Dream of Fair Woman Read online

‘Because they said it is not their province,’ the doctor answered promptly. ‘No law’s been broken. No crime is involved.’

  Betty had her feet on the floor now, and she felt Matt’s shoe nudging her ankle. ‘I don’t like it, either,’ she said at once, and sought his approving eye.

  But Peg said to them gently, ‘It’s nothing to like or dislike. It’s something to do.’

  And the doctor said with a Jovian nod, ‘Right. I think so. I’ll make the arrangements.’

  ‘Then I’ll lay it on,’ cried Tony joyfully. ‘Be very glad to, Doctor. I’ll get it a good position. I’ll write the story myself.’ He sounded as if this should reassure them as to literary quality and humane discretion. It did not reassure Matt in the least. But he kept quiet until Tony, babbling promises, had taken his leave.

  Then Matt said, ‘I think we forgot something, sir.’

  ‘What was it we forgot?’

  ‘That it isn’t quite normal,’ Matt said, bearing up nobly under the doctor’s eye-beams, ‘for a person to carry no identification whatsoever. Not even an old letter. A scrap of paper. Or so much as an initial.’

  Betty was with him in a flash. ‘Sure, because everybody carries some dumb thing. You mean it’s not an accident?’

  ‘My point,’ said Matt, grinning congratulations at her. ‘So I ask you this. Is it possibly, deliberate? Suppose she doesn’t want to be identified?’

  The doctor was frowning. ‘Why wouldn’t she want to be identified?’

  ‘We can’t know why. But that doesn’t mean it might not be so.’

  ‘The fact remains,’ said the doctor judiciously, ‘that if we are going to save her life, we need all the information about her that we can get. I wouldn’t worry about offending her, myself.’

  ‘I wasn’t quite worrying about offending her,’ Matt said. ‘We might do worse. We might put her in some position she was trying to avoid.’

  ‘In danger, even,’ Betty said.

  Peg’s hands fluttered alarm.

  But the doctor turned to Betty and said, mock-solemn, ‘From the Mafia, I suppose?’

  ‘Or a reasonable facsimile.’ Matt remained cheerfully obstinate. ‘There are some contributing indications. She came unusually early in the morning—looking as if she had not slept at all—to a strange house, where she took what seems suspiciously like refuge. She carried nothing with her to tell who she really is. She wasn’t forthcoming.’

  The doctor countered at once. ‘She was on the brink of an illness, which fact manifested itself as fatigue. She took refuge, as Peg says, because she needed a place to rest. She took a strange room because she was travelling. Witness the suitcase. I doubt the very remote possibility, that she intended to hide from physical danger, should prevent us from trying to save her from a very real and undeniable physical danger by any means we can. She is safe where she is, as far as the Mafia is concerned, or its reasonable facsimile. From some emotional problem, she can be rescued later. But we do not yet know what ails her, in the body, and we had better find out pretty soon.’

  ‘Oh, Jon,’ said Peg woefully.

  ‘So we’ll let this newspaper appointment stand, I think,’ said the doctor. ‘Agreed, Peg?’

  ‘Yes,’ Peg said. ‘Yes. She mustn’t die because we neglected anything.’

  ‘Matt? Betty?’

  The doctor was taking votes, but the conclusion was already clear.

  ‘I guess we lose, Uncle Jon,’ said Betty for them both.

  So the doctor said he had to get along home. He told Peg, sternly, not to worry. She had done and was doing the best that she could do. As would he. So he went off, carrying as much as he could of the trouble on his big shoulders. Peg went quietly off to her bed.

  Matt and Betty sat on, in the kitchen.

  Matt had almost forgotten that she was there. He was a little ashamed of his argument. Not that it hadn’t been of some import. It was, however, more of a rationalisation of a reluctance. An instinct?

  He was remembering now, seeing with great clarity in his mind’s eye, the little private room where they had put her. She was not in isolation, not yet. Just before he had come home, he had looked in and seen her lying on the high bed, seeming enshrined. It was funny how that feeling had been transferred from the room upstairs. It had stopped his breath for a moment.

