Hamilton, Donald - Novel 02 (14 page)

 
          
“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.”

 
          
She
swung impatiently away from him, sipping her drink; he tasted his drink
absently, watching her. Then he sat quite still, his mouth and nose segregating
an elusive taste and odor for his brain to identify.
On me!
he thought incredulously,
She has the nerve to try it on me, a chemist!
The blonde girl
turned back to face him, about to speak; he saw her recognize his discovery in
his face.

 
          
He
was a little embarrassed. He could feel his blood singing in his ears, and he
was aware of a sense of outrage, but he could not see precisely what he was
going to do about it. Her eyes followed his face as he rose; her face turning
up to him was expressionless, the hazel eyes blank, as if a shade had dropped.
He knew that he was in the presence of something primitive and unfamiliar. People
who cared much for human life did not use chloral; it was an unreliable agent.
Helene Bethke looked cool and self-possessed and a little contemptuous. Her
composure irritated him unendurably; when she moved, he flung the drugged drink
in her face.

 
          
There
was ice in it. He saw her, through a singing haze, thrown off balance by the
shock of the cascade of ice and cold liquid; when she started again toward the
purse on the table, he was ahead of her. She did not stop. He put his shoulder
and hip into her with deliberate violence, taking the impact of her compact
body with a savage pleasure that derived from sources he was aware weren’t very
nice. She was hurled across the cocktail table to strike against the sofa and
roll off onto the floor in a flurry of green sandals and bare muscular legs and
stained white dress. He took a small gun from the green purse, looked at it for
a moment, and recalled how to put the slide back to check the loads: there was
a shell in the chamber.

 
          
“No,”
he said. “Don’t move.”

 
          
She
had pulled herself up to kneel beside the sofa, her forehead pressed against
her folded arms. Her shoulders shook with the force of her breathing as she
kneeled there, her disheveled bright hair matted and sticky, her dress splashed
and awry and ripped at the waist. Her dishevelment embarrassed him and made him
want to turn his back while she pulled herself together.

 
          
She
rose with a last shuddering intake of breath; standing, she regarded the gun
for a moment, then his face. Then she looked down at her ruined dress and,
gingerly, as if not liking to touch it, her fingers marking the silk where it
was still clean, tugged at the knot of the sash. Her face contracted with
impatience, something tore, and she stripped the dress off over her head. She
had nothing at all on beneath it. She stood there without anything on but the
green sandals, using the dress to dry her hands and face and hair. Then she
threw it at him.

 
          
As
he ducked, there were steps behind him, and a cold hard bar of metal that he
somehow knew to be a gunbarrel came down across his wrist: he dropped Helene
Bethke’s pistol. He turned slowly to face Dr. Kaufman, who had come in from the
bathroom.

 
          
“Kick
it this way, Mr. Emmett.”

 
          
He
kicked the smaller gun across the rug. The doctor picked it up and dropped it
into his pocket. He put his own revolver away but kept his hand on it.

 
          
“I’m
sorry about your wrist,” he said politely, seeing Emmett rubbing it. “I’m
afraid I struck harder than I had intended.”

 
          
“I’ll
live,” Emmett said curtly.

 
          
Dr.
Kaufman said, “Perhaps.”

 
          
He
sat in the big chair that was deep enough and low enough that, as far as quick
action was concerned, he was as effectively immobilized as if he had been tied.
The doctor sat on the sofa and told him about the climate; it seemed that it
was fine for certain respiratory diseases, the humidity and pollen count were
quite low, and yet you could count on a cooling shower several afternoons a
week. Dr. Kaufman expected that they would have one that afternoon, from the
look of the sky, although often the thunderheads dissipated themselves over the
mountains without reaching
Denver
.

 
          
Emmett
listened to him and watched, waiting for the blonde girl to return from the
bathroom. It seemed to Emmett that he had never spent so much time and effort
on trying to understand people as he had today, with so little results. He did
not know why the big man from the FBI had accused him of being a foreign agent,
when Kirkpatrick certainly had access to his agency’s wartime files, which
would show that one John E. Emmett had been thoroughly investigated and proved
to be safe for confidential work at the Federal Research Labs. He could not
understand why Helene Bethke should apparently have lied to give an alibi to a
girl she obviously hated. He could not clarify the character of Ann Nicholson
in his mind; at one moment she seemed to be a small, rather helpless, slightly
unbalanced girl who was the victim of a savage persecution, and at the next she
was a cunning maniac who had left a trail of treachery and death reaching back
to
France
and the war.

 
          
He
could not work out in his mind the relationship between the doctor and the
nurse. Ann Nicholson had accused them of being lovers, but the impatient
attitude of the girl and the rather tolerant contempt that seemed to be
characteristic of the man, did not bear out this theory. Yet they were
certainly working together. He did not even bother to try to understand what
they wanted of him. There was no sense in wasting effort guessing at what he
was going to learn in a few minutes, anyway.

