The Seven of Calvary Page 8

  “We needed a doctor, and we did not know one who would do—what we needed. Lupe feared to ask anyone, because it might be suspected what had happened. Then one night she heard one girl—I do not think that she was sober—telling another of the luck that she had had two times, and Lupe learned the name of the doctor. We knew he would be good but expensive, because the girl was wealthy.

  “In the meantime, I had written to my uncle, who was just arrived in New York, telling him that I needed some money badly and asking him for a loan. I will show you his answer.” Kurt rose and opened the drawer of his desk. Martin waited expectantly. On this letter depended, apparently, the entire question of motive.

  “Here it is,” Kurt said, handing it to him.

  “Lieber Kurt,” Martin read silently, deciphering with some difficulty the outmoded German script, “Du kannst ja garnicht wissen, wie es mich freut, zum erstenmale in Amerika anzukommen. Die frische Luft dieses freien, friedlichen Landes …” Martin smiled ironically and skipped hurriedly through three paragraphs of rejoicing in the peaceful freedom of America. Dr. Schaedel seemed to have been a curious combination of wisdom and innocence. “In Bezug auf Deinen letzten Brief …” he read at last, and concentrated his attention. His eyes opened wide as he read on.

  “In regard to your last letter,” (thus Dr. Schaedel said, freely translated) “I realize that I have long been remiss toward my only living relation. While I have enjoyed to the full your letters and your company, I have never thought how I might aid you in any way. I am not a wealthy man, but I am of comfortable means. As I believe I have told you, my fortune (if I may dignify it by such a word) goes at my death to several Swiss universities and charitable organizations, in addition to a fund to provide a Schaedel Chair of World Peace at my own university (a selfish whim to immortalize my name perhaps, but certainly a worthy immortality). Even in view of my previous remissness, I cannot see my way clear to altering my will and depriving any of these institutions of their allotments; but I am resolved to do what I can for you during my life. I shall be in Berkeley within two weeks, and you can then explain to me your need if you desire, or keep it secret if that seem necessary. In either case, please consider my aid as a gift, not as a loan. If your need be too urgent to wait the two weeks, wire me here.”

  At this point the letter went off into a discussion of Dr. Schaedel’s plans for his lecture tour, and Martin laid it aside. “You have shown this to the police?” he asked.

  “Yes. They secured other documents of my uncle and gave them to an expert of handwriting, who did me the honor of deciding that this letter was genuine. It was then that they told me to return home.”

  “Of course,” Martin muttered. This letter removed any possible motive that Kurt might have had. With Dr. Schaedel alive, he could expect financial aid whenever he needed it. With Dr. Schaedel dead, he would have no claim whatsoever upon any of his uncle’s money.

  Kurt roused himself from silence and said, “I had best tell you the rest, too, even as I told it to Sergeant Cutting.”

  “Is there more?”

  “You still do not know why you found my key, Martin,” Kurt reminded him.

  Martin nodded. His sympathy for Kurt had for the moment dispelled his detective fever.

  “Very well,” Kurt resumed. “It is now Friday evening. After the dinner I speak to my uncle, and he tells me that he will see me at half after nine.”

  “I know. I heard you.”

  “So? You knew that too? Martin, I am surprised that you have not by now hanged me.” Kurt’s laughter was forced. “I went to his room at that hour. We talked a little and then he said,

  “‘Kurt, take this.’

  “He seemed awkward and unhappy, as though he were embarrassed by his gift. I took it. It was twenty-five twenty-dollar bills.

  “‘I do not want to know your trouble,’ he said. ‘I have decided that it is better that I only give you this. If it is enough,’ he added.

  “I said, ‘More than enough,’ and then I was telling to him all the story. Martin, he was a kind man. Things let themselves be told to him.…

  “When I had finished, he said, ‘I do not like death, even of one not yet truly alive. But it is perhaps wise if it saves the happiness of those living.’ And he smiled and got up and said, ‘Now I am going for my evening walk. Send your Lupe to the hospital tomorrow, and bring me to see her when she is better. She must be a charming girl, Kurt.’

