Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 17, No. 4, April 1972
- Автор: Breese Edward Y., Бриттен Уильям
- Год: 1972
- Язык: английский
- Год: H.S.D. Publications
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 17, No. 4, April 1972». Краткое содержание книги:
“Oh, I hope you’ll be able to catch him, sir. Many of the envelopes I’ve put in the cabinets have been labeled Top Secret.”
“I don’t think we’ll have any trouble on that score. You see, I think the thief plans on staying on right here at The Center. He’s going to try and make it seem as if someone else is the guilty person. You, Augustine.”
“Me? I don’t understand. How?”
“Over to you, Tim.” Orin turned his chair to face Doherty. “If a theft like the one I’ve described actually took place, what would be the first thing I’d do?”
“Oh, seal off the area. Ascertain what was actually broken into. Make up excuses to the commanding officer for your blunders.”
“Yes, but when I started questioning suspects, what then? I’d use the polygraph, Tim. The lie detector. And I’d start with the people who had access to the room. Augustine, here, would be one of the first people tested.”
“I still don’t get it,” said Doherty.
“Think, Tim.” Orin turned to the old man. “Augustine, you were set up for a theft of records that may take place tonight, or certainly within the next couple of days. You were going to be the patsy for this job. You’d have been turned into perhaps the world’s first artificial liar.”
“It’s all very confusing, sir.”
“Tim,” Orin gestured toward the doctor, “imagine Augustine strapped into the lie detector. The machine is attached to his body. His blood pressure, pulse, respiration and skin conductivity are all being monitored. I begin by asking his name or how he feels. Anything to put him at ease so we can get a proper reading.
“But now, we agree that the real thief would have access to keys to the record area. So, after a few innocent words, I say ‘keys’.”
In his chair, Augustine Lanier jerked involuntarily. The color drained from his face. “Oh, poor Marley,” he whispered. “And with my own key chain.”
“Saint Patrick, protect us!” murmured Doherty. “With a reaction like that, he’d send the lie detector needles right through the wall.” He scratched his head doubtfully. “But what about the other things, Orin? The files in the medicine cabinet, for instance?”
“Try the words ‘file cabinet’, Tim.”
“And the werewolf getup would provide a reaction to ‘mask’. But what about General Pershing?”
“ ‘Black Jack’. The watchman would have to be slugged with something, remember? We’d be given a perfect suspect. Not because Augustine had done anything wrong, but because he’d been psychologically conditioned to respond to the very words we were bound to use in our investigation. Meanwhile, as we concentrated on Augustine, the guilty party would be laughing up his sleeve at us. However, in one way, Augustine didn’t act the way he was expected to. Instead of keeping those odd events to himself, he told me about them.”
“And the real thief, the one who’s been doing all these things to Mr. Lanier? Have you got him pegged, too?” asked Doherty.
Orin leaned back, grinning. “Sure,” he said. “Augustine, you’ve been telling me all along that for the past few days you’d been alone in the rooming house. You weren’t, you know.”
“You mean my landlady—”
Orin shook his head. “She’d hardly qualify as a guard here,” he said. “But—”
“Sergeant Pomeroy,” breathed Augustine, his eyes wide with amazement. “His room’s right across the hall from mine.”
“Now you’re catching on, Augustine. You see, I don’t believe Pomeroy ever went on his fishing trip. He may have left the house while you watched, but it’s my guess he stashed his luggage somewhere and sneaked back. He’s been lying concealed in his room ever since. You said you’d forgotten your keys several times. He could have slipped over to your room and made clay casts of them in seconds, before you returned to pick them up. Since you’re a file clerk, those keys would have let him into any part of the record area. The same thing with Marley; how long does it take to kill a tiny bird? He just waited until you’d forgotten your keys once more, came into your room, opened the cage, and that was that. The other occurrences would have been even easier to set up. All Pomeroy had to do was wait until you were out of the house and he could set up your room any way he liked.”
“An interesting theory, Orin-me-boy,” said Doherty. “Going to be a bit difficult to prove, though, isn’t it?”
“No trouble at all,” said Orin.
Two nights later, a figure dressed in a dark shirt and pants unlocked the side door of The Center’s record area, opened the door, and quickly slipped inside. He pushed the door shut behind him. As he turned, someone in the darkness whipped away the black bandana handkerchief which had been wrapped around his face. Startled, he dropped a large ring of keys to the floor just as somebody turned on the overhead lights. In front of the man, four soldiers held their bayoneted rifles at the ready.
“Welcome, Sergeant Pomeroy,” said Orin Watkins, placing the black handkerchief carefully in his pocket. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
Second Thoughts
by Carroll Mayers
One confession may be good for a pair of souls.
I didn’t go to work the day Henry Gifford stole fifteen hundred dollars from the office safe. As a matter of fact, I didn’t even learn Henry had taken the money until four days later, and then only because Henry himself told me.
The reason I was absent was because I’d picked up a summer cold. I wasn’t in bed, and could get around all right, but I have a ‘thing’ about constantly sneezing in public, spreading germs and maybe infecting others. So I phoned Mr. Holcomb, our office manager, and told him I didn’t think I should come in.
He wasn’t too happy about it. “Very well, Miss Daniels,” he conceded, “but I trust you’ll be able to make it tomorrow. Your filing’s considerably behind, you know.”
Aside from Mr. Holcomb, there were five of us in the office of Fidelity Savings and Loan Company: Henry and I, and a Mr. Winder, a Mr. Zivic, and a Miss Corsi. The last three were strictly out of Henry’s league. Charlie Winder was a bright-lights boy with dark good looks, an endless supply of racy stories and a little black book to keep his evenings full. Fred Zivic was married but wasn’t working too hard at it, had a ready eye for our younger female customers. Rita Corsi wasn’t exactly a sex symbol, but I had to admit her dusky features were attractive and she knew how to wear provocative clothes.
Henry himself was a mild character in his late twenties. Unmarried, he didn’t drink or smoke, was bookishly inclined and nourished a secret ambition (confided to me) to become a writer.
As for myself, I wasn’t truly Henry’s introverted type, but he had a certain appeal and he tried to come out of himself in his quiet way. We’d had a few movie dates, but nothing serious. I just liked him, you understand.
Stealing the fifteen hundred dollars was, of course, completely out of character with Henry. He’d acted spontaneously, on a sudden impulse that had zeroed into his consciousness.
It all happened when a lone bandit hit the office an hour before closing that day. Brandishing a nickel-plated revolver, the gunman had herded the office force and two women customers into one corner, and started to scoop banded money packets from the open safe into an airline flight bag.
Then one of the customers made an inadvertent move and the bandit whirled, triggered a wild shot and bolted, gaining a car he’d parked at the curb outside and racing away.
Pandemonium had followed. Both women customers began screaming. Mr. Holcomb stormed in the robber’s wake, shouting and waving his arms. Traffic snarled. Pedestrians clotted the sidewalk, trying to peer into the office. Rita Corsi finally jumped to the phone to call the police — and Henry deftly transferred from the open safe to the bottom shelf of an adjacent supplies cabinet, underneath some cartons of business envelopes, three five-hundred-dollar money packets.