The Almost Perfect Murder by Hulbert Footner (ereader for comics txt) 📖
- Author: Hulbert Footner
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“working to save your children, all the children. He had almost
attained success when this…”
Inspector Rumsey fairly groaned in his distress. “I’ve got to do my
duty. I had hoped that he would never hear this story. Never discover
that he was being watched.”
“Well, he knows it now,” she said gravely, “and his work is at a
standstill…. You say he might have done it,” she presently went
on, “but he says he was at the Natural History Museum all evening where
hundreds of people saw him.”
“That is true and not true,” said the Inspector. “He made a speech of
welcome at nine o’clock and of course everybody in the building saw and
heard him. But after he stepped down from the platform at nine-twenty,
I am unable to find anybody who saw him until supper was served at
eleven.”
“That is no proof that he wasn’t there.”
“No, but unfortunately I have learned that a taxicab was called to the
museum at nine-thirty, and that a man was driven from there to the
corner of Avenue A and Seventy-Fourth Street, which, as you know, is
just around the corner from the Institute. Well, if he could taxi over
there he could taxi back, of course, in plenty of time for supper.”
“Did this passenger resemble Dr. Portal?” Mme. Storey asked anxiously.
“Ah, there we are up against it again. The driver of that taxi has
left his job, and I have not been able to find him.”
“Pretty slim evidence,” suggested Mme. Storey.
“Surely,” he agreed. “But in the face of it, how can I give up
watching Dr. Portal.”
“Well, now the situation is somewhat altered,” she said. “Dr. Portal
has engaged me to solve this mystery. That’s pretty strong evidence of
his good faith in the matter. If I assure you that I mean to devote my
whole time to the case, are you willing to call off your dogs? You and
I will still be working together, of course.”
“Sure,” cried the Inspector heartily. “And darn glad of the excuse to
let up on the doctor!”
They shook hands on it.
“Now tell me all you know about the case,” said Mme. Storey, lighting a
fresh cigarette.
It required a full hour for the Inspector to relate all the work he and
his men had done. I shall not weary you with the recital, for there
was little of it that proved to be of any service to us. Nothing in
Dr. McComb’s past life, nor in Dr. Portal’s either, threw any light on
the crime. In an association of five years they had never been known
to quarrel, or even to have a serious difference of any kind. The only
thing in the way of complete harmony was Dr. McComb’s ambition—and
that was mostly Mrs. McComb’s.
As a matter of fact Mme. Storey had to begin from the beginning. It
was a single word dropped by Inspector Rumsey which gave her her lead.
In one of the gossiping stories patiently run down by the police, a
young interne of the Institute had used the phrase: “As it was told to
me, Dr. Portal hired a gunman to put McComb out of the way.” This yarn
was traced back to Mrs. McComb; but when the police questioned her she
denied having said it. In fact she denied ever having charged that Dr.
Portal was responsible for her husband’s death. This was manifestly a
falsehood. It was no doubt the Terwilligers who, with the best
intentions, had shut the woman up. Mrs. McComb was the kind of woman
who would be very much in awe of multi-millionaires.
“At any rate,” said Mme. Storey, “‘gunman’ is our line.”
“I have not neglected that line,” said the Inspector. “The possible
hired killers are pretty well known to us. Well, every man of that
sort has been able to account for his actions on the night of November
8th.”
“But there are always new killers coming up,” suggested Mme. Storey.
“Sure,” said the Inspector gloomily, “there are always youngsters who
are crazy for a chance to qualify in that class. It is looked upon as
the head of the criminal profession.”
“Then we will assume,” she said, “that this was a first killing by a
man who had already served an apprenticeship in lesser crimes.”
“But it was Dr. Portal who was said to have hired the gunman,” said the
Inspector, frowning.
“Well, maybe he did,” said Mme. Storey airily. “In any case it
provides us with a starting point.”
IIIBefore we went to bed that night we made an appointment with Dr. Portal
to come to his laboratory next day. What she had learned made it
necessary for her to have another talk with him, Mme. Storey told him.
After that she did not expect to trouble him again until she had
arrested her man. She insisted that there was no need for secrecy now,
and in fact she advised him to tell his associates that he had engaged
her to clear him from the absurd scandal that had clouded his name.
“Let the matter be dragged out into the open,” she said.
The great Terwilliger Institute, as everybody knows, stands in its own
fine park on the bank of the East River. I should very much have liked
to have gone over the whole place, but there was no time for that. We
confined our attention to the bacteriological laboratory, which was for
the time being entirely devoted to the researches of Dr. Portal and his
assistants. The ground floor was given up to an immense general
laboratory with apparatus of every description; the second floor was
divided into special laboratories and offices, while the third floor
housed the monkeys and other animals used in their work. I did not go
up there.
