“I’ve come to see you because I’m a detective, Doctor Sutton.”

  He pushed himself back into his chair until he was almost lost in it. “A detective? Whatever do you want to see me about?”

  “One of your patients.”

  He waved a hand at me. “That’s out. Doctors do not discuss their patients!”

  “He’s not a patient of yours anymore.”

  “It does not matter.”

  “Not even if he’s a dead patient?”

  He stood up, but so did I. I walked quickly to his side and put a dose of molasses into my voice.

  “The patient I’m interested in mentioned you as his doctor. I assumed from this that you had treated him for some time. It’s important for me to know something more about him.”

  He continued to wave his hand at my dialogue. “I am a specialist!” he snapped. “Most of my cases are simply one visit people. I’m not in the habit of revealing facts about my patients. I’m also not in the habit of discussing medicine with detectives. I must ask you to leave.”

  I fingered my hat. “Are you in the habit of going down to Police Headquarters for questioning, Doctor Sutton?”

  He sat down again, suddenly. “Police Headquarters?”

  “It could be.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “You will, once they get you downtown.”

  “Ridiculous!” he rallied. “There is no reason for my going downtown! No reason whatsoever!”

  “I’ve got a reason.”

  “Then you must tell it to the police, my good man.”

  “A good idea,” I said. I picked up my hat and started for the door.

  He stopped me before I had made it.

  He said, “Just one moment, please.”

  When I turned around he was standing before his desk, facing me.

  Out of his cavernous chair, Doctor Sutton was a middle-sized man, but powerfully built. He had taken off his horn-rimmed glasses and now his eyes were small and weak.

  “You must forgive me for my rudeness. I’m unused to this sort of thing, you know.” He laughed nervously. “My last visit with the police happened many years ago. In my field one is not usually faced with such problems.”

  When I came into range he motioned me to a chair and sat down alongside me, tapping his palm with his glasses and awaiting my next question. I didn’t give it to him. I let him break the silence.

  “Which one of my patients are you talking about?”

  “Hiram Goodson.”

  He sat back and thought about it for a moment. He put on his glasses and tongued his upper lip and looked very, very sad.

  “A most interesting case. I suppose you know that he was dead before he got here?”

  “So I read. What killed him?”

  “Hypertension. Mr. Goodson died of a cerebral hemorrhage.”

  “You got that from the police? From an autopsy?”

  “But of course. Although I suspected the cause of his death immediately. I had been treating him for hypertension for a long time.”

  “How long?”

  “About ten months. Almost a year.”

  “Regularly?”

  He let his shoulders sag and sighed his answer. “As regularly as I would expect from a man of his type.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Simply that Goodson was the sort of man who enjoyed living. He would therefore only visit his doctor when his illness made itself manifest with an extreme symptom. And even then he came here unworried. He seemed more annoyed with himself than worried.”

  “An extreme symptom? Would that mean that Goodson came to you when he had fainting spells?”

  He nodded sagely. He sat there nodding and playing with his fingers until he had made up his mind about something. Then he got up and crossed the room to the book-lined walls. He bent to a cupboard and I saw him thumbing through another file of index cards. He found two cards and then returned.

  He studied the cards and then held them up.

  “Goodson’s case fascinated me, for many reasons. Let me explain. On this card I have a record of his symptoms of hypertension, a serious disease in a man of his size and his habits.” He held up the other card. “Here, however, I have another record, a record that confuses me. It seems that Goodson suffered from more than one complaint. The first—the complaint of hypertension—is a drawn-out affair. The second complaint is altogether different. It is something that Goodson never knew existed.”

  “What was the second business?”

  “Anemia.”

  “That’s the blood-cell stuff, isn’t it?”

  He smiled weakly. “So it is.”

  “How long did he suffer from anemia?”

  “So far as I can tell, Goodson was a victim of that malady only recently. It all came to light suddenly, after I detected a few of the symptoms of anemia. At that point I took a blood test and discovered that his count was off.”

  “How long ago did this happen?”

  “Only a day or so ago.”

  “It had hit him suddenly?”

  “Inexplicably.”

  “And after that, there was no checking it?”

  “I couldn’t be sure. Goodson’s case amazed me. He died before I could complete my diagnosis, actually. Anemia must be charted. I didn’t have a chance to finish with Goodson, because he died from hypertension before the chart could be completed.” He wrinkled his broad brow and worried himself for the next speech. “You might say that I was suspicious of Goodson’s symptoms. That’s all.”

  “Suspicious of what?”

  “The cause,” he said.

  “You suspected another doctor?”

  He looked at me with a long, professional stare. “I might have.”

  “He would have died from the anemia if the hypertension hadn’t hit him first?”

  “I’m pretty sure of it.”

  “How soon would he have died?”

