The Tragedy of Z (24 page)

From his left breast protruded the rounded grip-handle of a knife-like object, which I recognized as some sort of lancet.

I leaned weakly against father and felt his reassuring clutch on my arm. History was repeating itself. In the sickish haze before my eyes I heard words and saw familiar faces. There was little Dr. Bull, the medical examiner, kneeling by the supine still figure, his quick fingers exploring. Kenyon scowled as of old at the ceiling. And, leaning against the desk, his bald pink skull wet with perspiration, his evilly wise old eyes baffled and afraid, stood Rufus Cotton, John Hume's political guardian.

“Rufe!” cried the district attorney. “What's this? You found him?”

“Yes. I—Dear, dear.” The old politician wiped his skull with a fluttering handkerchief. “I had called—ah—unexpectedly, John. Without appointment. To talk over some—ah—things with Dr. Fawcett. The campaign, you know. And—heavens, John, don't look at me that way!—I found him dead, just as you see him.”

Hume stared at Rufus Cotton fixedly for an instant, with a bitter intensity; and then he muttered: “All right, Rufe. I shan't go into personal matters—now. What time did you find him?”

“Now, John, please don't take it …”

“What time did you find him?”

“At a quarter of twelve, John … The house was deserted, quite! Naturally, I telephoned Kenyon at once——”

“Did you touch anything?” demanded father.

“No, indeed.” The old man seemed shaken; he had lost his assurance, and stood leaning heavily against the desk, avoiding John Hume's eyes.

Mr. Drury Lane, whose eyes had been exploring every crevice of the room, now stepped quietly to the side of Dr. Bull and stooped a little. “You're the medical examiner, I presume? How long has this man been dead, Doctor?”

Dr. Bull grinned. “Another one, hey? Since a few minutes after eleven. About ten minutes after eleven.”

“Did he die instantly?”

Dr. Bull squinted aloft. “Ah—hard to tell. He might have lingered a few moments.”

The old gentleman stared. “Thank you.” Then he straightened and went to the desk, where he stood regarding its contents with an expressionless face.

Kenyon rumbled: “Talked to the servants, Hume. Dr. Fawsett sent 'em all away from the house early this evening. Funny, ain't it? Just like his brother did.”

Dr. Bull rose and closed his black bag. “Well,” he said briskly, “there's nothing mysterious about this. Good healthy case of murder. The weapon is a lancet, called in medical parlance a bistoury. It's used for minor incisions.”

“It came,” said Mr. Lane thoughtfully, “from this tray on the desk.”

Dr. Bull shrugged. It seemed so. On the desk lay a rubberized tray which contained a tumbled group of odd-looking surgical instruments. It was apparent that Dr. Fawcett had been intending to sterilize them in the electric sterilizer which stood on a table nearby; the cooker was still steaming, in fact, and Dr. Bull stepped over quickly and turned it off. The room was beginning to take shape: it was a well-equipped medical office, I saw, with an examining-table at one side, a giant fluoroscope, an X-ray machine, and various oddments of apparatus which meant nothing to me. On the desk, beside the tray, lay an open black medical kit, much like Dr. Bull's own. The legend: “Ira Fawcett, M.D.,” was neatly printed on the bag.

“There's only one wound,” continued Dr. Bull, thoughtfully surveying the weapon, which he had extracted from the corpse during his examination. It had a long thin blade with a tip faintly like a fish-hook; the steel was murk-red along its entire length. “A clumsy but effective sticker, Hume. Caused profuse bleeding, as you can see.” He kicked out toward the dead man, and we saw a broad ragged stain on the taupe pile very near the side of the corpse, as if the blood had spurted from the wound and dripped down the doctor's clothes to the floor. “In fact, the blade scraped one of the ribs. Nasty wound, all right.”

“But—” began Hume impatiently, when Drury Lane's eyes narrowed and he knelt by the dead man, lifting the right arm and examining it closely.

He looked up. “What's this?” he asked. “Did you see this, Dr. Bull?”

The medical examiner glanced down indifferently. “Oh that! Yes, but it's of no particular importance. There's no wound, if that's what's bothering you.” We saw on the underside of Dr. Fawcett's right wrist three bloody smudges, roughly oval in shape, and close together. “Above the artery, note.”

