A Puzzle for fools (24 page)

A stiff rustle from Mrs. Fogarty made me pause, night nurse was leaning forward, her gloomy face suddenly creased with interest. "I see what you mean, Duluth. And that would explain the telephone call when I thought that Jo ..."

"Precisely," I broke in. "Mrs. Fogarty has the idea. I refer, of course, to that delight of our less sophistical forebears—the ventriloquist."

"Ventriloquist!" echoed Green.

"Yes. The man who can throw his voice. I've seen dozens of them, and they have a lot of cute tricks. They’re not only able to make their own voice appear to come from any place they want. They can imitate other people'! voices, too: men, women, babies, farmyard animals, anything you like." I turned to Lenz. "It was the title of that book about witchcraft which gave me the idea. I know sounds pretty cock-eyed, but I think that the murder who's been playing havoc with all your patients, my included, is nothing but a dime magician."

The expressions of the staff were showing increasing alarm for my sanity. Everyone stared at Lenz as though waiting to see whether or not he would give me official stamp of his approval.

The director leaned over the desk and nodded encouragingly. "I am in complete agreement with you, Mr. Duluth. That was my idea and I think it very intelligent of you to arrive at the same conclusion without having read Professor Traumwitz's learned thesis."

Green seemed to be qualifying his contempt for me. I could almost see his brain according a modest raise to my mental rating.

"Don't you see how it all fits in?" I asked enthusiastically. "A ventriloquist could make infinite whoopee in a place like this. He could be Miss Powell's inner self urging her audibly to steal that knife. He could become a disembodied voice, issuing panic warnings to Geddes and myself. He could be Laribee's broker, whispering stock market crises in his ear. He could be the spirits themselves, prompting Fenwick to broadcast messages from the astral plane. And when he needed confusion in the cinema he could switch on full power and shout 'Fire' with the tongues of men and of angels."

"Can you pin all this on any one person?" cut in Green sharply.

"I think so. But humor my theatrical instincts for a while, Captain, and maybe I can build up a character you will recognize for yourself. Let's assume to start off with that our bogey-man is a ventriloquist. Does he have any other attributes? I think he does. There's been a lot of hocus-pocus going on, hasn't there? A stop watch was hidden in Laribee's room and later slipped into his pocket at the dance. A knife was planted in Miss Pattison's bag and then lifted again from right under my nose. All that requires a certain amount of sleight-of-hand. Well, ventriloquists have to earn their bread and butter in their unbuttered times, and they usually do so by giving a double bill. Most of them take up conjuring as a side line."

"Aren't you making this mythical individual a little too versatile?" broke in Moreno coldly.

"No. This all may sound miraculous to the uninitiated, but nothing's been done around here that the humblest of pick-pockets or parlor magicians couldn't have carried off with one hand tied behind his back. The only half-way smart stunt pulled was the strait-jacket trick, and Dr. has promised to explain later on that that wasn't particularly smart, either."

"Yes," remarked the director solemnly, "I go along with you entirely, Mr. Duluth. But he has a third conspicuous talent, hasn't he?"

"I was coming to that," I replied. "It's obvious that made the most professional use of us patients and our individual neuroses. He was able to work on Miss Powell's kleptomania. He knew enough about Geddes and me to realize we were scared of the dark. He even exploited Miss Pattison's neurotic feelings about Laribee. I think it reasonable to suppose that he had a certain knowledge medicine and psychiatry."

Lenz inclined his head. "Once again, Mr. Duluth, agree. In fact, I believe I have an even higher opinion of his abilities than you."

"Good." Lenz' approval had given me a surprising elation. I felt carried away like a successful after-dinner speaker. "We're getting places now, aren't we? We dealing with someone who was a vaudeville artist and some kind of medical man. Now there's only one person in the case who happens to have just those two tributes."

"So you're back on your son-in-law theory!" commented Green guardedly.

"Yes," I replied. "And why not? It seems a pretty logical one."

"Very logical," broke in the director once again with smile. "It appears that we have remarkably similar mind Mr. Duluth."

