Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination (8 page)

"Are you absolutely sure of this?" Dr. Akechi quickly asked. "Remember now, the damage I mean is a scratch on the face of Komachi painted on the screen."

"Yes, yes, I know," Fukiya said emphatically. "And Im positive, I tell you, that there was no scratch, neither on the face of the beautiful Komachi nor anywhere else. If it had been damaged in any way, I'm sure I could not have failed to notice it."

"Well, then, would you mind making an affidavit?" Dr. Akechi shot back. "You see, the owner of the screen is very insistent in his demand, and I find it very difficult to deal with him."

"Not at all," Fukiya said, in his most cooperative tone. "I would be most willing to make an affidavit any time you say."

Dr. Akechi thanked the student with a smile, then scratched his head, a habit of his whenever he was excited. "And now," he continued, "I think you can admit that you know a great deal about the screen, because in the record of your psychological test, I noticed that you replied 'screen' to picture.' A screen, as you know, is something rare in a student boardinghouse."

Fukiya was surprised at Dr. Akechi's new tone. He wondered what the devil the man was trying to get at.

Again the man who had been introduced as a lawyer addressed him. "By the way," he said, "there was still another point which came to my attention. When the psychological test was conducted yesterday, there were eight highly significant danger words on the list. You, of course, passed the test without a hitch. In fact, in my opinion, it went off altogether
too
smoothly. With your permission I'd like to have you take a look at your record on those eight key words."

Dr. Akechi produced the tabulation of the results and said: "You took little less time to answer the key words than the insignificant words. For example, in answer to 'dwarf tree,' you said 'pine' in only six-tenths of a second. This indicates remarkable innocence. Note that you took one-tenth of a second longer to answer to the word "green," which of all the twenty-eight words on the list is generally the easiest to respond to."

Not quite understanding Dr. Akechi's motive, Fukiya began to wonder where all this talk was leading. Just what was this talkative lawyer up to, anyway, he asked himself with a shudder. He had to know, and quickly, for it might be a trap.

"'Dwarf tree,' 'oilpaper,' 'crime,' or any other of the eight key words are not nearly so easy to associate with other words as are such words as 'head' or 'green,'" Dr. Akechi continued tenaciously. "And yet, you managed to answer the difficult words quicker than the easier ones. What does it all mean? This is what puzzled me all along. But now, let me try to guess exactly what was in your mind. Really, you know, it might prove to be quite amusing. Of course, if I'm wrong, I humbly beg your pardon."

Fukiya felt a cold shiver run down his spine. This weird business was now really beginning to prey on his nerves. But before he could even attempt to interrupt, Dr. Akechi began speaking again.

"Surely you have been well aware all along of the dangers of a psychological test," he insisted to Fukiya. "I take it, therefore, that you prepared yourself for the test well in advance. For example, for all words associated with the crime, you carefully drafted ready-made replies, so that you could recite them at a moment's notice. Now, please don't misunderstand, Mr. Fukiya. I am not trying to criticize the method you adopted. I only want to point out that a psychological test is a dangerous experiment on occasions. More often than not, it snares the innocent, and frees the guilty."

Dr. Akechi paused to let the hidden implications of his statements sink in, then he resumed again.

"You, Mr. Fukiya, made the fatal mistake of making your preparations with too much cunning. When you were confronted with the test, you spoke too fast. This, of course, was only natural, because you were afraid that if you took too much time in answering the questions, you would be suspected. But. . .you overdid it!"

Dr. Akechi paused again, noting with grim satisfaction that Fukiya's face was turning a sickly grey. Then he continued his summation:

"I come now to another significant phase of the test. Why did you choose to reply with such words as 'money,' 'conceal,' and 'murder'—all words which were liable to incriminate you? I will tell you. It was because you purposely wanted to make out that you were naive. Am I not right, Fukiya? Isn't my reasoning sound?"

Fukiya stared with glassy eyes at the face of his tormentor. He tried hard to look away, to evade the cold, accusing eyes of Dr. Akechi; but for some reason he found he couldn't. It appeared to Kasamori as though Fukiya had been caught in a hypnotic trance and was unable to manifest any emotion other than fear.

"This seeming innocence of yours," Dr. Akechi continued, "just did not strike me as being truly genuine. So I thought up the idea of asking you about the gold screen. Of course, the answer you gave was exactly the one I anticipated."

Dr. Akechi suddenly turned to the district attorney. "Now, I want to ask you a simple question, Mr. District Attorney. Just
when
was the screen brought into the house of the old woman?"

"The day before the crime, on the fourth of last month," Kasamori replied.

"The day before the crime
, did you say?" Dr. Akechi repeated loudly. "But that's very strange. Mr. Fukiya just stated a moment ago that he saw it
two days before
the crime was committed, which was the third of last month. Furthermore, he was very positive as to where he had seen it—in the very room where the old woman was murdered! Now, this is all very contradictory. Surely, one of you two must be mistaken!"

"Mr. Fukiya must be the one who has made the miscalculation," observed the district attorney with a sly grin. "Until the afternoon of the fourth the screen was at the house of the owner. There is no question about it!"

Dr. Akechi watched Fukiya's face with rapt interest, for the expression that the latter now wore was akin to that of a little girl on the verge of tears.

