And now, to pile confusion on confusion, and work on work, the man Ray had sent to the Plaza Hotel telephoned in that he had arrived there too late to intercept the girl; but had managed to learn that she had been registered there with her “husband” as “Dr. and Mrs. A. W. Walters of New Rochelle.”
The operative had taken with him a copy of the photograph of Dr. Waite, and the hotel clerk had said that he recognized it as that of “Dr. Walters.” He also let fall the statement that “Mrs. Walters,” on her abrupt departure, had left a package to be picked up later by a messenger. Since the clerk would not disclose the address, the operative had to haunt that hotel lobby until a messenger called at the desk and picked up that parcel.
Then the operative had to follow the messenger until he delivered it to a “Mrs. Von Palmenburg” at an address in West 72nd Street.
Isn’t there something rather hair-raising or breathtaking, or whatever sensation you experience, in realizing how much knowledge of all these total strangers had been acquired since Ray had been called at ten o’clock the night before to talk to two strangers from Grand Rapids?
There had followed in dizzy sequence a telephone call to the dead man’s son, the entry into Waite’s apartment, secured with great difficulty in after-midnight hours, the collection of vital documents there, a train met, a telephone call listened in on, a taxicab chase, a rendezvous with a man who turned out to be Waite’s pet undertaker, a talk with a bank president, a visit to a safe deposit vault, a conference with a famous physician, visits to thirty hospitals, to the telephone company, the electric company, to numberless drug stores, the Plaza Hotel—what not!—whom not?
All these things had been ordered, conducted, reported, and acted on in about sixteen hours’ time.
Never pausing to congratulate himself on a busy day and a successful one, nor refreshing himself with even thirty winks of sleep, Ray now called on the City Medical Examiner, Dr. Otto H. Schultz, whom he knew. Ray told him a bit about the case, and asked him to be ready to make a train trip. Then he gathered up Dr. Schultz, Dr. Schurtz, and Rev. Mr. Wishart and motored down to the office of the District Attorney.
The night before, Ray had told his clients from Grand Rapids that they had not an iota of legal evidence which a district attorney would even look at. He was soon proving his point up to the hilt; for, even when he laid all his accumulated facts before the District Attorney of New York, that official found them invisible.
Ray told the then District Attorney, Edward H. Swann, that Waite was a liar about his hospital activities as consulting dental surgeon; that he was enriching himself by handling the funds of his wife’s aunt, and paying alleged dividends with personal checks; that he had almost certainly murdered his mother-in-law and his father-in-law and was studying typhoid germs in order to murder his wife, and thus inherit her estate of perhaps a million dollars. Finally, as a bit of an anti-climax, Ray announced that Waite was living in a hotel under an assumed name with an assumed wife.
District Attorneys live in such a welter of crime that they are hard to excite. Mr. Swann took all this with skepticism as to its absolutely conclusive legal value. Now he handed Ray what Ray had handed to his clients when he first heard their unsupported story. Mr. Swann said, icily:
“You have no proof positive that all these facts can be explained only as the deeds of a murderer.”
This was not the first time in his life that Ray had been rebuffed, and he retorted:
“You want more evidence before you will even entertain a suspicion or lift a finger to defend a poor woman against a cold-blooded liar and double murderer. This family physician, Dr. Schurtz, found evidence that Waite’s father-in-law had not died of a heart attack. He sent the vital organs to an expert in Ann Arbor for final examination. Will you allow the City Medical Examiner, Dr. Otto Schultz, to go to Ann Arbor and take part in the final tests?”
“That’s asking a lot,” the D.A. protested. But finally he yielded to the plea of Dr. Schurtz and gave a reluctant consent.
For fear he might change his mind, Ray hurried away and put the City Medical Examiner on the first train for Ann Arbor along with Ray’s own office manager.
Even now the indefatigable, indestructible Ray, who had been dragged from his rhumba the night before, did not pause for breath. He sped to Harlem and the address of Dr. Waite’s cook. She was in, and she loved to talk when she had an appreciative audience. Never had she had a more interested listener, nor one who made her feel more important.
