An Air That Kills

Sixteen

It was characteristic of Blake that when he wanted something badly he went after it with such tactless determination that he weakened his own chances. The job at theGlobe and Mail was a case in point.

He had decided on journalism as his field because it apparently offered glamour and excitement and a chance for advancement “Wait’ll I’m editor,” he’d told one of his girlfriends. And he had chosen the particular newspaper, the Globe, because it was old, established, solvent, and the news editor was a man named Ian Richards whom Blake respected as much as he could respect anyone.

Every day or two, for the past month, he’d been dropping in at Richards’ office, trying to prove, by means of story ideas, plans for a new sports column, revamping the front-page format and so on, that the Globe had tired blood and needed a quick transfusion of Blake. He oversold himself. Richards’ preliminary interest had turned into dislike, his amusement into acidity. Yet no matter how clearly Richards indicated these changes, Blake seemed to remain obdurately unaware of them.

Late Tuesday afternoon he appeared at Richards’ office in an elated mood. Richards didn’t pay much attention to the mood. He’d seen samples of it before, and it usually meant only that Blake had been thinking beautiful thoughts of himself again.

“I’d ask you to sit down,” Richards said, “but I’m busy.”

Blake grinned. “I can talk on my feet.”

“You can talk on your head, I’m still busy.”

“You’ll be sorry if you don’t listen. I’m on to something.”

“Again?”

“This time it’s big. You’ve been following the Galloway case?”

“I read my own newspaper, naturally. What about it? Suicides are a dime a dozen.”

“And the stories behind them?”

“I’m sure they’re all very interesting, but it’s not the kind of thing we print.”

“You might want to print this one. You, or some other newspaper. I’m giving you first chance. Nice of me, eh?”’

“Dandy.” Richards’ mouth puckered as if he’d bitten into something sour. “Just dandy.”

“Well, the whole thing started in kind of a chancy way. Last night I dropped in at the Emergency Ward at General. It’s a good place to pick up things, there are always policemen around waiting to question accident victims and so on. Anyway, I was just standing there minding everybody else’s business when I happened to see an old prof of mine from U. C., Ralph Turee. He handed me a bum deal in his course but I figured, let bygones be bygones. Besides, I had a hunch — it seemed like the last place in the world you’d meet a guy like Turee. I mean, he’s just not the type you associate with accidents or emergencies or the like. He’s cold, and cautious, probably never even had a parking ticket in his life — maybe a little like you, eh, Richards?”

“So you had a hunch. Go on.”

“It seems Turee was in the ward, visiting a friend of his who had an accident. That much I got from him, the rest got from the nurse in charge. I had no trouble at all. Nurses always go for me. I gave her the treatment and she opened up like a flower. The friend Turee was visiting was a guy named Harry Bream who’d been brought in drunk after hitting a street car. Bream did a lot of ranting and raving during which he dropped some names. Galloway was one, Ron Galloway. As soon as I heard that, bells started to ring.”

“Same old bells, or new ones?”

Blake brushed away the sarcasm as he would a fly, with sweep of his hand. “So I began checking. First the records at City Hall, then your file room downstairs. When Galloway was married, nine years ago, to his present wife, Harry Bream was his best man. And get this, he was also best man at Galloway’s first marriage to the heiress Dorothy Reynold. The conclusion’s obvious: Bream and Galloway have been very good friends for a very long time.”

“So?”

“Well, Bream now has a wife himself. They were married about three years ago, no children, live out in Weston. Her name is Thelma. Mean anything to you?”

“Not a thing.”

“You should get around, Richards. Like me. That suicide note Galloway left — well, let’s put it this way: I’ve got a pretty good friend in the police department.”

“He let you see the note?”

“No, but he told me what was in it.”

Richards looked grim. “For how much?”

“Not a cent. He likes my pretty blue eyes.”

“I suppose policemen find you as irresistible as nurses do?”

