She laughed nervously. “It might bring on shortness of breath.”
“He’s an old guy. What is he? Close to seventy?”
“Don’t, Sam. Don’t!”
“You act like I might be trying to talk you into something, kid.”
“Sam! Are you?”
He shut the kitchen door behind them, swung her around and backed her against the closed door. His mouth was an inch from hers. He said softly, “How do I know whether I’m talking you into anything? Can you be talked into anything?”
“I’m frightened, Sam. Scared green. Hear my heart. It’s pounding.”
He took a small box out of his pocket, opened it with his thumbnail. The stone was a living and perfect green. “Remember that dream I tried to sell you? Will you buy it?”
“Oh, Sam!”
“There was no more to the dream. I got to go line up a couple of bullfighters. Acapulco is maybe an hour and a half, two hours, by air from Mexico City.”
“But I couldn’t leave with you,” she whispered.
“Go visit a girl friend. A girl friend in Seattle, or New Orleans. You got two thousand. Take yourself a vacation.”
She bit her lip. “I might do that.”
“If you want to write me or anything, I’ll be at a hotel called the Del Prado in Mexico City. I’ll get there next Tuesday.”
“I’ll send you a special delivery.”
“You do that.”
Howard Dineen crouched and looked moodily in at the cage of white mice. One would stop for a moment and he could see it. Then it would completely disappear and reappear on the opposite side of the cage. He knew that this group had been speeded to a point where the eye could not follow their normal movements. Dr. Tomlinson had fretted about the possible structural damage that would be self-inflicted by the mice through their mere velocity of movement, but it was beginning to appear that the new vibration-born acceleration also caused a compensation in the structural qualities of bone and tissue so that the expected damage did not result.
Dineen was moody about the changes which this past seven months had made in him. Before coming here there had been nothing but the work, the intense, almost feverish devotion to the work of research. And now another factor had intruded. Linda Tomlinson. Even as he stared into the cage he seemed to see her walking toward him.
He had tried all manner of things to chase her out of his mind. He lay at night picturing her in the embrace of that crude Banth person, and instead of making it better, it made it worse so that he heard himself groan aloud. He had walked the nearby roads and fields until he was exhausted, and still he dreamed of Linda. He had forced himself into an intrigue with one of the new lab girls who had recently reported, but it had been awkward and tawdry and utterly disappointing.
She had been gone for ten days now. And so had Banth. He tortured himself with conjectures about whether they were together. Dr. Tomlinson bad said that Linda was visiting a school friend. Dr. Tomlinson did not seem to be worried.
Howard Dineen knew that it was hindering his work, his powers of concentration. He made mistakes in timing and in recording and found it necessary to repeat an awkward number of experiments. He told himself a thousand times that she was a tramp, Banth’s girl, a divorced woman. Nothing worked.
“Hello, Howard,” her voice said, close behind him. He thought how odd it was that his imagination could consistently give him such convincing impressions of her.
“Didn’t you hear me?” Linda asked.
He spun around awkwardly, rapping his elbow smartly against the side of the cage. He rubbed it and said vacuously, “You’re back!”
She wore a dark suit, so severely tailored that it accented rather than concealed the intense femaleness of her. Her dark hair had been cropped fashionably short. Her eyes puzzled him. They had lost a certain awareness while she had been away. They had an almost glazed look, as though she were an automaton set in motion by a superior force for a specific purpose.
“Yes, I’m back, Howard. How has the work been going?”
“The work? Oh, fine. Great. How was your trip, Miss Tomlinson?”
“Do you have to be so formal? My name is Linda. It was a nice trip.”
“I’m glad — Linda.” He flushed, knowing that the way he had said her name, the way he had mouthed it so gently had told her too much.
“I’m glad to see you again, Howard. Dad is always so engrossed, and Mr. Banth is so busy. It seems like you’re the only real friend I have here ”
The suspicions of Sam Banth melted like snow in a furnace. He grinned. “I want to be your friend, Linda. Your — good friend.”
“I don’t see any reason why you can’t be, Sam. Dad says you’re ever so clever.”
He flushed again. “He overrates me, Linda.”
“I don’t want you to think I’m too bold.”
“I won’t.”
“I have a new car and I’m timid about driving it into New York at night. I wondered if tonight you and I could — I mean it would be nice to—”
“I’d love it, Linda!”
“At seven, then. No, make it six, so the evening will be long.”
“At six, then,” he said reverently. She left. Howard turned back to the cage and spoke tender words to the uncomprehending mice who flitted back and forth like rays of soft white light.
Sam arrived the next day, in the afternoon. He sought out Linda. He spoke a few words to her and later she came to his room. He shut the door.
“How did the kid react?”
“How did you expect?” she said bitterly. “He’s nice, Sam. Too nice for what we’re doing to him.”
He held her shoulders. “Come on, now! Don’t go soft on me. We’ve got to keep the kid in line and know he’s going to stay in line before we do — the other thing.”
“You’re cold, Sam. You’re cold and hard and cruel.”
His hands tightened on her shoulders and his mouth curled. “Duckling, I was protecting your sensibilities. I used nice words. I could have said before we kill your father. I was being delicate.”
Her eyes half closed. She swayed. “Sam, maybe I... can’t—”
“I made you a promise in Acapulco, duckling. I told you that you’d follow through — all the way — or you’d never see me again. It still stands that way.”
“Please, Sam.”
“Don’t forget we’re married, duckling. We’re gay newlyweds. Remember? I’m your staunch and loyal husband. Between us we’ll own a hundred percent of this business. You said you wanted that.”
“All right, Sam. All right,” she said wearily. “I’ll be all right — afterward.”
“You better be. Now get out of here.”
Chapter Five
The Iron Maiden
It was a most unfortunate accident. Lieutenant Klatsa of the state police, who handled the investigation, saw how it had happened. The daughter — a nice item, that one, even with her tear-puffed eyes — told how Tomlinson had left the dinner table saying that he wanted to take a look at progress on the small addition to the main lab building. It was dusk, a fool time of day for an old duffer like that to be out climbing ladders.
The ladder had been tilted up against the cinderblock wall, with the legs in soft sand. It was clear how the ladder had shifted and slid. It came down with the old boy and he would have survived the fall had it not been for the cinderblock. The edge of it caught him at the temple.
The man named Banth was pretty up set about the whole thing. And odd setup; the old man working with rabbits and cats and rats right on the same property where this Banth operated a health camp or something.