What was it about that bastard in 107? What was it?
Something, that was for sure. Something you just sensed. When you’d been around hospitals long enough, you automatically knew who was goofing off and who was really sick. And 107 was goofing, Greg would bet his bottom dollar on that
Cat fever, the old standby. Don’t know what else to call it? Cat fever. Greg was even willing to bet they’d diagnosed poor Guibert as cat fever when he first came aboard. So 107 was pulling a switch on the old routine. He was a shrewd bastard, all right, no getting away from that. He was shrewd, and the shrewdness annoyed the hell out of Greg, especially now, especially after he’d seen Miss Dvorak leaving the room. She’d been in there for close to twenty minutes, and that’s too long for any nurse to spend with any patient, especially an innocent doll like Miss Dvorak and especially with a shrewd bastard like 107.
What was his game? That was the big question, all right. The guy in 107 had a game, as sure as God made little green apples. Just malingering? Yeah, maybe. Was he bucking for a medical discharge? No, he’d have chosen something stronger than cat fever if that’s what he was up to. So what then? Maybe he was going to pull a psycho routine, maybe that was it. Start foaming at the mouth, falling down on the floor, brushing bedbugs off him, things like that. Well, don’t brush them on me, pal.
Damnit, why don’t I like the poor sonofabitch? Greg wondered. He may be really sick, when you get down to it.
The hell he is.
O.K., so he ain’t sick.
Damn right, he ain’t.
Then what’s his game?
I don’t know, Greg admitted. But I’m sure as hell going to find out!
Eleven
Chuck Masters tried to make his head comfortable against the coarsely padded back of the seat.
In all his experience with trains, he had never achieved that simple goal of making himself comfortable, and this experience, he silently reflected, was no different from any of the others. The people who designed trains, he was sure, were the same people who designed such things as electric chairs and subterranean torture chambers. If you put your head this way, he thought, it’s no good. And if you put your head the other way, it’s still no good. What I really need is a Pullman. But he’d been in Pullmans, too, and he’d never been able to sleep, and oh, hell, he should have joined the Air Force.
He achieved some measure of comfort, finally, by sort of twisting his head a little to starboard and tilting it back slightly just a smidgin, just about maybe three degrees. He didn’t dare move his head because he’d been striving for this position ever since the train had begun its laborious journey, and he was certainly not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Outside the window, he could see the countryside falling away, the bland Southern sky imperceptibly changing to the harsher, bleaker Northern sky. He began counting telephone poles. The poles were regularly spaced, set into the ground at slightly different depths, so that the wires plunged and rose, plunged and rose again.
Jesus, I’m getting seasick.
He turned his attention from the telephone poles and the scenery beyond the window, and he concentrated on the window directly before him, in which the aisle and the seats opposite were reflected. A girl was sitting in one of the seats. She was a redhead, and she was wearing a tight green woolen suit and a short topper, and her legs were crossed, and there was a gold ankle bracelet around one ankle. The crossed legs exposed a goodly amount of white, fleshy thigh, and the girl seemed cognizant of this fact, proud of it, for that matter, and for a moment Masters wanted to turn his head from the reflection and enjoy the splendor of the real image. He balanced the desirability of viewing an expanse of thigh against the desirability of keeping the comfortable position he had finally found. And into his reasoning came the coldly logical fact that he was on a Navy mission, and even if the young lady proved to be as interesting as her interesting thigh promised, she’d probably get off the train in Washington, and he’d go on to Atlantic City, and where would that leave him? Of course, there was a portion of night travel ahead, and heaven only knew what could happen on a dimly lighted train speeding through the night with a redhead who looked the way this one did, and who went around flashing comfortably padded white-winking thighs all over the place.
The debate assumed major proportions in his mind. He was an officer of the United States Navy, he reminded himself, and his conduct should become an officer of the United States Navy, but the thigh persistently winked at him in the reflection. The girl had put down her magazine now, and he caught a glimpse of the title. One of the romance magazines, and that too weighed heavily in the young lady’s favor. She sucked in a deep breath that threatened the strength of her upper garments, and Masters was almost ready to rise and make the young lady’s acquaintance when he thought of Jean Dvorak. At the same time, one of the radarmen walked down the aisle and plopped into the vacant seat beside Masters, so that he never really knew whether it was the radarman or Jean Dvorak who prevented him from getting to meet and perhaps know the redhead with the extroverted thigh.
“Hello, Mr. Masters,” the radarman said.
“Hello,” Masters answered. He did not turn his head. If a redhead could not budge him from the dubious comfort he had at last achieved, a radarman certainly wasn’t going to turn the trick.
“Mind if I sit here?” the radarman asked.
“Go right ahead,” Masters said.
The radarman, who was already sitting anyway, made himself comfortable. “Ah, this is nice,” he murmured.
Masters wondered about his sanity, until he realized the radarman was sitting directly opposite the redhead, without the slightly smudged hindrance of a reflection in the window.
“Ain’t it, sir?” the radarman said.
“The ride, or the scenery?” Masters asked.
“Oh, both, sir. Both.”
Masters grunted, not moving his head.
“Very nice,” the radarman said, apparently very comfortable in the seat now, apparently planning to spend the night there, or perhaps the rest of the month, or even the rest of his life. “When you think we’ll be there, sir?”
“Early in the morning,” Masters said.
“Think we’ll get liberty?”
“I doubt it.”
“Oh.”
“I can’t see your face,” Masters said, “and I don’t want to turn.”
The radarman looked at him curiously, wondering if the Lieutenant were sick or something.
“Who are you?” Masters asked.
“Me?” the radarman asked back.
“Yes.”
“Oh. I’m Caldroni. Hey, don’t you know me? Sir?”
“Yes, Caldroni. I know you very well.”
“For a minute there—”
“Where are the other men?”
“Oh, all in this car.”
“Good.”
“Yes, sir.” Caldroni was silent for a long while. “Sir?” he whispered at length.
“Mmm?”
“She’s something, ain’t she, sir?” he whispered.
“The redhead?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Yes, she’s something.”
“Begging your pardon, sir, but is there anything outside that window that is important to our mission, sir? What I mean to say, sir, is that if you are concerned with duty, I can understand your interest. But if you are not, sir, then may I suggest—”
“I am concerned with comfort, Caldroni,” Masters said. “To be sure, sir. Aren’t we all?” His voice dropped to a whisper again. “This one is built for comfort, sir.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Yes, sir.” Caldroni glanced at the redhead again. “Sir, have you ever been to Atlantic City?”
“No,” Masters said.
“A very nice place, I understand. One of the fellows lives in Jersey. He says Atlantic City is real gone.”