The Tragedy of Z (30 page)

“Ah, but the murderer
did
open that envelope! The murderer, therefore, must have been our strong alternative—someone who would be interested, generally speaking, in investigating the contents of any note dealing with promotions in Algonquin. Someone, I say, connected with the prison.” He paused, and a stern shadow darkened his face. “Actually when I tell you who the murderer is, you will discover a more interesting reason than I've just pointed out. At present, however, I shall say no more than to lay down the general principle that the murderer was connected with the prison.

“One more deduction from the facts of the first crime. Prison routine, as I learned from Warden Magnus on one occasion, is rigid: keepers, for example, have regular shifts which are never varied. Our murderer, whom we have now shown to be connected with Algonquin Prison, committed the murder of Senator Fawcett—when?—at night. Therefore, whatever position he holds within these walls, it is evident that he is not on regular night-duty, otherwise he would not have been able to get away from here in time to commit the crime at Senator Fawcett's house. Therefore he must be someone either on regular
day
-duty, or someone without specified hours at all. All this is of the most elementary nature. Bear it in mind while I take up another tack.”

His voice was growing more incisive with every passing moment. And his face was settling into metallic lines. He looked everywhere about the room, and I saw several of the witnesses shrink a little on their hard benches. That grave resonant impersonal voice; the harsh brilliant light; the electric chair and its motionless occupant; the uniforms … I scarcely blamed them for feeling uncomfortable. My skin was prickling.

“And now,” resumed the old gentleman in quick clipped tones, “for the second crime. It was proper to assume that both crimes were linked: the second section of identical chest, Dow's connection with both, the blood-relationship between the two victims.… Now, Dow being innocent of the first murder, the presumption was that he was also innocent of the second; framed in the first, then framed in the second as well. Have we confirmation of this? Yes. Dow had never received a message from Dr. Ira Fawcett assigning Wednesday as the day to attempt escape from Algonquin. But Dow did receive a note, presumably from Fawcett, appointing Thursday as the day to attempt escape. This means, simply, that someone intercepted the original message from Fawcett (which we found on his desk at the scene of his murder), and sent a different message to Dow, appointing Thursday as the day of escape. The interceptor of the original Fawcett note—who could he be but the shadowy individual who from the beginning used Aaron Dow as a foil for his own nefarious activities; in a word, the framer of Dow?

“Then what have we? Confirmation that the conclusion—of the murderer's being connected with the prison—is correct. For the interception of the note is strong presumptive evidence that the affair was managed
in the prison
itself by someone who, knowing the prison underground system of smuggling messages in and out, intercepted Fawcett's note, retained it, and replaced it by his own, a forgery.

“But now we have come to the most significant element of the solution, gentlemen. Why should the murderer have desired to change the time of Dow's escape from Wednesday to Thursday? Since the murderer was intending to frame Dow for the murder of Dr. Ira Fawcett, and since Dow was innocent of Ira Fawcett's murder, it was necessary for the real murderer—mark this—to be able to kill Fawcett
on the night Dow was free
after his escape! If the murderer changed the day of escape from Wednesday to Thursday, it could only be because
he himself was not able to kill Dr. Fawcett
on Wednesday, but would be able to kill him on Thursday!” Drury Lane, lean face taut, brandished his forefinger. “Ha, why wasn't he free? you ask. We know from the first crime that he is not on night-duty at any time, and therefore should have been free to commit the crime on
any
night, let alone Wednesday night. The only possible answer”—he straightened up, and paused—“is that something other than the usual routine in the prison kept the murderer busy Wednesday night! But what happened in the prison Wednesday night, the night before Ira Fawcett was murdered, which was
not
the usual routine, which
would
keep an ordinary night-free person connected with the prison busy? I say to you, gentlemen, that this is the heart and brain of our case, and the conclusion is as immutable as a natural law. On that Wednesday night there was an electrocution in this very chamber of horrors, the electrocution of a man named Scalzi. And I say to you, further, that this conclusion is as inevitable as the Judgment Day:
The murderer of both Fawcetts was someone who had to be present at the electrocution of Scalzi!”

The room was roaring with the silence of intergalactic space. I was afraid to breathe, afraid to move my neck, afraid to shift my eyes. No one stirred; we must have looked like a collection of wax museum pieces under the burning eye of that vibrant old man who stood by the electric chair expounding, word by word, the story of a criminal and the tragedy of an impending doom.

