Queen's Ransom, page 74
“I’ll bet the seismograph at Fordham is going crazy,” said Jimmy. “Where do you sphinxes want it from?”
“Anywhere?”
“Well,” said Jimmy, admiring his glass in the light, “the story of Edward Cazalis is kind of lopsided. I couldn’t find out much about his family background and boyhood, just a few details. Seems he got away from home early—”
“Born in Ohio, wasn’t he?” said the Inspector. He was measuring three fingers of Irish whiskey with care.
“Ironton, Ohio, 1882,” nodded Jimmy McKell. “His father was a laborer of some sort—”
“Ironworker,” said the Inspector.
“Whose report is this, anyway?” demanded Jimmy. “Or am I being checked up on?”
“I just happen to have a few facts, that’s all,” said the Inspector, holding his glass up to the fight, too. “Go on, McKell.”
“Anyway, Papa Cazalis was descended from a French soldier who settled in Ohio after the French and Indian War. About Mama I couldn’t find out.” Jimmy looked at the old gentleman belligerently, but when that worthy downed his whiskey without saying anything Jimmy continued. “Your hero was one of the youngest of fourteen ill-fed, ill-clothed, and ill-housed brats. A lot of them died off in childhood. The survivors and their descendants are strewn around the Middle West landscape. As far as I can tell, your Eddie’s the only one who made anything of himself.”
“Any criminals in the family?” asked Ellery.
“Sir, don’t asperse the rank and file of our glorious heritage,” said Jimmy, pouring another drink for himself. “Or are you taking a refresher course in sociology? I couldn’t find anything special in that line.” He said suddenly, “What are you digging for?”
“Keep going, Jimmy.”
“Well, Edward seems to have been a very hep cookie. Not a prodigy, you understand. But precocious. And very ambitious. Poor but honest, he burned the midnight oil, worked his industrious little fingers to the bone, and got a southern Ohio hardware king all hopped up about him; in fact, he became this tycoon’s protégé. A real Horatio Alger character. Up to a point, that is.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Well, in my book young Eduardo was something of a heelo. If there’s anything worse than a rich snob, it’s a poor one. The hardware hidalgo, whose name was William Waldemar Gaeckel, lifted the bloke clean out of his lousy environment, scrubbed him up, got him some decent clothes, and sent him away to a fancy prep school in Michigan… and there’s no record that Cazalis ever went back to Ironton even on a visit. He ditched pa and ma, he ditched Tessie, Steve, and the other fifty thousand brothers and sisters, and after old Gaeckel sent him proudly to New York to study medicine he ditched Gaeckel, too—or maybe Mr. G. got wise to him; anyway, they had no further relations. Cazalis got his M.D. from Columbia in 1903.”
“1903,” murmured Ellery. “Aged 21. One of fourteen children, and he became interested in obstetrics.”
“Very funny,” grinned Jimmy.
“Not very.” Ellery’s voice was chill. “Any information on the obstetrical specialty?”
Jimmy McKell nodded, looking curious.
“Let’s have it.”
Jimmy referred to the back of a smudged envelope. “Seems that back in those days medical schools weren’t standardized. In some the courses were two years, in others four, and there weren’t any obstetrical or gynecological internships or residencies… it says here. Very few men did obstetrics or gynecology exclusively, and those who did became specialists mostly by apprenticeship. When Cazalis graduated from Columbia—with honors, by the way—he hooked onto a New York medico named Larkland—”
“John F.,” said the Inspector.
“John F.,” nodded Jimmy. “East 20s somewhere. Dr. Larkland’s practice was entirely O.B. and gyne but it was apparently enough to keep Cazalis with him about a year and a half. Then in 1905 Cazalis started his own specializing practice—”
“Just when in 1905?”
“February. Larkland died that month of cancer, and Cazalis took over his practice.”
Then Archibald Dudley Abernethy’s mother had been old Dr. Larkland’s patient and young Cazalis had inherited her, thought Ellery. It soothed him. Clergymen’s wives in 1905 were not attended by 23-year-old physicians except in extraordinary circumstances.
