Stranger Than Truth Page 2

  Lola’s drinking, I decided, was directly related to the cynicism with which she approached her job. Not that I blamed her for finding Truth and Love distasteful. Lola Manfred had once written some good poetry.

  She laid her hand gently upon my coat sleeve. “Are you sure you know what you’re fighting for?”

  “I refuse to be pushed around.”

  “I hope when you’re shivering in your garret that principle will warm you.”

  “But suppose I let them set a precedent this time, how much authority can I expect in the future?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Does it matter!” I cried.

  She blew her nose daintily on a soiled handkerchief. “What makes you so different, Don Quixote, from your fellow prisoners in this steam-heated dungeon? Why should you enjoy the luxury of getting your own way when the rest of us make daily obeisance before Munn and kiss Barclay’s noble prat?”

  “I’ve never noticed you indulging in those rites, Lola.”

  “I don’t have to. They can’t fire me. I happen to know where the body’s buried.”

  “Perhaps I’d better find myself a body.”

  “It oughtn’t to be hard. There are probably plenty of ’em rotting in the crypts.”

  The door had opened softly. Someone was standing behind my chair. I turned hopefully, but it was not Eleanor. Munn’s secretary had come in. She smiled contemptuously and said, “He’ll see you now, Mr. Ansell.”

  I started out. As I held the door for Munn’s secretary, Lola blew me a kiss. “Come back when it’s over and I’ll provide consolation.” She jerked her thumb toward the lower drawer and winked.

  “Come in, come in,” Munn called jovially. “Sit down, won’t you? Are you comfortable there? Let me pull down the blind. I’m sure you don’t want the light in your eyes.”

  That was Munn, glib and unctuous. The smile was too quick, the voice too smooth. He loved himself, he was a success, a male secretary who had become a big executive. He had a clown’s mouth, red as paint and curving like the crescent moon. When he laughed the muscles of his cheeks never moved. It was as if his mouth had its own life, independent of his face. His hair had grown thin. A peak descended to his forehead but on the sides it scalloped off. He had angular eyebrows and narrow, restless eyes. His desk was neat, the blotter spotless and all of his papers filed into one of those leather folders called a “Work Organizer.” On the wall hung numerous photographs lovingly autographed by Noble Barclay.

  He offered me a cigarette.

  “I don’t smoke Turkish,” I told him and took out my own. He leaned over to light one for me. I waited for him to open the conversation.

  After a while he said, “You wanted to see me about something, Ansell?”

  “You know damn well what I’ve come to talk to you about.” I waved the crumpled memo. “We’re supposed to be going to press today.”

  He nodded. “I’ve noticed before, Ansell, that you always wait till the last possible moment before putting through an important story.”

  “I wait? Look, Munn, that story was held in your office for almost three weeks. Look at the date on the manuscript. You’re on top here, you’re the Supervising Editor and General Manager. Why did you hold the story until the day we go to press and then reject it with a sappy memo? For once in your life, Munn, someone’s asking you for a reason.”

  Munn watched his smoke rings drift toward the ceiling. “I don’t quite understand your complaints, Ansell. Most of our editors find that the organization functions efficiently.”

  “Damn it!” I shouted. “You can’t do that to me. You know I can’t put the magazine to bed without an Unsolved Mystery.”

  “Have you no other copy to substitute?”

  “The illustrations have been made. The plates are all ready.”

  “We can get cuts made over night. Have you no other Unsolved Mystery, Ansell?”

  I jumped up. I stood before him. I pounded on his desk with both fists. “There’s nothing wrong with that story. Why the hell are you sabotaging it?”

  He nodded toward the crumpled memo. “You’re aware of my objections.”

  “I don’t entirely agree with you, Mr. Munn.”

  “I’m sorry, Ansell.”

  Out in the General Office, the typewriters were clicking again. I heard laughter to my left, which was the direction of the Truth and Love office, and I wondered whether Eleanor had returned from the Studio, and what Lola had told her. Would Eleanor also think me a solemn young fool, or would she admire a man who fought for his rights?

