Ellery Queen. The Best of Suspense

Lawrence G. Blochman The Killer with no Fingerprints

The place was almost a shambles when Max Ritter, Lieutenant of Detectives, arrived. All the living-room furniture was slashed or overturned. Chair legs and lamps littered the apartment. So many light bulbs had been broken that the police had to work by flashlights until more bulbs could be sent up. The bed was a rat’s nest of bloody tatters, and a trail of gore led from the bedroom through the living room into the bathroom.

The dead man was lying in the bathroom in a pretzel-like posture that would have made a Ringling Brothers contortionist green with envy. He had one foot in the toilet bowl, one arm in the wash basin, and his head in the bathtub. The wood-handled long-bladed kitchen knife which had carved hieroglyphics into his torso had been left lying on the bathroom floor. So had a cheap plastic raincoat which the murderer had obviously worn to protect his clothing, as well as the crumpled bloody towels with which he had wiped his hands and probably his shoes.

The house phone was off the hook and lay on the floor a fact which led to the early discovery of the crime. The desk clerk of the Westside Residential Hotel had plugged a jack under a signal light that had suddenly flared for Apartment 26. He had said “Office” several times, but got no response. He thought he heard curious sounds in the background and repeated “Office” three more times. When he heard what he thought was the sound of a door closing, he had run up the stairs — the self-service elevator was somewhere in the stratosphere — and had banged on the door of Apartment 26. When there was no response, he ran back down the stairs and called the police. He made no attempt to enter the apartment with his passkey until the squadcar cops arrived. Why should he, a law-abiding and unarmed citizen, usurp the unquestioned duty of the uniformed forces of the law?

While the print men, photographers, and other technicians were picking their way gingerly through the mess in Apartment 26, Lieutenant Ritter was collecting pertinent data. But the swarthy, lugubrious beanpole of a detective found the desk clerk, the manager, and the neighbors singularly uninformative. It seemed incredible to Ritter that such a desperate life-and-death struggle could have gone on without arousing some auditory interest: yet this appeared to be the case. The man and wife across the hall were addicted to loud television — the wife was rather deaf — and the people in the apartment next door were out for the evening. The girl at the end of the hall had taken a sleeping pill and even slept through five minutes of door pounding by the police.

Neither the desk clerk nor the house manager was of much help at first. The desk clerk, a young man with curly brown hair, long eyelashes, and suspiciously red lips, was terribly, terribly bored and terribly, terribly vague about who had entered and left the lobby during the evening. The manager said that the dead man had registered three weeks previously as Gerald Sampson of New York, although he agreed with the desk clerk that the deceased had a pronounced Southern accent.

Lieutenant Max Ritter was convinced that the dead man’s name was not Sampson and that he had not come from New York. In the wastebasket of Apartment 26 the Lieutenant had found an envelope addressed to Mr. Paul Wallace, General Delivery, Northbank, and postmarked Baton Rouge, Louisiana. There was no return address on the envelope and no letter inside the envelope or in the wastebasket.

In a dresser drawer, under a pile of expensive shirts, Ritter found a Social Security card in the name of Paul Wallace and a passbook showing a balance of $1706 in a Cleveland bank to the credit of P. L. Wallace. In an envelope stuffed into the inside pocket of a Brooks Brothers sports jacket hanging in a closet, the detective found an envelope containing a dozen newspaper clippings about a young singer named Patty Erryl.

Even in the smudged halftone pictures, Patty was a comely lass, apparently not far out of her teens, brimful of that intangible effervescence which is the exclusive property of youth. In most of the poses her eyes glowed with the roseate vision of an unclouded future. Her blonde head was poised with the awareness of her own fresh loveliness. Patty Erryl was quite obviously a personality. Moreover, Lieutenant Ritter concluded as he read through the clippings, Patty had talent.

Patty had been singing in Northbank night clubs for the past year. Just a month before the sudden demise of Mr. Paul Wallace, she had won the regional tryout of the Metropolitan Opera auditions. In a few weeks she would go to New York to compete in the nationally broadcast finals.

Ritter took the clippings downstairs and reopened his questioning of the bored desk clerk.

“Ever see this dame?” He dealt the clippings face up on the reception desk.

“Ah? Well, yes, as a matter of fact I have.” The clerk fluttered his eyelashes. “I saw the pictures in the papers, too, even before I saw the girl, but I somehow didn’t connect the one with the other. Yes, I’ve seen her.”

“Did she ever come here to see this bird Wallace?”

“Wallace? You mean Mr. Sampson?”

“I mean the man in Twenty-six.”

“Ah. Well, yes, as a matter of fact she did.”

“Often?”

“That depends upon what you call often. She’s been here three or four times, I’d say.”

“Do you announce her or does she go right up?”

“Well, the first time she stopped at the desk. Lately she’s been going right up.”

“What do you mean, lately? Tonight, maybe?”

“I didn’t see her tonight.”

“If she comes here regular, maybe she could go through the service entrance and take the elevator in the basement without you seeing her?”

“That’s possible, yes.”

“Does she always come alone?”

“Not always. Last time she came she brought lover boy along.”

“Who’s lover boy?”

“How should I know?” Again the clerk fluttered his eyelashes. “He’s a rather uncouth young man whom for some reason Miss Erryl seems to find not unattractive. She apparently takes great pleasure in gazing into his eyes. And vice versa.”

“But you don’t know his name?”

“I do not. We don’t require birth certificates, passports, or marriage licenses for the purpose of visiting our tenants.”

“You’re too, too liberal. You let in murderers. Did lover boy ever come here without lover girl?”

“He did indeed. He was here last night raising quite a row with the gentleman in Twenty-six. When he came down he was red-faced and mad as a hornet. Right afterward the gentleman in Twenty-six called the desk and gave orders that if lover boy ever came back, I was not to let him up, and that if he insisted I was to call the police. Lover boy had been threatening him, he said. But I think he came back again tonight.”

“You think?”