“Let me list,” he said at last, without excitement and in a voice as cool as a stalactite, “the necessary qualifications of our murderer—qualifications drawn from the facts of the two crimes as sharply as the murderer himself engraved them upon the plate of time.

“One. The murderer is right-handed.

“Two. He is connected with Algonquin Prison.

“Three. He is not on regular night-duty.

“Four. He was present at the Scalzi electrocution.”

Again silence, and this time it was palpable and throbbing.

The old man smiled. “I see you are impressed. Particularly,” he continued suddenly, “since those who were present at the Scalzi electrocution, gentlemen, and who are connected with the prison are here tonight, in this very room! For I was informed by Warden Magnus that the personnel of Algonquin present at electrocutions is never changed.”

One of the guards made a hollow little sound, like a frightened child. Everyone mechanically looked at him, and then back at Drury Lane.

“And so,” said the old gentleman slowly, “we eliminate. Who were present at the Scalzi electrocution? Remember; our murderer must fit all four of the qualifications I have laid down.… ‘Twelve reputable citizens of full age,' witnesses required by law. You gentlemen, therefore,” he said to the rigid men on the benches, “need have no fear. None of you, by definition, is connected with the prison. You are civilian witnesses and as such, failing to measure up to Qualification Two, may be dismissed as possibilities.”

As one man the twelve on the two pew-like benches sighed, and several of them cautiously took out handkerchiefs and patted their damp brows.

“Three court officials, required by law to see that legal sentence of death is carried out. Eliminated for the same reason.”

The three men in question shuffled their feet.

“Seven prison-keepers. The same seven,” continued Drury Lane dreamily, “who were present at the Scalzi electrocution, I presume, if I did not mistake the warden's assertion.” He paused. “Out! You are all on regular night-duty—since you are always in attendance at executions, which in turn are always held at night—and this is directly counter to Qualification Three.
Ergo,
none of you is the murderer.”

One of the seven blue-clad men muttered something horrible beneath his breath. The tension in the air was growing unbearable; it crackled with emotional static. I glanced furtively at father; his neck was apoplectically red. The Governor stood still as a statue. Father Muir's eyes were glassy. Warden Magnus scarcely breathed.

“The executioner,” went on that calm, inexorable voice. “Out! I saw during the Scalzi electrocution—which fortunately I attended—that he threw the switch twice with his
left
hand. But the murderer, by Qualification One, is right-handed.”

I closed my eyes, and my heart stormed in my eardrums. The voice stopped; and when it resumed it was sharp again, full, ringing off the bare walls of that dreadful room. “The two physicians required by law to make sure that the electrocuted man is, in truth, dead.” He smiled wintrily. “It was my inability to eliminate you two gentlemen,” he said to the frozen men with the black bags, “which prevented me from solving this problem sooner. But today Fanny Kaiser supplied the clue which definitely eliminated both of you. Permit me to explain.

“The murderer, framing Dow for the murder of Dr. Fawcett, also knew that Dow was due to appear in that office shortly after his own departure. It was vitally necessary, then, for him to make sure that his victim was dead when he left, could not talk, could not give Dow—or anyone else who might unpredictably come—the name of the real murderer. The same was true in the murder of Senator Fawcett; the murderer there had struck twice; the first blow was not fatal, and he struck again. Making certain, you see.

“Now on Dr. Fawcett's wrist we found the bloody imprints of three fingers; and it was pointed out, rightfully, that the murderer must have felt the pulse of his victim after striking him down. Why? Obviously, to make sure his victim was dead. But observe the salient fact!” His voice rose in thunder. “The victim, despite the murderer's precaution of taking the pulse,
was nevertheless still alive when the murderer left;
for Fanny Kaiser, arriving on the scene a few moments later, saw Dr. Fawcett move and heard him exonerate Dow, although he died before he could disclose the real murderer's name.… How does this eliminate our two prison doctors present at the Scalzi electrocution—and tonight, you ask? In this way.

