Mission: Earth "Death Quest" (17 page)

"Some doctah friend of his named Price. Owns a private health hospital, Altaprice, ovah in Redneck. Millionaire kin' of place."

"Mistah Biggs, c'd ah ask you the favah of showin' me the way ovah theah?"

"Why, sho', Junior. It's on'y abaht fifteen mile." He went and got his coat and hat.

Heller thanked Marcy for the meal and she beamed.

They went outside.

Heller stared.

THE CAR WAS GONE!

That clever Harvey Lee had apparently got himself untied and probably with another key had spirited the car away!

Biggs evidently supposed somebody had just dropped

T

Heller off, for he opened the prage beside the house and unlocked the door of an old vintage Buick.

Heller, with a glance toward the direction of Harvey Lee's lot, possibly thinking of future revenge, got into the Buick. Biggs backed it out and they were on their way.

I thought fast.

There was yet a way to stop Heller and give Torpedo his chance.

I grabbed the phone. Telling the operator it was a Federal emergency, she rapidly connected me with the Fair Oakes chief. He was evidently at home. He sounded rushed.

"This is a Federal agent," I said. "We have just gotten data by satellite that your son, Joe, and another officer are tied up in a closet in the courthouse. Harvey Lee is a witness to a car theft. The man you want is in an old Buick headed for Room 13, Altaprice Hospital, Redneck. If you drive fast you can intercept him on the road!"

"Jesus!" said the chief. "That confirms what Harvey Lee just reported. We're on our way!"

I hung up.

I beamed. Heller would be stopped.

Torpedo would have his chance!

I thought I had better check up on Krak..I moved her viewer closer to me to get a better look.

She seemed to be just staring down a hall. She

wasn't moving. So I did a fast replay. Maybe I could catch a glimpse of Torpedo.

She had left the land yacht in company with Bang-Bang and walked to the bottom of the hospital steps.

"Now Bang-Bang," she had said, "you go in and tell the doctor you're in pain and somehow get the receptionist to help you to his office. You make him examine you and groan around and keep him there."

Resignedly, Bang-Bang had gone in, attracted the receptionist's attention and had gotten her to inform the doctor he was there. But she had come back and had told him to wait despite his plea that he was sure he would perish any instant. For quite a time he had sat there, rolling about in the chair and groaning. And all that while Krak had been outside. Torpedo, I felt sure, had private plans for when she went inside.

Finally, as Krak had seen through the window from the porch, a tall, blond man in a black coat, who must have been Dr. Price, had come out and, with the help of the receptionist, had gotten the collapsing Bang-Bang into his office.

Krak had slipped in and gotten out of sight at the end of a hall.

Now, as I watched, two nurses sauntered by. Once they were gone, Krak went up the hall, found Room 13 and slipped in.

The room was very plain. A night-black, uncurtained window was in the far wall. White metal tables, chairs and other hospital things stood about.

An old man was groaning on the bed, his face twisted in pain. He focused on the Countess Krak. She was looking at a chart that hung on the bottom of the bed. It said, "Dr. Tremor Graves."

"Do I know you?" said Dr. Graves.

"I am the new therapist," said the Countess Krak.

She reached into her shopping bag. She pulled out a helmet. She slid a recording strip into the slot and pushed a button that said Record. She plonked the helmet onto his head, threw the switch, plugged in the microphone and sat down.

The Countess Krak looked at the black window, glanced at the door, listened for a moment and then got down to business. "Sleep, sleep, pretty sleep."

Graves, who had been threshing about, lay more quietly.

"What do you know about Delbert John Rockecen-ter's wife and son?" she said into the microphone.

Graves went rigid. From under the helmet came a fearful voice. "Murder. Murder. I will not be blackmailed."

"You had better tell me exactly what happened," said the Countess Krak. "Then you can't be blackmailed."

The old doctor twisted restlessly. "This arthritis is worse than blackmail."

"Pay attention," said the Countess Krak. "Your pains will all go away if you tell me and you will never have them anymore."

Dr. Graves, in a hollow, muffled voice, as though it came from some deep tomb, began to talk.

