And I loved her that she did pity them.
I had the jumps at the desk that night. I kept going over it in my mind. It was a situation for a catalyst. Otis was overbrained and nervous, and his wife was looking dewy-eyed at a cousin that had come home from the South Pacific with all the glamour of heroism. There was something I’d heard once about Otis’s grandfather. …
I gnawed at myself so long over it that I almost wasn’t surprised when the call came. The voice on the phone was incoherent. I didn’t even know who was talking, or who was dead.
The surprise came after I got out there.
But now I was standing in Otis’s study. The body was lying in the center of the room. There was a purple bruise on the jaw, and the face looked hurt and surprised. There was plenty of blood, and when will people learn not to leave sharp paper cutters on their desks? There was something by the corpse’s hand, too, something that looked familiar and didn’t belong there.
The doctor was saying: “Just missed the heart by the looks of things. Bled to death. Nasty, slow way of dying.”
I said: “Good.” The doctor gave me a funny look, but that was all right. I meant it. It was good that Gregor Stolz had had a slow nasty death.
It’s hell to grill people you know, and the questioning didn’t bring out very much.
The party had broken up after I left and for a while Otis had continued to talk numbers with Gregor Stolz here in the study—I didn’t ask what Anne and the commander were doing at the time. Then Otis had gone down to the basement to look up some science fiction mags he had stored away that contained some stories about extraterrestrial nondecimal notation (it says in the transcript). Both Anne and the commander had been in the study (separately) to talk to Gregor but they had both left him alive (they said).
It was a family front and nobody was saying anything.
I picked up what was by the corpse’s hand. “This is my notebook,” I said.
Otis explained: “I found it by your place after dinner. Brought it in here, meaning to ring you up and forgot it.”
“Stolz knew it was mine?”
“I think we talked about it.”
Otis had found him when he came up from the basement. There weren’t any science fiction mags in the room.
I talked to Anne last. When we finished her transcript, I asked Macready to go get her a drink. Alone, we sat looking at each other.
She said: “It isn’t possible.”
I said: “It happened.”
“But he must have … done it himself?”
“The doc says no.”
When she spoke again, she said a funny thing. She said: “And now of all times …”
I looked at her. She caught herself and shook her head. “No. Not even you.”
“I’m not me,” I said. “I wear a badge.”
“That isn’t why. It’s you I can’t tell. Not the badge. Some time soon. Oh, soon. I want to, but it isn’t fair …”
She didn’t say anything more for a while. When Macready brought the drink I spilled a little on the shoulder of my suit. Willful destruction of evidence, they call it.
When she was gone Macready said: “And your own notebook is Exhibit A, huh, Loot?”
I looked at the notebook. There was blood on its pages—inside pages where it couldn’t have dripped. And the blood made signs, intelligible marks—the way a finger might make, before it ran out of blood.
I said: “He knew this was my book. He left a message for me.”
Macready said: “Jeez, Loot. What’s it say?”
I worked on the marks. I said: “It’s a big help. It says Over Seven-Down Ten. And under that it says Fifteen-Ten.”
Macready looked blank and snapped his fingers. “I got it, Loot. It’s a crossword clue like in a story I read once. Over and down, see? You find the crossword and those words are gonna be the murderer’s name.”
I said: “You keep an eye on things here. I’ll be back in a half hour or so.”
Gregor Stolz had a small house up in Strawberry Canyon east of the campus and south of the hills. It was modern, I guess. Anyway, it had a lot of flat planes and seemed to grow right out of where it was, and I liked it.
I had the dead man’s keys. I tried the study first with no luck, and then the bedroom. The bed was narrow even for a single and maybe that explained a little more about the way Gregor Stolz ticked before somebody stuck a papercutter in the works.
The bedroom had paneled walls. The part above the head of the bed was all fancy, with an inlaid diamond motif running around it.
I said: “Over Seven-Down Ten.” I knelt on the bed and pressed my right hand on the seventh diamond in the top row and my left in the tenth at the side. Nothing happened. I felt around a little. My left hand moved down two diamonds.
