Catch-As-Catch-Can Page 16

  Mrs. Gilman wiped her eyes. Beaming, she took up the pencil to tell him all about it.

  Dr. Stirling read back the name and the number, the street and the direction. “Not seven o’clock yet. Plenty of time. I’ll have that truck picked up so fast.…” And heard him sigh.

  “Call me,” he begged. “Take down this number.”

  “Got it.” Stirling would have hung up but Andy said rapidly, “I’ll tell Dee.”

  “Good. Get Clive.”

  “I’ll get him.”

  “Hit him for me,” said Dr. John and hung up fast. The compelling need to have Laila picked up was rushing him.

  Andy hung up and held his head a brief moment. He ignored the fury in Agnes’ eye. He dialed information for the number of St. Bart’s. He thought, “Dee’ll feel a lot better when she hears.… She might even be happy.” The thought of Dee, happy, made him wince somehow. Waiting, he thought, This Agnes and her big fat self-importance. Another kind of nurse here and they’d have found out, long ago—Dee was right There’s that difference—that’s where, in all the complicated mess, we count. Each one. The kind he is. He began to smile ruefully to himself. What a time they’d be having with Dee, down there. She’d make them let her make a phone call. Perhaps by now she’d be under sedation. It seemed strange to him to think of all Dee’s bright force and energy quiet in a clean white bed.

  Dee could not work the filthy gag away from her mouth She could not cry out. Clive had bound her wrists together and her two hands were imprisoned under Clive’s weight. She twisted and rolled and struggled to heave his weight away. If she could work out from under, get to her feet, or even to her knees, turn that doorknob.… It was hopelessly high and far away. The ladder lay the width of the room. She began to fear it had got wedged, somehow, in her struggling, because she could not shift Clive’s body which held her down.

  Then Dee began to beat her heels on the paper rolls. But she could move her legs only from the knees, now, and her soft shoes made very little noise on the paper. Not enough noise. Not enough.

  She used her eyes again, to search for a way to noise, for something else she could make fall and crash. Something that would bang. Her head, straining on the neck, bumped the sharp corner of a smallish box. She rolled her head and her eyes to look at it. The box was too near to be seen very clearly. But in a little while, she was pretty sure it was an old portable radio.

  Her head slid. Her cheek felt the cold knobs on its face. She thought, Noise? If a radio began to play in here, surely someone would come to see why.

  CHAPTER 21

  Frank Turner had his ear stretched a mile, but she was still quiet. Sometimes he had a funny feeling that she might have disappeared; maybe she had been a dream he’d had; maybe he was the one who was asleep. Mike Torres still didn’t have any idea that they had a passenger. Mike was giving a lecture, now, on safe driving, illustrated by an analysis of the crossroads crash behind them. Mike was a good guy, but preachy.

  Frank let him go on but he wasn’t listening. He was wondering what was best to do about the girl if she was real and hidden quietly behind them and no dream. He had well considered letting her sleep and ride secretly all the way to his house and he could still do it.

  But Frank knew now this was a dream and could not come to pass. Mike had to be told about the passenger and Frank would probably get fired. And he thought he’d better tell Mike about her pretty soon. It was getting to be nearly seven o’clock already. Time to stop and take her on a bus.…

  Still, they weren’t anywhere near a bus, right now, that was going where she wanted to go. He didn’t know yet if she wanted to go anywhere besides that hospital in Long Beach.

  He could still take the girl home and telephone about that friend who got injured. She shouldn’t go running around the city after dark. Let her, say, get a good night’s rest and then, maybe, set about taking her where she belonged, if on this earth, she belonged anywhere.

  But Frank straightened his shoulders. He got stern with himself. The thing to do first was find out what she wanted. Why she was so kinda scared and lost. What he ought to do to help her. So he had better let Mike know about it, right away and take a beating. probably, but then he could ask her.

  He thought she must still be asleep. He let a certain sweetness in the vision keep him silent for another mile.

