Читать книгу Murder of a Startled Lady - Charles Fulton Oursler - Страница 15

The house of the crime sculptor was one of a dingy row of seven in a back-wash street of forgotten people not far from the foundation piles of Brooklyn Bridge. Our car, whirling in one of Neil McMahon's remarkable parabolas, stopped at the corner of Cherry Hill Place, really a cul-de-sac running back from the bridge to the brick wall of a machine shop—a ding-dong neighbourhood, noisy even now.

We set off down a narrow pavement, too bright in its empty stretches, the frequent lamps shining on the fronts of narrow houses in which all living things were, or seemed to be, fast asleep.

Presently we stopped at a stone stoop with an iron railing to a forlorn-looking door. All six windows of the house were hidden behind massive shutters. Colt put his gloved forefinger on the button of the doorbell and kept it there; with his other hand he pointed to a dilapidated Chevrolet parked at the curb, and chuckled: "That's his car. He calls it Pocahontas. Any other car would curl up and die in this cold but not that one."

From inside we heard the sound of running feet. Then the door very slowly opened—only a little ways, a very few inches, it is true—but there it was opened, on a chain guard, and behind it, secure from a rush attack, was a face that looked out at us with a most unfriendly expression. It was a homely, wrinkled face. In that first glimpse of this remarkable man, whose brilliant mind and clever hands were soon to play so helpful a part in our investigation, I photographed an unforgettable image—pale, with sad, large eyes, a sentimental mouth and a thin coating of oily, womanish black hair over a square-cut head. But it was his expression that I most recall now; his fretfulness and yet his fear, too, as if he distrusted all comers; some pathetic phobia, some mysterious, perhaps psycho pathological fear that held him in a pale, stormy grip. Or, I wondered fantastically, was this wistful look, the glare of one always lamenting the loss of wooden Indians?

"Good-morning, Mr. Fitch," began Colt, with that air of apology a leader accords only to an irreplaceable expert. "I am terribly sorry to get you up——"

"You didn't! I've been listening on my short wave set—got Moscow and the man was speaking in excellent English about how they had embalmed Lenin—it wasn't much fun—Come in."

As he talked, Mr. Fitch unhitched the chain guard and opened his door. Shivering with cold, he stood back—a chunky man in a blue bathrobe and fur slippers. His uncomplacent eyes fluttered from Colt to me in a fretful, riddling way; then he turned abruptly and strode off down the dark corridor, leaving me to close the door. Colt and I followed him into what once had been a dining room but was now evidently Mr. Fitch's chamber of solitary recreation—a sad old room, with a chessboard, a radio, phonograph, stereopticon, and cards, a cage with coloured birds, stacks of old magazines, books and newspapers, and a saxophone with a set of correspondence school instructions.

Thatcher Colt set down the suitcase beside a small table while Mr. Fitch hastily cleared chairs of a litter of papers, and entreated us to sit down.

"We've got a problem for you," began the Commissioner, upon which Mr. Fitch threw his hands above his head, rolled up his eyes and groaned. But Colt smiled good-naturedly as he lay the suitcase flat, opened it and lifted out a piece wrapped in a towel. Fitch, whose hands were nervous and restless, opening and closing, clasping and unclasping, rubbing the thin, oily black hair above his ears, scratching his neck, fussing around like a child on a rainy day, gave a low bird-like chirp when he saw the thing Colt lifted out—the head of the murdered woman.

"More of that work, huh?" he murmured to himself rather than to Colt. "Let me have a good look at it."

He studied the head, with his own head cocked to one side. He lifted it nearer to the speckled bulb of the electric light on the table with the chessboard. We remained perfectly quiet for a few minutes during the expert's nervous examination of the specimen; his very breath was full of distaste as he turned it back and forth in his hands.

"An unpleasant business, Mr. Commissioner," he said at last, gravely setting the skull on a stack of old magazines. "It's been in the water a long time. It will be hard to establish the pigmentation—and the eyes! My stars, Mr. Colt, but those will be almost impossible."

"I think I can help you there," said Colt, as he asked me for Detective Sherman's envelope. "Take a look at these pearl ear-rings."

Again that bird-like chirp—and then still another, a third, a much louder chirp from Mr. Imro Acheson Fitch.

"A hair! A brown hair! Caught in the ear-ring. Did you see this, Mr. Colt?"

The Commissioner nodded delightedly.

"I was sure that would help you."

"Help! It does everything. There's no skin left on the bones—how could I ever guess at her eye-colours, her complexion—her pigmentation—now, of course, I may still go wrong—but I am not so completely in the dark——"

"You can use our department laboratories."

Mr. Fitch's pale, square face flushed a little; his smudge of a nose lifted in disdain.

"No, I thank you, sir. I will do anything for you personally, Mr. Colt. But nothing for the City of New York or its politicians. I prefer my own apparatus—and I work alone. Yes—this little lady and I shall be quite alone here."

He was kneeling at the suitcase, his hands prowling among the bones.

"This body," he remarked, "was cut up by a master."

"I shall remember that. How soon can you get to work?"

"At once, of course."

"And when will you begin the actual modelling?"

Mr. Fitch's chirp this time was a jape, a mockery.

"I see!" he exclaimed in his hollow voice. "You always said you wanted to watch."

"And you always said—no witnesses!"

"Well, maybe I shall relent this time, Mr. Colt. I won't be able to start before to-morrow afternoon, anyway. I will need to get a wig-maker started. And other things. But especially I will have to dream—to look at the little head there and dream. I will sit in front of it and dream for hours at a time. The lineaments sort of come to me that way. But first I shall have a lot of preliminaries——"

"When could we come and watch you, Mr. Fitch?"

The crime sculptor touched the top of his head with the long, smooth forefinger of an artist.

"Be here at two this afternoon, Mr. Colt?"

"Two o'clock—that's set!"

"Good-night, gentlemen! You can let yourselves out."

Mr. Fitch flounced unhappily into an old-fashioned chair upholstered in red felt. He fixed his disappointed eyes on the skull and stared at it dreamily. I went away with that memory and, sleeping in Colt's guest room that night, I dreamed about the dreamer before the skull.