“What did he have to say to you?”
“He said—” She hesitated. “He was the one… the aviator whose life Georges saved. He gave me the picture and said that… that Georges wanted me to know… to know he hadn’t blamed me. That he had forgiven me.”
He tried to see the expression on her averted face, but she would not turn. At last he said, “Then Georges believed you’d done it.”
Her head moved in a tiny nod.
“Then you do know,” he said. “You said you—”
She whirled to face him. “I said I didn’t remember,” she gasped. “I didn’t lie. I didn’t! Even Georges could have been mistaken, couldn’t…?” Her voice ran out abruptly, leaving the sentence unfinished.
“And the lad who carried the message?” Emmett asked. “What else did he say?”
“I’ve told you what he said.”
Emmett watched her with wary objectivity. It was like catching a mouse in a closed room; you had it, you would get it eventually, but it always found something to hide behind. “No,” he said, “you’ve told me what the message was from Georges. Didn’t—?” He cleared his throat, “—didn’t the guy have anything to say for himself? After all, he’d gone to some trouble to look you up personally, when he could have stuck the picture in the mail with a note, and forgot about it. Did he just hand you the picture and quote Georges’ dying words and walk out?”
She took the picture from his hands and ripped it in two along the crease, and dropped the pieces in the wastebasket. Then she faced him stiffly.
“No,” she said flatly, her head well back. “No, you’re perfectly right, Mr. Emmett. That wasn’t all he said. He gave me the picture, folded like that, as if he had not wanted to be contaminated by looking at it. He told me what Georges had said as if it hurt him to say it. Then he made a little speech. I don’t have to tell you what it was, do I? You can guess, can’t you?”
Emmett said slowly, “I think so.”
“He said he was going to take the story to the newspapers,” she whispered. “I wanted to die. I always want to die, but I never have the courage. I tried once, in the camp, with a knife… I couldn’t even manage to cut myself!”
“And then?”
“That’s all,” she whispered. “I ran away. I knew I had to… to see Dr. Kissel. To make sure. If he could just say something that would make me remember… To be told you’ve done something like that and not know—”
He had been in the little room too long. He could no longer feel anything for her; she had made too many demands on his emotions already, and it was too hot. When she buried her face in her hands, he found himself wondering whether or not she were peeking through her fingers to see how the gesture affected him. He could not help remembering that a man had been murdered in Chicago. He could not help the dreadful suspicion that he now knew who the victim must have been. After a time he looked away.
He turned to the papers on the bed, but as she moved behind him he found himself suddenly concentrating on tracing her path across the room by the small sounds of her feet and clothing and breathing; then she was beside him, putting her feet into the dusty black pumps by the bed; then moving away. The bathroom door closed on her. He felt himself slowly relaxing and he knew that, ridiculously, he had been afraid to have her behind him. There was no news of a Chicago murder in either paper. He took out the card Dr. Kaufman had given him and read the telephone number the doctor had written: R. Austen Nicholson, Evanston, Lake-view 2210. He picked up the telephone and asked for Evanston, Illinois.
chapter TEN
Emmett put down the phone slowly, aware that the man at the other end of the line considered him an unknown bum with dubious motives whom his daughter had probably found, drunk, outside a saloon. Emmett found himself breathing a little heavily and realized that he was angry, in spite of the fact that Mr. Nicholson had been quite polite. He looked up and saw the girl in the doorway watching him, drying her hands on a thin white hotel towel. Her face had a shiny fresh-scrubbed look.
Emmett said, “You’ll be glad to know everything is fine, Miss Nicholson. Your father told me to tell you not to worry about a thing; everything is all right.”
Relief struggled with puzzlement on her face. “Why didn’t you let me talk to him? And what’s the matter, if—?”
But he had picked up the telephone again. “I want police headquarters, Chicago,” he said. Looking up, he found her watching him. “Everything may be as beautiful as your parent thinks, but I’m not taking the word of a man I’ve only talked to long distance.”