“Suppose one of these gentlemen had been the murderer. The crime took place
in a physician's office.
On the, desk only a few feet from the body was a medical kit, the victim's own—and all medical kits, for example, contain stethoscopes. Yes, it is possible that even a physician taking a dying man's pulse may not be able to detect a tiny flicker of life; but a doctor in a doctor's office, with all necessary paraphernalia at hand, being forced by his own plan to make certain his victim was dead,
would
have made certain, I say! The stethoscope. A mirror, perhaps; any number of ways by which physicians ordinarily test for death …

“So we may say, therefore, that no physician with all the means at hand for making sure of his victim's death would have left that victim alive. He would have detected the victim's lingering spark, and quenched it by dealing the body another blow. The murderer did not do this. Therefore the murderer was not a physician, and could not be either of the two prison doctors who had to be eliminated.”

I could have screamed from the tension. Father's huge first was ropy with muscle; the faces before ues were a gallery of pale masks.

“Father Muir,” continued Drury Lane in a low voice. “The murderer of the Fawcett brothers was the same in both instances. But Dr. Fawcett was murdered at a little past eleven. From ten o'clock on, that night, the good padre was in my presence on his porch, and could not physically have committed the crime. Then he could not, reasonably, have murdered Senator Fawcett either.”

And so, in the red haze that drifted between my eyes and those pale faces, I heard his strong pulsing voice say: ‘One of the twenty-seven men in this room is the murderer of the Fawcett brothers. We have eliminated twenty-six. There is only one left, and he … You men, catch him; don't let him go! Thumm, don't let him use that revolver!”

The room exploded into sounds, shouts, grunts, struggles. The man who was the vortex of it, and who now was caught in the iron grasp of father, the man whose features were purple contortions and whose eyes blazed manically red, was Warden Magnus.

23. THE LAST WORD

As I look back over these pages, I wonder if I have anywhere given the impression that the murderer of Senator Fawcett and Dr. Fawcett was someone other than Warden Magnus. I think not, although it is hard to be sure; sometimes it seems to me that the appalling truth was in many places self-evident.

I have learned enough about the technique of writing a detective story (whether it is based on fact or fiction) to have made sure that every single point on which Drury Lane—and I, in my modest way—arrived at the various steps in the solution may be found somewhere in the manuscript. It was simply a matter of collation as we worked it out, and—rather more remotely—a matter of collation in a solution from the reading.… I have tried, with what result the reader is best fitted to judge, to reproduce this amazing case exactly as it occurred. That extraordinary old gentleman whom I have peremptorily adopted used nothing in the careful structure of his analysis which was not known to all of us. We simply did not possess his acuteness to grasp and utilize.

There are various loose ends, I realize, which none of us knew, and which for the sake of completeness must be told; although knowledge of them, as has been seen, was distinctly not essential for a solution. For example, Warden Magnus's motive in turning to crime—the last man, one would say, who would succumb to temptation and the necessity for bloodletting. Yet there is somewhere on record, I am told, the case of another prison warden who is at present incarcerated in a penitentiary for a crime which one would scarcely expect a man of his experience with crime and criminals to commit.

In the case of the unhappy Magnus it was the old story, as he revealed in his written confession: lack of money. It seems that he had had a small personal fortune, amassed through long and honest years, which was swept away by the depredations of the stock market. A little past the prime of his career he found himself penniless. And then Senator Fawcett came to him with his suspicious interest in Dow, and a suggestion of blackmail in the background; and on the fatal day of Dow's release telephoned Magnus, as has been told, that he had decided to pay Dow and had in his possession fifty thousand dollars. Poor Magnus! The temptation, in his desperate need, was overwhelming. He went to the Senator's house that night, not exactly prepared to murder the man, but vaguely hoping to trick the Senator by bluff into paying him blackmail; there was a precedent, you see! At this time he did not know the story behind Dow's hold on the Fawcetts. When he faced the Senator, perhaps saw the cash, he made up his mind blindly and quickly. The die was cast. He would kill the Senator, steal the money, and let Dow take the blame. So he snatched the letter-knife from the desk and went through with his incredible crime. Then, in looking over things, he found on the top sheet of the letter-pad a note in the Senator's handwriting addressed to his brother, Dr. Fawcett. It gave him an idea. There was a second Fawcett involved. For the note mentioned the name of the ship,
Star of Hejaz.
With this information as a starting point it was a simple matter for him to trace back the records later and come to the ultimate truth behind the Dow-Fawcett entanglement. He destroyed the note to prevent its getting into the hands of the police; should the real story come out, he could not blackmail Dr. Fawcett, but if only he and Dow knew the story, Dow would be eliminated by the state as the supposed murderer of the Senator and the warden would be free to blackmail Dr. Fawcett in the future.