Alfred Hitchcock - Alfred Hitchcock Presents - 16 Skeletons From My Closet

I frowned. How could he possibly have known those things?

Henry was enjoying himself. "On September 28th, last April at two-fifteen of a chilly afternoon, a Gerald Mitchell 'fell' off an escarpment near his home while he was taking a stroll. You had a bit of trouble with him. Though he was a small man, he showed remarkable strength. He managed to tear the left pocket of your coat before you could throw him into space."

I caught myself staring at him and quickly took a sip of brandy.

"Five thousand dollars," Henry said. "Small bills, of course. Nothing larger than a five hundred. Naturally I didn't expect you to have that much cash lying about. I shall return tomorrow evening at eight."

I pulled myself together. For a moment I had almost entertained the thought that Henry actually might have a time machine. But there was some other explanation and I would have to think it out.

At the door to the hallway, I smiled. "Henry, would you hop into your time machine and find out who Jack the Ripper really was? I'm frightfully curious."

Henry nodded. "I'll do that tonight."

I closed the door and went into my living room.

My wife Diana put aside her fashion magazine. "Who was that strange creature?"

"He claims to be an inventor."

"Really? He certainly looks mad enough for the part. I imagine he wanted to sell you an invention?"

"Not exactly."

Diana is green-eyed and cool and she is perhaps no more predatory or unfaithful than any other woman who marries a man with money who is thirty years her senior. I am fully aware of the nature of our relationship, but I realize that one must pay by various means for the enjoyment of a work of art. And Diana is a work of art — a triumph of physical nature. I value her quite as highly as I do my Modiglianis and my Van Goghs.

"What is he supposed to have invented?"

"A time machine."

She smiled. "I am partial to perpetual motion machines."

I was faintly irritated. "Perhaps it works."

She studied me. "I hope you have no intention of letting that queer man talk you out of money."

"No, my dear. I still retain my mental faculties."

Her solicitude for my money would have been touching, except that I realized that she preferred to spend it on herself. Henry's chances of acquiring any of it were nil as far as she was concerned.

She picked up the magazine. "Has he asked you to see it?"

"No. And even if he does, I have no intention of doing so."

And yet I wondered how Henry could possibly have managed to know the details of those three murders. His presence at one of them could be an acceptable coincidence. But three?

There was no such a thing as a time machine. There had to be some other explanation — something that an intelligent man could believe.

I glanced at my watch and turned my mind to another matter. "I have something to attend to, Diana. I'll be back in an hour or two."

I drove to the main post office downtown and opened my box with a key. The letter I had been expecting was inside.

I conduct most of my business by mail and box number. My clients do not know my name, even on those occasions when personal contact is necessary.

The letter was from Jason Spender. We had exchanged some correspondence and Spender had been negotiating for the elimination of a Charles Atwood. Spender did not give his reasons for that desire and for my purposes they were not necessary. In this case, however, I could hazard a guess. Spender and Atwood were partners in a building concern and evidently sharing the profits no longer appealed to Spender.

The letter accepted my terms — fifteen thousand dollars — and provided the information that Atwood had a dinner engagement tomorrow evening and would return to his home at approximately eleven. Spender would have an alibi for that particular time in the event that the police might make embarrassing inquiries.

I drove on to the Shippler Detective Agency and went directly to Andrew Shippler.

I cannot, of course, employ his agency continuously to follow my wife. But several times a year I made a precautionary use of his services for a week or two. It is usually sufficient.

In 1958, for instance, Shippler discovered a Terence Reilly. He was extremely personable — fair, athletic, and the type to which Diana seems to be drawn — and I cannot blame Diana too much.

However Terence Reilly soon departed this world. I was not paid for the demise. It was a labor of love.

Shippler was a plump man in his fifties with the air of an accountant. He took a typewritten page from a folder and adjusted his rimless glasses. "Your wife left your apartment twice yesterday. In the morning at ten-thirty she went to a small hat shop for an hour. She finally purchased a blue and white hat with…"

"Never mind the details."

He was slightly aggrieved. "But details can be important, Mr. Reeves. We try to be absolutely thorough." He glanced at the page again. "Then she had a strawberry soda at a drugstore and went on to…"

I interrupted again. "Did she see anyone? Talk to anyone?"

"Well, the owner of the hat shop and the clerk at the drugstore counter."

"Besides that," I snapped.

He shook his head. "No. But she left the apartment again at two-thirty in the afternoon. She went to a small cocktail bar on Farwell. There she met two women her age, apparently by prearrangement. It appears that they had been college classmates and hadn't seen each other for years. My man overheard most of their conversation. They discussed their former classmates and what they were doing now." Shippler cleared his throat. "It seems that they were most impressed that your wife had… ah… caught such a man of means."

"What did Diana say?"

"She was extremely noncommittal." Shippler folded his hands. "Your wife consumed one Pink Lady and one Manhattan during the course of two hours."

"I am not interested in my wife's liquor preferences. Did she see anyone else? A man?"

Shippler shook his head. "No. At four-ten she left the two women and returned to your apartment."

The human mind is a peculiar thing. I was relieved, of course — and yet, a trifle disappointed.

"Shall we keep watching her?" Shippler asked hopefully.

This time I had had Diana under a surveillance for about a week. I mulled over Shippler's question. Shippler charged one hundred dollars a day and that was rather expensive. I smiled slightly. Now if I had Henry's time machine. I could save a great deal of money. "Watch her a few days more," I said. "And I have something else for you."

"Yes?"

"At eight tomorrow evening, I am expecting a caller. He will be with me ten to twenty minutes. When he leaves, I want him followed. I want to know who he is and where he lives." I gave Shippler a description of Henry. "Phone me as soon as you find out."

I went to the bank and withdrew five thousand dollars.

At seven the next evening Diana left to see a motion picture. Or at least so she informed me. I would find out about that later.

Henry arrived punctually at eight o'clock and I took him into my study.

He took a chair. "He was a clerk with an importing concern."

"Who was?" I asked.

"Jack the Ripper. A timid-looking man — in his early forties, I'd estimate. He was apparently a bachelor and he lived with his mother."

I smiled. "How interesting. What was his name?"

"I haven't gotten that yet. You see people don't go about with signs hanging from their necks and it can be difficult to find out who they actually are."

He could easily have invented some name for this Jack the Ripper, but this was really more clever — and logical.

Henry said, "Do you have the five thousand dollars?"

"Yes." I got the package and handed it to him.

He rose. "Tonight I think I'll go back to Custer's massacre. I find history fascinating."