To Keep or Kill

Two

Charles Horne put his aching head back against the inviting softness of the doctor’s bosom and waited for her to finish the tape job.

He found it pleasant waiting. She had been running; had taken the back stairs two at a time coming up to the office; his head rose and fell with her labored breathing. The doctor possessed an elegant bosom.

Dr. Elizabeth Saari was new to Boone; she had come in from Chicago less than six months before to open a practice, and had rented a suite of rooms just across the hall from the office of Confidential Services. Because people need doctors more than they need detectives — even confidential ones — her daily volume of business put his to shame. It was his habit to sit most of the day with his feet on the desk, listening to the trampling of people going in and out of her door, wondering what he’d do and say if just one of them wandered into his office by mistake.

It was a decision he’d never yet had to make.

The doctor was an efficient, alert young woman not many years out of medical school. She made friends easily and customers easier.

He found Dr. Saari to be an intelligent, attractive, chestnut-haired model with all the standard fixtures; about twenty-seven years old, and single. It pleased him. When standing near him on her medium heels she almost made it to his chin-level. Almost. And they had done each other a few favors since her arrival in town.

Chief among those favors was the finding of an apartment for her in an already overcrowded, underhoused community. Horne liked to remember that. With his usual sly cunning and adroitness, he told himself, the discovery of an apartment was simplicity in itself. He merely created one, and after an appropriate wait the better to impress her and to allow her hotel expenses to pile up, he “found” the empty apartment and moved her in.

He lived in a rather exclusive rooming house owned and operated by a sentimental old-maid character he called “Mother Hubbard.” He couldn’t recall just what her real name was. It was exclusive because the two of them were the only tenants of the house — until Dr. Saari was moved in. Using his slick tongue and his persuasive manners, he privately admitted, it was fairly easy to convince Mother Hubbard of the evil perils apt to be encountered by a big city girl in a small town... and you know how those hotel bellboys are. He talked Mother Hubbard into converting three rooms, front, on the ground floor into a “vacant” apartment.

Dr. Saari clinched the deal by volunteering to pay the telephone bill.

Nearly a week went by before the new doctor discovered her benefactor lived in the same house in the two upstairs rooms that comprised the second floor. Then, his slick tongue failed him, but only momentarily.

That was six months ago.

At the moment he was plagued with an insistent, violent headache and he was one of those people who are immune to aspirin. His ears hurt and no sound was coming through them. The strange silence didn’t help his peace of mind; the raging headache had been with him since he had picked himself up from the floor of his office twenty minutes past.

Jingling shards of window glass had fallen from his body to the floor when he sat up, some of them stained a reddish brown. The ears were beginning to sting deep down inside, but he was picking up sounds. He passed a dazed hand across his eyes to wipe away the mist and it had come down smeared with blood.

People were running and shouting down in the street. He had probably lain on the floor longer than he at first suspected for already the low whine of the police ambulance was coming through the shattered windows. It usually required from five to ten minutes for those boys to get around. A very heavy motor was thumping not too far away; the reverberations seemed to be coming through the floor. Presently he recognized it. Someone had turned in a fire alarm and a heavy-duty pumper was working down in the street.

Clutching the corner of the desk for support, he clawed his way upright and hung there for long minutes weakly. Rubble crunched under his hands. The room and its few contents were spinning, the dripping mist persisted in clouding his eyes. He wiped it away again and his shirt sleeve was sodden with blood. The three windows of the office, all facing the street, were broken. Only the jagged edges remained, clinging to the long-dried putty. The chair on which he had so recently sat was in three or four pieces scattered over the floor. Only the heavy desk was solid and dependable beneath his hands.

The seemingly cool night air of the open window invited him. Looking out, he found the streets and sidewalks jammed with milling people and unmoving automobiles. A second, steadier glance revealed that the automobiles were not on the sidewalks, it only seemed that way. People and cars were in the street, all tied together in a beautiful jam. The thumping fire truck stood at the intersection on the left, astraddle the streetcar tracks. The still-unused hoses snaked flatly away from an orange fire hydrant.

“Jeez,” Horne addressed the crowd below him. “That was some bang, wasn’t it?”

The oily worm’s big automobile with the big license number had been parked between two light standards up the street to his right. He craned his neck. Had been parked. He located the light standards: they were twisted around in pretzel shapes, looking like the newsreel pictures of the palm trees in a tropical hurricane. Of the car there remained only a gaping hole in the asphalt street.

