Thunder and Roses (54 page)

“Why didn’t he give some evidence against Voisier?”

“No evidence. Not a scrap. Voisier’s much too clever to leave loose ends around. Witness the trick he pulled on you. And besides—my imbecile of a friend rather admires him.”

“Admires him—and Voisier got him into the penitentiary?”

“He blames only himself. And it seems that Voisier has a certain likable something about him—”

Peg thought of that saturnine face, and the compelling eyes of the man. She remembered his tactile glance, and the incredible flexibility of his voice. “Oh.” She shook herself. “I can’t afford the luxury of sitting here and saying how awful it all is,” she said firmly, putting away her handkerchief. “What are we going to do?”

“Why do anything? Robin English is no longer our responsibility, if it’s Robin you’re worried about. As far as the book is concerned, I have the original, so that’s a small loss.”

“When does your responsibility to a person end?” she demanded hotly.

“That depends,” he said, looking at the ceiling, “on what the person in question means to you. If it’s a patient, and that patient, of sound mind, decides to go to another doctor or to stop treatment altogether, there is no law or ethic which demands that I try to hold him. If, on the other hand, the person is a … well, of personal interest, it’s a different matter.”

“And you feel that Robin can look out for himself?”

“He’s demonstrated that pretty well so far, He must include self-preservation and the ability to act on it among his other talents.”

“Mel—this isn’t like you!”

“Isn’t it, though!”

“Mel!” she cried, shocked. “If it weren’t for us he wouldn’t be in all this trouble! He’s hooked up with Voisier in some way, and—”

Mel put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her back in her
chair. He looked at her somberly and then sighed. “Peg,” he said finally, “I’ve got to say this. I deeply regret the day I ever set eyes on Robin English. You haven’t been yourself since the day you met him.”

She thought of the extraordinary statement Robin had made at tea that day, about Mel Warfield’s desire to kill him. She looked up at Warfield with horror in her face.

“Listen to me,” he said. “You’re all tangled up in your emotions, and you can’t think straight. You think Robin’s mixed up with Voisier in some business way. Isn’t it obvious what Robin is doing? You know that Voisier is mixed up in a dozen different businesses, two-thirds of which are shady in some way or another. You were told by Voisier himself that Robin is engaged in some of these same fields. I think you’ll find that Robin is engaged in all of them. I think that if you are fool enough to mix yourself into anything this big and this dirty, you’ll discover Robin is out to undercut everything the man is doing.”

“Why? Why on earth should he do that?”

“I wouldn’t know. Probably because he recognizes Voisier as his own brand of genius, with many years’ start on him. Without doubt he feels crushed by Voisier—feels that the world isn’t big enough for both of them. The ‘why’ of it isn’t important. The fact remains that if he is not doing such a fantastic thing, he isn’t in any danger and you needn’t worry about him. If he is, then he must be outdoing Voisier on the dirtiest of his rackets.”

“No, Mel—no! Robin wouldn’t do that!”

“Someone is. How many new addiction cases has your hospital admitted in the past three months?”

“Well, there is a decided upswing, but what has that—”

“Robin
could
be responsible. It would have to be a one-source deal—someone previously unknown, without a record that can be checked, with a tremendous organizing ability and personal compulsion, and a lot of scientific skill. Most of the drugs found on these poor devils are synthetic.”

“But Robin never did an evil thing in his life!”

“He has done many things recently he never did in his life. I tell you, Peg, the responsibility I feel in this matter is a far greater one
than anything that could happen to Robin English. If I’m right in all this, I have been instrumental in loosing something rather terrible in the world. And if I’m right and he’s tackling Voisier by playing the man’s own game, the odds are pretty strong that Voisier’s too big for him. In which case—good riddance.” He lowered his voice. “I’m sorry, Peg. Truly I am. I’ve been going round and round in smaller and smaller circles over this thing, and I’ve had enough.”

Peg was feeling absolutely bewildered. “But I have only just told you about Voisier and this—”

“I’ve known about it for weeks, Peg. Let the thing take its course.”

She rose, trembling. “You’re wrong, Mel,” she whispered. “You’ve
got
to be wrong.”

“I’m afraid not,” he said sadly. “I sincerely wish I were.”

“I’ve got to see him.”