  “Look,” I said to Munn in a moderate conversational tone, “I don’t want to be stubborn about this. You’re right about that correspondence-school stuff. I’ve no illusions about the purpose of our magazine.”

  “Our purpose, Ansell, is to disseminate truth in a form that will appeal to popular taste.”

  “Yes, of course, Mr. Munn. But the advertising…”

  “Advertising helps finance our periodicals, Mr. Ansell. Without it, we should be obliged to operate on a much smaller scale and we could not bring our message to so many people.”

  “I understand that. And I’m quite willing to cut out all the cracks about correspondence schools. I’ll simply state that this particular course was a phony and not to be compared with the accredited educational institutions which advertise in our incorruptible publications.”

  I saw my mistake at once. Humor of any kind baffled Munn. He was one hundred per cent literal and any remark that hinted of irreverence toward Noble Barclay or Truth Publications was a personal affront.

  I hurried to cover up. “Look, Mr. Munn. Where the liquor is concerned, you haven’t a leg to stand on. How can we, in our editorial columns, pretend that liquor doesn’t exist, when three of our magazines are running wine ads?”

  “I believe that you were absent from the conference at which we discussed the matter.”

  “I didn’t miss the piece in Truth and Health that said that wine, taken at meals in moderate quantities, is a vitamin-packed food and provides an antidote against the craving for stronger liquor. And in the next issue of Truth, I understand…”

  “I didn’t know that you were so well acquainted with the contents of our other publications.”

  “Such a drastic change in policy can’t go unnoticed. Look, Mr. Munn…”

  “Look, Ansell. I’m astonished at you, a professional writer, abusing the English language in that manner. You ask me to look. What am I to look at? Don’t you mean to employ the verb, to listen?”

  I was going crazy. You could never argue with Munn. He was always like that, going off the main path, scooting down some dark alley.

  “Listen, if that’s what you prefer, I’ll merely mention that there was liquor in the murder victim’s glass. I won’t say what kind of liquor.”

  “Do you consider that consistent with our policy of strictest truth in every detail?”

  “I’ll cut all mention of liquor out of the story. It has nothing to do with the murder anyway. Will that suit you?”

  He crushed out the cigarette, rolled the stub against the bowl of the ashtray until the paper was empty. He rolled the paper into a tiny ball, threw it into the wastebasket and emptied the ashes into a covered tin receptacle. “I dislike the odor of stale tobacco,” he said and wiped his hands on a paper handkerchief which he had taken out of his desk drawer. Then he threw the handkerchief into the wastebasket.

  “We were talking about a manuscript,” I reminded him. “The Unsolved Mystery, the murder of Warren G. Wilson. Remember?”

  “I’ve finished talking about it.”

  “I haven’t.”

  At this point I should have given up. I knew that Lola had been right. It was not principle I was fighting for, but authority. Just the same, I went on fighting.

  “Compromises are useless, Ansell. Need I remind you that you’re wasting time? The story has been rejected. Definitely.”

  There was a long silence. He had
dismissed me and he waited to enjoy the spectacle of my retreat. I sat tight. Who was he, Edward Everett Munn, to turn me out? For a moment there, I had wavered and been willing to call quits.

  “Look, Munn,” I said, and when he frowned, I didn’t bother to change the verb. “I’ve offered to take out everything you object to in the story. Even without the comment which I think gives it quality, we’ll be offering our readers something fresh. I’ll make the cuts now, and send you the manuscript by lunchtime. If you’ll okay it immediately, I can get it to the printer’s this afternoon.”

  “And if I refuse?”

  “I’ll send it through anyway. As editor, I’ll take the responsibility.”

  He rose. Sitting down he seemed insignificant because his head was small and his shoulders narrow, but when he stood on his incredibly long legs, he looked like a middle-aged boy on stilts. “Very well, there’s only one thing for us to do. We’ll take it up with Mr. Barclay.”

  He lifted the mouthpiece of his interoffice phone. “It’s Mr. Munn,” he told the instrument. “Very important.”

