by Otto Penzler
It was at that moment that the nurse who had left the room came back with a doctor. An elderly gentleman who, from his dignity and bearing, was evidently the big medical shot at the hospital.
“I have waited for your return.” The doctor snapped out his watch as he spoke. “Not simply to advise you, but to warn you. The patient will get better here, with proper care, the right nourishment, and—and less disturbances. If you move him there is the possibility—I’ll say more—the gravest probability that he will die.” And at the request of my unknown client he dismissed the nurses.
“I understand and appreciate your interest.” My boss had some dignity of his own when he wished to use it. “Let me assure you, Doctor, that you have done all that your professional ethics demand—even as your deepness of human feeling dictates. Let me assure you again that for this man to remain here means almost certain death. No.” He raised his hand. “I have said more than I should, now.”
“But an ambulance, surely?”
My client hesitated a moment, and then:
“I am afraid not. Too many would know— and to drive it myself would create hospital talk. No.” And suddenly and abruptly, “You will kindly ask the nurses to return and make the patient ready to travel.”
“But my dear sir, it is a question of human life, and—”
“You are not going to dispute my authority.” A hand went into his pocket and came out with a folded sheet of paper.
“No—no.” The doctor turned slightly sulky. “I took the trouble to check you up more fully on that this evening from the district attorney’s office.”
“From the district attorney, himself—personally?”
“No. From the district attorney’s office.”
“You’ve been a fool.” My client exploded slightly for the first time, and then calmer, “or perhaps I have. But let me assure you that the importance of the man being moved is now even graver. You will call the nurses—at once. Any delay on your part is hamperingthe cause of justice.”
“It’s kidnaping,” the doctor mumbled. Looked again at the document which my client held in his hand before him, and finally went to the door.
“Kidnaping, certainly—but official kidnaping.” And as the nurses came into the room, “You will do me the kindness, Doctor, to tell me just how long ago you telephoned to the—” with a glance at the nurses, “officials.”
“Shortly. Perhaps an hour ago. The thing worried me. I—. Can’t you wait a minute, sir? The whole thing is unseemly—inhuman—and without precedent in the hospital.”
“So—they suggested that you hold the man. Not by force, Doctor—not by official authority—but, let us say, by diplomacy.”
And he had the doctor. He squirmed beneath those eyes—the accusation in the man’s face. But years and breeding will tell. Dignity won out and the doctor gave him eye for eye.
“And what if they did, sir? It was most natural. You are not hinting that the district attorney’s office of New York City would enter into a conspiracy with me to hamper, as you put it, the cause of justice—or that they are not acting in this situation in good faith! I believe, sir, were it as you have hinted, the word would be ‘crooked.’ “
“Not ‘crooked,’ Doctor. Let us say ‘a hurt pride’—’a false ambition’—or perhaps just the word ‘politics.’ A word with you in private?”
And I was out of it. But the doctor was a more friendly man when, ten minutes later, we descended to the basement of the hospital in the slowly moving elevator, while Detective Sergeant O’Rourke held the limp, unconscious body of a little old man in his strong arms.
As we passed that main floor I breathed easier. Not in fear or even excitement, you understand. Perhaps in relief. For, after all, the game as I play it is always in the interest of my client. And the man who moved so quickly by the open steel work of the old elevator shaft door was John H. Holloway, an assistant district attorney of the city of New York.
CHAPTER IV
NOT BAD SHOOTING
Now, one thing seemed certain. My client was quite a lad, any way you look at it. If he put something over on the hospital and walked out with a patient he was a high class criminal, which I didn’t for an instant believe—even if the presence of O’Rourke didn’t eliminate such a possibility. Detective Sergeant O’Rourke was known in the city as “The Honest Cop.” Which being an honest cop was the reason for his still being a sergeant, despite his recognized courage and ability that should have entitled him to an Inspector’s shield.