“When was the last time you saw Dr. Waite?” Ray asked.
“When was a las’ time I seen mah boss?”
Ray nodded.
“Why, a las’ time I seen mah boss was when him and mah missus took off for de Gran’ Rapids wid de corpus of po’Mistoo Peck what done die on ’em. He say I could take time off till he git back. Im awaitin’ now for his call.”
“Did you ever give any medicine to Mrs. Waite’s mother and father when they were alive and ailing?” Ray asked casually.
“Did I done give ’em any med’cine? Whah, yes, I ’member givin’ po’ ol’ Miz Peck some white powda now and den. It was at Dr. Waite’s orders, o’cose. He tol’ me to put a mite of it in her vittles when I was cookin’ up somethin’ special for her.”
Arsenic is a white powder. Ray went on: “Did you ever put any of the white medicine in Mr. Peck’s food?”
“Nossa! I ain’t nevva put no white powda in po’ ol’ Mistoo Peck’s vittles. But sometimes Doctah Waite would come into mah kitchen and sprinkle a little on de ol’ man’s vittles. He say de old gemman so pernickety abote takin’ his med’cine he had to slip it into de old man’s vittles kind of secretious like. But it didn’ seem to do no good, for de po’ ol’ soul done die all on a suddens.”
Suddenly her luxurious sense of importance ended in a jolt of uneasiness as if she realized that there might be some connection between that white powder and Mr. Peck’s death, and some connection between her and Mrs. Peck’s death. Sweat fairly shot out of her pores and she glared at Ray as she demanded:
“Say, man, who’s you anyway? How you git up here? Why you want to know so much abote me and mah boss and his med’cines?”
Ray did his best to calm her fears without diminishing her sense of importance.
“You have no cause for the slightest uneasiness. You have an excellent reputation as a wonderful cook. Nobody suspects you of anything wrong. But the District Attorney may ask you to—”
“De Districk Attunney!” she gasped. “What I done dat dat ol’ debbil wanna see me?”
“You’ve done nothing wrong. But you’re an important woman and you may be of great help to the great city and county of New York.”
She grew queenly again. “Me? I could maybe be of he’p to be Districk Attunney? Wait till mah boss hears of dis!”
“You could be of help only if you don’t mention it to Doctor Waite that you have talked to me or to anybody.”
This bugged her eyeballs almost out of their sockets. Her loyalty to her employer was at war with her hunger for importance. Her importance—or let us say her sense of civic duty—won, and she promised Ray to keep her big mouth shut.
Leaving her to her palpitations, Ray called next on that “Mrs. Von Palmenburg,” to whom the package from the Plaza Hotel had been sent. Here he ran into a shower bath of good luck.
In a dazing coincidence, the door was opened by a pretty young woman for whom Ray had recovered some stolen jewels a few years before. She welcomed him warmly, and told him that she had now a new name and a new husband.
But her face fell when Ray said: “I didn’t call on you, my dear. I came to see Mrs. Walters.”
“Don’t tell me that you’ve been engaged by Dr. Walter’s real wife to investigate poor Margaret, who’s been foolish enough to pretend that she was Mrs. Walters. What fools love makes of us poor women! It’s going to be tough for Margaret, because she has a legal mate of her own. He’s a well-known actor, but I don’t like him any mor
e than she does now. Well, of course if you’re on the case, it’s hopeless and I wash my hands of it. I warned her a dozen times. Please keep me out of it, won’t you?”
“There’s no reason to drag you into it, my dear, and your friend may be mighty glad if I drag her out of it.”
“I’ll call her in, and leave her to your tender mercies.”
And soon Ray was in the presence of the woman of whom, a few hours earlier, he had learned by an overheard telephone talk only that she was a somebody in a certain room at the Plaza Hotel.
Margaret was pretty and well poised and she made no denial of her liking or her liaison with Dr. Walters. She, too, said: “I warned him of the danger of discovery. But I was afraid only of those enemies of love, the newspapers, with their screaming scandals. Dr. Waite—I mean Walters—is so prominent that he rates headlines.”