“Well, I had just finished taking a phone message for one of our tenants who was out, and I turned my back to put the message in her box when this man went by and got into the elevator. I only had a glimpse of him as the elevator door was closing, but I’m sure it was lover boy. I shouted at him but it was too late. I tried to phone Twenty-six to warn Mr. Sampson—”

“Wallace.”

“Wallace. But there was no answer, so I assumed he was out. Then a few minutes later the phone in Twenty-six was knocked off the hook.”

“Did you see lover boy come down again?”

“Now that you mention it, no, I didn’t — unless he came down while I was up banging on the door of Twenty-six.”

“Or took the car down to the basement and went out the service entrance, maybe?”

“You’re so right, Lieutenant. Or he could have been picked up by a helicopter on the roof.” The clerk giggled.

“Very funny.” Ritter advanced his lower lip. “Any other non-tenants come in tonight since you came on duty?”

“Traffic has been quite light this evening. There was the blonde who always comes to see the man in Sixty-three on Wednesdays. There was a boy from the florist’s with roses for the sick lady on Nine, and there was an elderly white-haired gent I assumed to be delivering for the liquor store on the corner.”

“Why?”

“Well, he had a package under his arm and it was about time for Miss Benedict’s daily fifth of gin, so—”

“What time do you call ‘about time’?”

“About an hour ago.”

“This was before Wallace’s light went up on your switchboard?”

“About twenty minutes before. Now that I think of it, I didn’t see him come down either. Of course, with all the excitement—”

“That makes two for your helicopter,” the detective said. “Let me know if you think of any more.”

Ritter went upstairs again for another look at the dead man and to wait for the coroner who had been summoned from his weekly pinochle game but had not yet arrived. At least this was one case the coroner could not very well attribute to heart failure — “Coroner’s Thrombosis,” as Dr. Coffee called it — since the cause of death was plainly written in blood.

The dead man had been on the threshold of middle age. His temples were graying and there was gray in his close-cropped beard. The beard, instead of giving him an air of distinction, left him with a hard ruthless face.

His features were regular, except perhaps for his earlobes which were thick, pendulous, and slightly discolored as though they had been forcibly twisted.

Whoever killed Mr. Wallace-Sampson must have really hated him to have done such a savage knife job on him. Why, then, would the victim have admitted a man w ho was such an obvious and determined enemy? Could the murderer have obtained a key from some third party?

Ritter’s reverie was interrupted by the approach of Sergeant Foley, the scowling fingerprint expert.

“Lieutenant,” he said, “we got something special here. I think we’re stuck with a sixty-four-million-dollar question and with no sponsor to slip us the answer.”

“You mean you can’t make the stiff?”

“Oh, the stiff’s a cinch. We haven’t made him yet, but we got a perfect set of prints and he’s old enough so he must be on file somewhere in the world. But the murderer — no soap!”

“Sergeant, you surprise and grieve me,” Ritter said. “With my own little eyes I see five perfect bloody finger marks on the bathroom door.”

“Finger marks yes,” said Sergeant Foley, “but prints no.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning no prints. No ridges, no pore patterns, no whorls, no radial loops, no ulnar loops — no nothing.”

Ritter frowned. “Gloves?”

“We usually get some sort of pattern with gloves, even surgical gloves sometimes, although they’re hard to identify. But here, nothing — and I mean nothing.”

“The knife?”

“Same thing. It wasn’t wiped. Bloody finger marks, yes — prints, no. The knife, by the way, comes from the kitchenette here.”

Max Ritter scratched his mastoid process. He pursed his lips as though rehearsing for a Police Good Neighbor League baby-kissing bee. Then he asked, “Your boys finished with that phone, Sergeant?”

“Yup. Go ahead and call.”

A moment later Ritter was talking to his private medical examiner, Dr. Daniel Webster Coffee, chief pathologist and director of laboratories at Northbank’s Pasteur Hospital.

“Hi, Doc. Get you out of bed?... Look, I got something kind of funny, if you can call homicide funny... No, the coroner’s a little late, but this one he can’t write off as natural causes. A knife job, but good. Like a surgeon, practically... No, I don’t think there’s anything you can do tonight, Doc. I already emptied the medicine chest for you, like always. But if I can talk the coroner into shipping the deceased to your hospital morgue for a P.M.... You will? Thanks, Doc. I think you’re going to like this one. The killer’s got no fingerprints... No, I don’t mean he left none; he’s got none. Call you in the morning, Doc.”

When Dr. Coffee returned to the pathology laboratory after the autopsy next morning, he handed two white enameled pails to his winsome, dark-eyed technician and said, “The usual sections and the usual stains, Doris. Only don’t section the heart until I photograph the damage.”

Doris Hudson lifted the lids from both pails and peered in without any change of expression on her cover-girl features.

“Lieutenant Ritter is waiting in your office, Doctor, talking to Calcutta’s gift to Northbank,” she said. “If you agree that Dr. Mookerji is not paid to entertain the Police Department, I could use him out here to help me cut tissue.”

Doris’s voice apparently had good carrying qualities, for the rotund Hindu resident in pathology immediately appeared in the doorway and waddled into the laboratory.

“Salaam, Doctor Sahib,” said Dr. Mookerji. “Leftenant Ritter is once more involving us in felonious homicide, no?”

Dr. Coffee nodded.

“Hi, Doc,” said Ritter. “What did you find?”

“The gross doesn’t show much except that the deceased died of shock and hemorrhage due to multiple stab wounds in the cardiac region and lower abdomen. As you know, Max, I won’t have the microscopic findings for a day or so.”

“Did you shave off the guy’s whiskers?”

“That’s not routine autopsy procedure, Max. But it’s pretty clear that he grew a beard to hide scars. There’s old sear tissues on one cheek, on the chin, and on the upper lip.”

