It didn’t take me long to become the possessor of a .38 Colt revolver with a six-inch barrel, a fairly husky weapon designed for holster use. A little further searching gave me a trick rubber cartridge holder, a quickload device with six extra rounds all lined up ready to be slapped in the cylinder—I wondered what kind of a firelight he’d been anticipating on these medical premises. I also acquired a wallet and some more keys. I hoped I wouldn’t have to do any swimming before the night was over. The amount of metal I was now carrying, I’d sink like a stone.
I turned my head and whistled softly. A light figure detached itself from the wet bushes and came splashing towards me across the soggy lawn. Pale pink wasn’t, I reflected, a very practical color for this type of night-escape operation. The next time we had to blast out of a booby hatch together, I hoped she’d pick a more suitable color scheme, not to mention a pair of pants she could run in without tripping over the super-stylish, super-wide cuffs—even as I watched, she got her feet tangled and fell headlong. Not that it mattered. By this time we were both about as wet and muddy as we could get. I stepped forward and helped her up.
“Grab the feet,” I hissed, leading her back to the corpus delecti. “The old goat is too heavy for me to carry and I don’t want to direct attention to him by leaving a plowed-up trail where I dragged him across the lawn… What’s the matter?”
“But… but this man is dead!” There was horror in her voice. “You killed him.”
I drew a long breath, and told myself firmly that I was a reasonable person, not given to violent displays of temper.
“Miss Davidson,” I said calmly, “you’re quite welcome to try to get out of here by yourself. I tell you what, ma’am, although it involves some risk I’ll give you half an hour to do it your way. I’ll wait right here. After that I’ll go out of here my way. That should keep us both happy, right?” I looked at her standing there in the soaking rain. “Well, what the hell are you waiting for? You don’t seem to like my escape technique so go ahead and use your own.”
She was looking down at the man on the walk between us. Her wet face was white and strained. “But you didn’t have to—”
“Don’t tell me what I do or don’t have to do!” I snapped, to hell with being reasonable. “I don’t owe these crummy bastards anything, not one thing except a week of hell! I’m not obliged to take a single goddamned risk to keep them healthy; as far as I’m concerned it’s open season at Inanook and no bag limit. I gave them a clear warning the day you brought me here. They chose to ignore it. Now I’m leaving, and anybody who gets in my way is dead!”
“But he didn’t get in your way! He was just—”
“Just strolling around the property with a loaded gun!” I sneered. “A gun he could have shot us with if something went wrong. Even if I hadn’t wanted the pistol for myself, I’d have put him out of action so he couldn’t use it. You don’t leave armed characters wandering around behind you if you can help it.” This was idiotic, having to explain basic principles with the rain pouring down and the clock ticking. “It’s your decision, doll, but make it fast. Either give me a hand with the dirty work, or see how far you get being gentle and humanitarian by yourself.”
She hesitated a moment longer, staring up at me. “Dugan?” she whispered. “How did you know we didn’t have to worry about Dugan? Did you kill him, too?”
“Are you going to cry for Dugan, for God’s sake?”
She was regarding me strangely. “And the one in your cottage, the big blond boy they call Tommy? I don’t suppose he stepped aside politely and let you walk out.”
“I feel kind of bad about Tommy,” I said. “He wasn’t really a bad guy.”
Surprisingly, she made a choked little sound that turned out to be a giggle. Well, almost.
“You’re really rather a monster, aren’t you, darling. I hadn’t realized.”
It took me aback, a little. I guess I hadn’t realized, either. When I came to think of it, I didn’t know where those basic principles came from that I’d been explaining to her, any more than I could remember where I’d learned the blow that had killed Tommy Trask. I’d merely been acting in a manner that seemed necessary and natural; but I could see that by conventional, civilized standards my recent behavior might appear to be a little crude. We stood there in silence for a moment—silence, that is, except for the steady rustling of the rain. At last Kitty laughed oddly.
“I’m sorry. I think I’m being stupid. I’m supposed to be working for revenge on these people, aren’t I? Why should I care how many of them die?” Deliberately, she squeezed the soaked hair back from her face so it wouldn’t obscure her vision when she bent over. She swallowed hard, reached down, and grasped the ankles. “Well, where do you want it?”
Ten minutes later, after ducking around bungalows and crawling through occasional bushes to avoid raincoated employees hurrying between the cottages and the kitchen with trays of dirty dishes, we reached the main house. In the darkness at the side of the building it took me a while to locate the right key on Dugan’s ring. My fingers were numb with cold and slippery with rain. I was beginning to think I was going to have to work my way through the guard’s assortment to find the one I wanted, although I knew Dugan had carried one because I’d seen him use it; then a key finally turned in my clumsy grasp and the door opened.
Kitty whispered, “Do we have to go in there?” Before I could answer, she said quickly, “Sorry again. It’s just Davidson being stupid again.”
