I followed the street west until it became fashionable Central Park South (I hadn’t much hope there), then further still as it turned into darkest San Juan Hill, gave a lot of attention to the Vanderbilt Clinic at 10th Avenue, and finally came smack up against the speedway bordering the Hudson, with my feet burning me like blazes. No results. No Jones. It took me all of the first day and most of the second. At 2 P.M. Thursday I was back again at the Bridge (I’d taxied back, don’t worry).
I got out and stood on the corner smoking a cigarette. I’d used the wrong method, that was all. I’d been rational about it, Amato had been instinctive. What had his wife said? He was going by and most likely saw some dentist working behind a window and that decided him. I’d been looking for a dentist, he hadn’t—until he happened on one. I’d have to put myself in his place to get the right set-up.
I walked back two blocks to 3rd Avenue and started out afresh from that point on. He had lived on 3rd Avenue, so he had probably walked all the way up it looking for work until he got to 59th, and then turned either east or west. West there was a department store on one side, a five-and-ten and a furniture store on the other; they wouldn’t interest him. East there were a whole line of mangy little shops and stalls; I turned east. I trudged along; I was Amato now, worrying about where my next half dollar was coming from, not thinking about my tooth at all—at least not just at that moment.
A shadow fell before me on the sidewalk. I looked up. A huge, swaying, papier-mach6 gold tooth was hanging out over the doorway. It was the size of a football at least. Even Amato would have known what it was there for. Maybe he’d gotten a bad twinge just then. The only trouble was—I’d seen it myself yesterday, it was almost the first thing that had caught my eye when I started out. I’d investigated, you may be sure. And the card on the window said “Dr. Carter” as big as life. That was out—or was it? Amato couldn’t read; “Carter” wouldn’t mean any more to him than “Jones.” But then where had he gotten “Jones” from? Familiar as it is, it would have been as foreign to him as his own name was to me.
No use going any further, though. If that gold tooth hadn’t made up Amato’s mind for him, nothing else the whole length of the street could have. I was on the point of going in anyway, just for a quick once over, but a hurried glance at my own appearance decided me not to. Serge business suit, good hat, dusty but well-heeled shoes. Whatever had happened to Amato, if he had gone in there, wasn’t likely to happen to anyone dressed like I was. If I was going to put myself in his place, I ought at least to try to look like him. And there were a few other things, too, still out of focus.
I jumped in a cab and chased down to Headquarters. I didn’t think they’d let me see Steve, but somehow I managed to wangle it out of them. I suppose Keenan had a hand in it. And then too, Steve hadn’t cracked yet, that may have had something to do with it,
“What enemies have you?” I shot out. There wasn’t much time.
“None,” he said. “I never harmed anyone in my life.”
“Think hard,” I begged. “You’ve got to help me. Maybe way back, maybe some little thing.”
“Nope,” he insisted cynically, “my life’s been a bed of roses until day before yesterday.” He had a purple eye at the moment and a forty-eight-hour beard.
I turned cynical myself. “Let’s skip it then and look at it the other way around. Who are your best friends—outside of myself?”
He ran over a list of names as long as a timetable. He left out one, though. “And Dave Carter?” I supplied. “Know him?”
He nodded cheerfully. “Sure, but how did you know? We used to be pretty chummy. I haven’t seen him in years, though; we drifted apart. We started out together, both working in the same office I have now. Then he moved out on me, thought he could do better by himself, I guess.”
“And did he?”
“He hit the skids. All the patients kept on coming to me, for some reason, and he just sat there in his spic-and-span office twiddling his thumbs. Inside of six months the overhead was too much for him and here’s the payoff: he ended up by having to move into a place ten times worse than the one he’d shared with me. What with one thing and another I lent him quite a bit of money which I never got back.”
“And did he turn sour on you?”
“Not at all, that’s the funny part of it. Last time I saw him he slapped me on the back and said, ‘More power to you, Stevie, you’re a better man than I am!’”
“In your hat!” I thought skeptically. “When was the last time you saw him?” I asked.
