CHAPTER XXIX
THE QUACK DOCTORS
Kennedy's first move was to go downtown to the old building opposite theCity Hall and visit the post-office inspectors.
"I've heard of the government's campaign against the medical quacks whoare using the mails," he introduced when we at last found the properinspector. "I wonder whether you know a Dr. Adam Loeb?"
"Loeb?" repeated the inspector, O'Hanlon, who was in charge of theinvestigation which was then in progress. "Of course we know Loeb--avery slippery customer, too, with just enough science at his command tomake the case against him difficult.
"I suppose," went on O'Hanlon, "you know that in Europe the popularfurore about radium and its applications appeared earlier than it didhere. But now we have great numbers of dishonest and fake radium cureestablishments. Usually they have neither radium nor knowledge. Theypromise a cure, but they can't even palliate the trouble. Loeb has someradium, I guess, but that's about all."
"I think I'd like to visit the 'doctor' and his 'medical museum,'"ventured Kennedy when O'Hanlon had finished describing the case to us.
"Very well," agreed O'Hanlon. "Our cases against the quacks are justabout completed. I've heard a great deal about you, Mr. Kennedy. Ithink I may trust you."
The inspector paused. "Tomorrow," he added, looking at us significantly,"we have planned a simultaneous raid of all of them in the city.However, there's no objection to your seeing Dr. Loeb, if you'll becareful to give no hint that something is about to be pulled off. I'msure any new evidence we may get against him will be quite welcome."
"I'd like to see him in action before the raid," hastened Craig.
"Well, I think the best way, then, for you to get at him," advised theinspector, "would be to adopt the method my investigators use with thesefakers. I mean for one or the other of you to pose as a prospectivepatient. Only don't let him treat you too much with any of thoseelectrical things of his."
Craig glanced over at me whimsically.
"Oh," I said good-humoredly, "I'll be the goat, if that's what you'regoing to ask me."
Craig laughed.
"Come in tomorrow," called the inspector as we left. "I'd like to hearwhat happens and I may be able to add something to what you find out."
We found Dr. Loeb established in a palatial suite of offices in anultra-modern office building. Outside was what he called his "medicalmuseum." It was a grewsome collection of wax figures and colored chartswell calculated to prepare one for the worst. At the end of the room wasa huge sign bearing his name and the words, "Positive Cure for CancerWithout Cautery or the Knife."
There were no cappers or steerers about the place, though I have nodoubt he had them working for him outside to bring in business. Instead,we were met by a very pretty, fluffy-haired girl, evidently the doctor'ssecretary. She, I gathered, was the Miss Golder whom Lionel hadmentioned. In fact, I felt that she was really much above the level ofsuch a position.
Loeb's office was elaborately equipped. There were static machines,electric coils, high frequency appliances, X-ray outfits, galvanic andfaradic cabinets, electric light reflectors of high power, light bathcabinets, electric vibrators, high pressure nebulizers andozonizers--everything, as Craig expressed it later, to impress thepatient that Loeb could cure any disease the flesh was heir to. I knowthat it impressed me.
The doctor himself was a pompous man of middle age, with a veryformidable beard and a deep voice that forbade contradiction.
"I've come to you on the recommendation of a patient of yours," beganCraig, adding hastily, "not for myself, but for my friend here, whom I'mafraid isn't very well."
The doctor eyed me through his gold-rimmed spectacles. Already I beganto feel shaky.
"Who recommended you?" he asked casually.
"My friend, Mr. Darius Moreton of Norwood. I suppose you remember him?"
"Oh, very well, very well. A most peculiar case, that of the Moretons. Ihave succeeded in prolonging their lives beyond what anyone else couldhave done. But I fear that they haven't all followed my treatment. Youknow, you must put yourself entirely in my hands, and there is a youngdoctor out there, I believe, whom they have also. That isn't fair tome. I wonder whether you are acquainted with my methods of treatment?"
Kennedy shook his head negatively.
"Miss Golder," the doctor called, as the fluffy-haired secretaryresponded quickly, "will you give these gentlemen some of my booklets onthe Loeb Method."
