“They all wanted me to come and live here and keep him in line. All means himself, his wife, and his publisher, a man named Howard Spencer. He’s in New York, I guess. You can check with him. I turned it down. Afterwards she came to me and said her husband was off on a toot and she was worried and would I find him and bring him home. I did that. Next thing I knew I was carrying him in off his front lawn and putting him to bed. I didn’t want any part of it. Bernie. It just kind of grew up around me.”
“Nothing to do with the Lennox case, huh?”
“Aw, for Pete’s sake. There isn’t any Lennox case.”
“How true,” Ohls said dryly. He squeezed his kneecaps. A man came in at the front door and spoke to the other dick. Then came across to Ohls.
“There’s a Dr. Loring outside, Lieutenant. Says he was called. He’s the lady’s doctor.”
“Let him in.”
The dick went back and Dr. Loring came in with his neat black bag. He was cool and elegant in a tropical worsted suit. He went past me without looking at me.
“Upstairs?” he asked Ohls.
“Yeah—in her room.” Ohls stood up. “What you give her that demerol for, Doc?”
Dr. Loring frowned at him. “I prescribe for my patient as I think proper,” he said coldly. “I am not required to explain why. Who says I gave Mrs. Wade demerol?”
“I do. The bottle’s up there with your name on it. She’s got a regular drugstore in her bathroom. Maybe you don’t know it, Doc, but we have a pretty complete exhibit of the little pills downtown. Bluejays, redbirds, yellow jackets, goofballs, and all the rest of the list. Demerol’s about the worst of the lot. That’s the stuff Goering lived on, I heard somewhere. Took eighteen a day when they caught him. Took the army doctors three months to cut him down.”
“I don’t know what those words mean,” Dr. Loring said frigidly.
“You don’t? Pity. Bluejays are sodium amytal. Redbirds are seconal. Yellow jackets are nembutal. Goofballs are one of the barbiturates laced with benzedrine. Demerol is a synthetic narcotic that is very habit forming. You just hand ‘em out, huh? Is the lady suffering from something serious?”
“A drunken husband can be a very serious complaint indeed for a sensitive woman,” Dr. Losing said.
“You didn’t get around to him, huh? Pity. Mrs. Wade’s upstairs, Doc. Thanks for the time.”
“You are impertinent, sir. I shall report you.”
“Yeah, do that,” Ohls said. “But before you report me, do something else. Keep the lady clear in her head. I’ve got questions to ask.”
“I shall do exactly what I think best for her condition. Do you know who I am, by any chance? And just to make matters clear, Mr. Wade was not my patient. I don’t treat alcoholics.”
“Just their wives, huh?” Ohls snarled at him. “Yeah, I know who you are, Doc. I’m bleeding internally. My name is Ohls. Lieutenant Ohls.”
Dr. Loring went on up the stairs. Ohls sat down again and grinned at me.
“You got to be diplomatic with this kind of people,” he said.
A man came out of the study and came up to Ohls. A thin serious-looking man with glasses and a brainy forehead.
“Lieutenant.”
“Shoot.”
“The wound is contact, typically, suicidal, with a good deal of distention from gas pressure. The eyes are exophthalmic from the same cause. I don’t think there will be any prints on the outside of the gun. It’s been bled on too freely.”
“Could it be homicide if the guy was asleep or passed out drunk?” Ohls asked him.
“Of course, but there’s no indication of it. The gun’s a Webley Hammerless. Typically, this gun takes a very stiff pull to cock it, but a very light pull to discharge it. The recoil explains the position of the gun. I see nothing against suicide so far. I expect a high figure on alcoholic concentration. If it’s high enough—” the man stopped and shrugged meaningly—“I might be inclined to doubt suicide.”
“Thanks. Somebody call the coroner?”
The man nodded and went away, Ohls yawned and looked at his watch. Then he looked at me.
“You want to blow?”
“Sure, if you’ll let me. I thought I was a suspect.”
“We might oblige you later on. Stick around where you can be found, that’s all. You were a dick once, you know how they go. Some you got to work fast before the evidence gets away from you. This one is just the opposite. If it was a homicide, who wanted him dead? His wife? She wasn’t here. You? Fine, you had the house to yourself and knew where the gun was. A perfect setup. Everything but a motive, and we might perhaps give some weight to your experience. I figure if you wanted to kill a guy, you could maybe do it a little less obviously.”
“Thanks. Bernie. I could at that.”
“The help wasn’t here. They’re out. So it must have been somebody that just happened to drop by. That somebody had to know where Wade’s gun was, had to find him drunk enough to be asleep or passed out, and had to pull the trigger when that speedboat was making enough noise to drown the shot, and had to get away before you came back into the house. That I don’t buy on any knowledge I have now. The only person who had the means and opportunity was the one guy who wouldn’t have used them—for the simple reason he was the one guy who had them.”
