The Nine Mile Walk

by Harry Kemelman

  “And what’s that?” asked Chisholm curiously.

  “To see what time it was on the electric clock.”

  I could understand something of Graham’s exasperation as he exclaimed, “But dammit, Nicky, the man had two watches. Why would he want to go downstairs to see the time?”

  “Because in this case, two watches were not as good as one,” said Nicky quietly.

  I tried to understand. Did he mean that the supernatural force that had manifested itself to Jack Cartwright that night and had prevented him from entering the house had somehow tampered with the watches?

  “What was wrong with them?” I asked.

  “They disagreed.”

  Then he leaned back in his chair and looked about him with an air of having explained everything. There was a short silence and as he scanned our faces, his expression of satisfaction changed to one of annoyance.

  “Don’t you see yet what happened?” he demanded. “When you wake up in the middle of the night, the first thing you do is look at the clock on the mantelpiece or your watch on the night table in order to orient yourself. That’s precisely what Cyrus Cartwright did. He woke up and glancing at his wristwatch he saw that it was a quarter to twelve, say. Then quite automatically he reached for his pocket watch on the night table. He pressed the catch and the chiming mechanism tinkled twelve and then went on to tinkle half or three quarters past. He had set the watches only a few hours before and both of them were going, and yet one was about an hour faster than the other. Which was right? What time was it? I fancy he tried the repeater again and again and then tried to dismiss the problem from his mind until morning. But after tossing about for a few minutes, he realized that if he hoped to get back to sleep that night, he would have to go downstairs to see what time it really was.” Nicky turned to Chisholm. “You see, the jar from the fall would not have moved the watch ahead. A blow will either stop the movement or it might speed up or slow down the escapement for a few seconds. But a watch with hands so loose that a jar will move them would be useless as a timepiece. Hence, the watch must have been moved ahead sometime before the fall. Cyrus Cartwright would not do it, which means that his nephew must have, probably while transferring the watch, from the bureau to the night table.”

  “You mean accidentally?” asked Chisholm. “Or to annoy his uncle?”

  Nicky’s little blue eyes glittered. “Not to annoy him,” he said, “to murder him!”

  He smiled pleasantly at our stupefaction. “Oh yes, no doubt about it,” he assured us. “After arranging the windows to his uncle’s satisfaction and placing the watch on the night table, Jack bade his uncle a courteous good night. And on his way out, he stopped just long enough to rumple or double over the bit of carpet at the head of the stairs. There was no light in the hallway remember.”

  “But—but I don’t understand. I don’t see—I mean, how did he know that his uncle was going to wake up in the middle of the night?” Chisholm finally managed.

  “Firing off his rifle under his uncle’s windows insured that, I fancy,” Nicky replied. He smiled. “And now you can understand, I trust, why he could not enter his uncle’s house that night. He was afraid that his uncle, awake now, would hear him come in and instead of venturing downstairs, would simply call down to him to ask what time it was.”

  This time we did not laugh.

  The silence that followed was suddenly broken by the chiming of the chapel clock. Subconsciously, we glanced at our watches, and then realizing what we were doing, we all laughed.

  “Quite,” said Nicky.

  The Whistling Tea Kettle

  I was fully prepared to spend the week or ten days that it would take to redo my house at a hotel, but when I mentioned it to Nicky Welt and he suggested that I bunk in with him instead, I was curiously touched and readily accepted. He treated me as very much his junior, usually with a touch of condescension, as of the teacher for the not overbright sophomore, and I fell into the role assigned me. It had been that way from the beginning of our friendship when I had first joined the Law Faculty, and it continued even after I left teaching to campaign—successfully—for the office of County Attorney.