“He also grows the bush to hide behind.” Max Ritter grinned. “Doc, the guy’s a con man and a small-time blackmailer. I wire the Henry classification to the F.B.I. last night and I get the answer first thing this morning. His name’s Paul Wallace, with half a dozen aliases. He’s got a record: four arrests, two convictions. Two cases dismissed in New York when the plaintiffs, both dames, withdrew their complaints. Last four years are blank, the F.B.I. says, at least as far as Washington knows.”

“What about the murderer with no fingerprints?” the pathologist asked.

“That’s what I want to talk to you about, Doc. Since this Wallace is a crook, maybe the guy that knifed him is another crook he double-crossed. Maybe the butcher boy had a little plastic surgery on his fingers.”

“I don’t know, Max.” Dr. Coffee shook his head, then with one hand brushed an unruly wisp of straw-colored hair back from his forehead. “I’ve never seen a first-class job of surgical fingerprint elimination. Did you ever see the prints they took off Dillinger’s corpse? His plastic job was a complete botch. No trouble at all to make the identification.”

“Then how do you—?”

“Give me another forty-eight hours, Max. Meanwhile, what progress have you made running down blind leads?”

Ritter told the pathologist about Patty Erryl and her visits to the dead man’s apartment with and without “lover boy”; also about the bored and vague desk clerk’s recital, and about his own conclusions.

“This white-haired old geezer with the package under his arm is definitely not delivering gin to Miss Benedict in Seven-oh-two for any liquor store within half a mile,” said Ritter. “I checked ’em all. Could be that his package was the plastic raincoat I found in the bathroom.

“Anyhow, I just come from talking to this Patty Erryl, the opera hopeful.” Ritter brought forth his envelope of clippings and spread them on Dr. Coffee’s desk. “Look, Doc. A real dish. Not more than twenty. Born in Texas, she says — some little town near San Antonio. Grew up in the Philippines where her father was a U.S. Air Force pilot. He was killed in Korea. Her mother is dead too, she says. I ain’t so sure. Maybe Mama just eased out of the picture, leaving little Patty with a maiden aunt in Northbank — Aunt Minnie Erryl. Anyhow, little Patty studies voice here in Northbank with Sandra Farriston until Sandra is bounced off to join Caruso, Melba, and Schumann-Heink. Remember Sandra? Then Patty goes to New Orleans to study with an old friend of Sandra’s for a few years, she says. Then she comes back to Northbank to live with Auntie Min and sing in night clubs, under Auntie Min’s strictly jaundiced eye. Then all of a sudden she wins this Metropolitan Opera audition tryout—”

“What about lover boy?”

“I was just coming to that, Doc. Seems he’s a reporter on the Northbank Tribune. Covers the Federal Building in the daytime and the night-club beat after dark. Name’s Bob Rhodes. He’s the one who pushes her into the opera auditions. Quite a feather in his cap, to read his night-club columns. He thinks he discovers another Lily Pons.”

“What has he been seeing Wallace about?”

“I don’t know yet.” Ritter pushed his dark soft hat to the back of his head. “Seems last night’s his day off and I can’t locate him. I’m on the point of putting out a six-state alarm for him, but little Patty talks me out of it. She guarantees to produce him for me at eleven o’clock this morning. Want to come along?”

“Maybe I’d better. How does the girl explain her visits to Wallace?”

“She don’t know he’s a crook, she says. Friend of her dad’s, she says. Ran into him in New Orleans when she was studying music down there, then lost sight of him for a few years. When he sees her picture in the papers after she wins that opera whoopdedoo, he looks her up here in Northbank. She goes to see him a few times to talk about her family and maybe drink a glass of sherry or two. That’s all. She has no idea who killed him or why.”

“What about that stuff you collected from the medicine cabinet in Wallace’s bathroom?”

“I got it here.” Ritter pulled a plastic bag from his bulging pocket. “It ain’t much. Aspirin, toothpaste, bicarb, hair tonic, and this bottle of pills from some drug store in Cleveland.”

Dr. Coffee uncorked the last item, sniffed, shook a few of the brightly colored tablets into the palm of his hand, sniffed again, and poured them back. He picked up the phone.

“Get me the Galenic Pharmacy in Cleveland,” he told the operator. A moment later he said, “This is Dr. Daniel Coffee at the Pasteur Hospital in Northbank. About a month ago you filled a prescription for a man named Wallace. The number is 335571. Could you read it to me? Yes, I’ll wait... I see. Diasone. Thank you very much. No, I don’t need a refill, thank you.”

Dr. Coffee’s face was an expressionless mask as he hung up. He pondered a moment, then picked up the phone again. He dialed an inside number.

“Joe? Coffee here. Has the undertaker picked up that body we were working on this morning?... Good. Don’t release it for another half hour. Dr. Mookerji will tell you when.”

The pathologist took off his white jacket, hung it up carefully, and reached for his coat. He took the detective’s arm and marched him out of the office. As he crossed the laboratory, he stopped to tug playfully on the tail of the Hindu resident’s pink turban.

“Dr. Mookerji,” he said, “I wish you’d go down to the basement and wind up that autopsy I started this morning. I need more tissue. I want a specimen from both the inguinal and femoral lymph nodes, and from each earlobe. When you’re through, you may release the body. Doris, when you make sections from this new tissue, I want you to use Fite’s fuchsin stain for acid-fast bacilli. Any biopsies scheduled, Doris?”

“Not today, Doctor.”

“Then I won’t be back until after lunch. Let’s go, Max.”

The office bistro of the Northbank Tribune staff was on the ground floor of the building next door. There reporters and desk men could refuel conveniently and could always be found in an editorial emergency. It was whimsically named “The Slot” because the horseshoe bar was shaped like a copy desk with the bartender dealing fermented and distilled items to the boys on the rim — like an editor meting out the grist of the day’s news for soft-pencil surgery.

