Hanged for a Sheep (31 page)

“The club,” Dr. Dupont said. “What will they say about the club?” Now there was something pathetic about the dictatorial old man. But Pam North stared at him, and then at Jerry.

“He takes it very hard, doesn't he?” she said. “Harder than you'd expect. He was—he was almost hysterical, wasn't he? Before he started to faint. Isn't that odd?”

It was odd, Jerry North thought. But it was oddness of a kind hard to identify. It might be that Dr. Dupont was merely an odd man, and then it was meaningless. For them, and, when he came, for Lieutenant William Weigand of the Homicide Division. But it might be, as easily, that Dr. Dupont was himself not particularly an odd man, but a normally quite predictable man who suddenly found himself in odd circumstances. The circumstances were odd, certainly. But did they have for Dr. Dupont an additional, personal, oddity? That would be one for Lieutenant Weigand.

Pam and Jerry North were standing near the front of the stage, and stage left. Dr. Dupont, now sitting up gingerly in the supporting arm of Dr. Klingman, was between them and the chair in which Victor Leeds Sproul still sat, as if lolling there. Beyond Sproul and those clustered around him, looking diagonally upstage, was the door through which Jerry North and Mrs. Williams and Mr. Sproul had entered hardly half an hour before. Mr. North, wondering about the oddity of Dr. Dupont, looked at the door abstractedly. His gaze was so abstracted that it was several minutes before he saw that the door was opening. It opened inward, toward the speakers' room beyond. Mr. North was at first vaguely puzzled by an incongruity before he realized that the lights which had been burning in the speakers' room were no longer burning—that the door was opening inward on shadows, with a darker, human shadow in the doorway. The shadow kept back, so that the lights from the border above the stage fell on it only slightly. It was a dark, small shadow. It seemed to be a little, dark man; a little, dark, surreptitious man, staring out of an unlighted room at the scene of a murder. And then the shadow disappeared and, slowly, the area of darkness on which the door had opened grew narrower. The little dark man had seen whatever it was he wanted to see, and was withdrawing as inconspicuously as he had appeared.

That, Mr. North thought, was measurably odder than the behavior of Dr. Dupont. That needed looking into. Mr. North, forgetting the several occasions on which he had looked into odd matters and lived—once by a fairly narrow margin—to wish he hadn't, moved without announcement toward the door. He felt, strangely, that he was moving invisibly across the lighted stage, so evidently was the attention of everyone fastened on Sproul and the group around him. Even Pam seemed not to notice that he had left his place beside her.

The door closed fully, but without sound, just a moment before Mr. North reached it. Mr. North pushed it back cautiously, standing on the stage and letting it swing away from him. He could look into and across the room, and see the door on the far side which led to the corridor beyond. That door was closing, biting away a sector of light which had, only a moment since, entered the darkened speakers' room from the lighted hall outside. The little dark man was going away from there.

If Mr. North was to see the little dark man and inquire about his interest in the taking off of Mr. Sproul, it was evident to Mr. North that he would have to hurry. He stepped quickly into the gloom of the little speakers' room and started across it toward the other door; he took two steps and the second brought his shin sharply against the edge of a chair. Mr. North gave tongue, leaned slightly forward to move the chair, and felt a sudden, crushing weight descend on his left shoulder. Falling with it, Mr. North knew that he had not run into anything this time. Something had run into him.

His shoulder was numb, but as—half from the impact, half defensively—he let himself drop to the speakers' room carpet, Mr. North was thankful. Because the blow had been aimed at his head, and only the chance that he had leaned a little forward and to one side after his encounter with the chair had saved him. It was better, Mr. North decided, lying for an instant motionless, to have a numb shoulder than a numb head. Of course, the second might come.

Mr. North was twisting himself up, hands out protectingly, demanding that his eyes accustom themselves to the faint light, when the door leading to the corridor opened again. It had been a blind before, Mr. North supposed. Perhaps it was a blind this time—an invitation to Mr. North to rise hopefully and undertake pursuit, and make himself a better target than he made crouched between a chair and what was evidently a desk. Mr. North waited an instant.

