He stared at me levelly, out of deep, sad, remote eyes under the dun-colored eyebrows. «You haven’t seen Grcb,» he said, almost with an inner amusement. «I happen to know he went East this noon. His father died in Ohio.» He got up and went to the electric sterilizer and looked at his strap watch and then switched the juice off. He came back to the desk then and opened a flat box of cigarettes and put one in his mouth and pushed the box across the desk. I reached and took one. I half glanced at the dark examination room, but I saw nothing that I hadn’t seen the last time I looked at it.
«That’s funny,» I said. «His wife didn’t know that. Big Chin didn’t know it. He was sitting there with her all tied up on the bed tonight, waiting for Grcb to come back home, so he could bump him off.»
Dr. Austrian looked at mc vaguely now. He pawed around on his desk for a match and then opened a side drawer and took out a small white-handled automatic, and held it on the flat of his hand. Then he tossed a packet of matches at me with his other hand.
«You won’t need the gun,» I said. «This is a business talk which I’m going to show you it will pay to keep a business talk.»
He took the cigarette out of his mouth and dropped it on the desk. «I don’t smoke,» he said. «That was just what one might call the necessary gesture. I’m glad to hear I won’t need the gun. But I’d rather be holding it and not need it than be needing it and not hold it. Now, who is Big Chin, and what else important have you to say before I call the police?»
«Let mc tell you,» I said. «That’s what I’m here for. Your wife played a lot of roulette at Vance Conned’s club and lost the money you made with your little needles almost as fast as you made it. There’s some talk she was going around with Conned in an intimate way also. You maybe didn’t care about that, being out all night and too busy to bother being much of a husband to her. But you probably did care about the money, because you were risking a lot to get it. I’ll come to that later.
«On the night your wife died she got hysterical oven at Conried’s and you were sent for and went over and needled her in the arm to quiet hen. Conned took her home. You phoned your office nurse, Helen Matson — Matson’s ex-wife — to go into your house and see if she was all right. Then later on Matson found hen dead under the car in the garage and got hold of you, and you got hold of the chief of police, and there was a hush put on it that would have made a Southern senator sound like a deaf mute asking for a second plate of mush. But Matson, the first guy on the scene, had something. He didn’t have any luck trying to peddle it to you, because you in your quiet way have a lot of guts. And perhaps your friend, Chief Anders, told you it wasn’t evidence. So Matson tried to put the bite on Conned, figuring that if the case got opened up before the tough grand jury that’s sitting now it would all bounce back on Conned’s gambling joint, and he would be closed up tighter than a frozen piston, and the people behind him might get sore at him and take his polo ponies away from him.
«So Conned didn’t like that idea and he told a mug named Moss Lorenz, the mayor’s chauffeur now but formerly a strongarm for Conned — he’s the fellow I called Big Chin — to take cane of Matson. And Matson lost his licence and was run out of Bay City. But he had his own brand of guts too, and he holed up in an apartment house in L.A. and kept on trying. The apartment house manager got wise to him somehow — I don’t know how but the L.A. police will find out — and put him on the spot, and tonight Big Chin went up to town and bumped Matson off.»
I stopped talking and looked at the thin, tall man. Nothing had changed in his face. His eyes flicked a couple of times and he turned the gun over on his hand. The office was very silent. I listened for breathing from the next room but I didn’t hear anything.
«Matson is dead?» Dr. Austrian said very slowly. «I hope you don’t think I had anything to do with that.» His face glistened a little.
«Well, I don’t know,» I said. «Greb was the weak link in your setup and somebody got him to leave town today — fast — before Matson was killed, if it was at noon. And probably somebody gave him money, because I saw where he lived and it didn’t look like the home of a fellow who was taking in any dough.»
Dr. Austrian said very swiftly. «Conned, damn him! He called me up early this morning and told me to get Greb out of town. I gave him the money to go, but —» he stopped talking and looked mad at himself and then looked down at the gun again.
«But you didn’t know what was up. I believe you, Doc. I really do. Put ’that gun down, won’t you, just for a little while?»
«Go on,» he said tensely. «Go on with your story.»
«Okay,» I said. «There’s plenty more. First off the L.A. police have found Matson’s body but they won’t be down here before tomorrow; first, because it’s too late, and second, because when they put the story together they won’t want to bust the case. The Club Conned is within the L.A. city limits and the grand jury I was telling you about would just love that. They’ll get Moss Lorenz and Moss will cop a plea and take a few years up in Quentin. That’s the way those things are handled when the law wants to handle them. Next point is how I know what Big Chin did. He told us. A pal and I went around to see Greb and Big Chin was squatting there in the dark with Mrs. Greb all taped up on the bed and we took him. We took him up in the hills and gave him the boot and he talked. I felt kind of sorry for the poor guy. Two murders and he didn’t even get paid.»
«Two murders?» Dr. Austrian said queerly.
«I’ll get to that after a while. Now you see where you stand. In a little while you are going to tell me who murdered your wife. And the funny thing is I am not going to believe you.»
«My God!» he whispered. «My God!» He pointed the gun at mc and immediately dropped it again, before I had time to start dodging.
«I’m a miracle man,» I said. «I’m the great American detective — unpaid. I never talked to Matson, although he was trying to hire me. Now I’m going to tell you what he had on you, and how your wife was murdered, and why you didn’t do it. All from a pinch of dust, just like the Vienna police.»
He was not amused. He sighed between still lips and his face was old and gray and drawn under the pale sand-colored hair that painted his bony skull.
«Matson had a green velvet slipper on you,» I said. «It was made for your wife by Vcrschoyle of Hollywood — custom-made, with her last number on it. It was brand-new and had never been worn. They made her two pairs exactly the same. She had it on one of her feet when Matson found her. And you know where he found her — on the floor of a garage to get to which she had to go along a concrete path from a side door of the house. So she couldn’t have walked in that slipper. So she was carried. So she was murdered. Whoever put the slippers on her got one that had been worn and one that had not. And Matson spotted it and swiped the slipper. And when you sent him into the house to phone the chief you sneaked up and got the other worn slipper and put it on her bare foot. You knew Matson must have swiped that slipper. I don’t know whether you told anybody or not. Okay?»
He moved his head half an inch downward. He shivered slightly, but the hand holding the bone-handled automatic didn’t shiver.
«This is how she was murdered. Grcb was dangerous to somebody, which proves she did not die of monoxide poisoning. She was dead when she was put under the car. She died of morphine. That’s guessing. I admit, but it’s a swell guess, because that would be the only way to kill her which would force you to cover up for the killer. And it was easy, to somebody who had the morphine and got a chance to use it. All they had to do was give her a second fatal dose in the same spot where you had shot hen earlier in the evening. Then you came home and found her dead. And you had to cover up because you knew how she had died and you couldn’t have that come out. You’re in the morphine business.»