Kill as Directed

Twelve

One Tuesday afternoon, at five o’clock, Dr. Alfred McGee Stone dropped into the office of Dr. Harrison Brown.

“My wife’s in town, shopping,” said Dr. Stone. “I was wondering if you could join us for dinner.”

“Sure thing, Doctor,” said Dr. Brown.

“Eight o’clock all right?”

“Fine.”

“By the way, if you have any suggestions... My wife is always looking for new places to eat. If there’s some special restaurant you know—”

“How about Giobbe’s? It’s a wonderful Italian place in Greenwich Village...”

Mrs. Stone turned out to be a plump little hen of a woman with bright, quick eyes. She clucked over every dish at Giobbe’s.

“You know, Doctor,” she said to Harry, “I’m here only as Alfred’s excuse. Ordinarily a woman would resent being used that way, but this food is so divine—”

“Bernice.” Dr. Stone tapped his lips with his napkin, rather embarrassed. Then he laughed, “well, it’s true, Doctor. Have you been giving any thought to my proposal?”

“Yes,” Harry said politely.

“No decision yet, I take it.”

“No.”

“Well, there’s plenty of time. When you do come to a decision, though, I hope you’ll call me at once.”

“Naturally, Doctor.”

Dr. Stone began talking about the Taugus Institute. “I will admit,” he said after a while, “that the one possible drawback from your standpoint is the matter of income. I take it you’re an ambitious young fellow. I don’t mean to sound like somebody out of a soap opera, Doctor, but a lot of money and happiness don’t necessarily go together.”

“Happiness?” Harry said, holding on to his glass of Chianti. “Do you know a happy man, Dr. Stone?”

“A great many of them. Don’t you?”

“He’s too young to be happy,” said Bernice Stone.

“Peter Gross is happy,” said Dr. Alfred Stone. “Lewis Blanchette is happy. I’m happy. I love my wife and children and grandchildren. I like my work. I’m not rich, but I have enough to give my family a decent life, with some left over for books and recordings and golf and taking my wife out to overeat occasionally. What more could a man want?”

Harry was silent.

“Aren’t you happy, Dr. Brown?” asked the plump little woman.

“I suppose not, Mrs. Stone.”

“You join us at the Institute,” Dr. Stone said. “You’re not happy because you’re not satisfying your innermost needs. Are you?”

“I suppose not, Dr. Stone.” He felt like a fool.

“May I call you Harry?” the director of the Taugus Institute asked with a smile.

“Of course,” said Harry.

He was committed. He no longer fought it; it was no longer unreal. He was committed to pit himself against a wily old adversary who had all the weapons on his side.

I have only one advantage, Dr. Harrison Brown thought: the adversary doesn’t know he’s in a fight. To the death. I have no choice — he told me that himself. So I’m locked in the arena, and I’ve got to kill or be killed — be killed slowly. At least he’ll die all at once... The concept of himself in the role of murderer no longer struck him as psychotic. He could look at himself in the mirror again. He could think his plans out without squirming... well, much.

He was sleeping better, working better, loving better.

He did not talk of his plans to Karen. She knew. She had told him about the Starhurst routine in detail. If she did not realize consciously why she had done that, she knew all the same.

He was committed to murdering Kurt Gresham. As the man’s doctor it could be a simple matter. But as the man’s doctor it could also be a dangerous matter. And as the man’s wife’s lover... He stood to gain the widow, the millions, the dream he had dreamed all his life. Gresham’s death must not lead, even in theory, to Dr. Harrison Brown’s door.

So it had to be murder — crass, vulgar, apparently without finesse. Murder as far removed from Dr. Brown as a Chicago alley mugging. Murder not as a crime of passion by an amateur, but as a deliberate underworld assassination. A doctor would obviously use a doctor’s weapon — poison, or an injection, or some pharmacological means deriving from the victim’s coronary. Therefore — sudden death by a gangster’s weapon.

This, then, was the first problem.

The weapon called for was clearly a gun. But he had no gun. To procure one legally was to invite investigation. The question was therefore how to procure one illegally, without a license. It should be an untraceable gun, if possible, its serial number destroyed beyond resurrection — a professional killer’s weapon. Because, clearly, it had to be found near the body to establish the professional nature of the killer.

Where did a physician practicing medicine out of a Central Park West office get hold of such a gun?