The Expendable Man

by Dorothy B. Hughes

  Gramps said gently, “We’ll make them welcome, Stacy. Don’t mind Mama. She’s just feeling her pepper today.”

  It was all so homey and safe. Iris was only a small memory far back in Hugh’s consciousness. She’d been out of it entirely until this matter of the motel came up, and with it, the strange sense of relief. When he analyzed it, he realized he had had a fear of her finding his car and turning up again. Making trouble. If she turned up at the motel, he could handle her. But she wouldn’t. He was quite sure she’d take no chance of being held accountable for that ten dollars. She’d had what she wanted from him, the ride to Phoenix. She wouldn’t want to see him again any more than he wanted to see her.

  His grandmother had got up from the table and started to carry out the dishes to the kitchen. “I’ll pepper you,” she told her husband. “Hoity-toity,” she muttered as she stomped away. “Hoity-toity.”

  She’d been born in the Territory of Arizona and was firmly convinced that only Arizonans were to be esteemed. She’d never quite forgiven Hugh’s mother for marrying an Angeleno and moving to California. When Stacy married Dr. Edward and moved to Phoenix, Gram had considered it a judgment on her daughter for her own defection. Gram’s other children had remained loyal; of the uncles and aunts, none was further away than Tucson.

  Hugh said, “I guess I’d better go check in and get my things unpacked. What’s the schedule for today, Stacy?”

  “Edward has already checked you in, Hugh.” She opened her purse. “Here’s the key.”

  “Thanks.” It was like Edward; he was always thoughtful about such things.

  “The schedule? Tonight’s a barbecue at Uncle Dan’s. The whole tribe of course and members of the wedding party. Sports clothes.”

  Gram returned for more dishes. “Barbecue. Cooking outdoors like Indians.” She didn’t wait for rebuttal but trotted back to her kitchen.

  “The Bents are flying in tomorrow morning from New York.”

  “Want me to meet them?”

  “Thanks, but Edward believes we should do the honors. I suppose we should.” She sighed. “There’s too much to do. Clytie wants Mother and me to drop in on the party this afternoon. You can’t imagine the entertainment she’s had, Hugh. It seems as if every club on the campus has partied her. There are enough gifts already to furnish a mansion. I don’t know where we’ll store them until she and John return from Germany. He has European orders, you know.”

  He knew. It was the European orders which had pushed the wedding up from June to May. John’s wing was leaving next week. Clytie would follow after graduation.

  “Anything I can do to help—”

  “There’ll be plenty. Tomorrow is Ellen’s bridal luncheon for Clytie. Then there’s rehearsal in the afternoon and our bridal dinner at night. We’re having it in the private banquet room at The Palms, where you’re staying.”

  “And the main event?”

  “Sunday afternoon. Four o’clock. We can’t decorate until Sunday, we’re using fresh flowers. Oh, we’ll keep you busy, Hugh. You’ll be run ragged like all of us. If you can get any rest today, make the most of it. You won’t have another chance until after the wedding.”

  “Okay, Stacy. Count me in.” He stood up. “When do you want your car, Mother?”

  “You’ll need it, staying at the motel. I’ll ride with Stacy. You can bring the folks out to Daniel’s tonight. Six-thirty.”

  “A pleasure.” He stage-whispered to Gram, now folding the tablecloth, “You’re going to be my girl at that Indian barbecue and you can so inform your husband.”

  She snorted, then regained her good humor and laughed.

  “Whenever you do want the car, Mother, let me know. Bye, all. See you later.”

  He drove over to Van Buren and on east to the motor hotel. As he was registered, there was no reason to stop at the desk. He followed the circular drive around to 126, the number on his key. For once he had no rancor at being assigned to a rear unit. His car wouldn’t be visible from the street, just in case Iris found some more kids to tour her about the town looking for him. Why on earth should she look for him? He was obsessed and it was nonsense. There was no reason for her to return to haunt him.

