Catch-As-Catch-Can
Page 19
Dee drew a shaky breath. “Any more questions?”
The policeman shook his head.
She said, “We want to go to Laila, now, don’t we?”
“Yes, we’ll go. Here’s Procter with his cab.”
Andy helped her up gently. He was distressed. She could feel his distress.
Vince Procter couldn’t get over it. He was enchanted that he had missed getting a bullet in his back by so narrow a margin. He himself had gone to find the gun in the bush. It was loaded. Now, he drove them with unconscious skill and over his shoulder the excited rehashing came like a scarf in the wind.
“Listen, who can tell, hey? Maybe he’d a taken a crack at you, too, Mr. Talbot. Guys like that go berserk. He mighta shot two—three people.”
Vince was deliriously happy.
“Say, Miss Allison, how come you didn’t yell. You coulda got shot, would you have yelled. You know that? How come you spoke like you did to him?”
“I don’t know,” said Dee and began to cry.
Andy said, “Look, she’s been in a crash and pretty near choked and pretty near gassed—Let her have peace.”
“O.K. O.K.” said Vince, “But she’s my girl. She’s for me, this redhead! What I mean—”
“Be quiet,” snapped Andy.
St. Bart’s at Long Beach was discreetly crowded with quiet visitors. Pearl Dean plucked at the coverlet. “Laila is well,” she said moodily.
“Yes, I know, Pearl. I know you are glad.”
“I am glad. So kind of you to come, Estelle.”
“Dearest Pearl.…”
“And your flowers.…” The eyes rolled listlessly.
“They will breathe health, Pearl. Shall I call the nurse?”
“Do,” said Pearl, brightening. “Miss Marlowe is a remarkable young woman. To be a nurse, Estelle, is a noble profession.”
“Do you think so, Pearl?”
“Selfless,” said Pearl, “and wise! Ah, Miss Marlowe.…”
“Hi, Miss Dean. How’s my patient? What lovely flowers.”
Estelle watched the clean hands jam the stems into the bottle and she winced, birdlike.
“There, now,” said the nurse, bending over with her clean crackle. “Everything O.K.?”
Pearl said earnestly, “I know I am in good hands.”
“She’s a one,” said Miss Marlowe with a cheerful smile.
“An experience. I would not have missed.…”
“Dear Pearl, to rise over your pain!”
“Go on, she’s having fun,” said Miss Marlowe, almost affectionately.
“You have never been ill a day in your life, Estelle,” said Pearl, “or you would understand. The caring of your fellow creatures is such medicine to your soul.…”
“She’s a one,” said Miss Marlowe, but her eyes were shining with both amusement and pleasure. This Pearl was a whack, to be sure, but the way she put things did make you feel kinda important.
In Dr. Stirling’s smaller place, the Greenleaf Hospital, Laila sat upon a bed with her legs crossed tailor-fashion. Her hair was braided into two great long braids and a nurse had tied blue ribbons on them. Laila looked like a cute schoolgirl, and not the least bit exotic, and she was jabbering in a happy spate. But Frank Turner, sitting beside the high bed and listening gravely, had no doubt she was the same angel as before.
Her cousin Dee sat in the corner, all her splendid color faded in weariness and bewilderment. She did not look at Andy, or the doctor, or even this boy, but at Laila’s sparkling face, and the look in her eyes that was so curiously not reverent any more.
She knew Andy leaned over the bed, heard him say, gently, “We must go, Laila.”
She felt his touch upon her arm. “It’s late, Dee.”
“Yes.” She pulled herself up. “I’ll say good night, sweetie. Good night, Frank.”
“Good night, Miss Allison.”
Laila said, “Oh, good night, Andrew and Dee. But Frank can stay a little longer?”
“Sure he can,” buzzed Dr. Stirling. “He’s got privileges around here.”
“I’m glad,” said Laila demurely and her brown eyes slipped sideways in a look, as old as Eve, that no one had ever taught her at all.
“That’s quite a lad, that Frank,” said Stirling in the corridor.
“For which I thank the Paramount Linen Service, the United States Army, and God in his mercy …” said Andy with sudden vehemence.
“You’re fired, Dee,” chuckled the doctor. “Frank’s going to raise her, whatever we do, whoever I hire. You’re staggering. Go on home or I’ll put you to bed here.”
“And Clive?” she asked. “What shall we do?”
“Prosecute,” said Stirling. “He’s best where he is, in jail. I wouldn’t let him loose on society.”
“Poor Mrs. Vaughn,” said Dee. “Poor thing.”
“Take her home, Talbot.”
So Andy put her in the car and Sidney drove them home. Lorraine, strong and kind, welcomed her mistress with affectionate gladness and went running up the stairs to draw Dee’s bath.
“Go to bed,” said Andy tensely. “You’re not fit to be out of it.”
“I know.” But Dee sat down on the stairs in the same spot where she had been sitting so long ago. Her head bent against the spindles. She could smell the varnish. “Quite a day at the beach,” she said without spirit.
“Dee.”
“Yes.”
“We found her.”
“You found her, Andy.”
“Who’s to say who found her? We both did. Lots of people did, in a higgledy-piggledy way.…”
“All right But you were sensible.”
“Dee, you tried to tell me how complicated it gets, all these intersecting lives.…”
“I remember.”
“I see what you mean.”
“Do you?”
“There’s such a thing as silly pride,” he said.
“Yes.”
“It’s bad enough, it’s hard enough, without that.”
She didn’t answer.
“Don’t you think so?”
“It’s hard enough,” she said.
“Now, I could go away.…”
She didn’t answer.
“Too proud to trust you to understand. But Dee, you’ll believe me.”
“A long time ago,” she murmured, “I think I should have just … believed you.”
His voice gained power. “Then believe this. Ah Dee, you’re my girl. You’re the one for me. If you can be.”
“I won’t be silly and proud again,” she said.
He sat down and took her limp hand. “Things said, mistakes I made, they hurt me enough,” he said drearily, “I could run away.”
But her voice had more life in it. “It’s bad enough without that.”
“You look beautiful,” he told her gravely, “dirty and haggard and old. Nothing can blind me. I know you, now.”
She moved her fingers.
“There’s teaching, and then again, there’s learning something,” he said humbly. “There’s the urge to take care … and a need to be taken care of. Ah Dee, do both for me?”
She tightened her hand. She turned her bright head from the hard varnished wood to his breast.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is enti
rely coincidental.
copyright © 1952 by Charlotte Armstrong
copyright renewed 1980 by Jeremy B. Lewi, Peter A. Lewi, and Jacquelin Lewi Bynagta
ISBN: 978-1-4532-4566-8
This edition published in 2012 by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media
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