Читать книгу Murderer's Vanity - Footner Hulbert - Страница 4

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Amos Lee Mappin rented a suite in a handsome old dwelling on lower Madison Avenue which had been converted into offices. Since he insisted on maintaining the status of an amateur, he had no absolute need for an office, but he could afford it, and he said that the act of going to the office kept him at work. Moreover, at the office he could make appointments to meet all sorts of queer characters that he did not care to bring home. The secret of his private address was carefully guarded.

The office suite consisted of a large room on the second floor with three windows looking down on the avenue and two smaller rooms in the rear, all furnished in plain and businesslike fashion. There was no elevator in the building. The front room was the daily habitat of the blond Fanny Parran and the dark-haired Judy Bowles who served Lee in the triple capacity of secretaries, research workers, and, when he happened to be actually engaged in an investigation, as operatives. The small room which Lee used for a private office had its own door on the corridor, to enable him to slip out unseen should there be an unwelcome caller in front. The building was kept in order by a respectable couple who lived in the basement.

Lee’s mail was very heavy owing to the amount of publicity he had received. He made a point of answering every letter, however trifling, because it pleased him to think of the innocent pleasure he conveyed by this means, even if his answer was only a form. The broadcast produced an increased number of letters. Skimming over them on the following morning, Lee thought: What a lot of people there are in the world with time on their hands! One letter Fanny had not ventured to open since it was marked: “Private and Confidential.” It was in a plain envelope, the address typewritten; it had been posted late the night before in the General Post Office, New York. Lee opened it and read:

Lee Mappin:

I have just been listening to your broadcast, and I must say I was surprised and disgusted to hear a man who claims to be as intelligent as you do, putting out the old dope to the effect that “Murder will out.” You ought to know better. A few minutes thought (if you are capable of thinking, which I doubt) would convince you that for every murder that is discovered, there must be ten which never come to light. When you consider the mental calibre of detectives (and I include you) the wonder is that murder is ever found out. It is only the congenital fools among murderers that are caught; those who are incapable of planning a good crime, and those weaklings who lose their heads and give themselves away afterwards.

For some time past I have been preparing to commit a murder, and my plans are almost ripe. I am in no hurry because I enjoy the preliminaries. Murder provides the keenest thrill a man is capable of feeling. It is ten times more fascinating than a play on the stage to watch the unsuspecting fly buzzing closer and closer to the web you have stretched for him. Do not try to laugh this off by telling yourself I am mad. Never in my life has my brain functioned better. I never before had such an incentive to clear thinking. And it isn’t merely a stunt crime, undertaken to prove my ideas. I hate the person who has injured me and, what is worse, threatens to make a fool of me, publicly. I’m not going to wait for that. My hatred is like a fire in my breast. God! how sweet it will be to kill! Nor will I ever feel remorse. I never was sorry for anything I did. As long as I live I’ll hug the thought of my crime.

So there’s a problem for you, Mr. Crime-detector! You think yourself very clever, but I am cleverer. I work calmly; I provide for everything. You will never be able to come close to me. My only regret is that nobody can ever know how perfect a murder I have planned. I’ll let you know when I pull it off, and will keep you informed from time to time how close you are getting, and in that way I will enjoy a kind of vicarious satisfaction.

Yours,

X.

Lee, frowning, read this over a second time. He told himself he was a fool to let it irritate him because it was obvious that the writer had set out with just that intention. Yet he couldn’t help feeling irritated. Somebody was pulling his leg he was sure, and if he took it seriously, the writer would give him the big laugh directly. The only thing to do was to ignore it as he had ignored all anonymous letters ... Yet there was something about this one that disturbed him deeply: was it a ring of genuineness? The writer’s cry of hatred sounded real. But even suppose there was something in it, what could he do? His hands were tied; the letter conveyed no clue.

It had been typewritten on a sheet of inexpensive white paper with a smooth finish. The paper had for a watermark the word Cronicon with U.S.A. beneath. He made a memo of it. The spacing of the words was irregular and there were some erasures, suggesting that it had not been written by an expert typist. There were no mistakes in spelling and the language was that of a person of some culture. Lee got out his magnifying glass. The letter had been typed with a fresh ribbon, he could see, and the machine was a fairly new one. There were some infinitesimal peculiarities in the type that might perhaps be identified—but first he would have to find the machine, he told himself grimly.

In the end, still feeling exasperated and disturbed, he filed the letter away among his literary curiosities without showing it to anybody. He had an engagement to lunch at the Colony with Rafe Deshon. Rafe turned up looking like the glass of fashion and the mold of form. There was a slight stir when the pair of them entered the restaurant a few minutes later, and many of the marvellously-hatted women turned their heads.

“You are famous today,” whispered Rafe. “After the broadcast.”

“Nonsense,” said Lee. “It is your blond head they are looking at, not my bald one.”

