Deadly Cure

by Lawrence Goldstone

  Almost by reflex, the young patrolman raised his left arm. Miriam took it. Thus, supported on one side by Noah and the other by the rookie copper, Miriam was able to make it down the stairs. Noah thanked the man when they reached the ground floor.

  “Need help from here?” the patrolman asked. “I should go with you anyway.”

  “I’m going to put her in a carriage, even though it’s only a few blocks. If the wound opens, she could hemorrhage. If you’re willing to be seen on duty riding in a hansom, come on along. They’ll love that at the station house.”

  The young policeman considered the prospect. A more experienced man would not have let them leave alone, appearances be damned, but the rookie was every bit as afraid of looking foolish as of making an error. While he was still pondering the choice, Noah had led Miriam out the door and helped her into the first carriage at the stand.

  “Thirteenth precinct house,” he said loudly to the driver.

  The hansom pulled away from the curb, moving south on First Avenue, leaving the perplexed patrolman to stare after it. At Twenty-Third Street Noah instructed the driver to turn right. After he had done so, Noah had the cab pull to the curb.

  “Did anyone go through Turner McKee’s room after he died?”

  “Why? What is this all about?”

  “Just tell me.”

  “Yes. I did.”

  “Did you find anything? About the drugs?”

  “No. We didn’t find anything at all. But the coppers had been there first.”

  “They didn’t find anything either. They thought it was at the offices.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Sasha was working for the police, not the communists. He set the bomb for them. The target wasn’t your father at all, although I’m sure they’re pleased he’s dead. They wanted to destroy whatever material Turner McKee had amassed on the Patent Medicine Trust. You were correct the first time. That’s who McCluskey is working for. Specifically, I think they are interested in suppressing any incriminating information on a new drug from Germany called Heroin. It’s made from morphine. That’s the drug that killed Sinead Ryan and my patient. They tortured McKee before they killed him, trying to get him to reveal what he had and where he had it. McKee was too tough. He died without telling them. After they searched his room, they assumed the information was at the office, so they had Sasha blow up the place. Two detectives came by afterward to search for anything that remained but didn’t find any evidence one way or another.”

  “There was nothing to find. Turner never kept anything important at the office. At his rooms either. The chance of burglary or a raid by the police was too great.”

  “Where then?”

  Miriam sized up Noah for a moment; she, he realized, was deciding whether to trust him. “Do you think this driver will take us to Pelham?”

  “His parents’ house? Are you certain or guessing?”

  “Certain. He told me. I even know where they are in the house.”

  “Let’s go then. For a price, this driver will take us to Paris.” Noah knocked on the trap. When the driver opened it, Noah gave him the destination and asked for a rate. “You will have to move as speedily as you can.”

  “Let’s see,” the driver replied, taking on an expression of extreme studiousness. “That’s up Second Avenue, across the Macombs Dam Bridge, on through the Bronx . . .”

  “I know were Pelham is, driver.”

  “I expect you want me to wait and bring you back.”

  “Two hours. Possibly less.”

  “Back to Bellevue?”

  “Brooklyn Heights.”

  “Whole day gone then. I can do that for fifteen dollars.”

  “Absurd. I’ll offer you seven.”

  “Twelve.

  “Ten.”

  “Eleven.”

  “Ten.”

  The driver agreed with a scowl, as if he had been forced to have a tooth extracted. In fact, ten dollars for a day’s work was a windfall to a cabbie.

  “And what about me?” Miriam asked, as the driver urged the horse north.

  “You would have been found to have died from the complications of your wound.”

  The driver turned out to be extremely adept. They reached Pelham, on the shore of Eastchester Bay, in ninety minutes.

  The McKees lived on a long tree-lined dirt road that meandered through the wooded countryside. Most of the houses on the road were behind high walls and gates, which rendered the area at once beautiful and forbidding. The driver pulled up at a high, squared wrought-iron gate with black bunting woven between the stiles. A weather-beaten man of about fifty in work clothes stood just inside. The sort who hires on to a family and remains with them for life. He wore an expression of profound sadness.

  “Are you here for the funeral?”

