Dark Tunnel Page 12

  I went on: “Alec told me that he had some reason to suspect a member of the War Board of espionage, and he told me just this evening that he intended to search the office of the suspected person for incriminating evidence.

  “He did so, and called me about 11:30, half an hour before he was killed, to tell me that he had found incriminating evidence in the office of Dr. Herman Schneider.”

  There were only five other people in the room, but their excitement was almost an audible hum. In the midst of it Dr. Schneider got slowly to his feet. I noticed that Gordon’s right hand rested near the left lapel of his suitcoat.

  “Gentlemen,” Schneider said with heavy dignity, “this is an outrageous slander. I am aware that Dr. Branch was a close friend—”

  I cut him short. “I haven’t finished.”

  “You have the floor, Dr. Branch,” Galloway said.

  “In addition to espionage, I wish to accuse Dr. Schneider of attempted murder and of consummated murder. To-night his son Peter tried to kill me. When his son failed, Dr. Schneider himself attempted to do the job by crashing his car on Bingham Heights. I don’t know what reason they had for trying to kill me, but I do know why they killed Alec Judd. I accuse Dr. Schneider of being either the murderer or the murderer’s accomplice.”

  “May I speak, President Galloway?” Schneider said in a rising voice which he tried to control.

  “You may speak.”

  “Gentlemen, this accusation—these accusations come as a tragic surprise to me. You know my reputation and my past, though I do not choose to rest on them alone. I am not guilty of any of the actions which this misguided young man has seen fit to attribute to me.

  “My son fenced a little with Dr. Branch to-night, and appears to have frightened him. Later, when I was driving Dr. Branch home, my car got out of control and plunged over the cliff near my home. I can understand that Dr. Branch may have been unsettled by the experience—I was shaken myself and barely escaped with my life—but it is certainly irrational to accuse me of trying to kill us both.

  “Above all, I know nothing of espionage or of the death of Professor Judd. His death has come as a deep personal blow to me. Perhaps it has affected Dr. Branch even more deeply. But you must not condemn me, untried, on the word of one young man, a young man whose judgment has perhaps been unsettled by a series of harrowing experiences.”

  Schneider sat down wearily in his chair.

  “Have you any evidence, Branch?” Jackson said curtly. He was leaning forward across the table, the lines in his face drawn deep by earnestness.

  “I have what happened to me, what Alec told me, and what happened to Alec. And a word he told me to write down when he called me from the Dictionary office before midnight. ‘Taillour,’ Middle English for ‘tailor.’”

  “And Old French,” Hunter said.

  “Schneider means ‘tailor’ in German,” I said, realizing how feeble it sounded.

  “Did he explain it that way?” Hunter said.

  “He was cut off before he could say anything more. I believe he may have been attacked then.”

  Hunter said, “I know how you feel about Alec and all that. But tell me: if Alec had given you the word ‘chasseur’—‘hunter’—would you be suspicious of me?”

  “There’s more to it than that. You’re not a German, for one thing.”

  “You don’t like Germans, I know,” Hunter said. “But your logic seems pretty tenuous, and I can’t follow it.”

  Schneider was looking less strained by the minute, and I felt that things were slipping out from under me.

  “Did you make a copy of the War Board report which Alec gave you, Dr. Schneider?” I asked.

  “Yes, I did,” he said coolly.

  “May I ask why.”

  “Though you have no legal right to question me, there is no reason why I should not answer. I made a copy for further study, a copy which I intended to destroy when I had mastered its contents. Surely, it is not criminal to take a serious interest in one’s duties.”

  “Judd specifically instructed you not to make a copy.”

  “Your tone is not wholly tolerable, Dr. Branch. I do not recall that any such instructions were given me. If they had been, my making of a copy would have been, at worst, an indiscretion.”

  “Have you anything more to say, Dr. Branch?” Galloway said. His voice was like dry ice, and the faces in the room were becoming hostile to me. I felt a surging desire to jolt them out of their stupid preconception that a respected scholar could do no wrong.