“Within a few years,” continued Jimmy, “Cazalis was one of the leading specialists in the East. As I get the picture, he’d moved in on the ground floor and by 1911 or ’12, when the specialty had become defined, he had one of the biggest practices in New York. He wasn’t a money-grubber, I understand, although he made pots. He was always more interested in the creative side of his profession, pioneered a couple of new techniques, did a lot of clinic work, and so on. I’ve got lots of dope here on his scientific achievements—”
“Skip it. What else?”
“Well, there’s his war record.”
“World War I.”
“Yes.”
“When did he go in?”
“Summer of 1917.”
“Interesting, Dad. Beatrice Willikins was born on April 7 that year, the day after Congress declared war on Germany. Must have been one of Cazalis’s last deliveries before getting into uniform.” The Inspector said nothing. “What about his war record?”
“Tops. He went into the Medical Corps as a captain and came out a full colonel. Surgery up front—”
“Ever wounded?”
“No, but he did spend a few months in a French rest area in ’18, and in early ’19 after the war ended. Under treatment for—I quote—‘exhaustion and shell shock.’”
Ellery glanced at his father, but the Inspector was pouring his fourth, fifth, and sixth finger of whiskey.
“Apparently it wasn’t anything serious.” Jimmy glanced at his envelope. “He was sent home from France as good as new and when he was mustered out—”
“In 1919.”
“—he went back to his specialty. By the end of 1920 he’d worked up his practice again and was going great guns.”
“Still doing obstetrics and gynecology exclusively?”
“That’s right. He was then in his late 30s, approaching his prime, and in the next five years or so he really hit the top.” Jimmy hauled out another envelope. “Let’s see… yes, 1926. In 1926 he met Mrs. Cazalis through her sister, Mrs. Richardson—and married her. She was one of the Merigrews of Bangor. Old New England family—blood transparent, blue, and souring, but I’m told she was a genetic sport, very pretty, if you went for Dresden china. Cazalis was 44 and his bride was only 19, but apparently he had Dresden china ideas; it seems to have been an epic romance. They had a fancy wedding in Maine and a long honeymoon. Paris, Vienna, and Rome.
“I find,” said Jimmy McKell, “I find nothing to indicate that the Cazalises have been anything but happily married—in case you’re interested. No whisper about him, in spite of all the ladies in his medical life, and for Mrs. Cazalis there’s never been any man but her husband.
“They ran into hard luck, though. In 1927 Mrs. Cazalis had her first baby and early in 1930 her second—”
“And lost both in the delivery room,” nodded Ellery. “Cazalis mentioned that the night I met him.”
“He felt terrible about it, I’m told. He’d taken fanatical care of his wife during both pregnancies and he’d done the deliveries himself—what’s the matter?”
“Cazalis was his wife’s obstetrician?”
“Yes.” Jimmy looked at them both. Inspector Queen was now at the window, pulling at his fingers behind his back.
“Isn’t that unethical?” asked the Inspector casually. “A doctor delivering his own wife?”
“Hell, no. Most doctors don’t do it because they’re emotionally involved with the woman in labor. They doubt their ability to maintain—where’s that note?—to maintain ‘the necessary objective, detached professional attitude.’ But many doctors do, and Dr. Edward Cazalis of the Tearing Twenties was one of them.”
“After all,” said the Inspector to Ellery, as if Ellery were arguing the point, “he was a big man in his field.”
“The type man,” said Jimmy, “so supremely egocentric he’d maybe become a psychiatrist. Hm?”
“I don’t think that’s quite fair to psychiatrists,” laughed Ellery. “Any data on the two babies he lost?”
“All I know about it is that both babies were toughies and that after the second Mrs. Cazalis couldn’t have any more children. I gathered that they were both breeches.”
“Go on.”
The Inspector came back and sat down with his bottle.
“In the year 1930, a few months after they lost their second child, we find Cazalis having a breakdown.”
“Breakdown,” said Ellery.
“Breakdown?” said the Inspector.