She spilled the beans with enthusiasm. She boasted rather than confessed to the receipt of some jewels and other gifts from “Dr. Walters,” and she let slip a startling bit of information: “Dr. Walters is going to take me to Paris as soon as he has settled up a large estate he came into by the death of a rich aunt. That’s why he had me studying French at the Berlitz School. As soon as we get to Paris, Dr. Walters will secure a French divorce from his wife and get me one from my good-for-nothing husband. Then Dr. Walters and I will get married and live happily ever after. I do pray to high heaven you’re not planning to spoil our lovely romance. He’s such a wonderful man! Shh! Here comes my husband now. You can see for yourself what a rat he is.”
No fictioneer would dare overwork coincidence as Mother Nature sometimes does. And now she actually brought Margaret’s actor husband into the scene. There, in Ray’s presence, Margaret was emboldened to tell him what she had just told Ray of her plans. The husband was just as frank. He sighed:
“I knew you were having one of your flirtations with that Walters fellow, but I never guessed how far it had gone.” He turned to Ray: “Ain’t women a scream? I’ve given the dame a good home, a maid, and a swell new car. What more can a woman want? I guess they’re all just like Mother Eve. Give ’em the whole Garden of Eden and a good Adam for a husband and they holler for something forbidden, if it’s only an old apple.”
This ancient generalization on her sex did not distress his wife. She was shedding comfortable crocodile tears and overlooking her husband in her anger at Ray.
“How can you be so mean? What won’t men do for money? Here you are working for that old Mrs. Walters to get evidence so she can sue for a divorce and drag poor me in as a co-respondent. It’s cruel! It’s shameful!”
Ray was not even tempted to tell her that, instead of hating him, the poor, pretty idiot might soon be thanking him for saving her from being perhaps the future victim of a modem Bluebeard.
Content with his harvest in that field for the moment, Ray rolled back to his office.
There he received some of the dizzying blows he had been dealing out all day, with a few added punches that would have knocked out anyone who was less of a glutton for punishment.
He learned that two of his operatives had actually been led by Dr. Waite to the District Attorney’s building in Center Street!
Waite had walked right into the lion’s den and spent an hour there with the District Attorney. Then he had come out of the building, walked right up to the operatives, and laughed in their faces.
“You boys don’t have to follow me any longer. Go telephone your boss that the District Attorney has just given me a clean bill of health.”
Then Waite had driven away. One of the operatives had continued to follow him. The other came back to the office to deliver the dynamite in person.
This was enough to make even the patient Schindler see red. He went promptly to Swann’s office and asked him:
“Did you tell Waite that I had men following him?”
The District Attorney answered: “Yes, I ’phoned him to come down to my office. Your suspect came at once and laid his cards on the table. He told me a straight story and frankly admitted he was having an affair with a girl. But his very candor convinced me he is innocent of anything criminal. I told you that you had no case against him.”
When Ray grew sarcastic, Swann grew ugly. He said:
“After all, Schindler, you’re only a private detective trying to earn some big money. Waite is an eminent dentist and he has a right to know that he is being spied on by a gang of private dicks.”
Ray laid before him what he had learned from Waite’s cook about the white powder, and told him Margaret’s story about the big estate Waite was soon coming into. Rut Swann would not be impressed. In fact he finally announced that he had telegraphed the Medical Examiner who was now in Michigan, to come back at once from his fool’s errand without delaying for any silly tests.
It is always bewildering to find such cases of infatuation in high officials. But even a private detective has emotions; so Ray walked out and went on about his business, realizing that he had two powerful adversaries to contend with: the clever Waite and the stubborn District Attorney.
In sudden exhaustion and bitter despondency he called his office on the telephone and invited further bad news. But there was a bit of good. His operatives had found the very drug store where Waite had been buying arsenic. He had seen the actual prescription carrying Waite’s signature. It was at a great distance from Waite’s apartment and had been reached only after a search of dozens of drug stores.
Furthermore, one operative had found the assistant of the undertaker Kane (whom Waite had visited soon after he reached town) and he informed Ray that both men were in the shop. So Ray sped to the undertaker’s. He was now almost in a mood to turn himself in as a customer.
