"Thank you, Doctor," George breathed.
Dr. Harley turned to look at Alexandra's husband, his eyes filled with loathing. George's clothes had been hastily donned, but his knuckles were raw, and his hands and face were still spattered with blood. "Don't thank me. I'm doing this for the Blackwells. But on one condition. That you agree to see a psychiatrist."
"I don't need a-"
"Then I'm calling the police, you sonofabitch. You're not fit to be running around loose." Dr. Harley reached for the telephone again.
"Wait a minute!" George stood there, thinking. He had almost thrown everything away, but now, miraculously, he was being given a second chance. "All right. I'll see a psychiatrist."
In the far distance they heard the wail of a siren.
She was being rushed down a long tunnel, and colored lights were flashing on and off. Her body felt light and airy, and she thought, I can fly if I want to, and she tried to move her arms, but something was holding them down. She opened her eyes, and she was speeding down a white corridor on a gurney being wheeled by two men in green gowns and caps. I'm starring in a play, Eve thought. I can't remember my lines. What are my lines? When she opened her eyes again, she was in a large white room on an operating table.
A small thin man in a green surgical gown was leaning over her. "My name is Keith Webster. I'm going to operate on you."
"I don't want to be ugly," Eve whispered. It was difficult to talk. "Don't let me be ... ugly."
"Not a chance," Dr. Webster promised. "I'm going to put you to sleep now. Just relax."
He gave a signal to the anesthesiologist.
George managed to wash the blood off himself and clean up in Eve's bathroom, but he cursed as he glanced at his wrist-watch. It was three o'clock in the morning. He hoped Alexandra was asleep, but when he walked into their living room, she was waiting for him.
"Darling! I've been frantic! Are you all right?"
"I'm fine, Alex."
She went up to him and hugged him. "I was getting ready to call the police. I thought something terrible had happened."
How right you are, George thought.
"Did you bring him the contracts?"
"Contracts?" He suddenly remembered. "Oh, those. Yes. I did." That seemed like years ago, a lie from the distant past.
"What on earth kept you so late?"
"His plane was delayed," George said glibly. "He wanted me to stay with him. I kept thinking he'd take off at any minute, and then finally it got too late for me to telephone you. I'm sorry."
"It's all right, now that you're here."
George thought of Eve as she was being carried out on the stretcher. Out of her broken, twisted mouth, she had gasped,
"Go ... home ... nothing ... happened___" But what if Eve died? He would be arrested for murder. If Eve lived, everything would be all right; it would be just as it was before. Eve would forgive him because she needed him.
George lay awake the rest of the night. He was thinking about Eve and the way she had screamed and begged for mercy. He felt her bones crunch again beneath his fists, and he smelled her burning flesh, and at that moment he was very close to loving her.
It was a stroke of great luck that John Harley was able to obtain the services of Keith Webster for Eve. Dr. Webster was one of the foremost plastic surgeons in the world. He had a private practice on Park Avenue and his own clinic in lower Manhattan, where he specialized in taking care of those who had been born with disfigurements. The people who came to the clinic paid only what they could afford. Dr. Webster was used to treating accident cases, but his first sight of Eve Blackwell's battered face had shocked him. He had seen photographs of her in magazines, and to see that much beauty deliberately disfigured filled him with a deep anger.
"Who's responsible for this, John?"
"It was a hit-and-run accident, Keith."
Keith Webster snorted. "And then the driver stopped to strip her and snuff out his cigarette on her behind? What's the real story?"
"I'm afraid I can't discuss it. Can you put her back together again?" 'That's what I do, John, put them back together again."
It was almost noon when Dr. Webster finally said to his assistants, "We're finished. Get her into intensive care. Call me at the slightest sign of anything going wrong."
The operation had taken nine hours.
Eve was moved out of intensive care forty-eight hours later. George went to the hospital. He had to see Eve, to talk to her, to make sure she was not plotting some terrible vengeance against him.
