An Air That Kills (2 page)

I must get some pills from Harry. Harry has all kinds of pills.

Esther's pink and cream De Soto was missing from the garage, but Galloway's Cadillac convertible was in its place with the top down, freshly washed and waxed, the way old Rudolph liked to keep it, as if it were an irreplaceable heir­loom instead of something that would be traded in within a year.

It was cold, even for April. But Galloway left the top down and climbed, shivering, into the front seat.

Upstairs, the two boys continued their argument but its content had changed.

“What if he forgets to bring the dogs?”

“He can't forget.”

“Or maybe he will never come back, like old Rudolph's wife.”

“Oh shut up,” Gregory said fiercely. “When you go away, you
got
to come back. There's no place else to go, you got to come back.”

For Gregory it was that simple.

TWO

When Galloway referred to his friends as a group he usually called them “the fellows.” Two of the fellows, Bill Winslow and Joe Hepburn, drove up together from Toronto and ar­rived at the lodge, which was located on Georgian Bay a few miles beyond Wiarton, at about ten o'clock. A third, Ralph Turee, came alone a few minutes later.

They were admitted by the caretaker, and each of them launched immediately into his special task. Turee took the luggage upstairs, Hepburn started a fire in the huge stone fireplace, Winslow pried the lock off the liquor cabinet, and, as Esther had predicted, the fellows began the process of getting themselves boozed up.

These were Galloway's special friends, of approximately the same age, and with a mutual aim, having as good a time as possible when they were away from the pressures of business and family: Bill Winslow, an executive in his father's milling company; Joe Hepburn, manager of a firm which manu­factured plastic toys and novelties; and Ralph Turee, who taught economics at the University of Toronto. Except for Turee, they were men of average intelligence and above aver­age income. Turee never let them forget this. Chronically broke, he made fun of their money and borrowed it; pos­sessing a superior education, he jeered at their ignorance and used it to his own advantage. But the group was, on the whole, a congenial one, especially after small differences had been dissolved in alcohol.

It was Turee who first remarked on the passage of time and the absence of Harry Bream and Galloway. “Peculiar thing Galloway hasn't come yet. He makes such a point of being punctual.”

“I hate punctuality,” Winslow stated. “It is the hobgoblin of small minds. Right, fellows?”

Hepburn said it was chastity that was the hobgoblin of small minds and Turee corrected them both, as usual, and said it was consistency, and eventually they got back to Galloway.

“Galloway called me last night,” Turee said, “and told me he was going to pick Harry up in Weston and drive on up here and arrive about nine-thirty.”

“There,” Winslow said. “There you have it.”

“Have what?”

“The crux of the situation. Harry. Harry's always late for everything.”

It was a logical as well as an agreeable theory, and they were all having another drink to toast Harry, the crux of the situation, when, about eleven-thirty, Harry unintentionally ruined the whole thing by walking in the front door. He was wearing a mackintosh, a deer-hunter's cap with the flaps up, and carrying his fishing gear.

“Sorry I'm late,” he said cheerfully. “Something went wrong with the fuel pump the other side of Owen Sound.”

They all stared at him in such a peculiar and disgruntled way that even Harry, who was not given to subtleties, sensed something was wrong.

“What's the matter with you guys anyway? Have I broken out in spots or something?”

“Where's Galloway?” Turee asked.

“I thought he was here.”

“Wasn't he supposed to come with you?”

“That was the original plan, but I had an emergency call to make at a clinic down in Mimico, so I left word with Thelma to tell Galloway to go ahead without me. I know how he hates to be late. You don't suppose Thelma got her signals switched?”

It was generally agreed among the fellows that Thelma had been born with her signals switched, but none of them wanted to state this outright because it might hurt Harry's feelings. Harry adored his wife. Her little eccentricities seemed endlessly fascinating to him and he was always enter­taining his friends with detailed reports of her opinions and experiences.