Instead, he questioned Kane about his secret meeting with Waite, and suggested that Waite was a murderer. This seemed both to relieve and to shock the undertaker. After a bit of swallowing hard and fidgeting about, he decided to come clean. He said:
“I don’t want to get dragged into nothing. I might as well tell you I suspicioned the same thing. I kind of had a hunch that there was dirty work going on, but I never suspicioned that Mr. and Mrs. Peck had been murdered till Dr. Waite came back to New York and asked for a private meeting somewhere outside my shop.
“He suggested that vacant garage for a meeting place, and as soon as Waite got there he had the nerve to say, ‘Look here, Kane, you might be asked if you used arsenic in your embalming fluid,’ he says. And I says, ‘Why it’s against the law to use arsenic! I’d lose my license if I did.’ Then Waite says, Well, in case you’re called on to testify, I’ll give you five thousand dollars if you’ll say you did use arsenic in this one case.’
“I looked at him and wanted to punch him in the jaw. But business has been very poor for me lately and I was about to have to shut up shop anyway, so I says to Waite, “If you’ll make that $10,000 I’ll testify I used arsenic—or any damn thing you say.’ Well, would you believe it? the next thing I know, he slaps ten one thousand dollar bills in my hand. I didn’t have no intention of committing no perjury like he said. But—well, I needed the money something awful, so I took it.
“The worst of it was, that my assistant was listening in and, when Waite had left, he said if I didn’t give him a third of the loot, he’d spill the story to the D.A. So I promised him. And now I’ve told you all I know and I hope you’ll keep me out of trouble.”
Ray was grateful for the information, but he would make no pledges even to the man who did not believe in keeping pledges.
He returned to his office in a strange complex of moods. Everybody in town seemed to be confirming Waite’s guilt; yet the adamantine District Attorney would not even aid the investigation.
It was about time for sportive Fortune to give her wheel another spin. As Ray carried his load of glum frustration into his office, his secretary greeted him. She was waving a telegram like a banner of triumph. It was from the Medical Examiner in Ann Arbor. He had not obeyed the District Attorney�
��s order to return till after finishing his tests. The message ended:
“We found enough arsenic in the vital organs of John Peck to kill forty men.”
This was triumph enough to atone for all the insults Ray had endured. He was tempted to dash down to the District Attorney’s office and shake the telegram under his snooty snoot. But just then there came a telephone call from the operative who was sticking like a burr to Dr. Waite. He said:
“I’m kind of puzzled. I tailed my man all over town and back to his apartment house. Instead of dashing out again at once, he’s still stickin’ up there. He’s been quiet so long he’s got me worried. There’s no back way for him to get out without my seeing him. What do I do? Stay put?”
“I’ll be with you as soon as I can get there,” Ray said, and gave up gloating over his friend Swann in a mood of strange uneasiness, an unreasonable but alarming intuition of foreboding.
He hastened to the apartment house and after ringing the bell repeatedly, had the owner open the door. And now he found the elusive dentist, who had just secured the D.A.’s clean bill of health, lying on his bed in a complete stupor. He had taken a big dose of his own opiates.
Ray had hardly laid a hand on the man’s ominously clammy skin when the telephone rang. When Ray answered it, he heard the voice of the District Attorney:
“Hello, Ray, I found out from your office where you were, and I thought I ought to be the first to inform you that I’ve just got a telegram from Ann Arbor. The Medical Examiner wires me—I quote: ‘We found enough arsenic in the vital organs of John Peck to—’ ”
“To kill forty men,” Ray broke in. “You’d better come up here and pick up your man. He’s taken enough of his own medicine to kill one man if you don’t hurry.”
As quickly as possible the District Attorney in person, with a retinue of policemen, photographers and reporters, burst into the apartment. The unconscious Waite was rushed to a hospital instead of a cell, and pumped out. In a few days he was ready to talk. His own brother persuaded him to make a full confession. From hints he let fall, further investigations were made that brought out the biography of almost incredible villainies and successes which the reader was apprised of earlier in this history.
The Complete Detective Page 5