Sunday, November 2 to Thursday, November 6, 1941
URSULA MARSHALL, happily full of formula, kicked her chubby legs. It was a friendly and joyful gesture, but it did not help the process of changing her diaper.
Her four-year-old brother looked on wide-eyed. “That looks like fun maybe, daddy. Is it?”
Lieutenant Marshal said, “What do you think?”
Terry gave the problem due attention. “Maybe yes,” he announced. “Can I do it sometime, daddy?”
Marshall’s large hands moved with surprising deftness. “By the time you can reach on top of a bathinet, I hope your sister won’t be needing it”
“Then could I have another sister maybe?”
“We’ll see about that. Perhaps we ought to get you practised up for when you have one of your own. And when you do, Terry, remember these words of fatherly advice: The more you help your wife with being a mother, the more time and energy she’ll have for being a wife.”
“What’s energy?”
“Breakfast!” Leona called from the kitchen, thereby sparing her husband the grievous semantic problem of defining a term with no visible referend.
“You see, Terry?” he elucidated as they sat to table. “Because I got up and gave Ursula her early bottle, your mother had time” (he omitted the confusing new word) “to whip me up a buckwheat batter.”
“I want a buckwheat batter,” Terry announced inevitably.
“There dear,” said Leona soothingly. “You’ve got your nice mush.”
“Leona.” Marshall firmly overrode Terry’s outspoken comments on the nice mush. “Did you get anywhere sleeping on it?”
“Nowhere at all. That does usually work with mystery novels. I read them up to where the detective says, ‘All the clews are now in your hands, my dear Whozit,’ and then I go to sleep and in the morning I know the answer. But this didn’t work out. Maybe it’s because all the clews aren’t in our hands.”
“That’s just it. There aren’t any clews but a rosary and a photograph. Everything’s so god—”
Leona glanced sideways at their son. “Terence!”
“So terribly nebulous. And a corpse is a—a darn sight more cooperative than a living victim who sits calmly back swiddling his press notices and murmurs gently, ‘All right. Now you tell me who did it.’ ”
To most children a corpse at the breakfast table would be unbearably exciting. But Terry was too young yet to realize how romantically thrilling his father’s profession would seem to others. Murder and corpses were just funny things that his parents talked about a lot. He now barely heard the word and went right on with his mush, which he had remembered that he liked.
“What I keep coming back to,” Leona reflected, “is Sister Ursula’s reference to the Invisible Man. She doesn’t say things at random. So I reread that Chesterton story last night.”
“Does it help?”
“It’s the same moral as so many of his, of course: the easy danger of overlooking the obvious. The Invisible Man is the postman. All the witnesses swear that no one came near the house, and of course they never think of the man who comes and goes all the time. But who’s your Invisible Man here? You checked on the maid?”
“Naturally.”
“And—I know this sounds funny, but still . . . and Sister Felicitas?”
Marshall laughed. “I see what you mean. She is the Invisible Woman right enough.”
“I knew you’d laugh at me. But remember the Holmes dictum: Eliminate the impossible . . .”
“Dr. Derringer put it another way in one of his scientific researches: ‘Eliminate the impossible. Then if nothing remains, some part of the “impossible” was possible.’ I think that might be more helpful here. But to please you, darling, I’ll check on the good Sister. Her motive, I suppose, was to avenge the insult to Sister Patientia in the Braille work?”
“How many times, Terence, have I heard you say, ‘Juries convict on evidence, not on motives?’ ”
“All right. But I doubt if Sister Felicitas could stay awake long enough for a murder . . . And what are the chances on some more b-u-c-k—”
“Buckwheat batter!” Terry crowed.
Jenny Green received Marshall with a friendly, “Good morning, Lieutenant.”
“And to you, Miss Green.”
“Veronica’s at the hospital,” she explained.
Marshall repressed a sigh of relief. “It’s chiefly you I wanted to see anyway. You and that room.”
“Me? How can I help you? But I’d be so glad if I could.”
“You were Mr. Foulkes’ secretary, weren’t you?”
The girl shuddered. “Please don’t say were, Lieutenant. You make it sound as though—as though whoever it was had succeeded.”
“Sorry. Professional habit, I guess. This living corpse situation is a trifle irregular. You are, then?”
“Yes.”
“Then might I ask you to go through your files and make me a list of everyone Mr. Foulkes ever had any serious financial or literary disputes with?”
She half-smiled. “I’m afraid that will take a while.”
“I’m not surprised. But meanwhile I’ll see if I can prise some secret out of that devilish study.”
There’s a time-honored dictum, Marshall thought as he stared at the unresponsive walls, that the more complex a situation has been made, the easier it is to solve. The simply conceived crime is the brain-twister. Which is doubtless true enough. Most complexities unravel instantly once you get hold of the right end of the thread. But when there are no threads . . .
