The Steel Mirror

by Donald Hamilton

  “Mr. Nicholson,” she said at last. “We’re ready to leave now, Mr. Nicholson.”

  Ann’s father looked up. “Is she all right?”

  “Oh, yes. Just a momentary reaction from strain, very natural. She’s waiting for you in the car, Mr. Nicholson.” She held the door for him, and waited, as the older man went on, for Emmett to pass her, before letting it close again. She walked through the office beside Emmett. He glanced at her; today, for the first time since he had met her almost a week ago, she was wearing a uniform, her body armored in starched white cotton, her legs and feet institutionalized by white stockings and flat white shoes. The shining yellow-brown hair was pulled into a tight knot and partially covered by a prim nurse’s cap. She looked a little sturdy and almost plain; and the heat of the day had already attacked the crispness of her uniform, but he could remember her otherwise, and looked away quickly before she could catch him watching her. He held the outer door for her. “So you married her?”

  Emmett glanced at her again. “Yes.”

  “Congratulations.”

  He did not say anything.

  “Why are you afraid of me, Emmett?” the blonde girl asked.

  “Shouldn’t I be?” he asked. “After that chloral cocktail you tried to feed me in Denver?”

  “It wouldn’t have hurt you,” she said negligently. “All we wanted was to learn where she was.”

  Her eyes, watching him, were very blue and hard and unfeminine, and it seemed to him suddenly that nothing was settled, nothing solved.

  He asked, “Aren’t you going to try to convince me that I imagined it?”

  Helene Bethke said quietly, “Don’t be clever, Emmett. You don’t know as much as you think you do. You’re not as smart as you think you are. You’ve been luckier than you deserve, and so has she. Be thankful for what you’ve got.” She patted his cheek lightly. “Don’t try for the jackpot, little boy. Leave it alone, now.”

  She turned and walked away through the blinding sunshine toward where Dr. Kaufman and Kirkpatrick were talking politely to Mr. Nicholson beside his car, a long Buick.

  Emmett followed her slowly, but stopped as he came abreast of Ann’s car, opened the door, and retrieved the sunglasses he had hung on the crossarm of the steering wheel. On a sudden impulse he reached over and opened the glove compartment on the far side, the car parked left side to the curb. The snub-nosed revolver he had taken from the man who had been following them two nights before—if the man had been following them—slid out into his hand. The weapon, quite hot from the closed compartment, was a reminder that somewhere, presumably in a hospital, an unexplained individual named Henry McElroy was waiting for a shoulder to heal. Perhaps the police were already on the trail of the fawn-colored convertible with the Illinois plates; and if not, Emmett asked himself, why not? Over a day had passed. They had not been stopped along the road. It almost seemed as if the man must be shielding those who had attacked him. But why?

  He slipped the gun into his right hand slacks pocket, backed out of the car, and straightened up to put on the dark glasses; then closed the door of the convertible. As he walked toward the waiting group, he could feel the weight and bulk of the revolver in his pocket, but he did not dare to look down at himself. He felt awkward and conspicuous, as if he had lost a button from his trousers.

  He was stopped by Kirkpatrick’s outstretched hand. “I understand congratulations are in order, Mr. Emmett.” Emmett shook the big hand and made some response. Kirkpatrick clapped him on the shoulder. “Take good care of her. The little girl’s had a tough time, but it’s all fixed now, eh?” The big man turned to Mr. Nicholson. “No hard feelings, sir? You understand, I’ve got a pretty big responsibility. Kissel’s damned important to us. But I’m glad to’ve been able to help you out, even if you did have to twist my arm to make me like it.”

  Mr. Nicholson laughed. “Well, it’s the first time I’ve been treated like a potential desperado, but I can see your point.” He surveyed the group. “Mr. Kirkpatrick has offered to drive the convertible down to Santa Fe for us, so we don’t have to split up.” He gestured to the open rear door of the Buick. “Hop in back, Emmett. Want to talk to you. Doc, you can drive, can’t you?”

  Settling himself in the back seat of the big car, Emmett glanced at Ann, beside him, glad that she was on his left where she could not feel the gun. She did not quite look at him as she answered his greeting; and the warmly sentimental feeling that had grown inside him, talking about her during her absence, died abruptly.

