The Thing in B-3 Page 9

  He felt the feather-light touch of her hand on his shoulder. “Bill?” she said softly.

  He lifted his head slowly. “What if I put the psychiatrist off a little longer?”

  “But why? The quicker you....”

  “Why?” he echoed. It was hard to look at her suffering and tell her why. “Betty . . .” he pleaded, taking her hand in both of his, in almost a fatherly gesture, “what if a psychiatrist doesn’t have the answer to this one?”

  “You could try....”

  “And cut the slender thread?”

  “You’re not a laboratory animal for Connell to observe!”

  “Forget Pat Connell. This is something I have to do for myself.”

  Her shoulders folded slightly. “The way men had to plant a flag on the South Pole, climb Mount Everest, and risk their lives in weightless space just because it’s there?”

  “Yes, I guess so—because she's there.” He saw the small, fresh flare in her eyes and added quickly, “More accurately, the impression is there. My conscious mind accepts the evidence of other observers. I haven’t gone that far. Consciously I’m well aware that there is no material body in that morgue compartment.”

  She closed her eyes. “Bill, this can’t be real. . . .” He ignored the glances they were drawing from passing students.

  “Betty, I’d do almost anything to make it easier for you.”

  “I know,” she said with a little gulping sound. She opened her eyes, looked about her, and stood up. “Well, I guess we’ve said it, haven’t we?”

  “Not quite.” He rose beside her. “What are you doing for lunch tomorrow?”

  A glint of tears spilled over. “Meeting an impossible character named William Latham, Jr.” She mustered a look that was both bright and woebegone.

  “I’ll walk you to your car,” Bill said.

  On the way he considered telling her about Elizabeth Braxley, but then he decided not to. They hadn’t solved or settled anything between them, merely put it off. It was best to let things rest as they were for the moment.

  He opened the door on the driver’s side of her small MG. She slid under the steering wheel and started the car, avoiding his eyes.

  “See you tomorrow, Betty.”

  He stepped back against the car parked parallel to hers and watched her back up and turn. The MG’s engine burred saucily as she drove the lane formed by the rows of cars. At the entrance-exit she had to brake suddenly and ease around an old Mercedes limousine that was nosing in.

  Bill broke stride so suddenly his toes stubbed the asphalt. He stood rigid in the driving lane, watching the car approach. Despite its age and weight, the Mercedes moved with silken power.

  Bill moved over, and the car whispered to a stop. In the drivers seat George Kahler smiled at Bill through the side window, which was snicking down from a touch on an electric button.

  “Hello there, Mr. Latham," Kahler said pleasantly. “This is sure luck. I was looking for you and all prepared to go to the registrar’s office and find out where you might be this time of day.”

  “What do you want?”

  “First, I guess an apology is in order. I must have impressed you as a roughneck this morning.”

  “I’ve met friendlier people,” Bill admitted.

  “It’s just that Mrs. Braxley don’t usually want anybody calling. So, out of habit, I head off what you might call ‘unauthorized personnel.’ And I make it short and to the point. Saves wear and tear on the nervous system.”

  Kahler leaned his head out. “This morning I thought I did real great.” He grinned hugely at himself. “But I about got tarred and feathered. Seems Mrs. Braxley likes your looks.”

  A breath quickened in Bill’s throat.

  “She said to me, ‘George, you go right down and look that fine young man up and you tell him you’re sorry you acted like a roustabout, and then you offer the hospitality of The Oaks to him.’ ” Kahler delivered his diplomacy in a single rush of words.

  “She wants to see me?” Bill asked.

  “She sure does.”

  “When?”

  “Right now.”

  Bill glanced at a classroom building several hundred yards away.

  “Be a pal, Mr. Latham,” Kahler wheedled. “It’ll mean a lot to her, talking with someone about Elizabeth. And to me, too. I can’t go back and tell the poor old lady you wouldn’t come. Anyhow, you must have missed some classes this morning. A little more classroom time spent at The Oaks won’t hurt.”

  “I’ll get my car,” Bill decided suddenly.

