Pathway to Japanese Literature

Death of a Popular Singer Midnight—the electric clock’s hands silently pointed to the first hour of the new day when Social Section Chief Chigusa Jujiro bundled up his final manuscript and tossed it onto the assistant’s desk in the Coordination Department with a thud.

“Alright, that’s done.” Chigusa was weighing—the piping-hot oden at Guard Station against the lukewarm bed in his Nakano apartment—which to choose. After twelve straight hours of work, his mind and body had become tattered rags of exhaustion—to the point that even if someone turned the whole Earth into a bomb and lit the fuse of some cataclysmic event, he’d be in such a reckless state he’d snarl, *Damn it, I won’t write a single line!*

“Mr. Chigusa, there’s a phone call for you.” The attendant’s voice and the telephone’s ringing shattered Chigusa Jujiro’s indolent reverie. “Where—” “It’s Mr. Hayasaka’s voice—‘Is the section chief there?’” “That rascal Isamu’s probably drinking in Ginza again—just mark him as returned.”

“It’s no good—they can hear your voice over there, you see.”

The office attendant covered the mouthpiece with his palm and made a sour face. "It can’t be helped—another military funds requisition."

Chigusa Jujiro tugged at the desk phone’s cord—though this was strictly prohibited by the supplies department—and picked up the receiver, his feet still propped on the desk.

“Chief—something terrible—” The voice of Hayasaka Isamu—the sharpest among diplomatic reporters—came through in fragments. “What’s all the panic about, Isamu? Since when do journalists deal with anything momentous? Unless you’ve run into a debt collector on the street—that’d be different.” “That’s not some trivial matter—Nagashima Wakana has been killed!”

“What?!” “That popular singer Wakana?!”

Chigusa Jujiro twisted the pipe he’d been gripping between his teeth into the paste pot, lowered his feet from the desk to the floor, and desperately clamped onto the desk telephone. Having cursed the news and completely forgotten his recent state of mind, a fiery journalistic instinct blazed up within him, incinerating both fatigue and lethargy. “She was shot dead with a pistol in her own home—the crime was committed just one hour ago.” “Where are you right now?”

“Wakana’s house—I casually dropped by the Metropolitan Police Department and saw the investigation team sneaking out, so I tailed them in a taxi. Turned out they were headed to Wakana’s place in Daikanyama. Cops were guarding the front and wouldn’t let anyone through, so I sweet-talked the maid into letting me in through the bathroom. When I saw Wakana sprawled on her back in front of the grand piano, that Chinese rug soaked in blood—damn, it startled me. A woman that beautiful… makes it all the more horrifying.”

“You idiot—don’t tell me you were just dazedly staring at the corpse—what are the reporters from other papers up to?”

"They’re all scrambling at the entrance. Luckily, I’m the only one who managed to slip inside." "Good! Don’t leave that phone—lay out the details in order. I’m waiting to send the city edition to print." Chigusa Jujiro looked back toward the Coordination Department and, while signaling a deadline extension with his hand, pulled the coarse manuscript paper closer and licked his pencil. "Nagashima Wakana had planned her second overseas tour and held a farewell tea party at her home tonight. Guests started gathering around seven o’clock—after making quite a ruckus—and by about ten-thirty most had left. Those remaining were Fujii Kaoru—a famous accompanist—his wife Toriko—as you know, she’s a socialite who used to be a tour guide, a beauty rivaling Wakana, around twenty-five or twenty-six—and Okazaki Keinosuke—a music enthusiast who’s recently grown close to Wakana at an alarming pace."

“Hmm—wait there, Isamu. I’ll have them prepare photos of those three and Wakana—looks like the Investigation and Editing Departments are packing up to leave—Hey! Attendant! Is no one here? Damn it—past twelve and they all vanish in unison—Hey! Go to the Investigation Department and bring me photos of Nagashima Wakana, Fujii Kaoru, his wife Ms. Toriko, and Okazaki Keinosuke—there should be plenty of Wakana’s photos; pick ones where she’s smiling if possible. Then call the Plate-Making Department—tell them we’ve got urgent work and to keep two or three people on standby—Alright, Isamu! Good—keep going with your report.”

Chigusa transcended time and fatigue, demonstrating his three-faced, six-armed prowess. “Okazaki was mixing cocktails in the next room apparently, while Fujii sat at the piano with Wakana playing a jazz duet or something—since people heard both the piano duet and Wakana’s singing, this part isn’t a lie.” “And then?” “The piano’s highest note, the pillar clock striking eleven, and the muffled gunshot all coincided apparently. Fujii Kaoru—playing alongside Wakana—kept going solo for three or four more measures without realizing she’d been shot; he only noticed when Wakana fell backward flat.”

“Hmm, and then—”

Chigusa Jujiro’s pencil moved at a terrifying speed. Hayasaka Isamu’s phone call immediately turned into written text—a feat born of years of experience that no master stylist could ever replicate.