Now there has to be a reason for any locked room situation. Criminals do not create locked rooms out of sheer devilment. The simplest reason is to make the death look like suicide; but if that were the case here, Hilary would have been stabbed in the front or the side. That was out. So was a framed accident. The reason might be to give the criminal an alibi. It had been in that Harrigan case. But of possible suspects so far, the only ones with alibis at all had such impeccable ones that they could not be questioned for an instant. Perhaps in Miss Green’s list . . .
Or there is one kind of locked room without a reason. That is the accidental one, never planned by the criminal. Some little thing might have gone wrong by chance to produce this effect of apparent impossibility.
. . . and if nothing remains, some part of the “impossible” was possible . . .
Marshall clucked irritably, left the study, and followed the sound of typing. He found Jenny Green methodically hunting through files and copying down names with a line or two to identify the cause of trouble in each case. She looked up and asked, “Yes, Lieutenant?”
“Did you, Miss Green, ever grab a stick by the wrong end and then find the end wasn’t there?”
“Am I supposed to answer?”
“Rhetorical. It’s what I’ve been doing. I’m grabbing at the factual clews and I don’t know enough about the people. Maybe you can help me?”
Jenny waved a hand at the typewriter. “But I don’t know anything about those people. To me they’re just names to type at the heads of letters.”
“I don’t mean those people necessarily. I mean Mr. Foulkes, his wife, his brother-in-law—you.”
“Lieutenant, surely you—”
“I don’t suspect anybody yet. I don’t unsuspect anybody either. But the whole thing focuses around Hilary Foulkes, and I’ve got to know this—this Foulkes focus. The Foulkes-lore, if you’ll forgive me.”
“I’ll try. I mean, try to tell you; I don’t think I can forgive you. But sit down. And you can light your pipe if you want.”
The only furniture beside the chair at the typing table consisted of a bed and a low boudoir chair covered with flowered chintz. Marshall chose the latter and did not feel so out of place as one might have expected; it was almost identical with the chair in which he gave Ursula her bottles.
“I’ve gathered,” Jenny Green began slowly, “how people feel about Cousin Hilary. Sometimes I can even understand it a little. But he’s been so different with me that I . . . Well, it isn’t only that I owe a lot to him. My mother was some sort of forty-second cousin of Fowler Foulkes. My father was killed in the last war, before I was born. Mother went back to grandfather and I was born at the vicarage. Mother wasn’t ever really well after that, and when grandfather died . . . Oh, I’m not going to tell you the whole story, but before Hilary came to England and decided to track down his transatlantic relatives, there were days when we didn’t eat. So I feel gratitude all right, but more than that too. Hilary is . . . well, he’s nice to me. Quite aside from being good to me, if you understand.”
“I think I do.”
“But to make you see him . . . You’ll have to go back. You’ll have to see Fowler Foulkes. Yes, and Darrell Wimpole too. I never knew them, but from their books, and from hearing their children talk— You must read those books, Lieutenant Foulkes’ autobiography and the Wimpole memoir. They might help.”
“I shall. But if meanwhile you—”
“Fowler Foulkes . . . well, he was a lot like Dr. Derringer except for his appearance. He looked very much like Hilary; but I suppose you remember pictures of him?”
“But he acted as though he did have a barrel chest and a black spade beard and a silver-headed cane. He boomed and he dominated and he crushed people with his trenchant wit. It wasn’t a pose. He was the real thing; a major personality. And Darrell Wimpole—”
“That’s Mrs. Foulkes’ father?”
“Yes. He was . . . he was the same sort of thing gone wrong. He was a major personality that didn’t come off. He’d started with a freak success in some strange mathematical theory that sounded brilliant and was later disproved. He wrote a little and kept being on the verge of success. He was great at dominating salons until anyone of interest appeared. Then when he met Foulkes, he changed entirely and became just a Boswellian satellite. Do you understand it? Because he couldn’t succeed in being what he wanted, he could write about its perfection in Foulkes, because he was simply a Foulkes manque. Does it make sense?”
“I think so. And the children of these men?”
“It’s as though there were only so much vital energy, so much perfection; and father and son had to split it between them. Hilary’s father, you see, achieved himself completely.”
“So Hilary lives simply on his father’s energy and is nothing in himself?”
“I wasn’t going to put it so cruelly, Lieutenant; but that’s much what I meant.”
“And Wimpole’s son? What is his name . . . Vance?”
“Vance . . .” Jenny Green leaned back and clasped her hands around her knees. Her eyes blurred away from their usual alertness. “Now Vance—”
At that point the doorbell rang. “And Alice is still out marketing.” She jumped to her feet. “We’ll finish this later, Lieutenant.”
Marshall looked at the sheet in the typewriter. Scads of names, many unfamiliar. Webb Marlowe, Cleve Cartmill . . . Austin Carter, but he knew that already . . . Matt too, of course.
