Diagnosis

by Rufus King

  “No, you can’t.”

  “Well, it was always in the back of the boys’ heads. It was so good it was too good. So when Miss Elser’s picture broke in the press they didn’t watch Miss Elser; they watched Haines.”

  “Of course—”

  “Sure, you get that. Being a doctor.”

  Starr asked suddenly, “What does Mrs. Haines look like?”

  “You’re right. She’s the general type of Mrs. Elser.”

  “That so frequently happens with some men, with their successive wives.”

  “Yes, there’s every reason why the half sisters should look alike. The Haines girl is two years younger, of course, but she’s lived harder. Honestly, Doctor, these debutantes!”

  “They get over it.”

  “Sometimes. Well, there you are.”

  “I’m afraid I’m not. Not yet. What did happen in Detroit after Nan Elser’s picture broke?”

  “As I say, they watched Haines. Oh, he saw the picture all right, and so did Mrs. Haines and the daughter. The boys have Haines’ chauffeur on the pay roll so there isn’t much they don’t pick up. Mrs. Haines just commented on the likeness and forgot about it. So did the girl, after some occasional chitchat about it among other girls in her set. It struck both of them as amusing but as very unimportant.”

  “But not Haines, of course. Haines knew.”

  “That’s right. He fixed it to meet Miss Elser. Casually. Only the boys considered it wasn’t casual. It spelled the first flicker to them and they knew they were onto something really hot. I don’t know what happened at that meeting. I don’t even know whether they actually met. All I know is that both of them were at the same cocktail party one afternoon. A big party. I had my own ideas.”

  “What were they, Mr. Hangaway?”

  “I like to look at all angles, Doctor. I figured from the other end: that maybe Miss Elser had come to Detroit on purpose to put the bee on Haines. You see, the thing that held the boys up from the start was that they didn’t know positively what Haines’ name really was. They considered it might be Elser, because they didn’t know right away that Mrs. Elser had remarried and that the daughter had legally taken the name of Elser. They got a girl to contact Miss Elser easily enough, but all she could find out was that there was a Mrs. Elser in Laurel Falls, a widow, and that Nan Elser’s father was dead. Then the boys put Parne on it.”

  “Just who was Parne?”

  “He was a disbarred counselor who knew his way around. They used him a lot. Personally I always thought he was overestimated. He lacked finesse. His usual method for getting the dope on a woman was a cross between the chief suspect in a horror film and a ham juvenile, with a good deal of lurking behind the arras. He certainly fancied himself, that boy.”

  “Why did they use him then?”

  “Because he got results no matter how crudely he got them. Then they’d get a laugh out of him too. But the women wouldn’t. Usually they’d be worried into fits by all of his hamming and ready to come across with whatever dope he was after on his first serious pass. I know he started his usual routine with Miss Elser. He began to flush her out, make her lose jobs, almost black-list her. He’d show every now and then and let her get a look at his face with one of its most significant expressions. Lord, what a ham, Doctor. I guess Miss Elser dreamed about it in nightmares.”

  “How do you know all this, Mr. Hangaway?”

  “Well, I came into it around then. Right after the boys hired Parne for the job Worthby Haines hired me.”

  “Why?”

  “You don’t get to be where Haines got by being a dumb bunny, Doctor. He knew what was going on. He knew they had sicked Parne on Miss Elser, so he sicked me on Parne.”

  “You said a moment ago that you were doubtful about Miss Elser, that you considered she herself might have come to Detroit to blackmail Haines.”

  “That’s right. I knew definitely she was out for dough, but I figure now it was just the smalltime stuff of trying to lead one of the money boys up to the altar. I figure she must have doped Parne out as a bouncer for one of the First Families.”

  “Why were you in doubt at all about Miss Elser’s purpose if you were in Haines’ employ? Why didn’t you know?”

