Tuned for Murder

CHAPTER III Murder in the Corridor!

In the world of letters and biology, Sessel’s was a shining name. But as a tap dancer he wasn’t known. That was natural because he had never even tried to tap dance before.

He tried it now in the center of the general office with gaping clerks and scared stenographers watching.

With his chin high, sticking his Vandyke out at a crazy angle, he whistled “Sweet Adeline” and tried to clog the time with his feet. He fell down, bumping his head against a desk leg.

He didn’t seem to feel it at all. He got up, laughing shrilly like a whinnying horse and tried again.

“Sweet”—tap, tap, tap, stumble—“Adeline”—tap, tap, heavy fall.

Sessel lay where he had fallen that time, for he had turned his ankle. But lying there, he was screaming with laughter as though at the funniest joke in the world. And between laughs he was chanting the song and jerking his feet in rhythm.

Jenner came running toward him. The clerks in the office stared with growing horror in their eyes.

“Good heavens!” said Jenner. “He has gone mad! Like his uncle!”

They carried him to the gate. Blandell’s town car and chauffeur were there. They put Sessel in, still shaking with laughter and trying to dance. Jenner went to the Blandell home with him.

There were more cops around the Blandell place now. There were three more psychiatrists there. And Sessel, who had come to help Blandell in his mental lapse if he could, was now being treated as a patient, too. And in his eyes was the fear that had been in the banker’s for the past hours.

He wasn’t trying to tap dance or sing or laugh, now. He was cold sane; he felt as a man does who is cold sober after a heavy drunk.

“I can’t understand it,” he moaned, for the dozenth time. “I simply can’t. I never had a blank spot in my mind like that before.”

Blandell bit his lips. He had heard what Sessel had done. It was about the maddest thing that his dignified, distinguished nephew could have attempted.

Sessel himself had had to be told, too. He had no recollection whatever of it.

“Your mind just went blank when you were leaving Jenner?” Blandell said.

Sessel nodded.

“I have a faint recollection of saying something to him that didn’t quite make sense, and of hearing his pet dog howl as if something had hurt him. And that’s all.”

Blandell stared. “That’s exactly the way it happened with me! I was leaving Jenner. Things faded out. And — I heard Prince howl as if something were hurting him.”

Uncle and nephew stared at each other.

“Neither of us has ever had a mental kink before,” Sessel said at last, slowly. “Now each of us does. And each of us first experienced it — at the office of Ned Jenner, at Garfield Gear. Same thing, same place.”

“You think that means something?” asked Blandell.

“I don’t know.”

“Why would Garfield Gear be mixed up in it?”

“I don’t know that either. I could make a wild guess that something mysterious might happen at a place that makes secret government war materials. But that doesn’t seem to mean anything as far as you and I are concerned. We have nothing to do with such stuff. You’re a banker and I’m a biologist.”

“The only secret thing I know of that Jenner’s turning out now,” said Blandell, “is a new kind of gyroscopic control for torpedoes. One of Cranlowe’s devices.”

They thought that over.

“It still has no meaning,” sighed Blandell.

“It means one thing to me,” said Sessel. “We’ve got to go out to Jenner’s office again, and do a little looking around.”

“We’ve got to do something, all right,” the banker agreed. “We’re in serious trouble.”

“You’re telling me,” snorted Sessel, reverting to slang. “We’re on the edge of an asylum right now. I can see our being shut up for life, if we can’t find some answer for our crazy spells.”

“What good would it do us to go out and look around?” Blandell asked helplessly. “We’re not detectives. We ought to leave that to the police—”

“What do you suppose would happen if either of us asked the police to investigate anything?”

Blandell was silent, chewing his lips. But he knew what would happen. The cops wouldn’t actually say anything, but they’d simply think the request of a lunatic was too crazy even to listen to — and they’d do nothing about it.

“What will we do, then?” he said. “We can’t get out of here. We’re prisoners in my own home.”

“We’ll try in the morning,” replied Sessel. “But we can do something else, right now. We can phone a man I know in New York and ask for help.”

Blandell glanced at the clock. It was past midnight.

“Pretty late, isn’t it?”

“Not for this man,” said Sessel. “When you look at him, you get the idea that he never sleeps. Certainly he sleeps lighter than most, and comes out of it instantly if there’s a reason.”

“Who is he?”

“A man by the name of Richard Benson. He’s an extremely wealthy man who handles criminal matters the police aren’t able to take.”

“Criminal matters?” said Blandell. “Really, Henry! Crime! I don’t see—”

“There’s certainly something criminal behind this,” snapped Sessel. “I don’t know what, nor where we fit in. But I do know there’s something big and terrible afoot. We can’t get the police to do anything because they think we’re insane. It’s precisely the kind of job this man Benson likes to tackle.”

“There’s a phone,” said Blandell. “I surely hope—”

Sessel called the Bleek Street number, and gave his plea for help. After hearing the vibrant, though quiet voice of The Avenger, he sighed with relief.

“Now,” he said, “things will happen! But we won’t wait for him to come. He might not get here till noon. First thing in the morning we’ll go to the plant and investigate.”