“You might,” Blake said with a smile, “put it like that, yes.”

“You’re a fresh kid, Blake. Full of ideas, some of them good, full of stories, some of them true. But mostly full of you-know-what. I wouldn’t give you a job here even if I could. You’re trouble.”

“Trouble or not, I have some very valuable information.”

“My advice is, take it to the News.”

“The News has no class. Besides, I hear it’s going to fold. I don’t want to start a trip on a sinking ship. I can’t swim.”

“You’d better learn.”

“O.K., the hell with you, Richards. Let a silly personal prejudice cut you off from a scoop.”

“We don’t depend on scoops for our circulation.”

“All right, but would you turn one down?”

Richards hesitated, drumming his pencil on the desk.

“Listen, Blake, if you’ve got a story, I might buy it. I won’t buy you.”

“How much?”

“That depends on the story. If it’s good, if it’s true. And if it’s printable.”

“I’d print it, if I were news editor.”

“We don’t always think alike. Let’s hear the story.”

“Not yet. I have to check out one more thing before everything’s positive. Oh, it’ll check, don’t worry. My methods may not come under the Boy Scout rules, but they work.” He perched on the edge of Richards’ desk, clasping his hands together as if he were congratulating himself. “You know, that’s the trouble with this paper, you need a live wire around with some high voltage.”

“You might blow the fuses.”

“Think it over. I’ve got guts, energy, youth, a nose for news...”

“What makes you hate yourself so much?”

“I’ve got to talk myself up. Who else will do it?”

“Haven’t you got a mother?”

“Oh, come off it, Richards. How do you pick reporters around here, for their modest smiles and the way they sweet-talk you? Anybody can do that. Oh, you’re a great man, Mr. Richards, sir, I don’t really deserve to work for such an outstanding newspaper, sir, but I’ll do anything, I’ll scrub floors, I’ll wash out the cuspidors...”

“Beat it, Blake. I told you I was busy.”

“O.K., but I’ll be back. Unless I get a better offer somewhere else.”

“If you do, take it.” He picked up a piece of copy from his desk and began reading.

Blake craned his neck to look at it. “The autopsy report on Galloway, eh? You know what I bet you’ll do with it? Take your little red pencil and reduce it to something as dull as a stock quotation.”

“That’s my business.”

When he had gone, Richards took off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. They felt gritty, as though he’d been bucking a strong and dirty wind. He felt more distaste for than interest in Blake’s promises. If the police department had so many leaks that a kid like Blake could find out the contents of a supposedly secret suicide letter, this was a story in itself, perhaps a bigger story, in the long run, than any Blake could dream up.

He replaced his spectacles and turned back to the autopsy report. It was, as far as Richards was concerned, considerably duller than a stock quotation: death had been caused by drowning, water was found in the stomach and lungs, and foamy mucus in the trachea, and the blood chlorides on the left side of the heart were thirty percent lower than those of the right, a positive indication of drowning in fresh water.

The report revealed only one surprise, that Galloway had made a previous attempt at suicide in the earlier hours of the night, Saturday, that he had died. Considerable amounts of a barbiturate compound were found in the stomach and other vital organs. When questioned about this point, Dr. Robert Whitewood, the pathologist who performed the autopsy, stated that it was fairly common to discover traces of previous suicide attempts, which he compared roughly to the “hesitation marks” frequently found on victims of suicide who had used razors, knives, or other sharp instruments.

Nothing in the early part of the report affected Richards — water in the lungs, chloride content of the heart, mucus in the trachea, these meant only that Galloway was a dead man. But the phrase, hesitation marks, conjured up a live one.

“Hesitation marks.” Richards repeated it aloud, thinking, Galloway was a man, like himself, going through all the motions of living, until one day he no longer felt any incentive to move. He had tried to kill himself, and failing, had tried again. Between the two attempts there was the time of hesitation. At what point had he written the letter to his wife?

And who, Richards wondered, was Thelma?