I didn’t answer him. I was remembering a china doll. Not so very many hours ago I had looked into her eyes and dreamed of them across a breakfast table. And later I had looked into the same eyes, now glassy, on an undertaker’s table.
I wound up later by modestly mentioning a subject very close to my heart.
“I’m writing a book on Lost Atlantis.” And for the first time that night I was properly thankful for his slight touch of eccentricity. He displayed keen interest.
“You are!”
“Well — I only have seven chapters done. I expect to finish it someday.”
“Will you do me a favor?”
“Gladly. If I can. You’ve done me a big one.”
“Will you let me read the seven chapters?”
“Now you’re pulling my leg.”
“I’m not. I want to read it. If it is worthwhile I’d like to publish it. I’m running some work on ancient Egypt now, written by a young Egyptotogist in Los Angeles. I’d like very much to publish your book. A chapter at a time.”
“Well, I sort of wanted it in book form.”
“Oh, my publishing it in serial form won’t prevent that. You are protected by common law right, you know. Our organization has limited membership. None of our magazines are sold. Your material is absolutely your own until it is distributed through commercial or non-organizational channels. Then, of course, a regular copyright protects it. Will you do me that favor?”
I have an ego. I gave in with very little coaxing. I promised to send him the chapters in a day or so.
Kennedy walked with me to the 63rd Street car line. Our friend the robot had knocked off for the night and the drugstore was dark.
The amateur publisher asked if I were returning to Boone that night and I said I was. I mentioned that a train left the Twelfth Street station at around 2:20. He first extracted a promise from me that I keep him up to date on any developments in Evans’ death, and then gave me the fastest route to the station. I stood on the rear platform of the streetcar and watched him wave me out of sight.
Kennedy is a pretty good egg.
I had been hanging around the station for about ten minutes when a couple of slick gents closed up on each side of me. They gave me a turn until I recognized the professional touch.
One of them said, “Got a good reason for carrying that rod mister?” In the rush of packing and getting to the station I had forgotten to take off the gun. They were plainclothes men.
We all had a laugh over it — that is, after I showed them my badge but not the outdated license. The guy who had tackled me bought a round of coffee and we shot the breeze until my train time. I spent most of the trip sleeping.
There were early editions of some of the Chicago papers in the car, and one of the papers carried an AP story on the body found in the lake. The caption writer had suggested suicide because the girl “was believed to be pregnant.”
Boone hadn’t changed much in the twelve hours I had been gone.
The wind was sharper, or maybe it was just the magnified memory of the Chicago winds. Snow had piled up deeply in those places where it was necessary to walk. Only a few dim street lights and a couple of outside station lights were lit; the town goes to bed well before midnight, just after the last popular radio show has left the air, and anyone found roaming the streets after that hour is a rounder or a suspicious character.
Up near the front of the train a mail truck had backed up to the open door of the mail and baggage car and the dirty gray sacks were flying. Someone in coveralls wielding a long-snouted oilcan was fussing around the locomotive. The station agent had already darkened the interior of the station and was preparing to lock up.
I saw a blacked-out coupe sitting at the far end of the parking lot but there were no cabs waiting. It was roughly a mile across town to the rooming house; my feet were tired.
As I turned away and started towards the street someone sitting in the coupe tooted the horn twice.
The interior of the car was too dark to reveal the someone and the station lights didn’t penetrate that far. Behind me on the platform there were only a young couple standing by the steps of a coach. They paid no heed to the horn. Neither did I.
The wooden platform ended abruptly and I stepped down into the street, sinking up to my ankles in drifted snow. The middle of the street made the best walking. I didn’t hear the coupe start up nor see it until it slid alongside of me, matching my pace.
After leaving the parking lot it had had to swing around behind the station, cross a little-used spur track and emerge into the street. I was surprised it had made the swing so quickly.
I kept walking, my right hand swinging free.
Suddenly the door nearest me was impatiently pushed open and a girl sitting behind the wheel called out, beckoning with a gloved hand. I had started to swing sideways, but stopped the movement.
Instead, I answered despairingly, “Please — not that again!”
The coupe stopped, throwing snow with the rear wheels.
A bare head popped out the door and the wind caught up the brown hair to whip it around. It was the nurse I had seen in the undertaker’s basement room.
“Don’t be silly!” she half screamed at me. “Get in here; it’s cold out there.”
I said yes mam and got in. It was warmer inside. She started up.
“Hello,” I offered feebly by way of opening a conversation the proper way.
“What did you mean by what you just said?” she countered.
“ ‘Not again?’ Lady, I’ve stopped trusting strange women who invite me into their automobiles.”
“I’m not strange. Call me Beth.”
“My name is—”
She cut it off. “I know. Mr. Thompson told me. But what do they call you? Your friends I mean?”
“Chuck. Or Horny. I prefer Chuck. What were you doing at the train?”
She neatly ignored the question by asking one.
“All right, Chuck. What’s what in Chicago?”
“And who mentioned Chicago?”
“That train makes no stops between Chicago and Boone. I suspect you’re nosing into something.”
“I am?” And a repeat of the question, “Why were you at the train?”
“You am.” And a repeated ignoring of the question. “Your interest in the autopsy yesterday wasn’t as casual as you pretended. Want to tell me?”
“Sorry. Professional confidence and stuff.”
“Bunko, Chuck. We’re a couple of professionals.”
“Nurses don’t count. At least, not until you take an office and go into business.”
“I have an office, smarty. Just across the hall from yours. I spoke to the rental agency this afternoon. And I’m not a nurse.”
“That office? That’s an old doctor’s office.”
“The new doctor is moving in.”
“You—?” My voice changed in the middle of the word.
“And why not? What did you suppose I was doing at the autopsy?”
“I thought you were... a nurse, or something.”
She laughed, a gleeful, silvery sound. It was like soft organ music playing bells at a far distance. Soft bells.
“Dr. Elizabeth Saari,” she introduced herself, “at your call. Have a card. They’re in my purse on the seat.”
I just sat there.
“Why don’t you say something? Make conversation?”
“Wait until I get my breath. I don’t like surprises. But I seem to be getting them all the time.”
She suggested artfully, “You’re still evading my question. Why the sudden Chicago trip?”
I turned so that I could look at her face, barely illuminated now by the light of the dash. It was quite pleasing to look upon. She hung onto the wheel and kept her eyes on the street. The loaded mail truck overtook us and passed in a cloud of churned-up snow.