A Puzzle for fools Read Online Free PDF

a sort of cunning hopefulness.
    "Miss Brush—Isabel, you've got to understand." His hand gripped her arm again. "It's not only for me, it's for us. I want you to have everything money can buy; everything my daughter has had and more ..."
    His voice rambled on, low and quick so that I wasn’t able to hear. Billy Trent had stopped throwing snowballs and his eyes were smoldering. None of the others seemed particularly interested.
    Miss Brush was smiling again, a smile which seemed a fraction too unprofessional.
    "Of course it'll be all right, Dan. Hurry up and get well. We can take care of the stocks later on."
    Laribee was all excited. He even hummed a little tune as we resumed the walk. He seemed to have forgotten about the warning and his broker's voice in his ear.
    But I hadn't
    Of course, I had no idea then of the fantastic and horrible things which were so soon to happen in Doctor Lenz' sanitarium. I had no means of telling just how significant these minor and seemingly pointless disturbances were. But I did have a distinct impression that something was vitally wrong. Even then I felt that behind all this madness there was method. But whose method it was, and just how sinister its motive, was, at that time, a problem far too intricate for my post-alcoholic brain.
    I started to talk to Miss Brush to cheer myself up. That girl had a way with her. A few words and a couple of her famous smiles made me feel a helluva fellow. I strode along as though the whole sanitarium, with its large acreage of parkland, belonged to me.
    This accession of virility put me ahead of the others. I turned a corner around a small wood and almost collided with some of the female patients, who were also taking their daily exercise.
    As a general rule, we saw nothing of the other sex except during the polite social hour after dinner, when the better behaved of us were allowed to mix in the central hall for bridge, conversation, and the formal Saturday dance. To date I had never been a good enough boy to rate an invitation, so this was the first time I had seen the women. I had to thank the snow which restricted us to the footpaths.
    Most of them wore very smart clothes, but there was something a little wrong about the way they wore them. Their coats and hats had been put on carelessly, rakishly. They looked like fashionable patrons leaving a night-club in the early hours of the morning.
    The other men had come up now, and Miss Brush prompted our chivalric instinct by stepping off the beaten track to let the ladies pass.
    They filed by uneventfully enough until the last one of them suddenly stopped dead. She was young, dressed in a fine mink coat, and wore one of those little Russian caps on her black hair.
    Maybe it was because I had been away from women for a long time, but I thought her the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. Her face was pale and exotic, like those amazing white flowers they rear in hothouses. Her eyes were large and incredibly sad. I had never seen such tragic, hopeless sadness before.
    Her gaze was fixed intently on one of the men in our group. No one moved. It was as if we were all caught up in the fascination which held her there, spellbound.
    I was standing only a few inches from her. Slowly she put out a small gloved hand and touched my sleeve. She didn't look at me. I don't think she was even aware of my existence. But she said in a low, toneless voice:
    "You see that man there? He murdered my father."
    Instantly the women's equivalent of Miss Brush drew her away. There was a certain amount of confused chattering among the females and the males. But it didn't amount to much.
    I took one final glance at that girl with the exotic flower face and the tormentingly sad eyes. Then I turned to see who it was she had been looking at. I could tell at once. There was no possibility of doubt.
    The man who had "killed her father" was standing very close to Miss Brush. He was Daniel Laribee.

6
    WHEN WE WERE back in Wing Two and Miss