The Outsider (43 page)

Menti ate broodingly. Hilton moved quickly about the kitchen like a man who must either do something or become exasperated. Cross let his eyes rest on Eva; she was pale and tired, looking off into space; finally she did glance at him and there flitted into her eyes a sign that she was with him; he felt better.

The doorbell rang and Hilton started nervously.

“This is it, I think,” Hilton said.

Hilton left and a moment later, before Cross could prepare himself, the hunched form of Ely Houston filled the doorway. Cross stared unblinkingly. Houston entered the kitchen and paused; his eyes traveled swiftly around the room and at last rested on Cross.

“Well,” Houston exclaimed, “what in the world are you doing here?”

Cross stood, smiled, and reached out his hand to Houston who shook it warmly.

“How are you, Mr. Houston?” Cross said evenly. “I live here.”

“At last I've tracked you down,” Houston said.

Hilton, Menti, and Eva were thunderstruck. Hilton was staring at Cross with an open mouth and Cross could tell that he was thinking that maybe he was a police spy.

“How is it that you know the District Attorney?” Hilton asked softly.

“Mr. Houston and I have met before,” Cross explained lightly.

Houston advanced into the kitchen, followed by Farrel and a tall, lean, grey-haired man on whose chest Cross could see a police badge. Farrel too stared at Cross and said:

“Why didn't you tell me you were a big-shot, boy?”

“I'm not,” Cross said.

Everyone was standing now except Eva; tension and distrust hung in the air. The tall, lean man stood in one corner and surveyed the faces of Cross, Menti, and Hilton.

“I've asked about you,” Houston began, addressing himself to Cross, “but I couldn't get a line on you…I'll never forget that talk we had. Know one thing? I made notes on your ideas.” Houston seemed to have forgotten that he had come to investigate the deaths of two men; he was excited and seemed in a holiday mood. “Now, what was it you said…?” Houston paused, ran his hand into his pocket and pulled out a notebook. “I've got it right here, you see.” As he thumbed the leaves, the tall man stared in bewilderment at Houston, saying nothing. “Ha—Here it is: ‘Man is nothing in particular…' You see? I don't forget.”

“I see you don't,” Cross said.

Hilton was so nervous that he could not control the shaking of his hands. Menti stared, but there was a sardonic smile on his thin lips. Only Eva was listening to Houston.

“Well, what is this all about?” Houston asked of Cross, rubbing his hands together. “We can talk about special problems later—Oh, yes—What was the name you gave me?”

“The name is Lane, Lionel Lane,” Cross said.

“Lionel Lane,” Houston repeated, paused; then went on. “Mr. Lane, this is the Medical Examiner, Dr. Stockton…”

Cross nodded to Dr. Stockton and the doctor nodded to him.

“Farrel,” Houston demanded. “What have we got here?”

As Farrel outlined to Houston what he had found downstairs, Houston moved with vacant eyes about the kitchen, his lips pursed, his hat in his hand, his hump seeming to follow him. He walked softly, flat-footedly, as if he feared that he would disturb some delicate process of thought by jarring his brain. He began to frown as Farrel described details of the scene of blood and death.

“And these two men, what were their backgrounds?” Houston asked at last.

“That's a damned strange thing, Mr. D.A.,” Farrel said. “Gilbert Blount was a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the United States—”

“You're kidding,” Houston protested with wide eyes.

“No, sir,” Farrel insisted. “It's a fact—”

“And who's the other one?”

“His twin. A Fascist, they say—”

“What's his name?”

“Langley Herndon—”

Houston snapped his finger, as though trying to recall something.

“Langley Herndon…! Ah! I remember him—He used to write for the
Crusader
sometimes,” Houston said. “Hunh! A violent baby—Bloodthirsty—Welcomed Hitler and publicly lauded his extermination of the Jews. Said that America should use the Negro as a scapegoat around which to unify the nation—” He looked at Cross and smiled. “Herndon was perfectly cynical. He argued that anything could be done for any reason…He had the Negro singled out as a target, a
menace, a danger…The Negro was America's ace in the hole if the nation ever experienced any real internal stress. You could say that the nigger was the cause of it and get the rest of the nation to forget its problems and unite to get rid of the niggers…Ingenious, hunh?” Houston chuckled and turned to Dr. Stockton. “Well, Doc, how does it look to you? What's your verdict?”

