Burn, Witch, Burn!

Chapter V The Thing in Ricori's Car (Continued)

I said, incredulously, "McCann, you surely don't expect me to believe that?"

He did not answer, rolling another cigarette which this time he did not throw away. The chauffeur staggered over to Ricori's body; he threw himself on his knees and began mingled prayers and implorations. McCann, curiously enough, was now completely himself. It was as though the removal of uncertainty as to the cause of Ricori's death had restored all his old cold confidence. He lighted the cigarette; he said, almost cheerfully:

"I'm aiming to make you believe."

I walked over to the telephone. McCann jumped in front of me and stood with his back against the instrument.

"Wait a minute, Doc. If I'm the kind of a rat that'll stick a knife in the heart of the man who hired me to protect him—ain't it occurred to you the spot you're on ain't so healthy? What's to keep me an' Paul from giving you the works an' making our getaway?"

Frankly, that had not occurred to me. Now I realized in what a truly dangerous position I was placed. I looked at the chauffeur. He had risen from his knees and was standing, regarding McCann intently.

"I see you get it." McCann smiled, mirthlessly. He walked to the Italian. "Pass your rods, Paul."

Without a word the chauffeur dipped into his pockets and handed him a pair of automatics. McCann laid them on my table. He reached under his left arm and placed another pistol beside them; reached into his pocket and added a second.

"Sit there, Doc," he said, and indicated my chair at the table. "That's all our artillery. Keep the guns right under your hands. If we make any breaks, shoot. All I ask is you don't do any calling up till you've listened."

I sat down, drawing the automatics to me, examining them to see that they were loaded. They were.

"Doc," McCann said, "there's three things I want you to consider. First, if I'd had anything to do with smearing the boss, would I be giving you a break like this? Second, I was sitting at his right side. He had on a thick overcoat. How could I reach over an' run anything as thin as whatever killed him must have been all through his coat, an' through the doll, through his clothes, an' through him without him putting up some kind of a fight. Hell, Ricori was a strong man. Paul would have seen us—"

"What difference would that have made," I interrupted, "if Paul were an accomplice?"

"Right," he acquiesced, "that's so. Paul's as deep in the mud as I am. Ain't that so, Paul?" He looked sharply at the chauffeur, who nodded. "All right, we'll leave that with a question mark after it. Take the third point—if I'd killed the boss that way, an' Paul was in it with me, would we have took him to the one man who'd be expected to know how he was killed? An' then when you'd found out as expected, hand you an alibi like this? Christ, Doc, I ain't loco enough for that!"

His face twitched.

"Why would I want to kill him? I'd a–gone through hell an' back for him an' he knew it. So would've Paul."

I felt the force of all this. Deep within me I was conscious of a stubborn conviction that McCann was telling the truth—or at least the truth as he saw it. He had not stabbed Ricori. Yet to attribute the act, to a doll was too fantastic. And there had been only the three men in the car. McCann had been reading my thoughts with an uncanny precision.

"It might've been one of them mechanical dolls," he said. "Geared up to stick."

"McCann, go down and bring it up to me," I said sharply—he had voiced a rational explanation.

"It ain't there," he said, and grinned at me again mirthlessly. "It out!"

"Preposterous—" I began. The chauffeur broke in:

"It's true. Something out. When I open the door. I think it cat, dog, maybe. I say, 'What the hell–' Then I see it. It run like hell. It stoop. It duck in shadow. I see it just as flash an' then no more. I say to McCann—'What the hell!' McCann, he's feeling around bottom of car. He say—'It's the doll. It done for the boss!' I say: 'Doll! What you mean doll?' He tell me. I know nothing of any doll before. I see the boss carry something in his coat, si. But I don't know what. But I see one goddam thing that don't look like cat, dog. It jump out of car, through my legs, si!"

I said ironically: "Is it your idea, McCann, that this mechanical doll was geared to run away as well as to stab?"

He flushed, but answered quietly:

"I ain't saying it was a mechanical doll. But anything else would be—well, pretty crazy, wouldn't it?"

"McCann," I asked abruptly, "what do you want me to do?"

"Doc, when I was down Arizona way, there was a ranchero died. Died sudden. There was a feller looked as if he had a lot to do with it. The marshal said: 'Hombre, I don't think you done it—but I'm the lone one on the jury. What say?' The hombre say, 'Marshal, give me two weeks, an' if I don't bring in the feller that done it, you hang me.' The marshal says, 'Fair enough. The temporary verdict is deceased died by shock.' It was shock all right. Bullet shock. All right, before the two weeks was up, along comes this feller with the murderer hog–tied to his saddle."

"I get your point, McCann. But this isn't Arizona."

"I know it ain't. But couldn't you certify it was heart disease? Temporarily? An' give me a week? Then if I don't come through, shoot the works. I won't run away. It's this way, Doc. If you tell the bulls, you might just as well pick up one of them guns an' shoot me an' Paul dead right now. If we tell the bulls about the doll, they'll laugh themselves sick an' fry us at Sing Sing. If we don't, we fry anyway. If by a miracle the bulls drop us—there's them in the boss's crowd that'll soon remedy that. I'm telling you, Doc, you'll be killing two innocent men. An' worse, you'll never find out who did kill the boss, because they'll never look any further than us. Why should they?"

