Росс Макдональд: Dark Tunnel

“Miss Vlathek?” I said in a lowered voice. “Doesn’t she know there isn’t anybody called Vlathek?”

“What people don’t know won’t hurt them,” he said. “We want to get Vlathek.”

“Vlathek-Schneider. Gordon told you about Schneider?”

“Yeah. Don’t worry, Bud, we’re combing the whole region for that guy. All I ask is to get in sight of him.” He clenched a fist like the end of a knotted club and fondled it with his other hand.

I saw a nurse coming down the hall and left him in the vestibule.

“Did you put in that call?” I said to the nurse at the desk.

“Yes. The operator said it would take a few minutes.” She turned to the nurse who had come up behind me silently on rubber soles. “Is Miss Vlathek sleeping?”

“Yes,” the nurse said from behind a white starched bosom like a barricade.

“Take this gentleman to see her, please. He is on no account to speak or disturb her in any way.” She looked at me as if she suspected that I had a noisemaker in my pocket.

“This way, sir.” I followed the nurse along the hall to a rear wing of the hospital. Her starched posterior was immobile as if she moved on wheels. I had to hold myself steady to keep from running ahead of her down the corridor.

We turned into another corridor and she led me to a closed door and stood with a finger on her lips. My heart seemed to reverberate in the quiet wing like a muffled gong. She half-opened the door and I looked over her shoulder into a cool, dim room smelling of the hospital neutrality between life and death. The shade was almost completely drawn but I could see a mass of roses burning darkly on a table by the window and on the pillow a pale sleeping face beneath a helmet of bandages.

The nurse whispered, “She’s sleeping. Don’t make any noise. Can you see her from here?”

“Not very well. May I go in if I’m quiet?”

“Just for a minute.”

I tiptoed into the room and across to the head of the bed. It was Ruth, but not the Ruth I had seen with Peter Schneider. Though the face on the pillow was faintly hollowed by time and pain, it was as fair and smooth as a child’s face. Even in sleep and illness, her lips and chin held the curve of gaiety and courage.

Her lowered lashes shadowed her cheek delicately, and I bent to kiss her closed eyes. Then I remembered that I must not wake her and stood still with my head bowed over her. She must have felt my breath on her face. She raised her eyelids and her clear eyes looked at me.

Something hovered in her eyes, circled wildly and hovered again, like a lost gull over moving grey-green water. The lost thing plunged and her eyes focused and took hold of the meaning of my face.

Her lips fluttered and her voice seemed to come from a distance: “Bob Branch!” Something glittered in her eyes and two tears fell across her temples into the pillow. I touched her face with my hand.

She said in German, “My name is Ruth, nicht wahr? I am Ruth Esch.”

“Yes.”

“I remember now – You got my letter?”

“Yes, I came here to find you.”

“My brother,” she said. “Peter Schneider came to me in Toronto and told me my brother was no longer Nazi. He said Carl was sick in the prison camp and calling for me. I came here with Peter and waited to see Carl for three days. Then he took me to a dark field and Carl was there and they struck me – I did not know after so many years my brother could hate me so terribly–”

“Forget your brother. I love you. I came to take you home with me.”

The nurse came across the room and hissed, “You must leave now. You must not disturb her.”

Ruth said, “Don’t go.” Her hands moved under the sheets, beating against them feebly like caught birds.

I said, “I won’t go away, darling. I’m going to stick around. But you’ve got to rest some more.”

She smiled and two more tears fell. I kissed the bright track on her temple and felt the steady, heartbreaking tremor of the pulse that beat there. I went out of the room with sweet salt on my lips.

The nurse shut the door behind me and turned accusingly. “You said you wouldn’t disturb her.”

I felt like laughing in her face and weeping on her shoulder. “What would you do if you loved somebody and lost him for six years and found him again?”

She looked at me for a moment. Then she smiled and patted my arm. “I know. My husband’s been in England since 1940. I’d turn handsprings, I guess.”

She frowned and opened the door quietly and looked in. When she had closed it again I said, “What’s the matter?”

“Oh, nothing. I thought I might have left my bundle in there this morning, but I guess I didn’t. You didn’t see it, did you?”

“What kind of a bundle?”

“A big paper bundle of laundry. You know, caps and uniforms. Maybe I left it in the Residence.”

“No, I didn’t see it.”

Another nurse came tripping silently down the corridor. “Professor Branch?” she said. “Your party is on the line.”

I went back to the front desk and the grey-haired nurse got up from her seat and handed me the phone.

“Hello, Branch speaking,” I said into it.

“Mr. Gordon is on the line,” the operator announced above the electric murmur of the wires.

I said, “Gordon? This is Branch.”

His voice clear and crisp over a thousand miles of wire. “Hello, Branch. Have you seen the woman?”

“I’ve seen her. It’s Ruth Esch, and she’s been here for three days.”

“You’re quite sure? You were wrong once.”

“My glasses were broken and I don’t see so well without them. But there’s no mistake this time. She recognized me even before I spoke.”

“Would you swear to her identity?”

“I’m going to marry her. Does that convince you?”

“I have to be sure,” Gordon said. “But I figured she must be there.”

“What do you mean, you figured? You thought it was a bum steer.”

“I was wrong. I mean that’s what I figured this morning after we captured Carl von Esch.”

“So you got him.”

“We had to shoot him a little, but he’ll live to stand trial. Did you ever see him, Branch?”

“Once.”

“He resembles his sister, doesn’t he?”

“No. Yes. I don’t remember very well. I didn’t see much resemblance at the time, but he’s not a big man, is he?” A door in my mind opened on whirling vistas of possibility and another door clanged shut for good on a dark, ugly place. “Listen, Gordon, he knocked out his sister and left her for dead in an old mine-shaft here. Was he disguised as a woman?”

“When we caught him,” Gordon said, “he tried to ditch a bundle he was carrying. I’ve got the bundle here. It contains a set of women’s clothes, a woman’s red wig, and a pair of rubber breasts. He had Ruth Esch’s passport and visa on his person, and her Department of Justice permit to enter the United States. Incidentally, he entered this country from Windsor the night of September 21 – the day before this whole thing started. Peter Schneider must have driven him down from Kirkland Lake this morning. He had on a man’s suit, but he was wearing women’s underwear under it. I got the suit identified over long-distance by the man that had his car stolen, you know, the little man in the blanket. All in all, I think we’ve got enough to convict von Esch of murder.”

“Is he homosexual?”

“He has some of the mannerisms. Good female impersonators usually are pansies; they like pretending to be women. Why?”

“I saw Peter Schneider kiss him. That’s what buffaloed me from the first, more than my bad eyes, I think. I’ve seen men in women’s clothes in Paris, in the hole-in-the-wall dancehalls around the Place de la Bastille. But I forgot there were such things.”