  The Palms was one of the new luxury motels on the eastern extension of Van Buren. There were no second-rate units. He moved his bags into the bleached-wood elegance, cooled to proper temperature by the wall thermostat. Sliding glass lanai doors opened to a vast expanse of close-cropped green, bisected with bleached white walks. Across the green was a tropical blue pool with clusters of sky-tall palm trees bending over it. Hot-pink umbrellas shaded white tables and desk chairs, hot-pink chaises for sunbathers were grouped at the pool’s tiled rim. A faint plash came across the lawn as a diver curved from the high board.

  The large room with its two oversized beds was meticulously clean, the blue-tiled bath was stocked with good towels, the desk held hotel stationary and guidebooks, the television set worked. There was no reason to expect otherwise. Edward wouldn’t select a place without standards of quality. But then you never knew. Remembering stories his mother told of traveling when she was a girl, personally recalling trips he’d taken as a child, he could believe that times had definitely changed.

  He hung up his suits and slacks, put away his other clothes in the bureau drawers, laid open his toilet kit on the tiled dressing table. The medical bag he pushed to the back of the shelf. It was two o’clock. Enough of the pre-wedding excitement had entered him to cancel any ideas of sleep. He needed to unwind, but he was so unused to idleness these days, he didn’t know how to begin.

  Out of simple curiosity, he picked up the telephone directory from the desk and turned to the C’s. No Mayble Carney was listed. It could be she lived in a rooming house or had one of those modern apartments with a switchboard. He flipped to the yellow pages, Beauty Parlors. They bore cute names, not those of their owners.

  He was just stubborn enough to try to find out if there was a Mayble. He asked the switchboard for Information. When that operator responded, he gave the name and address Iris had written. There was no such person listed at any address.

  By now his stubbornness had solidified. There weren’t too many beauty shops. He called them, one by one. It took a full hour. Not one had a Mayble Carney working there at present or in memory. He put away the phone and flung himself on the bed. So she’d got by with the lie, the one he hadn’t believed could be a lie. He still didn’t think she’d invented Mayble. But Mayble wasn’t her aunt or didn’t live in Phoenix. Possibly Mayble was one of the “kids” in Banning or Indio or Blythe, and Iris had been snickering to herself when she’d put across that whopper.

  He’d written off the money, it wasn’t that. It was being played for a sucker. He wouldn’t suffer because he’d given away ten bucks, not like some of the poor guys who had nothing but their intern’s pay. He’d been one of the lucky kids who never knew want, never knew the kind of deprivation which Iris, to look at her, must have lived with all her young years. His family wasn’t wealthy but they were comfortable, had always been. He couldn’t hold his anger against the girl, she was too miserable a creature. How could she help being what she was?

  He got up from the bed. It was still too early to dress for the evening. He decided to go across to the newsstand and buy the Los Angeles papers. Just possibly there might be a report of a missing girl. He didn’t have to believe that Iris’ father and mother were what she said they were, although that too had had the ring of truth. Like the name of Mayble Carney.

  He walked across the green to the motel office. The heat of the afternoon was a shock after the air-conditioned room. It was little wonder that the only guests in view were clustered by the pool. In the lobby the clerks and the bellboys were listless before the evening rush. At the desk he made arrangements for the car to be serviced and washed. With its cross-country dust, it was not fitting for wedding activities. He bought the Times and the Herald-Examiner at the newsstand. They were mail editions and mo
st of the news would be old, yet the girl had left home yesterday. There could be a mention.

  Returned to his room, he searched all the pages with care but there was no story of any missing person. Maybe she wasn’t a runaway, maybe that denial had been honest. Leisurely he caught up on the sports and columns, on Gordo and Charlie Brown and Dick Tracy. By then it was time to shower and dress and go gather the grandparents. He wasn’t worried any longer. He was actually relieved that there hadn’t been an Aunt Mayble to find out who had given Iris a ride to Phoenix.

  It was past midnight when he returned to the motel. It had been a singularly happy evening. Lieutenant John Bent was almost good enough for Clytie. As for Ellen Hamilton, Clytie’s former roommate—why hadn’t any of the family told him what to expect? She was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen, he who came from a family of beauties.

