Double or Quits

by Erle Stanley Gardner

  “What about Mrs. Devarest?” I asked.

  Dr. Gelderfield frowned. “I’m worried about her…. Come in here and sit down. How about a drink? I won’t join you myself because I never can tell when I’ll be called out on an emergency.”

  “I could use a Scotch and soda.”

  “Sit right there. I’ll fix it. I have everything here except the ice. I’ll get some from the icebox. Sit right down and make yourself at home. I’m sorry I was rather brusque with you the time I called you out to my car. I didn’t realize then —well, just what sort of person you were. Just wait there and I’ll get the liquor.” I stretched out in a chair. The room was restful, with deep, soft chairs, a subdued lighting, walls lined with bookcases, a big table, well covered with magazines and books, individual, shaded floor lamps standing back of the chairs, humidors ready to hand, cigarettes and matches in profusion—the sort of room to live in.

  The room was sweet with the odour of fragrant tobacco, had the same atmosphere of having been well used that clings to a good pair of worn boots. One could relax here, the rush, the noise, and the bustle of the outside world being shut off by modern, soundproof walls. An air-conditioning unit kept the room at a comfortable temperature and humidity.

  Out in the kitchen, I could hear Dr. Gelderfield dropping ice cubes into a bowl.

  He came back with a tray, a bottle of old Scotch, a bottle of club soda, a big glass full of ice cubes, and a straw holder for the glass so that moisture wouldn’t get on my fingers.

  “Help yourself, Lam,” he said, placing the tray on a little coffee table by my chair. “I’m sorry I can’t join you. Mix it to suit yourself. At least I can enjoy watching you. I can’t get over that splendid exhibition you put up. It was a grand fight. Bad for my patient. I should have rushed her right back into the house, but I’ll admit I was momentarily neglectful of my duty. You have marvellous speed and co-ordination. Where did you learn to fight?” I laughed and said, “I learned it the hard way. Everyone used to beat up on me. Bertha Cool put up money for jujitsu lessons. They did some good. In one of my cases I spent quite a bit of time with a slap-happy prize fighter who was imbued with the idea of putting me in training. Some of it stuck.”

  “I’ll tell the world it did! Always like to see a little man give it to a big fellow—guess it’s the way we all sympathize with the underdog. It was a neat exhibition. Can’t get over thinking of it.” I poured myself a drink.

  “You were going to say something about Mrs. Devarest?”

  He nodded, started to say something, then checked himself, and regarded me thoughtfully. At length, he said, “There are certain ethics of the profession. I couldn’t discuss a patient’s symptoms or my diagnosis with you—unless I had the consent of that patient.” I didn’t say anything.

  He waited a moment to emphasize the importance of what he was going to say and then went on, “But I happen to know that you were employed by my patient to make a certain investigation. My patient has instructed me to co-operate with you to the fullest extent. Therefore, if carrying to a successful conclusion the work which you were doing necessitates knowing something about the condition of my patient, I would feel free to answer such specific questions as you might ask touching on that particular point. You see what I’m getting at. Her authorization to assist you in any way would permit me to disclose facts about her condition that might have a direct bearing on the work you’re doing.” He waited then for me to ask a question. I could see that he was hoping I’d ask the right one.

  “Is Mrs. Devarest necessarily confined to her bed and wheel chair?”

  “Only for the purpose of reducing the strain on her nerves and heart, and keeping her mind occupied with herself—which, for certain reasons, seems to be important just now.” He placed a subtle emphasis on the “certain reasons.” I said, “She apparently felt, and with some reason, that her secretary, Nollie Starr, was in a peculiar relationship with her husband. Would that have caused any unusually bitter enmity t against Miss Starr—bearing in mind the fact that the woman’s nervous condition and the shock that she has received have made her perhaps a bit unstable?” His eyes sparkled. “You are asking the question that I was hoping you would ask. That opens the door for me to tell you something that I think is very important. Her hatred of Miss Starr is becoming a very definite, tangible menace to her health. She is beginning to brood over it. I am doing everything in my power trying to get her mind more on herself and less on the Starr woman.” I said, “Well, honest confession is good for the soul. After all, you’re in a peculiar position here, and I may as well report to you before I report to my client.”