  “Listen, Doctor. When you work for a man like Haines you know only what he tells you and you do only what he tells you to do. Miss Elser and fifty other people might have been trying to throw their hooks into him and he wouldn’t tell me about it or anybody else about it unless he had a purpose to. My job was Parne and just Parne.”

  “Just what kind of a job? Or do you mind?”

  “Not a bit, Doctor. It all centered around Haines’ real name. They had found out by then all they could, in general, about Mrs. Elser, about her coming here to Laurel Falls around the same time that Haines showed in Detroit and about her calling herself a widow, Mrs. Robert Warden. You can see what a job it would have been.”

  “To do what, Mr. Hangaway?”

  “First they couldn’t be sure that Warden wasn’t just a name which Mrs. Elser had picked out, to cover whatever it was had happened before she got here. And even if Warden was the right name it would mean the impossible feat of checking every divorce record for years in the name of Warden or Haines all over the country. Absolutely impossible, Doctor.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “They felt Mrs. Elser might have the documentary records here in the house or in town or else that Parne could get the information from her by his delicatessen tactics. Once they got her copies or the dope from her they could then check the records at their source. That’s why Parne came here.”

  “And you, Mr. Hangaway?”

  “Haines gave me twenty thousand dollars with which to buy Parne over to our side. If Parne couldn’t be bought—which is a laugh—or if he shoved the ante up too high I was to use my judgment. That meant killing Parne and getting busy on the Elsers.”

  “You didn’t kill Parne.”

  “I know I didn’t.” Hangaway’s bright eyes grew speculative with interest. “Do you know who did? I know.”

  “Haines killed him.”

  “That’s right. How did you dope that out, Doctor? They’ve got Mrs. Elser sewed up and in the bag.”

  “If Haines were alive he could be sewn up in the same bag.”

  “But how?”

  “Mrs. Elser did a lot of foolish things because I believe she felt her daughter was involved.”

  “Sure, but how do you pin it on Haines?”

  “Blood.”

  “Yes?”

  “Parne had Group AB.”

  “Rare.”

  “Yes. Mrs. Elser got some of it under the sleeve of her negligee while she was holding up Parne’s body and putting his fingerprints on the doorknobs. Do you know the layout of the hallway outside of the room Parne occupied and outside of the one you yourself used so briefly?”

  “Yes.”

  “There is a shallow alcove, if you remember, at the end of it. It has a door opening into a linen closet.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “That enters into my reasoning, but first about blood. Consider Haines. He was shot through the head. It was the type of wound that bled a little but not excessively. There were the normal blood trickles on his face, but there were also several bloodstains on the white cuff of his shirt. It bothered me as to how they could have got there, and there was the further fact that they were not fresh. You will understand my interest in Mrs. Elser’s welfare, that I wanted to leave no possible contradiction unchecked?”

  “Certainly, Doctor. For a town like this she is very okay.”

  “Well, Haines’ blood checks as Group O, whereas the bloodstains on the cuff of his shirt have just been identified as Group AB—that is, Parne’s. Which places Haines as well as Mrs. Elser upon the scene of Parne’s death.”


  “Any D.A. could still make it stick on her in spite of that.”

  “There is more. I have just finished looking. There is another stain. It is on some linen in the linen locker where I believed Haines waited, resting his hand and freshly bloodstained cuff on the linen, after he had shot Parne and searched the body and while Mrs. Elser was doing her stupid and tragic act in Parne’s room. Mrs. Elser could not have transferred that stain from the sleeve of her negligee. It is on one of the higher shelves, where a man’s hand would reach naturally for a rest and where his cuff could leave it on the linen. Mr. Hangaway, Haines had hired you to do his work for him. Why did he come here himself?”

  “Doctor, who can tell about a man like Haines? They get so smart they get too smart for their own good. This business meant the ruin of his career if not of his life. He hired me, yes, but why should he take a chance? He would want to check me, if possible, with his own eyes. Then you have the blizzard.”

