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

Dr. Portal is working on now,” said Mme. Storey quietly;

“working to save your children, all the children. He had almost

attained success when this…”

 

Inspector Rumsey fairly groaned in his distress. “I’ve got to do my

duty. I had hoped that he would never hear this story. Never discover

that he was being watched.”

 

“Well, he knows it now,” she said gravely, “and his work is at a

standstill…. You say he might have done it,” she presently went

on, “but he says he was at the Natural History Museum all evening where

hundreds of people saw him.”

 

“That is true and not true,” said the Inspector. “He made a speech of

welcome at nine o’clock and of course everybody in the building saw and

heard him. But after he stepped down from the platform at nine-twenty,

I am unable to find anybody who saw him until supper was served at

eleven.”

 

“That is no proof that he wasn’t there.”

 

“No, but unfortunately I have learned that a taxicab was called to the

museum at nine-thirty, and that a man was driven from there to the

corner of Avenue A and Seventy-Fourth Street, which, as you know, is

just around the corner from the Institute. Well, if he could taxi over

there he could taxi back, of course, in plenty of time for supper.”

 

“Did this passenger resemble Dr. Portal?” Mme. Storey asked anxiously.

 

“Ah, there we are up against it again. The driver of that taxi has

left his job, and I have not been able to find him.”

 

“Pretty slim evidence,” suggested Mme. Storey.

 

“Surely,” he agreed. “But in the face of it, how can I give up

watching Dr. Portal.”

 

“Well, now the situation is somewhat altered,” she said. “Dr. Portal

has engaged me to solve this mystery. That’s pretty strong evidence of

his good faith in the matter. If I assure you that I mean to devote my

whole time to the case, are you willing to call off your dogs? You and

I will still be working together, of course.”

 

“Sure,” cried the Inspector heartily. “And darn glad of the excuse to

let up on the doctor!”

 

They shook hands on it.

 

“Now tell me all you know about the case,” said Mme. Storey, lighting a

fresh cigarette.

 

It required a full hour for the Inspector to relate all the work he and

his men had done. I shall not weary you with the recital, for there

was little of it that proved to be of any service to us. Nothing in

Dr. McComb’s past life, nor in Dr. Portal’s either, threw any light on

the crime. In an association of five years they had never been known

to quarrel, or even to have a serious difference of any kind. The only

thing in the way of complete harmony was Dr. McComb’s ambition—and

that was mostly Mrs. McComb’s.

 

As a matter of fact Mme. Storey had to begin from the beginning. It

was a single word dropped by Inspector Rumsey which gave her her lead.

In one of the gossiping stories patiently run down by the police, a

young interne of the Institute had used the phrase: “As it was told to

me, Dr. Portal hired a gunman to put McComb out of the way.” This yarn

was traced back to Mrs. McComb; but when the police questioned her she

denied having said it. In fact she denied ever having charged that Dr.

Portal was responsible for her husband’s death. This was manifestly a

falsehood. It was no doubt the Terwilligers who, with the best

intentions, had shut the woman up. Mrs. McComb was the kind of woman

who would be very much in awe of multi-millionaires.

 

“At any rate,” said Mme. Storey, “‘gunman’ is our line.”

 

“I have not neglected that line,” said the Inspector. “The possible

hired killers are pretty well known to us. Well, every man of that

sort has been able to account for his actions on the night of November

8th.”

 

“But there are always new killers coming up,” suggested Mme. Storey.

 

“Sure,” said the Inspector gloomily, “there are always youngsters who

are crazy for a chance to qualify in that class. It is looked upon as

the head of the criminal profession.”

 

“Then we will assume,” she said, “that this was a first killing by a

man who had already served an apprenticeship in lesser crimes.”

 

“But it was Dr. Portal who was said to have hired the gunman,” said the

Inspector, frowning.

 

“Well, maybe he did,” said Mme. Storey airily. “In any case it

provides us with a starting point.”

III

Before we went to bed that night we made an appointment with Dr. Portal

to come to his laboratory next day. What she had learned made it

necessary for her to have another talk with him, Mme. Storey told him.

After that she did not expect to trouble him again until she had

arrested her man. She insisted that there was no need for secrecy now,

and in fact she advised him to tell his associates that he had engaged

her to clear him from the absurd scandal that had clouded his name.

“Let the matter be dragged out into the open,” she said.

 

The great Terwilliger Institute, as everybody knows, stands in its own

fine park on the bank of the East River. I should very much have liked

to have gone over the whole place, but there was no time for that. We

confined our attention to the bacteriological laboratory, which was for

the time being entirely devoted to the researches of Dr. Portal and his

assistants. The ground floor was given up to an immense general

laboratory with apparatus of every description; the second floor was

divided into special laboratories and offices, while the third floor

housed the monkeys and other animals used in their work. I did not go

up there.

