Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination by Edogawa Rampo Read Free Book Online Page A

he could explain the episode of Fukiya's finding the purse was that the man had stolen half of the old lady's savings, left the remainder in the hiding place, put the stolen money in a purse, and pretended that he had found it on the street. But was it really possible that such a fantastic thing could have been done? The purse, of course, had been subjected to the closest scrutiny and placed under a microscope for even the faintest of possible clues, but all these efforts had proved negative. Also, according to Fukiya's own statement, he had taken a walk on the day of the murder; in fact, he had even admitted that he had passed the old lady's house. Would a man who was guilty be so bold as to make such a dangerous admission? And then, what about the weapon which had been used to stab the old woman? The entire house and garden as well as the surrounding area within a large radius had been searched with a fine-tooth comb, but there was not a trace of it.
    In the absence of conclusive evidence to the contrary, Kasamori felt that the police were justified in pointing to Saito as the most likely suspect. But then again, the district attorney reasoned, if Saito could be guilty, so could Fukiyal Thus, after an investigation which had stretched out to a full month and a half, the only point which had been established was that there were two possible suspects, but without a shred of concrete evidence to convict either.
    Reaching this impasse, Kasamori decided there was still one other method he could use in his attempt to break the case. This was to subject the two suspects to a psychological test—a method which had been useful in the past.
    When he had first been questioned by the police, two or three days after the murder, Fukiya had learned that the district attorney who had been put in charge of the case was the noted amateur psychologist Kasamori, and the information filled him with panic. Cool and collected as he had been until then, he soon came to dread the very sound of the district attorney's name, especially after he had been summoned a second time and questioned by Kasamori himself. Supposing, just supposing, he were to be subjected to a psychological test. What then? Would he be able to hold his own in the face of such an experiment, the nature of which he knew absolutely nothing about?
    The shock of this possibility was so stunning that he became too uneasy to attend his classes. He remained in his room, on the pretext of illness, and tried desperately to figure out how he could match wits for wits. Of course, there was absolutely no way of anticipating the form of psychological test that Kasamori might employ. Fukiya, therefore, applied all the test methods he could possibly imagine on himself in order to discover the best possible way to circumvent them. Since a psychological test, by nature, was a method applied to reveal all false statements, Fukiya's first thought was that it would be utterly impossible to lie his way out of such a test.
    Fukiya knew there were psychological tests which used lie-detector devices to record physical reactions. He had also heard that there was a simpler method which used a stop watch to measure the time it took a suspect to answer questions. Reflecting upon the many and various psychological methods of crime detection, Fukiya became more and more concerned. Supposing he were caught by a surprise question like "You're the one who killed the old woman, aren't you?" fired at him point-blank? Fukiya felt confident that he would be able to shoot back calmly: "What proof do you have for such a wild supposition?" But if a lie detector were to be used, wouldn't it record his startled state of mind? Wouldn't it be absolutely impossible for a normal human being to prevent such physical reactions?
    Fukiya tried asking himself various hypothetical questions. Strangely, no matter how unexpected his questions were, when they were addressed to himself by himself, he could not imagine that they