‘Tonight. By tomorrer I’ll have the dope on that flunky. You watch.’
‘I’m watchin’,’ said Jinx. ‘And all I got to say is, Sherlock, do yo’ stuff.’
CHAPTER XVIII
BY eleven-thirty the same Sunday morning, Dr Archer had completed his morning calls—both of them. He returned to his office, where he found three gentlemen awaiting him. Two were patients, the third was Detective Perry Dart.
‘Urgent?’ he asked Dart.
‘Nope. Take the others.’
The others were soon disposed of; the first pleaded a bad cold and got his liquor prescription, the second pleaded hard times and borrowed three dollars.
‘Come in here,’ the physician then summoned Dart, and led the way through his treatment room with its adjustable table, porcelain stands, glass-doored steel cabinets shining with bright—and mostly virgin—instruments, into a smaller side room which had done duty as a butler’s pantry in the days before Harlem changed colour.
‘Something like Frimbo’s,’ commented the detective, looking admiringly around.
‘In part, yes. That is, Frimbo has some clinical stuff, but that’s only a fraction of his, while it’s all of mine. He has chemistry apparatus that a physician’s lab would never need except for research, and few practicing physicians have time for that kind of research. More than that, he has some electrical stuff there that only a physicist or mechanic would have, and I’m sure I saw something like a television receptor on one end of the bench—remember that affair like a big lens set in a square box? Those specimens sort of stole the show and we didn’t take time to examine around carefully. But all I’ve got is what’s necessary for routine clinical tests—some glassware, a few standard reagents, a centrifuge, a microscope, and that’s about all.’
‘I guess all labs look alike to me.’
‘Well, there’s enough here to investigate certain properties of our friend’s blood, any day. If the two specimens present no differences that we can determine, we’re stumped—so far as murder goes. But if they do—’
‘Is this something new, doc?’
‘New? No, why?’
‘Well, of course I knew they could tell whether it was human blood. I know of plenty of cases where blood was found on a weapon, and the suspect claimed it was chicken’s blood or sheep’s blood, but the doctors came along and showed it was human. I should think that would be hard enough.’
‘Not so hard. A chap—Gay, I believe—sensitized some lab animals—guinea pigs or rabbits or whatever happened to be around—to various serums. You see, if you do it right, you can inject a little serum into an animal and he’ll develop what they call antibodies for that serum. Antibody’s a substance which the blood manufactures to combat certain things that get into it but haven’t any business there. But the point is that each antibody is specific—hostile to just one certain thing. From the viewpoint of the health of the human family, that’s too bad. Be swell if you could just inject a little of anything and get a general immunity to everything. But from the viewpoint of criminology it’s useful, because if you’re smart enough, you can tell whether your suspect is lying or not about the blood on his weapon. You just dissolve your blood off the weapon, and test it against the sensitized blood from each of your known animals. When you get a reaction you know, your unknown is the same as the one which reacted to it. See?’
Dart shook his head.
‘I’ll take you guys’ word for that stuff. But if it’s that hard to tell human blood from other kinds, I should think it would be still harder to tell one human’s blood from another human’s blood.’ Dart looked around. ‘And I don’t see the first guinea pig.’
‘So it would seem. But there are many ways in which one man’s blood differs from another’s. Take the Wasserman reaction. Mine may be negative and yours positive—’
‘Hold on, doc, don’t get personal.’
‘Or we may both be positive, but different in degree.’
‘That’s better.’
‘And there are plenty of other germs, which, like the germ of syphilis, bring about definite changes in the blood. In many cases these changes can be determined, so that you can say that this blood came from a fellow who had so-and-so, while that blood came from a fellow who didn’t have so-and-so.’
‘Go ahead. How about Frimbo’s?’
‘Or take blood transfusions. You know everybody can’t give his blood to everybody—in many cases it would be fatal—was fatal before blood types were known about. Now it’s known a man might be eager to give his blood to save his sweetheart, and yet that might be the quickest way of killing her.’