  A female voice shrilled through the box. We waited a few seconds and the female voice shrilled again. “He’ll see us now,” Munn said, smiling because the boss had not kept him waiting.

  No typewriter ceased its clatter as Munn and I walked through the General Office. There was not a split second’s lapse in the rhythm of the machines. Discipline never slackened when Munn was in the office.

  He walked ahead, the shepherd leading the lamb to slaughter, the warden taking the condemned man to the death house. Before the door of Barclay’s office, he stopped and leaned over to whisper something. His breath smelled of peppermint-flavored mouthwash. “Has it ever occurred to you, Ansell, that your stubbornness might lead to disaster?”

  It certainly had occurred to me, but the disaster I had in mind was the loss of a good job, not the horror and tragedy which came as the result of my determination to get my Unsolved Mystery into the February issue.

  At that time I did not consider the Wilson story anything out of the ordinary. The murder was not particularly exciting. It was the background of the victim—as much as was known of it—that interested me. I had no other reason for writing the story, scheduling it for the February issue and sending it for approval to Noble Barclay.

  I have a copy of the manuscript in my files, and since it is the focus of a much stranger story, I am including it here, just as I wrote it and submitted it on November fifth to the Reading Department, the Supervising Editor and Barclay.

  Here it is:

  * * *

  No. 1028—TaC

  11/5/45

  Sched: Feb.

  Author: John Miles Ansell

  The Unsolved Mystery of the Month

  DEATH OF THE MAN WHO WAS NEVER BORN

  They did not immediately see the body. It lay face downward in the narrow channel between the wall and the bed. The right arm was extended. The man had apparently fallen while reaching for the telephone.

  It was nine o’clock on Sunday morning, May 13, 1945. The body had been there since Friday night, for it was on Saturday morning that the chambermaid, the bath maid and a bellboy had noticed the sign on the door: Do Not Disturb.

  On Monday morning the sign was still there. The chambermaid had notified the housekeeper. The housekeeper had telephoned the desk clerk. The desk clerk had reported to Mr. Frederick Semple, manager of the hotel. Accompanied by the desk clerk, the housekeeper and the chambermaid, Mr. Semple approached the door of Suite 3002-4. Before using the pass key, Mr. Semple pressed the electric button, knocked at the door and called the tenant’s name. There was no response, and Semple, followed by his retinue, entered the apartment.

  Drawn curtains repelled the sunlight. Bulbs burned in three silk-shaded lamps. The electric phonograph’s motor throbbed. Evidently the machine had been burning up current since the last of the records had dropped into the well. Pillows were heaped at one end of the wide couch and close by stood a coffee table with cigarettes, ashtray, French brandy and a snifter, not quite empty.

  Beyond this room a short corridor led to bedroom and bath. The bed had been turned down and on the night table were shell-rimmed spectacles, a copy of Saki’s short stories and a thin gold watch which had stopped at 5:20.

  At the far end of the room a desk had been overturned. A portable typewriter lay on its carriage, legs upward like a helpless animal. Pens, pencils, paper and carbons were scattered on the desk and spilled on the floor.

  And in the narrow channel between the bed and the wall lay the tenant with a bullet in his back.

  An hour later, Mr. Semple, quivering from shock and thinking of the effect of scandal upon the conservative bankers who operated the hotel, told the police what he knew of the late tenant.

  His name was Warren G. Wilson and there had been nothing in his way of life to suggest a violent end. He had occupied his suite for five years and three months, and never in that time had his activities created any of the problems which distress the managers of exclusive hotels. Servants remembered his generosity and regarded his passing as the loss of a friend. He had spent most of the time in his suite, reading in bed or lying on the couch, listening to his records.

  According to the Coroner’s report this inactivity had been due to illness. Pale flesh had been stretched meagerly over Wilson’s bones and his lungs were so embroidered with scars that it was remarkable that he had lived long enough to be killed by a shell fired from a .22 automatic.

