The Deadly Percheron Read online

  The Lieutenant’s sharp, blue eyes regarded me steadily, but I suspected that he was suppressing a smile. Why, the fellow liked having to interrogate me! “Frances Raye was murdered last night,” he said. “Her body was found on the living room floor of her apartment on West Tenth Street. It was near the door, about six paces away. She had been stabbed in the back. We haven’t found the knife.”

  “What has my patient to do with it?”

  “Blunt’s queer actions led to our discovery of the body. He was standing outside the house ringing the doorbell. A big horse with a fancy mane was tethered to the nearest lamppost. A scout car was passing by, and the boys thought the setup looked funny. So they parked and investigated. Blunt told them a ‘leprechaun’ had paid him twenty-five dollars to deliver the horse to Raye. The boys thought he was drunk, but one of them went inside to see if he had bothered Miss Raye. He found her door unlocked and her body on the floor.”

  “What did Jacob say about that?”

  “He said he didn’t know anything about it. He kept repeating the same outlandish story about a ‘leprechaun’ named ‘Eustace’ who had given him the horse and paid him to deliver it to Raye. I questioned him myself about an hour ago and he said the same thing. Finally, I told one of the boys to lock him up until he came to his senses.”

  “What’s he charged with?”

  “Drunk and disorderly.”

  I was relieved. From what Nan had told me over the telephone, I had thought that Jacob was under suspicion of murder.

  “Of course, he could have killed her,” Anderson went on. “Or he could have seen the murderer on his way out. But when I talked to him, I got the idea he was more than drunk – ” He tapped his forehead significantly.

  “As I said before, I know very little about him–nothing more than I gained in a short interview yesterday afternoon – but if his mind is affected I doubt if his type of aberration would lead to homicide. Not so soon, at least,” I said.

  “You mean this ‘leprechaun’ he was talking about?”

  I nodded my head. “Something like that. He might have been suffering from hallucinations.”

  Anderson leaned his head on his hand. “The trouble is I don’t have any clues. The door to her place was ajar, the building doesn’t have a desk clerk or elevator operator – just one of those buzzer arrangements – and even the front door was unlocked. If your booby killed her, why did he go back outside and ring her doorbell?”

  “Anyone could have done it, is that it? Were there signs of a struggle? Was anything stolen?”

  Anderson stood up and came around his desk. He was a short man in a neat, double-breasted suit. He fingered his tie nervously, unloosening the knot. There was a button missing on his coat sleeve. “No, the place was in apple-pie order and nothing seemed to be missing. Raye was wearing one of those backless negligees – not the sort of thing she would wear if she were expecting company, unless it was a certain kind of company! They tell me she didn’t have anything on underneath.”

  “What about her friends?” I asked. “Are you going to question them?”

  He smiled for the second time. Again I had the feeling that he enjoyed the advantage of his position. The next time he consulted me, I knew how I was going to act. “We’re taking care of that,” he said, and his tone let me know that I had asked a foolish question.

  “Then you don’t think Jacob murdered her?”

  He shook his head. “No, I don’t.” He did not sound too happy about it. “Nobody, even a nut, who had just killed a woman would try to get by with a preposterous alibi like that.” He shook his head again as if he still could not believe that Jacob had told him what he had. “And even nuts have reasons for doing what they do, particularly murder. Crazy reasons, but still reasons.”

  “And Jacob has no motive…”

  He nodded his head glumly. “That’s about the size of it.”

  “Lieutenant,” I said, “what would you say if I told you that I had met and talked to this leprechaun Jacob was telling you about? Eustace, I mean?”

  He did not even look up at me. “I’d say you were crazy, too.”

  “But it’s true. I met him only last night.” Then I went on to tell him about Eustace and the percheron. “I heard him promise Jacob twenty-five dollars to bring the horse to Frances Raye,” I concluded.

  I think that Anderson felt like quitting his job then – just throwing up his hands and walking away, never to return. His shoulders slumped and his eyes grew tired. For the first time he looked like a man who had been awakened in the middle of the night to investigate a murder. His manner seemed to say: “There are some things no man can endure!” Well, it served him right for the way he had been acting to me. Now the shoe was on the other foot and I hoped it pinched!

  “George, I must remind you that there are penalties attached to obstructing the course of justice,” he said, wearily clutching at the remains of his dignity.

  “What I said was the truth. In every detail. On my professional honor. I told you because I thought the information might lead to something in connection with the case.”

  Then I told him the story of Jacob’s visit to my office the previous day and the events that followed. I ended by saying, “I’m in a position similar to yours. I cannot believe these things to be true, and yet I cannot escape the evidence of my own senses. I cannot say whether we are dealing with a wily madman or the ingenuous victim of a vicious conspiracy!”

  Anderson slumped down in his chair. He seemed discouraged. I felt tired and over-tense myself. The lack of sleep suddenly began to weigh on me, the four dreary walls of the small office oppressed me. I wanted to get up and walk out – to forget all about it.

  “We have to find this ‘Eustace,’” said Anderson. “We have to make him talk – tell who hired him and all the details. Then we may get to the bottom of it.”