The street surface immediately around the crater was swept clean by the force of the explosion; what remained of the car itself was hundreds and perhaps thousands of blasted pieces of anonymous metal scattered in every imaginable direction, including the pockets of souvenir hunters. There were chunks of it lying inside store windows and imbedded in brick walls, and still other chunks would be found in second-floor offices and on roof tops for days to come.

All in all it was a very successful practical joke, eh Mr. Horne? It was, he grimly answered himself. The only question being: was the fat man appreciating it now, wherever the hell he was? Could the deadly redhead have been his wife? How did she like being a widow? Damn her, I didn’t expect her to take my unspoken thought so literally.

A ragged and hastily organized police line was being thrown at an angle across Wilsey Street, making a clearing around the crater and lampposts. The mob was barred from the upper end of the block altogether. He looked to see why.

A tall and lanky Finn known as “Swede” kept a drugstore up that way, one of those typical places where one could buy anything from a filthy book to an automobile tire, in season. The Finn also accepted bets on the ponies. The police ambulance was backed to the curb in front of the drugstore.

At the present time the drugstore lacked windows but nobody was paying any heed to that. Every shop up and down the street within a reasonable radius of the explosion lacked windows. A man was sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk before the store, experiencing considerable pain to judge by his actions. Swede was on his knees beside him wrapping the guy in yards of bandages. A cop squatted in front of the man, asking questions and jotting down answers in a notebook.

A couple of cops bent over something hidden from view behind the cross-legged man and straightened up with a stretcher in their hands. If whoever it was on the stretcher was moving, Horne was too far away to see it. They slid the stretcher in the back door of the ambulance and returned for the man on the sidewalk. Ignoring the protests of the bandage-waving druggist, they put the man in the ambulance. One of the policemen climbed in with him. The door was shut and the car moved away from the curb.

Two more victims of your joke, redhead.

Charles Horne looked down at the crowd suddenly and wondered why they were making so little noise. They continued to mill and gape. Then, quickly, overwhelmingly, two facts crashed home to him. A jangling, searing headache took complete possession of his skull, instantly making life miserable. And at the same time his sense of hearing began to slip away from him.

He reached for the telephone and found it still in working order. No reason why it shouldn’t be, he reflected, the cables were underground in the business district. It was difficult to understand Mother Hubbard’s words when she answered the phone. He asked for Elizabeth Saari.

He made a brilliant beginning when she came on the wire. Her voice reached him faintly. He cleared his throat.

“Hi, babe.”

The woman made some answer or he may have cut in on her before she finished speaking; he caught only a mumble.

“Elizabeth, please speak louder.”

“Chuck, we heard an explosion. What was it?”

Her voice had always sounded nice on the phone but he was careful never to tell her so. The boys at the pool hall, very free with wise advice, said it was best to keep them guessing for satisfactory results. He wished he could hear that voice right now. As it was, he caught only a few key words to shape the question she was asking.

“Explosion,” he said briefly.

“So we gathered. But what was it?”

“What?”

“I said, what was it? That explosion?”

“Better come down to the office, doctor. Come on down and count your windows. Mine are all gone.”

“O-h, Chuck! My office?”

“All our offices. Up and down the avenue. Come on down and we’ll inspect your damage.”

There were some seconds of silence and then she yelled his name.

He questioned, “What did you say?”

“Chuck, what is the matter with you? You haven’t heard half of what I’ve said.”

“Sorry, babe. My hearing isn’t up to snuff. What did you say?”

“I asked if anyone was hurt.”

He caught only the last word and guessed the rest.

“Hurt? Yeah, two or three guys got themselves blown through windows, or whatever. Two of them have just been taken away in the blue wagon. I think one is kaput.”

In his mind’s eye he could picture the doctor reaching for her compact black bag with one hand and the dinky, trivial hat she affected with the other. He had no idea what she was using to hold the phone.

“Chuck!”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m here. Can’t hear you very well.”

“Charles Horne, you are acting very queerly. Were you hurt in that explosion?”

“You’re a mind reader, babe. Yeah. I’m the third guy what was blowed around...”

She smacked the phone down abruptly. He heard that all right. He hung up and sat down on the floor, sliding down the side of the desk for support.

Dr. Saari was a smart girl for her age. She guessed Wilsey Street would be blocked and came the back way, through the alley and up the rear stairs. The man on the floor didn’t hear her coming, his hearing was completely gone by the time she arrived.

Breathing hard from the exertion, she pushed open the door to his office and looked down at him on the floor. He reflected on the pleasant sight he probably presented. His eyes traveled up her slim body from the dark brown shoes to the dark brown eyes.