Because he'd been the sole support of his parents, Harry had not married until they were both dead and then he wasted no time. His marriage, at the age of thirty-five, to a woman who worked as a receptionist in a doctor's office, came as a shock to his friends, especially to Galloway who had become used to having Harry at his beck and call, and ready for anything. The carefree bachelor Harry had been suddenly replaced by the hopelessly married Harry, subject to rules and restrictions and at the mercy of whims and worries. Though Thelma and Esther did not get along well, the two men re­mained the best of friends, partly because Thelma seemed to like Galloway and encouraged Harry to see him, and partly because the two men had been friends ever since their prep school years together. As a senior, Harry had been president of the class. He still possessed the yearbook with his gradu­ation picture in it, and the caption:
Henry Ellsworth Bream.
A great future is predicted for our Harry, who holds a warm place in all our hearts.

He still held a warm place in a good many hearts but the future remained elusive. He had missed a number of boats, by inches or minutes, by oddities of fate like a flat tire, a delay in traffic, a wrong turning, a misplaced key, a sudden blizzard, a mistake in a telephone number.

“Poor Harry,” people said. “Always running into bad luck.”

It was generally expected that when his parents died fate would step in and make up to Harry for all his misfortunes by handing him a real stroke of luck. By Harry's standards, fate had. The luck was Thelma.

“She probably didn't give him the message,” Turee said. “Perhaps she suddenly decided to go to a movie or something and Galloway's still sitting there waiting for you to turn up.”

Harry shook his head. “Thelma wouldn't do a thing like that.”

“Not on purpose, of course.”

“Not accidentally, either. Thelma's got a wonderful mem­ory.”

“Oh?”

“That girl's never forgotten a thing in her life.”

“Well, all right, all right. It just seemed the logical explana­tion, that's all.”

It was midnight by this time, and Bill Winslow, who couldn't hold his liquor but would die trying, had reached the point of saturation. The excess fluid was seeping out of his eyes in the form of tears.

“Poor old Galloway, sitting down there on his can, sitting on his poor old lonely can, while we're up here lapping up his liquor and having a swell time. It's not cricket. Fellows, I ask you, is that
cricket?”

Turee scowled at him across the room. “For God's sake, stop blubbering, will you? I'm trying to think.”

“Poor old Galloway. Not cricket. Here we are having a swell time and there he sits on his poor old . . .”

“Hepburn, see if you can haul him off to bed.”

Hepburn put his hands under Winslow's armpits and pulled him to his feet. “Come on, Billy-boy. Let's go beddy-­bye.”

“I don't want to go to bed. I want to stay down here and have a swell time with you fellows.”

“Look, Billy-boy, we're not having a swell time.”

“Y'aren't?”

“No. So let's get moving. Where'd you leave your suit­case?”

“I don't know.”

“I put it upstairs with mine, in the room next to Gallo­way's,” Turee said.

“I don't want to go to bed. I'm sad.”

“So I see.”

Winslow tried to brush the moisture off his cheeks with his forearm. “I keep thinking about poor old Galloway and poor little Princess Margaret.”

“How did Princess Margaret get into this?”

“Ought to marry somebody, have kids, be happy. Every­body should be happy.”

“Certainly.”

“I'm
happy.”

“Sure you are.”

“I'm having a swell time with you fellows, aren't I?”

“Not for long, Billy-boy. Come on.”

With the tears still spouting from his eyes, Winslow shuf­fled across the room and began to ascend the staircase on all fours like a trained dog going up a ladder. Halfway up he collapsed and Hepburn had to drag him the rest of the way.

Turee got up and put another log on the fire and kicked it impatiently with his foot. “Well, what do we do now?”

“I don't know,” Harry said gloomily. “This isn't like Ron, to keep people waiting.”

“He might have had an accident.”

“He's a good driver. He's got a real bug on safety, seat belts and everything.”

“Even good drivers occasionally have accidents. The point is, since there's no phone here, if something happened we'd have no way of finding out unless Esther sent a telegram to Wiarton and it was delivered out here.”

