心理試験 English

I

Exactly why Fukiya Seiichiro came to conceive of the dreadful crime about to be set down here, the precise motive, is not well known.

And even if it were known, it would have little bearing on this story.

Seeing that he was attending a certain university while working his way through, half as a struggling student, one might suppose he was driven by need for tuition money.

He was a rare talent, and moreover an exceedingly diligent student, so it is certain that he resented having his time consumed by trifling side jobs to earn his tuition, time that kept him from the reading and reflection he loved.

But would a man commit so grave a crime for a reason as slight as that?

Perhaps he was, by nature, born wicked.

And perhaps it was not tuition alone but various other desires he could not restrain.

In any case, half a year had passed since the idea first occurred to him.

During that time he wavered again and again, thought it through again and again, and in the end resolved to go through with it.

At one point, quite by chance, he grew close to a classmate, Saito Isamu.

That was how it began.

At first, of course, he had no ulterior motive at all.

But partway along, he began drawing near to Saito with some vague purpose in mind.

And as he drew closer, that vague purpose grew gradually clearer.

Saito had, for about a year now, been renting a room in a private house in a quiet residential quarter up in the Yamanote hills.

The mistress of the house was the widow of a civil official — an old woman nearing sixty by now — and although the income from the several rental houses her late husband had left behind was more than enough to live on, she had been blessed with no children, and would say, "Money is all I have to rely on now,"

and took her greatest pleasure in lending small sums to reliable acquaintances and watching her savings grow little by little.

That she had let a room to Saito was no doubt partly because a household of women alone felt unsafe, but she must also have reckoned that the rent alone would swell her monthly savings.

And — a thing seldom heard of these days, though the miser's psychology seems to be the same in every age and every land — rumor had it that, beyond the bank deposits she showed to the world, she kept an enormous sum of cash hidden in some secret place within her own house.

It was this money that tempted Fukiya.

What value was there in that old crone possessing such a fortune?

To put it to use as tuition for a young man with a future ahead of him, like himself — was that not the most rational thing imaginable?

In short, this was his theory.

So he set about learning as much as he could about the old woman through Saito.

He tried to ferret out the secret hiding place of that great sum.

But until the day he heard that Saito had, quite by chance, discovered that very hiding place, he had held no definite plan of his own.

"I say, it's a rather clever idea for an old woman like her. Usually a hiding place for money is always the same thing — under the floorboards, up in the ceiling — but hers is in a rather unexpected spot. You know that big maple planted in a pot in the alcove of the inner room? It's under that pot. That's where she hides it. No thief alive would ever dream money was hidden in a flowerpot. The old woman is, you might say, a genius among misers."

So Saito said, laughing as though he found it amusing.

From that time on, Fukiya's plan grew steadily more concrete.

He weighed every possibility for each step of the route by which the old woman's money might be transferred into his own tuition money, trying to work out the safest method.

It proved a far harder task than he had expected.

Beside it, even the most complex mathematical problem was nothing at all.

As already said, he spent half a year simply working the plan out to his satisfaction.

The difficulty, needless to say, lay in how to escape punishment.

Ethical obstacles — the pangs of conscience, that is — were scarcely a concern to him.

Just as he did not regard Napoleon's wholesale killing as a crime but rather admired it, so he thought it only natural that a gifted young man, in order to nurture his gift, should sacrifice some old crone with one foot already in the coffin.

The old woman seldom went out.

All day long she sat curled up in silence in the inner room.

On the rare occasions she did go out, a maid from the country, under her orders, kept honest watch during her absence.

Despite all of Fukiya's efforts, the old woman's vigilance left not the slightest opening.

At first Fukiya considered something like this: watching for a moment when both the old woman and Saito were away, he might trick the maid into being sent out on some errand, and in that gap steal the money from the flowerpot.

But that was an exceedingly rash idea.

If it ever came out that he had been alone in that house even for a short while, would that alone not be enough to bring suspicion down on him?

He spent a full month conceiving and rejecting, conceiving and rejecting, one foolish scheme of this kind after another.

He considered every conceivable case: a trick to make it look as though Saito, or the maid, or some ordinary burglar had done the stealing; a method of slipping in without a sound while only the maid was present, and stealing the money without her ever seeing him; a method of doing the deed at night while the old woman slept; and every other possibility he could think of.

But every single one of them carried a considerable chance of discovery.

There was no way around it — the old woman would have to be disposed of.

He arrived at last at this dreadful conclusion.

Just how much money the old woman had, he did not really know, but weighing various considerations, it did not seem so great a sum as to be worth risking murder to obtain.

To kill an entirely innocent person for a sum of money that amounted to so little — was that not far too cruel?

But even if it was no great sum by the world's standards, it was more than enough to satisfy a poor man like Fukiya.

Moreover, as he saw it, the question was not the size of the sum at all, but simply making the discovery of the crime absolutely impossible.

For that end, no sacrifice, however great, was too much to pay.

At first glance, murder appears many times more dangerous an undertaking than mere theft.

But that is nothing more than a kind of illusion.

To be sure, if one carries out the deed expecting to be found out, then murder is without doubt the most dangerous of all crimes.

But if one judges not by the gravity of the crime but by how easily it might be discovered, then in certain cases — Fukiya's case, for instance — theft is in fact the more dangerous undertaking.

By contrast, the method of simply doing away with whoever might discover the wrongdoing is, cruel as it is, free of worry.

Since ancient times, the great villains have committed murder after murder without the slightest hesitation.

Is it not precisely because of this boldness in killing that they are so seldom caught?

Well then, supposing he did away with the old woman — was there truly no danger in it?

Once he ran up against this question, Fukiya went on thinking it through for several months.

How, over that long span, did he develop his thinking?

That will become clear to the reader as the story proceeds, and so is omitted here; suffice it to say that, through analysis and synthesis carried to a minuteness quite beyond the reach of an ordinary mind, he worked out a method absolutely safe, without so much as a hair's breadth of oversight.

Now there was nothing left but to wait for the right moment to come.

And it came sooner than he had expected.

One day it was confirmed that Saito would be out on some matter connected with school, and the maid sent out on an errand, and that neither of the two would be back before evening.

That was exactly two days after the day on which Fukiya had completed his final preparatory act.