"I know much of this from the girl and from the woman psychiatrist. And I know full well what happened to them in my own hands." He halted, restless again.

"Tell all," said the Countess Krak. "Begin with who you are."

"I am Dr. Tremor Graves, M.D., retired many years, a victim of my own drink and drugs and folly. I owned

my own hospital in Fair Oakes but now even that is gone." He fell silent again.

"Rockecenter and his wife and son," prompted the Countess Krak.

"Delbert John Rockecenter kept his marriage secret. According to the girl it was because his family would be furious if they found out he had married someone so poor. The girl was Mary Styles, the only child of Ben and Charlotte Styles who owned a farm near Fair Oakes. She was stage-struck and went north some nineteen years ago. She got a job in the chorus of the Roxy Theater. That was all known in the local town and nobody much approved.

"Then apparently at a pot party she met Delbert John Rockecenter, then a man of about twenty-five. In a crazy moment they got married in a fast-marriage place. To Rockecenter it was just a joke. To the girl it was her whole life.

"She used to meet him secretly through the back doors of hotels because he was afraid someone, mainly his Aunt Timantha, would find out.

"Then she became pregnant and could no longer hide it. She refused an abortion and in panic he sent her to her parents here. And that's where I came in." He fell silent, twisting about.

"What happened?" prompted the Countess Krak.

"She was only in town a day or two when a psychiatrist showed up, a woman named Agnes P. Morelay, Ph.D., M.D., a newly graduated acid thing. I did not like her.

"This psychiatrist had some men with her. They grabbed the Styles girl and then I found myself talking to Dr. Morelay. This psychiatrist kept the parents quiet-I do not know how. And she wanted me to kill the

girl and say it was suicide. But I wouldn't because I was afraid they would be able to blackmail me, then, for murder. Then this Morelay wanted an abortion done to the girl. But she was too far along and I said that would be murder, too.

"So I promised, for money, to hold the girl in a padded cell they hastily built in my hospital and then, for more money, to kill the mother and baby at birth." He fell silent, very agitated.

"Go on," said the Countess Krak.

"Just before the delivery, news came that the parents had been killed in an auto accident. It was a terrible shock to the girl. But it would have made no real difference. It was a breech birth and she bled to death internally. And I didn't want to be blackmailed by the psychiatrist for killing the baby, so I didn't, but I told Dr. Morelay that I had. I have done many evil things in my life," and the voice became a wail, "but I did not kill the two of them!"

"What did you do with the baby?" said the Countess Krak.

"I made it identifiable so I couldn't be blackmailed and would have some blackmail in my turn if I ever needed it. I tattooed a black dollar mark on the sole of the left foot of the boy and put it in the county poor farm under the name of Richard Roe. I told them it had been found on the hospital doorstep. I filed the mother's death certificate and never mentioned the child. I know psychiatry is for the rich to keep the poor in line. But if Morelay ever seeks to keep me in line, I can threaten to produce the child."

"That has been heard," said the Countess Krak. "But I will now tell you the additional thing that happened and you will remember it that way. And then

you'll have no more pain. Is that all right?"

"Yes."

"What you have said is all correct except for this: Mary Styles gave birth to twins. They were nonidenti-cal." She consulted a note she drew from her pocket. "The one that was born first, you put a dollar mark on the right foot sole. You sent this boy to a doctor friend in Georgia that professional ethics will not let you name. You told him to replace a stillborn child whose parents were Agnes and Gerald Wister, and name it Jerome Ter-rance Wister, and record that it was born in the Macon General Hospital, Bibb County, Georgia. And the other doctor agreed and is since dead. And any date disparity is because of the arrangements you had to make. Now, you remember this clearly."

"Yes."

"Now that we have all this clear in your mind, you will feel compelled, when you awake, to ease your soul of guilt, to write this all up as a formal confession. And only if you do that will your pains go away. And you will feel no more pain.

"Now you will forget I put a helmet on you. You will only remember the real incident as I have just told you and feel the compulsion to confess in writing. When I snap my fingers, you will awake."

She took the helmet off, turned it off and put it in the shopping bag.

