The Case of the Drowsy Mosquito

Chapter 8

Dr. Kenward, by an almost imperceptible motion of his head, indicated he wished Velma to join him for a conference, and then moved toward the dining-room.

Velma Starler joined him after a few seconds, finding him seated in a chair at the dining-room table, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, gazing somewhat dejectedly at the carpet.

No longer was Dr. Kenward the cool, efficient master of the sickroom, the quickly decisive, perfectly poised medical man whose calm professional competence could not be shattered by emergencies, the hysteria of patients, or those diabolical coincidences of fate when everything seems to go wrong at once.

The man who sat on the edge of the dining-room chair, his elbows propped on his knees, his body sagging with weariness, was merely a very tired, very much overworked, and somewhat distraught mortal who had reached the limit of his endurance. He looked up as Velma entered the room, and she was shocked as some trick of lighting threw into undue prominence the dark circles of weariness under his eyes.

Recognizing that this was not a case where the nurse should remain standing in the presence of the doctor, but a matter of two tired human beings bound together by a common interest, Velma drew up a chair and seated herself at his side.

For the space of nearly a minute he was silent. Velma, waiting for him to speak, later on realized that he had no desire to talk for the moment, but was drawing a certain amount of strength from her presence.

She offered him her package of cigarettes.

Silently, he took one. And she was the one to stroke the match and hold the flame cupped in her hands to light both cigarettes.

The silence was not in any way strained, nor was it embarrassing. It was as though a cloak of wordless understanding had thrown itself about them, shutting off, for the moment, cares and worries of the outside world.

It was Dr. Kenward who at length broke the silence. “Thanks to the fact that you had the antidote on hand, I don’t think it will be serious.”

“Arsenic?” she asked.

“Undoubtedly. Perhaps not a very large dose, but nevertheless arsenic.”

Several seconds later he sighed wearily, then said, “I’m afraid what you told me about Banning Clarke didn’t completely register — all the little details. Would you mind very much repeating what you told me?”

“Not at all,” she said.

He sucked in a deep drag from the cigarette, then placed his head back against the chair, exhaled slowly, and closed his eyes.

Velma said, “I was on my way to see Banning Clarke when Mr. Mason called. I telephoned you and then washed out the stomachs and administered the ferric solution. Then I dashed out to see how Mr. Clarke was getting along.

“You know how the pathway runs along the side of that rock wall, then swerves around the big clump of cactus and winds in and out through the sand around the cactus patches. — I was running just as fast as I dared — so fast that for a moment I couldn’t realize the significance of what I saw... or rather, what I failed to see.”

She paused and peered at him sharply as though wondering whether the closed eyes and relaxed muscles indicated he’d drifted off into the slumber of physical exhaustion.

“Proceed,” he said without so much as flickering his eyes.

“You know how they slept — Salty Bowers on the north side of the little sand cove, and Banning Clarke down to the south near the wall. Well, I had actually run past the fireplace before I suddenly realized what was the matter. Neither sleeping bag was there.”

“And there was no sign of Clarke?” he asked.

“None whatever. Both sleeping bags were gone, the cooking utensils were gone, the jalopy that they used to drive around with is missing, and there’s no sign of Banning Clarke or Salty Bowers.”

“Any indications in the sand, any tracks?” Dr. Kenward asked.

“I didn’t look for that.”

“Are the burros gone?”

“No. They’re there.”

Dr. Kenward pushed the end of his cigarette down hard in the ash tray. “Let’s go look the place over. You have a flashlight?”

“Yes.”

“Look in on the patients,” he said. “Tell them you may be out for five or ten minutes. Where’s that housekeeper, by the way?”

“I don’t know. It seems as though people cleared out of the house by magic. Mrs. Sims simply isn’t here. Her daughter went out with Hayward. I understand she left a note saying they were going to Las Vegas to be married. Mrs. Sims was pretty much upset over it. She left the dishes in the sink and dashed out.”

“Upset? Why?”

“She doesn’t like him.”

“Where are the others?”

“I don’t know. It seems they’d been having a stockholders’ meeting. Moffgat, the lawyer, was here. He tried some of his clever tricks and they didn’t pan out, thanks to Mr. Mason. Then everyone went out. I’m a little surprised that Mrs. Bradisson and her son went, because they should still be feeling weak from the effects of the poison. At least, one would think so. They were terribly sick last night.”

Dr. Kenward said, “They seem to have made a very satisfactory recovery. However, that doesn’t need to concern us. We have got to notify the police again. But before they take over, I want to see what has happened to Banning Clarke. I want to make sure that he isn’t on the grounds, or anywhere around the house. If he needs medical attention, I want to see that he gets it before the officers start another inquisition.”

Velma Starler looked in on her patients, advised Dr. Kenward, “They’re resting quietly. Shall we go now?”

He nodded.

They walked out through the back door, around the flagstone walk, down stone steps, and then followed the beam of the flashlight through the terraced slope which had been so skillfully landscaped. To their left was the rock wall, ahead of them and to their right was the cactus garden. A moon, but slightly past the full, hung in limpid brilliance in the eastern heavens, sending shafts of silvery light, creating splotches of inky shadows.

“Just like being out in the middle of the Mojave Desert,” Dr. Kenward said. “It gives me a creepy feeling every time I come out here. Not creepy, exactly either; it’s as though you had suddenly walked out of the present into the past.”

“I know exactly how you feel,” she said. “It’s such a complete change. — Over here is where they had their camp. There’s the fireplace, you see, and here’s where their sleeping bags were.”

“Let’s see the flashlight for a moment,” Dr. Kenward said. “Ah, I thought so.”

“What?”

“That peculiar oblong section of sand. Notice how those marks lead up to that little smooth section — slightly concave as though a cylinder had been pressed down.”

