Murder in the Madhouse
A Bill Crane Mystery
Jonathan Latimer
MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM
Chapter I
IT WAS NEARLY EVENING. Outside there was already that stealthy darkening of late afternoon in a region of hills, but the air was still dry and hot. Tar in the cracks of the concrete pavement oozed out blackly, leaves hung limply from bedraggled trees, and in the parched fields the animals lay and watched the road with detached curiosity. In the ambulance, too, it was dry and hot. William Crane sat on the narrow leather-covered ledge and watched particles of dirt, enlivened by the vibration, dance around the floor. He wondered how far they had to go.
They were traveling very fast, and behind him, through the dirty window, the road unwound like an angry snake. The ambulance swung insanely from side to side, and waves of burning air swept back from the engine. A bug flew in the partially opened front panel and struck William Crane’s face. He tried to strike it away, but his handcuffs bruised his head. He cursed. The man beside the driver scowled back at him. “What’s the matter, mister?”
“Bugs,” said William Crane.
The driver laughed. “Bugs to the bugs,” he said.
Both the men laughed. The man beside the driver fumbled in his pocket, pulled out a bottle, and took a drink between gasps. Then he held it between the lips of the driver. The ambulance reeled to the left, struck something with a sharp crash, and swerved back to the right. A car roared by, and there was a receding sound of angry shouting.
“Jees, that’s real stuff,” the driver said. He turned to peer back down the road, exposing a roll of sooty flesh where his collar touched his neck.
The man beside the driver tenderly pocketed the bottle. He appeared shaken. “That was so close,” he stated, “you could’ve untied that guy’s necktie with your teeth.”
“Don’t let it bother you,” said the driver consolingly. “As soon as it’s dark I’ll turn on the red lights and the siren and show you a little fancy work with a gas pedal.”
“How far are we going?” asked Crane.
“We’re going to the Astor estate for the week-end,” said the man beside the driver. He was a dark man with two gold teeth and a cap. His name was Joe.
“Yeah,” said the driver. “A party with those big bugs.”
This sent Joe into a hysteria again. “Big bugs,” he gasped. “Christ, that’s funny!” He was impelled to take another swig from the bottle. The driver took one, too.
Through the back window, William Crane could see the buff banks of the Hudson every time the ambulance rounded a curve to the left. It was nearly fall, and some of the trees were beginning to turn brown. The dusk and the speed made the landscape mottled, as though it were being unwound too quickly on a stage set built to represent scenery passing a train window. The car roared through a town, and there was a burst of screaming. He caught sight of three young girls through the back window.
“Let’s pick them up,” said the driver.
“Nix,” said Joe. “Not with this loony in here.”
The driver said: “Hell, he’s all right.” He gazed back at William Crane affectionately, narrowly missing a passing sedan. “Ain’t you ever picked up babes in an ambulance?” he asked Joe.
Joe admitted he had never picked up babes in an ambulance.
“It’s the berries,” asserted the driver earnestly. “You don’t have to find no woods or pay for a hotel room or anything like that.”
When the road dipped down into a valley between the hills, Crane noticed a pocket of cool air. It felt good to be cool again, even for only a minute.
“The best part of it all,” the driver was saying, “is that they can scream their damn heads off and nobody will pay any attention. An’ even if they do, you can tell them the broad is a patient. It’s a snap.”
The driver inserted the neck of the bottle in his face a second time. It was nearly empty when he handed it back to Joe.
“We better get some more of this when we stop to get gas,” he said.
“Do you know a spot?” asked Joe. He drained the bottle of its cinnamon liquid.
“Sure,” the driver asserted. He waved a grimy hand. “You can get applejack at pretty near any of the filling stations. It’s good stuff.”
“So is this,” said Joe. “I got it from Dutch’s mob. It ain’t been cut.”
“I thought they cut everything.”
“I work for Dutch.”
The driver was impressed. He made a sucking noise with his tongue and gums. “Whew! How’d you happen to quit him?”
“I didn’t. I’ll go back when this doctor gets through needing me up here.”
The driver considered this information for nearly a mile. “What’d you do?” he asked finally.
Joe patted himself lightly under his left arm.
It soon became dark. Trees huddled somberly by the roadside. Lights gleamed in clearings, and the Hudson looked like a black leather belt with an electrically lighted bridge for a diamond buckle. Presently the ambulance decreased speed, came to a crawl, and swung to the right onto a gravel driveway. It halted in front of a pump marked:
“Blue Gas—11¢.”
The driver shut off the ignition, and the door of the gray frame shanty opened, reluctantly emitting a cadaverous man with a dead-white face. He spoke with difficulty around a plug of chewing tobacco.
“How many?”
“Better put in ten,” said the driver. “Check the oil and water.”
Joe got out of the ambulance and walked stiffly over to the shanty. He glanced inside and then came back and spoke to the attendant.
“There’s ten acres of woods back there,” said the attendant in an aggrieved tone of voice. “What’s the matter with them?”
