As Farrel outlined to Houston what he had found downstairs, Houston moved with vacant eyes about the kitchen, his lips pursed, his hat in his hand, his hump seeming to follow him. He walked softly, flat-footedly, as if he feared that he would disturb some delicate process of thought by jarring his brain. He began to frown as Farrel described details of the scene of blood and death.
“And these two men, what were their backgrounds?” Houston asked at last.
“That’s a damned strange thing, Mr. D.A.,” Farrel said. “Gilbert Blount was a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the United States—”
“You’re kidding,” Houston protested with wide eyes.
“No, sir,” Farrel insisted. “It’s a fact—”
“And who’s the other one?”
“His twin. A Fascist, they say—”
“What’s his name?”
“Langley Herndon—”
Houston snapped his finger, as though trying to recall something.
“Langley Herndon…! Ah! I remember him—He used to write for the Crusader sometimes,” Houston said. “Hunh! A violent baby—Bloodthirsty—Welcomed Hitler and publicly lauded his extermination of the Jews. Said that America should use the Negro as a scapegoat around which to unify the nation—” He looked at Cross and smiled. “Herndon was perfectly cynical. He argued that anything could be done for any reason…He had the Negro singled out as a target, a menace, a danger…The Negro was America’s ace in the hole if the nation ever experienced any real internal stress. You could say that the nigger was the cause of it and get the rest of the nation to forget its problems and unite to get rid of the niggers…Ingenious, hunh?” Houston chuckled and turned to Dr. Stockton. “Well, Doc, how does it look to you? What’s your verdict?”
Dr. Stockton cleared his throat, advanced to the kitchen table and rested his briefcase upon it. He took out a sheaf of papers and leafed through them. He lifted his eyes at last to Houston.
“Mr. District Attorney, this is either very simple or very complicated…”
“Make it simple,” Houston said.
“I’ll let you decide that,” Dr. Stockton said.
“Oh, wait a minute,” Houston interrupted him. He turned and faced Eva, Hilton, Menti, and Cross. “Who are these people? Is anybody here related to either Blount or Herndon?”
“This is Mrs. Blount,” Cross told Houston.
“Oh, Madam, I beg your pardon,” Houston apologized. “If I’d known it was you, I’d not have spoken as I have. I’m awfully sorry…”
“It’s nothing,” Eva mumbled.
“These things are unpleasant, but we have to get these facts straight—Oh, yes; and the other two gentlemen?”
Farrel introduced Hilton and Menti as friends of Eva.
“All right, Dr. Stockton, you may proceed—”
“Well, Mr. District Attorney, I’ve all the reports right here. What we can make of these reports is quite another matter. Our Pathological Chemist, Dr. Reddick, has submitted a mass of details. I’ll begin first with Blount…” He began reading from the report: “‘Multiple incised wounds of scalp; congestion and oedema of brain…’”
“Dr. Stockton,” Houston interrupted him. “Forgive me—Suppose we save all that for the formal hearing, eh? Right now I just want to know if I’m to look for a murderer or not. Give me this wrapped up in a nutshell…”
“Right,” Dr. Stockton replied, putting his papers aside. “To all intents and purposes, Mr. District Attorney, these two blokes battered each other to death. All concrete evidence points toward that…Let’s take that aspect of it first…And, mind you, I’m leaving out all question of motive for the time being…The definite ascertaining of a different motive could alter the entire picture of our findings…Now, due to the great disorder of the room downstairs, we’ve not yet been able to reconstruct exactly what happened. Yet, the concrete evidence we possess points to the fact of an argument that led to a fist fight…There’s evidence that Herndon attempted strangulation upon Blount…Blount must have freed himself, for the next stage of the fight was with the fire poker. Who grabbed the fire poker first, we do not know. Now, here’s the strange thing. Both men bear evidence of having been hit with the poker, which means that during the course of the fight the poker must have been lost from the possession of one or the other of the men. In other words, they took turns in lamming each other…Follow me?”
“You’re saying,” Houston paraphrased, “that one man could have dropped the fire poker and the other could have grabbed it?”
