Neither Five Nor Three (Helen Macinnes) (42 page)

Jon rushed back into the hall and began telephoning for the doctor.

“Thank God he was at home,” he said to Paul after his call was over. He stood beside the telephone for a moment. “We’d better get hold of Rona,” he said. He picked up the ’phone again.

“I’ll do that,” Paul said, taking the receiver. “You get Barbara quiet. What’s wrong, Jon?”

Jon shook his head, unable to reply. He saw Bobby, stretched out so rigidly on his bed, his face small and thin and white with pain, his frightened eyes asking for help. He shook his head and went back to the bedroom.

Paul dialled Rona’s number. There was no answer. He glanced at his watch. It was a quarter of eleven. Had she gone to bed early? He waited patiently, listening to the monotonous ringing of the bell. Then at last he came away.

He stood hesitatingly at the bedroom door, his grey eyes troubled as he looked at the still quiet figure of Bobby, and then at the haggard faces of Peggy and Jon. Jon was standing beside the bed. Peggy was sitting with Barbara in her arms. Only Barbara’s questions broke the silence.

The doorbell rang, and Jon pushed past him to answer it.

“I’ll look after Barbara,” Paul said. He took a good grip of the fat soft waist and carried her into the living-room. Behind him, Paul heard the doctor’s quiet business-like voice as he hurried up the long hall with Jon.

Barbara raised her sleepy head, took a surprised look around the lighted living-room, decided this was an adventure not to be missed, and became suddenly awake. She sat up on Paul’s knee and opened her large blue eyes very wide. “Tell me a story,” she commanded.

“About what?”

“Tell me,” she said. She smiled happily.

Paul smiled back, watching the tufts of golden hair pressed upward at the back of the small round head. “All right,” he said. “And then you’ll go back to sleep?”

She nodded, and folded her short fingers with a story-for-a-good-girl pose.

“Well,” began Paul, “there was once a hippopotamus who lived in the zoo.” Shocking original writer you are, he thought. He listened to the doctor’s voice telephoning the hospital. Emergency. Immediate operation.

“What zoo?” asked Barbara.

“Central Park Zoo.” No time for an ambulance. The doctor was bringing the boy in his car.

“What then?” Barbara yawned and mastered herself. She looked at him expectantly, apparently still more wide awake in spite of the yawn. In the hall, there was now silence.

“One fine day,” Paul began obediently, “the hippopotamus was lying in the sun. And—”

“What was its name?”

“Rosebud. You approve? Good. All right; Rosebud was lying in the sun, flat on her side, her ankles delicately crossed for she had gone to a very good school, and her eyes closed.”

“She was asleep.” Barbara sounded disappointed. Nothing exciting ever happened when you were asleep.

“Oh, no! She was wide awake.”

“Why her eyes closed?”

“She was tired of the view. Every time she opened her eyes she saw the same old scenery. She said to herself, ‘What I need is a vacation. And besides, my bathtub is really much too small. I want a place where I can make a bit of a splash.’”

Barbara nodded understandingly.

“Right then and there, she decided to get away from it all.”

“It all?” Barbara repeated. Her brow creased. “What’s it all?”

Paul looked blankly at the questioning blue eyes. “My dear young lady, we’ve reached an impasse, I fear. Well, let’s say she wanted to get away from medicine and rainy days and early bedtime and rice pudding without currants in it. That do?”

Barbara considered that, and decided it would do. “Then what?” she asked again, insisting on the story-line.

“You’ll be a whale of an editor some day,” Paul told her. “Well, then she went to her friend the elephant and borrowed his trunk to pack her clothes. And she put on her new hat. The one with cherries on it. And a blue bow. And she was all ready.”

Jon, behind him, said tensely, “We’re leaving for St. Luke’s. The doctor thinks it’s a ruptured appendix. Is Rona coming here?”

“I’ll stay until she does,” Paul said.

“I’m having a story,” Barbara announced happily, her eyes fixed on Paul.

“Good girl,” Jon said and bent to kiss the back of her head. He left as silently as he had entered.

“Rosebud took a bus to Peon Station,” Paul went on quickly.

Barbara looked doubtful. “A bus?” She glanced round suddenly. “Where’s Daddy?”

“It was a
big
bus. A
very
big bus.” Paul traced its size with his arms and recaptured her attention.

