“Forget about him, kid.” I patted his shoulder. “I handed him a little of the same dish. His map’ll never be the same.”
“Cripes! I bet you did! I thought something funny happened down there. Thanks, Mike, thanks a lot.”
“Sure.”
Then his face froze in a frightened grimace. “Suppose . . . suppose they come back again? Mike . . . I—I can’t stand that stuff. I’ll talk, I’ll say anything. I can’t take it, Mike!”
“Ease off. I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be around.”
Billy tried to smile and he gripped my arm. “You will?”
“Yup. I’m working for your boss now.”
“Mr. Hammer.” York was making motions from the side of the room. I walked over to him. “It would be better if he didn’t get too excited. I gave him a sedative and he should sleep. Do you think you can manage to carry him to his room? Miss Malcom will show you the way.”
“Certainly,” I nodded. “And if you don’t mind, I’d like to do a little prowling afterward. Maybe question the servants.”
“Of course. The house is at your disposal.”
Billy’s eyes had closed and his head had fallen on his chin when I picked him up. He’d had a rough time of it all right. Without a word Miss Malcom indicated that I was to follow her and led me through an arch at the end of the room. After passing through a library, a study and a trophy room that looked like something out of a museum, we wound up in a kitchen. Billy’s room was off an alcove behind the pantry. As gently as I could I laid him under the covers. He was sound asleep.
Then I stood up. “Okay, Roxy, now we can say hello.”
“Hello, Mike.”
“Now why the disguise and the new handle? Hiding out?”
“Not at all. The handle as you call it is my real name. Roxy was something I used on the stage.”
“Really? Don’t tell me you gave up the stage to be a diaper changer. What are you doing here?”
“I don’t like your tone, Mike. You change it or go to hell.”
This was something. The Roxy I knew never had enough self-respect to throw her pride in my face. Might as well play it her way.
“Okay, baby, don’t get teed off on me. I have a right to be just a little bit curious, haven’t I? It isn’t very often that you catch somebody jumping as far out of character as you have. Does the old man know about the old life?”
“Don’t be silly. He’d can me if he did.”
“I guessed as much. How did you tie up in this place?”
“Easy. When I finally got wise to the fact that I was getting my brains knocked out in the big city I went to an agency and signed up as a registered nurse. I was one before I got talked into tossing my torso around for two hundred a week. Three days later Mr. York accepted me to take care of his child. That was two years ago. Anything else you want to know?”
I grinned at her. “Nope. It was just funny meeting you, that’s all.”
“Then may I leave?”
I let my grin fade and eased her out through the door. “Look, Roxy, is there somewhere we can go talk?”
“I don’t play those games anymore, Mike.”
“Get off my back, will you? I mean talk.”
She arched her eyebrows and watched me steadily a second, then seeing that I meant it, said, “My room. We can be alone there. But only talk, remember?”
“Roger, bunny, let’s go.”
This time we went into the outer foyer and up a stairway that seemed to have been carved out of a solid piece of mahogany. We turned left on the landing and Roxy opened the door for me.
“In here,” she said.
While I picked out a comfortable chair she turned on a table lamp then offered me a smoke from a gold box. I took one and lit it. “Nice place you got here.”
“Thank you. It’s quite comfortable. Mr. York sees that I have every convenience. Now shall we talk?”
She was making sure I got the point in a hurry. “The kid. What is he like?”
Roxy smiled a little bit, and the last traces of hardness left her face. She looked almost maternal. “He’s wonderful. A charming boy.”
“You seem to like him.”
“I do. You’d like him too.” She paused, then, “Mike . . . do you really think he was kidnapped?”
“I don’t know, that’s why I want to talk about him. Downstairs I suggested that he might have become temporarily unbalanced and the old man nearly chewed my head off. Hell, it isn’t unreasonable to figure that. He’s supposed to be a genius and that automatically puts him out of the normal class. What do you think?”
She tossed her hair back and rubbed her forehead with one hand. “I can’t understand it. His room is next door, and I heard nothing although I’m usually a light sleeper. Ruston was perfectly all right up to then. He wouldn’t simply walk out.”
“No? And why not?”
“Because he is an intelligent boy. He likes everyone, is satisfied with his environment and has been very happy all the time I’ve known him.”
“Uh-huh. What about his training? How did he get to be a genius?”
“That you’ll have to find out from Mr. York. Both he and Miss Grange take care of that department.”
I squashed the butt into the ashtray. “Nuts, it doesn’t seem likely that a genius can be made. They have to be born. You’ve been around him a lot. Tell me, just how much of a genius is he? I know only what the papers print.”
“Then you know all I know. It isn’t what he knows that makes him a genius, it’s what he is capable of learning. In one week he mastered every phase of the violin. The next week it was the piano. Oh, I realize that it seems impossible, but it’s quite true. Even the music critics accept him as a master of several instruments. It doesn’t stop there, either. Once he showed an interest in astronomy. A few days later he exhausted every book on the subject. His father and I took him to the observatory where he proceeded to amaze the experts with his uncanny knowledge. He’s a mathematical wizard besides. It doesn’t take him a second to give you the cube root of a six-figure number to three decimal points. What more can I say? There is no field that he doesn’t excel in. He grasps fundamentals at the snap of the fingers and learns in five minutes what would take you or me years of study. That, Mike, is the genius in a nutshell, but that’s omitting the true boy part of him. In all respects he is exactly like other boys.”
“The old man said that too.”
“He’s quite right. Ruston loves games, toys and books. He has a pony, a bicycle, skates and a sled. We go for long walks around the estate every once in a while and do nothing but talk. If he wanted to he could expound on nuclear physics in ten-syllable words, but that isn’t his nature. He’d sooner talk football.”
I picked another cigarette out of the box and flicked a match with my thumbnail. “That about covers it, I guess. Maybe he didn’t go off his nut at that. Let’s take a look at his room.”
Roxy nodded and stood up. She walked to the end of the room and opened a door. “This is it.” When she clicked on the light switch I walked in. I don’t know what I expected, but this wasn’t it. There were pennants on the walls and pictures tucked into the corners of the dresser mirror. Clothes were scattered in typical boyish confusion over the backs of chairs and the desk.
In one corner was the bed. The covers had been thrown to the foot and the pillow still bore the head print of its occupant. If the kid had really been snatched I felt for him. It was no night to be out in your pajamas, especially when you left the top of them hanging on the bedpost.
I tried the window. It gave easily enough, though it was evident from the dust on the outside of the sill that it hadn’t been opened recently.
“Keep the kid’s door locked at night?” I asked Roxy.
She shook her head. “No. There’s no reason to.”