“When they turned her over，the pistol bullet had pierced through from below the left shoulder blade on her back straight through her heart’s center—then Okazaki from next door，Toriko from hallway，maids，disciples，all came rushing over.” “What about murder weapon?” “It’d fallen ’bout six feet behind piano，between entrance door ’n corpse.” “Onto Chinese rug—”

“Hmm.” “Fortunately, Okazaki Keinosuke—though an amateur—writes detective novels too, so he didn’t let anyone touch either the corpse or pistol and immediately called the local police station.” “Didn’t they call a doctor?” “They called a doctor afterward, but since her heart had been shot through, there was no saving her.” “The police first, then the doctor—exactly.”

Chigusa Jujiro suddenly noticed this contradiction. "There’s no mistake—" "What’s happening with the interrogation?"

“I can’t say it out loud—let me write it up when I get back.”

“No—don’t go back! Keep at it till dawn!” “I’ll have to hand over the phone to the police—well, do your best! I’ll push as hard as I can. Also, if we send someone to Wakana’s ex-husband—Dr. Nagashima Chotaro, the acoustics scholar—we might get some unusual information—Toriko’s being questioned right now.” Hayasaka Isamu’s voice came in fragments, terribly flustered—he was probably being pressured from behind by police officers to hand over the telephone.

“Isamu! Hey—Hayasaka! Don’t hang up! Hey—Isamu!” But no matter how much he shouted, the call ended there, and even when trying to ring back from his end, all that continued was a busy signal. “Damn it! If he’d just talked three more minutes, I could’ve written three columns or more for the morning edition’s early print…” Chigusa Jujiro threw the receiver with a clatter, and Orito Tomoyoshi—the editor-in-chief who had still been wandering around Ginza—casually peeked into the editorial department to check on the final layout of the city edition.

“Ah, Mr. Orito! Perfect timing—Nagashima Wakana has been murdered.” “What?! That alluring record singer who crooned those sweet pop songs?” “I’ve written up what Hayasaka phoned in, but this alone makes for a pitiful morning edition. Send one more person to the Metropolitan Police Department, another to the local precinct, and dispatch a photography team and reporters—two each—to the Daikanyama crime scene. For the music industry side… we’ll handle Mr. Amano—the veteran—and the record company’s literary department head by phone.”

“Thank you, that should cover it for now. By the way, Nagashima Wakana was supposed to have a husband—Dr. Nagashima—” “They separated two years back, didn’t they? How could that saccharine-sour woman have remained settled as some academic’s wife?” “No—they may live apart, but they haven’t formally divorced yet. Someone ought to handle it—are we already at capacity, Chigusa?” “Isamu had been concerned about that too—I’ll go myself.” “You?”

Chigusa had already forgotten his position as Social Section Chief and had taken his overcoat and hat. It was the psychology of a hunting dog driven to its limit.

Enormous Sound Wave Murder Machine

Dr. Nagashima Chotaro, Doctor of Science, seemed to belong to an entirely different species from his separated wife Wakana, as though inhabiting separate worlds. Wakana appeared devastatingly beautiful—this being a description of her cosmetic effect rather than any physiological assessment of her face—with a melancholy demeanor, while Dr. Nagashima Chotaro presented as an indescribably uncouth gentleman in outdated light-blue-lined suits. After five years of cohabitation, they had found their worldviews and lifestyles too divergent to reconcile, and had been living separately in public for about two years now. There was no doubt the separation proposal had originated from Wakana’s side, but according to newspaper reports, they had agreed to this trial separation to preserve their respective scholarly and artistic pursuits—with a promise to decide after two or three years whether to divorce, resume cohabitation, part permanently, or attempt some improbable reconciliation.

Dr. Nagashima Chotaro had secluded himself in his laboratory atop a small hill a couple of blocks away and never once showed his face again. Using only a single elderly maidservant, it was said he would not appear before anyone until emerging with a world-astonishing invention clutched in hand. Or rather—at the very least—Dr. Nagashima Chotaro himself had declared this with supreme confidence. In stark contrast to Dr. Nagashima’s reclusive existence, Wakana’s lifestyle grew increasingly ostentatious and flighty—the hundreds of thousands of yen flowing annually from the record company being more than sufficient to render a woman’s solitary existence extravagantly unbridled, defying all norms and propriety.

Fujii Kaoru, who played the piano accompaniment, was—despite being married to the renowned Ms. Toriko—Wakana's paramour, her collaborator in work (though not artistic, mind you), a rather handsome man, and one who gave off a decidedly immoral impression. Okazaki Keinosuke was that friend—a man with a somewhat comedic appearance—yet unexpectedly possessed a shrewd soul. Before anyone realized, he had mastered the art of amusing Wakana and was gradually encroaching upon Fujii Kaoru's position.