There was a pleasant beery smell about the place, and the walls were hung with such masculine adornment as yellowing photos of prizefighters and jockeys, moth-eaten stags’ heads, mounted dead fish, a few Civil War muzzle-loaders, and framed Tribune front pages reporting such historic events as the sinking of the Titanic, the surrender of Nazi Germany, the dropping of the first atomic bomb, and the winning of the World Series by the Northbank Blue Sox.

The masculine decor was no deterrent, however, to invasion by emancipated womanhood. A series of stiffly uncomfortable booths had been erected at the rear of the barroom, and from one of them, as Dr. Coffee and Max Ritter entered, emerged a dark-eyed, flaxen-haired cutie who, from the swing of her hips as she advanced toward the two men, might have been a collegiate drum-majorette — except for the set of her jaw, the intelligent determination in her eyes, and the challenge in her stride.

“Hi, Patty,” said Lieutenant Ritter. “Where’s the fugitive?”

“Fugitive!” The girl flung out the word. “I warn you, I’m not going to let you frame Bob Rhodes. Who is this character you’ve brought along — a big-shot from the State Police, or just the F.B.I.?”

“Patty,” said Ritter, his Adam’s apple poised for a seismographic curve, “Dr. Coffee is maybe the only friend you and your lover boy have in the world — if you’re both innocent. Doc, meet Patty Erryl, the girl who’s going to make the Met forget Galli-Curci, or whoever they want to forget this year. Where’s Bob?”

“He’s been delayed.”

“Look, Patty baby, if you insist on obstructing justice, I’ll have lover boy picked up wherever he is and we’ll take him downtown for questioning without your lovely interfering presence.”

“Don’t you dare. If you—”

“Just a minute, Max,” Dr. Coffee cut in. “Remember I’ve never met Miss Erryl before. I may have a few questions—”

The pathologist was interrupted by a crash near the entrance. A man, sprawled momentarily on all fours, immediately rose to his knees, trying to recapture the bottles that were spinning off in all directions.

Patty Erryl sped to his rescue. She caught him under the armpits, straining to get him to his feet. “Bob, please get up. They’re trying to railroad you, and I’m not going to let them.”

“Come, my little chickadee, there’s no danger.” Rhodes had recaptured three of the elusive bottles. “There are no witnesses. There is no evidence. I did not kill Fuzzy Face.”

“Bob, you’ve been drinking.”

“No, my little cedar wax-wing. Only beer. My own. If only Mr. Slot would stock my Danish brand. You know I never drink until the sun is over the yardarm. Which reminds me. We have passed the vernal equinox. The sun must be over—”

“Bob!”

“Rhodes,” said Max Ritter, “the desk clerk saw you at the Westside last night.”

“That near-sighted pansy!” Rhodes exclaimed. “Don’t you ever try to prove anything by his testimony. And don’t tell me that anything I say may be used against me, because even if this place is bugged I’ll deny everything. You’ve drugged me. You’ve beaten me with gocart tires. You’ve kicked my shins black and blue. I’ll swear that you’ve—”

“Stop it, Bob.”

“May I ask a question, Mr. Rhodes? I’m Doctor—”

“Sure, you’re the learned successor to Dr. Thorndyke, Dr. Watson, Dr. Sherlock, Dr. Holmes, Dr.... Indeed, I’ve heard about you, Dr. Sanka. Go ahead and ask.”

“What were you doing at the Westside Apartment Hotel last night?”

“I was on assignment.”

“From whom?”

“I’m not at liberty to say. The highest courts of this state have ruled that a newsman is not required to reveal his sources. Privileged communication.”

“This ain’t a matter of privileged communication,” Ritter said. “This is a matter of murder in the first degree. Look here, Rhodes—”

“Just a minute, Max. Mr. Rhodes, were you inside Apartment Twenty-six last night?”

“No.”

“Did you see a man named Paul Wallace last night?”

“No.”

“But you know that Paul Wallace was killed in Apartment Twenty-six last night, don’t you?”

“Sure. I read the papers even on my day off.”

“Did you see anyone go into Apartment Twenty-six last night?”

“No.”

“Did you see anyone come out?”

Rhodes hesitated for just the fraction of a second before he said, “No.”

“What were you doing on the second floor of the Westside?”

“I was playing a hunch. I’m a great little hunch player.”

“You make mincemeat of Wallace’s lights and gizzard on a hunch?” Lieutenant Ritter asked.

“Down, Cossack!” said Rhodes. “Down. Roll over. Sit up. Beg...”

“Bob, you’re not making any sense,” the girl broke in. “Lieutenant, I’ll tell you why he was at the Westside. He had an awful fight with Paul Wallace the night before last. You see, Bob and I are very much in love, and Bob is terribly jealous. He thought Paul Wallace had designs on my virtue, so Bob told him if he as much as invited me to his apartment again, he would kill him.”

“And last night he made good his threat?”

“Of course not. Last night I told Bob he was being silly and he would have to go around and apologize to Paul Wallace. Only he couldn’t apologize because nobody answered when he knocked on the door. I guess Mr. Wallace was already dead.”

From the expression on Bob Rhodes’s face, Dr. Coffee judged that at least part of the girl’s story was new and startling to him.

“Patty,” said Ritter, “if this guy Wallace was so buddy-buddy with your family, how come your Auntie Min never heard of him?”

“Because I never spoke of him in front of Auntie Min. Auntie is a real spinster. She thinks all men are creatures of the devil. If she ever thought that I went to see Mr. Wallace alone, she’d simply die, even if he is old enough to be my father.”

“Is he your father?”

“No, of course not. Lieutenant, why don’t you let Bob go home and sober up? You’ll never get a straight story out of him in this condition.”

Ritter ignored the suggestion. “Getting back to your Auntie Min,” he said, “how come she wasn’t worried to death about you being alone with that voice coach of yours way down south in New Orleans?”

Patty laughed. “He’s even older than Mr. Wallace.”

“What was his name, Miss Erryl?” Dr. Coffee asked.

The girl hesitated. “You wouldn’t recognize it,” she said after a moment. “He wasn’t very well-known outside of the South. In the French Quarter they used to call him Papa Albert.”

