Dr. Phibes

by William Goldstein

  He’d been going only a few months when his instructor, a veteran named Cunningham, told him he would be able to get his solo in less than a year’s time if he could spend a few more hours each week in the air. Kitaj accepted the challenge with his usual thoroughness. Wednesdays found him in the noontime traffic after spending six hours in the surgical clinics or ampitheatre. He was usually revved up by 1:30 and, with even the smallest assist from the weather, could log three or four hours during the afternoon. In seven months he was flying with a verve and assurance that few wartime pilots achieved, and Cunningham pronounced him ready for his solo with blessings.

  Audrey, sportswoman that she was, would have no part of the young surgeon’s enthusiasm for flying. In conversation, she maintained that she was too involved with equestrian etiquette to develop any appreciation for aerodynamics; but secretly she knew that she’d be too frightened ever to accompany Mark to the aerodrome—a fact she’d never admit to him.

  The dashing surgeon brought the first intimations of love into Audrey’s young life. She knew this and wisely let the process take its course.

  For his part, Mark Kitaj was above such inducements. He was comfortable, awfully comfortable with Audrey Basehart, but just that—and nothing more. The fact that he was a gentleman would vouchsafe his treating her well. He would leave her with more than he found her.

  One particular Wednesday morning he cleaned up quickly after a routine three hours in the surgical pavillion. He’d worked with Bernie Schwarz, a muscular Dubliner who had almost as much speed as Kitaj did. He and Schwarz had roomed together for a year at Sheffield but had lost touch when Schwarz went back to his native Ireland to complete his medical studies. They’d met by chance a year earlier and were now renewing their acquaintance.

  “Why don’t you and Audrey join Lisa and me for lunch?” Schwarz shot at Kitaj over the large steel washbasin.

  “Not today, Bernie, me bucko. Today’s my solo.” Mark gave a final flourish with the green soap, spraying the air with flecks of suds.

  “You’re kidding! You just started a few months ago. Now I know what you’ve been doing all these weekends. And here I’d thought you’d gotten serious on us.”

  “I am serious. It’s the ladies who aren’t. They want a rose-covered cottage and baby and three months on the continent within a year. And where’s there room for thee and me?”

  “We’re the breadwinners, Mark, or don’t you read those ladies’ magazines? You know a contented man should be sent off to work with a balanced breakfast and greeted with kisses at the door.”

  “I’ll take what comes after. And leave the rest up to the chaps who write that drivel.”

  “The whole lot of it is done by maiden aunts. At least that’s what my friends in publishing circles tell me.” Schwarz winked and threw his towel into a hamper.

  “Who wouldn’t know what to do with a man if they got one in the parish rummage sale.” Kitaj discarded his long green surgeon’s smock and, rummaging about inside his locker, put on his shirt and began to knot his tie. “Tell you what, let’s meet for drinks tonight. Audrey and I planned on the theatre. We can celebrate and make a foursome out of it.”

  Schwarz grinned. “Audrey again. For an independent man of leisure, there’s one young lady who knows where you spend your time. She must be doing something right.”

  “She hasn’t done anything wrong. Besides, she has a purpose in life. Other than the obvious one.”

  “And she’s brilliant and beautiful to boot. You’re beginning to sound like the rest of us. When’re you going to pop the question?”

  “When she corners me with her father’s bank statements.” Kitaj snorted. “Seriously though, we’re really quite unserious. The young lady has her studies. And I have my work.”

  “Aha! That’s just it. You have your work but it doesn’t have you.”

  Kitaj was annoyed. “What’re you getting at Bernie?”

  “Not all that much and don’t look so alarmed, Mark. But your eyes do have that distant stare. . . .”

  “Oh, come off it!”

  “And your hands move a bit faster. And your pulse speeds up. And when the end of the day comes: zowie!”

  “Stop before I run you out of here.” Kitaj threw his towel at Schwarz then started to chase him. Schwarz dodged behind the sink, laughing.

  “See, I told you she’d gotten under your skin. But relax and let it happen. It’s not such a bad feeling, after all; and you couldn’t have found a better girl.”