“Nothing to it,” said Rafe. “I’m only the promoter, the introducer. They never look at me, but only to see who I’m bringing.”

Lee’s roly-poly little figure was not imposing, but it had distinction. He could never have been dismissed as a nonentity; the grey eyes behind the brightly polished glasses were too keen. His style of dress was all his own; he had gone early nineteenth century so far as he could without attracting too much attention; narrow trousers, white waistcoat, a black satin cravat which suggested a stock, and so on. It suited him and he knew it. Whenever he was embarrassed or wished to gain a moment’s time before speaking, he took snuff.

They were shown to a table. Rafe was full of last night’s broadcast. The station, it seemed, was inundated with telephone calls and letters; Lee’s debut on the air was considered a great success. Already one of the leading agents had made an offer for Lee to give a weekly broadcast on crime at a flattering figure. A sponsor had come forward, and time was available on a coast-to-coast network.

Lee thinking of the annoyance that had resulted from his first broadcast, said: “I won’t do it!”

Rafe said: “As a public figure, you can hardly avoid it.”

“I don’t want to be a public figure,” said Lee. “I’m happier when I’m working in the dark like a mole.”

“It’s not my fault if the public insists on beating a path to your door.”

“I can refuse to answer the bell,” said Lee.

“Think how it would promote your book. You could plug it week after week.”

“Absolutely, no,” said Lee. “That’s one of the things that’s the matter with the world. Too much plugging!”

Rafe was too wise to pursue the matter further. Lee was well aware that he would bring it up again.

Upon returning to the office he found that Fanny and Judy were holding an impromptu reception. Seven or eight bright young men were clustering around the girls’ desks, the red-headed Tom Cottar among them, and a good time was being had by all. On the outskirts of the group hovered Jim Costin, the janitor of the building—or, it would be more proper to say, the janitor’s husband, since Costin had never been seen to do a tap of work around the house.

This Costin was a travesty of a gentleman in seedy attire. A man of some education, he was completely dependent on his wife, a grim silent woman who worked hard to keep her children decently clad. Costin claimed to be writing a book and spent most of his daytime hours in the reading-room of the public library. Fanny, who often visited the library for research, reported that he sat there idly turning pages of old illustrated weeklies, or enjoying a snooze when he could escape the notice of the attendants. When they happened to meet, Costin addressed Lee familiarly, as one author to another. It amused Lee to draw him out. At the moment Lee marked how Costin was listening to the talk of the reporters with an attentive ear. He really had no business to be in the room, and at Lee’s entrance he quietly slunk out. The reporters were waiting for Lee. Tom Cottar was constituted their spokesman, and he said:

“Mr. Mappin, we understand you received a letter from a crank this morning, announcing that he was about to commit a murder.”

Lee concealed his surprise and annoyance. “Oh, that!” he said with a laugh. “I don’t take any stock in anonymous letters. Do you want to see it?”

“Only for the purposes of comparison, sir. We’ve all received copies.”

“The deuce you have!” said Lee. “Well, anyhow, that relieves my mind.”

“How come, Mr. Mappin?”

“Well, I thought there might be something in it, and I was a little worried. But if it’s newspaper publicity the writer is after, that proves he’s only suffering from an inflamed ego.”

“I don’t know,” said Tom. “Somehow this doesn’t sound like the usual crank letter. There is real feeling in it.”

This, which coincided with Lee’s own inward opinion, induced a fresh spurt of irritation in him. He was careful to hide it from these wise young guys.

One asked: “Have you any idea who wrote it, Mr. Mappin?”

“Not the slightest.”

“What are you going to do about it?”

Lee looked surprised. “Do about it? Why, nothing.”

“Oh, you can’t do that, Mr. Mappin. Not after it’s been noticed in the press.”

“Why can’t I?”

“All your fans will expect you to take action; to show up the writer.”

“That would be attaching too much importance to him. He is either a harmless lunatic or a practical joker. I have more important things to attend to. I rather incline to the practical joker theory. I wouldn’t put it past one of you fellows; perhaps my young friend Tom here wrote it, just for the sake of the story.”

“I wish I had thought of it,” said Tom grinning. “There’s a good story in it. But I didn’t.”

“Or my ingenious promoter, Rafe Deshon,” said Lee. “You’d better be careful or you’ll be giving him free publicity.”

“The publicity won’t be any good to you unless you take some action,” said Tom.

Lee shook his head. “You’ve had your fun with me now, boys. If you’ll excuse me ...”

“Analyse the letter for us,” one pleaded. “You’re a psychologist. What can you tell about the writer from his letter?”

Lee reflected that the letter-writer would be sure to read what he might say. If he could sting the man into writing again, perhaps in his second letter he would betray himself. “Okay,” he said, picking up the letter with a smile, “let’s see what this tells us.”