  “What has happened? Something out of the ordinary?”

  “Yes. I went to Nollie Starr’s apartment. I let myself in with a passkey because I wanted to look around.”

  “What for?” I said, “I’ll go a step behind that. I put a little pressure to bear on Bayley, the chauffeur. I found out that he’d had a criminal record.”

  “So I understand,” Dr. Gelderfield said. “The police have released a statement Bayley made. To me it sounded preposterous. I’m surprised to hear there’s anything to it.”

  “I put it up to him to get those gems for me.”

  “What made you think he could get them for you?”

  “I had reason to believe he could.”

  “Did he?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where are they?”

  “I have them.”

  “You haven’t told Mrs. Devarest?”

  “No.”

  “Did Miss Starr—” He paused.

  “Go ahead.”

  “—have anything to do with the disappearance of those gems?”

  “I think she did.”

  “I was afraid so,” he said. “You haven’t as yet said anything to Mrs. Devarest about the stones?”

  “No.”

  “Or given her any inkling as to where you got them, how you got them, or in what way Miss Starr might have been concerned in their disappearance?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t do it. We’ll have to work up some other way of handling the matter. It would have a devastating effect on my patient’s mind.”

  “Perhaps she knows already.”

  “I don’t think so. I think I’d have learned of it if she knew.”

  “But there’s a possibility that you might not?”

  “Yes, a possibility.” He thought for a moment, then added, “A distinct possibility.”

  “All right,” I said. “Now, I’m coming to my confession.”

  “What is it?”

  “I went to Miss Starr’s apartment. I let myself in with a passkey At first, I thought the apartment was deserted. It should have been at the hour in the morning when I entered. It wasn’t. Someone was there.”

  “Who?”

  “Nollie Starr.”

  “What did she do?”

  “Nothing. She was dead.”

  “Dead!”

  “Yes.”

  “How long had she been dead?”

  “Not very long. She’d been strangled. A pink-coloured corset string had been doubled and knotted around her throat. The handle of a potato masher had been inserted in the string and twisted. I don’t know what the post-mortem will show, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d been clubbed, perhaps, into unconsciousness, possibly by a blow struck from behind with the potato masher.” For a moment his face showed surprised incredulity, then his lips twitched. He evidently wanted to say something, but fought against the impulse.

  I said, “The murder had been committed only a few minutes before I arrived. The body was still quite warm. There was no pulse. I loosened the cord and telephoned for a pulmotor. Then I walked out. There was nothing more I could do. A scrubwoman in the hallway saw me go out. That and a couple of other things have put the police on my trail.”

  “But, good heavens, man, can’t you establish your innocence? Surely murderers don’t ring up and ask aid for their victim
s.”

  “They might,” I said, “if they were certain the victims were dead. It would be a good dodge. At least, that’s the way the police will look at it. And regardless of what may happen eventually, right now I can’t afford to be put out of circulation.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I think I’m getting ready to close the whole case. There’ll be developments within the next twenty-four hours that will tell me whether I’m right. I can’t afford to spend those twenty-four hours in a cell. That’s where you come in.”

  “What do you want me to do?” I said, “I’m calling on you. I’ve had a terrific nervous shock. My heart is bad. My blood pressure is way up. I’m nervous and jittery. You’re going to give me a sedative and send me to a hospital where I won’t be disturbed. At the end of twenty-four hours you hope I’ll have recovered enough so the police can question me without jeopardizing my health. If I cheat on you and don’t take the sedative, you won’t know anything about it—not officially.” He was shaking his head even before I’d finished speaking. “I can’t do that, not ethically.”

