Читать книгу The Conjure-Man Dies: A Harlem Mystery - Stanley Ellin - Страница 13

‘BRADY, ask the lady who arrived first to come in,’ said Dart, adding in a low aside to the physician, ‘if her story checks with Brown’s on the point of his staying in that room, I think I can use him for something. He couldn’t have taken that club out without leaving the room.’

‘He tells a straight story,’ agreed Dr Archer. ‘Too scared to lie. But isn’t it too soon to let anybody out?’

‘I don’t mean to let him go. But I can send him with a couple o’ cops to identify the other men who were here and bring them back, without being afraid he’ll start anything.’

‘Why not go with him and question them where you find ’em?’

‘It’s easier to have ’em all in one place if possible—saves everybody’s time. Can’t always do it of course. Here comes the lady—your friend.’

‘Be nice to her—she’s the real thing. I’ve known her for years.’

‘O. K.’

Uncertainly, the young woman entered, the beam of light revealing clearly her unusually attractive appearance. With undisguised bewilderment on her pretty face, but with no sign of fear, she took the visitors’ chair.

‘Don’t be afraid, Mrs Crouch. I want you to answer, as accurately as you can, a few questions which may help determine who killed Frimbo.’

‘I’ll be glad to,’ she said in a low, matter-of-fact tone.

‘What time did you arrive here tonight?’

‘Shortly after ten-thirty.’

‘You’re sure of the time?’

‘I was at the Lenox. The feature picture goes on for the last time at ten-thirty. I had seen it already, and when it came on again I left. It is no more than four or five minutes’ walk from there here.’

‘Good. You came directly to Frimbo’s waiting-room?’

‘No. I stopped downstairs to see if my husband was there.’

‘Your husband? Oh—Mr Crouch, the undertaker, is your husband?’

‘Yes. But he was out.’

‘Does he usually go out and leave his place open?’

‘Late in the evening, yes. Up until then there is a clerk. Afterwards if he is called out he just leaves a sign saying when he will return. He never,’ she smiled faintly, ‘has to fear robbers, you see.’

‘But might not calls come in while he is out?’

‘Yes. But they are handled by a telephone exchange. If he doesn’t answer, the exchange takes the call and gives it to him later.’

‘I see. How long did stopping downstairs delay you?’

‘Only a minute. Then I came right up to the waiting-room.’

‘Who was there when you got there?’

‘Four men.’

‘Did you know any of them?’

‘No, but I’d know them if I saw them again.’

‘Describe them.’

‘Well there was a little thin nervous man who looked like he was sick—in fact he was sick, because when he got up to follow the assistant he had a dizzy spell and fell, and all the men jumped to him and had to help him up.’

‘He was the first to go in to Frimbo after you arrived?’

‘Yes. Then there was a heavy-set, rather flashily-dressed man in grey. He went in next. And there were two others who seemed to be together—the two who were in there a few minutes ago when you and Dr Archer came in.’

‘A tall fellow and a short one?’

‘Yes.’

‘About those two—did either of them leave the room while you were there?’

‘The tall one did, when his turn came to see Frimbo.’

‘And the short one?’

‘Well—when the tall one had been out for about five or six minutes, he came back—through the same way that he had gone. It was rather startling because nobody else had come back at all except Frimbo’s man, and he always appeared in the hall doorway, not the other, and always left by the hall doorway also. And, too, this tall fellow looked terribly excited. He beckoned to the short one and they went back together through the passage—into this room.’

‘That was the first and only time the short man left that room while you were there?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you yourself did not leave the room meanwhile?’

‘No. Not until now.’

‘Did anyone else come in?’

‘The other woman, who is in there now.’

‘Very good. Now, pardon me if I seem personal, but it’s my business not to mind my business—to meddle with other people’s. You understand?’

‘Perfectly. Don’t apologize—just ask.’

‘Thank you. Did you know anything about this man Frimbo—his habits, friends, enemies?’