Chigusa Jujiro—who understood society's undercurrents better than anyone—arrived at Dr. Nagashima's gate in Daikanyama with the impatient urge of someone slapping the back of a taxi they'd just ridden in, all while turning over various circumstances in his mind.

Amidst the grove, around what appeared to be the laboratory, a crimson light burned with an undeniable sense of human presence. It must have just passed one o'clock. Chigusa Jujiro pressed the doorbell twice, then a third time, feeling peculiar anticipation stir faint excitement within him. The front door remained closed, "Who is there?" A voice called from an unexpected direction. When he turned, there at the kitchen window—now open—a woman in her sixties peered out timidly.

“I’m from Kanto Shinpo—I’d like to have a brief word with the Professor, if I may—”

Chigusa stood up straight. “It’s past one o’clock—would you mind postponing this until tomorrow? The Professor may have retired for the night.” “But he’s still awake—as you can see, the lights are on, and isn’t there some strange noise coming from there? A terrible incident has occurred, so please tell him I’d like to meet him even briefly.” “————” The elderly servant hesitated. By the gate light, she seemed to have determined there was nothing suspicious about Chigusa’s appearance, but— It was simply too late.

“Have the police come?” “No.” The elderly servant shook her salt-and-pepper head, but upon hearing this question, she seemed daunted by the incident’s gravity. “What’s this, old woman? — A guest at this hour? Rather late, isn’t it?” “Newspaper reporter?” “Then I’ll see them.” Dr. Nagashima directed the elderly servant to open the front door. “Doctor, I apologize for the late hour, but something serious has occurred.” Chigusa offered his business card, but Dr. Nagashima only gave it a fleeting glance without accepting it. It was the indifference befitting a scholar.

“Step this way.”

He was led to a laboratory protruding from the rear of the building, its dimensions approximately five and a half meters on each side. A bright decorative lamp hung at the center, with several additional stands lit above it, rendering the room so intensely illuminated that no object cast shadows. An enormous machine of unknowable nature occupied the majority of the room's floor space, standing imposingly. ———— Chigusa Jujiro felt something—neither quite terror nor unease. The air in the room quivered with a faint phosphorescence like that inside a radio vacuum tube, stirring anxiety and agitation in the unaccustomed Chigusa.

Seated across the tea table, Dr. Nagashima, the master of the house, had also undergone a transformation. In this chilly midnight hour, wearing nothing but a white knit shirt, with his mummy-like dark face sporting a goatee and those unfathomably deep eyes turned this way, he stared fixedly at Chigusa Jujiro’s face like a hypnotist.

“What about this machine, Doctor?” Overwhelmed by the bizarre scene before him, Chigusa Jujiro found himself asking such an idle question. “It’s a remarkable machine developed from acoustics.” “What does it do?” “You know about the theremin, don’t you? It’s even been to Japan.” “Electricity—an instrument that superimposes two high-frequency oscillating currents to produce any desired sound. Instruments applying this principle of electrical vibration saw twenty or thirty types invented worldwide over the past decade—the theremin, dynaphone, martôno, radio-phonette, ondium… all variations on the same theme.”

“Um, Doctor…” Chigusa attempted to halt this lecture, but there was no interrupting Dr. Nagashima’s eloquence—delivered with scholarly zeal and a madness-tinged tone. On Dr. Nagashima’s gaunt and darkened face burned a sickly-looking excitement as he continued his torrent of words, heedless of time or his audience.

“What I’ve invented is a machine that replaces an entire full orchestra! With just a simple operation, you can hear Beethoven’s grand symphonies, Bach’s Great Mass—anything! The overtone modulation requires precision—making it sing like a human voice remains challenging—but since it can perform instrumental music flawlessly, songs and speech will surely follow in time! The notion that machines can’t reproduce human singing and speech is antiquated superstition. Why, phonograph record grooves and talkie film soundtracks already achieve perfect mechanical recordings of songs and speech!”

“————” “The era when mechanisms dominate the music world will surely come! Machines that perform better than live musicians and sing better than humans will be invented any day now—this machine here is but one example. Pitiful though it may be for singers—especially those pop stars pandering to vulgar audiences—they’ll soon be out of work! I—Nagashima Chotaro—will strip every last one of those wretches of their livelihoods! Ha ha, ha ha!”

A hollow laugh reverberated through the four walls of the laboratory—empty save for the enormous machine—sending a shiver down Chigusa Jujiro’s spine. Dr. Nagashima must have devoted himself to inventing this outlandish machine to avenge his grudge against Wakana, the popular singer who had betrayed him. “Doctor, rather than that—something terrible has—” “That’s right—there’s something terrible! With this machine, you can kill people—people—” “What?!” “You must be shocked—the discovery of death rays is the ultimate goal scientists worldwide are striving toward now. But such lethal rays wouldn’t be found so easily. Before that, I’ve discovered murderous acoustics.”