  “Why not? You haven’t even examined me yet.”

  “You don’t show any signs of having the symptoms you complain of. If I said I’d given you a sedative I’d have to give you a sedative, a good hypodermic. If I did that, you’d sleep the clock around. You wouldn’t be good for anything. You’d probably wake up with a heavy, drugged feeling. I can’t do it.” I said, “Let’s think this thing over a little more carefully.”

  “It doesn’t make any difference what you say, Lam. I simply can’t do it. I’d do anything I could conscientiously, but I can’t do that.”

  “The weapon used was a potato masher,” I said. “The thing that followed that up was a corset string. Hardly the weapons a man would use.” He saw what I was getting at now, and started arguing with me. “Why not?” he asked. “A man could have been smart enough to have used weapons that would have directed suspicion toward a woman.”

  “He could have, but the chances are ten to one he didn’t.”

  “Well, even so—” He abruptly decided not to pursue that conversational vein.

  I said, “The night Dr. Devarest was killed, you’ll remember I went into Mrs. Devarest’s bedroom. There was a corset on the back of a chair, one of those girdle affairs. It had pink strings in it.”

  “I can assure you, young man, that those are by no means unusual. Many women approaching middle age use figure supports of various kinds.” I held his eye. “Lieutenant Lisman is working on the case. It won’t be long before he starts checking up on Mrs. Devarest. Let’s suppose, just for the sake of the argument, he finds that the girdle she has been wearing is missing, or finds that the string has been removed from it. Let’s further suppose he finds there’s no potato masher in her kitchen.”

  “Preposterous!” I lit a cigarette and sat smoking, saying nothing. The strain of the silence began to tell on him.

  “Even so, it could have been a frame-up.”

  “It could have been. She’s your patient. You’re sticking up for her.”

  “I wouldn’t stick up for a murderess just because she was my patient. But I know Mrs. Devarest—well. I know that it would be absolutely impossible for her to have done any such thing as you describe.”

  “Speaking only as a physician speaks of a patient?” I asked.

  “Just what do you mean by that?”

  “I had thought perhaps your feeling for her was a little less impersonal.” I resumed my cigarette, and let him do a little thinking. There was quite a pause.

  “What,” he asked, “can we do?” I said, “That’s better. I can’t go to Mrs. Devarest’s house, not now. In the first place, the police will be watching it. In the second place, even if they didn’t pick me up, they’d find out I’d been there. If I should go and search the kitchen for a potato masher or make some excuse to look in the woman’s bedroom to see if there was a string in her girdle, it would undo the very thing I’m trying to accomplish. But you could go very nicely. It wouldn’t excite any comment. In fact, it would be entirely natural for the woman’s physician to call on her. You could find, perhaps, that she needed a hypodermic. You’d have to go to the kitchen to boil some water. While you were there, you could quietly look around and see if you could locate a potato masher.”

  “Even if I couldn’t, it wouldn’t prove anything.”

  “Who does your cooking here?”

  “Why, I eat most of my meals out. I have a housekeeper who keeps the place in order and cooks for my father. He’s bedridden.”

  “Does she ever serve mashed potatoes?”

  “Why?”

  “There’s probably a potato masher in your kitchen. You could slip it in your instrument bag, then if you couldn’t find a potato masher in Mrs. Devarest’s house, you could see to it that the police did find one.” He said in a shocked voice, “Lam, are you crazy? I’m a reputable physician and surgeon. I couldn’t do anything like that.” I said, “Mrs. Devarest is your patient. She’s your friend. She’s my client. I’d like to make her forty thousand dollars and collect a percentage on it. We both have a keen personal interest in what’s going to happen. You don’t want her arrested right at this time and neither do I. I could stay here while you made the trip. When you got back you could tell me what you’d found. Then you could send me to the hospital. While I was there I could do some thinking.”

  “I couldn’t do any of that ethically.”

