was relatively austere. There were two wooden side chairs in front of his desk. Dr Holmes drew one chair closer to the desk, indicated that Minna should sit there, and settled into the other chair.
'Alderman Coughlin telephoned and told me to expect you,' Dr Holmes said. 'Do you know him?'
'Not really. He called, introduced himself – of course, I'd heard of him – said he'd heard I was a reputable physician with a special interest in female problems, and that you were dismissing one doctor and seeking another.'
'Did he inform you why I am seeking a doctor?'
Dr Holmes smiled winningly. 'The alderman reminded me – although it wasn't really necessary – that you and your sister own the most elegant brothel in America.'
'Yes, the Everleigh Club on Dearborn. We have thirty very beautiful, high-class girls on the premises. I need a doctor for them. Does the idea of working as a doctor for a brothel offend you?'
'Offend me?' said Dr Holmes. 'I'd be privileged. Attending to the concerns of thirty young women would be a delight and a challenge.'
'Well,' said Minna, 'do you know anything about my present situation?'
'Not much, really. Only that you require a physician who is discreet.'
'Someone who won't talk about what is going on in the Club.'
'It is a basic rule in my profession to keep patients' histories private.'
'There is more to it than that,' said Minna. 'Mayor Harrison won re-election on a reform platform. His major pledge was to shut down the Everleigh Club. He has been advised it is no longer a brothel, but merely a restaurant featuring a floor show.' She paused. 'The truth is, Dr Holmes, it will continue to be a brothel, as long as the mayor has no evidence of it. Henceforth, we will screen customers, and my servants and girls have promised not to discuss their activities. The only hole to be filled is to find a doctor who could be equally discreet.'
Dr Holmes offered his winning smile once more. 'Miss Everleigh, rest assured that in me you have found such a doctor.'
'Well, that's the main thing.'
'You'll find I never discuss women I'm involved with.'
Minna nodded. 'Good. Your duties would be to come to the Club two days a week, mornings and afternoons – the girls are otherwise occupied evenings – to examine the girls and report to me if anything is amiss.'
'You mean if any one of them has a venereal disease?'
'That is my sole concern,' said Minna. 'These girls of mine are the best and most expensive, and they must be clean.'
'I presume, Miss Everleigh, your real concern is syphilis.'
'Exactly. Are you familiar with the latest treatment of syphilis?'
'It is one of my specialities, of course,' said Dr Holmes.
'I am familiar with the symptoms,' said Minna, 'but I am not a medical person. I don't know how one examines for this and the latest methods of cure. Can you enlighten me?'
Dr Holmes seemed at ease and perfectly frank as he answered her. 'The big problem in examining your average female who may be afflicted is a prevailing sense of false modesty. This infectious disease is usually the result of so-called impure sexual intercourse. The male's poison enters a female's minute wound or lesion. Syphilis is rarely fatal, but the effect on a female is extremely debilitating. She suffers from the disease and she passes it on to other partners. Faced with false modesty, I often find it impossible to examine a patient's genitalia. It must be more possible to touch the inflamed area to locate syphilitic chancres, but this female delicacy makes real effectiveness all too difficult.'
'But you wouldn't have the same problem of modest resistance in examining a prostitute, would you?'
'No, I wouldn't. That would make it much easier for the patient and myself. I merely look into the vagina with a speculum. If I find a chancre, I will prescribe the standard medication – mercury, in pill or ointment form. It will not be difficult for me.'
Minna stood up. 'Dr Holmes, you sound capable and I feel you can be trusted. You have the job, if you want it.' Dr Holmes came to his feet. 'It would be an honour and my pleasure to serve you and your ladies. Definitely a great opportunity.'
'There's still the matter of your fee. If you will come to the Everleigh Club at eleven tomorrow morning, you can meet my sister Aida, and she will work out a satisfactory arrangement. Then I'll take you around and introduce you to our girls. Is this agreeable?'
'Most agreeable, Miss Everleigh.'
Minna allowed Dr Holmes to see her to the door, then walked to her Model A Ford, where Edmund was waiting to assist her into the seat.
As they drove away from Dr Holmes's Castle, Minna felt pleased. Dr Holmes was a professional, a gentleman, and her instinct told her he would be trustworthy in protecting the Club against Mayor Harrison's incursions.
As the Ford continued away from the doctor's Castle, Minna glanced back at it. The third storey could still be seen from a half-mile's distance. The chimney was visible also, and it was odd that the chimney was emitting smoke.
Crazy, Minna thought, to be using a furnace in the spring. Still, admittedly, there was a chill in the air, and whatever he was doing to warm himself, Dr Holmes certainly knew what was best for his own health as well as theirs.
The minute Dr Herman Holmes was certain that Minna Everleigh had departed the area, he hurried to his office, reached under a drape beside the fireplace, and pressed up a lever on a concealed panel to release pent- up gas.
After a while, he strode into the hallway to a metal wall with a wood grain finish over it, reached behind a thick-leafed rubber plant, pressed a button, and watched the door slide open to his secret soundproof chamber in the rear. He went inside the dimly illuminated, gloomy room, sniffed to be sure the gas had cleared, and found his sixth wife, Georgianne, still sprawled on the floor where he had left her.
He had decided at noon, after he had learned Minna Everleigh was coming to interview him, that once he had the job, Georgianne would no longer be useful to him. She would be in the way when Minna appeared, and create too many problems when he had access to the Everleigh Club and its fantastic girls. As Georgianne had bent her thick head of hair over her lunch, Holmes had come up behind her and whacked her on the back of the head with a crowbar. He had caught her before she slumped to the floor, dragged her into his gas chamber, stripped off her clothes, then sealed the windowless chamber lined with sheet iron. From his office he had turned on the gas.
Minna had arrived punctually and – as expected – he'd earned the job at the Everleigh Club. Getting the job thrilled him. It would be a feast. He would have all those flawless young women to choose and pick among – some for love, some for money – and when necessary, he would dispose of them too.
Now, staring down at Georgianne's corpse, Holmes suffered no remorse. She had served her purpose, given him her money and many nights of acrobatic love-making. Alive, she would have been in the way. Georgianne was just another corpse. There had been so many before her, a few men, mainly women, whom he had bilked of their savings or used for the pleasures of his body. One human being more or less meant nothing to Holmes. There was pleasure in taking advantage of stupid human beings, using them, and getting rid of them when they became burdensome. He had read in a medical book that all serial killers were insane. Holmes felt positive that he was totally sane. He simply derived happiness from what he did. It was, perhaps, a strange but wonderful kind of lust.
Without wasting any more time, he lifted Georgianne's limp corpse off the floor, carried her across his shoulder to the first trap door, pulled the door open with his free hand, and dropped her down a greased chute to the basement.
Closing that trap door, he tugged at a second trap door which opened to a narrow stairway that also led down to the basement.
Once in the seven-foot high basement, Holmes worked efficiently. He carried Georgianne to a fourteen-foot cedar tank lined with zinc and filled with quicklime. He dropped her body into the quicklime, which rapidly began to dissolve her flesh.
After a short time he emptied the tank, drew on his rubber gloves, removed what was left of Georgianne and settled her remains on his surgeon's table. He found his scalpel, lancet, other knives. He was proud of his skills with a scalpel, which he had first learned in his youth at the Medical School of the University of Michigan. Expertly,