  Kitaj returned to his locker and began putting on his coat. “You’re reading too many of those magazines yourself, Bernie. Real life isn’t just letting things happen. It’s push and shove, a bloody snakepit, a jungle. If a man doesn’t make things happen, he’s not a man.”

  Kitaj grew pensive. “A man doesn’t have all that much time and certainly damned little to waste on‘feelings’ or‘thoughts’ or‘intuitions.’ Nobody ever asked William Harvey what his‘intentions’ were in studying veins and arteries. Why? Because nobody was around who could ask the question. But Harvey went right at it, got precious little acknowledgment for his work too, and when he was finished, he and subsequent generations knew quite a bit more about what keeps us going!”

  “But Harvey was a genius, Mark.”

  “With one difference. William Harvey was a genius who had the push himself—and let’s emphasize that‘himself.’ How many brilliant bastards do you know who’ve been content to sit on their duffs reading manuals and practicing medicine by rote?”

  “Now that you ask, too damn many.”

  “Precisely. Jerzy Kaminski, that Polish chap we kaew at school, knew more about tropical medicine than the whole bloody department. Where d’you think he is now?”

  Schwarz threw up his hands.

  “He’s a fat OB-Gyn man, languishing out in the West End in a three-room suite that’s something out of Vanity Fair. His office looks more like a ladies’ wig parlor than a physician’s workroom. And those women! Snivelling society brats in their £100 creations, looking like a bunch of ripe rutabagas.”

  “Where’d you find poor Kaminski out?”

  “He rang me up some months ago out of the blue. Invited me to an office reception. In a fit of sentiment I made the mistake of going. So help me, he was celebrating the installation of a new tilt-table. He even went far enough to demonstrate it—with his nurse!”

  “Good Lord, I hope she was pretty!”

  “She was old enough to be a retired nanny. And even then the old girl clung to her modesty, insisted on wearing the examining smock throughout. He had her perched up there like a prize pickle.”

  Schwarz started to laugh. “Did the doctor demonstrate his technique?”

  “Of course. Tapped her knee, moved the levers and she opened just as if she was ready to breach a set of twins.”

  Schwarz roared. “No, he didn’t!”

  “Yes, he did. Veins and all. It was a spectacle. Immediately after, he served punch and cookies.”

  “Well, at least he observed the social amenities.”

  “Which is probably a fitting epitaph for Dr. Kaminski—a man that should’ve been.”

  “But you just said he had his three-room suite in the West End.”

  “Plucking his manicured hands into those overripe plums when he should be in Kuala Lumpur doing something about cholera.”

  “I see! The altruist speaks. You want this poor fool, who probably didn’t have much to begin with, to sell out the few comforts he’s worked—and worked like hell, as a matter of fact—to earn. You want him to give up the shined shoes, that one new suit a year, the linen table with the pretty wife’s indifferent cooking spread on it every night. You want him to give up the bright-eyed kids, even that West End suite, to go where? Kuala Lumpur! To rot in a thousand square miles of steaming jungle, that’s where!”

  “But you’ve missed the point.”

  “What point? He’ll go and rot to make some notations in flimsy notebooks that maybe
, if we’re lucky, somebody else will be able to decipher in a decade or two.”

  “Cholera kills one-hundred-thousand souls annually. Kaminski was doing original work. Chances are that he could have had the disease licked, and also . . .”

  “Say, Doctor, we’ll take on the universe next. I’ve got to get along to pick up a young lady for lunch. And you have plans too, I believe.” Schwarz cut the conversation short and got ready to leave.

  “Yes, I’ve got plans. Today’s the solo, you know. As soon as I get it, I’m going to convert you to a believer.”

  “Not on your life. I’ll go as fast as I want right here on the ground. At least in an automobile I know where I’m heading.”

  “And you have only half the fun of getting there. Just one flight into and through those clouds would convince you, Bernie.”

  “No, thanks.” Bernie shook his head emphatically. “Say, Mark!”

