“Not this door,” said the janitor. “It goes in that other door.”
He went to one marked private and knocked.
The door opened, and Doctor Krueg’s glittering black eyes stared at us in cold-blooded appraisal.
“A case for you, Doctor,” I said. “The case of medicines you wanted in a hurry.”
“In this way,” he said.
The janitor set the box down on the floor in front of the operating table, and held out his palm.
I handed him ten dollars. He kept the palm out, and I handed him ten more. He folded the bills, thanked me and went out. Doctor Krueg lifted the lid of the packing box.
“Miss Tiel,” he called.
The door opened and his nurse came in. He indicated the figure in the packing box.
The three of us lifted him out and got him on to the operating table.
“I want to use the telephone,” I said.
“Go ahead,” he told me, “you’ll find it in the other office. This is going to be a job.”
I went to the outer office, found the telephone and dialed the unlisted number of my apartment.
While I was waiting for an answer I stared speculatively at the big safe which was over in the corner. It was different from the ordinary type of safe.
There were years when I specialized on opening safes that other men couldn’t touch. My interest in this one was pardonable. The more I saw of it, the more respect I had for it. It had been made to look innocent enough on the surface, with the conventional black finish, and the painting of the pastoral scene which gave it an old-fashioned look, but it wasn’t old-fashioned at all. It was a safe that a cracksman could have wasted a lot of time on and still not get anywhere.
Why the devil should Doctor Krueg have a safe like that in his office?
I turned the matter over idly in my mind, and had come to the conclusion that it was filled with dope that the doctor dispensed on the side, when I heard Edith’s voice on the telephone.
“Yes,” she said, timidly, “who is it?”
“Ed,” I told her. “How’s the arm?”
“I was waiting for you,” she said. “It’s throbbing pretty badly.”
“All right,” I told her, “get a taxicab and come directly to Doctor Krueg’s office. I’m there. Pretend that you just happened in, without knowing that I would be there, and don’t be surprised at what you see, no matter what it is.”
“In a hurry?” she asked.
“In a hurry,” I told her, and hung up.
I went back to the operating room. The nurse looked up at me and put a finger to her lips. Doctor Krueg was busy.
I’ll say this much for him—his veins may have been filled with ice water, but he was a good workman and a fast workman. He probed, bandaged, disinfected. From time to time he consulted his watch and clamped a finger over the patient’s wrist. Twice he nodded to the nurse, and the nurse gave the man a hypodermic.
Cove lay on his back, his face white as marble, unconscious.
Once I saw his eyelids flutter, and occasionally I could get the motion of his chest that showed he was breathing.
No one said anything. The room was so still that the rustle of the physician’s garments as he moved hastily about, or the sound of a surgical instrument grating against the edge of a pan of antiseptic, sounded startlingly loud. I kept over in the corner, out of the way, watching, waiting and saying nothing.
Abruptly, Doctor Krueg turned to me.
“What do you want him to do?” he asked.
“I want him to get well,” I said.
“He won’t.”
“All right,” I told him, “I want him to talk.”
The doctor nodded, motioned to the nurse. He snipped off a last bit of bandage, took the hypodermic which the nurse gave him, and jabbed the needle into the man’s white skin.
“I think,” he said, “he’ll regain consciousness.”
There was the jangle of a bell somewhere in the office, and the doctor looked significantly at the nurse. She walked through a door, towards the outer office, was gone for a moment, and then came back.
“It’s the arm case,” she said.
Doctor Krueg looked at me, and I nodded.
“Sure,” I said, “it’s okey so far as I’m concerned.”
“All right,” Doctor Krueg said, “show her in, Miss Tiel.”
Edith came in. She looked at me, smiled, then saw the figure on the operating table, and recoiled.
“It’s all right,” I told her, “you’re interested in this, too.”
Doctor Krueg watched us both and said nothing.
Howard Cove’s eyes fluttered. He opened them and looked at me. There was recognition in them.
“Thanks, buddy,” he said.
He rolled his head and looked around him at the white walls of the physician’s office; the surgeon standing there in his white robe, splashed here and there with red; the nurse in the background.
“Have I got a chance, Doc?” he asked.
Doctor Krueg’s face changed expression by not so much as a line. His eyes remained hard and glittering.
“Not a chance in the world,” he said.
Howard Cove closed his eyes, then he opened them and looked at me.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“I’m a friend,” I said. “I was coming to see you. I can’t tell you who I am right here and now, but I had a proposition to put up to you about those Loring jewels.”
A spasm of expression twisted his face—whether of pain or anger I could not tell.
“Did you see who gave me the works?” he asked.
“ ‘Frank The Fixer,’ Sam Stillwell and Carl Rankin,” I told him.
“How did you know?”
“I tagged them and tried to tip you, but it was too late.”
“The dirty double-crossers,” he said, “they ratted on me.”
I nodded and waited.
“I pulled the job,” he said. “Rankin covered me. ‘Frank The Fixer’ was back of it, and Sam Stillwell cooked it up.”
I said nothing.
Edith pressed forward so that she could hear. Doctor Krueg stood a little way behind us, his manner purely professional and cold-blooded.
“Listen,” said Cove, “they tried to double-cross me, to make me the goat.”
I nodded again.
“Perhaps,” I told him, “if you could tell me where the stuff is I could fix it so it wouldn’t help them any.”
He thought for a moment, then a smile twisted the corners of his lips. His eyes closed and remained closed for several seconds. I thought at first he was sleeping. Then I saw Doctor Krueg reach forward and feel the man’s wrist. The doctor stepped back. I looked at him questioningly. He shook his head. After a moment Cove’s eyes opened again.
“I turned all the stuff over to Carl Rankin,” he said. “He’s got a room in the Continental Hotel. Pull the bureau drawer out all the way and you’ll find the stuff in back of the drawer.”
He sighed peacefully, as though drifting off to sleep.
I leaned towards him.
“Quick, Cove,” I said, “what’s the number of his room, do you know?”
“Five nineteen,” he said, “and if you can get the stuff it suits me swell.”
He sighed, opened his eyes.
“Sure I’ve got a chance, Doc,” he said, slowly. “I feel swell.”
Doctor Krueg turned and nodded significantly to the nurse. She tiptoed from the room. Doctor Krueg didn’t lower his voice.
“It won’t be long now,” he said, “the stimulant is wearing off. He’ll lose consciousness and probably never regain it.”
The man on the operating table smiled peacefully.
I heard a gasping intake of the breath. It was Edith, but she wasn’t crying, she was standing with her knuckles pressed to her teeth, her eyes big, round and dark with sympathy, staring down at the man who had shot her.
Doctor Krueg turned to me.