  He lived in a boardinghouse a couple of blocks from the railroad depot at some little distance from the university, a circumstance which from his point of view was one of the virtues of the place since it gave him a brisk fifteen-minute constitutional every day, and also cut down on the number of people who might be likely to drop in on him of an evening had he been nearer. He occupied a small suite on the second floor consisting of bedroom, study, and bath, and either by reason of his seniority at the boardinghouse—he had lived there all the time I had known him—or by reason of his academic eminence, and in a university town that is important, he was the star boarder. Mrs. Keefe, the landlady, was always doing special little things for him, such as bringing up a tray with cake and coffee in the evening, and this in spite of his having an electric hot-plate in his room, as did all the rooms in the establishment, and quite able to do for himself. Obviously, she offered no objection to my coming there. In fact, it was all Nicky could do to prevent her from removing the cot in the study and bringing in a full-sized bed so that I would be more comfortable.

  As it turned out, I was fortunate in the arrangement, for a portion of that period of ten days coincided with a university convocation. We had had convocations before, and they had disturbed the even flow of university life but little, but this year the university had a new president, one of the new type of college presidents, a young, eager, efficient executive, and he had arranged for scholars and big-wigs to be drawn from the ends of the earth. There were meetings and conferences and panel discussions scheduled for every hour for each of the three days. But what is more to the purpose, every hotel room in town, every bit of available dormitory space, seemingly every unoccupied bed had been commandeered by the university for the expected distinguished guests. If I had gone to a hotel, I probably would have had to share my room with one or more of the visitors. And if I had remained in my own house, I would have been in a worse case—the unwilling host of a dozen or more. As it was, Professor Richardson, who was Chairman of the Committee on Housing Arrangements, gave me a reproachful look when I ran across him at the Faculty Club, and practically implied that I had purposely arranged to have my house done over during Convocation Week just to avoid having to entertain the guests of the university.

  Mrs. Keefe, on the other hand, like all the boarding-house proprietors, was naturally delighted. She had a room up in the attic which she rarely succeeded in renting, into which she now managed to crowd three young women from India who were to take part in the discussions on Village Medicine. She had coaxed or browbeaten the amiable young graduate student who had the room immediately above ours to sharing his room with a bearded Pakistani in a turban. The room across the hall from us was occupied by another graduate student who had been called home because of sickness in the family and she had promptly rented it, presumably with his permission, to two of the visitors, one of whom arrived Sunday and the other the following day by the evening train.

  Later that evening, after the two men had had a chance to get settled, Nicky knocked on their door and invited them to spend the evening with us. I am sure that he was moved as much by curiosity as he was by natural feelings of hospitality. The earlier arrival was a young man of about thirty, tall and blond, with a charming mid-European accent and the impossible name of Erik Flugel-heimer. He was lively and vivacious, and yet withal, he had a humility that was not the least part of his charm. His roommate was a short dark man, perhaps ten years older, whose name was Earl Blodgett. He was stuffy and pompous and quite convinced of his own importance. He turned out to be none other than the Assistant Curator of the Far East Division of the Laurence Winthrop Collection. Since the theme of the Convocation was, as the program leaflet gave it, “The New World of the Far East,” his importance in the general scheme of things was obvious. He was also precise, and meticulous and
crotchety.

  When Nicky set about preparing coffee for our guests, Blodgett said, “I’m afraid I can’t. It keeps me awake till all hours. Might I have some tea instead? Do you have a kettle? If not, I can get the one in our room.”

  Nicky assured him that he had tea and a kettle and was about to prepare it when he begged leave to prepare it himself. “I am very particular as to just how it is brewed. I’m sure you won’t mind.”

  Nicky did mind, of course, but as host he was being gracious and he motioned his guest to the hot-plate.

  Erik laughed. “He cannot abide coffee and I can’t stand tea. We have both a teapot and a percolator but we have only one burner on our hot-plate. We shall have to toss a coin to decide who will make his drink first in the morning.”

  We sipped at our drinks and talked about the events that were scheduled. I remarked that the emphasis seemed to be primarily political and sociological and that for that reason there might not be too much interest in the Art Section meetings.

