little more, get me? Be a little more reasonable. Do something, for God's sake! This is getting to be a disgrace.'
He yanked the car door open, tossed his medicine kit upon the.seat. With an irritated scowl, he started around to the opposite door, then, whirled and stamped back to the bellboy.
'Yes?' he said, his face thrust almost against Dusty's. 'You said something to me, Rhodes?'
I said,' said 'Dusty, evenly, 'that if you don't want to treat the case, I can call in another doctor.'
'No' – Lane shook his head. 'No,' he said again, his voice muted to an icy purr. 'I'll tell you what you can do, Rhodes. You can start takeing better care of your father, or you can hire someone who will take care of him. Do I make myself clear? You can do it of your own free will, as a son should, or I'll take steps to compel you to.' He hesitated,'wet his lips, continued in a milder tone. After all, he'd been. the Rhodes' family doctor for years. And he'd known this young man sincere was a squirt in short pants. 'Sure that, uh, nothing of that kind will be necessary,' he went on. 'I know your expenses have been pretty high, and it's hard for a man holding a full-time job to do much else. But, well, see what you can do about it, eh? Do the best you can.'
Dusty promised that he certainly would. He was no more afraid of the doctor than he was of Kossmeyer, but there was no point in making an enemy of him. He needed friends; he was very apt to need them, at any rate. And – and the realization startled him – he had none. There were friends of the family, friends of his father. But there was none of his own. No one who could be depended upon to fight for him, stick up for him, if he got into trouble.
'I'll get busy on it right away,' he promised. 'I'm only sorry that you had to be bothered about such things, Doctor.'
'Well. Well, that's all right,' Lane said gruffly. 'Know you've got the old man's welfare at heart – just a little thoughtless perhaps – or I wouldn't have said anything.'
He drove away.
Entering the house, Dusty again sent Mr. Rhodes to the barber, again gathered up his clothes and called the laundry and cleaners. It would mean losing sleep today and still more tomorrow. But that would be the end of this particular difficulty. Kossmeyer was dropping his father's case. He would be making no more demands for money, and the old man would thus cease to filch from the household funds as he had been doing.
Dusty dialed the telephone, thinking of the attorney with sardonic amusement. That was always the way with these holier-than-thou guys, these guys who made such a show of standing on principles and to hell with the cost. They didn't care about money – oh, not at all! – but they never turned any down. They were too good to give you a decent word, to show a little understanding for you, but they weren't too good to take your money. If they couldn't get it in one way, they'd do it in another. Squeeze it out of someone close to you who was too trusting to see through them.
Kossmeyer must have known that Mr. Rhodes had no money of his own. He must have been aware that Dusty would not, or could not, have authorized the old man's steady and substantial expenditures. And yet –
Dusty frowned faintly, the smoothly satisfying chain of his thoughts temporarily unlinked. He didn't know, of course, that Kossmeyer had gotten any dough from his father. It would seem that he hadn't, in fact, since Mr. Rhodes had pestered him frequently to send me attorney a remittance. Then, well, then there was the way Kossmeyer had acted a few days ago: mere in his office when the subject of fees had come up. He'd brushed it aside as something of no importance. In so many words, he'd offered to work for nothing. He'd been pretty sure, no doubt, that the offer would not be accepted, and, of course, a man as sharp as he was would know when to take it easy and when to put on the screws. But suppose… suppose he had really meant it. Suppose he hadn't received those hundreds of dollars, as much as fifteen or twenty dollars a week for more than a year.
Well – Dusty shrugged and resumed his telephoning – -suppose he hadn't? What difference did it make whether the old man had simply wasted the money, let it get away from him, or whether he had given it to Kossmeyer?
He hung up the phone, and leaned back on the lounge. Fretfully, he lighted a cigarette and leaned forward again.
… Hundreds of dollars, close to a thousand. And if Kossmeyer hadn't got it, who had? It didn't make any difference, of course – how could it? – but 'still ft was damned puzzling. He couldn't push the riddle out of his mind.
Squandered? Wasted? Absently dribbled away or lost? The more he thought about it, the more preposterous the theory became. Mr. Rhodes had no vices, nothing he might have spent so much money on Years of living on a modest salary had made him chronically frugal. He abhorred waste, and had demonstrated the fact frequently and recently. He was absent-minded, true, but not that absent-minded. On occasion, he might have forgotten his change from a purchase or lost a bill from his pocket. It was out of character, but he might 'have. But he would not have done so steadily, consistently, week after week.
There was only one explanation, then. Kossmeyer. The money had either gone to him, or it simply hadn't gone. And if it hadn't…
Dusty crushed out his cigarette, and stood up. Stepping to the screen door, he looked up and down the street. He stood there in the door for a moment, hesitant, feeling a faint twinge of shame. Then, he turned away purposefully, and entered his father's room.
It was as neat as the old man was unneat. The bed was made. The floor appeared to have been recently swept. A handful of toilet articles was tidily arranged on the dresser. Books stood in orderly array upon their several shelves.
He examined them, the books first. Riffling their pages, shaking them, hastily replacing them on the shelves. Next, after another look up and down the street, came the bed. He jerked off the covers, went over the mattress swiftly but carefully. There was nothing. No smallest slit, nor any place where the ticking had been re-stitched. He re-did the. bed and moved to the dresser. In the bottom drawer he found a small steel file. He lifted it out, and raised the unlocked lid.
There was nothing here, either. Only old letters, old receipts, old and yellowed newspaper clippings. And a couple of old insurance policies. One, a thousand-dollar policy, carried a twenty-year-old date. The other – ten thousand dollars, double indemnity – was dated some five years ago. Both, of course, named his mother as beneficiary. Both, consequently, would have long since lapsed.
He returned the file to the drawer. That completed his search of the room.
The following morning, having sent his father to a picture show, he searched the rest of the house. His findings totaled a dime (under the bathtub) and three pennies (extricated from the cushions of the living-room furniture). That was all.
Well, he hadn't actually expected to turn up a horde. He'd been sure all along that Kossmeyer had got the money. He went to bed, more pleased than otherwise, glad that his opinion of the attorney had been positively confirmed.
TWELVE
He ate.
He slept.
He worked.
He conferred with Tug and his boys several times. He went to extraordinary pains to keep Mr. Rhodes presentable.
Eat, sleep, work: that was about the sum of his existence. It seemed that there should have been something more, but that was all.
The days, the nights, slipped by, blending uneventfully one with another. Almost abruptly the day came, that day.
Two-thirty in the morning of that day.
THIRTEEN
At midnight, politely but implacably, the Manton had begun urging its guests toward their rooms. Now, at two-thirty in the morning, with the coffee shop closed, the porters and elevator operator gone, the lobby was almost painfully quiet. It was as though no one had ever walked the sparkling marble floors, sat in the overstuffed chairs and divans. As though no one ever had or ever would. The cleanliness was so forbidding, the silence so
