The Doomsters

19

GRANTLAND CLOSED the door and saw me. The lingering smile on his face gave up the ghost entirely. Shoved by a gust of anger, he crossed the room toward me. His fists were clenched.

I rose to meet him. “Hello, Doctor.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I have an appointment with you.”

“Oh no you haven’t.” He was torn between anger and the need to be charming to his receptionist. “Did you make an appointment for this – this gentleman?”

“Why not?” I said, since she was speechless. “Are you retiring from practice?”

“Don’t try to tell me you’re here as a patient.”

“You’re the only doctor I know in town.”

“You didn’t tell me you knew Dr. Grantland,” the receptionist said accusingly.

“I must have forgotten to.”

“Very likely,” Grantland said. “You can go now, Miss Cullen, unless you’ve made some more of these special appointments for me.”

“He told me it was an emergency.”

“I said you can go.”

She went, with a backward look from the doorway. Grantland’s face was trying various attitudes: outrage, dignified surprise, bewildered innocence.

“What are you trying to pull on me?”

“Not a thing. Look, if you don’t want to treat me, I can find another doctor.”

He weighed the advantages and disadvantages of this, and decided against it. “I don’t do much in the surgical line, but I guess I can fix you up. What happened to you, anyway – did you run into Hallman again?” Zinnie had briefed him well, apparently.

“No. Did you?”

He let that go by. We went through a consulting-room furnished in mahogany and blue leather. There were sailing prints on the walls, and above the desk a medical diploma from a college in the middle west. Grantland switched on the lights in the next room and asked me to remove my coat. Washing his hands at the sink in the corner, he said over his shoulder: “You can get up on the examination table if you like. I’m sorry my nurse has gone home – I didn’t know I’d be wanting to use her.”

I stretched out on the leatherette top of the metal table. Lying flat on the back wasn’t a bad position for self-defense, if it came to that.

Grantland crossed the room briskly and leaned over me, turning on a surgical light that extended on retractable arms from the wall. “You get yourself gun-whipped?”

“Slightly. Not every doctor would recognize the marks.”

“I interned at Hollywood Receiving. Did you report this to the police?”

“I didn’t have to. Ostervelt did it to me.”

“You’re not a fugitive, for God’s sake?”

“No, for God’s sake.”

“Were you resisting arrest?”

“The sheriff just lost his temper. He’s a hot-headed old youth.”

Grantland made no comment. He went to work cleaning my cuts with swabs dipped in alcohol. It hurt.

“I’m going to have to put some clamps in that ear. The other cut ought to heal itself. I’ll simply put an adhesive bandage over it.”

Grantland went on talking as he worked: “A regular surgeon could do a better job for you, especially a plastic surgeon. That’s why I was a little surprised when you came to me. You’re going to have a small scar, I’m afraid. But that’s all right with me if it’s all right with you.” He pressed a series of clamps into my torn ear. “That ought to do it. You ought to have a doctor look at it in a day or two. Going to be in town long?”

“I don’t know.” I got up, and faced him across the table. “It could depend on you.”

“Any doctor can do it,” he said impatiently.

“You’re the only one who can help me.”

Grantland caught the implication, and glanced at his watch. “I’m late for an appointment now–”

“I’ll make it as fast as I can. You saw a pearl-handled gun today. You didn’t mention that you’d seen it before.”

He was a very quick study. Without a second’s hesitation, he said: “I like to be sure of my facts before I sound off. I’m a medical man, after all.”

“What are your facts?”

“Ask your friend the sheriff. He knows them.”

“Maybe. I’m asking you. You might as well tell a straight story. I’ve been in touch with Glenn Scott.”

“Glenn who?” But he remembered. His gaze flickered sideways.

“The detective Senator Hallman hired to investigate the murder of his wife.”

“Did you say murder?”

“It slipped out.”

“You’re mistaken. She committed suicide. If you talked to Scott, you know she was suicidal.”

“Suicidal people can be murdered.”

