A Puzzle for fools (23 page)

I glanced quickly at the clock, but the director seemed to feel no sense of time or emergency.

"Mrs. Fogarty told us," he went on, "that on the night of his death, her husband announced his intention of leaving the sanitarium for the entertainment world. At first I thought that his rather foolish ambitions had been aggravated by your presence here, Mr. Duluth. I now feel that there was another subversive influence which made him choose that particular evening. I believe that on that Saturday the murderer had given his first prick to the heel of Achilles."

The director turned to me. "Now you, Mr. Duluth. You are a man of the theatre. How would you set about planning to kill a person of Fogarty's type? You would play on his vanity. You might, for example, offer to teach him a trick which would be profitable for his projected career as a stunt-artist. That book,
Witchcraft and Medicine
, describes a certain well-known trick called the strait-jacket trick in which the artist trusses himself up in a strait-jacket and then, as if by magic, extricates himself."

"You mean," broke in Geddes excitedly, "the murderer promised to show Fogarty that trick, got him there helpless, and then tied that cord around his neck?"

"Exactly." Lenz nodded gravely. "But the procedure would not have been quite as simple as that. Fogarty was, in his way, a shrewd man. I cannot believe that he would have let himself be tied up by anyone unless the person who was teaching him had first demonstrated the trick himself. And that is what I believe happened. I think that this man and Fogarty went together to the physio-therapy room and that the murderer performed the strait-jacket trick in front of Fogarty. And…"

"But he'd have to be a regular Houdini to do that!" I exclaimed.

"On the contrary," said the director almost apologetically. "That book shows how elementary the trick is. Anyone, knowing the secret, could perform it." He picked up a pencil and tapped on the desk. "In fact, I myself should be able to make a very creditable attempt. Perhaps you would like me to demonstrate."

He looked up with an almost impish smile. Both Geddes and I agreed rather dazedly that we would be delighted to witness a demonstration.

"Very well," he murmured. "I will play magician for you."

He pressed a button and, when Warren appeared, he sent the attendant for the institution's only remaining strait-jacket. Within a few minutes, Warren returned and with rather surly bewilderment handed the jacket to Lenz. "Thank you, Warren." The director nodded his head benevolently. "And by the way, Mr. Duluth and Mr. Geddes have something which they are eager to talk over with the police. You might ask Captain Green if he could spare a few moments from his work in the laboratory." He turned to me. "I feel that those members of the staff who can leave their duties should also be here in case there are any little matters that need corroboration."

"Let them all come," I exclaimed. "We'd willingly talk before a whole medical convention."

"Very well, Warren. Would you please ask Miss Brush, Mrs. Fogarty, Dr. Moreno and Clarke to come here, too? And ask Dr. Stevens to take charge of the male patients."

After the attendant had gone, Lenz held up the wicked-looking canvas jacket.

"You must imagine that I am a magician," he began impressively. "I hope to show you that it is possible for anyone to have himself bound into this jacket and then make his escape."

As he spoke, he did look remarkably like a wizard with his important beard and his thick, bushy eyebrows.

"I'm afraid," he went on, "that I am a trifle too elderly to care to try this experiment on myself. But you, Mr. Duluth, perhaps you would be kind enough to act as what we might call the prestidigitator's guinea-pig."

I stepped forward, and with a great show of mystery, Dr. Lenz started to bind my shoulders into the jacket. He had succeeded in rendering me completely ineffectual when he paused.

"On second thought," he said, "I am particularly anxious for you to witness the experiment, Mr. Duluth. Another guinea-pig would be preferable. I will ring for Warren." Geddes, who had been watching absorbedly, now rose from his chair. "There's no need for that," he said with an amused smile. "Why not try on me?"

"I was going to ask you, Mr. Geddes." The director's face clouded. "But I think that for a narcoleptic it would be taking an unwarranted risk."

"Oh, that's all right," persisted the Englishman. "Moreno gave me some of that new drug, benzedrine sulphate, about half an hour ago. I'm not likely to go off in an attack or anything."

Lenz reflected for a moment and then his satisfaction at mystifying us both seemed to override his sense of sanitarium discipline.

