Росс Макдональд - The Dark Tunnel

Then somebody else must have called Alec and told him to get up. Ruth Esch? I didn’t see how she could have, because she hadn’t got back to her hotel until ten to twelve. And when she got there, she had had to take a phone call herself. The call on Alec’s line had been put in soon after 11:30, the operator thought. Did Peter and Ruth have a third accomplice?

But according to my reconstruction, Alec was unconscious until five minutes after twelve; otherwise, he’d have heard Helen Madden at the door and answered her. How could anybody have telephoned him if he was unconscious?

I couldn’t work it out. I remembered where I was and got up and went into the hall. The nurse was coming down the hall towards me with President Galloway. I pretended to be a lost sheet blowing idly in the wind and scampered inconspicuously back into my room.

I was in bed when the nurse opened the door and said, “Naughty, naughty, Mr. Branch. You haven’t been released yet. But I’ve brought you a visitor.”

“Thank you. I was just testing my legs. Now bring me Bill Meinzinger and my clothes. Max Simon. Plaza.”

She went away again and Galloway came across the room with his hand out. I shook the hand that had shaken the hands of governors and penetrated the pockets of wealthy alumni.

“How are you, Robert, how are you?” Galloway intoned with the extreme urbanity of embarrassment. “You’ve had a fearful ordeal.”

“I feel all right, thanks. A bit stiff, but I needed exercise. I understand the police are letting me out of here.”

“Chester Gordon and I talked with Garvin, the County Prosecutor, this morning. Gordon found the marks of Schneider’s bullets in the Dictionary room. Garvin decided that – this – was all a mistake and he took immediate steps to rectify it. Perhaps you acted a trifle – er – indiscreetly, Robert, but the rest of us were decidedly obtuse. I feel very badly that you should have been – forcibly detained.”

“I had a good sleep. There’s nothing like a police guard to keep people away from you – and you away from people. Has Peter Schneider been caught?”

“Not yet. But they’re hot on his trail, I understand.”

“Where’s Gordon now?”

“At McKinley Hall, I believe. After we spoke with Garvin, he said he was going to make a thorough examination of Alec’s office. He may very well be there still.”

Bill Meinzinger put his long, intelligent Savonarola face in at the door and said:

“Hello, Bob. I hear you want to see me.”

“Pardon me,” I said to Galloway. “Do you know Dr. Meinzinger? President Galloway.”

They shook hands and I said, “Did you see my x-ray picture?”

“Yeah,” Bill said. “Your neck’s O.K.” He reached over and dug his fingers into it. It hurt and I threw up my hand to ward him off.

The sleeve of my hospital gown fell down and exposed my forearm and he shifted his attention to it.

“What’s the matter with your arm?” he said. “Intravenous? Whoever did it bungled it.”

I looked at my arm and saw the blue circular bruise as big as a nickel just below my elbow. As soon as I looked at it, I was conscious that it hurt slightly. I remembered the sharp stab I had felt in my arm when Peter Schneider had me hog-tied in the barn.

“I guess that’s what it is,” I said. “I was drugged this morning when I–”

“I heard about that,” Bill said. “You don’t know what drug it was, do you?”

“No.”

“What were your subjective symptoms?”

“I just went out like a light, it felt like floating away. Like sudden death. When I came to, I had a hangover head.”

“How long were you out?”

“I don’t know. It couldn’t have been so very long. Perhaps half an hour.”

“It sounds like sodium pentothal to me,” Bill said.

“What’s that?”

“One of the barbiturates. Nothing to worry about; in fact, we’ve been using it a couple of years for bone-setting and the like. I understand they’re using it in the army now for battle fatigue. 20 c.c. will put a man out in about ten seconds, and keep him that way for twenty minutes to half an hour. No ill-effects, except that it leaves him feeling as if he’s been on a jag.” He stopped lecturing and looked at my arm again. “Your man knows the latest in materia medica, but he’s no hell at giving an intravenous.”

“He’s good enough,” I said. Suddenly I thought of something: “Would this drug – sodium penthothal, is it? – show up in a post-mortem?”

“Probably not, unless death occurred immediately after the injection. It’s excreted very rapidly. The mark of the needle would show, of course. It usually bruises the tissue a bit. But if you had succeeded in hanging yourself, there’d likely have been no trace except the mark on your arm, that is, if it was sodium pentothal.

“Watch those eyes,” he said. “I’ll give the nurse some drops for you.”

“Can I get out of here now?”

“If you want to. Don’t you want more sleep? Or have you decided to break off the sleeping habit?”

“I have a date with the F.B.I.”

“Take care of yourself. Alec is going to be missed.”

“He certainly is,” Galloway said.

I said to Bill, “Tell the nurse I’m free, will you?”

“O.K. So long. Good day, Dr. Galloway.”

Bill went away and I turned to Galloway, who had sat down in a chair beside the window. “Have they captured Ruth Esch?”

“No, they haven’t.” After a pause, he said as if he were contemplating a newly-discovered department of the universe:

“It’s something I can’t understand, how scholars like Dr. Schneider, devotees of the humanities, can sink to such a level.”

“Pro patria. They’re Germans. One-third of the officers of the Nazi party are school-teachers, or used to be. But I can’t understand the Esch woman.” I tried to think and talk about her as impersonally as I could. “When I knew her in Germany she was liberal to the core.”

“Schneider, too, seemed to be a genuine liberal,” Galloway said. “He had taken out his American papers, you know. I’ve rarely been so mistaken in a man.”

“I hardly took Alec’s suspicions seriously at first, yesterday.” Yesterday seemed very remote, something seen through the wrong end of a telescope. “I was trying so hard to be liberal and tolerant that I couldn’t see straight. Alec himself tried too hard to be fair. If he had gone to the police right away, he’d be alive now. But he gave Schneider an even break, and it cost him the best years of his life.”

“He was a good and useful man,” Galloway said. “We shan’t be able to replace him.”

The nurse opened the door, and Max Simon followed her in with my clothes over his arm. Everybody went out and I put them on in a hurry, cursing Max’s ideas of color-harmony under my breath.

Galloway drove me to McKinley Hall and left me on the first floor to go into his own office. I started up the stairs two at a time. Halfway up to the fifth floor, I met Gordon coming down. He looked tired and strained – he couldn’t have had any sleep yet – but more friendly than he had been.

“Hello,” I said. “I’m a free man, thanks to you.”

“Good. How do you feel?”

“Better than I look. I want to talk to you, Gordon.”

“Make it fast. I’m on my way.”

“Then you’ve figured it out?”

“How Judd was killed? No, I haven’t. I read the police reports, and the record of your testimony, and went over the room. But it doesn’t come clear. The autopsist found the marks of an intravenous injection on his arm, so it’s fairly certain he was drugged. But that doesn’t fit in with his being conscious when he fell. Are you sure about that?”