Joe’s small eyes wavered as he paused, undecided, for an instant behind the oblivious back of the attendant. Finally he turned and disappeared into the ten acres of woods. The driver climbed out to watch the attendant measure the oil, and William Crane raised his handcuffed hands high above his head. The leather-covered iron chafed his wrists, but the stretching relieved muscles cramped from perching on the narrow seat and resisting the swaying motion of the vehicle. He slid up toward the front panel and looked out.
The attendant held up the gage. “Take a couple,” he stated dispassionately.
“Put ’em in,” said the driver.
“These here sure take a lot of fuel.” The attendant poured in the oil from a slimy can. “Another one, somethin’ like this here, comes by every week. They take ten and five most every time.” He balanced the can on the engine and straightened his back.
“Check the water,” said the driver.
Joe stepped out of the irregular underbrush and strolled toward the station. “I’ll watch while you go,” he said to the driver. The driver nodded and walked toward the woods. He did not walk in a straight line.
The attendant had finished pouring the water and was screwing on the radiator cap when he noticed William Crane through the front panel. His eyes widened as he saw the handcuffs. “I didn’t know they was three of you,” he said.
Joe was lighting a cigarette. “Three of who? Oh, he don’t count. He’s daffy.”
The attendant studied William Crane’s face. “You’d never think it, would you? So young looking. Can’t be over thirty. Kin he hear us?”
Joe said he didn’t know. He said he didn’t care.
“Well, I don’t suppose it makes much difference. They say nobody can tell them they’re crazy. They say they don’t know it themselves.” The attendant was still looking at William Crane.
Joe glanced up and down the road. He leaned closer to the attendant. “You look like a right guy. D’you
know where a fellow could get some good stuff around here?”
The attendant looked at him speculatively, without surprise.
“I sorta think I got some in my shack.”
“How much a quart?”
The attendant reflected. “Two dollars,” he said tentatively.
“O. K.”
While the attendant was in the shack, the driver came back. Joe told him about the applejack.
“He makes it himself,” said the driver.
Joe said, “I don’t care who makes it so long as it’s good.”
It smelled good, anyway, so Joe paid for it, and the driver paid for the gas. While they were getting in the front seat, the attendant went around to the back and looked at William Crane through the window. The gas station’s electric light made his face whiter and his teeth yellower, and Crane decided he looked like an unpleasant horse. He waited for a second, and then he leaned toward the window.
“Boo!” he said. “Boo!”
The attendant’s face disappeared from the window.
Once more the ambulance was racing along the highway. Trees, automobiles, houses, towns whisked by with violence, and every now and then the headlights would illuminate the white face of some pedestrian along the way, like a flashlight in a charnel house. With the heat and the weird effect of the colored lights and the speed and the cry of the siren, William Crane felt as though he were being driven down the road to hell.
They tried another drink of the applejack, and Crane saw that it was already more than half gone.
“That ain’t bad stuff,” the driver said. He smacked his lips. “It’s got authority.”
“You said it,” said Joe. “Is all the stuff around here like this?”
“It varies a lot, but we got some better’n this at the home.”
“Where do you live?” asked Joe.
“In Hoboken.”
Joe looked at the driver with suspicion. “What good is that going to do us up here, if you got it at home?”
“Got what at home?”
“The liquor.”
The driver was puzzled. “I didn’t say I got liquor at home, I said at the home. Besides, the little woman don’t allow it around.”
“What do you mean—at the home?”
“That’s what we call it up here. I wouldn’t have none home, the little woman wouldn’t allow it.”
“Where does the booze come from?”
“They bring it in bottles like this.” The driver held up the bottle and then drank from it. “Boy, I’m glad I ain’t going home tonight. The little woman’s sorta hasty. She don’t like me to drink. She said——”
“Say, who’s askin’ you about the little woman?”
“Why, you did.” The driver’s feelings were injured. “You were asking me about liquor at home. I told you the little woman wouldn’t have it around the place. She said if I ever come in blotto I could just figure on alimony. She said——”
“Nuts,” said Joe. “Have another drink.”
The driver did.
Presently the highway curved, and they turned down a side road in a wide even skid and started to climb a long hill, the tires crunching against pieces of crushed stone and every once in a while throwing one against the fender with a sharp report. It was cooler as they climbed, and it did not seem as noisy as it had on the main road. Now there were no lights at either side.
“Only four miles,” said the driver.
Joe asked, “What sort of a place is it?”
“Not bad. They got good eats and a good place for us to sleep. You don’t have to work hard except when some patient gets to making trouble. The nurses is pretty hotsy-totsy, though.”
“What d’ya mean, hotsy-totsy?”
“They’re swell lookers, but they go for the doctors. You won’t get to first base with them.”
“I won’t, eh?” Joe evidently thought otherwise. “I ain’t had no trouble with dames yet.” Gold teeth flashed in a proud smile. “I got hair on my chest.”
“Don’t let Doc Eastman catch you foolin’ around.”
“Who’s he?” asked Joe. “Doc Livermore’s the big boss, ain’t he?”