  He had entertained few visitors. Hotel clerks remembered Mr. Thornhill, Mr. Henning and Mr. Bendas, middle-aged gentlemen who shared Wilson’s hobby of collecting first editions. That his bent was literary was proved, not only by these friendships and his library, but by the collection of writing materials stored in his cupboards. That Wilson’s ambitions were unfulfilled was shown by the absence of manuscript.

  An examination of his bookshelves showed that he had been a man who admired style, and it can be assumed that he was a perfectionist who wrote three lines on Monday, added two commas and a semi-colon on Tuesday, on Wednesday took out a comma, spent Thursday criticizing what he had written, threw it all in the fire on Friday and spent Saturday thinking he had done a hard week’s work.

  There had been a woman. She had come to the hotel infrequently, but had never left her name at the desk because she returned with Mr. Wilson after he had dined out. Two elevator boys said she was good-looking, but neither could remember whether she had been blonde or brunette.

  On the night of his death Wilson had dined out, but had returned without a companion. While he sipped French brandy and listened to his favorite phonograph records, a Negro pianist was playing boogie-woogie in the suite across the hall. For on that night, Wilson’s neighbors, the only ones who shared the thirtieth floor of the tower with him, were giving a party. More than sixty people rode to the thirtieth floor that night. Strangers were not asked their names, for the hostess in 3006-8 had informed the desk that guests were not to be announced.

  No stranger stopped at the desk that night to ask the number of Wilson’s apartment. The murderer had evidently known that his victim occupied Suite 3002-4. To the busy elevator boys all passengers bound for the thirtieth floor were party guests. One boy, a new employee, hired only the week before and unfamiliar with the hotel guests and their regular visitors, told the police he remembered a nervous lady who dropped her pocketbook as she got off at the thirtieth floor. He had bent over to pick it up, but the lady had swooped down, grabbed the bag and tucked it under her arm in a most belligerent manner. All the boy could remember about this lady was her plaid coat.

  The hostess in Suite 3006-8 could not recall a guest in plaid. Her party had been formal. A plaid coat would have been as inappropriate as a top hat at a baseball game. The police decided, therefore, that the plaid coat might help identify Wilson’s visitor. It was not much of a clue. Plaid coats were all the style that season.

  To make the search more baffling ther
e was the report of Jean Pierre Hyman and the conflicting opinion of his head-waiter, Gustav. Mr. Hyman is the owner of the French restaurant that attracts so many gourmets to his modest but expensive quarters on East Twelfth Street. Jean Pierre remembered the lady who had sometimes dined in his restaurant with M. Wilson. She had been young and fair, and on her last visit, ten days before Wilson’s regrettable death, had worn a new spring coat of red, blue and green plaid. She had been, according to Jean Pierre, a dainty blonde.

  Although he did not like to disagree with the boss, Gustav, the headwaiter, insisted that Wilson’s girl friend had been a willowy, radiant brunette with soulful dark eyes. Yet Gustav and Jean Pierre were agreed on one point. There had not been more than one young lady.

  The police found themselves seeking a girl who was either blonde or brunette and who wore one of the hundreds of thousands of plaid coats circulating in New York. It was a tough assignment, but Captain C. Allan Riordan of the Detective Bureau vowed that he would not rest until he had discovered the lady in plaid who, on the night of May eleventh, might or might not have been carrying a .22 automatic in her pocketbook.

  Meanwhile Captain Riordan and his staff sought other information. Somewhere in the fertile ground of Warren G. Wilson’s past lay the clue to his strange death. Why was he, a man of gentle disposition and quiet habits, the victim of premeditated murder? What rage or grievance could inspire the death of a man known to have been a connoisseur of wines and salads, an admirer of Prokofiev, Debussy, Mahler, Saki and William Blake?

  One fact about Wilson baffled Riordan as much as the identity of the lady in plaid. No one knew the source of Wilson’s income. On the second day of every month he had deposited in his checking account two thousand dollars in cash. It was highly irregular, but his bankers had asked Wilson no questions. Since the ’29 depression there had been a number of eccentric depositors who, fearing revolution, had converted their assets into cash which they kept in safety-deposit boxes.