“No, Peg! He might … he … can’t you see that he’s turned into a man who takes what he wants?”

“Does that make a difference?” Peg asked in a strange voice. “I can’t let this happen to him. I’m going to find out where he is and see him. I’m responsible for this whole horrible thing and so are you. But through your stupid mulish jealousy you’ve argued yourself into blaming him!”

Warfield went white. “Responsible? He had the seed of this in him all along. He simply never had the courage to do an honestly evil thing until we so generously matured him. Maturity is a strange thing, Peg. Like other riches, it is dangerous in unskilled hands. It isn’t something that can be achieved all in a lump. We gave him a kind of maturity which gathered all the loose threads of his personality into something monolinear—something productive. But we didn’t give him the power to use the years of experience he had had before we got to him. He’s a bulldozer with a skilled idiot at the controls. But he is no longer a glandular case. If you want me to change my attitude at all, prove to me that he is still suffering from imbalance of any kind. That’s in my field. That I can handle.”

“I’ll have to see him.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“Nobody does. But I’ll find him.”

“I know where he is. But I will certainly not tell you.”

“
You
know?”

“He came to see me four months ago.” Warfield wet his lips. “He—had a word or two to say about you. He was apparently suffering from some sort of a delusion. He explained carefully to me that he had no use for you, that there was no longer any reason for me to want to … to kill him, and … you don’t seem surprised.”

“He told me about that the last time I saw him,” she said, shaken.

“You
knew
about that?”

“Did you try to kill him, Mel?”

“It was an accident, Peg. Really it was. And he compensated for it. Splendidly. I don’t know how he found out about it—the man’s incredibly sharp.”

Peg felt turned to ice, and her voice was ice as she said, “It was the post-pituitrin excess, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, but that couldn’t have anything to do with this Voisier business. I tell you it was an accident. I didn’t realize that I’d made a mistake in the solutions until after he’d left the office that particular day. It didn’t affect his progress, except temporarily; and when he stopped his treatments, he was practically normal.” He stopped and wet his lips again, and then suddenly ran to her. “Peg! Peg, what’s the matter?” For she had suddenly turned white, and was rocking on her feet. He put an arm about her shoulders and led her back to her chair. She slumped down, shook herself, and looked up at him with a swift, scornful glance that was almost a physical force.

“How do you
dare
to call yourself a doctor?” she breathed. She opened her handbag with shaking fingers and took out the photograph Voisier had given her. She handed it to him without glancing at it. “Look at that and tell me he’s not still glandular,” she said.

He looked, and then stared. “It’s Robin, all right,” he said, and then, with a ghost of his old grin, “Getting to be quite a glamour boy in his old age, hm-m-m?”

“He is? Have you noticed why?”

“What am I supposed to look for?”

“Look at his jaw.”

“Nice jaw.”

“You don’t remember Robin. You don’t remember that round baby face.”

“I wasn’t in love with the man,” Warfield said nastily.

“He didn’t have much jaw,” she said, her voice quivering. “Can’t you see what’s happening? That used to be
Robin
, with the charming, chinless face!”

Warfield’s breath sucked sharply. He walked over to the window and for a long moment stood with his back to her, staring out.

“What do you diagnose, doctor?” she said acidly.

“Ac—” he began, and couldn’t make it. He swallowed and coughed. He cleared his throat. He said, “Acromegaly.”

“Acromegaly,” she echoed sweetly. “His pre-pituitary has gone wild, he’s suffering from hypertrophy of the chin and probably of the hands, and you say he’s not glandular.” Suddenly she was across the room, had spun him about and was clutching his lapels. “What are you going to
do?
Are you going to let him go on doing whatever crazy thing a glandular imbalance is forcing him to do, so that he’ll be killed by Voisier? Or are you going to stand by while he gets around Voisier some way and then turns into a monster and dies?”

“I have to think,” said Warfield. “Oh, Peg. Peg—”

“You can’t think,” she said wildly. “Why do you suppose Voisier stole that book? With what he knows, and with what that book contains, he’ll track Robin down in a matter of hours! Do you really know where he is?”

