Harry Brown was silent again. Then he mumbled, “That woman with the bullet wound I treated. Who was she, a client?”
“Good heavens, no!” Gresham said; he actually sounded shocked. “We don’t have that kind of client, Harry. She’s an employee. Sometimes there’s violence in our ranks, no matter how careful we are. As I said, it doesn’t happen often. When it does, we take extraordinary measures to keep it within the family, so to speak.”
“And,” asked Harry dryly, “if the little family misunderstanding happens to wind up in a murder, Gresham? What’s your family doctor expected to do with the corpse — grind it up for hamburger?”
“Harry,” said the millionaire in a pained voice. “In the unfortunate event that an individual dies in one of these episodes, we take him off your hands. You have nothing to do with — ah — disposal. Actually, it’s happened only half a dozen times in the last twenty, twenty-five years — and in three different cities, at that. Don’t worry about things of that sort. We have resources and connections that would astonish you. Anything else?”
“Yes,” Harry Brown said grimly. “The matter of—”
“Oh, excuse me,” Gresham said. “I almost forgot your retainer.” He took a check from his desk drawer and reached over to lay it softly before Harry. “For a year in advance, Harry. Twenty-five thousand dollars.”
Dr. Harrison Brown stared down at it. He grew very pale. He did not touch the check.
“And you’ll earn more, Doctor. I paid you five hundred dollars when you treated the lady with the bullet nick. That was chicken feed — I didn’t want to startle you. Hereafter, on the rare occasion when you’ll have to treat one of our special patients, you’ll receive a fee of five thousand dollars per patient. Such fees will be in addition to your yearly retainer. And now, what were you going to ask me?”
Harry thought bitterly, You clever bastard. He looked up from the check and said, “Lynne Maxwell. I want an explanation.”
“Oh! Yes, of course, Harry,” said Kurt Gresham, and his round mouth flattened sadly. “Most, most unfortunate thing. I won’t conceal it from you. She was a client. The first case of its kind we’ve ever had. She tried to commit suicide by taking a deliberate overdose. And then, as often happens, regretted it. She phoned the manager of the club where she always made the pickup — and, of course, under the unusual circumstances, he quickly got word to me. I got a couple of my security people to drive over to her apartment. They found her-dead.”
“So you had them plant her body in my place, Gresham,” Harry said wearily.
“I’m so sorry, Harry.” The colorless eyes remained round and without guile. “But I did feel I had to impress you with our — ah — resources. I wanted you to realize that we can go through locked doors and perform miracles with dead bodies — depositing them, for example, where they don’t belong.”
“In other words, I’d better accept your proposal, or you’ll frame me for something nice and ripe.”
“Harry, did I say anything like that? Or imply it? It was simply a demonstration, preliminary to this talk.”
Dr. Harrison Brown rose, picked up the check for twenty-five thousand dollars, stored it in his wallet and put his wallet away. He left Gresham smiling.
Outside, in the warm Fifth Avenue sunshine, Dr. Brown shivered. It was not from fear. It was from self-disgust. He had simply been unable to resist the money.
Four
In time, Dr. Harrison Brown became aware of the compassion of Lieutenant Galivan, or of what he believed to be his compassion. This belief in Galivan’s compassion did not spring from any overt act on the lieutenant’s part; to the contrary. For four weeks and a fraction thereof, nothing appeared in the newspapers about Lynne Maxwell.
To this absence of news about the dead girl Dr. Brown gave much thought. The corpse of a Greenwich Village artist found in an apartment where she did not belong would be sensational news anywhere. Then why wasn’t there one word about it in the papers? Obviously because Galivan had sat on the story. The lieutenant was wise and experienced; the lieutenant was compassionate. God bless the lieutenant, said the doctor silently. He would never again have to hear the name Lynne Maxwell.
But he did hear it again, four weeks and a fraction after the event, on a Sunday night following an afternoon of golf at Taugus in Connecticut.
The Greshams, members of the Taugus Country Club, had put him up for membership and he had been accepted: he could now afford it. He played golf on most Sunday afternoons, and this Sunday afternoon the fourth player was to be Dr. Alfred McGee Stone, another member of the club.
“Stone? I don’t know him,” Harry said.
“He’s dying to meet you,” Kurt Gresham said.
“Why?”
Tony Mitchell said, “Maybe he thinks you’re grist for his mill.”
“What’s his mill?”
“He’s director of the Taugus Institute.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s charity,” Karen Gresham said.
Tony Mitchell said, “Maybe he’s heard of you, Harry. Wants to pluck you from the ranks and institutionalize you.”
“Nonsense,” Karen Gresham said. “These jokers are giving you the business, Harry.”
“No, really,” Kurt Gresham said. “Dr. Stone’s been asking about Harry ever since I mentioned his name.”
Dr. Alfred McGee Stone was tall, wire-thin and bald, with a good sunburn, wolfish teeth, an Arab’s nose and rimless glasses which kept slipping down his beak. He acknowledged his introduction to Harry heartily: his clasp was powerful and a little impatient. The rest had been golf. Dr. Stone played a whale of a game, all in silence.
But at the bar in the clubhouse afterward, they had been alone for a while and Stone said, “Harrison Brown. I’ve heard about you.”
Harry squinted. “From whom?”
“Dr. Peter Alexander Gross. The astonishing Pete Gross. I understand you were one of his wonder kids.”
“Dr. Peter Gross! How is he?”
“As always. Indestructible.”
Dr. Peter Alexander Gross had been his professor of surgery, one of those legendary teachers who inspire worship. Harry had never forgotten their many wonderful nights of talk.
“I love that man,” Harry said simply.
“He thinks a lot of you, Brown.”
“That’s very kind of him.” I wonder, he thought, what Dr. Peter Alexander Gross would think of his wünderkind now... Harry said abruptly, “What’s this all about, Dr. Stone?”
Stone used a bony middle finger to push his glasses up on his bridgeless nose. “Dr. Gross and I have been discussing you...” But just then Kurt Gresham, showered, shaved and pinkly cherubic, came ambling toward them. “Look,” the physician said. “We need a talk, a long talk, and this is neither the time nor the place. I come into New York every Tuesday. May I drop in on you?”
“Of course, Doctor.”
“This Tuesday?”
“Certainly.”
“One o’clock all right? At your office?”
“One o’clock will be fine.”
Then Kurt Gresham was upon them. “Tony and Karen are outside on the patio. Let’s join them, gentlemen.”
“Why wasn’t Mr. Mitchell your fourth, Kurt?” Dr. Stone asked.
“Tony doesn’t play golf, Doctor.”
“Then why is he here?” Dr. Stone seemed puzzled.
“He likes my wife,” chuckled the millionaire, “among other females. And he likes my money, and he and Harry are old friends. Those are three pretty good reasons on a beautiful day, even if he doesn’t like golf. Oh, there they are...”