And kill once more Page 8

  Nine

  Kate drew a quick breath and I heard Pilcher swearing softly. Elsa Doyle stood looking from the doc to me, then to the sheriff and back to me again.

  "This Bowman," she said in a low voice. "He's a pretty sharp beach boy." She gave me an admiring look that could have matched the ones you get from a teen-ager you've just lugged out of a rip tide. I scrambled around for a quick change in subject.

  "Just one of those things," I said. "Something left over from an appendix operation I had as a kid. But didn't he say we were all in the same life raft? I seem to remember that you got special mention along with pudgy pants over there."

  Elsa Doyle laughed. "That Cronk. He's in such a stew right now he'd probably say that the sheriff was under George's thumb too. I'm going to wait for a great deal more in the way of evidence before I start thinking that you people are out on the blackmail limb."

  "Thanks," Kate said, and matched the redhead's laugh. "If we believe everything we hear we'll be sleeping with the bureau drawers propped against the door."

  "Did you say—blackmail?"

  We turned. Sandy Engle was standing there. She looked from one to another, then put an unsteady hand on the back of a deck chair and faced Cronk. "Do you mean

  my husband was blackmailing you?"

  "That's exactly what Dr. Cronk has implied," Toland said grimly. "And Cronk further indicates that the rest of the inmates of this fun house are in the same fix. Just how much do you know about this, Mrs. Engle? Maybe you can help us a little."

  "But George couldn't have. He's such a—so—" She broke it there and big tears formed in her eyes. "I can't believe that George—" Once again she let it trail off, then turned and ran blindly toward the house. Kate Weston hurried after her, slipped an arm around her waist, and the heavy outer door closed after them. Sheriff Toland sat down on the edge of a patio lounge and raised a questioning eyebrow at Cronk.

  "Let's have it, Cronk. You're under a false flag. How did you get there, fella, and all about it. I'd like to get things straight."

  Cronk tugged at the belt circling his ample middle and then adjusted his glasses. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mrs. Pilcher giving her husband a nervous glance as Cronk dropped wearily into a canvas chair.

  "I'm willing to go into this, Toland," Cronk said dejectedly, "but remember that I've told you I'm not alone. I'm not going to hang for something I didn't do, by God. Not when there's a half a dozen other people with just as much motive and a hell of a lot more chance to finish George off. He keeps an office and collects his money, but that's the only way you could consider him a business man. He had plenty on all of us. And a few other people, I'd guess. Like me—like knowing I wasn't really an M.D."

  "He knew you when?" Toland asked.

  "No, he didn't. Nobody here in California did, until four years ago."

  Cronk's head slumped a little lower as he went on, his voice almost listless as he told us how he'd been a shoe

  clerk in a small Illinois town before the war. About ten thousand population, Cronk said, a handful of doctors and a single X-ray lab. The lab was next door to the store in which Cronk spent his working day fitting size ten feet with size nine shoes which he cheerfully sold as size seven and a half. People, he was beginning to find, were very gullible indeed.

  But each year in the shoestore seemed to advance him only slightly along the path to financial success. His salary went up slowly and was highly dependent on the labor market. He laid by very little from the world's store of luxury, and more and more he came to envy the owner of that lab next to the shoestore. No midnight hours. No calls in the dark of night to break his sleep. An honest M.D., sure, but he had an ideal practice. He did the X-ray work for the other doctors in town. An assistant, quickly trained and not too hard on the budget handled the actual equipment. The doctor read the plates and wrote out his report.

  Through dint of some study and with the cooperation of his medico neighbor, Cronk changed trades. He came cheaper than the trained technician the doc already had, and who was ready to move to greener pastures. Albert Cronk learned as he worked—and the Army put on the finishing touches. Through basic, Cronk put in for and received a transfer to a hospital unit. Working day and night, he pursued his chores with a diligence rare among Uncle Sam's temporary help and wangled his way into the X-ray lab of a moderately large base.

  And here he managed to stay. Two years of: "Take a deep breath, hold it—now breathe—" as countless dogfaces stood for their chest X-rays. Then on to the gastrointestinal wards and a liberal education in Auoroscopes.