Dart’s black eyes were alive with interest.
‘That’s right. I remember—’
‘That’s because one blood may contain something that doesn’t harmonize with something in another blood.’
‘Like what, doc?’
‘It’s mainly a matter of serum and red corpuscles. Some serum will destroy some corpuscles—’
‘Oh, I see,’ said Dart.
‘So to make sure this doesn’t happen, every transfusion now has to be preceded by a certain blood examination known as typing. Couple of bright gentlemen named Janski and Moss looked into the matter not so many years ago and found that all human blood falls into four general types. Since then a flock of sub-types have been established, but the four basic ones still suffice for ordinary procedures. Everybody falls into one of the four groups—and stays there.’
Dart was eagerly curious.
‘And Frimbo’s blood isn’t in the same group with the other?’
‘I don’t know. Haven’t tested it out yet—just got ready and had to go deliver twins. That allowed you to get here just in time for the performance. But for intra-human differences, you’d hardly find any two people with every degree of every blood reaction precisely identical.’
‘Do your stuff, doc. I’m getting nervous.’
‘All right. Now look. See this?’ He held up a test tube in the bottom of which was a small amount of pinkish fluid. ‘This is the unknown serum, extracted from the dressing with which I sponged the wound in the dead man’s scalp. It’s diluted, of course, and discoloured because of haemolysis of the red cells—’
‘Don’t mind me, doc. Go right ahead.’
‘—but that doesn’t matter much. And this tube is Frimbo’s serum, and this is a suspension of Frimbo’s red cells, which I made last night. By the way, Dart, would you give up some of your blood to find this thing out?’
‘How much, doc?’
‘He hesitates in the pursuit of his duty,’ murmured the doctor. ‘Well, never mind—I may not need it. I may not even need my own.’
‘You mean you were figuring on bleeding yourself, too?’
‘I happen to know I’m under Type II. You remember I mentioned that all tests are checks against a known specimen.’
‘And you’ve got to have a known specimen?’
‘Unless we’re very lucky. We may be able to prove these two specimens different without actually having to type them. Well, now look. We’ll take this capillary pipette and remove a drop of this unknown serum and place it thus on a microscopic slide. Then we’ll take a nichrome loop so, and remove a loopful of Professor Frimbo’s best red cells, and stir them gently into the drop of serum, thus, spreading same smoothly into a small circular area in this manner. Watch carefully. The hand is quicker than the eye. Now then, a cover glass, and under the microscope it goes. We adjust the low power with a few deft turns and gaze into the mysteries of the beyond. Dart, we seldom reflect upon what goes on at the other end of the barrel of a microscope: challenge, conquest, combat, victory, defeat, life, death, reproduction—every possible relationship of living beings—the very birth of the world there in a droplet of moisture.’ With both eyes open he was manipulating the fine adjustment. ‘Do you know what a fellow said to me once? I came up behind him and asked him what he was staring down his mike so steadily for—what did he hope to find?
He said one word without looking up. He said, “God.”’ He focused the instrument satisfactorily, peered a moment, then stood aside, ‘You and I are more practical, aren’t we? All we hope to find is a murderer. Come on—try your luck.’
‘Me?’
‘Of course. Look, look, and keep looking. If you see anything happen, don’t keep it a secret.’
Dart, squinting one eye shut, gazed with the other down the barrel. ‘A lot of little reddish dots,’ he announced.
‘What are they doing?’
‘Nothing.’ Dart grinned. ‘Must be Negro blood.’
‘Jest not, my friend. It is Sunday. All blood reposes. But keep looking.’
‘Well, maybe they are moving a little. Hey—sure! They are moving—so slow you can hardly see it, though.’
‘In what direction?’
‘Every direction. Boy, this is good. They can’t make up their minds.’
‘That sounds as though—’
‘Hey—Judas Priest—what’s this? Look, doc!’
‘You look and tell me about it. I might let my imagination run away with me.’