“Yes,” Warfield whispered. “A piece of his strange kind of braggadocio. He was defiant, and yet he seemed afraid of me. He promised to keep in touch with me whatever he did, so that if I ever wanted to … kill him I could come and face him with whatever it was. He swore to keep away from you. He has moved four times since he stopped taking the treatments, and each time he has called or written to give me the address. I don’t know why.” Warfield raised his eyes to hers. “I don’t know anything about any of this,” he said brokenly. “It’s all mad. We’re being played like chessmen, Peg, by a lunatic against a devil.”

“Is he in town?”

Warfield nodded.

“Well?”

Warfield looked at her. She was a statue now, a dark-crowned bloodless figure. “I’ll go with you.”

“I’ll see him alone.”

“I’ll go with you all the same, then, and wait.”

“Very well. Only hurry.”

Warfield slipped out of his laboratory smock and into a coat without another word. Outside the office he stopped and said, “Peg … please—” but she walked steadily down to the elevators, and he shrugged and followed her.

They caught a cab almost immediately, and Warfield gave the driver a Riverside address. Peg sat staring blindly ahead of her. Mel slumped in a corner and looked at his wrists, dully.

Peg broke the silence only once—to ask in a deceptively conversational voice if anything had been learned that she didn’t know about the treatment of acromegaly. Warfield shook his head vaguely. She made a sound, then, like a sob, but when Warfield looked at her she still sat, dry-eyed, staring at the driver’s coat collar.

They pulled up in front of one of those stately old cell-blocks of apartment houses that perch on the slanted, winding approaches to the Drive. They got out, and a doorman, a bit over life-size, swung open both leaves of a huge plate-glass-and-bronze door to let them into the building.

“Mr. Wenzell,” said Warfield to a wax-faced desk clerk.

“What?” said Peg

“He … it amuses him to use your name,” said Warfield, as if he were speaking out of a mouthful of sal ammoniac.

“Mr. Wenzell is out,” said the clerk. “Can I take a message?”

“You can take a message right to Mr. Wenzell, who is not out,” said Warfield. “Tell him his two doctors are here and must see him.”

“Tell him,” said Peg clearly, “that Margaretta Wenzell is here.”

“Yes, Mrs. Wenzell,” said the clerk with alacrity.

“Why must you make this painful as well as unpleasant?” gritted Warfield. Peg smiled with her teeth and said nothing.

The clerk returned from the phone looking as if he had learned how to pronounce a word he had only seen chalked on fences before.
“Fourteen. Suite C. The elevators—”

“Yes” growled Warfield. He took Peg’s elbow and walked her over to the elevators as if she were a window-dummy.

“You’re hurting me.”

“I’m sorry. I’m—a little upset. Do you have to go through with this weird business?”

She didn’t answer. Instead she said, “Stay down here, Mel.”

“I will not!”

She looked at him, and said a thousand words—hot-acid ones—in the sweep of her eyes across his face.

“Well,” he said, “all right. All right. Tell you what. I’ll give you fifteen minutes and then I’m coming up.” He paused. “Why are you looking at me like that? What are you thinking about?”

“That corny line about the fifteen minutes. I was thinking about how much better Robin would deliver it.”

“I think I hate you,” said Warfield hoarsely, quietly.

Peg stepped into the elevator. “That was
much
better done,” she said, and pushed the button which closed the doors.

On the fourteenth floor she walked to the door marked “C” and touched the bell. The door swung open instantly.

“Come in!” grated a voice. There was no one standing in the doorway at all. She hesitated. Then she saw that someone was peering through the crack at the hinge side of the door.

“Come in, Peg!” said the voice. It was used gently now, though it was still gravelly. She stepped through and into the room. The door closed behind her. Robin was there, with a gun. He put it away and held out both hands to her. “Peg! It’s
so
good to see you!”

“Hello, Robin,” she whispered. Just what gesture she was about to make she would never know for she became suddenly conscious of someone else in the room. She wheeled. There was a girl on the chesterfield, who rose as Peg faced her. The girl didn’t look, somehow, like a person. She looked like too many bright colors.

“Janice,” said Robin. It wasn’t an introduction. Robin just said the one word and moved his head slightly. The girl came slowly across the room toward him, passed him, went to the hall closet and took out a coat and a hat and a handbag with a long strap. She
draped the coat over her arm and opened the door; and then she paused and shot Peg a look of such utter hatred that Peg gasped. The door closed and she was alone with Robin English.