Chapter Ten

DOCTOR PELLMAN paced nervously across the carpet of the police commissioner’s office. A National Guard colonel, New York’s police chief, the commissioner and two inspectors sat and watched him.

Each time Pellman would stop, all the men would sit up straight and open their ears expectantly. But always Pellman resumed his pacing, more worried than before.

At last he stopped, tall with anger, before the colonel. “If you had only waited ten minutes,” he said, shaking his finger under the colonel’s nose, “we would now have all this straightened out!”

The colonel looked at his shiny boots and his face got cordovan. “I had my orders!”

“Yes, you had your orders,” said Pellman, “but damn it, man, you also had my wire.” He shook his head hopelessly. “If you’d only thought.”

“Soldiers don’t think,” said the colonel gruffly. “They obey orders.”

Pellman turned to the police commissioner and his young face was strained. “You’re responsible for this too, remember,” said Pellman. “If you hadn’t let that broadcast order go out, Doughface Jack wouldn’t be so much on the qui vive.”

“The what?” blinked the commissioner, removing the long cigar from his orator’s mouth.

“At every turn he expects to be nabbed,” said Pellman. “He’s scared to death. He’s no killer. He’s just a poor chap that was unlucky enough to be the object of a miracle. He probably didn’t even know he could kill people just by looking at them until he met those thick-headed fools that grilled him.”

“They paid for it,” growled the commissioner.

“Sure, half of them are dead. But what they did is being paid for by others—good United States citizens. Don’t forget that,” stated Pellman.

“Sure,” ventured an inspector, “they’re payin’ all right. About a third of these people he’s looked at are dead by this time and the other two thirds are dying. I say he ought to go to the chair.”

“You say it,” said Pellman. “Then why the devil don’t you go out and get him?”

The inspector squirmed. “I … er …”

“I know,” said Pellman, striding up and down the rug again. “I’m responsible for this. It’s up to me. I put his brain together and therefore I’m the killer.…”

“Ah, nuts!” said the commissioner. “You didn’t have anything to do with it. How’d you know what was going to happen?”

Pellman paid no heed. He gave very little evidence of being what he was—a small-town doctor. He showed none of his decades of wisdom in that youthful face of his. But he had been room companion to death so often that people alive or dead could not impress him very much.

“Turn the militia on him!” growled Pellman to himself. “And now what will he do? He won’t show his face in New York. He’ll try to leave the city and head for the country and then we’ve pushed him beyond any chance of getting him at all. There’ll be no tracing him just as soon as he gets beyond the radius where he has been publicized. And the stupid papers. Running his face on every front page of every edition. You’d think they’d be able to realize something once in a while. Of course when a man calls him by that silly name, Doughface gets mad and it begins all over again. But he can walk down an avenue through an entire crowd and, unless he’s molested, nobody hears a thing about it.”

“Professor Beardsley is still waiting,” said a clerk through the inter-office phone.

“Let him wait!” barked Pellman savagely. “The stupid fool. He ought …”

“Sssh,” said the commissioner. “That phone worked both ways.”

“What if it did? Gentlemen, it’s not often I get mad and I wouldn’t be angry now if it weren’t for that cowardly fool out there. I don’t dare meet him. I’d kill him. All he had to do was to tell Doughface that everything was all right and Doughface would have allowed himself to be confined in some country estate with perfect happiness.”

“Huh,” said the colonel. “I’m not worried about Doughface Jack’s happiness. He’s done for two of my men, remember?”

“What if he has?” said Pellman. “Was it his fault?”

“His fault or not,” said the commissioner, “he’ll swing, I’m afraid. Murder, Doctor Pellman, is, after all, murder. And whether it is done with the eyes, a knife or a gun, it is still murder.”

“And you’ll use more force,” said Pellman in disgust. “I …”

The phone jangled and the commissioner grabbed for it. The man at the other end was shouting so loudly that Pellman could hear it halfway across the room.

“I tella you, I’ma Grik. I’ma gooda Grik. But he come inna here, he knocka me down, he taka da clothes, he poota da rope ona me and thissa gal, she go widda heem. He feexa me right. He makka me so small I slide outa da rope.”

“Did you hear where they were going?” demanded the commissioner.

“Sure. Why you think I call? They go to da train. They go to da Washington and taka da country. They ona way righta now. You gotta do asomething. Me gooda da Grik. I losa …”

The commissioner banged the phone on the hooks. “They’re heading for the station. That’ll be Pennsylvania. Come on!”