Suddenly Dr. Akechi pointed an accusing finger at the student, and demanded sharply. "Why did you say you saw something which you could not have seen? It's really too bad that you had to remember the classical painting, because by doing so you have betrayed yourself! In your anxiety to pretend to tell the truth, you even tried to elaborate on the details. Isn't this so, Fukiya? Could you have noticed that there was no folding screen in the room when you entered it two days before the crime? No, you certainly would not have paid any attention to such a detail, because it had nothing to do with your plans. Furthermore, I think that even if it had been there, it would not have attracted your attention, because the room was elaborately decorated with various other paintings and antiques of a similar nature. So it was quite natural for you to assume that the screen which you saw on the day of the crime must have been there two days previously. My questions bewildered you, so you accepted their implications. Now, had you been an ordinary criminal, you would not have answered as you did. You would have tried to deny knowing anything about anything. But I had you sized up from the very beginning as being a real intellectual, and as such, I knew you would try to be as outspoken as possible so long as you did not touch upon anything dangerous. But I anticipated your moves, and played my hand accordingly."

Dr. Akechi then broke out into loud, boisterous laughter. "Too bad," he said sarcastically to the crestfallen Fukiya, "that you had to be trapped by a humble lawyer like myself."

Fukiya remained silent, knowing that it would be useless to try and talk his way out. Clever as he was, he realized that any attempt to correct the fatal slip he had made would only drag him deeper and deeper into the pit of doom.

After a long silence, Dr. Akechi spoke again. "Can you hear the scratching of pen against paper, Fukiya? A police stenographer in the next room has been recording everything we've said here."

He called out to someone in the adjoining room, and a moment later a young stenographer entered the study, carrying a sheaf of papers.

"Please read your notes," Dr. Akechi requested.

The stenographer read the complete record, taken down word for word.

"Now, Mr. Fukiya," Dr. Akechi said, "I would appreciate it if you will kindly sign the document, and seal it with your fingerprint. Certainly you can have no objection, for you promised to testify regarding the screen at any time."

Meekly, Fukiya signed the record and sealed it with an imprint of his thumb. A few moments later, several detectives from police headquarters, summoned by the district attorney, led the confessed slayer away.

The show now over, Dr. Akechi turned to the district attorney. "As I have remarked before," he said, "Muensterberg was right when he said that the true merit of a psychological test lies in the discovery of whether or not a suspected person noticed any other person, or thing, at a certain place. In Fukiya's case, everything hinged on whether or not he had seen the screen. Apart from establishing that fact, no psychological test that you might have given Fukiya would have brought any remarkable results. Being the intellectual scoundrel he is, his mind was too well prepared to be defeated by any routine psychological questions."

Rising from his seat with the air of a professor leaving his class following a lengthy lecture, Dr. Akechi put on his hat, then paused briefly for a final statement.

"Just one more thing I would like to mention," he said with a smile. "In conducting a psychological test, there is no need for strange charts, machines, or word games. As discovered by the famous Judge Ooka, in the colorful days of eighteenth-century Tokyo, who frequently applied psychological tests based on mere questions and answers, it's not too difficult to catch criminals in psychological traps. But of course, you have to ask the right questions. Well, good night, Mr. District Attorney. And thanks for the refreshments."

                         CATERPILLAR

T
OKIKO SAID GOOD-BU, LEFT THE
main house, and went into the twilight through the wide, utterly neglected garden overgrown with weeds, toward the detached cottage where she and her husband lived. While walking, she recalled the conventional words of praise which had been again bestowed upon her a few moments ago by the retired major general who was the master of the main house.

Somehow she felt very queer, and a bitter taste much akin to that of broiled eggplant, which she positively detested, remained in her mouth.

"The loyalty and meritorious services of Lieutenant Sunaga are of course the boast of our Army," he had stated. (The old general was ludicrous enough to continue to dignify her disabled soldier husband with his old title.)

"As for you, however, your continued faithfulness has deprived you of all your former pleasures and desires. For three long years you have sacrificed everything for that poor crippled man, without emitting the faintest breath of complaint. You always contend that this is but the natural duty of a soldiers wife, and so it is. But I sometimes cannot help feeling that it's a cruel fate for a woman
to
endure, especially for a woman so very attractive and charming as you, and so young, too. I am quite struck with admiration. I honestly believe it to be one of the most stirring human-interest stories of the day. The question which still remains is: How long will it last? Remember, you still have quite a long future ahead of you. For your husband's sake, I pray that you will never change."

Old Major General Washio always liked to sing the praises of the disabled Lieutenant Sunaga (who had once been on his staff and was now his guest tenant) and his wife, so much so that it had become a well-rehearsed line of conversation whenever he saw her. But this was all extremely distasteful to Tokiko, and she tried to avoid the general as much as possible. Occasionally, when the tedium of life with her silent, crippled husband became unbearable, she would seek the company of the general's wife and daughter, but usually only after first making sure that the general was absent.

Secretly, she felt that her self-sacrificing spirit and rare faithfulness well deserved the old man's lavish praise, and at first this had tickled her vanity. But in those early days the whole arrangement had been a novelty. Then it had even been fun, in a way, to care for one so completely helpless as her husband.

Gradually, however, her self-satisfaction had begun to change into boredom, and then into fear. Now she shuddered whenever she was highly praised. She imagined she could see an accusing finger pointing at her, while in her ear she heard a sarcastic voice rasping: "Under the cloak of faithfulness you are leading a life of sin and treachery!"