3
Everett Frankel was a big red-haired man who looked as Irish as County Cork… which was not surprising, since it was from Cork that his mother’s ancestors had sprung. He had been Ray Van Allen’s P.A. for four years, ever since he’d gotten out of the Navy.
He arrived at Castle Rock Family Practice at quarter to eight that Monday morning, and Nancy Ramage, the head nurse, asked him if he could go right out to the Burgmeyer farm. Helen Burgmeyer had suffered what might have been an epileptic seizure in the night, she said. If Everett’s diagnosis confirmed this, he was to bring her back to town in his car so the doctor-who would be in shortlycould examine her and decide if she needed to go to the hospital for tests.
Ordinarily, Everett would have been unhappy to be sent on a house-call first thing, especially one so far out in the country, but on an unseasonably hot morning like this, a ride out of town seemed like just the thing.
Besides, there was the pipe.
Once he was in his Plymouth, he unlocked the glove compartment and took it out. It was a meerschaum, with a bowl both deep and wide. It had been carved by a master craftsman, that pipe; birds and flowers and vines circled the bowl in a pattern that actually seemed to change when one looked at it from different angles. He had left the pipe in the glove compartment not just because smoking was forbidden in the doctor’s office but because he didn’t like the idea of other people (especially a snoop like Nancy Ramage) seeing it. First they would want to know where he had gotten it. Then they would want to know how much he had paid for it.
Also, some of them might covet it.
He put the stem between his teeth, marvelling again at how perfectly right it felt there, how perfectly in its place. He tilted down the rearview mirror for a moment so he could see himself, and approved completely of what he saw. He thought the pipe made him look older, wiser, handsomer. And when he had the pipe clenched between his teeth, the bowl pointed up a bit at just the right debonair angle, he felt older, wiser, handsomer.
He drove down Main Street, meaning to cross the Tin Bridge between the town and the country, and then slowed as he approached Needful Things. The green awning tugged at him like a fishhook. It suddenly seemed very important-imperative, in factthat he stop.
He pulled in, started to get out of the car, then remembered that the pipe was still clenched between his teeth. He took it out (feeling a small pang of regret as he did so) and locked it in the glove compartment again. This time he actually reached the sidewalk before returning to the Plymouth to lock all four doors. With a nice pipe like that, it didn’t do to take chances. Anybody might be tempted to steal a nice pipe like that. Anybody at all. He approached the shop and then stopped, feeling disappointed. A sign hung in the window.
it read. Everett was about to turn away when the door opened. Mr. Gaunt stood there, looking resplendent and quite debonair himself in a fawn-colored jacket with elbow patches and charcoal-gray pants. “Come in, Mr. Frankel,” he said. “I’m glad to see you.”
“Well, I’m on my way out of town-business-and I thought I’d just stop and tell you again how much I like my pipe. I’ve always wanted one just like that.” Beaming, Mr. Gaunt said, “I know.”
“But I see you’re closed, so I won’t bother y-”
“I am never closed to my favorite customers, Mr. Frankel, and I put you among that number. High among that number. Step in.” And he held out his hand. Everett shrank away from it. Leland Gaunt laughed cheerfully at this and stepped aside so the young Physician’s Assistant could enter. “I really can’t stay-” Everett began, but he felt his feet carry him forward into the gloom of the shop as if they knew better.
“Of course not,” Mr. Gaunt said. “The healer must be about his appointed rounds, releasing the chains of illness which bind the body and…” His grin, a thing of raised eyebrows and clenched, jostling teeth, sprang forth. “… and driving out those devils which bind the spirit. Am I right?”
“I guess so,” Everett said. He felt a pang of unease as Mr. Gaunt closed the door. He hoped his pipe would be all right. Sometimes people broke into cars. Sometimes they did that even in broad daylight. “Your pipe will be fine,” Mr. Gaunt soothed. From his pocket he drew a plain envelope with one word written across the front. The word was Lovey. “Do you remember promising to play a little prank for me, Dr. Frankel?”
“I’m not a doc-” Mr. Gaunt’s eyebrows drew together in a way that made Everett cease and desist at once. He took half a step backward. “Do you remember or don’t you?” Mr. Gaunt asked sharply. “You’d better answer me quickly, young man-I’m not as sure of that pipe as I was a moment ago.”
“I remember!” Everett said. His voice was hasty and alarmed. “Sally Ratcliffe! The speech teacher!” The bunched center of Mr. Gaunt’s more or less single eyebrow relaxed. Everett Frankel relaxed with it. “That’s right. And the time has come to play that little prank, Doctor. Here.” He held out the envelope. Everett took it, being careful that his fingers should not touch Mr. Gaunt’s as he did so.
