He stood still for a long moment, his face changing. Dull sorrow filmed his eyes like transparent lacquer. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to fly off the handle. It’s just when I think about them.”
“The chair,” I said.
He stooped and picked it up and sat in it. “I’m sorry, Mr. Archer.”
“I’m not Archer,” I lied. “You’ve got me wrong.”
His eyes blazed wide. “Who are you then? Archer’s the name on the door.”
“I keep Mr. Archer’s books, answer his telephone for him. Why didn’t you say you wanted Mr. Archer?”
“I thought that you were him,” he answered dully. “A friend of mine, back where I came from, told me if I ever sprung myself – if I ever got here to L.A., that Mr. Archer would give me a fair throw if anybody would. Where is he?”
I countered with a question: “What’s your friend’s name?”
“He has no name. I mean I don’t remember.”
“Where did you spring yourself from?”
“It was a slip of the tongue. I didn’t say that. Anyway, what business is it of yours? You’re not Mr. Archer.”
“Folsom? San Quentin?”
He was silent, his face like stone. After a while he said: “I’ll talk to Mr. Archer.”
“I’ll call him for you.” I reached for the telephone and started to dial a number. “Who shall I say wants him?”
“No you don’t.” His stormy mind had flashes of intuition. “I know what you’re up to, ringing in the cops.” He leaped across the desk and tore the phone from my hands. “And you are Mr. Archer, aren’t you? You’re a liar, too, like the rest of them. I come here looking for a fair throw and I get the same old dirty deal again. You’re one of them, aren’t you?”
I said: “Put the telephone back on the desk and sit down.”
“To hell with you. You can’t scare me. One thing, when a man goes through what I’ve been through, I’m not afraid any more. You hear me?” His voice was rising.
“They hear you in Glendale. Sit down and be quiet now.”
He threw the telephone at my head. I ducked. The telephone crashed through the window and hung there on its wire. I reached for the upper righthand drawer of my desk, the one that contained the automatic. But he forestalled me.
“No you don’t,” he said.
His hand went into his pocket and came out holding a gun. It was a .32 Smith & Wesson revolver, nickel-plated. It wasn’t much of a gun, but it was enough to freeze me where I stood.
“Put your hands up,” he said. “Give me your word that you won’t call the police.”
“I can give it. It won’t be worth anything.”
“That’s what I thought. You’re a liar like the rest. Get away from that desk.”
“Make me. You’re crazy if you think–”
He let out a yelp of fury. “I am not crazy.”
He dropped the little revolver and reached for me. His hooked hands swung together and clamped on my throat. He dragged me bodily across the desk. He was tremendously strong. His pectorals were massively sculptured under the wet blue shirt. His eyes were closed. They had long reddish lashes like a girl’s. He looked almost serene. Then water sprang out in little rows of droplets across his forehead. His iron fingers tightened on my throat, and daylight began to wane.
His face opened suddenly, eyes and mouth, as if he had wakened out of a walking nightmare. The blue eyes were bewildered, the mouth pulled wry by remorse. “I’m sorry. You hate me now. You’ll never help me now.”
His hands dropped to his sides and hung useless there. Relieved of their support, I went to my knees. Bright-speckled darkness rushed through my head like a wind. When its roaring subsided and I got to my feet, he was gone. So was the bright revolver.
I pulled myself to my feet and dragged the telephone in through the broken window. It still had a dial tone, not quite as loud as the singing tone in my head. I dialed a police number. The desk-sergeant’s voice focused my wits, and I hung up without saying a word.
A homicidal maniac, or reasonable facsimile of one, had taken me in my own office. That would be a pretty story for the papers, good advertising for a private detective. Clients would be lining up six deep at my door. I sat and looked at the telephone, trying to decide whether to throw it out the window permanently.
There were footsteps in the outer office, too rapid and light for a man’s. As I crossed the room, they paused outside my door. I pulled it open. A woman in a dark suit stumbled in, attached to the knob. Her jet black ducktail bob was slightly disarrayed. She was breathless.
“Are you Mr. Archer?”
I looked her over and decided that there was no harm in admitting it.
She swayed towards me, wafting in springtime odors from the young slopes of her body. “I’m so glad you’re all right, that I got here first.”
“First before what?”
“Before Carl. He came to Dr. Grantland’s office – where I work – and said that he was on his way to see you. He demanded money to pay you with. I went back to get the doctor, to see if he could reason with him. As soon as my back was turned, Carl rifled the petty cash drawer in the desk.”
“Who is Carl?”
“My husband. Please forgive me, I’m not making much sense, am I?” Her dark blue glance slid over my shoulder and rested on the jagged hole in the window. “Has Carl been here already?”
“Something was. A man on a cyclone.”
“A big young man in working clothes? With short blond hair?”
I nodded.
“And he was violent.” It wasn’t a question. It was a leaden statement of despair.
“He started to choke me to death, but he changed his mind. Flighty. Did you say he’s your husband?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not wearing a wedding ring.”
“I know I’m not. But we’re still man and wife, in the legal sense. Of course I could have had an automatic divorce, after the trouble.” She slumped against the doorframe. Her dark enormous eyes and her carmine mouth provided the only color in her face. “I knew it. I knew he was lying. They’d never let him go in his condition. He must have escaped. It’s what I’ve been afraid of.” A few sobs racked her. She swallowed them, and straightened.
“Come in and sit down. You need a drink.”
“I don’t drink.”
“Not even water?”
I brought her a paper cupful from the cooler and stood over her chair while she drained it.
“Where did Carl escape from?”
“He’s been in the Security Hospital in Mendocino for nearly five years.” She crumpled the cup in her hands, and twisted it. “It’s a state institution for the criminally insane, in case you don’t know.”
“I do know. Is he that bad?”
“As bad as possible,” she said to the twisted cup. “Carl killed his father, you see. He was never tried for the murder, he was so obviously – unbalanced. All the psychiatrists agreed, for once. The judge was a friend of the family, and had him committed without a public trial.”
“Where did all this happen?”
“In the Valley, in Citrus Junction. It was a tragic thing for all of us. It happened on Thanksgiving Day, five years ago. Carl was home from Camarillo, and we were having a sort of family reunion.”
“Was he a mental patient at the time?”
“He had been, but he was out on leave of absence. We all thought he was on his way to being cured. It was almost a happy day, our first for a long time – until it happened. We should never have left him alone with his father for a minute. I still don’t think he meant to kill the old man. He simply went into one of his terrible rages, and when he came out of it old Mr. Heller was dead. Choked to death.” Her heavy eyes came up to my face. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. You have no part in my troubles. Nobody could possibly want a part of them.”