Dr. Stockton cleared his throat, advanced to the kitchen table and rested his briefcase upon it. He took out a sheaf of papers and leafed through them. He lifted his eyes at last to Houston.

“Mr. District Attorney, this is either very simple or very complicated…”

“Make it simple,” Houston said.

“I'll let you decide that,” Dr. Stockton said.

“Oh, wait a minute,” Houston interrupted him. He turned and faced Eva, Hilton, Menti, and Cross. “Who are these people? Is anybody here related to either Blount or Herndon?”

“This is Mrs. Blount,” Cross told Houston.

“Oh, Madam, I beg your pardon,” Houston apologized. “If I'd known it was you, I'd not have spoken as I have. I'm awfully sorry…”

“It's nothing,” Eva mumbled.

“These things are unpleasant, but we have to get these facts straight—Oh, yes; and the other two gentlemen?”

Farrel introduced Hilton and Menti as friends of Eva.

“All right, Dr. Stockton, you may proceed—”

“Well, Mr. District Attorney, I've all the reports right here. What we can make of these reports is quite another matter. Our Pathological Chemist, Dr. Reddick, has submitted a mass of details. I'll begin first with Blount…” He began reading from the report: “‘Mul
tiple incised wounds of scalp; congestion and oedema of brain…'”

“Dr. Stockton,” Houston interrupted him. “Forgive me—Suppose we save all that for the formal hearing, eh? Right now I just want to know if I'm to look for a murderer or not. Give me this wrapped up in a nutshell…”

“Right,” Dr. Stockton replied, putting his papers aside. “To all intents and purposes, Mr. District Attorney, these two blokes battered each other to death. All concrete evidence points toward that…Let's take that aspect of it first…And, mind you, I'm leaving out all question of motive for the time being…The definite ascertaining of a different motive could alter the entire picture of our findings…Now, due to the great disorder of the room downstairs, we've not yet been able to reconstruct exactly what happened. Yet, the concrete evidence we possess points to the fact of an argument that led to a fist fight…There's evidence that Herndon attempted strangulation upon Blount…Blount must have freed himself, for the next stage of the fight was with the fire poker. Who grabbed the fire poker first, we do not know. Now, here's the strange thing.
Both
men bear evidence of having been hit with the poker, which means that during the course of the fight the poker must have been lost from the possession of one or the other of the men. In other words, they took turns in lamming each other…Follow me?”

“You're saying,” Houston paraphrased, “that one man could have dropped the fire poker and the other could have grabbed it?”

“Or,” Dr. Stockton added, “one could have wrested the poker from the hands of the other. That happens quite frequently in brawls. A man is pounding another
man's brains out with a pop bottle. The other takes the bottle away from him and starts in with the bottle upon the aggressor with the aggressor's own weapon…Well, that seems to have happened at the beginning of this fight.

“Now, a third stage of the fight comes. The table leg is now used as the weapon. Just how they got hold of it, we do not know. It seems utterly unlikely that either of the two men had time enough to stop the fight and break that leg off the table. We surmise that one of them crashed against the table in falling and broke the table, the leg coming off, breaking in two…The first man who saw that table leg dived for it and took it as his weapon.

“At the present moment, with what we've got to go on, we surmise that Blount got hold of the leg first—”

“How do you figure that?”

“It's a guess,” Dr. Stockton said. “The most single powerful blow dealt with that table leg was against the forehead of Herndon…That blow could have caused death, not at once, but certainly Herndon would have died of it eventually. Most certainly he was stunned by it and we further surmise that he kept on his feet and continued the fight…Now, here's another strange fact in a strange case.
Both
men bear marks of that table leg on their heads…That can only be accounted for, too, on the basis that the table leg, like the fire poker, changed hands during the course of the fight, which is highly likely
…But
, and this puzzles me, was Herndon
able
, physically
able
to deliver such death-dealing blows upon Blount's head
after
he had received that crushing blow to his own forehead…? Yet the facts point to such. It's possible…Men have been known to possess remarkable strength just before dying; men have been known to aim and fire a gun with sharp accu
racy and then die straightaway
…If
Herndon was able to deal a death-dealing blow to Blount, after having received such a blow himself, then the case is simple.”