"I'm Miss Blackwell's attorney," George told the duty nurse. "She asked to see me. I'll only stay a moment."
The nurse took one look at this handsome man and said, "She's not supposed to have visitors, but I'm sure it's all right if you go in."
Eve was in a private room, lying in bed, flat on her back, swathed in bandages, tubes connected to her body like obscene appendages. The only parts of her face visible were her eyes and her lips.
"Hello, Eve ..."
"George ..." Her voice was a scratchy whisper. He had to lean close to hear what she said.
"You didn't... tell Alex?"
"No, of course not." He sat down on the edge of the bed. "I came because—"
"I know why you came___We're... going ahead with it.. ."'
He had a feeling of indescribable relief. "I'm sorry about this, Eve. I really am. I—"
"Have someone call Alex ... and tell her I've gone away ... on a trip ... back in a few ... weeks ..."
"All right."
Two bloodshot eyes looked up at him. "George ... do me a favor."
"Yes?"
"Die painfully...."
She slept. When she awakened, Dr. Keith Webster was at her bedside.
"How are you feeling?" His voice was gentle and soothing.
"Very tired ... What was the ... matter with me?"
Dr. Webster hesitated. The X rays had shown a fractured zygoma and a blowout fracture. There was a depressed zygomatic arch impinging on the temporal muscle, so that she was unable to open or close her mouth without pain. Her nose was broken. There were two broken ribs and deep cigarette burns on her posterior and on the soles of her feet.
"What?" Eve repeated.
Dr. Webster said, as gently as possible, "You had a fractured cheekbone. Your nose was broken. The bony floor where your eye sits had been shifted. There was pressure on the muscle that opens and closes your mouth. There were cigarette burns. Everything has been taken care of."
"I want to see a mirror," Eve whispered.
That was the last thing he would allow. "I'm sorry," he smiled. "We're fresh out."
She was afraid to ask the next question. "How am I—how am I going to look when these bandages come ofF?"
"You're going to look terrific. Exactly the way you did before your accident."
"I don't believe you."
"You'll see. Now, do you want to tell me what happened? I have to write up a police report."
There was a long silence. "I was hit by a truck."
Dr. Keith Webster wondered again how anyone could have tried to destroy this fragile beauty, but he had long since given up pondering the vagaries of the human race and its capacity for cruelty. "I'll need a name," he said gently. "Who did it?"
"Mack."
"And the last name?"
"Truck."
Dr. Webster was puzzled by the conspiracy of silence. First John Harley, now Eve Blackwell
"In cases of criminal assault," Keith Webster told Eve, "I'm required by law to file a police report."
Eve reached out for his hand and grasped it and held it tightly. "Please, if my grandmother or sister knew, it would kill them. If you tell the police ... the newspapers will know. You nustn't... please___"
"I can't report it as a hit-and-run accident. Ladies don't usually run out in the street without any clothes on."
"Please!"
He looked down at her, and was filled with pity. "I suppose you could have tripped
and fallen down the stairs of your home."
She squeezed his hand tighter. "That's exactly what happened ..."
Dr. Webster sighed. "That's what I thought."
Dr. Keith Webster visited Eve every day after that, sometimes stopping by two or three times a day. He brought her flowers and small presents from the hospital gift shop. Each day Eve would ask him anxiously, "I just he here all day. Why isn't any- one doing anything?"
"My partner's working on you," Dr. Webster told her.
"Your partner?"
"Mother Nature. Under all those frightening-looking ban-dages, you're healing beautifully."
Every few days he would remove the bandages and examine her.
"Let me have a mirror," Eve pleaded. But his answer was always the same: "Not yet."
He was the only company Eve had, and she began to look forward to his visits. He was an unprepossessing man, small and thin, with sandy, sparse hair and myopic brown eyes that costantly blinked. He was shy in Eve's presence, and it amused her.