  “Turner McKee’s funeral is today?”

  “At three,” he said. “You are supposed to go directly to the cemetery and then return here afterward. Mr. and Mrs. McKee don’t wish to be disturbed until after the ceremony.”

  The retainer eyed them curiously through the window of the hansom, paying particular attention to Miriam’s garb.

  “You must be Conrad,” she said. “I worked with Turner. He told me you taught him to swim. We need very much to speak with Mr. McKee immediately.”

  The man’s expression softened. “You’re Miriam Herzberg then. Turner spoke of you as well. I was sorry to read about your father.”

  “Thank you. This is Noah Whitestone. We are trying to learn the true circumstances of Turner’s death and make certain that those responsible are punished.”

  The gatekeeper rubbed his face. Stubble rasped against the calluses on his hands. “I got to warn you, Miss Herzberg, you may not be welcome in the house. The master and the missus are of the opinion that if it wasn’t for you and your father, young Turner would be alive.”

  “Turner came to us, Conrad. We did not seek him out. He believed in the work he did. Allow us to attempt to gain him a measure of justice.”

  Conrad thought for a moment, then cocked his head up the tree-lined path. “Quarter mile up on the right.” As the carriage began to move through the gate, he added, “Good luck.”

  No other homes were visible from the path. The house was fashioned on an English country estate, broad and sprawling, three stories high, eight windows on either side of the portico. Three other carriages, shiny and black, all horse drawn, waited in the driveway. They looked at each other before pulling the bell, Noah with the freshly sutured laceration across his forehead and Miriam, limping in the plain, one-dollar dress of a dead woman.

  The maid who answered the door looked them up and down and seemed on the verge of closing the door in their faces.

  “My name is Whitestone,” Noah barked, as if to a wayward orderly. “I’m a physician. I need to see Mr. McKee immediately. He knows me. Tell him I’m terribly sorry to intrude, especially today, but I have vital information. He will know on what subject.”

  The maid hesitated. But she had been trained to take orders and Noah had given her one. Without replying, she closed the door almost all the way and went off. Some moments later, the door again opened and Turner McKee Sr. stood inside.

  “I am burying my son in ninety minutes, Dr. Whitestone. What is so vital that it cannot wait?” He turned to Miriam. “Miss Herzberg. I am terribly sorry about the death of your father, but still, I should have thought you would have been embarrassed to come here.”

  “You have lost your son, Mr. McKee. I have lost my father. Both were murdered by the same men.”

  “The same men? Your father died in a bombing by a rival radical group.”

  “No, Mr. McKee,” Noah said. “The bomb was set at the behest of the police. I saw the man who placed it, laughing in a police station with two detectives. I suspect those two are the same men who murdered your son.”

  “Ridiculous! I was willing to indulge you at the morgue, Dr. Whitestone. I was even willing to allow
my son to be cut open on your say-so. But all that Dr. Herold found was death by asphyxiation.”

  “From blood in his lungs. And his ribs were broken.”

  “Nonsense. Dr. Herold told me—”

  “Dr. Herold wished to spare your feelings. We can telephone him if you wish. He will confirm what I just told you. Your son was beaten to death by two New York City police detectives.”

  McKee placed his hand against the door jamb for support. He didn’t want to believe Noah, but he did.

  “You knew yourself your son had died by violence when we first met,” Noah went on. “Now I’ve discovered who killed him and why. What’s more, information that may well lead to the exposure of his killers is in this house.”

  “Here?”

  “Your son left his evidence here, Mr. McKee,” Miriam said. “He always feared precisely what occurred.”

  McKee swung the door wide. “You should come in then.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  DAY 7. TUESDAY, 9/26—12:15 P.M.

  Once they were inside, McKee took in their appearance more fully. “Can I offer you something? You must be thirsty after your ride.”

  “Perhaps some water while we speak,” Noah replied.

  McKee pulled a cord on the far wall of a vestibule that was furnished expensively but without ostentation. A man appeared in a doorway at the far end. “A pitcher of water in the study please, Dodson.” The man nodded and disappeared.