  But he got stern. You had to. You can’t drift around dreaming in this world. It was best he found out. Wouldn’t be very helpful to drag her too far out of her way, whatever it was.

  So Frank said, “Say, Mike, I did something. I got to tell you. There’s a girl in back of this truck.”

  “Wha …!” The truck swerved to the curb in righteous wrath. Mike Torres was about to blow his top and cite a million rules and regulations. Frank waited quietly.

  But when he met Mike’s eye, Mike certainly surprised him. He said quietly, “O.K., kid. You had a reason. What was it?”

  “She was scared,” Frank said, “and she asked me to help her.”

  Mike closed his eyes prayerfully. When he opened them the boy was still sitting there, still meaning every word of it. Mike let his mouth go lopsided. He didn’t know! What could you do?

  “You got plans?” he inquired.

  “I want to ask her what I can do now, whatever she wants,” said Frank serenely. “I was thinking I could take her home with me if she’s got no other place to go.”

  Mike gave his cap a whack that sent it over his eyes. He slipped down in the seat. “Pinch me,” he said sourly, “but don’t wake me. Listen, you’re going to be out on your ear when you wake up. You know that?”

  “I know,” said Frank with a grateful grin on his face. Then he was stretching his body across the interim space and peering over the barrier. “Hi! Are you all right, Ma’am?” Mike heard him saying.

  Mike hit himself on the top of the head and drove himself deeper into the seat. He didn’t know …! He was so late already, he couldn’t bring himself to get excited. So the kid was crazy. It made a nice change, anyhow.

  Mike’s conventional gloom was rent. These kids! These damn kids! Good thing there were these kids in the world, maybe, after one generation grew up and got sour.…

  Frank was sliding over the wooden partition. She was lying against the linen bags and she was awake. There was just enough light to see that she smiled at him. He picked up her chilly little hand.

  “We’re quite a ways away, now,” he said, “From the man who tells lies. I was wondering where you’d like to go.”

  “Aren’t we going to the hospital?” He felt her hand tighten nervously.

  “Well, we can. Sure. I found out which one. And Mike says the redheaded girl wasn’t hurt very much. Is it the redheaded girl …?”

  “It’s me,” she said.

  “Why, don’t you feel well?” he asked in pure wonder.

  “I do. I feel very well, but .. but they are saying on the radio that I’ve been poisoned.”

  Frank felt his own startled frown. He believed her, though. Sure, he believed her. It was necessary to him to take every word she said as perfectly true. He had to because she was an angel, and if he didn’t believe her perfectly, why then she’d stop being an angel. “Did you hear that on the radio yourself, Ma’am?” he asked respectfully.

  “Yes.”

  “Your name, and all?”

  “Yes, and my clothes, my hair. It was me,” said Laila, earnestly.

  “Well, then,” said Frank after a stunned moment, “I’d better take you to a hospital.”

  Now her hand was warmer and holding to his tightly. “I was afraid at first,” she confided. “I don’t feel as if I’d been poisoned, you see, and I thought it might be that they would want to hurt me. But you don’t think so, do you? You think I ought to go back, even if it is a mistake?”

  “If there is any question,” he said carefully, “sure. You should go and find out about it and make sure. It could be a mistake.”

  “I’m a little bit f
rightened. I don’t understand it very well.”

  “I don’t blame you for that,” said Frank. He was feeling his path straight through the fantasy, the unearthly feeling.… “Is it any special hospital you want to go to, Ma’am?” he asked respectfully. And she told him. But he, suddenly alarmed, put his hand on her cheek, which was warm and delicate and soft … and as he did so, a roar came alongside and a loud voice said, “You got a girl named Laila Breen in this truck, Mac?”

  “Huh? Whatsat, officer?”

  The girl’s cheek pressed Frank’s hand. “Yes, that is my name.”

  Laila Breen. Frank remembered dimly having heard it before. He let her go and stood up and over the partition he said to the policeman, “She’s here. She wants to go to the Greenleaf Hospital. Dr. Stirling.”