She said stiffly, “One would think you wanted me to be a fugitive from justice.”
He said, “I don’t give a damn what you are, Miss Nicholson. I just want to know what I am.”
“Please,” she whispered. “What’s the matter? What did Dad say to you?”
His answer was cut off by a male voice in the telephone saying, “Chicago Police Headquarters.”
He said, “I want to talk to whoever’s handling the case of a man named Stevens who was found murdered last night.” He was annoyed to find his voice not quite certain, but there was something a little terrifying about calling the police about a murder.
“I’ll give you Homicide,” the voice said. Presently another voice, soft but with a hint of hoarseness, as if from too much smoking said, “Polachek here.”
He said, “My name’s Emmett. I’m calling for Miss Nicholson, Miss Ann Nicholson. She understands that you wanted to get in touch with her—”
“Oh, that’s all cleared up, Mr. Emmett,” the soft voice said quickly. “We’re sorry that it happened. The accident of her being the last known person to have talked to the victim… But of course, the testimony of her doctor and nurse frees her from any possible suspicion.”
“Do you want to talk to her? She’s right here.”
“No, I won’t bother Miss Nicholson now,” the man in Chicago said. “If we need her to fill in some background for us we’ll arrange to have her testimony taken by someone in Denver. Please give my apologies to Miss Nicholson and tell her I hope she wasn’t frightened or inconvenienced in any way.”
The smooth insincerity of the voice remained in Emmett’s ear after the connection had been broken; the man had clearly had pressure put on him and had not liked it. Emmett looked across the bed at the girl in the bathroom doorway.
“He hopes you weren’t frightened or inconvenienced in any way.” He turned his back on her hesitant smile, knowing that she was not quite sure whether the irony was his or the Chicago detective’s, but not pausing to enlighten her. He walked to the closet.
Her voice said, “If you don’t mind, I’d like something to eat before we start driving again.”
He turned with his arms full of suitcoat and topcoat. “I’m leaving,” he said. “You’re waiting here for Dr. Kaufman. He’s on his way from Denver by now; your dad was going to call him. I’m to get the hell out of here before I compromise you any further.” He dumped the stuff on the bed. “I can pick up my check at the Denver office of your dad’s company, he told me. He said he thought I’d find it adequate.”
The color left her face. “I’m sure Dad didn’t mean—!” she whispered.
“I don’t know what the hell he meant,” Emmett said wearily, “and I don’t care. I’m glad to get out of it.” He stared at her briefly. “You haven’t asked who was killed?”
Her eyes were innocent. “You mentioned the name. Stevens.”
“And it doesn’t mean anything to you?”
“No.”
“Not even,” he asked, “when I tell you that the last person Mr. Stevens is known to have talked to, is you?”
“You mean—” Her breath caught sharply. “He never told me his name.”
Emmett said, “He was found behind a signboard on Chicago’s west side with his head bashed in from behind. He died about four-thirty to five o’clock, just about the time… just a little after you’d left the party, Miss Nicholson. Naturally th
e police were interested in finding you. The body was discovered around midnight, before Dr. Kaufman and the nurse had got back. When they returned they gave you a complete alibi, and the call that had been sent out for you was canceled. I understand your father is raising hell about it.” He looked at her for a moment without liking. “You’ve got between here and Denver to decide how to explain what you and Stevens were talking about, and why you ran away. Detective Polachek said he was making arrangements to have your testimony taken.” He hesitated. “And I just want to warn you, Miss Nicholson, that man was mad. He didn’t like what your dad had said to him. You’d better pray that Dr. Kaufman and Miss Bethke weren’t lying about that alibi.”
She whispered, “Why, you think I killed him!”