“But how can we get out of here?”

“I’ll tell you in the morning. It will work, I think, though it is a dangerous thing to do—”

It was a very dangerous thing to do. After a fitful sleep and a silent breakfast, Blandell checked a loud exclamation when Sessel told him. The danger was not exactly a physical one, but it was no less great.

At nine-thirty, Sessel said, two of the eminent psychiatrists of Garfield City were coming to call on them again. One was about Blandell’s build, and the other about like Sessel. They would overcome the two doctors and go out of the guarded house disguised as them.

“Good heavens, Henry!” said Blandell. “Overpower two distinguished doctors and sneak out like prisoners in a jail break? Then they would think we were crazy!”

Sessel nodded. “After that, we’ll be locked up behind bars with keepers in attendance for the rest of our lives — if we don’t find the answer at Jenner’s office. But I am sure we will find the answer.”

“How?” demanded Blandell.

Sessel stared at him with bright, dark eyes. He was a brilliant man and a fine scientist in his manner of thinking.

“I think I have an idea of what it’s all about,” he said. “The way Jenner’s dog howled when your mind went blank, and howled again when mine did the same thing — the fact that neither of us has ever had mental trouble before, indicating that the trouble recently was made to happen to us— Yes, there’s an answer at Garfield Gear. And we’re going to find it.”

Blandell looked at him a moment, then nodded. And Sessel went to shave off his Vandyke.

Dr. Lucien and Dr. Grabble had worked with a lot of mentally unstable patients in their careers. But neither of them had quite made up his mind that Blandell and Sessel were really insane. Therefore, they came into the room where the two were, without any thought of precaution.

They hadn’t time even to yell when Blandell hit one with a vase and Sessel downed the other with a heavy book.

Blandell and Sessel took off the doctors’ outer clothing, and then bound and gagged them. They were pretty pale as they did it. It was a tremendous risk they were running. But they thought if they could find out something at the manufacturing plant it would be worth it all.

The servants and guards in the house weren’t prepared for extreme measures, either. They had been told to persuade the two men to stay in if they tried to leave. But no one had the faintest idea that there actually would be a violent attempt at escape. And it was dark in the hall.

When Dr. Grabble and Dr. Lucien left the room in which Blandell and Sessel were supposed to be, no one paid much attention. The two got into Grabble’s car, at the curb, and drove off.

“We’d better keep right on going, if we don’t find out anything,” shivered Blandell, in Grabble’s clothes.

Sessel nodded, and the two thought of hiding out, as criminals hide out, unless they could solve the mystery of yesterday’s strange conduct.

They got into the plant easily enough by sending a card from Lucien’s case in to Jenner.

“Shall we go up that openly?” said Sessel.

Blandell shook his head. “No!” if there really is something sinister here, we’d be fools to walk right into it again. We’ll get in by asking for Jenner. But we won’t see him at once.”

Sessel looked at his uncle questioningly.

“There is a narrow corridor leading past the general office and into a sort of lounging room off Jenner’s office,” the banker explained. “He uses it as a sort of relaxing room. Goes in there and sleeps or reads, sometimes. We’ll sneak into that room and listen through his office door for a while — see if we can hear anything that might give us a hint of what it’s all about.”

“Excellent,” said Sessel. “You know how to get there?”

“Yes. I’ve been here often enough.”

Blandell passed the door leading to the big office on the second floor to a small room, unmarked, at a distance to the right. He opened it, and a narrow corridor stretched before them.

The corridor, reserved for Jenner’s use if he wanted to go or come in privacy, was completely empty. They walked past the general office, hearing a hum of voices and typewriters through the thin partition. They got to a door that was partly open and Sessel started to open it farther. Blandell silently caught his arm and pointed. Sessel looked in.

This was not the lounging room Blandell had spoken of. It was the anteroom where Jenner’s secretary sat on guard. Grace was there now, but he was working at something on his desk. The two, one a well-known financier and the other a brilliant scientist and writer, slid past like burglars without the secretary looking up from his desk.

Reaching the door of the next room, they heard voices from the room beyond, Jenner’s office. They stopped there in the corridor, to listen. But the distance was too great. They couldn’t quite make out words.

After several minutes, Sessel reached out his hand to open the lounging-room door and creep into it. He stopped suddenly. From Jenner’s office came the sharp howl of a dog! Jenner’s fox terrier. The howl was weird, like that which dogs sometimes utter when they bay at the moon. Only there was pain in this cry.

They looked at each other. That happened when I was here, was the thought in Blandell’s scared eyes. And Sessel showed his own thought as plainly. That happened when I was here. Now what—

Again, his hand went forward to turn the doorknob. But, again, he never did.

The door banged open suddenly, and a man stood on the threshold. Blandell and Sessel stared at him, started to turn and get away — but stopped dead.

The man had a gun in his hand. It was a silenced gun, which is an out-of-the-ordinary weapon. He was holding it level before him, staring over the sights.

The man grinned, showing teeth in a wolfish snarl, and pressed the trigger twice, after deliberate aim.