  They had given her a nurse for the night, instructed to observe to the motion of an eyelash. She was a pleasant woman of middle years, named Selma Marsh, whom Matt knew casually. She had been in attendance with a devoted awe, he mused now, as if she were handmaiden to a fair young queen, where the lady lay in whiteness mellowed by one yellow light, lay like Elaine on her barge. Now where, he wondered, wrenching away from the vision, had that Elaine-image come from? An old child’s book?

  Then Betty spoke up reasonably in his mother’s kitchen. ‘If she was running away from something, she might have given us a phony name.’

  Matt stirred, feeling as if he had been too rudely awakened. ‘She might have,’ he agreed. ‘It could follow.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure, you know,’ Betty went on, ‘that she never did say “Dolan.” And she didn’t even answer when Peg asked for the rest of it. Maybe she hadn’t made up a first name yet.’

  This grated. Matt got up, taking dishes to the sink. ‘Oh well, Tony gets to have his fun, and all will be revealed by the power of the Press.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Betty. ‘But I sure wish …’

  ‘What?’ he said, waiting to turn the hot water on.

  ‘Oh, just that Peg wasn’t taking it so darned hard. There’s nothing more for her to do.’

  Matt turned the water on and held his cup under it. He seemed to know that Betty was wishing he wasn’t taking it so hard. He felt a little curl of resentment. He wasn’t taking it that hard. But if his mother felt responsible, what was he supposed to do? He had to be responsible, too. He hadn’t asked for it. He shut off the water and said, ‘At least it doesn’t have to bother you.’ He knew he had stung her. He shouldn’t have. Surely he needn’t wave a big fat KEEP OFF sign for Betty Prentiss!

  ‘Hey, hey, old Betts,’ he said to her frozen face, ‘I didn’t mean that.’ And then he did it again by saying much too formally, ‘Would you excuse me?’ before he headed for his bed.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The next morning, Thursday, Matt walked across to the hospital and found Tony in the corridor outside the girl’s room, involved in an argument about lighting with a photographer, two doctors, and a nurse. Matt stood by, silent, non-interfering, and barely breathing, while the job was done, and when they had closed her door, where she still lay sleeping he suffered the gleam in Tony’s eye, and Tony’s mindless bubbling thanks, and watched Tony go scurrying off to stir things up.

  He wasn’t due in the lab until noon. He had to go out to the University to register for the summer session. He might as well go. He needn’t ask any questions of the doctors; since he could tell by the very atmosphere that they had not yet decided upon a name for the girl’s condition. They were not conclusion-jumpers.

  So he tore himself out of there, raced through the park in the pleasant morning, took the car he shared with his mother and drove his twenty miles, since—although he was lucky enough to be able to walk to work—he went a rather more normal Los-Angeles-area distance to school.

  Matt did his dreaming in a practical and organised fashion. He had every intention of becoming, one day, an important scientist, for which reason he meant to be, first, well trained and then industrious. He would go steadily, step by step, upon his way to achieve something, and it would not be wealth. He had ambition, a goal, and a plan. Upon which he proceeded, without romancing. He had long ago decided just which courses he would take this summer and why. He knew what hours would be best and which instructors, and what text-books he must buy.

  This morning, it all seemed very cut and dried.

  Betty Prentiss went to her school and her third-graders as usual, but this was the last day, an
d when she had gone through the short session and had turned in all her reports, she drove back to Peg’s house, feeling at a loss.

  What would she do now? Would she look for a summer job, as she had half-planned to do? No, not today. It was an afternoon for brooding quietly, clearing the head, perhaps making full plans.

  But she kept seeing that girl, hearing that girl’s voice, going compulsively over and over that brief encounter.

  The funny thing was, that girl had not, awake and moving, struck Betty as being so darned beautiful. Oh, a reasonably fine collection of physical attributes. Yes, of course. But she had moved as if she were weighted, spoken in a voice without volume or emphasis, seemed dull, dusted over, without radiance. That could have been her illness coming on.

  What had she said? Very little. She had said, at sight of the front room, ‘This is nice. This is nice.’ But without enthusiasm. How could anybody say such a thing without enthusiasm? Nevertheless, that girl had. Then she had said ‘Thank you’ a time or two.

