Nurse Murrow then became the acme, the pink of proficiency. She dressed and bound Hollander’s wounds, and applied the proper tourniquet above his shattered wrist. In her opinion, his condition was not fatally serious, when one considered his obvious physique and his probably excellent constitution—of iron—and, yes, he was distinctly handsome. What a pity they’d arrest him. Or perhaps he was under arrest already, although she usually associated handcuffings with arrests. But there surely wouldn’t be any handcuffs now. In spite of her long familiarity with dreadful injuries she shuddered a little at that shattered wrist. And they couldn’t be so soulless as to move him to prison. Dr. Worth would never permit any patient of his to be treated like that. And, after all, Hollander was the doctor’s patient. …
Dr. Worth himself was standing beside her. There was a bewildered, curiously grave look on his face. She sensed intuitively what had happened.
“Mr. Endicott, Doctor?”
Dr. Worth shrugged helplessly. “He’s dead.”
“But I swear that knife never went in, sir,” Cassidy said. “Hansen, here, and me was watching Hollander like cats. Sure we saw the knife even before it touched the bedclothes.”
“Didn’t Hollander have a gun, too?”
“No, sir. Why do you ask?”
“Because Endicott was killed by a bullet.”
Hansen’s Nordic young face grew very red and then very white. Cassidy showed nothing of what he was thinking—certainly nothing of the sickening, puzzled worry that clamped his chest—except that there was a tight clenching of his hands.
“Too bad,” Cassidy said.
“Yes,” agreed Dr. Worth, “it is too bad.”
“You’re sure, sir?”
Dr. Worth grew icily formal. “Quite,” he said. He was also getting good and mad. This was the sort of thing, he told himself angrily, that taxpayers shelled out their money for. Protection! It was enough to make anybody laugh. A lot of protection the police force of New York City had been for Endicott. They’d shot him—that’s what.
“But I don’t see how—”
“Officer, there is no mistaking the difference between a bullet wound and one made by a knife. In this case especially it is perfectly obvious. I dare say the charge against you two men will be just technical—accidental homicide in line of duty!”
Dr. Worth did permit himself one short laugh.
“I guess so, Doctor,” Cassidy said.
“And is there anything that has to be done, Officer?”
“In what way, sir?”
“Why, a report made to the medical examiner?” Dr. Worth became almost airy in his mounting anger. “This sort of starts the whole thing over again, doesn’t it? I mean, won’t the medical examiner have to come back up and investigate before we can move the body and—oh, well, you know the line.”
“Maybe so, sir.” Cassidy’s face was the colour of a red tile brick. “Cripes, but I wish the lieutenant was here.”
“I understand that he will be here any minute.”
“You’ve heard from him, sir?”
Dr. Worth felt that if he didn’t apply the brakes he would become positively lightheaded. “Oh, yes, yes, indeed, Officer. He called up to warn me that my patient was going to be murdered and suggested that I run downstairs and stop it. Murder? Fiddlesticks—it’s beginning to graduate into a catastrophe.”
“What has happened here?”
Lieutenant Valcour, very pale, still very weak, and with an improvised bandage around his head, had come unobserved into the room.
“You can see,” Dr. Worth said with almost insulting distinctness, “for yourself.”
Dr. Worth then went on to expand. He related in detail his version of the battle—he insisted that it was a battle—which had just taken place.
Entirely apart from the natural discomfiture of his head, Lieutenant Valcour was feeling desperately glum. Under no light, no matter how favourable, could his handling of the case be considered a success. He had to his credit one slap on the face, a good crack on the head from a lead slug, and now it seemed that the very man whom they had been ordered to guard had been shot and killed by his own men. That, at least, was the impression the angry bee talking to him was obviously trying to give. Oh, it would be a cause célèbre all right, but he shuddered to think of just what it would be celebrated for.
“This,” he said, “is nonsense.”
Dr. Worth was by now thoroughly acid.
“I am glad that you are able to find in the miserable situation some element of humour, Lieutenant.”
“Humour? Not humour, Doctor. I am just trying to say that the probability of Endicott’s having been shot by one of my men is nonsense.”
“Would it convince you, sir, were I to remove the bullet and let it speak for itself? Imperfections in the barrel leave their markings, don’t they? You can then doubtless determine which one of these two young men fired the unhappy shot.”
“Please don’t get irritated, Doctor. I’m not trying to annoy you or to be funny. It’s simply that I cannot see—just where is the wound located, Doctor?”
“In the chest.”
“Cassidy, where were you and Hansen standing?”
“We was crouched on the floor just inside the room, sir—not over five feet off from Hollander,” Cassidy said.
“Then consider your angles, Doctor. There’s Endicott—there’s about where my men were crouched. It would take pretty wild shooting for either of them to hit Endicott in the chest. In fact, one might almost consider it impossible.”
Dr. Worth still hovered around zero. “From the number of innocent bystanders whom one reads about in the newspapers as having been shot down by the police—”
“That is an unfair comparison, Doctor. Those cases you refer to have all involved a chase of some sort—rapid motion—streets cluttered up with people. There was nothing like that here. I’m going to call up Central Office and ask permission for you to remove the bullet and determine the angle of its path.”
“Permission, sir? And do you think it is my business or my pleasure to go probing about for bullets and determining the angles of their paths? I happen to be a specialist, sir—”
“Yes, yes, Doctor. But right now it