“Why, yes. I hadn’t noticed it before. What causes it?”

“That is where Banning Clarke’s sleeping bag was spread out. That sleeping bag has been neatly rolled up. You can see where someone started rolling and pushing, moving forward on his knees, rolling the sleeping bag into a tight roll. See those peculiar marks? They’re made by knees pressing into the sand as the sleeping bag was rolled as tightly as possible. Then, when the bag had been rolled into a compact bundle, it was picked up for roping’. The last pressure on the bag shoved it down into the sand and left that little rectangular, slightly concave space.”

“I see — but is that particularly important?”

“I think so.”

“I’m afraid I don’t see just what you’re driving at.”

“A camper,” Dr. Kenward said, “no matter how great the rush, would roll up a sleeping bag and carry it rolled — unless he were going to put it-on a horse, in which event he might fold it double. A tenderfoot, however, hurriedly trying to remove a sleeping bag as evidence, would rush in and pick it up any old way and dash out with it.”

“So you think this sleeping bag was rolled by someone who had done a great deal of camping?”

He nodded.

“Banning Clarke?”

“Either Clarke or Salty Bowers.”

“And what does that mean?”

“One of the possibilities is that Salty Bowers and Banning Clarke are playing some deep game. I’m afraid that out on the road somewhere, at a point affording no immediate medical attention, Clarke will develop symptoms of arsenic poisoning, and the retching and nausea will overtax his heart even if the poison is not fatal.”

Silently they moved toward the house, soaking up the night tranquility. Velma had switched off the flashlight. The light of the moon was sufficient to guide them through the weird cacti, the stone wall casting a sinister shadow, the ocean far below — a misty sheet of mystery from which could be heard the low pulsing of booming surf.

Abruptly Dr. Kenward stopped, his back against the wall. “Let’s take ten minutes,” he said. “Surely we’re entitled to that much. Our patients are coming along all right, and if the police aren’t notified for ten minutes, no great harm will be done.”

“You’re tired, aren’t you?”

“I’ve been going pretty steadily,” he admitted. “It seems so calm out here, so utterly peaceful. You’re away from the jangle of the telephone, the neurotics, the hypochondriacs. — Sometimes, since I’ve met Salty Bowers, I’ve wondered about life in the desert, being out with a burro somewhere in the big open spaces, rolling out a sleeping bag, stretching out to slumber with the vast silence reaching down from interstellar spaces to wrap you in a blanket of oblivion. It must be a wonderful sensation.”

“Look, Bruce,” she said abruptly, almost unconsciously using his first name, “you can’t keep this up day in and day out, month in and month out, year in and year out. Why don’t you prescribe for yourself the same treatment you would prescribe for a patient? Take a month off and get away from everything, simply drop the whole business.”

“I can’t.”

“The argument you would use for the patient is that if you had a nervous breakdown, or if you fell over dead, things would go on without you.”

The moonlight softened the harshness of the smile that twisted his lips. “Quite true,” he admitted. “That, however, is something I could not control. But if I left now, it would mean that my practice would simply fall on other shoulders that were already overburdened with troubles of their own. The only thing to do is to keep plugging. There are only a few of us, relatively, to carry on. But we are entitled to a ten-minute recess once in a while.”

Abruptly he took her arm, walked back down to the place where Banning Clarke and Salty Bowers had had their camp. He seated himself and drew her down beside him in the sand.

“Now then,” he observed, “we are a couple of prospectors sitting out in the desert. There’s nothing we can do till daylight; we’re absorbing the regenerating peace and tranquillity which comes only to those who live close to Nature, in the open air.”

Velma Starler, a catch in her throat, pointed her finger out toward the vague blue of the moonlit mountains. “Tomorrow,” she said, trying to mimic the slow drawl of Salty Bowers, “we’ll head up through that pass and prospect around the outcropping. Meantime, guess there ain’t anything to do except drop off to sleep.”

“That’s the spirit,” Bruce Kenward applauded. He clasped his hands behind his head, lay back on the sand, his face turned toward the sky. “Strange how many stars there are, even when the moon’s almost full. I guess we don’t really see the heavens in the city. Salty Bowers was trying to tell me about how you could lie on your back in the desert and look up at the heavens blazing with myriads of brilliant stars whose existence you never even suspected until you got out away from the cities into the clear dry air of the desert.”

“They’re exceptionally clear tonight,” she said, “even with the moon. There are dozens of stars visible.”

“Dozens,” he said musingly. “I wonder how many stars are visible in the desert — on a moonlit night. I wonder if we couldn’t play hookey some evening and drive out into the desert just to see. — I wonder just how many there are visible now. Let’s see, there are five... ten... fifteen... twenty... twenty-five... thirty... thirty-one... thirty-two... thirty-three... I wonder if I counted that one...”

She didn’t say anything when he lapsed into silence. A few seconds later she heard the even, regular breathing of an exhausted man dropping off into the contentment of much-needed slumber.

Noiselessly, she raised herself to her feet, moved as silently as she could through the soft sand until she was half a dozen steps away, then she turned to look back at him, a wistful tenderness in her eyes as she saw the moonlight caressing the careworn features relaxed in sleep.

For a moment she stood looking down at him, then she turned and walked quietly toward the big house which had always been so distasteful to its owner. She invaded a guest room, folded a couple of heavy blankets over her arm, returned to the cactus garden, tiptoed up to the sleeping physician and very gently placed the blankets over him, using the deft skill of a trained nurse so that no pressure would rouse him.

Then she hurried back to the house, looked in on Perry Mason, then on Della Street. Then, going into the library, she dialed Operator and said, “Police Headquarters, please. I wish to report an attempted homicide.”