That final preparatory act — this much needs explaining in advance — was a certain act meant to confirm whether, now that half a year had passed since he first heard from Saito of that hiding place, things still stood as they had then.

On that day — that is, two days before the murder of the old woman — he called on Saito, and while there entered the inner room, the old woman's own room, for the first time, and exchanged all manner of small talk with her.

He let that small talk drift, little by little, in a single direction.

And he spoke, more than once, of the old woman's wealth, and of the rumor that she had hidden it away somewhere.

Whenever he spoke the word "hide,"

he would, as if by chance, watch the old woman's eyes.

And each time, exactly as he had expected, her eyes would steal quietly toward the flowerpot in the alcove — though by then it held not the maple but a pine that had been planted in its place.

Fukiya repeated this several times over, and was able to confirm that there was no longer any room whatsoever for doubt.

II

Now, at last, the day had come.

He put on a student's cape over his university uniform and cap, drew on an ordinary pair of gloves, and set off for his destination.

After thinking it over again and again, he decided in the end not to disguise himself at all.

If he were to disguise himself, he would leave behind clues to the crime's discovery at any number of points — buying the materials, finding a place to change, and so on.

That would only complicate matters, without the slightest benefit.

It was a kind of philosophy of his that, so long as there was no risk of discovery, the method of a crime should be kept as simple and open as possible.

The essential thing was simply not to be seen entering the house he was headed for.

Even if it became known that he had passed in front of that house, it would not matter in the least.

Since he often took walks in that neighborhood, he could always explain it away by saying he had merely been out walking that day too.

At the same time, should he happen to be seen by an acquaintance on the way to the house — a possibility he had to allow for no matter what — it went without saying which was better: wearing some strange disguise, or appearing as always in his uniform and cap.

As for the time of the crime, too — knowing full well that if he simply waited, a convenient night would come when both Saito and the maid would be away — why did he choose the more dangerous daytime instead?

This too, just as with his choice of dress, was to strip the crime of any unnecessary air of secrecy.

But when at last he stood before the house, even he, for all his composure, glanced anxiously about him, before and behind, left and right, just as any ordinary burglar would — perhaps even more so.

The old woman's house stood alone, hedged off from its neighbors on either side, and across the road ran the tall concrete wall of some wealthy man's estate, stretching on for a full block.

It was so quiet a residential quarter that even in daytime there were times when not a soul passed by.

And when Fukiya arrived there, luckily enough, there was not so much as a stray dog to be seen on the street.

He opened and closed the lattice door — which, if opened normally, gave off a dreadfully harsh metallic screech — slowly, carefully, so as not to make the slightest sound.

Then, from the earthen entryway, he called out in a very low voice — all of this a precaution against the neighbors — to announce himself.

When the old woman came out, he was shown into the inner room on the pretext that he had something rather private to discuss concerning Saito.

No sooner had they settled themselves than, saying, "I'm afraid the maid isn't here just now,"

the old woman rose, by way of apology, to go and pour some tea.

This was exactly the moment Fukiya had been waiting for, breath held.

The instant the old woman bent slightly to slide open the door, he sprang at her from behind, seized her, and, using both arms — for although he wore gloves, he was still taking care to leave as little trace of his fingers as possible — strangled her throat with all his strength.

The old woman merely made a sort of choked sound in her throat and hardly struggled at all.

Only her fingers, clutching at the empty air in her agony, brushed against a folding screen standing there and left a small tear in it.

It was an old two-panel screen of gold leaf, painted with the Six Poetic Immortals in brilliant colors, and it was, of all places, right at the face of Ono no Komachi that a wretched inch-long tear appeared.

Once he had made certain the old woman had stopped breathing, he laid the body down there and, with a look of some unease, studied the tear in the screen.

But on second thought, there was nothing to worry about at all.

A thing like that could hardly serve as evidence of anything.

So he went to the alcove he had come for, took hold of the pine tree by its base, and pulled it clean out of the pot, soil and all.

Just as he had expected, at the bottom lay something wrapped in oiled paper.

Perfectly composed, he untied the wrapping, drew a new, large wallet from his right pocket, put about half of the bills into it — a good five thousand yen at least — returned the wallet to that same pocket, and wrapped the remaining bills in the oiled paper again, hiding them once more at the bottom of the pot exactly as before.

This, of course, was to obscure any trace that money had been stolen at all.

Since only the old woman herself had known the sum of her savings, no one was likely to suspect anything even if it had been cut in half.

Next he rolled up a cushion lying nearby and pressed it against the old woman's chest — a precaution against spattering blood — and, drawing a jackknife from his left pocket and opening its blade, drove it straight into her heart, gave it one hard twist, and pulled it out again.

Then he wiped the blood from the knife clean on the same cushion's cloth and put it back into his pocket.

He had thought that strangling alone might leave a risk of her reviving.

It was, in other words, the old practice of delivering the finishing stroke.

As for why he had not used the blade from the very start, it was because he feared that doing so might, by some mischance, splatter blood onto his own clothes.

Here a brief word must be said about the wallet into which he put the bills, and the jackknife just mentioned.

He had bought both of them at a stall during some temple fair, for this purpose alone.

Choosing the busiest hour of the fair and the most crowded of the stalls, he had tossed down the exact small change marked on the price tag, snatched up the goods, and vanished so quickly that neither the stallkeeper nor the many customers around had time enough to remember his face.

And both articles were of the most ordinary kind imaginable, the sort that could bear no distinguishing mark whatsoever.

Now, having taken great care to make certain that not the slightest clue had been left behind, and remembering to close the sliding door properly, Fukiya made his way slowly out to the entrance.

There, as he tied his shoelaces, he gave some thought to the matter of footprints.

But on that score there was nothing whatsoever to worry about.

The earthen floor of the entryway was hard plaster, and the street outside, after days of fine weather, was bone dry.

All that remained now was to open the lattice door and step outside.

But should he blunder here, all his painstaking effort would come to nothing.

He held his breath and listened intently, patiently straining to catch the sound of footsteps out on the street. ...

There was dead silence; not a sign of anyone.

Only the tranquil plink and strum of a koto being played somewhere nearby reached his ears.

He made up his mind and quietly opened the lattice door.

Then, with the casual air of a visitor who had simply just taken his leave, he stepped out into the street.

Just as he had expected, there was not a soul in sight.