  “I should like to ask Dr. Schneider another question.”

  “Ask your question,” Galloway said, looking at me without great interest.

  “Dr. Schneider, can you account for the movements of your son and yourself at the time that Alec Judd was killed?”

  He meshed his hands over his belly and began to twiddle his thumbs. After a pause he said, “Of course I can, Dr. Branch. May I ask if you can account for yours? You must have some reason for this unusual attack on me, and I should like to find out what it is.”

  “Where were you at midnight?”

  “I was at home. My son Peter was with me.”

  “Have you any way of proving it? Was Miss Esch present?”

  “No, she has taken quarters in a hotel. But a policeman was there. He had come, rather tardily, to inquire after the details of our accident.” Red lights flickered in his brown eyes like small triumphal torches.

  “What was the policeman’s name?”

  “Moran, I believe. He is a motorcycle policeman.”

  There was a buzz of voices in the room. The meeting was on the point of spontaneous disintegration, and once that happened things would be where they had been.

  I turned to Galloway. “I should like to check on Dr. Schneider’s story. May I step over to my office and phone the police?”

  “I’m willing to accept Dr. Schneider’s word,” Galloway said. Jackson said, “And I.”

  They’re liberals and sportsmen of the old school, I thought, the kind of liberals and sportsmen that the Nazis have hornswoggled in every nation in Europe: I’d rather be a son of a bitch and have a chance in the rough-and-tumble.

  I said, “I’m going to phone.” Galloway raised his eyebrows and looked with interest at the bare wall.

  I went out the door leaving a silence like a vacuum which tugged at my coattails, and went upstairs to my office. I dialed police headquarters and Cross’s voice answered the phone.

  “Branch speaking. Is there a motorcycle officer named Moran there? I’d like to speak to him.”

  “Just a minute,” Cross said, and in a minute Moran came to the phone and said, “Yes?”

  “Did you interview Dr. Herman Schneider to-night?”

  “Yessir. I got there late because there was a bad hit-run case on the other side of town.”

  “What time did you get there?”

  “About twenty to twelve. Just a minute, I’ll look at my book. Yeah, twenty to twelve. I called him up about an hour before and told him I couldn’t make it till then and he said he’d wait up for me.”

  “Was Dr. Schneider there at twenty to twelve?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Was his son Peter there? A blonde young man.”

  “Not when I got there. He came in a few minutes later.”

  “Did he get there before twelve or after?”

  “Before twelve. I left right after twelve—I heard the tower clock. He was there for a while before I left.”

  “Was anybody else there?”

  “Nope. The old man said he’d give me a cup of coffee, only his housekeeper was in bed. So no coffee.”

  “Thanks very much, officer.” Thanks for a feeling of frustration.

  “Nodatall, professor. Good night.”

  “Good night.” I slammed down the receiver and went out into the hall.

  As I passed the Ladies’ Room, the door opened and Haggerty came out grinning like a laboratory rat who has mastered the ma
ze.

  “Hello, professor,” he said. “Are they still down there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you solved the mystery?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe there is no mystery. They’d better hear what Miss Madden has to tell them.”

  He moved aside and Helen Madden came up to the lighted doorway. She was so pale her skin seemed translucent, but her mouth was set and her eyes were dry.

  “How are you, Helen?”

  “I’m all right, Bob. I’ll feel worse to-morrow and the day after.”

  “Are you willing to tell Galloway and the others what you saw? Sergeant Haggerty seems to think it’s important.”

  “What others?”

  “Jackson and Hunter and an F.B.I. man. And Herman Schneider.”

  “Where are they?”

  “In the seminar room on the fourth floor.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I’ll tell them what I saw.”

  We went down to the seminar room with Haggerty trailing behind. Her legs moved stiffly like a sleepwalker’s, and I took her arm on the stairs. Her muscles were tense under the sleeve.

