WHEN MOLLOY DID NOT come back Julie Edwards was hurled eye to eye with a frightening crisis, and she reacted to it exactly the way her suppressive nature dictated—by whipping into cold, stony tension and slamming upon her mind the responsibility for both decision and action. Her mind was accustomed to work out system and detail with care, so it balked. The net end was that terror, while it didn’t break her composure, certainly unnerved her until she couldn’t decide what to do.
She did fling, wildly, to the door; impulse took her no farther, though, when she realized she was in danger and supposed to stay locked in until Molloy came back. She retreated, came back against the aft partition, and remained flattened there, arms down rigidly at her sides and hands tight.
The train, now that an electric locomotive had been put in place of the diesel one, had surrendered its zest; formidable spirit, headlong violence, were gone. Its jerks were soft, spongy ones. The windows, the doors, did not vibrate; the water glasses in their holders no longer jiggled.
Presently she was able to see, and detest, her uncertainty. She hated this suspended unsureness that always sprang on her when need for action came on the heels of surprise. What had happened, the whole picture, its fears, black stark mystery, was slashed in her mind with deep-cut detail. There was no dimness. But she could not decide what to do.
Her head bowed against a tightness; she was hardly able to endure the tension longer. This was her first contact with danger. Real violence had never touched her before, because her foresight had always enabled her to side-step it. Back home, her judgment was considered very good, and she was thought of as careful, wary, a girl who obeyed all the safety rules. She would not ride in a car driven by a drunken driver, not even when she had had a few herself. She had never, in her student flying, made the leaving-traffic turn lower than the prescribed safe altitude of four hundred feet. Danger was something to be adeptly avoided by using her head.
Julie Edwards was embroiled in a terrible thing. Poor Martha! She was afraid—she knew Chance Molloy had been deeply concerned too—for Martha. Martha, her closest friend, might very well be dead. Those men were probably capable of anything. She would put no crime, however evil and horrifying, beyond Walheim and Fleshman.
Abruptly, violently, her ideas came to focus. She knew what she must do. Decisions snapped into place. Firm now and intent—she could carry out action well in the heat of necessity; it was only the making of decisions that took time—she unlocked the door and jerked it open.
“Oh!” she gasped.
“Why, hello ... !” The doctor stood there smiling. “I was about to knock.”
“I—oh! ... You scared me!”
“I was to drop around and see how you were,” the doctor explained pleasantly. “The gentleman asked me to do so. So .... here I am!”
She was holding tightly to the edge of the door. “I—see,” she said. “You ...”
“How do you feel now, my dear?” The doctor’s eyes touched her with professional interest. “The head still ache?”
“No—yes—it doesn’t hurt much.” The truth was she’d forgotten the headache some time ago. “I’m all right.” She chose her words carefully and spoke them carefully. “I was just going to find the conductor. Have you seen him?”
“Conductor? Let’s see ... Why certainly! Of course! I passed him on my way here. The conductor, three policemen”—his eyes on her became thoughtful, tainted slightly by suspicion—“and the gentleman who first asked me to have a look at your injury.”
“Molloy?” she asked.
“I don’t believe I ... know who Molloy is.”
“The man who first got you to examine me. That’s Mr. Molloy—a tall, blond man ... ?”
“In that case Molloy is with the conductor—and three policemen. H’mmmm ... I don’t believe I had heard Mr. Molloy’s name.”
Her hands fell away from the door edge. “In that case I won’t bother the conductor.” Her voice came out clear and strong. “I really feel—my head—feels much better, Doctor. The pain has almost disappeared. It’s noticeable, just a little, when I move my head suddenly. There is some soreness whenever I touch the bruise, but that is to be expected, isn’t it?”
“Perhaps I’d better check you over, anyway.”
“Well, if you wish. Only ...” She stepped back, bringing the door with her, and said frankly, “I don’t know whether I can afford this.”
“It’s paid for.” The doctor indicated the bench. “Will you just sit there?” He had blunt, capable fingers, and his gray hair was redolent of tonic. He had a rounded melon of a stomach and she sensed that he was a family practitioner somewhere. There was a Masonic pin in his lapel; when he leaned over, parting her hair and inspecting the bruise, an Elkstooth dangled before her eyes on an old-fashioned gold watch chain. He said, “H’mmmmm!” and “Uh-huh.”
He clucked amiably. He sounded pleased, like a mother hen with a fine chick. He poked a thermometer into her mouth. He inspected her eyes.
She said, “I don’t think there was any contrecoup. And, while I know it’s hard to tell, I don’t believe there has been any rupture of the meninges.”
“Hah!” The doctor was astonished. “Contrecoup and meninges! Those terms—don’t tell me you’re a doctor?”
“Oh no! I work for one. Office assistant.”
“Well, well, that’s fine! Where? The Middle West?”
She nodded. The thermometer was firm and smooth against her tongue. “Missouri,” she said.
The doctor said he was from Minnesota himself, and added a well, well. “I won’t worry about you now,” he said. Waiting for the thermometer to reach its temperature, he ducked his head and looked out of the window. “It’s misting rain, isn’t it? I do hope the weather in New York is decent. This will be the first visit for my wife and me.”
Her face was composed, inscrutable, giving no hint of racking tension within. She had no intention of telling the doctor her troubles; it had not occurred to her. He stood apart and had no part in it, a pleasant old gentleman who no longer had a real interest in her because he considered her—his manner was telling her that—as good as well.
She noticed that the mist droplets on the window had become plentiful enough in one place to make a small rivulet that threaded downward. A few of the ice daggers had melted from the edges of the windowpane. She thought of Molloy and the policeman. The mystery had taken on another spot of coloring, a bright one for a change. Her mind briefly engaged, was quickly defeated by, the matter of how Molloy had managed to contact the policemen so quickly.
“Hah! Look, a ship! On the river!” the doctor exclaimed. He pointed. Her gaze, compliant, sought for his boat, but it was gone. She did not see it. The doctor sighed, wheeled, took the thermometer and, head back, hand up, held it and turned it to catch the ceiling light just right. “Fine! No rise in temperature at all!” He shot the thermometer into a thin metal case, clipped it into his pocket beside a black fountain pen.
“Thank you, doctor,” she said.
“Just keep an eye on yourself,” he warned. “You know how these head things go ... A blow, a rupture of one of the arteries supplying the membranes that cover the brain, a clot, it’s pressure ... Oh-ho! But you know all that, don’t you! No need to scare you, is there?”
“No, no need to scare me,” she said woodenly.
He took her hand and gave it a hearty shake, then backed to the door. “I’m sorry you fell,” he said. He opened the door. “But you seem to be getting along so nicely ... Well, good-by. Soon—I imagine—very soon, the city! Oh-ho, the city! Well, I hope you have a good time.” He drew the door farther open. He stepped outside. “Take care of yourself,” his jovial voice called from the corridor.
The door closed partially, not completely—a gap remained. Six inches, perhaps. An aperture the width of a hand from top to bottom and a lean triangle at the top. The door remained that way. It was motionless. There was silence in the compartment, and from the corridor, silence; the stillness in the compartment was different from before, but this difference was due to the fact that the door was open, changing, vaguely, the resonance of the room. Julie was rising to close and lock the door. But the door came the rest of the way open before she reached it, flung open, disclosing the two men who stood there.
“I am the man who found you after you fell,” Fleshman said, stepping inside. “I have a friend with me,” he said. He indicated Walheim.