  “I could not say anything. I took his hand and … and kissed it, like a peasant kissing the hand of his emperor. I felt like that. He was so good, and I was …

  “That was the last time that I spoke to him alive.”

  Kurt, deeply moved, ceased to speak, while Martin, moved almost as deeply, could find nothing to say that would not sound intolerably stupid. He was surprised to hear Kurt, after a short pause, continue his story.

  “That was some time after ten o’clock. I hurried from his room to mine and there … there I wept. Then I hid the money deep back in a drawer and went for a walk myself. I walked about an hour in the hills, and then was coming back along Panoramic Way. I had just looked at my watch about five minutes earlier; it must have been around eleven-thirty.

  “I saw a man who might have been my uncle go into Cynthia Wood’s house. I was not sure. You know he was of ordinary height, but looked so small because he stooped. On his evening walks, he kept very straight. And he was in an ordinary gray suit. It might have been anyone, and since he went into Cynthia’s I thought for a minute it might be Alex. He has a suit like that. But I waited for a moment, and saw him come out again. I was about ten meters away, and I started forward, and then …” Kurt broke off. His emotion was too great.

  “You mean—you saw him killed?” Martin exclaimed.

  “Yes!” Kurt burst out. “Yes! I saw that good man killed. It was someone who was behind that bush where you found my key. He rushed out and seized my uncle. Then my uncle fell. It was all over before I could even move. I hurried and seized the man. I was not afraid, only for my uncle. He did not try to stab me. He only slipped away and vanished. I bent over my uncle. He was dead. Then I heard people coming out of the house, and then … now this I do not like to tell, no, not even to you, Martin. I am not proud of it. But … I was afraid. There was my uncle, dead—there was nothing that I could do for him. But those who were coming—what might they not think on finding me? It was foolish, that I know—but it was … hysteria almost. I ran. I left that dear dead man and ran away from a fear that did not exist. For ten, fifteen minutes I do not know what I did. I wandered helpless, hopeless, mad.… And then I forced myself to come back among people. I came to your room. And the rest you know.…” He paused with something almost a sob.

  “And it was while you were struggling with the murderer that you lost your key?”

  “I think so.”

  “You told this to the police too?”

  “Just as to you, Martin.”

  “What was he like, this man?”

  “That I cannot tell you. He wore a rough mask from a handkerchief. He was smaller than I—about my uncle’s height, and wore a gray suit much like his. It was dark; you could not recognize people.”

  “And how did this keep out of the papers?”

  “Sergeant Cutting said: ‘If I say through the papers that you saw the murderer and could not identify him, he will feel too safe. If I say a lie that you could identify him, perhaps you will not be safe yourself. It is best I say nothing. He may become worried and make a mistake.’”

  Martin mentally noted that Sergeant Cutting was a much shrewder man than his statements to the newspapers might lead one to believe.

  “Now that is all that I know,” Kurt concluded. “I do not quite know why I have told you so much, Martin. Sergeant Cutting wished that I should say nothing of it. But you were very kind to me—” he glanced at the gold key—“and I wished to thank you.”

  “I should thank you, Kurt. It was most interesting,” Martin said la
mely. It was so much more than interesting, and still it led nowhere that he could see.

  Kurt picked up the key and adjusted it on his watch-chain. “I must have this repaired,” he said. “God knows where I might lose it next.”

  “I only hope that I’ll find it again, and not—” Martin broke off, realizing that the remark was tactless.

  “Shall we now dine—pardon me, Martin—eat?” Kurt asked.

  Martin glanced at his watch. “I’m sorry,” he replied. “It’s late and I’ve got to get to rehearsal. I’ll just have time for a hamburger at the White Tavern.” He paused embarrassedly, and finally held out his hand—an uncommon gesture for Martin. “Well,” he said, “good luck, Kurt. And I hope Lupe gets on all right.”

  “I am sure that she will. I have much trust in a doctor recommended by Cynthia.”

  “Cynthia!”

  “I am sorry. I had not meant to let the name slip. Good-bye, Martin, and thank you.”

  So that was that, thought Martin on his way to rehearsal. His beautifully built-up case had collapsed completely. With all trace of motive ripped out, the other details explained themselves readily enough.

