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

he addressed me as ‘Doctor’; he knew I was the head

of this institution.”

 

“Go on, please.”

 

“In the end he perceived, I suppose, that I didn’t believe a word of

his self-righteous story. With that unnatural penetration of his he

saw that the way to win me was by confessing his sins. At any rate he

suddenly changed his tone. ‘Aah, that’s all baloney,’ he said with a

laugh. ‘The truth is, I’m a bad egg, doctor. I shook my folks long

ago. I play a lone hand. Never did an honest day’s work in me life!’

My heart warmed to him when he said this. It cleared the air. We got

along famously after that.”

 

Dr. Portal paused with his attractive smile, so shy and wise. He may

have been innocent of the ways of the world, but he was nobody’s fool.

Always ready to smile at himself.

 

“How can I convey to you the extraordinary effect his story had on me?”

he presently went on. “It laid a spell on my imagination. It was the

first time in my life that I had ever come into contact with

lawlessness, and all the starved lawlessness in my own nature leaped to

meet it. Already at nineteen this lad had quaffed life to the dregs,

whereas at fifty-nine I had not even tasted it! I felt a kind of shame

for my wasted opportunities.”

 

Mme. Storey did not miss the irony in this. They laughed together.

 

“Of course it was only a mood,” he said; “the result of too many

suppressions. If I had a son I would say to him: ‘Don’t be too good

when you’re young, or the devil will get you later!’”

 

“I suppose women played a considerable part in his story,” she

suggested.

 

Dr. Portal held up his hands expressively. “Amazing! Amazing!” he

murmured. “An incredible point of view! Such a complete absence of

inhibitions! Such coolness and matter-of-factness! Apparently when

Tolentino saw anything that pleased him he just reached out and took

it, as one might help oneself to a peach from a dish! Of course he had

been very much favoured by nature for this pursuit. Such a handsome

little blackguard! The things he told me took my breath away. Girls

everywhere; all kinds of girls; even girls of position, society girls.

He used to pick them up at afternoon tea dances. ‘They like a fella to

be bad,’ he said with his sly grin.” The doctor shook his head

mournfully.

 

“What was the upshot of this remarkable conversation?” asked Mme.

Storey.

 

“The upshot was,” said Dr. Portal, “that I came to myself with a start

to find that the sun was going down and that I was thoroughly chilled.

When I got up to leave, my new friend suggested that we ought to meet

again, and I eagerly agreed. I was still under his spell. He said as

long as I was interested in that side of life, he’d like to take me

around town and show me some places, and we agreed to meet at six the

next evening at the Queensboro Bridge entrance. I chose a distant

point because I was none too anxious to have my associates at the

Institute see the kind of company I was mixing with. He promised to

have a car.”

 

“Good heavens!” cried Mme. Storey, “after all you had been told were

you not afraid to trust yourself in his hands?”

 

Dr. Portal looked at her in surprise. “Why, no,” he said. “The idea

of danger to myself never crossed my mind. Who would want to injure

me?”

 

Mme. Storey smiled at him somewhat grimly. “And you went?”

 

“Certainly, I went,” he said, “and had one of the most interesting

evenings I have ever spent … though I got a little tight,” he added

deprecatingly.

 

“Well, I expect that was good for you,” said Mme. Storey.

 

“Yes,” he agreed innocently. “I tackled my work with fresh energy next

day.”

 

“Well, tell us all about it.”

 

“Unfortunately my sense of direction is poor, and I cannot describe

just where he took me,” said Dr. Portal. “One turned innumerable

corners and pulled up in front of one door after another. I never knew

where we were.”

 

“What kind of car was it?” asked Mme. Storey.

 

“A little sedan, quite new, but I didn’t notice of what make.”

 

“Oh, well, it hardly signifies. It was undoubtedly stolen for the

occasion and abandoned at the end of the evening. Go on, doctor.”

 

“First we drove far down town into the crowded East side. We went into

a basement restaurant there. It had no lights nor sign outside, but it

was quite a large place and well filled. There was a little space for

dancing in the middle. We ate our dinner there, and Tito pointed out

all the celebrities of the place. There was a woman—I forget her

name—who had been tried for the murder of her husband so many times,

the jury disagreeing on each occasion, that finally the District

Attorney had become discouraged, and she was allowed to go free, though

everybody knew she had done it. Then there was Monk Eyster, the famous

gang leader, and many other notorious criminals whose names were

strange to me. It was a thrilling experience for me.”

 

“Did these people appear to know your companion?” asked Mme. Storey.

 

“No. Nobody spoke to us.”

 

“Naturally, he wouldn’t have dared take you to any place where he was

known. Go on.”

 

“Afterwards we went to a sort of club on the second storey of a

building. There were only men in this place. It was the headquarters

of the stick-up fraternity, Tito said, and while we knocked the balls

around a pool table, he told me who the different men were, and

described their hair-raising exploits. Everyone was wanted by the

police.”

 

Mme. Storey smiled at him indulgently. “Did anybody speak to your

friend here?”