  “Blizzard?”

  “Sure, the jams, the road conditions, all of it. Haines trailed me from Detroit, only I stopped off at that filling station and he passed right by it in the blinding snow and reached here alone.”

  “Of course—”

  “Sure. He parked his car in town and walked here to the house and looked in the living-room window and saw Parne at the secretary. Then he simply tapped on the window. Parne recognized him and maybe got scared stiff and maybe saw a chance for a swell shakedown. Anyhow, Parne pocketed the pearl-handled gun that was in the secretary and opened the front door and let Haines in. They went upstairs to Parne’s room, and Haines got tough and Parne pulled the gun on him, and Haines just took the gun away and shot him.”

  “Why didn’t Haines leave the house at once and start back for Detroit?”

  “Because Parne didn’t have the papers. Haines tapped on the window before Parne found them, and Parne was just putting on a bluff. So Haines had to stick around here until he could get the papers himself. He used the rafters in the attic.”

  “When did he get the papers?”

  “Well, what with the cops about he didn’t get a real chance until I came here from the hospital and knocked out that pretty boy on guard at the front door. He took his time going through Parne’s room, and then he came downstairs and found them in the secretary.”

  “Where were you?”

  “That was just when I had finished with Mrs. Elser and her daughter and that shine and while I was coming downstairs myself. Naturally I wanted to talk it over with Haines, and I had the cop’s gun, so we went back upstairs and into Parne’s room and talked. I told him how I had him for bigamy and for murder and we talked for quite a while, but it was no use. He made a jump for me and I had to shoot him and take any chances for a real shakedown with either the boys in Detroit or with the widow and the illegitimate girl direct. You were downstairs at the time with some other guy, Doctor, and Miss Elser was just saying good night and coming upstairs, so I came up here and got behind the nigger woman’s bed. I kept her quiet with this.”

  Hangaway took an ice pick from his hip pocket and tapped it gently against one pipe-like knee. He said to Starr very quietly, “How did you know that I was here in the room, Doctor?”

  “Because you had planned to leave it, to make your escape.”

  “Yes.”

  “You had taped Delilah’s wrists and her lips with adhesive tape.”

  “Yes.”

  “When Mrs. Elser knocked and asked whether she and I could come in Delilah didn’t answer for several seconds. During that time you removed the tape and got behind the head of the bed.”

  “Yes.”

  “Surely it is obvious, Mr. Hangaway? When I felt Delilah’s pulse I also felt the sticky glue which remained from the tape about her wrist. I felt it also over her lips.”

  Hangaway shook his head slightly and sighed. A flash of sudden irritation made his fingers tremble.

  “Just think, Doctor—because of a little thing like that. All of the trouble for nothing.”

  “I hope you are including in it the rather tragic amount of trouble that came to the Elsers.”

  “Them? Smalltime stuff, Doctor. Just a couple of little people who happened to get in the way.”

  “Yes, I suppose you do look at it like that. That Haines looked at it in that way, and the boys did too.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, thank you, Mr. Hangaway. Are you ready to come with me now?” Hangaway looked at Starr steadily for a while. It was impossible to read a single thought behind the dull smoky glaze which was masking the former glitter in his eyes. He flicked the ice pick impatiently in his fingers.

  “You’re coming with me, Doctor. Not me with you.”

  Starr took a small metal case from his pocket.

  “You said that I interested you, Mr. Hangaway. I think that this will interest you even more than I do myself.” He opened the case and spilled a hypodermic needle and a vial of pellets onto a table. “Morphine.”

  Hangaway grew rigid and sat very still. Slowly the ice pick dipped and dropped, ignored, from his twitching fingers. He gave a small strangled cry that was more animal than human and started to walk slowly toward the table.

  Starr unbolted and opened the door.

  “All right, gentlemen. You can come in.”