  When we entered the room, the men there looked at her as if she herself had been dead, and got to their feet. I said, “Sergeant Haggerty wants Miss Madden to tell you what she saw.”

  Galloway came and took her arm and led her to a chair.

  Jackson said, “Sit down, Haggerty,” and turned to me. “Did you speak to Moran?”

  “Dr. Schneider’s statement is correct,” I said.

  “Is that all you have to say?” Galloway asked.

  “That’s all I have to say.” I sat down.

  Galloway said, “Miss Madden, you are very kind to come here at all. Please confine yourself to the relevant circumstances of Professor Judd’s death as you know them.”

  She said: “Alec committed suicide. I can’t understand it but—he killed himself.” She let out her breath with the last three words.

  I looked at Schneider and Haggerty across the table from me. They were practically smiling.

  “I know this must be painful to you, Miss Madden,” Galloway said. “Indeed, I am deeply conscious of its painfulness, and of your fortitude. But can you tell us how you—that is, what your grounds of judgment are?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I’d better tell you the whole thing. After Alec and I finished work to-night, he said he had an appointment and went off to it. I went to a movie and got out about 11:30 or so. On the way home I saw Alec’s car in front of McKinley Hall, so I—I climbed in to wait for him. I thought he probably wouldn’t be long and that he could drive me home. Anyway, I wanted to see him. He had been worried recently about the War Board and I was concerned about him.

  “I sat in the car smoking until nearly midnight and it began to get quite chilly. Finally, when he didn’t come, I thought I’d go up to his office and get him—I thought he shouldn’t go on working after midnight anyway. I let myself in the side door and took the elevator up.”

  “What time was this, Miss Madden?” Galloway said.

  “Midnight. I heard the tower clock strike before I entered the building. Alec’s office was dark when I got there but for some reason I stood and listened at the door. I had a feeling that he was there in the dark office. I knocked on the door and called his name but he didn’t answer me, and I began to feel terribly frightened.

  “I tried the door but the self-lock was on and it wouldn’t open. Then I put my ear against the glass part of the door and I could hear a sort of whispering noise. It sounded very faint and queer, like—something on a radio program.”

  “Did you recognize his voice?”

  “No, not then. But he spoke once before—before he jumped. I heard him speak quite loudly and clearly. His voice sounded strange and troubled but I knew that it was Alec speaking.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said: ‘I don’t feel like it, but I will if I have to.’ Then I heard the window creak and his terrible cry as he fell. Just before he fell the light went on. I was quite frantic and I tried to break down the door. Then I took off my shoe and broke the pane with the heel and let myself in. There was nobody in the room.”

  Her breathing was quick again and her forehead was wet. She put her hand to her forehead and then took a handkerchief out of her sleeve and wiped it.

  “Thank you profoundly, Miss Madden,” Galloway said. “Certainly there is only one inference to be drawn. Did it sound as if he were talking to himself when he said—what he said?”

  “Yes. It sounded rather horrible and queer, not like Alec at all, though I know it was his voice—as if he was temporarily unhinged. He sounded—sick. Why did he kill himself?” she cried on a keen rising note. “If he was sick, I wanted to take care of him.”

  “Of course you did, my dear,” Galloway said. “As you say, the poor man must have been temporarily unbalanced.”

  “He was not,” I said. “I’d back his brain against the brains of all of you put together.”

  “Dr. Jackson,” Galloway said as if I had not spoken, “would you be good enough to take Miss Madden home?”

  Jackson said, “Certainly,” and they got up and left the room.

  Haggerty said, “I guess, that settles the case, doesn’t it?”

  “Indubitably,” Galloway replied, and the meeting broke up. Schneider was the first to leave and Gordon left soon afterwards. Galloway was careful not to look in my direction until he left, too, with Haggerty at his heels.

  Hunter came up to me and put a hand on my shoulder. “Better drop it, Bob, at least for to-night. Go home and get some sleep, man.”