  Ellen carried herself like a model, tall and slender and prideful. Small nose, enormous black eyes slightly tilted, skin like golden sand. Smooth dark hair not worn in one of the silly modern French fashions but with a bang across her forehead, and brushed down to a slight curve just above her shoulders. He could almost believe his mother and Stacy had entered into a conspiracy of silence lest he shy away from her.

  He hadn’t had half a chance to make headway tonight. John’s Air Force friends had surrounded her as if she were a shiny new spaceship. What Hugh had learned about her had been from his mother. Ellen had graduated cum laude from Vassar. She was taking special courses at George Washington, preparing for foreign diplomatic service. On that item, he had realized that her father was the Judge, that she was the Washington, D.C., Hamiltons.

  It was just as well he hadn’t had a chance to be alone with her, he might have fallen. A young doctor, not yet in practice, had nothing to offer an Ellen Hamilton. Moreover, he had no intention of getting involved with any girl until he had paid back the family for their backing him all these years, and was earning enough to support a wife on a decent economic level.

  At this hour the cars were parked closely in their lanes at the rear of the units. Not that all the guests were in bed; there were lights behind most of the drawn curtains. The late, late TV show echoed from open lanai doors. He parked as close as possible to 126, locked the car, and walked over to his door. He let himself in, flipped the night latch to keep the maid out in the morning, and put on the lights. He’d left the air conditioning on when he went out; he turned it off now, the motor hum would be disturbing for sleep. It wasn’t needed, the night had turned definitely cool. He checked the door screen, it was locked, and he drew the draperies across it, leaving the doors open.

  He turned on the TV set, tuning until he found the one with the old movie. He removed his jacket and hung it in the wardrobe, loosened his tie, and stretched out on one of the beds. The soporific picture would relax him for sleeping.

  The soft rap on the locked rear door came almost immediately. He didn’t comprehend it at first, he took it for an extraneous sound, from the television set or the next-door unit. Only when it was repeated did he know it for what it was, a knocking at his door. His first thought was that it was a mistake, someone at the wrong unit; his second that it was, for some reason, the management. It couldn’t be his family. If they’d wanted him for any purpose, they’d have telephoned before coming. He walked slowly back to the soft sound, unfastened the night latch, turned the knob. Only when he saw her standing outside, did he realize that he’d been afraid it might be Iris. She was wearing the same dirty outfit, even to the scarf hiding her hair.

  He was furious but he kept his voice quiet. “What are you doing here?”

  She spoke almost in a whisper. “I got to talk to you.”

  “No, you don’t.” He moved into the doorway, blocking it so that she couldn’t push in. “There’s nothing whatever you could have to say to me. You go on now. And don’t ever come around here again.”

  “I won’t stay but a minute,” she protested. “Let me come in just a minute.”

  “I wouldn’t think of it.” He spoke with finality. He hoped she would recognize it as such. “Go on home. You could get in a lot of trouble coming here.”

  And get him into worse trouble. But he wouldn’t say that to her, wouldn’t put it in her head. She might not know how bad she could make it for him.

  “I’m in a lot of trouble.” Her head was turned and she spoke under her breath.

  “Because you don’t have an Aunt Mayble living here and you don’t know what to do next?” But she had someone or she wouldn’t be able to drive around and discover where he was staying. Or was it possible she had telephoned the motels until she found a Dr. Hugh Densmore registered?

  “I do too have an Aunt Mayble. In Denver.” She was peering beyond him into the lighted room. She said, “Please, let me in, just for a minute.”

  He stood firm. “No, you can’t come in,” he repeated. It was bad enough to have her outside on his doorstep. There was no way of knowing how many persons might be seeing her there. “I tried to help you on the road but I can’t help you any more. Go to the Travelers’ Aid. They’ll see that you get home.”

  “I can’t go home,” she said dully. She looked up at him. She said it again with a muted emphasis, “I’m in trouble. Real trouble.”

  Somehow this had never occurred to him. It was a shock. “Is that why you came to Phoenix?”

