“I’ll take care of the letter, Brady,” Gavigan broke in. “No hurry about that just now. I want you to go through this darkroom with particular attention to the poison bottles you’ll find there.” Gavigan turned again to Gail. “I don’t get it. Photographers that use it don’t all turn blue, and Arnold certainly wouldn’t be dosing himself with it.”
“No,” Gail said with deliberation, “but doesn’t it look as if he might have hidden his silver nitrate, substituting rock salt in its place, in order to escape being dosed with it?”
Merlini picked some of the crystals from the table between thumb and finger and examined them closely. “You mean Linda?” he asked.
Gail said, “I’d like to make my position clear. I wasn’t Arnold’s doctor. The fact that he has argyria interested and puzzled me, but it wasn’t my business exactly. He said as much once when I tried to mention the subject. It wasn’t until last night, when we found Linda, that I started to put two and two together. I couldn’t mention it before, because it was only a wild and libelous speculation. But the fact that he keeps his silver nitrate under lock and key with a harmless decoy salt in its place — well, it begins to look as if I had something.”
“Yes,” Gavigan agreed slowly, “it looks as if Arnold had tumbled to the fact that he was being dosed and had taken secret precautions to avoid it. But why would Linda — this makes her crazier than you thought, doesn’t it?”
“It means she was more dangerous than I thought, yes. And her reasons are obvious. Jealousy is a natural agoraphobic state of mind. In Linda’s case it concerned Arnold and Floyd — but particularly Arnold. He is — or was — an actor and a good one. Linda has always wanted to be one — you may have noticed the books in her room and the theatrical make-up table. Her acting ambitions were, because of her phobia, quite impossible of fulfillment. She couldn’t stand seeing Arnold free to go where he liked, independent of her and successful on the stage. She found out about the effects of silver nitrate somehow and she simply fed it to him — taking it from his own darkroom. He wouldn’t notice the taste because of the very small amounts. She might as well have given him her phobia; it had the same effect. Like her, he disliked to go out, though for a physical rather than mental reason.”
Gavigan frowned at the brown bottle and the scattered crystals on the table. “Opportunity, means, and motive!” he said. “Get him, Malloy. This case is all washed up.”
Malloy hurried up the stairs. His stride was purposeful and determined.
Merlini’s voice came from the corner of the room. “You know, Inspector, I think we’ve got a break at last.”
“Yes,” Gavigan agreed, “Arnold’s out on the end of a long, long limb.”
“Arnold? Oh, yes. But I don’t mean that.”
We all swung around on him together. He was seated at the desk behind the typewriter. He had removed the ribbon from the machine and was holding it, a spool in each hand, close under the desk lamp. He was squinting at it with fascination; and, without looking up, he said:
“Ross, there’s another ribbon or two in this upper left hand drawer. Put one in this machine and take dictation.”
He got up then to make room for me; and I acted quickly, following instructions.
Gavigan said, “That a new ribbon?”
“Yes,” Merlini said. “Let me have that magnifying glass of yours. There are a couple of feet here in the center that carry only a single layer of impressions. They’re crowded but quite distinct. The rest, on each side has been gone over twice. Your men at the lab should be able to untangle those with photographic enlargements, but I think I can decipher the single impressions now. Ready, Ross?”
I nodded, and with the ribbon close to the light he began reading, slowly and with frequent pauses, but with certainty. He read, not words, but single letters: “i-l-l — i—m — t-h-g — i—e-e-h-capital t-colon-a-d—”
“No spaces?” I interrupted.
“They wouldn’t show,” he said. “The ribbon doesn’t travel when the space bar is struck. We’ll have to put those in ourselves, later.”
He continued spelling out the message, and my enthusiasm waned rapidly. I didn’t see that we were getting much in the way of sense, and then, as the letters suddenly became numerals, we got even less. The Inspector and the Doctor when I had finished, were both leaning over my shoulder and looking at this:
It reminded me of the mathematician’s assertion that a monkey at a typewriter could, if given a sufficiently great number of millions of years, eventually turn out, by pure chance and according to the laws of probability, all the books in the British Museum. This batch of characters looked to me like the monkey’s work on an off day.
Gavigan glanced at Merlini and said, “Well?”
“Looks a bit cryptic, doesn’t it?” Merlini replied.
“You might insert spaces before each capital letter,” Gail suggested, “except that ‘Lrae’ doesn’t look very promising.”
Gavigan scowled at it a moment longer, then remarked impatiently, “You can have it, Merlini. You like puzzles. And you’ll probably decode it and come up with a six-way substitution cipher, an international spy ring, and stolen naval secrets. While you’re doing that, I’ll finish off Arnold.”
The Inspector didn’t appear to think highly of the message, if that’s what it was. I wasn’t sure that I did myself; it didn’t even look like a worth-while finger exercise. If it meant anything at all, it would appear to be a combination code and cipher, though Gavigan seemed to consider that as too romantic for serious consideration. I eyed Merlini, trying to fathom what he thought. He seemed more hopeful, because, after a moment, a smile suddenly grew on his face and he leaned above me.
“Ross,” he began, “if you’ll just—”
But the stairway door opened; and Arnold hurried down, followed by Malloy. Gavigan moved quickly to stand before the bottles on the table, hiding them with his body.
Chapter Fifteen:
THE PERFECT CRIME
Inspector Gavigan waited until Arnold had stopped before him. Then he went straight to the point. “Who’s your doctor?”
“Doctor?” The apprehension in Arnold’s voice was plain. “Why do you want to know that?”
“Never mind that. Who is he?”
Arnold balked. “Look here, Inspector. I see no reason—”
Gavigan, without warning, exploded. “I’ve got plenty of reason and you damn well know it!” he roared. “Answer my question. You and a lot of other people around here answer as nice as you please to all the unimportant questions. As soon as I throw out one that means something, you stall and start lying. I’m going to have some answers, and I’m starting with you! What is your doctor’s name and address?”
“Sorry, Inspector. I don’t have one. I’m never sick.”
“Arnold,” Merlini put in earnestly, “you’re making a mistake, you know. A bad one. And, Inspector, you forgot to tell him at this point that he can refuse to answer until he’s seen his lawyer.”
Gavigan paid no attention to Merlini’s comments. “Let me see your hand, please,” he ordered.
“Fingerprints?” Arnold asked, without moving.
“No.” Gavigan reached out, grasped his arm between elbow and wrist and swung it up. Arnold made no protest, but his face was grim. Gavigan pretended an interest in the palm. Suddenly he turned the hand over and shot back the cuff.
“You don’t use the make-up on your arms?”
The flesh color of the hand stopped short just above the wrist. His arm beyond that point was the dark, blue-gray, slate color that Gail had described.