Marshall listened and heard Miss Green’s tentative “Yes?” as she greeted, obviously, a complete stranger. Then there was a voice, a voice he knew slightly, saying, “I’d like to speak to Mr. Foulkes’ business manager.”
“I’m afraid Mr. Foulkes is his own business manager.”
And God knows that’s true enough, thought Marshall, trying to place the not quite unfamiliar voice. Then it identified itself.
“My name is Phyn. M. Halstead Phyn.”
There was a smile in the girl’s voice. “Oh yes. I remember typing letters to you. In fact, I was just about to refer to that file.”
So the little agent, too, had had his troubles with Hilary. Hardly surprising. But perhaps worth looking into.
Marshall stepped out into the living-room. There were two men at the door. The second was that deceptively young and callow-seeming individual who was, Matt had informed him, unexcelled at either hack or creative fantasy. Henderson, that was the name.
Phyn registered surprise. “Mr. Marshall!” he exclaimed.
“I’m afraid we met under false pretenses, Phyn. The handle is Lieutenant. Homicide. Miss Green, is it all right with you if I ask these gentlemen to step in?”
“Certainly, Lieutenant. I’ll finish that list for you.”
“Thank you. Please come in, gentlemen.”
Phyn sidled in uneasily. Henderson seemed lankily unperturbed by the Lieutenant’s status, but somewhat awed by the apartment.
“I want,” Marshall explained, “to ask you boys a few questions. First let’s get the name straight. What beside Phyn?”
“M. Halstead. And it’s P-h-y-n.”
“The M. stands for?”
Phyn hesitated, and Henderson laconically supplied, “Michael.”
Marshall grinned. “And I’ll bet the Phyn used to be F-i-n-n. Can’t blame you for changing it. Mickey Finn isn’t a good name for a man in a position of trust like an agent.”
“Does anybody,” Phyn asked ruefully, “trust an agent?”
“That I can’t say. But I’m willing to try. Now tell me just why you should choose this bright morning to visit the scene of the crime?”
Phyn wisely chose not to answer the implication. “I don’t know how much you understand about the literary business, Lieutenant—”
“The pulp racket,” said Joe Henderson.
“A little, Phyn. And by the time this case is over, I expect to be an authority. But what should I understand to account for your call?”
“You do at least know the standing of the Dr. Derringer opi? Of course. Well, you see—”
It was then that Veronica Foulkes threw open the hall door and caroled joyously, “Look who’s here!” When she saw the Lieutenant, her voice fell and she repeated, in a markedly different tone, “Just look who’s here . . . !”
But her reaction hardly mattered. The pale and wiry man behind her took over and dominated the scene. Jenny Green had abandoned her typing and come at Veronica’s call. Now she ran eagerly into the thin man’s arms and said “Vance,” very simply and happily. And D. Vance Wimpole was kissing her and greeting Phyn and Henderson and getting introduced to Marshall and demanding unlimited rounds of drinks all at once.
The next half hour was something nightmarish for Marshall. He wanted to talk with this brother-in-law for at least two reasons: first, because he might have information, being in the trade, of Hilary’s business relations with science fictionists, and being in the family, of Hilary’s relations with his wife and cousin (Miss Green’s family narrative, though clear and suggestive, could always bear checking against another source); and second, because Marshall was markedly interested in just where the hell Wimpole himself had been for the past several weeks.
But there was no opportunity for coherent questioning. Wimpole had welcomed Marshall eagerly enough (“. . . delighted to meet the man who’s going to unlock Hilary’s locked room . . . rotten taste in a murderer to go out of his way to be difficult, isn’t it?”), but then he was off on the narrative of his travels or trading shop talk with the agent and the other writer, whose presence here at the Foulkes apartment he seemed to accept with infinite casualness.
And sandwiched in between narrative and shop talk were fraternal kisses for Veronica, affianced kisses for Jenny, and a meticulous attention to the replenishing of glasses which suggested that Wimpole was host here rather than guest.
One unasked question he did in a way answer.
“. . . and I’m having the polar bear mounted. Make a wonderful rug for you, Ron. Or should I save it till Jenny and I set up housekeeping? Which by the way, Joe. Beautiful idea hit me. What happens if you mount a werewolf skin as a rug? Does it keep changing so you every so often look down and find you’re treading on human parchment? Don’t think I’ll use it. Too busy. You can have it if you want.”
Veronica shuddered. “Grisly!”
“Isn’t it? Almost as bad, good mother, as lock a room and in it stab my brother. -In-law, of course, but that wouldn’t rime. Which by the way, Lieutenant, where do I stand on the suspect list?”
“High,” said Marshall. In the presence of Vance Wimpole, anyone tended to become as laconic as Joe Henderson.
