Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination (6 page)

In the case of Saito, there was one major point which worked to his great disadvantage. This was that he was extremely weak by nature and, completely terrorized by the stern atmosphere of the court, he was unable to answer even the simplest questions without first stuttering and stammering and showing all the symptoms of a man with a guilty conscience. Furthermore, in his excited state, he often retracted his previous statements, forgot vital details, and then tried to cover up by making other contradictory remarks, all of which tended only to incriminate him further and further. Simultaneously, there was another factor which tortured him and drove him to the verge of insanity. This was the fact that he
was
guilty of having stolen half of the old woman's money, precisely as Fukiya had theorized.

The district attorney carefully summed up the evidence, circumstantial as it was, against Saito, and pitied him deeply. It could not be denied that all the odds were against him. But, Kasamori asked himself again and again, had this weak, blubbering fool been capable of committing such a vicious, cold-blooded murder? He doubted it So far Saito had not confessed, and conclusive proof of his guilt was still lacking.

A month went by, but the preliminary probe had not yet been completed. The district attorney became decidedly annoyed and impatient at the slow pace of the investigation.

"Curse the slow-grinding wheels of the law!" he exploded to a subordinate one day, while rechecking his documents on the case for what was probably the hundredth time. "At this rate, it'll take us a thousand years to solve the case." He then strode angrily to another desk and picked up a sheaf of routine documents filled out by the captain of the police station in whose jurisdiction the murder of the old lady fell. He looked casually at one of the papers and noticed that a purse containing ninety-five thousand yen in thousand-yen notes had been found at a spot near the old lady's house on the same day of the murder. The finder of the money, he further learned from the report, was a student, Fukiya by name, and a close friend of Saito's, the key murder suspect! For some reason—possibly because of the urgency of other duties—the police captain had failed to submit his report earlier.

After finishing reading the report, Kasamori's eyes lit up with a strange glow. For a full month now he had felt like a person fumbling in the dark. And then came this information, like a thin ray of light. Could it have any significance, any bearing on the case at hand? He decided to find out without delay.

Fukiya was quickly summoned, and the district attorney questioned him closely. After a full hour's questioning, however, Kasamori found he was getting nowhere. Asked as to why he had not mentioned the incident of his finding the purse when he had been interrogated previously in connection with the murder, Fukiya maintained calmly that he had not thought the matter to have any bearing on the case.

This reply, given straightforwardly, sounded most reasonable, for the money believed to have belonged to the old lady had been found in Saito's possession. Naturally, therefore, who could have imagined that the money found on the street was also a part of the old lady's property?

Nevertheless, Kasamori was deeply puzzled. Was it nothing but a mere coincidence that the very man who was a close friend of Saito's, the leading suspect, the man who, according to Saito's testimony in court, had also known where the old lady had hidden her money, had picked up so large a sum at a spot not far from the place where the murder had been committed? Here, indeed, was a conundrum worthy of the mind of a master sleuth.

Struggling angrily with the problem, the district attorney cursed the unfortunate fact that the serial numbers of the banknotes had not been recorded by the old woman. Had they been recorded, it would have been a most simple task to verify whether the money found by Fukiya was part of the same loot.

"If only I could find one single clue," he kept repeating to himself.

In the days that followed, Kasamori revisited the scene of the crime and talked to the victim's relatives, going over the same ground again and again, but all to no avail. He had to admit that he was up against a wall, with not a single tangible clue to follow up.

So far as he could see, the only possible way in which he could explain the episode of Fukiya's finding the purse was that the man had stolen half of the old lady's savings, left the remainder in the hiding place, put the stolen money in a purse, and pretended that he had found it on the street. But was it really possible that such a fantastic thing could have been done? The purse, of course, had been subjected to the closest scrutiny and placed under a microscope for even the faintest of possible clues, but all these efforts had proved negative. Also, according to Fukiya's own statement, he had taken a walk on the day of the murder; in fact, he had even admitted that he had passed the old lady's house. Would a man who was guilty be so bold as to make such a dangerous admission? And then, what about the weapon which had been used to stab the old woman? The entire house and garden as well as the surrounding area within a large radius had been searched with a fine-tooth comb, but there was not a trace of it.

In the absence of conclusive evidence to the contrary, Kasamori felt that the police were justified in pointing to Saito as the most likely suspect. But then again, the district attorney reasoned, if Saito could be guilty, so could Fukiyal Thus, after an investigation which had stretched out to a full month and a half, the only point which had been established was that there were two possible suspects, but without a shred of concrete evidence to convict either.

Reaching this impasse, Kasamori decided there was still one other method he could use in his attempt to break the case. This was to subject the two suspects to a psychological test—a method which had been useful in the past.

When he had first been questioned by the police, two or three days after the murder, Fukiya had learned that the district attorney who had been put in charge of the case was the noted amateur psychologist Kasamori, and the information filled him with panic. Cool and collected as he had been until then, he soon came to dread the very sound of the district attorney's name, especially after he had been summoned a second time and questioned by Kasamori himself. Supposing, just supposing, he were to be subjected to a psychological test. What then? Would he be able to hold his own in the face of such an experiment, the nature of which he knew absolutely nothing about?

The shock of this possibility was so stunning that he became too uneasy to attend his classes. He remained in his room, on the pretext of illness, and tried desperately to figure out how he could match wits for wits. Of course, there was absolutely no way of anticipating the form of psychological test that Kasamori might employ. Fukiya, therefore, applied all the test methods he could possibly imagine on himself in order to discover the best possible way to circumvent them. Since a psychological test, by nature, was a method applied to reveal all false statements, Fukiya's first thought was that it would be utterly impossible to lie his way out of such a test.