 
          
Helene
Bethke came in from the bathroom, wrapping a towel about her head like a
turban. Her face was freshly washed and free of makeup except for lipstick, but
the lipstick was so fresh and heavy that it looked wet. She was wearing a white
chenille robe that parted, showing her legs as she moved; she had to keep
reaching for it. She sat down at the white vanity table and found a cleansing
tissue to blot her lips. Emmett found himself experiencing a curious
resentment; he was a little startled to realize that he did not like to see the
blonde girl making herself at home among things designed for Ann Nicholson.

 
          
“Have
you got it?” the nurse asked Dr. Kaufman over her shoulder.

 
          
“No,
I was waiting for you. Was it necessary to take a bath?”

 
          
“Did
you ever swim in Coca-Cola? I couldn’t be drinking a plain highball when I get
it thrown in my face, not me!” She dropped the tissue in the wastebasket and
turned. “He’s got it in his wallet,” she said.

 
          
Dr.
Kaufman glanced at Emmett. After a moment he held out the hand that did not
rest on the gun in his pocket.

 
          
“Please,
Mr. Emmett.”

 
          
Emmett
looked at the hand reached out to him across the cocktail table. It was like
walking into the middle of a movie. He did not have any idea what was going on.
He shrugged and took out his wallet. The doctor received it and sat back to
examine it. Helene Bethke went quickly to the sofa and, sitting on the arm,
reached over the stocky man’s shoulder and picked from the bill compartment a
slip of paper which Emmett recognized. It had been given him by the desk clerk
when he came down from his hotel room that morning.

 
          
“Mrs.
Amos Pruitt,” the doctor read, the nurse holding the slip for him. “Mrs. Amos
Pruitt, Hogback Lake Lodge, reservations.
Summit
seven two one, ring four.”

 
          
They
were both looking at Emmett with the same calculating, weighing look.

 
          
“You’d
better call,” Helene Bethke said. She passed the telephone to the man, the cord
running across her knees, one bare.

 
          
“
Summit
seven two one,” the doctor said after a
pause. “Ring four.”

 
          
The
nurse said, “Find out if—”

 
          
“Be
quiet!” He cleared his throat. “I’d like to speak to Mrs. Pruitt. Mrs. Amos
Pruitt? Oh, Mrs. Pruitt, this is Dr. Einsinger, of Young’s Valley Ranch… Yes,
Young’s Valley. That’s right. Mrs. Pruitt, we were wondering if one of our
patients could have come by your place. A young lady driving a Mercury
convertible with
Illinois
plates…”

 
          
The
room was quite still as he listened to the reply.

 
          
“I
see,” he said. “Well, thank you very much, Mrs. Pruitt. If you should happen to…
Oh, no, not dangerous at all, Mrs. Pruitt, except to herself, poor child. We
are trying to find her before she… Well, I hope so too, Mrs. Pruitt. Sorry to
have troubled you.”

 
          
He
hung up very slowly and looked at Emmett; and Emmett felt a slow relaxation and
rearrangement going on, as if a dangerous experiment had just proved to be a
failure, and the doctor was now studying the apparatus gingerly to determine
how to release the pressure or disconnect the terminals with minimum risk to
himself.

 
          
“You
see,” he said quietly, “she got away from us, Mr. Emmett.”

 
          
Emmett
said, “Yes, I got the idea.”

 
          
Dr.
Kaufman grimaced. “We stopped at a gas station…” He hesitated. “I went inside.
She asked her father to get her a soft drink from the dispenser. She had seemed
rather sick and dazed all morning, hardly capable of standing up unsupported.
He did not even consider… The moment he was out of the car she was behind the
wheel and away.”

 
          
Helene
Bethke said, “We thought you might know—”

 
          
“Actually,”
the doctor said, “it’s very important for us to find her, you understand. Not
only because of what she may do to herself, but because of what the police will
do to her if they catch her, and…” he paused and looked up, “… what she may do
to someone who does not suspect the truth about her case.”

 
          
Emmett
said, “What is the truth, Dr. Kaufman?”

 
          
“I
think you know the answer to that,” the doctor said.

 
          
“But
I understood that Miss Bethke gave her an alibi for the Stevens murder.”

 
          
“Miss
Bethke lied,” the doctor said without looking at the nurse. “Miss Bethke’s job
was to keep an eye on the patient. But Miss Bethke, unfortunately, was flirting
with a number of young men at the punchbowl when the patient slipped away from
the party. Going back to report her mistake to Mr. Nicholson, Miss Bethke heard
him on the phone talking to the manager of a local department store where the
patient was trying to cash a check. She saw the opportunity to conceal her lapse
from duty, and hurried to the store. When I came there, sent by Mr. Nicholson,
Miss Bethke gave me to believe that she had been following the patient all the
time. At this time, of course, we knew nothing about the murder, which is why I
took the step of leaving Miss Nicholson in your care. And Miss Bethke did not
see fit to confess her little deceit until
after
our session with the police the following morning.”