Every street in that quarter was part of the same quiet residential district.

Some four or five blocks from the old woman's house stood the old stone wall of some shrine, running for a long stretch along the road.

Having made sure no one was watching, Fukiya dropped the jackknife that had been his weapon, together with the blood-stained gloves, into a gap in that stone wall.

Then he strolled on toward the small park nearby that he always made a point of visiting on his walks.

He sat down on a bench in the park and spent a long while there, watching the children playing on the swings with an utterly peaceful expression on his face.

On his way back, he stopped in at the police station.

And,

"I just found this wallet a moment ago. There seems to be quite a lot in it, so I've brought it in,"

he said, holding out the wallet in question.

In answer to the policeman's questions, he gave the place and time he had found it — a plausible fabrication, of course — and his own name and address, which were genuine.

And he was given something like a receipt, a printed form with his name and the amount of money entered on it.

To be sure, this was without question a very roundabout method.

But for sheer safety, it was the best there was.

Since the old woman's money — no one knowing it had been halved — still sat exactly where it always had, no one could possibly come forward as the wallet's rightful owner.

A year hence, it would fall into Fukiya's hands without fail.

And he could then spend it openly, without a shred of hesitation before anyone.

He had thought the matter through to its limit before settling on this stratagem.

Had he hidden the money away somewhere instead, there was always the chance that some accident might let another person carry it off.

As for simply keeping it on his own person — that, needless to say, was dangerous.

What is more, by this method, even if the old woman had, by some chance, taken down the serial numbers of her bills, there was nothing whatsoever to fear.

(though he had already looked into this point as thoroughly as he could and was, on the whole, satisfied there was no danger there)

"Not even the Buddha himself could imagine that a man would turn in to the police the very thing he had stolen,"

he murmured to himself inwardly, biting back a laugh.

The next day, waking in his room at the boarding house from a sleep as untroubled as ever, Fukiya yawned, spread open the newspaper delivered to his bedside, and scanned the local news pages.

There he discovered an unexpected fact and was briefly startled.

But it was nothing at all to be worried about — quite the opposite, an unlooked-for stroke of luck for him.

For his friend Saito had been named a suspect.

The article stated that he had fallen under suspicion because he was found in possession of a sum of money quite out of keeping with his station.

"Since I'm Saito's closest friend, it would only be natural for me to go to the police now and ask a few questions,"

Fukiya thought, and, quickly changing his clothes, hurried off to the police station.

It was the very same station where he had turned in the wallet the day before.

Why had he not taken the wallet to a station in some other jurisdiction?

But that too was deliberate, in keeping with his own particular doctrine of artlessness.

Wearing an expression of concern calibrated to just the right degree, he asked to be allowed to see Saito.

But, exactly as he had expected, this was refused.

So instead he pressed with various questions about why Saito had come under suspicion, and managed to bring a good deal of the circumstances to light.

Fukiya pieced together the following picture.

The day before, Saito had come home before the maid.

That was not long after Fukiya, having accomplished his purpose, had left the house.

And, of course, he had discovered the old woman's corpse.

But before reporting it to the police at once, he must have thought of something.

Namely, that flowerpot.

If this were the work of a thief, might not the money inside it be gone?

It was probably no more than a moment's idle curiosity.

He went and checked.

But, to his surprise, the packet of money was still right there.

That Saito's heart turned to wickedness at the sight of it was a shallow enough impulse, but hardly an unnatural one.

No one else knew of that hiding place; and whatever happened to the money, it would surely be assumed that the old woman's killer had taken it.

Circumstances such as these would present an all but irresistible temptation to anyone.

As for what he did after that — according to the police, he had, with an entirely innocent face, gone and reported the murder to them himself.

But what a rash, thoughtless man he was.

He had simply tucked the stolen money into his stomach band and gone about as though nothing were amiss.

It seemed he had never dreamed he would be searched then and there.

"But wait. How exactly will Saito explain himself? Depending on how things go, could this turn dangerous for me?"

Fukiya turned the question over from every angle.

When the money was found on him, Saito might have said, "It's mine,"

he may have answered.

To be sure, since no one else knew the extent of the old woman's fortune or where it was hidden, such an excuse might, on the face of it, hold up.

But was the sum not far too large for that?

In the end, then, he would surely be driven to admit the truth.

But would the court accept it?

Unless some other suspect turned up, they were unlikely to clear him before then.

If things went well, there was no telling but that he might even be charged with the murder itself.

If it came to that, so much the better — but then, as the judge pressed him with questions, all manner of facts would surely come to light.

For instance, that he had told me when he discovered the hiding place of the money; that I had gone into the old woman's room and talked with her at length two days before the murder; and, further, that I was poor and hard-pressed for tuition money.

But all of these were things Fukiya had already reckoned with beforehand, before ever laying his plan.

And however he considered it, he could not imagine that any fact more damaging to himself could be drawn from Saito's mouth.

When Fukiya got back from the police station, he sat down to a late breakfast — telling the maid who brought it in all about the incident — and then went off to school as usual.

At school, talk of Saito was on everyone's lips.

He, half preening, made himself the center of the gossip and talked away.

III

Now, dear reader, you who are thoroughly versed in the nature of the detective story will surely know full well that this tale cannot possibly end here.

And indeed, that is exactly so.

To tell the truth, everything up to this point has been nothing but the premise of this tale; what the author most wishes you to read is everything that follows.

That is to say, the story of how a crime so carefully schemed out by Fukiya came to be discovered.

The examining magistrate assigned to this case was the celebrated Mr. Kasamori.

He was not merely a distinguished judge in the ordinary sense; he was all the more famous for a somewhat peculiar interest of his own.

Namely, that he was something of an amateur psychologist, and in cases where no ordinary approach would yield a judgment, he would, as a last resort, draw on his abundant knowledge of psychology — and often to great effect.

Though his career was still short and his years still few, he was a talent almost too brilliant to be wasted on a mere examining magistrate of the district court.

Everyone assumed that this old woman's murder, too, would be solved without any trouble once it fell into Judge Kasamori's hands.

Kasamori himself thought much the same.

As always, he meant to investigate this case thoroughly in the preliminary hearing and handle it so that not the slightest trouble would remain by the time it came to trial.

But as the investigation proceeded, it gradually became clear just how difficult the case was.