“————” “Admittedly, I haven’t actually tested it yet, but it sends sound waves of a certain frequency—inaudible to the human ear—in a specific direction. Are you saying it’s difficult? Even light rays transmitted through ether vibrations can be directed to specific locations using reflecting mirrors—so there’s no logical reason why sound transmitted through air vibrations couldn’t be directed to some degree!” “————” “In 1909, Parsons created something called the Ouzetofon—an acoustical device utilizing compressed air and metal valves that selectively harmonizes specific instrument tones, enhancing their timbre and amplifying their resonance to extraordinary levels. By applying electromagnetic principles to this, sound waves transmitted from great distances—far beyond human auditory range—can be amplified to overwhelming intensity and directed. If the target has a weak heart, it induces cardiac paralysis; if weak nerves, madness ensues.”

"Is such a thing even possible?" "It can! It certainly can! Last night and tonight as well, I conducted transmission tests of these sound waves from evening until midnight, but—"

Dr. Nagashima raised his face and gazed out through the sole open window at the pitch-black night sky. There, about two blocks away, Nagashima Wakana—the pop singer who had abandoned this erudite doctor—was supposed to have been leading a life of scandalous immorality. “Doctor—your wife—Ms. Wakana was killed.”

“What?”

“I have come to inform you of that.” Chigusa Jujiro had finally said what needed to be said.

“Is that true?” “Around what time?”

Dr. Nagashima suddenly stood up, placed his hands on the window frame, and stared fixedly toward Wakana’s house in the distance. “About two hours ago—exactly at eleven o’clock.” “That was the time—I started testing this machine at ten. Eleven was exactly when I had it working at full capacity. Then I gradually reduced the power.” “Doctor.” “Behold—the woman who defied me has finally been killed—before her livelihood could be taken, her life was taken—”

Dr. Nagashima placed a hand on Chigusa Jujiro’s shoulder and made as if to laugh heartily. But that laugh caught in his throat, transforming into a strange voice that mingled sobs with choked gasps—a grotesque sound.

The enormous machine still continued its small but powerful growl.

Dr. Nagashima’s Confession

“Isamu, you’ve worked hard. The Editor-in-Chief is thrilled—apparently the president called to heap praise on us. While other papers only managed twenty or thirty lines, our newspaper wrote over half a page, Ah.”

“But man, I went through hell! Putting up with no sleep was one thing, but when I left that house, reporters from rival papers ambushed me—lucky I didn’t get mobbed!”

Chigusa Jujiro and Hayasaka Isamu had already met at the Kanto Shinpo editorial department by nine o'clock the next morning.

“Come now, quit your complaining—this counts as a special bonus! This time—and I mean this time—you should be able to pay off three years’ worth of installments to the tailor.” “Who in their right mind would divert a special bonus into installments? Installments stay installments even three years late.” “You’re unbelievable. Now, what about the materials?” “I’m begging you—let me write a full page for today’s evening edition!”

“You’ve got some nerve.”

“I’ll get another special bonus and build a house.”

“You’re such an idiot.” “I’m being evicted from the apartment.” “By the way—did Toriko confess?”

Chigusa Jujiro finally steered the conversation back to its original track. “She claims complete ignorance—‘Yes, I was standing in the corridor, but only because I was concerned about my husband and Wakana performing that duet. I had absolutely no intention of killing anyone,’ she says.” “Whose pistol is it?” “It’s Wakana’s possession. Since her income had increased recently—leading to harassment by local gentlemen and gangsters—through great effort her permit application was approved, and she purchased it this autumn.” “To be precise, since she was kidnapped and severely extorted in Kamakura this past summer, it seems that department granted her a carry permit as well. Being a popular singer isn’t easy, huh?”

“Where was it kept?” “On the triangular cupboard in the corner of the room—inside an ornate ivory-inlaid box. The maid, Fujii, and Okazaki all knew that spot.” “Could you reach that pistol by stretching your arm from the entrance?” “Not impossible—but pretty damn tricky.”

“When Fujii noticed—was the entrance door open or closed?”

“I don’t know—apparently they were too flustered to notice.” “Fingerprints?” “The pistol only has Wakana’s unclear fingerprints. If someone wore gloves or gripped it with a handkerchief when pulling the trigger, no prints would remain. Since Fujii was playing piano with Wakana at the time, he wouldn’t have had an opportunity for such preparations. But Toriko’s an intellectual who reads detective novels—she’d have thought of that.” “The angle—the direction the bullet came from?”

“It’s from the direction of the triangular cupboard. In that regard, Toriko is cleared—if someone had fired from the corridor by opening the door, the bullet should have gone slightly more to the right. But it came sharply from the left—that is, diagonally from where Fujii Kaoru was performing the duet.”

