He turned the covers back, and she twisted frantically away from his hands.
“No-no! Leave them on, don’t let me-”
“It’s gone,” Michael said, hardly knowing what he was saying. “It’s all right.”
“How do you know?” Her voice was quieter, under a fierce control, but she still held herself away from him. Michael’s hands dropped back onto the blankets.
“Don’t you see,” she went on, “that we can’t take the chance? I can’t take it, even if you will. Call your friend. Call Bellevue, some hospital. And leave me tied until they come for me.”
Michael shook his head dumbly. He was incapable of speech, but she read his face, and her own expression changed. Her eyes flickered and then dropped away from his.
“All right,” she said. “I’m sorry. I was upset. Untie me.”
She held her bound wrists toward him. The cloth was soft, and he had not tied the knots tightly; but he saw the red marks on her wrists, and his first impulse was to do as she asked. Yet he hesitated-noting her reluctance to meet his eyes, remembering the quick, cunning expression that had flickered across her face.
“What will you do if I untie you?” he asked.
Her silence was all the answer he needed. The minute his back was turned, she would run, and not stop running until she had found a safe padded cell in which to hide. She might even go back to Gordon, she was desperate enough for that… And through the black despair that enveloped him he felt an incongruous flash of something like triumph. She hadn’t reacted this way after her attempt on Gordon. Rather than risk hurting him, she would run to meet the fate she had been fleeing.
“No,” he said decisively. “Not that way, Linda.”
Her eyes blazed up at him, and she started to speak. The words caught in her throat as they heard the sound of a knock at the front door.
The same idea came to both their minds simultaneously: Gordon. Michael moved just in time to stop the scream that had gathered in her throat. He knew what she meant to do, and he knew what his course of action must be. The struggle was short but ugly, because now he was not fighting some sick manifestation of hate, but Linda herself. When he stood up, he was wet with perspiration. His stomach contracted in a spasm of sickness as he looked down at the writhing figure on the bed-gagged with a towel, its wrists and ankles tied firmly to the bedposts. The knock was repeated. It had come again twice while he was…Whoever it was must know he was there.
Michael turned on his heel and went out, closing the bedroom door tightly behind him. As he reached the front door the knock was repeated. He wrenched the door open with a violence that did little to relieve his fury and frustration. He was almost hoping that his surmise was correct. It would have been a pleasure to get his hands on Randolph.
But it was not Randolph. It was his secretary.
“Good morning,” Briggs said politely.
Michael stared back at him, deflated and uncertain. He was not sure of Briggs’s role. Involved he must be, but perhaps only as one of Gordon’s blinded disciples. If that was the case…Michael’s stomach contracted as he remembered what lay on the bed in the next room. Linda wouldn’t be the only one to be locked up if Briggs happened to see that pretty picture.
“Good morning,” he answered, wondering how his voice could sound so normal. “Looking for something?”
Briggs blinked; a sly, appreciative smile moved his mouth. The expression was so ugly that Michael fell back a step. Briggs took advantage of his movement to enter.
The man was dressed in an imitation of Gordon’s impeccable taste. The suit had been well fitted; but not even Savile Row could have done much with Briggs’s figure. The expensive leather belt had slid down below the equator of his round belly, and the Italian silk tie curved out to follow the hump. In his hand Briggs held a hat. He put it down on a table and glanced around the room.
“Nice place you have here,” he said.
There was no sound from the bedroom. Michael wondered whether Linda had recognized Briggs’s voice and found him too much even for her new resolution. He couldn’t risk it, though. He had to get the man out of here.
“I don’t like to seem inhospitable,” he said, “but I’m just about to go out.”
It was such a glaring lie, considering the hour and the state of Michael’s apparel, that Briggs didn’t bother to comment. But another of those faint, unpleasant smiles touched his pale mouth.
“Oh, I shan’t stay. I just came by at Mr. Randolph’s request. You haven’t seen anything of Mrs. Randolph, I suppose?”
A series of soft thuds came from behind the closed door. Michael glanced at it.
“That damned cat,” he said.
“Your cat? How nice that you have a pet.”
“If you don’t mind…” Michael felt he couldn’t control himself much longer. In about thirty seconds he was going to grab Briggs by the collar of his pretty suit and heave him out the door.
“Yes…You see, there was a sad occurrence last night. You remember our local witch, I’m sure. Apparently she got carried away by one of her experiments and set her house on fire.”
“Really?” His tone didn’t even convince Michael himself, but suddenly he no longer cared. Briggs knew. He knew all about everything.
“Yes,” Briggs cooed. “Very sad. Burned to a crisp, the poor old lady was. Well, naturally Mr. Randolph thought Linda might have been involved.”
“Linda,” Michael repeated.
“I think of her that way,” Briggs said, with an indescribable smirk. “I wish we could find her, helpher… She’s a beautiful young lady. A shameto have all that go to waste in some asylum.”
Two things kept Michael from planting his fist right in the center of Briggs’s leer. One was the thought that it would be like hitting a fat woman. The other was the knowledge that Briggs was trying to anger him into an indiscreet act.
“How is Mr. Randolph?” he asked.
“Not well.” Briggs shook his head sadly. “He’s very upset, naturally. Knowing Linda’s sad history as he does, he wondered about what happened to Andrea. Luckily the evidence was destroyed. The body, I mean.”
“I’m late now,” Michael said.
“How thoughtless of me to keep you, then.” Briggs turned toward the door. Then he made a sudden dart to the side, his pudgy hand shooting out.
“Here it is,” he exclaimed guilelessly, holding up a small black notebook. “Mr. Randolph thought he might have misplaced it here.”
Michael looked at it.
“ Randolph ’s? But it must have been here for days. I never saw it.”
“Somehow it seems to have worked its way under a heap of magazines,” Briggs said blandly. “You busy writers aren’t the neatest housekeepers in the world, are you? He’ll be glad to have this back. And to think this was the reason why he asked me to stop by. I declare I’d have forgotten to ask if I hadn’t seen it, peeping out. Well, then…”
“Wait a minute,” Michael said. An insane suspicion had entered his mind. “Let me see that.”
Briggs surrendered the notebook without comment. Only his raised eyebrows indicated courteous surprise.
Michael flipped through the pages of the notebook. It was an ordinary little loose-leaf pad, except that its cover was of tooled leather instead of plastic. It was certainly not Michael’s property, and the handwriting on the pages resembled what he remembered of Gordon’s script. The entries were cryptic and abbreviated; they might have been written in the sort of personal shorthand a busy man had developed in order to jot down appointments and reminders. A few of the signs reminded Michael of chemical or mathematical symbols.
With some reluctance he returned the notebook to Briggs. He had an odd feeling that if he could study those entries at leisure, he might learn something important. But he couldn’t refuse to let the man have it, and the need to get Briggs out was stronger than any possible gain from the book.