And then Willie Ecks put his gun back into his pocket and opened the door. He said, «Come in.»
The man in the yellow suit entered the room and Willie Ecks shut the door very carefully and locked it.
He said, «I’m proud to meet you, Dr. Chappel.»
He sounded as though he meant it, and he did mean it.
It was four o’clock in the morning when Bela Joad stood outside the door of Dyer Rand’s apartment. He had to wait, there in the dimly luminous hallway, for as long as it took the chief to get out of bed and reach the door, then activate the one-way-transparent panel to examine his visitor.
Then the magnetic lock sighed gently and the door opened. Rand’s eyes were bleary and his hair was tousled. His feet were thrust into red plastic slippers and he wore neonylon sleeping pajamas that looked as though they had been slept in.
He stepped aside to let Bela Joad in, and Joad walked to the center of the room and stood looking about curiously. It was the first time he’d ever been in Rand’s private quarters. The apartment was like that of any other well-to-do bachelor of the day. The furniture was unobtrusive and functional, each wall a different pastel shade, faintly fluorescent and emitting gentle radiant heat and the faint but constant caress of ultraviolet that kept people who could afford such apartments healthily tanned. The rug was in alternate one-foot squares of cream and gray, the squares separate and movable so that wear would be equalized. And the ceiling, of course, was the customary one-piece mirror that gave an illusion of height and spaciousness.
Rand said, «Good news, Joad?»
«Yes. But this is an unofficial interview, Dyer. What I’m going to tell you is confidential between us.»
«What do you mean?»
Joad looked at him. He said, «You still look sleepy, Dyer. Let’s have coffee. It’ll wake you up, and I can use some myself.»
«Fine,» Dyer said. He went into the kitchenette and pressed the button that would heat the coils of the coffee-tap. «Want it laced?» he called back.
«Of course.»
Within a minute he came back with two cups of steaming café royale. With obvious impatience he waited until they were seated comfortably and each had taken his first sip of the fragrant beverage before he asked, «Well Joad?»
«When I say it’s unofficial, Dyer, I mean it. I can give you the full answer, but only with the understanding that you’ll forget it as soon as I tell you, that you’ll never tell another person, and that you won’t act upon it.»
Dyer Rand stared at his guest in amazement. He said, «I can’t promise that! I’m chief of police, Joad. I have my duty to my job and to the people of Chicago.»
«That’s why I came here, to your apartment, instead of to your office. You’re not working now, Dyer; you’re on your own time.»
«But —»
«Do you promise?»
«Of course not.»
Bela Joad sighed. «Then I’m sorry for waking you, Dyer.» He put down his cup and started to rise.
«Wait! You can’t do that. You can’t just walk out on me!»
«Can’t I?»
«All right, all right, I’ll promise. You must have some good reason. Have you?»
«Yes.»
«Then I’ll take your word for it.»
Bela Joad smiled. «Good,» he said. «Then I’ll be able to report to you on my last case. For this is my last case, Dyer. I’m going into a new kind of work.»
Rand looked at him incredulously. «What?»
«I’m going to teach crooks how to beat the lie-detector.»
Chief Dyer Rand put down his cup slowly and stood up. He took a step toward the little man, about half his weight, who sat at ease on the armless, overstuffed chair.
Bela Joad still smiled. He said, «Don’t try it, Dyer. For two reasons. First, you couldn’t hurt me and I wouldn’t want to hurt you and I might have to. Second, it’s all right; it’s on the up and up. Sit down.»
Dyer Rand sat down.
Bela Joad said, «When you said this thing was big, you didn’t know how big. And it’s going to be bigger. Chicago is just the starting point. And thanks, by the way, for those reports I asked you for. They are just what I expected they’d be.»
«The reports? But they’re still in my desk at headquarters.»
«They were. I’ve read them and destroyed them. Your copies, too. Forget about them. And don’t pay too much attention to your current statistics. I’ve read them, too.»
Rand frowned. «And why should I forget them?»
«Because they confirm what Ernie Chappel told me this evening. Do you know, Dyer, that your number of major crimes has gone down in the past year by an even bigger percentage than the percentage by which your convictions for major crimes has gone down?»
«I noticed that. You mean, there’s a connection?»
«Definitely. Most crimes — a very high percentage of them — are committed by professional criminals, repeaters. And Dyer, it goes even farther than that. Out of several thousand major crimes a year, ninety percent of them are committed by a few hundred professional criminals. And do you know that the number of professional criminals in Chicago has been reduced by almost a third in the last two years? It has. And that’s why your number of major crimes has decreased.»
Bela Joad took another sip of his coffee and then leaned forward. «Gyp Girard, according to your report, is now running a vitadrink stand on the West Side; he hasn’t committed a crime in almost a year — since he beat your lie-detector.» He touched another finger. «Joe Zatelli, who used to be the roughest boy on the Near North Side, is now running his restaurant straight. Carey Hutch. Wild Bill Wheeler — Why should I list them all? You’ve got the list, and it’s not complete because there are plenty of names you haven’t got on it, people who went to Ernie Chappel so he could show them how to beat the detector, and then didn’t get arrested after all. And nine out of ten of them — and that’s conservative, Dyer — haven’t committed a crime since!»
Dyer Rand said, «Go on. I’m listening.»
«My original investigation of the Chappel case showed me that he’d disappeared voluntarily. And I knew he was a good man, and a great one. I knew he was mentally sound because he was a psychiatrist as well as a criminologist. A psychiatrist’s got to be sound. So I knew he’d disappeared for some good reason.
«And when, about nine months ago, I heard your side of what had been happening in Chicago, I began to suspect that Chappel had come here to do his work. Are you beginning to get the picture?»
«Faintly.»
«Well, don’t faint yet. Not until you figure how an expert psychiatrist can help crooks beat the detector. Or have you?»
«Well —»
«That’s it. The most elementary form of hypnotic treatment, something any qualified psychiatrist could do fifty years ago. Chappel’s clients — of course they don’t know who or what he is; he’s a mysterious underworld figure who helps them beat the rap — pay him well and tell him what crimes they may be questioned about by the police if they’re picked up. He tells them to include every crime they’ve ever committed and any racket they’ve ever been in, so the police won’t catch them up on any old counts. Then he —»
«Wait a minute,» Rand interrupted. «How does he get them to trust him that far?»
Joad gestured impatiently. «Simple. They aren’t confessing a single crime, even to him. He just wants a list that includes everything they’ve done. They can add some ringers and he doesn’t know which is which. So it doesn’t matter.
«Then he puts them under light waking-hypnosis and tells them they are not criminals and never have been and they have never done any of the things on the list he reads back to them. That’s all there is to it.