Dr. Poggioli: Criminologist (The Lost Classics Book 14) Page 6

  “The devil! Let up on that croak, will you? Driver, step on it; we’ve got to catch that car.”

  “Mr. Poggioli,” pleaded Mordag, “let him go; I don’t want to catch him.”

  “Well, I do. If I can get hands on him—”

  “But the woman—the woman he had with him—”

  “Woman, the devil. Step on it, chauffeur—and look out for the blue car!”

  Both Poggioli and the driver were staring forward now as the taxicab stuttered at a great rate up the boulevard. They were passing car after car.

  From the back of the car Mordag was exclaiming:

  “But the woman was Arline! He’s with Arline.”

  “Who is Arline?” asked Poggioli over his shoulder, giving about a quarter of his attention to his client.

  “She’s my cousin.”

  “Devil she is!” flung back Poggioli, not greatly interested in this.

  “Yes. That night—the night he came into the dressing room and—and found us—he said to me—he said—”

  “Say it; say it and stop stuttering!”

  “He said, ‘Mordag, I’m going to divorce Rose for this and I’m going to marry your cousin,’ Arline Daupheny. And that’s Arline with him; he done it.”

  “That’s all right. I don’t care if he married the Queen of Sheba.”

  “Yes, but he didn’t even know Arline then—never heard of her. I don’t think he ever heard of her. I’d never mentioned her to him.”

  “Oh, I see—another miracle he has worked.” Poggioli peered ahead through the vibrating glass. “Now that man’s miracles are one thing I’m not interested in. Do you see him, chauffeur?”

  “No, sir; not yet.”

  “Yes, but that’s why he’s trying t-to kill me, sir,” wailed Mordag. “I understand it now.”

  “Understand what now?”

  “Arline’s my cousin, I tell you. If I’m dead, she will be next in line to the Daupheny estate.”

  Poggioli turned around with a bit more interest.

  “Oh, I see. So there’s a financial end to this. How valuable is the Daupheny estate?”

  “It’s a sugar plantation—worth two or three hundred thousand.”

  “That’s good,” suggested Poggioli, with a bit more tolerance in his voice. “If I’m to run this man down, I’m glad his crime is complicated with a cold acquisitiveness.”

  “Of course, he wants me out of the way,” went on Mordag in the empty repetition of a frightened man, “so Arline will get the estate.”

  The chauffeur interrupted—

  “Yonder’s the blue car, sir—parked by that house with the silo.”

  “Turret,” corrected Poggioli.

  “They’re getting out and going in,” cried the chauffeur. “Look at ’em; all three are going across the lawn, sir.”

  “You don’t pay any attention to them; you drive on to the air field!” cried Mordag.

  But the chauffeur had, for several minutes, known enough to pay no heed to Mordag.

  “Shall I turn in by ’em, sir?”

  “Yes, but check the car number first; might be dozens of blue limousines.”

  “Right you are, sir,” called the driver through the hole. “It’s a pleasure to drive a detective that knows his line, sir.” He waited a moment as he rapidly drew near the parked limousine. “Ohio 143–734, sir.”

  Poggioli looked at his envelope. “Check,” he called back.

  The taxi roared on up to the pavement and stopped with such suddenness that Poggioli and Mordag were assisted in a swift exit to the curb. The chauffeur also jumped out.

  The three men ran across a slightly neglected lawn to the house with the turret. There were no curtains in the windows. Instead, “to rent” signs looked out through their blank eyes.

  Poggioli ran to the front door and laid a hand on the bolt. It was locked. He looked inside and saw the bareness of an uncarpeted hallway.

  “They’re fixing to rent it,” hazarded the chauffeur.

  “Well, for pity’s sake let’s get away and let ’em rent it,” pleaded Mordag, standing on the walk and staring at the house.

  “If they walked in meaning to rent it, why did they lock the door behind them?”

  asked the chauffeur.

  “They saw us coming,” suggested the psychologist.

  “He didn’t have any key,” said Mordag. “He didn’t need any. He opened it locked, and of course when he went in and pulled the door shut it was still locked.”

