“But what does Kissel say?”
Kirkpatrick smiled. “When I called him this morning, he wouldn’t answer the question. He claimed he wanted to see the girl before he gave an answer. Even that is suggestive, don’t you think? If he was going to say something pleasant, do you think he’d be so careful of whom he said it to?” Emmett looked down and found his hand holding his pipe; he put the stem in his mouth and searched himself for a match. Kirkpatrick leaned across the table to give him a light from a windproof lighter.
“But consider my predicament, Mr. Emmett,” he said. “Suppose her father should insist on her seeing Dr. Kissel; after all, he’s almost got to insist, now, and hope for the best, since his daughter’s started the business. Otherwise it looks as if he believed her to have been a traitress… Well, if I block him, I have a fight on my hands; there may be publicity, which is just what we don’t want, obviously. But if I let the girl in, then I’ve got to let him in, too; and the doctor and the nurse to take care of her in case she gets an unpleasant shock; and maybe even you, Mr. Emmett. And with a man of Mr. Nicholson’s standing I’d look silly as hell searching his daughter and medical advisers and friends, wouldn’t I? If I’m going to antagonize him, I might as well not let him in at all. But,” the big man said heavily, leaning forward on his elbows, “it would take only one little fountain pen shooting bullets instead of ink to make certain people very happy. And they’ve taken a couple of cracks at him already, Mr. Emmett.”
“You mean, somebody’s tried to—?”
Kirkpatrick said, “You see, the Nazi laboratory where Dr. Kissel worked as a prisoner has been moved piecemeal and reassembled, Mr. Emmett, considerably to the east of where it was. We know that some very intensive work has been going on in that laboratory. The people in charge haven’t any desire for us to learn even as much as what the place looked like four years ago. They must be getting pretty damn desperate by now. Pretty soon it’ll be too late: we’ll have everything Kissel knows down on paper, doublechecked, and reconstructed to scale. And just at this point, Mr. Emmett,” Kirkpatrick said, smiling gently, “I’m supposed to believe that the appearance of you and Dr. Kaufman and the beautiful nurse, with this poor crazy girl and her not very bright parent, is a coincidence? Clever, but not very convincing, Mr. Emmett. Just a little too elaborate.” He sat up and there was anger on his brown face. “Why don’t you leave the kid alone? Haven’t you done enough to her already? Why don’t you people give up and go home, Emmett? Or will they liquidate you for failing?”
chapter THIRTEEN
Emmett walked slowly back to the hotel. Clouds were rising over the mountains to the westward, and the mountains themselves hidden behind the buildings across the street, but the sun was still bright and hot. He could not make himself think coherently. Reaching the hotel, he walked blindly through the lobby, dark after the sunshine outside, to the telephone booths behind the cigar counter. He looked up a number in the city directory and stepped into a booth. The light going on above his head, as he closed the door, startled him vaguely. He called the number, and presently a friendly girl’s voice answered.
“This is Arapahoe six two six two.”
Emmett said, “I’d like to speak to Mr. Edward Kirkpatrick.”
The voice said without hesitation, “Mr. Kirkpatrick isn’t in right now. Would you like to leave a message?”
Emmett started to hang up. As if sensing his action, the friendly voice said quickly, “I can give you Mr. Long.” Emmett dropped the receiver hastily on the hook before, he told himself wryly, the girl gave him J. Edgar Hoover, just to be nice. The small private joke made him feel a little better, and somehow it was reassuring to know that apparently the big man was exactly what he had claimed to be, at least he was known around the office. Emmett thought, Well, he still didn’t go through that routine and turn me loose again without a reason. He’s playing a different game from what he’d like to have me think.
There was something comforting and secure about the four walls of the booth, as if the world outside had become somewhat too large to handle for the moment. He stuffed tobacco into his pipe slowly, presently discovering that he had forgotten to shake out the ashes of the previous load. He sat picking at the mess with the small blade of his penknife, and wondered what would happen if he simply got on a train and went away somewhere. Home, perhaps. But on the other hand, if you were going to be questioned and maybe arrested by police or federal officials, it would do less damage if it happened where nobody knew you. He got his pipe emptied, and refilled, and lighted. Somebody tapped impatiently at the door of the booth.