“I thought so. They say you’re a shrewd man. It wouldn’t be hard to see what a pretty motive I have. Financially, I mean. You can disregard the incest angle. So here. This is what they left me of my ticket and Pullman stub. Proves I was in San Francisco yesterday. Just thought you might like to know. Keep them if you wish. Press them with your dance programs. And did I write you, Ron, about that amazing sect of christianized voodoo I found in Santo Domingo?”
Marshall slipped the stubs back in their envelope and tucked them into his wallet. He’d have them checked, of course; but he had a fairly precise estimation of their worth without that. He only half listened to the narrative, colorfully incredible as it was, while he surveyed the other listeners.
They were themselves not too attentive to the words; but with one exception they were raptly fixed on the speaker. Jenny Green looked devotedly glad at this reunion, which was to be expected. What was less expected was that Wimpole’s sister gazed upon him quite as devotedly, quite as—hell, you might almost say amorously as his fiancée. Phyn’s interest was harder to analyze; he regarded D. Vance Wimpole almost as he might an un-anticipatedly favorable contract, and seemed to be studying him, forming in his shrewd mind the proper approach to extract the last drop of profit. But why? Was this purely some angle of the agency business, or did it somehow tie in with the Foulkes situation?
The one exception was Joe Henderson. Marshall had not seen him notice a woman before, not as a woman, that is. Miss Green, Mrs. Carter, Concha, even Leona he had hardly more than glanced at. But now his stare adhered fixedly to Veronica Foulkes.
Marshall would have liked to stay. There were possibilities that might develop here with another round or two. But the presence of a police official would simply act as whatever was the opposite of a catalyst and damn it he was beginning to think in the quasi-scientific jargon of these boys. And besides, there was plenty of routine, both Foulkes and Tarbell, waiting for him at headquarters.
At the point in Wimpole’s narrative where the christianized voodoo sect had developed a schism on the question of whether it was valid to baptize zombies, Marshall rose.
“I’ve some other matters to check up on,” he said regretfully. “But I want to see you later, Mr. Wimpole. Where are you staying?”
“Here, naturally.” It was Veronica Foulkes who answered.
“I’ll sleep in the study,” Wimpole explained. “Let you know, Lieutenant, if anything says, ‘Now we’re locked in for the night.’ ”
“I’ll phone you, then. And when is your husband expected home from the hospital, Mrs. Foulkes?”
“Tomorrow or next day. They say he’s recovering wonderfully.”
“Grand!” Wimpole cried. “We’ll have a recovery party. And it fits magnificently. Chantrelle—you know my mad friend over at Caltech—”
“You have mad friends any place,” Jenny murmured.
“I know. Won’t you have fun being hostess to them? But Chantrelle has his model rocket car all ready for a demonstration. He’s been holding it up till I got here. How’s about it? We’ll make it Hilary’s Saved-from-the-Jaws-of-Death party. You’ll come, of course, Joe, and Phyn. I’ll ask some of the other fantasy boys, the Carters and the Bouchers and who’s that bright new protégé of Austin’s? Matt Duncan. I know,” he added maliciously, “they’ll love to celebrate Hilary’s good health. And by all means you, Lieutenant.” He beamed all over his pale face, and drained his glass. “If only we could make the party complete! Invite the murderer. But maybe that can be arranged.”
As indeed it was.
3.
Sister Ursula had keep the Foulkes case from her mind during the day’s services and her All Souls’ Day visit to the cemetery in Long Beach and the grave of her father, that Stalwart Iowan Captain of Police. But now, as she read the office of Compline before retiring, it recurred to plague her.
Oddly enough it was the Qui habitat that set her off, the ninetieth psalm.* This noble hymn of confidence in the Lord seemed to accord so curiously with Hilary Foulkes’ trust, apparently so well deserved, in something that protected him. Scapulis suis obumbrabit tibi . . .
With His pinions will He shelter thee, and under His wings thou shalt be secure.
Like a shield His truth shall guard thee; thou shalt not fear the terrors of night,
Nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the plague that prowleth in the dark, nor the noonday attack of the demon . . .
It had been almost noon, the attack, hadn’t it? And was this as reasonable an explanation as any?
A thousand shall fall at thy side and ten thousand at thy right hand, yet no evil shall come nigh thee . . .
He has given His angels charge over thee . . .
A favorite line of the Devil’s this, Sister Ursula smiled to herself. He quoted it to Christ on the pinnacle of the temple, and was answered by a brilliantly twisted quotation which put him in his place as a scriptural authority. But was it chance that the Tempter chose this line? Was there not something dangerous in a certain kind of confidence?
There was something here, something in this confused melange of reflections on psalms and angels and devils and Hilary and religion . . . Sister Ursula paused and tried to put her finger on it, but it slipped away mockingly. At last she turned back to her breviary and went on to the Nunc dimittis.
4.