“Doc Livermore’s the head of the place, but Doc Eastman looks after things. He don’t let anybody forget it, either.” The driver licked his lips. His face was streaked in the light from the dashboard. “He’s engaged to Miss Evans, the head nurse, and is she a honey!—blond and built. They say she went to college.” He shook his head. “I wouldn’t know about that.”
Joe did not appear impressed. “How many others?”
“There is one more doctor and a couple of other nurses. They’re pretty nice, but they got dark hair. I go for blondes.” He thought for a minute. “Still, I’m gettin’ sorta chummy with one of the others. I may take a try at her.”
“Those docs must have an eye,” said Joe. “How many patients they got?”
“About a dozen. You wouldn’t think that would be enough to make a place like that pay, but I hear the minimum is five grand a year. They are all worth plenty of rocks.”
William Crane looked out the front panel. It was not quite so dark outside. There was a nearly full moon in the sky, and the stone road was chalky. The trees were black, and he could see they were pines. The road was still upward, and the ambulance had settled down to a comfortable thirty miles an hour.
“Most of ’em aren’t so nutty,” the driver said. “They act all right for a while and then they go cuckoo for a spell. They have to be locked up in the detention building then.”
“What do they do with them when they are on good behavior?”
“It’s just like one of them classy resort hotels they have in Florida or at Atlantic City. They got a tennis court and a croquet field and a putting green, and they can do just what they please except for meals and treatment. They just got to be in bed before eleven.”
“Jees,” said Joe. “I thought they kept nuts in padded cells and fed ’em through the bars like lions or somethin’.”
The driver snorted. “Some of these people have got such good sense that it takes the doc a couple of weeks to find out what’s wrong. And even then he ain’t sure until they have a bad spell.”
Joe took another drink. So did the driver. “What are they like when they have a spell?” Joe demanded.
“They are all different. Some get crying fits, and some get tough and try to strangle me or one of the other fellows about the place. One guy, he used to be a banker, gets down and makes out like he was a dog, and one old lady throws off her clothes when she gets one.”
“It’s too bad the swell blond nurse ain’t like that old lady.” Joe took another drink. “Do we got to live right with them all the time?”
“It depends upon what you’re going to do.”
“I don’t know,” said Joe. “Dutch said I was to come up here and do whatever Doc Livermore said.”
“Well, if they put you in the servants’ quarters,” said the driver, “you’ll be able to sleep away from them. But you’ll be in the same part of the estate if you get a room in the hospital.”
“Hell, I ain’t scared of them,” said Joe. “It’s just that if I’m around them all the time I may get nervous and bust one of them or somethin’.”
The road finally stopped climbing and circled through a cut between two hills. There was a deep valley ahead. The driver stopped the ambulance.
“There it is.” He pointed down. “I guess we better finish this liquor before we get there.”
Joe agreed, passed the bottle. “I got somethin’ else I want to do,” he said. He climbed down from his seat and walked to the side of the road.
William Crane looked through the panel at the valley. Not far below was a scene as artificial as the setting in a Cecil B. DeMille society drama. Through the tessellated branches of trees seen from above, a pool of water gleamed in a patterned background of paths and flower beds on the estate. Their figuration was nicely bounded by a stone wall, like a frame on
a picture, and artistically unbalanced by a cluster of white buildings at one side. Under the light of the moon the estate was at once peaceful and glamorous and illegitimate.
William Crane’s contemplation of Dr. Livermore’s sanitarium was broken by the return of Joe, who swung back into his seat. “Where is this joint?” he asked. The driver pointed the bottle downward. There was a pause.
“Say, pretty classy,” said Joe. “Is all the liquor gone?”
“One drink left,” said the driver. “You take it. I feel lousy.”
Joe drank as the driver started the ambulance down the hill. Finished, he tossed the bottle out the window. There was a brittle noise of breaking glass.
Chapter II
IRON GATES CLOSED with dull finality. The old man moved after them, crabwise, his face thin with suspicion and curiosity. The driver swung the ambulance up to the porch of the large stucco building and skidded it to a flourishing stop, like a coachman arriving with royalty. Naked of furniture, bare of rugs, the porch gleamed under moonlight which made pearls of pebbles in the driveway.
The driver stepped out to the earth, staggered, clutched the open door for support, and sat down heavily on the running board. He made an attempt to rise but got no more than halfway to a standing position.
“Get dizzy drivin’,” he said to no one in particular. “It’s fumes.”
He made another attempt to stand up; failing, he muttered the word “fumes” and sat down. Joe watched him with apprehension, leaning far out of the seat.
“Buddy,” he said, “get yourself together.”
The driver sat with his face pressed against blunt fingers, He made a hiccoughing sound.
“Remember,” Joe said, “that we gotta take this guy somewhere.”
There was a harsh cackle. “He comes in this way every time,” said the old man. His voice was high and frail and oriental. “But I’ll help you.” He was standing back out of the area lit by the headlights.
“Who the hell are you?” asked Joe. He peered pugnaciously at the circle of shadows.
“I’m Andrew,” said the old man.
“Sure you are,” said Joe, “but what of it?”
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