He glanced up, rose, and opened the door. Stepping out, he was aware that the woman waiting was staring at him with what was probably a dirty look for occupying the booth so long; he did not look at her directly to make sure.
“Sorry,” he said, starting away.
“Please,” she said softly. “Mr. Emmett—”
He stood quite still for a fraction of a second. Even before he had turned he knew that the girl was not the one he had, in the first moment of hearing her voice, thought it might be, but his breathing had stopped momentarily. It seemed to him peculiar and a little frightening that, in spite of what he knew and guessed about her, every stranger who telephoned him should be for a moment Ann Nicholson; every strange voice addressing him, Ann Nicholson’s voice.
He turned to see the girl who had spoken come after him, and recognized the nurse, Miss Bethke. There was always something arrogant and gaudy about a blonde wearing green, and today she was wearing a white dress drawn together at the waist by a bright green sash; and her wide hat, the purse and gloves she carried in her hand, and her high-heeled sandals, were all the same brilliant shade of green. Her legs, he noticed, were bare and a little sunburned.
“Darling!” she exclaimed, her voice a protest. “Really, I’ve been waiting hours!” Before he could pull away, she had taken his hand, tucking it firmly beneath her elbow. “Come on, we’re going to have to simply dash to make it!”
He found himself being led rapidly back through the lobby, her strong fingers tightening on his hand to counteract the sudden slipperiness of perspiration. If he wanted loose, her grip said, he could damn well put his foot in her side and pull. She was not going to be polite about it. He could either come along like a good boy or involve both of them in a ridiculous tug of war in front of the desk clerk and the half-dozen people scattered through the lobby.
He was aware of her face, serene and handsome beneath the brim of the large green hat; he was aware of a bald man at the desk turning away from the clerk to look at them as they went past—the man’s interest seemed to be mainly centered about the nurse’s ankles. No one else seemed to be paying any attention. Outside, the sunlight was like a blow in the face. Emmett felt his hand released.
“I’ve got to talk to you, Emmett.” Miss Bethke’s voice was a little breathless with strain or excitement.
Emmett took out a handkerchief to dry his hand. He saw that she was rubbing hers against her dress. His hand was striped with the red-and-white marks left by her fingers.
The doorman said, “Taxi, sir?”
He nodded before he knew that he had come to a decision. He walked slowly across the sidewalk to the curb, the blonde girl beside him. She got in ahead of him. She was pulling on her green gloves as the cab started away.
“Estes Hotel,” she said to the driver. Then she turned to Emmett. “The drug,” she said, “the seconal she tried to kill herself with. Emmett, where the hell did she get the stuff?”
He had had the feeling all morning that the whole world had got ahead of him while he slept—that everybody knew more than he did—that he had somehow lost contact. Now he stared at the girl blankly, for a moment not even sure of what she was talking about. Ann Nicholson’s attempted suicide seemed to belong to the past so completely that it had even lost its quality of shock; it was only a link in a chain of evidence. Then something stirred in his mind, and he glanced at the
girl beside him.
“Why do you want to know?” he asked warily.
She smiled and patted his knee with a green-gloved hand, and leaned forward to tell the driver to pull up at the side entrance. He followed her into the hotel with a sense of deliberately walking into danger. It seemed like a rather stupid thing to do.
Her key admitted them to a room on the twelfth floor that was large enough to hold a small sofa, a comfortable chair, and a small, low cocktail table between them. There were also a writing desk, a dresser, and a vanity table, all white. The bed apparently folded out of sight behind the double doors in one wall. The room looked light and spacious, illuminated by two large, neatly curtained windows. The nurse reached back to close the door behind them.
