Тэлмидж Пауэлл - The Third Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™ - 25 Classic Mysteries

She’d closed her eyes slowly, and Gramling had risen, nodding at the nurse assigned to Camilla’s bedside. “We’ve turned a corner,” he’d said softly. “Now... during the days ahead... the careful, skillful follow-up...”

Now, as he poured a quick after-dinner Benedictine, he was already planning the follow-up, the guidance he would give to Camilla.

He glanced at his watch. He set down the small brandy snifter with quickening movement. He was picking up Marcy Lewis, his favorite among his women friends, in an hour. Marcy was a department store executive, and enjoyed an occasional evening of Wagner as much as he did.

At last, Camilla opened her eyes and said, “Please... may I have something cold? A Coke? And something to nibble on?”

Miss Archer, the young blonde nurse on duty until midnight, laid aside her Gothic novel. She smiled serenely. “Coke? Of course, Miss Jordan. But something to eat?” She glanced at the heavy numerals of the watch on her wrist. “It’s almost eleven o’clock. The kitchen’s long-since closed, the last of the help home and fast asleep. But perhaps...” She rose quietly. “...I could raid the ’fridge. Nothing substantial, mind you, not so soon after surgery. What would you like? Bit of fruit? Perhaps a little cup of custard?”

“No, please. Don’t make me feel like a bother. Just a Coke and package of those little crackers from the vending machine in the rec room.”

Miss Archer nodded, moved to the door, paused and looked at the bed. The patient’s eyes had already closed once more. Miss Archer shrugged. She could always go for a Coke herself, if Jordan didn’t re-awaken.

In her veil of darkness, Camilla heard the click of the door latch. Her eyelids snapped. Light scorched her. She eeled out of bed, steadied herself through a gasping moment, and reached toward the closet where her lavender silk robe hung.

A moment later she cracked the door and looked out into the corridor. It was a long, dimly-lighted cavern, empty, silent. Belted robe swishing, she was out quickly, a wraith slipping into a stairwell, disappearing.

Gramling’s phone was burring an insistent demand when he keyed open his apartment door. He rushed through the soft glow of the night light, past the shadowy impressions of Danish modern furnishings, and snatched up the phone in the middle of its next snarl.

“Doctor,” the stone-like voice was that of night nursing supervisor Stephens, “Camilla Jordan has disappeared.”

The pleasant afterglow of his evening with Marcy Lewis was consumed in a quick fire. His teeth clicked; his knuckles whitened. “How did it happen? Who was on duty in her room?”

“Archer, Doctor, the young RN who just came to us from Central Hospital.”

“Who can pack and return to Central’s payroll as of this moment,” Gramling rasped. “Was she catching a catnap?”

“Hardly, Doctor. She stepped into the rec room to get the patient a soft drink.”

Gramling’s thin nostrils flared out a breath. “And when she stepped back in, she found the covers thrown back, the bed empty. Well, so much for that. It’s done now, isn’t it? I’ll be there immediately. She must not leave the grounds — and not a hint of a patient-escape leaking out, especially to the local press.”

“Of course, Doctor. We started searching on the instant. She will never get over the walls.”

Shivering, Camilla stepped from the meat cooler into the dim vastness of the institutional kitchen. Before her in the faint light filtering from the night outside were obscure details, the long table where food was prepared, the butcher’s block with its rack of knives, the gas-fired ranges, the rows of pots and skillets dangling from the long rafter overhead.

Haven Hill had been home for two long years, and she knew every door and passageway. Once out of her room, she’d hurried down a service stairs. At a doorway in the ground-level corridor, she’d known a search had already started. She’d heard footsteps crackling quickly on tile, voices, subdued but strained, calling out her absence from her room. She’d crossed quickly into the kitchen. They would search every hallway, each linen and storage closet, she’d known. Even the kitchen. When she’d heard the quick approach of footsteps, she’d ducked into the cooler between hanging loins of beef, the side of a pig, the quarter of a veal. As from a muffled distance, she’d heard the brief murmur of voices when two of them had clicked a light on and off in the emptiness of the kitchen.

Now they were gone, and she drifted to the tall windows. She saw the light of electric torches flickering, moving about the dark landscape. In the distance jouncing headlights marked a pickup truck. That would be Pickens, the maintenance supervisor, cruising carefully, hoping to catch sight of her as she tried for the ivy-grown outer wall.

She drew back from the shadowy window, nodding slowly; Very well. Quite well let them search the trees and shrubs and pan along the wall, searching in all the wrong places...

Castleneau, the night man in gray security guard’s uniform, swung open the wrought-iron gate and the white jag shot through. Gramling slammed the car to an immediate halt and looked up through the open side window as Castleneau bent and peered in.

“Well?” Gramling demanded through gritted teeth.

“Not yet, Doctor. But we’ll find her. She is still inside the grounds.”

“Are you absolutely certain?”

“As sure as I can be of anything. She simply didn’t have that much time. I had Pickens, his crew, orderlies and aides spreading about the perimeter in everything available on wheels within thirty seconds after the night nursing supervisor notified me. Camilla Jordan will have to grow wings to get out of here.”

“Very well.” Gramling was only slightly mollified. “But every second counts. She is a patient, Castleneau. Don’t forget that for a moment. No telling what she will do. It’s worth your hide if she hurts herself.”

“If we had a few more people...”

“You will have people in sufficient number to take Haven Hill apart,” Gramling said, gunning the engine. “I’ll have day crews, from grass cutters to RN’s reporting in immediately. Nobody gets any sleep until Camilla Jordan is safely back in her room.”

Gramling threw the clutch, and the jag shot toward the white shadows of colonial buildings at the further end of the driveway.

Camilla stood in the soft darkness of the munificent, walnut-paneled office, looking at the deeper shadows of chairs in leather, the imposing desk with its high-backed chair like a throne upon the heights. This was Terrence Gramling’s sanctum, his lair, the place where his mind wormed in its patterns.

She turned her head, hearing the sound of his voice speaking to someone out in the corridor. She eased backward, until her shoulder blades were pressed against the wall close beside the door.

She heard the sound of the doorknob turning in his hand.

And she was quite prepared. Her face was a glint of sweat-slick whiteness. The cones of black erupted in her eyes. Her right hand was lifted, poised, her fingers burning with strength as they gripped the cleaver from the butcher’s block.

The door opened. And in walked the unspeakable monster who had destroyed her child...