Корнелл Вулрич - A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

Steve’s voice broke. “Because I had nothing to do with it, accidentally or otherwise!”

“So you’re willing to have us think you did it purposely, eh? Keenan!” he called out.

We both went in there, Keenan just a step in back of me to guide me.

“There’s no trace of where he kept it hidden, but it’s all over his drill thick as jam,” Keenan’s teammate reported. He detached the apparatus from the tripod it swung on, carefully wrapped it in tissue paper, and put it in his pocket. He turned to Steve.

“I’m going to book you,” he said. “Come on, you’re coming down to Headquarters with me.”

Steve swayed a little, then got a grip on himself. “Am I under arrest?” he faltered.

“Well,” remarked the detective sarcastically, “this is no invitation to a Park Avenue ball.”

“What about this fellow?” Keenan indicated me. “Bring him along too?”

“He might be able to contribute a little something,” was the reply.

So down to Headquarters we went and I lost sight of Steve as soon as we got there. They kept me waiting around for awhile and then questioned me. But I could tell that I wasn’t being held as an accessory. I suppose my puffed-out cheek was more in my favor than everything else put together. Although why a man suffering from toothache would be less likely to be an accessory to murder than anyone else I fail to see. They didn’t even look to see if it was phony; for all they knew I could have had a wad of cotton stuffed in there.

I told them everything there was to tell (they asked me, you bet!) — not even omitting to mention the cigarette I had given the man when we were both sitting in the waiting room. It was only after I’d said this that I realized how bad it sounded for me if they cared to look at it in that way. The cyanide could just as easily have been concealed in that cigarette. Luckily they’d already picked up and examined the butt (he hadn’t had time to smoke more than half of it) and found it to be okay. Who says the innocent don’t run as great a risk as the guilty?

I told them all I could about Steve and, as soon as I was cleared and told I could go home, I embarked on a lengthy plea in his defense, assuring them they were making the biggest mistake of their lives.

“What motive could he possibly have?” I declaimed. “Check up on him, you’ll find he has a home in Forest Hills, a car, a walloping practice, goes to all the first nights at the theatre! What did that jobless Third Avenue slob have that he needed? Why I heard him with my own ears tell the guy not to be in a hurry about paying up! Where’s your motive? They came from two different worlds!”

All I got was the remark, Why didn’t I join the squad and get paid for my trouble, and the suggestion, Why didn’t I go home now?

One of them, Keenan, who turned out to be a rather likable sort after all, took me aside (but toward the door) and explained very patiently as to a ten-year-old child: “There’s only three possibilities in this case, see? Suicide, accidental poisoning, and poisoning on purpose. Now your own friend himself is the one that has blocked up the first two, not us. We were willing to give him every chance, in the beginning. But no, he insists the guy didn’t once lift his hands from under that linen apron to give the stuff to himself — take it out of his pocket and pop it in his mouth, for instance. Standish claims he never even once turned his back on him while he was in the chair, and that the fellow’s hands stayed folded in his lap under the bib the whole time. Says he noticed that because everyone else always grabs the arms of the chair and hangs on. So that’s out.

“And secondly he swears he has never kept any such stuff around the place as cyanide, in any shape or form, so it couldn’t have gotten on the drill by accident. So that’s out too. What have you got left? Poisoning on purpose — which has a one-word name: murder. That’s all today — and be sure you don’t leave town until after the trial, you’ll be needed on the witness stand.”

But I turned and followed him back inside and started all over again. Finally when I saw that it was no use, I tried to go bail for Steve, but they told me I couldn’t spring him until after he’d been indicted.

I spent the rest of the night with a wet handkerchief pasted against my cheek, doing heavy thinking. Every word Steve and the victim had spoken behind the partition passed before me in review. “Where do you live, Amato? Two-twanny Thirr Avenue, mista.” I’d start in from there.

I took an interpreter down there with me, a fellow on my own office staff who knew a little of everything from Eskimo to Greek. I wasn’t taking any chances. Amato himself had been no Lowell Thomas, I could imagine what his family’s English would be like!

There seemed to be dozens of them; they lived in a cold-water flat on the third floor rear. The head of the clan was Amato’s rather stout wife. I concentrated on her; when a fellow has a toothache he’ll usually tell his wife all about it quicker than his aunts or nieces or nephews.

“Ask her where this Dr. Jones lived that sent him to Standish.”

She didn’t know, Amato hadn’t even told her what the man’s name was. Hadn’t they a bill from the man to show me? (I wanted to prove that Amato had been there.) No, no bill, but that didn’t matter because Amato couldn’t read anyway, and even if he had been able to, there was no money to pay it with.

If he couldn’t read, I persisted, how had he known where to find a dentist?

She shrugged. Maybe he was going by and saw the dentist at work through a window.

I went through the entire family, from first to last, and got nowhere. Amato had done plenty of howling and calling on the saints in the depths of the night, and even kept some of the younger children quiet at times by letting them look at his bad tooth, but as for telling them where, when, or by whom it had been treated, it never occurred to him.

So I was not only no further but I had even lost a good deal of confidence. “Docata Jones” began to look pretty much like a myth. Steve hadn’t known him, either. But the man had said Fifty-ninth Street. With all due respect for the dead, I didn’t think Amato had brains enough to make up even that little out of his head. I’d have to try that angle next, and unaided, since Amato’s family had turned out to be a flop.

I tackled the phone book first, hoping for a short cut. Plenty of Joneses, D.D.S., but no one on 59th. Nor even one on 57th, 58th, or 60th, in case Amato was stupid enough not even to know which street he’d been on. The good old-fashioned way was all that was left. At that, there have been dentists before now who couldn’t afford a telephone.

I swallowed a malted milk, tied a double knot in my shoelaces, and started out on foot, westward from the Queensboro Bridge. I went into every lobby, every hallway, every basement; I scanned every sign in every window, every card in every mail box. I consulted every superintendent in every walk-up, every starter in every elevator building, every landlady in every rooming house.

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.