“It’s part of Mr. Nicholson’s suite,” she said, explaining the expensive look of the room. “Miss Nicholson uses it, as a matter of fact, but since she’s not here… Anyway, I’m staying here until Mr. Nicholson makes up his mind whether the patient is going to need me again. At least, that’s what he says,” she finished cryptically.
He watched her fling back the shining mane of her hair and walk across the room to the white telephone.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
She turned to smile at him over the mouthpiece of the instrument. “I think he wants to keep an eye on me, Emmett. Hello, room service—?” She put her hand over the mouthpiece. “Rum Cokes all right?”
When she had finished ordering, she slid from the arm of the sofa to the seat and raised herself to pull her dress into place. She leaned forward and ran a gloved hand down her leg.
“Damn,” she said, “I need a shave.” She began to peel off the gloves. Then she looked up at him abruptly. “Sit down, darling. I’m not going to bite you; don’t stand there with your bare face hanging out. My God!”
He came forward uncomfortably, but an unconcerned part of his mind was studying her objectively and deciding that there was too much stuff with gloves and purse, and with dress and hair and legs; altogether too much stuff: the girl was nervous as a kitten. There were two of him, one who wanted to get out of there before the trap closed, and one who wanted to stay and see what would happen, who thought he could probably take care of himself. This second guy, he thought, was probably mistaken. He felt as stiff and awkward as if wearing his first pair of long trousers, as he sat down in the chair facing her. Then he had to get up again and take care of the boy with the drinks.
As he gave her a glass, she looked up at him searchingly and said, “Listen, if you have business in the john, it’s the door over there; and if you haven’t, for God’s sake relax before I throw something at you.”
He sat down. “Did you bring me here to ask me something?” he demanded. “Or just to have somebody to crack wise to?”
She laughed, and put her glass aside to remove her hat and throw it, with her gloves, to a corner of the sofa. Then she glanced at him again.
“What did she tell you about me, anyway?”
Emmett hesitated.
The blonde girl smiled, not very pleasantly. “I was making up to her father, wasn’t I?”
Emmett said, “No, to Dr. Kaufman.”
The nurse’s smile faltered, and died. Suddenly she looked plain and rather tired. “I swear, Emmett,” she said wearily, “next case I take, the patient’s either going to be damn good and sane, or so screwy I have to pick her off the chandeliers. This business of trying to keep it a secret that little Angelface isn’t quite hitting on all six—”
Emmett found that things people told him seemed to have stopped carrying conviction some time ago. He had stopped trying to sort out the truths from the falsehoods; he no longer believed anything, he merely filed it for reference. He was merely collecting information and waiting for a hunch. As a chemist you learned that, contrary to the popular idea of scientific procedure, one good hunch was often worth a ream of data.
He said, “All right. So she called you a bitch, and you call her crazy, and what have we got? Let’s stick to this drug you were interested in, Miss Bethke. Why did you practically kidnap me to ask where she got it?”
She made a small ceremony of opening her purse to examine her appearance in the mirror, then putting it down on the table between them.
“If you were a nurse, Emmett,” she said deliberately, “and your patient took an overdose of sedative once, and you managed to get out of the mess without even losing your job… If you were that lucky once, Emmett, you’d make damn sure it didn’t happen again, wouldn’t you? And if she did do it again, and you knew that you had all the drugs you’d ever brought into the house safely locked away except what had been used up—” She made a little despairing gesture with her hand. “Hell, I’ve even got the aspirin under cover, that’s how careful I’ve been, Emmett.”
He frowned, not quite sure of the significance of what she was telling him. “You mean, you don’t think she got it from you?”
“I know she didn’t get it from me! That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” the nurse said sharply. “The first time, yes. The first time, nobody’d bothered to tell me I was taking care of a mental case. I was told it was a simple matter of hardship and undernourishment. I had no idea she might try anything like that. But this time—”
Emmett said flatly, “It was a regular prescription bottle.”
“Can you remember what it looked like?” she demanded, leaning forward.