“A
very
big bus,” she echoed, waving her arms too, smiling again.

“And so she arrived at the railroad station. She went into a big hall, all gleaming and polished, but she couldn’t see a train, not anywhere. She went up to a kind man and asked where the trains lived. He said, ‘Madam’—that’s the way he always talked to lady hippopotamuses—‘Madam, you go downstairs and there you will find a train all ready and waiting.’ Rosebud nodded her head politely, and the cherries on her hat nodded too.”

“And the blue bow,” Barbara said, unclasping and then again clasping her hands. She looked at the blue ribbon on her dressing-gown approvingly.

“That’s the colour exactly,” Paul agreed. “So she started to look for the stairs to get down to the trains. She looked and she looked, but all the stairs had their gateways closed. And then, right over there in that corner, she saw an escalator.”

Barbara frowned heavily and repressed another yawn. “Esslator?” she asked, puzzled.

Paul began trying to describe an escalator in words of one syllable.

“What then?” Barbara asked suddenly, tired of mechanical details. Her eyes tried to close and she forced them open.

Then what? “Well, Rosebud stepped on the escalator. And it groaned and wheezed. It wheezed and groaned. And then it gave a big sigh—like this!—and it stopped. Rosebud said, ‘Dear me! What a nuisance. These things never work when you want them to.’ She tried to walk down, but she couldn’t. She tried to back up, but she couldn’t. She was stuck, right between the waiting-room and the trains in Pennsylvania Station.”

He looked down for a smile of approval. Barbara’s eyes were closing. “The hippopotamus was stuck,” he repeated gently. But Barbara was suddenly asleep.

So much for my story, he thought. It’s a good job I make my money in non-fiction. He waited for a few moments, and then rose quietly to carry her back to her cot.

He paused for a moment to look at the empty bed where Bobby had lain. Then, with a last glance at the sleeping Barbara blanketed to her chin, he went back to the telephone. There was no answer from Rona’s apartment.

* * *

Almost midnight. There was still no report from Jon at the hospital, there was still no answer from Rona to any of his calls.

Paul Haydn walked through the apartment again, paced around the living-room, looked out at the darkened buildings across the street, and then went back to the telephone. This time he called the hospital. The cool, antiseptic voice told him that she had no information available. Yes, she would call him when she found out. Yes, she would give Dr. Tyson his message: all was well at home, Barbara was asleep. Yes, she would call him at once if there was any change. Yes, yes...

He put down the receiver. “Yes, yes, yes,” he said savagely. Then he calmed down. He wondered how many worried voices she had to answer each day. Pain and anguish and sorrow had become routine to her. Would she call him, would she even have time to find out how Bobby was?

The telephone answered him. He raced back down the long hall. Yes, the same cool voice told him, the news was as good as it could be so far. The operation was over, the boy was beginning to come out of the anaesthetic, his parents were with him.

“How good is all that?” he asked.

“As good as can be expected,” the quiet voice said.

“It’s serious? There’s little hope?”

“It is much more hopeful now.”

“But how’s the boy?” he asked angrily. The doorbell rang insistently behind him. He tried to ignore it, to concentrate on the next words.

“He’s resting comfortably,” she said in a final way.

“Oh...” A goddamned lie... Bobby resting comfortably when he was retching out of the anaesthetic, his raw wound stitched round a tube draining away the poison. Then Haydn recovered himself. He said, “Thank you. Thank you for calling me so quickly.” He had almost forgotten that. “Thanks a lot,” he added gratefully.

“You’re welcome,” the nurse said, startled into sudden warmth and sympathy. “Don’t worry, now.” And then, as if alarmed at this breach of etiquette, she hung up the receiver abruptly.

Paul Haydn went to the door. The bell was ringing for the third time. Behind him, from Barbara’s room, came a wail. That goddamned bell, he thought irritably and opened the door.

Outside, there was Rona. Rona, and a policeman, and a thin-faced, dark-haired man.

“You the brother-in-law?” the policeman asked.

“No, he’s out,” Paul said, startled. “Rona—”

“This all right, miss?” the thin-faced man asked.

Rona nodded. She stepped into the apartment.

“Rona,” Paul said again.

She turned her face away, her hand over her neck, and drew aside as if to avoid touching him. She walked down the long hall without looking back. Then suddenly she stopped, as if she had just heard Barbara crying, and she went into the bedroom.