  “No need. Come around and hop in. I’ll bring you back.”

  As Bill walked around the front of the Mercedes, Kahler let out a long, grateful sigh and slipped his hand from beneath his black jacket. His fingers felt stiff. His palm had grown sweaty from gripping his concealed revolver.

  9

  Something to Wear

  BETTY CAREFULLY insinuated the MG into the rushing roar of expressway traffic. The tumult squeezed yet another degree of intensity into her raging headache. The cars about her hurtled like monsters straining their leashes. Home, where she could collect and sort her thoughts in quiet security, seemed an impossible distance away.

  She drove with determination, consciously focusing on the demands of expressway conduct. She marked off the familiar exit signs, hanging on to the thought that as each swept by she was a little nearer her own.

  The drive was a brutal contrast to all her other trips in the MG. The car was a present from her father on her last birthday. Until today, she had enjoyed every mile the sturdy little car had taken her. It was a personal possession, as a spirited filly might have been to a young woman in bygone days. She usually drove with the top down, a kerchief snugging her blue-black hair, even in chilly weather. Often on weekends, she was a common sight around home in dungarees and sweatshirt, slicking up the MG with hose, wax, and chamois.

  Ahead loomed the tall stanchion supporting a white-on-green sign: EASTERN PARKWAY, NEXT RIGHT.

  The MG blinkered and eased into the exit lane. Betty braked and dropped down the tight cloverleaf of the ramp.

  A few minutes later she turned off Eastern onto Fairfield Boulevard. The scenery abruptly changed. Out here in the Estates, traffic was a whisper. A few shiny cars and an occasional delivery van from the better downtown stores glided the winding, gracefully curving avenues. The boulevard was walled in green; carefully planted pines and rhododendron shielded homes, swimming pools, parklike acreage.

  Betty turned left on Foxlane and reached the break in the screening shrubbery that marked the Atherton driveway.

  As the MG nosed in, the familiar view spread before Betty. A long lawn. Manicured box hedges and rock gardens. The curl of the driveway through a lane of firs as perfectly shaped as Christmas trees.

  Rising in the midst of the setting, the house was a two-story, spotlessly white colonial. Chimneys of antique brick rose at either end. A veranda, reposing behind tall columns and graced with a scattering of wrought-iron furnishings, would have delighted the heart of a Kentucky colonel.

  Betty parked on the concrete apron before the three-car garage, turned off the ignition, and sat for an exhausted moment.

  The soothing serenity didn’t lift her spirits very much. She appreciated everything her father had done, but at times she wished they were all back in the middle-class home she’d known as a small child. No other house could quite match its friendliness and warmth.

  The good old days. Her mouth quirked in wry amusement at the thought.

  Mr. Youngblood had seen her arrival and was coming around the garage, a pruning shears dangling in his hand.

  He was a lean, fit, slightly grizzled man of about fifty. He could plumb a pipe, repair a furnace, and coax a rose to grow. He, a butler, a cook-house-keeper, and a housemaid comprised the staff. The others were always distant and impersonal, as if she were a machine or another piece of furniture. But Mr. Youngblood had always had a moment for Betty and her problems. I
n some ways, she felt almost as close to him as to her father.

  He was frowning as his shadow fell across the car. His keen gray eyes added up her tired look, her paleness, the wan hollows beneath her eyes.

  “You’re all done in!” he said anxiously.

  “Just a headache,” she dismissed her own feelings.

  She got out as Mr. Youngblood opened the door.

  “Is Mother here?”

  “No, ma’am. She left about an hour ago. She’s attending the convention of clubwomen in the state capital.”

  “Yes, that’s right,” Betty said. She remembered that her father had mentioned the convention, rather stiffly, to her mother last evening.

  Walking toward the foot of the veranda, she supposed that her mother would be gone over the weekend. Nothing much had been said about the trip. Her mother was forever on the go with her time-filling activities—clubs, charities, bridge parties at the country club.

  It seemed such a long time since Daddy and Mother had really discussed anything more important than a dinner-guest list. Betty almost wished that sometime they would have an old-fashioned, slightly uncivilized argument.

