He dropped the bottle into his pocket, then added, “There are a number of poisons that cause the same symptoms as coronary thrombosis. If it were a suicide attempt, I couldn’t possibly guess which one until we can get the contents of this bottle analyzed. But if he’s been in custody, where would he have gotten hold of any poison?”
Sergeant Copeland said, “Until recently he hasn’t been in custody for weeks. He escaped from Sing Sing six weeks ago, and was arrested on the West Coast only about a week back. He may have decided to carry a suicide potion around just in case he was caught. And he would know what to get. He’s been an aide in the prison medical dispensary for the past five years.”
“What was he in prison for?” the doctor asked.
“About three dozen bank robberies. Don’t you remember Willie the Parrot Doyle?”
After considering, the doctor said, “Vaguely. A number of years back, wasn’t it?”
“About a dozen. He’s been in stir for ten. He was head of the Doyle Gang, which once consisted of eight or nine gunmen. All but two, aside from Willie himself, are now either in prison or dead. Willie’s younger brother Jim and Smooth Eddie Greene, who is a cousin of Willie’s, are both at large. As a matter of fact, Greene has never even been arrested, so we don’t have mug shots of him. Jim Doyle has a record, though, and I’ve seen his mugs. Looks like a younger version of Willie.”
I had been standing there silent all this time, but now I put in, “How did Doyle get his nickname of Willie the Parrot?”
“He used to talk a lot when pulling bank jobs,” the sergeant explained. “Kept up a steady flow of banter with the bank employees and customers as he directed them to lie on the floor on their stomachs, or herded them into vaults. Apologized to the ladies for inconveniencing them, told the ugly ones they were beautiful, cracked a lot of jokes. Just kept up a steady stream of chatter.”
“How about Smooth Eddie Greene?” I asked.
“He’s called that because he’s actually more con man than bank robber. He used to case banks by representing himself as an industrialist who was planning to open a branch factory in town. He would ask to see the manager in order to discuss whether the bank would be capable of handling a million-dollar-a-month payroll. Bank managers have been known to explain their alarm systems in detail in order to convince him his company funds would be safe in their banks.”
The stewardess came along with a blanket, which she handed to the doctor. She said, “The pilot radioed your message. An ambulance from City Hospital will be there. He told them no attendants other than the driver will be needed.”
“Good,” Dr. Smith acknowledged.
After tucking the blanket around the patient, he bent to listen to his breathing. When he straightened again, the stewardess asked, “Is he all right?”
“He’s far from all right,” Dr. Smith told her. “But he’s still alive.”
The stewardess went away again. The doctor turned to the detective. “Will you be wanting to ride along in the ambulance with us, Sergeant?”
“Naturally.”
“In his condition he won’t be running off. And there is a prison ward at City Hospital he couldn’t escape from even if he fully recovered. But it’s up to you.”
“Thanks, I’ll stick with my prisoner,” the detective said in a definite tone.
Dr. Smith shrugged. “If it is a heart attack instead of a poisoning, he probably won’t be able to be moved for at least a month. You won’t wait around all that time, will you?”
“Oh, no. I’ll leave him in the custody of the Buffalo police and come back for him when he’s again able to travel. Why are we still standing here in the aisle? Let’s sit down.”
He slid over against the window in the seat across the aisle from the unconscious man. The doctor took the aisle seat, leaving me the only one standing.
“He’ll probably be assigned as one of my patients, since I’m taking him in,” Dr. Smith said. “If you’ll give me your card, I’ll keep you abreast of his condition.”
The detective took out a wallet, searched through it and said apologetically, “I seem to be out of cards. Do you have a piece of paper?”
Searching his pockets, the doctor came up with his flight-reservation envelope and handed it to the detective. Sergeant Copeland laid it on his knee, took out a pen and began to write on it. I turned away and returned to my seat.
Diane whispered to me in an embarrassed voice, “I thought I would die when you volunteered my services. I am not a registered nurse.”
I gave her a surprised look. “You said you were.”
“No, you said I was, and I just didn’t correct you. I hated to spoil your remarkable record of deductive reasoning.”
“Oh,” I said, somewhat deflated. After a moment of silence, I said, “Well, he doesn’t need your services anyway.” Then something suddenly struck me and I sat bolt upright.
“What’s the matter?” Diane asked.
“I just watched Sergeant Copeland use a pen,” I said in a low voice. “And guess what? He writes left-handed.”
She looked at me blankly. “So?”
“So why did he have his left wrist shackled to the prisoner?”
After considering this, she said, “That is odd.”
Still in a low voice I said, “Actually we have only Sergeant Copeland’s word that he is the police officer and the other man is the prisoner.”
Diane looked startled. “What are you getting at?”
I said, “The prisoner seems pretty suntanned for a convict who has been cooped up ten years. And the sergeant is remarkably pale. You might almost say he has a prison pallor.”
In a slightly unsteady voice Diane said, “The prisoner escaped weeks ago. He could have acquired a tan. And it’s not unusual for people who work in New York City to be pale.”
“In an outside job like a cop’s?”
After a period of silence she said, “If what you’re suggesting is right, how did he ever work it?”
I pursed my lips and stared out the window at the clouds below until I had my thoughts organized. Finally I said, “Let’s assume both men are left-handed. The real Sergeant Copeland would shackle the prisoner to his right wrist because his gun was strapped to his left side. My guess is that the liquid in that bottle labeled as a sweetener is some kind of poison and that Willie somehow managed to slip it into the sergeant’s coffee. Willie simply waited until the sergeant was unconscious, then switched wallets with him, removed the man’s holster from his belt and put it on his own, then dropped the bottle of poison into the sergeant’s pocket. He unlocked the cuff from his own wrist, but left the other ring still attached, pulled the man out into the aisle and called the stewardess.”
Diane said nothing for some time, merely thinking all of this over. Eventually she said, “Why would he deliberately call the doctor’s attention to the poison?”
“Because he intends to brazen it out just as though he were Sergeant Copeland. No one in Buffalo knows what the sergeant looks like. When the patient arrives at the hospital and it is discovered he did not suffer a heart attack, but was poisoned, no suspicion will be cast on the so-called sergeant because he has already supplied an explanation. He can arrange for the Buffalo police to watch the prisoner for him until he either recovers or dies, then walk off and be halfway to Australia before anyone discovers the patient is really Sergeant Copeland.”
“Unless the patient happens to regain consciousness en route to the hospital. Or even right after they pump him out.”