Gray said mildly, “But you believed her an hour ago when she said I was going to frame you.”
“She said—” Champion stopped short. His haggard gaze searched Gray’s face, at first with fury in it. Confusion and anxiety came into his eyes as the fury faded. He sighed heavily and dropped his head in his hands.
“Okay, okay,” he said in a muffled voice. “Maybe I was wrong.” He rubbed his face bruisingly hard. “I guess I should have known better. But Karen—she gets me so mad…” He lifted his head suddenly to look at Gray. “You sure you didn’t tell her all that?”
Gray smiled. “If anybody told her you could be railroaded into an asylum, it just isn’t true.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Quigley put in unexpectedly. “Seems to me I’ve read about such things happening. There’s a man right here in San Francisco—” He checked himself and was silent, frowning.
Gray said, “Oh, it’s happened. But controls get tighter all the time on swindles like that. Mr. Champion, if you’re really worried, you can protect yourself easily enough. Get a good lawyer who knows how to make sure you get an examination by reputable psychiatrists and you’re perfectly safe.”
Champion was peering up at him with an intent, almost childlike concentration. Gray looked at him compassionately, wondering at the same time if he was looking at a man who had broken into his wife’s bedroom with intent to kill only a few nights ago. It could be. There was no way of telling, yet.
“All the same,” Champion said suddenly, “what the devil are you doing here now? Don’t tell me this is a social visit Just why did Joyce ask you to come?”
At the window, her back to him, Joyce said in a cool voice, “I can ask anyone I please into my own home, Dennis. As a matter of fact, I’m glad he’s here. I want plenty of witnesses.” She swung around to face Champion. “I’m sick and tired of having the business always tottering on the brink because you’re too timid to make a move. Right here and now I’m asking you to name your price for your share in the firm. We’ll buy you out somehow.”
“No!” Champion’s voice was explosive. “I’m not selling! The hell with all of you. CQD is mine and I’m not letting go of it.”
“Not even after it dies on the vine?” Joyce snapped.
“Don’t you worry about that. We’ll stay afloat. This isn’t the time to take chances. I can’t get you young fools to see it! You haven’t had my experience. You—”
Quigley said to Gray, “What Dennis means is we’re in for the biggest depression in history.” His mouth had an ironic twist. “Dennis has been saying it for years.”
“Wait and see, damn it.” Champion looked goaded. He glowered around the ring of watching faces. Then he shook his head heavily and lumbered to his feet. “You’ll never get CQD away from me,” he told the Quigleys. “Never as long as I’m alive, understand that? And when I’m dead, my share goes to Karen—not you.” He gave them a brief, ironic look. “Our insurance will take care of you two if I go first,” he said. “You’ve got nothing to worry about.”
Joyce laughed, a sharp, contemptuous sound.
Champion drew a quick breath to speak. Then he shook his head and turned toward the door, shrugging angrily. On the threshold he glanced back, feet planted wide, head sunk, swaying a little. The old lion, Gray thought again. The beaten fighter, still stubbornly on his feet.
“I’m warning you,” he said. “All of you.” His glance included Gray. “Don’t try anything you’ll regret.”
The door crashed shut behind him.
Half an hour later Wesley Turk got up, a stocky, imperturbable figure, and said it was time he went home. Gray rose thankfully. He might as well admit to himself that he was getting nowhere here. Joyce Quigley’s attitude had become distinctly unpleasant. She alternated between sullen silence and periods of urging Gray blindly to say that Champion was insane. Roger Quigley himself seemed uncomfortable in the taut, hostile atmosphere. The bursting vitality with which he had greeted Gray was submerged now. He ran ice cubes expertly around the inside of his glass and sat with his forearms on his knees, looking at the floor.
Joyce said unpleasantly at the door, “You can send me your bill if you like, Mr. Gray.” The suggestion was clear that she didn’t feel he was worth his pay.
Gray nodded. “I will. Good night.”
He heard Turk’s quiet chuckle beside him as they set off down the walk toward the street.
“All the same, though,” Turk said in a low voice, “it’s a mess. A bad mess. I wish to God I knew what’s going to happen.”
