The Almost Perfect Murder, Hulbert Footner [digital e reader .TXT] 📗

that there was no chance of stopping it now!”

 

“They circulate it, but I doubt if they believe it,” said Mme. Storey

gravely. “It is a common human failing.”

 

“But how terrible … how terrible to be the victim of such a slander!”

cried Dr. Portal brokenly. “It has completely unnerved me! It comes

between me and my work. I can do nothing! And my work has reached a

fatally critical point where every ounce of ability that I possess is

required of me. The polio serum…”

 

“What is polio?” asked Mme. Storey quickly.

 

“Ah, pardon!” he said, with a distracted gesture. “A bit of laboratory

slang. Polio is short for poliomyelitis or infantile paralysis. I

have been working on it for many years. I have not yet succeeded in

isolating the bacillus, but I have prepared a serum from the blood of

immune monkeys which, in the case of monkeys anyhow, arrests the

paralysis. I am not quite ready for human experiments, but I soon will

be—if I am only left in peace! … Meanwhile the number of cases is

daily increasing. Everything points to a coming epidemic. There is

not a day to lose!”

 

Mme. Storey, too, had risen. She had instantly made up her mind as to

the rights of this case. “How proud I will be if I can contribute to

your work by ever so little!” she said, impulsively taking his hand.

“I beg of you to put this preposterous slander out of your mind, and

return to your work. Leave this to me. I promise you if I live I will

lay it in its grave for ever!”

 

The doctor, as a man will, immediately began to make light of his own

emotion. “There … there,” he said, shaking her hand, “my mind is

relieved already. I feel safe in your hands. As for the expenses

connected with this affair…”

 

“Not a word as to that,” she said, holding up her hand. “That’s my

part…. All you have to do is to answer a few questions…. Where

were you on the night Dr. McComb was shot?”

 

“Fortunately I can produce an alibi,” he answered with a wry smile. “I

attended a reception at the National History Museum to visiting British

scientists. Hundreds of people must have seen me there…. However,”

he went on bitterly, “I understand that I am not accused of firing the

shot myself. They believe that I had it done.”

 

“What exactly did Mrs. McComb say to you on the morning after?”

 

“She said: ‘This is your work! This is your work! Now I hope you’re

satisfied! For years you have been trying to keep him down, and when

you found you could no longer do so you turned to this!’ And much

more to the same effect. No precise charge.”

 

“Hm! jealousy,” remarked Mme. Storey.

 

“Oh, yes, that had often peeped out,” said Dr. Portal. “Such a pity!

So unnecessary!”

 

“What sort of woman is Mrs. McComb?”

 

“A good enough sort as women go,” answered Dr. Portal carelessly.

“Highly conventional. Ambitious. On that account I considered her

influence over her husband unfortunate. A scientist cannot afford to

consider ambition; he cannot consider anything in the world but

science!”

 

“You have not much use for women, I take it, doctor,” suggested Mme.

Storey with a dry smile.

 

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” he protested. “Have I not put myself in

your hands? … The only thing I have against women is that they demand

too much time. For me life is not long enough to include both science

and women.”

 

“It is a pity,” murmured Mme. Storey. “Where is Mrs. McComb now?”

 

“She has gone abroad. I believe Mrs. Terwilliger sent her.”

 

“Ah! a mistake in tactics. Perhaps we will have to bring her back….

Now tell me what you can about the crime, doctor.”

 

“That is next to nothing,” he said, spreading out his hands.

 

“You have spoken of the bacteriological laboratory. What sort of a

place is it?”

 

“It is a small separate building connected with a main group by a

covered passage. Dr. McComb and I have been working there exclusively

during the past year. The monkeys that we use in our experiments are

kept on the top floor. Some of them are sick, you see, and there is a

male nurse on duty throughout the night just as if they were human.

Dr. McComb’s private office and my office were on the floor below.”

 

“The nurse heard no sound?”

 

“No, Madame. The walls are thick.”

 

“Describe the finding of the body.”

 

“It was found by a cleaning woman at eight o’clock on the morning of

November 9th. When she opened the door she saw the doctor slumped down

in his chair with a bullet-hole in his forehead. His body was already

stiff. He had evidently been shot from in front as he sat upright in

his chair. The bullet had gone completely through his head and had

lodged in the hard plaster of the wall behind him. A curious thing

was, that the murderer had gone to the trouble to dig it out of the

plaster and carry it away with him.”

 

“Nothing strange in that,” remarked Mme. Storey. “He had evidently

heard of the new science of ballistics which enables us sometimes to

trace the bullet back to the gun from which it was fired.”

 

“Another strange feature,” Dr. Portal went on, “is that the body was

stripped of every trifling article of value; a seal ring, a cheap watch

and a dollar or two in money, which was the most the doctor ever

carried. It seems incredible that a man should be murdered for that.”

 

Mme. Storey made no comment.