‘These things are going into a huddle. No—into a flock of huddles. No kidding—they’re slowly collecting in little bunches.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Am I sure? What does it mean, doc? Here, take a look.’
Dr Archer complied. ‘Hm—I think I can safely say your observations are correct—though “agglutination” is a far more elegant term than “huddle.”’
‘But what’s the answer?’
‘The answer is that nobody’s red cells could conceivably behave like that in their own serum. Not even a magician’s.’
‘You mean that’s the destruction you were talking about?’
‘Yes, sir. The first step in it. That’s as far as we need to go in vitro. In vivo, the process goes on to dissolution, disintegration, haemolysis—oh, there’s lots of nice words you can call it. But whatever you call it, this serum gives those corpuscles—hell.’
Dart’s eyes glowed.
‘Then Frimbo and the corpse were two different people?’
‘And still are. And you and I are two lucky people, because we don’t have to play school any longer—not with these, anyway.’
‘The son of a bedbug! I’m going to put him under the jail—trying to kid somebody like that. Where’s my hat?’
‘What’s your hurry, mister? He isn’t going anywhere.’
‘How do I know he isn’t?’
‘Can he get out without being seen by your men?’
‘That’s right. But why wait?’
‘If you grab him now—if you even let him suspect what we know, he’ll close up like a vault. My humble opinion is that he’s got a lot of information you need—if he gets lockjaw, you’ll never convict him.’
‘Then what’s your idea?’
‘Indulge me, my friend. I’m smart. I want to keep that appointment with him this evening—’
‘He may be back in Bunghola, or wherever he hails from, by then.’
‘Not the slightest chance. Frimbo is staging a party tomorrow night for just one reason—he’s going to fasten the blame for that murder, as he still calls it, and rightly, on somebody—somebody else. Your best bet is to have all the counter-evidence ready to confront him with at the same time. Don’t worry, he’ll be there.’
‘Well this certainly is enough to make him a suspect.’
‘You’ve got suspects enough already. What you want now is a murderer. It’s true that Frimbo was not the corpse. This proves that. It is also true that he must have managed to make away with the corpse; then, to cover that, masqueraded as the corpse—even inflicted a wound on his head resembling that of the corpse.’ Dr Archer could talk very plainly and directly on occasion. ‘But there are lots of things between that conclusion and proof of his being the murderer. All that we know is that Frimbo lied. We do not know why he lied. And he isn’t the only liar in this case—Jenkins lied, probably Hicks lied, for all I know Webb lied—’
‘Say that reminds me! That Webb was on the right track. He was telling the truth, at least in part. I meant to tell you, but I got so interested in this other thing. There was a knock-down and drag-out shooting this morning on 132nd Street. Apparently an argument over a girl, but who do you suppose the victim was? One of Brandon’s best-known runners. Yes, sir. Well, it took the boys exactly forty-five minutes to nab the guy that did it. And who do you s’pose he was? Spencer’s first lieutenant, boy named Eagle Watson. Of course he’ll get out of it—good lawyers and all—girl’ll swear the victim attacked her and turned on him when he came to her rescue—plenty o’ bona fide witnesses—self-defence—easy. But we know what’s behind it—and Webb told the truth about it. There actually is a Spencer-Brandon policy feud on; Spencer’s getting the worst of it, and he’s declared war on the whole Brandon outfit. The reason why he’s getting the worst of it can only be because he’s losing a lot of money and losing it fast, and the reason he declares war on the rival outfit is because he figures they are responsible. If he figures that, he may have got wind of this Frimbo’s having a hand in it and tried to pull a fast one last night. Only that doesn’t hitch up with this blood business at all, does it?’
‘There was once a man—nice fellow, too, even though he was a policeman—who delivered some remarks on premature conclusions. His idea was to fit conclusions to facts, as I recall, not facts to conclusions. And he admitted—nay, insisted—that, by such a system, it would only be necessary to accumulate enough facts and they’d sort of draw their own conclusions. You will observe that this fellow was a lineal descendant of Francis Bacon—despite their difference of complexion—in that he inherited the tendency to reason inductively rather than deductively. But such is the frailty of human-kind that even this fortunate chap occasionally fell into the error of letting his imagination, instead of his observation, draw the conclusions; whereupon he would suddenly look about in bewilderment and say that something didn’t hitch up with something.’