“No doubt, but what does that prove?” A womanish petulance tugged at his mouth, disrupting his false calm. “I’m sick and tired of being badgered about it, simply because she happened to be my patient. Why, I saved her life the week before she drowned. Did Scott bother to tell you that?”

“He told me what you told him. That she attempted suicide in this office.”

“It was in my previous office. I moved last year.”

“So you can’t show me the bullet hole in the ceiling.”

“Good Lord, are you questioning that? I got that gun away from her at the risk of my own life.”

“I don’t question it. I wanted to hear it from you, though.”

“Well, now you’ve heard it. I hope you’re satisfied.” He took off his smock and turned to hang it up.

“Why did she try to commit suicide in your office?”

He was very still for an instant, frozen in the act of placing the white garment on a hook. Between the shoulder blades and under the arms, his gray shirt was dark with sweat. It was the only indication that I was giving him a hard time. He said: “She wanted something I wasn’t prepared to give her. A massive dose of sleeping pills. When I refused, she pulled this little revolver out of her purse. It was touch and go whether she was going to shoot me or herself. Then she pointed it at her head. Fortunately I managed to reach her, and take the gun away.” He turned with a bland and doleful look on his face.

“Was she on a barb kick?”

“You might call it that. I did my best to keep it under control.”

“Why didn’t you have her put in a safe place?”

“I miscalculated, I admit it. I don’t pretend to be a psychiatrist. I didn’t grasp the seriousness of her condition. We doctors make mistakes, you know, like everybody else.”

He was watching me like a chess-player. But his sympathy gambit was a giveaway. Unless he had something important to cover up, he’d have ordered me out of his office long ago.

“What happened to the gun?” I said.

“I kept it. I intended to throw it away, but never got around to it.”

“How did Carl Hallman get hold of it?”

“He lifted it out of my desk drawer.” He added disarmingly: “I guess I was a damn fool to keep it there.”

I’d been holding back my knowledge of Carl Hallman’s visit to his office. It was disappointing to have the fact conceded. Grantland said with a faint sardonic smile: “Didn’t the sheriff tell you that Carl was here this morning? I telephoned him immediately. I also got in touch with the State Hospital.”

“Why did he come here?”

Grantland turned his hands palms outward. “Who can say? He was obviously disturbed. He bawled me out for my part in having him committed, but his main animus was against his brother. Naturally I tried to talk him out of it.”

“Naturally. Why didn’t you hold on to him?”

“Don’t think I didn’t try to. I stepped into the dispensary for a minute to get him some thorazine. I thought it might calm him down. When I came back to the office, he was gone. He must have run out the back way here.” Grantland indicated the back door of the examination room. “I heard a car start, but he was gone before I could catch him.”

I walked over to the half-curtained window and looked out. Grantland’s Jaguar was parked in the paved lot. Back of the lot, a dirt lane ran parallel with the street. I turned back to Grantland: “You say he took your gun?”

“Yes, but I didn’t know it at the time. It wasn’t exactly my gun, either. I’d practically forgotten it existed. I didn’t even think of it till I found it in the greenhouse beside poor Jerry’s body. Then I couldn’t be sure it was the same one, I’m no expert on guns. So I waited until I got back here this afternoon, and had a chance to check the drawer of my desk. When I found it gone I got in touch with the sheriff’s department right away – much as I hated to do it.”

“Why did you hate to do it?”

“Because I’m fond of the boy. He used to be my patient. You’d hardly expect me to get a kick out of proving that he’s a murderer.”

“You’ve proved that, have you?”

“You’re supposed to be a detective. Can you think of any other hypothesis?”

I could, but I kept it to myself. Grantland said: “I can understand your feeling let down. Ostervelt told me you’re representing poor Carl, but don’t take it too hard, old man. They’ll take his mental condition into account. I’ll see to it personally that they do.”

I wasn’t as sad as I looked. Not that I was happy about the case. Every time I moved, I picked up another link in the evidence against my client. But this happened with such clockwork regularity that I was getting used to it and beginning to discount it. Besides, I was encouraged by the firm and lasting faith which I was developing in Dr. Grantland’s lack of integrity.