Warren Murphy: Bottom Line

Ruby gave one last furious jab at the canvas band and felt it separate. She began to raise her right hand to cut away the band on her left wrist, but Dr. Gladstone turned and Ruby dropped her right hand to her side.

Dr. Gladstone, holding the hypodermic in front of her eyes, examining it, walked back toward Ruby.

With her left hand, she felt for the vein on the inside of Ruby's left elbow. She found it and pressed down the surrounding skin with her fingertips to make the vein protrude. She lowered the syringe to it.

"I'm sorry, my dear," she said.

"You sure are," Ruby said. She swung her right hand up from her side, putting as much force into it as she could with her body anchored. The scalpel glinted as it flashed past her eyes and then it bit into the left side of Elena Gladstone's neck and Ruby snapped her wrist on the follow-through as if she were wristing a little pitch shot onto the green.

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The hypodermic fell to the highly-waxed white tile floor. Dr. Gladstone's eyes opened wide as she realized what had happened. A gusher of blood pumped from the side of her slashed throat.

She tried to scream, but all she could produce was a bubbling high-pitched shriek as she fell.

Outside, moving down the steps they had found behind the filing cabinet in Elena Gladstone's office, Remo and Chiun heard the sound.

Remo said, "Hurry, Chiun." He ran down the steps.

Chiun slowed up and smiled. "It is too late, Remo. Ruby does not need us."

Remo didn't hear him. He pushed his way through the heavy metal fire door into the large bright room.

Elena Gladstone lay on the floor, her dead body still pumping blood onto the tiles.

Ruby was using the bloodied scalpel to saw away the band on her left wrist.

She looked up as Remo came through the door. He stood there speechless.

"Remind me never to count on you for anything," Ruby screeched. Remo smiled and took the earplugs from his pocket and put them in his ears.

"Oh, shut up," he said with a smile.

Chiun came up behind him. He saw Ruby strapped to the cot and whispered to Remo:

"If you wish, I will leave and you can take advantage of her while she is a prisoner. But remember, the baby is mine."

"If you think I'm going near a black chick with a knife, you're crazy."

"Will you two stop jawing, and get me out of here? I'm tired of sawing," Ruby hollered.

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CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Dr. Jesse Beers took the telephone call from Hazel, the young receptionist at the Lifeline Laboratory, in his room, two doors away from the master bedroom of Elmer Lippincott Sr. and his young wife, Gloria.

His face turned white as he listened. Then he said, "All right, Hazel. Just close up the lab. Lock everything up. Leave everything where it is." He paused. "Yes, her too. Just you lock up and go home and I'll come up later and take care of everything. No, no, don't call the police. I'll explain it all to you when I come to your house." He forced a smile. "I haven't been to your house for a while, sweetmeat, and I'm about ready."

He waited for the expected words of invitation and when they had come, he said: "Think of me. I'll be with you soon."

He hung up the telephone and walked down to the master bedroom.

Gloria Lippincott was alone in the room. Her belly swelling gently, she sat in front of the makeup dresser, applying mascara to her eyes.

"Elena's dead," Beers said as he closed the door behind

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Gloria slowly put down the mascara tube and turned toward Mm.

"What happened?"

"I don't know. Our receptionist found her with her throat cut. She said she saw those two men your husband was with. The old Chink and the skinny dude."

"Goddamit, I guessed they were trouble when Elmer told me about them," Gloria said. "What about the receptionist? Will she talk?"

"No," Beers said. "I told her to lock up and go home and wait for me. She's got the hots for me. She'll wait."

"Doesn't everybody?" asked Gloria.

Jesse Beers grinned. "Present company included."

"Don't flatter yourself," Gloria said. "You're a tool with a tool and don't forget it."

"I know it," Beers said. He sounded deflated.

"And we're both hi this for one thing only. The money. Certainly not because I like ruining my figure and walking around carrying this baby of yours in my belly."

"Who knows?" he said. "You might like it."

Gloria did not answer. She was drumming her fingers on the dressing table.

"All right," she finally said. "We've got to get rid of Douglas. Then you can split."

"What about the old man?" asked Beers.

"He can wait. Maybe later when all this blows over. Hell, he's eighty years old. He might just conk any minute without any help from us."

"I don't like it," Beers said. "Maybe we ought to just call everything off."

"Lover getting cold feet?" Gloria taunted. "Listen,

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we've gone this far and we're not stopping now. I don't think anybody's going to connect Elena's death with Lem and Randall dying, but even suppose they did. You were here when both those twits died. You're just a doctor in residence making sure Elmer Lippincott's baby is born healthy and well."

Jesse Beers pursed his lips as he thought. Then he nodded.

"Where do I find Douglas?" he said.

"That's the beautiful part. He's here. The old man told him he wanted to see him."

"He's not going to tell what he did, is he?" asked Beers.

"No, you don't understand the Lippincotts, Jesse A little guilt goes a long way. So he was feeling guilty last night blaming himself for the two twerps' deaths. But it was all gone by morning. He just wants to talk to Douglas about handling more of the business, now that the brothers are dead."

"All right. How should I do it?"

She mulled a moment, sucking on the tip of her right index finger.

"I'll get Elmer to come up here and when I do you slip downstairs and get rid of the twerp."

Beers nodded.

"Can you make it look like his heart?"

"Sure," Beers said. "I've got medicines that can make anything look like anything."

"Good. Now get out of here and let me finish my eyes. I'll call Elmer up here in ten minutes. Then you can get Douglas in the study. But let me finish my eyes first." She smiled at Beers. "I want Elmer to stay up here with me for a while."

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"Who wouldn't stay at your invitation?" Beers asked.

"Flatterer. Even with this belly you gave me?"

"If it was twice as big."

"Get away now and let me do my thing. Ten minutes, I'll have him here."

Remo drove. Chiun sat in the back seat while Ruby explained to them what she had learned from Dr. Gladstone.

"She was the one that killed the two Lippincotts," she said. "And Zack Meadows before that."

"Who's Zack Meadows?" Remo asked.

"He the detective who wrote the letter to the President about the plot to kill the Lippincotts. She killed him and somebody who tipped Meadows on what she was doing. Then she killed the two brothers."

"And she's dead now," Remo said, "so why are we racing up to the Lippincott estate?"

"Because of something she said," Ruby said.

"What'd she say?" asked Remo.

"Did she tell you what I did with the pencils?" Chiun asked.

"No," said Ruby.

"She seemed very impressed," Chiun said.

"What'd she say?" Remo repeated. . "I asked her why the Lippincotts," Ruby said. "And she said 'we're going to get rid of all of

them'!"

"So what? She's dead," Remo said.

"She said 'we're.' Not her. She's got a partner in

it."

"Or partners," Chiun said. " 'We're' could mean more than one extra person with her."

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"That's right," Ruby said. "She say something else too."

"What's that?" Remo asked.

"She said the Lippincott money would be theirs. I said the heirs might have something to say about that. She said 'they will, they will.' "