The Almost Perfect Murder by Hulbert Footner (ereader for comics txt) 📖
- Author: Hulbert Footner
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Inspector, “but no needle. He’s evidently an addict too. He’s been
whining for it all day. I don’t know what’s coming to the world!”
“Oh, the world is much as it always was,” returned Mme. Storey. “These
people belong to a special class, moral invalids; it’s natural they
should turn to drugs to buoy them up…. I suggest you give him a
needle to steady him,” she went on. “Bring him up here with his
machine before lunch, and let him give you and me a demonstration.”
Rumsey agreed.
“What have you learned about Ram Lal?” she asked.
“A month ago he rented a house on West Seventy-Ninth Street near
Columbus Avenue. No one there when I entered it yesterday. Had been
lavishly furnished in Oriental style. According to the neighbours he
employed several servants, but they had vanished. I found nothing that
threw any light on the manner of his murder.”
Promptly at eleven the buzzer sounded in the outer office announcing
the coming of Dr. Chisholm. He was the most famous toxicologist in New
York and a good all-round man. We had had dealings with him before.
I led him into Mme. Storey’s room. His face was giving nothing away.
The Inspector jumped up eagerly. He could scarcely wait for polite
greetings to be exchanged.
“Well, doctor?”
Dr. Chisholm spread out his hands deprecatingly. “The result of the
autopsy is nil,” he said. “I cannot tell you what killed Ram Lal.”
It was a bitter disappointment. Inspector Rumsey dropped back into his
chair with a grunt. My employer carefully knocked the ash off her
cigarette.
I pushed forward a chair for the doctor. For a moment there was
silence in the room. Finally Mme. Storey said incredulously:
“A man dies, and with all the resources of science at your command you
cannot say why!”
“He died because his heart stopped beating,” he replied. “I don’t know
why it stopped.”
“No trace of poison in his blood?”
“None whatever.”
“Or in his stomach?”
“None.”
“How could he have been poisoned through the stomach?” put in Rumsey.
“To be sure,” said Mme. Storey; “but I didn’t want to overlook
anything…. But do men die like that?” she went on to the doctor.
“Without any apparent reason for it?”
“Oh, yes, Madame.”
“Healthy men?”
“Few men over forty can be said to be perfectly healthy. His lungs
showed some infiltration due to old tubercular lesions. His heart was
a little enlarged, but without any pericarditis. There were also some
suspicious spots in the pelvis. All common conditions.”
“But none of them sufficient to have caused death?”
“Not ordinarily.”
“Then if this was just an ordinary case the report would be that the
man died of…?”
“Heart failure, Madame.”
Mme. Storey and the Inspector looked at each other. Rumsey was very
glum.
“But there are poisons, doctor,” my employer insisted, “that may kill
without leaving any trace of themselves in the body?”
“There are such poisons,” he answered cautiously, “but naturally they
are not known outside the laboratory. We never meet them in practice.”
“There is a possibility this crime may be the work of a chemist.”
“I am aware of it.”
“Would you be kind enough to prepare me a list of such poisons together
with their properties and effects so far as known?” she asked.
“Certainly, Madame.”
“What’s the use?” said Rumsey. “Even though there are such poisons,
how can we go beyond the body?”
“Every precedent has to be created in the first place,” she answered
smiling.
“I say we’re stalled,” he said with his harassed air. “Aren’t we
justified now in assuming that it was only a coincidence?”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, a practical joker calls up and tells you there is going to be a
murder at Mrs. Julian’s. You go there, and a man happens to die from
natural causes.”
Mme. Storey slowly shook her head. “That would be stretching the arm
of coincidence too far. I don’t believe he died a natural death, and
you don’t believe it. The public would never believe it, and if we
tried to put it over it would only react to the damage of our own
reputations.”
“But what can we do?” he said helplessly. “There is no case!”
“We must build up a case.”
“Have you a theory?” he asked eagerly.
“I have a theory,” she answered dryly, “but the evidence is
insufficient.”
They agreed among themselves to withhold the result of the autopsy for
a few hours, or at least until Dr. Chisholm had time to read up on the
rare poisons that might have been administered to Ram Lal. However, as
he was in the act of taking his leave, the telephone rang and a man’s
voice inquired for him.
I handed the instrument over to him. He presently clapped a hand over
the transmitter and lifted a dismayed face.
“It’s the city editor of the Morning Press,” he said. “He tells me
somebody has just called him up to say that the autopsy on the body of
Ram Lal revealed no trace of poison. He wants me to confirm it. At my
office they told him I was here.”
Inspector Rumsey jumped up, swearing roundly. My employer used no
expletives, but her face turned grim.
“This is the fine Italian hand of the murderer again,” she said
quietly. “He is vain of his crime.”
“But the suspects are all locked up!” cried the perplexed Inspector.