  Then she had said, reeling with weariness, mumbling, ‘My name is …’ Dolan? No. Olin? Tollin? Bollen? Rollin? Polling? Poling? The sound would not come back to Betty’s ear with any satisfactory clarity.

  When Betty had heard the phone and taken over, volunteering to let Peg go down, she could remember no strong response to her friendly chatter. When she had uttered that prophetic sentence, about sleeping, had the girl smiled? Yes, surely she had smiled. A slow sleepy smile? An absent-minded grimace?

  Well, it was a mystery that would soon be solved. ‘This, too, shall pass,’ she told herself, mockingly.

  Peg had a guild meeting in the afternoon. She said nothing to the ladies about the incident of the sleeping stranger. Matt had warned her, gloomily, at breakfast that she’d be answering questions soon enough. But Peg had a running argument with herself that went around and around like a broken record. I mustn’t worry. They are taking care of her. But if she dies and then her people come, will I say to her mother, ‘I didn’t notice. I had a room for rent. She had the money. Who would expect me to notice?’ But I mustn’t worry. They are taking care of her.

  The whole day had a paralysed feeling to it.

  The girl slept.

  Matt slipped along to Room 124, just before he left for home, and by this time Mrs Marsh was on duty again and glad to see him.

  ‘I sit here,’ she told him, ‘just kinda plugging with my nerves for her to wake up. Every time she stirs I think she might open her eyes. And just, you know, suddenly—be all right? I don’t usually do that. But I can’t seem to help it. Wears me out, too.’

  Matt said he knew, but himself felt no such thing. He was not plugging with all his nerves for her to wake up. And this was odd. He stood a while, forcing himself to breathe the quiet air, the air of peace in this place. All his nerves seemed to sag away from tension when he was watching her, where she was sleeping so peacefully. They had been feeding her through a vein. She looked perfectly healthy. Perfectly serene. He didn’t want to know the colour of her eyes.

  When Mrs Marsh sighed in his ear, ‘She’s such a lovely, lovely thing,’ Matt woke with a start.

  ‘Well, take it easy.’ He clapped her on her sturdy shoulder and went away.

  But his feet dragged on the park path. It was strange. It was very strange. Too strange. Suddenly he felt he ought to shake the strangeness off. Or go back and shake that girl to sensible consciousness.

  In the evening, he grimly hit the new books he had purchased. Betty watched television with Peg. Tony didn’t come around. The evening had a paralysed feeling to it.

  In the morning, Friday, Matt dashed out to buy Tony’s paper, since it was not the regular fare of the house. There she was, at the top of page three. The photographer had done a good job. The reproduction was superb. Folds of white fabric lay beautifully shadowed. The whole picture was composed on a diagonal and was absolutely compelling. No one could resist looking at it, and surely if anyone had ever seen that exquisite face before, he would recognise it.

  It made Matt’s scalp creep.

  Peg’s name was in the story which began, ‘A mysterious beauty lies in sleep …’ (And turned Matt’s stomach.)

  Peg’s phone began to ring, as he had predicted. But it was only one violently curious acquaintance after another.

  Matt, for whom there were no classes until a week from Monday, mowed the lawn and tinkered with the car. The morning crept.

  Just before noon, he raced the park and strode down her corridor, bracing for anything. But there was nothing. Mrs Marsh was not on duty at this hour. The nurses on the floor were attentive enough. Her door was ajar. Matt thought she seemed too vulnerable, too exposed.

  He tipped in and went closer. They were taking very good care of her. She was immaculate. He studied her face. Not a grain of powder (as Matt innocently thought makeup to be) on that skin. Not a smidgeon of lipstick on that mouth. A face, a body, intact and unadorned, and warm asleep. Like a child, he thought. He had seen children asleep. But she was not a child. A woman? What was she? Does she dream? he thought.

  He snatched at his obligation to be where he ought to be, and not in here. And went away, trying again to shake off whatever it was she made him feel. A funny thing, it wasn’t goatishness. No, but a planlessness, a drifting feeling. He seemed to have no plot, no plan, about this girl. He didn’t seem to hope or fear. He just wanted things to stay as they were. He didn’t want to know who she was. But that was ridiculous! He had to want to know. He’d better forget the whole thing and do some work.