“Just what shape is the business in?” Gray asked.
“Oh, it rides along. Potentially it’s big money, with the right handling. But that’s always a gamble. The way things look now CQD will always bring in a living for the partners, anyhow. If nothing changes drastically.”
“Such as what?”
“When partners disagree,” Turk said, “it’s time to break the partnership up. I’ve known Dennis Champion for fifteen years. He’s under a bad strain. The Quigleys don’t help much, either.”
A car parked at the curb suddenly switched on its lights. A woman’s voice from inside said, “Wes?”
“Susan!” Turk stepped quickly over to her. “You’re early. Why didn’t you come in? It’s chilly out here for you.”
She said in a die-away voice, “I wasn’t feeling well, Wes. I just couldn’t face those people. Honestly, sometimes I could hear Joyce from clear out here.”
Turk shook his head. “We were having quite a time.” He turned to Gray. “Susan, Mr. Gray,” he said. “My wife, Mr. Gray. Can we give you a lift somewhere?”
Susan Turk caught her breath in an audible hiss of objection. Looking at her, Gray saw a shadowy outline of big eyes wide apart in a childlike, triangular face tapering to a small chin. There was discontent on the face.
“Thanks,” Gray said quickly. “My car’s right here.”
Susan Turk said, “Oh dear, I was rude. I’m’sorry, Mr. Gray. It’s just that I have an appointment. And I’m not early, Wes—you’re late. You’ll have to run me right over to Dr. Brand’s or I’ll be late.”
Turk’s voice held an edge of annoyance. “Not Brand again!” he said. “You’d better skip it tonight.”
“Oh, Wes, I can’t.” Her tone took on an added element of the die-away. “I’ve been feeling very low all day. If I don’t get my electronic treatment I just won’t be able to sleep. Dr. Brand’s keeping his office open especially for me and I don’t want to be late.”
Turk turned to Gray. “This is on the edge of your field,” he said. “Maybe you know something about Perry Brand. How much good do these electronic treatments really do, anyhow?”
Gray said, “Brand? Let me think. I’ve heard the name somewhere.” He searched his memory. There was some unsavory connection. And—electronic treatments? It could mean almost anything. Or nothing.
“Electronics covers a lot of territory,” he said. “I’d have to know more about the kind of treatment.”
Susan Turk said indignantly, “Of course it does me good. I expect Mr. Gray wouldn’t know much about electronic treatments, Wes. After all, he isn’t a doctor.”
A sudden memory flickered in Gray’s mind. “Is Perry Brand a doctor?” he demanded, more sharply than he had intended. “A doctor of medicine, I mean?”
She hesitated. “I don’t see what difference that makes. I never could keep all those degrees straight. The main thing is, Dr. Brand’s helped me when every other doctor in town just gave me up.” Her voice took on a querulous tone. “Do get in, Wes. I’m going to be late.”
Gray watched their taillights dwindle down the dark street. The memory had come back to him. Perry Brand. Of course. A charlatan with a diploma-mill degree and a long record of near-arrests, always somehow evaded at the last minute. The kind of man best equipped to do infinite harm among the sick, the lonely, the confused. If Brand was really passing himself off as having an M.D., maybe this time the law co
uld close in on him.
Gray shrugged. It was a faint hope. Brand was much too clever for that. Sliding into his car, Gray paused suddenly, key in the lock, motionless as a further memory flickered through his mind. Something about a magazine article reporting Brand’s closest brush with the law. What was it? Gray shut his eyes and groped for details.
A rich old man on the verge of some serious psychosis, taken to Brand instead of to a doctor, by greedy relatives eager to railroad him into an asylum…
Gray opened his eyes again and stared into the foggy dark. Brand—the article had made obliquely clear—had let the old man lapse completely into a breakdown. Possibly he’d helped push him over the edge. And then—the asylum. But this case had a happy ending. Competent treatment had restored Brand’s victim to health and he had brought suit against his relatives and Perry Brand. As Gray remembered it, Brand had as usual escaped through a loophole in the law. And now he was practicing here in San Francisco, treating Susan Turk.