  “Who do you think is behind it?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. I haven’t an idea.”

  “We can’t get at Eustace without Jacob’s help,” I reminded him. And a moment later I regretted that I had spoken. The same thought entered both of our minds at once. Anderson looked at me, a smile creasing his saturnine face. Then he sat down and began to play with the pencils on his desk.

  “If I release him into your custody, will you work with him and try to find out what he knows? I’ll give you any police assistance you may need.”

  This was what I had feared he would suggest. I did not want to do it. I wanted to be done with Jacob and his little men. And yet I was curious. “What about my practice?” I asked. “It would take time and I have a long list of appointments everyday.”

  “You’ll get paid for your time. Any fee within reasonable limits.”

  I wanted to do it, and I didn’t want to. I felt a responsibility towards Jacob – if I did not do it he might be prosecuted for a crime he did not commit – and yet I had no desire to get entangled with Eustace and Joe and Harry. It was difficult for me to say either yes or no.

  At last I made up my mind. “I’ll do it,” I said, “if we can start now. I want to lose as little time from my practice as possible.”

  Anderson pressed a button on his desk. He was smiling. “You can find out what he knows if anyone can, George,” he said. “I’ve always liked working with you.” I said nothing, but I was amused by the change in his manner. Now that I had agreed to do what he wanted me to do, there was no need for him to dissimulate and we were friends again. “I’ll give orders to release Blunt into your custody. If you could get him to open up and talk to you by – say – this afternoon, that would be fine.”

  I held up my hand. “Not so fast,” I said. “It’s going to take longer than that.” I was thinking of how unsuccessful I had been the day before when I had tried to find out what was really wrong with Jacob.

  “Well, report your progress and his whereabouts everyday.”

  “And, in the meantime, what will you be doing?” I asked him
.

  “I’ll be working at it from this end. I’ll let you know how that goes, too.”

  I found Nan waiting for me in the corridor outside Anderson’s office. She was a subtly different person from the girl I had met the night before; although she was every whit as beautiful, her manner was no longer as intense – she seemed withdrawn, distracted.

  “What did he say?” she asked me, and, strangely enough, she averted her eyes. I had the feeling that she did not care to know.

  “Anderson is releasing Jacob to me. They should be bringing him up in a few minutes. I’ll be responsible for him – he will have to stay with me, but he will be out of jail.”

  “How did you manage to work that?” Her exclamation was automatic, her voice apathetic. I looked at her curiously. She looked away again.

  “I’ve known Anderson for several years,” I said. “I worked with him as a psychiatric consultant on a number of cases. So I pointed out to him that parts of Jacob’s story were clearly true, and to get the whole truth we would have to get Jacob to confide in us. Anderson realizes that psychiatric methods sometimes work in places where police methods fail. He’s releasing Jacob although he will still be technically under arrest – under my supervision. Jacob is not yet out of the woods, though.”

  “I suppose it’s like being out on bail?” Again she spoke lifelessly and gave me the impression that none of this mattered to her. I stared at her, remembering the impulsive, prying interest she had shown in my opinion of Jacob just the previous evening. She saw that I was puzzled and smiled at me. “Don’t mind my mood, doctor. I’ll snap out of it. So many things have happened in so short a time that I guess it’s all been a little too much for me.”

  “You should go home and rest,” I said. “I can see how this has affected you.”

  “I’m all right now, or I shall be as soon as I have some breakfast. I don’t want to go home now. I want to be with you when you meet Jacob.”

  Oddly enough, she sounded as if she meant her last statement.

  A few minutes later a man came down the corridor toward us, accompanied by a policeman. He was about thirty, of middle – size, with slick black hair and an annoyingly small mustache. As soon as Nan saw him, she rushed to meet him, throwing her arms about him and crying, “Darling, they aren’t holding you any longer. Dr Matthews is going to be responsible for you!”

  But the man she was kissing, the man she had called “darling,” was not Jacob Blunt. He was not the man who had come into my office the previous afternoon and who had later introduced me to Eustace. His hair was not even the same color.

  There was something very wrong.

  I waited to see what would happen. I knew I could do one of two things: either denounce him to Anderson on the spot, or let him think I did not know that a substitution had taken place and see if I could learn something important. I knew then and there that the sensible thing for me to do was to tell him that I did not know him, that he was not Jacob Blunt. But I hated to face Anderson again, to make myself doubly ridiculous. If I could find out what lay behind the muddle of Jacob, the little men and their preposterous activities, I might be able to turn the tables on Anderson. I was still brooding about being awakened in the middle of the night to rush down to Centre Street only to be questioned like a common criminal by my old friend. As a result, what I did may not seem intelligent – all I can say is that it made sense to me then, it even looked like a good idea. I walked down the corridor to a desk, signed some papers and then walked out of the station with Nan and “Jacob.” He did not say anything until we were standing outside on the street.

  “It was funny my finding her body like that,” he said, self-consciously. “I don’t blame the cops for thinking I did her in.”

  “You didn’t, of course?”

  He looked at me, feigning incredulity. He was smiling, but his face was pale and his mouth worked nervously. “You don’t think I killed her, do you? My God, I didn’t! I really didn’t!”