  At about one o’clock, Peg was tidying away the traces of a meal when the doorbell rang.

  A few ripples had reached her by this time, thrown into the pond by the picture and story in the paper. Another paper had telephoned. A man calling himself an occultist had telephoned. Peg had told the former that all she knew was in the published story and had refused to be sold an electronic crystal ball by the latter.

  Now she trotted to answer the bell and found an obviously prosperous middle-aged gentleman on her doorstep. She caught the idea of prosperity quickly, partly from the lines of the car standing at the kerb and partly from his clothing. Peg was nobody to know one make of car from another, nor was she a connoisseur of men’s tailoring, but she knew, just the same, when money had been spent.

  ‘Mrs Cuneen? My name is Leon Daw. I wonder if you would let me come in and ask you a few questions? It is in regard to the young woman whose picture was in the paper. You see, I may know who she is.’

  ‘Well, then, come in,’ said Peg eagerly. ‘We are very anxious to find out who she is because, I’m afraid, she is quite ill. Poor child.’

  ‘Then I suppose I hope,’ he said piously, ‘that she is not my niece.’ He gave her a pained smile as he stepped inside. ‘There are reasons,’ he said, ‘why I have come here instead of going directly to the hospital. Would you be good enough to tell me what you know about her? She came here on Wednesday, did she?’

  Peg took him into her living-room, where he waited politely until she was seated and then drew up his trouser knees by expert habit. He was rather a bland-looking chap, in his forties, she surmised, with a face and a body that seemed an intricate arrangement of curves. He had a wellfed look, pinkish skin on cheeks plump enough to be unwrinkled, a tonsure of pale brownish hair around a pink bald spot. His light blue eyes were quick and sly enough to send her some admiring glances, as if a busy little brain were saying ‘What a nice woman!’ His mouth was narrow but high, what could have been called a rosebud mouth had it not been so heavy of lip and masculine in size. He looked smooth. Smooth was the very word for him. Even his voice was smooth, with a purring quality.

  Peg told him rapidly all she knew, which was so very little. ‘She gave us a name,’ she continued, ‘but we didn’t quite understand it. We haven’t let the … well, the newspapers have that. But I’ll tell you, of course.’ She told him. ‘Does it mean anything?’

  ‘No,’ he said, with a sigh. ‘No, bu
t if she is my niece, I can conceive of reasons why she wouldn’t have given her real name.’ He stared at her a moment, with his strange mouth part-way open. ‘Would you be good enough, Mrs Cuneen, to look at this picture?’

  He handed her a newspaper clipping, a poor photograph taken at an airport obviously. There was a girl, standing out against a distant background of a disembarking crowd. ‘Could that be the girl, do you think?’ he purred. Then he sat very still.

  Peg studied the picture. This girl, for all one could tell under her boxy jacket, had an excellent figure. Her legs and ankles were good. She was slim. She stood with an easy air of dominance. She looked as if she had poise and force. Her head was bare, her blonde hair piled high. The shot was full face, not profile, and showed only the oval shape, the well-spaced features which were in no way distinguished by any striking emphasis of chin or nose or eyes.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Peg. ‘I suppose it could be.’

  ‘Then you see nothing that contradicts?’ he pressed her.

  ‘No. No. She’s a very good-looking young woman.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, she is. Poor Dorothy. I don’t understand this, you know, Mrs Cuneen. But I saw such a resemblance in this morning’s newspaper, I felt I must check.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Tell me, did anyone besides yourself see her or speak to her?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Peg. ‘Wait. I’ll call her.’

  So Betty came down.

  Betty had the immediate conviction that Mr Daw was a bachelor. This screamed to her from everything about him. A high-living bachelor who liked women. He had that assessing and exploratory air. She looked at his clipping and agreed with Peg. It might be. Nothing said it couldn’t be. So Mr Daw turned on what he, no doubt, thought of as his charm and asked her to recount her impressions of the girl who had come here on Wednesday morning.

  Betty hadn’t much to tell him, either.

  ‘Well,’ he sighed, ‘I am sorry I have no other picture of my niece, none recent enough, that can be of any help. Except this one, which was taken when she flew in, on Sunday morning.’