‘No. He had many followers, I know, and a great reputation for being able to cast spells and that sort of thing. His only companion, so far as I know, was his servant. Otherwise he seemed to lead a very secluded life. I imagine he must have been pretty well off financially. He’d been here almost two years. He was always our best tenant.’

‘Tell me why you came to see Frimbo tonight, please.’

‘Certainly. Mr Crouch owns this house, among others, and Frimbo is our tenant. My job is collecting rents, and tonight I came to collect Frimbo’s.’

‘I see. But do you find it more convenient to see tenants at night?’

‘Not so much for me as for them. Most of them are working during the day. And Frimbo simply can’t be seen in the daytime—he won’t see anyone either professionally or on business until after dark. It’s one of his peculiarities, I suppose.’

‘So that by coming during his office hours you are sure of finding him available?’

‘Exactly.’

‘All right, Mrs Crouch. That’s all for the present. Will you return to the front room? I’d let you go at once, but you may be able to help me further if you will.’

‘I’ll be glad to.’

‘Thank you. Brady, call in Bubber Brown and one of those extra men.’

When Bubber reappeared, Dart said:

‘You told me you could locate and identify the three men who preceded Jenkins?’

‘Yes, suh. I sho’ can.’

‘How?’

‘Well, I been seein’ that little Doty Hicks plenty. He hangs out ’round his brother’s night club. ’Cose ev’ybody knows Spider Webb’s a runner and I can find him from now till mornin’ at Patmore’s Pool Room. And that other one, the railroad man, he and I had quite a conversation before he come in to see Frimbo, and I found out where he rooms when he’s in town. Jes’ a half a block up the street here, in a private house.’

‘Good.’ The detective turned to the officer whom Brady had summoned:

‘Hello, Hanks. Listen Hanks, you take Mr Brown there around by the precinct, pick up another man, and then go with Mr Brown and bring the men he identifies here. There’ll be three of ’em. Take my car and make it snappy.’

Jinx, behind a mask of scowling ill-humour, which was always his readiest defence under strain, sat now in the uncomfortably illuminated chair and growled his answers into the darkness whence issued Dart’s voice. This apparently crusty attitude, which long use had made habitual, served only to antagonize his questioner, so that even the simplest of his answers were taken as unsatisfactory. Even in the perfectly routine but obviously important item of establishing his identity, he made a bad beginning.

‘Have you anything with you to prove your identity?’

‘Nothin’ but my tongue.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean I say I’m who I is. Who’d know better?’

‘No one, of course. But it’s possible that you might say who you were not.’

‘Who I ain’t? Sho’ I can say who I ain’t. I ain’t Marcus Garvey, I ain’t Al Capone, I ain’t Cal Coolidge—I ain’t nobody but me—Jinx Jenkins, myself.’

‘Very well, Mr Jenkins. Where do you live? What sort of work do you do?’

‘Any sort I can get. Ain’t doin’ nothin’ right now.’

‘M-m. What time did you get here tonight?’

On this and other similar points, Jinx’s answers, for all their gruffness, checked with those of Bubber and Martha Crouch. He had come with Bubber a little before ten-thirty. They had gone straight to the waiting-room and found three men. The women had come in later. Then the detective asked him to describe in detail what had transpired when he left the others and went in to see Frimbo. And though Jinx’s vocabulary was wholly inadequate, so deeply had that period registered itself upon his mind that he omitted not a single essential item. His imperfections of speech became negligible and were quite ignored; indeed, the more tutored minds of his listeners filled in or substituted automatically, and both the detective and the physician, the latter perhaps more completely, were able to observe the reconstructed scene as if it were even now being played before their eyes.

The black servitor with the yellow headdress and the cast in one eye ushered Jinx to the broad black curtains, saying in a low voice as he bowed him through, ‘Please go in, sit down, say nothing till Frimbo speaks.’ Thereupon the curtains fell to behind him and he was in a small dark passage, whose purpose was obviously to separate the waiting-room from the mystic chamber beyond and thus prevent Frimbo’s voice from reaching the circle of waiting callers. Jinx shuffled forward toward the single bright light that at once attracted and blinded. He sidled in between the chair and table and sat down facing the figure beneath the hanging light. He was unable, because of the blinding glare, to descry any characteristic feature of the man he had come to see; he could only make out a dark shadow with a head that seemed to be enormous, cocked somewhat sidewise as if in a steady contemplation of the visitor.