A cloud of suspicion gathered around my conviction of the pair's innocence. The proposal, naive as it seemed, was subtle. If I assented, the gunman and the chauffeur would have a whole week to get away, if that was the plan. If McCann did not come back, and I told the truth of the matter, I would be an accessory after the fact—in effect, co–murderer. If I pretended that my suspicions had only just been aroused, I stood, at the best, convicted of ignorance. If they were captured, and recited the agreement, again I could be charged as an accessory. It occurred to me that McCann's surrender of the pistols was extraordinarily clever. I could not say that my assent had been constrained by threats. Also, it might have been only a cunningly conceived gesture to enlist my confidence, weaken my resistance to his appeal. How did I know that the pair did not have still other weapons, ready to use if I refused?

Striving to find a way out of the trap, I walked over to Ricori. I took the precaution of dropping the automatics into my pockets as I went. I bent over Ricori. His flesh was cold, but not with the peculiar chill of death. I examined him once more, minutely. And now I could detect the faintest of pulsation in the heart a bubble began to form at the corner of his lips—Ricori lived!

I continued to bend over him, thinking faster than ever I had before. Ricori lived, yes. But it did not lift my peril. Rather it increased it. For if McCann had stabbed him, if the pair had been in collusion, and learned that they had been unsuccessful, would they not finish what they had thought ended? With Ricori alive, Ricori able to speak and to accuse them—a death more certain than the processes of law confronted them. Death at Ricori's command at the hands of his henchmen. And in finishing Ricori they would at the same time be compelled to kill me.

Still bending, I slipped a hand into my pocket, clenched an automatic, and then whirled upon them with the gun leveled.

"Hands up! Both of you!" I said.

Amazement flashed over McCann's face, consternation over the chauffeur's. But their hands went up.

I said, "There's no need of that clever little agreement, McCann. Ricori is not dead. When he's able to talk he'll tell what happened to him."

I was not prepared for the effect of this announcement. If McCann was not sincere, he was an extraordinary actor. His lanky body stiffened, I had seldom seen such glad relief as was stamped upon his face. Tears rolled down his tanned cheeks. The chauffeur dropped to his knees, sobbing and praying. My suspicions were swept away. I did not believe this could be acting. In some measure I was ashamed of myself.

"You can drop your hands, McCann," I said, and slipped the automatic back in my pocket.

He said, hoarsely: "Will he live?"

I answered: "I think he has every chance. If there's no infection, I'm sure of it."

"Thank God!" whispered McCann, and over and over, "Thank God!"

And just then Braile entered, and stood staring in amazement at us.

"Ricori has been stabbed. I'll explain the whole matter later," I told him. "Small puncture over the heart and probably penetrating it. He's suffering mainly from shock. He's coming out of it. Get him up to the Annex and take care of him until I come."

Briefly I reviewed what I had done and suggested the immediate further treatment. And when Ricori had been removed, I turned to the gunmen.

"McCann," I said, "I'm not going to explain. Not now. But here are your pistols, and Paul's. I'm giving you your chance."

He took the automatics, looking at me with a curious gleam in his eyes.

"I ain't saying I wouldn't like to know what touched you off, Doc," he said. "But whatever you do is all right by me—if only you can bring the boss around."

"Undoubtedly there are some who will have to be notified of his condition," I replied. "I'll leave that all to you. All I know is that he was on his way to me. He had a heart attack in the car. You brought him to me. I am now treating him—for heart attack. If he should die, McCann—well, that will be another matter."

"I'll do the notifying," he answered. "There's only a couple that you'll have to see. Then I'm going down to that doll joint an' get the truth outa that hag."

His eyes were slits, his mouth a slit, too.

"No," I said, firmly. "Not yet. Put a watch on the place. If the woman goes out, discover where she goes. Watch the girl as closely. If it appears as though either of them or both of them are moving away— running off—let them. But follow them. I don't want them molested or even alarmed until Ricori can tell what happened there."

"All right," he said, but reluctantly.

"Your doll story," I reminded him, sardonically, "would not be so convincing to the police as to my somewhat credulous mind. Take no chance of them being injected into the matter. As long as Ricori is alive, there is no need of them being so injected."

I took him aside.

"Can you trust the chauffeur to do no talking?"

"Paul's all right," he said.

"Well, for both your sakes, he would better be," I warned.

They took their departure. I went up to Ricori's room. His heart was stronger, his respiration weak but encouraging. His temperature, although still dangerously subnormal, had improved. If, as I had told McCann, there was no infection, and if there had been no poison nor drug upon the weapon with which he had been stabbed, Ricori should live.

Later that night two thoroughly polite gentlemen called upon me, heard my explanation of Ricori's condition, asked if they might see him, did see him, and departed. They assured me that "win or lose" I need have no fear about my fees, nor have any hesitancy in bringing in the most expensive consultants. In exchange, I assured them that I believed Ricori had an excellent chance to recover. They asked me to allow no one to see him except themselves, and McCann. They thought it might save me trouble to have a couple of men whom they would send to me, to sit at the door of the room—outside, of course, in the hall. I answered that I would be delighted.

In an exceedingly short time two quietly watchful men were on guard at Ricori's door, just as they had been over Peters'.

In my dreams that night dolls danced around me, pursued me, threatened me. My sleep was not pleasant.