Double or Quits

by Erle Stanley Gardner

  I stretched and yawned. A delicious warmth enveloped me. I could realize how much a place like this meant to a doctor, a chance to relax where he could forget the responsibilities of his practice.

  I looked at my wrist watch. My eyes had a little trouble bringing the hands into focus.

  Something significant began to hammer at the back of my mind for attention. I didn’t want to think about it. I tried to dismiss it from my mind and couldn’t. Then suddenly the idea struck me with an impact which brought me up out of my chair.

  I stumbled over the footstool, caught my balance, and walked rapidly back to the kitchen. There was a hallway back of the kitchen, a flight of back stairs going up to the second floor. I climbed those stairs. It was an effort. I entered an upper hallway and tried the first door on the right. It was evidently Dr. Gelderfield’s bedroom. I went through a bathroom into an adjoining bedroom which was evidently a guest room. I stumbled against the side of the door as I went through into the corridor, crossed the corridor to the other side, and pushed a door open.

  An emaciated man who must have been well in the seventies lay motionless on the bed with his eyes closed. There was a waxy sheen to his skin. His mouth was open. I stood over the bed, listening to him breathing.

  He’d go without breathing for almost a minute, then start breathing heavily, gasping in air in deep breaths, then pause again for so long that I thought he’d quit for good.

  I reached out my hand to touch his bony shoulder. I lost my balance and fell against him on the bed.

  The man made no move, but kept up his peculiarly irregular breathing. I shook him. He moved uneasily. I shook him again. He flung up an arm. The hand struck my shoulder. I slapped him gently on the side of the jaw. He opened his eyes.

  I said, “You’re Dr. Gelderfield’s father?” My voice sounded faint and far away.

  It took him a minute to gather his faculties. He kept his eyes fastened on mine. I saw the lids start to flutter closed.

  I shouted at him, “You’re Gelderfield’s father?” He opened his eyes wide and said, “Yes,” in a flat, lifeless voice.

  By concentrating with every bit of energy and will-power at my command, I could hold my mind in focus. I said, “Dr. Devarest was treating you, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “He isn’t any more?”

  “No. My son thought it would be better to wait for a while. Who—who are you?” I said, “Dr. Devarest is dead.” Apparently the words meant nothing to him.

  “Did you know he was dead?” His eyes started to flutter shut. He said, “He hasn’t been here for a week.” I shook him again. “When did you see him last? Was it Wednesday—after he’d been fishing?” The man looked at me with eyes that seemed out of focus. “When he got back from fishing?” I asked.

  I shook him. The man roused and said, “Yes. He’d been fishing. He and my son had a quarrel.”

  “What about?”

  “Because his medicine wasn’t doing me any good.”

  “Your son told you about that afterwards?”

  “Yes, but I heard the quarrel.”

  “Your son—told you what they were quarrelling about?” He started to answer me, then closed his eyes. The telephone downstairs rang twice, two quick rings. Then the ringing ceased.

  That would be the first part of the signal. Dr. Gelderfield was on the line. I looked at the second hand of my wrist watch and couldn’t bring my eyes to focus on it. I got up and started for the stairs. I collided with the side of the door. I tried to make speed down the stairs without falling, but my legs became tangled halfway down. I took a pounding, falling down the stairs. That helped jar my faculties into wakefulness. I started for the telephone. It began to ring again just as I reached it. That would be the second signal. Dr. Gelderfield was calling.

  I picked up the receiver and, for a moment, couldn’t think of the word a person was supposed to use when he started talking in the telephone. After a while, I said, “Yes.” Dr. Gelderfield’s voice, crisply professional, came over the wire. “That you, Lam?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right, Lam. I’m over here. The string that you thought might be missing is gone. You understand what I mean?”

  “Yes.” -

  “Well, don’t worry about it. I took the whole girdle. The masher is in place. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.” A note of sharp concern came into his voice. “Are you all right, Lam?”

  “I—I guess so.”

  “You didn’t take too much Scotch?”

  “No—I don’t know—no.”

  “You sound terribly tired.”

  “I am.” He said, “Lam, don’t fail me now. There’s too much at stake. You understand the risk I’m taking?”

