Murder Is Suggested (4 page)

“One other room,” he said. “Just used it as a storeroom, from the looks of things. Loot, this is a screwy one.”

“That record's stuck, sergeant,” Bill said, and grinned at Mullins who said, “Maybe. But all the same—”

“Speaking of records,” Bill said, “we'll want to take that along.” He indicated the recorder.

“Sure,” Mullins said. “We run the tape and somebody says, ‘My name is Joseph Q. Zilch. I am now gonna kill you, professor, on account of' and then, pretty soon,
bang!
And we go out and arrest Zilch and he says, ‘You got me, pals.' Only, do we ever get nice simple ones, Loot?”

“No,” Bill said. “Does anybody?”

He was abstracted. He looked around the room again. He had, he thought, seldom seen two less communicative rooms than the office and the laboratory of the late Professor Elwell. He went over and looked at the record player and found a record on it. Mullins stood and watched him. Bill set the turntable revolving and the stylus arm rose obediently, hesitated, settled.

“Please listen carefully to what I say,” a man's voice said. The voice was low, the words spoken slowly; the voice soothed. There was a momentary pause. “That's right,” the voice said. “That is precisely right. Now this is what I would like you to do. This is what I would like you to do. Stand easily—that is right. Relax. That is right. Close your eyes, now. Close your eyes. Close your eyes.”

The voice was infinitely soothing. There was soft assurance in the low male voice.

“Now,” the voice said, “you will begin to feel yourself falling slowly forward—forward—you are falling slowly forward—forward—forward. You are beginning to lose your balance—something is pulling you slowly—slowly—slowly—forward. You are falling slowly forward. But do not try to resist—you cannot resist—you are falling forward—forward—there is nothing to be afraid of—I will catch you—you are falling forward, slowly forward—an irresistible force is slowly pulling you forward—you cannot help yourself but I will not let you fall—I will catch you—forward—forward you are falling slowly—falling—falling—”

It was soothing, relaxing. It was as, when one has taken a sleeping pill, gradually, tenderly, sleep creeps—creeps—

“The hell with this,” Bill Weigand thought, with something like anger, and opened his eyes—and was startled because he could not remember having closed his eyes.

“Forward,” the soft voice said. “Forward. You are falling slowly forward—you cannot—”

The hell I can't, Bill Weigand thought, now with clear anger. And looked at Sergeant Mullins.

Sergeant Mullins, eyes closed as directed, heels together, arms hanging loosely, was standing in the middle of the room. And Sergeant Mullins was swaying slowly, contentedly, forward and back, forward and back; nodding like the mast of a sailboat in a gently rolling sea.

It was ludicrous. It was also, in some odd fashion, disturbing, even alarming.

Weigand lifted the player arm and the voice stopped. Mullins stopped swaying. He did not, however, open his eyes.

“Mullins!” Bill Weigand said, sharply.

Mullins opened his eyes.

“What kind of record is that?” Mullins said. “Damnedest thing I ever heard.”

“Yes,” Bill said. “It is an odd sort of record.”

“All this stuff about falling,” Mullins said. “Who's going to pay any attention to that? If this professor thought anybody was going to think he was falling forward, forward, forward like it said, then the professor was nuts.”

Bill Weigand looked at Sergeant Mullins for a moment with speculation. Then he said, “Right, sergeant. Very silly business,” and took the record off the player and examined it. It had no title. It was scored only on one side. He would, Bill decided, have to take advice about the record on Professor Elwell's turntable.

It was, among other things, interesting that Sergeant Mullins apparently had no realization whatever that he had obeyed the reiterated injunction and stood swaying gently, but always, it appeared, with the assurance that he would be caught, in the middle of a room built for silence.

It was unfortunate that Professor Jameson Elwell was dead, and so could not tell them what it was all about. He would have to ask somebody else. That, perhaps, was the next step.

Technicians worked in Professor Elwell's laboratory, collected its dust and its fingerprints, took its picture and measured its walls. Mullins and precinct men and a detective assigned to the district attorney's Homicide Bureau, listened to the tape from the recorder—listened to it from end to end, and heard only the faint scratching of a blank tape. (Not, then, a nice simple one, as Mullins had supposed it would not be.)