The three of us were in his private room, an office rather than a
laboratory, bare and speckless as a hospital ward. Mme. Storey said
lightly:
“Among the different versions of the story which have been going the
rounds, there was one to the effect that you hired a gunman to do the
deed.”
“How absurd!” said the doctor, half-amused, half-angry. “How on earth
would I set about to hire a gunman?”
“Have you never known a man of that sort?” asked Mme. Storey carelessly.
Dr. Portal suddenly checked himself. “Why … why, yes I did,” he said
blankly. “How strange! It happened just a little while before the
tragedy…. It never occurred to me there might be a connection
between the two…. Why, there couldn’t have been!”
“Nevertheless, tell me about it,” said Mme. Storey.
Dr. Portal looked out of the window. His gaze became still more remote
as he called up the past scene. “When you have been concentrating on a
difficult problem for many hours—or days,” he began slowly, “there
comes a moment when the brain seems to slip its cogs, and you become
conscious of a great weariness. It is a sort of warning signal, I
suppose, and I always heed it at once. Generally I take a little walk
in the grounds. Sometimes just a few minutes’ relaxation is enough to
restore me.”
“I expect this habit of yours is well known,” suggested Mme. Storey.
“No doubt. No doubt,” he said. “There are certain individuals of the
neighbourhood with whom I have become quite well acquainted through
meeting them in the grounds. When I came here years ago the grounds
were closed to the public, but I persuaded my patrons to open them. It
is a crowded neighbourhood and there are too few parks. Moreover, I
like to walk about and watch the people, and talk to them. But I have
not always the courage to open a conversation. You will think it very
silly, I am sure, at my age to be so diffident. I am glad when anybody
speaks to me.”
“I can understand that,” murmured Mme. Storey.
He glanced at her gratefully. “I lead too solitary a life, having no
family,” he went on. “I get up in the morning and go to work. Most
days I work until it is time to go home and go to bed again. I have
myself pretty well disciplined—but not completely disciplined. There
is something in me that sometimes rebels against this dryness,
something that longs for colour and drama in life. I tell you this in
order to explain what happened.”
Mme. Storey nodded.
“One sunny afternoon,” he went on; “it was just a few days before the
catastrophe here; let me see, the following day was a Saturday; that
would be two Saturdays before the tragedy, October 30th; I was sitting
on a bench in the grounds throwing bread crumbs to the sparrows when a
young fellow came along and sat down on the other end of the bench. I
was immediately and strongly attracted to him….”
“Why?” asked Mme. Storey.
“Well … I suppose it was the attraction of opposites. He was the
exact antithesis of what I had been as a young fellow. He existed
purely on the physical plane, one would say. A superb physical
specimen; comely, vigorous and alert. He was very well dressed in a
somewhat flashy style. I was surprised at his interest in me, for such
a one naturally has little use for an old fogey of a scientist. From
his handsome dark eyes and smooth, firm, dusky skin I put him down as
an Italian, and as a matter of fact he told me later that his name was
Tito Tolentino….”
“A mellifluous moniker,” put in Mme. Storey with a dry smile; “probably
assumed for the occasion.”
“No doubt,” said Dr. Portal. “Indeed, when we became better acquainted
he confessed that he went under many names. An amazing tale.”
“Don’t skip any of it,” warned Mme. Storey.
“He was a mere lad,” the doctor went on, “not more than nineteen I
should say, but he had an uncanny air of experience and assurance. I
am rather alarmed in the presence of hard-boiled youths, but on this
occasion I wasn’t required to make any overtures, for he immediately
started talking to me. With his uncanny sharpness he perceived that I
was diffident, and laid himself out to put me at my ease, just as if he
had been the elderly man of the world and I the gawky stripling.”
Mme. Storey and I smiled at the picture this called up—the great
scientist and the gunman! “What did he talk about?” asked my employer.
“It was about the sparrows at first. How they must have recognised
that I had a good nature since they came right to my feet. Then he
went on to tell me about himself; how he was the sole support of his
widowed mother and small brothers and sisters; how he worked in a
printing shop all night, slept in the mornings and came out in the
afternoons for a breath of air. All this was delivered in a snuffling,
self-righteous kind of voice. I suppose he thought this was the proper
way to recommend himself to me; but it only made me uncomfortable—it
was so false, so out of character with the flashy clothes and the hard,
handsome, predatory eyes that searched me through and through while he
snuffled.”
“He knew who you were?” suggested Mme. Storey.
“Yes; it did not occur to me then, but he must have known. From the
first, I remember,
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