  She felt the weight of Mr. Youngblood’s concerned gaze. As she crossed the veranda, he was still standing there beside the driveway, tapping his shears in his hand and worrying about her.

  Her arrival had caught the rest of the household unawares. She moved through the spacious entry hall and wearily mounted the subdued elegance of the gently curving stairway.

  The carpeting in the upper hallway dissolved the sounds of her moving presence as she made her way to her room.

  Her mother had chosen the French provincial furnishings a few years ago—ivory chests, dressing table, canopy bed. But Betty had added touches of her own. A shelf of treasured books. A small aquarium of tropical fish. High school and college pennants on the walls.

  She’d made the curtains over the twin bay windows and daubed the still lifes and landscapes that hung on the walls. They weren’t very good paintings, she knew, but she’d been warmed by Mr. Youngblood’s praise as the two of them had made frames in his workshop.

  She gulped an aspirin in the bathroom, then reentered the bedroom and crossed to the bed. She stripped off the satin spread, folded it, and laid it on a boudoir chair. She wriggled her shoes off, sitting on the edge of the bed, and lay back, easing her head to the pillow.

  She tried to keep her mind off Bill and the awful thing that had happened to him. She had plenty of thinking to do about Bill. But right now, just get rid of the horrible headache.

  Her eyes closed. Her muscles began to relax. The hammering pain between her temples dulled.

  She was soon limp. Now that it had a chance to catch up to her, the fatigue overwhelmed her. It was the last thing she expected, and she didn’t know the quiet, secret second that it happened; but in a short time she fell sound asleep.

  She woke groggily. Her senses struggled from the slump of deep exhaustion. She stirred and opened her eyes. Early twilight cast a gray tone through the room. As consciousness gained strength, she felt better. The headache had drained away.

  “Betty?” a man’s voice inquired softly.

  She turned her head. Her father stood at the foot of the bed. His form was a bit fuzzy because of the gloom. But even so, Rolph Atherton’s presence filled the room. He was six feet tall, but the width of his shoulders and chest gave him a stocky look. He didn’t seem to merely stand on a spot; he was planted, rooted of his own free will and for as long as he cared to remain. The cut of him, Betty thought at times, might have been molded from the concrete and steel with which he worked.

  “Yes, Daddy, I’m awake,” she said.

  The shadows emphasized the crags of his face, the lean cheeks sloping down from blunt bones, the cleft chin, the forehead with the slight jutting of bone over the eyes. His hair seemed to pick up most of the light. Surprisingly, it was a soft silver, as fine as a woman’s, laying back from his forehead in a carefully barbered sheen.

  He moved around to the side of the bed. In motion, his body denied its weight. No particular muscle usage set him apart. He didn’t barge; he didn’t charge, he simply walked. And yet a close observer could easily have imagined Rolph Atherton crossing a veld in big-game country. The same observer might have surmised that in the end Rolph Atherton would track down his lion and bring back his trophy.

  He sat down sideways on the edge of the bed and leaned forward to touch the lamp on the bedside table.

  His face leaped boldly from the twilight as the lamp softly flared. Betty saw the thawing of anxiety in his eyes as he looked at her carefully.

  “Little flu bug got my girl?”

  “No, Daddy, just a headache.”

  “Saw Youngblood as I drove in. He told me you checked in early.”

  Casually he patted her forehead. She knew he was really checking for the heat of a temperature. During his rare mother-hen moments with her, he was never as clever as he thought. But she was touched rather than amused. Deep down, she suspected, he really did value her well-being more than his own life.

  She sat up and brushed a wisp of hair from her forehead. The bed rustled with the loss of his weight as he stood up and edged back to give her room. He stood and watched her swing her feet to the floor. Her toes explored in search of her shoes.

  She smiled up at the residual shadow of worry still in his face. “The nap was a terrific tonic. I’m fine now.”

  “Headache all gone?”

  “Like I never had one.”

  His eyes remained faintly suspicious. “You’re the stickler for the nearly perfect attendance record,” he pointed out. “And you do look a bit puny. Maybe Dr. Rathstein should look you over.”

