The Golden Age of Pulp Fiction MEGAPACK ™, Vol. 1: George Allan England. George Allan England

me explain. This doctor must at some previous period of his career have had considerable mechanical ex­perience. He certainly knew much about the mechanism of safes. Also he realized that his profession was an ex­cellent shield. A doctor, you know, can go almost anywhere without exciting suspicion. He can carry tools in his medical bag. He can leave his car standing anywhere. In a good many ways he enjoys rather an unusual free­dom of movement, coming and going as he will, especially at night, without any one thinking ill of it. So far, so good.”

      “And what then?” asked Dillingham, relighting his pipe which had gone out.

      “This particular physician I have in mind,” continued T. Ashley, “chose di­rect action as his means of punishing the crooked and ­sinister forces in ques­tion, and also of forwarding the public im­provement in which he was inter­ested. You see I am speaking in non­specific terms. No names mentioned, of course. Being a cautious and very brainy man, he evolved the idea of cov­ering his tracks in a manner that seemed absolutely beyond the reach of analyti­cal rea­son.”

      “Nothing,” murmured Dillingham, “seems beyond the reach of such ana­lytical reason as you practice.”

      “Thank you. Never mind about that, however. You understand there are no personalities, on either side, in anything I’m telling you now.”

      “Certainly! Well, then?”

      “The physician so arranged matters that, unless he were really caught in the act, his safety seemed assured.”

      “How very prescient of him!” com­mented Dillingham, forcing a smile.

      “His idea,” resumed T. Ashley, “was something like Robin Hood’s—taking from thieves to give to the needy. Only he used modern science to help him, in­stead of a good crossbow and ­cloth­yard shafts. Unfortunately, however, he overlooked a trifling detail.”

      “A detail?”

      “Yes. He failed to notice a slight cut, or tear, in one finger of one of his gloves.”

      “What gloves?”

      “Gloves,” said T. Ashley, “unlike any others in the whole world. Gloves made of the skin of the fingers of the de­ceased Dutch Pete, dissected from the dead hands and drawn on over a pair of thin other gloves.”

      “How very extraordinary!” The doctor’s eyes blinked, narrowed.

      “Is it not?”

      “But how in the world could you ever manage to make up such a hypothetical narrative?”

      “The microscope helps to some ex­tent. That mark which shows in the print on your desk there is the mark of a cut or tear, as I have already told you. The fingerprint itself is that of Dutch Pete. The little bit of skin un­der the cut must have been dogskin. No other skin leaves just that kind of mark.”

      “Indeed?”

      “Yes. The only answer is, double gloves. So it is all quite plain. And now,” T. Ashley added, while Dillingham’s face grew ever more and more drawn, “now I have a little proposition to make you.”

      “What—what proposition?”

      “I am willing to become a participant in crime with the owner of that amazing pair of gloves.”

      “You—you mean—”

      “In exchange for those gloves,” said T. Ashley slowly, leaning ­forward and looking square at Dillingham, “in ex­change for those gloves—which I will destroy, after having examined them—I will drop this whole investigation at once, and carry it no farther, now or at any future time.”

      “I—really, Mr. Ashley, I—don’t un­derstand you.”

      “Oh, yes you do! The thing done was legally criminal, but morally most praiseworthy. Hanrahan and Levitsky bilked you of fifty thousand. Your two ‘touches’ came to just that. They totaled exactly fifty. Another point I haven’t overlooked. If you’d taken an­other dollar, you’d have been a thief yourself. As it is, you’re a public bene­factor; you deserve medals! Especially as this morning’s paper carries that an­nouncement from you that the success of the orthopedic is at last assured. So—”

      “But I—I tell you—”

      “Come, come!” said T. Ashley, laying a hand on Dillingham’s arm. “Why not make a clean breast of it? Why not give me the gloves, in exchange for a Scotch verdict of ‘Not guilty but don’t do it again?’”

      Dillingham tried to moisten his lips with a dry tongue. He managed to ar­ticulate: “No man—voluntarily—runs his head into a noose.”

      T. Ashley laughed, and it was rare for him to laugh. “Tell you what I’ll do, to prove I’m on the level with you. Keep the gloves, if you want to. In fact, I rather think you’d better. There’s one su­premely good use you can make of them.”

      “And what’s that?”

      “Show them to me, and then I’ll tell you.”

      The doctor hesitated a moment, smeared his sweating brow, then got up and walked to a filing cabinet at the other side of his office. T. Ashley no­ticed how his legs shook.

      “You’re making no mistake, my friend,” he assured the doctor, “to trust me. If there’s any man in this city who hates Hanrahan and Levitsky worse than you do, that man is myself.”

      “That’s good enough for me,” re­plied the doctor. He pulled out a drawer of the cabinet, reached far into the back of it, took something, and re­turned to the desk, exclaiming, “Here!”

      He thrust into T. Ashley’s hands a pair of thin dogskin gloves, the fingers of which were covered with human skin.

      “Here,” he repeated. “You win!”

      “We both win,” corrected T. Ashley, with keen interest examining the gloves. “You win immunity, and I win another triumph for my deductive methods—though it must be a secret one. But, after all, you see how very simple it all is, when one knows the method? Here, take them back.” He tossed the gloves onto the desk. “My offer still stands. I happen to have a thousand dollars soon payable to me, for which I have no personal use. Will you accept that thou­sand, for the orthopedic?”

      “Will I? Good God!”

      “Also my suggestion as to disposing of these gloves?”

      “What—what’s that?”

      “Wrap and seal them, and include them among the articles to be deposited in the metal box that goes into the cor­ner stone of the hospital. For they are its corner stone!”

      A moment the doctor stared at him. Then his hand hesitated toward that of the investigator.

      T. Ashley shook hands with him warmly. “Agreed, then?”

      But Dillingham, choking, could find no word.

      VIII.

      Next afternoon T. Ashley called Scanlon by phone. “It’s about that mat­ter, you know,” said he.

      “Oh, you got it doped out, have you?” Scanlon queried.

      “I am very sorry to say I haven’t. In fact, I have been obliged to drop the affair.”

      “The devil!”

      “Just what I said, when I discovered that my charwoman had done a little cleaning up. The fact is, Scanlon, all the evidence in the case has disap­peared.”

      “You don’t expect me to believe nothin’ like that!”

      “I expect—and require—you to be­lieve anything I choose to tell you!” T. Ashley’s voice was decisive. “I repeat that the case is closed. You can give your employers the explanation I have just given you. Between you and me, however, I don’t mind telling you it will be very much better for all parties con­cerned if things stop right