“Is there any way of telling, Dr. Stockton, how much
time
intervened between these blows?” Houston asked.

“That's impossible,” Dr. Stockton said. “Our impression is that those blows were all delivered at approximately the same time. At the most, a half hour could have intervened, but we think the whole fracas took place in about fifteen minutes.”

“In other words, you don't think that one man could have been knocked out, could have come to, and resumed the fight…?” Houston asked.

“That's highly speculative,” the doctor said. “It
would
explain how Herndon was able to deal such hard blows after he had been mortally wounded. There are some ‘ifs' here…But these ‘ifs' only make the whole picture more complicated.” Dr. Stockton paused and pulled forth a batch of photographs from his briefcase. “This is how they looked when the officers arrived…” He handed the photographs to Houston.

Rocking on his heels, Houston looked at the photographs and his eyes bulged with suppressed horror. Cross could see a slanting glimpse of the pictures and at once there leaped into his mind the image of that red room with its flickering flames and the two still, bloody forms stretched out on the carpet, drenched in their own blood…

“Lovely,” Houston commented softly, returning the photographs to Dr. Stockton. He turned to look at Eva. “Would the lady mind excusing herself?” Houston asked.

“Not at all,” Eva said; she rose and left the kitchen.

Cross's eyes followed her with anxiety as her wan, tight face went from view.

“There's no use in her hearing this sordid mess,” Houston mumbled. He rubbed his hands together, glanced about the room, and then spoke in a loud, sonorous voice:

“Perfect setup. Two extremes meet. A plus and a minus—And they cancel each other out…And who could hate each other more than two men like that? It's the Russian-German war all over again, eh? Could be…Sounds like it. It fits, doesn't it? Motives? Dr. Stockton, you spoke of leaving out motives…Why? You have all the motives on earth here, my dear doctor. These two men were totally opposed to each other in all aspects of life. You might call such motives
natural life
motives…Oh, I know that there is no such thing in law as that. But there will be one day…I'm sure of it. We might call such motives jealousy. But it's total jealousy. The kind of jealousy the Bible speaks of when it refers to God's being a jealous God, hunh?” Houston looked around the room and smiled.

Cross was trembling; he felt that maybe Houston knew that he was guilty and was mocking him. Was Houston teasing him by speaking his
own
ideas out loud, testing them on the people present? Whose ideas belonged to whom? What crazy luck he had in having this hunchback, the one man he had ever met who understood him, to track him down? Did Houston know how maddeningly close he stood to the truth?

“There's another possibility,” Dr. Stockton's voice sounded patiently.

“There are millions of possibilities,” Houston said, waving his hand. He looked at Cross. “Of course, there's this problem of Herndon hating to have Negroes in his building, but I take it that that was simply a tiny aspect of his total jealousy toward Blount—”

Hilton and Menti were silent, tight-lipped, staring
first at Houston and then at Cross. Cross waited, wondering what other versions of the crime did the Medical Examiner have in mind.

“So they killed each other,” Houston went on. He turned to Farrel. “According to you, Herndon killed Blount, hunh? Yes, he was seen standing over Blount with the fire poker…He was strong enough to chase Mrs. Blount up the steps with a gun…That fits. He later dies of wounds that Blount had inflicted on him. A double murder, or double manslaughter, whatever you want to call it.” Houston faced Dr. Stockton. “Is that more or less your opinion?”

A trace of hesitancy showed in Dr. Stockton's eyes; then he shrugged and said:

“More or less.”

“More or less?” Houston was astonished. “What's your reservation?”

“Somebody could have come upon them while they were fighting and killed them both,” Dr. Stockton said somewhat sheepishly; he was obviously embarrassed at the farfetched nature of his theory.