"Of course," I continued, a trifle smug in the security of official approval, "any youngish man here in the sanitarium could potentially be Laribee's son-in-law. Laribee himself told me he'd never seen the guy, and, although he was both an actor and a student of medicine, he doesn't seem to have been particularly well-known in either capacity.

No one was likely to recognize him. It was the perfect set-up."

"So you think he came here from California to kill the old man for his money?" snapped Green.

"More or less. Laribee told me his will left most of his millions to his daughter. He also told me that, by the financial arrangements he made before he came here, Sylvia Dawn and Dr. Lenz would have complete control of the money if he was ever certified permanently insane. The son-in-law had as swell a motive as you policemen could ever hope to find. There's all the difference in the world between being married to an obscure movie actress and having a millionairess for a wife."

"But, Mr. Duluth—" once more the director's voice rose in serene comment, "you don't think the son-in-law originally planned to kill Mr. Laribee, do you?"

"No," I said emphatically, although the idea had only that moment come to me. "I don't think he was that ambitious at first. I think his initial idea was to drive the old man nuts. It was less dangerous and almost as profitable. Besides, his chief asset was his ubiquitous voice. Ventriloquism's a cinch for sending your father-in-law out of his mind, but it's not so hot as a lethal weapon."

I was still a little surprised at the fluency of my own thoughts. It was almost as though Lenz by his pointed interruptions were performing a Svengali act on me. Anyhow, just as Svengali controlled the audience for Trilby, the director's surprising patronage had assured me the attention of the police now.

"He started off," I went on, "by getting poor bewildered Miss Powell to steal that stop watch from the surgery. Then he scared Geddes and me with a voice prophesying murder, and, as he expected, one of us, myself as it happened, started to act up, distracted the staff and gave him the opportunity to sneak the stop watch into Laribee's room. Laribee, of course, thought it was the tape-ticker and had a distinct set-back."

"And then, Mr. Duluth?"

"The next little performance he staged was the broker's voice whispering news of a stock-market crash. It was cruelly, horribly clever. As the director would put it, the son-in-law was working on Laribee's heel of Achilles, it looked as though things were going to pan out. Then, I think, he went a little too far. He planted the stop watch on Laribee for a second time and the old man found it started realizing it was all a put-up job."

"Exactly," remarked the director, his faintly amused gaze settling once again on my face. "I think that was false move, Mr. Duluth. But even so, you must remember that the prognosis for Mr. Laribee's permanent recover was always very grave. Why did not the son-in-law patience and wait, instead of altering his plans to murder?"

"Because something else came up," I said. As before words slipped out pat, but I had the feeling that it was Dr. Lenz who had supplied the inspiration. I turned to the day nurse who was leaning forward, her arms folded across her tiger-colored breast.

"This is where Miss Brush steps into the picture. The son-in-law must have found out that Laribee was fond of her. In fact, he had asked her several times marry him. Now a second marriage would have meant collapse of everything. A new wife and step-mother would almost certainly have entailed a new financial arrangement, particularly as relations were rather strained between Laribee and his daughter. There was only one thing to do and that was to remove the menace of Miss Brush. Consequently, our versatile friend worked on Fenwick deliver that spiritualistic warning against her, and he himself slipped poison-pen notes into Laribee's books. He hoping either to turn the old man against her or to have her transferred to the women's wing where she would safely out of the way."

"And he almost succeeded," exclaimed Miss Brush with impulsive indignation. "Why, of all the absurd ... !"

"Laribee's proposals may have seemed absurd to you," broke in. "But the son-in-law would have had to take them darn seriously. Anyway, I think it was his failure to remove you that made him switch his plans to murder."

Captain Green glanced at the clock. So did I. The hands pointed to a quarter of ten,

"Don't worry, Captain," I went on hurriedly. "God knows I'm as eager as you to get this over before ten. I'm coming to Miss Pattison right now. Once the son-in-law decided on murder, he must have put in a lot of heavy thinking. And he figured out a most ingenious plan. He'd learned about Miss Pattison's fixation against Laribee. Therefore, he started a ventriloquist campaign, urging her to kill him, and finally put the knife in her bag. His idea was to get her so bewildered and confused, poor kid, that when he did the actual killing and planted the knife on her, she might easily think she had committed the crime in some forgotten moment of madness. The whole business made her a hell of a good suspect whatever happened, and with any luck, he could slip away from the sanitarium in all the fuss without starting any questions."