“Yes. He’d been driving himself, he was 48—his collapse was attributed to overwork. By this time he’d been practicing obstetrical and gynecological medicine for over twenty-five years, he was a wealthy man, so he gave up his practice and Mrs. Cazalis took him traveling. They went on a world cruise—you know the kind, through the Canal up to Seattle, then across the Pacific—and by the time they reached Europe Cazalis was practically well again. Only, he wasn’t. While they were in Vienna—this was early in ’31—he had a setback.”
“Setback?” said Ellery sharply. “You mean another breakdown?”
“‘Setback’ was the word. It was nerves again, or mental depression or something. Anyway, being in Vienna, he went to see Béla Seligmann and—”
“Who’s Béla Seligmann?” demanded Inspector Queen.
“Who’s Béla Seligmann, he says. Why, Béla Seligmann is—”
“There was Freud,” said Ellery, “and there’s Jung, and there’s Seligmann. Like Jung, the old boy hangs on.”
“Yes, he’s still around. Seligmann got out of Austria just in time to observe Anschluss from an honored bleacher seat in London, but he went back to Vienna after the little cremation ceremony in the Berlin Chancellery and I believe he’s still there. He’s over 80 now, but in 1931 he was at the height of his powers. Well, it seems Seligmann took a great interest in Cazalis, because he snapped him out of whatever was wrong with him and aroused in the guy an ambition to become a psychiatrist.”
“He studied with Seligmann?”
“For four years—one under par, I’m told. Cazalis spent some time in Zürich, too, and then in 1935 the Cazalises returned to the States. He put in over a year getting hospital experience and early in 1937—let’s see, that would have made him 55—he set himself up in the practice of psychiatry in New York. The rest is history.” Jimmy laced his nagging glass.
“That’s all you got, Jimmy?”
“Yes. No.” Jimmy referred hastily to his last envelope. “There’s one other item of interest. About a year ago—last October—Cazalis broke down again.”
“Broke down?”
“Now don’t go asking me for clinical details. I don’t have access to medical records. Maybe it was plain pooping out from overwork—he has a racehorse’s energy and he’s never spared himself. And, of course, he was 66. It wasn’t much of a breakdown but it must have scared him, because he started to whittle down his practice. I understand he hasn’t taken a new case in a year. He’s polishing off the patients under treatment and transferring long-termers to other men when he can. I’m told that within a short time he’ll be retiring.” Jimmy tossed his collection of disreputable envelopes on the table. “End of report.”
The envelopes lay there.
“Thanks, Jimmy,” said Ellery in a curiously final voice.
“Is it what you wanted?”
“What I wanted?”
“Well, expected.”
Ellery said carefully, “It’s a very interesting report.”
Jimmy set his glass down. “I take it you shamans want to be alone.”
Neither man replied.
“Never let it be said,” said Jimmy, picking up his hat, “that a McKell, couldn’t recognize a brush.”
“Fine job, McKell, just fine,” said the Inspector. “Night.”
“Keep in touch with me, Jimmy.”
“Mind if I drift in with Celeste tomorrow night?”
“Not in the least.”
“Thanks! Oh.” Jimmy paused in the foyer. “There’s one little thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Let me know when you clap him in irons, will you?”
When the door closed Ellery sprang to his feet.
His father poured another drink. “Here, have one.”
But Ellery mumbled, “That touch of so-called shell shock in the first war. Those recurring breakdowns. And in the middle age the obvious attempt to compensate for something in that sudden, apparently unprepared-for interest in psychiatry. It fits, it fits.”
“Drink it,” said his father.
“Then there’s the whole egocentric pattern. It’s unusual for a man of 50 to begin studying psychiatry, to set up in practice at 55, and to make a success of it to boot. His drive must be gigantic.
“Look at his early history. A man who set out to prove something to—whom? himself? society? And who wouldn’t let anything stand in his way. Who used every tool that came to hand and tossed it aside when it outlived its immediate usefulness. Professionally ethical always, but in the narrowest sense: I’m sure of it. And then marriage to a girl less than half his age—and not just any girl; it had to be a Merigrew of Maine.
“And those two tragic confinements, and… guilt. Guilt, decidedly: immediately that first breakdown. Overwork, yes; but not his body. His conscience.”
