Kill as Directed

Eighteen

On Wednesday morning he went with Tony Mitchell to Immigration; on Friday he went again; on the following Tuesday he had his passport. On Thursday and Friday he shopped for clothes and luggage. One of his purchases was a pair of snug lightweight gloves. He did not have the gloves sent home; he took them back with him to his office and locked them in the cabinet with the gun and the silencer.

On Saturday he played golf with Gresham, Karen and Dr. Stone; on Saturday night Dr. and Mrs. Stone were hosts of a dinner party consisting of the Greshams, Tony Mitchell, and Harry Brown. It was an expensive dinner at a French restaurant of note. Dr. Stone explained: “In return for the many times Bernice and I have been entertained by the Greshams.”

At one point, between courses, the director of the Taugus Institute called across the table to Harry, “How goes it with the decision, Doctor?”

“I’m still sitting on it,” said the doctor, turning to Bernice Stone in the hope that it would discourage her husband from pursuing the subject.

But it was too late. Kurt Gresham asked with a disarming smile, “Decision, Alfred? What kind of decision would that be? This is my personal physician, you know.”

“Ah,” said Dr. Stone mysteriously. “That’s a secret.”

Harry expected Gresham to question him later; rather to his surprise, Gresham seemed to have forgotten it.

On Sunday night Dr. Brown and Mrs. Gresham dined à deux at Giobbe’s in the Village. It was the first time they had been alone since the Saturday night in his apartment. Harry thought Karen looked thinner, her classic cheeks more hollowed out; but it only emphasized the immensity of her green eyes; she seemed to him utterly beautiful. She was poised, attentive, even gay at times; but he sensed an edginess.

Only once did they talk of the matter most important to them, and it was Harry who brought it up.

“Uncle Joe came through.”

She lit a cigarette. Her fingers trembled. “When?”

“On Monday. He gave me certain directions and I followed them. Everything worked out fine.”

“So you have it.” He could hardly hear her.

“Yes.”

“Now what?”

“The Starhurst.”

“When?”

“I don’t know yet. But it has to be before the first.”

On Tuesday he made a dry run. He left his office promptly at eleven o’clock in the morning. He walked at a normal pace. The loaded revolver was snugged in the waistband of his trousers. The silencer was in the inner pocket of his roomy sports jacket. His feather-light new gloves were in an outside pocket. He walked west to Columbus and up Columbus to the hotel.

Ten minutes flat, the whole thing.

The Starhurst was a tall, thin, rusty-looking building with a revolving-door entrance. He pushed through and into the empty forepart of a long corridor-like lobby covered with worn red carpeting. Far up the lobby he could see a corner of the desk and a bank of elevators and armchairs and sofas and tables with dimly lit lamps. From the entrance he could not see the clerk behind the desk, which meant that the desk clerk could not see him.

The whole place was silent, damp and had a faintly dusty smell.

Directly to the right of the entrance was a short corridor, red-carpeted like the lobby, that ended at a brass-knobbed door. Harry walked down, turned the knob and pushed, and found himself in a cramped vestibule at the foot of a steep flight of stairs. He climbed the stairs: the first door facing the stairway was 101.

Dr. Harrison Brown retraced his steps down the steep flight of stairs and opened the brass-knobbed door, stepped through and walked down the short corridor and turned left into the forepart of the Starhurst lobby and pushed through the revolving door to the street and walked at a normal pace back to his office on Central Park West.

Time from door to door: Exactly ten minutes.