The Second Pulp Crime Page 3

  “I regret,” he said stiffly, “that my error amused you. Just what is it you would have me suggest? A course in psychiatric treatment? I must tell you plainly that in any event Mr. Pike would have to be confined. He would have to be kept under the strictest observation and an ultimate commitment would probably be unavoidable.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  Dr. Seibermann suddenly appreciated that an alarming change had come over Carlotta’s features. All traces of laughter had vanished, as if blacked out by the swift fall of a tropical night. He found it appalling, this transformation of a balanced woman of the world, as though—he groped for a comparison—the statue of a benign saint were to harden up and lose all its capacity for compassionate understanding.

  She was saying now in a metallic voice, “You will not have Damon committed. You will examine him tomorrow afternoon at three o’clock. I’ve arranged through my influence over Florence to have him come here at that hour. You will declare him sane. You will tell him that you can see no reason why he should not continue to lead a normal business and social life. You will attribute his occasional aberrations to alcoholism, to nervous strain, or to whatever you wish. But you will suggest that his mental condition should be amenable to ordinary therapeutic treatment and should require no restrictive measures whatsoever.”

  For a long moment Dr. Seibermann was too flabbergasted even to speak. Although he had attempted to analyze her motives with complete objectivity, never in his wildest imaginings could he have conceived a development such as this.

  He said with as much dignity as he could muster, “Are you remotely aware of what you are saying? Can you seriously expect me to fall in with this plan, this plot—whatever infernal scheme it is you are concocting?”

  “Yes, Helmut, I can.” Then Carlotta added almost negligently, “Because I shall ruin you if you don’t.”

  “Gott im Himmel, woman! You are yourself a proper candidate for an institution. Surely, you must be joking—”

  But he knew it was no jest. He could see it in the implacable set of her features, in the all but palpable maliciousness in her eyes. She had not bothered to answer him, but was simply sitting there observing him with the marble gaze of a basilisk.

  “Do you,” he said, “appreciate the enormity of what you are suggesting? Not that for a single instant I would entertain it. You are asking me to suspend above society, above your sister in particular, what amounts to a Damoclean sword.”

  “Please, Helmut. Let us omit the clichés and the flowery oratory, shall we?”

  Dr. Seibermann was in no mood to omit anything.

  “Are you familiar with what might well be a psychotic sadist’s brain? Its menace? I am. And I can tell you it is not a pretty picture. It is like the pistol in a game of Russian roulette. It is precisely as indeterminate and as dangerous.”

  Dr. Seibermann’s hand reached out to summon Miss Foot.

  “Do not press that button, Helmut.”

  Some power in her voice arrested his hand in midair and for a frightening second he felt absolutely helpless.

  “There is nothing to be gained by continuing this discussion, Carlotta. Naturally, I shall be compelled to report Mr. Pike’s probable condition.”

  “No, Helmut. You will do exactly what I tell you to do.”

  “Let us not be stupid, Carlotta. Let us not prolong this idiocy.”

  “Very well.” Carlotta looked at Dr. Seibermann as if visualizing him in the role of an unsuspecting whale whose blubber was about to receive the plunge of a deadly harpoon.

  “I must ask you,” she said, “to think back. Back to Vienna. Surely, Helmut, you remember the house on the Kartnerstrasse? And the Grafin von Hanseldorf? Surely you haven’t forgotten the man called Smith?”

  Dr. Seibermann seemed literally to shrink within himself, as if some outlandish suction pump were draining his body dry. In a cruel panorama he foresaw the ugly future with which this woman was threatening him, for precisely what furtherance of her own ruthless ends he no longer cared. It was sufficient that ruin was staring him in the face.

  He rapidly summed up the potentialities in his mind. A cancellation of his citizenship papers, that at least could be taken for granted. The total collapse of his lucrative practice was equally inevitable. Both of those tragedies he could manage to endure, for there were far worse disasters that a man might have to contend with. As for the effect upon his wife, she somewhat tepidly figured in his general concern, but only off on the shadowy and inconsequential fringe of it.