“Esther would be too upset to think of doing that.”

“All right, here's another theory: Galloway never left home. He suffered an attack of indigestion, perhaps, and decided not to come.”

“Now that's more like,” Harry said with enthusiasm. “Last time I saw him he was complaining about his stomach. I gave him a couple of those new ulcer capsules my firm's putting out.”

“Galloway hasn't got an ulcer.”

“He may have. The capsules worked like a charm.”

Turee turned away with an expression of distaste. He was the only one of the group who refused to have anything per­sonal to do with either Harry's diagnoses or Harry's pills.

“All right, all right. Galloway's ulcer started kicking up and he went to the hospital. How does that sound?”

“Splendid,” Harry said, beaming.

When Hepburn returned, a conference was held and it was decided that Turee, the brainiest, and Harry, the sober­est, should drive back to Wiarton and call Galloway's house to test the ulcer theory.

The road wound along the cliffs above the bay and Turee had to concentrate on his driving while Harry, in case the ulcer theory might be incorrect, kept his eye peeled for signs of a Cadillac in distress. They met only two cars, neither one a Cadillac.

By the time they reached the town of Wiarton, nearly all the lights were out, but they finally located a pay phone in the lobby of a small tourist hotel which was just opening for the season. Since both the men were wearing fishing clothes, the manager of the hotel assumed they were customers and treated them very cordially until he learned they merely wanted to use the telephone. When, in addition to suffering a disappointment, he had to make change for five dollars, he became quite bitter about the whole thing and sat behind the desk glowering as Turee stepped into the phone booth.

It required ten minutes or more to put the call through to Galloway's house in Toronto, and then the connection was bad and the conversation was punctuated by what sounded like static.

“Esther?”

“Ron?”

“No, this is not Ron. Is that you, Esther?”

“Just who is this, please?”

“Ralph. Ralph Turee. Is that you, Esther?”

“Yes,” Esther replied, rather coldly, since she'd been awakened from a sound sleep and even under the best of circumstances didn't care much for Turee, Turee's wife, or any of the little Turees. “Isn't it rather
late?”

“I can't hear you. Would you speak up?”

“I'm practically screaming already.”

“Listen, Esther—what in hell is that noise? Operator, operator, do something about that noise—Esther? Are you there? Well, listen a minute. Is Ron all right?”

“Of course he's all right.”

“No attack of indigestion or anything?”

“Are you drunk, by any chance?” This was one of Esther's favorite questions and after long practice she read the line with spirited contempt, rolling the
r
in drunk and broadening the
a
in chance.

“I am not drunk,” Turee shouted. “Why should I be?”

“I'm sure you have reasons. Now what's all this about Ron?”

“Well, it's like this. Harry's up here at the lodge with the rest of us.”

“So?”

“Ron hasn't arrived. Harry drove up alone in his own car. He had a business appointment to keep in Mimico and he told Thelma to tell Ron not to wait for him but to come up to the lodge by himself and Harry would get here when he could. Well, Harry got here all right, but Ron hasn't. The fellows were beginning to get worried so we thought we'd better call you.”

Esther suffered from a chronic case of jealousy, and the first image that flashed through her mind was not of Gallo­way lying dead somewhere in a car wreck, but of Galloway lying cosily beside Thelma in a bed. She said, “Maybe Ron was delayed.”

“Where?”

“In Weston.”

“How?”

“How? Ask Harry. He's married to the woman.”

“Now that,” Turee said irritably, “is the silliest remark in history. What's got into you, Esther?”

“Just an idea.”

“Honest to God, I gave you credit for better sense. I can't say more than that right now because I'm shouting as it is and Harry's not ten feet away. Do you understand?”

“Naturally.”

“Listen, Esther . . .”

At this point the operator's voice cut in and demanded an­other ninety cents. Turee deposited the money, cursing aud­ibly. “Are you still there, Esther?”