Lieutenant Marshall was checking over the reports on the rentals and sales of beards. They were not helpful. No beard of the Dr. Derringer type had been out on rental at the time of the bomb episode, and of the eight sales in the past year, only one was to a private individual, Bernice Carter. The rest had been to amateur theatrical groups.
The damnable thing was that this did not even narrow it down to the Carters. The bomb-sender might have owned such a beard for years. He might have bought or rented it out of town. He might conceivably have improvised it himself.
There had been equally little luck on the cyanide. The poison register would be a great and valuable institution if there were any reasonable certainty that the individuals signing did not simply make up their names and purposes in the spirit of free improvisation. If you have a suspect, with a good case proved against him otherwise, you may be able to trap him on a falsified entry with the aid of a handwriting expert (whom the defense will, of course, match with one quite as eminent); but as a source of much-needed leads, the system is hopeless.
Marshall had checked over one or two registers himself, in moody restlessness, and had grown weary of the number of people in Los Angeles who were troubled with rats and wanted arsenic. He liked, however, the arsenic entry which was signed George Spelvin and read, not Rats, but Mice. He wondered what actor with a cruel gag sense had decided to dispose of his superfluous girls, and rather hoped that such a piquant case might fall to his lot in time. But there was no trace anywhere of any of the names so far involved with Hilary Foulkes, save of course the Carter cyanide. (This too had been bought by Bernice, who seemed effectively to shelter her husband from such distracting crudities as shopping.)
Marshall was growling into his own non-existent beard when the phone rang. “Borigian speaking,” he heard when he picked up the receiver. “Think I’ve got a lead for you on that bomb of yours. Can you come to the jail now?”
“Be right over,” Marshall promised. Any kind of fresh lead sounded good. He needed to clear his head.
“I got thinking it over,” Borigian explained in welcome, “and it seemed to me like there was something familiar about the screwy way whoever made that bomb attached the fuses. Then last night I was drinking beer down at the Lucky Spot and that boogy-woogy-playing dinge they’ve got was going good and all of a sudden it hits me. Louie Schalk. Remember the Austerlitz case?”
Marshall nodded.
“That bomb was Louie’s work, though a smart mouth-piece got him off. And it had the same fuse-fastenings. So I decided to have a talk with Mr. Schalk.”
“How’d you get him to talk?”
“He’s been branching out lately, Louie has. He’s a good chemist, and there’s pretty strong evidence he’s been making counterfeiting inks. So we pulled him in and talked about how we’d turn him over to the Feds unless he came clean.”
“And he came clean?”
Borigian frowned. “I don’t know. You talk to him, Lieutenant.”
A half hour later Marshall had learned little beyond an interesting study in how an addiction to cheap wine can turn a promising’ chemist into a sordid criminal. Louie Schalk was little and thin and white-haired. His pale blue eyes showed hardly any remaining trace of intelligence, but his hands were the deft skilled hands of a good artisan.
“Honest, Lieutenant,” he repeated for the seventh time, “that’s all I know.”
“The letter contained nothing but a hundred dollar bill and the instructions?”
“That’s all.”
“Repeat them again.”
“I should put the unset bomb and directions for setting it in a parcel locker in the P.E. station at Sixth and Main. Then I should mail the key to General Delivery. I’d get another hundred after. And I did too.”
“No signature to the letter?”
“Anything you remember about the typing?”
“Should I? A typewriter’s a typewriter, ain’t it?”
Marshall shrugged hopelessly. “And you went ahead just on that?”
“Why shouldn’t I? Most people want bombs, they don’t want you should know who they are, do they?”
“You get orders like that often?”
Schalk’s thin lips tightened. “You’re booking me on this one charge.”
“All right. I’ll take it that means Yes, but you’ve got your constitutional rights. So. And how do people find out about your . . . profession?”
Schalk was silent. “Hell, Lieutenant,” Sergeant Borigian broke in, “everybody knows about Louie.”
“Yes, but not in the circles I’m concerned with. Well, one more try. Tell me, Schalk: What was the name at General Delivery?”
Borigian grunted disapproval. “Don’t think he’d give his real name, do you?”
“No. But the phony a man chooses can be just as indicative as his true name. What was it, Schalk?”
Louie Schalk frowned, trying to remember. “Got it,” he said at last. “It was Dr. Garth Derringer.”
While Marshall expressed himself, his eyes rested on the card on which Schalk had been booked. Suddenly his self-expression ceased, and his face took on a look almost of pleasure. One lead. One thing that fitted:
Residence: ELITE HOTEL
In the Elite Hotel, Jonathan Tarbell had died.
The Princess Zurilla shrank back against the gem-encrusted wall, her golden tresses gleaming brighter than the gems. Changul, High Priest of Xanatopsis, drew yet nearer and extended a lean hand, all seven of its bony fingers avidly twitching.
“From this hidden space port,” his harsh voice droned on exultantly, “our ships used to blast off for Atlantis, in those glorious days when Terra was but a fragment of our colonial empire. We have not lost our cunning through the millennia, as Terra will learn to its disaster.”
