“Yeah, I know. But don’t you think it might be a wise plan, professor, to leave investigation to the proper authorities? We’re stupid, we’re slow, we’re dumb, but we’re trained to find out things. Isn’t that right, professor?”
“That’s right, Sergeant. I don’t want to butt in.” In the United States a college degree is a mystic symbol. There are a lot of men who have never been to college and can’t get over it. It pays to humor them.
“O.K., now we know where we stand. You leave investigation to me, I leave Shakespeare to you.” His thin lips smiled narrowly: he had taken the curse off one college degree. I hid my Phi Beta Kappa key in my watch pocket.
Sale, the officer with the sallow face, was watching us as if he were enjoying himself. “Where’s Cross?” I asked.
“He took the body to the morgue,” Haggerty said. “I told him to send over the fingerprint man. He’ll probably want your fingerprints, so he’ll know which are yours and which are somebody else’s, if there was somebody else.”
“Don’t forget Miss Madden’s fingerprints. The Lieutenant told you about her, didn’t he?”
“I’m not planning to forget anything, professor. I went down there a few minutes ago and she said she was ready to talk to me when I get through with you.”
“How is she?”
“She’s O.K. Now I want to know what you saw. Everything you can remember.” He sat down in the swivel-chair at the desk and I sat facing him in the chair I had sat in talking to Alec earlier in the evening.
Sale was standing behind us looking unnecessary but interested, and the sergeant said, “You better go down and guard the front entrance.”
“O.K., Sarge.” Sale went out closing the door behind him.
“Now you were walking on the sidewalk down below this window,” Haggerty said. “What time?” He had taken out a black-bound notebook and waited with pencil poised.
“Five after twelve as close as I can figure it.”
“What did you see? Tell me in the order you saw it.”
“The first unusual thing I noticed was that the light on the corner of the building was out.”
“Sale checked on that. The bulb was partly unscrewed. But that doesn’t prove anything, it could’ve been kids.”
“And perhaps Alec thought he could fly and just jumped down to greet me.” The official assumption that Alec’s death was suicide, unless it could be proved otherwise, was getting under my skin.
“Aw c’mon, professor, don’t be like that. I’m just trying to figure a case. We got to co-operate.”
“Somebody turned that light out, and I think it was for a reason. And somebody turned on the light in this office.”
“When was that?”
“I saw the light go on at the moment that Alec fell.”
“Could he have turned it on just before he jumped?”
“He could have, I think, if he stood on the sill and pulled the chain through the window-opening as he jumped. But why would he do that?”
“Make it look like an accident,” Haggerty said.
“You think it was suicide,” I said, “but he had no motive for suicide. Alec Judd was a successful man, in general a happy man! He just got engaged to be married to Miss Madden, and yesterday he went to Detroit to apply for a commission in the Navy.”
“What do you mean, ‘in general’? Was something bothering him?”
“He was a little worried recently, but it wasn’t the sort of thing he’d kill himself over.”
“He was worried, eh? What about?”
“About the War Board. Certain things were bothering him.”
“Such as?”
“He didn’t tell me.” Galloway wanted me to keep mum for the present, and I kept mum against my will.
“Now look, professor, this looks like suicide to me. I know you don’t like to think so; he was your friend. But I’ve seen quite a few suicides. I’ve seen a couple right in this university.”
“It was not suicide,” I said.
“What makes you so sure? Did he look dead when he fell?”
“He was alive when he fell. I heard him yell, and it scared me to death.”
“Did you see him jump?”
“I saw him the moment after he jumped. I could see him against the light from the window, flinging his arms up. He was feet-first but he turned in the air on the way down and landed on his head.”
“Did it look like a jump?”
“It looked like a jump. But I know he was pushed.”
“Look here, professor.” He stood up and put his hand on the windowsill. “Is this the way the window was when you came up here after he fell?”
I got up and looked at the window. It was still open at a thirty-degree angle. Between the bottom sash of the outward-swinging pane and the outer edge of the narrow concrete sill, there was hardly more than a foot of clear space.
“This is the way it was,” I said.
“Miss Madden didn’t close the window, did she?”
“Not that I saw. She looked out, screamed, and fainted. No, she didn’t close it.”
“Right. Now how in hell could anybody push or throw a man as big as Judd through that little space, even if he was lying sideways? And you said he came feet-first and standing up. I don’t see how anybody could push him out in that position even with the window wide open. Look.”
He opened the pane wide, so that it made a right angle with the vertical sash. The metal supports at the side creaked as if it was seldom opened that far. As the bottom of the pane swung outward, the top came down, moving in grooves in the sash on each side, so that even when the four-foot square of window was wide open there was only two feet of clear space between the horizontal pane and the sill. Above the pane there was another two-foot space, bounded at the top by the bottom sash of the upper pane.
The upper pane was closed and had been since I could remember. I tested it with a push but it was firmly rusted in place.
“They could have opened the window wide and flung him out and closed it after him.”
“Who are they? You didn’t see anybody close the window after. You didn’t see or hear any struggle before. Don’t forget Judd was conscious, and he wouldn’t co-operate with anybody chucking him out a window.”
He paused and went on: “I’m sorry, professor, I think he jumped, and I’ll think so until I see the evidence pointing the other way. I think he opened the window wide and climbed up and stepped out on the outer sill–”
“He couldn’t have been knocked unconscious and stretched out on the sill so that he’d fall off when he moved?”
“Maybe if he was Tarzan of the Apes,” Haggerty said. “That sill isn’t eight inches wide. Anyway, that’s not the way you saw him fall. He didn’t roll off, did he?”
“No.”
“Well,” Haggerty said, “he climbed out on the sill and stood out of the way of the window and partly closed it. He reached in and turned on the light – see, it’s got a pull chain and he could even hold the end of it outside the window.”
“Why would he turn out the light in the first place?”
“So nobody would see him climb out the window. Same reason he turned out the light down below on the corner.”
“So now you think Alec did that.”
“I just thought of it,” Haggerty said, as if his own cunning surprised him. “He didn’t want anybody to see him jump. A lot of suicides try to make it look like an accident. He probably called you up to convince you that it was going to be an accident.”
“He convinced me that it was murder,” I said. “Not an accident, and not suicide.” This ratty detective can ratiocinate till doomsday, I thought, and I’ll stick by what I know about Alec Judd.
“Tell the coroner,” Haggerty said. “You’ll be the main witness at the inquest.”