Whispering Justice
By
ERLE STANLEY GARDNER
The sound of the siren purred through the loud-speaker on my roadster. Then came the voice of the police announcer repeating in a mechanical monotone: “Calling car thirty-one.”
I slowed the motor to listen.
The voice of the announcer continued in its same expressionless tone: “Car thirty-one—go to 659 Porter Street. Make a quick run. Howard Cove, having an apartment at that address, found a woman burglar ransacking his rooms. There was an exchange of shots. The burglar is believed to be wounded.
“Here is a description of the burglar: A woman twenty-four years old, height about five feet three inches, weight about one hundred ten pounds, hair dark, eyes dark, wearing imitation Mink coat, brown skirt, suede shoes. She ran from the back door of the apartment, down an alley, and disappeared. She will probably be found in the neighborhood, as it is believed she did not have an automobile. We will repeat the description . . .”
I flung the car out from the curb, and stepped on the throttle, without bothering to listen to a repetition of the description.
I was on Ninth Street, and the next block was Porter. I was in the beat of police radio car thirty-one, but probably nearer to the address than the police car. I swung to the right and crossed Eighth Street. Midway in the block I saw a young woman walking towards me with nervous, rapid steps. She wore an imitation Mink coat, a brown skirt, and a tight-fitting hat.
I swung the car in a circle and in to the curb.
“Hello, cutie,” I said.
Her face was white, save where the orange rouge on the cheeks showed painfully distinct, but her eyes were glittering. She flung up her chin in a gesture of contempt.
“Oh come on, cutie,” I said, “nobody’s going to bite you. Just a little ride, and maybe a picture show.”
A siren screamed in the distance.
The girl paused, standing as rigid as a startled deer.
Then she smiled.
“I don’t mind if I do,” she said, and walked towards the roadster.
I flung the door open. She got into the car, and dropped back against the cushions with a tired sigh.
The siren on the police car sounded measurably closer.
I coaxed the car into speed and skidded a bit at the corner.
She kept up the pretense.
“Well, big boy,” she said, “you seem to be in a hurry.”
I sped down Eighth Street and slowed for a right-hand turn.
Abruptly, the loud-speaker underneath the dash burst into sound, as a siren wailed its demand for attention, and the mechanical voice said in emotionless tones: “Calling car twenty-nine. Swing in towards 659 Porter street. Keep an eye out for a female bandit with black bobbed hair, a close-fitting hat, black eyes, an imitation Mink coat, brown skirt and suede shoes. She is about twenty-four years of age; height five feet three inches; weight about one hundred ten pounds.”
The girl gave a little gasp, turned towards me with eyes that were wide and startled.
“A cop!” she exclaimed, and reached for the door of the car.
I slammed my foot on the brake, grabbed her left arm.
“Take it easy, sister,” I said, “I’m not a cop; I’m a crook.”
She had the door open, one foot out on the running-board, the wind whipping her skirt. She stared back at me over her shoulder, with a doubtful expression.
“What are you doing with that thing on your car?”
“Simply checking up on the cops.”
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”
“Because you aren’t wearing bracelets right now. Do you think I’d have let you go this far, without making a pinch, if I’d been a dick? There was a call came through just before I picked you up, calling car thirty-one, reporting a robbery of a man named Howard Cove in an apartment house at 659 Porter Street. The description fits you.”
She made a grimace of disappointment.
“Ain’t that just my luck?” she asked.
“What?” I wanted to know.
“To pick up a crook, when I wanted a nice, genteel petting party. I don’t know where they got the description from, but I’m not the one who was in the stick-up. I’m a manicurist who went out to the Rex Arms Apartment to doll up the fingernails of a cutie who was stepping out and couldn’t come to the shop. Then you come along and proposition me. I pull the virtuous stuff until I get a look at your eyes, and then decide it’s okey, and here you turn out to be a crook, and you think I’m one. What a hell of a break I get.”
Her eyes stared steadily at me, straightforward and sincere.
I removed my hand from her arm. It was wet and sticky. I looked down at the discolored palm.
“Okey, sister,” I said, “but you’ve got to get that bullet wound fixed up.”
She swayed towards me, then slumped forward in a dead faint.
I didn’t like the doctor, but I hadn’t expected to, so I was nothing out. Doctors who make a specialty of dressing gunshot wounds, with no questions asked, are not, as a rule, the leaders of their profession.
He was tall, thin and cold-blooded, with a black mustache and wary, watchful eyes.
“You’re Doctor Krueg?” I asked.
He nodded. His eyes didn’t change expression. The man seemed standing perfectly still and holding his breath; like some long, thin spider feeling a preliminary tug at his web, but waiting until the fly should enmesh itself more securely, before coming into the open.
“ ‘Two-pair’ Kinney told me about you,” I said. “He told me the password was the last name in the telephone book, in case I should forget it.”
The black eyes bored into me with glittering scrutiny.
“What was it you wanted?” he asked.
I indicated the girl who was clinging to my side. Her left arm was out of the coat now, and a handkerchief which I had tied tightly around it, had checked the bleeding.
“It’s a simple wound,” I said. “The young woman, here.”
He stared at me, rather than at the wound.
“ ‘Two-pair’ Kinney, eh?” he said.
“Yes,” I told him.
He turned abruptly towards his private office.
“Come in here,” he said, “both of you.”
We walked into the private office. The girl was weak from excitement and loss of blood. I held her up with a supporting arm around her waist. At sight of the white-walled operating room, with the grim table, the glitter of instruments, and the glare of a cluster of lights, she shuddered.
“Keep your grit,” I told her. “It doesn’t amount to much; just a clean wound, but it’s got to be disinfected.”
Doctor Krueg raised his voice.
“Miss Tiel,” he called.
A door opened, and a young woman in the uniform of a nurse stepped into the room. She was cool, calm and efficient. She cast me a single appraising glance, then let her eyes drift to the left arm of the young woman, and the blood-stained handkerchief.
Doctor Krueg merely nodded.
The nurse came forward. With swiftly competent hands she slipped the imitation Mink coat from the girl’s shoulders, untied the handkerchief, produced a pair of blunt-nosed scissors and clipped away the soggy sleeve of the waist.
The girl fainted again when she saw the round hole with the welling blood seeping down her forearm.
The nurse nodded to me and indicated the operating table. I lifted the girl on to it. Doctor Krueg filled a bowl with hot water from the tap, dropped three white tablets into the water from a blue bottle. He took a piece of cotton, dropped it into the hot water.
“Nothing serious,” he said.