  “Pete’s sake, Dad!”

  He watched her rise and cross to her dressing table.

  “Well, okay,” he relented. “But I don’t like the idea of a headache bad enough to blast you out of school and knock you out for the afternoon.” “Maybe something I ate,” she said, sitting down and picking up a hairbrush.

  “You?” he growled. “You’ve a stomach like . . . like young Latham’s. Have you had these headaches often?”

  Her eyes met his briefly in the dressing table mirror. “No, of course not. Today was the first time.” She tried to concentrate on brushing her hair, but he was still studying her mirrored image.

  He was a hard man to fool. Many people had tried—business rivals, politicians, top echelon employees in his company on rare occasions. Very few had succeeded. And right now, Betty knew, he suspected she was holding something back.

  He came up close behind her, making a grin for her in the mirror. “Three guesses?” he suggested.

  “You flunked a test?” He shook his head. “No, you’ve done that before without it resulting in migraine. Let’s see, for number two, your best friend has been making eyes at Bill Latham, and he’s. . . ”

  “Daddy, please!” The words were almost a gasp.

  His hand stole to her shoulder. She could sense the reserve of his strength, like the power of a dynamo that would never run down, but his touch was gentle.

  “Sure, Bets. I guess I stumbled warm, at that. It does have to do with Bill Latham.” He gave her shoulder a warm little squeeze. “And I keep forgetting. You’re not a kid. You’re a young woman. College girl, anyhow. You’ve a right to some privacy.”

  “Yes, I do have!” She yanked the brush in a vigorous stroke through her hair.

  His hand drew back. “Say, now! I really did touch a sensitive nerve.”

  The tension that had clamped through her in Patrick Connell’s office began an insidious, creeping return.

  She dropped her brush on the dressing table and turned to face him. Now that he’d traced the cause of her headache to Bill Latham, he wasn’t any longer worried about her physical health. He was not only relieved, she decided, he was hoping the headache was a sign that she and Bill were breaking up.

  “Daddy, I think yours is the sen
sitive nerve—any time Bill Latham is mentioned.”

  “Have I said anything against the boy?”

  “Not in so many words. You’re too clever for that.” He drew up a Louis XVI chair upholstered with brocade and straddled it, facing her over its back. “Have I said you couldn’t see him? In fact, I believe he has a dinner invitation this very next Saturday evening.”

  A vein throbbed in Betty’s temple. She moved to face away from him again. Then, seeing herself in the mirror, she wished it didn’t reflect her countenance so clearly. She had the feeling there was no escaping, no hiding.

  She saw her lips move and heard the words, “Saturday ... it seems so far off. So much could happen.” She broke off, her eyes stinging, the mirrored image swirling.

  “Betty?” her father asked with some alarm.

  She fought for a breath and tried to guide the brush through her hair. “I’m all right. It’s nothing.” “You’re not all right!” His hands were clamped tight on the chair, inches below his thrust-out chin. His eyes flared with the light that usually cowed a board of directors. He was about to voice a demand. But an instinct seemed to warn him.

  He got up, came to her, bent beside her, and put his arm about her. “Bets, its a good strong shoulder.” She needed it, and she used it, her hands grasping him, her face burrowing tightly against the collar of his jacket.

  He cushioned her sobs, letting her have the time she needed.

  She raised her tearful face. “Daddy, Bill is sick!” “Sick?”

  “Sick, sick, sickl” The words were almost a scream. “In here!” Her fingertip punched against her temple.

  He rose with stiff movements. “When did you find this out? How?”

  “Today. Dr. Patrick Connell told Bill’s father and me.”

  “Connell. . . Atherton’s strong fingers curled at his sides. “That radical and his wild ideas!” Without realizing it, she was wringing the brush between her hands. “Bill thinks he detects a ... a presence in one of the empty drawers in the morgue.”

  Atherton s head moved in a quick, pitying shake. “Poor old Doc Latham. Where have they taken Bill?”

  “No place, Daddy. Not yet.”