  “There comes a time in the life of every physician when he has to remember that he’s a man as well as a physician. Professional ethics are all right as a rule of guidance, but there are times when it’s a lot more logical to toss ethics out of the window.” He got up and began to pace the floor. I kept on smoking my cigarette. He walked back and forth with nervous rapidity, occasionally cracking his knuckles. That made me fidgety and I got up and walked to the window. It was too dark to see anything.

  Gelderfield must have changed his mind about a drink because I heard him open the Scotch and pour some out. I turned around in time to see him down a short one before he went out into the kitchen. I could hear him opening and closing drawers. I heard his steps on the stairs going to the second floor, heard him moving around in an upper bedroom; then he came back down the stairs into the kitchen again. Then, after a few seconds, he came back and picked up his black bag of surgical instruments.

  “Find it?” I asked.

  “I don’t know whether I care to say anything—certainly not to commit myself. You’ve given me something to think about. You think the police will make a search of her kitchen?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Good Lord, if the stores were only open we could buy a dozen of the damn things at fifteen cents apiece.”

  “The police,” I said, “will also take that into consideration.” He took his surgical bag out into the kitchen, came back with his mouth thin and straight. “All right, Lam, I’m going through with it. You’ve done something no one hitherto has been able to do—get me to violate the code of my profession.”

  “All right,” I said, “get started. Do you want me to answer the phone?”

  “You might take any calls that come in.”

  “It might not be so good,” I told him.

  “Suppose I want to call you?”

  “In that event ring up from a dial telephone. As soon as you hear the phone ring, hang up and break the connection. Wait sixty seconds, then call again. That will be my signal, the phone ringing once or perhaps twice, and then quitting. Then after sixty seconds another call. I’ll answer that second call.” He thought that over, then said, “Yes, I guess that’s okay.”

  “And you’ll send me to the hospital?”

  “I’d have to give you a hypodermic.”

  “When a person is nervous and unsettled, don’t you sometimes give them a hypodermic of sterile water and tell them it’s morphine sulphate?” His face lit up. “By George, yes ! ” I said. “You could diagnose my ca
se as nervous hysteria. I could be begging you for dope. You wouldn’t want to give it to me. You could give me a hypo of sterile water. Under the influence of that my nerves would begin to quiet. I’d show symptoms of drowsiness. You could ”

  “Under those circumstances,” he said, “I could call a nurse for you and put you to bed in my own house. You would, of course, be in the charge of the nurse, but once the nurse thought you were safely asleep she wouldn’t actually stay in the same room with you.”

  “Would there be some way of getting out of that room?”

  “You could climb to the window, drop to the roof of the kitchen porch, let yourself down to the wooden rail, and—well, you’d be back within an hour, wouldn’t you?”

  “I’m not certain.”

  “Well, that’s the best I can do for you, Lam.”

  “The nurse wouldn’t be in on it?”

  “Of course not. She’d think you were a bona-fide patient who had settled into peaceful slumber following a hypodermic of what you thought was morphine sulphate.”

  “How long will it take you to get the nurse?”

  “I can get one in twenty minutes.”

  “A good one?”

  “Yes.” I motioned toward the door. “Get going. It takes you quite a while to get an idea, but when you once get it, it germinates nicely.” He picked up his bag, and walked rapidly out of the door. A few moments later I heard his automobile gliding along the driveway and picking up speed as it turned into the street.

  I settled myself back in the depths of the big overstuffed chair, poured myself another drink of Scotch, added soda, and took a long drink. I lit a cigarette, took another good-sized drag of the whiskey, and elevated my feet to the footstool. It seemed unusually quiet in the house. There was not so much as the creaking of a board, no sound of traffic from the outside world. The room was a veritable refuge from the noise and bustle that reigned beyond the air-conditioned silence of those protecting walls.

  I finished my cigarette and my drink. I wondered if Dr. Gelderfield would lose his nerve—telephone a report of what was taking place—would he talk with Mrs. Devarest? .. .