  Each week he added to his store of information, kept notes and labored to learn the routines. He studied re-

  ports made out on hundreds of plates and after hours slipped as many of them as time would allow against the illuminated ground glass and carefully traced the irregularities as he read reports. In short, he apprenticed himself to the trade. Realizing that disposition of the cases was left largely to attending physicians and that the radiologist did little more than interpret the X-rays, Cronk poured his entire accumulation of spare time into that channel.

  Now, sitting beside Engle's pool, Cronk seemed more than a little proud of the skill he had attained without formal training.

  "Your service time comes to over four years, then. That right, Cronk?" Toland asked.

  "Almost five," Cronk said. "Toward the end I used to hold the plates up to a light before stacking them in the racks for the doctors. I'd make out a report on each one or as many as I had time for—write it all out in a notebook I kept with me. Then after the X-ray had been analyzed by the doc I'd check myself. You know—go in and read his analysis and see how far I'd missed on each one. And you'd be amazed at the accuracy I attained. I'm not going to apologize for the cash I took in since then, Sheriff. I can read an X-ray with the best of them. I've seen a lot more plates than plenty of the practicing radiologists who've spent all that time in medical school."

  "The medical association is going to take a dim view of your logic," Toland said dryly. "What about your credentials?"

  "A diploma mill, as I said."

  "Where, Cronk?"

  Cronk looked at his shoes. "Kansas City—I think. I'm not exactly sure I can help you on that."

  "You could try. What was the name of the man who set you up in business? Kow did you meet hirn?"

  "It's a little hazy, Toland. Like an abortionist—did

  you know some of them actually advertise in the daily papers—some pass as urinologists, some as midwives— but you'd have a hell of a time pinning anything on them. They get their credentials the way I got mine—a fellow I met in the Army sent me an ad from a New York paper and—"

  "Where did you go to make the deal, Cronk?"

  "A hotel room in Kansas City. But that was just a meeting place. Nothing was written and I paid off with small bills totaling five hundred and fifty dollars. I started in the outskirts of a middle-sized town in the East—had letterheads printed and all, then moved to San Diego and used my short stay in the East as a reference point. You'd be surprised how much credence people are inclined to place in easily obtainable props, such as business cards, letterhead correspondence, and the rest."

  Toland scratched a hard finger along his jaw and gave Cronk a careful once-over. "It hardly seems possible that you could get by with the work, though. I mean there'd be times when you didn't know—"

  Cronk almost managed a wry grin. "You'd be surprised, Sheriff, what goes on. Men by the hundred are hired as machinists in your town, for instance, then put to work on some simple routine operation that a high school kid could learn to do in three days. The machinist is trained but he doesn't have to use more than an infinitesimal part of that skill. Now you take my work. A chest X-ray I can read. As well as any man in the business, I'd venture. You look for scar tissue, active spots—a few other things. As a 'doctor,' too, other doctors are available to you for consultation. Then suppose a man is sent in to have a picture of his arm taken.
Simple. The technician exposes a few plates. Then you find the breaks or cracks if any, which are actually quite obvious on the plate, dash off a short note, and send the works along to the fellow's physician. You don't have to set the bone. Or advise

  how it's to be done. You're through when you've made the picture and pointed out the break."

  Toland sighed heavily. "So you were doing all right, then, until—"

  "Until about four years ago, as I said. In the Army I'd been careful to make damn few friends. I kept my head down, hid myself away among the many, but of course there's a limit on how far you can go with that, too. I did figure, though, when I set up in practice, that the chances were almost nil that I'd ever encounter anyone who knew me sufficiently well to recall that I'd been a mere technician. Even among those, very few would guess my actual background. But luck was against me, and one day I had to X-ray a fellow named Gorton sent over by one of the neighborhood doctors. This Gorton, he'd been a corpsman on the base I worked last. One of these sharpies, and naturally I told him I'd worked through medical school after the war but he got around to reading my diploma on the wall and the date was 1946. He grinned and said it looked like I'd hung up some kind of a record—out of the army as an enlisted technician in late '45 and a graduate M.D. the next year. I couldn't kid him out of it.

