It was perhaps two silent minutes later when Steele and Ardis came over to us. “I dislike interrupting,” he said quietly, “but you could help me if you would, Miss Royce.”
Lillian took a deep breath, and then stepped away from me and faced Steele.
He said, “Matthew mentioned your describing Mr. Thorp’s acquisition of an inamorata — a girlfriend. Do you know her?”
“Yes,” Lillian answered. “Ginny Epworth.”
Steele nodded again. Just then Lieutenant Garrett came out of the private office. “Oh, Steele!” he called, then waited until he reached us to continue: “One of our lab men has a farfetched theory on how the killer got into and out of the Stamp Room, but I’d like you to hear it anyway.”
“I don’t have to, Lieutenant,” Steele said. “I know how it was done.”
“What?”
“And I believe I can name the killer of Victor Schneider.”
My mouth, I think, dropped open. So did Garrett’s. There was a silence; then Garrett said warily, “Go ahead.”
“My proof is, at the moment, merely inferential,” Steele said. “But if you will bear with me, I believe I can suggest a means for establishing the killer’s identity.”
“Just name him.”
“If you would join us in the Stamp Room, and bring the others with you — and if you would then give me ten minutes to propound a little scenario — I’ll give him to you.”
“Just name him,” Garrett repeated.
“It wouldn’t do you any good; you couldn’t arrest him. Give me ten minutes, and I guarantee you can arrest him.”
“I can’t authorize you to ask any questions in the name of the Police Department.”
“I won’t be asking any.”
Garrett thought it over, then shrugged. “You’ve got your ten minutes,” he said.
We stood or sat on two sides of the Stamp Room, facing each other. Ardis, McCarthy, Lillian, and I were by the door, with a plainclothesman in the doorway. Across from us, Thorp, Mrs. Lorde, and Lieutenant Garrett were in front of the counter. Steele, of course, stood in the center of the room; it was his show.
“I would like to attempt an experiment,” Steele said, slowly turning around, his eye catching and examining each of us in turn. “Before I do, I should tell you that there is no magic, nothing mystical in what I am about to do.”
I suppressed a smile. Always watch a magician most closely when he tells you there is no trick. Steele had everyone else’s complete attention.
“There is a psychic aura of the past that is always with us,” Steele continued. “It seems to be strongest in the presence of death — particularly violent death. Some people believe that this psychic aura explains the phenomenon we call ‘ghosts,’ other experimenters equate it with that strange sense that what is happening has happened before: what the French call deja vu.” Steele was using his intense, mellifluous, almost hypnotic stage voice on us, a voice which compelled suspension of disbelief until the effect — whatever he was after — was accomplished.
“With experience and help, a few sensitive people have been able to read this aura and unfold the story it conceals. I am going to attempt to do this in this room. I will need your help.”
Mrs. Lorde was skeptical and impatient. “What is it you want us to do?” she asked.
“Patience,” Steele said. “I am about to tell the story that I read in the psychic patterns of this room. I may appeal to one or more of you for help as I go along. Verbal help. That’s all I require.”
“Go on,” Garrett said.
Steele raised his arms above his head. “Let us go back,” he said. “Back almost four hours, to the act of murder and all that led up to it.” He began prowling about the room, examining the walls, the windows, the display cases, the two aisles between the stacks, and even the floor — as though there were words written there for him to find. “I see this room,” he said. “It is empty, waiting. Now Victor Schneider enters. He has come to inventory the stamps; he has a list in his hands and he is checking the stamps off against it, not really examining them but merely seeing that they are there.
“He checks the counter first. Then he goes over to the stacks...” Steele disappeared down one of the aisles, then returned and pointed dramatically at the door. “The murderer!” he announced. Everyone stared at the plainclothesman, who was blocking the doorway.
“The door slowly opens,” Steele continued, his finger still pointing, “and the murderer enters. He closes the door behind him. I think — yes, he locks it.”
“Now wait a minute,” Garrett protested. “Schneider had the only key to the room — we know that.”
“Do we?” Steele asked. “I told you, Lieutenant, that there is no such thing as a ‘locked-room’ mystery. The murderer had a key — a duplicate key no doubt made some time ago by Victor Schneider and foolishly given to the killer for the sake of expediency. The murderer used it to get in, and he locked the door with it when he left.”
“Then where is it now?” Garrett demanded.
“I have no idea. Let me go on.” Steele stared about the room again, as if to relocate the aura. “The killer is in the room. What does he do? Does he attack Victor Schneider? No. He doesn’t see Schneider. He thinks he is alone. He advances—” Steele advanced “—to the counter. Is it the stamp he’s after?”
Steele paused before the case that had held the Hayes Two-and-a-Half-Cent Vermilion and contemplated it. “No. There is no aura of violence about this case. It was something else. What?” He ran his hand a foot above the counter as though it were a sensitive antenna tuning in to the auric vibrations. The hand paused and quivered over the far right end of the counter. “The telephone,” he said.
“What?” Garrett asked.
“He picked up the telephone. He dialed an outside number.”
“What number? Who was he calling?”
“Why come in here to use the phone?” Lillian Royce asked. “There are fifty telephones in the store.”
Steele pressed his hands to his forehead. His audience was obviously still with him, but I was beginning to wonder just what the hell he was doing. “I sense fear; fear, and a need for privacy. This person — the killer — locked himself in here to speak on the telephone of something so private that the overhearing of it was a mortal threat to him. Unfortunately for Victor Schneider, he did overhear this conversation.”
Steele moved again to the stacks. “What exactly was it that Schneider overheard? The facts of a crime — yes, I sense a crime. Perhaps the killer was making plans with the person at the other end of the wire, plans for immediate escape with the ill-gotten gains of this crime, this theft...”
“The Vermilion!” Garrett said.
“No, not a stamp. Not a physical theft. Cheating or embezzling perhaps. Yes — and the killer was laboring under a misconception; he thought his crime had been discovered, that he faced a prison sentence, that his only alternative was to flee as quickly as possible.”
Steele pointed a finger at the phone. “So Victor Schneider, overhearing all of this, decided to confront the person. And did so.” He spread his hands, and then clapped them together. “Just so quickly are created a killer, and a corpse. No premeditation; just the sudden, overwhelming need to suppress a criminous act... Isn’t that right — Lewis Thorp?”