The police, for their part, simply insisted on Saito Isamu's guilt.

Even Judge Kasamori could not deny that there was some reason behind their claim.

For every person who showed any sign of having gone in and out of the old woman's house while she lived — debtors, tenants, mere acquaintances, all of them — had been summoned and painstakingly investigated, and not one proved suspicious.

Fukiya Seiichiro was, of course, among them.

So long as no other suspect emerged, there was, for the moment, no choice but to judge Saito Isamu, the most suspicious of them all, to be the culprit.

What is more, the thing most damaging to Saito was that, being timid by nature, he was overcome with fear the moment he entered the courtroom atmosphere, and could not answer the questioning clearly or firmly.

Flustered, he would often retract earlier statements, forget things he plainly ought to have known, or blurt out damaging admissions he need not have made at all — and the more he panicked, the deeper his suspicion grew.

This was all because he carried the guilty secret of having stolen the old woman's money; had it not been for that, a man as capable as Saito, timid as he was, would surely never have bungled things so badly — his position was, in truth, a pitiable one.

But as to whether he could go so far as to recognize Saito as the murderer, Kasamori simply could not bring himself to be confident of it.

There was, after all, nothing there but suspicion.

The man himself, of course, made no confession, and there was no other definite proof.

In this way, a month passed since the incident.

The preliminary hearing had still not concluded.

The judge had begun to grow a little impatient.

It was just then that the chief of the police station with jurisdiction over the murder brought him a report worth hearing.

It concerned a wallet containing some five thousand two hundred and some odd yen, which had been found, on the very day of the incident, on a street not far from the old woman's house — and that, through an oversight on the part of the officer concerned, no one had until now noticed that the man who had turned it in was a student named Fukiya Seiichiro, the close friend of the suspect Saito.

But given that a month had passed and no one had come forward to claim so large a sum, might there not be some significance in that?

He was reporting it, he said, purely as a precaution.

Judge Kasamori, who had been at his wit's end, felt on receiving this report as though he had glimpsed a single ray of light.

At once, the procedure to summon Fukiya Seiichiro was set in motion.

But the result of questioning Fukiya seemed, for all the judge's enthusiasm, to yield very little.

Asked why he had not mentioned the fact of finding that large sum of money when he was first questioned at the time of the incident, he answered that it had not occurred to him it might have any bearing on the murder case.

This answer held up perfectly well.

Since the old woman's fortune had been found inside Saito's stomach band, who would ever imagine that some other sum of money — especially one lost out in the street — might be part of that same fortune?

But could this really be mere coincidence?

That on the very day of the incident, not far from the scene, a man who was, moreover, the close friend of the chief suspect — a man who, by Saito's own account, had known of the flowerpot's hiding place too — should have found this very sum of money: could that truly be coincidence?

The judge agonized, trying to find some meaning in it.

What he most regretted was that the old woman had not kept a record of her bills' serial numbers.

Had she done so, it would have shown at once whether this suspicious money had anything to do with the case or not.

"If only I could get hold of just one solid clue, however small,"

the judge thought, pouring the whole of his ability into the effort.

The scene of the crime was examined again and again, countless times.

The old woman's family connections were thoroughly investigated.

But nothing whatsoever came of it.

And so another fortnight or so passed by, fruitlessly.

There was, the judge thought, just one possibility.

To suppose that Fukiya had stolen half of the old woman's savings, hidden the remainder away again exactly as before, put the stolen money into a wallet, and made it look as though he had found it lying in the street.

But could anyone really be so foolish as to do that?

The wallet itself had, of course, been examined too, but it yielded no particular clue.

And besides, had not Fukiya calmly stated of his own accord that he had walked past the old woman's house that day while out on a stroll?

Could the culprit possibly say something so bold?

And above all, the whereabouts of the weapon — the most crucial thing of all — remained unknown.

The search of Fukiya's room at the boarding house had turned up nothing at all.

But as for the weapon, was that not just as true of Saito?

Then whom, in the end, was he to suspect?

There was not a single piece of definite proof to be had.

If, as the police chief and the others said, one suspected Saito, then Saito did seem the likely man.

But then again, Fukiya too was not beyond suspicion.

All that was certain was that, after a month and a half of every kind of search, no suspect existed apart from these two men.

With every strategy exhausted, Judge Kasamori decided it was at last time to bring out his trump card.

He resolved to administer to the two suspects the psychological test that had so often served him well before.

IV

When Fukiya Seiichiro received his first summons, two or three days after the incident, he learned that the examining magistrate assigned to the case was none other than the celebrated amateur psychologist Kasamori.

And even then, foreseeing this very eventuality, he had been thrown into no small confusion.

Even he, for all his composure, had never imagined that anything like a psychological test was actually being carried out in Japan, however much it might be one man's private hobby.

He knew, from various books, all too well just what a psychological test was.

Struck by this heavy blow, he lost the composure to keep up the pretense of attending school as usual, and, claiming illness, shut himself away in his room at the boarding house.

There he did nothing but think how he might get through this crisis.

He went on thinking with just as much care and fervor as he had before carrying out the murder — perhaps even more.

What sort of psychological test would Judge Kasamori actually administer?

That was utterly impossible to foresee.

So Fukiya called to mind every method he knew of, and considered each one in turn, wondering whether there might be some countermeasure for it.

But since a psychological test was, in its very nature, designed to expose false statements, to deceive it in turn seemed, in theory, all but impossible.

As Fukiya understood it, psychological tests could be broadly divided by their nature into two kinds.

One relies on purely physiological reactions; the other is carried out through words.

The former is a method in which the examiner poses various questions connected with the crime and records, by means of suitable apparatus, the subject's minute bodily reactions, seeking to grasp a truth that ordinary interrogation could never uncover.

It rests on the theory that, however skillfully a person may lie in words or facial expression, he cannot hide the excitation of the nerves themselves, which betrays itself in minute bodily signs — methods for which include, for instance, detecting the faint movement of the hand with the aid of an Automatograph;

a method of confirming the movement of the eyeballs by some means;

a method of measuring the depth and speed of breathing with a Pneumograph;

a method of measuring the strength and rate of the pulse with a Sphygmograph;

a method of measuring the blood volume in the limbs with a Plethysmograph;

a method of detecting the faint perspiration of the palm with a Galvanometer;

a method of observing the degree of muscular contraction produced by a light tap on the knee joint; and various other methods of this kind besides.