In the treatment room, a small night light was burning. The place still stank of human suffering and its byproducts. Kitty slipped around by way of the wall, keeping as far as possible from the equipment with which we’d both become too familiar. I forced myself to walk straight across the tiled floor, and pat the table and chair lightly as I went by, just to show them they didn’t scare me a bit. I don’t think I fooled them much, or myself, either. It was never going to be my favorite place.
I opened the inner door very cautiously, gun ready. Another small light burned in Dr. Elsie’s examining room. Her office, beyond an open door, seemed to be fully lighted. I moved silently that way and peeked. She wasn’t there. I signaled to Kitty to join me and went in. Somehow, the soft carpet and neat office furniture seemed to emphasize how wet we were, but I checked Kitty with a gesture when she instinctively embarked on a campaign of sartorial reconstruction. I pointed to the chair behind the desk.
“Just sit there and don’t move,” I said. “You’re the bait. We’re waiting for the tiger. I mean, tigress.”
I stepped back into the corner by the soundproof door that led out into the lobby. The inside guard would be in his cubicle, I knew, and there would be inmates—Dr. Elsie referred to them as patients, but Dr. Albert preferred to call them guests—talking, reading, or just staring at the walls out there, but nothing could be heard in the well-insulated office, just as no screams from the back room could be heard in the lobby. I felt a belated rivulet of ice water trickle down my neck. Kitty had her elbows on the desk as she watched the door half-fearfully. Rain from her sweater and her long hair was soaking into the otherwise unmarked green blotter on the desk. Not too many executives went in for desk blotters these ballpoint days, I reflected, but Elsie was an old-fashioned girl.
I knew her pretty well by now. I knew she’d be back soon. Perhaps because she had such fun ways of using electricity, she hated to see it wasted. She wouldn’t have left all the lights on in here if she wasn’t returning to the office shortly… Then the doorknob turned, and she marched in briskly, her starched coat rustling. She stopped short, staring at the girl who’d usurped the chair behind the desk. The moment of surprise was enough; the heavy door closed itself behind her, with a little encouragement from me, before she could throw herself backwards out of danger, or call for help.
“Careful, Doctor,” I said. “There’s a gun on you.” She didn’t turn her head. She was really quite a woman, in her grotesque, middleaged way.
“Mr. Madden?”
“With a revolver in my hand, I think I’m Helm,” I said. “Madden is the guy with the camera.”
“It must be confusing,” she said calmly. She turned, very slowly and carefully. There was a little pause. She didn’t bother with the obvious questions like how did I get out and what the hell did I think I was doing and did I really think I could get away with it. She merely said, “Apparently I underestimated you. We get so many blustering loudmouths who are going to tear this place down brick by brick if we don’t release them immediately with abject apologies. Are you going to kill me now?”
“It would be fun, but I’ll pass as long as you behave yourself,” I said. “I don’t really need to do it for personal satisfaction. I killed you every day in that back room. Little by little, piece by piece.”
Her hoarse voice said, “Of course. They all do.”
“Actually, it wouldn’t be so good if you were really dead,” I said. “The dead don’t suffer. As long as you’re alive I can hope that the remission of your disease, if that’s the proper medical jargon, is only temporary. When it comes back it will do a slower and better job on you than I could ever do.”
Her eyes narrowed under the thick brows. I saw that I’d hit home. It was something she feared, perhaps the only thing she feared. Her face looked like something out of a prehistoric nightmare, the kind that Pacific island savages used to commemorate with stone statues. She glanced bleakly at Kitty.
“All this because a stupid girl conceived an idiot revenge for the death of her wishy-washy husband!” she sneered. “You miserable intellectual midgets! Just because we dealt summarily with a weakling traitor, girl, do you think that gives you the right to deceive and betray us, too? And you, Helm, an establishment mercenary taking advantage of her sentimental grief to further the oppressive purposes of your ruthless government employers in the United States, and their accomplices here in Canada; all trying vainly to put down a great, spontaneous, revolutionary movement far more important to the future of mankind than a single life, or a hundred lives, or a thousand… Kill him, Jake!”
It might have worked. She’d held my attention nicely with her gaudy talk of revolution; but the guard who walked in on us was very, very slow. He had a strap on his holster and I guess he’d never practiced unsnapping it in a hurry. When he opened the door casually, and saw us standing there, and heard Elsie’s sharp command, he lunged forward clawing at his hip. I saw at once that he wasn’t Wyatt Earp reincarnated, no matter what he might think. I took time to bring the heavy gun barrel down hard on Elsie’s wrist as she grabbed for my weapon. I was still in no danger as I stepped into the clear and raised the Colt once more and took deliberate aim…
Gradually, Jake realized that he was dead; the certificate just hadn’t been signed yet to make it official. With his weapon half out of the holster, he froze.
“Wrong grip,” I said. “Two fingers. Lay it gently on the desk, please.”