“Or,” Dr. Stockton added, “one could have wrested the poker from the hands of the other. That happens quite frequently in brawls. A man is pounding another man’s brains out with a pop bottle. The other takes the bottle away from him and starts in with the bottle upon the aggressor with the aggressor’s own weapon…Well, that seems to have happened at the beginning of this fight.
“Now, a third stage of the fight comes. The table leg is now used as the weapon. Just how they got hold of it, we do not know. It seems utterly unlikely that either of the two men had time enough to stop the fight and break that leg off the table. We surmise that one of them crashed against the table in falling and broke the table, the leg coming off, breaking in two…The first man who saw that table leg dived for it and took it as his weapon.
“At the present moment, with what we’ve got to go on, we surmise that Blount got hold of the leg first—”
“How do you figure that?”
“It’s a guess,” Dr. Stockton said. “The most single powerful blow dealt with that table leg was against the forehead of Herndon…That blow could have caused death, not at once, but certainly Herndon would have died of it eventually. Most certainly he was stunned by it and we further surmise that he kept on his feet and continued the fight…Now, here’s another strange fact in a strange case. Both men bear marks of that table leg on their heads…That can only be accounted for, too, on the basis that the table leg, like the fire poker, changed hands during the course of the fight, which is highly likely…But, and this puzzles me, was Herndon able, physically able to deliver such death-dealing blows upon Blount’s head after he had received that crushing blow to his own forehead…? Yet the facts point to such. It’s possible…Men have been known to possess remarkable strength just before dying; men have been known to aim and fire a gun with sharp accuracy and then die straightaway…If Herndon was able to deal a death-dealing blow to Blount, after having received such a blow himself, then the case is simple.”
“Is there any way of telling, Dr. Stockton, how much time intervened between these blows?” Houston asked.
“That’s impossible,” Dr. Stockton said. “Our impression is that those blows were all delivered at approximately the same time. At the most, a half hour could have intervened, but we think the whole fracas took place in about fifteen minutes.”
“In other words, you don’t think that one man could have been knocked out, could have come to, and resumed the fight…?” Houston asked.
“That’s highly speculative,” the doctor said. “It would explain how Herndon was able to deal such hard blows after he had been mortally wounded. There are some ‘ifs’ here…But these ‘ifs’ only make the whole picture more complicated.” Dr. Stockton paused and pulled forth a batch of photographs from his briefcase. “This is how they looked when the officers arrived…” He handed the photographs to Houston.
Rocking on his heels, Houston looked at the photographs and his eyes bulged with suppressed horror. Cross could see a slanting glimpse of the pictures and at once there leaped into his mind the image of that red room with its flickering flames and the two still, bloody forms stretched out on the carpet, drenched in their own blood…
“Lovely,” Houston commented softly, returning the photographs to Dr. Stockton. He turned to look at Eva. “Would the lady mind excusing herself?” Houston asked.
“Not at all,” Eva said; she rose and left the kitchen.
Cr
oss’s eyes followed her with anxiety as her wan, tight face went from view.
“There’s no use in her hearing this sordid mess,” Houston mumbled. He rubbed his hands together, glanced about the room, and then spoke in a loud, sonorous voice:
“Perfect setup. Two extremes meet. A plus and a minus—And they cancel each other out…And who could hate each other more than two men like that? It’s the Russian-German war all over again, eh? Could be…Sounds like it. It fits, doesn’t it? Motives? Dr. Stockton, you spoke of leaving out motives…Why? You have all the motives on earth here, my dear doctor. These two men were totally opposed to each other in all aspects of life. You might call such motives natural life motives…Oh, I know that there is no such thing in law as that. But there will be one day…I’m sure of it. We might call such motives jealousy. But it’s total jealousy. The kind of jealousy the Bible speaks of when it refers to God’s being a jealous God, hunh?” Houston looked around the room and smiled.
Cross was trembling; he felt that maybe Houston knew that he was guilty and was mocking him. Was Houston teasing him by speaking his own ideas out loud, testing them on the people present? Whose ideas belonged to whom? What crazy luck he had in having this hunchback, the one man he had ever met who understood him, to track him down? Did Houston know how maddeningly close he stood to the truth?
