Dr. Sedler pulled a wallet from his pocket. “I’m hoping we can get some kind of a settlement so we can put him in a hospital where he can have the right kind of attention. Here’s some money that’ll help carry you over, Fred. Make it last as long as you possibly can. And, above all, don’t let Bill think his case is hopeless. We’ll go out through your door, Fred.”
“Thanks for the dough, Doc. Gee, I hate to take it from you, because I know all you’re doing to help Bill. And, after all, it ain’t any funeral of yours. But it’s just one of those things that can’t be helped. I’ve been buying the eats for both of us, and Bill can’t seem to get no nourishment out of slum any more. He has to have real chow — steaks and that stuff.”
Dr. Sedler placed a sympathetic hand on Stevens’s shoulder. “I know, Fred,” he said, “I know. We’ll just have to be patient and put up with it a little while longer. I don’t think it’s going to be very much longer. And remember he needs nourishing food.”
“Okay, Doc, anything you say.”
Dr. Sedler caught Terry Clane’s eye, nodded and said, “Well, we’ll be getting on. I’ve got a couple of calls to make, and it’s getting late.”
Stevens was folding the bills Dr. Sedler had given him, as the Doctor opened the corridor door and, followed by Terry, walked down the long corridor, where the threadbare strip of carpet was so thin that the boards beneath echoed to the pound of their feet. Dr. Sedler said nothing until Terry was once more seated beside him in the automobile. Then he said, “That, my dear young man, is the effect of a moment’s careless driving on your part. That’s what comes of starting out with one cocktail too many and that pleasant feeling of well-being which comes with a little too much alcohol.”
Terry looked thoughtful.
“I’m not going to say a word,” Dr. Sedler told him. “I’m not going to try to preach. I’m not going to try to find out who you are. I’m going to drop you at any place you say, and leave the matter entirely to your own conscience. Whenever you get ready to get in touch with me again, you may do so. On the other hand, young man, I’m going to warn you that the police are moving heaven and earth investigating this case. Once they’ve located you, it’ll be too late for you to make any financial adjustments in the hope of securing a lighter punishment. Every day that you allow this man to suffer without doing what you can to compensate him for your criminal carelessness is going to make your ultimate punishment that much more severe. Prompt action might accomplish something. There are a couple of European surgeons who have evolved a new operating technique which might effect results.”
“Look here,” Terry said contritely, “suppose I make a cash settlement. Would you be willing to help me cover up with the police?”
“Certainly not. I wouldn’t stultify my profession by compounding a felony. I might be willing to remain strictly neutral.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I wouldn’t say anything to the police about your visit. In fact, I’d consider the entire matter as between us, a professional confidence. In other words, your connexion with it would be a closed chapter so far as I was concerned. That’s the most I could do.”
“Thanks,” Terry said. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll get out here at the boulevard.”
Dr. Sedler promptly swung his car into the curb.
“I’m leaving you,” he said, as he reached across and opened the door, “to debate the matter with your own conscience. In the meantime, good night.”
As Terry reached the curb and closed the door of the car, Dr. Sedler, without once looking back, slammed the car into gear and shot out into traffic. Terry turned down the boulevard for a block, caught a cruising cab, and, four and a half minutes later, was climbing the creaking stairs of the lodging-house and pounding his way down the thinly carpeted corridor. He knocked twice. Then, after a moment, twice more. The thin, toneless voice said, “Come in, the door’s unlocked.”
Terry opened the door.
The emaciated individual, with his head clamped firmly in the steel brace, was propped up in bed. Fred Stevens, seated in the straight-backed chair, tilted against the wall, his heels hooked over the rungs, looked up from a movie magazine and temporarily ceased chewing gum.
“Hello,” Stevens said. “You’re back. What do you want? Where’s Doc?”
“Yes,” Clane remarked, seating himself on the foot of the bed, “I’m back. Doc’s gone back to his surgery for a while. We can just leave him out of it. I wanted to talk with you, Bill.”
Stevens let the front legs of the chair drop to the floor. His jaw came forward at a slowly belligerent angle. “Say,” he asked, “what’s the idea?”
Clane said casually, “Have you boys read about Mandra?”
Stevens’s eyes, nervous, glittering, apprehensive, shifted to the eyes of the emaciated man on the bed, and held them for a second or two. For a moment the silence in the room was intense. Then it was the man on the bed who said, in his thin, quavering voice, “I’ll do the talking, Fred. Who’s Mandra?”
“A bail-bond broker,” Terry said.
“I don’t know him. Am I supposed to have read about him?”
Fred Stevens got to his feet and took a stealthy, stalking step towards Terry Clane.
Terry caught Fred Stevens’s restless eyes and said, “Hold it, Fred.”
The man on the bed said in that same quavering tone, “I’ll handle this, Fred. Sit down.”
Stevens stood poised for a moment on the balls of his feet, then went back to his chair and resumed the nervous, rapid chewing of his gum.
“What about Mandra?” Shield asked in the querulous voice of an invalid.
“Bumped off,” Terry said.
“Want us to bust out crying?” Stevens asked.
“Shut up, Fred,” Bill said. “This is my meat.”
“Crying wouldn’t be such a bad idea, at that,” Terry said. “If a man bumped off, owing me a lot of money I couldn’t collect, I’d shed a few tears myself.”
Shield laughed bitterly and said, “Mandra was a millionaire. If he owed anybody money it wouldn’t be such a hard job to collect.” He moved his white, wasted hand in a sweeping gesture, which included the stained furniture, the wavy mirror, the spotted paper on the wall, the thin, cold carpet. “Does that look like a millionaire owed me money?”
Terry said calmly, “I don’t know how much he was paying you, but it should have been at least half. You were taking all the risk. And half of twenty thousand is ten thousand bucks. And that’s only one payment. I think there were a couple of others.”
Terry watched the pale, expressionless eyes of Bill Shield. Behind him, he could hear the moistly, snapping sound of gum-chewing increase in nervous tempo. Shield said, “Just who are you?”
“The name’s Clane.”
“A detective?”
“No.”
“Reporter?”
“No.”
“Lawyer?”
“No.”
“What then?”
“A business man.”
“You ain’t talking business.”
“I could talk business if I had the proper encouragement,” Clane said. “You’ve got some frozen investments with Mandra. If you try to collect, you’ll be thrown in jail, charged with conspiracy, using the mails to defraud, and a lot of that stuff.”
Fred Stevens ventured a comment, “You said something about twenty thousand...”
“Shut up, Fred,” Shield interrupted, “and stay shut up. We don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Clane.”
“I’ll cite just one case,” Terry said. “Take that Renton woman, for instance. Out of the twenty thousand she paid Mandra for a settlement, you should have got at least ten. She paid the money last week. I know of another that paid fifteen thousand.”