  * * * *

  Lily took off the tailored gray. She did not want to see the suit again, with its reminder of the torment of the past few hours. She wondered about the house, too: whether it were spoiled for her forever or whether time and the sunlight of succeeding days would cleanse it of its bitter memories. They were too vivid and much too close upon her now to tell. This room with the foot of the bed on which Hangaway had sat—the slipper chair—the window at which Heffernan had stood—the place where Sheffield, beaten, had crumpled and dropped—each step with its wrenching reminder.

  This basin in which pink had spread while Nan—and that—and in the mirror, standing in the doorway, just as she had then been standing in the doorway, was Nan.

  “Mother—”

  “Darling?”

  “It’s stopped snowing, Mother.”

  Lily dried her hands, wondering what move to make, what word to say, and then she thought: That’s the trouble. She’s my child. I’ve had to guard each word, each move, each minute of the past long days, and I’m still thinking in that groove. She’s my child, and no words or gestures any longer matter, because there can’t be any wrong ones any longer. We’ve been frugal, both of us, with the things that really count.

  Lily put the towel down and started to hold her hands out. But again, with vivid cruelty, it was the night, and they dropped to her side, and the marble of the basin was cold against them. Nan moved a hesitant step and was closer.

  “I’m so glad about Gene, darling.”

  “I’ve been an awful fool, Mother.”

  “No, you haven’t, Nan. Neither have I been. Things have to hurt you before you can cure them.”

  “Gene thinks it will be all right if we don’t wait for so awfully long. Do you?”

  “I think whatever you do. I always shall think that way, Nan.”

  Nan’s fingers touched her arm, warm, melting little spots of feeling which reached straight back through the years leaving Lily Nan and Nan a child once more, cradled against her, with their futures blank to write on. And everything was fixed. Tightly and so simply, just by this hanging onto one another, making up for the past and sealing the coming years. If you could imprison a moment under a clear glass bell… Lily thought: I’m being foolish, because I’m happy and because I’m tired and because we’re close now. Close. Even when she’s married to Gene we will be. She’s never been so truly mine.

  Delilah rapped and came in.

  “I have arranged some breakfast, madam.”

  “Thank you, Delilah. We’ll be right do
wn.”

  “It has stopped snowing, madam.”

  “Yes,” Lily said, “I know.”

  Lily put on a house dress of Nile wool, feeling younger and refreshed and more forgetful with each added second that passed. She went with Nan out into the hallway and thought it amazing how pallid its special memories were so quickly growing. How bright the tense whiteness of the morning made the hall below, with Lorrimer waiting stolidly down there in the bright white pool.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” he said. “We all thought we’d like to eat. You haven’t got rid of us. We’re all here.”

  “I suppose there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  “Nothing at all. Just be graceful and pretend you’re glad of it. I understand felicitations are in order, Nan. It’s about time.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Keith.”

  “I won’t have it. Say Lorrimer the next time you speak to your mother’s imminent husband. Go ahead—say it.”

  “Lorrimer.”

  “That’s better. You’re a grown girl now, and it’s time you had some manners. Are we going to stand here all day, Lily?”

  “I’d like to, Lorrimer.”

  “So would I. Beat it, my good child, for a minute—will you, Nan?”

  “Yes, Lorrimer.”

  They stood for a while looking after her, and Lily said, “I’m thinking of the other one, of Nan’s half sister, and the mother. Must they be told? Is there anything that can be done, Lorrimer?”

  “It has been, Lily. They’re not to know. Chance brought them to this house in refuge from the storm, Haines and Hangaway and Parne, and that’s the story. There’ll be no trial because Hangaway is admittedly insane. He’ll never talk. Starr gives him just a little while to live.”

  “I saw her photograph, you know. I thought her Nan.”

  “You thought too much, you sinful woman.”

  “I’m not. I’m just a wreck.”

  “Nothing that a good overhauling won’t fix.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Lorrimer…”

  “Lily—Lily—Lily.”