“What happened?” Mervyn sat down, eagerly.
“Oh, Pilgrim finally gave in. He and Mary began to eat lunch together out of paper sacks. Bread, salami, red wine in paper cups. The wine officially verboten, of course, but it would have been a pity to interfere.”
“And then what?”
“I fired him.”
“How come?”
“Pilgrim was hopeless. Not a bad fellow personally — really a rather refreshing sort — but his mind simply wasn’t on his work.”
“Do you have his address?”
“Yes.” The librarian swiveled to consult a file. “1909 ½-A Milton. That’s south of campus.”
Mervyn made a note. Then he said in a manly way, “It would simplify matters so much, Thompson, if you could tell me... I mean eliminate yourself...” Thompson shook his head. “Gray, I work here five days a week. From three o’clock Friday afternoon to nine o’clock Monday morning I’m a different man. I like to keep my two worlds separate. And I fully intend to. You’ll just have to take my word for it that I had nothing to do with Mary Hazelwood’s going away.”
Mervyn rose for the second time. “Thanks for your help.”
Thompson said graciously, “Sorry I didn’t prove more satisfactory.”
Mervyn returned to his car, not altogether displeased. In a sense the interview had not been a total loss; Thompson had seemed relaxed and assured. Or had it been an act? Mervyn gnawed his lower Up, worried again.
He swung south of campus, turned into Milton Street and located 1909½-A. It was a ramshackle cottage in the yard behind a ramshackle house. The district was something less than middle class, not far from the used-car lots along Shattuck Avenue.
Mervyn took a cracked concrete path that skirted a neglected lawn from which sprouted a circular aluminum clothes-drying contraption. John Pilgrim’s cottage was not much more than a garage. The roof was of cheap red composition shingle; the siding had once been painted gray. Mervyn climbed two steps to the unsteady porch and knocked on the door.
There was no response. Mervyn went over to a nearby window and peered into a front room. A reed mat covered the floor. On the far wall were William Blake water-colors and a bookcase constructed of orange crates, holding two or three dozen paperbacks. Along the other wall stood a studio couch covered with dark-green monk’s cloth, a cane-bottomed rocking chair and a card table.
He knocked once more, and then he gave up.
Returning to his apartment, he made a pot of coffee and some sandwiches, which he ate without appetite. Susie came into the court, ran up the steps quickly to the balcony and went into her apartment. Mervyn checked the time. One-thirty. Susie, he recalled, was planning to visit Mrs. Kelly between two and three.
Ten minutes later she emerged; she had changed from shorts into a fetching blue print dress. On impulse Mervyn went to the door.
“Hey, Susie!”
She turned and waited for him.
“Going to the hospital?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“I had no idea you were fond of Mrs. Kelly.”
“She seems a decent old thing.”
“She is,” Susie said shortly. Mrs. Kelly, Mervyn remembered, had mothered her and Mary, or tried to. It was probably the only mothering they had ever had. Reaching the sidewalk, Susie turned left. Mervyn halted in astonishment.
“You’re going to walk it?”
“What’s wrong with walking? It’s only a few blocks.”
“Why, it’s at least a mile! Come on, we’ll take my car.”
“Someday,” said Susie, following him, “people’s legs will begin to drop off.”
So they rode to the hospital, Susie sitting straight as a drum majorette.
A woman at the lobby desk directed them to Room 406. The elevator deposited them in an antiseptic corridor. Susie pushed open the door marked “406” softly and looked in. “Mrs. Kelly? You awake?”
“Oh, Susie,” a weak voice said. “Come in.”
Susie hurried into the room; Mervyn followed bashfully. He was afraid of hospitals.
“Sit down,” croaked Mrs. Kelly. She was lying flat on her back; one leg was in traction. “I’m so glad to see you, dear. Who is that with you? Mary?”
Mervyn stepped forward. “It’s me, Mrs. Kelly. Mervyn Gray.”
Mrs. Kelly’s eyes rolled and seemed to bulge. Her body swelled. And her mouth gaped and let loose a scream of terror.
“You!”
“Me?” Mervyn said, prickling all over. “What did I do, Mrs. Kelly?”
“You... pushed me down the steps!” Mrs. Kelly shrieked.
Chapter 7
When the floor nurse chased them out, Mervyn was pale and Susie was thoughtful.
They waited for the elevator in strained silence. Finally Mervyn laughed nervously. “The poor woman must be hallucinated.”
“She seemed quite rational till she saw you,” Susie observed.
Mervyn gave her a sour look. “She’s off her rocker, that’s what she is.”
“It seems to me,” Susie said, “that’s a pretty feeble defense.”
“My God!” he cried. “You can’t really believe...?”
“Does it matter what I believe, Mr. Gray?”
The elevator door opened; they rode down in an unfriendly silence. On the sidewalk Susie smiled distantly and said, “Thanks for the lift. I have an errand to do. I’ll leave you here.”
With a hurt nod, Mervyn turned on his heel. He climbed into his car and sat glowering at the world. He hated the whole planet, notably those of its denizens who were female and fat and neurotic and had paranoid delusions. Why in heaven’s name had old Mrs. Kelly accused him of having shoved her down the steps? She must be out of her ever-loving mind.
Still, Mervyn was uneasy. The more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed to him that there was a connection between his unknown tormentor and what had just happened in Room 406. But what, how, why? He started the car and edged out into traffic.
For a few minutes he drove aimlessly, letting his blood cool. Finally he looked at his watch. Two-thirty. Thesis? Study? Research? He laughed unhappily. Fat chance!
YOU’LL SUFFER, the note had said.
Stimulated to fury anew, Mervyn made recklessly for the Bayshore Freeway. He shot across the Bay Bridge and swung down the First Street off-ramp into the heart of San Francisco.
In a pay-phone directory at a service station, he looked up John Viviano’s address: 30 San Angelo Place. Viviano’s house proved to be a relic of pre-1906 San Francisco, clinging to the north side of Telegraph Hill, with a travel-poster view of the Embarcadero and the bay. The pinch-front frame structure was painted a dazzling white; there was a great deal of rococo fretwork and scrimshaw, and two bay windows on each floor. On the pane of the front door, ancient chipped white enamel letters proclaimed:
Mervyn stepped into a foyer that startled him. There was black carpeting on the floor and the walls were covered with black velvet. To the left stood a spraddle-legged table painted the greenish white-blue of verdigris, supporting an antique lamp with a celadon base and a green Tiffany-glass shade.
If the décor startled him, what hung on the opposite wall almost toppled him. It was a huge photograph in an ugly gun-metal frame of a standing young woman in a décolleté Empire-like gown. She had one knee resting on a Louis XIV chair and both hands lightly touching the chair’s top. And she was staring right at Mervyn with a Mona Lisa smile, and she was Mary Hazelwood.
The confrontation was so unexpected that Mervyn’s heart stopped for a moment. And into his mind flashed the nightmarish image of that twisted cold figure in pale blue making an obscene splash in dark water... Mervyn winced and turned hastily from the photograph.