“Does it hurt?” “Come on, come on. Being sweet and womanly when you haven’t even started to forget that Moore? Quit stalling.” She showed a hint of color, very faint, but the first I had seen of it. “I’m not stalling,” she denied. “If you can’t feel it you ought to look in a mirror and see it. What about Rosa Bendini?” I grinned at her to show her that the muscles worked, no matter how it looked.
“So you’re asking me instead. Okay. She calls Moore Wally. She says that he never had any intention of marrying you, and that you went crazy-these are her words-when you found out that he was still seeing her, and that you have never recovered. I may add that I don’t believe everything I hear, because if you have never recovered you must be crazy now, and on that I vote no.” The color had gone. She had held her working pose in front of her typewriter, her fingertips resting on the frame of the machine, implying that I had just dropped in to say hello and would soon drop out again, but now her torso and head came square to me to meet my eyes straight. The tone of her voice matched the expression of her eyes.
“You should have asked me to give you a list of the best ones to go to for gossip, but maybe you didn’t need to, because, if you had, Rosa would have been near the top, and you’ve already found her yourself. When you’ve found the others, please don’t bother repeating it to me. I have a lot of work to do.” Her body pivoted back to its working position, she looked at the paper in the machine and then at her notebook, and her fingers hit the keys.
I had my choice of several remarks, among them being that Rosa had found me, not me her, but it would have had to be a loud yawp to carry over the din of the typewriter, so I saved my breath and departed.
The day was more than half gone and I hadn’t made a beginning on the names I had got from Rosa. I returned to my room, got the head of the reserve pool on the phone, said I would like to have a talk with Miss Gwynne Ferris of his section, and asked if he would send her to see me. He said he was sorry, Miss Ferris was busy at the moment taking dictation from a section head whose secretary was absent for the day, and would a little later do? I told him sure, any time at his and her convenience, and as I pushed the phone back I became aware that my doorway was being darkened.
The darkener was a tall bony young man with a lot of undisciplined hair that could have used a comb or even a barber’s scissors. He looked like a poet getting very deep into something, and since his eyes were unmistakably fastened on me, evidently I was what was being probed.
“May I come in, Mr. Truett?” he inquired in a rumble like low thunder from the horizon.
When I told him yes he entered, closed the door, crossed to a chair in three huge strides, sat, and informed me, “I’m Ben Frenkel. Benjamin Frenkel. I understand you’re here looking for the murderer of Waldo Moore.” So if I didn’t have Gwynne Ferris I had the next best thing, the intense young man who, according to Rosa, had been beckoned and promised by her until he didn’t know which way was south.
Meeting his gaze, I had to concentrate to keep from being stared right out through the window behind me. “I wouldn’t put it like that, Mr. Frenkel,” I told him, “but I don’t mind if you do.” He smiled sweetly and sadly. “That will do for my purpose,” he stated. “I wouldn’t expect you to commit yourself. I’ve been here before, several times, since I heard this morning what you are here for, but I didn’t find you in. I wanted to tell you that I am under the strong impression that I killed Moore. I have had that impression ever since the night it happened-or I should say the next day.” He stopped. I nodded at him encouragingly. “It’s still your turn, Mr. Frenkel.
That’s too vague. Is it just an impression, or can you back it up?” “Not very satisfactorily, I’m afraid.” He was frowning, a cloud on his wide brow for his thunder rumble. “I was hoping you would straighten it out and I would be rid of it. Can I tell you about it confidentially?” “That depends. I couldn’t sign up to keep a confession of murder confidential-” “My God, I’m not confessing!” “Then what are you doing?” He took a deep breath, held it a couple of seconds, and let it out. “My hatred for Waldo Moore,” he said, “was one of the strongest feelings I have ever had in my life. Possibly the strongest. I won’t tell you why, because I have no right to drag in another person’s name. I doubt if any man ever hated another one as I hated him. It went on for months, and Iwas frightened at it, literally frightened. I have always had a profound interest in the phenomenon of death.
The two merged inside of me. There was a fusion, a synthesis of those two reactions to stimuli. The one, the hatred was emotional, and the other, the interest in death, was intellectual; and the two came together. As a result I became preoccupied with the conception of the death of Moore and I thought of it, over and over again, in concrete and specific terms. The conception of a car running over him and crushing the life out of him came to me many times, I don’t know how many, but dozens.” “It wasn’t a conception that hit him, it was a sedan.” “Certainly. I’m not suggesting anything esoteric. I live in a furnished room on Ninety-fourth Street not far from Broadway. One evening I was sitting there in my room, and those conceptions, those I have spoken of, were filling my mind. It was an extremely exhausting experience; it always was. Psychologically it might be compared to a trance resulting from a congestion of the cerebral cells brought about by prolonged and unendurable tension. My head ached and I lay on the bed.” I was getting bored. “And went to sleep and dreamed.” “No, I didn’t. I went to sleep, but I didn’t dream. That is, the overwhelming impression was that I had been asleep. That was a little after one in the morning, ten minutes after one. At the moment of consciousness I was opening the door of the bathroom. I thought to myself that I must have been very deep in sleep to have left the bed and got to the bathroom door at the other side of the room without being aware of it. My mind was completely empty, and rested; there were no dreams in it at all, though there often are when I get up. That was all there was to it that night; I undressed and went to bed and after a while went back to sleep; but in the morning, when I read the news of Moore’s death in the paper-of course it was an electrifying experience for me-my mind was suddenly occupied, completely dominated, by the impression that I had killed him. I think one little circumstance was a major factor in the birth of the impression: the circumstance that the car that killed him had been found parked on Ninety-fifth Street, just one block from where I lived.” “Think again, Mr. Frenkel. The car wasn’t found until nearly noon, so it couldn’t have been in the morning paper.” “What!” He was disconcerted. “Are you sure of that?” “Positive.” “That’s strange.” He shook his head. “That shows what a mind can do with itself.
I clearly remember that the impression was with me that morning when I went to work, so the detail of where the car was found must have come later and only made the impression deeper and stronger. Anyhow, that was when it started, and I’ve had it ever since, and I want to get rid of it.” “I don’t blame you,” I assured him. “That first time you went to sleep, when you were exhausted with conceptions and your head ached, what time was it?” “It was around nine o’clock. Naturally I’ve considered that. I can’t determine it very exactly, but it couldn’t have been far from nine one way or the other.” “Did you know where Moore was that evening? Or where you might expect to find him?” “No.” He hesitated. “I knew-” He left it hanging.
I nudged. “Let’s have it.” “I knew where I surmised he was, or might be. No, that’s not right. I knew whom I surmised he might be with, and that’s all. I prefer not to mention names.” “When you woke up by the bathroom door, how were you dressed?” “As usual. As I had been when I lay down. Suit, shoes-fully dressed.” “No hat or overcoat?” “My God, no. That would have removed any doubt, wouldn’t it?” “Well, a couple of layers. Any other indications-dirty hands or any thing?” “No. Nothing.” “Have you ever mentioned this to anyone, your impression that you killed Moore?”
“Never. When the police were investigating, soon after it happened, a detective called on me and asked if I had been out for a walk late that night and had noticed anyone parking a car on Ninety-fifth Street.