Miss Golder took from a cabinet several handsomely printed pamphletsextolling the skill and success of Dr. Loeb. Like everything else abouthim, no expense had been spared to impress the reader.
As Miss Golder left the office, Dr. Loeb began a rapid examination ofme, using an X-ray machine. I am sure that if I had not received asurreptitious encouraging nod from Craig now and then, I should havebeen ready to croak or cash in, according to whichever Dr. Loebsuggested--probably the latter, for I could not help thinking that agreat deal of time was spent in mentally X-raying my pocketbook.
When he finished, the doctor shook his head gravely. Of course I wasthreatened. But the thing was only incipient. Still, if it were notattended to immediately it was only a question of a short time when Imight be as badly, as the wax figures and charts outside. I hadfortunately come just in time to be saved.
"I think that with the electrical treatment we can get rid of thatmalignant growth in a month," he promised, fixing a price for thetreatment which I thought was pretty high, considering the brief time hehad actually spent on me, and the slight cost of electric light andpower.
I paid him ten dollars on deposit, and after a final consultation weleft the doctor's office. I was to return for a treatment in a couple ofdays.
We turned out of the entrance of the office building just as scores ofemployes were hurrying home. As we reached the door, I felt Kennedygrasp my arm. I swung around. There, in an angle of the corridor, Icaught sight of a familiar figure. Dr. Goode was standing, evidentlywaiting for someone to come out. There were several elevators and thecrowd of discharging passengers was thick. He had been so intent onlooking for someone he expected, apparently, that he had missed us.
Kennedy drew me on into the doorway of the building next door, fromwhich we could observe everyone who went in and out of the skyscraper inwhich Dr. Loeb had his offices.
"I wonder what he's down here for," scowled Kennedy.
"Perhaps he's doing some detective work of his own," I suggested.
"Lionel Moreton said that Miss Golder and he used to be intimate,"ruminated Kennedy. "I wonder if he's waiting for her?"
We did not have long to wait. It was only a few minutes when Kennedy'ssurmise proved correct. Miss Golder and Dr. Goode came out, and turnedin the direction of the railroad station for Norwood. He was eagerlyquestioning her about something, perhaps, I imagined, our visit to Dr.Loeb. What did it mean?
There was no use and it was too risky to follow them. Kennedy turned andwe made our way uptown to the laboratory, where he plunged at once intoan examination of the blood specimens he had taken from the Moretonsand of the peculiar porcelain cone which he had picked up in the rubbishpile between the two houses.
Having emptied the specimens of blood in several little shallow glassreceptacles which he covered with black paper and some very sensitivefilms, he turned his attention to the cone. I noted that he was veryparticular in his examination of it, apparently being very careful toseparate whatever it was he was looking for on the inside and theoutside surfaces.
"That," he explained to me at length as he worked, "is what is known asa Berkefeld filter, a little porous cup, made of porcelain. The minutemeshes of this filter catch and hold bacteria as if in the meshes of amicroscopic sieve, just like an ordinary water filter. It is so finethat it holds back even the tiny bacillus fluorescens liquefaciens whichare used to test it. These bacilli measure only from a half to one andone-and-a-half micromillimeters in diameter. In other words 130,000germs of half a micromillimeter would be necessary
to make an inch."
"What has it been used for?" I ventured.
"I can't say, yet," he returned, and I did not pursue the inquiry,knowing Kennedy's aversion to being questioned when he was not yet sureof his facts.
It was the next day when the post-office inspectors, the police andothers who had been co-operating had settled on the raid not only of Dr.Loeb's but of all the medical quacks who were fleecing the credulous ofthe city out of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year by one of themost cruel swindles that have ever been devised.
For the time, Kennedy dropped his investigations in the laboratory andwe went down to O'Hanlon's office, where a thick batch of warrants, justsigned, had been received.
Quickly O'Hanlon disposed his forces so that in all parts of the townthey might swoop down at once and gather in the medical harpies. Dr.Loeb's stood first on the list of those which O'Hanlon decided to handlehimself.