Fukiya knew there were psychological tests which used lie-detector devices to record physical reactions. He had also heard that there was a simpler method which used a stop watch to measure the time it took a suspect to answer questions. Reflecting upon the many and various psychological methods of crime detection, Fukiya became more and more concerned. Supposing he were caught by a surprise question like "You're the one who killed the old woman, aren't you?" fired at him point-blank? Fukiya felt confident that he would be able to shoot back calmly: "What proof do you have for such a wild supposition?" But if a lie detector were to be used, wouldn't it record his startled state of mind? Wouldn't it be absolutely impossible for a normal human being to prevent such physical reactions?

Fukiya tried asking himself various hypothetical questions. Strangely, no matter how unexpected his questions were, when they were addressed
to himself by himself,
he could not imagine that they produced any physical changes within him. Gradually he became convinced that so long as he avoided becoming nervously excited, he would be safe even in the face of the most accurate instrument.

While conducting these various experiments on himself, Fukiya suddenly became convinced that the effects of a psychological test might be neutralized by training. He became sure that the reaction of a man's nerves to a pointed question would become less each time the question was repeated. Granting that his reasoning was sound, Fukiya told himself, the best method of neutralization was to become accustomed to the questions. He reasoned that his own questions to himself produced no reaction because he already knew both question and answer before he spoke.

Fukiya painstakingly began to examine every page of a thick dictionary and to jot down those words which might possibly be used in questions to be thrown at him. For a full week he spent most of his waking hours this way, training his nerves against all possible questions. Then, feeling that his mind had been fairly well fortified in this field, he turned to another. This was the word-association test, which Fukiya knew psychiatrists used widely in examining patients.

As Fukiya understood it, the patient—or accused—would be told to answer any word given him with the first word that came to his mind, and then the examiner would call off a list of words with absolutely no bearing on the case—"screen," "desk," "ink," "pen," and the like. The significance of the test lay in the fact that the word given in reply would have some mental association with the previously recited word. For example, if the word happened to be "screen," the culprit might come out with such words as "window," "window sill," "paper," or "door." And in the course of the test such incriminating words as "knife," "money," or "purse" would be slipped in so as to befuddle the accused in his association of ideas.

In Fukiya's case, for instance, if he were not on his guard, he might reply "money" to "dwarf tree," thereby unconsciously admitting that he knew money to have been stolen from the pot of the tree. On the other hand, if he prepared for the ordeal in advance, he could answer with a harmless word like "earthernware" instead of "money." Then, of course, he would be in the clear.

Fukiya knew that, in conducting the "word diagnosis," the exact time elapsing between question and answer was always recorded. If, for example, the accused said "door" in reply to "screen" in one second and then took three seconds to say "earthernware" in reply to "dwarf tree," it could be inferred that the man had taken more time to frame the second reply in order to suppress the first idea which leaped to his mind. Such a time discrepancy, of course, would arouse suspicion.

Fukiya also reasoned that if he were given a word test, it would be far safer to answer in the most obviously natural manner. He, therefore, decided that in reply to "dwarf tree" he would say either "pine" or "money" because, even if he had not been the culprit, the police would know that he would be sufficiently acquainted with the facts of the crime for this to be a natural answer for him to give. One question, however, called for deeper thought. This was the matter of timing. But he felt that this too could be managed by careful training. The important thing was that if a word like "dwarf tree" was fired at him, he should be able to reply "money" or "pine" without a moments hesitation.

For several days Fukiya worked hard at training himself, until finally he felt that he could satisfactorily pass the strictest test. Furthermore, he derived immense consolation from the knowledge that Saito, although innocent of the murder, would also be exposed to the same volley of questions, and would certainly exhibit a similar degree of nervousness.

The more Fukiya considered all these possibilities, the greater became his sense of security and self-confidence. In fact, now that he was once again feeling completely at ease, he was able to whistle and sing, and even to wish strongly for a summons from District Attorney Kasamori.

It was the day after the district attorney had subjected both suspects to psychological tests, and Kasamori was in his study at home, busily going over the results of the tests. Suddenly his maid announced that he had a visitor.

Literally buried under his papers, the district attorney was in no mood to play host, so he growled impatiently to his servant: "Kindly tell whoever it is that I'm too busy to see anyone today."

"Yes, sir," the maid replied obediently, but as she turned, the door suddenly opened, and the caller popped his head in playfully.

"Good afternoon, Mr. District Attorney," the caller said cheerfully, ignoring the startled look of the servant. "Don't tell me you're too busy even to see your old friend Akechi."

Kasamori dropped his pince-nez and looked up sharply. But immediately his face broadened into a happy grin.

"Why, hello, Dr. Akechi," he replied. "I didn't know it was you. Forgive me. Step right in and make yourself comfortable. As a matter of fact, I was hoping you'd drop in."

Kasamori dismissed the maid with a grunt and motioned to his guest to be seated. A sleuth with a mind keen as a razor and a unique technique for solving knotty problems, Dr. Kogoro Akechi was the one man whom the district attorney would have stopped to talk to even if he had been on his way to catch a train. On several previous occasions he had asked for Dr. Akechi's cooperation in cracking what had been labeled "impossible cases," and in every instance the man had lived up to his reputation as one of Japan's most remarkable detectives.

After lighting a cigarette, Dr. Akechi nodded meaningfully toward the stacks of papers on the district attorney's desk.