  Kitaj looked up from his briefcase into which he was stuffing books.

  “Good luck!”

  Kitaj nodded. “Thanks, Bernie. See you later for drinks.”

  The door closed and Kitaj finished arranging his books in the old leather case. Then he tied the straps and was amused to see that his hands were shaking.

  Chappter 12

  AUDREY was alone when Kitaj got back to his office. She was sitting on a tall stool, half-turned so she could look out the window. Her cheeks were flushed from the sunlight and her brown hair shone softly. She seemed deep in thought, her high collar, piled white and lacy about her throat, giving her a slightly scholarly look. She wore a rose-colored cameo on a black ribbon, which showed just above the lace. Her hands were folded quietly in the gatherings of her long, black woolen skirt. Her plain clothes only accentuated the vivid colors of the girl herself. In that warm midday light, she was like a Renoir painting, a very beautiful one indeed.

  “Have you been waiting long?” Mark was attentive.

  “Not too. Sally and I had a late breakfast. She likes to stay in bed after Charles leaves and I caught up on my reading.”

  Kitaj smiled at her. “That’s a fine pin. Is it very old?”

  Audrey looked down at the brooch at her throat. As she shifted her gaze away from the window, her eyes seemed to film over. They looked dreamy and soft under her long slanted lashes. “My grandmother gave it to me. It’s a likeness of her mother.”

  “So we have her to thank. What was her name?”

  “Eustachia. Eustachia Vincent. Lionel, her husband, went to America right after my grandmother was born. He was a clerk in a dry goods store but the sea had gotten to him.”

  “He sounds like a romantic.”

  “Not entirely. There’d been a business setback here and he wanted to repair the family fortunes. He managed to scrape enough money together for passage. A few months later he wrote that he found work as a Boston whaler and that he’d booked on a vessel headed for the waters off Peru. That was the last my great-grandmother heard from him.”

  “How sad. Did she remarry?”

  “No. Eustachia raised the little girl single-handedly. The shipping company awarded her an annuity so they were comfortable enough. My grandmother always said that the experience built up her mother’s character; Eustachia was jut nineteen at the time, her husband had been but 30.” Audrey lifted her chin as she spoke.

  Mark was impressed by her forthright manner. She was even now showing the magnificent womanliness that seemed inbred into her family. He could, had he been so disposed, easily find reasons for extending their acquaintance beyond the prescribed boundaries.

  “How was your morning?” Audrey shifted to face him more fully.

  “Routine. A stockbroker; the poor devil apparently has a wife he doesn’t need. We patched up his stomach but he’ll have to leave either the cocktails or her alone.”

  “Was her cooking that bad?” She pursed her lips.

  “Oh, no. Not that at all. His ulcers are caused by worry which comes from many sources, including the usual haggle on the job and aggravation at home. For people on the way up, such as this stockbroker, ulcers are an occupational hazard.”

  “Is that the price of brilliance, Dr. Kitaj?”

  “Only for those with faint heart and shallow competence. The really great seem to be able to take it all in stride. They live with disdain and die with energy. King Harold was struck down by an arrow, Shelley drowned, Caesar was knifed by his colleagues, Napoleon was consumed by cancer.”

  “You speak as if it’s nobler to die in a violent fashion.”

  He thought for a moment then began to pace about. “I suppose you could say that, although perhaps I’m not really in a position to speak objectively about the ways of death. A physician is, after all, a biological craftsman. He assists life, or at least he’s supposed to.”

  “At a pretty handsome fee.”

  “Yes, but when you figure the years a young man must invest in the profession, his compensation is in line with the rest of the economy.”

  Audrey grimaced. “Oh, Mark, I don’t want to talk about those esoteric things. It’s you I’m worried aboutt”

  “How’s that?”

  “Well, it’s the airplane.” She dropped her eyes. He could see that she was quite agitated. “It’s your first time alone.”

  He stopped pacing, touched by her concern. “So that’s what you wanted to talk about! You’re worried about my solo flight.”

  “No, it’s not that at all.” She was murmuring now.

