The Almost Perfect Murder by Hulbert Footner (ereader for comics txt) 📖
- Author: Hulbert Footner
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of this institution.”
“Go on, please.”
“In the end he perceived, I suppose, that I didn’t believe a word of
his self-righteous story. With that unnatural penetration of his he
saw that the way to win me was by confessing his sins. At any rate he
suddenly changed his tone. ‘Aah, that’s all baloney,’ he said with a
laugh. ‘The truth is, I’m a bad egg, doctor. I shook my folks long
ago. I play a lone hand. Never did an honest day’s work in me life!’
My heart warmed to him when he said this. It cleared the air. We got
along famously after that.”
Dr. Portal paused with his attractive smile, so shy and wise. He may
have been innocent of the ways of the world, but he was nobody’s fool.
Always ready to smile at himself.
“How can I convey to you the extraordinary effect his story had on me?”
he presently went on. “It laid a spell on my imagination. It was the
first time in my life that I had ever come into contact with
lawlessness, and all the starved lawlessness in my own nature leaped to
meet it. Already at nineteen this lad had quaffed life to the dregs,
whereas at fifty-nine I had not even tasted it! I felt a kind of shame
for my wasted opportunities.”
Mme. Storey did not miss the irony in this. They laughed together.
“Of course it was only a mood,” he said; “the result of too many
suppressions. If I had a son I would say to him: ‘Don’t be too good
when you’re young, or the devil will get you later!’”
“I suppose women played a considerable part in his story,” she
suggested.
Dr. Portal held up his hands expressively. “Amazing! Amazing!” he
murmured. “An incredible point of view! Such a complete absence of
inhibitions! Such coolness and matter-of-factness! Apparently when
Tolentino saw anything that pleased him he just reached out and took
it, as one might help oneself to a peach from a dish! Of course he had
been very much favoured by nature for this pursuit. Such a handsome
little blackguard! The things he told me took my breath away. Girls
everywhere; all kinds of girls; even girls of position, society girls.
He used to pick them up at afternoon tea dances. ‘They like a fella to
be bad,’ he said with his sly grin.” The doctor shook his head
mournfully.
“What was the upshot of this remarkable conversation?” asked Mme.
Storey.
“The upshot was,” said Dr. Portal, “that I came to myself with a start
to find that the sun was going down and that I was thoroughly chilled.
When I got up to leave, my new friend suggested that we ought to meet
again, and I eagerly agreed. I was still under his spell. He said as
long as I was interested in that side of life, he’d like to take me
around town and show me some places, and we agreed to meet at six the
next evening at the Queensboro Bridge entrance. I chose a distant
point because I was none too anxious to have my associates at the
Institute see the kind of company I was mixing with. He promised to
have a car.”
“Good heavens!” cried Mme. Storey, “after all you had been told were
you not afraid to trust yourself in his hands?”
Dr. Portal looked at her in surprise. “Why, no,” he said. “The idea
of danger to myself never crossed my mind. Who would want to injure
me?”
Mme. Storey smiled at him somewhat grimly. “And you went?”
“Certainly, I went,” he said, “and had one of the most interesting
evenings I have ever spent … though I got a little tight,” he added
deprecatingly.
“Well, I expect that was good for you,” said Mme. Storey.
“Yes,” he agreed innocently. “I tackled my work with fresh energy next
day.”
“Well, tell us all about it.”
“Unfortunately my sense of direction is poor, and I cannot describe
just where he took me,” said Dr. Portal. “One turned innumerable
corners and pulled up in front of one door after another. I never knew
where we were.”
“What kind of car was it?” asked Mme. Storey.
“A little sedan, quite new, but I didn’t notice of what make.”
“Oh, well, it hardly signifies. It was undoubtedly stolen for the
occasion and abandoned at the end of the evening. Go on, doctor.”
“First we drove far down town into the crowded East side. We went into
a basement restaurant there. It had no lights nor sign outside, but it
was quite a large place and well filled. There was a little space for
dancing in the middle. We ate our dinner there, and Tito pointed out
all the celebrities of the place. There was a woman—I forget her
name—who had been tried for the murder of her husband so many times,
the jury disagreeing on each occasion, that finally the District
Attorney had become discouraged, and she was allowed to go free, though
everybody knew she had done it. Then there was Monk Eyster, the famous
gang leader, and many other notorious criminals whose names were
strange to me. It was a thrilling experience for me.”
“Did these people appear to know your companion?” asked Mme. Storey.
“No. Nobody spoke to us.”
“Naturally, he wouldn’t have dared take you to any place where he was
known. Go on.”
“Afterwards we went to a sort of club on the second storey of a
building. There were only men in this place. It was the headquarters
of the stick-up fraternity, Tito said, and while we knocked the balls
around a pool table, he told me who the different men were, and
described their hair-raising exploits. Everyone was wanted by the
police.”