“No last name?”

“That was his last name — Albert.”

“Address?”

“Well, he used to live on Bourbon Street, but the last I heard he was going to move away.”

“To Baton Rouge?”

“I–I don’t know where he is now.”

“Didn’t he write to you from Baton Rouge?”

“No.”

“Or to Mr. Wallace?”

“I’m sure I don’t know.”

“Do you know of anyone who might have written to Mr. Wallace from Baton Rouge?”

“I... I...” Patty Erryl suddenly covered her face with her hands and burst into tears.

“Lay off the gal, will you, Cossack?” Rhodes stood up, swinging a full beer bottle like an Indian club. “If you have to work off your sadistic energy somewhere, call me any day after dark and I’ll give you some addresses which I suspect you already know. You can bring your own whips, if you want, and—”

“Sit down, Mr. Rhodes.” Dr. Coffee gently removed the bottle from the reporter’s hand. “Miss Erryl, I happened to listen to the broadcast of your operatic audition. I thought you did a first-rate job. I particularly admired the way you sang Vissi d’ Arte. Do you have any real ambition to sing La Tosca some day?”

The girl’s weeping stopped abruptly. She stared at the pathologist for a moment. Then she said, “Why do you ask that?”

“You seemed to have a feeling for the part of Floria Tosca,” Dr. Coffee said. “I’m sure you must be familiar with the libretto. You are, aren’t you?”

Patty Erryl’s lips parted. She closed them again without saying a word.

“Come on, Max,” Dr. Coffee said. “Miss Erryl is right. I think you’d better tackle Mr. Rhodes when he’s more himself.”

“But Doc, he admits—”

“Let’s go, Max. Goodbye, Miss Tosca. Goodbye, Mr. Rhodes.”

As the police car headed for Raoul’s Auberge Française (one flight up) where since it was Thursday, Dr. Coffee knew they would be regaled with Quenelles de Brochet (dumplings of fresh-water pike in shells), Max Ritter said, “Doc, I shouldn’t have listened to you. I should have taken that wisecracking reporter downtown.”

“You won’t lose him, Max. I saw some of your most adhesive shadows loitering purposefully outside The Slot.”

“You never miss a trick, do you, Doc?” Ritter chuckled. “Doc, you don’t really believe that a guy gets that squiffed so early in the day just because he can’t apologize to a dead swindler, do you?”

“Hardly, Max. But a man might get himself thoroughly soused if he realized he was seen heading for the apartment of a man with whom he had quarreled the night before and who had since been murdered. My guess is that he spent the rest of the night ducking from bar to bar, trying to forget either that he killed a man or that he had certainly maneuvered himself into the unenviable position of appearing to have killed a man.”

As they waited for a light to change, Ritter asked, “What was that crack of yours about Tosca?”

Dr. Coffee laughed. “Pure whimsy. Probably unimportant. I wanted to watch the girl’s reaction.”

“You sure got one. What’s the angle?”

“Max, why don’t you drop in at the Municipal Auditorium when the Metropolitan Opera troupe stops by for a week after the New York season?”

“Doc, you know damned well I never got past the Gershwin grade. Who’s the Tosca?”

“Fiona Tosca is the tragic heroine of a play by a Frenchman named Sardou which has become a popular opera by Puccini. Tosca is a singer who kills the villain Scarpia to save her lover, an early Nineteenth Century revolutionary named Mario, and incidentally, to save her honor. As it turns out, her honor is about all that is saved because everybody double-crosses everybody else and there are practically no survivors. But it’s a very melodious opera, Max, and I think you might like it. Listen.” Dr. Coffee hummed E Lucevan le Stelle. “Da da da deee, da da dum, da dum dummmm...”

“You think we got a Patty La Tosca on our hands, Doc?”

“It’s too early to tell, Max. Right now, though, I’d say it might be a sort of Wrong-Way Tosca. Instead of Fiona Tosca killing Scarpia to save Mario, Mario may have killed Scarpia to save Tosca. Only I’m not sure who Mario might be. I’ll know more tomorrow or the next day. I’ll call you, Max.”

Dr. Coffee was reading the slides from the Wallace autopsy. The Fite stains provided colorful sections. The acid-fast bacteria appeared in a deep ultramarine. The connective-tissue cells were red, and all other elements were stained yellow. He raised his eyes from the binocular microscope and summoned his Hindu resident.

“Dr. Mookerji, I want you to look at this section from the femoral lymph node. You must have seen many like it in India.”

Dr. Mookerji adjusted the focus, moved the slide around under the nose of the instrument, grunted, and held out a chubby brown hand.

“You have further sections, no doubt?”

“Try this. From the right earlobe.”

Dr. Mookerji grunted again, then twisted the knobs of the microscope in silence.

“Hansen’s bacillus?” ventured Dr. Coffee.

“Quite,” said the Hindu. “However, am of opinion that said bacilli present somewhat fragmented appearance. Observe that outline is somewhat hollowish and organisms enjoy rather puny condition if not frankly deceased. Patient was no doubt arrested case?”

“The patient is dead,” said Dr. Coffee, “but I’ll go along with you that it wasn’t Hansen’s bacillus that killed him. It rarely does. In this case it was a knife.” He stared into space as he toyed with the slides in the rack before him. After a moment he asked, “Doris, when is that New Orleans convention of clinical pathologists that wanted me to read a paper, and I replied I didn’t think I could get away?”

Doris consulted her notebook. “It’s tomorrow, Doctor.”

“Good. Doris, be an angel and see if you can get me a scat on a plane for New Orleans tonight. Then try to get me Dr. Quentin Quirk, medical officer in charge of the U.S. Public Service Hospital at Carville, Louisiana. Make it person to person. Then get me Mrs. Coffee on the other line.”

In five minutes Dr. Coffee had reservations on the night flight to New Orleans, had instructed his wife to pack a small hag with enough clothes for three days away from home, and was talking to Dr. Quirk in Louisiana.

