The Chinese Doll

Chapter 17

  Boone, Ill.

  Sunday, P.M.

My Dearest Louise:

You undoubtedly already know the final results, Louise. I suppose every news ticker and every radio commentator in the midwest has had a field day. Especially those in Illinois. But all the little details, the somewhat dry step-by-step coverage they ignore, go like this:

Eleanor was sleeping. Doc Burbee had undressed her and put her to bed while I was raiding his ice box.

He stood beside her bed, alternately looking down on the girl and then at me. His fingers fumbled at the collar of his dressing gown for a bow tie that wasn’t there.

“I’ll have to report this, you know. Gun wound.”

“Yeah, I know. Are you particular who you report it to?”

“The police, of course!” he snapped.

“I can make a better suggestion.”

He waited for the better suggestion, glowering.

“Report it to Thompson. Ask him to pass it along to the City Hall.”

Still the doctor waited, trying again to tug at a tie.

“Look, Doc, you know something about this business. Thompson and me, we’re in it together — now. He came out to the hospital to see me about it. This girl is a part of it; as the other one was. Oh, hell! Where’s the telephone? I’ll call him myself.”

He showed me, and hung around to listen.

The State’s Attorney was in bed and said so. I guessed that. He had picked up his phone, put it back on the cradle, and picked it up again. Or maybe he had hit the cut-off button with his hand. Anyway, there were two clicks.

“Now wait a minute, please...” I tried to placate him after identifying myself. “This is important.”

“So is my sleep!” Mr. Thompson was somewhat annoyed. “I thought you were in the hospital?”

“So does the hospital... or maybe they know better by this time. Now hold on! Don’t shout at me like that. I haven’t broken and entered anything, yet. This is about another matter we were discussing.”

“I’m listening,” he reminded me impatiently.

“Not over the phone, ninny.”

There was considerable silence on his end while he thought that over. I heard heavy breathing. Finally he asked, “Something we discussed at the hospital?”

“That’s right.”

“Something that worried us considerably?”

“Right again.”

“And you have the answer?”

“I have the one answer you wouldn’t be foolish enough to go to court with.”

Silence. Then, “I think I understand. Where are you?”

“Remember your five fingers?”

“Uh? Oh yes, certainly.”

“Then think, you have one there with you, one is out of reach, one has a new job. The fourth and fifth are here.”

I could hear his feet hit the floor. “I’m on my way,” he snapped at me and dropped the phone into the cradle. Then someone else dropped another phone into another cradle. When I hung up it made the third click.

The listener was an amateur. Always wait until both parties hang up before you hang up yourself.

Burbee was standing beside me. He motioned to the phone.

“I heard two clicks on the other end.”

I nodded. “You’re beginning to get the idea.”

We walked back into the bedroom. Eleanor hadn’t moved. Her face seemed calm and less pale under the shaded light.

Burbee commented, “She bears a remarkable resemblance to that other girl. The one in the lake.”

“Sisters.”

He pursed his tongue in his cheek and studied me. “I wonder how much you know?”

“Me? The works. Thompson told me about the water in the stomach, if that’s what you mean. It’s funny how you guys keep overlooking that match; me, I can’t forget it.”

“Where did you find this... this...”

“Her name is Eleanor. Behind the door in my office. God knows how long she lay there. I’ve been in the hospital for a couple of days. Is she bad off?”

“No. She’ll get over it. Slight wound. Shock, and loss of blood mostly. Also hunger. I’ll wager she was behind that door for from fifteen to twenty hours, probably longer.”

I whistled, and recalled the dried blood spots.

Fifteen to twenty hours. That meant from about the time I had tried to get out of the hospital Friday night and had been stopped by the owlish nurse. Maybe longer.

The State’s Attorney arrived in almost no time with his wife chasing after him. Neither of them had taken time to dress. He wore a pair of trousers and an old sweater over his pajamas. His wife, whom he introduced as “Trudy,” kept her coat on. Maybe she didn’t have an old sweater. Trudy had a stenographer’s notebook and a couple of pencils.

“Where is she?” Thompson demanded anxiously. “Is she hurt?”

Doc Burbee answered both questions with a minimum of words, and asked him if he knew his phone was tapped. By the expression on Thompson’s face, I’d hazard a guess that he didn’t know it. He bent to inspect the sleeping girl and then turned to me for the story.

I gave it to him. While I was doing it, Eleanor heard me talking and opened her eyes.

They widened with alarm as they saw past me and discovered Bur-bee and Thompson standing there. She apparently didn’t remember Burbee from a short while ago. Before she could become alarmed I sat down on the edge of the bed and held one of her cold, unresisting hands.

In turn I introduced Burbee, Thompson, and Trudy.

