`I hardly blame him,' the fair one said emotionally, `after what you did to his wife.'
`Were you shacked up with her?' the dark one said.
I looked from one healthy smooth face to the other. They didn't look sadistic, or sound corrupt, and I wasn't afraid for myself. Sooner or later the mess would be straightened out. But I was afraid.
`Listen,' I said, `you're wasting time on me. I had legitimate business at the court. I was investigating-'The fear came up in my throat and choked off the rest of the sentence. It was fear for the boy.
`Investigating what?' the dark one said.
`Law enforcement in this country. It stinks.'
I wasn't feeling too articulate.
`We'll law-enforcement you,' the dark one said. He was broad, with muscular shoulders. He moved them around in the air a little bit and pretended to catch a fly just in front of my face.
`Lay off, muscle,' I said.
The large, moustached face of the doctor appeared in the entrance to the cubicle. `Everything okay in here?'
I said above the deputies' smiling assurances: `I want to make a phone call.'
The doctor looked doubtfully from me to the officers. `I don't know about that.'
`I'm a private detective investigating a crime. I'm not free to talk about it without the permission of my principal. I want to call him.'
`There's no facilities for that,' the dark deputy said.
`How about it, Doctor? You're in charge here, and I have a legal right to make a phone call.'
He was a very young man behind his moustache. `I don't know. There's a telephone booth down the hall. Do you think you can make it?'
`I never felt better in my life.'
But when I swung my legs down, the floor seemed distant and undulant. The deputies had to help me to the booth and prop me up on the stool inside of it. I pulled the folding door shut. Their faces floated outside the wired glass like bulbous fishes, a dark one and a fair one, nosing around a bathyscaph on the deep ocean floor.
Technically Dr Sponti was my principal, but it was Ralph Hillman's number I asked Information for. I had a dime in my pocket, fortunately, and Hillman was there. He answered the phone himself on the first ring: `Yes?'
`This is Archer.' He groaned.
`Have you heard anything from Tom?' I said.
`No. I followed instructions to the letter, and when I came up from the beach the money was gone. He's double-crossed me,' he said bitterly.
`Did you see him?'
`No. I made no attempt to.'
`I did.'
I told Hillman what had happened, to me and to Mrs. Brown.
His voice came thin and bleak over the wire. `And you think these are the same people?'
`I think Brown's your man. Brown is probably an alias. Does the name Harold Harley mean anything to you?'
`What was that again?'
`Harold or 'Har' Harley. He's a photographer.'
`I never heard of him.'
I wasn't surprised. Harley's yellow card was the kind that businessmen distributed by the hundred, and had no necessary connection with Brown.
`Is that all you wanted?' Hillman said. `I'm trying to keep this line open.'
`I haven't got to the main thing. The police are on my back. I can't explain what I was doing at the auto court without dragging in the extortion bit, and your son.'
`Can't you give them a story?'
`It wouldn't be wise. This is a capital case, a double one.'
`Are you trying to tell me that Tom is dead?'
`I meant that kidnapping is a capital crime. But you are dealing with a killer. I think at this point you should level with the police, and get their help. Sooner or later I'm going to have to level with them.'
`I forbid-' He changed his tone, and started the sentence over: `I beg of you, please hold off: Give him until morning to come home. He's my only son.'
`All right. Till morning. We can't bottle it up any longer than that, and we shouldn't.'
I hung up and stepped out into the corridor. Instead of taking me back to the emergency ward, my escort took me up in an elevator to a special room with heavy screens on the windows. They let me lie down on the bed,