"That's pretty logical," grunted Green. "But where does Fogarty fit in?"

"Right here. You see, the son-in-law, in spite of his smartness, didn't get much of a break. Fogarty must have found out something. I don't know what but it's quite possible that with his passion for vaudeville he'd seen the son-in-law somewhere in his professional capacity and later recognized him here in the sanitarium. Obviously he had to be disposed of."

For a moment I caught the expression on Mrs. Fogarty's face and I continued quickly.

"Well, he got rid of Fogarty all right, but we all know what happens to the best laid schemes of mice and men. Having removed one danger, the son-in-law found he'd only contracted two more: myself and Geddes. Out of sheer muddle-headed, post-alcoholic curiosity, I blundered onto the scene. I began to be interested in Miss Pattison and looked like spoiling his scheme for making her the chief suspect. I had to be coped with but, luckily for me, I wasn't important enough to rate murder." I glanced once more at the gaunt, intent figure of Mrs. Fogarty. "I was merely warned over the telephone in a particularly unpleasant way. I suppose he hoped that both Geddes and I would clear out of the sanitarium and stop being damn nuisances."

"What's this about Geddes?" queried Green tersely.

I felt a little guilty. "I'm afraid Geddes and I have been holding something back. I guess that's obstructing justice or something, but we thought it the only thing to do. You see, Geddes was far more of a menace than I."

Quickly I related the facts of the Englishman's unconscious embroilment in the plot and the incidents which had led finally to the brutal attack on him that afternoon and our discovery of the bloodstained handkerchief.

For the first time my audience showed their surprise audibly. A ripple of startled comment ran across the room. I could see the cold, official stare coming back into Green's eyes.

"So you thought it best to hold back an attempted murder from us, did you?" he growled when I had finished. "Strikes me all of you've been holding back a darn sight too much. Those voices, warnings, and all the other crazy things—I heard nothing about them."

"I think you have given yourself your own answer," said Lenz calmly. "You called all those things crazy and that is precisely why you were not told about them. You must remember that this is a mental hospital and, daily we are faced with things which seem just as bizarre as the incidents to which Mr. Duluth has given such an excellent pattern. We on the staff are professional psychiatrists. Mr. Duluth, on the other hand, is an amateur. When these events occurred, he was naturally suspicious whereas we who have been trained to accept the abnormal as the normal, merely explained them away as the symptomatic behaviorisms of individual patients."

Captain Green seemed to capitulate before this imposing array of polysyllabics.

"All right," he said grudgingly. "But who the hell is this son-in-law? And has Mr. Duluth any real evidence?"

"I think I know who the son-in-law is," I said softly. "And I've got evidence all right."

It was rather embarrassing to have to disclose another obstruction of justice, but rather lamely I ran through the pathetic incidents of Laribee's midnight will and our intricate plan which had culminated in the document's removal from the musical place.

"I can see now," I concluded, "how anxious the son-in-law would have been to get hold of that will. Of course, it was only a scrap of paper, signed and witnessed by a bunch of nuts. But there was just the chance it might be proved valid. And if it was, Miss Brush would have come in for all the money. The whole elaborate song and dance would have gone for nothing."

"And you know who took the will?" asked the captain briskly.

"Yes. And Clarke's been watching him. He hasn't had a chance to get rid of it."

The captain's gaze moved to the young detective and then switched back to me. "And what's the other evidence?"

Clarke rose. "I traced that handkerchief to the man who took the will, sir," he said quietly.

"You did?" bellowed the captain. "Well, who is he?"

"Just a moment," I put in. "Let's run through what we know about him once again. Apart from being a vaudeville actor and a man of some medical knowledge, he must obviously have come from California where he met and married Sylvia Dawn, nee Laribee. He's presumably quite young and he can't have been here at the sanitarium very long. All those qualifications fit the man who took the will from the musical place. I'm expecting that telegram from Prince Warberg soon. It ought to give some physical details to clinch the matter of identity."