For a time the shadow made no sound or movement, and Jinx squirmed about impatiently in his seat, trying to obey directions and restrain the impulse to say something. At one moment the figure seemed to fade away altogether and blend with the enveloping blackness beyond. This was the very limit of Jinx’s endurance—but at this moment Frimbo spoke.

‘Please do not shield your eyes. I must study your face.’

The voice changed the atmosphere from one of discomfiture to one of assurance. It was a deep, rich, calm voice, so matter of fact and real, even in that atmosphere, as to dispel doubt and inspire confidence.

‘You see, I must analyse your mind by observing your countenance. Only thus can I learn how to help you.’

Here was a man that knew something. Didn’t talk like an African native certainly. Didn’t talk like any black man Jinx had ever heard. Not a trace of Negro accent, not a suggestion of dialect. He spoke like a white-haired judge on the bench, easily, smoothly, quietly.

‘There are those who claim the power to read men’s lives in crystal spheres. That is utter nonsense. I claim the power to read men’s lives in their faces. That is completely reasonable. Every experience, every thought, leaves its mark. Past and present are written there clearly. He who knows completely the past and the present can deduce the inevitable future, which past and present determine. My crystal sphere, therefore, is your face. By reading correctly what is there I know what is scheduled to follow, and so can predict and guard you against your future.’

‘Yes, suh,’ said Jinx.

‘I notice that you are at present out of work. It is this you wish to consult me about.’

Jinx’s eyes dilated. ‘Yes, suh, that’s right.’

‘You have been without a job several weeks.’

‘Month come Tuesday.’

‘Yes. And now you have reached the point where you must seek the financial aid of your friends. Being of a proud and independent nature, you find this difficult. Yet even the fee which you will pay for the advice I give you is borrowed money.’

There was no tone of question, no implied request for confirmation. The words were a simple statement of fact, presented as a comprehensive résumé of a situation, expressed merely as a basis for more important deductions to follow.

‘So far, you see, my friend, I have done nothing at all mysterious. All this is the process of reason, based on observation. And now, though you may think it a strange power, let me add that there is nothing mysterious either in my being able to tell you that your name is Jenkins, that your friends call you Jinx, that you are twenty-seven years old, and that you are unmarried. All these matters have passed through your mind as you sat there listening to me. This is merely an acuteness of mental receptivity which anyone can learn; it is usually called telepathy. At this point, Mr Jenkins, others whom you might have consulted stop. But at this point—Frimbo begins.’

There was a moment’s silence. The voice resumed with added depth and solemnity:

‘For, in addition to the things that can be learned by anyone, Frimbo inherits the bequest of a hundred centuries, handed from son to son through four hundred unbroken generations of Buwongo kings. It is a profound and dangerous secret, my friend, a secret my fathers knew when the kings of the Nile still thought human flesh a delicacy.’

The voice sank to a lower pitch still, inescapably impressive.

‘Frimbo can change the future.’ He paused, then continued, ‘In the midst of a world of determined, inevitable events, of results rigidly fashioned by the past, Frimbo alone is free. Frimbo not only sees. Frimbo and Frimbo alone can step in at will and change the course of a life. Listen!’

The voice now became intimate, confidential, shading off from low vibrant tones into softly sibilant whispers:

‘Your immediate needs will be taken care of but you will not be content. It is a strange thing that I see. For though food and shelter in abundance are to be your lot sooner than you think, still you will be more unhappy than you are now; and you will rejoice only when this physical security has been withdrawn. You will be overjoyed to return to the uncertain fortunes over which you now despair. I do not see the circumstances, at the moment, that will bring on these situations, because they are outside the present content of your mind which I am contemplating. But these things even now impatiently await you—adequate physical necessaries, but great mental distress.

