The Anatomy of Deception - Lawrence Goldstone [122]
The wagon had pulled up to the door in the center wing, which was part prison, part residence for the county sheriff, and part administration area. Once more, Farnshaw was led roughly from the wagon. Inside, the Moko was grim and forbidding. A uniformed prison attendant, exuding a mixture of boredom and cruelty, asked Farnshaw a number of questions, to which he did not seem to care if he got answers. He then perfunctorily nodded to another uniformed man, obviously a jailer, to come and take the prisoner away.
That was when Farnshaw lost control. He spun around. “Carroll!” he yelled. “Don’t let them take me! I’m innocent. Oh, God!”
I ran to him, but two other prison attendants jumped in and held me back. Guards began to drag Farnshaw off. His face was wan and strangled, the most pathetic sight I have ever seen.
“I’ll help you,” I yelled to him. “I promise!” I doubted he heard the words as he was half-dragged through the door and off to be placed in a cage.
I felt perilously close to tears as I pushed my way outside, determined to keep my promise to poor Farnshaw, but still unsure how. I was not even certain how to get back to the center of the city. Before I could decide on any course of action, however, I was intercepted by Keuhn.
“I got a message for you,” the Pinkerton man said softly. “Mr. Lachtmann says that you two are square. He thanks you for your help. He wants me to tell you that he don’t want no more of it.”
“I don’t take orders from Jonas Lachtmann,” I replied.
“You do now,” Keuhn said, and walked off.
CHAPTER 25
IT TOOK THREE STREETCARS FOR me to make my way back to the hospital. I needed to tell the Professor what had transpired. If I thought that Keuhn had ceased to dog my footsteps, I was mistaken. When I arrived, the Pinkerton man was already inside the front door, waiting for me.
I started for the stairs to the Professor’s office, but abruptly changed my mind. Instead, I went to the women’s ward. There I found Simpson, at the bedside of an elderly patient with wispy white hair done in a single thin braid, her veins showing blue through almost translucent skin. Just from the rale of breath I heard as I neared her bed, I knew that the woman would not last out the day.
“Do you have a moment?” I asked Simpson softly.
“Now, Polly, you rest and I’ll be back soon.” Simpson nodded at me, then waited, but Polly gave no sign that she had heard.
We moved away from the dying woman’s bedside and I recounted the ghastly tale of Farnshaw’s incarceration. Simpson listened, tight-lipped. “We must try and help him,” she said resolutely.
“I agree,” I said, “but I’m not sure how to go about it.”
“I have some thoughts,” she said, “but I need information before we can proceed.”
“Anything. I appreciate any assistance you can provide. Lord knows, I don’t deserve it.”
“Perhaps not,” she said. “But Farnshaw does.” Then she added, “But from this moment on, Ephraim, we must be honest with each other.”
I agreed gratefully, but not without embarrassment. I had never specifically lied to Simpson. But nor had I ever told her the complete truth. Perhaps that was the most insidious brand of lie of all.
“Let us begin with this notion of an accomplice,” she said. “Perhaps we can work our way backward from there and find something with which to prove Farnshaw’s innocence.”
In the doctors’ lounge, I beckoned her to the same chairs in the corner at which we had had tea. I recounted the events, omitting nothing, not my discovery of Turk’s journal, not my visit to St. Barnabas, not the previous evening’s dinner with Halsted and its shattering revelations. She listened attentively, digesting all I had to say. Only when I told her of my romance with Abigail Benedict did even the slightest tightness pass over her face, but it vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
When I had finished, she asked, “You are certain that Dr. Osler and Dr. Halsted were involved only by coincidence? We’ve been taught by Dr. Osler himself to distrust coincidence.”
“I agree,” I said, “although, after sitting with Halsted, it seems persuasive