For instance, were he suddenly asked, "You are the one who killed the old woman, aren't you?"

he had confidence enough to reply, with an unruffled face, "What proof do you have for saying such a thing?"

— that much he was confident he could manage.

But might not his pulse quicken unnaturally at such a moment, or his breathing come faster?

Was preventing that not, in fact, absolutely impossible?

He imagined various scenarios and tested them out in his own mind.

But, strangely enough, no question he posed to himself, however startling or however suddenly it occurred to him, seemed to produce any bodily change at all.

Of course, he had no instrument on hand to measure such minute changes, so he could not be certain — but so long as he felt no excitation of the nerves themselves, the bodily change that would result from it ought not to occur either.

And as he went on with these various experiments and speculations, Fukiya suddenly hit upon an idea.

It was this: might practice not interfere with the effectiveness of a psychological test — in other words, might the nervous reaction to the same question not grow weaker the second time than the first, and weaker still the third time than the second?

In short, growing accustomed to it.

As one could see by considering various other cases, this seemed quite possible.

The very fact that he showed no reaction to his own questions was, in the end, surely a matter of the same logic — the questions were already expected before they were even posed.

So he took the Jirin dictionary

and went through every one of its tens of thousands of entries, without missing a single one, copying out every word that seemed even remotely likely to come up in questioning.

Then, over the course of a full week, he put his nerves through a kind of "drill"

against every one of them.

Now, next came the method of testing through words.

Nor was this anything to fear either.

If anything, being a matter of words, it was all the easier to deceive.

There were various methods for this, but the one most commonly used was the same method a psychoanalyst uses when examining a patient — the so-called word-association test.

"Shoji" (a paper sliding door),

or "desk,"

or "ink,"

or "pen"

— ordinary words like these are read aloud one after another, and the subject is made to speak, as quickly as possible and without thinking, whatever word each one calls to mind.

For instance, to "shoji"

one might associate "window,"

or "threshold,"

or "paper,"

or "door,"

or various other associations — it doesn't matter which; the subject is simply made to say whatever word happens to come to mind at that moment.

And among these meaningless words, one slips in words like "knife,"

or "blood,"

or "money,"

or "wallet"

— words connected with the crime, mixed in without the subject noticing, and one examines the associations they call up.

First of all, the least careful sort of person, in a case like this old woman's murder, might, at the word "flowerpot,"

carelessly answer "money"

without meaning to.

That is because, from beneath the "flowerpot,"

the theft of "money"

is the association most deeply impressed upon his mind.

In that moment, he has as good as confessed his guilt.

But if he were a slightly more thoughtful sort, then even if "money"

came to mind, he would suppress it and answer instead, say, "porcelain,"

or something of that kind.

There are two methods for dealing with a deception of this sort.

One is to repeat the words already tested once through, after letting some time pass.

Answers that came naturally will, in most cases, remain consistent from one time to the next, whereas a deliberately contrived answer will, nine times out of ten, differ from what was said the first time.

For instance, to "flowerpot,"

the first answer might be "porcelain,"

and the second time "soil,"

or something along those lines.

The other method is to record precisely, by some apparatus, the interval between the posing of the question and the giving of the answer, and to judge by how quickly or slowly it comes — so that, for instance, if to "shoji"

the answer "door"

took one second, whereas to "flowerpot"

the answer "porcelain"

took as long as three seconds (in reality it is not so simple a matter as this), then that delay over "flowerpot"

would mean the time was spent suppressing the association that first arose, and the subject would thereby stand suspected.

This delay in timing may sometimes fail to show up on the word in question itself, appearing instead on the next, meaningless word that follows it.

There is also a method of describing the circumstances of the crime in detail and then having the subject repeat it back.

If he is truly the culprit, then in repeating it back, he will, on some minute point, inadvertently blurt out the truth, at variance with what he was told.

(I must apologize to readers already familiar with psychological testing for so tediously detailed an account.

But had it been left out, the whole story would have remained obscure to other readers, so it truly could not be helped.)

For this kind of test, just as before, "practice"

was needless to say necessary, but even more important, in Fukiya's view, was artlessness.

That is, not resorting to any petty tricks.

To "flowerpot,"

he would answer, quite openly, with "money"

or "pine"

— answering that way was the safest method of all.

For even supposing Fukiya were not the culprit, it was only natural that he should, through the judge's investigation and other channels, have come to know the facts of the crime to some degree.

And since the fact that money had lain at the bottom of the flowerpot was, without question, a recent and deeply striking impression, was it not the most natural thing in the world for the association to work that way?

(By this means, moreover, he would also be safe should he be made to repeat back the state of the crime scene.) The only remaining problem was timing.

For this, too, "practice"

was, after all, necessary.

The moment "flowerpot"

came, he needed to be able to answer, without a moment's hesitation, "money"

or "pine"

and he made sure to drill himself until he could do so.

He spent yet more days on this "practice,"

several of them.

In this way, his preparations were now entirely complete.

He was also counting, moreover, on one further circumstance in his favor.

Bearing it in mind, he found that even if he met with some unexpected question, or, further still, even if he showed some damaging reaction to a question he had expected, there was not the slightest need to be afraid.

For Fukiya was not the only one being tested.

However innocent that highly-strung Saito Isamu might be, could he really remain calm and unmoved under all manner of questioning?

Surely it was only natural that he, too, would show reactions at least as strong as Fukiya's own.

The more Fukiya thought it over, the more his mind was set at ease.

He began to feel almost like humming a tune to himself.

Now, if anything, he had come almost to look forward to Judge Kasamori's summons.

V

Just how was Judge Kasamori's psychological test conducted?

And what reactions did the high-strung Saito show to it?

How composedly did Fukiya meet the test?

Rather than set out a tedious account of all this here, let us move directly on to its result.

It was the day after the psychological test had been administered.

Judge Kasamori was sitting in the study of his home, tilting his head over the papers recording the results of the test, when the calling card of Akechi Kogoro was brought in to him.

"The Murder on D-zaka"

— readers who have read that will already have some idea of the sort of man this Akechi Kogoro was.

Since then he had been involved in one difficult criminal case after another, displaying his singular gift, and had by now come to be thoroughly recognized, not only by professionals but by the general public as well.