  “Yes, it must be. You’re blushing. Has it really upset you?” He put his hand on her shoulder.

  “Oh, Mark.” She looked up but once. He bent his head and brushed her hair with his chin. Then he kissed her forehead, her eyelashes, her nose, and her cheeks. He lifted her long hair in his hands, drawing her face closer with great gentleness and kissed her once, twice, again and again, softly brushing her hair, cheeks, eyes, with his lips. He could see the part in her hair and smell her perfume. Her lips were wet now, moist from his.

  She murmured and he caught his name between sighs. She whispered, but he didn’t want to hear. Her head turned from side to side, her eyes closed and her long lashes almost touched her cheeks.

  He kissed her eyes again, brushing one then the other, then again and twice more. Her breath came in small gasps. His hand moved in the air, searching for something. He was standing very close to her now. His hand found her waist, then both hands circled her body and he bent down towards her mouth, found it waiting, turned up in the air, turned up to him. He pressed down, kissing her lips, her throat, kissing the white horizon now aglow. His hands remained around her waist. She sighed, breathed deeply; his hands held.

  She moved, covering his face with her perfumed hair. Now she was pressed tightly against him, her hair covering him, her mouth at his, purposeful, pressing, moving, pressing deeply. She kissed him, kissed him, again and again. She was surrounding him, overwhelming him, her mouth against his.

  He groped in the air; he edged back, bending further backward. He almost slipped. She was still kissing him, swarming over him. She’d opened her blouse and was moving his hand inside the white silk, open now beneath the rose brooch and the black ribbon. She was soft, so soft, except for the firm pink nipples standing erect.

  He was breathing hard, feeling her body drive into his. She kissed him again. He could see her nude breasts, full and pink. He was bent backwards, with her above and over him. He was pressed back down, surrounded by the incense of her hair. He was against the ledge, losing hold, her breasts, freed from the white blouse, thrust into his chest. She moved against him, swaying in a steady rhythm.

  “Time to leave.” Somehow he had broken away and collected himself.

  “Now?” She kissed him again.

  “I must go,” he said.

  “Where?” She was still close to him.

  He turned his head. “I won’t be long.”

  She kissed him, more lightly now. “Please stay.”

  “We’ll have this
evening.” He was moving from her. He kissed her forehead and kept moving away. She held him, but quietly. They stayed together again, waited some long moments, then he got up.

  “Mark!”

  He was putting on his coat. She gathered herself.

  “A Dr. Vesalius called. He called a few times this morning while you were in surgery. I promised faithfully I’d get you to call back.”

  She was all right now. After all, they’d be together in the evening. He brushed her forehead. “Never promise anything faithfully.” He thought awhile. “Vesalius? Vesalius? Good God . . . haven’t seen him in years. I interned under him.”

  “I think you should call him. He seemed terribly anxious.”

  Kitaj laughed and moved to the door. “Probably remembered something he forgot to teach me. It’ll have to keep. I’m late already.”

  He returned and kissed her lightly. “I’ll call him this evening. Right now I’ve got my first solo coming up. Think of it!”

  She gave his hand a final squeeze. “Good luck, Mark.”

  “Later, darling.” He was out the door before she could say goodbye.

  While Mark Kitaj raced out to Northolt Aerodrome, a less-than-cordial interview was taking place in the sedately furnished offices of Sir John David Crow. Like most top administrators with the Police Department, Sir John shunned publicity. He kept his public appearances to a minimum, preferring to attend to the department from his green wallpapered suite of offices. The offices were located at the end of a seldom-used corridor on the seventh floor of the rambling Metropolitan Police Headquarters—a perfect hiding place. To Sir John, the cardinal principle of detection was invisibility; and it had paid off with a better-than-average record of success during the years of his tenure.

  In practice, Crow was not so much the master sleuth as he was the organizer. He marshalled his forces, shifting assignments to meet the changing texture of each case. He loathed grandstand tactics and used his men parsimoniously. As a consequence, he placed a great deal of responsibility on his subordinates and came down hard on them if their performances didn’t meet with his expectations.