“Aren’t you doing an awful lot of guessing?” asked Inspector Queen.
“We’re not dealing with clues you can put on a slide. I wish I knew more!”
“You’re spilling it, son.”
“The conflicts set in, and from then on it’s a question of time. A gradual spreading of the warp. A sickening, a corruption of the whole psychic process—whatever the damned mechanism is. Somewhere along the line a personality that was merely paranoid in potential crossed over and became paranoid in fact. I wonder…”
“You wonder what?” asked his father when Ellery paused.
“I wonder if in either of those deliveries the infant died of strangulation.”
“Of what?”
“Umbilical. The umbilical cord wound around its neck.”
The old man stared.
Suddenly he bounced to his feet.
“Let’s go to bed.”
They found the white index card marked Abernethy, Sarah-Ann within twenty seconds of opening the file drawer labeled 1905-10. It was the eleventh card in the file. A blue card was clipped to it marked Abernethy, Archibald Dudley, m., b. May 24, 1905, 10:26 A.M.
There were two old-fashioned filing cabinets of walnut, each containing three drawers. Neither had locks, or catches, but the storage closet in which they found the cabinets had to be unlocked, a feat Sergeant Velie performed without difficulty. It was a large cabinet filled with the memorabilia and bric-a-brackery of the Cazalis household; but on the side where the cabinets stood were also a glass case of obstetrical and surgical instruments and a worn medical bag.
The records of his psychiatric practice were housed in modern steel cabinets in his inner office. These cabinets were locked.
The Queens, however, spent all their time in the crowded musty-smelling closet.
Mrs. Abernethy’s card recorded an ordinary case history of pregnancy. Archibald Dudley’s recorded the data of birth and infant development. It was evident that Dr. Cazalis had provided the customary pediatric care of the period.
Ninety-eight cards later he ran across one marked Smith, Eulalie to which was clipped a pink card marked Smith, Violette, f., b. Feb. 13, 1907, 6:55 P.M.
One hundred and sixty-four cards beyond the Smith cards they found the entries for O’Reilly, Maura B. and O’Reilly, Rian, m., b. Dec. 23, 1908, 4:36 A.M. Rian O’Reilly’s card was blue.
In less than an hour they located the cards of all nine of the Cat’s victims. There was no difficulty. They were arranged in chronological order in the drawers, each drawer was labeled with its year-sequence, and it was simply a matter of going through the drawers card by card.
Ellery sent Sergeant Velie for the Manhattan telephone directory. He spent some time with it.
“It’s so damnably logical,” complained Ellery, “once you have the key. We couldn’t understand why the Cat’s victims should be successively younger when there was no apparent connection among them. Obviously, Cazalis simply followed the chronology of his records. He went back to the beginning of his medical practice and systematically worked his way forward.”
“In forty-four years a lot had changed,” said the Inspector thoughtfully. “Patients had died off. Children he’d brought into the world had grown up and moved to other localities. And its nineteen years at a minimum since he had any medical contact with any of them. So most of these cards must be as obsolete as the dodo.”
“Exactly. Unless he was willing or prepared to undertake a complicated search, he couldn’t hope to make a clean sweep. So he’d tend to concentrate on the cards bearing names most easily traced. Since he’d had a Manhattan practice, the obvious reference was to the Manhattan phone book. Undoubtedly he began with the first card in his files. It’s Sylvan Sacopy, a boy born to a Margaret Sacopy in March of 1905. Well, neither name is to be found in the current Manhattan directory. So he went on to the second card. Again no luck. I’ve checked every name on the first ten listings and not one is to be found in the Manhattan book. Abernethy’s the first card with a current listing. And Abernethy was the first victim. And while I haven’t checked all the names on the ninety-seven cards between Abernethy and Violette Smith, I’ve taken enough of a sampling to indicate that Violette Smith became the Cat’s second victim for exactly the same reason: despite the fact that her card is Number 109, she had the misfortune to be Number 2 in the phone book checkback. There’s no doubt in my mind that the same thing is true of all the others.”