Apparently it was not a blind this time. A small man went through the door. He was a clear, black shadow this time, moving with speed and moving quietly. He was a little, dark man, all right. He was also a man who did not want to tell Mr. North, or presumably anyone, why he had been peering out of a dark room at the scene of sudden death. At the scene, Mr. North was now more than ever convinced, of a sudden murder. A peculiar enough murder, when you came to think of it; one which could hardly have been accomplished more publicly. If this was the murderer, now departing through the door as Mr. North worried his way up between desk and chair and prepared to follow—if this was the murderer, he had developed a new, and apparently uncharacteristic, desire for privacy.

Mr. North was up and the numbness was going out of his shoulder. It had not, he thought, been as hard a blow as it felt to be. Even if it had landed where it was unquestionably aimed, he might have escaped with a bad headache. The little dark man lacked thoroughness—or perhaps did not wish to be thorough. Possibly, Mr. North thought, opening the door which the little dark man had closed behind him, his assailant limited himself to one murder an evening. Or possibly merely to one an hour.

Mr. North came to the corridor. It was bright and empty. At one end it ran to a flight of stairs leading downward; at the other it ran to what was evidently another corner at right angles to it. There was nothing to indicate which way the little dark man had gone. But the turn to the right, leading to the intersecting corridor, led evidently to more immediate concealment. The stairs were broad and led downward in full sight to the floor below—and there was no sound of anyone hurrying down them.

Mr. North turned right and began to run, trying to run lightly. A few strides brought him to the crossing corridor. He looked quickly to right and left. Toward the right, the transverse corridor led straight, evidently to the other side of the building. It must, Mr. North decided, run behind the stage of the auditorium; probably it gave, part way down, some means of access to the backstage area. But the little dark man had had his look backstage. Presumably, now, he merely wanted to get away. If so, the shorter stretch to the left would look more promising. Mr. North, hoping—or hoping he hoped—that he was right, took the turn to the left.

He reached the end of the corridor branch and heard something. The corridor ended in a flight of stairs, narrow and metal-edged. The stairs mounted at right angles to the corridor, to the right. Somebody was running up them.

Mr. North reached the lowest step in time to see movement at the uppermost. The little dark man had come this way; the little dark man was, not quite so silently as before, going this way. Mr. North went after him, reaching the top of the flight rather winded. He reached another corridor. The place was a labyrinth. And this corridor was lined with office doors and it came over Mr. North, gloomily, that the little dark man might be in refuge behind any of them, assuming he found any of them unlocked. Mr. North tried the nearest; it was unlocked. It led into a kind of class room, planned evidently for small discussion groups. There was a little platform at one end, and on either side of the platform was a door. And the little dark man, if he had chosen this particular room, might now be behind either of the doors. But he might equally well be in any of the other rooms along the corridor. And as Mr. North searched any one room—this one, for example—the little dark man had only, if he chose, to return to the corridor and go back down the stairs. Only by the sheerest fluke of luck, Mr. North realized, would he now be able to catch the little dark man and make inquiries of him. Mr. North felt his shoulder. Mr. North did not feel lucky.

In any case, Mr. North thought, the thing to do is to tell Bill. And Bill can catch the little dark man as he tries to get out. That was the thing to do all along.

He had been impetuous to no purpose, Mr. North decided. Probably even now the little dark man was sifting out of the building and into the unsiftable mass of New York's population. The thing to do was to tell Bill Weigand about it as quickly as possible.

Mr. North left the room hurriedly, without further investigation. He trotted, feeling a need to rectify his now obvious error hastily. When he came to the stairs he ran down them, and then he trotted to his right along the corridor. He came to the intersection of his corridor with that which had a door to the speakers' room, turned briskly to the right and encountered a large, somewhat padded object. The object said “ouf!”—Mr. North bounded slightly.

“Well,” the object said, “where do you think you're going, buddy? Trying to get away from something?”