  And he was glad—terrifically glad that his feelings had been right and his reasoning wrong. But if Kurt was innocent, who was the murderer? Kurt’s description might fit anyone—a masked man of medium height—it meant nothing. There seemed to remain only the two possibilities—the homicidal maniac and the emissary of the Vignards. Martin admitted that both ideas, however possible, or even plausible, were distasteful to him. He had certain aesthetic ideals of murder, in which neither madness nor secret societies played any part.

  Irrelevant though it was to the murder, his thoughts recurred to Kurt’s involuntary mention of Cynthia. He could hardly believe the staid Alex responsible for Cynthia’s visits to the abortionist. And what then would Alex think if he knew of them? It was an amusingly bawdy topic for wonder, and a relief from the murder. Some day he should write a mystery novel in which the entire mystery should consist of such a question as paternity. Better yet, a mysterious rape. There could be a wonderful scene in which the crime was reconstructed, with the detective, as is conventional, performing the actions of the criminal.

  Martin reached Wheeler Hall a little late, despite the speed with which he had gulped his hamburger. Rehearsal was already in progress, and Drexel greeted him with anything but the proper respect due to a translator-actor. Paul was on the stage, looking, as always, slightly annoyed that he was not allowed to go through the part with a pipe in his mouth.

  “Come on, Lamb,” Drexel called petulantly. “After all, it is your play, you know, and you’ve got to snap into it.”

  Martin snapped obediently, and so effectively that in his preoccupation over Don Juan Returns he quite forgot his preoccupation over the Seven of Calvary. He had little notion how soon those two preoccupations were to become one.

  CHAPTER V

  Watson as Lothario

  “Arthur Machen, in his brief study of the Islington mystery,” Dr. Ashwin pronounced, “has stated that the public taste in murders is undependable and vagarious. Surely we have here a case in point.”

  It was late on Friday evening, a week, almost to the hour, after the murder of Dr. Hugo Schaedel. Martin, wearied by a strenuous rehearsal, had encountered Alex, almost equally weary from long hours of experimenting in the laboratory; and together they had decided to pay a brief visit to Dr. Ashwin.

  Inevitably the conversation, which had first lingered upon such topics as the recent amusing remarks of Elizabeth or Dr. Ashwin’s eminently sound reasons for not translating the masterpieces of Bravabhuti, had come round to murder and the Seven of Calvary. Ashwin, who had begun to take an almost personal pride in the intricacies of the local murder, was now venting his grievance against the newspaper-reading public.

  “The murder of Dr. Schaedel,” he continued, “was a skillful and fascinating crime. The character of the victim, the lack of motive, the curious symbol left beside the corpse—all these combined to make it a puzzle of unusual interest. By the way, Mr. Lamb, how did it happen that the newspapers secured the story of the Seven of Calvary? Mr. Lennox seemed firmly resolved not to make it public.”

  “I suspect Worthing,” Martin said. “There was a fierce light of resolution in his eyes when Paul announced that he respected his life more than his public duty. You remember, Alex?”

  Alex nodded silently.

  “Besides,” Martin added, “he probably got space rates.”

  “That does seem likely,” Ashwin admitted. “Was Mr. Lennox much perturbed by the publication of his dangerous knowledge?”

  “I was with him when he read it,” said Alex. “When he saw that his name wasn’t mentioned he was relieved. But he did seem puzzled when the Swiss Consul said he’d never heard of the Vignards.”

  Martin smiled. “I think he suspects the Swiss Consul of being a Vignard himself. The Seven of Calvary is approaching the proportions of a monomania with Paul.”

  “So.” Ashwin settled farther into the swivel-chair. “And yet even that wildly romantic revelation failed to keep the newspaper public interested. Over the last week end, the Ice Pick Murder was spread on the front pages of every Bay Region newspaper. It is still unsolved, and yet, within a week—”

  “Yes,” Martin agreed regretfully, “all that the papers are interested in now is the Twin Peaks murder.”

