“No need,” she said. “They were eyesores that were removed when the house was re-modeled because they made it fire-proof.”
But the lock on the door was utterly deficient. Simple and ancient, it did not require an expert to solve it, and the door itself carried no secondary protection: no bolt.
“This’ll never do,” I mumbled.
“Beg pardon?” she said.
“Look, I don’t know who’s been visiting you, ghost or no ghost, but anyone can get in here with any old key, and a picklock can make this doorlock do somersaults. This has got to go.”
“Go?” she inquired. “Go?”
“Where’s your Classified Directory?”
She brought it to me and I checked a few locksmiths and called a few locksmiths and found one who was free and told him what I wanted. He promised to come within the next half hour and Miss Troy made coffee and sandwiches, and we munched and chatted but avoided any mention of ghosts, and she grew more animated and smiled more frequently, and I discovered that I was having a very pleasant afternoon.
“Why don’t you come see me at the club this evening?” she said. “I told you where it is when you were making all those notes in your office. Cafe Bella on West Third in the Village.”
“What time do you go on?”
“The show starts at nine, and it’s sort of continuous. There are six acts — nobody’s real great and they don’t pay us much — but we don’t work too hard and everybody has his own dressing room which is something. The show runs from nine to two, sometimes later, depending upon business. In between, I just sit around in my dressing room. I don’t like to mix with the customers and the owners don’t demand that we do. I do wish you’d drop in and catch my act.”
“I might,” I said.
The locksmith came and he did as I requested. He installed a strong modern lock and he installed a sturdy steel slide-bolt. I paid him out of my pocket-money and I refused reimbursement from Miss Troy.
“Part of the fee,” I said, “and it may do the trick. You may never be bothered again.”
“I hope so, I hope so,” she said. “God bless you. I’m beginning to feel better already. It’s like when you go to a good doctor, you know, and he reassures you. Just your presence and your attitude — all these crazy things seem to be like a dream, a nightmare, and all of a sudden it’s morning and it was all dreadful but silly, you know?”
“Yes, I do, and I’m glad. Just keep right on thinking like that. Good-by now, and thank you for the lovely lunch.”
“Oh, don’t mention it. Will you come see me tonight?”
“I’ll try,” I said.
Simon Troy worked in a drug store at 74th Street and Columbus Avenue. It was small, cluttered, and old-fashioned, and it did not have a soda fountain. It smelled of herbs and pharmaceuticals and germicidals and there was dust on the shelves and the dust in the air made you want to sneeze. Simon Troy, working alone, was a blond wispy little man with puppy-sad brown eyes, a belge-leather complexion, and small yellow teeth. His smile, as he greeted me, was perfunctory: a drug clerk greeting a customer. I told him who I was and why I was there and an expression of anxiety wizened his face as his smile receded.
“If you please,” he said, “let us go in the back where we can talk.”
The rear, partitioned by thick plate-glass from the front, was a narrow area dominated by a drawer-pocked wooden counter for the making of prescriptions. There were a couple of wire-backed, rickety, armless chairs, and he motioned me to one of them. Before I sat, I said, “You are Simon Troy?”
Impatiently he said, “Yes, yes, of course.”
I produced cigarettes, offered one to him, and he grabbed at it with thin, bony, tobacco-stained fingers. He lit my cigarette, lit his, and puffed at it rapidly, shallowly, and noisily. I talked and he listened. I told him everything that Sylvia Troy had told me and I told him of the fee that she had paid me. When I was finished, he was finished with the cigarette, and he lit one of his own from the stub of the one I had donated. “Mr. Chambers,” he said, “I assume you must realize how terribly worried I am about my sister.”
I nodded. I said nothing.
“She’s sick, Mr. Chambers. I’m certain it was apparent to you.”
I nodded again. I said, “Would you tell me what happened up at Mt. Killington?”
“You mean about Adam?”
“If you please.”
He told me. “We weren’t even near him. He had gone over for a peek at that precipitous edge. We were quite far away, many yards from him, the three of us together. He must have had a seizure, a dizzy spell. We heard the scream as he slipped, toppled — and then he was gone. The Vermont police examined the site after we reported it. It had begun to snow and they could not make out any footprints on the edge. But from the points of the jagged crags below, which they could reach, they recovered bits of bone, bits of flesh, and bits of the ski suit he had been wearing. The body, of course, was never recovered.” He put the tip of his right index finger between his teeth and bit upon the fingernail, audibly.
“Mr. Troy,” I said. “Do you have any idea as to why your sister has come up with this wild story of hers?”
“I’m afraid there’s only one explanation. I believe her to be in the throes of a severe nervous breakdown.”
“But is there any basis for it? Any past history? Any reason?”
“She mentioned our reciprocal wills to you, didn’t she.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Well, Adam’s estate, after taxes, was divided into approximately fifty thousand dollars for each of us. My brother Joseph, a childless widower, was a rather conservative man, as am I. We put that money away and continued in the even tenor of our ways — but not so Sylvia. She quit her nightclub work, went off to Europe, and within a year, she had squandered her inheritance in toto. I think this did something to her, disturbed her, that within a year she was back to where she had started. She was compelled to return to work for a living, and right then, right from the beginning, she began to act peculiarly. Then she began to prattle about a plot, our plot, to murder Adam. And now this terrible business about Adam’s ghost.”
“And what about Joseph?” I said. “His suicide. Would you tell me?”
“Precious little to tell. Joseph was a sweet, simple, meticulous man. He was quite a hypochondriac although he had a dread of doctors. About six months ago he developed stomach pains, nausea, vomiting. He refused to go to a doctor, but I finally dragged him. X-rays disclosed a mass in his stomach. The doctors believed it to be benign, but Joseph believed otherwise. We had arranged for an operation but, before the time for it arrived, he killed himself.”
“Yes, I know, he slashed his wrists,” I said. “But what about this business of no weapon?”
He smiled, yellow-fanged, sadly. “The police are satisfied with the explanation. Joseph committed suicide in his bathroom. He cut open his wrists and bled to death. Knowing Joseph, I know exactly what he did, once he made up his mind to do it. There was an open razor found nearby, without a blade. He took the blade from that razor, cut his wrists, dropped the blade into the toilet bowl, flushed the toilet, and bled to death. There was a good deal of blood, all over that bathroom, but no actual weapon. Joseph was meticulous, a creature of habit. He flushed the weapon away into the toilet bowl. The police agreed completely with my thinking in the matter. After all, I was his brother; I knew him.”
I stood up, saying, “Thank you.”
“Mr. Chambers, please.” He fidgeted, hesitant, obviously embarrassed.
“Yes?” I said.
“Mr. Chambers,” he blurted. “I believe you should return that fee to my sister.”
“Why?”