"Very well, Mr. Geddes. Let us try." While Geddes moved to the desk, the director handed me the jacket.

"Mr. Duluth, I want you to strap this onto Mr. Geddes as firmly as you are able."

Obediently I slipped the straps tight. It was rather complicated, but at length I managed. Geddes looked as helpless as a trussed turkey. He grinned.

"You're going to be a genius, doctor," he murmured, "if you can tell me how to get out of this."

Lenz seemed almost boyishly pleased. "Oh, I assure you it's simple. It's merely ..."

He broke off as the door was pushed open and Captain Green entered with two of his officers. Behind them came the staff, Mrs. Fogarty, Miss Brush, Moreno, Warren, and John Clarke.

Captain Green was staring at us as though we offered him a final proof of the world's insanity.

"What on earth are you doing with that strait-jacket?" he asked.

Lenz patted Geddes' shoulder. "Mr. Geddes and Mr. Duluth believe they have solved your mystery for you, captain. I was adding my penno'th of knowledge to theirs in a little demonstration.'*

While the director was speaking, my attention had been distracted to the Englishman. I noticed that he had gone white and I saw that familiar, glazed expression slip in his eyes.

"Look out . . . !" I exclaimed, but my voice trailed off.

The muscles of Geddes' face had contracted and, beneath the binding strait-jacket, his body stiffened visibly. I was just in time to spring forward and break his fall as he lurched to the floor in one of his seizures.

Instantly the staff was galvanized into efficiency. While Green shouted astonished questions, Warren and Moreno picked up the unconscious Englishman and carried him into a small examining room which opened out from Lenz' office. We all hurried after them as they laid him down on a couch with the greatest care.

I had never seen Lenz so concerned. He bent over Geddes, shaking his head and murmuring that this was the first time in his professional career that he had wantonly jeopardized the health of a patient

"Keep back, all of you," he commanded. "You, Warren, open the window. He needs plenty of fresh air and he should come round shortly. Just fresh air and quiet."

As the attendant hurried to the window, I moved to the Englishman's side. It was always rather beastly to see him in that condition, but now I felt a genuine alarm. Not only was Geddes my friend, he was also my chief witness and my partner. I would now have to face the police single-handed.

"Aren't you going to take him out of the jacket, Lenz?" I asked sharply.

"No, no." Lenz was taking the Englishman's pulse. "In a case like this, it would be most dangerous. The muscles are unnaturally constricted by the strait-jacket. If we were to take it off, the gradual passing of the seizure might bring on a serious muscle spasm. Please, all of you, get back into the office."

As a body, we returned to the director's room, and with a parting glance at the patient, Lenz followed.

Green had been watching the proceedings with the avid interest of a layman confronted with a rare medical phenomenon. He now started to ask questions, and Lenz briefly explained the nature of narcolepsy and cataplexy, adding a word of regret for his rashness in using Geddes as the subject of his experiment.

"My only excuse," he concluded, "is that I felt a demonstration was really important for the solution of the case. I had not considered how the surprise of your sudden entrance might easily bring on a narcoleptic seizure. I am afraid that now we shall have to postpone my demonstration until Mr. Geddes comes round."

He crossed back to his desk and sat down. Somehow this familiar movement seemed to restore his composure. Within a few moments he was once more very much the serene and omnipotent god. He smiled a trifle sadly at the little group of staff and police who were still gathered questioningly around his desk.

"As I already told you," he said, "Mr. Duluth and Mr. Geddes have worked out a theory which they want you to hear. Unfortunately Mr. Duluth will have to expound it alone now. But before he begins, I want you to know that I personally have no more idea than you what course he intends to adopt or whom he is going to accuse. Needless to say, I feel sure that he will succeed in interesting us."

The director produced his spectacles and very deliberately perched them on his nose.

"There is one more point. I myself have a little theory which I think is going more or less to agree with that of Mr. Duluth. It involves a certain inmate of this institution. I am going to ask Warren to go downstairs and keep him under rather close observation."

