“I don’t know, I tell you. It might be anyone. A man with a sick wife, anybody.”
“Why don’t they ring the bell?”
The doctor’s face was haggard; deep shadows had darkened under his eyes, and his lips had begun to tremble. “I don’t know, I don’t know.”
Ingram put his ear to the door. He heard low, murmuring voices, and a teasing rise of laughter. Then a latch clicked, and high heels tapped in the hallway.
“Dad?” It was a girl’s voice, soft and husky with excitement. “Dad? Are you still up?”
“She’s just sixteen,” the doctor said, whispering the words frantically. He stared at Ingram in helpless anguish. “Sixteen, you hear?”
Ingram’s face was hot. “I can’t help that,” he said, shaking his head. “How can I help that?”
“Dad? May I come in for a minute? We had a super time.”
“Tomorrow’s a big day, honey. I think you’d better turn in. I’ve got some — work to finish up.”
The knob turned slowly. “I just want to tell you one thing, Dad.”
“No, go to bed!”
“It’s too late, Doc,” Ingram said sharply. “Keep still.” Holding the gun at his side he opened the door and said, “Step in here,” to the young girl who stood in the hallway. She smiled uncertainly at her father as Ingram closed the door and leaned against it. “I didn’t know there was anyone with you, Dad. You didn’t say—”
“I’m sorry,” Ingram said, bringing the gun into sight. “Now don’t scream, don’t even talk. Just stand nice and quiet.”
“Dad!” She whimpered the word. “Who is he?”
“It’s all right, Carol,” her father said in a tight, unnatural voice. He put an arm about her slim shoulders. “His friend is hurt. I’ve got to go and take care of him.”
“We’ve all got to go,” Ingram said. “You see that, don’t you, Doc?”
“You can’t take her!”
“I’ve got to.”
“What kind of a man are you? Or are you a man at all?” The doctor’s voice was trembling with impotent fury. “You’re some kind of animal — that’s closer to the mark, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know,” Ingram said helplessly. “But I’ve got to do it, Doc.” The fear in the girl’s eyes and the anger in her father’s face cut him like whips. “I’ve got to help my friend. I’ve never done anything bad in my life before this. I’m in trouble. I don’t look like a man to you, but I swear to God you or your daughter won’t be hurt. You fix up my friend, and I’ll bring you right back. I swear it, I swear it. You got nothing to be afraid of.”
“I’m not afraid, Dad,” the girl said in a soft, little voice. “Really I’m not. Don’t worry, please.” She was small and slender, just a child in a pink party dress and high-heeled silver pumps, but she stared at Ingram with level, sensible eyes. “He won’t hurt us,” she said. “I believe him, Dad.”
“You won’t be hurt,” Ingram said, with sudden heat in his voice. “I swore that, didn’t I? Now, let’s go...”
Chapter Sixteen
The lane twisting into the farm had frozen solid; Ingram had to fight the wheel as the car bumped over ruts and ridges, the long headlights bouncing crazily over the stone walls of the old house. He had driven back in a wide circle, making a half-dozen unnecessary stops and turns; it was essential strategy, but the trip had used up precious time.
He climbed out of the car and shivered as the wind struck his body. The night stretched wide and dark and empty around him, silent except for the wind screaming like something caught in the branches of the big bare trees. He helped the doctor and the young girl from the car, and led them up the porch. They had said little during the long, circuitous drive, but after he had stopped and bandaged their eyes Ingram could feel their straining attention to the evidence coming to their other senses; the distant throb of a plane, the heavy, wet-earth smell of a mushroom house, the transition from concrete to dirt roads — they were soaking it all up, he knew, trying to figure out where he was taking them. Now as they stood on the porch, the doctor’s hand touched the door jamb, his fingers moved appraisingly over the porous stones of the old walls.
“Why don’t you just relax?” Ingram said quietly. “We aren’t worth your worrying about. Come on now, watch this step here...”
Earl was stronger than when Ingram had left him, propped up on the sofa with the whisky bottle beside him, his cheeks bright with unnatural color, and a hard, weary light flashing in his eyes. “Who is she?” he said, staring at the girl. “Why’d you bring her?”
“She’s his daughter. She came in from a party, and I had to bring her. How’re you feeling?”
“Pretty good. Just cold.”
Ingram took off the overcoat he had been wearing, and put it across Earl’s legs. Then he took a quick look around the room; Earl’s woman had done her job well. The old man was out of sight, the photographs were gone from the mantel, and except for the area around the sofa the room was lost in shadows. The doc would know he had been in an old house out in the country — nothing else. Ingram guided the girl to a chair, then removed the gauze bandage from the doctor’s eyes. He blinked and looked around for his daughter. She sat with her hands folded in her lap, her childish lips composed in a firm little line, incongruously sweet and innocent in the cold, dank room, with the pink skirt spread about her knees and a faint light gleaming on the tips of her silver pumps.
“I’ll be quick as I can, honey,” the doctor said to her. “Don’t worry about anything.”
“I’m not worried, Daddy.”
“Let’s go, Doc,” Earl said.
The doctor looked at him for the first time, his eyes clinically alert. There was no compassion in his face, and very little interest. He glanced at the whisky bottle, and said, “How much of that have you been drinking?”
“Three or four swallows. Why? Is that bad?”
“It probably won’t hurt.” The doctor bent over and looked into Earl’s eyes for a few seconds. Without turning around, he said, “I’ll need some boiling water, and a table or a couple of chairs.”
“I’ll get ’em,” Ingram said.
The doctor removed scissors from his bag and unbuttoned Earl’s shirt to cut away the bloody cloth. Ingram winced when he saw the wound; it looked like a purple eye squeezed between layers of swollen, discolored flesh. “I’m going to give you a local first,” the doctor said, putting his bag on the chair Ingram had shoved over beside the sofa. “Then something to keep you quiet. After I clean up the surface area, we’ll see what we’re up against.”
“How does it look? Bad?”
“I don’t know. I can make a guess after I’ve taken your blood pressure. Have you coughed up any blood?”
“No.”
“Maybe you were lucky. The bullet entered the pectoral muscle, but obviously missed the lung.” He had filled a hypodermic needle as he talked, measuring the liquid with frowning attention. “Okay, give me your arm.”
“How long’s this going to take?”
“Half hour to an hour, depending on what I find.” He hesitated then, and looked up at Ingram. “I’m going to do my best, but I can’t promise a damned thing under these circumstances. I should have a sterile operating room and sterile instruments. In a wound there’s the danger of shock and infection, in addition to the rupturing effect of the bullet, and the damage done to flesh and bone, capillaries and arteries. I’ll try like the devil — that’s all I can promise.”
Earl put a cigarette in his mouth, studied the doctor with a little grin. “How do you rate yourself as a sawbones?”
“I’m good.”
“Well, don’t worry then. I’m tough. I took a town in Germany once with a bullet through my leg. Had the Krauts making coffee for me when the rest of the platoon showed up. So start chopping away.”