  “I have every reason to believe,” Blodgett said with lofty complacency, “that the Art Section will provide the most noteworthy contribution of the Convocation.”

  “Are you planning a surprise of some sort?” I asked.

  Blodgett favored me with a superior smile. “Have you ever heard of the Adelphi Bowl?” he asked.

  Nicky pricked up his ears. “George Slocumbe, he’s the Fine Arts man here, was telling me about it the other day. He said it had recently been acquired by a private collection. He didn’t mention the Laurence Winthrop Collection. Do you mean that you have it and are planning to exhibit it here?”

  “What is it, Nicky?” I asked.

  “It’s a bowl made of massive gold and encrusted with precious stones. It’s worth—”

  “It is priceless,” said Blodgett.

  “And you are going to exhibit here at the Convocation?” I asked.

  Blodgett shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps.”

  Rather than press him, I turned to his roommate. “And you, are you going to surprise the Convocation, too?”

  The blond young man shook his head ruefully. “I am not one of the distinguished scholars like my roommate who have been invited to read papers. I am an instructor of mathematics at Muhlbach College in North Dakota. Have you ever heard of it? Ah, I thought not. It is a small denominational college where once a year the Minneapolis Symphony gives a concert and maybe two or three times a year we get a road company with the New York hits of three years ago. So when notice of your convocation was posted on the bulletin board and I saw that it would come during our April vacation, I decided to come here. I shall attend as many sessions as I can. Who knows, I might get to ask an intelligent question and this might call me to the attention of one of your distinguished guests from one of the larger colleges who might decide that I might make a worthwhile addition to his faculty and rescue me from Muhlbach.”

  The Convocation was scheduled to last three days—Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Blodgett’s talk was scheduled for Wednesday evening. He chose to regard the scheduling as indicative of the importance of his talk, as though the Convocation was arranged to work up to a gradual climax. Under the circumstances, I did not have the heart to point out that since the evening train left about an hour before his discourse, the likelihood was that the great majority of the guests would have left the university by the time he was scheduled to speak since otherwise they would have to stay overnight until the next day before they could get a train out.

  The next day, Tuesday, I left my office early, just after lunch in fact. It was too nice a day to work. I strolled along leisurely, savoring the April air. I chose the long way back to the boardinghouse—through the campus. I saw Earl Blodgett and stopped to talk with him. I invited him to join me back at the house, but he was planning to take in some of the lectures and I left him.

  Just as I arrived at the boardinghouse, I saw Erik turn the corner. I waited for him and we walked up the front stairs together. The mail had just been delivered and was lying in a pile on the hall table. I riffled through the letters to see if there was anything for me or for Nicky.

  “I don’t suppose there is anything for me,” Erik said.

  “Here’s one for your roommate though,” and I handed him an envelope.

  Included in the mail were a couple of magazines and I glanced through them idly while Erik went on up to his room. Nicky was at his desk in the study correcting student blue books when I entered.

  “Are you planning to go to the Convocation Dinner tonight?” I asked.

  He gave me a sour grin. “I went to the Convocation Luncheon this noon,” he said. “That’s about as much Convocation as I can stand for a while. I can forgive the gelatinous creamed chicken in soggy pastry shell since that’s standard, but the conversation at these affairs is a little more difficult on the digestion. There were two females, one on either side of me, who were conversing largely across me and talking the most utter drivel. One urged with all seriousness that mirrored in every leaf or bud there is the clue to the entire cosmos. I am not unfamiliar with the more insane theories of the transcendentalists, but I don’t believe any of them ever really believed the nonsense as a purely practical matter; that is, that one could determine the speed of the earth’s rotation by studying the leaf of a tree.”

  “And you think your luncheon companion did?”

  “Well, she had been in India, and she had been taken to all the tourist traps—the usual guru, and this one’s forte was to take a single hair from a man’s head and tell all about him. Another thing that he did: he had himself blindfolded and he had one of the company—there were about twenty as I understand—pluck a single note on a native harp, and then he was able to tell which of the twenty had struck the note.”

