Clearing her throat, Martha said to the receptionist, “Miss, do you happen to know if Dr. Waters has a clock at home similar to the one you have here?”
The receptionist said politely, “I’ve never seen Dr. Waters’ home. I’ve only worked for him a little over two weeks.”
“Oh,” Martha said, and subsided. Several moments passed in silence, then the girl looked up again. “It may be that they have, and that’s why they put this one here. I wish they hadn’t, because it drives me crazy, sounding off every fifteen minutes.”
Martha said puzzledly, “What do you mean they put it here?”
“Dr. and Mrs. Waters, when they were married.”
“But they were married ten years ago, weren’t they?” Martha said, confused.
The redhead smiled at her. “I mean his current marriage, Miss Pruett. They were only married a couple of weeks ago. That’s how I got this job, because Joanne was his previous receptionist.”
Martha was mildly shocked. He certainly hadn’t waited a very decent interval before taking a second wife. Men, she sniffed to herself. After all his show of bereavement.
The redhead was saying, “Joanne had the clock at her apartment, and of course when she moved from there to Dr. Waters’ home, she had no place to put her furnishings, because his home was already furnished. She sold most of her things, but she brought a few of the smaller items here.”
The girl went back to her work. Martha stared up at the clock while a series of astonishing thoughts ran through her mind. If all those calls had come from the apartment of Dr. Waters’ former receptionist instead of from his home, quite obviously it had not been Janet Waters to whom Martha had talked; and the fact that this same receptionist had become the second Mrs. Waters so soon after the death of the first added a sinister element. This thought so staggered Martha that she didn’t realize how long she had been sitting there mulling it over until the clock sounded again. This time all doubt was removed from her mind, because it cuckooed twice before chiming five times, then cuckooed twice again.
At that moment the door from the inner office opened and Dr. Fred Waters ushered out a male patient.
“Make Mr. Curtis another appointment for next week, Ruby,” the dentist said to the receptionist. “Then you can leave, because I know you have to catch a bus. I’ll close up.”
He turned to glance at Martha and a startled expression crossed his face. “Oh, hello there,” he said. “I didn’t realize you were my last appointment. Ruby likes to surprise me.”
The remark caused the receptionist to glance curiously from Martha to the dentist, but she made no comment. She merely handed him a large card and said, “Here is Miss Pruett’s chart, doctor.”
After a brief glance at it, Dr. Waters said to Martha, “Sorry to have kept you waiting, Miss Pruett. Come on in.”
Beyond a jerky nod, Martha had made no response to the dentist’s greeting, but no one seemed to notice. She rose and rather woodenly preceded him into the treatment room. She sat in the dental chair, allowed a bib to be tied around her neck, and obediently opened her mouth.
“Hmm,” the dentist said after a brief examination. “Exceptionally fine teeth for your age.” He smiled down apologetically and amended that to, “I mean for any age.”
He started to work with a scraper and a pick. Fortunately the nature of dental treatment prohibits conversation, because Martha couldn’t have thought of a word to say to him. Time passed in silence. She knew when fifteen minutes had passed, although it seemed much longer, because the cuckoo clock sounded the quarter hour.
Only seconds later, at a moment when Martha was seated erect to rinse out her mouth, there was a light rap on the door, then it immediately opened. A strikingly beautiful blonde of about twenty-five stood in the doorway.
“Oh, excuse me, honey,” she said in a husky voice. “I assumed your last patient would be gone by now.”
She was starting to pull the door closed again from outside when Martha blurted, “You must be Joanne.”
The woman paused to gaze at her inquiringly. Dr. Waters’ expression denoted doubt as to whether he should introduce the two women or simply request the blonde to wait outside.
His patient took the decision out of his hands by announcing, “I’m Martha. Remember me, Joanne?”
The blonde’s face lost all expression. Dr. Waters’ turned pale. The woman pushed the door all the way open again and studied Martha with pursed lips.
“You sound as though we had met before,” she said with an assumed air of puzzlement which failed to fool Martha in the least. She could tell by the woman’s expression that she had recognized Martha’s voice as instantly as Martha had recognized hers.
Martha said coldly, “Only over the phone. What a remarkable murder plan! You managed to establish through a totally disinterested witness that Janet was a psychotic who had committed suicide, when the poor woman was prob-ably entirely normal.” She looked at the dentist. “How did you give her the pills before you went bowling, doctor? In her coffee?”
Belatedly, she knew that this verbal outburst had been unwise when she saw how both of them were looking at her. Sliding from the dental chair, she undid her bib and draped it over the chair arm. “I guess I’ll be going,” she said nervously.
The blonde Joanne remained centered in the open doorway. In an unemotional voice she said to her husband, “Accidentally giving a patient an overdose of anesthetic won’t help your professional reputation, but it wouldn’t hurt as much as a murder trial.”
The dentist gazed from his wife to Martha and back again with an expression of desperation on his face.
Martha said to the woman in the doorway, with a mixture of fright and belligerence, “You had better get out of my way.”
Ignoring her, Joanne said to Dr. Waters, “You have no choice. It’ll pass as an accident. It’s happened in other dental offices.”
Dr. Waters came to a decision so suddenly he took Martha by surprise. Grasping her frail figure by both shoulders, he threw her back into the dental chair.
Despite her age and small size Martha was as agile as an eel, and now she behaved like one. She writhed and kicked and twice nearly broke loose from the man’s grip before he finally subdued her by lying across her legs and holding her shoulders down with both hands. She had to give up then, because he was nearly double her weight.
“You know how to use the gas,” the dentist said to his wife. “Get the mask over her face while I hold her down.”
A moment later a conelike rubber mask with gas hissing from it was clamped over Martha’s nose and mouth. She shook it loose by violently shaking her head from side to side, but then Joanne grasped her beneath the chin with one hand and held her head immobile while she firmly reset the mask in place with the other hand.
Martha held her breath. She could feel the gas cooling her cheeks as it was forced from both sides of the mask by her refusal to breathe. She could also feel the pressure of Joanne’s right thumb on her cheek alongside the mask.
Martha’s lungs were on the verge of bursting and she was ready to capitulate by taking a deep breath when the hurried voice of the receptionist said from the open door, “I left my bus ticket in my desk, doctor. I have to rush—” There was a pause, then, “What—”
Dr. Waters started so violently that he released his grip on Martha’s shoulders and half rose from his position across her body. Joanne started too, less violently, but enough to relax momentarily the pressure of both hands.
Martha jerked her head to one side and used the exceptionally fine teeth Dr. Waters had admired to bite his wife’s thumb nearly to the bone.