“Are you going to damage it?”
She shook her head. “No. Not me.”
“Then why shouldn’t you look at it?”
Gently, she slipped the doll out of his pocket. “My pop had one. Mom said it used to talk to him at night, when they thought she was asleep. I guess I know whose hair you wanted done, right? You ought to carry her in a box, that’s what most of them do. I’ll get a comb and straighten it out a little for you.”
The Land in Winter
Leaving the haberdashery he walked past Dr. Applewood’s office, though it was on the upper level and he on the lower. No light showed through the pebbled glass door; he wondered whether the doctor had gone home or been arrested. It seemed quite possible that Applewood had been an informer—that Applewood had summoned Klamm and Klamm’s agents, that the wound received in the theater had been an accident or a trick, and that Applewood had returned to the hotel that morning in response to instructions from Klamm or the police.
He considered trying the door, entering the doctor’s office if he could, and searching the desk; but decided against it. It was conceivable—though only, he felt, barely conceivable—that they did not know about Dr. Applewood. If so, they would surely learn if he were seen going into the doctor’s office or so much as touching the doorknob. It was conceivable that they had not known where he was—as now they clearly did—before he had gone into the coffee shop; but he doubted it.
In any event, he was already much too warm, bundled as he was into sweater-vest, overcoat and muffler. He wanted to get outside as soon as he could. Some distance beyond the doctor’s office he discovered a short stair labeled PARKING; he climbed it and let himself out through a rusty steel door.
The wind the blonde had mentioned met him at once; it was not strong, but persistent and very cold. He felt that it was not a sea wind but a land wind; it lacked the flavor of the sea, seeming instead to have blown across lonely miles of featureless snow.
Nor could he see the sea from the place to which the rusty door had admitted him. A small lot, plowed clean of snow, lay before him. In it were four cars, all parked as near the door as possible. None was the hunched brown Mink whose keys were in his pocket, though two were very much like it. The third was a bright red convertible, hardly larger. The fourth was a black limousine with jump seats in the back, a car capable of carrying eight in some comfort. Beyond doubt, that was the car in which Klamm’s agents had come—Fanny, the blonde to whom she reported, the new “guest” in the coffee shop, and perhaps Dr. Applewood as well. He found himself wondering who had driven. The blonde—she was the type who would always want to drive, who would never allow anyone else to drive if she could help it; she would be a fast driver, he thought, constantly burning rubber or slamming on the brakes, the kind of driver North would be if he drove.
He tried to open the limousine’s door with the keys of the hunched car. Neither would work, or even enter the lock. To his surprise, the trunk was not locked. He opened it and found a litter of paper; someone had tossed a file folder into it, and the motion of the limousine had emptied it. The wind caught two sheets of paper and sent them flapping across the frozen asphalt like terrified chickens. He seized another before it could make good its escape and glanced at it, then read it with fascination.
7/12/87 mem. Blue September. 12/11/87 chief Iron Boot. Arrested 6/6/88 ngri., U. Gen. Psychiatric Hosp. Expert shot, often carries two or even three guns. Expert knife thrower, may have knife strapped to wrist, arm, or ankle. Violent, uncontrollable temper.