The fleshless hand clutched the smooth arm of the Princess. Zurilla’s firm warm flesh trembled. “And you shall behold all this with me, my dear. You shall reign with me . . .” He broke off and crackled a command in Xanatoptic to the three-armed Rigelian servant who stood in attendance.
“No!” Princess Zurilla implored him. “Let me go! Let me return to my own people!”
“To your lover, you mean,” the High Priest snarled. “To that too clever Captain Comet who will yet learn that he has met his match in me. No, you shall not go! You shall be mine down through the eons of the triumph of Xanatopsis!”
An agonized scream burst from Zurilla’s throat. “Is there no escape?” she moaned. “Will no one save me?” The slavering lips of the mad High Priest neared hers—and then the Princess Zurilla beheld a strange thing. The third arm of the Rigelian servant fell to the ground.
Another arm twitched the horn from his forehead . . .
“Captain Comet!” she cried joyously, and knew no more.
“That’s what I call timing,” Joe Henderson observed, “when people knock on the door just when I reach a tag line.”
M. Halstead Phyn said “I’ll answer it,” and jumped up from the couch eagerly. He opened the door, saw the visitors, and grinned like a cat given the freedom of a fish cannery.
“We’re on our way to bring Hilary home,” Vance Wimpole announced as he and his sister entered the room. “Thought we’d stop off and remind you about Chantrelle’s rocket party. It’s this Friday.”
“Fine,” said Joe Henderson.
“You’re the damnedest one, Joe. I’ve never seen you miss a party yet and I think you love them; but you never say a word and you drink maybe two beers.”
“I have my fun,” Joe said.
“I guess you must. How goes the Cosmic Captain?”
“All right.”
Phyn broke the ensuing silence. “Have you got a minute to spare, Wimpole? Because if you have . . .”
“Yes. I’ve been wanting to talk further about that business you mentioned. Got another room here?”
“We could go in the kitchen.”
“O.K. Ron, you mind entertaining Joe?”
Veronica Foulkes had not said a word since they came in. Her brother’s presence seemed to subdue her. But now that he had vanished with Phyn, she came alive again. She crossed her legs (she knew they were good) and leaned forward (she knew they were good too).
“Don’t you think Vance is stimulating, Mr. Henderson? He makes life so much more vivid, so much more real.”
“He’s a good joe,” said Joe.
“He has so much fun and yet he does so much work too. I like a man who does something, who really is somebody and not . . . not just a filial ghost. A man like Vance who makes all his money from writings that he really writes himself. . . . You write too, don’t you, Mr. Henderson?”
“Some.” Joe Henderson seemed even more tongue-tied than usual, and he was having trouble keeping his eyes polite.
“Writers are so understanding. They know about people. They understand how a woman like me ticks. You do understand, I think, don’t you?”
“Uh . . .” said Joe Henderson sympathetically.
“I knew you would. You’d see how lonely I am, or was until Vance came. And soon he’ll be off again to Lord knows where and I . . . Won’t you come and have tea with me some afternoon, Mr. Henderson? Just you and me and Pitti Sing?”
“I’d like to very much, Mrs. Foulkes.” There was eagerness behind Joe’s stiffly formal phrase.
“Mrs. Foulkes! But you must call me— No, everybody calls me Ron. You . . . you shall call me Nikki . . . Joe.”
“Nikki,” said Joe Henderson. His voice sounded as though it were changing.
Then the room was full of D. Vance Wimpole. He glanced at Joe’s manuscript, smiled and nodded, downed the drink he was still carrying, shook hands with Phyn, clapped his fellow author on the back, took his sister’s arm affectionately, and steered her out the door, all the while recounting an anecdote concerning the habits of the Galapagos turtle, which was equally improbable and improper.
When quiet had returned, Phyn thrust his hand out at Henderson. “Congratulate me, Joey. From this time forth M. Halstead Phyn collects ten per cent of every D. Vance Wimpole check, including the Scandinavian and plus five pseudonyms.”
The startling statement had to be repeated before Henderson took it in. When he did, he whistled. “That’s good going. How did you do it? Do you know where the body’s hidden?”
“Something like that,” said Phyn smugly.
6.
“Cousin Hilary’s taking his nap,” said Jenny Green. “I know he’s anxious to see you, Lieutenant, but the doctor was very strict about a properly sensible convalescence.”
“Commendable. And Mrs. Foulkes?”
“She and Vance went out together.”
Poor kid, Marshall thought. Your fiancé goes gallivanting with his sister while you stay home to tend to Hilary’s correspondence. But a man like Vance Wimpole must have the irresistible appeal of color after the vicarage and poverty . . . “Well,” he said aloud, “that’s all to the good, Miss Green. You and I can resume that conversation we were having the other day. Unless you’re too busy?”