He wished she would not look so extremely vulnerable, like a rumpled child, standing there with her face washed clean of the last traces of makeup. He reminded himself that the delicate face and the slight body had survived experiences that he could barely imagine. It was, he told himself, none of his business, and there was no reason for him to stick around. Very few innocent people were convicted of murder. He slung the camera case back over his shoulder. It was well after dark when he reached Denver.
He stood in the lighted station for a while, knowing that he was going back. He told himself to take it easy, at least stop and have a snack to eat. Then he heard the bus called and hurried out to it, driven by a mounting urgency. The bus driver had to wake him at the stop.
“Hey, Mac, you wanted Boyne, didn’t you?”
The other passengers obviously thought he’d had a big night in Denver and was coming home to Boyne to sleep it off. The driver helped him wrestle his belongings out the door. He looked at his watch as the bus pulled away; it read past midnight. He had never been so sleepy in his life.
The clerk at the hotel looked surprised to see him back.
“Quick trip, sir?” he asked and passed over the key. “Just leave the bags and I’ll have the boy bring them up in a minute.”
He walked stiffly across the lobby to the elevators. As he rode up he had not yet made up his mind what he was going to say to her. There was no explaining the vague panic that had seized him as he got off the bus in Denver; it would sound silly to say that he had ridden all the way there and come all the way back to see that she was all right, that Dr. Kaufman had arrived and taken over, that she had not jumped out of a window or hung herself with a stocking or drowned herself in the bathtub. It would sound as if she were very important to him, to draw him back over sixty miles, as tired as he was; it would be difficult to explain the feeling of guilt that he had had about her. She was a human being for whom he had been made responsible, and he could not feel that he had discharged the responsibility very well.
He hesitated in front of the door and knocked. There was no answer. He knocked a second time, waited, put the key into the lock and opened the door. The room was quite dark except for the faintly visible rectangle of the open window.
“Miss Nicholson,” he whispered, acutely conscious of the misinterpretations that could be put on his sneaking back into the room like this in the middle of the night. All around him the hotel was silent. “Miss Nicholson. Ann.” His voice seemed to resound through the room. He knew a sudden taste of defeat and panic as he pressed the light switch.
There was still a moment for him to try to tell himself that it was all right; that she was only sound asleep, exhausted by the events of the night and the day. She was lying in the big iron bed, covered by a sheet that was thrown back a little so that he could see her slight shoulders bare except for the narrow ribbon straps of the slip she had worn to bed, lacking a nightgown. Her blouse hung neatly on a wire hanger inside the open closet; the closet looking barren and empty with nothing inside but the blouse and her jacket and hat. Her skirt was carefully folded over the back of the only chair in the room; her stockings and undergarments lay on the seat of the chair; and her shoes stood tidily, side by side, beneath it. There was a green glass bottle lying, with her purse, beside the telephone. A single brownish capsule had spilled from it, and the screw cap lay beside it. There were not many capsules left in the bottle.
He walked slowly across the bare floor, hearing the sound of his own feet and his own breathing.
“Ann,” he said. “Ann!”
His voice sounded like the voice of a frightened man about to burst into tears. It annoyed him. Her face was rather pale. Her hair was almost smooth; it showed that she had combed it carefully before going to bed, and the pillow had only disarranged it a little. Her lips were slightly parted. She had not put on lipstick to die. He could see the tiny scar.
He picked up her wrist and tried to remember how he had been told to take a pulse in the first-aid course he had taken during the war. Under his thumb he could feel only the heavy beating of his own blood. With his forefinger he could feel nothing at all. Then she moved her head a little and her breath caught in a little gasp and she was still again. He whirled and snatched up the telephone.
chapter ELEVEN
He washed his face and studied it in the bathroom mirror, but washing it had not helped it. It still needed a shave, some nourishment other than coffee, and about twelve hours of sleep. He dried it and combed the black hair out of it. The door behind him opened to show the head of the local doctor, whose name was Williams.
“Sorry,” Dr. Williams said, starting to retreat.