  “Very quickly, at the incredible rate his blood was changing. I would say that Goodson might have died within the month. Perhaps sooner.” He tapped his palm with his eye glasses. “It was an amazing attack. It is very difficult to translate a doctor’s amazement to a layman. It is more difficult to handle a patient when such symptoms become known. Yet—I couldn’t do anything for Goodson. I couldn’t be sure. I didn’t want to frighten the man. I thought of having him hospitalized, so that his blood could be accurately charted. But Goodson was not the type of man to be easily bedded down. He was a big man—a strong man, and very stubborn. He was the type of patient who would refuse to consider himself seriously sick.” He lifted Goodson’s cards again and stared at them glumly. “Although I don’t know that hospitalization would have saved him.”

  The nurse tapped gently at the door and then the door opened and she smiled and stood there.

  The doctor said: “A few more minutes, Miss Farrell.”

  When she had closed the door I thanked him for his consideration.

  “I’ve only a few more questions, Doctor Sutton. Do you mind?”

  He didn’t mind.

  I said, “What caused the anemia?”

  “I couldn’t find out. Such attacks are comparatively rare. I asked Goodson the routine questions—general health, symptoms, exposure to X-ray, radium—”

  “Radium?”

  “Indeed, yes. The disease has been known to stem directly from overexposure to X-ray and radium. In both cases it happens accidentally, brought on by prolonged treatment or bad equipment in the doctor’s office.”

  “How can you discover the effects?”

  He shook his head grimly. “There is sometimes a type of burn on the flesh. A discoloration. A minor sunburn, in effect.”

  “You found this on Goodson?”

  “No, I did not. Goodson’s illness only became traceable after I took the blood test. I knew at once that he was a doomed man.”

  “The rays destroy through anemia? Beyond any relief?”

  “He was doomed,” said Doctor Sutton. “A doomed man.”

  I pumped his hand and thanked him again and he escorted me to the door and through the door along the corridor to the reception room.

  Here he paused. “I’ve been a bit stupid, I suppose, not to have asked you how it was that you came to me. What I mean is that I’m confused by your questions about Goodson. He died, I’m sure, from a cerebral hemorrhage—from an attack brought about by his hypertension. He would have died—a bit later—from anemia. But why do you come to me? It isn’t often that one finds a detective in a doctor’s office. What kind of a case brought you here?”

  “Murder.”

  He took a step away from me. “Do you mean that Goodson was involved in a murder case?”

  “Better than that, Doctor Sutton. I believe Goodson himself was murdered.”

  He opened the reception room door for me and when I passed the two women on the way out he was still standing at the door and his glasses were off again and his face was almost as pale as the white jacket he wore.

  CHAPTER 23

  At Mrs. Dunwoodie’s, Max awaited me impatiently. He was a caricature of a nervous wreck. He sat in the dim corner of the living room, his coat off and an ashtray full of dead cigarettes at his elbow.

  When I entered he came alive and crossed the room. In the lamplight his face was drawn and the bags under his eyes were etched in a gray-purple. He fumbled another cigarette into his mouth and said: “Where in hell have you been? This place’s been jumping. Grand Central Station is a backhouse in Albany compared to this joint!”

  I said, “Relax, Max. One thing at a time. How did you do?”

  He came over to me at the table near the bay window and eased himself into a chair. “I drew a blank.”

  “At the Butler Trading Company?”

  The face he made was the face of nausea. “The Butler Trading Company is nothing at all that I can figure.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  “Nothing but air.” He ran one hand through his hair nervously. “It’s a dead-end. I went down to the office of this Butler Trading Company first. It was after three o’clock when I got there. The door was locked. I knocked. I kept knocking, but there was no answer from inside. I stood around in the hall, waiting, but nobody came. So I tried to play it smart. I went down to the lobby and talked with the super, a big dumb gorilla with a face full of garlic and nothing upstairs. He didn’t know a thing about the Butler Trading Company. He told me to see the real estate people—the outfit that rents the space in the building. So, naturally, I went back upstairs and waited some more.

  “After a while I got tired of waiting and pulled out my keys,” Max continued. “It was an easy in, because the office building is pretty crummy—you know, the old-fashioned kind, with a small hall and just four doors on the floor. I waited until after five in the men’s room. Then I came out and used my keys. I made it on the fifth key. The place was as empty as my head.”

  I stopped him there. “No furniture?”

  “Plenty of furniture, but no paper. The place was loused up, but bad. Somebody had gotten out of that office fast. They left only the desks and chairs and the filing cabinets—three of them, but all empty. It was getting dark and I was afraid to throw on any of the lights. I worked the place through, I went over it room by room. It was a total loss. I got nothing but dirty hands up there.”

  I said: “That might not mean anything. We may be able to check it later and find something.”

  “Don’t get humorous. I know that kind of dump like I know my own name. It was a front. What happens when you check a front? Nothing happens. You get nothing down at City Hall, because they never registered the company name down there. You get less from the people in the building because people who work a front never get friendly with anybody. You follow your leads and wind up with ulcers, galloping ulcers, like I did.” He put out his cigarette in a frenzy. “But all this Butler Trading Company is nothing. Let me tell you about what’s been cooking right here—”

  “Not yet, Max. You followed through? You went down to the place near the waterfront?”

  He eyed me with disdain. “Of course I did. What I said about the uptown office of the Butler Trading outfit goes double for the cesspool near the docks. It was the same deal, but the downtown branch is dirtier.”

