Стюарт Стерлинг - The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories

“So that’s how it was worked,” he murmured. “Took the sign down temporarily and let him see a glimmer of light coming from inside. Probably the woman who put in the call met him outside on the street somewhere and steered him in, to distract his attention. He needed patients too bad, poor devil, to turn down anything that came his way. Someone must have been waiting for him right behind the door, didn’t even let him get down two steps inside the house. Took his car and ditched it somewhere afterwards.”

He went inside again, stood looking down the beam of his light at what had been Dr. Bradley Meredith. “Somebody hasn’t been so clever about this,” he said aloud. “Planting conviction where there wasn’t even suspicion before.”

He was shown into Swanson’s cell at the unholy hour of three that same night, or the following morning rather. Swanson was a huddled cylinder, asleep under a gray blanket on the iron cot that was let down broadside from the wall like a slab on chains. “I’ll call you back when I’m ready to go,” he said, to get rid of the guard.

The reclosing of the cell gate partly roused the sleeper. He stirred; then as he made out the detective’s outline against the dim corridor-light outside the bars, he shot upright on his shelf. “Who is it?” he gasped frightenedly.

“Me,” said the dick. “I want to talk to you. Keep your voice down. Here’s something to smoke. Now, are you awake?”

Swanson swung his legs down to the floor, crouched low over his own knees. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“If you’re not, here’s something that ought to do it. Your friend, Doc Meredith, was murdered early last evening.”

Swanson jolted ruler-straight, then buckled over again, held his head. “Oh, now I am hooked!” he groaned. “First my wife, now the doctor. They were the only two who could have proved — Now there’s no one who’ll believe me! I’ll never get out of it now; I’m finished!”

“All right, quit wailing through your adenoids,” Butler told him impatiently. “You’re a lot better off than you were while Meredith was still alive.”

Swanson blinked at him stupidly in the cell twilight. “How do you mean, how could I be?”

“What his murder has managed to do is start me to thinking there may be something to your story after all. It looks too much as though someone didn’t want anyone to be able to clear you, now that you’re conveniently under indictment and the wheels have something to feed on. What happened to Meredith may just be a coincidence. The fact remains that he was lured out on a fake call, that robbery wasn’t the motive, and that he had no personal enemies of his own; the way he never pressed his patients to pay their bills is the best guarantee of that.

“Add to this the fact that his name was never spoken by you until this afternoon, to my knowledge; that it was mentioned to only one person — Ranger’s widow — and that his murder followed within a few hours, and the coincidence becomes a little too wobbly for my liking.

“You stuck your neck out,” the dick went on, “and you’re not going to be allowed to pull it in again, even if a second or third murder has to be piled on top of the original one. That’s one line of reasoning we could take — just to see where it gets us.” He stopped, thought it over. “Yeah, that’s our play: A second or third murder. Given the same circumstances, if it comes through again, it’s our pay-off.”

He took a quick turn around the cell. “That’s what I looked you up at this ungodly hour for. Isn’t there someone else who could go to bat for you like Meredith could have if he had stayed alive enough?”

“No, no one,” said Swanson mournfully. “Only the doc was up there that Wednesday night with us, and he’s dead now.”

Butler didn’t seem to be listening. “How about a guy named—” He stroked his chin thoughtfully as he went along. “Lindquist, let’s say.”

“But I don’t know anyone named Lindquist; I never did!” exclaimed Swanson in surprise.

“Oh, yes, you do!” he purred with slow emphasis. “Now get this and see that you hang onto it tight; it’s your only chance to keep from being railroaded into the hot seat or a bughouse.

“Your last possible remaining alibi is a guy named Lindquist, a doctor like the other one was. Dr. Carl Lindquist, we’ll call him. He also happens to be an old friend of yours as well; Swedish ancestry like you, and all that.

“Now Meredith called him in that Wednesday night of the murder in consultation, at you and your wife’s urgent request, because you wanted a second opinion on your boy. You’re sure he’ll remember the date, be able to vouch for you. He hasn’t come forward until now because, you understand, he moved his practice out to St. Paul soon afterwards, probably hasn’t heard about the case. Does all his reading in Swedish-language papers. You’re sure a wire from you will bring him back again, though.

“Now you tell all this to one of the other men in the department; any of ’em, it don’t matter which. I’ll arrange it so that you’re given a chance to do your pleading in that same office in the next building where you were the last time.

“Plead to be allowed to send this wire for help. Here’s what this Dr. Lindquist looks like: He’s an elderly guy, sort of a country fogey, doesn’t know his way around so good. Got a big corporation and dresses sloppy in clothes that fit him like a tent. Wears thick-lensed glasses and a little white goatee on the end of his chin. Be sure to tell whichever dick you’re talking to all that, whether he asks you or not.

“Now, have you got all that? I hope you have for your own sake, because you won’t be seeing me around much from now on.”

“Would you mind waiting in here a few moments?” the detective who had ushered her in asked Mrs. Ranger politely. “They’ll be ready for you in the D.A.’s office in just a minute or two.” He drew out a chair for her.

She sat down in it with a poor grace. “You know, this is really becoming a nuisance. I don’t mind cooperating all I can, but this is the third time I’ve been sent for by you people.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Ranger,” the detective said deferentially. “I’m sure this is the last time you’ll be troubled, before the case goes to court.” He moved toward the door. “You don’t mind if I ask you not to touch that little lever there on the table in front of you while you’re in here — it’s a dictaphone leading into the next room, where suspects are sometimes interviewed. I’m not supposed to bring anyone in here, but seeing it’s you, Mrs. Ranger...”

She smiled faintly, mollified. He closed the door discreetly after him and she could hear his heavy tread recede down the corridor outside.

She reached out and snapped the lever defiantly, as if to say: “Just for that, I will!” A faint buzzing, like a fly trapped in a bottle, sounded. She picked up the head-set and gingerly brought it around to the back of her head, careful not to disturb her modish hat.

A gruff voice said in her ears: “What do you want now, Swanson? You have been beefin’ all week long to be let in here to talk to me. All right, out with it.”

Mrs. Ranger changed her original intention of immediately discarding the head-set; brought it in closer around the base of her skull.

“There is still one person who can tell you I was in my own flat that Wednesday night Ranger was killed. Please let me get in touch with him, that’s all I ask you!”

“Yeah? Who is he?”

“He’s an old friend of my wife and mine, an old Swedish doctor named Carl Lindquist. He was up there that night; we asked Dr. Meredith to call him in in consultation, just to make sure there was no mistake about the kid’s condition. We’ve known Lindquist so long, we knew if he told us, it must be true.”