  “Yes.”

  “Lam, have you been drinking?”

  “Just one more—only one.”

  “You’re certain that’s all you’ve had?”

  “Yes.”

  “A good-sized drink?”

  “I—I guess so.” He said irritably, “Lam, you’ve had too much. You can’t afford to let me down. Take that bottle of Scotch and pour it down the sink. Don’t touch another drop. Promise me you’ll do that, Lam.” I said thickly, “All right,” and pushed the receiver hook down, cutting off the connection.

  I tried to wait long enough for the connection to be terminated and the line cleared. There was a great roaring inside of my ears. My head seemed a huge globe which was turning slowly on an axis, gathering momentum as it spun around. I tried to stop it and couldn’t. I reached out with my right hand to find something to hang on to and caught the thick cloth of one of the heavy drapes. I twisted my fist up in it, and hung on. Then I lifted my left hand. I knew that I had to dial Operator. I groped with my finger trying to find the last hole in the dial and slowly twisted it around. Then I let it go.

  It seemed an hour from the time I released the dial until a feminine voice said crisply, “Operator.”

  “Police headquarters—hurry—murder.” I couldn’t hear well. It seemed that a stream of water was pouring through my ears, falling on my eardrums like some great cataract. Coming through this roaring sound, I heard a man’s voice say, “Police headquarters.” I said, “Lieutenant Lisman—Lisman—murder.” The receiver seemed to echo the words, “Lisman—Lisman —this is Lisman…. Hello. This is Lisman. What do you want?” I gathered all my faculties into determined focus and said, “This is Donald Lam…. I’m at Dr. Gelderfield’s house. I’ve poisoned Mrs. Devarest. I’ve poisoned Dr. Gelderfield’s father. I’ve poisoned—poisoned —” The noises inside my head were getting louder. The globe that was my head was turning faster and faster. I hung on with my right hand, bracing myself against the thick cloth of the drape. There was something else I wanted to say to Lisman, but my tongue was so big and fuzzy I couldn’t get it to enunciate the words. Then the drape, which was wrapped around my right hand, seemed to start pulling at my arm. It pulled until all my weight was on my right arm. I tried to scream at it, but the words wouldn’t come. Then with a crash the drape ripped loose from its fastenings, and I felt myself falling.

  I was unconscious before the floor hit me.

  Chapter XIX

  I HAD the impression of voices hammering on my eardrums, voices that meant nothing, shouting words that were meaningless. They were yelling at me. Hands were slapping me. Boots kicked my ribs, hard police boots. Various things were happening to disturb the tranquility of my slumbers.

  After a while these things ceased. I half awakened as someone forced my lips apart. A rubber hose gagged me as it was pushed down my throat.

  I slept again.

  There followed an interval when voices came and went in waves. Words which meant something fastened themselves upon my mind and then were washed out by the rolling clouds of darkness that blotted into oblivion. But in those more lucid moments the voices registered, and the ideas which they conveyed kept tugging at the strings of my consciousness, trying to pull me back to w
akefulness.

  “—pumped his stomach—hypodermic—caffeine—take effect—his confession—have to make him talk now—it will take a while.” Cold towels. The sting of a hypodermic. Hot liquid burning my throat, starting the blood circulating around my stomach… . My nostrils registered the smell of coffee. A voice said, “Look, he’s trying to open his eyes.” I had the impression of faces, grouped around a bed, faces that were wavering and distorted as though I had been looking up at them through a stream of flowing water.

  Someone seemed to be arguing. I could understand them distinctly now. “You’re not going to get anywhere until some of these stimulants take effect. You may as well let him alone for the time being. I’ll call you whenever he can talk coherently.” There followed a period of freedom from the annoying interruptions, then there were cold towels slapping me, and I woke up, feeling a lot better.

  Bertha Cool was standing by the bedside looking at me with her glittering, angry eyes.

  “Did they get there in time to save Mrs. Devarest?” I asked.

  Her lips quivered with anger as she tried to speak. In the end, she had to content herself with a nod.

  I waited until she could talk. “What the hell did you make that confession for?” she asked.