“I should be catching up on—but then, I suppose this is really doing Hilary’s work too, isn’t it? Very well, Lieutenant. Come in and make yourself comfortable.”
The latter injunction Marshall found it impossible to obey in that room; but he lit his pipe and settled down to listening.
“Let’s see . . . How much had I told you when those pulp people interrupted us? That Mr. Henderson is an odd one, isn’t he? But he seems . . . I don’t know, rather sweet.”
Marshall laughed. “It’s hard for a man to see that adjective applied to another man, but you may be right. Well, you were telling me about Wimpole and Foulkes and how they affected their children.”
“Oh, yes. One thing I don’t think I’d mentioned about Mr. Wimpole: He was an atheist. I don’t mean just the ordinary kind of atheist that so many people are or think they are. He was a crusading atheist, who took it for a religion. He was always quoting Tom Paine and Bob Ingersoll, though there was, I gather, more of Ingersoll than Paine in him. And that worked on his children, though in different ways. It gave Vance his independence, that fine rational self-reliance that he has. He found what he needed inside himself. But Ron didn’t. She’s the sort of person who needs something, because she—please don’t think this is catty, but because she isn’t anything in herself. So she gropes and fumbles and reacts to a situation the way she thinks someone might react only she isn’t really anyone. Or is that clear at all?”
“I think it is, a little. Say that we all, even if we can’t accept a capitalized God, still need a lower case god of some sort. Mr. Foulkes found it in his father and Mr. Wimpole in himself, but Mrs. Foulkes is still hunting. Or has she—isn’t it true to some extent she finds it in her brother?”
Jenny Green hesitated. “Yes . . . A little, perhaps. But Vance is . . . He’s a hard god to worship. He doesn’t stay put on the altar. You never know quite where you are. He can give you excitement but not peace. He’s a god for a maenad but not for a nun, if you follow.”
“And Mr. Foulkes?”
“What about him?”
“For his wife’s lower case god.”
Jenny frowned. “I don’t think Ron understands Cousin Hilary. I don’t think they understand each other.”
“Tell me, while we’re at this: It seems an odd marital pairing. How . . . ?”
“I think Cousin Hilary married Ron because she was her father’s daughter. I gather she was more like Darrell Wimpole when she was younger. His atheism was enough for her then, and she felt or seemed to feel much as he did about Fowler Foulkes . . . I think Hilary wanted—well, should we say a high priestess for his religion?”
“And she failed him?”
“You can get tired of anything, Lieutenant. Now Ron says all she needs for hell is a world where all the books are by Fowler Foulkes and all the films are about Dr. Derringer.”
Marshall puffed slowly at his pipe. That perverse use of Dr. Derringer as the murderous bomb sender . . . would not that appeal to just such a resentment? To use the symbol to destroy the reality . . .
“I’ve been talking more than I should,” said Jenny Green. “More than I ever do, in fact. But you can see how important this is to me? If any word I say can prevent some devil from killing Cousin Hilary . . . Have I said anything helpful?”
“I’m damned,” said Marshall, “if I know.”
7.
“That Miss Green,” Marshall said, “thinks you’re sweet.”
Joe Henderson was sitting cross-legged on a cushion before the stone fireplace. “Miss Green?” He looked up innocently.
“Hilary’s cousin-secretary.”
“Oh. I was over there today, Lieutenant. I went to . . . well, Mrs. Foulkes asked me to have tea and I . . . Your policeman almost didn’t let me in.”
“That’s as it should be.”
“But am I a suspect?”
Austin Carter laughed. “Put Joe up on the top of your list, Lieutenant”
Marshall looked puzzled. “Why? We’ve just been over all the Hilary-complications of the Mañana Literary Society (and thanks, Carter, for your cooperation), but it seems to me Henderson is about the only one to emerge with a clean bill of health.”
“Ah, but you see, Lieutenant, we agreed, did we not, that the locked room attempt was made with a time machine? And Joe is our greatest authority on gadgets like that. See Time Tunnel in the current Surprising.”
Marshall smiled. “That is suspicious. And motive?”
“Mrs. Foulkes. You should have seen Joe just after that tea party.”
Joe Henderson, though seated, seemed to give the effect of shuffling his feet embarrassedly.
“But he didn’t meet Mrs. Foulkes until after the attack.”
“Lieutenant! How prosaically literal you can be! If the whole business was hocused by a time machine, why shouldn’t the motivation arise after the fact? All the more ingenious a crime—alibi yourself by going back to when you had no reason to kill.”
“I’m afraid, Henderson, Carter has bared your dread secret. Better confess.”
Joe Henderson shook his head. “I’m not that smart.”
“But seriously, Lieutenant,” Austin Carter went on, “you ought to read Time Tunnel. That’s Joe being nonhack, and it’s a beautiful job. One of the swellest novelets to hit science fiction in years.”