  The matter of his neck, either by rope or ax, upon his deportation back to Austria, he ignored. It was his daughter Freda who made him aware of his vulnerability. Her fiancé being a career diplomat, it was a foregone conclusion that his wife, like Caesar’s, must be above reproach.

  And Jan Pulsedski, as Dr. Seibermann felt sure he knew him, was not a man to consider the world well lost for love. No, Jan would shut Freda out of his fife, and even though it were done in the best diplomatic style the blow, figuratively, would kill her. It was unthinkable.

  He said to Carlotta, “You are a she-devil straight from hell.”

  Carlotta gathered up her gloves and her bag from the desk. She said pleasantly, “Then the appointment will be convenient at three tomorrow, Helmut?”

  His sigh was the embodiment of self-loathing and defeat.

  “Very well,” he said. “At three.”

  * * * *

  Carlotta, in her Mercedes, on leaving Dr. Seibermann’s was held up where the driveway turned into East Los Olas Boulevard by a flow of cars. She did not mind the wait. She was lazy with satisfaction over the outcome of her duel with Dr. Seibermann and there was nothing left her now but to mark time, like some malignant goddess-from-the-machine, for its deadly result—a result that would spell release from staggering bills and threatened law suits. It was the one certain way of escaping the penalties of her own and Stefan’s fantastic extravagance.

  The line thinned and Carlotta was about to swing into traffic when she saw Stefan’s Bugatti. Stefan was driving alone, evidently on his way home from the Bahia-Mar yacht basin, which meant that the Bimini fishing clambake was over. She was sure that he would glance toward the Seibermann house in passing, and equally certain that he would spot the Mercedes and herself.

  Stefan did. His romantic, deep-set eyes widened slightly and he waved a courteous hand in salute. He touched the brake, then released it, smiling as Carlotta waved back. He would greet her at home in Halcyon.

  He wondered what in blazes she was doing at Helmut’s. The fact of her being within a mile of the place came as a delayed minor shock. Both Helmut and Dora bored her stiff. Stefan could understand this very well for Helmut, during recent years, had begun to bore Stefan himself. This was largely due to Helmut’s tediously tailored affectation of being a true-blue American male, completely dominated by a businesslike sobriety.

  At first Stefan had found this change-process amusing. It was so different from the burning, rather larcenous young Viennese Helmut had been in his youth. How many years ago? Twenty easily, if you cared to figure it out, which Stefan didn’t.

  What an intense, threadbare young creature Helmut had been in Vienna. Steeped up to his neck with his work in psychiatry, but equally involved in questionable escapades, both romantic and political. And on at least one occasion becoming involved in something far worse.

  He had at the time told Carlotta about the affair, without actually indicating his own accidental role, and although Carlotta never afterward had mentioned it, Stefan could not believe that she had forgotten. He hoped that she had, for in spite of the passage of years it remained a knowledge dormant with potential dynamite.

  His thoughts switched again to her having been at the Seibermanns’ and he amused himself with concocting innumerable impossible reasons during the balance of the drive to Halcyon and the
house, where he turned the car and his bags over to Jenks.

  “Have you eaten, sir?” Jenks asked.

  “Heavily, thank you. An extended buffet all the way over from Bimini. I’ll have a highball, though, in the patio.”

  Jenks, the highball, and Carlotta arrived in the patio simultaneously.

  “Was the fishing good?” she asked.

  “Unfortunately, yes. I should never have gone. Why do I yield so easily to traps like that?”

  “You don’t. Tell me—are you wondering about Helmut? My being there?”

  “Curiosity of the mildest nature, Carla.”

  “I stopped to make an appointment for tomorrow afternoon for Damon.”

  Stefan digested this for a moment. “So it approaches a climax.”

  “You’ve known about his mental state. You’ve talked it over with Otis.”

  “In a haphazard fashion. The symptoms do seem to be pretty serious. At first I didn’t take Otis very seriously.”

  “Neither did I this morning.”

  “He was here?”