“These people are okay, Eleanor. They’re on our side. If you trust me, you can trust them.” Her eyes told me she knew Thompson, at least by name.

He and Burbee fired the same question at her. Her fist tightened in my hand.

She answered, falteringly, “His name is Burton Dunkles.”

Thompson frowned. “Dunkles? Never heard of him.”

“They call him ‘The Judge,’ ” Eleanor explained.

Our faces lit up. “He collects guns,” I said for no reason whatever.

Eleanor shuddered. “He walked into the kitchen. I was ironing. He had a gun in his hand, a big, long one. I didn’t know what he was going to do; his face was a mask. I’ve seen him like that before — when he was angry.”

“He was living with you, wasn’t he?” I prodded. “He was the man who came up the stairs that day I visited you?”

She said yes. “We moved into Leonore’s apartment after... after...”

“Sure,” I eased it over. “I should have known it was the Judge. I found western magazines in the bathroom.”

Eleanor tried to apologize, “The lease is paid up for a year. It was a much nicer place than our own. Burton said—”

I cut in.

“You don’t have to explain that, kid. What happened — when the Judge walked into the kitchen while you were ironing?”

“I was frightened. I don’t remember what he said, or what I said. His face was terrible. He had just talked to someone on the telephone. Then he came into the kitchen with the gun in his hand. I remember screaming, and then I threw the hot iron at him. I think it struck his head. He cried out when it hit him and fell on the floor. I ran into the bedroom and got my coat. I don’t know why, but I wanted to go out the back way. I ran through the kitchen. He was struggling on the floor. He raised up and fired just as I was closing the door.”

Burbee jumped in and cautioned her to go easy. He said she was exciting herself.

“Eleanor, you say he talked to someone on the phone. Did he call out, or did someone call him?”

She hesitated only an instant. “Someone called him. I was going to answer it, but he said never mind, he would.”

Thompson and I exchanged glances.

“Notice the curious time lapse?” he pointed out.

I said yeah. Burbee asked, what time lapse?

Thompson explained that I had been to see Eleanor the day before, but that punishment had taken nearly twenty-four hours to catch up with her. He also mentioned that the City Hall janitor had been fired long after I had revealed that I had been using him. And that a shadow in Croyden had been several hours late in getting on my tail.

I asked Eleanor how she had gotten away.

“I drove his car. After I left Croyden and crossed the river I realized the car could be traced. It was so flashy. So I left it in some small town and waited for a bus.”

“You went straight to my office?”

She nodded. “I was afraid to take a taxi. That might be traced. So I walked. I must have been weaker than I realized. I could hardly climb the stairs.”

“No one else around?”

“I didn’t see anyone. I was afraid someone might come in. I sat down behind the door. You might be late getting back. You see...” Her voice trailed away.

“Yeah,” I used some sarcasm. “I see. I was lying in the ditch where your friends had left me.”

“Oh, no. We saw that other car pick you up. We followed the other car as far as the hospital.”

“You... you did that? Why?”

“Our instructions were to make sure you were found.”

“Well, I’ll be damned. Why?”

She didn’t know. They were only obeying orders. She regretted having hit me on the head with the gun butt, but it had become necessary. I was beginning to win the fight. They had to follow orders. I was dumped in the ditch and shadowed to the hospital. And then their chore was finished.

“And then you returned to Croyden, and then, after this phone call, Dunkles shot you? Is that right?”

“Yes, sir.”

I bogged down. Thompson knew what was in my mind and knew why I wasn’t asking the next logical question.

He asked it for me. “Eleanor. Did a woman issue those orders? Did a woman call you that night at the farmhouse?”

“No sir.”

“No? Has a woman ever issued orders to you? Or to your knowledge, to the Judge?”

She was plainly puzzled. “No, sir.”

“Well then, who did?”

“The chief, Mr. Swisher.”

Thompson wasn’t satisfied. He thrust in another question, “Do you know a woman named Elizabeth Saari? Doctor Elizabeth Saari?”

Eleanor said no and she obviously wasn’t lying.

I started in again. “Eleanor, all this should convince you that you’re on a spot. The same hot spot I’m on. Remember that phone call to the Judge. That time he was instructed to eliminate you.” I stopped and let it sink in. “Now, Eleanor, Thompson wants to bust up this mess. You can help him if you want to. Do you?”

She lay very quiet and unmoving.

“Thompson has dug up a lot of stuff on Swisher and his outfit. He knows enough to hang them, but he can’t prove it. Not without your help. The Judge has shown you that Swisher no longer wants you around. There’s no reason why you should hang back — not now. You’ve got to help us.”

Abruptly, violently, she shuddered and hid her face. She was crying.