‘Now then, when you have passed through that paradoxical period, what will you do? Let me see. It is but a short way—a few days ahead—but—’ Into that until now completely self-assured tone crept a quality of puzzlement. It was so unexpected and incongruous a change that Jinx, up to this point completely fascinated, was startled like one rudely awakened from deep sleep. ‘It is very dark—’ There was a long pause. The same voice resumed, ‘What is this, Frimbo?’ Again a pause; then: ‘Strange how suddenly it grows dark. Frimbo—’ Bewilderment dilated into dismay. ‘Frimbo! Frimbo! Why do you not see?’

The voice of a man struck suddenly blind could not have been imbued with greater horror. So swift and definite was the transition that the alarmed Jinx could only grip the arms of his chair and stare hard. And despite the glaring beam, he saw a change in the figure beyond the table. That part of the shadow that had corresponded to the head seemed now to be but half its original size.

In a sudden frenzy of terror, Jinx jumped up and reached for the hanging light. Quickly he swung it around and tilted it so that the luminous shaft fell on the seated figure. What he saw was a bare black head, inclined limply sidewise, the mouth open, the eyes fixed, staring from under drooping lids.

He released the light, wheeled, and fled back to summon Bubber.

All this Jinx rehearsed in detail, making clear by implication or paraphrase those ideas whose original wording he was otherwise unable to describe or pronounce. The doctor emitted a low whistle of amazement; the detective, incredulous, said:

‘Wait a minute. Let me get this straight. You mean to say that Frimbo actually talked to you, as you have related?’

‘’Deed he did.’

‘You’re sure that it was Frimbo talking to you?’

‘Jest as sure as I am that you’re talkin’ to me now. He was right where you is.’

‘And when he tried to prophesy what would happen to you a few days hence, he couldn’t?’

‘Look like sump’m come over him all of a sudden—claim he couldn’t see. And when he seen he couldn’t see, he got scared-like and hollered out jes’ like I said: “Frimbo—why don’t you see?”’

‘Then you say you tried to see him, and it looked as though his head had shrunken?’

‘Yes, suh.’

‘Evidently his head-piece had fallen off.’

‘His which?’

‘Did you hear any sound just before this—like a blow?’

‘Nope. Didn’t hear nothin’ but his voice. And it didn’t stop like it would if he’d been hit. It jes’ stopped like it would if he’d been tellin’ ’bout sump’m he’d been lookin’ at and then couldn’t see no more. Only it scared him sump’m terrible not to be able to see it. Maybe he scared himself to death.’

‘Hm. Yea, maybe he even scared up that wound on his head.’

‘Well, maybe me and Bubber did that.’

‘How?’

‘Carryin’ him downstairs. We was in an awful hurry. His head might ’a’ hit sump’m on the way down.’

‘But,’ said Dart, and Jinx couldn’t know this was baiting, ‘if he was dead, that wound wouldn’t have bled, even as little as it did.’

‘Maybe,’ Jinx insisted, ‘it stopped because he died jes’ about that time—on the way down.’

‘You seem very anxious to account for his death, Jenkins.’

‘Humph,’ Jinx grunted. ‘You act kind o’ anxious yourself, seems like to me.’

‘Yes. But there is this difference. By your own word, you were present and the only person present when Frimbo died. I was half a mile away.’

‘So what?’

‘So that, while I’m as anxious as you are to account for this man’s death, I am anxious for perhaps quite a different reason. For instance, I could not possibly be trying to prove my own innocence by insisting he died a natural death.’

Jinx’s memory was better than Bubber’s.

‘I ain’t heard nobody say for sho’ he was killed yet,’ said he.

‘No? Well then, listen. We know that this man was murdered. We know that he was killed deliberately by somebody who meant to do a good job—and succeeded.’

‘And you reckon I done it?’ There was no surprise in Jinx’s voice, for he had long had the possibility in mind.

‘I reckon nothing. I simply try to get the facts. When enough facts are gathered, they’ll do all the reckoning necessary. One way of getting the facts is from the testimony of people who know the facts. The trouble with that is that anybody who knows the facts might have reasons for lying. I have to weed out the lies. I’m telling you this to show you that if you are innocent, you can best defend yourself by telling the truth, no matter how bad it looks.’