  “He wanted to see you. He wanted the name of a good psychiatrist and I suggested Helmut.”

  “Of course.”

  Carlotta put on her earnest look, which to Stefan always seemed to be tempered with evasiveness, if not outright deception. “What is the real truth about Otis, Stefan? You are much closer to him than I am. We both know he doesn’t give a tinker’s damn about his stepfather.”

  “Otis cares considerably for his mother. Shall we say for her continued well-being?”

  “I realize he’s very fond of Florence. More than is normal, if you wish. It’s jealousy all right, intense. But it’s not directed at Damon. It’s jealousy of Jo and that fiancé of hers. Chuck Fallon—the gilt-framed protégé. From the moment Damon took the boy under his wing you could see the effect on Otis. It’s almost as though Chuck were the son Damon had always wanted and never had, a son of his own flesh and blood.”

  “Are you trying to convince me of something, Carlotta?”

  Her eyes were limpid with candor as she went on to embroider the veiling that masked her deadly plot. “Actually, Stefan, I’m simply trying to reassure myself. I believe that most of Damon’s mental instability can be rationally explained. Ever since he married Florence he’s been breaking his neck to stand even with her. I mean in a financial sense, as the male provider.”

  “The man must be a positive freak.”

  “From your Continental viewpoint, yes. I’m convinced that Damon dreads, has always dreaded the stigma of fortune hunter.”

  “Nevertheless he was penniless when he married your sister.”

  “Only comparatively speaking. I’m sure that his worry about it warped his business judgment. Consider his various failures, the foolish chances he has taken. They were all gambles, really, and the brutal fact is that each failure was financed out of Florence’s income. It goes a long way toward explaining his almost psychotic behavior and his lushing.”

  “Carla—”

  “Yes, Stefan?”

  “What is your interest in all this? Your true one?”

  She permitted the candor in her eyes to increase. “It’s Jo, I suppose. Shall we put it down to an aunt-like concern?”

  “Rubbish. You haven’t given a hoot about the girl for years.”

  “There was no need until now, until Otis stirred up this madness fantasia. Surely you can see that, Stefan? The girl’s desperately in love, and her engagement—not only to Chuck Fallon but to anyone at all—could land on the rocks.”

  “Tainted blood? An old wives’ tale.”

  “Some authorities still think not, and Jo’s not the sort of girl who would ever chance it—handing down Damon’s insanity to her children. That’s precisely the reason why I persuaded Florence to force Damon to agree with Otis about seeing a psychiatrist. The examination will clear the air. In fact, I’m hoping that it will prove Damon is a normal, sane man.”

  “Did you explain all this to Helmut?”

  “Yes. It’s why I saw him personally. I thought it important he know the general background.”

  When Carlotta had gone to her room, Stefan sat for a while in disturbed thought. Something was wrong. Carlotta’s specious brief for Damon’s sanity in the face of the most blatant signs of mental unsoundness was just too much to accept at face value.

  Why did she want Damon pronounced sane? Truly why? And what had she really said to Helmut?

  It was damned queer.

  * * * *

  Toward dusk of the following day Carlotta drove to Live Oaks. She was determined to satisfy herself at first hand that the three o’clock appointment with Helmut had gone off according to plan. She had urged Stefan to accompany her, but he had flatly refused.

  A strange feeling of unease gripped Carlotta as she went up the front steps and was admitted by an elderly Negro butler.

  “Are they back, Edward?”

  “For some time, Miss Carlotta. Miss Florence is in her sitting room, and doing mighty poorly.”

  “Poorly?” Uneasiness increased. Had Damon been kept in Fort Lauderdale for further observation? The possibility seemed too remote to be taken seriously—not with the vise she had clamped on Helmut. “Isn’t Mr. Damon—here?”

  “He is riding, Miss Carlotta. After they all gathered in the library for a short spell, Mr. Damon changed his clothes and went right off to the stables and had Buck saddle Black Panther.”