It was through some case or other that he had come to be on easy terms with Kasamori too.

Shown in by the maid, Akechi's smiling face appeared in the judge's study.

This story takes place some years after "The Murder on D-zaka,"

and he was no longer the student he had once been.

"You're working hard at it, I see,"

Akechi said, peering at the papers on the judge's desk.

"Oh, this one really has me stumped, I'm afraid,"

the judge replied, turning to face his visitor.

"That old woman's murder case, is it? How did it go — the results of the psychological test?"

Akechi had, ever since the incident occurred, met with Judge Kasamori repeatedly and heard the details of the case.

"Oh, the results are clear enough,"

the judge said. "And yet somehow it just doesn't sit right with me. Yesterday I tried the pulse test and the word-association test both. Fukiya showed almost no reaction at all. There were a few suspicious moments in his pulse readings, I'll grant you, but next to Saito's they hardly amount to anything. Look here — here are the questions and the pulse records. You can see how remarkably strong Saito's reaction is, can't you? It's the same with the association test. You can tell just from the response time to the stimulus word 'flowerpot.' Fukiya answered it in even less time than he took over the meaningless words, whereas Saito — look at this — took a full six seconds."

The record of the word-association test the judge showed him was set down as follows.

The circled words were those connected with the crime.

In practice, some hundred words are used, prepared in two or three sets and administered one after another, but the table above has been simplified here for clarity.

"You see, it's remarkably clear, isn't it?"

The judge waited for Akechi to look over the record, then went on. "You can see from this that Saito has been up to all sorts of deliberate contrivance. The clearest sign is the slowness of his response time, and it doesn't stop at the word in question either — it carries over to the one right after it, and even the one after that. And look here: he answers 'iron' to 'money,' 'horse' to 'steal' — some rather forced associations, wouldn't you say? The reason 'flowerpot' took him the longest of all is probably that he was struggling to suppress two associations at once — 'money' and 'pine.' Fukiya, by contrast, is entirely natural about it. To 'flowerpot' he gives 'pine'; to 'oiled paper,' 'hide'; to 'crime,' 'murder' — associations that, if he were the culprit, he would surely feel bound to conceal — and he answers them without the slightest concern, and in a short time too. If he really were the murderer and still showed reactions like these, he would have to be quite a simpleton. But in fact he is — a university student, and a rather brilliant one at that."

"One could look at it that way, certainly,"

Akechi said, seeming to weigh something in his mind as he spoke.

But the judge, not noticing in the least the meaningful look on his face, pressed on.

"The thing is, though — as far as Fukiya goes, there's no longer any room for doubt. But when it comes to whether Saito really is the culprit, even with the test results as clear as they are, somehow I just can't bring myself to feel certain. It's not as though finding him guilty at the preliminary hearing would be the final word on the matter, so I suppose it would be well enough to leave it as it stands. But as you know, I have my stubborn streak, and it galls me to think my conclusion might be overturned at trial. So the truth is, I'm still of two minds about it."

"This is really quite fascinating, looking at it,"

Akechi began, taking the record in his hand.

"They say both Fukiya and Saito are quite the diligent students, and it shows in how they both answer 'Maruzen' to the word 'book' — that tells you something about their character, doesn't it? But what's more interesting is that while Fukiya's answers are, every one of them, somehow material and intellectual, Saito's have a certain gentleness about them, don't they? Lyrical, you might say. Answers like 'woman,' 'kimono,' 'flower,' 'doll,' 'scenery,' 'younger sister' — if anything, they suggest a sentimental, delicate sort of man. And Saito must be in poor health, too. He answers 'illness' to 'dislike,' and 'consumption' to 'illness' — doesn't that show he's been living in constant fear of catching consumption?"

"There's that way of looking at it too, certainly. This word-association business — the more you think about it, the more interesting conclusions you can draw from it,"

"By the way,"

Akechi said, his tone shifting slightly.

"Have you ever given thought to the weak points of this thing called the psychological test? De Quiros, criticizing the ideas of Munsterberg, the man who first proposed the psychological test, says that this method was devised as a substitute for torture, but that its results, just like torture's, can end up condemning the innocent and letting the guilty slip through. Munsterberg himself wrote somewhere that the true value of a psychological test is certain only in cases where one is trying to discover whether a suspect has knowledge of some particular place, person, or object — and that in other cases it carries a certain amount of danger. I may well be teaching the Buddha to preach, telling you all this. But I do think it's a genuinely important point. What do you make of it?"

"Well, if you consider the worst case, I suppose that's so. Of course I'm aware of it too,"

the judge answered, with a faint look of displeasure.

"But there's no telling that this worst case isn't closer at hand than one might think. Could one not put it this way? Suppose a highly nervous, entirely innocent man comes under suspicion of some crime. He was caught at the scene of the crime, and he knows the facts of it perfectly well. In such a case, could he really remain calm and unmoved under a psychological test? Wouldn't it be only natural for him to grow agitated, thinking something like, 'Ah, this is meant to test me — how should I answer so as not to arouse suspicion'? And so, wouldn't a psychological test carried out under such circumstances end up doing exactly what de Quiros calls 'condemning the innocent'?"

"You're speaking of Saito Isamu, aren't you. Well, that's exactly the feeling I've had myself, without quite being able to say why — which is precisely why, as I said just now, I'm still of two minds about it."

The judge's expression grew ever more sour.

"Well then, if Saito is indeed innocent in that sense — though he can hardly escape the charge of stealing the money — then who on earth did kill the old woman ..."

The judge broke in on Akechi's words partway through, demanding roughly.

"Do you mean to say you have some other suspect in mind, then?"

"I do,"

Akechi answered, smiling.

"Judging from the results of this association test, I believe Fukiya is the culprit. I can't say for certain yet, mind you — but he should be home by now, shouldn't he? What do you say — could you have him called here quietly, without arousing his suspicion? If you did, I feel sure I could get to the bottom of the truth and show it to you."

"What's that? Do you have some definite proof for this?"

the judge asked, not a little startled.

Akechi, without the slightest air of triumph, laid out his reasoning in detail.

And it left the judge thoroughly impressed.

Akechi's request was granted, and a messenger was sent running to Fukiya's boarding house.

"Your friend Mr. Saito has at last been found guilty. There is something I would like to discuss with you about the matter, so I would be grateful if you would trouble yourself to come to my private residence."