He thought for a moment. He could recall the bottle quite clearly, he had studied it, and read the label of it several times, while waiting for the doctor. It had seemed to him important, yet he could not decide why. But there had been nothing else to do except listen to the shallow breathing of the girl in the bed, and to wonder, every time it paused, whether it would ever start again.
“It was,” he said, rather proud of his memory, “a one-ounce, green-glass, wide-mouth bottle, kind of a jar, rather—”
“How big?”
“I said one ounce,” he pointed out, a little impatiently. “You’re a nurse. How big is a one-ounce bottle? About one and a quarter by two and a half inches, I’d say.”
“And the label?”
He said, “Some chain drug store they have in the middle west. Wallman’s?”
“Walgreen’s?”
“That’s right.” He closed his eyes to remember. “Patient’s name: A. Nicholson. Physician’s name: P. F. Kaufman, M.D. Instructions: one at night if restless. And the usual blurb about the prescription not being refillable.”
“And—” She hesitated. “—the date? Can you remember the date?”
“I think it was January,” he said. Then he nodded. “January, this year. I can’t remember the day of the month.” After a while he looked at her. “Well, it looks like you slipped, doesn’t it? Or could she have got the stuff direct from Kaufman?”
“Oh, no,” she said. Her voice was suddenly rough with some emotion. “No, it’s the right bottle, all right.” She got up so abruptly that the glasses jumped on the cocktail table, and stood with her back to him, stroking her thin dress down over her hips with stiff fingers. “The only trouble,” she said softly, “is, I threw that damn bottle out empty three months ago!”
Again she was ahead of him, and he could not see what she was getting all worked up about.
“You mean,” he said, “somebody picked up the empty bottle, Miss Bethke—?”
She whirled on him. “For God’s sake, call me Helene!” she snapped. “Miss Bethke this. Miss Bethke that. As if I were a housekeeper or something… Sorry, I didn’t mean you.” She picked up his empty glass and her own. “More?” she asked. He nodded and watched her go to the dresser; it was a pleasure to watch her walk. “Aren’t you cute, Emmett?” she murmured without looking at him. She mimicked his voice with deadly accuracy: “‘Somebody must have picked up the bottle, Miss Bethke—’ Somebody! The colored help, I suppose, or the man who collects the garbage; and she made a date with him to give it back to her in Boyne, Colorado. Be your age,
John Emmett!”
He watched her turn, flicking the polished bright hair back over her shoulder with one hand, pick up the drinks, and come to stand above him. It gave him a feeling of inadequacy to have to look up at her. Her voice was low and savage when she spoke.
“You know she hates my guts, don’t you? She’s accused me of sleeping with every man who’s come to the house. If you don’t believe me, ask her father. Once I found ink spilled over my uniforms; somebody had accidentally knocked over a bottle on top of the dresser, and the drawer just happened to be open. Or the time I came in to find the cat playing with my best nylons…”
Emmett reached up to take the glass she held out to him.
“I saved her life, once, remember,” Helene Bethke said. “She’s never forgiven me that. She picked up that empty bottle and got a refill for it. How was I going to prove it was empty when she got it? How am I, Emmett?”
Emmett said stiffly, “The label said, not to be refilled.”
“Oh, the drugstore wouldn’t do it. But you can get the stuff, if you know where to go and have the money.”
“How would she know where to go?”
“Listen,” the blonde girl said sharply, “when you’ve nursed as many feebs as I have, you won’t ask how they know where to go. It’s an instinct with them, like homing pigeons. When they get that way, I really believe they can smell knives, or poison, or firearms, or the people who’ll sell them what they want.”
The crude term for imbecile seemed to put Ann Nicholson immeasurably far away from him; she was no longer a pretty girl he had known, but only a warped brain capable of a certain perverse, vicious cunning.
“But why?” he demanded. “Why would she want the bottle?”
“To ruin me,” the nurse said flatly. “I stopped her once. This time she was going to take my career with her when she went. I’d look fine applying for another job and trying to explain how I’d lost my previous patient, wouldn’t I? I bet the little bitch was smiling when you found her.”
The Steel Mirror Page 10