“Certainly. I answered the door myself. I didn’t like his looks at all. He was a very thin man, a walking skeleton. I thought when I looked at him he must have tuberculosis. Galley wouldn’t marry a man like that.” But her statement curled at the edges into a question.
“That isn’t her husband. Did he threaten you, or her?”
“Heavens, no. He simply asked for Galley, very quietly. She came to the door and they talked together for a minute. I didn’t hear what was said. Galley closed the door and stepped outside. Then she came back in and put on her coat and left.”
“Without a word?”
“She said good-bye. She said she would be back soon. I tried to get her to eat her breakfast first, but she was in too great a hurry.”
“Was she frightened?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen my daughter show fear. She is a very courageous girl, Mr. Archer, she always has been. Her father and I tried to teach her to face the world with fortitude.”
I was standing above her, resting part of my weight on the edge of the refectory table. I noticed that she was looking at me with growing disapproval.
“Is something the matter?”
“Please sit down in a chair, Mr. Archer. That table was one of the doctor’s favorite pieces.”
“Sorry.” I sat down.
Her past-encumbered mind came back to the present again: “You’ve implied several times that Galley is in danger.”
“I got the idea from you.”
“Don’t you believe she will come back soon, as she promised? Has something happened to my girl, Mr. Archer?” One of her fists was steadily pounding one of her bony knees.
“I don’t know. All you can do is wait and see.”
“Can’t you do something? I’ll give you anything I have. If only nothing dreadful happens to Galley.”
“I’ll do what I can. I’m in this case to stay.”
“You’re a good man.” The fist stopped pounding.
“Hardly.” She lived in a world where people did this or that because they were good or evil. In my world people acted because they had to. I gave her a little bulletin from my world: “Last night your daughter’s husband knocked me out with a sandbag and left me lying. I make a point of paying back things like that.”
“Goodness gracious! What kind of a man is Galley married to?”
“Not a good man.” Perhaps our worlds were the same after all, depending on how you looked at them. The things you had to do in my world made you good or evil in hers. “You’ll probably be hearing from the police some time to-day.”
“The police? Is Galley in wrong with the police?” It was the final affront to Dr. Lawrence’s memory and the furniture. Her hands rose to her head and lifted her hair in two gray tangled wings.
“Not necessarily. They’ll want to ask some questions. Tell them the truth. Tell them I told you to tell them the truth.” I moved to the door.
“Where are you going?”
“I think I know where Galley is. Did she go away in a car?”
“Yes, a big black car. There was a second man driving.”
“I’ll bring her back if I can.”
“Wait a minute.” She followed me down the dim hallway and detained me at the front door. “There’s something I must tell you.”
“About Galley? If it isn’t you’d better save it.”
Her roughened hand moved on my sleeve. “Yes, about Galley. I haven’t been entirely candid, Mr. Archer. Now you tell me the police are coming here–”
“Nothing to worry about. They’ll want to do some checking.”
“A policeman was here Sunday night,” she said. “He warned me not to divulge the fact to anyone, not even you.”
“How did I come into the conversation? I entered the case on Monday.”
“Lieutenant Dahl urged me to employ you. He’s a detective in the Vice Squad, he said, a very lovely young man. He said my girl was living with a criminal whom he was shortly going to have to arrest. But he knew that Galley was an innocent good girl, and he didn’t want to involve her if he could help it. So he gave me your name and telephone number. He said that you were honest and discreet, but even so I wasn’t to tell you about his conversation with me.” She bit her lip. “It’s terribly wrong of me to violate his confidence like this.”
“When did he come here?”
“Sunday night, after midnight. He got me up out of bed.”
“What did he look like?”
“He was in civilian clothes – an extremely handsome young fellow.”
“Tall, wavy reddish hair, purple eyes, movie-actor’s profile, radio-actor’s voice?”
“Do you know Lieutenant Dahl?”
“Very slightly,” I said. “Our friendship never had a chance to come to its full flower.”
Chapter 14
I went up the looping road in second and stopped at the green iron gate. The sentry was already out of the gatehouse with the shotgun. The sun burned on the oiled and polished barrels.
“How’s the hunting?” I asked him.
He had a bulldog face whose only expression was a frozen ferocity intended to scare off trespassers. “You better beat it. This is private property.”
“Dowser is expecting me. I’m Archer.”
“You stay in your car and I’ll check.” He retired to the gatehouse, from which a telephone wire ran to the main building. When he came out he opened the gate for me. “You can park over here by the fence.”
He moved up close to me as I got out of the car. I stood still and let his hands run down me. They paused at my empty holster. “Where’s the gun?”
“I ditched it.”
“Trouble?”
“Trouble.”
Blaney met me at the front door, still wearing the wide black hat. “I didn’t expect you back.”
I took a long look at the mushroom-colored face, the ground glass eyes. They told me nothing. If Blaney had shot Dalling he’d done it without a second thought.
“I can’t resist your charming hospitality,” I said. “Where’s the boss?”
“Eating lunch on the patio. You’re to come on out, he says.”
Dowser was sitting alone at a wrought-iron table by the swimming pool, a crabmeat salad with mayonnaise in front of him. His short hair was wet, and he was wrapped to the chin in a white terrycloth robe. With his bulging eyes and munching jaws he looked like an overgrown gopher masquerading as a man.
He went on eating for a while, to remind me of his importance in the world. He ate pieces of crabmeat and lettuce with his fingers, and then he licked his fingers. Blaney stood and watched him like an envious ghost. I looked around at the oval pool still stirred and winking with the memory of Dowser’s bathe, the spectrum of flowers that fringed the patio, all the fine things that Dowser had pushed and cheated and killed for. And I wondered what I could do to take them away from Dowser.
He pushed the demolished salad away and lit a cigarette. “You can go in, Blaney.” The thin man vanished from my side.
“Did you get my special delivery?”
“Come again. Sit down if you want to.”
I took a chair across the table from him. “I flushed the girl for you. Tarantine was too quick for me, or I’d have brought him in too.”
“You flushed her! We had to find her ourselves. Some dame called in this morning that she was at her old lady’s. That wasn’t you on the phone, was it, doing a female impersonation?”
“I don’t have the figure for it,” I said, looking him up and down.
“So where do you come in?”
“I brought her from Palm Springs for you. You said it was worth a thousand.”
“The way I understand it, she came by herself. I pay for value received.”
“You’ve got her, haven’t you? You wouldn’t have her if I hadn’t sent her home to mother. I talked her into it.”