  "A few days later he came around and wanted to borrow some money. Two hundred bucks, he said. I took one long look at the possibilities and decided not to go for it. He got sore, but not too sore and I figured he'd think it over and forget it. To be quite honest, I knew Gorton pretty well. He wasn't what you'd call a man of guts and blackmail takes a certain amount of courage. But if I guessed right on Gorton's being afraid to embark on outright blackmail I missed on what he'd do about it, because about a month later George Engle drove down from L.A. to pay me a visit."

  "Now just a second," Widdle cut in. "You were talk-

  ing about a guy named Gorton. How did Engle get into this?"

  Cronk gave Widdle an annoyed glance, then turned back to Sheriff Toland. "As you may have gathered from the unhappy faces around here in the last half hour, George Engle spread his operation over quite a wide and lucrative area. He—" Cronk hesitated a moment and blotted perspiration from his forehead, then adjusted his glasses and went on. "There's one in every city, I guess. Hard, shrewd and ruthless. Sure, he didn't seem that way. Not here, treating us all as guests and the like, but you don't know Engle." Cronk stopped again as Kate came down the walk and sat down beside me.

  "How's Mrs. Engle?" Toland asked.

  "She's pretty broken up—wants to be alone for a while, she said. I thought it might be best too, because she's embarrassed to death. She had no idea, I'm sure, that George wasn't a legitimate insurance broker. It was something of a shock."

  "I can guess," I said seriously. Looking toward Dan Pilcher I saw a sardonic sneer working its way across his fat face. He raised a chubby hand long enough to remove the ever-present toothpick.

  "A hell of a bad guess, Bowman. You ask me, I'd say she knew her husband pretty well."

  "You mean you think she knew what George had on you, Pilcher?" I grinned.

  "I didn't say that. In fact, Cronk is speaking strictly for himself, as far as I'm concerned. I'm just here as a guest—knew George personally. We were good friends."

  "You're a little disorganized," I said quickly. "Make up your mind, fella, on just where you stand. A while ago you and the doc here were closer than two boys in a bathtub "

  "How'd I know he was a phony?" Pilcher complained.

  That earned him a sour look from Cronk and then Sheriff Toland stepped in.

  "Hold on now. We aren't getting anywhere wrangling. You gents leave the questions to me for a while. We were working around to how Engle muscled in on some information a guy named Gorton happened to run onto. How about it, Cronk?"

  "It's like this, Sheriff," Cronk said in a tired voice, "Everyone knows about things that are going on that aren't exactly legal. Think for a minute and you'll see I'm right. A friend of yours is collecting part of his pay in cash and manages to overlook some of it when he files his income tax. Or a buyer gets a kickback on sales to his company. Done all the time. And how many car dealers were raking in 'over-the-ceiling' bonuses during the war years? You know about these things and maybe you gripe, but you don't do anything. You don't want to look like a heel and you wouldn't be caught dead squealing to the Bureau of Internal Revenue, say, for the reward they'll gladly pay on that friend of yours who's cutting the corners a bit too close.

  "Well, George Engle built a business plowing that fertile field. He let the word get around that there was cash on the line for reliable information, and complete protection for the informer. Engle paid a small part of what the information was worth, then went to work. He evaluated what his silence should bring and that was the premium. Twice each year he'd call me. 'Doctor,' he'd say, 'been thinking about your insurance the last few days. Why not come up to the desert and discuss it this weekend?' You can be sure I didn't say no. The semi-annual premium on my policy was five hundred dollars. A cool thousand a year to keep Engle from asking that an investigation of my credentials be made. It was cash in old bills, and actually very little talk of insurance." Cronk blotted his forehead again. "Now you've got the situation, Sheriff. I've

  played it straight across the table. You owe it to me to dig into other people here—I didn't kill Engle and I had no more reason to than the rest of them. I could afford the tariff George skimmed off me. What was he getting from Pilcher and Bowman, and Doyle? How about that blonde next to Bowman? She's been here before, I can tell you that much."