Susan Turk, whose husband was an agent for CQD, and CQD’s controlling partner might be on the verge of being railroaded by his wife and associates into an asylum…Oh, it had to be a coincidence.
The complex series of memories had moved through his mind so fast that the Turks’ taillights were still disappearing far down the dark street. Gray sat whistling soundlessly between his teeth and gazing after them thoughtfully.
7
In the car Gray watched, Susan Turk had forgotten him almost before the engine started. She sat beside her husband in silence, not listening much to his familiar complaint. Now and then a fragment of what he said penetrated her abstraction. “—Can’t afford this Brand—nobody could, the prices he charges—why, even Rockefeller—”
She paid no attention. If an occasional little twinge of guilt stirred in her mind she pushed that down too, well below the level of consciousness. Her head ached and she felt weak and hollow all over. Small, random pains flickered in her chest, and she could feel her shoulder muscles drawing her shoulders up taut, painful with the effort of holding the world at bay.
When Wes Turk drew up at the side of the big old house which Perry Brand had remodeled for his offices, Susan had her door open almost before the car stopped.
“I thought I’d take an hour treatment,” she said. “You want to wait or come back for me?”
Turk hitched himself sidewise angrily to look at her. But something in the tenseness and distress of her face seemed to touch him a little, and his anger died. “I’ll be here in an hour,” he said. “Take it easy, Sue. I hope the treatment does you a lot of good.”
“It always has,” she said. And then, smiling, she laid a hand on his and said, “Thanks, Wes.”
He watched her go up the wide stone steps between thick walls of ivy. When she had rung at the door in the deep porch and a woman in a nurse’s uniform admitted her, he leaned back, lit a cigarette, and wondered casually how to spend the hour. Presently he began to hum a little tune to himself without realizing it. Wes Turk was essentially a cheerful man. Even his own adversities didn’t bother him very long at a time.
Inside, Susan followed the nurse up the wide, old-fashioned stairs to the second floor. The house smelled a little of stale cigar smoke and cooking. The upper hall was carpeted, and the carpeting slightly worn down the middle. The nurse, a plump, gray-haired woman, ushered Susan into the treatment room where the electronic apparatus took up much of one wall, shining black with banks of impressive looking dials. Susan could feel the tenseness across her shoulders already begin to relax.
She took off her outer clothing and put on the freshly ironed cotton robe, striped in pink and green, which the nurse held out for her. The nurse hung up her dress and coat and lit her cigarette for her.
“Dr. Brand will be with you in just a minute, Mrs. Turk,” she said. “There’s an ash tray over there. I hope you feel better real soon.” She gave Susan a professional smile and went out.
Susan was standing at the window smoking in quick, deep drags when Brand came in. She turned quickly. The sight of his burly, gray-haired good looks was, as always, marvelously reassuring. His brows were dramatically black under the abundant gray waves, and he had deep, compelling black eyes. His crisp white coat was buttoned at the neck under well-established jowls, and he smelled richly of cigar smoke with a faint undernote of whisky.
“Now, now, Mrs. Turk,” he said jovially, “we don’t start off relaxing by getting tenser. Let’s put out that cigarette and make you comfortable, shall we?”
The cot had a fresh sheet pulled taut. Under it Susan could feel the slight lumps of the electronic pads that were going to start pumping life-restoring energy waves through her any moment now. She lay back and relaxed with a deep sigh of anticipation.
Brand clicked a switch and the lights dimmed to a soft, rosy glow. He clicked another switch and the most delightfully relaxing, gentle vibrations began to flow upward from the pad and into the tight muscles in Susan Turk’s back. The bed set up a softly soothing hum under her.
Brand looked down with a judicious frown. “I think you could use a little booster wave tonight, my dear lady. The dial reading shows your condition’s deteriorated a bit since last time.” He shook his head. “I don’t like to see a patient going into relapses like this. It’s hard enough getting started when we’re fighting a long-established disease like yours. When we lose ground, even a little, I find it doubly hard to make it up. Hold your arm a little higher, please.”
