The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries Part 55

"I hope not, Baas. This Heston was a bad man."

"All the same, it is not right that he should be killed. The murderer must be punished."

Two sharp bells rang in the driver's cabin. The car began to move. Ben went through the door up the stairs and stood in the cabin with Clobber and Johnson. They saw Rolf lean over and wave with an exaggerated gesture.

Clobber reached to lift a pair of binoculars, but Johnson gripped his arm. "Wait. Did you pick them up at this stage the first time?"

"No. I only used them after the emergency brake was applied,"

"Then leave them alone now."

They watched the two cars crawling slowly across s.p.a.ce towards each other.

In the ascending car Dimble peered approvingly at the one which was descending. "That's right," he said to Botha. "He's leaning over the door exactly as Heston . . . Good G.o.d!"

He pulled the emergency brake. Mrs Orvin sobbed and then screamed.

The telephone rang. Botha clapped the instrument to his ear.

"Everything OK?" asked Johnson.

"No!" said Botha, "no! Something's happened to Rolf. There's a knife sticking out of his back. It looks like the same knife . . ."

From the lower station Joubert cut in excitedly. "What are you saying, Botha? It's impossible . . ."

"It's true, Inspector. I can see it quite clearly from here. And he's not moving . . ."

"Get him down here," said Joubert. "Quick!"

The cars moved again.

In the driver's cabin Johnson, through powerful binoculars, watched the car with the sagging figure go down, down, losing sight of it only as it entered the lower station.

Joubert, with Brander, stood on the landing-stage watching the approaching car. He felt suddenly lost and bewildered and angry.

"Oom Rolf," he muttered.

Brander's eyes were sombre with awe. "The Lord has given," he said, "and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord."

He and Joubert stepped forward as the car b.u.mped to a stop.

The head of the corpse with the knife in its back suddenly twisted, grinned, said gloatingly: "April fool!"

Brander shivered into shocked action. His arms waved in an ecstacy of panic. His bandaged left hand gripped the hilt of the knife held between Rolf's left arm and his body, and raised it high in a convulsive gesture. Rolf twisted away, but his movement was unnecessary. Joubert had acted, too.

Brander struggled, but only for a second. Then he stood meekly peering in myopic surprise at the handcuffs clicking round his wrists.

"And that is how Heston was killed," said Rolf. "He died because he remembered today was April the first All Fools Day and because he had that type of mind, he thought of a joke, and he played it to the bitter end. A joke on Clobber, on the people in the ascending car, on Brander.

"But to Brander it was not a joke it was horror incarnate. A dead man come to life. This was infinitely more terrible than the dream he feared of a knock from a coffin. This was like the very lid being suddenly flung open in his face. And his reaction was the typical response to panic when there is no escape a wild uncontrollable aggression, striking out in every direction as he struck out at me when the unthinkable happened again.

"The first time he plunged the knife into Heston. The joke became reality. The dead stopped walking.

"And now you see why there were no fingerprints on the knife. Brander is left-handed he reached for the hot iron with that hand, remember. So it was burnt and bandaged. Bandages no fingerprints. The way Heston was crouched, too, explains the angle of the wound."

Joubert said: "So it was not premeditated after all." Then, to Brander: "Why did you not tell the truth?"

Brander said, meekly: "Who would believe the truth?" Then, louder, with undertones of a new hysteria: "The dead are dead. They must rest in peace. Always rest. They are from h.e.l.l if they walk . . ."

Then he mumbled, and his voice tailed off as he raised his eyes, and his gaze saw far beyond the mountain and the blue of the sky.

The Poisoned Bowl Forrest Rosaire Forrest Rosaire (190277), who also wrote under the name J.J. des Ormeaux, is little remembered today. Originally in the oil industry, he settled in California from Chicago in the 1930s and turned to writing. He appeared regularly in both the pulps and slick magazines producing a number of high quality crime or suspense stories. He continued writing until the 1950s but did not make the transition fully to the book market. He published only three books, East of Midnight (1945), Uneasy Years (1950) and White Night (1956), the last his only straight suspense novel in book form. He is another of those writers whose talents have been forgotten. The following, which betrays some of the pulp stereotypes of the day, is nevertheless ingeniously plotted and keeps you guessing to the end.

I.

