“I know that you’re rich, and that you built an observatory at San Jacinto.”
“Nothing else?”
“Half an hour ago, Doctor Carew was telling me these things. I’ve never spoken of you before.”
Messenger stood up and made through the room some long and slow measured strides. When he turned in the more distant shadow he looked younger, more formidable, and the swollen vein in his forehead was like a sign of wrath. He was very excited as he said: “So far you’ve seen through everything. Don’t stop your guesswork now. Go on and tell me more about Nancy.”
“I’ll have to see her,” said Kildare, “and then I’ll do what I can, but what you need is not I, but a sound psychiatrist twice my age.”
“I don’t think so,” answered Messenger. “The Chanlers told me what you did for their daughter when older men in the medical profession would have written her off as a mental case. Kildare, I don’t want Nancy written off in that way.”
He waited for a comment. Kildare said nothing, but looked down at a bright circle of blue which a floor lamp cut out of the rug. Then the voice of Messenger sounded just above him. He had come swiftly and soundlessly across the room.
“Barbara Chanler disappeared from her home. At that moment she was rich; she had every prospect before her of a happy and well-filled life; her family was devoted to her and she to them; she was about to be married to a man she loved. Then she was picked up as a nameless waif who had tried to commit suicide in a cheap rooming house. A young intern from the hospital answered the emergency call and refused to give her up for dead even when the sheet was pulled over her face. He brought her back to life. In the hospital she tried to take her life a second time. The young intern refused to believe that her mind was gone in spite of these two attempts, and he held on like a bulldog until he’d prove to her that she was wrong about herself and so was the rest of the world.”
Messenger ended his pacing and sat down abruptly in the chair opposite Kildare. His lowered voice said: “Older minds perhaps would be better for my daughter’s case. On the other hand, young people ought to understand other youth by instinct. And above all, I feel that there is a close relationship between the case of Barbara Chanler and that of Nancy.”
“You mean that there was a sudden change in each instance?” asked Kildare. “Or do you mean that you’re afraid your daughter may take her own life?”
The blunt question was by no means an instance of that smooth diplomacy for which Carew had begged when he sent the intern out on this case. Messenger absorbed the shock for a moment before he said: “This change in my daughter is more than normal. How far beyond normal must I consider it? Is she a mental case requiring isolation? Those are some of the questions I want you to answer.”
“That’s impossible until I’ve had a chance to see her and study her reactions in detail,” answered Kildare.
“We can’t manage that,” said Messenger. “She’s been afraid of doctors for years; it’s a real phobia in her. If she’s in a critical mental state and finds out that I’m using a doctor to spy on her, she may be driven frantic and then I keep Barbara Chanler in mind.”
A murmur of voices from the lower part of the house got Messenger hastily out of his chair again. “That’s Nancy now,” he said.
“Why not introduce me as a friend, not as a doctor?” asked Kildare.
“And then have the truth come out to bite us?”
“No one in New York knows me except the Chanlers, and they’re not in town now. Give me another name. I’m John Stevens—from the West somewhere. You knew my father in the old days.”
“It’s melodrama. It’s absurd,” murmured Messenger. He pulled open the door a trifle so that the voices entered, small but clear. The girl was saying: “But I don’t want you to, Charles. I don’t want to drag you around. You go home and get your sleep.”
Messenger, listening, turned his head sharply, and Kildare saw the vein in his forehead again, like a sign of wrath which did not go with the glistening fear in the eyes. He came back toward the fire again.
“Are you busy, father? May we come in?” asked Nancy at the door.
Messenger looked fixedly at Kildare.
“Come in, come in!” he called, and as Kildare stood up, Nancy Messenger entered, throwing open a kolinsky coat and smiling back over her shoulder at her companion. Every feature of her appearance had to have meaning to Kildare, as though he were a portrait painter. She had on a dress of brown velvet with a knee-length tunic and a halo-shaped turban increasing the pile of her hair; a chain of wrought gold was looped around her neck in clumsy, heavy links. But of course her face took most of Kildare’s attention. He remembered a picture of that great lover and termagant, Sarah, the first Duchess of Marlborough, for the girl had somewhat the same look of resolute and forward pride and the same soft fullness of lips which somehow suggested wilful determination rather than feminine gentleness. She had something of her father, in miniature, and as she grew older the resemblance would be greater; she even had the vein in the forehead, though in her it was merely a pale stroke of blue.
Messenger was saying: “Nancy, this is John Stevens, a son of an old friend of mine…and this is Charles Herron.”
Herron was one of those broad-beamed man-mountains who are useful at tackle in the football line to spill the whole charge of a backfield. He was a bit past thirty, and he was somewhat overweighted by the inevitable extra poundage that is bound to accumulate on a very strong man. His width made his height un-apparent until he came up close to shake hands.
Nancy, after a brief smile of greeting, had found nothing in Kildare and obviously dismissed him from her thoughts.
“Now I’m safely home, Charles, and you can go get your sleep,” she said. She added to her father: “There’s so much of him that when he’s tired it’s a tremendous ache.”
“I’m too heavy for this long-distance running,” remarked Herron. “Three nights and three afternoons, and she’s still full of go. I suppose you’ll be out again tonight, Nancy?”
“Oh, no. I don’t think so.”
“You will, though…She thinks that if she keeps going where the lights are the brightest she’ll see something worth while.”
He tried to maintain a certain lightness of touch, but it was plain that he was deeply troubled. He kept looking from the girl to her father as though he might find an explanation by making a detailed comparison.
“Blame her for being young. That includes being silly,” suggested Messenger.
“I want you to promise me something, Nancy. Will you?” asked Herron.
“He’s a lawyer, and he makes a living out of broken promises,” said the girl, laughing. “Don’t be that way, Charles, please!”
“It’s not a great thing, but I’m curious. Can you stay home for a single evening, Nancy?”
He was bearing down on his point much too heavily, particularly with a stranger in the room, but he was too disturbed to be diplomatic. Messenger could not hide the concern with which he watched the two of them. Nancy went up to Herron and shone her eyes at him exactly as though they had been a thousand miles from observation. It was clear that she wanted this man and did not care if the whole world knew about her choice.
“Of course I can stay home if you want me to,” she said. “But don’t be such an old, old man, Charles. There’s a lot of living to do.”
“Not in these night spots,” said Herron, “getting sticky with cocktails and dizzy with champagne and listening to the crooners wail and swing it. Why don’t you quit it, Nancy?”
“I’m going to pretty soon,” she said. “You run along home while you’re still nice and sour, and I’ll telephone to you in half an hour when you’re in bed. I’ll talk you to sleep, Charles.”