She shook her head. “I don’t want to know. Take what you want and go. Please.”
“No,” he said. “It can’t be as simple as that.”
A chill knifed through Susie’s insides. “You said I wouldn’t be harmed.”
“That was expedient.” He paused, then went on, “I can’t leave you to tell them about it in the morning.”
When he finished speaking the silence in the room seemed palpable to Susie. It seemed to hold her motionless. When Hellmuth came at her, she would not even be able to raise a hand against him.
The silence stretched on unendurably. When at last Hellmuth made a move, it was only to open the calendar in front of him.
“You know where Stant was this afternoon?”
He asked the question indifferently, putting on his reading glasses, as if he would merely dismiss her as soon as she answered. She realized that he could not bring himself to kill her. Not yet. The paralyzing fear lost its grip on her. If Hellmuth wanted to talk, let him talk.
She mumbled an answer: “At the hospital, I think.”
“Yes. The question was, which hospital?” He had reached the day’s date, and his finger traced the line he wanted. Then he wrote down the name of the hospital and the client Stant had seen there. “You know, when you suddenly find yourself a criminal, it is a great advantage if you also happen to be a lawyer. You have all the right connections.”
He closed the calendar and put the note in his pocket. “Getting the access card for this building, and key to this office, for instance. A simple matter, as one of your associates has the locker next to mine at the Athletic Club.
“In fact, I would never have heard about Stant’s visit to the hospital if I hadn’t been at the Bar Association cocktail party. Someone said, they’d heard Harry Stant called an ambulance chaser before, but they hadn’t realized how true it was.”
Hellmuth was leaning back in his chair, dangling his glasses over his pinstriped paunch. He seemed to have forgotten that Susie was there. He was listening to his own mellifluous voice.
“A young girl — the daughter of an acquaintance, I believe — was the victim of a hit and run early yesterday morning.” He looked at his watch. “Exactly twenty-two hours ago. Even though she’d not yet regained consciousness, Stant was at the hospital by noon, offering condolences and. signing up her parents as clients. I don’t blame Stant for being greedy. It’s an excellent case. The girl, when she comes to, will suffer excruciating pain and suffering, and will be crippled for life. So the damages will be in seven figures easily. Stant will get a third of that. If he can bring a case — for the question is, against whom? Will the girl be able to identify the driver? There were no other witnesses. And will the driver turn out to be a deep pocket? You know the phrase, ‘a deep pocket?’ ”
“Yes,” Susie responded dully. “It means a defendant with lots of money.” She knew what Hellmuth would say next, and the knowledge sickened her.
“Quite. And the defendant in this case would be a deep pocket, as it is I.” With hardly a pause, the calm recitation continued. “So that leaves only the problem of whether the victim will be able to identify me. I can’t be sure. But I have my initials on my license plate — a foolish vanity — and I have an expensive and rather distinctive car. And my face is well-known. She looked right into my eyes, the moment before—”
His voice broke, for the first time. For a while he sat in silence, folding and unfolding his glasses. When he resumed, he had managed to find again his loftily ironic tone. “I can’t take the risk. I am a lawyer myself, and I do not intend to fall into the clutches of my own kind. They’d strip me clean. If the girl identifies me, the District Attorney will indict me for manslaughter, among other charges. I’ll be convicted, fined, and sentenced to several years in prison. Then Stant will simply take the conviction to civil court and they’ll award him all the damages he asks for.”
He rolled his chair back from the table and stood to face her. “I would lose my freedom, my reputation, and every cent I’ve got. Just because I had a few too many drinks at a party, and was in a hurry driving home. I’ve concluded that it is too high a price to pay.”
Susie understood now what he had been doing. He had not been talking to her, but to himself. He had made up his mind to kill her — and to finish off the wretched girl in the hospital — long ago. But he had quailed for a moment before the actual deed. He had needed to run over the chain of his reasoning again, to persuade himself. He was a persuasive man: he was a lawyer. Now he could murder her.
“It can’t work — don’t you see?” Susie pleaded in desperation. “They’ll suspect—”
“There will be no one for them to suspect, if the girl dies before regaining consciousness. And with luck you will pass for an accident.”
Involuntarily she glanced over his head, at the spiral staircase that led to the upper floor.
“Yes,” she heard Hellmuth say. “The steps are narrow and it’s dark in here. You’ll be found at the bottom with a fractured skull. A fall.”
As he spoke, he began to move unhurriedly around the table. For a moment his deliberateness held Susie in thrall. Then, as he came around the table, she saw the heavy crystal paperweight in his hand.
Susie swept a chair from beneath the table and sent it rolling at his legs. He bent and put out a hand to ward it off, and before he could straighten up she was round the table and running for the stairs.
In a second she was through the door to the twenty-first floor lobby. She pushed the door closed behind her and leaned against it. She had only a few seconds before he would come after her.
Her glance fell on the big grandfather clock — a firm heirloom — which stood next to the door. She knew it was too heavy for her to move. But...
Straining on tiptoe she managed to grasp the newels atop the clock. She heaved backwards with all her might. The clock teetered and fell over in a crash of glass and metal, blocking the door.
Susie could not hope that it would stop him. But it would hold him up. She darted across the lobby and stabbed at the elevator call button. The doors slid open. By sheer good luck, one elevator had come to rest on this floor.
And then, on the threshold of the empty, beckoning car, she stopped dead.
Turning, she saw the door behind her was still shut. By now Hellmuth should have been there, straining the jamb against the heavy clock.
He had not followed her. He was not in the library, but in the lobby directly below her. He had only to push the call button, and the elevator would obediently stop for him. She would be trapped.
Susie backed away, watching the doors slide shut and the indicator light go off.
There was a door to her right, leading to the emergency stairs. Susie took a step toward it — and then realized that Hellmuth could be watching the landing below, waiting for her. Or he could be on his way up.
She stood frozen in an agony of indecision.
“Susan.”
It was the hollow whisper over the paging system. He was where she had known and dreaded he would be: in the lobby below, at the reception console.
“You’re too clever for your own good. You can’t escape. You can only prolong the misery. If you had gotten in that elevator, it would all be over by now.”
She stared out the windows at the black skyscrapers in the distance, as the voice filtered out of the dimness around her.
“Now it’s going to be a long drawn-out business. But the end is certain. I’ve propped open the fire door, so you can’t get by without my seeing you. And I’ve called all the elevators. When they get here I’ll block the doors open. Then I’ll come up the stairs.”
He broke off for a moment, and there was only the hum of static from the speakers.