Such was the wording of the summons.

Fukiya had just returned from school, and on hearing this, came at once.

Even he, composed as he was, felt no small excitement at this welcome news.

In his sheer delight, he never noticed at all that a terrible trap lay in wait.

VI

After giving a general account of his reasons for finding Saito guilty, Judge Kasamori added the following.

"I really do feel terrible for having suspected you at all. Today, to tell the truth, I asked you to come both to apologize for that and to explain the whole matter to you properly."

And, ordering tea to be brought for Fukiya, he began, in an entirely relaxed manner, to make small talk.

Akechi joined in the conversation too.

The judge introduced him as an acquaintance of his, a lawyer who had been asked by the deceased old woman's heir to see to the collection of outstanding debts and the like.

Half of this was, of course, a lie, but it was true enough that, following a family conference, the old woman's nephew had come up from the countryside to inherit her estate.

Among the three of them, various topics were discussed, beginning with talk of Saito.

Fukiya, now thoroughly at ease, was the most eloquent talker of the three.

As they talked, time passed unnoticed, and evening dusk began to gather outside the window.

Noticing this all of a sudden, Fukiya began preparing to leave, saying

"Well, I should be going now — was there nothing else you needed of me?"

"Oh, I very nearly forgot entirely,"

Akechi said cheerfully.

"Oh, it's nothing much, really. Since we're on the subject — I wonder if you know: in the room where the murder took place there stood a two-panel folding screen of gold leaf, and it seems there's a small tear in it that's become something of an issue. You see, that screen didn't belong to the old woman herself — it had been left with her as security on a loan — and the owner is insisting the tear must have been made at the time of the murder and demanding compensation, while the old woman's nephew, who takes after her in stinginess, claims it might well have been there from before, and won't budge on the matter. It's a thoroughly tiresome business, and it has me quite stumped, though the screen does seem to be a rather valuable piece. Now, since you were a frequent visitor to that house, you probably remember the screen — I don't suppose you happen to recall whether it had a tear in it before? Though I imagine you'd have had no particular reason to pay attention to a folding screen. I did ask Saito about it too, but the poor fellow is so overwrought he couldn't tell me anything useful, and the maid has gone back to the country, so writing to ask her hasn't gotten me anywhere either. It's rather a bind, really ..."

That the screen had been left as security was true; everything else, of course, was pure invention.

At the word "screen," Fukiya felt an involuntary chill.

But on listening closely, he found it was nothing at all to worry about, and was entirely reassured.

"What am I so jumpy for? Hasn't the whole matter already been settled?"

He gave a moment's thought to how he ought to answer, but, as always, it seemed to him the best method was simply to tell things as they were.

"As the judge here well knows, I only ever went into that room the one time — and that was two days before the murder."

he said, grinning.

He found this manner of speaking irresistibly amusing.

"But I do remember that screen. When I saw it, there was certainly no tear in it."

"Is that so? You're quite sure of that? It's only a very small tear, right at the face of Ono no Komachi."

"Ah, yes, now I remember,"

Fukiya said, putting on a show of just then recalling it.

"That was the painting of the Six Poetic Immortals, wasn't it. I remember Ono no Komachi too. But if there had been a tear then, I couldn't possibly have overlooked it — after all, a tear right on Komachi's face, painted in such brilliant colors, would catch the eye at a glance."

"Then I wonder if I might trouble you to give testimony to that effect? The owner of the screen is a genuinely greedy fellow, and quite impossible to deal with."

"Why, certainly, whenever it's convenient for you."

Fukiya, feeling rather pleased with himself, agreed to the request of the man he believed to be a lawyer.

"Thank you,"

Akechi said happily, running his fingers through his mop of unkempt hair.

This was a habit of his, a thing he did whenever he grew somewhat excited.

"To tell the truth, I was convinced from the very start that you must know about that screen. Because, you see, in yesterday's record of the psychological test, in answer to the word 'picture,' you gave the rather particular answer 'screen.' Here it is, right here. Boarding houses don't generally keep folding screens about, and you don't seem to have any close friends besides Saito — so I imagined that this could only be the screen in the old woman's room, which, for some reason or other, must have left a particularly deep impression on you."

Fukiya was briefly startled.

It was certainly, without doubt, exactly as this lawyer said.

But why, yesterday, had he blurted out the word "screen" at all?

And, strange as it was, that he had not even noticed it himself until now — was that not dangerous?

But dangerous in just what way?

Had he not, at the time, examined that tear carefully and confirmed for himself that it could serve as no clue at all?

It's fine, it's fine — nothing to worry about.

He thought it through once and finally felt reassured.

In truth, though, he had not the slightest idea that he had made a blunder so glaring it could hardly have been more obvious.

"I see — I never noticed it myself, but you're quite right, certainly. That's a remarkably sharp observation."

Fukiya answered calmly, never once forgetting his doctrine of artlessness.

"Oh, it was pure chance that I noticed it,"

Akechi, playing the lawyer, said modestly.

"But speaking of noticing things, there's actually one more matter — no, no, nothing at all for you to worry about. Yesterday's association test included eight dangerous words, and you passed through them perfectly. Too perfectly, really. If there'd been the slightest guilty conscience behind it, it couldn't have gone this smoothly. Those eight words are marked with circles here — you see, right here."

And with that, Akechi showed him the sheet of records.

"But your response time to each of these was, if only by a small margin every time, faster than to the meaningless words. For instance, it took you a mere 0.6 seconds to answer 'pine' to 'flowerpot.' That's a rare degree of artlessness. Among these thirty words, the easiest association to make is probably 'blue' for 'green,' and yet even that one took you 0.7 seconds."

Fukiya began to feel a profound unease.

Just what was this lawyer driving at, going on so at length?

Was it out of goodwill, or out of malice?

Might there be some deep ulterior motive behind it?

He strained every faculty to grasp the meaning of it.

"Whether it's 'flowerpot' or 'oiled paper' or 'crime,' none of these eight words in question could possibly be easier to associate with than ordinary ones like 'head' or 'green.' And yet you answered these harder associations faster still. What could that possibly mean? That's the very point I noticed. Shall I try guessing at what was going through your mind? Well, what do you say — it might make for some amusement. But forgive me if I'm wrong."

