I repeated, no one but Eleanor. And Ashley, of course, had never seen me before, so he didn’t count.
Rothman shook his head, dissatisfied. “Think again. Who did you tell you were coming over here? Who, in Boone?”
“Nobody. That is... nobody...”
“Go on,” he urged curiously. “Except who?”
“The... lady doctor I mentioned. Dr. Saari. You don’t think—? Aw, that’s a crazy notion.”
“How long have you known her?”
He certainly had me there. I said, “Two or three days.” And their silence was eloquent.
Liebscher asked, “Do you know anything about her, chum? Anything that doesn’t jibe?”
Did I know anything about Elizabeth Saari that didn’t jibe? Well, yes. She was waiting for me at the train when it pulled in from Chicago; she knew I had been to Chicago. She had shown more interest in my interest in the Chinese girl than is normally expected from a doctor who helped perform the autopsy.
And Elizabeth Saari had been rather pointed in her suggestion that I stay away from Croyden. And she had had ample opportunity to frisk my office; practically admitted as much. The looked-for “mother” from Chicago hadn’t appeared.
I told them those things. To boost my crumbling defenses, I said, “Maybe the shadow came from Eleanor after all.”
Liebscher said no. “We weren’t followed, chum.” And remembering his eye habit when driving, I had to agree.
“Are you sure Ashley doesn’t know you?”
“We never set eyes on each other before in our lives. And it’s difficult to recognize a voice you’ve heard only over a long distance telephone wire.”
Rothman turned to me. “Horne, if I were you, I’d watch my step. You’re in something and you don’t know who your friends are. I’d be particularly careful about this doctor. I’d watch for any funny moves on her part.”
“She’s turned up once where I hadn’t expected her.”
“I’d see to it that she doesn’t do it again. If she does... well, I’d ask for explanations if I were you. Check up on her, anyway. She new in town?”
“Yeah. Just moved in from Chicago. Took an office across the hall from mine.”
The two detectives stared at each other across my shoulders. They were beginning to feel sorry for my lack of brightness and weren’t too careful in concealing it. Rothman jotted down her name and address on a scratch pad.
“We’ll check on her. All the way back to her school days, if necessary. And you keep your eyes open!”
“She’s a doctor,” Liebscher said idly, “and Leonore was going to have a baby.” He picked up the Croyden telephone book and leafed through it. Finally he said, “No, not here.”
“It occurs to me,” Rothman put in, “that pitting a man against his mistress, lover against lover, over a delicate thing like an unborn baby is a woman’s trick. It’s not something a gambling man would think of.”
“What’s her line of attack?” Liebscher inquired.
I could feel the burn beginning down inside my collar. It must have been higher than my collar. They saw it.
“Don’t answer that one, chum. You don’t have to.”
Rothman asked me, “Does she know about Louise?”
I said yes. Liebscher said, who’s Louise? I told him. Then he said, oh, one of those experiments, huh? Rothman suggested he shut up.
I changed the subject. “Ashley keeps bothering me. I can’t fit him into the picture.”
“Silent partner. Another one.” Rothman finally lit the chewed cigar. “You said he was scared one day and sitting pretty the next. He was scared because he suspected something like that might happen. He was sitting pretty the next day because the gambler assured him everything was taken care of. Say... just who the hell is this gambler, this mutual friend? Don’t you know his name?”
“Yeah; Eleanor told me. Didn’t I mention it? She said he is a Mr. Swisher.”
Liebscher had seated himself in a swivel chair. The chair suddenly went over backwards.
Rothman walked over to me, the cigar working furiously. He put up a brawny hand, index finger outstretched, and jammed it into my chest.
“Look, Horne, get out of this mess while the getting’s good. You’ve got your retainer fee. Now forget the business!”
“Why?” I asked in sweet innocence. “Who’s Swisher?”
Rothman pulled the cigar from his mouth and threw it on the floor. “I’m not kidding, Chuck. Get out of it!”
“But who is he?”
“Tell the dope,” Liebscher advised. “Maybe it’ll scare some sense into his skull.” He turned worriedly to the window to watch the shadow across the street.
Rothman did. Swisher was the man who “owned” Croyden. The upstairs poker rooms, the dice games, the bootleg liquor trade, the numbers and lottery rackets, the pony bookies, certain night clubs, the telegraph tickers direct from all race tracks, and the red light district.
“Yeah, chum, and some other places to boot. He’s probably starting in on Boone, right now. The gambling house first, the girl-houses later, and so on. That license of yours — that’s his warning to you. Keep your nose clean.”
“This town is his, bag and baggage, Home. You can’t buck him. Why, do you know he is the only lad ever to beat the federals?”
“How?”
Rothman shrugged. “Protection upstairs, mostly. And smart business management. It was an income tax rap. When they can’t pin anything else on a rat, they try the income tax approach. Swisher beat it. Now what do you think?”
“I think,” I thought slowly, out loud, “that I had better get to hell back to Boone and wait for another insurance case.”
“Smart boy! I think so, too. And we’re taking you to the station. Come on.”
Before we left the office, Rothman picked up the scratch sheet bearing Elizabeth Saari’s name, studied it a moment, and put a match to it. We watched it burn.
“Don’t want that on me,” he said without explanation.
“How does this Swisher get away with it?” I objected on the way down the stairs. “What holds the organization in one piece, safe from the police in Croyden and elsewhere?”
“Politics,” Rothman grunted. “How the hell do you think one party stayed in office for fifteen years? Ballotbox stuffing. And what is given in exchange for the stuffing? Protection. Some people say he runs the party, instead of the party running him. I dunno. It doesn’t make a lot of difference. He gives them the vote, they give him the city or the state on a platter.”
“I begin to see why I lost my license. And I thought the chief didn’t dare step out of line.”
“Mistake. Nobody’s okay until you look them over.”
“I also begin to see why the Boone police didn’t do everything they should have done about Evans’ death. Do you suppose the whole department...?”
“Maybe,” he grunted, “maybe not. I doubt it. Too many noses in the know isn’t a good policy. One, sometimes two men at the top can handle everything in good order. Watch the chief, don’t trust the mayor. But above all, drop this and stay clear of the matter.”
I would have, too, Louise, if I’d been given time.
The shadow left us at the railroad station. Rothman and Liebscher stayed with me until I climbed the coach steps.
“It looks good, Horne. It looks as though they wanted to see what you were up to, here. Now that you are leaving, they might be satisfied and forget it. And Home, keep clear of that woman doctor.”
My train pulled out.
There were only a few people in the coach. I flipped over the back rest of the seat in front of me and put my feet up on the opposite seat. A several days’ old newspaper was stuck between the seat and the wall. I tore out the crossword puzzle, put it in my pocket, and tried to read the daily short story.