TICKED OFF! IN FLORIDA

I LISTENED TO the clock tick.  Someone had sent it to Professor Sanford and he had tacked it on the wall directly across from my desk.  It was an innocent brown box, about six inches square, fashioned to look like a gabled cottage – but with a malicious arrangement of cogs and springs which caused a blob of feathers to burst through a door every hour and screech “cuckoo!”  It sounded more to me like “cuckold” than “cuckoo,” but since neither Professor Sanford nor I were married, I suppose that was just the effect of my dirty mind.  Also, the clock ticked.  It ticked louder, more regularly, more monotonously, than I had ever heard any clock tick.  Its pendulum swung giddily from side to side – click-tick--.click-tick--.click-tick--. Maybe I’m neurotic.

I sat there staring at the pendulum and listening to the click-tick.  I’d decided to toss a small paperweight at the bird the next time it stuck its crazy head out, when I looked toward the window and saw the bulky, blue-clad figure of Lieutenant Michael Phelan, major domo of the Westport Homicide Squad, turn into our walk.

I glanced at my boss, Professor Don Sanford, and grinned.  He sat in what seemed an oddly comfortable position – elbows planted on the edge of his desk, posterior poised on the edge of his chair, his spare shoulders hunched forward, twisting the jacket of his tweed suit into a pattern of wrinkles.  His collar pressed into the back of his neck like a headrest.  His short silvery hair dropped in an unruly lock toward his forehead.  He brushed it impatiently back from time to time, unsuccessfully.

He picked up each card of notes which I’d compiled for the Syllabus of Wifery, his opus on the history and psychology of marriage, in an even, mechanical rhythm – selecting, reading, discarding in monotonous tempo.  His eyes, narrowed to a squint by intense concentration, moved from left to right, left to right, following the lines of typing.  Occasionally he paused briefly, half unconsciously, to relight his pipe, puff thoughtfully, or rub his hand reflectively across his chin.

I hadn’t dared disturb him.

Phelan’s arrival satisfied a sadistic urge within me.  I knew the doorbell would ring like mad in a moment.  The lieutenant weighed two-seventy-five if he weighed an ounce and was the sort of guy who likes to express himself, especially on doorbells.  I watched Sanford, who was about to be knocked from the lofty pinnacle of intellectual contemplation by the very raucous, very insensitive buzzing of the doorbell, and I grinned in anticipation of what his reaction would be.

The lieutenant leaned on the bell – twice.  Sanford shifted his shoulders irritably.  I lit a cigarette and drew a leisurely draught of smoke into my lungs.  Lieutenant Phelan leaned on the bell again.  I puffed casually on my cigarette, flicked its ash carelessly to the floor.  Sanford’s eyes stopped their left-right, left-right progression, and remained fixed at a point approximately in the middle of a reference card.  I waited, expecting action with the next ring.  Phelan leaned on the bell, hard.  Sanford’s reaction was a disappointment.  He merely muttered, half to me and half to himself:  “Not in!” and his eyes resumed their left-right, left-right motion.

I’ve never cared much for cops myself – not even the bright, college-educated variety like Lieutenant Phelan.  Without answering the door, I knew what Phelan wanted.  Ever since Professor Sanford had, by application of elementary psychological principles, suggested the correct solution of the Hopewell murder case a year ago, he’d been pestered by the Homicide Squad for help on every tricky case they encountered.  There was the Dainworth case, Riley-Cutting case, and, just a few months ago, the Dross poisoning case.  Sanford, with the air of a pedagogical prestidigitator, had put the finger on the murderers, and with such flattering publicity that, on recommendation of the Fairfield County Crime Commission, he had been invited to give a series of weekly lectures to officers of the Detective Bureau on the relation of psychology to crime detection.

I knew when Phelan’s uniformed figure turned up our walk that he was stymied on another case and was going to ask Sanford for advice.  Personally, I’ve never approved of Sanford’s dabbling in the game of cops and robbers.  It isn’t dignified.  It isn’t a suitable activity for a man of Professor Sanford’s academic distinction and, if I hadn’t been so bored, I’d have let Lieutenant Phelan ring himself down to an ounce in the hope that Sanford would get mad and throw a few pointed poly-syllables into Phelan’s face.  But, no such luck.