“There’s another possibility,” Dr. Stockton’s voice sounded patiently.
“There are millions of possibilities,” Houston said, waving his hand. He looked at Cross. “Of course, there’s this problem of Herndon hating to have Negroes in his building, but I take it that that was simply a tiny aspect of his total jealousy toward Blount—”
Hilton and Menti were silent, tight-lipped, staring first at Houston and then at Cross. Cross waited, wondering what other versions of the crime did the Medical Examiner have in mind.
“So they killed each other,” Houston went on. He turned to Farrel. “According to you, Herndon killed Blount, hunh? Yes, he was seen standing over Blount with the fire poker…He was strong enough to chase Mrs. Blount up the steps with a gun…That fits. He later dies of wounds that Blount had inflicted on him. A double murder, or double manslaughter, whatever you want to call it.” Houston faced Dr. Stockton. “Is that more or less your opinion?”
A trace of hesitancy showed in Dr. Stockton’s eyes; then he shrugged and said:
“More or less.”
“More or less?” Houston was astonished. “What’s your reservation?”
“Somebody could have come upon them while they were fighting and killed them both,” Dr. Stockton said somewhat sheepishly; he was obviously embarrassed at the farfetched nature of his theory.
Cross felt suspended over a bottomless void. He had thought that Houston would have arrived at that solution first; but, no, it was Dr. Stockton who had put his finger on the truth.
“Good Lord!” Houston exclaimed. “Why can’t you fellows take facts just as you find them? Why do you want to make life more complicated than it is, and it’s damn well complicated, if you ask me. Now, Dr. Stockton, what motive on earth could anybody have in coming upon those two men fighting and then killing the both of them?”
“I don’t know.” Dr. Stockton shrugged his shoulders.
“I don’t know either,” Houston said. “The damned thing’s simple. Two hotheads met and had a fight over their total views of life. They fought. One died and then the other died. And for my money, there’s something of poetic justice in the whole damn thing.”
“Is that the official interpretation, Mr. District Attorney?” Dr. Stockton asked.
“Oh, Dr. Stockton, I’m not trying to encroach upon your duties,” Houston said, smiling blandly. “If not this interpretation, then what have you to offer?”
“I don’t know,” Dr. Stockton said. He turned to Cross and stared at him for several seconds. “You’re the young man who saw them fighting?”
“Yes, sir,” Cross answered.
“What time did Blount go down to see Herndon?” Dr. Stockton asked.
“It was about ten past nine o’clock,” Cross answered.
“How do you know that?” the doctor asked.
“Just before leaving the dinner table, Mr. Blount looked at his watch and told the time to us, and said he had to leave.”
Houston came forward and stood in front of Cross. Cross felt that his feet were resting on air, that he could sink right down through the floor.
“How long was Blount gone from the apartment before you went down there?” Houston asked.
Cross frowned, thinking. He felt that it was not really a matter of time; either they found a motive, his motive, and accused him or they did not. So he could tell the truth.
“That’s really hard to say…It’s better to tell you what happened. Mrs. Blount was worried. I was too. I offered to go down with Blount, to help him, defend him if anything happened…But he wouldn’t hear of it. He was a proud man…And Mrs. Blount warned me not to interfere. She said he’d be angry, wildly angry if I did…I was helping Mrs. Blount clear away the things from the table. Then we began hearing loud voices. We knew that they were quarreling. I offered to go down and Mrs. Blount said no, that he’d be angry. I went to my room and was lying on my bed…It was then that I heard that loud noise, like something breaking, a big piece of wood…That was the table, maybe…”
“No doubt,” Dr. Stockton said. “Go on…”
“Mrs. Blount came running to me. She was terribly upset. It seems—”
“How long were you in the room before Mrs. Blount came running to you?” Dr. Stockton asked.
“I don’t know,” Cross said truthfully. “Maybe five minutes; maybe longer…”
“And Mrs. Blount asked you to go down?”
“Well, not exactly…She didn’t seem to know what to do…So I offered to go down. But she said no. Then we heard a scream—”
“Could you tell who it was that screamed?”
