“What is it? You want my blessings? Want to address me as
“Damn . . . this is so hard. You only led me to believe you CITY FOR RANSOM
123
thought my idea of creating a mental picture of the killer a good one. I took you at your word when—”
“I am a master of facetiousness. Even Ransom knows this.
But now what on earth are you driving at, man?”
She pulled away her neckerchief, revealing her throat.
She needn’t say a word. Her fingers trailed a faint red glow that died along her milky white neck. No protrusion of Adam’s apple, and a makeup line gave Tewes’s face and neck a darker hue. “You’re not a man! My God, woman, who are you and why? Why this elaborate ruse?” “It is me, Christian, Dr. Jane Francis.”
He squinted and blinked all at once.
“You once loved me, respected my father . . . and you . . .
and . . .”
“. . . and you left me.”
“Not you. I left Washington for Europe to further my studies, to gain access to—”
“Your future.”
“—a true medical library, recall?”
“Yes but you stopped writing, and all these years I had no idea. I thought some awful fate’d befallen, that you were . . .
dead. Now look at you.”
“I can explain.”
“What have you done to yourself?”
CHAPTER 13
They had brought their voices down and spoke under the minstrel’s songs, and the muffled conversations of Hinky Dink’s.
“I’ve a daughter in medical school. Can’t do that on what a woman makes—not in any womanly profession or in my
“But you’re a gifted physician with surgical skills touting phrenology and nonsense and selling snake oils! And doing it as a man. A waste on more levels than I can say.”
Hinky interrupted, asking if the young Dr. Tewes would care to partake of a drink. She ordered Amaretto liquor.
“My God . . .” Christian moaned, “Ransom—”
“What of ’im?”
“—has the wrong idea about . . . and—”
“No one else is to know, Dr. Fenger. No one! You must promise. You must reveal my secret to no one, and especially not to Alastair Ransom.”
“But the blackmail and the—”
“I’d never’ve gone through with it, sir, never.”
“But Tewes may’ve?”
“A means to an end.”
“To gain access to Alastair’s case?”
Jane nodded. “I can explain why.”
CITY FOR RANSOM
125
“You don’t understand. As angry as I am at Tewes, you must know—”
“I can sense Ransom wants to hurt me . . . ahhh, Dr.
Tewes, that is.”
“Hurt you? He wants to drown you in Lake Michigan, and I just handed him all the justification.”
“That’s his knee-jerk reaction? Kill Tewes?”
“He could be lurking in the shadows of the alleyway just outside right now.”
“Then the two of you . . . you really were plotting—”
“Dr. Tewes’s demise, yes.”
“My God . . . perhaps I play my part too well.”
“I’d say . . . yes.”
“How can we stop him without telling him the truth?”
“There mayn’t be any stopping him short of his discovering you wear knickers!”
“Shhh! Please.” She looked around but no one heard above the lament being sung of unrequited love. “But Ransom’s a law enforcement official, a police officer, an inspector in the—”
“All the more reason to fear him.”
She gulped and Hinky handed her the Amaretto at the same instant. She threw it back and swallowed. “I needed that.”
“We have to tell him something.”
“No!”
“I . . . we left it with his calling on you at your office . . .
asking for a miracle cure for those recurring headaches he’s suffered since the bomb.”
They sat in silence. The balladeer song changed to a mother’s child lost to war. Finally, Jane said, “All right . . .
when he comes to see me . . . do you think him foolish enough to . . . in my own home . . . that he’d—”
“No, actually, I think he’ll gather information on you—
Dr. Tewes—for now.”
“Clumsy . . . comes ’round ostensibly for an examination? For the headaches?”
126
ROBERT W. WALKER
“A phrenological exam, during which he’ll interrogate you—Tewes that is. We agreed at the last only to get some dirt to counteract Tewes, but . . .”
“But what?”
“For one, he’s bloody unpredictable, and I didn’t like that look in his eyes when—”
“Far from pleasant, agreed. Funny . . . as children, I admired him so, but he’s so changed . . . and I rather doubt he has any memory of—”
“As children?”
“I have the dubious honor of having gone to the same school when I was four, before Father moved us to the far north side.”
“Can’t imagine Ransom ever having been a child.”
“But in so many ways . . . he still is.”
“Aren’t we all?”
“This new science of the mind and neurosurgery fascinates the child in me, I suppose.”
“I insist on walking you home, Dr. Tewes. In the event you should encounter any unpleasantness.”
“A big unpleasantness named Ransom, you mean? That won’t be necessary, Doctor.”
Christian released a twenty-year-old sigh. “My God, so it’s now Dr. Jane Francis. Had you not gone off —”
“Believe me, sir. I learned more from watching you work than anything in all my studies, both here and abroad.”
“And now you’re back. Declare yourself, Jane, and I’ll do all in my power to get you an appointment at Cook
