Flash and Filigree (3 page)

Mr. Treevly, standing by the couch in a wild daze, his fingers frozen half run through his thin hair, looked on at once in disbelief and then in something rising to savage reproach.

“What’s going on!” he demanded. “What’s up!”

But Miss Mintner, crying now as if her heart would really break, sprang out of the room without a word, clutching at her skirt with one hand as she went, and hiding the streaming shame of her face with the other.

She tore through the outstretched hall, halfshadowed but shot dazzling with light at the far end ahead where a copper screen caught the sun in a spangle. The corridor opened onto a blazing patio and a maze of breezeways, all leading to other departments of the Clinic in the opposite wing, and holding, each at its end with the same screened door to the sun, a plaque of high burnished light.

Miss Mintner crossed unerringly, rushing sightless through the right turns, only slowing herself when she was at last past the far screen and inside the other building. Here, she dropped her hands to her side and walked rapidly, eyes high and straight ahead, till she reached the ladies’ room where she turned in quickly, crossed the tile floor past the lavatories, entered a booth and locked the door behind her. There she sat, crying audibly for five minutes before she heard someone else come into the lavatories; and then she began to pull herself together. Eleanor Thorne? Barbara sat very still. She could just make out the hands of her tiny watch. 12:10. Nurse Thorne would be back in ten minutes. Outside the booth a lavatory tap sounded in a rush of water. Under the covering noise Miss Mintner leaned forward, her eye near the crack of the door. But too late! Whoever it was had stepped away, drying hands, and was now actually leaving. She heard the outer door open and close . . . or had someone else come in? She listened intently, staring at the black gloss of the door in front of her. Gradually she had the sensation that she could wee-wee. She leaned back quietly, listening. No one. They were gone. How quickly too! It must have been a patient, she thought, the nurses dallied so.

It was 12:15 when Miss Mintner came out of the lavatory, and she looked as fresh and sweet as ever, except that her eyes were pinched and red. But she had retouched her whole appearance, had even, within the limits of its required shortness, changed the order of her hair.

All smiles now on her way to the Dispensary, she passed several patients and two or three nurses from other wards; then, at one blind turning, she almost crashed into heavy Beth Jackson of gyno, senior service nurse at the Clinic.

They spoke together hurriedly, Miss Mintner in confidence, as a little girl breathless in the great woman’s presence, giving an awed account of what had happened in the day-room, and Nurse Jackson, understanding now and in genuine sympathy at what was inferred: the very deliberate unfairness of it. Shaking her head slowly, her small eyes darkly grave, she almost drew the child to her bosom. But they neither mentioned Eleanor Thorne by name.

Mr. Edwards, the pharmacist, was not at the Dispensary. His nephew, Ralph, was there, sitting behind the counter reading a book. Ralph Edwards was studying pharmacy in the University and often visited his uncle at the Clinic, but he had never, so far as Miss Mintner could know, been left there alone, in charge of the Dispensary.

She stood at the counter and pretended not to notice when the young man looked up, already smiling as if there were some joke between them.

“Hello there.” He lumbered forward, humorous with himself in the attitude of a clerk. “What will it be, aspirin or sodium chloride?”

Miss Mintner felt at once that what was supposed to be funny was the ridiculous (to him) idea of his being in a subservient position to her, and it came with the same shock as had he simply said outright: “Yes, this is something we have to do, but if I had you in the back seat of my room-mate’s convertible, you’d be panting hot by now!” It was intolerable.

“Mr. Edwards,” she said coolly, stating her business.

“That’s me,” said the young man, even half winking. He leaned toward her on the counter, arched his brow in mock disappointment. “I thought you knew.”

“I don’t know to what you’re referring,” said Miss Mintner, not looking his way. She fought down an urge to touch her hair. “Where is the pharmacist?” she said, and with a surprising effort, she rechanneled the other impulse into turning her head and giving the young man a very icy stare.

And so he began to cool, either in fear of causing his uncle some embarrassment, or in real offense. He straightened up. “He was called out,” he said moving back to the chair, “. . . on an emergency. He and Albert went with Dr. Evans. They should be back any time now.” He sat with the open book on his lap, pretending to regard Miss Mintner curiously, as she appeared not to be listening. “If it’s nothing that has to be compounded, of course,” he went on after a moment, “I can get it for you myself.”