But whoever my client was, he was a big shot in his own field. Big enough evidently to keep the district attorney’s office from crossing him— at least, in an official capacity. I was getting a bit interested, also I was taking an interest in this lad’s map again. It was familiar all right—but not from life, I thought again, but from the newspapers. The newspapers! I liked the taste of that and spun it around on my tongue. It would be worth recalling later.
There we were, out in the hospital grounds. My client leading, O’Rourke following, with the unconscious burden, and I bringing up the rear. Nothing exciting? Maybe not. Yet to me there was a feeling of tension in the air—pending disaster. This client of mine walked with such a steady, almost grim step of determination. If ever a lad had set himself one tough task to bring to a conclusion, this was the bozo.
Tall buildings all around us, the dull lights of the hospital behind us. The outline of the white coated doctor, who stood in the doorway rubbing his chin and moving his lips as if he talked. Nothing but the quiet, somber, and somewhat iodoformed air of a summer night in an orderly city hospital. Yet, for all that, I swung a gun from under a shoulder holster beneath my right arm and stuck it in my jacket pocket.
We made a little gate and came out on the street, perhaps half a block from where our car was, for we had entered by a different gate.
Right behind the car was another, a closed car—parked. We had to pass it to reach our own. It didn’t have such a sinister appearance. My client plodded straight on, but O’Rourke slowed up a minute and spoke to me.
“Don’t be too free and easy with them guns of yours now, Race. Tonight, it looks like diplomacy. That boat there behind our car is from the district attorney’s office. I’d hate to be recognized on this job, but the city’s rotten with racketeering graft, or—” And he jostled the human burden in his great arms as he pulled his slouch hat down over his eyes.
Did instinct warn me of danger as we turned on that sidewalk and started toward the car parked so close behind ours? No, I guess it wasn’t just instinct. I’m always ready for danger, and there was something wrong about that car. I could see behind the wheel. No well trained police chauffeur sat straight and stiff, ready and waiting. No uniformed man leaned against the car or paced the sidewalk behind it.
One thing I did know. My client wasn’t anxious to have the district attorney’s office in on his little adventure tonight. And the district attorney’s office would like very much to be in on it— that is, without seeming to force their presence. It would be simple then for a man to crouch low in the rear of that apparently deserted car, and then follow us. And my boss got the same idea, for he paused suddenly—waved O’Rourke to stand back, and turned toward that car.
A strange thing happened. The red rear light on that car went off—the brake light. You’d hardly have noticed it but for the fact that a moment before I had been looking aimlessly at the make of the car, wondering if it came to a dash through the city streets, if we’d be able to lose it.
The tiny rear light remained. The red brake light, just below it, had gone out. That meant one thing only. Some one crouched in the front of that car had released his foot or his hand from the brake pedal. Why?
An auto horn screeched suddenly, down the block behind us. A motor raced as a car started in second speed far down the street. O’Rourke turned quickly, facing the sudden screech of the siren. Of course my client reacted in the same manner as did O’Rourke. Just as he stretched out his han
d and grasped the open window edge of the car, he straightened, turned his head and looked down the street.
But not me. Gangsters don’t announce themselves in that style—at least, if they’re making an attack. And if it were the police, the job to assure them of our respectability must come from my client or O’Rourke. As for me—I kept my eyes trained straight on that parked car; the front window. The siren and the racing motor would not distract my attention, if that was its purpose—and it was.
It happened. I won’t say it was expected, or even what I was looking for. But then, I won’t say it was unexpected. Not unexpected, because in plain words—I don’t allow the unexpected to happen, if I can prevent it.
A face bobbed up in that car window. A dark coated arm shot above the half open glass, and the heavy bore of a nickel plated six-gun was smacked right against the side of my client’s head. I saw the flashing eyes, the set chin, the thick sensuous lips of the gunman, and knew that the rod he held was, at that distance, heavy enough to blow my client’s head to pieces. I knew too that the hand that held that gun was steady, and that the thick lips were cruel. My client turned his head suddenly and looked straight into the weapon which in the fraction of a second would carry death. And—. But why go into it?