“Plenty of room,” Emmett said. The doctor came in and glanced at himself in the mirror over Emmett’s shoulder, rubbing a hand over his rough chin. He was still in the trousers, T-shirt, and moccasins he had arrived in just about ten hours earlier; a young man with light crisp hair and a confident air of knowing what he was about. He had lectured Emmett on the latest methods of combating barbiturate poisoning while injecting benzedrine into Ann Nicholson as if performing a laboratory demonstration.
“How is she?” Emmett asked.
“Patient’s fine,” the doctor said. “They’re taking her to St. Luke’s, in Denver, for observation. I didn’t try to convince them that a night’s sleep and a good spanking…” He yawned at his image in the mirror. “None of my business,” he said. “Through here?”
“It’s all yours,” Emmett said. He put the comb away and went out into the bedroom, bright again with daylight.
There was no one in the room; they had moved her into the suite at the end of the hall several hours before. After getting Dr. Williams, Emmett had called Dr. Kaufman, in Denver. The psychiatrist had been startled to learn that Ann was in Boyne; Mr. Nicholson’s message had not reached him, he said; he had been out to dinner and the hotel had not notified him when he returned. Having flown down himself, he had not expected them, driving, to reach the vicinity of Denver for another day. He had arrived within an hour. Later in the morning Mr. Nicholson, himself, had arrived by private plane from Chicago; Dr. Kaufman had notified him before starting out. Between them they had managed to keep the fourth floor of the hotel in an uproar until they had found a suitable place for the patient.
Emmett squeezed his face between his fingers to work some life into it. As he stepped into the hall the door of the suite at the end opened and the psychiatrist came out, looking clean-shaven and neatly brushed, pressed, and polished for a man who had been called in the early morning hours to drive sixty miles on an emergency call, but then, Emmett reflected, he had looked the same way in the lunchwagon in the middle of Iowa where they had first met in the middle of the night. The doctor turned in the doorway, reaching back a helping hand, and Ann Nicholson came out, leaning on the arm of one of the hotel maids.
She was dressed exactly as she had been when Emmett first saw her, her costume complete to hat and purse and white gloves; her blouse had been washed and ironed and the pale gabardine suit cleaned and pressed. Her hair was brushed smoothly out of sight beneath the fragile veiled hat, and under the veil she had the proper amount of makeup in the proper places; and she had the painted-clown look of a sick per
son who had been washed, dressed, and made presentable by someone else. As she was turning away toward the elevators she looked at him briefly, a blank look of nonrecognition that shocked and bewildered him. She did not know him at all.
He heard the elevator descend. Poor kid, he thought; and he felt again the sense of loss that he had felt once before, when Dr. Kaufman had first told him about her case while she slept in the car across the road—as if some part of his consciousness had recognized something that he could have become very fond of. Yes, he said to himself irritably, sure, she had damn nice legs. It was like thinking of someone who was dead.
“Oh, there you are, Emmett.”
He looked up to see her father come toward him down the hall; not a tall man but given an impression of height by the way he carried himself. Someone during the morning had told Emmett that Mr. Nicholson had served with the marines during the First World War; he had apparently never forgotten the training. He had a lined, brown, rectangular face, a little too big for his body, and stiff, short, graying dark hair. He carried a panama hat in one hand and a slip of yellow paper in the other, which he extended to Emmett. Emmett took the slip and saw that it was a check for five hundred dollars. He was a little relieved. He had been more or less expecting to catch hell.
“That’s all you’re going to get, young man,” Mr. Nicholson’s voice said.
Emmett looked up, startled.
The older man said harshly, “I don’t want to see you coming around again with your hand out, Emmett. I don’t know what you’ve managed to worm out of Ann; if you’re smart you can probably add a few things together, and maybe you think you’ve got something worth my paying for, but remember this: you picked her up and drove her across four or five states, and took her to a hotel, where she tried to kill herself. Figure what that would look like to a jury.”
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