The panel that opened was plumb in the middle of the wall, but I hadn’t spotted so much as a crack. I looked in and I didn’t see any rare East Indian snakes. I reached in and took out a leather-bound book. It was lying all by itself in front, but toward the back I could see a row like it.
I opened it and read a while. Then I reached in and read a little of one of the back volumes, just enough to be sure.
A man in my business ought to have a stronger stomach.
When I got back to the Queen’s Road house Macready said: “All quiet. They’re all three in the music room.”
I heard voices and I went in without knocking. Anne was whiter than her dress and her mouth was open, not making a sound. Commander Quentin Lyons had his fists up defensive-like. Otis Jordan had his right in the air and he was staring at it as though he’d never seen it before and never wanted to see it again.
You’d think they had been living statues. I said: “O.K. Otis, I think it’s time we had another talk …”
He looked dazed, said: “Not … not in there?”
I said: “Yeah. The study. Come on.”
We left Anne with the commander. When Otis was seated in the study, trying to keep his eyes away from the stains, I said: “You socked him.”
“I was going to. I was going to and then—”
“Not your cousin. Gregor Stolz. That bruise on his chin.”
Otis’s head nodded a weak yes.
I said: “Maybe you were honest before. Maybe you didn’t remember. That’d be why you were so horrified when you started to slug the commander and all of a sudden remembered the other time.”
Otis nodded again. Then he started to talk. He wasn’t being articulate now. “He said things. Not Quentin—Gregor. Terrible things. That Anne … I couldn’t stand it. Then the next thing I knew I was down in Grandpa’s library. I didn’t know why I was there. That’s where I keep the science fiction, so I thought maybe … But I was worried because I didn’t remember and I came back upstairs and …”
“Found him.”
“And I still don’t know. Just now when Quentin … I remember the hitting but nothing more. How much more have I got to remember?”
It isn’t a good thing to see an industrial chemist with tears in his eyes.
I said: “Anne and the commander both saw him alive afterwards.”
He waved them aside. “They’re my family.”
I said: “You were in a mental jam, so you went to Grandpa’s library. Grandpa was a little … Well, wasn’t he? I seem to remember—”
He twisted a smile. “Grandpa was nuts, if you want the truth. That’s what makes me feel so … He was a great scholar, you know—the money came from his brother. He spent all his life working on Elizabethan manuscript material. There’s damned little of it and he spent a fortune and all his energy amassing stuff—this was before photostats. He was all ready to publish his book. It would have proved new things about collaborative methods in the Elizabethan drama. And then came the great Berkeley fire. That was just twenty years ago. It all went. Every scrap of it. Only he didn’t think so. When that was Grandpa’s library it had empty shelves. He used to take visitors around it and show them all the treasures and give them
autographed copies of the book that was never published.”
I said: “Hell!”
“You see we crack under strain, we Jordans. I’ve been overworking. I’ve felt like hell. And the things Gregor said … They were poison, you know. I wouldn’t say them even to you. I didn’t believe them and still they made me take a sock at Quent just because he paid Anne a compliment.”
I stood up. I said: “Come on back to the music room. I want to read you something. A little message from Gregor.”
I tried not to look at Anne while I talked.
I said: “Gregor Stolz knew he was dying. He also knew that this was my notebook. He scrawled something in it for me. He didn’t dare write his killer’s name because if the killer saw it first he’d destroy it. Instead he left scrawls that looked meaningless. If the killer saw them he might worry, but he’d be a little hesitant about destroying the book I’d remember I left. It was up to me to figure them out.
“The ‘crossword’ directions sounded like the clue to a hiding place. I found the paneled wall at Gregor’s and it was what I wanted. The other message—Fifteen-Ten—well, you’ll see about that in a minute.”
