Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1940)

BY MAX BRAND ence. I want to point out that we cannot. . . ." He choked himself. "I have to see Gillespie," he finished. "Will you ask him to come up here?" Kildare left the office and returned to Gillespie with the message. "I'm going to ask the board of directors for a gag that will fit the mouth of that catfish, that Carew," roared Gillespie, and let Conover wheel him out toward the elevators. 1HE interrupted line commenced to flow in on Kildare, as it did sometimes with hardly an interruption for days at a time, in obedience to that famous brass plate above the door on which was engraved the words: "Dr. Leonard Gillespie, hours 12 a. m. to 12 a. m." It would have been a dry jest, from another man. It was cold fact, coming from Gillespie. Then Gillespie himself came back and cleared the office with one of his roars. "Did you really do it, Jimmy?" he asked, when they were alone. "What, sir?" "Set up this fellow Thornton for operation by — er — by using my name?" "Yes, sir!" "You actually made Lane think that I was behind the idea?" Kildare said nothing. "It's queer," said Gillespie. "I'm not fool enough to think that I know any man, really; but this time you've surprised me. You surprised Carew, too, but not very much." Kildare began to say that he was sorry. Gillespie cut him short by remarking: "A fellow like Carew is a blessing to the institution he heads and a curse to a good many other things. He's an executive first, a damned good doctor second. But he always thinks that he's a general." "He's going to give me the limit?" asked Kildare. "He was torn in two directions," said Gillespie. "You've done so much for the hospital that he's grateful, he's almost affectionate. On the other hand you've done so much for the hospital that you're an outstanding figure even as an interne. It's like this: If a private disobeys orders, he can be sent to the guardhouse. But if a general officer disobeys the high command, he's cashiered." "I understand," said Kildare. "You have from here to Friday for something more than understanding," answered Gillespie. "You have that time to do something about it!" "You managed to get that much delay?" "Never mind what I did. The question is: What are we going to do, Jimmy?" He gathered his shaggy, white brows over his eyes and folded his hands together, backs up. "There's another question first," said Kildare. "Is there anything that I possibly could do to straighten it out?" "It's not simply 'you;' it's 'we,' you fool!" "Yes, sir." "Why couldn't some other young jackass in the place have had the idea? But no, it had to be my boy." Kildare, staring at him, bit his lip. He did not speak for the moment because there was no room in his throat for words. "V * RID AY the board of directors is meeting. And the case of young Doctor Kildare comes up, as it came up once before. Only then you were just a young fool who broke the rules and now you're a reprobate, dyed-in-the-wool, who has formed the rotten habit of doing as he pleases, regardless of the higher-ups. Friday is the day when your head goes off, then. And now, Jimmy, we put our heads together. State the case to me, first of all." Kildare said: "Doctor Lane performs an authorized operation that produces insanity in the patient; it's discovered that the fault is mine, after all. So I get the gallows." "Let's ask the right questions first, and then maybe we'll get the answers. What could be done to take the curse off?" "If I could prove that the insanity existed before the operation, that would take the curse off." "It's hard to prove things like that — to a Carew? But if the insanity could be removed, or seem to be removed? What are your cards, Kildare? What have you got in the pack or up your sleeve? If there's a fine, clean, straightforward way, we'll use it. If not, we'll deal off the bottom of the deck." "Well, a shock was what started him raving. It brought the disease on him with a rush." "And if we can give him another shock — a happy shock — if we prove to him that the strain he was under before the operation is gone — if we clear the whole emotional air of his life — you think that it might bring him back to normalcy?" "There's a ghost of a chance, perhaps?" "That's better than nothing. We can't ask for the world with a fence around it. We want a chance to fight. That's all. A ghost of a chance is a damned sight better than no chance at all. Hamlet's father was only a ghost, Jimmy. But he's still a force in our minds. So now we do what?" "We find out what it is that he had to meet on Friday at noon." "And then meet it for him?" "Yes, sir." "And bring him back the results?" "Yes, sir." "And with Thornton restored to his wits, even Carew will have to admit that the operation was a fine thing?" "Yes, sir." "So that Carew can damn you black and blue for encouraging the operation but he can't quite take off your head?" "I hope that it may turn out that way," said Kildare. "What do you do first?" "I try to be a detective, and of course I'm not one." "Not a detective? Confound you, make yourself into one, then! A doctor has to be a nurse, a cook, a family lawyer, a mother, a father, a ratkiller, and why in the name of God can't he go a step backward, or forward, and be a detective?" "I'm going to tackle it," said Kildare. "Then get out of my sight and start now. Wait a minute. There's another thing involved here. Do you have no pangs of conscience about using my name to Lane, as you did?" "No, sir." "You mean that you'd do it again, without any permission?" "Yes, sir." "Damned impudence, I call it," said Gillespie, and, "Well, get on with you! I'd disown you if you hadn't done exactly that." CHAPTER XII rJ the clothes of Henry Thornton there had been a pair of soft-lead draughting pencils, twenty odd dollars, a good, big pocketknife, cigarettes, a lighter, two handkerchiefs, an addressed envelope without the sender's name and without contents. That was all. Even