This remark was received with the silent uneasiness which the director seemed to expect He took a piece of paper from a drawer and scribbling a few lines on it, handed it to the night attendant

"I want you to watch this person, Warren," he ordered, calmly. "If Dr. Stevens should question you, please show him that note. And when I ring the bell, I would like you to bring that particular person to us here."

The night attendant read through the note and gave a spontaneous grunt of surprise. Lenz smiled, and as Warren hurried out of the room, he turned politely to me.

"Now Mr. Duluth, if you are ready ... !"

THE TEMPORARY LOSS of my ally had somewhat nerved me, but the last few minutes had brought with them certain compensations. While the director was forming his demonstration, my eyes had fallen once more upon that ponderous book which lay on his desk.
Witchcraft and Medicine
—the title had given me an idea, an idea which, like the key piece to a jigsaw puzzle, suddenly made clear in my mind the pattern behind the whole bewildering series of events.

It had been a puzzle for fools, and I saw now that was its very foolishness which had saved it from absurdly obvious. I felt indecently self-confident. I could even return the captain's implacably official stare without the trace of a jitter.

I glanced from him to John Clarke. His reassuring nod told me that he had performed his part of the job to his own satisfaction. The stage was set, and promisingly so.

My prospective audience had settled down in various parts of the room now. Miss Brush had taken herself and her tiger-colored ensemble to a chair by the window. Moreno, very spruce in his undress uniform of blue serge, leaned against the wall; while Mrs. Fogarty, like a mauve, mournful ghost, had progressed to a leather settee. Clarke and Green sat together with the two officers beside them.

The captain started the ball rolling by glancing swiftly at his watch and muttering: "I don't know what all this is about, but so far as I'm concerned the case won't get any further until Miss Pattison's been interviewed. Dr. Eismann will be here soon and the girl's going back with him to police headquarters—" he smiled grimly—"unless, of course, Mr. Duluth has it all figured out."

"No," I said, "I haven't got it all figured out." I was standing by the desk within the sphere of Dr. Lenz' benign presence and felt as secure there as though I were a repentant sinner shrouded in celestial wings.

"There are a lot of technical details which I don't pretend to have fitted in. But you're a policeman, and that's your job, just as psychiatry is the province of Dr. Lenz here. I believe in every man sticking to his last. I'm a theatrical producer by trade and it's as a theatrical producer of sorts that I want to attack this thing. You see, an idea's just come to me and it's right up my own alley."

"Shoot," said the unimpressed Green.

"We all have to take things the way they hit us," I went on. "And the thing that hit me in the beginning was that voice. When I first heard it, I was in a pretty jittery state and naturally I thought it was all part of my own craziness. And then, later, when I found out that Geddes, Fenwick and Laribee had all heard it, too, I switched opinions and started thinking there must be some funny sort of hypnotism floating around. But you can't hypnotize people into hearing imaginary voices, can you, Dr. Lenz?"

"I hardly think so." The director looked up with a faint trace of amusement in his eyes. "At one time, as you know, I felt there might be a purely psycho-pathological explanation for practically all the disturbances. But I myself have been forced to change my opinion. The manifestations were a little too wholesale for any kind of hypnotism."

"Exactly." I turned what I intended to be a successfully self-confident gaze upon the captain. "You may think we're all just a bunch of nuts and that it makes no difference what we did or didn't hear. But that voice was real all right. Even Dr. Lenz heard it this afternoon when it entertained us to a fire-alarm in the movies. I should have guessed what was back of it then if I hadn't been a supreme nit-wit."

Except for Clarke and Lenz, no one seemed to showing much sympathy. The staff regarded me with alert, strained expression which they adopted when watching for symptoms. Green and his men looked frankly impatient.

"Maybe there is something to be said for the show business, after all," I continued. "It seems to have given me a slant which you non-Thespian people missed. You see, I've knocked around burlesque shows. I've been in half the dime music halls in the country. I've spent days the big fairs, looking for that elusive thing called talent. And in all those places, I've come across a particular of artist. He wasn't the type that interested me. He's well paid. In fact, he's rather out of date. But he'd be riot in a mental hospital."