The Collection (99 page)

"Attaboy, Doc," I said, as I rounded the end of
the desk. "Aim it at him. He's a killer. He might get you."

As Dr. Stanley's automatic swung around to cover Betterman,
I was right beside Stanley, and I dived for the automatic. I caught his gun
wrist in both my hands and bore it down to the floor as I pulled him out of the
chair.

The gun fired once as his knuckles hit the floor, but the
bullet buried itself harmlessly in the molding. Then I had the gun twisted out
of his hand and had his arm turned behind his back, and it was all over. Even
the strength of a homicidal maniac can't break an arm-twist like that.

"Sorry, Frank," I said, to Betterman. "But
if I hadn't played it that way, he'd have shot several of us before we got him.
I saw his hand keeping near that partly open drawer and I knew there'd be a gun
in it. Had to stall till I got near enough to jump him."

Frank Betterman wiped sweat off his forehead with the back
of his hand.

"You mean Stanley is this Paul Verne?" he said.

I
nodded. "I might have known he wouldn't be without an identity that would
stand checking. He probably killed the real Dr. Philemon Stanley in Louisville,
took over his identity and
came here. He couldn't
have impersonated him where he was known, of course, but it was easy enough
here."

"You better be right, Anderson," Captain Cross
said. "I don't get all of it. Why'd he kill those other two guys? I know a
nut doesn't need a reason, but he had a good hideout here and was not
suspected."

"And he wanted to keep it," I said. "Those weren't
motiveless murders, either of them. He wanted to kill me, because he found out
why I was here and he knew I'd catch wise sooner or later once I suspected Paul
Verne was here. Probably he heard me talking on the phone, via an extension,
last night, and decided to kill me. So earlier in the night he killed Perry
Evans and hid the body and--"

"Why?" Cross demanded. "What's killing Perry
Evans got to do with killing you?"

I grinned at him loftily.

"So there wouldn't be an unsolved murder. I'd be dead
and Evans gone, with a piece of cloth from his suit on the barbed wire. Two and
two make four, and if the Verne angle pops up, why Evans was Verne and he
killed me and scrammed."

"Umm," said Cross. "But what about
Toler"

"Toler burgled my room while I was downstairs tonight.
I'll tell you why later. Skip it for the moment. And Verne--Dr. Stanley--was
waiting here to kill me when I came back, and in the dark he got Toler by
mistake. But he found out he'd got the wrong man and waited for me. It wouldn't
have put any crimp in his plans. Perry Evans, missing, would have taken the
blame for two murders instead of one. But he missed killing me, even after
firing a gun through the door. And I got a crowd in the hall outside so he
couldn't come out after me that way, so he went back upstairs to his own
room."

"You mean he dropped out the window, ran around the
outside and went upstairs?"

"I doubt it," I interrupted. "His room is
right over mine. I imagine he came in my window by a rope or something let down
from his window. And all he had to do was climb back up and then come down the
stairs, fastening his bathrobe."

"You were telling me some screwy yarn about a tommy
gun," Cross said. "Where does that fit in?"

"Garvey was under orders to report to Stanley on the
patients and any requests they might make. As a gag, I asked Garvey for a
machine-gun and, of course, he told Stanley. And that's the one nutty thing
that Paul Verne did. His macabre sense of humor made him put one in my room.
That was before he knew I was a detective, of course. Maybe the first thing
that made him suspect me was the fact that I ducked the gun in another room and
didn't report it to him. If I'd been what I was supposed to be, I'd have come
to him about it."

Cross and the plainclothesman had relieved me of my captive
by now and he was handcuffed and helpless. His sullen silence was enough of a
confession for me, and apparently for Cross, too.

But there was a plenty worried look on the captain's face
as his subordinates took Verne away.

"This is a new one on me," he said. "I mean,
the sanitarium here. What the devil am I going to do about all the patients?
Can the attendants take over, or did he have an assistant who can handle things
long enough to find other places for these people to go?"

I grinned at him. "You didn't ask me yet, Captain, why
Harvey Toler came to my room tonight."

He frowned. "All right, why did he? Not that that can
have anything to do with winding up the affairs of a sanitarium."

"It
can have everything to do with it," I said. "Toler came there to spy
on me, after he heard me pass his door to go downstairs. He wanted to look over
my stuff, so he could report to Dr. Stanley, or to the man he thought was Dr.
Stanley."

"Huh? Why? Wait a minute! You mean Toler wasn't really
crazy, that he was faking exhibitionism like you faked kleptomania, and that
Stanley hired him like he hired you, to watch the other patients?"

"Exactly, Cap. Now double that, in spades. . . ."

* * * *

"You're crazy," Kit said.

"No, angel," I explained patiently. "That is
the whole point. Much as I deplore two murders --three if you count the
original Dr. Stanley--that is what makes this case utterly and screamingly a
howl. I am
not
crazy.

"And neither was anybody else in that nut house,
except the man who ran it! I should have known it when we investigated a few
patients at random, and not one of them seemed to have had enough money to pay
his way, but every one of them was the type of person who would be looking for
a job and reading want ads. Want ads like the one I answered, but worded
differently"

"You mean there wasn't a single nut in that
place?"

"Not a one," I told her. "It seems likely
Verne would have had at least one genuine application during the month or so he
had been operating there, but if he did have, I have a hunch he'd have turned
it down. One or two legitimate ones would have spoiled the record, see? Lord,
what a kick he must have got out of running that place, knowing that eighteen
or nineteen people there were spying on each other at his orders and each of
'em acting crazy to fool all the others! And the whole shebang run by--"

I couldn't go on with it.