After studying it for a moment, he went on: “In an anonymous letter the submerged personality comes to the surface, and generally it’s not a pretty sight. This is no exception. The man, you see, insults me crudely because he feels safe in doing so. He would never dare tell me to my face that I am a fool.”

“You speak of him as a man,” put in Tom, “but can you be sure that the letter wasn’t written by a woman?”

“Absolutely. The language, the form of expression is masculine. We all know these frustrated egoists. Their names decorate the walls of public toilets. It will give him an exquisite pleasure to read his letter in tonight’s papers. He is a neurotic; one of the feeble creatures who compensate for their weakness by indulging in fantasies, daydreams of murder and so on. They are not dangerous. Such a man should not be treated as a criminal, but sent to a psychoanalyst.”

Tom Cottar lingered behind the others for a moment. “But Pop,” he protested, “there is more in this ...”

Lee’s eyes gleamed behind his glasses. “Write what I gave you,” he said, “or nothing.”

“Okay, Pop.”

Not that he expected anything to come of it, but just as a precaution, Lee called up his friend Inspector Loasby at Headquarters and suggested that he have the General Post Office watched that night. Loasby promised to have it done. Men were to be stationed in the corridors where the letter chutes were, and other men inside at the bottom of the chutes. If a letter dropped addressed to Amos Lee Mappin the man inside was to blow a whistle.

Nothing came of it, but next morning Lee received another letter in the first mail. This one had been posted at Station W. on the upper West Side. The newspaper interview had had the effect that Lee designed; the letter-writer was angry.

Lee Mappin:

I always suspected you were a false alarm and now I know it. You made a pitiful exhibition of yourself in the papers this evening. The whole town is laughing at you. You are nothing but a balloon all blown up by publicity, and at a prick you collapse. You call yourself a psychologist and when you are asked to analyse the character of the writer of my first letter, being completely up in the air all you can answer is that I am a writer on the walls of toilets. You know more about toilet writing than I do. You call me a neurotic, a day-dreamer. As a matter of fact I’m the exact opposite. I’m considered ... (Here two words were blacked out.) I feel quite safe now. You will never catch up with me, and neither will your friends the police that you have called in to help you. I suppose I ought to be glad you’re so dumb, but in reality I’m disappointed. I anticipated engaging in a battle of wits with you, but now I see you haven’t any wits to match me with.

Mind, I have warned you that I am about to commit a murder, and I now repeat the warning. If you fail to stop me, the blood of the victim will be on your head. You can’t get out of that.

X.

Lee read this with a grim smile. This letter showed more mistakes in typing, due no doubt to having been written in the haste of anger. It was all very well to make the man sore, but it didn’t get him much forrader. The writer’s anger ruled out the practical joker theory. There would be no call for a joker to get angry. Only two alternatives remained; either the letter-writer was mad, or he was really a potential murderer. Lee studied the letter for indications of madness. The preposterous assertion in the last paragraph showed a warped mind perhaps, but scarcely insane. Many little things that he could not define in his conscious mind, strengthened Lee’s feeling that the writer of these letters actually meant to kill. It was overweening vanity that forced him to confess the gruesome secret in advance to Lee.

Lee jumped up and paced the little room gritting his teeth. What a truly horrible position he would be in if a murder was committed and he, while knowing about it, was unable to prevent it. This man must be acquainted with me, he thought, he has so unerringly picked out the weak joint in my armor.

Copies of the second letter as of the first were sent to the various newspapers. The editors decided that it was too scurrilous to run. However, they sent the boys around to Lee’s office to ask if he had anything to say about it.

“Not a word!” said Lee. “The cruelest punishment we can inflict on this bird is to refuse him any space.”

The reporters agreed. Tom Cottar with his uncanny perspicuity, said:

“This letter sounds almost as if the man knew you, Pop.”

“Oh, no!” said Lee quickly.

“Then how do you account for the personal hatred that it reveals?”

“I’ve met with that before,” said Lee. “It always surprises me because I look on myself as a very inoffensive person. I explain it this way: (a) the man is an egomaniac, therefore (b) he prizes publicity above everything else in the world and (c) he is bitterly envious because so much publicity is thrust on me unasked.”

When the boys left him Lee sent a copy of the latest letter down to Inspector Loasby. He kept the originals in his office safe.

On the following morning, letter number three arrived. This had been posted at another branch post-office, Station D.

Lee Mappin:

Today I purchased the weapon. It’s a common kitchen knife with a six inch blade. I invite you to trace the purchase. A knife just like it can be bought for a few cents in any one of ten thousand stores in the Greater New York area. I have sharpened it to a point like a rapier. The quality of the steel is wretched of course, but it will serve for one stroke. I have been studying anatomical charts to make certain that one blow is sufficient. I know the exact spot to strike either in the breast or in the back. A gun would be cleaner and more certain, but a gun makes too much noise. When I plant my knife nothing will be heard but a low, choked cry. Moreover, I require the knife for another purpose afterwards.

X.