“You really think so?” Joe Henderson, Carter’s professional senior by ten years, looked as beamishly pleased as an amateur actor who has just received a kind word from the Lunts.
“Indeed I do. Henderson is still the Old Master when he wants to be. And that Storm Darroway . . . dear God, what a wench! If I could meet a woman like that, a thousand interplanetary civilizations could smash and much I’d care!”
“The heroine of Time Tunnel?” Marshall asked.
“Of course not. You don’t know your Henderson, Lieutenant. The villainess. The heroine is duller than dishwater. You see, one of the Henderson trademarks is the Two Women. They’re the same two that run through all of Rider Haggard too. One represents Virtue and is blonde and beautiful and good and dull. The other represents Vice and is black and beautiful and evil and marvelous. It’s always puzzled me why Joe can write only wicked women.”
“Could I play at amateur psychoanalyst? Perhaps he has a secret conviction that women are evil and can therefore write only an evil woman convincingly.”
Carter nodded. “Pretty. What do you say to that, Joe?”
Joe Henderson hesitated. “I don’t know,” he drawled at last. “I guess it’s just a subconscious belief that the human female has spider blood.”
8.
“Yes,” said the clerk at the Elite Hotel, “it’d be easy enough for anybody hereabouts to pick up who Louie Schalk was. Of course he was acquitted on the Austerlitz business, but we all knew what his racket was.”
“And do you think,” Marshall asked, “that Tarbell knew?”
“I can’t say. He didn’t talk much to people. But he could have easily.”
Marshall nodded. This fitted all right. Whoever had known Tarbell, visited him here, and killed him, could have learned where to order a bomb.
“Yes?”
“You told me to tell you if anybody was asking for Tarbell.”
“So?”
“Well, there was somebody. Not exactly asking for him; but asking about him.”
“Good man. Who?”
“It was one of those nuns that come around here on social work sometimes. We’ve got a poor lunger up on the fourth, and she was fixing up to get him sent away. So we got to talking about the murder and she asked questions about this man used to visit Tarbell occasionally, and she showed me a picture and said did that look like him, and damned if it didn’t.”
Marshall’s eyes popped. He was not surprised that Sister Ursula’s proud curiosity had led her to investigate the Elite; but where on earth could she have secured a picture of any of the suspects? “You were so vague in your description,” he objected. “What was it like?”
“I’d almost forgotten,” the clerk apologized. “So many people come and go. But when I saw the picture, it all came back to me. She left it with me to show you. It’s around here somewhere . . . Oh, here it is.”
He handed it over. It was a page torn from a movie fan magazine, a striking still of that admirable actor Norval Prichard in his great role of Dr. Derringer.
9.
“So there are all the latest pieces of the jigsaw,” said Marshall as he whisked a brush over the coat of his best suit. “And tonight you’ll meet the people.”
Leona executed some complicated maneuvers before the dressing table. “With your next bonus you’re going to have to buy me a full length mirror. Does my slip show?”
“Just a little.”
“It’s nice of Mr. Chantrelle to ask us to his party. And I am curious to see this Hilary of yours. I never get a chance to meet the victims in your cases while they’re still warm.”
“I don’t know that warm’s the word for Hilary.”
“A rocket party . . . That should be fun. And a rocket could be symbolic for clearing up a case. A loud noise and a spreading light. . .”
“Beauty falls from the air,” Marshall said, and added questioningly another quotation: “Beauty is truth? Well, we’ll see.”
Leona was listening to shouts and murmurs off. “Oh my . . . A howl. I’ll bet it’s a burp left over from that last bottle. Will you check, dear, while I . . .”
Lieutenant Marshall picked up his screaming daughter, put her against his shoulder, and patted her resolutely with no result. He sat down on the low chintz-covered chair, held her on his knee, and shook her gently. The internal rattle was deafening.
Ursula stared questioningly in her father’s face and parted her lips as though to emit the desired burp. Then her gaze switched. There had been no extraneous sound to distract her. Nothing had moved. But something in the corner of the room demanded her attention.
She stared fixedly at the thing and followed its slow and hesitant movements. Her father shook her again. “Don’t pay any attention to that, darling,” he said. “Make with the burp. Be a good girl.”
Just as Leona entered the room, the baby relaxed her attention and burped splendidly. “She saw a Thing,” Marshall said. “I don’t know how the child authorities account for that phenomenon, but it always gives me the creeps when she becomes so damned absorbed in something that isn’t there.”
“Maybe it’s our Invisible Man,” Leona suggested.
“Gives me gooseflesh,” he insisted. “I’ll bet some of our fantasy boys could work it into a very pretty omen.”
“Of what?”
“Of what? That, my darling, is what we’re going to this party to find out. Come on.”
* The numbering is of course that of the Douay version. In the King James, this psalm is the ninety-first.