  “Why shouldn’t I think so? You were the one person who was found near the scene of the crime.” I thought I was testing him. I wanted to see how far his bravado would carry him before he realized that I knew he was an impostor.

  We had been walking down the street. He stopped and took Nan’s hand in his, pulling her around roughly so that she faced him. I saw the flesh of her wrist turn white under the pressure of his fingers, and I thought I saw her wince. “You don’t think that of me, darling – do you?” he demanded.

  Nan would not look at him. “I don’t know, Jacob. I’m not sure.”

  He turned to me. His eyes were cold, but his mouth was uneasy. I saw that he did not know how to take my acceptance of him as Jacob Blunt. Whatever he had expected, it was not this.

  “But, doc, I didn’t do it I tell you! I did get drunk last night with Eustace. I did serenade Frances Raye and try to break down her door. But I never killed her, honest I didn’t! Why, I’d never seen her before last night!”

  I could not understand what he hoped to gain by pretending he was Jacob. Although he succeeded in imitating Jacob’s voice and way of talking fairly well, I was certain that this man was not the man who had visited my office. And by this time I had decided that as soon as I could get to a telephone, I would call Anderson and tell him what had happened.

  We continued to walk up the street to the IRT station. I kept on the lookout for a drugstore or lunch wagon that had a telephone, but all I saw were office buildings. Then it struck me that if I made a call now, it would be too obvious. I had better wait until we arrived at my office and I could excuse myself for a moment. During this time neither Nan nor Jacob spoke. This in itself was strange since Nan had struck me as being rather talkative. We walked down the steps of the subway entrance and stood on the platform waiting for the Uptown Local. From far off came the beginnings of a metallic roar – the train was approaching. I remember thinking: I can watch him on the train to see if he resembles my patient in any particular. I remember sensing that someone near me had moved, that someone else had whispered words that had something to do with me. I remember beginning to turn around, the first sensation of fright…and at the same instant I knew that the grinding roar had increased and that the two gleaming lights of the train were almost level with me…

  Then I felt a sharp blow in the middle of my back. I remember arching, grabbing at air – I remember twisting, falling against something that rushed past me and tore me away with it and then threw me down…

  FOUR

  Non Compos Mentis

  Two eyes were looking down at me. Two cold blue eyes in a fat womanish face. No lipstick. No rouge. A pallid, fleshy pancake of a face.

  “Open your mouth.”

  I opened my mouth and a cold thing went into it. I peered down my nose to see what it was and my head was one solid stabbing pain. The face swam away from me accompanied by a harsh, rustling sound, leaving me looking at a very flat pale green wall. Very flat indeed.

  Was it a wall? Could it be a ceiling? But if it were a ceiling, I must be lying on my back! What would I be doing lying on my back looking at a very flat pale green ceiling?

  The face was back again. It was even closer than before. The cold thing, now warm, slid mysteriously backward out of my mouth. I did not like the face. I wished it would go away.

  After the face went away, I decided that the cold thing must have been a thermometer…and that I must be sick…in bed…in a hospital? I would ask the face.

  I waited a long time for the nurse to return. And when she did, I found I could scarcely speak. The first time I tried I only made a rushing sound. My mouth was dry as felt and my tongue was twice its normal size, awkward, an impediment to speech. I tried to speak again. I managed to say, “Nurse!”

  “Yes.”

  “Where am I?”

  “You’re sick. But never mind. You’ll be all right.”

  I closed my eyes. The effort had been too much. I had wanted to find out something… something important.
But now it did not matter.

  The next time I awoke I felt better. My head still ached, but it was easier to think and my mouth felt more natural. This time I waited eagerly for the nurse. I still could not remember what was so important, but I wanted to ask questions. I wanted to find out the name of the hospital. I wanted to know what had happened to me.

  The nurse did not come.

  After a while another face came. A blank, lined face such as I had seen many times before but could not remember where. Cold brown eyes like flawed marbles. A mouth that twitched.

  “Aggie’s got you too!” it said. “Like me, Aggie’s come and got you too. And you ain’t goin’ to get away! Naaah! You ain’t goin’ to get away. Aggie’s got you!”

  The face laughed. I felt sorry for it, but I did not know why. I had seen so many like it before, but where? The face kept on laughing.

  “They come for me too,” it said. “They come in a wagon. They drug me. Yaah, they drug me! Oh, I didn’t want a go, but they made me.” And then suddenly the face began to whimper– the mouth trembled and the brown marbles glistened with tears. “Never done no harm. Never hurt nothin’. Why should they hurt me? Why should Aggie get me? Never done no harm…”

  A flat toneless voice that went on and on. I shut my eyes. Would the nurse never come?

  The third time I awakened I knew where I was. I must have felt stronger because I tried to sit up. I could not. I could only move my head. I was strapped to my bed. That could only mean one thing: I was in the psychopathic ward of a hospital.

  That explained the second face. A paranoiac. I had seen many just like that in my days at the sanitarium – I had even encountered a few in private practice. They were unmistakable: the empty, neurotic face, the unending complaint of the toneless voice, the humorless, mechanical laugh…