“She’s had a bit of a shock. Attacked in Central Park. But she’s all right,” the policeman said in a low voice. “We’ll come back later to get any particulars she can give. It didn’t seem a good idea to ask anything except the routine questions tonight. The man who was with her was no help at all. He beat it.”

“You’d—you’d better come in and tell me,” Paul said. “Her sister and brother-in-law are at the hospital. There’s been trouble here, too.” And briefly he told them what had happened.

The thin-faced man, who had been backing unobtrusively towards the elevator as soon as Rona had entered the apartment, suddenly turned round. You’re in a tough spot, he seemed to say. A crying child, a woman who might go hysterical at any moment. She had been far too quiet at the police station, far too quiet during the ride here.

The policeman felt the same way. He half-turned to look at his companion.

“And who are you?” Paul asked, looking at the unobtrusive clothes and the grey felt hat. Then he remembered the man he had seen in Benny’s.

“Oh,” said the policeman brusquely, “he was just passing by when it happened.” He had suddenly become the professional.

“Will you come in? Both of you? I guess I need help as well as information now.” He was still watching the man who had just happened to pass by. “A good job you were there. I wonder what happened to that smart FBI fellow who was supposed to be keeping an eye on Miss Metford? I guess he wasn’t so smart.”

The man looked at him. “I guess not,” he said. He paused and added, “Well, if I can be of any help to you...” and he stepped over the threshold.

There was silence now from Barbara’s room. Rona was still in there.

“What do we do?” Paul asked, hesitating.

“Leave her with the kid,” the policeman suggested. He looked at his watch with a frown.

“Get her to go to sleep, I suppose,” the quiet man said. The three men looked at each other.

“Well,” the policeman said in a resigned voice, “if I delivered a baby last week, I guess I can handle this.” He pushed the bedroom door open and looked round it cautiously. Then slowly and quietly he stepped back into the hall, closing the door gently. “She’s taken both our advice,” he said to the man who had come with his. “She’s asleep on the bed beside the kid’s cot.” He smiled, with relief. “Now,” he said to Paul, “all we have to do is to tell you what happened, as far as we can piece it together.”

They went into the living-room.

“Who was the man?” Paul asked, his face set, his eyes expressionless. “Who was the man with Miss Metford?”

The policeman opened his note-book. “Scott Ettley,” he said. “That’s the name she gave us.”

“A tall man, young, well-built, good shoulders, fair hair, regular features, eyes blue or grey—light colour, anyway,” the quiet stranger said.

“Yes,” Paul Haydn said slowly, his face suddenly white, his lips tight, “yes, that’s Scott Ettley.” He took a deep breath. “Go on,” he said to the men watching him.

* * *

They left shortly, for what they could tell him was brief, brief but vivid in its cold lack of explanations. The policeman’s unemotional voice gave the bald facts. Their bareness made his account all the more hideous to imagine into reality. “Don’t worry,” the policeman said, as they went down the hall toward the front door, “we’ll get them all. We’ve got one of them. And another was hit by the park detective’s bullet; there was blood on the grass. We’ll get all three of them. Catch one thug and you catch the rest. Cowards. That’s what all these muggers are. As yellow as they come. We’ll get them,” he added sympathetically, reassuringly, as he stepped into the elevator, followed by the man with the quiet face and watchful eyes.

“Yes,” Paul said. But he was thinking of Scott Ettley. He closed the door and switched off the lights.

He looked into the bedroom and he stood in the darkness looking down at Rona. She was asleep, deeply asleep, so still that she might have been dead. He slipped the shoes gently from her feet. He covered her with a light summer blanket, and backed slowly out of the room. As he half-closed the door, leaving it open enough so that he could easily hear any sounds, he remembered he hadn’t noticed Barbara. But she was all right, obviously, or there would have been a general uproar. Barbara was the kind of girl who let you know when she wasn’t happy.

He switched off the lights in the living-room too, except for the reading lamp beside his armchair. He lay back, his eyes closed, remembering word for word the simple factual report which the policeman had made. Scott Ettley, he thought, I’ll break his goddamned neck... Then he remembered another quotation that old Abernethie liked to use when he was lecturing about certain famous men. “He’s a clever chiel and nane the waur of a hanging,” Abernethie would quote, relishing the grim realism of dialect. Yes, Ettley was a clever guy and none the worse for a hanging.