  The cop climbed off his motorcycle, put a foot on the truck, gave Frank a long hard stare, and then he stretched in and looked over. “Long black hair. Yeah. Well … she’s going to the hospital. And so are you,” he snapped at Mike Torres, as if he, too, felt that unearthliness and resented it and had to snap at somebody. “Follow me, Mac. I’m taking you through lights. Get rolling.”

  “What the hell am I? An ambulance?” yelled Mike over the wail of their escorting siren. “What’s the matter? Why am I doing this? Somebody … hey, Frank.…”

  But Frank didn’t answer. He had his arm around the girl in the blue coat, and he was saying he’d go right along with her, of course, so she needn’t be scared and everything would be all right, he was pretty sure.

  Andrew Talbot’s palm sweated on the shank of the telephone.

  “What do you mean, she ran away! You mean you let her go without treatment … without exam …?” He listened a while longer and then hung up abruptly. “She didn’t run away,” he said out loud. “She’d run right back into it.”

  Vince Procter had turned the sound higher on the TV set. He and the old lady had their heads together in a companionable sort of way. Fanfares and introductions, the singsong swing of the announcer’s spiel, were filling the little sitting room.

  Andy went marching to the front door, threw it open and looked out. Across the road, the show was ready to go ahead. The Baxter house, embraced and glorified by light, was the stage, and the dark figures of the onlookers stood in a thicket around the light’s edge.

  Agnes Nilsson followed him out to the porch. She said, angrily, “I must ask you to take your friend and go. I cannot permit any more of this excitement. I am responsible to Mrs. Gilman’s sons and if you do not leave, right away, I’ll have to call someone who will make you leave.”

  “Not yet,” said Talbot briskly and coldly. “I’m expecting a phone call.”

  “Here!” She was outraged.

  “Yes, here. So you’ll have to put up with us a while.” Her eyes glittered angrily, but Andy continued, “A girl I know may also be coming along.…” He scanned the crossroads. The brilliance across the way made it difficult to see much else.

  Agnes was swelling as if she would explode, so he said to her coldly, “If you will listen while I explain to Mrs. Gilman, I believe that, as a nurse, you’ll see why all this is necessary.”

  He went back into the house. He touched Vince’s shoulder. “Do something for me?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Go outside and keep a look out for Dee Allison?”

  “Huh?”

  “She got away when that ambulance reached the hospital. She evidently wasn’t hurt much. If I know her, shell be trying her darndest to get back here into the thick of everything. You’ll recognize her? Redhead.”

  “The one who was with you in the car?”

  “The one with me.”

  “I’ll know her,” Vince said, saluting. “Sure. I’ll spot her.” He licked his lips with some relish. “Say, did you know that stuff on the TV screen is taking place right out there? Whadd’ya know, eh?”

  Andy glanced at the screen. A man was standing beside a vehicle of some kind. He was being interviewed. He was very much pleased about it, stuffy and pompous, in his best clothes.

  Andy turned Vince’s chair, setting its back to the screen. He began to talk earnestly to the old lady. When Agnes Nilsson came in, she turned the TV sound down to an indistinguishable murmur, before she drew near to listen while Andy explained. About the toxin, the housekeeper’s collapse, the disappearance of Laila Breen, the plight she was in, the hunt for her, the reason and the urgency.

  The siren whooped into the hospital courtyard. The linen truck looped after it. Mike sprang down to open the back doors, but Frank lifted her down.

  A little later, Dr. Stirling found the young man in the waiting room. “She’ll do,” said the doctor. “I think so. We got the antitoxin into her in good time.” The doctor made a lip sound, a sucking in, the equivalent of a whistle. “I’ve got a feeling that there are some thanks due to you, young fellow. Maybe you don’t know there was an old lady who ate that same contaminated salad. She died hah an hour ago.”

  Frank looked very earnest and pale. “I didn’t do anything. I’m glad that it’s all right. I hope it is.”

  “It was in time.’

  “Luck, then,” Frank said. “Just luck, sir. I was pretty stupid, as a matter of fact. Say, could I …?”