"Have you ever been married?" she asked.
"No."
"Why not?"
"I—I don't know. I guess I wouldn't make a very good husband. I'm on emergency call a lot."
"But you must have a girl friend."
He was actually blushing. "Well, you know ..."
"Tell me," Eve teased him.
"I don't have a regular girl friend."
"I'll bet all the nurses are crazy about you."
"No. I'm afraid I'm not a very romantic kind of person."
To say the least, Eve thought. And yet, when she discussed Keith Webster with the nurses and interns who came in to perform various indignities on her body, they spoke of him as though he were some kind of god.
'The man is a miracle worker," one intern said. "There's nothing he can't do with a human face."
They told her about bis work with deformed children and criminals, but when Eve asked Keith Webster about it, he dismissed the subject with, "Unfortunately, the world judges people by their looks. I try to help those who were born with physical deficiencies. It can make a big difference in their lives."
Eve was puzzled by him. He was not doing it for the money or the glory. He was totally selfless. She had never met anyone lik him, and she wondered what motivated him. But it was an idle curiosity. She had no interest in Keith Webster, except for what he could do for her.
Fifteen days after Eve checked into the hospital, she was moved to a private clinic in upstate New York.
"You'll be more comfortable here," Dr. Webster assured her.
Eve knew it was much farther for him to travel to see her, and yet he still appeared every day.
"Don't you have any other patients?" Eve asked.
"Not like you."
* * *
Five weeks after Eve entered the clinic, Keith Webster removed the bandages. He turned her head from side to side. "Do you feel any pain?" he asked.
"No."
"Any tightness?"
"No."
Dr. Webster looked up at the nurse. "Bring Miss Blackwell a mirror."
Eve was rilled with a sudden fear. For weeks she had been longing to look at herself in a mirror. Now that the moment was here, she was terrified. She wanted her own face, not the face of some stranger.
When Dr. Webster handed her the mirror, she said faintly, "I'm afraid—"
"Look at yourself," he said gently.
She raised the mirror slowly. It was a miracle! There was no
change at all; it was her face. She searched for the signs of scars, There were none. Her eyes filled with tears.
She looked up and said, "Thank you," and reached out to give Keith Webster a kiss. It was meant to be a brief thank-you
kiss, but she could feel his lips hungry on hers.
He pulled away, suddenly embarrassed. "I'm—I'm glad you're pleased," he said.
Pleased! "Everyone was right. You are a miracle worker."
He said shyly, "Look what I had to work with."
George Mellis had been badly shaken by what had happened. He had come perilously close to destroying everything he wanted. George had not been fully aware before of how much the control of Kruger-Brent, Ltd., meant to him. He had been satisfied to live on gifts from lonely ladies, but he was married to a Blackwell now, and within his reach was a company larger than anything his father had ever conceived of. Look at me, Papa. I'm alive again. I own a company bigger than yours. It was no longer a game. He knew he would kill to get what he wanted.
George devoted himself to creating the image of the perfect husband. He spent every possible moment with Alexandra. They breakfasted together, he took her out to lunch and he made it a point to be home early every evening. On weekends they went to the beach house Kate Blackwell owned in East Hampton, on Long Island, or flew to Dark Harbor in the company Cessna 620. Dark Harbor was George's favorite. He loved the rambling old house, with its beautiful antiques and priceless paintings. He wandered through the vast rooms. Soon all this will be mine, he thought. It was a heady feeling.
George was also the perfect grandson-in-law. He paid a great deal of attention to Kate, She was eighty-one, chairman of the board of Kruger-Brent, Ltd., and a remarkably strong, vital woman. George saw to it that he and Alexandra dined with her once a week, and he telephoned the old woman every few days to chat with her. He was carefully building up the picture of a loving husband and caring grandson-in-law.
No one would ever suspect him of murdering two people he loved so much.
George Mellis's sense of satisfaction was abruptly shattered by a telephone call from Dr. John Harley.