Bang-Bang slid into the room, making motions.

The Countess Krak snapped her fingers.

Graves opened his eyes and looked around with some anxiety.

Bang-Bang whispered to the Countess Krak. "That doctor said I couldn't be cured. But he's making his evening rounds. We better split!"

Footsteps sounded. Bang-Bang looked anxiously at the window, apparently to see if it could be dived out of.

More footsteps.

Dr. Price walked in!

He looked very severely at Bang-Bang. "I thought you had left. Maybe I should reexamine you for some other symptom such as snooping. Aha, and what is this young lady doing here?"

"We couldn't find the exit!" wailed Bang-Bang.

Dr. Price went around to the other side of the bed. He gave his black coat a professional twitch. He swept his blond hair out of his eyes. He bent over and took hold of Dr. Graves's wrist. "If you've been disturbing this patient..."

The door opened.

Stonewall Biggs walked in!

"What is this?" said Dr. Price. "A camp meeting?"

"Biggs!" cried Dr. Graves, sitting up and freeing his wrist. "Biggs! 'Fore God, get me a pen and some paper! This arthritis is killing me!"

Biggs looked startled. Then he looked at the Countess Krak. "You must be th' young lady..."

"Here," said the Countess Krak, pushing a pad and a pen into Biggs's hand.

"I can't allow this patient to be disturbed!" said Dr. Price.

"Give me that paper!" wailed Graves.

Biggs promptly did so. The Countess Krak pushed a bed table into place. Graves bent over it and furiously began to write.

Biggs looked at the first words that Graves put down and then he rushed from the room. A moment later he came back, dragging two of the hospital nurses.

"What is this?" cried Dr. Price, tearing at his blond hair.

"Shut up," said Stonewall Biggs. "It do seem that ol' Tremor heah is busy on a confession. And all of you watch because you'ns is goin' to be signin' it as due, prop-ah an' authentic, done by his own free will an' accord an' without no threat of duress!"

"You can't invade his privacy!" cried Dr. Price.

"He's invadin' it hisself," said Stonewall Biggs. "Confession is awful good fo' th' soul. An' as county clerk, ah c'n invade anythin' ah please. So jus' stan' theah an' watch."

Dr. Graves was writing at a mad rate.

Suddenly I realized that Heller was unaccounted for. His viewer was tipped a bit away from me and I had been too engrossed to watch it for his fate, which, after all, I considered sealed. The view was of the silly French car, the Karin, seen from a distance in the gloom and I supposed they had intercepted him on the road and now had him standing somewhere securely cuffed. I did not have time to play back the strips. I could enjoy that later.

Right now the question was, would the Countess Krak get away with this flagrant violation of all legal rules of evidence? Surely men as clever as Price and Biggs, themselves, would see through this: the eagerness

of that racing pen would look strange to them. Graves was practically quivering!

And then I realized something else: the chance Torpedo now had. The Countess Krak was standing across the room from that window. Dr. Price, on the other side of the bed, had his back to it but was not blocking it. All Torpedo had to do was shoot past Dr. Price and he would nail the Countess Krak! No thin windowpane could even deflect a.375 Magnum Holland and Holland elephant slug! Come on, Torpedo!

Dr. Graves was finished. He signed the confession with a huge signature and then sank back. A beautiful smile suffused his aged face. "Oh," he said, "what a relief! No pain!"

Biggs was reading the confession. The Countess Krak was looking over his shoulder. "So!" said Biggs. "Theah
were
two lahk he said!"

The nurses were also trying to get a glimpse of what Graves had written. "No, no," said Biggs. "Th' rest of you don' have t'read it. You'ah jus' heah t'witness that he writ it. So you sign, heah at th' bottom, each one of you."

Dr. Price and the two nurses signed as Biggs thrust it under their noses.

"Now, Tremor," said Biggs, "raise yo' raht ban'. Do you solemnly sweah that this is th' truth, th' whole truth and nothin' but th' truth, so he'p you God?"

"Oh, yes," said Dr. Graves. "It's the only decent thing I ever did in my whole life."