Susan said bitterly: ‘Mr Morro is not a piker. He doesn’t do things on a small scale. He’s holding seven others hostage too.’
Peggy slumped back on her pillows. ‘I just don’t understand.’
The doctor touched Morro’s arm. ‘The young lady is overtired, sir.’
‘I agree. Come, Mrs Ryder. Your daughter’s shoulder requires attention. Dr Hitushi here is a highly qualified physician.’ He paused and looked at Peggy. ‘I am genuinely sorry about this. Tell me, did you notice anything peculiar about either of your attackers?’
‘Yes.’ Peggy gave a little shiver. ‘One of them — a little man — didn’t have a left hand.’
‘Did he have anything at all?’
‘Yes. Like two curved fingers, only they were made of metal, with rubber tips.’
‘I’ll be back, soon,’ Susan said and permitted Morro to guide her by the elbow out in the passageway where she angrily shook her arm free. ‘Did you have to do that to the poor child?’
‘I regret it extremely. A beautiful child.’
‘You don’t wage war on women.’ Morro should have shrivelled on the spot, but didn’t. ‘Why bring her here?’
‘I don’t hurt women or permit them to be hurt. This was an accident. I brought her here because I thought she’d be better with her mother with her.’
‘So you shock people, you tell lies and now you’re a hypocrite.’ Again Morro remained unshrivelled.
‘Your contempt is understandable, your spirit commendable, but you’re wrong on all three counts. I also brought her here for proper medical treatment.’
‘What was wrong with San Diego?’
‘I have friends there, but no medical friends.’
‘I would point out, Mr Morro, that they have fine hospitals there.’
‘And I would point out that hospitals would have meant the law. How many small Mexicans do you think there are in San Diego with a prosthetic appliance in place of a left hand? He’d have been picked up in hours and have led them to me. I’m afraid I couldn’t have that, Mrs Ryder. But I couldn’t leave her with my friends either because there she would be lonely, with no one capable of looking after her wound, and that would have been psychologically and physically very bad for her. Here she has you and skilled medical attention. As soon as the doctor has finished treating her I’m sure he’ll permit her to be wheeled to your suite to stay there with you.’
Susan said: ‘You’re a strange man, Mr Morro.’ He looked at her without expression, turned and left.
Ryder awoke at 5.30 p.m., feeling less refreshed than he should have done, because he had slept only fitfully. This was less because of worry about his family — he was becoming increasingly if irrationally of the opinion that they weren’t in as grave danger as he had at once thought — than because there were several wandering wisps of thought tugging at the corners of his mind: only he couldn’t identify them for what they were. He rose, made sandwiches and coffee, and consumed them while he ploughed through the earthquake literature he had borrowed from Pasadena. Neither the coffee nor the literature helped him any. He went out and called up the FBI office. Delage answered.
Ryder said: ‘Is Major Dunne around?’
‘Sound asleep. Is it urgent?’
‘No. Let him be. Got anything that might interest me?’
‘Leroy has, I think.’
‘Anything from eight-eight-eight South Maple?’
‘Nothing of interest. Local nosey neighbour, a rheumy-eyed old goat — I’m quoting, you understand — who would clearly like to know your Bettina Ivanhoe, if that’s her name, better than he does, says that she hasn’t been to work today, that she hasn’t been out all morning.’
‘He’s sure?’
‘Foster — that’s our stake-out man, spends most of his time round the back — says he believes him.’
‘Eternal vigilance, you’d say?’
‘Probably with a pair of high-powered binoculars. She went out this afternoon, but walking: there’s a supermarket on the corner and she came back with a couple of carry-bags. Foster got a good look at her. Says he hardly blames the old goat. While she was out Foster let himself in and put a bug on her phone.’
‘Anything?’
‘She hasn’t used the phone since. More interesting, our legal friend was on the phone twice today. Well, only the second conversation was interesting. The first was made by the judge himself to his chambers. Said he’s been stricken by a case of severe lumbago and could they get a deputy to stand in for him in court. The second was made to him. Very enigmatic. Told him to let his lumbago attack last for another couple of days and everything should be all right. That was all.’
‘Where did the call come from?’
‘Bakersfield.’
‘Odd.’
‘What?’
‘Hard by the White Wolf Fault where the earthquake was supposed to originate.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Education.’ Courtesy of the CalTech library, he’d learnt the fact only ten minutes previously. ‘Coincidence. Coin box, of course.’
‘Yes.’
‘Thanks. Be down soon.’
He returned to the house, rang Jeff — he’d nothing to say to his son that a phone-tapper would find of any interest — and told him to call round but to wear different clothes from those he had been wearing the previous night. While he was waiting he himself went and changed.
Jeff arrived, looked at his father’s usual crumpled clothes, looked at his own well-creased blue suit and said: ‘Well, no one could accuse you of entering the sartorial stakes. We meant to be in disguise?’
‘Sort of. For the same reason I’m going to call up Sergeant Parker on the way in and have him meet us at the FBI office. Delage says they may have something for us, by the way. No, we’re going to have the pleasure of interviewing a lady tonight, although I doubt whether she’ll regard it as such. Bettina Ivanhoe or Ivanov or whatever. She’ll recognize the clothes we were wearing last night, which is more than we can say about her. She won’t recognize our faces, but she would our voices, which is why I’m having Sergeant Parker briefed and having him do the talking for us.’
‘What happens if something occurs to you — even me — and we want Sergeant Parker to ask a particular question?’
‘That’s why we are going along — just in case that possibility arises. We’ll arrange a signal then she’ll be told that we have to go out and check something with the station by the car radiophone. Never fails to panic the conscience-stricken. Might even panic her into making a distress call to someone. Her phone’s bugged.’
‘Coppers are a lousy lot.’
Ryder glanced at him briefly and said nothing. He didn’t have to.
‘Let’s start with Carlton,’ Leroy said. ‘The security chief at the reactor plant in Illinois never got to know him well. Neither did any of the staff there — the ones that are left, that is. That was two years or so ago and a good number have moved on elsewhere. Secretive kind of lad, it would appear.’
‘Nothing wrong with that,’ Ryder said. ‘Nothing I like better than minding my own business — in off-duty hours, that is. But in his case? Who knows? Any leads?’
‘One, but it sounds more than fair. The security chief — name of Daimler — had traced his old landlady. She says Carlton and her son used to be very close, used to go away weekends quite a bit. Says she doesn’t know where they went. Daimler says it’s more likely that she didn’t care where they went. She’s well off — or was: her husband left her a good annuity but she takes in boarders because most of her money goes in gin and cards. Most of her time and interest, too, it would appear.’
‘Sensible husband.’
‘Probably died in self-defence. Daimler offered — he wasn’t too enthusiastic about the offer — to go and see
