By the time the doorbell rang insistently for the fourth time, Marcia Merom, Ph.D., had returned from the bedroom carrying her gun. She seemed much calmer, as if the weight of the oversized thing itself steadied her.
As the would-be visitor banged on the door, she slipped the weapon under a cushion on the couch. I had become extremely uncomfortable. Not just because of the gun, but because of the roller-coaster changes in Merom’s apparent personality.
From outside, a syrupy and suggestive voice called, “Marcia Janet Merom. I know you’re in there. You’re going to let me in, Marcia Janet Merom.”
Merom fluffed up her hair, a reflex that made me pity her. Then she opened the door wide, and stood out of the line of sight.
Seafield saw me first. He wasn’t pleased. He paused. He thought. Then he marched into the room, and virtually without looking at Merom he closed the door and locked it.
He pointed a finger at me. He nodded and said, “The fart private detective.”
Merom sat down on the couch and slipped her hand under the cushion that covered her revolver. If it comforted her, she was the only one.
Seafield stood in front of where I sat and looked like Paul Bunyan. “You don’t know when to keep your nose out of other people’s business,” he said. Then to Merom, “What’s he doing here, Marcy?”
“I can see who I want to,” she said, mistakenly responding as if the question had been from the jealous lover, when it had been from the suspicious covert conspirator. Whatever the details, he obviously had her twisted into knots emotionally.
“You’re supposed to be at the lab,” he said, as a matter of fact.
“What have you been telling him?”
“He knows most of it already,” she said more stoutly.
“And what he didn’t know you’ve been filling in, I suppose,” Seafield said. “Including what happened to the treacherous John Pighee.”
“No,” Merom said suddenly. And more leisurely, “But he knows about John’s . . . condition.”
“If you’ve told him anything, anything at all—”
“He already knew!” she pleaded, and began to cry.
“If you’ve told him anything,” Seafield insisted, “I’m not answerable. It’s not up to you to take on that kind of responsibility.”
“I didn’t tell him anything,” she whined. “He already knew it. I didn’t say anything.”
Seafield said to me, “You’d better go now.” He had nearly a foot on me when I was standing; when I was sitting, he seemed to be suspended from the ceiling.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said. “Dr. Merom and I were talking when you intruded. I don’t know what kind of personal hold you have over her, but she seems to fear you. I’m not leaving until you do.”
Seafield just smiled at first. “You like to play rough, do you?” he asked. “She likes that. You like playing rough, don’t you, Marcy?”
“No!”
“I ought to know,” Seafield intoned. “I ought to know.”
I stood up.
“You’re still too little,” Seafield said. I felt like a bear being baited. Fortunately I have a small mental advantage over a bear. I stepped behind the couch to the telephone. While I dialed, I made small talk. “You know your way around this apartment pretty well,” I said. “You’d been here even before Dr. Merom moved in, yes?”
Seafield grew dark, instead of merely casually threatening. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
I heard the phone being answered and held the earpiece away so they would have a chance to hear as the reception officer said, “Homicide and Robbery with Violence. May I help you?”
“Lieutenant Miller, please,” I said.
But it was a brief conversation. Seafield ripped the phone wire out of the wall.
“Well, well,” I said. He was the bear now. I stared hard at him, and grinned like Davy Crockett.
He thought, balancing wisdom against preference in deciding how to deal with me. Wisdom won. He said, “I’ll wait outside. I’ll give you ten minutes.” He went to the door, unlocked it, and turned back to us with an ugly leer. “She doesn’t like to take any longer than that anyway,” he said. He closed the door behind him
Merom sighed. I turned to face her. She was only partly expressing relief. The other part seemed to be an unmistakably sexual kind of admiration. I realized she had been watching, not crying, as Seafield and I had held our little showdown.
I didn’t really understand what had happened in either of them, why he had backed down for ten minutes, and why she was now stepping up. But I’d won a victory, however temporary, and I wanted to make sure it wasn’t Pyrrhic.
“Come on,” I said to Merom. I had another question or two.
“What?” Words had broken the initial spell.
“He’s out there.” I pointed to the front door. “So we’re going out there.” Through the kitchen.
She hesitated, uncertain again.
I tried to be reasonable. “You can’t live under his constant threat. You can’t come back here until the phone is fixed. It’s your only protection.”
But reason didn’t impress her, Ph.D. or no Ph.D. She looked one way, then the other.
Her dithering only made me angry. I shouted, “Move!”
The volume startled her, but made her act. She walked smartly toward the kitchen door, and as she passed me she took my hand.