  “And what is there in that for a connoisseur of murder? A common, brutal crime passionel, utterly deficient in mystery or subtleties of psychology.” Ashwin sighed. “A naked female body is found in a parked car on Twin Peaks. The woman has been shot. Five yards down the road, the gun is found. The car and the gun are both traced to a married man who is known to have been the woman’s lover. His fingerprints are on the gun—that such negligence should be possible in this age of mystery-novel readers!—and he confesses to the crime. There is your Twin Peaks Murder, and it absorbs every copywriter to the entire exclusion of the Seven of Calvary.” Ashwin sighed again and shifted about in discomfort. “Gentlemen,” he announced, “only another glass of Scotch can keep me from tears at the thought of this shameful decadence of modern taste. Will you join me?”

  Martin and Alex joined him, with suitably doleful countenances.

  “I can see but one explanation,” Dr. Ashwin reflected aloud. “In view of the naked female body involved in the Twin Peaks Murder, the public must suppose the twin peaks to have a physiological, rather than a geographical, reference. Lubricity is indeed the lubricant of social thought.” He relapsed into mournful silence.

  “Dr. Ashwin …” Alex began tentatively.

  “Yes, Mr. Bruce?”

  “Martin tells me that you were rather interested in poor Dr. Schaedel’s death. I wonder if you have any new ideas on it by now?”

  “I have no ideas on it, Mr. Bruce, beyond the perception of certain obvious facts. That these have not been perceived by the authorities is doubtless unfortunate; for that means that this first murder will in all likelihood remain unsolved.”

  “This first murder …?” Alex sounded a little frightened.

  “Consider the facts as they stand, Mr. Bruce. Mr. Lamb will remember that he and I ran through a little list of possible motives. We eliminated Jealousy, Revenge, and Elimination because of the character of the victim. Gain we considered for a time—at least, Mr. Lamb did—thinking that Kurt Ross stood to gain by his uncle’s death. But Mr. Lamb spent the greater part of a recent class period, which might better have been devoted to the Mahabharata,” (Ashwin’s look of stern reproof was not a complete success) “in explaining to me why Mr. Ross could have no motive. We can hardly suspect the emissaries of Swiss charities of having committed this murder; and they alone stood to gain by it.

  “Thus we are left with Conviction and Lust for Killing as motives. Conviction could result only in the case of the Vignards, and I begin to feel that there Mr. Lennox’s imagination and zeal for research have twisted a too
elaborate explanation from probably simple sources. I deeply regret that those works of Urmayer’s and Kurbrand’s are not available here. There remains, of course, the last possibility—the crime of a homicidal maniac. But that a maniac who has never struck before in Berkeley should kill a Swiss emissary just arrived in the city and leave beside him a symbol connected with Swiss history—to believe this is to stretch the laws of chance too far.” Ashwin paused to find a cigarette.

  “Then what is there left?” Alex asked not illogically.

  “What is there left, Mr. Bruce? The fact—the glaring, horrifying fact—the fact, indeed, in the Elizabethan sense—the deepest of deep damnations of this taking-off—the fact that the wrong man was murdered.”

  Alex’s mouth fell open, and was not closed until he had finished off his glass of Scotch. Martin, who had half-expected the idea, felt nonetheless the need of whiskey.

  “The wrong man?” Alex mumbled.

  “Dr. Schaedel was of ordinary height and ordinarily attired. It was a dark night, and a dozen men in Berkeley must have looked exactly as he did. The murderer simply made the trifling error of killing the wrong person. That accounts completely for the absence of motive, and that is why I spoke of Dr. Schaedel’s death as the first murder.”

  “You mean …?”

  “I mean, Mr. Bruce, that the murderer will, in all probability, still carry out his original intention, and kill his planned victim. Whatever his motive may have been, Dr. Schaedel’s death has certainly not satisfied it. The fact that his accidental murder has been a complete success, insofar as his personal safety is concerned, will merely be a stimulus to him in his second effort.

  “I have never put much stock,” Ashwin continued, “in the oft stated theory that murder breeds murder—that is, that a once successful murderer is more apt to kill than any other man. Most people pass through life without having a real reason for killing more than one or two people. The necessary killing once accomplished, they are, in my opinion, if anything less apt than a nonmurderer to kill again. Your Landrus and Smiths, men to whom killing became more or less a profession, or at least a hobby, are of course in a class apart.