  “What’s your boy friend talking about?” asked the chauffeur, looking at Poggioli.

  “He’s got a lot of very shaky information in his head,” smiled the psychologist. “It’s a pleasure to chauffeur for a detective like you,” said the taxicab man. “Let’s try the windows,” said the docent.

  “Which ones?” asked the chauffeur.

  “Why, these right here,” said Poggioli, going to the nearest light. “You walk around and try the windows on that side, and I’ll try ’em on this.”

  The chauffeur started off with the enthusiasm of a young setter on his first field trial.

  “If I see ’em, shall I yell?” he asked guardedly. “Or shall I break in and nab

  ’em, or call the police or what?”

  “Come back to me without making any noise,” advised Poggioli.

  The two men set off testing windows. Mordag went with the psychologist.

  “What are you going to do if you get him?” he asked apprehensively. “Arrest him for attempted poisoning.”

  “Won’t do any good to arrest him; he’ll—”

  “Yes, I know all that,” replied Poggioli with patient satire; “but it annoys them to have to keep percolating out of jail. I don’t care how good a sleightof-hand man gets to be, percolating is hard work.”

  Mordag became silent and simply followed his adviser. Presently Poggioli felt sorry for him.

  “Look here, Mr. Mordag,” he began more seriously. “You don’t seem to realize that you have changed from the rôle of a fugitive to that of a pursuer. Don’t be nervous any more. By the time this Professor La Plesse has been given the third degree—”

  THE DOCENT was interrupted by footsteps coming around the house. He became alert and the next moment a policeman turned the corner of the building. Poggioli did not know whom he expected to see; possibly La Plesse himself; but the sudden appearance of the bluecoat was a little disconcerting. At the moment he was trying to pry a window open. He had an impulse to quit, but he felt the best thing to do under the circumstances was to keep on. So he continued running the blade of the knife under the bottom of the window trying to get at the catch which he could see inside.

  “Can you get in here, Officer?” he asked, jabbing in the blade. “There’s a murderer in this house.”

  The policeman simply looked at Poggioli and Mordag for a moment, then he said:

  “Are you birds color blind? Can’t you tell day from night?”

  “I didn’t want to come here at all,” began Mordag in a complaining voice. “Shut up,” snapped the docent. “Officer, we’ve got to get in here at once;

  there’s a man in here—”

  The patrolman saw that Poggioli had only a pearl handled pen knife, with a blade rather short even for a penknife. He became less menacing. He said:

  “Better shut up your jimmy and put it in your pocket. It’s against city regulations to break open houses in Columbus with burglars’ tools like that.”

  Poggioli put his knife in his pocket.

  “Listen,” he repeated earnestly, “there is a man in this house who has attempted to take this man’s life. I want him arrested.”

  “Who are you?” interposed the officer.

  “This man’s name is Mordag—Clayman Mordag.”

  “Don’t you happen to have a name?” demanded the policeman. “If you wanted to call yourself up on the ’phone, who’d you ask for?”

  “Your hypothesis is improbable to say the least of it,” returned Poggioli
with dignity, “but my name is Henry Poggioli, M.A, Ph. D. I teach criminology at the Ohio State University.”

  The officer stared, actually at sea now.

  “Are you trying to show this man how to break into a house?”

  “The devil! I’m after a criminal,” cried Poggioli, quite out of patience with this mixture of ignorance and ill placed humor. “I expected you to help me instead of—”

  The patrolman glanced up at the window. “You say there’s a gunman in there?”

  “No, not a gunman; he’s a sleight-of-hand performer.”

  “Thought you said he was trying to kill your pupil here?”

  “This man isn’t my pupil—”

  “What is he?”

  “He’s a man whose life is threatened. He came to me as a psychologist.”

  “I thought you said you taught crime at the university?” cross-questioned the bluecoat shrewdly.

  “I teach criminal psychology,” stated Poggioli with the curved inflections of disgust.

  “I see,” nodded the officer, the docent’s academic manner gaining a slight moral advantage over him. “Do you happen to have anything on you to prove what you are?”