Then Mullins, with precinct aid, began the long, necessary chore of checking back on those they already knew about—on Mrs. Oldham and daughter, Faith; on Carl Hunter, graduate student obscurely concerned with cats; on such others as might appear. One of the others—Foster Elwell, brother of deceased—ought soon to appear, unless he was walking in from Westport. He would be asked to await the return of Captain Weigand.

Bill Weigand, meanwhile, had driven twenty blocks to the north, and found Dr. Eugene Wahmsley, dean of faculty, Dyckman University, waiting for him in the Men's Faculty Club, as promised on the telephone. Dr. Wahmsley was a tanned man in his fifties, who looked as if he might play a good deal of golf. He got up from a deep leather chair and shook hands and said it was a shocking thing about poor Jamey and added that his loss would be felt.

“A great man in his field,” Dr. Wahmsley said, and although what he said was obvious he said it as if he meant it. He motioned Weigand to a chair, sat again in his own. A silver coffee pot stood on a table by his chair, beside an empty coffee cup and a half-empty pony glass of brandy. Dr. Wahmsley lifted the coffee pot and shook it and then shook his head, and then gestured. A man in a waiter's jacket appeared. Dr. Wahmsley looked at the coffee pot with reproach.

“More coffee,” he said. “And a Courvoisier for my guest.”

“I—” Bill said.

“And tell them to make sure it's fresh coffee,” Dr. Wahmsley said, with some sternness. “Yes, captain?”

“Nothing,” Bill said. Coffee and brandy seemed, on second thought, an excellent idea.

“You want to know about Jamey,” Wahmsley told him. “I gather it wasn't some ordinary thing? Interrupted robbery, some young hood—that sort of thing?”

“It doesn't seem so,” Bill told him, and told him what he needed to know—which was about as much as Bill knew himself—about the manner of Jameson Elwell's death. Wahmsley said that it was hard to believe. Bill told him that murder always was.

“A bit of psychologist yourself, I gather,” Wahmsley said, and thanked the waiter for more coffee and watched it poured. “I said Jamey was a great man in his field,” Wahmsley said then. “What one always says, of course. About him, it happens to be true. You know anything about his work?”

“No,” Bill said. “Oh, that he was professor of psychology, that he was supervising some sort of an experiment which involved cats—that he had a room in his house—the house next door, actually, but I gather he owned it—that he called a laboratory. In brief—nothing of importance about his work.” He sipped. “Or at the moment,” he added, “about any part of him.”

“Animal intelligence,” Wahmsley said. “That explains the cats. We feel here that he carried on—a long distance on—from where Thorndike and the rest left off.” He looked at Weigand with sudden doubt. “Edward Lee Thorndike?” he said.

“I've heard of Thorndike,” Bill said, with no special inflection. “I went to Columbia for a time.”

“Good school,” Wahmsley said. “Very good school. Well—that explains the cats. Also, a number of dogs and even more rats and quite a few monkeys.”

He poured himself more coffee.

“A great researcher in his field,” Wahmsley said, and seemed to speak to the silver coffee pot, and spoke slowly. “A great teacher. And—more than that.” He looked at Weigand now. “A very special sort of man,” he said. “Aside from all that. It is—to be honest, captain, it seems flatly impossible that anybody would kill a man like Elwell. Anybody in his right mind. Or what passes for lightness of mind nowadays.”

“Nevertheless,” Bill Weigand said. “But go on, doctor. A special sort of man?”

Dr. Wahmsley regarded the silver coffee pot for some seconds.

“In understanding,” he said, finally, and spoke with deliberation, as if seeking words. “In a sense, of course, trying to understand the way the mind works was his trade. I don't mean only that. More than anyone else I've ever known he went beyond the mere technics of understanding. It was as if he—” Dr. Wahmsley shared his hesitancy with the silver coffee pot “—went into the minds of others, shared what was in other minds. With the utmost sympathy, the most complete—generosity. Perhaps that is the word I want. Generosity. Not only in the obvious sense.”

He shook his head at the silver coffee pot and seemed, Bill thought, to shake it in reproof as if the coffee pot had failed him. Then he said that it was difficult to put into words precisely what he meant. He added that words were elusive things and asked if Captain Weigand had not found it so.