Not wearing a tie, she thought, a grown man; and needing a shave. She guessed this without looking, only feeling at once a thousand stiff prickles on her own soft face.

“Bromide powder,” she said. “And a small bottle of distilled water.”

The young man stood up, setting a bottle of the water on the counter as he did. “How much bromide?”

Miss Mintner hesitated. “They’re right there,” she said, pointing and, painfully then, as at a loss with his dullness, “in that blue box on the second shelf. Just give me one of those packages.”

She averted her eyes from his smile as he crossed to the shelf and took a small glassine envelope from the box.

“Yes,” he said looking quizzical, “that would be about a half gram, wouldn’t it?” He handed it over giving her his devastating grin as he did. “Or seven-point-six grains.”

She took it from his hand at once, snatched up the bottle of water. “Thank you,” she said airily, as though it were only her breeding that said it, and she turned away with a toss of her head. With her hair so short, the gesture was grotesque.

She marched back to the day-room, saying to herself most of the way:
What an absolute fool he is!
Halfway down the West Wing corridor she saw the day-room door, open as she had left it; and slowing her steps now, she began to collect herself. She would take no more abuse from this one, nor yet would she lose control of herself again.

She entered the day-room with the grace of a virgin queen, sweeping directly to a side table where she set down the bottle and powder, only realizing then she had not brought a glass. But this was as nothing to the sudden certainty that she was alone in the room. She looked up slowly around her. At the windows the light drapes billowed in as before, though somehow now suggesting that this was how he had gone. Miss Mintner moved to the nearest window and looked out. Far across the lawns, Garcia was bent working, his slight figure stooped in the shadow of the pines.

She turned back to the couch where Mr. Treevly had lain. Briefly, in starting to sit down, she put her hand on the raised headrest, then her whole body went suddenly stiff, throwing up one hand to block the scream in her throat and slowly turning the other, palm up as she closed her eyes quickly tight against the heavy, covering blood on her hand where it had touched the couch. She made a strangling sound and tore out of the room a few steps west into the hall away from the dancing light, to a booth with an open phone inside. She frantically dialed Dr. Eichner’s home number. Waiting, she held off the offending hand, outthrust now against the door of the booth.

“Hello, Doctor? DOCTOR?”

As Miss Mintner waited, not understanding, the screen at the far end of the hall, like a rose window of thin spun copper, was burst aside, banging against the wall of the corridor, and Albert, the ward-boy, raced toward her from the patio, his white face strained to wildness.

A ward-boy, he was actually a middle-aged man, terribly dwarfed and stone deaf, with a speech impediment that agonizingly muddled his every word. He stopped short before Miss Mintner breathing like a tempest, his whole aspect shot with fear and panic.

“Dey lubing for ub!” he cried and began to rattle the handle of the door violently.

“Wait a sec, Bert,” said Miss Mintner, not bothering to take her mouth from the phone, “. . . something’s up. Hello! Hello, Doctor?” But she opened the door to Albert and held put one arm for him as though he were coming to nest. Without a word, he seized her around the waist with his tiny, thick arms and began to pull at her viciously. “Twenty-eight!” he shouted, “TWENTY-EIGHT IN HEMORRHAGE!”

“Wait up, Bert,” said Miss Mintner, “it’s Fred—Dr. Eichner,” and for a minute she managed to keep his hold tentative; but suddenly his arms were locked around her waist like a steel garter, mouth shouting against her chest, his chin digging into the ribs. Miss Mintner clutched at the sill and the open door as she was torn bodily from the booth. The phone jerked out of her hand with a crash and they went reeling onto the corridor floor. Albert was on his feet at once, trying to get her up with short ineffectual kicks and little tugs at her hair and dress. Miss Mintner fought back like a cornered cat, threshing her tiny feet about and striking at his face with the blood-covered hand, until she was up and running for the door, with Albert behind, driving her on, arms flailing above, while now his blood-stained face was dead and impassive, like a wooden mask.

D
R.
E
ICHNER WAS
a man of remarkable bearing, slightly above six feet, slender, with well-set shoulders and a magnificently gray, patrician head. He stood on the Clinic’s shaded front veranda, waiting for his car to be sent around.