“It came from Fujii Kaoru’s side, then.” “Fujii’s beyond suspicion. Shooting someone mid-duet would be too difficult, and you can’t play piano while handling gloves or handkerchiefs.” “――――” “Another thing—after the pistol, clock, and piano’s loudest note sounded together, Fujii kept playing through three or four more measures in high spirits.”

Their conversation came to a halt; they were contemplating how to structure the evening edition's article for maximum impact. “By the way, there’s something interesting, Isamu.” Now it was Chigusa’s turn. “What?” “Dr. Nagashima turned himself in this morning.”

“Huh.” “The one who killed Wakana is undoubtedly this Nagashima Chotaro—so he claims.”

“Has he gone mad?” “While they say Wakana was shot dead with a pistol, Dr. Nagashima insists she was killed by sound waves.” “Sound waves?” “Sound waves—the doctor made a revolutionary discovery in acoustics and built this monstrous machine that’ll render all musicians obsolete! That same machine can supposedly transmit lethal sound waves over distances. Wakana’s house was originally his property—he’d installed resonance devices in that room’s windows. If the pistol on the triangular cupboard fired, it’s because an acoustic signal sent from his lab got amplified by special equipment in the room. That neurotic Wakana must’ve snapped and shot herself in a fit—crazy, right?”

“Is that something a sane person would do?” “The Metropolitan Police ran a psychiatric evaluation—while he’s got that stubborn streak typical of academics, they found no real signs of madness.”

“So, did they put him in holding?” “Preposterous! There’s no way Dr. Nagashima could’ve killed Wakana—he never left his laboratory from ten PM to one AM last night. His alibi’s rock-solid with that machine clattering away and the old maid as witnesses! Sure, he resented her, but you can’t make someone a suspect just for holding a grudge.” “But it’d make for sensational copy.” “I’m weighing whether to run this in the paper or not. After nursing his hatred for Wakana all these years, maybe he cracked and confessed to something he didn’t actually do. If that’s true—poor bastard.”

“Is it true that Dr. Nagashima really didn’t leave his laboratory last night?”

“That’s beyond doubt—compared to sound wave murder being impossible, it’s even more impossible for Dr. Nagashima to have escaped his laboratory.” Considering the laboratory’s brightness, the height of its windows, and the machinery requiring constant operation—escaping that room was utterly inconceivable. “Once we’re done with the evening edition, let’s go check again.” “Shall we?” The two set to work on the lengthy manuscript.

Okazaki and Toriko’s Claims

At Wakana’s house in Daikanyama, distant relatives and close friends from music circles came and went in quick succession. However, due to their lack of regular contact and the persistent awareness of her “unnatural death” clinging to their minds, they all withdrew as if by prior arrangement. In the end, Fujii Kaoru, Okazaki Keinosuke, and two or three people from the record company ended up having to handle every single arrangement. Chigusa Jujiro and Hayasaka Isamu, among a crowd of newspaper reporters, moved in an inefficient manner that was neither fully helpful nor entirely obstructive—scouring the scene with hawklike intensity for scoops.

“Mr. Hayasaka, could I have a word?”

Okazaki Keinosuke, who had become thoroughly familiar through the overnight siege, gently tapped Hayasaka Isamu's shoulder.

Following along together, they went to a second-floor small room—a long four-tatami space that seemed forgotten—and, “I can’t say this to the police, but I believe that pistol could have been fired even while playing the piano—what do you think?” “A pianist can make their right and left hands perform entirely different tasks, don’t you think?”

“――――”

The meaning of Okazaki Keinosuke’s words was clear. Hayasaka Isamu involuntarily raised his face, tracking those upturned eyes without intent to accuse. “Entrusting the duet entirely to your left hand while retrieving a pistol—prepared beforehand and still wrapped in a handkerchief—with your right... Wouldn’t it be simple to fire from an angle behind the person seated to your right? You could shoot freely even precisely when the clock strikes eleven or alongside the piano’s loudest note—” “Firing from such proximity would leave burn marks on the corpse.”

“I think you could fire from about three feet away, though...” “Even so, her clothes would’ve been scorched—given how thin that Western-style dress was, barely enough to hide her skin.” Hayasaka Isamu laid bare his resentment through the protest.

“But if someone were to wrap the muzzle loosely with a handkerchief and fire, I think that could mitigate it—as long as they had time to hide the handkerchief—” “They wouldn’t have had a handkerchief with burn marks—as you saw, the police arrived immediately and searched both the room and the body—” “In any case, please remember that there was someone who became terribly upset recently because Wakana grew close to me—I have no other motive than wanting to avenge Wakana’s enemy.”

“――――” Hayasaka Isamu bit his nails—unable to comprehend why he had spoken to him,a newspaper reporter instead of informing the police.