  “I thought it was a warehouse?”

  “So did I. But a warehouse can also be an empty warehouse, like this one was. Sure, there was a small office in the front, big enough and smelly enough for a family of midget rats. The door was easy. Inside I gave it plenty of time and found plenty of nothing.”

  “Phone?”

  “No phone.”

  “But there was a phone uptown?”

  Max nodded. “That won’t do us any good. The telephone company don’t operate like the FBI. I tell you the Butler lead is as dead as Goodson.”

  I said: “The Goodson lead isn’t as dead as his fat head. And when you mentioned the FBI you weren’t talking through your ears. You know Fredericks?”

  “Sam Fredericks, the federal dick?”

  “The same. Give him the lead. Give him the whole background of the Butler Trading Company.”

  Max stared at me with as much incredulity as he could muster. “Are you kidding? What do I tell Fredericks?”

  “Use your imagination. Give him anything that will tease him. Tell him you got a lead to the Butler Trading Company.”

  “What kind of a lead?”

  “Anything that will interest a Federal man. Dope, maybe. Or smuggling. It isn’t important what you give him, so long as you sell him. Don’t you see what Fredericks can do for us?”

  “I forgot my glasses.”

  “The Federal boys will smell out any angles we need, Max. Just give them their head and they’ll go to town on the thing, ferret what we need and then maybe we can squeeze a crumb of help out of Fredericks later.”

  “When do I do this?”

  “First thing tomorrow.”

  Max got up and walked away from the table. “Now will you listen to me, maybe? What happened right here is much hotter than Abe Mann or the Butler Trading Company. What happened here—”

  “Give it to me.”

  “Get up,” Max said. “Get up and take it.”

  I got up. He led me upstairs to my room. He opened the door and waved me inside. He said, “How do you like these apples?”

  I stood there and laughed. My room was upchucked. My bed was in a state of upheaval that bordered on the lunatic. The sheets were wound in the blankets and the blankets were all over the floor. The mattress lay half off the springs. One pillow had been uncovered down to the feathers. There was a slit in the pillow case and the filling had been pulled out to festoon the red carpet with wisps of down.

  My two valises were emptied of all the odds and ends I had not bothered to put away, a small pad of notes, two tubes of shaving cream, an old address book, a magazine and many handkerchiefs. The dresser drawers hung open. The seat cushion from my reading chair lay under the bed and even that had been slit and prodded by some anxious hand.

  I walked among the debris, while Max stood in the door scowling at my discomfort.

  I said, “A pretty good job.”

  “Pretty good?” he snorted. “I’d call it perfect.”

  “Where’s Mrs. Dunwoodie?”

  “Probably at the movies. I walked in here a half hour before you got back. I figured you were in, maybe. I figured wrong. Somebody knows how this dump operates, he had to know. He must have watched the routine in this place and walked in at just the right time for a job like this. He wouldn’t have to be too smart. Mrs. Dunwoodie goes out almost every night. So do the others.”

  The front door opened and somebody came in. The somebody was Mrs. Dunwoodie. We heard her shout from the downstairs hall. “Is that you, Maxie, dear?”

  “Maxie dear is up here, Ella,” said Max, straining for an imitation of her voice. “Maxie dear wants Ella to come up here.”

  She giggled and skipped up the stairs. Max ushered her into my room and stood back to enjoy her gasp of horror. She held her little hand to her mouth and chewed the orange ends of her nails.

  I said: “Don’t be alarmed, Mrs. Dunwoodie. This is all to the good. When the opposition resorts to this sort of horseplay, it means we’ve passed third base and are ready to slide for home.”

  “I don’t understand,” she whispered. “Who could have done this? Do you think it might have been the maid? Who else? Isn’t this simply awful?”

  “It wasn’t the maid,” Max growled.

  She stared at him, round-eyed. “It wasn’t the maid?”

  I said, “Sit down, Mrs. Dunwoodie, and let’s try to think this thing through.”

  She looked at the bed and stepped back. “Then let’s go downstairs. Do you mind? This room just terrifies me.”

  We went downstairs and sat her on the sofa. I gave her a cigarette and Max gave her a drink.

  I said: “It wasn’t your maid, Mrs. Dunwoodie. All of it was planned on the outside, unless one of your boarders went berserk, suddenly.”

  She assured me that her boarders, all five of them, were respectable people with good jobs who paid their rent regularly and were beyond suspicion.

  Max winked at me slyly. “How about the outside, Ella? You been making any new friends recently? Any boy friends?”

  She pushed him playfully.

  I said, “A good question, Max, if you make it a general question.”

  Mrs. Dunwoodie asked, “What does that mean?”

  “It means this: you might have met somebody recently. If this somebody wanted to make a play for my bedroom, it would be easy to set up his working hours. It would be easy, too, even if the stranger didn’t meet you and talk to you. He might have observed you and learned the pattern of your routine.”

  She shook her head slowly and blushed a bit. “But I didn’t meet anybody. Honest I didn’t, Maxie.”

 

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