I simply raised my right hand slightly, closed my finger upon the trigger and shot the gunman smack through the side of his head. Hard? Cold blooded? Little respect for life? Maybe. But after all, it didn’t seem to me to be the time to argue the point with the would-be killer. Remember— I was some twenty feet from him—and shooting at an angle.
The gun crashed to the step of the car. The gunman jumped back. And as I ran around the rear of that car he tumbled to the street and lay still. It was a cinch that he had the door open behind him. It was a cinch too that the car which shot up the street was neither a police car nor that of attacking gangsters. It was simply the getaway car for the man who had attempted the life of my client—for it half slowed, swerved to avoid the body in the street, and as its headlight played upon the dead white face, shot away up the block.
I didn’t run out and take pot shots at the fleeing car, but made sure that the gunman had been alone. I jerked out my pocket flash, and with that in one hand and my gun in the other, looked the car over. The gunman had been there alone— that is, as far as life was concerned. But in the back of the car lay the body of the chauffeur. The job was a quiet one. Some one had stuck a knife in his heart and twisted it around. There was a welt on his forehead, too, from a blackjack, the butt of a gun, or some other blunt instrument. He had been knocked out, then, before he was killed.
A brutal bit of work certainly. But maybe necessary from the gangster’s point of view. You can’t tell how long a guy will stay “out” from a smack on the head. And the waiting killer couldn’t know how long it would take for my client to appear on the street.
O’Rourke had laid his human burden against the stone wall surrounding the hospital and was taking a look-see into the car with me.
“It’s Conway,” he said, and his voice shook slightly. “A good boy. Only taken off his beat three weeks ago and assigned to the district attorney’s office. Been married two months, on the strength of the promised promotion. It’s a tough break for a guy—a tough break for a cop. And the lad you—you gave it to. Just another gangster. A lad that Joe Gorgon’s gotten out more than once.”
“Joe Gorgon’s some guy.” I put the flash back in my pocket. “But I’d like to see him get his friend out of this mess.” And in what I think was justifiable pride, “It wasn’t a bad shot, O’Rourke.”
“No—” said O’Rourke, “it wasn’t. I turned just in time to see you give it to him. He had it coming.”
“You’ll make a good witness when—” I straightened suddenly as a police whistle came from down the block. “Do I have to explain this, and—”
“You won’t have to worry this time, Race. Colonel—” he stopped suddenly. “Our man’s a big shot. He—. But it looks like all hell’s going to break loose in the city. Like—”
“Our last case together. The Angel of the Underworld—and Power.” I helped him out.
“No.” O’Rourke shook his head. “For that was a man who looked for power—who grasped it, too, in rather a fantastic way. But here is Power already established. Nothing fantastic. A reality of money and greed, tearing into the bowels of a great city. Influence—justice—”
“You’re talking like a book,” I told him. “Let’s think of this present mess, and—”
But my client, who O’Rourke called Colonel had already broken into life. He came around from the off side of the car, where he no doubt had been examining the stiff and getting a justifiable and personal kick out of it. Anyway, he had snapped back into life. I saw him talking to O’Rourke just before the harness bull came up the street.
“Just a coincidence that you were here,” I heard him say, as he turned quickly from O’Rourke and picked up the unconscious old man from the grass beside the wall. “And if that doesn’t go over—” a moment’s pause, and very slowly, “But mine is an authority that will carry far.” And this time in determination, and nothing slow about it, “To the Mayor of the city itself, if it must be—though notoriety is the last thing we wish. Foul murder has been—. Come!” He turned to me, and half staggered down the street with the sick man in his arms.
“I’ll take the boy friend.” I nudged his arm. He seemed very shaky—his face very white. The old man was a load for him.
