Burbee jumped in and cautioned her to go easy. He said she was exciting herself.
“Eleanor, you say he talked to someone on the phone. Did he call out, or did someone call him?”
She hesitated only an instant. “Someone called him. I was going to answer it, but he said never mind, he would.”
Thompson and I exchanged glances.
“Notice the curious time lapse?” he pointed out.
I said yeah. Burbee asked, what time lapse?
Thompson explained that I had been to see Eleanor the day before, but that punishment had taken nearly twenty-four hours to catch up with her. He also mentioned that the City Hall janitor had been fired long after I had revealed that I had been using him. And that a shadow in Croyden had been several hours late in getting on my tail.
I asked Eleanor how she had gotten away.
“I drove his car. After I left Croyden and crossed the river I realized the car could be traced. It was so flashy. So I left it in some small town and waited for a bus.”
“You went straight to my office?”
She nodded. “I was afraid to take a taxi. That might be traced. So I walked. I must have been weaker than I realized. I could hardly climb the stairs.”
“No one else around?”
“I didn’t see anyone. I was afraid someone might come in. I sat down behind the door. You might be late getting back. You see...” Her voice trailed away.
“Yeah,” I used some sarcasm. “I see. I was lying in the ditch where your friends had left me.”
“Oh, no. We saw that other car pick you up. We followed the other car as far as the hospital.”
“You... you did that? Why?”
“Our instructions were to make sure you were found.”
“Well, I’ll be damned. Why?”
She didn’t know. They were only obeying orders. She regretted having hit me on the head with the gun butt, but it had become necessary. I was beginning to win the fight. They had to follow orders. I was dumped in the ditch and shadowed to the hospital. And then their chore was finished.
“And then you returned to Croyden, and then, after this phone call, Dunkles shot you? Is that right?”
“Yes, sir.”
I bogged down. Thompson knew what was in my mind and knew why I wasn’t asking the next logical question.
He asked it for me. “Eleanor. Did a woman issue those orders? Did a woman call you that night at the farmhouse?”
“No sir.”
“No? Has a woman ever issued orders to you? Or to your knowledge, to the Judge?”
She was plainly puzzled. “No, sir.”
“Well then, who did?”
“The chief, Mr. Swisher.”
Thompson wasn’t satisfied. He thrust in another question, “Do you know a woman named Elizabeth Saari? Doctor Elizabeth Saari?”
Eleanor said no and she obviously wasn’t lying.
I started in again. “Eleanor, all this should convince you that you’re on a spot. The same hot spot I’m on. Remember that phone call to the Judge. That time he was instructed to eliminate you.” I stopped and let it sink in. “Now, Eleanor, Thompson wants to bust up this mess. You can help him if you want to. Do you?”
She lay very quiet and unmoving.
“Thompson has dug up a lot of stuff on Swisher and his outfit. He knows enough to hang them, but he can’t prove it. Not without your help. The Judge has shown you that Swisher no longer wants you around. There’s no reason why you should hang back — not now. You’ve got to help us.”
Abruptly, violently, she shuddered and hid her face. She was crying.
“Don’t you think I’ve thought of that? Don’t you credit me with any sense at all? You don’t have to rub it in.”
I got up from the bed and turned to Trudy Thompson, making a finger motion as if I were scribbling with a pencil. She nodded, and I pushed Thompson into my place. Very, very gently he began plying her with questions. And slowly, very slowly, he began getting answers. Trudy took them down.
I went out into the kitchen and raided the icebox again. When Doc Burbee’s cook came in in the morning she was going to be a chagrined old girl. I could follow the mumbling undertone of voices but couldn’t distinguish the words. I seated myself at the kitchen table, eating cheese sandwiches, drinking from a milk bottle, and adding up my sums. And I must admit that each time I arrived at an answer I grew more excited with the correctness of it. And more than somewhat depressed. If ever a guy was pulling his house down on top of him, I was.
I wondered if the hospital had discovered my absence, and if they had notified Dr. Saari. And I wondered what the good doctor would think, or say aloud, when they notified her. In spite of it all, I hoped she wouldn’t be too mad at me. I had warned her I wouldn’t run out on a client.
With that I went back into the bedroom. Eleanor was finishing up. Thompson seemed extremely dissatisfied.
“What’s the matter?”
“We’re no farther along than we were before.”
“Hasn’t she told you what you want to know?”
“Oh, certainly.”
“Then what’s eating on you?”
“Read that!” He pointed at his wife’s shorthand notebook. “Or, no, you can’t read shorthand. It wouldn’t do you much good if you could, there’s nothing there.”
“Maybe you’d better explain it in little words.”
“Damn it all, Horne, there’s nothing there we don’t already know. She’s told me everything she can but she hasn’t added one word we haven’t already found out, or surmised. She simply doesn’t know enough about the inner circle. Well—” he flung his hands in the air, “she would still make a first class state’s witness... if we had a case.”
That was my cue.
“I might provide that. If you’ll keep one eye shut.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Remember the caretaker’s cottage? Eleanor said it was empty at night, when the barn is running wide open...”
“And—?”
“And it won’t be breaking and entering.” I walked over to Eleanor and held out my hand. She looked at it, uncomprehending.
I said, “The key, baby.”
She shook her head. “I don’t have it.”
“Who does?”
“No one. They keep it in a mailbox beside the door.”
Burbee and I burst out laughing. Thompson didn’t see anything funny in her statement.
“There’s no mailbox delivery out that way.”
“No. But there is a mailbox, and a key in it.” Eleanor stuck to her statement.
I asked Eleanor if she felt strong enough for a ride. She almost jumped at the suggestion, and Burbee jumped for me. I overrode his protests. I pointed out that I realized she had been shot, that she was weak and all that, but that for a very good reason she should go along with us. Thompson wanted to know the reason.
I said, well, there’s really more than one. In the first place, if Eleanor unlocked the door and asked us in, it wouldn’t be breaking and entering. That if there was anything at all incriminating in the house, she would know where to look for it. And lastly, I had once tried to prove to her without success that her sister had been murdered. If she went along now, I believed I could prove it beyond doubt.
Thompson silently turned over in his head the close juxtaposition of the cottage to the lake, and said, yes, if there is running water in the cottage, you may be right.
I said that wasn’t all. I said that, if no one else, I at least wanted to prove to myself the reasons behind the curious lapses of time between any act of mine and the subsequent reaction. I believed that proving one thing to Eleanor would prove the other to me. And to him, if he was interested. He was. Very much so.