“This is Dan Coffee, Quent. I’m coming down to your shindig tomorrow after all... Sure, I’ll read a paper if you want. I don’t care whether it’s in the proceedings or not. Will you let me ride back to your hospital with you after the show? Fine. I’ve always wanted to see the place. See you tomorrow then, Quent. Bye.”

The pathologist had barely replaced the instrument when Max Ritter walked into his office and tossed a pair of very thin rubber gloves to his desk.

“Developments, Doc,” the detective said. “I just come from Patty Erryl’s Auntie Min’s place. She happens to have five pairs of surgeon’s gloves in the house. Seconds, she says. Big sale of defective gloves at the five and ten. Forty-nine cents a pair because they’re imperfect but still waterproof. She buys six pairs for herself and Patty to wear when they do the dishes. But there’s only five pairs there when I find ’em. She can’t remember what happened to the missing pair. She says she thinks Patty threw ’em out because they split.”

“So you think old Auntie Min wore the defective surgical gloves to kill Wallace?”

“I don’t say that. But this lush Rhodes is at her house practically every night to sell his bill of goods to Patty. If he should have grabbed that sixth pair of surgeon’s gloves one night, it might explain why there ain’t any fingerprints.”

“Max, have you arrested Rhodes?”

“Not exactly. But the chief is getting impatient. I’m holding Rhodes as a material witness.”

“Good lord! Well, at least I won’t have to face Patty when she starts raising hell to get lover boy out of custody. I’m going to Louisiana tonight, Max. If it’s at all possible, don’t prefer charges until after I get back. I have a hunch I may pick up a few threads down there. Do you have that letter with the Baton Rouge postmark?”

“Sure.”

“And a photo of Patty Erryl?”

“A cinch.”

“Wish me luck, Max. I’ll call you the minute I get back — maybe before, if I run into something hot and steaming.”

Dr. Coffee savored the applause with which the convention of pathologists greeted his paper on Determination of the Time of Death by the Study of Bone Marrow. He also savored two days of gastronomic research: Pompano en pupillote at Antoine’s and Crab Gumbo chez Galatoire, among other delights. Then he drove northwest along the Mississippi with his old classmate at medical school, Dr. Quentin Quirk.

Except for an occasional mast which poked up above the levees, Old Man River was carefully concealed from the Old River Road. The drive through the flat delta country was enlivened by the pink-and-gold bravura of the rain trees, the smell of nearby water hanging on the steamy air, and the nostalgic exchange of medical school reminiscences — who among their classmates had died, who had gone to seed, who had traded integrity for social status, who had gone on to be ornaments to the growing structure of the healing sciences.

Dr. Coffee carefully avoided mentioning the real purpose of his visit even after the moss-hung oaks and the antebellum columns and wrought-iron balconies of the entrance and Administration Building loomed ahead.

It was Dr. Coffee’s first visit to Carville. In spite of himself, he was surprised to find that the only leprosarium in the continental United States should be such a beautiful place. He knew of course that modern therapy had removed most of the crippling effects of the disease, which was not at all the leprosy of the Bible anyhow, and that even the superstitious dread was fading as it became generally known that the malady was only faintly communicable.

Yet as Dr. Quirk gave him a personally conducted tour of the plantation — the vast quadrangle of pink-stucco dormitories, the sweet-smelling avenue of magnolias leading up to the airy infirmary, the expensive modern laboratories, the Sisters of Charity in their sweeping white cornettes, the gay parasols in front of the Recreation Hall, the brilliantly colored birds, the private cottages for patients under the tall pecan trees beyond the golf course — Dr. Coffee wondered how it was possible for the old stigma to persist in the second half of the Twentieth Century. When he settled down to a cocktail in Dr. Quirk’s bungalow, however, he remembered what he had come for.

“Quent,” said Dr. Coffee, “I’ve seen Hansen’s bacillus only twice since we’ve left medical school, while you’ve been living with it for years. Didn’t we read something in Dermatology 101 about leprosy affecting fingerprints? Some Brazilian leprologist made the discovery, as I remember.”

“That’s right — Ribeiro, probably, although several other Brazilians have also been working in that field — Liera and Tanner de Abreu among them.”

“Am I dreaming, or is it true that the disease can change fingerprint patterns?”

“Definitely true,” said Dr. Quirk. “Even in its early stages, the disease may alter papillary design. The papillae flatten out, blurring the ridges and causing areas of smoothness.”

“Do the fingerprint patterns ever disappear completely?”

“Oh, yes. In advanced cases the epidermis grows tissue-thin, the interpapillary pegs often disappear, and the skin at the fingertips becomes quite smooth.”

Dr. Coffee drained the last of his Sazarac, put down his glass, and gave a rather smug nod.

“Then I’ve come to the right place,” he said. “Quent, you may have a murderer among your patients — or among your ex-patients.”

“Murderer? Here?” Dr. Quirk got up and pensively tinkled a handful of ice cubes into a bar glass. “Well, it is possible. Over the years we have had three or four murders at Carville. When did your putative Carvillian commit murder?”

“Last Wednesday night,” said Dr. Coffee, “in Northbank. The murderer left bloody finger marks but no distinguishable prints. I suspect the victim might also have been a one-time patient of yours. There was Diasone in his medicine chest, and at autopsy I found fragmented Hansen’s bacilli in the lymph nodes and in one earlobe. Did you know a character named Paul Wallace?”

“Wallace? Good lord!” Dr. Quirk shook Peychaud bitters into the bar glass with a savage fist. “That no-good four-flushing ape! Yes. Wallace has been in and out of here several times. Whenever he gets into trouble with the law, he tries to scare the authorities into sending him back here. ‘You can’t keep me in your jail,’ he says. ‘I’m a leper. You have to send me to Carville.’ But I wouldn’t take him back anymore. He’s an arrested case. Last time he tried to dodge a conviction, I sent him back to serve time. I knew he’d end up in some bloody mess. Who killed him?”