  “How do you feel?” he asked.

  “I’m all right,” she said. “It was silly of me to faint.” Her words did not mean anything, he saw, even to her. She was only making a conventional sound rather than leave his question hanging unanswered between them; and he could see that she hoped he would not force her to make the effort again. Her face was rather pale but her mouth had been freshly made up with the clear red lipstick she used; her hair had been recently combed. The marks of the comb showed where the hair was damp at the temples. Her eyes looked straight ahead of her, avoiding him. He wished he could get her alone and talk to her.

  As the Buick slid smoothly from the curb, Emmett caught a glimpse of Kirkpatrick’s sweating brown face; the big man’s hand raised in unenthusiastic farewell, and he remembered that he had wanted a long talk with the federal man who must have the answers to a number of questions that needed asking. He recalled Kirkpatrick’s big hand crushing his fingers, patting his shoulder, the big man’s voice saying: Take good care of her, she’s had a tough time. He wondered if it could have been a warning. He shifted so that the gun in his pocket would not gouge his thigh, and tried to see, past the neat, blonde, capped head of the nurse in the front seat, where Dr. Kaufman was taking them. He wondered what it would feel like to shoot somebody, particularly a woman.

  Mr. Nicholson, in the corner of the rear seat beyond Aim, leaned forward to look at him.

  “Well, what are your plans now, John?”

  The older man’s use of his given name startled him, but he was more shocked at his realization that he had no plans. Everything had led to Dr. Kissel, and everything was to have ended tidily with Dr. Kissel.

  “I haven’t thought that far head, sir,” he said.

  “Let’s see, you’ve got a job with Southwest Petroleum, right?”

  Emmett nodded. “Starting the first.”

  The older man chuckled. “We’ve really given you quite a vacation, haven’t we, young man? Do you mind if I ask how much Southwest is paying you?”

  Emmett told him.

  He had a momentary fear that Mr. Nicholson was going to ridicule the salary, compare it, perhaps, with Ann’s monthly allowance, but the older man went on without comment:

  “Do you know any metallurgy?”

  “Not much,” Emmett said.

  “How about grease analysis? That’s more in your line, isn’t it?”

  “I can get along.”

  “Lubricating oils?”

  “That’s my field,” Emmett said.

  Mr. Nicholson rubbed the side of his nose thoughtfully. “We’re associated with Federal Refining. Their South American branch needs a chemist. Good money. Quarters furnished. After two years, vacation with pay in the States for you and—” he glanced at Ann, “—and your family, with transportation paid by the company.” He laughed. “The reason I know about it is, I was going to offer it to you anyway, to get rid of you. But it’s a real job, John. You’ll be in charge of the lab down there; it won’t be just a matter of their putting my son-in-law on the payroll, don’t worry about that.”

  They were outside the gate now, the doctor guiding the big sedan across the level, endless plain at an even sixty-five. Emmett caught a glimpse of the gold-rimmed glasses in the rear-view mirror; the eyes behind the glasses studying him briefly. He remembered that Ann had claimed that this man had tried to kill her, and at the time he had believed her. He still believed her, he found, but as you believe something to think a
bout, not to talk about it; as you might know that a man was a crook, and refrain from trusting him with your money, without feeling assured enough to announce the fact in public. He was going to get rid of Dr. Kaufman, as a doctor for Ann, and that was the extent of his intentions. Too much had happened for him to try to understand it all. But he suddenly did not like the feeling of being completely at the mercy of the small, neatly manicured hands on the steering wheel.

  He said to Mr. Nicholson, “I’d have to talk it over with Ann.”

  Mr. Nicholson said, “I can have you kids on a plane in two hours.”

  Emmett hesitated. He did not want to ask the question, but it came anyway, “What’s the rush, sir?”

  “Don’t be a damn fool, Emmett,” Mr. Nicholson said, forgetting the more familiar form of address he had been using. “Remember what I told you over the telephone yesterday. Just because somebody’s just told her she’s a heroine doesn’t change anything, does it? She didn’t know she was a heroine last Saturday when this man Stevens accused her of betraying those people.” He cleared his throat. “Hell, it’s partly my fault, but what does that help? If I’d checked with Kissel earlier she could have laughed in Stevens’ face when he told her that story; but what the hell difference is it going to make to a jury that she killed him for a mistake? He’s dead, isn’t he? She may have a trick memory, John, but my memory’s perfect, and I heard her blubbering into a telephone asking daddy please to help her, she’d just murdered a man. Kissel can’t say anything to change that!”