“Don’t you think I’ve thought of that? Don’t you credit me with any sense at all? You don’t have to rub it in.”

I got up from the bed and turned to Trudy Thompson, making a finger motion as if I were scribbling with a pencil. She nodded, and I pushed Thompson into my place. Very, very gently he began plying her with questions. And slowly, very slowly, he began getting answers. Trudy took them down.

I went out into the kitchen and raided the icebox again. When Doc Burbee’s cook came in in the morning she was going to be a chagrined old girl. I could follow the mumbling undertone of voices but couldn’t distinguish the words. I seated myself at the kitchen table, eating cheese sandwiches, drinking from a milk bottle, and adding up my sums. And I must admit that each time I arrived at an answer I grew more excited with the correctness of it. And more than somewhat depressed. If ever a guy was pulling his house down on top of him, I was.

I wondered if the hospital had discovered my absence, and if they had notified Dr. Saari. And I wondered what the good doctor would think, or say aloud, when they notified her. In spite of it all, I hoped she wouldn’t be too mad at me. I had warned her I wouldn’t run out on a client.

With that I went back into the bedroom. Eleanor was finishing up. Thompson seemed extremely dissatisfied.

“What’s the matter?”

“We’re no farther along than we were before.”

“Hasn’t she told you what you want to know?”

“Oh, certainly.”

“Then what’s eating on you?”

“Read that!” He pointed at his wife’s shorthand notebook. “Or, no, you can’t read shorthand. It wouldn’t do you much good if you could, there’s nothing there.”

“Maybe you’d better explain it in little words.”

“Damn it all, Horne, there’s nothing there we don’t already know. She’s told me everything she can but she hasn’t added one word we haven’t already found out, or surmised. She simply doesn’t know enough about the inner circle. Well—” he flung his hands in the air, “she would still make a first class state’s witness... if we had a case.”

That was my cue.

“I might provide that. If you’ll keep one eye shut.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Remember the caretaker’s cottage? Eleanor said it was empty at night, when the barn is running wide open...”

“And—?”

“And it won’t be breaking and entering.” I walked over to Eleanor and held out my hand. She looked at it, uncomprehending.

I said, “The key, baby.”

She shook her head. “I don’t have it.”

“Who does?”

“No one. They keep it in a mailbox beside the door.”

Burbee and I burst out laughing. Thompson didn’t see anything funny in her statement.

“There’s no mailbox delivery out that way.”

“No. But there is a mailbox, and a key in it.” Eleanor stuck to her statement.

I asked Eleanor if she felt strong enough for a ride. She almost jumped at the suggestion, and Burbee jumped for me. I overrode his protests. I pointed out that I realized she had been shot, that she was weak and all that, but that for a very good reason she should go along with us. Thompson wanted to know the reason.

I said, well, there’s really more than one. In the first place, if Eleanor unlocked the door and asked us in, it wouldn’t be breaking and entering. That if there was anything at all incriminating in the house, she would know where to look for it. And lastly, I had once tried to prove to her without success that her sister had been murdered. If she went along now, I believed I could prove it beyond doubt.

Thompson silently turned over in his head the close juxtaposition of the cottage to the lake, and said, yes, if there is running water in the cottage, you may be right.

I said that wasn’t all. I said that, if no one else, I at least wanted to prove to myself the reasons behind the curious lapses of time between any act of mine and the subsequent reaction. I believed that proving one thing to Eleanor would prove the other to me. And to him, if he was interested. He was. Very much so.

I began wrapping blankets around Eleanor.

“Now wait a minute,” Burbee interposed. “If you insist on taking her along, she may as well get dressed. If we... uh, have to leave in a hurry, those blankets will impede her progress somewhat.” He fidgeted with his collar.

He had a point there. We left the room while Trudy helped Eleanor to dress. I asked them if they had guns. Doc Burbee said yes, there was an old horse pistol around the house. I said, get it. Thompson said he always carried one in the dash compartment of the car.

I put Eleanor in the front seat with me and told Burbee, Thompson and his wife to ride in back,

“Why?” Thompson wanted to know.

“Because when we get there, you three are going to lie on the floor and pretend you’re not there.”

“Why?”

“Remember your tapped wire? Someone out there is waiting for us. For me, I mean. They’ll figure Eleanor is either with me or has skipped the country. She’s been missing for twenty-four hours you know. If she’s with me, they know I’ll turn up at that cottage sooner or later.”

Burbee began to wonder audibly if that was safe. I put the car in gear and shot ahead before he could convince Thompson. He tried, all the way out, but rather uselessly. When we reached the point on the highway many minutes later where the lane ran alongside the lake, I kept on going. I didn’t want to drive down that lane.

