“But why, Kurt? Because I tried to kill you?” He was surprised at the clarity in his head, the lack of fear in his body.
“Because you failed to kill me,” said the old man. “You chickened out, Harry. I can’t have a weak sister working for me. And you know too much to be allowed to live. Especially now that you’ve witnessed me commit two murders with my own hands.”
Harry measured the distance between them. He had played football in college and he knew how far he could spring for a tackle. He tensed his leg and thigh muscles.
And now, although Kurt Gresham was smiling with his little womanish mouth, his colorless eyes flashed the glare of impersonal ferocity that Harry had never seen except in the eyes of wild animals.
“That’s the way it has to be, Harry. It’s going to be a bitter blow to the old man. Out fishing, the dinghy overturned, the bodies never found, and poor old Kurt Gresham is bereft, in one foul blow of fate, of the three most important people in his life — his wife, his lawyer, his doctor. Goodbye Har—”
He leaped high and out and hard and even as he struck he knew he had no target; he struck nothing; there was no resistance; the bulk was beneath him but it had not collapsed’ as a result of his strike. As he recovered his balance and looked down on Kurt Gresham, he knew that the third death, which had been Kurt Gresham’s dream, would be as unrealized as the dreams of the other two in that silent room.
Gresham’s globe of a face was not pink but yellow-green. His left arm was rigid, clamped in cramp. There were bubbles, at the corners of his mouth. The lips were cyanosed and tight back against the teeth, the mouth a fixed gape. The animal eyes were rolled far up to the lids. Dr. Harrison Brown made the clinical diagnosis automatically: coronary occlusion.
Without conscious thought, in conditioned reflex, Dr. Brown pried open the mouth, depressed the tongue, placed his own mouth on the mouth of Kurt Gresham and breathed into it. He pulled back so that the lungs could express the air he had forced into them, put his mouth back on Gresham’s mouth, blew the air from his lungs into Gresham’s lungs — kept up the prescribed ritual, in, out, breathe, away...
The lips beneath his twitched, grew salty, pulled together, had wetness.
Dr. Brown drew back.
For a moment there was intelligence in the staring pucker of the eyes. The blue upper lip writhed back. Teeth showed in a mockery of a smile.
He slapped the cheeks sharply.
“Kurt,” he said. “Kurt!”
A whisper drowned in phlegm produced a word.
“Human...”
He rubbed the wrists. Rubbed and rubbed.
“Human... funny...” Very faint.
“What? What?”
Now, quite clearly, through the blue lips past the leathery tongue: “Forgive... love... no... fun...”
The eyes rolled up, became slits of white.
The body jerked.
The body was still.
Dr. Brown locked his lips on the lips again, blowing with all his power, but the mouth was stiff, the tongue a nuisance, the lungs empty bags.
Dr. Brown pushed up from his knees, staggered and straightened, went past the two bloody things on the floor to the telephone and dialed police headquarters.
Twenty-Five
Dr. Brown in the blue guest room, well-lighted now, door closed, vis-à-vis elderly Lieutenant Galivan, who looked like his father. Dr. Brown sipping Kurt Gresham’s private-stock cognac, smoking a parade of cigarettes in defiance of the coronary statistics. Telling his story from the beginning.
And Lieutenant Galivan, who looked as if nothing in this world or the next could surprise him, looking surprised.
Somebody knocked on the door and Galivan said patiently, “Come in.” A beef-shouldered man came in. “We’re through, Lieutenant,” he said. “M.E.’s signed the order, the meat wagon’s here. All right to take them down?”
“No,” said Galivan.
“No?” echoed the big detective.
“There are federal angles to this thing, Sergeant.”
“Federal? And here we were, figuring it the usuaclass="underline" old husband, young wife, young lover.”
“Let’s leave it like that for now,” Galivan said in his slow, tired voice. “Remember. For the papers, nothing.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Get rid of the technical people. Everybody. Just you and Jimmy Ryan stay. And keep the meat wagon on tap. But on a side street, off the Avenue.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes. Send Sidney over to get the District Attorney. The D.A.’s an early-to-bedder, but he’ll want to be in on this. Have you ever met Max Crantz, our D.A., Doctor?”
“No,” said the doctor.
“Hell of a nice guy. A straight-shooter. Okay, that’s it, Sergeant.”
The detective went out, closing the door. Galivan sucked on his pipe, looking at Harry through the smoke. “Well, we’ve come a long way from the Lynne Maxwell business, haven’t we? There’s nothing else, is there?”
“I’ve told you everything.”
“You sure got yourself messed up.”
“That, Lieutenant,” said Dr. Brown, “I did indeed.”
Galivan puffed. “Damn this pipe. Oh, that funeral-parlor setup, I’ll put the Yonkers police on that. And San Francisco on Uncle Joe. I think you’ll find others who’ll appreciate the by-products of this thing, too. Like the Federal Bureau. I take it you intend to cooperate?”
“All the way.”
“If there’s anything I can do for you, Doctor, I’ll do it.”
“Thanks, but I’m not looking for any favors, Lieutenant. I got myself into this mess, and I’ll get myself out of it, or pay the price.”
“No favors,” said Galivan. “But to be instrumental in cracking an operation like this narcotics setup — don’t sell yourself short, Doctor. You’re going to have a lot of law-enforcement people grateful to you. Including Max Crantz.”
Galivan’s pipe was making dying sounds. He made a face and got up and went to the extension phone. He dialed the operator and said, “I’d like to talk to Mr. Christopher Hammond, please. At the New York offices of the FBI.”
Twenty-Six
Dr. Harrison Brown at his office on Monday crept around like a zombie. He had hoped to lose himself in work, but it was a slow day: four patients in the early afternoon, two house calls, then nothing. He had read all the morning papers; there had been no word of the three deaths in the Gresham apartment. The FBI and the Narcotics men had sat on the story, hard.
At four o’clock he sent his girl out for the afternoon papers. Now there were headlines. Millionaire industrialist slays wife and lover and dies of heart attack. But there was no mention of narcotics, and there was no mention of Dr. Harrison Brown. There were pictures — of Kurt Gresham, of Karen Gresham, of Tony Mitchell.
At four-thirty his receptionist announced Lieutenant Galivan.
Dr. Harrison Brown leaped on him. “Lieutenant. Here, sit down. Tell me what’s been happening. Nobody’s come near me since that all-night session Friday night with the District Attorney and the Federal people. Not a word in the papers or on radio or TV about me—”
“And there won’t be, either,” said Galivan. He eased his long body into the chair beside Harry’s desk. He looked tired.
“There... won’t be?” Harry sat down suddenly.
“It’s all over, Doctor. Those FBI boys... Lieutenant Galivan shook his head in admiration. “It’s a beautiful thing to watch the way they work in an operation that requires absolute secrecy until the split second they’re ready to spring. On Saturday they and foreign authorities were quietly opening bank vaults on court orders in a dozen and a half cities here and abroad. CIA code specialists were put to work on the records, and by Sunday afternoon the whole Gresham machine was stripped down to its vital parts and each part analyzed — without a single member of the ring knowing what was hanging over their heads. Then — wham! — the strike. All at once. No warning. Timed to the minute. Last night, ten o’clock our time. New York, Washington, Philadelphia, Chicago, Miami, London, Paris, Zurich, Rome, Berlin, Lisbon, Madrid, Belgrade, Athens, Ankara, Cairo, Hong Kong, Tokyo. The Gresham empire. Took thirty-five years to build up, one night to destroy. Thanks to you.”