“No,” Cross said honestly. “This time I said I’d go down, and she agreed…But she was still afraid. You see, really, she was more afraid of Blount himself than of anything happening to him. The moment I got downstairs in the hallway, I knew a fight was going on…I ran to the door, opened it, and saw Herndon beating Blount with the fire poker…Blount was on the floor and Herndon had his foot on his chest and was lamming away. I didn’t hear Mrs. Blount come down, but all at once I felt her hand touching my back. She started screaming and Herndon saw us…He came at us with the fire poker…I blocked him just long enough for Mrs. Blount to run upstairs, and Herndon swiped me across the shoulder with the poker…” Cross paused, pulled off his coat, opened his shirt and showed his shoulder.
“Why didn’t you call the police?” Houston wanted to know.
“When I got upstairs, Mrs. Blount was calling the police…She didn’t seem able to get connections…She asked me to call, then she ran out of the room to go downstairs again…I was scared she’d get hurt, so I ran after her, caught her on the landing and brought her back to the apartment. We kept hearing the fighting; there were shouts, screams…Mrs. Blount asked me to phone the police—”
“And didn’t you phone?” Houston asked.
“No; I wanted to try to help Mr. Blount…I told her to phone and I ran downstairs. But I found the door locked this time. I rattled the knob—I called, yelled—I could hear ’em fighting—”
“Whose name did you call?” Dr. Stockton asked.
“Mr. Blount’s name. I didn’t know what to do. I went back upstairs and—”
“How long were you downstairs the second time?”
“I don’t know. Maybe five minutes, maybe longer…When I went back to tell Mrs. Blount, she told me that she’d phoned Mr. Hilton and that Mr. Hilton was phoning the police. You see, she thought surely that Mr. Blount was coming up with me. And when I told her that he was still down there, she went really wild…I was trying to call the police when she ran out of the door again. This time she came flying back. She sai
d Herndon had his gun and was on his way up…”
“Did you see ’im?” Houston asked.
“No. I barred the door. Mrs. Blount fainted and I put water on her face…”
Dr. Stockton turned to Farrel, frowning.
“Where was Herndon’s gun, Lieutenant?” Dr. Stockton asked.
“In the drawer of his desk,” Farrel explained. “The drawer was half-pulled out. Seems like somebody had just tossed it in there. Might have been the last thing Herndon did before he died.”
“Perhaps,” Dr. Stockton said slowly.
Cross was still as stone. He could feel that they were not satisfied with this interpretation, but they could find no other that would explain the facts. Houston seemed inclined to accept the picture that Cross had painted. Good. Let the doctor and his scientists discover something else, if they could. Things were not going so badly. But he had to be careful of this man Houston; after all, he may be stalling just to see how he would react. The doctor had hit upon the right solution, but he had no background of ideas to make it stick, no understanding or grasp of the range of motives that could explain it all. And Houston had that, but he seemed not to care to bother with it. Was Houston playing a game?
Dr. Stockton began putting his papers and photographs back into his briefcase.
“Well, I’ll have to leave the motives to you, Mr. District Attorney,” he said. “My findings are as follows: double murder or double manslaughter…The two men died so close together that I’d not like to say who died first, so—”
“Mr. District Attorney,” Hilton spoke up for the first time, “There’s more to this than you gentlemen are admitting. A man has been murdered. That man was Gilbert Blount. The murderer was Langley Herndon. Now, allow me to identify myself a little more before I continue. I’m a member of the editorial board of the Daily Worker. I was a colleague of Gilbert Blount. I want to protest against the light-handed manner in which this case is being handled. The issues here are basically social, and you gentlemen are playing around with probabilities and psychological facts. I’m insisting that some measure of responsibility be shown here. This case has a background of politics, sir. I said politics, and I mean it. And you do not want to look into that phase of it, yet the only real motives can be found there. We have proof that Herndon killed Blount. Mr. Lane here is an eyewitness…He saw Herndon striking Blount with a poker about the head…Herndon later struck Mr. Lane with that same fire poker. I’m speaking of the moral side of this case…You saw that frightened little woman who just left this room. Herndon chased that poor woman with a gun, terrorized her! Now, I maintain that it’s unfair to leave the impression in the public mind that her husband was a murderer—”