“Yes, I noted,” said Mr. Lane dryly. “Important, Doctor, despite your expert opinion.”

I touched the old gentleman's arm. “Mr. Lane,” I cried, “it looks as if the murderer, his fingers bloody after the killing blow,
took the pulse of his victim.”

‘Excellent, Patience.” He smiled faintly. “That's precisely what I was thinking. Why did he do this?”

“To make sure Dr. Fawcett was dead,” I ventured timidly.

“Oh, of course,” snapped the district attorney. “Where does that get you? Let's get to work, Kenyon. Dr. Bull, you'll perform an autopsy, eh? We want to be sure we don't miss anything.”

I cast one last look at Dr. Fawcett's dead face before Dr. Bull flung a sheet over the body, to await the arrival of the Department of Public Welfare truck. Its expression was not that of terror; rather, it was grim and, somehow, surprised.

The fingerprint men went to work, and Kenyon tramped about roaring orders, and John Hume took Rufus Cotton aside. Then a low exclamation from Drury Lane brought all heads up sharply; he was back at the desk and was now holding something in his hand which he had apparently discovered under some papers.

It was the section of chest which I had seen Dr. Fawcett examining so ferociously the night before.

“Ha!” said Mr. Lane. “This is admirable. I was positive it would be here. Well, Patience, what do you make of it?”

Like the first one we had found, it was a sawed-off section; but this time both sides had been sawed, and it was quite evidently the central part of the chest. And on its face, in gilt, as on the first one, were two capital letters.

But this time they were
JA.

“First
HE,”
I murmured, “and now
JA.
I confess, Mr. Lane, that it's wholly incomprehensible to me.”

“It's ridiculous,” cried Hume angrily. He was rubbering over father's shoulder. “Who the devil is ‘he'? And ‘ja'——”

“That means ‘yes,' in German,” I murmured, not too hopefully.

Hume snorted. “Now, that's sensible, isn't it?”

“Patience, my dear,” said the old gentleman, “this is a clue of vital importance. Queer, queer!” He looked about the room quickly, searching for something; then his eyes brightened, and he hurried over to a corner where on a little stand lay a large fat volume, a dictionary. Hume and father gaped at him; but I saw now what he was after. I thought hard and fast. H-E-J-A.… It must be that, for I could think of no meaning for the two groups of letters individually. So it must be one word. H-e-j-a.… But there was no such word, I was positive.

Mr. Lane slowly closed the dictionary. “Of course,” he said mildly. “As I thought.” He pursued his lips and began to pace up and down before the dead man, eyes abstracted. “From the shape of the two sections put together,” he muttered, “I think … It's unfortunate we haven't that first section.”

“Who says we haven't?” sneered Kenyon; and to my surprise he dug his hand into his pocket and produced the original piece. “Thought it might come in handy, crazy as it is, and I dug it out o' the files at Headquarters, by ginger, before I came.” He handed it to the old gentleman with a negligent air.

Mr. Lane seized it with avid fingers. He bent over the desk and stood the two sections up in the proper order. And now it was wholly clear that this was a miniature chest in wood, little metals hasps and all; the letters fitted neatly to make the word:
Heja.
And a great light broke over me, for I saw that those four letters did not represent a complete word. There must be another letter or letters; for surely if a word had been painted on the chest it would have been centered from side to side by the painter. Yet here, with the
a
of the word coming on the central piece, the painting would have been off-center if there were no additional letters.

Mr. Lane murmured: “You see now, from what we reconstruct here, that only one section remains to complete what is undoubtedly a model of a chest. Reference to the big dictionary confirmed my suspicions. There is only one word in the English dictionary which begins with
h-e-j-a
.”

“Impossible!” snapped Hume. “I've never heard of it.”

“Not necessarily analogous in meaning, said Mr. Lane, smiling gently. “I repeat: there is only one word in the English dictionary which begins with
h-e-j-a,
and that is not an English word at all, but an Anglicized word.”

‘What is it?” I asked slowly.

“Hejaz.”

We all blinked at that, as if he had uttered some abracadabrish incantation. Then Hume snarled: “Well, sir, even granting that's true, what the devil does it mean?”

“Hejaz,” replied the old gentleman calmly, “is a region of Arabia. And, oddly enough, the capital of Hejaz is Mecca.”