  Emmett was aware that the blonde girl in the seat in front of him had moved, slowly raising her hand to tuck back a strand of shining hair blown free by the rush of air through the open window beside her. He looked away from her.

  He heard his own voice saying, “One hysterical woman’s voice probably sounds pretty much like another, over the phone, Mr. Nicholson.” Not until he had said it, did the thought become clear in his mind.

  Ann’s father’s face was contemptuous. “Don’t try to tell me I wouldn’t know my own daughter’s—!”

  Helene Bethke turned. “I warned you against being too clever, Emmett,” she said sharply. “And you’re only guessing.”

  He said, a little breathlessly, “Yes, but I remember now that when you picked me up in the lobby of my hotel in Denver a couple of days ago you startled me by sounding just like Ann. At the time I was rather preoccupied, and I decided it was just my imagination. But it wasn’t, was it, Miss Bethke. You were looking for Ann. You wanted to know if I were interested enough in her to perhaps know where she was; if I’d jump at hearing her voice. I did; after all she was supposed to be safely tucked away in Young’s Canyon Ranch. But it’s interesting that you can do it, isn’t it? Imitate her, I mean. But you’re kind of a natural mimic, aren’t you? I remember, when we were talking that day, you got sarcastic and repeated back a sentence I had said, taking off my voice and expression perfectly.”

  “It doesn’t prove anything,” the blonde girl murmured. “It just shows how smart you are. You’re just showing off, Emmett. You’ve got a nice brain and you’ve used it, all the way through, very neatly and logically; you’ve even got a sort of scared ruthlessness, as I’ve got reason to remember…” She smiled briefly. “… and as poor Metschnik learned the same night, when he was following you down from that lodge in the mountains.”

  “Metschnik?”

  “The character you laid out with a jack handle. You’ll be glad to know his shoulder’s mending nicely. I think he was calling himself Henry McElroy at the time.”

  “What was he following us for?” Emmett demanded stupidly.

  “Well, darling,” Helene Bethke said, smiling, “If he saw the opportunity, he was going to kill you.”

  chapter TWENTY-FOUR

  “Fortunately,” Dr. Kaufman said, “that will no longer be necessary.”

  The doctor had slowed the car a little, and pitched his voice so that it could be heard clearly in the back seat, above the sound of the wind. Then the sedan rushed on smoothly for a while through the bright noon sunshine; the telephone poles that flickered past the windows cast no shadows. Emmett could feel the drops of perspiration run down beneath his sports shirt. Ann moved a little beside him, and he knew an aching sense of responsibility. Not only had he married her; he had brought her here. He slipped his hand into his pocket, with some difficulty because it was wet, and found the gun. It seemed like a melodramatic gesture, and he could not see himself using the weapon.

  Dr. Kaufman said, “I think we can come to a mutually satisfactory agreement.” He kept turning his head, not all the way around, as he spoke, so that his voice came back in snatches, as if he were tossing back to them the leaves from a notebook in which he had it all written down. “You see,” he said, “the gentleman with the cane back there, who has just so kindly testified to Miss Nicholson’s wartime heroism, does not happen to be Reinhard Kissel.”

  Then the car ran on for another space of time.

  Emmett heard Ann’s voice, breathlessly, “I… thought it was a trick. I thought you and Dad had arranged… to fool…” He felt her small damp hand on his wrist, and realized that she was talking to him. “I knew he wasn’t… but I didn’t want to spoil…”

  Emmett listened to them. They were way ahead of him, but he was gradually catching up. Reinhard Kissel was not Reinhard Kissel. It made a wild sort of sense. In the light of it, everything that had happened began to make a screwy sort of sense.