“Years back. As a matter of fact, I clean forgot him until you—”
I stood up to go without waiting for him to finish. “Excuse the rush, but I’ve got things to do.”
“Dig me up a good lawyer, will you?” he called after me. “Price is no object. I’m getting sick of hitting these dicks in the fist with my eyes!”
“You don’t need a lawyer,” I shouted back. “All you need is a little dash of suspicion in your nature. Like me.”
I got Keenan to take me in and introduce me to the chief while I was down there—after about an hour or so of pleading. The chief was regular, but a tough nut to crack. Still he must have been in good humor that day. If he reads this, no offense meant, but the cigars he smokes are fierce. I had a proposition to make to him, and two requests. One of them he gave in to almost at once—loving newspapermen the way he did. The other he said he’d think over. As for the proposition itself,.he said it wasn’t so hot, but to go ahead and try it if I felt like it, only not to blame anyone but myself if I got into trouble. From Headquarters I went straight to a pawnshop on 3rd Avenue. It was long after dark, but they stay open until nine. I bought a suit of clothes for three dollars. The first one the man showed me I handed back to him. “That’s the best I can give you—” he started in.
“I don’t want the best, I want the worst,” I said, much to his surprise. I got it all right.
From there I went to a second one and purchased what had once been an overcoat before the World War. Price, two fifty. The coat and suit were both ragged, patched and faded, but at least the pawnbrokers had kept them brushed off; I fixed that with the help of a barrel of ashes I passed a few doors away. I also traded hats with a panhandler who crossed my path, getting possession of a peculiar shapeless mound he had been wearing on his head. I was doing more than laying down my life for my friend; I was risking dandruff and Lord knows what else for his sake.
I trundled all this stuff home and managed to hide it from my wife in the broom closet. In the morning, though, when she saw me arrayed in it from head to foot she let out a yell and all but sank to the floor. “Now never mind the hysterics,” I reproved. “Papa knows just what he’s doing!”
“If this has anything to do with Steve, you’re a day late,” she told me when she was through giggling. “They’ve dismissed the case against him.” She held out the morning paper to me.
I didn’t bother looking at it; in the first place it was one of the two requests I’d made at Headquarters the night before; in the second place it wasn’t true anyway.
Keenan was waiting for me on the southwest comer of 59th and 2nd as per agreement. Anyone watching us would have thought our behavior peculiar, to say the least. I went up to him and opened my mouth as though I was Joe E. Brown making faces at him. “It’s that tooth up there, that molar on the right side. Take a good look at it.” He did. This was for purposes of evidence. “Got the picture?” He nodded. “I’m going in now, where that gold tooth is, half-way down the block. Back in half an hour. Wait here for me and keep your fingers crossed.”
This statement wasn’t quite accurate, though. I was sure I was going in where the gold tooth was, but I wasn’t sure I was coming back in half an hour—I wasn’t sure I was coming back at all, any time.
I left him abruptly and went into the office of Dr. Dave Carter. I was cold and scared. The accent bothered me too. I decided a brogue would be the safest. No foreign langi ages fo
r me. Carter was a short, dumpy little man, as good-natured and harmless looking as you’d want. Only his eyes gave him away. Slits they were, little malevolent pig eyes. The eyes had it; they told me I wasn’t wasting my time. The office was a filthy, rundown place. Instead of a partition, the dental chair was right in the room, with a screen around it. There was an odor of stale gas around.
My feet kept begging me to get up and run out of there while I still had the chance. I couldn’t, though; Keenan was waiting on the corner. I wanted to keep his respect.
Carter was standing over me; he didn’t believe in the daily bath, either. “Well, young fellow?” he said sleekly. I pointed sorrowfully at my cheek, which had been more or less inflated for the past three days. The pain had gone out of it long ago, however. Pain and swelling rarely go together, contrary to general belief
“So I see,” he said, but made no move to do anything about it. “What brings you here to me?” he asked craftily.
“Sure ‘tis the ellygant gold tooth ye have out, boss,” I answered shakily. Did that sound Irish enough? I wondered. Evidently it did.