  “That’s rather hard to believe of course, but I once spoke to a concert pianist who told me that if he and Rubinstein both struck the same key on the same piano, there would be a distinct difference in sound that would be apparent to anyone.”

  “Nonsense,” said Nicky decisively.

  At that moment the quiet of our boardinghouse was broken by the shrill hoarse whistle of our neighbor’s tea kettle. Nicky is so positive in his opinions that the chance of scoring on him was irresistible. I appeared to be listening intently for a moment, then I said, “I am not so sure, Nicky. Now I would be willing to wager that the discordant note of that tea kettle shows the fine Middle European hand of our friend Erik, rather than the restrained, repressed character of the excellent Blodgett.”

  “Then you would lose,” said Nicky with a wry grin, “Because it is Earl Blodgett who is the tea drinker; Erik drinks coffee.”

  I rattled the loose coins in my trouser pocket. “I am still willing to make the wager,” I said smugly.

  Nicky peered at me out from under his bushy eyebrows. “You are too certain,” he said. “You must know something. Did you meet Erik on the stairs and did he tell you that his roommate was not in?”

  I nodded sheepishly. “Something like that. I met Earl at the university and he said he was staying for some lectures. Erik came in with me. I stopped to look through the mail. There was a letter for Earl which I gave him to take up. I assumed that Earl didn’t change his mind about the lectures and that Erik must be in the room alone. I suppose he decided to try the tea for once just to see what Earl finds in the stuff.”

  Nicky had turned back to his blue books even while I was talking. Without looking up, he said, “The whistling of the tea kettle does not mean that our friend is brewing tea, only that he is boiling water.”

  “What else would he boil water for?”

  “There are any number of reasons he might have for boiling water. He might even be interested not in the water but in the by-product.”

  “What’s the by-product of boiling water?” I demanded.

  “Steam.”

  “Steam? What would he want with steam?”

  Nicky put his pile of blue books away and looked up at me
. “He might want it for loosening the gummed flap on an envelope.”

  “You think he is opening Blodgett’s letter? Why would he want to read Blodgett’s mail?”

  Nicky sat back in his chair. “Let’s think about it. Of course he might be an extremely inquisitive person who finds anything that is closed to him a challenge to his curiosity. But that’s not too likely. It is also most unlikely that he knows anyone who would be apt to be writing to Blodgett. That suggests that there was something about the sealed envelope that indicated that it would be worth his while to open it.”

  I fell into the spirit of the game. “You mean he could tell something from the handwriting or the return address?”

  “That’s a possibility,” said Nicky, “but it would mean that the address was in Blodgett’s own handwriting.”

  “How do you arrive at that conclusion?”

  “Well, consider, the two men, Blodgett and Erik, are engaged in entirely different fields of study; they come from utterly different backgrounds, and from widely separate parts of the country. It is most unlikely that they have any friends or acquaintances in common. The only handwriting that he might be familiar with would be Blodgett’s, from having seen his notes lying about perhaps. It is possible that that might excite his curiosity: what is Blodgett writing to himself? But what I had in mind was that the mere feel of the envelope might lead him to want to open it.”

  “Money? You mean it might contain money—bills of large denomination?”

  Nicky shook his head. “They would feel just like any other paper. If it were something heavy—”

  “Like a coin,” I exclaimed, having in mind a rare antique.

  “Possible, but not reasonable. If it were a coin of great value, he would be fairly certain to see it when Blodgett opened his letter—if he only wanted to see it. On the other hand, if he wanted to steal it, he would not bother to steam the envelope open, he would merely take it. Sooner or later, however, the theft would be discovered and investigation would prove that Erik must have taken it. No, I would say that that line of reasoning is not too fertile. I am inclined to agree that the envelope contained something that could be felt, probably metal, necessarily flat. But I rather think that it would be something that has no great value in itself, a key for instance.”