  “Come this way,” McKee said, extending his arm to the left. “If you wish, Miss Herzberg, some of my oldest daughter’s clothing is here. Her dresses should fit you admirably.”

  “Thank you, Mr. McKee, but I have grown attached to this one.”

  McKee’s eyebrows rose.

  “The woman who owned it killed herself. Her husband and society would have treated her as a criminal because her cancerous breast had been removed. It isn’t much, but I can honor her anguish by wearing this for a while.”

  McKee sighed and shook his head. “I admit I never did understand Turner’s attraction for the downtrodden, Miss Herzberg. Nor did I understand yours. I always thought it was akin to those who feel compelled to take in stray animals. I never believed my son when he railed on about endemic injustice. Society always seemed perfectly just to me. Oh, I saw flaws, certainly, but I simply assumed that flaws were the price one paid for freedom. But since I visited the morgue . . . and now . . .”

  “Turner!” came a voice from up the curved center staircase. “What are you doing down there?” A woman came into view from the second floor. She was tall and lean, about fifty, attractive with sandy hair gone mostly to gray. She wore a black dress and a veil pulled back over her head. Her face was lined, but the lines seemed recent, as if they had been etched on. She eyed Noah and Miriam at first with surprise. Then her gaze settled on Miriam and her expression turned to disgust.

  “I must speak with Miss Herzberg and Dr. Whitestone, Leticia,” McKee said to her. “Please wait for me. I promise we will leave with time to spare.”

  “I want her out of my house,” Leticia McKee said icily.

  “I said wait for me, Leticia. We may have made an enormous mistake. If we wish to honor Turner’s memory, I must hear them out.”

  At the mention of her son’s name, the woman’s eyes filled with tears. Her head began to shake back and forth. “I don’t . . .”

  “Trust me, Leticia. Our anger at Miss Herzberg may have been grievously misplaced. If so, please allow me to attempt to right an immense injustice.”

  Leticia McKee, now thoroughly confused, nodded perfunctorily. She seemed about to speak once more, but instead turned about and disappeared up the stairs.

  “You must forgive her,” McKee offered.

  “Nonsense,” Miriam said. “Her feelings are perfectly understandable.”

  McKee smiled briefly in thanks and then directed them down the hall to a wood-paneled room lined with bookshelves. “Before we do anything,” McKee said when they were all seated, “you must give me some details.”

  Noah provided McKee with a brief rendition of the events that had transpired since his son’s autopsy. He made particular reference to the Patent Medicine Trust, the new drug Heroin, Arnold Frias, and the rogue policemen’s role in the deaths of McKee’s son and Miriam’s father.

  “So you see, Mr. McKee, your son died a hero,” Miriam told him. “He won’t be a hero to those who lined their pockets at the expense of the helpless, but he will be a hero to the families of the children who are saved from death or drug compulsion because of his efforts.”

  McKee let out a slow breath. “If what you say is true, I will be greatly gratified. I freely admit I want to believe you. I am tempted to believe you. But I cannot do so on your word alone. Now what is the information Turner left here?”

  “We’re not sure. But it was sufficiently inflammatory to have cost him his life.”

  “You said you knew where it was in the house.”

  Miriam spoke. “What was Turner’s favorite book as a child? He said you would know.”

  “Oddly enough, it was a dime-store novel by Horatio Alger Jr., Brave and Bold; or, The Fortunes of Robert Rushton. He reread it many times. Why?”

  “In your library is a copy of that book. There is a packet behind it.”

  McKee led them back across the main hall. The library was two stories tall, filled with books of all sorts. The value of the collection fairly screamed out from the shelves. A section was devoted to natural history, one to travel, one to the history of the Americas. Many of the volumes were antiquarian, some dating from as far back as the fifteenth century. Some volumes were in French, others in German. Many were in Latin. A section devoted to contemporary literature was stunning. Beautiful leather-bound sets of Dickens, Trollope, Twain.

  Noah stood awestruck, as if he had walked into a cathedral. He wondered how Miriam felt, being in the presence of such splendor. Here were the trappings of wealth, it was true, but wealth used to preserve a great intellectual heritage. The countervailing forces of her father’s life.