“Somebody who must have loathed his guts enough to cut them to pieces. It was a real hate job — by a man with no fingerprints.”

Dr. Quirk shook his head. “I can’t imagine—”

“Quent, did you ever see this girl before?” Dr. Coffee opened his brief case and produced a photo of Patty Erryl.

Dr. Quirk squinted at the picture, held it out at arm’s length, turned it at several angles, squinted again, brought it closer, then slowly shook his head.

“No,” he said. “I don’t think—” Suddenly he slapped his hand across the upper part of the photo. “Sorry,” he said. “Change signals. Her hair fooled me. I never saw her as a blonde before. That’s Patty Erryl.”

“An ex-patient?”

Dr. Quirk nodded. “She came to Carville as a kid. Her father was an Air Force officer in the Far East. She was raised out there — Philippines, I think; one of the endemic areas, anyhow. When her father was killed in Korea, her mother brought her back to the States. The girl developed clinical symptoms. Her mother brought her to Carville and then faded out of the picture.”

“Did she die, too?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe she remarried. Anyhow, she never once came to Carville to visit Patty. Patty responded very well to sulfones and when she was discharged as bacteriologically and clinically negative, an aunt from somewhere in the Middle West came to get her.”

“That would be Auntie Min of Northbank,” said Dr. Coffee. “How long ago was Patty discharged?”

“Two or three years ago. Do you want the exact date?”

“I want to know particularly whether Paul Wallace was a patient here while Patty was still in Carville.”

“I’m not sure. I’ll check with Sister Frances in Records.” Dr. Quirk poured fresh Sazaracs.

“No hurry. I suppose you know that Patty is quite a singer.”

“Do I! When she sang in the Recreation Hall, radio and television people used to come down from Baton Rouge to tape her concerts.”

“How far away is Baton Rouge?”

“Oh, twenty, twenty-five miles.”

“Did Patty’s voice develop spontaneously, or did she have a coach?”

“Well, I guess you could say she had a coach of sorts.”

“Papa Albert?”

Dr. Quirk’s teeth clicked against the rim of his cocktail glass. His eyebrows rose. “You come well briefed, Dan.”

“Where does Papa Albert live? Baton Rouge?”

Dr. Quirk laughed briefly. “For twenty-five years,” he said, “Carville has been home to Albert Boulanger. He was a promising young pianist when the thing hit him. This was before we discovered the sulfones, so he was pretty badly crippled before we could help him. Hands are shot. He can play a few chords, though, and he’s still a musician to his fingertips.”

“Fingertips with papillae and interpapillary pegs obliterated?”

Dr. Quirk looked at the pathologist strangely. He muddled the ice in the bar glass, and squeezed out another half Sazarac for each of them. He took a long sip of his drink before he resumed in a slow, solemn voice.

“Patty Erryl was a forlorn little girl when she came here,” he said, “and Albert Boulanger sort of adopted her. He taught her to sing little French songs. When she began to bloom, he fought off the wolves. He would invite her to his cottage out back to listen to opera recordings evening after evening.

“She was an early case. She could have been discharged in three years, except that she wanted to finish her schooling here. I think, too, that she appreciated what Papa Albert was doing to bring out the music in her. He was like a father to her. And since she scarcely knew her own father, she was terribly fond of the old man.”

Dr. Coffee drained his glass again. “I suppose your records will show that Albert Boulanger was here at Carville last Wednesday night.”

“I’m afraid not.” Dr. Quirk frowned. “He had a forty-eight-hour pass to go to New Orleans last Wednesday. He wanted to see his lawyer about a new will. The old man hasn’t long to live.”

“I thought people didn’t die of Hansen’s disease,” Dr. Coffee said.

“Boulanger has terminal cancer. He found out just two weeks ago that he’s going to die in a month or two.”

“Could I speak to him?”

“Why not?” Dr. Quirk picked up the phone and dialed the gate. “Willy, has Mr. Boulanger come back from New Orleans?... Yesterday? Thanks.” He replaced the instrument. “I’ll go with you,” he said. “Papa Albert has one of those cottages beyond the golf course. We won’t move him to the infirmary until he gets really bad.”

Albert Boulanger must have been a handsome man in his youth. Tall, white-haired, only slightly stooped, he bore few external signs of his malady. Only the experienced eye would note the thinning eyebrows and the slight thickening of the skin along the rictus folds and at the wings of the nostrils.

As Dr. Coffee shook hands, he saw that Papa Albert had obviously suffered some bone absorption; his fingers were shortened and the skin was smooth and shiny.

“I stopped by to bring you greetings from Patty Erryl in Northbank,” Dr. Coffee said, “and to compliment you on the fine job you did on Patty’s musical education.”

Papa Albert darted a quick, startled glance at Dr. Quirk. He apparently found reassurance in the MOC’s smile. He coughed. “I take no credit,” he said. “The girl has a natural talent and she’s worked hard to make the best of it.”

“I hope she wins the opera finals,” the pathologist said. “Did you get to see her when you were in Northbank on Wednesday?”

Papa Albert looked Dr. Coffee squarely in the eyes as he replied without hesitation, “I’ve never been in Northbank in my life. I was in New Orleans on Wednesday.”

“I see. Did you know that Paul Wallace was killed in Northbank last Wednesday night?”

“Paul Wallace is not of the slightest interest to me. He was a blackguard, a swindler, a thoroughly despicable man.”

“Do you have a bank account in Baton Rouge, Mr. Boulanger?”

“No.”

“But you did have — until you sent about $1700 to Paul Wallace.”

“Why would I send money to a rotter like Wallace?”

“Because you love Patty Erryl as if she were your own daughter. Because you’d do anything to stop someone from wrecking her career just as it’s about to start.”

“I don’t understand you.” Papa Albert wiped the perspiration from his forehead with the back of his hand. He coughed again.