  “So the police could get to Mrs. Devarest in time. If I’d accused someone else, they’d have come to pick me up first, and by that time it might have been too late.” I closed my eyes again, but the feeling of drowsiness was dispersing under the effects of the stimulants that had been given me. My nerves were getting that jittery, high-strung feeling that comes when I’ve had too many cups of coffee, and momentarily that coffee-jag feeling was gaining the ascendancy over the desire to slumber.

  “How about Dr. Gelderfield’s father? Did they get to him in time?”

  “Yes. I could slap you for the way you’ve handled this.”

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “Everything.”

  “What in particular?”

  “You’ve worked us out of a job—a good job.”

  “I’ve solved the case, haven’t I?”

  “So what! There’s no chance now of getting anything out of the insurance company. You’ve absolutely ruled out any chance of death by accidental means.”

  “No, I haven’t. Dr. Devarest was murdered. Supreme Court decisions hold that a murder is a death by accidental means.” I saw the anger in her eyes give place to joyous satisfaction, and she began to purr. “Donald, you’re certain?”

  “Yes.” She said, “Lover, you’re a card! You do the damnedest things. You wait here.” She turned and walked out of the door.

  There was another period of quiet, and then a white-clad nurse stood over me, “How do you feel?” she asked.

  “As though I’d been drinking about six quarts of coffee.” She held my wrist, took my pulse, nodded, picked up a glass of water, and popped a pill into my mouth.

  “Take this.” After I’d swallowed the pill, she said, “Those were instructions from the police. They wanted you to be stimulated so you could talk. You won’t feel any permanent ill-effects, but it may be a little uncomfortable for a while.” It was all of that. I felt as though time were rushing by me, as though it were too late for everything I wanted to do or say.

  “Where are the police now, if they want me so badly?”

  “I don’t know. The doctor went to tell them you could be interviewed. They seemed to be waiting so impatiently and ” The door suddenly burst open, and my nerves were so jittered up I all but jumped out of bed.

  Bertha Cool rushed in and said, “I guess they won’t get to you for a while, Donald. Dr. Gelderfield has broken down and is making a complete confession out there in that next room. They’re having your doctor as a witness, and a nurse who understands shorthand is taking it down.”

  “That’s good. Don’t bust in on me that way. I’m trembling all over. So Gelderfield is coming clean!”

  “I suppose you knew it all along,” said Bertha sarcastically. “I didn’t know it all along. I didn’t know it soon enough. It damn near cost me my life. Don’t let on to anyone, though.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t want them to know how dumb I was. I led with my chin.”

  “How?”

  “I told Dr. Gelderfield that Devarest must have made some call that he hadn’t entered in his notebook.”

  “Why did you think that, Donald?”

  “I knew he must have, because I felt certain he wasn’t killed in his garage.”

  “What gave you that idea?” I said, “Figure it out for yourself. He couldn’t have gone in the garage, and then closed the door behind him. My experiment showed that the wind couldn’t have closed the door. Therefore, someone must have closed the door on him. Figure out what that means, and you’ll realize that Devarest was already dead when the door was closed.”

  “Donald dear, probably you shouldn’t talk so much,” Bertha said soothingly. “After all ”

  “I want to talk. I feel like talking. I’m telling you there’s only one way it could have happened. Someone drugged him, gave him a fatal dose of carbon monoxide, then took him back to his own garage, and planted the body and the evidence. I kept thinking that it must have been someone who had trapped him by asking him to make a professional call on emergency. But Devarest had the habit of marking down all of the calls he intended to make in his notebook so his bookkeeper could make the charges. I was a plain damn fool not to have thought of the right answer.”

  “Dr. Gelderfield?” she asked.

  “Of course. Devarest was calling on Dr. Gelderfield’s father, but he didn’t enter that in his book because, since Dr. Gelderfield was a colleague, he was making no charge for visits to Gelderfield’s father.” Bertha said, “Now, that’s enough, lover. You’ve got to conserve your strength. After all, you had quite a dose of drug.”