  Toland drew a big breath, then looked us over with a cool eye. Bob Widdle stood up like a man about to go to work but Toland nodded toward the chair Widdle had just vacated and he sat down again.

  "We'll just take it slow and easy from here on," Toland said. He pulled off his hat, regarded its broad brim, then carefully reformed the crease in the crown. "I guess you know we'll have to turn this over to the medical association, Cronk. They can take whatever legal action they like, but while we've got the body in our possession, so to speak, we'll just hang on to you until we iron out this Engle mess. For now, though, we'll let you off the hook." Toland put his hat back on and gave it a practiced tug.

  "Suppose we start with you, Bowman. You were in on the ground floor when Engle was killed. You tell us how you happened to drive up here for a weekend."

  "Sure," I said. "I'm as pure as ivory, you might say. Just happened to be a friend of Miss Weston's. She, you will find, was not invited up here by George, but by his wife. They've been—"

  "Now, Bowman," Toland chided gently. "The lady will speak for herself. Later. I want to know about you."

  "I'm explaining it to you," I said shortly. "Are you going to do this or am I?"

  "You are, son," he said, his voice unruffled. "Just keep it down to your side of the picture. We want to know where you fit up here?"

  "A guest. A friend of Miss Weston."

  "How much was your premium, son? What did you pay Engle—and why?"

  "Does there have to be one, Sheriff?"

  "It would seem that way."

  "Okay," I barked, "I used to drown people in the surf. See Bowman to get rid of your unwanted wives. Two hundred bucks a head. Three for half a G, special rates for the boys who make the altar hike very other year or so. That make you happy, Toland?"

  "Now, son, that won't help any. I got a world of patience but you'll wear it out fast the way you're going. You just calm down and answer my questions."

  I pulled my smokes out and struck a match. "All right. I'll try, Sheriff. Only don't insist on my having been blackmailed by Engle. It just isn't the case. Sorry, but that's the way she bounces."

  "If you came with Miss Weston, then, Engle didn't even know you. Not until you got here, that is."

  "That's right, Sheriff."

  "And you haven't been here before. Ever."

 
I nodded.

  "Uh-huh. Some of this we'll have to check with Mrs. Engle, I guess, when she's feeling up to talking with us. But for now we'll have to accept that part of it. In the meantime, we can get a few facts from some of the others."

  "Just a minute," Mrs. Pilcher cut in icily. "I'd like to point out that everything isn't quite as rosy as it sounds between Mr. Bowman and this Weston woman. For instance yesterday morning on the way up here, Dan and I stopped for coffee at a small cafe down the road. When we came out we saw these two sitting in that big car. They had been there quite a while, Sheriff, because I heard the tires skid when they stopped out front. But they didn't get out and come in—they just sat in the car, and when we went out to get into our own auto we saw

  them there. You couki tell they were having a spat."

  "And how do you tell a thing like that?" Toland asked mildly.

  Mrs. Pilcher sniffed. "They were about as far apart as two people can get in the front seat. When I came through the door they were talking real fast. I saw them, only as soon as the door slammed they looked up and noticed us. Then they stopped arguing right away."

  "Well, I don't know," Toland said uncomfortably. "It would seem that—"

  But I didn't hear what the sheriff was saying. My eye had wandered toward the house and my jaw must have dropped open because smoke billowed from a brick chimney on one side of the building. That chimney would be about where the master bedroom and living quarters were. George's and Sandy's room. And it was a hell of a lot too warm for a fire in the fireplace at high noon. And then Bob Widdle shouted, "Sheriff! Look—" Toland was already on his feet. He broke into a dead run, the rest of us following. I took the lead halfway up the walk. The topography of the house must have made an impression on me, because moments later I was slamming my knuckles against a locked door. "Sandy!" I yelled. "Open up! It's Marty." Then Toland pounded down the hall, sized up the situation, backed across the narrow hallway, and lunged against the door. It buckled and gave.