 

The three of us were in his private room, an office rather than a

laboratory, bare and speckless as a hospital ward. Mme. Storey said

lightly:

 

“Among the different versions of the story which have been going the

rounds, there was one to the effect that you hired a gunman to do the

deed.”

 

“How absurd!” said the doctor, half-amused, half-angry. “How on earth

would I set about to hire a gunman?”

 

“Have you never known a man of that sort?” asked Mme. Storey carelessly.

 

Dr. Portal suddenly checked himself. “Why … why, yes I did,” he said

blankly. “How strange! It happened just a little while before the

tragedy…. It never occurred to me there might be a connection

between the two…. Why, there couldn’t have been!”

 

“Nevertheless, tell me about it,” said Mme. Storey.

 

Dr. Portal looked out of the window. His gaze became still more remote

as he called up the past scene. “When you have been concentrating on a

difficult problem for many hours—or days,” he began slowly, “there

comes a moment when the brain seems to slip its cogs, and you become

conscious of a great weariness. It is a sort of warning signal, I

suppose, and I always heed it at once. Generally I take a little walk

in the grounds. Sometimes just a few minutes’ relaxation is enough to

restore me.”

 

“I expect this habit of yours is well known,” suggested Mme. Storey.

 

“No doubt. No doubt,” he said. “There are certain individuals of the

neighbourhood with whom I have become quite well acquainted through

meeting them in the grounds. When I came here years ago the grounds

were closed to the public, but I persuaded my patrons to open them. It

is a crowded neighbourhood and there are too few parks. Moreover, I

like to walk about and watch the people, and talk to them. But I have

not always the courage to open a conversation. You will think it very

silly, I am sure, at my age to be so diffident. I am glad when anybody

speaks to me.”

 

“I can understand that,” murmured Mme. Storey.

 

He glanced at her gratefully. “I lead too solitary a life, having no

family,” he went on. “I get up in the morning and go to work. Most

days I work until it is time to go home and go to bed again. I have

myself pretty well disciplined—but not completely disciplined. There

is something in me that sometimes rebels against this dryness,

something that longs for colour and drama in life. I tell you this in

order to explain what happened.”

 

Mme. Storey nodded.

 

“One sunny afternoon,” he went on; “it was just a few days before the

catastrophe here; let me see, the following day was a Saturday; that

would be two Saturdays before the tragedy, October 30th; I was sitting

on a bench in the grounds throwing bread crumbs to the sparrows when a

young fellow came along and sat down on the other end of the bench. I

was immediately and strongly attracted to him….”

 

“Why?” asked Mme. Storey.

 

“Well … I suppose it was the attraction of opposites. He was the

exact antithesis of what I had been as a young fellow. He existed

purely on the physical plane, one would say. A superb physical

specimen; comely, vigorous and alert. He was very well dressed in a

somewhat flashy style. I was surprised at his interest in me, for such

a one naturally has little use for an old fogey of a scientist. From

his handsome dark eyes and smooth, firm, dusky skin I put him down as

an Italian, and as a matter of fact he told me later that his name was

Tito Tolentino….”

 

“A mellifluous moniker,” put in Mme. Storey with a dry smile; “probably

assumed for the occasion.”

 

“No doubt,” said Dr. Portal. “Indeed, when we became better acquainted

he confessed that he went under many names. An amazing tale.”

 

“Don’t skip any of it,” warned Mme. Storey.

 

“He was a mere lad,” the doctor went on, “not more than nineteen I

should say, but he had an uncanny air of experience and assurance. I

am rather alarmed in the presence of hard-boiled youths, but on this

occasion I wasn’t required to make any overtures, for he immediately

started talking to me. With his uncanny sharpness he perceived that I

was diffident, and laid himself out to put me at my ease, just as if he

had been the elderly man of the world and I the gawky stripling.”

 

Mme. Storey and I smiled at the picture this called up—the great

scientist and the gunman! “What did he talk about?” asked my employer.

 

“It was about the sparrows at first. How they must have recognised

that I had a good nature since they came right to my feet. Then he

went on to tell me about himself; how he was the sole support of his

widowed mother and small brothers and sisters; how he worked in a

printing shop all night, slept in the mornings and came out in the

afternoons for a breath of air. All this was delivered in a snuffling,

self-righteous kind of voice. I suppose he thought this was the proper

way to recommend himself to me; but it only made me uncomfortable—it

was so false, so out of character with the flashy clothes and the hard,

handsome, predatory eyes that searched me through and through while he

snuffled.”

 

“He knew who you were?” suggested Mme. Storey.

 

“Yes; it did not occur to me then, but he must have known. From the

first, I remember,