The police captain accepted Ray’s disclaimer of criminal intent, and the clergyman and the doctor carried papers that satisfied him of their innocence. But he insisted on knowing why Ray’s errand could not wait till morning.
Ray could hardly confess: “I plan to break into the apartment of a total stranger without warrant or permission and go through everything I find there.”
So he refused to explain his visit to the apartment house as anything except something concerning the owner himself. He was so eloquent that he actually persuaded the captain to call the owner on the telephone and say:
“Say, I got those three guys here who’ve been buzzing your bell, and they ain’t the men you thought they were. Fact is, one of them is the well-known deteckatiff, Ray Schindler, who means you no harm. He’s a good guy for you to know and might come in handy to you. The other two guys are a sky-pilot and a medico. Schindler says he’s got something you’d ought to know and you’ll find it very interestin’. So leave ’em in, will you, when they come back?”
The gambling landlord’s relief at having a famous detective at his door instead of a trio of murderers must have had something to do with the cordiality of the welcome he now extended. But it took the last drop of Ray’s practically irresistible resources of persuasion to induce him to take out his passkey, admit Ray to Dr. Waite’s apartment, and then go back to bed and ask no questions.
Stealing into an unknown home was no novelty to Ray, but the parson and the doctor were as nervous as cats on hot tiles.
Dr. Waite’s apartment was luxuriously furnished, but Ray was not interested in the comfortable divans, though his footsore clients sank deep into them with sighs of relief and watched in wide-eyed wonder while Ray went through that home of mystery with the practiced skill of a second-story worker wielding a fine-tooth comb. He studied the pictures on the walls, not as a connoisseur of art, but with interest only in what was in back of the canvas. Behind the twentieth frame he found at last a small wall-safe.
He took a chance on the careless custom of some safe-owners and, finding the dial turned a little to the left, turned it very slowly to the right. The steel door obligingly swung open.
In the safe he found: first, a small red notebook of addresses and telephone numbers; second, a copy of a power of attorney signed by John Peck’s Aunt Katherine Peck, giving full legal power to Dr. Waite; third, rental receipts for three safe deposit boxes in a New York bank. Among the other contents were glass slides that seemed to have been used for cultivating bacteria. Ray handed them to Dr. Schurtz, who noted them with interest. He exclaimed, “Why, they’re all labelled ‘typhoid!’ I wonder why on earth a dentist should be experimenting with such a disease.”
He continued to wonder and to worry while Ray was jotting down a large number of names and numbers he found in the address book. Then he went on with his search of the apartment. On the top shelf of a closet he found several books and, tucked in behind them, a volume on Pharmacology. In it was a bookmark set at a page containing a minute discussion of the effects on the human system of several slow poisons, with a subheading: “Alternatives—Arsenic.”
In the apartment Ray also found a few photographs of the handsome Dr. Waite. He pocketed one of the photographs for future use.
It had been half-past two in the morning when Ray entered the apartment. It was seven o’clock and broad daylight before he had finished his study of its contents and what they disclosed or insinuated concerning their owner. His clients had watched him with a consuming interest, and helplessness to aid. They were glad to be put to some use when he asked them to do their best to restore the apartment to the state in which they had found it, so that when Dr. Waite returned he would not suspect that anybody had visited him during his absence. When they had finished, Ray showed his photographic memory by finding several mistakes they had made.
Before he left, he went to Dr. Waite’s telephone and dialed his own office, where there was always someone on duty, day and night, Sundays, holidays, always. He talked to his brother Walter and set many wheels in motion, summoned many aides to many tasks.
And now the men from Grand Rapids found how different is the approach of a Schindler from the classic procedure of that Sherlock Holmes, of whom they had expected to see a poor imitation. Ray had taken up an untouched case which, as he had said, no district attorney or police detective would even look into. In fact, a little later Ray would be practically thrown out of the New York District Attorney’s office by that indignant official, who would further promptly inform the suspect that private detectives were surrounding him.
Ray Schindler has rarely worked alone. He not only keeps a large staff of detectives on salary the year round, but he has an almost unlimited number of detectives on call. His bureau has branches in many other cities and correspondents and associates in practically every city at home and abroad. These can be added to his force on receipt of a telephone call.
Before this day was over, Ray would have a small army of skilled assistants going over certain districts of New York as carefully as he had gone over that apartment.
Returning with the doctor and the preacher to their hotel, he found his brother Walter waiting for them. Walter reported that he had already arranged to have an operative in a car posted at every entrance to the Grand Central Terminal. Ray gave Walter the photograph of Dr. Waite and asked him to have it photographed in a hurry and many prints made of it. A copy of it would be given to each of the watchmen outside the station, so that the man could be recognized at sight. This was managed with expert speed. But Ray did not rely on such identification and such coverage as infallible.
He took Drs. Schurtz and Wishart to the railroad station half an hour before the train was due, so that they could identify Dr. Waite the moment he stepped off the train. They were to signal Ray, who would tail Dr. Waite to whichever of the many exits he might take. Then Ray would signal whichever operative might be waiting outside in a car.
