Wax Apple by Donald E. Westlake Read Free Book Online

secret.”
    Doctor Cameron’s reasons for keeping his assistant in the dark sounded strained to me, and had from the beginning, but there was no point trying to decide what his real reasons were until I’d met the assistant, Doctor Lorimer Fredericks. So I said nothing about that, but stuck to the issue at hand. “Why me?” I asked. “Why apologize for snaring me, and not apologize for snaring anybody else? Look at the note again, it makes the point crystal clear. It doesn’t merely say the sender is sorry, he’s sorry it was me. If it isn’t because he knows the truth about me, why is it?”
    Doctor Cameron spread his hands. “Mr. Tobin, why is he causing these accidents in the first place? His motivations are obviously irrational, so how can I guess for you what his reasons are for regretting having hurt you? Perhaps Bob is right, this person feels you’re too much of a newcomer, and you aren’t part of the family or tribal group, however he thinks of it, and he’s sorry that an outsider got hurt in the course of family trouble.”
    “I don’t know,” I said. “It may be something like that, I can’t be sure. That doesn’t sound exactly right, though.”
    Doctor Cameron said, “I don’t mean to tell you your business, Mr. Tobin, but I doubt this is a case where you’ll be able to deduce motive first, and then find the perpetrator. I think this time we’ll have to find the perpetrator first, and once we have him we’ll be able to ask his motive.”
    Bob Gale said, “What about fingerprints, Mr. Tobin? Do you think there might be some on the note?”
    “I doubt it,” I said. “Paper doesn’t take prints well, and in any case they’d most likely be mine. Amateurs have known enough to wear gloves for at least twenty years now. And even if we did find a legible print on there that was neither mine nor Doctor Cameron’s, I doubt it would be a good idea to line up all the residents and take their fingerprints.”
    “For some of them,” Doctor Cameron said, “it would be a very bad experience indeed.”
    “And at the end of it,” I said, “it might turn out the print belonged to a clerk in a stationery store downtown.”
    Bob blinked and grinned. “I’m sorry I asked,” he said.
    I said to him, “There’s a question I’ve been meaning to ask you. Were you by any lucky chance in the ping-pong room when Debby Lattimore came and got Jerry Kanter to show me to my room?”
    “Sure,” he said. He grinned again, saying, “I would have shown you up myself, only I was in the middle of a game and it would have looked funny to quit.”
    “I’m glad you realized that,” I said.
    “Oh, I’m not always as dumb as I was at lunch.”
    “I’m sure you’re not. Who was your opponent yesterday?”
    “Well, there were three of us playing. You know, the man out this game would play the winner next game. It was me and Edgar Jennings and Phil Roche.” Naming two of the residents I hadn’t as yet seen.
    I said, “Were the three of you still playing up to the time I had my accident?”
    “Oh, sure. We were set for the afternoon.”
    “Good,” I said. “Did either of the other two leave the room at all from the time Jerry Kanter left till I had my accident?”
    He frowned, thinking back. “I’m pretty sure they didn’t.”
    “That’s fine,” I said, and turned to Doctor Cameron to say, “We’ve just started the process of elimination. Neither Jennings nor Roche set the trap I stumbled into.”
    He didn’t understand. He said, “How can you be sure?”
    I told him about the small nail hole I’d found in the baseboard last night, and of my feeling my ankle had caught on something just as I started to fall down the stairs. “Whoever set it,” I said, “had to be nearby to remove the evidence right after the trap was sprung. Also, it wasn’t there when Jerry Kanter and I came up those stairs, so it had to be set at some time while Bob here was playing ping-pong with Jennings and Roche.