“Irishman, eh?” he told me not very cleverly. “What’s your name?”
“McConnaughy.” I’d purposely picked a tongue-twister, to get the point across I was trying to make.
He bit. “How do you spell it?”
“Sure, I don’t know now,” I smiled wanly, “I niwer in me life learned to spell.” That was the point I was trying to make.
“Can’t read or write, eh?” He seemed pleased rather than disappointed. “Didn’t you ever go to school when you were a kid?”
“I minded the pigs and such,” I croaked forlornly.
He suddenly whipped out a newspaper he’d been holding behind his back and shoved it under my nose. “What d’you think of that?” It was upside down. He was trying to catch me off my guard, hoping I’d give myself away and turn it right side up without thinking. I kept my hands off it. “What do it say?” I queried helplessly.
He tossed it aside. “I guess you can’t read, at that,” he gloated. But the presence of the newspaper meant that he already knew Steve was back in circulation; the item had been in all of them that morning.
He motioned me to the chair. I climbed into it. I was too curious to see what would happen next to be really frightened. Otherwise how could I have sat in it at all? He took a cursory glance into my mouth. Almost an absent-minded glance, as though his thoughts were really elsewhere. “Can you pay me?” he said next, still very absent-minded and not looking at me at all.
“I’ll do my best, sorr. I have no job.”
“Tell you what I’ll do for you,” he said suddenly, his eyes dilating. “I’ll give you temporary relief, and then I’ll send you to someone who’ll finish the job for you. He won’t charge you anything, either. You just tell him Dr. Smith sent you.”
My heart started to go like a triphammer. So I was on the right track after all, was I? He’d picked a different name this time to cover up his traces, that was all. And as for the gold tooth outside the door betraying him, he was counting on something stopping me before I got around to mentioning that. I knew what that something was, too.
He got to work. He pulled open a drawer and I saw a number of fragile clay caps or crowns, hollow inside and thin as tissue paper. They were about the size and shape of thimbles. I could hardly breathe any more. Steve’s voice came back to me, indignantly questioning Amato: “Looks like the Boulder Dam, some bricklayer put it in for you?”
He took one of these out and closed the drawer. Then he opened another drawer and took something else out. But this time I couldn’t see what it was, because he carefully stood over it with his back to me. He glanced over his shoulder at me to see if I was watching him. I beat him to it and lowered my eyes to my lap. He closed the second drawer. But I knew which one it was; the lower right in a cabinet of six.
He came over to me. “Open,” he commanded. My eyes rolled around in their sockets. I still had time to rear up out of the chair, push him back, and snatch the evidence out of his hand. But I wasn’t sure yet whether it was evidence or not.
Those caps may have been perfectly legitimate, for all I knew; I was no dentist. So I sat quiet, paralyzed with fear, unable to move.
And the whole thing was over with almost before it had begun. He sprayed a little something on the tooth, waxed it with hot grease, and stuck the cap on over it. No drilling, no dredging, no cleansing whatsoever. “That’s all,” he said with an evil grin. “But remember, it’s only temporary. By tomorrow at the latest you go to this other dentist and he’ll finish the job for you.”
I saw the point at once. He hadn’t cleaned the tooth in the least; in an hour or two it would start aching worse than ever under the fake cap and I’d have to go to the other dentist. The same thing must have happened to Amato. I was in for it now! “Don’t chew on that side,” he warned me, “until you see him.” He didn’t want it to happen to me at home or at some coffee counter, but in Steve’s office, in Steve’s chair!
Then he gave me the name and place I was to go to. “Standish, 28th and Lexington, second floor.” Over and over again. “Will you remember that?” That was all I needed, I had the evidence against him now. But I didn’t make a hostile move toward him, instead I stumbled out into the street and swayed toward the comer where Keenan was waiting for me. Let the cops go after him. I had myself to worry about now. I was carrying Death around in my mouth. Any minute, the slightest little jolt—
Keenan had been joined by a second detective. They both came toward me and held me up by the elbows. I managed to get my mouth open, and Keenan looked in. “Get the difference?” I gasped.