  Carlotta, as she mounted a semicircular stairway to the floor above, continued to consider the unlikely possibility that Helmut might have staged a last-minute revolt, one in which the ruin of his career had ultimately been outweighed by medical ethics and his Hippocratic oath.

  Had she demanded too much? Murder in cold blood, say by a bullet, or poison, or the knife might have made him hesitate, precisely as she too would have hesitated. But the case in point held no such physical violence for her or for Helmut. They were bystanders watching a deadly game in which a problematic killer had been officially loosed. To kill. Perhaps to kill.

  She went along an upper hallway to her sister’s living room where she found Florence loosely filling an armchair, with her eyes and nose red from weeping. Florence was a softer, much prettier version of Carlotta with, however, a total lack of her sister’s sense of style and her quenchless self-love.

  Florence dabbed at swollen eyelids and said, “It was all a bad mistake, Carla. I never should have listened to Otis, or to you. I should have had faith.”

  Carlotta asked tensely, “What was Dr. Seibermann’s verdict? Are you trying to tell me it was unfavorable?”

  “Oh no, dear Damon is perfectly all right in that way. He’s not well physically, but his mind is all right. Dr. Seibermann was very positive about it.”

  “Then what in heaven’s name are you crying for?”

  “Because the whole consultation ordeal was so useless. All it accomplished was to prove something we already knew. There never has been anything mentally wrong with Damon.”

  “Well, isn’t that better for everyone’s peace of mind? For his own especially?”

  “No, Carla. Damon is hurt. It’s just as if we’d made him feel he was an outcast from the family or something. Like a leper. It’s because we made him feel that way that he has started on one of his drinking bouts. He began to drown himself in bourbon the minute we got home.”

  Carlotta cautiously approached the one difficulty she felt it would have been hard for Helmut to minimize without turning himself into a zany or a charlatan. “Tell me, Flo, what was Dr. Seibermann’s opinion about the snake whip?”

  “That has all been explained. Damon flatly denied having any connection with the whip. He had thought it over yesterday after he was calmer, and he put it down to a nasty trick on the part of one of the yard boys, one whom he had had to punish. The bo
y, Philomel, is a Haitian and Damon said it was the sort of thing that fitted in with their voodoo fetishes, like sticking pins in wax dolls and cutting up small animals during their devil-worshiping ceremonies. Dr. Seibermann agreed with him.”

  “Had Damon whipped the boy?”

  “Not really, Carla. Damon says he just gave Philomel a tap across the shoulders with his riding crop. But Dr. Seibermann explained that even such a tap could have been enough to induce a boy with voodoo tendencies to take that very peculiar sort of revenge.”

  “Was the boy questioned?”

  “Oh yes, yesterday. Right after Damon had calmed down and figured it all out.”

  “What did Philomel have to say?”

  “Naturally he denied it. Otis was there, too, and he told me what happened. Damon just kept right on trying to force the truth out of Philomel, and it must have been rather horrid—I mean, Damon simply flew into a rage again. He kept insisting that Philomel had been the last person to handle the golf bag, when Philomel brought it from the car and left it in the house. But Philomel kept right on refusing to admit he’d put the snake whip in the bag, so Damon was forced to—well, after all Damon is a Georgian, dear, and I guess he just lost all control for a moment.”

  “What you guess is that he beat the tar out of the boy’s hide.”

  “Oh Carla, I really think he must have. Because anyhow, sometime during last night Philomel ran away, leaving his odds and ends of clothing and even some pay that was due him. He didn’t even leave any word with Belle, Jo’s body servant. Even though Belle and he are kin in some distant cousinly way.”

  Carlotta explored dark pictures: a black young body, crisscrossed with bloody welts, crawling off to bed and then, during some silent moment of the dark hours the power of Damon’s muscles silencing the boy, then quickly lifting the body, and spiriting it away. She repressed a cold, smug smile.

  Things marched…

  * * * *

  The moon, that night, was full.

  Dr. Seibermann had finished with the day. He had himself typed out and filed in his private safe his notes and conclusions covering the Damon Pike case history, even appending to them his own desperate doubts and self-recriminations.