I opened the book in my lap and looked at it, gagging. I said, “It’s hard to say in words of one syllable what Gregor was. I bet the psychiatrists have a name for it, but I wouldn’t know. I’d call it a remote control murderer. Wherever Gregor was, murders happened. And it was always because he’d just happened to say the wrong word at the wrong time. This book from inside the panel, this is his—hell, his casebook. One of’em. They’re all written down here. Only he does not use names—he uses numbers.
“I think he told himself this was for secrecy in case the wrong eyes ever read it. But I think down underneath it was because that’s all the names and the people ever were to him, numbers he could twist around the way he made one-two-three-four into two-o-five-six. The numbers are too easy to read for secrecy. For instance the last entry is:
Dinner tonight with One. One’s curries are delicious, but I feel that I might add a few surprising ingredients.
“And an earlier book, his references to the banker, Charles Banktock, are Three-Two. Just numerals for initials, you see—one for A equals Anne, Three-Two for C.B.
“Now I want to read you a little about his latest game,” I said haltingly.
My throat was dry. They kept looking at me and I didn’t dare stop. I read:
“Fifteen-Ten will prove to be an unusually fascinating specimen. The situation is ideal. I was pleased enough with it simply in view of his emotional problems with the fair One, but imagine my entranced delight upon discovering yet another factor of even more pleasing complication.
“Fifteen-Ten is mad. He does not realize it, of course. It is doubtless hereditary, aggravated by occupational strain. I have picked up certain stories of his actions under stress which leave me no doubt, and I am sure his employers will soon take action. If they do not, a hint may interest them … To play upon this madness, to utilize it to further the emotional tension, perhaps even to reveal it to One, thereby heightening her—”
I broke off. I couldn’t take any more of the reading Gregor Stolz kept by his lonely bed.
I shut the book and said: “He talked to Fifteen-Ten. He wanted to convince him, you see, that he was mad, in order to drive him to murder over—over One. He convinced him, all right.”
Otis Jordan stood up. Macready made a move but I shushed him. Otis blinked through his lenses and said: “I guess madmen can still count. O’s the fifteenth letter. J’s the tenth. I’m ready whenever you are.” Anne moved swiftly toward him. Her dress was white against him and her arms were white around his darker neck.
“It’s not that easy,” she said. “I don’t care what Gregor Stolz wrote in his wicked little book. Otis isn’t talking to you without a lawyer. And a psychiatrist if you wish.”
Commander Quentin Lyons came close to the two of them. Gently, he tried to detach her arms. “Don’t be foolish, Anne. Can’t you see it’s better this way? If you fight it, there’ll only be a scandal.”
Anne turned on him. Her eyes lightened. “Otis isn’t crazy. Even if he is, he didn’t kill anybody, and if he did, I’m not walking out on him. Do you mean you’d stand there and let this poor tired sick man talk himself into a murder confession? Why, you—”
I got up, too. This was all I was waiting for. I said: “Come along, Commander. Let Otis get his sleep. He needs it. And that isn’t a bad idea about a psychiatrist, Anne.”
Quentin Lyons said: “You mean you’re not taking him?”
“Why should I when I’ve got you?”
The surprise held him breathless for a minute and I punched the words in hard. “Remember how Gregor said he was so sold on the duodecimal system he used it even in his private figuring? When I opened his panel, I had to reach down two diamonds from ten to twelve. One-five-one-o doesn’t mean fifteen ten. It means—”
A spark came into Otis’s dull eyes. “One-five equals one times twelve plus five. One-o equals one times twelve plus zero.”
“Thanks, Otis. I figured that, but it took me time. In Gregor’s duodecimal fifteen-ten means what in decimal is seventeen-twelve. In letters, Q.L. or Quentin—”
He was on his way to the door but somehow Macready was already there.
“He was probably beginning to crack when they transferred him to shore duty. And the field psychiatrist, not knowing about the family background—funny you don’t always think of cousins having the same grandfather—didn’t see it in the same light as Gregor did.