Burbee shut up then, curious as to what I was doing. He soon found out. About a mile past the lake we turned left on a graveled country road and killed the lights. We ambled along slowly, watching the fence line, when a gate suddenly appeared. A gate opening into a pasture.

I put the car through the gate and we bumped across the pasture to still another fence, keeping in a general direction leading back to the lake. There was no gate in the second fence. It was ordinary wire, not barbed, so I made a gate. Thompson groaned. On the other side were the remains of last season’s corn crop and a narrow lane running alongside it where the farmer had driven his plow and team. We followed this lane to the end, left the old cornfield through still another rickety gate, and were on the very edge of the vast plot of snow-covered park land. The lake was some distance away, near the center of the park. Far back from the lake loomed the dark bulk of the barn, and near us, still black but not so large, was the caretaker’s cottage. It had probably once been a fisherman’s cottage and was fairly close to the water.

I stopped the car and peered ahead over the snowy ground. There was no moon, but the sky was bright. As I watched, a car turned in from the highway, doused its lights, and began the slow journey to the barn.

“See that car?” I said to Trudy over my shoulder. “If we have to get out of here in a hurry, we’ll use that road. You’ll be driving. Think you can make it?”

She probably grinned behind my back. “You bet!”

We remained there at the cornfield gate until the car had discharged a couple of passengers and started back to town. Eleanor followed it with her eyes.

“That’s probably Doris,” she commented.

I asked, “Does Swisher always use women for that?”

“Yes sir.”

“The psychological effect upon the suckers, I presume,” Thompson commented dryly.

“Could be. Where does he get all the girls, Eleanor?”

Her answer was vague and evasive. I thought I knew; knew in her case, at least. I threw a shot in the dark.

“You came by way of Mexico, didn’t you?”

The shot told. She jumped and wanted to know how I knew. I said that I had guessed. I asked her how long she and Leonore had been in the country. She said since they were children. She didn’t know how many years. The United States has revoked some of the restrictions formerly imposed on Chinese immigration, but that doesn’t mean the Chinese who entered the country illegally were free to stay.

Thompson seized that one. “You realize, don’t you, that this admission will mean deportation?”

She shrugged and said she wasn’t worried about anything like that... not now.

That should have tipped me off as to what was in her mind, but I missed the boat again, Louise. I didn’t give it another thought at the time.

After the other car had reached the highway and gone towards town, I started the car, fed it a rich burst, and shut off the motor, hoping to coast all the way to the cottage. We stopped several yards away. I was afraid to use the motor again. There was nothing stirring, anywhere.

Thompson was nervous. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

“Damned sure. Do you?”

“Well, yes, I suppose so.”

“All right. Keep your lip stiff. Stay hidden back there until Eleanor and I get inside. Put Trudy in the front seat. At the first sign of trouble, signal us and we’ll be out so fast you’ll wish you started the motor first.

“If there isn’t any trouble, follow us in after maybe five or ten minutes. I’m banking on someone being in there. If I get the drop on him, I’ll signal you. If he gets the drop on me, wait around a few minutes and come in behind him. Got it?”

“I’m away ahead of you.” But he still didn’t like it.

I eased Eleanor out of the car and asked her if she was scared. She didn’t answer, but when I took her arm it was quivering. So was mine. We slipped across the snow to the house, slowly, because Eleanor was having difficulty in walking. I was holding my gun in my right hand and supporting her with my left arm.

I led her to the side of the house nearest the front door, propped her against the wall, and told her to wait there a minute. Circling the house flat against the wall, ducking under the windows, I came to the telephone wires fastened to the side of the house. They led from the barn, to a pole, to the house, down its side and into the basement. With as little noise as possible I ripped them loose. Then I went back to Eleanor.

Silently she pointed to the unused mailbox. The key was inside. Damn funny place for a key, I thought. People should have better sense.

After crossing the porch on hands and knees, I fitted the key into the lock and turned it. Then I went back for Eleanor. I placed her to one side of the door, back against the house where a tearing bullet from within couldn’t touch her, and then twisted the knob. Nothing happened. The house was in darkness.

Stale air mingled with cigarette smoke met my nostrils. Fresh cigarette smoke.

The smoker would be sitting across the room, facing me, waiting for me to come in. He wouldn’t fire while I stood there because the sound would carry in the night air. He would wait until I had entered and closed the door behind me.

I whispered to Eleanor, “Stay here. I’ll be back after you.”

Dropping to my knees I went through the door at a crawl. I was across the sill and feeling about for a chair when Eleanor did the damndest thing.

She walked upright through the opening behind me, fumbled for a light switch, clicked it on, and said, “I’ve just got to sit down!”