Besides, we'd have to stop laughing long enough to figure
out where we were going to spend--with the aid of twenty-five thousand
dollars--the rest of our honeymoon.

It was almost midnight. The lake front sweltered in the
aftermath of a blazing mid-summer day.

The little man with the straggly gray hair stood dejectedly
beside his big black skyward-aimed telescope, upon which hung a hand-lettered
sign, "The Moon for a Nickel."

It was too hot. Business was poor.

Over the rippling waters of Lake Michigan the moon hung
like a golden ball--but no one seemed interested in it. On the other side,
beyond the park, the tall buildings rose: black gaunt shapes against a black
background. Here and there shone the white rectangle of a lighted window.

A hand touched his shoulder, and the little man jumped. He
had not heard any one approach.

A man with a black slouch hat pulled down over his forehead
stood beside him. The telescope man recognized him as a man he had noticed
hanging around almost an hour the previous night, watching the telescope, the
buildings, and the people.

He was holding out a dollar bill. "Take a walk around
a tree, dad," he said. "I want to look at the Big Dipper."

The little man stuck the dollar into his pocket. A buck was
a buck--particularly right now. He didn't see many of them. He meandered off
and sat down on a bench, just near enough to see that the fellow didn't try to
walk off with the 'scope.

Not that he could do much about it-- the guy looked smooth
but tough. Thinking about it, the little man became quite uneasy. It wasn't
usual to be handed a dollar and told to take a walk. In fact, it had never
happened before. But a buck was a buck, and if only he had forty-nine more of
them--

Out of the corner of his eye he managed to watch the mysterious
stranger without appearing to do so. He had a hunch it would not be advisable
to act interested.

The stranger swiveled the telescope around so that it
seemed to be pointing up at the nearest building, across the street from the
park.

He kept turning the focusing screw. At last he seemed
satisfied with the adjustment and moved the telescope slowly from side to side
as though he were peering intently into every window. Then he raised it a
trifle and seemed to look into the windows of the floor above. Then the floor
below.

Then he took out his handkerchief to mop his forehead. But
before putting it back into his pocket, he waved it once. He turned the
telescope around again so that it pointed out over the lake. Then, without a
word, he walked away rapidly.

The little man with the straggly gray hair strolled back to
the telescope. He knew that it was none of his business and that he should keep
out of it, but his eyes followed the stranger, who became a dark shadow as he
crossed the two blocks of park.

Then, as he came out under the street lights of the
boulevard, he could be seen clearly again. He climbed into the front seat of a
big car parked at the curb.

But the car didn't drive away. It stayed there, waiting.

The little man realized he was out of his element--that
sudden death sat in the front seat of that car, and in its vacant back seat as
well.

And he didn't want to get killed just then, not when his
wife was so ill, when she needed an operation and was counting on him, somehow,
to find the money. But fifty bucks was as far away as the moon.

The moon--he should re-aim his 'scope at the moon, so that
in case anybody with a nickel came along-- He looked through the telescope and
saw a blurred golden disk. He reached up to turn the focusing screw, and then
lowered his hand. What was the use?

He might as well go home. No more tonight. The dollar bill
had been a windfall, but just enough to be tantalizing. How, where, when, to
find forty-nine more of them to pay for his wife's operation? Her wan face
seemed to swim before his eyes, superimposed upon the blurred disk of the
moon.

He turned back and looked up at the building front across
the park. There were a few lights here and there. One on the fourth floor, two
in adjacent windows on the eighth. He tried to remember the exact slant of the
telescope. It would have pointed, he guessed, at the fifth or sixth floor.

Suddenly, on the sixth floor, he saw a light that glowed
and disappeared, showed once more, dimly. A flashlight, he thought. He didn't
see it again. Several minutes passed.

Then out of the entrance of the building, two men walked
rapidly to the parked car. One carried a small bag.

Curiosity overcame caution in the little man beside the
telescope. It was partly a dim hope that if he could get the license number of
that car, a description of all three of the men, there might be a reward. But
mostly it was curiosity.

He swung the telescope around as quickly as he could, gave
the focusing screw a slight twist with a practiced hand, aimed.

As the distant scene leaped suddenly into view as though it
were only a few yards away, the men were climbing into the car.

They looked tough. One had a long jagged white scar just
above his collar. He had a long thin nose and little ratty eyes. The other man,
who was getting in beside the driver, had a fat pudgy face. Through the
telescope the little man could make out the baggy wrinkles under his eyes,
could almost count the hairs in his toothbrush mustache.

He got ready to swing the telescope to follow the car. He
wouldn't be able to catch the license plates until it had moved almost a block.
But anyway he could identify all three of the men, anywhere, any time. They
seemed almost close enough to reach out and touch.

He saw the man who used the telescope start the car. It
seemed so close that he was surprised for an instant not to be able to hear the
sound of the motor.

Then the driver turned, looked out over the park toward the
lake, toward the telescope. The little man could see his lips moving in what seemed
to be silent curses. The driver pointed toward the telescope and said something
to the two other men.

Obviously, plans were changed. The car made a U-turn on the
boulevard and headed toward the drive leading into the park.

It had to go a few blocks out of its way to get at him, but
it was coming toward the man with the telescope.

For a moment he stood petrified. The car was roaring down
the straight stretch toward him before he moved. Then he began to run blindly
out across the grass, away from the drive.