Hume threw up his hands. “What next, Mr. Lane? This is the most incredible nonsense, you know. Arabia! Mecca!”

“Nonsense, Mr. Hume? Hardly, when the death of two men revolves about it,” said Mr. Lane dryly. “It's fantastic, I confess, if you accept the literal explanation of the word as referring to Arabia or Arabians. But I don't know that that's necessarily the line of attack. I've the most peculiar notion—” He fell silent. Then he added quietly: “We're not finished, you know, Mr. Hume.”

“Not finished?”

Father's brows shot up. “You mean we're due for another murder?” he asked incredulously.

The old gentleman clasped his hands behind his back. “It would seem so, wouldn't it? First we had a crime in which the victim before his death received an
HE
section of chest; then another crime in which the victim before his death received a
JA
section of chest …”

“So somebody's goin' to get the last section and be bumped off, hey?” said Kenyon with a coarse laugh.

“Not necessarily.” And Mr. Lane sighed. “If past performances mean anything, it would appear that a third individual will receive the last section, and on it will be painted the letter Z, and that that individual's life will be taken. In other words, a sort of Z murder.” He smiled. “But I don't believe we shall be able to trust past performances in this instance. The important thing,” he finished in a sharp tone, “is that a
third
person is involved, the last of the triumvirate represented in two cases by Senator Fawcett and Dr. Fawcett!”

“How do you figure that out?” asked father.

“Very simply. Why was the chest cut into three parts in the first place? Obviously because it was meant to be sent to three people.”

“The third one is Dow,” growled Kenyon. “Whaddaya mean—sent? He's savin' that last one for himself.”

“Oh, the most arrant rubbish, Kenyon,” said Mr. Lane gently. “No, not Dow.”

And that was all he would say about the chest. I could see from their faces that neither Chief Kenyon nor John Hume gave credence to Mr. Lane's interpretation of the chest; and even father looked skeptical.

Mr. Lane clamped his lips together and said abruptly: “The letter, gentlemen. Where is it?”

“How in hell—?” began Kenyon, his rubbery lips parted.

“Come, come, man. We're wasting time. Have you found it?”

Shaking his head mutely, Kenyon took from his pocket a small square of paper and handed it to the old gentleman. “Found it on the desk,” he muttered sheepishly. “How'd you know it was there?”

It was the note I had seen on Dr. Fawcett's desk by the side of the middle section of chest the night before.

“Ha!” cried Hume, snatching the paper from Mr. Lane's fingers. “What's the big idea, Kenyon? Why didn't you tell me about this before?” He smacked his lips. “Anyway, now we're down to earth again.”

The message was in ink, in longhand, and the paper was dirty, as if it had been much handled. Hume read the note aloud:

Escape fixed for Wed. p.m. Make break while with road-gang. Guards okay. Find food, clothes in shack I told you about in last note. Lie low, come here Wed., 11:30 p.m. I will be alone and will have money waiting. For God's sake be careful.

I.F.

“Ira Fawcett!” exclaimed the district attorney. “Well, well! We've got the goods on Dow this time, all right. For some crazy reason Fawcett arranged Dow's escape, bribed the guards——”

“See if it's in Fawcett's fist,” growled father. Mr. Lane looked on with a sad and rather absent amusement.

Samples of Dr. Fawcett's handwriting were produced, and although there was no one present who qualified as a chirographic expert, even a superficial examination was sufficient to establish the note as genuinely in Dr. Fawcett's hand.

“Double-crossed,” said Chief Kenyon ponderously. “Well, it's a pipe from here. I just been waitin', Hume, to spring this on you. Dow took the dough, killed Fawcett, and lammed.”

“And,” said father in sarcastic tones, “left this note to be found here, I suppose.”

The sarcasm was lost on Kenyon. But the district attorney for the dozenth time in the case looked worried.

Kenyon went on fatuously. “I 'phoned the bank officials before you got here, Hume. No grass growin' under
my
feet. Well, sir, it's sweet. Doc Fawcett withdrew twenty-five grand from his account yesterday morning, and the money ain't in the house.”

“Did you say
yesterday
morning?” cried Mr. Lane suddenly. “Kenyon, you're sure?”