He clasped a metal band around her upper arm and clicked another switch. Susan felt a gentle tingle begin to spread around the band.
“Oh, that does feel better,” she said gratefully. “Thank you, Doctor.”
He gave her a warm smile. “Good, good. Now, then.” She heard a chair creak beyond her range of sight as he sank comfortably into it. “Now let’s get started. We need to find out what it was that caused this little relapse of yours. I want you to tell me everything that happened to you today. Even the most trivial thing might be important. Just relax and say whatever crosses your mind.”
Susan closed her eyes, sighed voluptuously, and began to talk.
Half an hour later the nurse opened the door a silent inch and caught Brand’s eye. Susan’s murmuring voice flowed on, uninterrupted. The nurse pointed downstairs, eyebrows lifted. Brand nodded. The nurse closed the door without a sound.
Brand waited for a pause in the gentle stream of Susan’s reminiscences. Then he said in a smooth, low voice, “I think we’re beginning to see the pattern, Mrs. Turk. You’ve given me a beautifully clear picture, whether you know it or not. I might mention you have a remarkable gift for bringing all these episodes to life. It seems to me you had an unusually hard day and you handled it with great skill.”
Susan said with drowsy pleasure, “Did I, Doctor?”
“You certainly did. You’re making fine progress in spite of all the forces working against you. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Turk, I think I have good news for you. I’ve been doing considerable research into the problems of your disease, and I’ve perfected a new treatment involving radiation.”
He cleared his throat. “My contacts in Washington wired me this morning that the government is releasing a limited amount of the radioactive material I’d need for your revised treatment. If I act fast I think I can get some. The trouble is, Mrs. Turk, this material is expensive. I’m not sure you’ll feel you can afford it. Unfortunately this kind of radioactive element is highly perishable. It has a very short half-life. I could use it only for you, so the cost would be rather steep.” Watching her face, he said, “I think, with any luck, I might get it for fifteen hundred or two thousand dollars.”
Susan winced. Her eyes opened abruptly and she frowned at the ceiling. “Oh, Dr. Brand, I don’t think I could manage it at this time. I’m really afraid—”
Brand said soothingly, “That’s perfectly all right, my dear. You know best.” He waited. Susan continued to frown.
“No,” she said agai
n. “I really just wouldn’t dare cash in any more of those bonds. If Wes ever finds out he’ll simply murder me as it is. I’m going along so well now, Dr. Brand—why don’t we just leave things as they are?”
Brand coughed gently. “As a matter of fact, that’s something else we’d better discuss, Mrs. Turk. Your electronic readings show that right now you’re at a crossroad in your treatment. With the new radiations you could make a tremendous gain quite quickly. But without them, I think it would be wise to cut your treatment time rather sharply. We need to hold you at a subsistence level now until you can manage the new treatment.”
Susan said fearfully, “What would we do?”
Brand pursed his lips. “You’ve been taking hour treatments lately, haven’t you? I think we should reduce the time to—say—twenty minutes at most. And no oftener than once a week.”
Susan rose on one elbow and looked at him anxiously.
“But Doctor, what about the nights when I can’t sleep? Sometimes my nerves get so tense I think I’ll die if I don’t get some relief. I’d just hate to go back to the way I was before you started treating me.”
Brand wagged his head judiciously. “Sometimes we must be cruel to be kind, my dear lady. It’s your own good I have at heart. You know that.”
“Yes, I know.” Susan searched his face with intent eyes. “Well … I guess you know best. Maybe, if it didn’t cost a penny more than fifteen hundred, I might take one more chance. Yes, I expect I’d better do it. You go ahead, Dr. Brand. I’ll pay for it somehow.”
Brand rose and pressed her gently back to the humming couch.
“You’ll never regret it, my dear. You’ve made a wise decision. Now I want you to relax completely for the rest of your hour. Nap a little if you can. And clear your mind of every trouble. That’s important. If a treatment ever fails, it’s usually because the patient didn’t really work at keeping his mind clear of worries while he took it. I’ll leave you now to relax completely.”
Michael Gray Novels Page 55