Just then, Toriko—whose suspicions had been cleared and who had returned—came with her husband Fujii Kaoru to help merely for appearances. But upon encountering her acquaintance Chigusa Jujiro,

“Could I have a moment of your advice, Mr. Chigusa?” “What is it, Ms. Toriko?” Chigusa was led and stood in the backyard. In the shade of the hedge and building—there, they could not be heard by anyone. “Mr. Chigusa, I’m truly mortified—to be suspected of even this…” Toriko was streaming tears copiously. A woman in her mid-twenties with a voluptuous body, from whom anger and charm seemed to radiate all at once—Chigusa, pressed into a narrow corner of the space, felt an oppressive sensation akin to suffocation.

“I certainly harbored resentment toward Wakana, but I wouldn’t be foolish enough to kill such a low-class woman and end up with a noose around my neck.” “――――”

Whether Wakana was low-class or Toriko was high-class—even Chigusa couldn’t discern—but in any case, the two women were equally coquettish. Despite one being an international lady and the other a singer, there was no significant difference in their kind of beauty and popularity.

“I told the police, but they didn’t believe me—it’s certainly Mr. Okazaki who killed Wakana.” “Such a thing—” “Mr. Chigusa, you think so too, don’t you? But Mr. Okazaki—who claimed he’d been mixing cocktails in the next room—wasn’t holding anything when he rushed over during the commotion! And in that next room, there might’ve been liquor bottles, but none were opened—let alone cocktails!”

“But from the next room, there’s no way to fire a pistol.” “The wound’s in a completely opposite direction.” said Chigusa Jujiro.

“So naive—I’m telling you, the pistol was fired from the window next to the triangular shelf! That shelf and the window are practically touching, aren’t they?” “Then the criminal reached out from outside—” “Oh, exactly! You’re so sharp, Mr. Chigusa—someone must’ve reached in from outside the window, taken the pistol from the ivory box, and fired from there!” “Are you saying *you* saw that?” “It’s as good as seeing it.”

Toriko became slightly flustered, but with eyes burning with desperation as she tried to construct evidence in her mind, she pressed closer to Chigusa. "That's an interesting theory, but there are two things that make it impossible." "――――"

“First，for Mr.Okazaki to go from the next room to outside the window，he would have to pass through either the corridor where you’re standing，Ms.Toriko，or the kitchen where the maids are.” “He could jump down from the window，couldn’t he?” “If he were to jump from the window，circle around the garden to kill someone，and return through the same window，he should have arrived late to the commotion—yet everyone arrived together—as both the maids and you yourself，Ms.Toriko，testified.”

“――――” “Moreover, since the window is quite high, it would be difficult for someone as short as Mr. Okazaki to both retrieve the pistol from the triangular shelf and take aim.” “What if they used a stepping stool?” “The exterior of the Western-style house is kept impeccably tidy. There isn’t a single thing around there that could serve as a stepping stool.” Chigusa had gathered enough material in just about an hour to dismantle Toriko’s suspicions. “Well… do you intend to defend Mr. Okazaki?”

“That’s not the case.” “It’s so frustrating—through the gap in the door, I caught a glimpse of something white by the window!”

That was likely Toriko’s genuine sentiment. “Is that true?” Chigusa Jujiro abruptly grew intent.

“It’s absolutely true! I pride myself on having excellent eyesight.” Toriko, who had peeked at the husband and Wakana’s duet, might have truly seen something like that. “Alright then—let’s rethink this. If I can just find a stepping stool—whether it’s a stone or a log—it’s mine.” “――――” “Was the window really open after all?” said Chigusa Jujiro. “Ms. Wakana ran hot—she always opened the window during piano or singing practice.” Chigusa Jujiro’s expression grew increasingly serious; having heard from Hayasaka Isamu earlier, he needed to re-examine everything from the beginning—whether Okazaki was telling the truth or Toriko was.

Re-examining from the Start

“Isamu, we’re starting over. Give me a hand.”

As if reluctant to part with the fading sunset, Chigusa Jujiro invited Hayasaka Isamu out from the newspaper reporters’ waiting room.

“That’s all well and good, but—Fujii Kaoru was taken away.” Hayasaka Isamu was bewildered.

“Is that true?” “Okazaki Keinosuke accused him—if he told them exactly what I said, the police would have to investigate.” “What a hopeless fool.” “It’s said that Wakana’s affections were shifting from Fujii to Okazaki, but that seems to be Okazaki’s own fabrication. Fujii’s a handsome man with his piano accompaniment as a weapon, while Okazaki’s clearly third-rate—a patron without a penny to his name.”

“Shh, here they come.” “Knock on wood, knock on wood.”

They greeted the vigilant police officers and were allowed to enter the room where the crime had occurred. It goes without saying that they had been permitted under strict conditions—namely, that they not lay a finger on anything.

