Хал Эллсон - Mink Is for a Minx

Bradley stood as dumb as a sloth for a moment, his thoughts going back to the girl’s apartment, the two Murphy beds, the quantity of clothing behind the chintz curtain, the amount of cosmetics on the dressing table.

He heard Caraway saying: “So it isn’t my responsibility, after all, is it?”

“Two of them—” Bradley said emptily.

“Of course,” Caraway said. “It isn’t as coincidental as it seems on the surface. Birds of a feather, you know. Madeen and Julia had known each other for some time. When they found they shared the same condition, they took the apartment together. They provided a certain comfort for each other, I’m sure. And more practically it cut their living costs considerably.”

Bradley sat down in a chipped metal examination chair and put his face in his hands. He’d always prided himself on the steel quality of his nerves, but even steel has a breaking point.

Caraway eased toward the door.

Bradley looked up. “Where are you going?”

“Home. I’ll forget that you exist, Bradley. Without Julia, you have no real hold on me. But because of Julia, I have none on you. I can’t very well report you to the police, can I? Not without revealing why I came here, the whole story.”

Bradley made no move to stop him as Caraway left the apartment. Caraway had pegged the situation accurately.

Bradley sat in glum silence for several minutes, his gaze on the closet door behind which the girl Madeen lay.

Finally, Bradley pushed himself out of the chair.

The apartment on Dixon Street showed lights when Bradley arrived. Taking a deep breath, he mounted the front steps, crossed the vestibule, and went upstairs.

He knocked lightly on the door of 214. It opened quickly framing an attractive girl with jet black hair. Bradley noticed the small mole near the corner of her mouth.

Bradley’s face wreathed in a friendly, benign smile. “You must be Julia.”

The girl nodded, and Bradley said, “Madeen asked me to drop over.”

“Where is she?”

“At my place.”

Bradley entered, and she closed the door and leaned against it.

“Are you—” she said. “I mean—”

“I’m a doctor,” Bradley said.

“Is Madeen—”

“Completely comfortable.”

Julia moved from the door with hesitance and sadness coming to her face. “Then she really meant it. She said she was going to—”

“You mustn’t judge her, my dear.”

“Judge her?” Julia said with a harsh little laugh. “I might have done the same thing myself. I don’t know. I’ll never know I guess. I thought I—”

“Was in the same condition?”

“Well, yes. But it proved finally to be a false alarm.”

“Unfortunately, Madeen experienced no false alarms. She did what she thought was best — and she assures me of your discretion, as she has mine.”

“In any event it’s over now, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is,” Bradley said, “and now I have taken the risk of coming here to tell you Madeen needs you.”

“You said she was comfortable.”

“I was speaking of the purely physical, my dear. In the psychological realm we have another situation. Tomorrow she’ll feel better. But right now, she is experiencing a rather terrible kind of aloneness.”

Compassion flooded Julia’s eyes. “I’ll get my coat,” she said.

“My place isn’t far,” Bradley told her, “We’ll walk over — and you’ll have the opportunity to get your thoughts in order.”

When they entered his dark apartment, Bradley was fleetingly grateful to Julia for not having told Caraway the truth she had discovered so recently about her condition. The truth that had caused her to refrain from mailing that final letter to him.

I’m glad he ceased to exist so far as you were concerned, my dear, Bradley thought. I wonder how quickly he’ll tire in the digging of a double grave.

Before he turned on the light, he let the scalpel slip from his coatsleeve into his steel-steady hand.