“Yes,” Bill said. “They turn up meaning more, or less, than we intend. But—an unusually generous man.”

“And—understanding,” Wahmsley said. “Sympathetic. Use all the usual words. Barnacled with associations, worn smooth with usage. There—you see what we come to? Roughened by accretions, at the same time, worn smooth.”

He was, Bill thought, again in conversation with the coffee pot.

“In the most simple word,” he said, to the pot. “A good man. Which means much less than it should. But—not the kind of man who is killed by another man or a woman. I would have sworn that. I have always felt that getting oneself murdered must result from a flaw somewhere—a flaw in character. Almost as much as murdering.”

He looked at the coffee pot again. He told the silver pot that he talked like a professor. He told Bill Weigand that he was sorry to be wasting so much of his time. He told Bill that Bill wanted facts and—

Professor Elwell had been on the Dyckman faculty for something like forty years, starting as an instructor while still working for his master's, his doctorate. He had gone up the slow, but reasonably sure, steps—assistant professor, associate, full professor, head of department. (The last step, of course, by no means inevitable.) He would have reached the retirement age in a few months. “Technically,” Dr. Wahmsley pointed out. “No real difference, if he chose not to have any. Oh—no further administrative duties, of course. But everything else much as before.”

“I take it,” Bill said, “that he had money of his own. Beyond his salary.”

“My God yes,” Wahmsley said, in honest astonishment. “You pointed out yourself he owned two houses. He was a college professor, man.”

“About his generosity,” Bill said. “You said ‘not only in the obvious sense.' I suppose you meant not only with money? But—included that.”

“Well,” Wahmsley said, “we've a term around here—So-and-so's probably on an ‘Elwell scholarship.' We had to guess, for the most part. Jamey wouldn't mention anything like that, and most of the kids were—well, I suppose, asked not to. But—likely kids who came along without money and looked like having to drop out rather often discovered they didn't need to. Because of Jamey.”

He was asked if he wanted to name names. He said he didn't, at least unless the captain could assure him that names would help. He said, also, that most names he might give would be guessed at.

“A man named Hunter?” Bill asked him. “A girl named Faith Oldham?”

“Hunter?” Wahmsley repeated. “We have fifteen thousand students here—in the college, in the schools, in the whole setup. I'd guess a hundred Hunters, wouldn't you? As for the Oldham child. That's quite a different matter. She's Frank Oldham's daughter.” He seemed to feel that he had said all that needed saying. Bill lifted his shoulders.

“
Sic transit
,” Wahmsley said. “A philosopher of some note, we felt. A pride of Dyckman. And, a great friend of Jamey's. His closest, oldest, I imagine. A man of great wisdom, Frank was. But—improvident as they come. So when he died ten years ago or so—and left a widow and a young daughter—and nothing else to speak of—” He ended with a gesture.

Bill Weigand said he saw.

“In Elwell's—what he seems to have called his laboratory,” Bill said. “We came across a rather odd phonograph record. I don't know whether you can help on—”

“‘Forward'?” Wahmsley said. “‘You are falling slowly forward' and the rest of it?”

“Right.”

“Just a sway test record,” Wahmsley said, as if so much (at least) should have been obvious. “Gauges susceptibility to hypnosis. Or's supposed to. Not my field.”

“Elwell's?”

“Oh,” Wahmsley said. “Very much his field. Very much indeed. A field of increasing importance, you know. Now that the medical profession isn't so afraid of it. Jamey's last publication made quite a stir, I understand. Boys over at the press are a bit green about it.”

To that Bill Weigand could only shake a bewildered head.

“Dyckman University Press,” Wahmsley said, spelling it out. “Jealousy, green with. Jamey gave it to a trade publisher, to get wider circulation. Some of the public's still a bit stuffy about the whole subject, you know. Or, say uninformed.”

“Doctor,” Bill Weigand said. “Do you happen to know who published this last book of Professor Elwell's?”

He waited the answer with somewhat bated mind. It happened that Dr. Wahmsley did know.

Bill Weigand was not really much surprised. Mullins had a good policeman's feel for the shape of things, including those to come.