"By the way," mentioned O'Hanlon as we hurried uptown to be ready intime, "I had a letter from Darius Moreton this morning threatening mewith all kinds of trouble unless we let up on Dr. Loeb. It's pretty hardto keep a big investigation like this secret, but I think we've planneda little surprise for this morning."
With the post-office inspector we climbed into a patrol wagon with adetail of police who were to make a general round-up of the places onForty-second Street.
As the wagon backed up to the curb in front of the building in whichLoeb's office was, the policemen hopped out and hurried into thebuilding before a crowd could collect. Unceremoniously they rushedthrough the outer office, headed by O'Hanlon.
Quickly though the raid was executed, it could not be done without somewarning commotion. As we entered the front door of the office, we couldjust catch a glimpse of a man retreating through a back door. There wassomething familiar about his back, and Kennedy and I started after him.But we were too late. He had fled without even waiting for his hat,which lay on Miss Golder's desk, and had disappeared down a backstairway which had been left unguarded.
"Confound it," muttered O'Hanlon, as we returned, "Loeb hasn't been heretoday. Who was that?"
"I don't know," replied Craig, picking up the hat, underneath which laya package.
He opened the package. Inside were half a dozen Berkefeld filters, thosepeculiar porcelain cones such as we had found out at Norwood.
Quickly Craig ran his eye over the mass of papers on Miss Golder's desk.He picked up an appointment book and turned the pages rapidly. Therewere several entries that seemed to interest him. I bent over. Amongother names entered during the past few days I made out both "Moreton"and "Dr. Goode." I recalled the letter which O'Hanlon had received fromMoreton. Had he or someone else got wind of the raids and tipped off Dr.Loeb?
Above the hubbub of the raid I could hear O'Hanlon putting poor littleMiss Golder through a third degree.
"Who was it that went out?" he shouted into her face. "You might as welltell. If you don't it'll go hard with you."
But, like all women who have been taken into these get-rich-quickswindles, she was loyal to a fault. "I don't know," she sobbed, dabbingat her eyes with a bit of a lace handkerchief.
Nor could all of O'Hanlon's bulldozing get another admission out of herexcept that it was a "stranger." She protested and wept. But she evenrode off in the patrol wagon with the rest of the employes unmoved.
Whom was she shielding? All we had was the secretary, a couple ofcappers, and half a dozen patients, regular and prospective, who hadbeen waiting in the office. We had a wagon-load of evidence, includingletters and circulars, apparatus of all kinds, medicines, and pills. Butthere was nothing more. Craig did not seem especially interested in themass of stuff which the police had seized.
In fact the only thing that seemed to interest him was the man who haddisappeared. We had his hat and the package of filters. Craig picked upthe hat and examined it.
"It's a soft hat and consequently doesn't tell us very much about theshape of his head," he remarked. Then his face brightened. "But hecouldn't have left anything much better," he remarked complacently, ashe went over to one of the little wall cabinets which the towel servicecompanies place over wash-basins in offices. He took from it a comb andbrush and wrapped them up carefully.
I looked at the hat also. There was no name in it, not even the usualinitials. What did Craig mean?
Other raids in various parts of the city proved far more successful thanthe one in which we had participated and O'Hanlon quickly forgot hischagrin in the reports that soon came piling in. As for ourselves we hadno further interest except in the disposition of this case, and Craigdecided shortly to go back to work again in the laboratory among histest-tubes, slides, and microscopes.
"I will leave you to follow the cases against the quacks, particularlyDr. Loeb and Miss Golder, Walter," he said. "By the way, you saw me takethat hair brush. I wish I had a collection of them. In some way youmust get me a hair brush from Dr. Goode. You'll have to take a trip outto Norwood. And while you are there, get the brushes from Darius Moretonand Lionel. I don't know how you'll get Goode's, but Myra will help youwith the others, I'm sure."
He turned to his work and was soon absorbed in some microscopic studies,leaving me no chance to question him about his strange commission.