She waited for my reaction, and I gave none, except to say, holding my temper, 'This has been coming for a long time. Now you have your excuse.'
Now her cheeks grew red with anger, and she unclasped her hands and pounded her small fists on the blotter.
'Get out!'
'Gladly,' I said. 'But before I go, I want it on the record that I turned down your advances toward me only because I didn't think it was proper to become involved with you in the workplace. It wasn't that I wasn't attracted to you—'
'Out!' she repeated, nearly choking on the word, and it gave me secret pleasure to see the redness deepen on her cheeks, and in the hollow of her throat.
In the lab, Eagleton and Smyth were slightly more sympathetic to my plight.
'Cow,' Smyth muttered, under her breath. She was cow-like herself, large and slow, but not without somber wit. She was a wonderful darts player, and knew how to drink a pint.
Eagleton laughed his high, cackling laugh. But his features, even paler and thinner than detective Molson's, regained their solemnity.
'What do you really think happened to old Lonnie-pooh?' he said, referring to Lonnigan, with whom he had never gotten along.
'I don't know...' I said. 'I don't want to know.'
'He was doing rotten work,' Smyth said curtly, without looking up from her microscope. 'Weird and rotten.'
'He was definitely using his grant work for other things rather than what it was apportioned for,' Eagleton said. His pale head nodded in satisfaction. 'I told him, but of course he screamed at me to keep to myself.'
'He was a cow, too,' Smyth said.
Between them, I said, quietly. 'I thought I saw the violets in the greenhouse move.'
Eagleton snorted, and for a moment Smyth showed no reaction, but then she looked up from her eyepiece to stare at me.
'What?'
'I said, I thought I saw the violets in Lonnigan's greenhouse move'
'As in, wiggle?' Smyth said, and I knew she was ready to either laugh or scoff.
'Skip it, then.'
'No,' Smyth said, suddenly serious. 'Tell me.'
'Did they dance, Corman?' Eagleton laughed. 'A little conga line, perhaps?'
'Shut up, James,' Smyth said, continuing to regard me. To me she said, 'Tell me what you saw.'
'I saw.. .what I thought was a hand. A green hand. Lonnigan brought me out there to show me something, and said that no matter what happened I should stick with him. He was acting very strangely. Also, I had a premonition that something terrible was going to happen, and I felt he wanted to pull me into it with him. He was not himself at all. You know the way he was, nearly always arrogant and rude. He wasn't like that at all yesterday evening. He pulled me from my bench, nearly pleading with me to come with him.'
'What did he say? Exactly?' I was a bit nervous at the seriousness of Smyth's face.
'Not. . . much at all. He merely said I had to come into the violet room with him. He was very insistent.'
'And when you got out to the greenhouse?'
Eagleton laughed. 'That was when the dance began, of course!' Ignoring Eagleton, Smyth kept her eyes on me.
'When we got to the greenhouse he rushed in ahead of me, and then started moving deeper into the room. A... shadow seemed to fall, though it was still before twilight. And then he disappeared into the violets at the far end of the nursery, and I heard him scream, and when I turned to run it got very dark. And as I reached for the doorknob I thought a hand held me back. A green hand.'
Smyth stared at me for a further moment, then nodded and turned suddenly back to her microscope.
'Interesting,' she said.
'Is that all you have to say?'
She ignored me, and Eagleton started tittering then.
As I turned to leave Smyth said after me, 'Don't worry about Administrator Reed. I've got a few things on her that will keep her quiet.'
But I was not thinking about Marsha Reed as I left, but about that green hand, and those twisting vines.
Detective Molson was back the following day, with two blowzy looking uniformed men with shovels. After consulting with Administrator Reed, the three policemen went into the greenhouse with the Administrator in tow. Through the small window in my office I could see her shouting at them, and I watched as they disappeared into the glass building.
They were out there a long time, but finally Marsha Reed emerged, followed by Detective Molson and the two lumbering, unhappy-looking uniformed cops behind him. The two blowzy fellows were dirt-stained and sweaty, and I saw Molson wave them back to their car while the detective followed Administrator Reed, who looked quite angry, back down toward our building.
Inside, I heard the administrator stop outside my door, shout, 'Here it is!' and march off.
There was a knock at the door.
'Come in,' I said, unenthusiastically.
Detective Molson, as expected, entered, closing the door behind him. He looked slightly better rested than the day before.
'Mind if I ask a few more questions, Mr. Corman?' he said. He did not make a move to sit down in the chair opposite my desk, but rather leaned against the closed door, perhaps to prevent my flight.
'I thought you wanted me to ring you up in forty-eight hours if Ralph Lonnigan didn't show up?' I said.
He shrugged, and pulled a cigarette pack from his coat pocket. He shook one out into his hand and lit it without asking my permission.
Around cigarette smoke he said, 'I thought a bit on what you said, and decided there was more to it than I thought.'
'Oh?'
He nodded. 'For instance, I'm very curious as to why you waited so long to call the police.' He pulled his notebook out and flipped to the page he wanted. 'You told me yesterday that. . . you fell asleep on getting home, and then called when you woke up.' He cocked an eyebrow at me. 'Is that correct?'
'Yes.'
He paused to blow smoke. 'I find it odd that you fell asleep after such a fright. How do you account for that?'
I thought about this, and realized I had no answer that would make him happy.
'I. . . can't account for it. Perhaps I was in shock.'
'In shock? A man in shock would not be able to call the police at all.'
'I was upset.'
'So upset that you slept?'
'Look...'
Suddenly I realized that I had been burdened with an overwhelming sense of tiredness after the touch of that violet stem, which I had taken for a slim hand...
'I don't know what to say.'
Molson harrumphed.
'I mean,' I continued, 'That's what happened, but I don't know how to account for it to you.'
Suddenly he shrugged, flipping a page of the notebook.
'Be that as it may, Mr. Corman, could you tell me a bit more about what Mr. Lonnigan was doing out in the greenhouse with you to begin with?'
'He asked me to come out to see something with him. Something he was working on.'
'And that was...?'