“I still think there’s something off about this spot. If you set up a stepping stool at this window—no, a rope ladder would work better—anyway, if you attach something like that and lean out your upper body, you could grab the pistol from the triangular shelf and take aim easily enough. If they remove that ladder and jump into the corridor in an instant, it wouldn’t be impossible to enter this room from behind Toriko. They say three or four measures were played after the gunshot—and Fujii’s moment to lift Wakana could be timed perfectly.”

“So...” Hayasaka Isamu also grasped that Chigusa Jujiro’s suspicion was directed straight toward Okazaki Keinosuke. “Hey, Mr. Chigusa.”

The one who peeked from behind was Toriko. When she saw her husband Fujii Kaoru being taken away earlier, she must have been unable to bear it. “Ms. Toriko, if things go well, we might be able to save Mr. Fujii—if there are opera glasses, please find them and bring them here.” “Huh?” Toriko left but soon returned with an opulent pair of opera glasses—ivory with gold handles—that Wakana had apparently cherished. “The question is whether this window is visible from Dr. Nagashima’s laboratory. If the doctor had stuck his head out at that time—well, it’s a one-in-a-million chance, but we should’ve been able to see the culprit’s head—shall we go check, Isamu?”

“Where to?” “To Dr. Nagashima’s laboratory—even after his wife’s death, the doctor hasn’t set foot here, his heart harboring an incurable rage and sorrow. It’s only right we go offer him some comfort.” Chigusa Jujiro and Hayasaka Isamu headed toward Dr. Nagashima’s laboratory atop a modest hill, a block or two away from there.

It was an unseasonably warm Indian summer day.

The face reflected in the piano's mirror panel "He is currently engaged in his research and will not see anyone."

Pushing back against the old woman’s words, “The culprit who killed Mrs.Nagashima has been caught. Please inform him that we’ve come to report that.” Chigusa’s stratagem succeeded splendidly, and before long, the two were ushered into the laboratory from the previous night. Though it was still daytime with no bright electric lights, by the ominously vibrating massive machine and before a small desk, Dr.Nagashima’s face—deep in thought over something—remained profoundly still. “Back again?” He appeared forty-five or forty-six at most but looked no younger than fifty, worn down by bone-grinding hardships and relentless research. On his quietly raised face lingered an indescribably desolate sorrow, stagnant like snow clouds reflected in winter water.

“Doctor, Fujii Kaoru was taken away in bonds.” “I see.” What an utterly lifeless voice. “Won’t you go to the house over there, Doctor?” “I don’t want to go—I’m a researcher. I don’t want to be bothered by such things.” “Not even to your wife’s funeral…”

“――――” Wakana, who had abandoned him two years prior to continue her wanton life from man to man—could her mere death truly erase all fury and resentment from her trampled husband's heart? Dr. Nagashima silently lowered his eyelids. "From here, that house's window is quite visible, wouldn't you say?" Chigusa shifted the topic. "To my chagrin, I saw it clearly." "Might I borrow your view for a moment?" “――――” Chigusa pressed the opera glasses against his eyes and peered intently through the window.

“That night, around eleven o’clock—if you’d shown your face here, you must have seen something.”

“――――” “This laboratory has only one entrance, right?” “That’s right.” “What about the entrance key?” “The old woman has it.”

“So if you wanted to go out at night, there’d be no way but to jump from this window, right?” “The window’s high—and I’m no sportsman.” Dr. Nagashima blurted this out as if involuntarily drawn, then laughed—a dry, empty sound escaping him unbidden. A hollow, desolate voice.

“But there are marks from a rope ladder’s hook on this window frame, Doctor.”

“――――”

“At intervals of about eight sun [approximately 24 centimeters], there are two hook marks—undoubtedly from a rope ladder—and identical marks were found on the window next to the triangular cupboard in that house across.” “What?!”

It wasn’t only the Doctor who was shocked—even Hayasaka Isamu stood aghast, lunging toward the window frame. “What’s that supposed to mean? You called me ‘Mr. Chigusa,’ didn’t you?”

“It’s nothing. The scratches on the window frame could’ve been made with a knife. Isn’t this the perfect means to frame someone?”

“———” “If the rope ladder isn’t found... this can’t become evidence... But—” “———”

“Even if gloves stained with cream-colored paint are found, they’ll make splendid evidence.” “What does that mean?” Dr. Nagashima was rendered speechless.

“Moreover, as I’ve been observing this machine for a while now, it changes various sounds automatically without any adjustments—if the maid didn’t know its noises shift in regular patterns, she’d naturally assume you were here operating it. And precisely because it’s a machine no one understands, it provides you with a perfect alibi.” “――――” “Keeping the lights so blazingly bright actually backfires—no one would imagine someone slipping out through the window of such a brightly lit room. Just by lowering a single curtain, you could do anything through that window—”

“You intend to say that I killed Wakana?” Dr. Nagashima had risen to his feet. When he opened his large eyes wide, his face contorted into a fearsome expression.