  Poggioli ran through his pockets and found two or three letters addressed to him in care of the university.

  The officer considered these in connection with the fact that Poggioli was trying to jimmy a window with a rather short bladed penknife.

  “Well, all right, you lads can go; but listen, Professor, you are not allowed to go to private houses outside the university grounds and try to teach your class how to jimmy—”

  “Listen,” cried Poggioli, “the academic phase of this incident weighs too heavily on your mind. I demand of you as an officer of the law that you help me break into this house and arrest the man inside for attempted murder.”

  The officer looked at the window again. “Nobody lives here—it’s for rent.”

  “I know that, but this Professor La Plesse, his wife and daughter, have just entered this house. I saw them go in.”

  “Professor La Plesse,” repeated the officer. “Does he teach at the university too?”

  “Yes,” flung out Poggioli, goaded into sarcasm at last. “Murder is his specialty, and since you policemen won’t let him use outside material, he was trying to kill this innocent member of his class . . . Come on, Mordag, what’s the use staying here!”

  The bluecoat followed the men around the building, not at all pleased at this.

  “I’m a good mind to run you two in for attempted housebreaking . . .”

  “Go on and do it,” snapped the docent, not looking around.

  “If the house wasn’t as empty as a shell, and nothing in it to steal, I’d do it.” Poggioli made no reply. He and Mordag walked on around on the front lawn,

  where he came to a sudden halt.

  “Why the blue car’s gone!” he ejaculated in dismay.

  “Thank God for that,” cried Mordag, drawing a long breath.

  “Which way did it go?” demanded the docent of the policeman. “Why didn’t you tell us the car was gone instead of keeping us there talking?”

  “When I came here,” said the officer, “there wasn’t anything at the gate but that taxi, so I came on in to see what was up.”

  The chauffeur was already around and was standing outside by his machine. “Look here, see what happened?” called the chauffeur as Poggioli approached the gate.

  The docent broke into a run, not knowing exactly what he expected. “What is it?” he cried.

  “Why look—” he pointed in dismay—“that cop’s tagged my car!”

  “You know better than to stop in front of a fireplug,” reproved the bluecoat sharply.

  “Well I’ll be damned!” cried Poggioli. “Chasing murderers and the only cooperation the police will give you is to tag your car for parking in front of a fireplug!”

  “Who’s going to pay that fine?” inquired the chauffeur gloomily.

  “We’ll fight the case before the police judge, if he’s got any sense at all.” The three men got into their respective places in the taxi. The policeman stood on the pavement, twirling his stick as he saw them off. He evidently considered that he had got the better of the situation.

  “Where do we go from here?” asked the driver. “Flying field,” called Mordag.

  “The Vendig,” said Poggioli.

  By this time the chauffeur had ceased to pay any attention to Mordag, who was paying the taxi fare, so he turned and started back down the boulevard toward the Vendig.

  The docent rode along in silence. After the manner of men of theory, his personal frustration gave place presently to a gloomy philosophical outlook on the world in general. The ineptness of the policeman was exactly the sort of thing that permeated life at large. How bungling and aimless was the world of men compared to the scientific precision of his little community of rats in the laboratory. The aims and passions of men, taken as a whole, had absolutely no objective whatever. They crossed and blocked and thwarted each other. But his rats served their purpose with precision and with a sort of logical elegance. They lived to illustrate the effect of various diets. And it was a great pity, the docent thought, that the world at large could not have the same definition of direction as his five hundred rats. What the great torrent of life needed was some strict scientific supervision; a center, a focus, an experimental cleaning house, if life was ever really to mean anything. And here, weirdly enough, there drifted through Poggioli’s mind the primitive folk notion of a god!

  The psychologist straightened up.

  “I declare!” he thought. “Fancy such an idea in the mind of an instructor in the Ohio State University!”

  There was quite a stir at the Vendig when the taxicab drove up. The doorman ran out and asked if this was Professor Poggioli’s cab. When he learned it was, he called out:

  “Professor Poggioli has arrived! Professor Poggioli is here!”