When the three took posts in the station, Ray decided that it would be best if Dr. Waite did not recognize Wishart or Schurtz and take alarm. Having no disguise for Dr. Schurtz, Ray gave the clergyman his own great fur coat and hat in exchange for Wishart’s raincoat and hat. Ray does not in the least resemble a lean ascetic and the slender Dr. Wishart’s raincoat would neither button nor reach Ray’s hips. The clerical hat was three sizes too small for Ray’s commodious skull.
A glance at Ray might have given Dr. Waite a smile, but he would hardly have guessed that the grotesque figure was a famous detective. Dr. Wishart was just as funny with Ray’s big hat reposing on his ears and Ray’s huge fur coat engulfing his ankles.
The train was posted an hour and a half late, but trains have a way of either losing more time or making up a bit; so the three had to keep their eyes open and watch the bulletin board.
At what is well called long last, the express lumbered in; the passengers poured out from every car, and suddenly Dr. Wishart began wig-wagging at a tall handsome man who looked like Dr. Waite’s photograph.
Now came a demonstration of the importance of leaving nothing either to chance or to rule. Instead of going to any of the carefully covered exits, Dr. Waite suddenly slipped into a telephone booth. Ray, who was close on his heels, found the adjoining booth providentially empty, and slipped into that. The telephone was not a dial instrument and Ray could overhear the number the dentist called. His elephantine memory recognized it as that of the Plaza Hotel. His excellent ears also caught the dentist’s every word, as he asked for room 1105 and greeted warmly the woman who answered, saying:
“Darling, I’ve just got in. But I can’t talk to you now. Something has happened that I can’t explain over the public telephone. But you must pack up at once, pay your bill, and check out with all our things. I’ll get in touch with you at the School as soon as I can. Do just as I say, darling, and ask no questions. G’by!”
The unbelievable luck of such eavesdropping was cancelled by the sudden whim of Waite t
o go to the one exit where Ray had been unable to post a man in a car. He chose the underground corridor to the Biltmore Hotel. Heeled by Ray, Waite walked up the steps into the hotel lobby, through it and down the steps to the front door. There he dived into a waiting taxicab and ordered it off in a hurry.
Ray could not catch the address Waite gave to his driver; but he made a mental note of the number 61708 on the rear plate of the cab, and promptly stepped into the next cab up. He murmured the classic line of the detective-fiction writers, who know no better:
“Follow that car!”
The driver answered: “Sorry, mister, but it’s against the rules for us to follow our own company cars.”
Ray knew this as well as the driver did, but he was desperate. He had extra cars of his own everywhere but at that point. He had no other means of locomotion now but his own legs. And Ray is no champion of the cinder-path. Nor was he dressed like one. But he did his best.
Few who saw him could have guessed that the ridiculously garbed clown, madly knocking people aside as he darted through the throngs, was America’s most famous detective in hot pursuit afoot of some one of the countless taxicabs that make New York streets one almost continuous yellow streak. Clinging to his hat, Ray panted and puffed up Madison Avenue all the way to 48th Street. There luck caught up with him for a moment. He saw Dr. Waite’s cab two blocks ahead. He bunted aside another man about to enter an independent cab and dived in. The driver made no demur to Ray’s demand: “Ignore traffic lights! Close up on that taxi ahead. And stick to it. And I’ll do right by you.”
The cabdriver was in a mood for romance. And the traffic lights held up Waite and not him. But the upshot of all this good luck was that Waite’s cab suddenly stopped at a garage. He paid off his cab and entered the garage, while Ray instructed his driver to pull to the curb just beyond and hold it. In due time, Waite whirled out of the garage in a car of his own and drove to his own apartment.
Ray’s ideal is an operative waiting at every conceivable spot in the world. It is an unattainable ideal, but he does his humble best. So he had instructed two of his own men that, if they missed Waite at the station, they were to speed to the apartment house and take up observation posts there.
While Waite was parking his own car outside his home, Ray, who had followed closely on his wheels, had a chance to point him out to his operatives in their cars and signal them to keep him under observation wherever he might go. It was understood that they would report to the office whenever they got the chance.
Leaving his prey to the observation of his two watchdogs, Ray hurried back to his office, and arrived just in time to receive a telephone call from one of the operatives in one of the two cars he had left outside Waite’s apartment. He reported that Waite had come out almost at once and driven to a bank, perhaps to draw money; then he had come out and driven to another garage, which he entered. He could still be seen in there, talking to a tall man in black, who seemed to have no connection with the garage, and was apparently there to keep an appointment with Waite. The operative suggested that he and his partner separate, one following the stranger, the other tailing the slippery dentist. Ray approved the plan and the operative went back to his post.
Now Ray felt sure that Waite had taken alarm at the curious interference of young Peck in the funeral plans and his insistence that Mrs. Waite remain in Grand Rapids. The telephone call to the girl, whom he had warned to vanish at once, proved, not only that he was frightened, but that he was also carrying on a clandestine love affair.
Successful criminals, like successful detectives, have to keep their suspicions alert; but Ray believed, and hoped, that Waite had not yet got wind of the fact that a detective bureau was after him.