“How could they reach a telephone?”
She did not answer. “If the truth is out we would only make ourselves
ridiculous by denying it,” she said to Dr. Chisholm. “Tell the city
editor his information is correct.”
He did so, and hung up. Both men looked to my employer for
inspiration. She arose and paced the long room, thinking hard. At
last she said:
“When you find yourself up against it, unexpected measures are called
for. Jim Shryock dares you to produce the suspects for a hearing two
days hence. Why wait until he is ready? Shryock is famous for his
success in making away with evidence. I suggest you produce them
before a magistrate this afternoon.”
“They’ll be set free!” cried Rumsey.
“It doesn’t matter much,” she said impatiently; “none of those three is
the actual murderer…. Have them up this afternoon. Summon your
witnesses to court. But do not let the suspects be arraigned until
just before court adjourns. If the case goes over until the next day
so much the better. I take it you can arrange that?”
“Sure!” said the puzzled Rumsey. “Anything you say. But what’s the
idea. Just give me a hint of what you’re up to so I won’t make any
mistake.”
“It’s simply this,” she answered. “I want to collect the whole
dramatis person� in court this afternoon, and keep them there, so
that I can do some intensive work on the case without interference.”
“How about Liptrott?”
“I’ll attend to him while I’m eating my lunch.”
VIIn order to save time I had a light lunch sent in for Mme. Storey. She
was eating it when Liptrott was brought up from Headquarters carrying
his precious box. His guards were invited to wait in the hall.
Inspector Rumsey who had been away on some errand returned about the
same time.
I have already described the old man with his decent black clothes and
old-fashioned Yankee manner. There was no look of the potential
murderer about him. On all subjects but one he seemed perfectly sane
and shrewd, but when that blessed machine came up, his tongue went
wild. Such borderline cases, of course, may be extremely dangerous.
“He’s happy again,” the Inspector whispered to Mme. Storey. “They gave
him another needle.”
And indeed the old man seemed as pleased as a child at a party. My
employer had me order in some good cigars for him. He bit the end off
one, and lighted it with gusto.
“The real Havana, mem. Once I smoked none but the best myself.”
We grouped ourselves around the big writing-table.
“Mr. Liptrott,” said Mme. Storey, “I didn’t have them bring you up here
to be worried with questions about that terrible affair yesterday. I
am just curious about that wonderful machine of yours, and I’m hoping
you’ll give me a demonstration.”
He sprang up with alacrity. “Happy to oblige, ‘m.”
I was sitting on Mme. Storey’s right with my notebook on the table.
The Inspector was opposite her with his chair turned half around so he
could watch Liptrott. The old man carried his apparatus to the nearest
outlet in the baseboard, and lifted out the smaller box with the cords
dangling from it, and switches and dials on top. Plugging it in, he
turned a switch and I heard the familiar buzzing and crackling. The
sound brought back the whole horrible scene in Mrs. Julian’s boudoir.
Satisfied that it was working all right, he switched it off and gave us
a little lecture. I shall not try to repeat it all. A crazy mixture
of electrical and physiological terms, it sounded like utter nonsense
to me. For instance:
“… And so, mem, just as a man-made generator gathers the vital
principle out of the air and sends it to us in a current that we can
use for light and power, so nature’s generator which is the body,
absorbs life through its organs. But as the body machine wears out it
becomes less able to transmute raw life to its own uses, and so our
vitality fails.
“My machine replaces the organs and glands of the body. It takes raw
electricity from the power station and digests it into a form that the
body can use. I am no quack doctor. I make no claim that it can cure
disease. I only say that it will furnish you with the vitality
necessary to resist disease and to keep you young.”
The obvious question was, why didn’t he renew his own visibly failing
vitality? However, nobody put it to him.
“How wonderful!” said Mme. Storey. “Can you give us all a sample now?”
“Not all of you at once,” he said. “One at a time. I must first find
out the measure of a person’s vitality, and set the machine
accordingly. No two persons are the same.”
“I see,” said Mme. Storey. “We are all like radio receiving sets that
only pick up the wave lengths for which we are set.”
“Same principle, mem.”
You see there was a crazy plausibility about his spiel. I could
understand how a woman like Mrs. Julian might be deceived by it for a
while.
Liptrott held out a small zinc cylinder that was connected to the
machine by a cord. “If you’ll grasp this a minute the dial will
register.”
Mme. Storey obeyed, and he read off the dial: “Seven four seven, point
two five. Your vitality is very high, mem. You would not need my
machine for many a year to come.”
“That’s nice. I suppose it won’t hurt me.”
“Oh, no. Nobody feels so good but what they couldn’t feel better.”
He took the cylinder from her. “What must I do now?” she asked.
“Nothing, mem. You may sit and eat. The best of my machine is, the
user don’t have to devote any time to it. You
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