  But the doctor bent his brow inquisitively. “Now, you did something. She tells me that when she heard the broadcast, she was afraid to come. How were you able to teach her different, in so brief a time?”

  “I don’t know, sir,” Frank said. “Of course, she was scared for a reason. I mean, it seems she happened to see some doctor use a hypo on her father when he died and she didn’t understand, sir. Of course, I explained that but it.…”

  The doctor goggled. “Of all the non …!” He snorted. “You … explained it? How?”

  “I didn’t exactly explain it,” Frank said, swallowing. “I just told her, probably the doctor was trying to save him. I said doctor’s don’t know everything but they always try the best they can. I mean, in my experience.”

  The doctor swallowed. And Frank went on. “I guess even before that she trusted in what I said. I’m glad if she did.”

  The doctor cleared his throat. He coughed.

  “She didn’t know,” Frank said earnestly.

  “All right, boy. I’ll buy that. Doctor’s don’t know everything.” Stirling buzzed in his throat. It might have been laughter. “Excuse me, I’ve got some phoning.…”

  “Could I see her?”

  “You go right in,” the doctor said with some warmth.

  “Thank you, sir. There’s one other thing.…”

  “Yes?”

  “I was thinking. If there’s anything to pay,” Frank said, “and she doesn’t have any people or funds or anything, I’d be glad to take care of it.”

  The doctor stood still.

  “If I could do it in installments or something like that,” said Frank, flushing. “I don’t say I’ve got much on hand.”

  “What makes you offer to pay her bill?” the doctor demanded. “Isn’t she a stranger to you?”

  “Well, she asked me to help her and I said I would.” The boy began to stammer. “I … I … I.…” His face was getting pinker. “I don’t want to lose track of her, doctor. She … well, since she did kinda trust me, I don’t know how to explain.… I’ve got a feeling she needs me.”

  “You may be right,” the doctor said bluntly. He plunked his blunt hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Don’t ever forget that. Whatever you’re told, whatever you hear, that’s a little girl who needs somebody to … er … show her around. She’s strange here.”

  The boy said, “She told me. She comes from an island. A little one, quite near New Caledonia, she said. She doesn’t understand it, here. I thought she was an angel,” he blurted. “I mean, I knew she must have come from some different place. She’s … different, isn’t she?”

  The doctor said gruffly, “You better go in. She and I don’t want to lose track of you, either.”

&nbs
p; “Could I call my mother?”

  “You can do anything you want to,” bellowed the doctor, and went trotting down the corridor toward his office.

  CHAPTER 22

  “Talbot?” barked Dr. Stirling a moment later. “Laila’s here. She’s had the shot. She’ll do, I think.”

  Andy Talbot groaned his exquisite relief.

  “There’s a boy here,” the doctor said in an odd voice that was not brusque but flat with a kind of helpless amazement, “Well, never mind.… Where’s that Clive?”

  “I don’t know. Could Laila tell you anything?”

  “That skunk,” raved Stirling, “put her in the trailer and bolluxed Pearl’s radio. There is no doubt at all that he knew what he was doing. Not only that, he saw Dee and Pearl into the ambulance and did not so much as mention Laila. Not only that, he saw Laila in that linen service truck and he let her get carried off in it. He is guilty as sin. He wanted her to get lost and die. He’s worked against us from the beginning. I don’t know what we can do to him legally, but what I’d like to do.…”

  “Don’t worry,” said Andy, “when I get my hands on that … crumb.…”

  “You don’t know where he’s got to, eh?”

  “Told you, he’s vanished. Haven’t found a single soul who saw him go.”

  “Probably running for cover. Probably hiding. Realizes he was stupid and made a mess of it.”

  “He may be hiding,” said Andy, “but he won’t hide long.”

  “See what you can do,” said Stirling. “You’re younger than I am. And listen, you’ve been in touch …? How’s Dee?”

  “I wish I could get in touch with Miss Dee Allison,” said Andy, “but it seems she skipped out on that ambulance.”