  “My father was a bibliophile, Dr. Whitestone. I have enhanced his collection. I was hoping Turner . . .” McKee shook his head. “I have an excellent selection of works tracing the history of medicine. I wish there was time so that I might show you. But, as it is, our interest is in one of the least impressive volumes in this room. Except to me, of course. But first, I must show one of my acquisitions to Miss Herzberg.”

  McKee strode across the room to a section in the far corner. He withdrew a volume bound in gleaming red leather from the bottom shelf. He returned and handed it to Miriam. She gasped when she opened the cover, then collapsed into a chair and cried.

  McKee was distraught. “I’m so sorry, my dear. I thought you would be pleased.”

  Miriam looked up, her face blotches of crimson. “I am, Mr. McKee. Thank you so much. I thought they were all gone.” She caressed the title page as if it were her child.

  McKee gently took the book from Miriam and handed it Noah. It was entitled, Eine Kritik der Empirismus von Occam nach Leibniz, “A Critique of Empiricism From Occam to Leibniz.” It had been published in Berlin in 1879. The author was Mauritz Herzberg, professor of philosophy at Georg-August University of Göttingen.

  “It is evidently quite brilliant,” McKee told Noah. “I sent this to William James himself. He pronounced it a groundbreaking study of the evolution of scientific thought. I never told Turner I had purchased it. I was ashamed, I suppose, to admit that I was sufficiently curious to spend three hundred dollars on a rare book written by a man of whom I never spoke well. I wish now I had said something.” He took the book from Noah and gave it once again to Miriam. “This is yours if you want it, my dear.”

  She sniffed loudly and shook her head. “I have nowhere to keep it where I know it will be safe. Papa belongs here, I think. In a fine library, in the company of all these wonderful thinkers.”

  “Very well.” McKee returned the book, then grabbed one of
the sliding ladders that allowed access to the upper shelves. “Now to the subject at hand.” He slid the ladder halfway down the wall and climbed a few steps. He pulled a small, ragged volume, bound in paper from a shelf, fondled it gently, as Miriam had the philosophy text, then removed a few books on either side. McKee poked his hand into the opening, nodded, then withdrew a rolled-up sheaf of papers tied with ribbon. After he replaced the books, he climbed down.

  “Let us return to the study and see what Turner gave his life to tell us.”

  Moments later, Noah was leafing through the material. He was astonished.

  “Your son was correct, Mr. McKee,” Noah said after he had finished. “His research is superb and the magnitude of the conspiracy immense. Many millions are at stake. Heroin, diacetylmorphine chemically, is to be marketed throughout the nation in elixirs, tablets, pastilles, and powders. It will be prescribed for asthma, dysentery, nervous disorders, respiratory disease, and, most ironically, as a treatment for morphine addiction. Its most widespread application, however, will be as a cough suppressant, particularly for children.

  “The Bayer Company has recruited a number of physicians in America and Europe to both test the substance and provide testimonials. Bayer will soon begin to advertise extensively within the medical community, although not to the public at large. Whether or not any or all of these physicians are aware they are dealing with a morphiate is uncertain. But Bayer certainly knows. Felix Hoffmann, the chemist who synthesized the substance, was quite open to his superiors as to process. Heinrich Dreser, the head of his section and the man responsible for testing new drugs, attempted to claim credit for the process when he saw the potential value of the discovery. Dreser, Turner discovered, negotiated an agreement with Bayer in which he shares in the profits of any new drug discovered in his section.

  “Dreser tested the substance in the laboratory, on animals, and on a number of Bayer workers. He insisted this research demonstrated that Heroin creates no tolerance. In other words, the user develops no craving for the drug at shorter and shorter intervals. Turner could not determine whether Dreser’s testing was fraudulent or simply incompetent. One of the researchers may have called Heroin an extremely dangerous poison but was ignored. Dreser also seems to have sampled the substance himself. Heroin is four times as powerful as morphine but inexpensive to synthesize from the base substance. Thus, if a user develops a tolerance, the profits of his craving will be far greater. And as we have seen from the children who died, tolerance is certainly developed and it seems to be quicker and more profound than with ordinary morphine.”