‘What you think I been doin’?’

‘You’ve been telling a queer story, part of which we know to be absolutely impossible—unless—’ The detective entertained a new consideration. ‘Listen. What time did you come into this room—as nearly as you can judge?’

‘Musta been ’bout—’bout five minutes to eleven.’

‘How long did Frimbo talk to you?’

‘’Bout five or six minutes I guess.’

‘That would be eleven o’clock. Then you got Bubber. Dr Archer, what time were you called?’

‘Three minutes past eleven—according to the clock on my radio.’

‘Not a lot of time—three minutes—Bubber took three minutes to get you and get back. During those three minutes Jenkins was alone with the dead man.’

‘Not me,’ denied Jinx. ‘I was out there in the hall right at the head o’ the stairs where the doc found me—wonderin’ what the hell was keepin’ ’em so long.’ This was so convincingly ingenuous that the physician agreed with a smile. ‘He was certainly there when I got here.’

‘During those few minutes, Jenkins, when you were here alone, did you see or hear anything peculiar?’

‘No, ’ndeed. The silence liked to drown me.’

‘And when you came back in this room with the doctor, was everything just as you left it?’

‘Far as I could see.’

‘M-m. Listen, doc. Did you leave the body at all from the time you first saw it until I got here?’

‘No. Not even to phone the precinct—I had the two men do it.’

‘Funny,’ Dart muttered. ‘Damn funny.’ For a moment he meditated the irreconcilable points in Jinx’s story—the immobility of Frimbo’s figure, from which nevertheless the turban had fallen, the absence of any sound of an attack, yet a sudden change in Frimbo’s speech and manner just before he was discovered dead; the remoteness of any opportunity—except for Jinx himself—to reach the prostrate victim, cram that handkerchief in place, and depart during the three minutes when Jinx claimed to be in the hall, without noticeably disturbing the body; and the utter impossibility of any man’s talking, dead or alive, when his throat was plugged with that rag which the detective’s own eyes had seen removed. Clearly Jenkins was either mistaken in some of the statements he made so positively or else he was lying. If he was lying he was doing so to protect himself, directly or indirectly. In other words, if he was lying, either he knew who committed the crime or he had committed it himself. Only further evidence could indicate the true and the false in this curious chronicle.

And so Dart said, rather casually, as if he were asking a favour, ‘Have you a handkerchief about you, Mr Jenkins?’

‘’Tain’t what you’d call strictly clean,’ Jinx obligingly reached into his right-hand coat pocket, ‘but—’ He stopped. His left hand went into his left coat pocket. Both hands came out and delved into their respective trousers pockets. ‘Guess I must ’a’ dropped it,’ he said. ‘I had one.’

‘You’re sure you had one?’

‘M’hm. Had it when I come here.’

‘When you came into this room?’

‘No. When I first went in the front room. I was a little nervous-like. I wiped my face with it. I think I put it—’

‘Is that the last time you recall having it—when you first went into the front room?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Can you describe it?’

Perhaps this odd insistence on anything so unimportant as a handkerchief put Jinx on his guard. At any rate he dodged.

‘What difference it make?’

‘Can you describe it?’

‘No.’

‘No? Why can’t you?’

‘Nothin’ to describe. Jes’ a plain big white handkerchief with a—’ He stopped.

‘With a what?’

‘With a hem,’ said Jinx.

‘Hm.’

‘Yea—hem.’

‘A white hem?’

‘It wasn’ no black one,’ said Jinx, in typical Harlemese.

The detective fell silent a moment, then said:

‘All right, Jenkins. That’s all for the present. You go back to the front room.’

Officer Brady escorted Jinx out, and returned.

‘Brady, tell Green, who is up front, to take note of everything he overhears those people in there say. You come back here.’

Obediently, Officer Brady turned away.

‘Light!’ called Dart, and the bluecoat in the hall pressed the switch that turned on the extension light.