Росс Макдональд: Dark Tunnel

When daylight came it was better. I could see trees that seemed thicker as we went north, the rock ribs of the country bursting from the earth, still lakes like wide, innocent eyes mocking the bright blue sky. At dawn my brain felt drained and chilly but it gradually drew heat and energy from the sun. Breakfast was better still.

When I got back from the dining-car, a soldier had taken the seat beside me and we talked all morning. He was going home on sick leave after service in the Middle East and Africa, to his parents’ farm in the Clay Belt. I asked him what ailed him and regretted it. He tapped his left leg with his brown walnut knuckles and the leg rang with a metallic sound.

I felt like a child frightened by bad dreams.

At Churchill, a wooden hamlet like an angular fungus on the railway line, I changed to another train. Half an hour later I got off at Kirkland Lake and took a taxi to the hospital.

We went down streets of wooden buildings that looked new and jerry-built. Between and beyond the packing-case buildings I could see the peaked hills of exhausted grey-black earth thrown up by the gold-mines. In atmosphere, Kirkland Lake was like a western boomtown, but there were restaurants and drugstores with shining plastic fronts and electric signs, and faces on the streets from every race in Europe.

The hospital was a brick building standing in its own grounds. When the taxi took me up the drive and let me out at the main entrance, I noticed a man in plain clothes in the vestibule. He gave me a quick, hard look as I mounted the steps, and then turned away.

I passed him without shying, though I was still leery of plain-clothesmen, and walked up to the information desk. The nurse on duty was a middle-aged woman with a brittle grey permanent. Her face was white and starched like her uniform, and her voice when she spoke was very hygienic:

“What can we do for you, sir?”

“My name is Branch, Robert Branch. I–”

“Oh, are you Professor Branch?”

“Right. Has somebody–?”

Her sharp voice amputated my sentence like a sterile knife: “Do you know a man called Gordon?”

“Chester Gordon? Has he been here?”

“No, he has not been here. He called you this morning by long distance.”

“Where is he?”

“The call was from Chicago.”

“What did he want? Did he tell you?”

“No, he told me nothing. When I told him that we had never heard of you, he asked to speak to the policeman on duty here.” She sniffed, as if all policemen were typhoid-carriers.

“Nurse, will you do something for me?”

“What is it? We have rules, of course.”

“Of course,” I said. “This is obviously a well-run hospital. Would you be allowed to put in a long-distance call for me, to Chicago?”

“This is not a telephone exchange.”

“No, but the call has to do with one of your patients. And it’s very important.”

“What patient?”

“The unidentified woman with concussion.”

“She has been identified,” the nurse said with the satisfied click of a mousetrap shutting on a mouse.

“She has?”

“Her brother was here this morning. She is a Miss Vlathek.”

I stopped breathing. When I started again I said, “Did you see him? What’s his first name?”

“We did not exchange first names.” But I knew what hers was. Gorgon.

“What does he look like?”

“Black curly hair. Spectacles. Rather pale in the face. A most courteous young man.” Unlike me.

“Where is he now?”

“Nor did we exchange addresses,” she said frigidly. “You can’t really expect me to answer all these questions. Are you a detective?”

“No, not exactly. But I’m assisting the F.B.I.” I hoped I was.

“Then the police will answer your questions.” She began ruffling papers.

I handed her a ten-dollar bill. “Look, put in that call for me, will you? This should cover it.”

“This is American money,” she said.

“I know, but it’s still good. Will you put in the call? It’s a matter of life and death.” I didn’t know then that it was, but I hoped she would recognize the phrase.

“Really?” Interest warmed her eyes almost to freezing-point. “Whom do you wish to speak to in Chicago?”

“The man who called me, person-to-person at the Chicago office of the F.B.I.”

“You are a detective,” she said, and even began to flutter a little. I was careful not to deny it.

“Is that the policeman that Gordon talked to this morning?” I pointed towards the vestibule.

“Yes.”

“Before or after Vlathek was here?”

“After, I think. Yes, it was after Mr. Vlathek left. He was here quite early. He said he drove up from Toronto overnight, as soon as he saw the newspaper account of his sister’s accident.”

“How is she?”

“Very weak, but much better. She’s suffering more from shock than concussion. She’s not allowed visitors, of course.”

“How did Vlathek identify her if he didn’t see her?”

“Oh, he saw her. A nurse took him in for a moment when she was sleeping. There was no doubt in his mind that she was his sister.”

“There wouldn’t be,” I said. “May I see her?”

“You’ll have to ask the police. I’m sorry.” Her thin mouth arranged itself in a facsimile of a smile.

“All right. Thanks very much for your trouble. And you will put in that call right away?”

“Yes, sir. Chester Gordon, F.B.I., Chicago.”

I did my best to devastate her with a grateful smile and went out to the vestibule. The officer in plain clothes, a brown hulk of a man whose straight back must have worn a uniform most of his forty years, was rolling a cigarette between fingers like Polish sausages.

“My name’s Branch,” I said.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Branch?”

“Perhaps you can give me some information. If you’d be good enough.”

“Perhaps.”

“I’m assisting the F.B.I.,” I said, wondering if that was enough to convict me of impersonating an officer.

“Credentials?”

“I have none. I’m a private citizen. But an agent of the F.B.I. has asked me to obtain some information.”

“Sure, but how do I know that?” He raised one thick eyebrow and lowered the other so that he was scowling and looking superior at the same time.

“I’m calling Chester Gordon in Chicago now. The man you talked to this morning. You can ask him about me.”

“That’s all right. He said something about you. I just had to be sure you were the right guy.”

His low eyebrow went up and joined the high one and he drew in and blew out smoke. “What do you want to know? I’ll tell you if I can.”

“How long has – Miss Vlathek been in the hospital?”

“Three days. But her name’s not Vlathek.”

“What is it?”

“You tell me.”

“Ruth Esch,” I said.

“That’s what Gordon thinks.”

“What did Gordon tell you?”

“Plenty.” He inhaled deeply and expelled smoke through wide nostrils and wider mouth.

“Did he tell you to arrest Vlathek?” I asked.

“That’s what I’m here for. He said he was coming back. He tried to take the woman out of the hospital this morning but they wouldn’t let him. She was still under guard and the doctor wouldn’t let her be moved, anyway.”

“Will you let me see her?”

“She can’t have visitors. Doctor’s orders.”

“I just want to see her. Vlathek saw her this morning. If it’s Ruth Esch I can identify her.”

The big man opened the inner door of the vestibule and spoke to the nurse behind the information desk. “Will you get somebody to show Mr. Branch here where Miss Vlathek’s room is?” She pressed a buzzer beneath the desk.