Fukiya gave an involuntary shudder.

But even he himself did not know what had made him do it.

"You knew perfectly well how dangerous a psychological test could be, and you'd prepared for it beforehand, hadn't you? For every word connected with the crime, you had a ready answer worked out in advance for whatever might come. No, no, I'm not condemning your method in the least. A psychological test really can, in certain circumstances, be a very dangerous thing. One can never say for certain that it won't let the guilty slip free while condemning the innocent. But your preparation was, if anything, too thorough — you surely never meant to answer any faster, and yet it was precisely those words that came out fastest of all. That was, without question, a grave misstep. You worried only about being too slow, and never once thought that being too fast might be just as dangerous. Mind you, the difference in time was so exceedingly small that only a very careful observer indeed would catch it without overlooking it entirely. But in any case, a fabrication always has a flaw somewhere."

Akechi's whole ground for suspecting Fukiya lay in this single point alone.

"But then why did you choose to answer with words so likely to arouse suspicion — 'money,' 'murder,' 'hide'? Needless to say — that's precisely your artlessness at work, isn't it. If you were the culprit, you'd never answer 'hide' to 'oiled paper.' The very fact that you could answer such dangerous words without the slightest concern is proof of a perfectly clear conscience. Isn't that so? Just as I said."

Fukiya stared fixedly into the speaker's eyes.

For some reason, he could not look away.

The muscles from his nose down to his mouth had gone rigid, and it felt to him as though every expression had become impossible — laughing, weeping, showing surprise, all of it.

Needless to say, he could not speak.

Had he forced himself to speak, it would surely have come out at once as a cry of pure terror.

"This artlessness — that is, your refusal to resort to petty tricks — is your most striking characteristic. Knowing that, I put that question to you just now. Eh, don't you see? I mean the matter of the screen. I never doubted for a moment that you would, quite artlessly, answer just as things truly stood — and indeed you did. Now then, Kasamori, let me ask you — when exactly was that screen with the Six Poetic Immortals brought into the old woman's house?"

Akechi asked, feigning innocence as he turned to the judge.

"The day before the crime. That is, the fourth of last month."

"Eh, the day before? Is that really so? That's odd, isn't it — Fukiya here has just told us plainly that he saw it in that room two days before the crime, on the third. That's quite irreconcilable, unless one of you is mistaken."

"Fukiya must simply be mistaken about something,"

the judge said, grinning.

"It's been established beyond any doubt that, until the evening of the fourth, that screen was still in the possession of its rightful owner."

Akechi watched Fukiya's expression with deep interest.

It was beginning to crumple in a strange way, like the face of a little girl on the verge of tears.

This was the trap Akechi had planned from the very start.

He had already learned from the judge that the screen had not been in the old woman's house two days before the crime.

"This has become rather awkward, hasn't it,"

Akechi said, in a voice of feigned distress. "This is a fatal blunder now, one there's simply no taking back. Why on earth did you say you saw something you never saw at all? By all rights, you shouldn't have set foot in that house even once since two days before the crime. And your remembering that painting of the Six Poetic Immortals in particular — that was the fatal stroke. No doubt, in trying so hard to tell the truth, the truth, you ended up telling a lie instead. Isn't that so? When you went into that room two days before the crime, did you pay any attention at all to whether or not a screen was standing there? Of course you didn't. It had, after all, nothing whatsoever to do with your plan, and even if the screen had been there, it was, as you know, faded with age and dull in color, hardly the sort of thing to stand out among all the other furnishings. So it was only natural that you should assume the screen you saw there on the day of the crime had been standing there in just the same way two days before. And I put my question in just such a way as to lead you to think so. It's a kind of illusion, if you like, but if you think about it, it's something that happens to all of us often enough in daily life. But an ordinary criminal would never have answered as you did. They think that all that matters is hiding everything, no matter what. What worked in my favor, though, was that your mind ran ten, twenty times ahead of the ordinary judge's or the ordinary criminal's. That is, you held to the conviction that, so long as it didn't touch the vital point, it was actually safer to speak as openly as possible. A method of going behind the back of the back, so to speak. And so I went one step further behind even that. You never imagined, I daresay, that a lawyer with no connection whatsoever to this case would set a trap to make you confess. Ha ha ha ha ha."

Fukiya, his face gone deathly pale, sweat beading heavily on his forehead, sat locked in silence.

He knew that, matters having come to this, the more he tried to explain himself, the more he would only expose his own lies.

Clever as he was, he understood all too well just how eloquent a confession his own slip of the tongue had been.

Strangely, all manner of memories from his childhood rose and vanished dizzyingly in his mind, like the turning of a revolving lantern.

A long silence went on.

"Can you hear it?"

Akechi said, after a while.

"There, that rustling sound, hear it? That's been going on since a while ago — someone in the next room has been writing down everything we've said. ... You there, that's enough now, bring it in here, would you?"

At that, the sliding door opened, and a man who looked like a student came out with a sheaf of Western paper in his hand.

"Read it aloud once, if you would,"

and, following Akechi's order, the man read it out from the very beginning.

"Well then, Fukiya, would you sign this? A thumbprint will do just fine. Surely you won't refuse. After all, didn't you promise just a moment ago to testify about the screen whenever needed? Though I suppose you never imagined it would be testimony of quite this sort."

Fukiya knew perfectly well that refusing to sign now would serve no purpose whatsoever.

He signed and stamped his print, thereby acknowledging Akechi's astonishing chain of reasoning as well.

And now he sat with his head hung low, like a man who had utterly given up all hope.

"As I said before,"

Akechi explained, in conclusion.

"Munsterberg says that the true value of a psychological test is certain only when it is used to determine whether a suspect knows something about a particular place, person, or object. In this case, that point was precisely whether Fukiya had seen the screen or not. Apart from that one point, a hundred psychological tests would probably have been useless — especially against an opponent like Fukiya, a man who foresaw everything and prepared himself so meticulously. There's one more thing I'd like to say, too: a psychological test need not, as the books would have it, be limited to fixed stimulus words and specially prepared apparatus. As I've just demonstrated to you, it can be carried out perfectly well through the most ordinary sort of conversation. The great judges of old — a man like Ooka Echizen no Kami, for instance — were all applying, without even realizing it themselves, methods that modern psychology has only just discovered."