The object was dressed in blue and wore a badge on its left breast. The object, under more favorable circumstances, responded to the name of Patrolman Byrnes, had three children, the eldest five, and lived in outermost Queens. But now Patrolman Byrnes, assigned to keep people from wandering in corridors outside the auditorium in which, it was probable, murder had occurred, was not responsive. Patrolman Byrnes looked at Mr. North with dislike and some triumph.

“I—” Mr. North began.

“Hold it, buddy!” Patrolman Byrnes directed. He took hold of Mr. North's shoulders and pushed Mr. North from him. Then he drew Mr. North back sharply. Mr. North's head bobbed. “Don't try any funny business,” Patrolman Byrnes advised. “Tell it to the loot.”

He took Mr. North firmly by his shoulders, turned him around and, now using only one hand, propelled him up the corridor to the door leading into the speakers' room. He propelled Mr. North through the room and through the door leading onto the stage.

Mr. North, who had left the stage unnoticed, returned to it with publicity. Patrolman Byrnes gave Mr. North a final shove and released him. Mr. North staggered and caught himself.

“Why, Jerry!” Pam North said. “What ever in the world?”

Bill Weigand, standing with several other men beside what had been Mr. Sproul, looked up at Mr. North and started grinning.

“Bill,” Mr. North said. “Tell this—”

“All right, officer,” Bill Weigand said. He grinned at Jerry. Feebly, Jerry grinned back. Detective Sergeant Aloysius Mullins, standing a little behind Weigand, beamed—at least Jerry preferred to think it was a beam. Patrolman Byrnes looked puzzled.

“All right, fella,” Sergeant Mullins informed the patrolman. “This guy's Mr. North. He's a pal, see?”

Byrnes looked stubborn for a moment.

“He was runnin',” Byrnes said. “He looked funny to me.”

Pam North and Weigand and Mullins, and Dorian Weigand who had joined them when her husband arrived, looked at Mr. North and smiled. Probably, Mr. North thought—and a hand went up to his now doubly damaged shoulder—I look funny to all of them. And then he realized that he had made his unimposing entrance in full view of the audience—the audience before which he had recently performed so satisfactorily. He looked at the audience, which had not grown perceptibly smaller. The audience looked back at him. Some of its members had no expressions which could be diagnosed. But there could be no doubt that several of its members were grinning.

3

Thursday, 9:10
P.M.
to 10
P.M.

Detective Sergeant Mullins nudged the group on the platform away from the big chair behind the lectern and the sprawled body in it, and the police photographers moved in. There were two of them and they ignored the audience, talking jargon between themselves, but talking it a little more audibly than was their custom. Even police photographers, Pam thought, watching them, played up before an audience. They shot the body from the sides and from above, they pictured it in relation to the lectern; one of them backed out and took a wide-lensed view of as much of the stage as could be got in, with the body at its center.

Lieutenant William Weigand, watching with a kind of attentive abstraction, also listened to Mr. North. Mr. North told him about the little dark man who had run so fast and Bill Weigand agreed that it was odd and cried out to be looked into. However—

“You'll admit, Jerry,” he said, “that you can't give us much to go on. By way of description—little and dark. Little I'll give you; dark perhaps only because you saw him in the dark. It would take in thousands.”

“Obviously,” Jerry agreed. “Millions. But if you saw a little dark man running out of the building you could stop him.”

Bill Weigand agreed with that, and that they would. For the moment, at any rate, they were stopping anybody who tried to leave the building—running or walking, tall or short, without regard to color. But that, obviously, had a time limit.

“There're five or six hundred out there,” Weigand pointed out, waving toward the audience. “Some of them left before we came. We can't hold the rest.” He looked at the audience. “Or want to hold the rest,” he said. “Our man wasn't killed from the audience.”

He looked at Jerry, consideringly.

“As a matter of fact,” he added, “we don't know he was killed at all. It's even money, or thereabouts, that he merely up and died. Thrombosis. Apoplexy. Cerebral hemorrhage. Klingman says he can't tell.”

“He also,” Jerry North pointed out, “says it could have been a drug. A narcotic—opium or something.”