“Lots of flaws show up under the strain of war. With proper care and good sense, most of them can be fixed. But he had the bad luck to run into Gregor, who needed to push people around. …”
I stopped and looked at Otis. He was asleep. “I know a guy out at Conch Oil,” I said. “I think I can arrange a sick leave for him.”
Anne said: “You’re sweet.”
She moved on the couch so that Otis’s sleeping head was on her white shoulder. I left them like that.
(1945)
The Retired Hangman
It’s hard to tell where to start this story. I could start it back in Iowa with the Wythe murder, if a common death by shooting is interesting enough. I could start it with Hagar and the way her stubby fingers twitched when she thought of a killer. Or I could start it much further on, with the Pasadena police when they discovered that you can cut the head off a corpse but you can’t necessarily fit it back on.
But I think it’s best to start in with Alonzo. It all revolves around Alonzo. Hagar and Willis and me … the whole picture would never have come into focus if it hadn’t been for Alonzo and his profession.
They say you can get used to anything. Aunt Martha used to say, “You can get used to hanging if you hang long enough.” I wouldn’t know about that, though Willis might have. But I do know you can get used to a hangman.
At first there wasn’t any telling Alonzo from the other retired Iowans playing checkers and horseshoes in the Arroyo. He chewed cigars like the rest of them; he had the same paunch and the same baldness. He played a fair game of checkers and a better than average game of horseshoes. And like the others, on a hot day he took off his coat and sat around in a shirt with a collar and tie and suspenders, which was to indicate that even though he was a voluntary exile from Iowa he still hadn’t given in to Southern California.
I used to wear a tie myself when I went down to the Arroyo. I fitted in better that way. Maybe it seems a funny place for me to want to fit in—a bunch of men a generation ahead of me living out their retired lives with huffs and ringers.
But to retire you have to have money. That’s sort of in the nature of things. And that makes a city like Pasadena, where being retired is a major occupation, a logical place for a man like me. Because when you have money you always want it to be a little more, and a gilt-edged proposition for doubling it in six months looks mighty attractive.
That’s how I met Alonz
o—on what you might call a scouting expedition down to the checker tables. I was soothing down a retired banker from Waterloo, explaining to him how a flock of new government regulations was hampering the quick return he’d expected, when I first heard Alonzo.
“It’s a shame,” he was saying, loud and sort of petulant, “it’s a shame and a disgrace to the nation.”
At first I thought it was more of the straight damn-the-White-House talk I was used to around there, like what my retired banker was giving me now. (He was willing to believe anything about government regulations.) Alonzo said something about “the American Way” and I almost stopped listening; I know that speech.
But then he said, “Only eleven states left, unless you count Utah and you can’t hardly do that. Only eleven states still following the American Way.”
This sounded like a new approach. I listened while I kept telling my banker how right he was.
“California held out a long time,” Alonzo went on, “but what’ve you got now? Murder, that’s what you’ve got; plain cold-blooded legal murder. What does the Constitution say? I’ll tell you what the Constitution says. The Constitution says …” He paused and held his breath. He let it out slowly and then said with a pause between every pair of words: “Cruel and unusual punishments shall not be inflicted. That’s what the Constitution says.”
Alonzo made pretty much of a speech of it. Even my banker began listening and pretty soon there was a little crowd around him. He had all the facts: Twenty-two states where they fry you in the chair, eight where they use the lethal gas chamber, six (and this seemed to hurt Alonzo the worst) where they don’t even kill you at all.
I kind of liked Utah. There they give you a choice. You can select whether you want to get shot or hanged. And all the time that law’s been in force, nobody’s picked hanging yet.
That really got Alonzo. “What kind of murderers is that?” he argued. “Afraid to die the good old American Way? And what kind of legislators pass laws like that?”
Somebody said something about Communists and somebody else said the only trouble with them was hanging’d be too good for them and the conversation began to get away from Alonzo. It’s always a good time to hit a man, just when the conversation’s getting away from him; so I slipped up next to Alonzo and listened to him for as long as he wanted to talk.
Exeunt Murderers Page 26
