Richard Marsten - Murder in the navy

“Oh, don’t misunderstand me, Jean—” He cut himself short. “Say, is it all right to call you Jean?”

“Well...”

“See, that’s what I mean about regulations. Isn’t it natural for a guy and a girl to call each other by their first names? Well, sure it is. But I have to be careful about calling you Jean. Now that’s silly, isn’t it?”

“Well...” She smiled. “I guess it is silly, when you consider it.”

“May I call you Jean?”

She hesitated. “I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Well, regulations...”

“Sure,” he said, the sadness back in his voice again.

“Oh, now don’t look so desolate.”

“No, it’s all right.”

“Really, it’s not that important.”

“It is important to me,” he said. His eyes sought hers. “It’s very important that I call you Jean.”

“Well, if it’s that important...” She smiled mischievously. “Suppose you call me Jean, then. But only in this room, all right?”

“And will you call me by my first name?”

“I don’t even know your first name,” she said. “In fact, I’m not even sure of your last name.”

“You’re kidding me. I thought surely you’d memorized the chart by now.”

“No, I’m afraid I haven’t,” she said, still smiling. “In fact, I have a confession. To me, you’re just One-o-seven.”

“One-o-seven?”

“The room number,” she said, gesturing toward the door with her head.

“One-o-seven,” he repeated, wagging his head. “The Navy’s finally reduced me to a cipher. Look, will you do me a favor?”

“That depends.”

“You won’t even have to look at the chart, how’s that? I mean, I’ll make it real easy or you, no fuss, no muss. O.K.?”

“It still depends.”

“I’ll give you my name. No work involved. No walking around to the foot of the bed, no eyestrain. How about it? All you have to do is promise you’ll call me by it.”

She thought about this for several moments. Then she said, “No.”

“Why not?” he said plaintively.

“It’s better this way.” She nodded her head. “It’s better if you remain One-o-seven.”

He looked crestfallen. “You engaged or something?”

“No,” she said slowly.

“Going steady?”

“No.”

“A guy?”

“Maybe a guy,” she admitted.

“Would he object to your calling me by my first name? Gee, is that a lot to ask? It’s not as if I’m... Well, I’m only asking you to...” He spread his hands in frustration.

“One-o-seven,” she said again, smiling.

“Well, I guess I know when I’m licked. That’s a nice name when you get down to it, I suppose. Has a good ring, and it’s sure individual. Oh, yes. I knew a guy named One-o-eight once, but I never met anybody named One-o-seven.”

She burst out laughing and then stopped abruptly, still unable to keep the smile off her face.

“You’re really very beautiful when you smile, did you know that?” he asked.

His statement surprised her, and her thoughts fled back to that night in the Officers’ Club, when Chuck had used almost the exact words. She thought of Chuck now, and a blush rose on her throat, spread into her face.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you, Jean.”

“It’s just... never mind. Thank you for your compliment.”

“With love, from One-o-seven,” he said, smiling.

She rose abruptly, glancing at her watch. “I’ve got to go. This has been very nice.”

“I enjoyed it,” he said. “Will you come back again?”

“Oh, you’ll see me around. You’ll get to hate me.”

His face grew suddenly serious. “I’ll never get to hate you, Jean,” he said, and his eyes were so penetrating that she knew she would blush again unless she got out of the room immediately.

“Get some sleep,” she said, and then she whirled on her heel and walked out of the room.

From the end of the corridor, Greg saw her leaving 107. His eyes followed her until she rounded the bend in the corridor, and then he turned back to the report he was filling out, annoyed when he found his concentration had been destroyed.

What was it about that bastard in 107? What was it?

Something, that was for sure. Something you just sensed. When you’d been around hospitals long enough, you automatically knew who was goofing off and who was really sick. And 107 was goofing, Greg would bet his bottom dollar on that

Cat fever, the old standby. Don’t know what else to call it? Cat fever. Greg was even willing to bet they’d diagnosed poor Guibert as cat fever when he first came aboard. So 107 was pulling a switch on the old routine. He was a shrewd bastard, all right, no getting away from that. He was shrewd, and the shrewdness annoyed the hell out of Greg, especially now, especially after he’d seen Miss Dvorak leaving the room. She’d been in there for close to twenty minutes, and that’s too long for any nurse to spend with any patient, especially an innocent doll like Miss Dvorak and especially with a shrewd bastard like 107.

What was his game? That was the big question, all right. The guy in 107 had a game, as sure as God made little green apples. Just malingering? Yeah, maybe. Was he bucking for a medical discharge? No, he’d have chosen something stronger than cat fever if that’s what he was up to. So what then? Maybe he was going to pull a psycho routine, maybe that was it. Start foaming at the mouth, falling down on the floor, brushing bedbugs off him, things like that. Well, don’t brush them on me, pal.

Damnit, why don’t I like the poor sonofabitch? Greg wondered. He may be really sick, when you get down to it.

The hell he is.

O.K., so he ain’t sick.

Damn right, he ain’t.

Then what’s his game?

I don’t know, Greg admitted. But I’m sure as hell going to find out!

Chuck Masters tried to make his head comfortable against the coarsely padded back of the seat.

In all his experience with trains, he had never achieved that simple goal of making himself comfortable, and this experience, he silently reflected, was no different from any of the others. The people who designed trains, he was sure, were the same people who designed such things as electric chairs and subterranean torture chambers. If you put your head this way, he thought, it’s no good. And if you put your head the other way, it’s still no good. What I really need is a Pullman. But he’d been in Pullmans, too, and he’d never been able to sleep, and oh, hell, he should have joined the Air Force.

He achieved some measure of comfort, finally, by sort of twisting his head a little to starboard and tilting it back slightly just a smidgin, just about maybe three degrees. He didn’t dare move his head because he’d been striving for this position ever since the train had begun its laborious journey, and he was certainly not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Outside the window, he could see the countryside falling away, the bland Southern sky imperceptibly changing to the harsher, bleaker Northern sky. He began counting telephone poles. The poles were regularly spaced, set into the ground at slightly different depths, so that the wires plunged and rose, plunged and rose again.

Jesus, I’m getting seasick.

He turned his attention from the telephone poles and the scenery beyond the window, and he concentrated on the window directly before him, in which the aisle and the seats opposite were reflected. A girl was sitting in one of the seats. She was a redhead, and she was wearing a tight green woolen suit and a short topper, and her legs were crossed, and there was a gold ankle bracelet around one ankle. The crossed legs exposed a goodly amount of white, fleshy thigh, and the girl seemed cognizant of this fact, proud of it, for that matter, and for a moment Masters wanted to turn his head from the reflection and enjoy the splendor of the real image. He balanced the desirability of viewing an expanse of thigh against the desirability of keeping the comfortable position he had finally found. And into his reasoning came the coldly logical fact that he was on a Navy mission, and even if the young lady proved to be as interesting as her interesting thigh promised, she’d probably get off the train in Washington, and he’d go on to Atlantic City, and where would that leave him? Of course, there was a portion of night travel ahead, and heaven only knew what could happen on a dimly lighted train speeding through the night with a redhead who looked the way this one did, and who went around flashing comfortably padded white-winking thighs all over the place.