“That’s preposterous—but I can state this much definitively. Fujii, who was performing a piano duet with Mrs. Nagashima, saw the culprit’s face reflected in the black-lacquered mirror panel on the piano’s front—he witnessed someone fire a pistol from the window and retreat. But since Fujii had done something unforgivable to the person whose face he saw, he couldn’t bring himself to tell the police or anyone else. Though as a precaution, he secretly disclosed it to me alone.”

“――――” A dreadful silence hung heavy as the colossal machine roared, shaking the very air. “If he were to come under suspicion with no way to explain himself—well, desperate times call for desperate measures—he’d have no choice but to tell the police whose face was reflected in the piano’s mirror panel... who fired that pistol—”

“――――” “That Fujii’s been arrested as the prime suspect.” “He might’ve already revealed the true culprit’s name by now.”

“Enough—I understand.—I’ll go to the police now and tell them everything I saw from this window last night—who made these hook-like marks on the window—who climbed that house over there around eleven o’clock— —I’ve been watching that window through a precision telescope at all times—”

“Doctor.” “I’ll go change and come back. Wait here for a bit.” Dr. Nagashima exited the laboratory quietly—truly quietly.

“Well, I don’t know—who’s the culprit? The Doctor? Okazaki? Or maybe—”

As if to drown out Hayasaka Isamu’s words,

“Ah! The Doctor sent the maid away!” “Danger!” “What are you doing?” “We’re getting out!” Chigusa grabbed Hayasaka Isamu’s hand and rolled through the window to leap outside.

At the same time, A strange sound hummed through their entire bodies. When they turned, the laboratory was flooded with a blinding white light—the floor, paneling, tables, chairs—no, even that grotesque machine—all burning fiercely like carved wooden ornaments.

“Ah!”

Chigusa Jujiro and Hayasaka Isamu leapt back five or six yards. In the flames, Dr. Nagashima—like a statue of fury, his entire body charred and blistered—glared fiercely in their direction.

The Sorrow of Newspaper Journalists

Chigusa Jujiro ended up taking three days off from the newspaper after that. “What’s wrong? I was thinking of visiting you, but—”

Hayasaka Isamu, who had tapped his shoulder—while there was a difference between this diplomatic reporter and the social section chief, one being a man of action and the other a man of intellect—they had been partners for a very long time. “I’ve grown sick of being a newspaper journalist.” “What’s gotten into you?”

“The laboratory incident.”

“I can’t make sense of anything. Even the authorities seem convinced Dr. Nagashima killed Wakana and released Fujii Kaoru—” “It must be the Doctor—I had that feeling from the start.” “The whole ‘sound wave murder’ was preposterous—a smokescreen to camouflage the truth. Confessing like that was downright clever. Everyone thinks the Doctor’s gone a bit mad, but he prepared an ironclad alibi. When things unfold so smoothly, the culprit’s confidence naturally grows fierce.”

Chigusa Jujiro proceeded to explain. "But wasn’t there so much incriminating evidence against the Doctor?"

said Hayasaka Isamu,

“They’re all lies—the window frame at the house where Wakana was killed was old with rough wood, so any hook marks from a rope ladder wouldn’t show. But thinking that using a stepstool would leave worse evidence, we assumed it had to be a rope ladder—and when we checked the Doctor’s laboratory window, there were clear marks there. The Doctor’s laboratory window frame was freshly painted too.”

“――――” “You were surprised, weren’t you?”

“I’d be surprised, but what about the face reflected in the piano’s mirror panel?” “That’s also a lie. With an upright piano, the neck from the window behind would reflect in the mirror panel for whoever’s playing—but with a grand piano, there’s no reflection. And don’t forget the music stand was loaded with jazz scores.” “That’s a rotten thing to say—you.”

Hayasaka Isamu was utterly appalled. “That’s why I said I’d quit journalism—once we figured out the Doctor was the culprit, I wanted to make him confess everything under the sun and splash it across a special edition of the paper.—He might not have had any will to live left, but there’s no doubt I hastened his death. And while the killer sound wave was a lie, that machine meant to replace a grand orchestra must’ve been something remarkable—what a waste to reduce it to ashes.”

“――――”

“Now that I think about it, worse than the Doctor were Wakana and the delinquents swarming around her.”

“――――” When Hayasaka Isamu saw Chigusa Jujiro’s dejected face, he too fell into deep thought. “Let’s both wash our hands of this here, Isamu.” “――――”

While they were discussing such matters, in the executive room deliberations were underway about how to commend Chigusa Jujiro and Hayasaka Isamu.

“Mr. Chigusa, Mr. Hayasaka, please come to the executive room.”

The office attendant was calling. “I’ll submit my resignation letter later. For now, I’m quitting verbally.” “Agreed.”

The two exchanged looks and nodded desolately.