“They might kill him,” she said quietly.
“And what is Dr. Vincent Lagardie doing all this time?”
“He doesn’t know, of course. Please, please go at once. I have the address here. Just a moment.”
And the little bell rang, the one that rings far back at the end of the corridor, and is not loud, but you’d better hear it. No matter what other noises there are you’d better hear it.
“He’ll be in the phone book,” I said. “And by an odd coincidence I have a Bay City phone book. Call me around four. Or five. Better make it five.”
I hung up quickly. I stood up and turned the radio off, not having heard a thing it said. I closed the windows again. I opened the drawer of my desk and took out the Luger and strapped it on. I fitted my hat on my head. On the way out I had another look at the face in the mirror.
I looked as if I had made up my mind to drive off a cliff.
21
They were just finishing a funeral service at The Garland Home of Peace. A big gray hearse was waiting at the side entrance. Cars were clotted along both sides of the street, three black sedans in a row at the side of Dr. Vincent Lagardie’s establishment. People were coming sedately down the walk from the funeral chapel to the corner and getting into their cars. I stopped a third of a block away and waited. The cars didn’t move. Then three people came out with a woman heavily veiled and all in black. They half carried her down to a big limousine. The boss mortician fluttered around making elegant little gestures and body movements as graceful as a Chopin ending. His composed gray face was long enough to wrap twice around his neck.
The amateur pallbearers carried the coffin out the side door and professionals eased the weight from them and slid it into the back of the hearse as smoothly as if it had no more weight than a pan of butter rolls. Flowers began to grow into a mound over it. The glass doors were closed and motors started all over the block.
A few moments later nothing was left but one sedan across the way and the boss mortician sniffing a tree-rose on his way back to count the take. With a beaming smile he faded into his neat colonial doorway and the world was still and empty again. The sedan that was left hadn’t moved. I drove along and made a U-turn and came up behind it. The driver wore blue serge and a soft cap with a shiny peak. He was doing a crossword puzzle from the morning paper. I stuck a pair of those diaphanous mirror sunglasses on my nose and strolled past him toward Dr. Lagardie’s place. He didn’t look up. When I was a few yards ahead I took the glasses off and pretended to polish them on my handkerchief. I caught him in one of the mirror lenses. He still didn’t look up. He was just a guy doing a crossword puzzle. I put the mirror glasses back on my nose, and went around to Dr. Lagardie’s front door.
The sign over the door said: Ring and Enter. I rang, but the door wouldn’t let me enter. I waited. I rang again. I waited again. There was silence inside. Then the door opened a crack very slowly, and the thin expressionless face over a white uniform looked out at me.
“I’m sorry. Doctor is not seeing any patients today.” She blinked at the mirror glasses. She didn’t like them. Her tongue moved restlessly inside her lips.
“I’m looking for a Mr. Quest. Orrin P. Quest.”
“Who?” There was a dim reflection of shock behind her eyes.
“Quest. Q as in Quintessential, U as in Uninhibited, E as in Extrasensory, S as in Subliminal, T as in Toots. Put them all together and they spell Brother.”
She looked at me as if I had just come up from the floor of the ocean with a drowned mermaid under my arm.
“I beg your pardon. Dr. Lagardie is not—”
She was pushed out of the way by invisible hands and a thin dark haunted man stood in the half-open doorway.
“I am Dr. Lagardie. What is it, please?”
I gave him a card. He read it. He looked at me. He had the white pinched look of a man who is waiting for disaster to happen.
“We talked over the phone,” I said. “About a man named Clausen.”
“Please come in,” he said quickly. “I don’t remember, but come in.”
I went in. The room was dark, the blinds drawn, the windows closed. It was dark, and it was cold.
The nurse backed away and sat down behind a small desk. It was an ordinary living room with light painted woodwork which had once been dark, judging by the probable age of the house. A square arch divided the living room from the dining room. There were easy chairs and a center table with magazines. It looked like what it was— the reception room of a doctor practicing in what had been a private home.
The telephone rang on the desk in front of the nurse. She started and her hand went out and then stopped. She stared at the telephone. After a while it stopped ringing.
“What was the name you mentioned?” Dr. Lagardie asked me softly.
“Orrin Quest. His sister told me he was doing some kind of work for you, Doctor. I’ve been looking for him for days. Last night he called her up. From here, she said.”
“There is no one of that name here,” Dr. Lagardie said politely. “There hasn’t been.”
“You don’t know him at all?”
“I have never heard of him.”
“I can’t figure why he would say that to his sister.”
The nurse dabbed at her eyes furtively. The telephone on her desk burred and made her jump again. “Don’t answer it,” Dr. Lagardie said without turning his head.