He spread his hands and grinned. “No hear English.”

She went to her knees beside him and opened the bag. He was suffering nothing more serious than a pair of long gashes in his forehead where one of the windows had fallen on him, the strange loss of hearing, and one of the most morale-crushing headaches since the days of creation, but she acted as if he were a fifty-dollar-a-visit patient with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. He guessed the bloody shirt gave a much worse impression of the damage than actually existed.

She helped him to his feet and guided him across the hall to her own offices. Her reception room was untouched but the inner sanctum was a glass-strewn counterpart of the room they had just quitted. Like his, it faced the street and contained three windows. They were out. She placed her black bag on the floor and brushed the broken glass from the long, leather examining table.

“Lie down there.” She removed her jacket.

He guessed at the words and sat down on the table.

She began by unbuttoning the ruined shirt he was wearing. He pulled it off and tossed it in the waste can.

“Nothing wrong with me there, doctor. Just my head and my ears.”

She ran hot water into the basin, wet a towel and washed away the muck on his face and arms. The sensation was pleasurable.

“You know what?” he smiled up into her face. “This is the first time a woman has given me a bath since I ran away from home to be a hobo.”

She said nothing. Elizabeth Saari would make somebody a swell wife. But not him. He unconsciously shook his head at the thought. Not him. He took a towel from her hands and dried himself.

Standing behind him, she tilted his head back against her and swabbed the gashes in his forehead. Then she reached for the bandages and tape. He put his head against the inviting softness of her bosom and waited for her to finish. The doctor had an elegant bosom.

What, he wondered idly, was the redhead doing now? Now there was a woman! She must have heard the explosion. The streetcar couldn’t have carried her too far away. The daring, icy-steel nerve of her! What manner of motive, how powerful a thrust could be behind her to force her to such an act? He wished he knew.

There had been her careful plan of action. Her every move had been premeditated; the whole crazy thing screamed of sureness, of foreknowledge, of timing and iron ruthlessness.

From somewhere the redhead had ridden to Wilsey Street, carrying with her in her purse that small, deadly bundle of dynamite. Dynamite? Something more powerful than that — it had been one hell of a blast for mere dynamite. Nitro, probably.

From somewhere across town she had ridden on the rattling streetcar, stepped off to walk three-quarters of a block, and planted the package in a waiting automobile. She had known the automobile would be there, at that precise time, somewhere along the block. She had known it would be empty, that the owner was not far away.

And then just as casually she had crossed the street, walked to the corner, and waited for the returning streetcar to carry her back to the unknown point from which she had come. That was timing. It implied practice, or at least an accurate knowledge of the haphazard streetcar schedules. They seldom ran on time.

And what had brought his disappointed would-be client back to Wilsey Street? What caused him to park his car almost beneath the windows? He hadn’t been wearing the white suit on his early morning call so it was a return trip. He had returned and the redhead knew it; had known his car would be empty when she reached it. He might have told her of his plans — depending upon who she was.

If she were his wife, the chances were he hadn’t confided in her. Not if he’d been on the level about the divorce. It was much more likely she had lured him back to Wilsey Street; such an explanation would account for her knowing his movement, knowing of the car.

So unless he had other business along the block the only thing to bring him back was Charles Horne. Had the redhead roped Charles Horne into the deal? Suppose she had told him the detective was willing to reconsider his offer? No — it wouldn’t work. She would hardly be in a position to know her husband had been refused in the first instance. Not if she were his wife.

If she weren’t his wife she simply didn’t fit into the picture at all. Still, the worm had come crawling back to Wilsey Street for some reason, and he was the only reasonable reason, and the redhead had known all about it.

But above all the act was incredibly ruthless. The fat man would die in the trap, and so could other people, innocent bystanders.

The fat man could have been accompanied by another man, a woman, or perhaps children. There had been children playing in the block earlier. And there had been other men present — witness the unmoving stretcher case and that fellow sitting cross-legged in front of the drugstore. Oh yes... and there had been Charles Horne poking his long nose out the window.

Had Charles Horne been an intended victim? Not likely.

Not unless the redhead was familiar with his habits and had known he would still be in his office. Besides that, the parked car was a trifle too far away to do him any real damage. Ummm... there was something else... now what the hell was it? Somewhere in his rocking, numbed skull there was one little thing asking to be remembered.

The redhead hadn’t cared a damn about all those others who might have died with her victim. She had been interested only in the worm, had succeeded in killing him, and if any other unfortunates wandered along to be caught with him — how sad.