Mme. Storey smiled at him indulgently. “Did anybody speak to your
friend here?”
“No.”
“Humph!” she said, “he probably made up the story out of whole cloth.”
“Perhaps,” said Dr. Portal a little ruefully, “but it was very exciting
at the time…. Afterwards he said he knew of a roadhouse up in
Westchester County that was the worst place of all. Everything went
there, he said, and nothing went any farther. But I would be all
right, he said, as long as he was with me…. So we drove for a long
time in the little car. It must have been somewhere north of the city,
because I remember crossing the Harlem River, and passing through the
suburb of Williamsbridge. I saw the name on a railway station. We
came to the roadhouse…”
“Was it so very wicked?” interrupted Mme. Storey, smiling.
“Well, I didn’t see anything out of the way,” returned the doctor
innocently, “but then I am not accustomed to such places. I wouldn’t
have known what to look for. As a matter of fact I had a drink or two
there, and I am not quite so clear afterwards as to what happened. All
I remember is that I became excessively talkative—it was a great
relief!”
“What did you talk about?” asked Mme. Storey.
“I can scarcely tell you. I suppose it was about the polio serum which
fills my mind to the exclusion of everything else. In looking back on
it I am astonished at the patience of young Tito in letting me run on
so. It could not have been interesting to him. In spite of all, there
must have been something genuinely friendly in him, don’t you think?”
“I wonder!” said Mme. Storey grimly. “Go on.”
“The next thing I remember is finding myself in the little car again,
still driving away from town. For some reason or another we drew up
alongside the road, and remained there a while, I still talking. It
must have been a very lonely spot; there were woods on either side of
the road; no cars passed that way. In my slightly fuddled condition
all this seemed perfectly natural. I was still talking garrulously
about my work, I remember, when I happened to notice that Tito was
playing with an ugly little automatic gun on his knees….”
“Good God!” murmured Mme. Storey, aghast.
The doctor, however, was entirely unconcerned. “I remonstrated with
him,” he said. “I told him to put the thing away before there was an
accident….”
“And then what?” asked Mme. Storey tensely.
“He put it in his pocket,” he said calmly; “and we drove home. That’s
all.”
“And that is the strangest part of all!” cried Mme. Storey. “What
could have persuaded him to spare you?”
“Hey?” said Dr. Portal, blinking.
“Don’t you realise that you were taken for a ride?” she said.
“Certainly I was taken for a ride…”
“No! No! I mean in the special sense of that phrase; the sense in
which it is used in the underworld. You were taken out to that lonely
spot to be shot, and your body thrown into the woods. The mystery is,
how you contrived to escape!”
“Why should anybody want to shoot me?” gasped the doctor.
“You escaped,” she went on, “but Dr. McComb was not so lucky!”
“Do you mean to say that Tito shot McComb?” he cried.
“I don’t know. Another tool may have been used in that case. Tito was
only a hired assassin, of course. There may have been several. What
is clear is that somebody had it in for the whole Terwilliger
Institute!”
“Why? Why? Why?” asked the dismayed doctor. “We injure nobody. We
threaten nobody’s interest. Our work is for the benefit of the whole
community!”
“I don’t know,” said Mme. Storey sombrely. “It shall be my task to
find out. Our only clue lies through this Tito.”
“How terrible!” murmured Dr. Portal, thinking of his near escape. “And
I suspected nothing!”
“Give me the best description of him that you can,” she said.
The doctor spread out his hands. “I’m afraid I’m not very good at it
… nineteen or twenty years old; about my height but much more
muscularly built. Very quick and graceful in his movements. Brown
eyes; smooth, warm-coloured face that still preserved some of the
roundness of boyhood; regular white teeth. Ordinarily he wore a mask
over his face; his expression was perfectly inscrutable….”
“This tells me next to nothing,” said Mme. Storey. “Try to give me
something characteristic, something peculiar.”
“Well, he had a trick of keeping a perfectly smooth face and speaking
out of one corner of his mouth,” said Dr. Portal.
“No good!” said my employer ruefully. “They all do that…. Did he
mention any names in his story? Did he ever let fall what they called
him?”
Dr. Portal shook his head. “No, I noticed that he was careful about
names. It was always ‘him’ or ‘her’ or ‘this fellow’ and ‘that
fellow.’”
“Then how about place names?” she asked. “Did he ever mention the
names of any places that he frequented?”
After thinking awhile the doctor said: “Yes. He spoke of Bleecker
Street. More than once I remember him saying: ‘I went down to
Bleecker’ or ‘I ran into him on Bleecker.’”
“That helps a little,” said Mme. Storey, “but not much. Bleecker is
the main street, the white-light district for the whole of little
Italy…. Can you give me anything else?”
After further thought the doctor brightened. “Here’s something,” he
said. “On the occasion of our second meeting he appeared wearing a
coon-skin coat like a college
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