“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.
“So when you put them under the detector and ask them if they’ve done this or that, they say they haven’t and they believe it. That’s why your detector gauges don’t register. That’s why Joe Zatelli didn’t jump when he saw Martin Blue walk in. He didn’t know Blue was dead—except that he’d read it in the papers.”
Rand leaned forward. “Where is Ernst Chappel?”
“You don’t want him, Dyer.”
“Don’t want him? He’s the most dangerous man alive today!”
“To whom?”
“To whom? Are you crazy?”
“I’m not crazy. He’s the most dangerous man alive today —to the underworld. Look, Dyer, any time a criminal gets jittery about a possible pinch, he sends for Ernie or goes to Ernie. And Ernie washes him whiter than snow and in the process tells him he’s not a criminal.
“And so, at least nine times out of ten, he quits being a criminal. Within ten or twenty years Chicago isn’t going to have an underworld. There won’t be any organized crimes by professional criminals. You’ll always have the amateur with you, but he’s a comparatively minor detail. How about some more cafe royale?”
Dyer Rand walked to the kitchenette and got it. He was wide awake by now, but he walked like a man in a dream.
When he came back, Joad said, “And now that I’m in with Ernie on it, Dyer, we’ll stretch it to every city in the world big enough to have an underworld worth mentioning. We can train picked recruits; I’ve got my eye on two of your men and may take them away from you soon. But I’ll have to check them first. We’re going to pick our apostles—about a dozen of them—very carefully. They’ll be the right men for the job.”
“But, Joad, look at all the crimes that are going to go unpunished!” Rand protested.
Bela Joad drank the rest of his coffee and stood up. He said, “And which is more important—to punish criminals or to end crime? And, if you want to look at it moralistically, should a man be punished for a crime when he doesn’t even remember committing it, when he is no longer a criminal?”
Dyer Rand sighed. “You win, I guess. I’ll keep my promise. I suppose—I’ll never see you again?”
“Probably not, Dyer. And I’ll anticipate what you’re going to say next. Yes, I’ll have a farewell drink with you. A straight one, without the coffee.”
Dyer Rand brought the glasses. He said, “Shall we drink to Ernie Chappel?”
Bela Joad smiled. He said, “Let’s include him in the toast, Dyer. But let’s drink to all men who work to put themselves out of work. Doctors work toward the day when the race will be so healthy it won’t need doctors; lawyers work toward the day when litigation will no longer be necessary. And policemen, detectives, and criminologists work toward the day when they will no longer be needed because there will be no more crime.”
Dyer Rand nodded very soberly and lifted his glass. They drank.
All Good Bems