“No—no.” He half wiped at his forehead, jarring the man, who muttered something unintelligible. “It’s better so—much better so.” A pause as I opened the door of his car for him. “I didn’t think they’d go as far as that with me— with me.”
CHAPTER V
LET THE DEAD REST
O’Rourke was talking to the harness bull down the block when the Colonel took the wheel and despite my efforts to get him to let me handle the car, we pulled from the curb.
“It was horrible,” he said. “He died—his face not a foot from mine. I saw the light go out of his eyes.”
“Pretty bit of shooting, eh?” I leaned back in the rear seat and braced the sick man’s head against my shoulder. Personally, I didn’t see anything to grumble about. Things had broken good—for him.
“It was awful—terrible.”
“Yeah?” This lad riled me. “Let me tell you something, friend. You got the finest bit of shooting you’ll ever get—at any price. And when I think of a job like that for five hundred smackers I could burst out crying.”
Maybe I was a bit sore. But then, wouldn’t you be? I pride myself on doing my work well. And though there was nothing really remarkable about the shooting itself—the circumstances sort of being in my favor—it had taken quick thinking. The real artistic end of it was not in the bullet beside the gunman’s ear, but in the fact that I was in a position to put that bullet there. Another lad—especially the sort of talent the Colonel would get from a private detective agency—would have needed a search warrant to find his gun at the right moment.
“It isn’t you,” the Colonel said. “But that he should die like that, my eyes on his eyes and—”
“Next time keep your eyes closed then,” I snapped at him.
“I’m not blaming you—” he started.
And that was enough. The old boy had let his head sink down so that it rested on my knees, which gave me a chance to lean forward and spill my stuff close to my client’s ear.
“Let me tell you this. A split second’s delay in that bit of gun-play, and—bing! there’d be some one to say ‘Doesn’t the Colonel look natural?’ You got me into it. You brought me along. If you were aiming on committing suicide, so that the insurance companies would call it homicide, you should have told me so.” And waxing just a bit sarcastic now, “You misrepresented the job—or at least Myer did for you. You got your life saved and a lad knocked over for five hundred dollars.”
“I never expected it. Never thought the
y’d dare. It couldn’t have been the old man, Giovoni, they wanted to kill. They couldn’t have known. It must have been me. But—I’ll pay you more. What you wish—what you charge for—”
“A flat rate for a corpse, eh? Well—I took the five hundred and I’ll call it a day, unless unpleasant complications arise. It was your party—your fun—and you’ve got to foot the bills.”
“I shouldn’t mind.” He was nodding his head now, as he narrowly missed a cruising taxi. “I’ve been through it all—in the war. But here, in the city streets—sudden and violent death!”
“Then don’t stick your face into the business end of strange guns,” I told him. I was a bit hot under the collar as I ducked another look back over my shoulder to be sure we weren’t tailed.
You’ve got to admit I had a right to feel sore. Here I was, due for a pat on the back—or several pats for that matter, and this lad was crabbing and throwing the “human life” stuff into my face. What did he want me to do? Break down and run to the district attorney’s office with a confession? If ever a lad needed one good killing, that gunman was the lad. I started to rake it into the Colonel again—and stopped dead. It took his mind off his driving—at least I thought it did, for he dashed toward the curb and a pole— and finally stopped before a large house on an up-town side street. There was a name that stretched across between the entrances of two houses. I didn’t get the lettering then.
The occupants of those two combined houses were more or less expecting us, for the Colonel had hardly climbed the stone steps and pressed the bell when two men in white coats came down the steps, bearing a stretcher. They made quick work of the old guy, Giovoni, in the back of the car. He was muttering now, and breathing sort of heavy. It didn’t take a minute to place him on that stretcher and carry him inside.
I climbed out of the car and walked up and down a bit, as the Colonel followed them inside. There was a round shouldered, mustached gent who stood by the door as the stretcher bearers passed. You didn’t need three guesses to tell you that he was a doctor—The Doctor.