  “And then,” I said, not paying any attention to her, “I turned to Dr. Gelderfield for help and asked him if he couldn’t give me some clues as to what calls Dr. Devarest might have made that wouldn’t have been entered in his book. … Bertha, I’m all hopped up. I’m as full of talk as a spongeis of holes. I can’t stop talking…. And I told him that I was going to ask Nollie Starr about it.” Bertha said, “Well?” I said, “Don’t you see? Nollie Starr would have known. If I’d asked her the question in just that way, she’d have told me that Dr. Devarest made frequent calls on Dr. Gelderfield’s father, and never made any charges. Gelderfield knew I was getting pretty close to a solution of the whole business when I started asking those questions. He tried to help things along so my experiment would have been a success, and demonstrated that the east wind could have blown the garage door shut. When it turned out that, even with a reasonable amount of tampering with the door, the wind still couldn’t be held accountable, Gelderfield knew that I was working on a murder theory.”

  “How about the gems?” Bertha asked.

  “Nothing to it,” I said. “Jim Timley was in love with Nollie Starr. Dr. Devarest tried to help things along. His wife found out about it, but thought it was an affair her husband was having with her secretary. She swiped the jewels herself and framed Nollie Starr.”

  “Then Bayley didn’t have anything to do with that?” I said, “Bayley had been planted on the job by Walter Croy. It was up to Bayley to get the safe open and get out the evidence Dr. Devarest was holding over Croy. But Mrs. Devarest mixed things up. She got Devarest to put her gems in the safe; then she sneaked them out with the aid of the combination which she’d deciphered from Dr. Devarest’s notebook…. Gosh, I’m wound up like an eight-day clock. I can’t stop talking. Cripes, I’m jittery.”

  “Don’t stop talking, lover. Don’t stop now,” Bertha said. “Keep right on. What happened then?” I said, “You can figure it all out. After Mrs. Devarest planted the jewellery and other evidence in Nollie Starr’s room, she called Dr. Devarest to come home and get the jewellery out of the safe. As soon as Devarest realized it had
been taken, he knew that it was a frame-up because no one but his wife knew the jewellery was in the safe. He called Nollie Starr and told her to notify the police, and, in doing it, he managed to give her some signal that told her what he was up against.”

  “So that she could skip out?” Bertha asked.

  “So that she could get out of the way and give Dr. Devarest a chance to go through her room and remove the evidence that had been planted. He did a pretty good job. He got the jewellery and most of the incriminating clues. He overlooked the oiled rag and a few things like that.” Bertha said, under her breath, “Pickle me for a peach.” I kept right on talking. I couldn’t seem to quit. “Of course, Walter Croy thought Bayley had double-crossed him, opened the safe, and cleaned it out, but was denying he’d had anything to do with it because he wanted to keep the jewellery. So Walter then went right ahead with his case against Nadine. Mrs. Devarest had the evidence her husband was holding over Walter Croy, but she probably didn’t realize its significance. … My God, they must have given me all the caffeine they had in town!”

  “It’s all right, Donald, you’ve got a talking jag. Why did Gelderfield kill him?”

  “Because Gelderfield was having a little affair with Mrs. Devarest and intended to marry her. He’d been planning to murder Dr. Devarest for some time. Gelderfield’s got a big house with a lot of fine furniture and virtually no servants. That tells the story. Gelderfield thought he was wealthy. Something happened to knock the props out from under him. He knew Devarest had Bright’s disease, was well fixed financially, was carrying a lot of life insurance, and that Mrs. Devarest was putty in his hands.” She said, “Go on. I’m listening to every word.”

  “There’s nothing more to talk about.”

  “Oh yes, there is. Why did Dr. Devarest hire us in the first place?”

  “To cover up. He told Nollie Starr to telephone the police, then tipped her off not to do it, but to skip out. When the coast was clear, Devarest went out to see Nollie Starr. He told her what had happened, promised her he’d make it all right with her, and left the jewellery with her—which was a foolish thing to do—only he’d worked out what he thought was a very fine place of concealment—cutting away the centre of several books of detective stories and hiding the gems in there. The cases he’d put temporarily in the glove compartment of his automobile. After his death, Nollie Starr telephoned Jim Timley, and Timley was to get the jewels put back in the safe in some way.”