All kinds of people came into the welfare office, and Sandra Grey was so well versed in the diverse aspects of human misery that nothing much surprised her. But this visitor did. Both physically and by contrast. She had closed up her desk and was putting on her hat after a long day when his voice from the doorway made her jump.

"I say, is this where I'm to leave this?"

Sandra turned and saw a big-shouldered, floridly handsome man in an expensive raglan topcoat. He was holding in his arms a tiny ragged child awkwardly, in the way men do who do not know how to handle babies.

Sandra stared at him. For a second she was completely at a loss his appearance, the child, the request. In his turn the man stared at her. Sandra was enough to take any man aback. He looked jerkily around, as if he could not connect the drab office, with its heaps of cast-off clothing, boxes of canned goods, bushel baskets of shoes, with this radiant, slim, smart girl, whose wide brown eyes were like deep velvet.

He said uncertainly: "This is the welfare office, isn't it?"

"Yes," said Sandra. "What's the trouble?"

He nodded his big florid face at the child. "I found this boy down in the building entry with a note on him. I stopped in at the clinic downstairs and they said to bring him up here, or to call the police."

"Oh!" said Sandra.

She stepped quickly across, took the boy from him. He was a little, laughing, curly-headed fellow, no more than three at the most. He reached up a chubby hand, experimentally took hold of the end of Sandra's nose.

"What a darling!" Sandra sat him down on her desk. He had wide gentian-colored eyes, bright with a baby's mischief. He began chuckling to himself, exploring in a tall basket of shoes beside the desk. Sandra's eyes flashed up to the stranger. "A note! You mean-"

"He's abandoned."

"Oh, how terrible!" Sandra had found the note by now, sewed into the ragged collar of his thin blouse. It read simply, in crude printing: "Be good to him."

Sandra felt compa.s.sion well up, an ache in her heart. "How could anyone abandon such a darling?"

The man shook his head. He had an abrupt, awkward manner, entirely out of keeping with his air of breeding, his expensively tailored clothes, his big, impressive handsomeness. He said gruffly: "What will you do with him?"

Sandra shook her head. "Take him to the orphanage, I suppose." She took her slip-over sweater from a chair, began to roll it up. "I'll drop him off on my way home. Thank you for bringing him up, Mr-"

"Gawdy."

"Mr Gawdy." Sandra decided the name aptly described his type of handsomeness. His ruddy face was too high-colored, his eyes too brightly blue, his topcoat too brilliantly golden.

She slipped the sweater over the boy's head. A sudden, curiously sharp feeling of fear caught her. She realized afterward it was an intuition: if she had only caught up the child, sweater and all, rushed away with him, out of the office, away, away, anywhere-she might have avoided the horrible event looming so close at hand. Instead she went on pulling the chubby little hands through the knitted sleeves. The big man cleared his throat.

"I'd kind of like to give something, to give him a help along." He was fishing in a shark-skin billfold.

"Oh, thank you," said Sandra. "That's generous of you. I'll see that it-"

There was a knock on the jamb of the open door.

Sandra turned. A Chinese stood there, young, moon faced, bland, dressed in a loud herringbone suit with a snap-brimmed hat jauntily on the back of his head. He immediately started to back out.

"So sorry. You are busy."

"No, no, come in; don't mind me," said the big man. He sat down, as if interested to observe the workings of a welfare office.

The Chinese came in. He had a squat and powerful body, that rippled with the same smooth blandness, the same easy suavity, as his voice.

"You are Miss Sandra Grey?"

"Yes."

The Chinese creased his almond eyes. "I have come to beg your indulgence, Miss Grey. A very great favor. Having heard of your generosity, which is indeed a byword in the neighborhood" he creased his eyes still more "I have come to ask your help in a distressing family matter."

His English was perfect, impeccable, as smooth as oil. He gestured slightly with two squat fingers, between which was an unlighted gold-tipped cigarette.

"I am here in behalf of my uncle, an old man who speaks only Cantonese. The matter concerns his daughter-my cousin a young lady who has disappeared after a violent family quarrel. I have come to ask if you, Miss Grey, will find her."

Sandra blinked. "You want me to find your cousin?"

The Chinese lifted his squat shoulders, dropped them. His bland smile was sad. "You are our last hope."

"Won't you sit down, Mr-"

"Dow."