“It begins to look like you were right,” he muttered.
He phoned the chief at Headquarters and then got me into a taxi with him. The second man was left there to keep an eye on Carter and tail him if he left his office.
“What’re you holding your mouth open like that for?” he asked me in the cab.
“A sudden jolt of the taxi might knock my teeth together,” I articulated. I had seen how thin those caps were.
We raced down Lexington and got out at Steve’s office. Steve had been rushed up there from the detention pen in a police car along with the chief himself and two more detectives. He had to have facilities if he was going to save me from what had happened to Amato.
“He’s got the evidence,” Keenan informed them as he guided me past the jangling bell. I pointed to my mouth. “In there,” I gasped, and my knees buckled up under me.
Steve got me into the chair. Sweat broke out on his face after he’d taken one look at Carter’s work, but he tried to reassure me. “All right, all right now, boy,” he said soothingly, “You know I won’t go back on you, don’t you?”
He looked around at them. The chief had his usual rank cigar in his mouth, which had gone out in the excitement. One of the others held a pipe between his clenched teeth.
“Where’s your tobacco pouch?” ordered Steve hoarsely. “Let me have it, I’ll get you a new one.”
The lining was thin rubber. He tore that out, scattered tobacco all over the floor. Then he held it up toward the light and stretched it to see if there were any holes or cracks. Then, with a tiny pair of curved scissors, he cut a small wedge-shaped hole in it. “Now hold your mouth open,” he said to me, “and whatever you do, don’t move!” He lined the inside of my mouth with the rubber, carefully working the tooth Carter had just treated through the hole he had cut, so that it was inside the pouch. The ends of the rubber sack he left protruding through my lips. I felt a little as though I were choking. “Can you breathe?” he said. I batted my eyes to show him he could go ahead.
He thrust wedges into my cheeks, so that I couldn’t close my jaws whether I wanted to or not. Then he came out with a tiny mallet and a little chisel, about the size of a nail. “I may be able to get it out whole,” he explained to the chief. “It’s been in less than half an hour. Drilling is too risky.”
His face, as he bent over me, was white as plaster. I shut my eyes and thought, “Well, here I go—or here I stay!” I felt a number of dull blows on my jawbone. Then suddenly something seemed to crumble and a puff of ice-cold air went way up inside my head. I lay there rigid and—nothing happened.
“Grot it!” Steve breathed hotly into my face. He started to work the rubber lining carefully out past my lips and I felt a little sick. When it was clear he passed it over to the detectives without even a look at its contents, and kept his attention focussed on me. “Now, watch your self, don’t move yet!” he commanded nervously. He took a spray and rinsed out the inside of my mouth with water, every comer and crevice of it, about eighteen times. “Don’t swallow,” he kept warning me. “Keep from swallowing!” Keenan, his chief, and the others had their heads together over the spread-out contents of the little rubber sack, meanwhile.
Steve turned off the water and took the pads away from my gums finally. He sat down with a groan; I sat up with a shudder. “I wouldn’t want to live the past five minutes over again for all the rice in China!” he admitted, mopping his brow. “Maybe I would!” I shivered.
“Packed with cyanide crystals,” the chief said, “enough to kill a horse! Go up there and make the pinch. Two counts, murder and attempted murder.” Two men started for the door.
“Top drawer left for the caps, bottom drawer right for the cy,” I called after them weakly and rather needlessly. They’d find it, all right.
But I was very weary all at once and very much disinterested. I stumbled out of the chair and slouched toward the door, muttering something about going home and resting up. Steve pulled himself together and motioned me back again.
“Don’t forget the nerve is still exposed in that tooth of yours. I’ll plug it for you right, this time.” I sat down again, too limp to resist. He attached a new drill to the pulley and started it whirring. As he brought it toward me I couldn’t help edging away from it. “Can you beat it?” He turned to Keenan, who had stayed behind to watch, and shook his head in hopeless amazement. “Takes his life in his hands for a ft-iend, but when it comes to a little everyday drilling he can’t face it!”
Darkness at dawn : early suspense classics Page 3