Джордж Хиггинс - The New Black Mask (No 4)

Behind me, I heard Kay getting up quietly. I heard her pick up the dinner tray and leave the room, softly clicking the door shut behind her.

Several minutes passed. Then she knocked and came in again, carrying the phone on its long extension cord. She handed it to me and started to leave, but I motioned for her to remain. She did so, taking the chair she had occupied before.

“Britt?” It was Jeff Claggett. “How was your visit with Miss Aloe?”

“All right,” I said. “At least partly all right. She’s leaving town and going back East. Yes, within the next day or so, I believe.”

“The hell!” He grunted with surprise. “Just like that, huh? She give you any reason?”

“Well...” I hesitated. “I don’t need to consult with her anymore. I’m going ahead with the work on my own.”

“Yes? Nothing else?”

“I couldn’t say,” I said carefully. “What else could there be, and what does it matter, an way? I am sure that I have nothing more to fear from her. I’m positive of it, Jeff. And that’s all I’m concerned about.”

“So who said no?” He sounded amused. “Why so emphatic?”

“Let it go,” I said. “The point is that there’s no longer any reason to continue our present arrangement. If you’d like to make it official, Miss Nolton is right here and—”

“Hold it! Hold it, Britt!” Claggett snapped. “I think we can close things out there very soon. But you leave it to me to say when, okay?”

“Well, all right,” I said. “I think it would be better to—”

“Why guess about something when you can be sure? Why not wait until Miss Aloe actually leaves town?” He paused, then lowered his voice. “Nolton throwing her weight around? Is that it, Britt?”

“Well...” I sidled a glance at Kay. “I imagine it would be difficult to make a change, wouldn’t it?”

“It would.”

“All right, then,” I said. “I’ll manage.”

We hung up, and I passed the phone back to Kay. She took it silently, but at the door she turned and gave me a stricken look.

I faced around to my typewriter and began pounding on the keys. And I kept at it until I was sure she had gone.

I had had about enough of Kay Nolton. What had started out as a pleasant giving, something that we could both enjoy, had wound up as an attempt to take me over.

I wasn’t ready to be taken over, and I never would be. Nor would I ever want to take anyone else over. Love isn’t tantamount to ownership. Love is being part of someone else, while still remaining yourself.

That was the way it had been with me and Manny. And now that she was gone from my life...

Well. Kay could not fill the space Manny had left. It was too great for any other to fill.

Kay left me alone that night. Which was just as well for her. I had discovered that confronting people when they insisted on it was not nearly so fearful as I had thought, and I was all ready to do it again.

The mood was with me the next day, and when Mrs. Olmstead appeared in my office doorway and announced that she needed more money to go shopping, I flatly refused to give her any.

“You’ve had far too much already,” I told her coldly. “You’ve constantly emptied that cashbox in the telephone desk and then come grumbling to me for more. You must have had over six hundred dollars in less than two weeks’ time. The best thing you can do now is to pack up your belongings and clear out.”

“That don’t make me mad none!” She glared at me defiantly. “You just pay me my wages, an’ I’ll be out of here faster’n you can say scat!”

“I don’t have to pay you,” I said. “You’ve already paid yourself several times over.”

If she had given me any kind of argument, I probably would have relented. But surprisingly she didn’t argue at all. Oh, she did a little under-the-breath cursing on her way out of my office. In no more than ten minutes, however, she was packed and gone from the house.

Kay, who had been standing by during the proceedings, declared that I had done exactly the right thing. “You should have done it long ago, Britt. You were far too patient with that woman.”

“I’ve been that way with a lot of people,” I said. “But it’s a fault I’m going to correct.”

She dropped her eyes, toeing in with one white shod foot, a slow blush spreading up her cheeks to blend with the auburn of her hair. It was all beautifully calculated. I have never seen such control. She was saying, as clearly as if she had spoken, that she had been a naughty, naughty girl and she was truly sorry for it.

“Will you forgive your naughty girl, Britt?” She spoke in a cute-child’s voice. “She’s awfully sorry, and she promises never to be naughty again.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Forget it.”

“Why, of course, it matters. But I’ll be good from now on, honey. I swear I’ll—”

“I don’t care whether you are or not,” I said. “I can hang by my thumbs a few days if I have to. If it takes any longer than that to wrap things up here, and if I still need a cop-nurse, you won’t be her.”

She gave me no more argument than Mrs. Olmstead had. I was amazed at how easy it was to tell people off — without being very proud of it — although, admittedly, my experience was pretty limited.

I didn’t feel much like working; the thought of Manny, my Manny , being married to another was too much on my mind. But I worked, anyway, and I was still at it when Claggett arrived in midafternoon.

Manny was back in the hospital, he informed me. The same reputable hospital she had been in before with the same reputable doctors in attendance.

And, as before, she was in absolute seclusion, and no information about her condition or the nature of her illness was being given out.

“I could probably get a court order and find out,” Claggett said, “if I could show any reason why it was necessary for me to know. But I can’t think what the hell it would be.”

“Probably there isn’t any,” I said. “Nothing sinister, I mean. She told me yesterday that she wasn’t feeling well. Possibly she got to feeling worse and had to go to the hospital.”

“Possibly. But why so secretive about it?”

“Well...”

“Tell you something,” Claggett said. “Maybe I’m a little cynical, but I’ve never known anyone to pull a cover-up yet unless there was something to cover up.”

“That’s probably true. But this could hardly be called a cover-up, could it?”

“It’s close enough. And the one thing I’ve found that’s usually covered up with doctors is mental illness. It’s my guess,” said Claggett thoughtfully, “that Miss Aloe has had a nervous breakdown or something of the kind. The second one in less than a month. Either that or she’s pretending to. So that leaves us with a couple of questions.”

“Yes?” I said. “I mean, it does?”

“To take the last one first. If she’s pretending, why is she? And, secondly, if she’s actually had a nervous collapse, what brought it on?”

“I just hope she’s all right,” I said. “In any case, I don’t see what her being in the hospital has to do with me.”

“Well, it could be just a coincidence, but the last time she was hospitalized, you had a pretty bad accident.”

“It was a coincidence,” I said, and wondered why I suddenly felt so uncomfortable and uneasy. “I’m positive that she’s leveling with me, Jeff. I knew it when she wasn’t, and I know it now that she is.”

Claggett shrugged and said that was good. He, himself, would never trust his own judgment where someone he loved was concerned. Because you could love someone who was completely no good and untrustworthy.