 
          
The
blonde girl stood up and walked quickly to the dresser. “I didn’t know anybody
had been killed,” she said. “My God! I’d been driving all night. I was dead for
sleep, I was starving, my best dress was a wreck, and suddenly those damned
policemen were shooting questions at me—”

 
          
The
doctor said with false mildness, “And now, of course, we’re all in the same
boat with Miss Bethke. The police will never believe that Mr. Nicholson and I
were not aware of the truth. Our only hope is to get the patient committed to
an institution, where she certainly belongs, and hope that the police will not
feel it worth while to pursue the investigation against a suspect who cannot be
convicted.”

 
          
Emmett
said, “Well, what was all this stuff about where she got the drug with which
she tried to kill herself?”

 
          
The
doctor glanced briefly at the nurse. “Well,” he said, “it
is
a point that’s aroused some discussion, Miss Bethke insisting,
of course, that she has not been careless…”

 
          
The
nurse said wearily, “Oh, hell, she probably did get it from me, Doctor.”

 
          
“Well,
did she or didn’t she?”

 
          
“All
right.” The blonde girl’s voice was angry. “She did. I left the damn bottle out
one night and it vanished. I didn’t dare tell anybody. I just said she’d
finished it and asked you to write another prescription. I tried to find where
the little bitch had hidden the stuff, but in some ways she’s clever as a
pack-rat—”

 
          
“That’s
enough, Miss Bethke.”

 
          
Emmett
said, “And was it necessary to slip me a Mickey Finn? Why not just ask me if I
knew where she was?”

 
          
The
doctor smiled. “Tell me honestly, Mr. Emmett, if you had known, would you have
told just upon being asked? Be honest, now.” He chuckled when Emmett hesitated.
“She is a very pretty girl, isn’t she; and very charming, too, in her happier
moments?”

 
          
There
was a knock at the door. The nurse turned at the dresser with a glass in her
hand. The doctor looked up slowly. “Come in,” Helene Bethke said, after a
pause.

 
          
The
door opened and Mr. Nicholson, in a wilted gray seersucker suit, came in,
followed by a bald man Emmett had seen before. Presently he remembered: he had
seen the man talking to the desk clerk as Helene Bethke marched him out of the
lobby of his hotel. The man had ogled the nurse’s ankles as they went past.

 
          
Mr.
Nicholson closed the door behind him, and looked at the wet rug. The glasses
had been set upright, but there was still a pool of liquid on the cocktail
table. He looked at the girl in her robe with the turban of towel about her
head, and at Emmett, and apparently what he saw added up to something in his
mind, because he said, “I wish you’d stick to medicine, Miss Bethke, and you,
Dr. Kaufman. What kind of a roughhouse has been going on in my suite? Is that a
gun in your pocket, Doc?”

 
          
The
doctor stood up and showed the weapon. He smiled apologetically. “Miss Bethke
heard Mr. Emmett receive a message from a lady this morning,” he said. “She
told me, and I thought it worth investigating as a possible lead.”

 
          
Mr.
Nicholson said, “Plaice here reports that while he was looking for Emmett to
ask him a few questions, the nurse marched him off right under his, Plaice’s
nose.”

 
          
“We
didn’t know you had anybody else—”

 
          
“And
I don’t like guns, Doc. If somebody got shot, we’d be sunk. Things are bad
enough without a lot of irresponsible—” Ann’s father checked himself. “Is that
the message? Let’s have a look at it.”

 
          
Dr.
Kaufman gave it to the nurse, who passed it to Mr. Nicholson. He read it,
snorted, showed it to the man beside him, and gave it back to the nurse.

 
          
“Mr.
Plaice has already investigated that call,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I
rang up Mrs. Pruitt myself. She has an urgent demand for a cabin. Mr. Emmett
reserved a cabin several months ago. She hasn’t heard from him since. She wants
to be sure he is going to claim it; otherwise she can give it to this other
client. As far as she knows, Emmett is planning to arrive alone.” He looked
from one face to the other with some annoyance. “Plaice has checked and found
that the lady exists, runs the place she claims to, and has a formidable
reputation for honesty and respectability. I think we can forget that particular
clue. You can give it back to Mr. Emmett, nurse.” Mr. Nicholson smiled. “Oh,
yes, and his wallet, too. I appreciate your trying to help, both of you, but
this is a case for a trained investigator, like Mr. Plaice. Mr. Plaice is a
private detective who has done some work for the company from time to time. I
have every confidence in him.” He glanced at the man beside him. “All right.
Let me know if you make any progress.”