  “Please,” Ann whispered. “You have to believe me. I didn’t realize… I thought it was a trick to help me. It all happened so fast…”

  He could not understand the pleading, desperate note in her voice. Kissel wasn’t Kissel, and what he had said didn’t count. They were right back where they had started, and it was tough. He would have to figure out something else. It was a big disappointment, all right. Perhaps the real Kissel was dead and they would never know for certain…

  He heard Ann’s voice again, with that pleading note in it that said that she was guilty as hell of whatever she was trying to defend herself against; that said that she wanted you to tell her you did not believe something you both knew to be true about her. He glanced at her, and her eyes met his for the first time that day, and looked away.

  He whispered, “You knew, and you didn’t…!” He had caught up to them now. He was right alongside them. He was even a little ahead of them, and he took the gun out of his pocket. “Let’s go back,” he said. “Let’s go back and talk it over with Kirkpatrick.”

  He saw the gold-rimmed glasses glint in the rear-view mirror, and the neatly manicured hands tighten on the steering wheel as the doctor saw the gun. He saw the color go out of Helene Bethke’s face, watching him over the back of the seat. When she moved, he pulled the trigger. The bullet struck where he had aimed, raised dust from the upholstery and passed through the seat to smack metallically into the dashboard, passing between the doctor and the nurse. The sound of the shot was deafening inside the car. The blonde girl froze in the middle of what she had been about to do or say. The car rolled gently to a halt at the side of the road, and the heat closed in about it like a great glowing blanket Dr. Kaufman disengaged the gears and returned his hands to the steering wheel and did not look around. Presently he shivered a little.

  “Your capacity for sudden violence is a little amazing, Mr. Emmett.”

  Emmett said, “I surprise myself all to pieces sometimes. Turn the damn car around and let’s get going.”

  “Actually,” the doctor said, “it’s a rather common behavior pattern among young men who spent the war as non-combatants. A sort of compensatory mechanism to make up for certain feelings of guilt and inadequacy. You are trying to prove to yourself that if you had been in the service, you would have made as good a soldier as the next man, or perhaps a little better…”

  “That’s all right,” Emmett said. “Just start the car. I’ll take the treatment next week.”

  He was beginning to feel a little fo
olish sitting there holding the short-barreled revolver, the walnut grips slippery with sweat; and also a little sick with the knowledge that, if he did not want to become completely ridiculous, he would have to hit one of them with the next shot. As a bluff, he had carried it as far as it would go.

  “Tell him to put it away, Miss Nicholson.” The doctor’s voice was the reasonable voice of a man who had spent his life among irrational people. He coughed apologetically and corrected himself. “I’m sorry: Mrs. Emmett. Tell your husband to put the gun away, Mrs. Emmett.”

  She stirred, and Emmett glanced at her.

  “Please,” she whispered. “Oh, please, John! Don’t you understand…?”

  He stared at her incredulously. Her hand was tight on his wrist and her eyes were bright and pleading.

  “Don’t you see?” she breathed. “If we go back… tell them…”

  Emmett asked softly, “Do you know what that place was?”

  She nodded her head. “But—”

  “And you still want us to drive away without telling them they’ve got an impostor—?”

  Her voice was suddenly clear and firm. “Do you realize what will happen to me, darling, if they learn that what he said doesn’t mean anything? that I still have a perfectly good motive for killing Stevens? Is it that important, John?” Her voice changed. “Please… for me,” she whispered. “Put it away. At least hear what he has to say, darling.”

  Mr. Nicholson said, “Probably Ann’s right, Emmett.”

  “Yes,” Dr. Kaufman’s voice said, “there’s no need for violence, Emmett. Nothing is going to happen to you. I wouldn’t dare let anything happen to you now; it would call attention to precisely what I want to keep concealed. We are simply going to have a little talk. When we’re through you’ll be at liberty to run to the nearest telephone, call Mr. Kirkpatrick, and tell him that Dr. Kissel is not Dr. Kissel. If you still want to.”

  Emmett looked down at the gun in his free hand. The fact of the matter, he reflected bitterly, was that a gun was no good unless you were going to shoot somebody with it. He wasn’t, and they sensed it. He put the thing back into his pocket. The girl in the front seat relaxed visibly and ran the tip of her tongue over her dark lips. Dr. Kaufman wiped perspiration off his glasses with a clean white handkerchief. Emmett was rather shocked at the realization that they had actually been afraid of him.