  I said, “Go to hell,” and left him standing by himself in the room.

  I went up to my office and locked the door behind me and sat down at my desk to wear out the telephone some more.

  CHAPTER VII

  I PICKED UP THE telephone directory but I thought of a man whose name wasn’t in the book because he had been dead for a long time. Heraclitus was the man. He said that everything in the world flows and changes constantly like a river, so that you can’t fasten yourself permanently to anything. He was wrong.

  You can fasten yourself to a man. The integrity of a man is the rock in the changing river. Suicide is a betrayal of friends, and Alec Judd was not capable of any kind of disloyalty. Therefore he had been killed. Because I was very angry, the thing seemed crystal clear to me: I could not believe that Alec killed himself without betraying him. Everybody else was wrong.

  The Schneiders had an alibi for the time of Alec’s death, but if they didn’t kill him somebody else did. Perhaps Ruth Esch killed him. I was beginning to suspect her. A man will trust another man further than he’ll trust a woman,—women are a different kind of animal. I wanted to find out if she had an alibi, too.

  Schneider said she had moved into a hotel, and Moran had not seen her with the Schneiders. There were two good hotels in town, the Rogers House and the Palace.

  I called the Rogers and was told that no Ruth Esch was registered there. I called the Palace and she was there.

  “I’d like to speak to her,” I told the operator. “Will you ring her room?”

  “Certainly, sir.” She rang several times and there was no answer.

  “There is no answer, sir,” the operator said melodiously as if she was singing a song. “May I take a message?”

  “No, thanks. Can you tell me what time she registered at the hotel?”

  “I’m sorry, sir, I cannot give you that information.” Same old song, the telephone operators’ Internationale.

  “May I speak to the manager?”

  “He is not here, sir,” she lilted. “But we do not give information about guests.”

  Before hanging up I said, “Thanks for the musical selections,” because frustration was beginning to get me down. She switched off.

  I felt a drawing tension in the roof of my mouth and a pressure on the nerves behind my eyes. I remembered it from childhood, the feeling
of wanting to cry. I sat stupidly with the dead receiver to my ear, wondering if adult infantilism was getting hold of me and looking at the reproduction of the Laughing Cavalier on the wall above my desk. The Cavalier laughed and laughed, as roguishly as hell. But it wasn’t the sound of laughter I heard.

  From the dead receiver, as if from a long way off, came the sound of faint, indistinguishable voices. It was the sound I had heard when I listened at the dangling receiver in Alec’s office after he fell. I pushed down the bar and got the dial tone and called the number of a taxi company. When they answered I said, “Sorry, wrong number,” and they hung up.

  Then I listened and heard the voices again. It must be switchboard leakage, I thought, the sound of the calls and the operator’s voice at the university switchboard. I called another taxi company and got the same result. Apparently, you heard it whenever you put in a call on the university telephone system and the other party hung up.

  So Alec had been telephoning and the other party had hung up and left the line open at Alec’s end. But who was the other party?

  As I pushed the telephone to the back of the desk, I noticed the ink-stains on my fingers. Fingerprint ink. Perhaps the fingerprint man was still in the building.

  I went down the hall to Alec’s office and looked in through the broken pane in the door. The fingerprint man was packing away his equipment in the black wooden case. I opened the door and he looked up.

  “Did you find any fingerprints?” I asked.

  “Nary a one, if I know what you mean. Plenty of the deceased—I took his prints at the morgue. Some of yours. A lot of old ones, but you can’t do anything with them.”

  “Any on the telephone?”

  “Not a one. Somebody must have wiped it clean, probably the deceased.”

  “Probably.” I was tired of arguing. He shut up his case and reached for the lamp and I stepped into the hall. The light clicked out and he came out the door.

  “Sticky,” he said.

  “What’s sticky?”

  “The pull-chain on the lamp. Some sort of crap on it.”

  I heard quick steps on the west stairs and turned to see Haggerty come round the turning and trot up the last flight.