  She nodded dumbly. She looked sick. “I thought my boy friend would marry me. But he’s already married. He didn’t tell me that when we were going around together. He’s married and got a couple of kids.”

  He didn’t know what to say. Finally he told her, “I think you’d better go to the police and tell them your story. They’ll work out something for you.” He didn’t know what else to advise. Certainly there would be a welfare department in a city the size of Phoenix. Despite everything she was, he was sorry for her. “I can’t do anything for you.”

  “Yes, you can,” she said. The old familiar slyness had come into her face. “You’re a doctor.”

  For a moment he couldn’t speak. He was frozen with rage. When his voice returned, it didn’t sound like his own. “I’m a doctor, yes. A doctor, not a quack. Now you get out of here before I call the police.”

  He shut the door on her before she could say anything more. He was shaken, he felt physically ill. That she’d had the brazen nerve to come to him for this. And her betrayer, had he been outside in one of those cars watching the scene, waiting to see if she brought it off? He must have driven her here after she had told him it was a doctor who gave her a ride to Phoenix.

  If either of them returned, he would call the police. He realized the risk he would be taking, the lies she could tell, her word against his. But the police would check, they would find out that Hugh had never laid eyes on her before yesterday afternoon. He had the strength and the prestige of the University Medical Center behind him, if it came to that. But with that awful sickness of heart, he knew that she could say things which would ruin his hopes of remaining at the university, much less of being granted a research scholarship. There’d always be a residue of suspicion that the girl’s inventions weren’t all false. How could he prove otherwise? They had traveled together.

  While the flickering screen unwound its meaningless story, while the sound track uttered its meaningless words, he waited for another knock on the door. He waited until the picture ended. But there was no more intrusion. She must have believed him when he said he’d call the police.

  He undressed, turned out the light, and went to bed. It was a long time before sleep came. He knew how close he was to danger. When he heard the telephone ringing, he came awake at once as he was trained to wake, quietly, completely. He saw that it was morning. He was almost afraid to lift the phone from its cradle. When his mother’s voice responded to his hello, he drew a deep breath.

  “Did I wake you, Hugh?”

  “That’s all right. What time is it?” His watch was on the table.

  “Ten o�
��clock. I wouldn’t have called but I’ve an endless list of things Stacy wants done. She and Edward dropped me here at the folks’ on their way to the airport.”

  “Hang on. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  He almost made it in ten. Five minutes to shower and shave, five to dress—slacks, sport shirt, loafers. He’d learned in the hospital not to dawdle.

  His mother was with his grandmother at the dining-room table, reading the morning paper. He had forgotten about the papers, what might be in them. His mother glanced at her watch. “I wouldn’t have believed it possible of you.”

  Automatically he grinned at her. “Fooled you, eh? Want me to taxi you on the tour?”

  “Not until you’ve had your breakfast,” Gram declared. “Sit down, young man.” She was off to the kitchen before he could deter her.

  His mother said, “Would you? It would be such a help not to battle parking.”

  “It would be my pleasure.” Casually, he picked up the section of the paper beside her plate. Sports section. She had the front page.

  His grandmother reappeared with a platter of ham slices and three eggs.

  “Gram! I’ll be too fat to waddle.”

  “Nonsense. They’ve been starving you at that hospital.” She skittered back to the kitchen, to reappear with a plate of hot baking-powder biscuits. “Now eat up. That’s my own strawberry jam in the blue bowl. I’ll pour your coffee.”

  He could ask it casually: Any news? He didn’t.

  But he wished his mother would comment on what she was reading. Surely she would if there were a missing-girl story. He couldn’t ask for the paper, not with Gram visiting with him. Somewhere along the line of errands, he’d pick up the Los Angeles Times. If a California girl were missing, the report would be more complete than in a Phoenix newspaper.

  He put aside his napkin. “Sorry to eat and run, ma’am, but that’s the way it is when you’re a doctor.” He kissed his grandmother’s dry cheek. “That’s the best breakfast I’ve had since I was a boy. Remind me to marry you when you get a divorce from Gramps. Where is he this morning?”