"I've made arrangements for you to see a psychiatrist. Dr. Peter Templeton."
George made his voice warm and ingratiating. "That's really not necessary any more, Dr. Harley. I think—"
"I don't give a damn what you think. We have an agreement—I don't report you to the police, and you consult a psychiatrist. If you wish to break that agree—"
"No, no," George said hastily. "If that's what you want, fine."
"Dr. Templeton's telephone number is five-five-five-three-one-six-one. He's expecting your call. Today." And Dr. Harley dammed down the receiver.
The damned busybody, George thought angrily. The last thing in the world he needed was to waste time with a shrink, but he could not risk Dr. Harley's talking. He would call this Dr. Tem-pleton, see him once or twice and that would be the end of it.
Eve telephoned George at the office. "I'm home." "Are you—?" He was afraid to ask. "All right?" "Come and see for yourself. Tonight." "It's difficult for me to get away just now. Alex and I—" "Eight o'clock."
He could hardly believe it. Eve stood in front of him, looking just as beautiful as ever. He studied her face closely and could find no sign of the terrible damage he had inflicted upon her.
"It's incredible! You—you look exactly the same."
"Yes. I'm still beautiful, aren't 1, George?" She smiled, a cat smile, thinking of what she planned to do to him. He was a sick animal, not fit to live. He would pay in full for what he had done to her, but not yet. She still needed him. They stood there, smiling at each other.
"Eve, I can't tell you how sorry I—"
She held up a hand. "Let's not discuss it. It's over. Nothing has changed."
But George remembered that something had changed. "I got a call from Harley," he said. "He's arranged for me to see some damned psychiatrist."
Eve shook her head. "No. Tell him you haven't time."
"I tried. If I don't go, he'll turn in a report of the—the accident to the police."
"Damn!"
She stood there, deep in thought. "Who is he?"
"The psychiatrist? Someone named Templeton. Peter Templeton."
"I've heard of him. He has a good reputation."
"Don't worry. I can just he on his couch for fifty minutes and say nothing. If—"
Eve was not listening. An idea had come to her, and she was exploring it.
She turned to George. "This may be the best thing that could have happened."
Peter Templeton was in his middle thirties, just over six feet, with broad shoulders, clean-cut features and inquisitive blue eyes, and he looked more like a quarterback than a doctor. At the moment, he was frowning at a notation on his schedule: George Mellis—grandson-in-law of Kate Blackwell
The problems of the rich held no interest for Peter Templeton. Most of his colleagues were delighted to get socially prominent patients. When Peter Templeton had first begun his practice, he had had his share, but he had quickly found he was unable to sympathize with their problems. He had dowagers in his office literally screaming because they had not been in-vited to some social event, financiers threatening to commit suicide because they had lost money in the stock market, overweight matrons who alternated between feasting and fat farms. The world was full of problems, and Peter Templeton had long since decided that these were not the problems he was interested in helping to solve.
George Mellis. Peter had reluctantly agreed to see him only because of his respect for Dr. John Harley. "I wish you'd send him somewhere eke, John," Peter Templeton had said. "I really have a full schedule."
"Consider this a favor, Peter."
"What's his problem?"
"That's your department. I'm just an old country doctor."
"All right," Peter had agreed. "Have him call me."
Now he was here. Dr. Templeton pressed down the button on the intercom on his desk. "Send Mr. Mellis in."
Peter Templeton had seen photographs of George Mellis in newspapers and magazines, but he was still unprepared for the overpowering vitality of the man. He gave new meaning to the word charisma.
They shook hands. Peter said, "Sit down, Mr. Mellis."
George looked at the couch. "Over there?"
"Wherever you're comfortable."
George took the chair opposite the desk. George looked at Peter Templeton and smiled. He had thought he would dread this moment, but after his talk with Eve, he had changed his Bind. Dr. Templeton was going to be his ally, his witness.
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