“Today is a school holiday, but the young Miss Ratcliffe is in her office, updating her files,” Mr. Gaunt said. “I know that’s not on your way to the Burgmeyer farm-”
“How do you know so much?” Everett asked in a dazed voice.
Mr. Gaunt waved this away impatiently. “-but you might make time to go by on your way back, yes?”
“I suppose-”
“And since outsiders at a school, even when the students aren’t there, are regarded with some suspicion, you might explain your presence by dropping in at the school nurse’s office, yes?”
“If she’s there, I guess I could do that,” Everett said. “In fact, I really should, because-” -you still haven’t picked up the vaccination records,” Mr.
Gaunt finished for him. “That’s fine. As a matter of fact she won’t be there, but you don’t know that, do you? just poke your head into her office, then leave. But on your way in or your way out, I want you to put that envelope in the car Miss Ratcliffe has borrowed from her young man. I want you to put it under the driver’s seat… but not entirely under. I want you to leave it with just a corner sticking out.”
Everett knew perfectly well who “Miss Ratcliffe’s young man” was: the high school Physical Education instructor. Given a choice, Everett would have preferred playing the trick on Lester Pratt rather than on his fiancee. Pratt was a beefy young Baptist who usually wore blue tee-shirts and blue sweat-pants with a white stripe running down the outside of each leg. He was the sort of fellow who exuded sweat and Jesus from his pores in apparently equal (and copious) amounts.
Everett didn’t care much for him. He wondered vaguely if Lester had slept with Sally yet-she was quite the dish. He thought the answer was probably no. He further thought that when Lester got bet up after a little too much necking on the porch swing, Sally probably had him do sit-ups in the back yard or run a few dozen wind-sprints around the house.
“Sally has got the Prattmobile again?”
“Indeed,” Mr. Gaunt said, a trifle testily. “Are you done being witty, Dr. Frankel?”
“Sure,” he said. In truth, he felt a surprisingly deep sense of relief. He had been a little worried about the “prank” Mr. Gaunt wanted him to play. Now he saw that his worry had been foolish.
It wasn’t as if Mr. Gaunt wanted him to stick a firecracker in the lady’s shoe or put Ex-Lax in her chocolate milk or anything like that. What harm could an envelope do?
Mr. Gaunt’s smile, sunny and resplendent, burst forth once again.
“Very good,” he said. He came toward Everett, who observed with horror that Mr. Gaunt apparently meant to put an arm around him.
Everett moved hastily backward. In this way, Mr. Gaunt maneuvered him back to the front door an,d opened it.
“Enjoy that pipe,” he said. “Did I tell you that it once belonged to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the great Sherlock Holmes?”
“No!” Everett Frankel exclaimed.
“Of course I didn’t,” Mr. Gaunt said, grinning. “That would have been a lie… and I never lie in matters of business, Dr.
Frankel. Don’t forget your little errand.”
“I won’t.”
“Then I’ll wish you a good day.”
“Same to Y-” But Everett was talking to no one. The door with its drawn shade had already been closed behind him.
He looked at it for a moment, then walked slowly back to his Plymouth. If he had been asked for an exact account of what he had said to Mr. Gaunt and what Mr. Gaunt had said to him, he would have made a poor job of it, because he couldn’t exactly remember. He felt like a man who has been given a whiff of light anaesthetic.
Once he was sitting behind the wheel again, the first thing Everett did was unlock the glove compartment, put the envelope with Lovey written on the front in, and take the pipe out. One thing he did remember was Mr. Gaunt’s teasing him, saying that A. Conan Doyle had once owned the pipe. And he had almost believed him.
How silly! You only had to put it in your mouth and clamp your teeth on the stem to know better. The original owner of this pipe had been Hermann Goring.
Everett Frankel started his car and drove slowly out of town.
And on his way to the Burgmeyer farm, he had to pull over to the side of the road only twice to admire how much that pipe improved his looks.
4
Albert Gendron kept his dental offices in the Castle Building, a graceless brick structure which stood across the street from the town’s Municipal Building and the squat cement pillbox that housed the Castle County Water District. The Castle Building had thrown its shadow over Castle Stream and the Tin Bridge since 1924, and housed three of the county’s five lawyers, an optometrist, an audiologist, several independent realtors, a credit consultant, a onewoman answering service, and a framing shop. The half dozen other offices in the building were currently vacant.