  Two or three men came running out of the hotel to the cab. One had a camera and began getting his head under his black cloth. Some one called: “Hold that a minute in the cab door, Professor. Try shaking hands with Mr. Mordag.”

  Poggioli automatically tried shaking hands with Mordag. “What for?” he asked.

  “Picture for the Times; and a thousand thanks.” He bobbed from under the cloth. “Look here,” cried the docent, moving hastily from in front of the camera. “I don’t want my picture in the—”

  A small man in a wine colored suit hurried up to the docent.

  “Professor Poggioli, my name is Tapper. I’m with the Dispatch. The police turned in a remarkable story. I hurried up here to verify it. Have you been employed to discover the murderer of a cat?”

  “That’s right,” nodded Poggioli hastily, beginning to back away.

  “One moment. Have you any clues? Why did the man want to murder the cat?

  Was it a prize cat? Was it a case of one cat fancier jealous of another?”

  “Correct! Correct!” The docent retreated with a feeling that he was being let down into a sensational quagmire.

  “Look here,” cried Mordag indignantly. “That poison was meant for me. I just happened to pour some water in the cat’s saucer—”

  Tapper turned to the sandy man.

  “Oh, I see; and Professor Poggioli—”

  “I’m not a professor,” snapped the psychologist. “I am simply a docent.”

  “Pardon me, but I understand you ran the murderer to earth in a vacant house at 2714 Johnson Boulevard?”

  “We saw him drive up to that number,” said Mordag, “but while we searched for him—”

  “Why, a Columbus policeman came up,” interpolated Poggioli hotly, “and kept us answering questions—”

  “Till the criminal got out the front way and drove off,” concluded Mordag. Mr. Tapper gave a snort, jerked out his handkerchief and muffled a rather long, keenish nose. A second later he asked soberly—

  “What is your opinion
of the general efficiency of the Columbus police, Professor?”

  “I’d rather not go into that—not for publication.”

  “The real story here,” said Mordag, “is about my room being entered every night and poison left in it. Does the Dispatch want a picture of me, too? The Times has got one.”

  “Who enters your room every night?” cried Tapper. “Why Professor La Plesse.”

  “La Plesse, La Plesse—where have I heard that name?”

  “He’s a sleight-of-hand man,” explained Mordag. “He played Columbus about five years ago. Here, I’ve got a clipping out of the old Times-Record—”

  “I knew it!” cried Tapper. “I never forget a name or a face. I remember they sewed him up in a sack and dropped him off the bridge.”

  “Sure, that was one of his stunts; here’s the clipping.”

  “Say, keep my name out of this, Mr. Tapper,” asked Poggioli in extreme discomfort.

  “Leave it to my discretion, Professor. I understand the academic conventions—” he turned to Mordag as a more untrammeled news source. “Where did you first catch sight of the La Plesse?”

  “Downtown.”

  “Then where did he go?”

  “We followed him to the house out on Johnson Boulevard and lost him.”

  “M-m-m—did you get his car number?”

  “Yes, we got that. It was 2—3—4—What was it, Mr. Poggioli?”

  The docent drew out his envelope. “Ohio 143–734.”

  “Bill, call up the department, see who owns that car and where he lives.” Bill went to a telephone booth.

  Tapper turned to Mordag again.

  “Now that’s fine. We’ll soon have a line on him. Say he comes to your room every night and tried to poison you?” He turned to the cameraman. “Jimmy, give us a shot of Mr. Mordag by himself.”

  The shot was given.

  “Now how about a shot of the dead cat—spot where cat was poisoned, saucer, glass—they’re not trick glasses, are they? I mean the sort a sleight-of-hand man uses?”

  “No, they’re the glasses the hotel furnished.”

  “Good! Come on, let’s get the shots.”

  This sudden burst of publicity drove away Mordag’s fear. He led the crowd toward the elevator. Poggioli followed with a feeling that it would be wise not to follow. He knew he ought to get away with as little notice as possible. Already he sensed the sort of story Mr. Tapper was going to write. But the reporter had the air of a man who momentarily expected to unearth wonders, and Poggioli wanted to see what Tapper was about to uncover.