Mr Dow did not sit down, but lighted the gold-tipped cigarette, which emitted a rank odor of violet. "The old man is heartbroken. If he could only get this message to her, asking her to return, he would be happy." He took from his pocket a bamboo tube, gave it to Sandra. "In this, after the Cantonese fashion, is the individual plea of every member of the family. If you could get it to her, you would make an old man happy, reunite a family."

Sandra turned over the tube. It was about ten inches long and sealed elaborately at one end with red sealing wax, in which a gold cord was embedded to break the wax. She said uncertainly: "I don't know how I could locate her."

"I believe she has taken a job through an employment agency called the Acme. Unfortunately she has left instructions not to tell her whereabouts to any of her race, so my efforts with the Acme are fruitless. I believe she has a job as housemaid; and for you, Miss Grey, I am sure the Acme-"

The big figure of Gawdy showed a sudden interest. "What's that? I have some friends who have a Chinese housemaid."

"Indeed." Dow's round face turned in polite surprise.

"Their name is Delaunay." Gawdy spelled it. "I can give you their address."

"Thank you." Dow's smile was faintly deprecatory. "There are, of course, many Chinese girls in service. But the Acme could verify it for you, Miss Grey."

"What is your cousin's name?"

"Helen Ying."

"I'll try to locate her for you, Mr Dow."

"The lady is as generous as she is lovely." Dow's creased eyes inclined over his cigarette. "I will stop in myself, tomorrow, to learn if you have any success. Permit me to depart in the American manner."

He extended his hand, and as Sandra took it, she felt he was palming something in it. She looked down at her hand in surprise, and as she looked up again, the Chinese was gone. Gawdy was staring after him.

"Queer customer," he said. "See here. I'm going by the Delaunays' and-"

"What on earth-" Sandra was staring at what Dow had left in her hand. It was a compact, compressed, folded square of paper. She unfolded it, saw a rice-paper envelope, carefully sealed. On it was typed: Give this to her employer.

Sandra red lips parted. "Give this to her employer!" Her eyes flashed to Gawdy. "Look. He gave me this. He must mean, give it to his cousin's employer!"

Gawdy was staring at it. "He gave that to you?"

"Yes, slipped it in my hand as he was going out!"

"Well, I'll be-" Gawdy got up. "See here. He looked shady to me. Open it, see what it says!"

A piercing scream rent their ears.

They whirled. The little boy had picked up the bamboo tube, hammered it on the desk, knocked the sealing wax loose. Liquid, spurting from it like a geyser, sprayed over his knees and feet, fuming, bubbling, viscous liquid.

"Great G.o.d!" cried Sandra. "Acid!"

It was a moment that would remain stamped on her soul as long as she lived. She saw his creamy flesh, his little knees, quivering, contracting, under that searing, slow-crawling flood. She caught his little body in her arms, bucking, wild, convulsive, screaming as only a child can in unendurable pain. Sandra hardly knew what she was doing. She heard Gawdy yell, "Get that Chinaman!" and dash out the door like a bull. She ran headlong at the gla.s.s water cooler, plunged the boy's feet and knees into the deluge of water. The choking fumes caught at her, throat-tearing, strangling. She whirled, burst through the door, went like an arrow downstairs toward the clinic one flight below.

She didn't know who was there, whom she plunged through. She saw the white blot of a doctor's ap.r.o.n.

"Acid! Acid! He's burned!"

Strong hands took the boy from her. Other hands guided her, made her sit down. She was blinded, choking and coughing from the fumes. For a time she could only gag, try to catch her breath, listen to that unendurable screaming. A nurse she knew had her by both shoulders.

"Sandra! Are you all right?"

"Yes, yes." The screaming had stopped. She saw the doctor's white form, caught at him. "Will he live? Will he-"

"Yes. You got him in water; best thing you could do." The doctor's eyes were tight. "I've given him morphine. It was sulphuric acid. How did it ever get on the child?"

Sandra heard herself trying to explain. It sounded garbled, impossible. Her mind was still stunned, uncollected. Acid was in that tube the bland, suave Dow had given her. Her brain was a maze of horror.

The doctor was aghast. "He was sending sulphuric acid by you to a girl?"

"Yes, yes. A Chinese housemaid who-"

For the first time she opened her clenched right hand, saw the rice-paper envelope still clutched in it. It acted on her like an electric shock. "Give this to her employer."

She sprang up, so abruptly she almost pushed the nurse over. Her eyes were not like velvet now, but like tawny flame.