Red hair. A redheaded girl shouldn’t be so hard to find, not in Boone. Of all the colors of hair in the world, the various shades of red were undoubtedly in the minority. Even gray- and white-haired oldsters outnumbered them. A redheaded girl would be easy to find... too damned easy.

She didn’t have red hair. Horne jumped with the impact of the thought.

She didn’t have red hair, not if she was smart. And everything else about the crime advertised her smartness, everything except the amazing risk. There would be a good explanation for that, too, he felt, if she were ever found.

The careful planning, the precise timing, the cold logic and ruthlessness said she wasn’t a redhead. The wig was red but underneath was some ordinary shade of brown, or black, or blonde.

A startling fact occurred to him. In different dress and a longer stride, Elizabeth Saari could have walked beneath him in an auburn wig and he wouldn’t have known the difference. He could have misjudged the height by a few inches, the weight by a few pounds. And the trick change from medium heels to high, spiked heels. No, the deadly practical joker wasn’t a redhead.

What else? There must be something else.

She had come to Wilsey Street on the 7:20 car. She had arrived from the east and afterwards returned to the east. That presented alternate possibilities. Either she had boarded the car at some far eastern point of the line and had traveled direct to Wilsey, or she had come from the north or south and had transferred to the westbound car. Transferred and ridden just a few blocks, because the Main and Lincoln intersection where the carlines crossed was a short distance away.

The streetcar people had built a safety island in the center of the intersection, for transfer fares. Was it logical to assume she had come from the north and changed cars at the island?

No... not for a two-block ride. The conductor would have noticed that, would mentally label her lazy, and would remember the label in connection with an explosion on the same night when the police began to ask questions. To transfer would be dangerous.

The return trip was less logical, more dangerous.

In the time wasted standing on the Wilsey corner waiting for the incoming car, she could have walked to the safety island and caught a northbound car. But she hadn’t. So the only line of thought left open was that she had deliberately made the transfers to confuse the police, at the same time running the risk of being recognized later by the conductor, with or without the auburn wig.

All right, so he had narrowed her back trail to the eastern end of the line. The police could do as well. Providing she also hadn’t taken that into consideration and had walked from the northern section of town to the east-side carline and then boarded the car. Oh hell, one argument was as silly as the other. She could have walked or driven to Wilsey Street from any section of town and escaped the same way. Why bother with the streetcars?

Why hadn’t she walked? Too great a distance. A taxi was out of consideration. Why hadn’t she driven her own car? Either she had none or she had just blown it up. Or what? Or nothing. It ended right there.

Now where was he?

He was sitting on the comfortable examining table in Dr. Saari’s office, practically sleeping on Dr. Saari’s comfortable bosom. And Dr. Saari reminded him of it. She must have been standing there for some time, waiting for him to move or speak. A pad of writing paper was shoved before him.

“Are you going to lie there all night?”

He said, no mam, and sat up. “Sorry. I’ve been thinking.”

She moved around in front of him. He had very little difficulty in following her lips.

She nodded, smiled slightly, and said, “Out loud.”

“Aloud? I must be nuts. What did I say?”

He watched her fast scrawl on the writing pad.

“Something about a redhead who isn’t a redhead, and that it might be me wearing a wig, and a worm.”

“I’ll tell you all about it some time.”

“Bend your head over.” She wanted to poke into his ears. “Why not now?”

While she was poking he repeated the night’s adventure, as much of it as he had seen and much of what he’d guessed, including the comparing of her to the girl who had walked beneath his window. He sensed rather than saw her following smile.

He told her about the blast and the windows coming down and the thunder bounding around the room, and that he had been able to hear at first but not at all by the time she arrived. He asked, was it permanent?

She shook her head and made a note on the pad.

“Temporary loss of hearing due to the concussion. No serious or permanent damage to your ears. Will probably be okay when you awake in the morning.”

“Hell — if I get to sleep to wake up in the morning. I’ve got to call the sergeant. You know Sergeant Wiedenbeck. I want to get in on this...”

She shook her head violently this time and wrote some more.

“No! Am going to give you an injection and take you home to bed.”

“You are not! I’m a respectable citizen, see? I’ve got rights, I’m a taxpayer. I’m going to call Wiedenbeck. Look, Elizabeth, I’m an eyewitness...” suddenly then the missing thought struck him... “and I know of another one!”

The note pad, “And I’m your doctor!”

He stood up, staggering, and started across the room to the telephone on her desk. She jumped in front of him and pushed him back onto the leather table.

The gleam in her eye wasn’t exactly friendly, but she reached for the phone. He watched her dial the police number.