the address was not in handwriting. It had been typed. There was not a trace of a laundry mark even. The underwear and shirts apparently had been new-bought. The clothes were the product of a wholesale tailoring firm whose suits were sold in fifty metropolitan stores. There was only a bit of reddish mud high inside the angle of heel and sole on one of the shoes. Kildare gloomily scraped it off, put it into a twist of paper. He did not feel like a detective, but like a fool. The Museum of Natural History in Manhattan is one of those places where people take their children to admire prehistoric skeletons. As a matter of fact there is hardly a physical phase of life that is not touched on and illustrated in the museum. The whole process in the Museum is so pictorial that when Kildare took his paper twist of dry mud to Professor McGregor, that bright little old man at once pulled out a chart which, like a crazy quilt of a thousand colors, showed the soils around New York, and the rock strata underlying them, or outcropping through them. Professor McGregor, after crumbling the mud to a fine dust, segregated some tiny particles of stone which he placed under a microscope. He kept whistling as he worked and finally he looked up to the earnest face of Kildare with eyes that shone like polished lenses. "Unless the stone is imported stuff, I think I have the place," said Professor McGregor. "Ever driven out from the East Side toward Westchester?" "Yes." "Well, over to the right, as you drive north, you see some land, somewhat broken, so that it looks like a low range of hills, almost. Two chances out of three, that's your district. Look, here's the map. You see this pink patch? Somewhere inside that district. It's not very large." Kildare went back to the hospital and looked up his friend, the ambulance driver with the numb, unconscious face. "Tell me," said Kildare, "where I can get the cheapest drive-yourself car in town. Do you know, Joe?" "There's none of them cheap enough. Not for you, Doc," said Joe Weyman. "But me brother-in law has a little bus that needs borrowing." "You mean I could rent it from him?" asked Kildare. "You mean, could he rent a sock in the chin?" demanded Weyman. "How could he take money from you? When d'you want it?" "Now." "Right this afternoon?" "Yes." "And me with my time off starting in half an hour!" said Weyman. "That's luck, ain't it? You can close your eyes and catch up on some sleep; I'll do the driving." So they started within the hour, with Weyman tooling the car with a sort of reckless precision through the traffic. The rain came down in a steady, misting fall. But at last they came toward the low-lying hills. "Pull up to that lunch wagon," said Kildare. He went in alone and got a cup of coffee. When he was half through with it, he asked the waiter: "You know a man named Henry Thornton who lives out here?" "Sure I know Thornbury," said the waiter. "He's the guy with the big green house on the hill over by. . . ." "Shut up, rummy," said a big young man who was trying to get half his ham and eggs into his mouth at a bite. "Not Thornbury, you poor mug. Thornton is the guy he asked about." He was still looking his reproof as he went on: "This here Thornton you wanta know about, is he thirty something and lives alone and looks it?" "You might describe him that way," said Kildare, delighted. "Does he live alone?" "Yeah. He ain't married." "How do I find Thornton's house?" asked Kildare. "That's easy. You go up here to the top of the hill, turn left, and it's three houses down." Kildare went up to the top of the hill, turned left, and asked Weyman to wait at the corner. "Do you mind, Joe?" he asked. "Whatta ya mean mind?" asked Weyman. "But you know where you're going?" "I think I know, all right." "You kin da make me nervous when you start strange places all by yourself." "I can take care of myself pretty well, Joe." "Yeah, sure, sure. But if you had a good right cross up your sleeve it would take care of you a lot better. I'm gunna teach you, some of these fine days." CHAPTER XIH DARKNESS had descended and many of the houses had lights turned on. Kildare, on the front porch, rang the bell, listened to the echo of it inside the place, and studied the jagged crack that streaked across the face of the adjoining window. He tried the window and when he found it locked he broke the glass and opened it Then he stepped inside. He closed the window. With a burning match he found the electric switch and turned on the lights. He stood in a hall. There was a living room at the right, so bright and cheerful that he thought for a moment the sky must have cleared but this was merely the effect of the gay covers on the furniture. The gaiety was a first impression that did not last. There was dust on the table. Cigarette butts littered the hearth, and a book fallen open, face down beside the couch, had crunched its pages into a tangle of confusion. Back of the living room, which was unusually large for such a small house, he stepped into the kitchen. The sink was filled with unwashed pans. The water in them had begun to rust the iron in places; the queer, sick odor of rust was all through the room. In a dining alcove he saw the remains of a breakfast, a cup half-filled with coffee, with a scum of soured milk on top of it, and a piece of toast as hard as wood. Forward from the kitchen a small study with a tall north light opened from the living room. A smell of old, crusted pipes was in it. Some shelves on one side held books on art and a number of sketchbooks, as well. On the drawing board which faced the high window was a bit of purely commercial stuff such as magazines or even newspapers use to illustrate new fashions. He looked over the room again, standing in the center of it. For him, the ghost of Henry Thornton was emerging in the house. A sighing sound came to him from the front of the house. A fallen bit of paper rattled on the floor of the studio, and then was still. It was as 35 "BS