‘O.K., doc. The point of all that being it’s still too soon to speculate?’
‘The point being that where more facts can be gathered, it is always too soon to speculate.’
‘Well—I guess he’ll keep. But if you let him get away from me—’
‘My dear fellow, permit me to remind you that in that case the situation would be no different from what it was before I suggested the blood comparison.’
‘Beg your pardon, doc. But what about the corpse? We’ve got to have a corpse—you know that. If it’s still somewhere in that house, Frimbo’s going to have plenty of time to destroy it.’
‘Have you—if I’m not too personal—ever tried to destroy a corpse, Dart?’
‘Almost impossible to destroy it completely by ordinary methods. But there are acids. As much stuff as he’s got there—’
‘You searched the house pretty well.’
‘Yes, but we’ve got experts that do nothing else, doc. They could find places that I wouldn’t dream of looking for. They measure and calculate and reconstruct to scale, and when they get through, there isn’t a place left big enough to hide a bedbug in.’
‘They take time, though, and their presence would arouse Frimbo’s suspicions and hostility. Believe me, Dart—Frimbo himself is the only answer to this riddle. Jump him too soon and you’ll destroy the only chance. I’m sure of that. I’m as curious about this thing as you are. I’m funny that way. And I’d like to see you and the local boys get the credit for this whole thing—not a lot of Philistines from downtown. You said you were depending on me. All right. Do that. And let me depend on you.’
‘Gee, doc, I didn’t realize you were as interested as all that. It sure would mean a lot to me personally to get credit for this. We don’t grab off a funny one like this often. If that’s really how you feel about it—’
‘Fine. Now all you’ve got to do is make no report of this last finding and hold off Frimbo till I’m through with
him. Before tomorrow night I hope to have a pretty good idea of what makes him go ’round. After all, a gentleman who turns out to be one of the suspects in his own murder case deserves a little personal consideration.’
‘A suspect in his own murder—say, that’s right! That’s a brand-new one on me! But he’s smart all right. Wonder why he didn’t object to the blood test? He must have known it might prove incriminating.’
‘Of course he knew it. But what could he do? To refuse would have put him in a bad light too. All he could gracefully do was acquiesce and take a chance on the two bloods being so much alike that the small amount of the unknown would be exhausted before we could distinguish it from his own. That failing, he would simply have to depend on his wits. Did you hear him ask me whether I would use the ordinary agglutination tests? He’s ready with an alibi for this lie right now, I’ll bet you. That’s another reason for not rushing in yet. We’ve got to get something he can’t anticipate.’
Dart looked at the physician with genuine admiration. ‘Doc, you’re all right, no lie. You ought to’ve been a detective.’
‘I am a detective,’ the other returned. ‘All my training and all my activities are those of a detective. The criminal I chase is as prime a rascal as you’ll ever find—assailant, thief, murderer—disease. In each case I get, it’s my job to track disease down, identify it, and arrest it. What else is diagnosis and treatment?’
‘I never thought of it that way.’
‘In this Frimbo case, I’m your consultant—by your personal invitation. I’m going to make as extensive an examination as I can before I draw my conclusions. Your allowing me to do so is proper professional courtesy—a rare thing for which I thank you deeply.’ He bowed solemnly to the grinning Dart. ‘And meanwhile you will be finding out every move of every visitor to that place last night?’
‘Right. They’re all being tailed this minute. And I’ve already checked everybody’s story, even the undertaker’s. They’re all O.K. Brown came around to the precinct this morning to see Jenkins—they eavesdropped on him but didn’t get anything except that Jenkins is still denying guilt. And his friend is willing to perjure himself to save him.’
The Conjure-Man Dies Page 16