“I know about her,” Haggerty said. “Shiny told me. And maybe you didn’t kill Judd and Schneider. Maybe you did. While I’m finding out, I’m going to book you for larceny, aggravated assault, and obstructing an officer in the performance of his duty.”
“Obstructing, hell.” The handcuffs saved me from another charge of aggravated assault. They were better than a rope, but they pinched my wrists.
I turned to Gordon, who had got out of the car. “For Christ’s sake, tell this – detective to take these handcuffs off me.”
Haggerty burst out, “This isn’t a Federal matter. Damn it–”
“Better take them off,” Gordon said. “Dr. Branch has had a bad night of it, and he needs medical attention. Less than an hour ago, Peter Schneider tried to murder him by hanging.”
“I can’t run the risk of letting him get away again,” Haggerty said.
“Take them off,” Gordon repeated. “You’ll have other chances to display them.”
Haggerty turned a delicate amethystine color but he produced a key-ring and took the handcuffs off my wrists. Encouraged by Gordon’s support, I said, “What time do they serve breakfast at the jail?”
Haggerty threatened me with his nose again. “It’ll pay you to be respectful, professor. You’re going to learn respect for the law.”
Gordon said, “Has the woman been found?”
“No,” said Haggerty. “Every main road is being watched. And we have men at the airport and the station.”
“This man wants to report the theft of his car.” Gordon jerked his thumb at Johnnie, who was still staring at me. “It was evidently taken by Ruth Esch. She also took their clothes.”
Haggerty motioned to Johnnie to get out of the car and said, “License number and description?”
“Just a minute, Sergeant,” Gordon said. “I have to get away.”
“Yeah?”
“Any sign of Peter Schneider?”
“He hasn’t been caught. His car was seen by a gas-station attendant on the other side of Arbana, at least it was a green coupe with one man in it.”
“Headed where?”
“Direction of the Bomber Plant.”
“You can take these men into town.”
“O.K. Especially this one.” Haggerty jabbed a thumb towards me.
“Treat him kindly, Sergeant,” Gordon said, with just enough condescension to make me want to kick him. “Oh, yes, there’s another thing I wanted to ask you, Haggerty. Did the operator tell you anything that was said on the line into Judd’s office last night?”
“Yeah, but it didn’t make any sense.”
“I’ll decide that,” Gordon said sharply. “What was it?”
“Don’t get your shirt-tail in a knot. I was just trying to remember the exact words. I think it was: ‘Get up, old man, get up. You can’t stay there all day.’ Something like that.”
“I see. Perhaps I’d better talk to her myself. What was her name?”
“Hilda Kramm, I think,” Haggerty said. “They can tell you at the U exchange.”
“No doubt they can,” Gordon barked. “But it’s your duty as an officer to keep accurate records. In a murder case, they are precisely a matter of life and death.”
“Murder! My God, are you going off the deep end–”
Gordon delivered a look that shut Haggerty off in mid-sentence, and slid behind the wheel of his car.
Three separate things were jostling in my mind, which the terror and exhaustion of the night had already pulled apart at the seams. One was the intense pleasure of hearing Haggerty rated for incompetence by a professional superior. One was a wild guess about the meaning of Alec’s telephone conversation. I thought of Poe’s Valdemar, and the Wizard King who could hypnotize people at a distance. Could Alec have been hypnotized and commanded over the telephone to get up on the windowsill and jump to his death? The idea seemed fantastic, but I had a friend in the psychology department who had shown me what hypnotism could do.
The third was the duck-billed platypus who was still swimming around in my unconscious, very near the surface. As Gordon’s car started to move, he came up for air and my conscious mind got hold of him. His name was Rudolf Fisher.
“Gordon!” I yelled. “Wait a minute!”
He braked the car and leaned his head out of the window. “What is it, Branch?”
“A possible lead on Schneider. Alec Judd suspected a man named Rudolf Fisher of being Dr. Schneider’s contact man with the Detroit ring. Your Detroit office has investigated Fisher and they should be able to tell you where to find him. Rudolf Fisher – I think he’s a naturalized German.”
“Right. I’ll look into it.” He waved his hand and threw out the clutch. The whine of his engine mounted like a small siren as he went up the lane.
Haggerty climbed the stairs to the porch and yelled through the open door, “Hey, Joe! Let’s go!”
A policeman in uniform emerged from the house and Haggerty said, “Stay away from that tart if you don’t want syph. Her last customer didn’t have any nose.”
“You should give him some of yours,” I said under my breath so he wouldn’t hear me. “A nose-transfusion.”
Haggerty put me in the front seat beside the policeman and got into the back seat with the Indian braves. As we drove away, I could feel his eyes on the back of my neck.
I said over my shoulder, “If you won’t tell me when breakfast is served, will you tell me whether there are any beds in the jail?”
Haggerty said, “There are. But don’t be so cocky, professor. They’re not comfortable.”
The policeman behind the wheel said, “Want me to shut him up, Sarge?”
“Don’t touch me, officer,” I said, “until you have a Wassermann test.”
“Leave him alone,” Haggerty said. “He nearly got hanged. And I think he’s nuts. He talks nuts.”
“My sleep was strangely troubled last night,” I said. “Mind if I snooze?”
Haggerty began to question Johnnie about his car and paid no attention to me. I rested my head against the back of the seat and went to sleep. I was sitting in a dentist’s chair with my head back saying, “It’s the tooth in my throat that troubles me, doctor.” He reached into my throat with a pair of gilded tongs which he drew from his beard, and when he pulled them out they were spattered with blood. Then I saw that he had green eyes and long hair like a woman, made of twisted hemp. He curtsied to me and I saw the hole in the top of his head and the announcer said, “Arbana station.”
“I said wake up, Branch,” Haggerty said. “We’re at the station.”
I opened my eyes and blinked and got out of the car, balancing my head on top of a stiff neck. Haggerty took me by the arm.
He said to the driver, “Better take these guys home to get some clothes on,” and the police car moved away.
It was just eight by the electric clock in the hallway of the police station. Lieutenant Gross was going off duty but he stayed to help question me. They took me into a bare back room and asked questions for nearly an hour while a policeman took shorthand notes.
I could have refused to talk or demanded a lawyer, but I was too tired to bother. I answered all their questions and told them everything I knew.
When they had finished, Cross said to Haggerty, “I’m going to put this man in the hospital, Sergeant. Under guard. He looks as if he needs a doctor.”
“I need a cook,” I said. “And an oculist. I don’t think my neck needs setting.”
“They’ll feed you at the hospital,” Cross said.
They did. Coddled eggs and toast that retained its shape no matter how you bent it. Before that I had to take a bath and the nurse wondered how the patient got so filthy and I said I didn’t know, I’d have to ask him, but I thought he was preparing to write an article on barnyard imagery in Shakespeare.