“Mr. Boulanger, you and I and Dr. Quirk know that there are dozens of maladies more dreadful and a thousand times more infectious than Hansen’s disease. But we also know that the superstitious horror of the disease is kept alive by ignorance and a mistaken interpretation of Biblical leprosy which equates the disease with sin. Despite the progress of recent years there is still a stigma attached to the diagnosis.

“Suppose, Mr. Boulanger, a blackmailer came to you or wrote to you making threats that suggested a newspaper headline such as ‘Girl Leper Barred from Met After Winning Audition.’ Wouldn’t you dig into your savings to prevent such a headline? And if the blackmailer persisted, if his greed increased, I can even envision—”

“Dr. Coffee, if you want me to say that I’m happy that Wallace is dead, I’ll do so gladly and as loudly as I can. But now...” Papa Albert had begun to tremble. Perspiration was streaming down his pale cheeks. “Now, if you will excuse me... Dr. Quirk has perhaps told you of my condition — that I’m supposed to get lots of rest. May I bid you good evening, Doctor?”

He tottered a little as he walked away.

The drainage ditches were aglitter with the eerie light of fireflies as the two doctors left Papa Albeit’s cottage.

“What do you want me to do, Dan?” Dr. Quirk asked.

“Nothing,” Dr. Coffee replied, “unless you hear from me.”

Max Ritter was at the Northbank airport to meet Dr. Coffee.

“News, Doc,” he said, as the pathologist stepped off the ramp. “Rhodes has confessed.”

Dr. Coffee stopped short. “Who did what?”

“Rhodes, the lush, the lover boy, the star reporter and the talent scout. He signed a statement that he killed Wallace.”

Dr. Coffee managed a humorless laugh. “Tell me more,” he said as they passed through the gate and headed for the parking lot.

“While you’re away I took a gander at the phone company’s long-distance records. I find two calls in one week from Patty Erryl’s number to the same place in Louisiana. Who makes the calls? Not me, says Auntie Min. Must be a mistake, says Patty. Not two mistakes, says Ritter. Then Rhodes comes clean. He makes the calls.

“Patty is terrified of this Wallace character, but she runs to see him every time he raises his little finger. Why? Well, Rhodes phones a newspaper pal in Louisiana to smell around a little, and he finds out Wallace is blackmailing Patty. Seems when she was studying music down there she got mixed up with a crummy bunch and got caught in a narcotics raid. She’s let off with a suspended sentence but the conviction is a matter of record. Wallace finds out about it and starts putting the screws on her, so Rhodes kills him. So I lock him up.”

“That poor, love-sick, courageous, gallant liar!” said Dr. Coffee as he climbed into Ritter’s car. “Let’s go right down to the jail and let him out.”

“But Doc, Rhodes confessed!”

“Max, Rhodes is making a noble sacrifice, hoping, I’m sure, that he can beat the rap when he comes up for trial. He’s given you a confession he will surely repudiate later if it doesn’t endanger Patty. He’s confessed so that you will not run down those long-distance phone calls and discover they were from Patty to the Public Health Service Hospital in Carville, Louisiana.”

“The phone company didn’t say anything about Carville. The number was a Mission number out of Baton Rouge exchange through Saint Gabriel.”

“Exactly. All Carville numbers go through Baton Rouge and Saint Gabriel, and the exchange is Mission.”

And Dr. Coffee told Ritter about Carville, Hansen’s disease, and Papa Albert Boulanger.

“I’m positive, Max, that Papa Albert is the white-haired man with the package under his arm — the man the clerk at the Westside saw get into the elevator shortly before Wallace was killed on Wednesday,” he said. “I’m also sure that he was paying blackmail to protect Patty.

“When Papa Albert found out two weeks ago that he didn’t have long to live, he decided that before he died he would get Wallace out of Patty’s life forever. Northbank is only two hours from New Orleans by jet. He could have come up by an early evening plane, killed Wallace, and been back at his New Orleans hotel by midnight. He’ll have an alibi, all right. Who wouldn’t perjure himself for a man with only a month or two to live.”

“But Doc, if he’s going to die anyhow, why doesn’t he just give himself up, say he did it for Patty, and die a hero?”

“Because that would undo everything he’s been willing to commit murder for. That would connect Patty with Carville. And let’s face it, Max, the stigma of Carville is still pretty strong poison in too many places.”

“Not for Rhodes it ain’t. Or don’t you think he knows?”

“He knows. But he’s an intelligent young man and he’s in love with Patty.”

“I still don’t see what Rhodes was doing at the Westside the night of the murder if he didn’t kill Wallace.”

“He’ll deny this, of course, but I see only one explanation. Papa Albert didn’t have Wallace’s address — Wallace has been getting his mail at General Delivery. My guess is that Boulanger called Patty, probably from the airport, to get the address. And Patty, realizing after she had hung up what the old man was intending to do, sent Bob Rhodes out to the Westside to try to stop him. Rhodes got there too late.”

“Do you think we can break Boulanger’s alibi, Doc?”

“I’m sure you could build a circumstantial case. You could dig up an airline stewardess or two who could identify him as flying to and from New Orleans the night of the murder — he’s a striking-looking old gent. You could subpoena bank records in Louisiana to show that he withdrew amounts from his savings account approximating Wallace’s deposits in Cleveland. Maybe the desk clerk at the Westside could identify him. But you’ll have to work fast, Max. Otherwise you’ll have to bring your man into court on a stretcher.”

“You really think he’s going to die, Doc?”

“Sooner than he thinks, I’d say. The metastases are pretty general. The lungs are involved — he has a characteristic cough. The lymph nodes in his neck are as big as pigeons’ eggs. With luck he may last long enough to hear Patty sing in the finals — La Tosca. I hope. Unless, of course, you start extradition proceedings.”

The detective swung his car into the “Official Vehicles Only” parking space behind the county jail.

“I dunno, Doc,” he said as he switched off the ignition. “Maybe we ought to let God handle this one.”