 

“Moreover,” said the doctor, “the unfortunate man must have made an

appointment to meet the murderer in the laboratory, for there was no

work to call him back that night. We had discussed it in the

afternoon. And he must have let the man in himself. Why should he

have made an appointment with a robber?”

 

“Obviously robbery was not the murderer’s main object,” said Mme.

Storey. “But having killed his man, he saw no reason why he should

overlook any little objects of value. From that I infer the shot was

fired by a professional criminal.”

 

“Now I call that clever!” said Dr. Portal admiringly. “Already we are

making progress.”

 

“But we have a long, long way to go,” said Mme. Storey, smiling. “How

about the Italian watchman?”

 

“He has been repeatedly questioned by the police. No suspicion

attaches to him, I understand. He can account for every minute of his

time that night by the time clocks he is obliged to punch as he makes

his rounds through the buildings.”

 

“But it only takes a fraction of a second to shoot a man,” Mme. Storey

pointed out.

 

“What object would he have? He knew Dr. McComb carried nothing of

value upon him?”

 

“I don’t know,” said Mme. Storey frankly. “Have you any theory as to

what happened?”

 

“None whatever,” said Dr. Portal, spreading out his hands. “All I can

tell you is, that McComb appeared to me to be in a highly nervous state

during the last days of his life. But I have no idea what was

troubling him.”

 

Mme. Storey and I left the opera house in a curious state of exaltation

induced by the insinuating violins and the poignant tenor voice. I

felt (and Mme. Storey confessed the same) that we were like two

crusaders sallying forth to do battle for the benefactor of mankind

against the powers of evil.

II

We proceeded directly to my employer’s little house on East Sixty –-

Street. It was still something short of ten o’clock, and Mme. Storey

telephoned immediately to Inspector Rumsey. Upon being assured that

the matter was of first-rate importance, the Inspector said he would

motor right down to join us.

 

Inspector Rumsey glanced at Mme. Storey with pleasure when he came in.

He is a little man of quite undistinguished appearance whose whole

study it is to render himself still more inconspicuous. Ordinarily his

face is as inscrutable as one of the little crooks whom it is his

business to track down, but in my employer’s presence he relaxes and

becomes quite human. He is a first-class police official and

absolutely incorruptible.

 

Mme. Storey went directly to the point. “Are you keeping Dr. Felix

Portal under surveillance?”

 

“I am,” he answered unhesitatingly.

 

“Why?”

 

“Well,” he said deprecatingly, “I received an anonymous letter

suggesting that he was responsible for the death of Edgar McComb.”

 

“An anonymous letter!” said Mme. Storey disgustedly.

 

“Sure,” he said calmly; “I despise them as much as you do. But in a

case of this sort where I was absolutely up against it I could not

afford to ignore it. The letter was typewritten on a sheet of cheap

paper, and it had been mailed in the corridor of the general post

office. I have been unable to trace it.”

 

“What did it say?”

 

“It said: ‘The story is going around that Dr. Portal did for Dr.

McComb. You had better look into it.’ … How did you become

interested in the case, if I may ask?”

 

“Between ourselves,” said Mme. Storey, “Dr. Portal has consulted me.”

 

“You mean he has engaged you to solve this mystery?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Well, that was a bold move!”

 

“If he is guilty it would be. But surely you do not think that he…”

 

“I have no opinion,” said Inspector Rumsey, spreading out his hands.

“All my investigation has shown is that he might have done it.”

 

“But, good heavens!” cried Mme. Storey, sitting upright, “why should he

have done it?”

 

“Professional jealousy,” suggested the Inspector. “Dr. McComb, a much

younger man, had been making great strides lately. His name was

continually in the newspapers.”

 

“But Dr. Portal is not the man to care about that,” said Mme. Storey.

“Look you, for fifteen years he’s been at the head of the Terwilliger

Institute and one of the most conspicuous citizens of New York. Yet

one almost never meets him at public functions. And in all those years

I have never seen a published photograph of him. I did not know him

tonight until he introduced himself. Is that the record of a man who

is keen about newspaper publicity?”

 

Inspector Rumsey did not answer.

 

“It is sacrilege to think a man like that in connection with a sordid

murder!” Mme. Storey went on earnestly. “I should say if there is

one disinterested man in this world of money-grubbers that man was

Felix Portal!”

 

“Even so,” said the Inspector with quiet obstinacy, “everybody knows

that the higher the flights a man is capable of, the lower he may fall.

The whole history of crime testifies to it.”

 

“You have several children, haven’t you?” said Mme. Storey, suddenly

taking a new line. “What are their ages?”

 

“The youngest is three and the oldest eleven,” said the Inspector with

a smile.

 

“All within the danger limits for infantile paralysis,” she murmured.

 

“Don’t speak of it!” he said with a painful gesture. “It’s a

nightmare!”

 

“They say we are headed straight for an epidemic.”

 

“It’s horrible!” cried the Inspector. “A man is so helpless! When I

see it coming I wish I could send them all up on a mountain top where

they could be cut off from everybody!”

 

“That’s what