Looking over the sweep of lawn and the gravel drive, past the tight footwalks and overhanging trees, he could see beyond to Wilshire Boulevard where the stirring smoke and dust of property improvements wound up unending through the day.

At the corner of the building then, the car appeared, a white-frocked garage attendant at the wheel, slithering the heavy car on the rounded curve. The Doctor raised his eyes like an alerted animal: the soft contusion of gravel under rubber wheels; he savored it, every sound and motion connected with an automobile, a low, heavy automobile.

Stopping directly in front of him, the attendant got out and held open the car door. Dr. Eichner studied his face keenly for an instant. He was evidently new at the Clinic’s garage.

“Good morning,” said the Doctor.

“Morning, Doc,” the attendant said, “swell car you got there.” It was a Delahaye 235.

Dr. Eichner came down the steps slowly. “This is interesting,” he said, “my experience had given me to believe that the majority didn’t care for foreign cars.”

The attendant scratched his head confusedly. “Well, Doctor, I been a mechanic for twelve years. Before that I was a trucker. I ought to know a good motor and body when I see it.” He gave the nearest tire a proving kick with his toe.

“Yes, it’s a fine car,” said Dr. Eichner getting into it. The door shut with a quiet expensive click, and the attendant stepped back, as though now it were he who held a signal to send the car and driver shooting away.

“Well, so long, Doc,” he said, saluting.

“Yes, so long,” said Dr. Eichner with a little smile for him.

Going down the drive, the Delahaye slid through the gravel like a speedboat over a slow swell. The Doctor drove extremely fast.

At the bottom, where the drive poured into Wilshire Boulevard, the car slowed, perceptibly nosing down, and in a sudden squelch-sounding lurch, swerved up and out toward Santa Monica. As the car steadied and settled in the far lane, picking up speed the while, Dr. Eichner leaned forward and switched on the radio. It was the hourly news. He pushed the buttons, seven in all, then toyed with the dial-knob, allowing the indicator to rest on a serialized drama as he, sounding the air-horns, took the wheel in both hands and pulled to the left, even into the oncoming speed-lane, to pass a fast moving convertible. Slowing at the intersection, the Doctor turned left into Highlord’s Canyon Drive. Ahead, the six-lane stretch tipped and fell in straight and desolate long-graded runs as far as the eye could see. From his breast coat pocket the Doctor drew out a thin silver cigarette case, steadily lowering the throttle while the countryside fled past like a film that has slipped the reel, and the saccharine tedium of the radio announcer’s voice was strangely muted under the climbing roar of the engine,
“. . . just as we left him yesterday, still sulking down by the black ships. Meanwhile, old Nestor . . .”
Dr. Eichner twisted the dial-knob abruptly to a static blank, lit his cigarette and adjusted the rear view mirror. There behind, a black sedan closed fast on the right.

These canyon roads toward noon are blazed with heat, and now the sun lay afire on the mountain land, striking every light surface with wild refraction. Dr. Eichner turned down the green glass visor and floored the throttle, racing up a long slow rise in the highway road. The Delahaye touched the crest of the hill with a whirlwind drone and plunged into the descent as for an instant the black sedan was lost behind.

At the far bottom of the hill below was a crossroads with traffic signal, and at quarter way on the descent, a white stone marker showed the distance from there to the intersection as one-eighth mile. It was Dr. Eichner’s habit to time his descent on leaving the crest so as not to pass this stone marker until the warning amber had shown on the traffic light below; and then to race down the hill at full throttle and beat the red. The duration of the amber was five seconds, so that to clear the intersection ahead of the red fight, he must do the eighth-mile in an average of ninety.

Now, as the light was green, he slowed the car leaving the crest approaching the stone marker, and the black sedan swung again into the rear view mirror just clearing the rise behind, very fast. The front wheels of the Delahaye were squarely aline the stone marker, the speedometer at sixty-five, when the amber went on the light below. Flat-mashing the pedal into the foam rubber mat, the Doctor peered keenly ahead, where for the eighth-mile the road fell like an unwound ribbon only rising briefly again past the exact bisection of the crossroad, and the whole, in this perspective, resembled nothing so much as a giant flat cross of the Greek Orthodox Church. The intersection was deserted but for a truck that stood on the right waiting against the light.