 

“No.”

 

“Humph!” she said, “he probably made up the story out of whole cloth.”

 

“Perhaps,” said Dr. Portal a little ruefully, “but it was very exciting

at the time…. Afterwards he said he knew of a roadhouse up in

Westchester County that was the worst place of all. Everything went

there, he said, and nothing went any farther. But I would be all

right, he said, as long as he was with me…. So we drove for a long

time in the little car. It must have been somewhere north of the city,

because I remember crossing the Harlem River, and passing through the

suburb of Williamsbridge. I saw the name on a railway station. We

came to the roadhouse…”

 

“Was it so very wicked?” interrupted Mme. Storey, smiling.

 

“Well, I didn’t see anything out of the way,” returned the doctor

innocently, “but then I am not accustomed to such places. I wouldn’t

have known what to look for. As a matter of fact I had a drink or two

there, and I am not quite so clear afterwards as to what happened. All

I remember is that I became excessively talkative—it was a great

relief!”

 

“What did you talk about?” asked Mme. Storey.

 

“I can scarcely tell you. I suppose it was about the polio serum which

fills my mind to the exclusion of everything else. In looking back on

it I am astonished at the patience of young Tito in letting me run on

so. It could not have been interesting to him. In spite of all, there

must have been something genuinely friendly in him, don’t you think?”

 

“I wonder!” said Mme. Storey grimly. “Go on.”

 

“The next thing I remember is finding myself in the little car again,

still driving away from town. For some reason or another we drew up

alongside the road, and remained there a while, I still talking. It

must have been a very lonely spot; there were woods on either side of

the road; no cars passed that way. In my slightly fuddled condition

all this seemed perfectly natural. I was still talking garrulously

about my work, I remember, when I happened to notice that Tito was

playing with an ugly little automatic gun on his knees….”

 

“Good God!” murmured Mme. Storey, aghast.

 

The doctor, however, was entirely unconcerned. “I remonstrated with

him,” he said. “I told him to put the thing away before there was an

accident….”

 

“And then what?” asked Mme. Storey tensely.

 

“He put it in his pocket,” he said calmly; “and we drove home. That’s

all.”

 

“And that is the strangest part of all!” cried Mme. Storey. “What

could have persuaded him to spare you?”

 

“Hey?” said Dr. Portal, blinking.

 

“Don’t you realise that you were taken for a ride?” she said.

 

“Certainly I was taken for a ride…”

 

“No! No! I mean in the special sense of that phrase; the sense in

which it is used in the underworld. You were taken out to that lonely

spot to be shot, and your body thrown into the woods. The mystery is,

how you contrived to escape!”

 

“Why should anybody want to shoot me?” gasped the doctor.

 

“You escaped,” she went on, “but Dr. McComb was not so lucky!”

 

“Do you mean to say that Tito shot McComb?” he cried.

 

“I don’t know. Another tool may have been used in that case. Tito was

only a hired assassin, of course. There may have been several. What

is clear is that somebody had it in for the whole Terwilliger

Institute!”

 

“Why? Why? Why?” asked the dismayed doctor. “We injure nobody. We

threaten nobody’s interest. Our work is for the benefit of the whole

community!”

 

“I don’t know,” said Mme. Storey sombrely. “It shall be my task to

find out. Our only clue lies through this Tito.”

 

“How terrible!” murmured Dr. Portal, thinking of his near escape. “And

I suspected nothing!”

 

“Give me the best description of him that you can,” she said.

 

The doctor spread out his hands. “I’m afraid I’m not very good at it

… nineteen or twenty years old; about my height but much more

muscularly built. Very quick and graceful in his movements. Brown

eyes; smooth, warm-coloured face that still preserved some of the

roundness of boyhood; regular white teeth. Ordinarily he wore a mask

over his face; his expression was perfectly inscrutable….”

 

“This tells me next to nothing,” said Mme. Storey. “Try to give me

something characteristic, something peculiar.”

 

“Well, he had a trick of keeping a perfectly smooth face and speaking

out of one corner of his mouth,” said Dr. Portal.

 

“No good!” said my employer ruefully. “They all do that…. Did he

mention any names in his story? Did he ever let fall what they called

him?”

 

Dr. Portal shook his head. “No, I noticed that he was careful about

names. It was always ‘him’ or ‘her’ or ‘this fellow’ and ‘that

fellow.’”

 

“Then how about place names?” she asked. “Did he ever mention the

names of any places that he frequented?”

 

After thinking awhile the doctor said: “Yes. He spoke of Bleecker

Street. More than once I remember him saying: ‘I went down to

Bleecker’ or ‘I ran into him on Bleecker.’”

 

“That helps a little,” said Mme. Storey, “but not much. Bleecker is

the main street, the white-light district for the whole of little

Italy…. Can you give me anything else?”

 

After further thought the doctor brightened. “Here’s something,” he

said. “On the occasion of our second meeting he appeared wearing a

coon-skin coat like a college