The bigness of Ray’s bureau was seen in his first act. His brother Walter had already set ten operatives combing all drug stores in widening circles to see if Waite had bought any poison anywhere. This was, of course, because of the books Ray had found in Waite’s apartment with marks at the pages treating of poisons.
Now Ray dispatched an experienced operative to the Plaza Hotel to interview that woman, if she had not already disappeared. If she had, he was to try to find out where she had gone and collect all the information he could glean about her. At the same time, Ray and Walter were collecting another large force to hunt down Waite’s standing with his profession and to learn his connections, if any, with hospitals or patients.
By this time Ray had about thirty assistants hot at work all over the town. They were none too many, and it is difficult to imagine what the solitary Sherlock Holmes could have accomplished in such a situation. Of course, the captivating Conan Doyle made up his stories backwards and controlled his criminals as well as his crimes. Ray had to take what he found as he found it.
While his far-flung cohorts were multiplying Ray, and taking him everywhere at once, he decided to visit in person that Katherine Peck, Mrs. Waite’s aunt, whose power of attorney he had found in Waite’s wall-safe. As the reader has been told, she was the woman whose investments Dr. Waite had been handling to her complete satisfaction.
Ray found her a fashionable lady, living in a fashionable hotel. She proved to be an elderly woman of charm and authority, and more than willing to talk about her dear nephew-in-law, Dr. Waite. Needless to say, Ray did not tell her what his true purpose was.
Miss Peck told him how attentive Waite had been to her; how piously he had accompanied her to church every Sunday, how he brought her flowers, and personally took care of her whenever she was ill. Suspicious of poison, Ray did not feel so easy about these illnesses and attentions as she did.
He was hardly surprised when Miss Peck told how great an interest Dr. Waite took in her investments. He had advised her, she said, to put a hundred thousand dollars in a certain stock and soon brought word that it had nearly doubled in value. He sent her his own checks whenever dividends were due without keeping her waiting for the slow bank. Incidentally, she tossed in the name of the bank she dealt with. Ray said he was delighted to learn so much about so charming a man. When he finally bowed out, he went to the bank where Waite had his safe deposit boxes and talked frankly with the president—a friend of his, of course.
He was so persuasive that the president actually went to the vault with him and had the box opened. There they found the original of Miss Peck’s power of attorney and a great deal of jewelry.
Thanking the most obliging bank president, Ray left him and called next on a famous doctor whose name he had found in Waite’s address book. To this man Ray unbosomed himself as, frankly, a detective investigating a man suspected of a double murder.
The physician told him how charming and straightforward he had found Dr. Waite. And yet, he confessed, he had been disturbed a bit when Waite once actually asked him to write a prescription for arsenic. He had done Waite that favor and now, at Ray’s request, he looked up his copy of the prescription and lent it to Ray.
When Ray said that Waite seemed to be interested in cultivating certain bacteria, the doctor gasped; for he remembered that Waite had told him of studying typhoid germs and had asked where he could buy such cultures. The doctor had wondered then. Now he shuddered to think that Waite might have been planning to use typhoid bacteria for murderous purposes.
Leaving Waite’s unintentional collaborator to his own resources, Ray went back to his office. There Walter told him that one of his operatives had followed the man whom Waite had met in the garage, and telephoned to say that the fellow was named “Kane,” and he ran an undertaking parlor. This turned out to be the very parlor where Waite had had the bodies of his wife’s father and mother embalmed before he took them to Grand Rapids.
Odd wasn’t it? that a dentist should meet an undertaker in a lonely garage?
Also, the other operative, who had stuck to Waite, had telephoned in that Waite had visited the bank where his safe deposit boxes were, and had drawn out $15,000 in cash. Then he had visited the Berlitz School of Languages. After that, he had drive
n his car through various Harlem streets, stopping now and then as if looking for a house, but finally returning to his apartment.
Ray remembered that, when Waite had slipped into the telephone booth at the Grand Central Station and called up his “Darling” at the Plaza Hotel, he had promised to meet her at “the school.” Was it the Berlitz School?
The operative’s report that Dr. Waite had driven up and down certain streets in Harlem reminded Ray that, when he had talked the night before to the owner of the apartment house, the owner had mentioned the little detail that Waite had a Negro cook, whom the owner had secured for him. The man had even told Ray the woman’s address in Harlem. Ray had noted down the address and now he guessed that Waite had forgotten the exact number and had been hunting for it—perhaps to warn his cook not to talk.
Information was pouring in now from all directions. One of the ten operatives sent out to study Waite’s professional life reported in that the “famous dentist” was not even registered as a practicing dentist, and had no office! This information was received from the telephone company, which had no record of a telephone in his name, listed or unlisted. Even the electric light company had been visited, and had reported that nobody of Waite’s name had purchased any electricity for light or heat. Plainly he used the apartment house telephone, light and heat; and had no separate office.
All this gives a hint of the minute thoroughness of the Schindlerian technique. A further glimpse of it can be seen in the fact that other operatives had already visited not less than twenty hospitals and learned that the great Waite was known at not one of them. Yet he had given his dead father-in-law and young Peck the impression that he was one of the busiest surgeon dentists in New York. He had certainly been busy; but not with other people’s teeth.
The Complete Detective Page 4