The Ferguson Affair

chapter 27

WHEN I WOKE UP AGAIN, the elevator was taking me down to a room on the fourth floor. Dr. Root, the bone surgeon, came along and watched the orderlies transfer me from the rolling cot to the bed. He said when the door closed behind them: “I ordered you a private room because you need rest and quiet. Is that all right with you?”

“If you say so, Doctor. I don’t expect to stay long.”

“You’ll be in for a few days, at least. I understand there’s nobody at home to look after you.”

“But I have things to attend to.”

“What you have to attend to,” he said firmly, “is letting that shoulder knit. By the way, I have something for you. Thought you might like to keep it as a memento.” He produced a small plastic pillbox and rattled it at me. “It’s the slug I removed. It will make an interesting conversation piece. Pieces, rather. It’s in several pieces.”

He showed me the distorted fragments of lead. I thanked him, because it seemed the thing to do.

He shook his gray head. “Don’t thank me. You should be thanking your lucky stars. It was providential for you that your collarbone deflected it upward. You could have come in here with a bullet in the lung. Who shot you, by the way?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Your wife?” Perhaps his narrow smile was intended to be jocular. “I’d hardly blame her, for taking the chances you took. I hope you’ve learned to leave these matters to the authorities. What were you trying to do?”

“Get myself shot. I succeeded. Next question.”

My unpleasantness failed to deter him. “There may be more to that than meets the eye. I’ve seen young men do some wild things while their wives were having babies. It isn’t only the women who suffer from parturient pangs.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Think about it. How are the wife and baby doing, by the way?”

“Fine, they tell me. Is it all right with you if I go down and see them? I’m feeling pretty good myself.”

“Tomorrow, perhaps, if your temperature stays down. I want you to remain in bed today. Can I trust you to do that?”

I grunted something noncommittal at him.

I asked the nurse’s aide who brought me breakfast to see if she could dig up pencil and paper. While I was waiting for her to come back, I composed a note to Sally in my head. Perhaps composed is not the word:

Dearest. I apologize, to you and Her, for getting shot. I did not plan this. It happened. You should have married a policeman if all you wanted was security. But you had to go and marry the slowest draw in the American Bar Association.

They are holding me incommunicado in Room 454. But I will foil them. I will put on the faded burnoose which was a gift from an old Bedouin riding companion, darken my skin with a little walnut juice, and pass through their lines like a phantom. Be on the lookout for me. I will be the one with the inscrutable smile. Burn this.

When my writing materials arrived, I wrote it down quite differently. The pentothal had worn off, and I wasn’t feeling so funny. I put the plastic pillbox in a drawer of the bedside table where I couldn’t see it.

I noticed for the first time that there was a telephone sitting on a lower shelf of the table. I picked it up and tried to call Sally. The switchboard operator told me acerbly that maternity had no telephones. I called Ferguson’s house instead.

He answered himself, in a hushed and wary voice. “Who is calling, please?”

“Gunnarson.”

His voice rose in pitch. “But I thought you were in the hospital.”

“I am. Come and see me. Room 454.”

“I’ve been planning to, naturally. I’ll try to drop by tomorrow. Or is tomorrow too soon for you?”

“It isn’t soon enough. I want you out here this morning.”

“I’d like to come, but I simply can’t make it today. Please don’t think I’m unappreciative of all you’ve done for us. I’m profoundly grateful, really, and so is Holly.”

“I want something more than gratitude. The police have been bearing down on me. You and I need an exchange of views, to put it mildly. If you’re not here by noon, I’ll assume that our professional relationship is dissolved and act accordingly.”

Somebody was knocking softly at my door. It seemed like a good time to hang up. The door opened inward, and Ella Barker peeped around the edge of it:

“May I come in, Mr. Gunnarson?”

“Please do.”

The girl approached me tentatively. Her eyes were very large and dark, with semicircular imprints under them. She had on hospital shoes and a clean white uniform, but no cap. Her black hair was brushed gleaming, and she was wearing fresh lipstick.

“I wanted to thank you, Mr. Gunnarson. I came over here as soon as I heard. To think that you got yourself shot on my account.”

“It wasn’t on your account. Put the thought away and forget about it. Anyway, it’s not a serious wound.”

“You’re just being nice.” She leaned above me, her eyes brimming with inarticulate feeling. “You’ve been awful nice to me. Would you like a back rub? I give a very good back rub.”

“No thanks.”

“Did you have a nice breakfast? I can get you some fruit juice if you’re thirsty.”

“You’re very kind. But I seem to have everything I need.”

She moved around the room, setting it straight in small, unobtrusive ways. I don’t know exactly what she did, but the place began to seem more comfortable. She picked up an empty glass vase that stood on the bureau, straightened the runner under it, and set it down again in the exact center.

“I’m going to get you some flowers,” she announced. “You need some flowers to brighten up the place. What kind of flowers do you like?”

“Any kind. But please don’t send me flowers. You can’t afford them.”

“Yes I can. I’m starting back on duty tomorrow morning at seven.” She turned with a slight dancer’s lilt, and smiled at me across the foot of the bed. “The hospital is taking me back.”

“No reason why they shouldn’t.”

“But I was so afraid they’d fire me. After all, I was in jail. I ran around with some terrible people.”

“Next time you’ll be more careful.”

“Yes. I guess I’m lucky to have a next time.” The marks of iron were showing on her face. It would take time for them to dissolve away. “Did Larry Gaines shoot you?”

“I can’t discuss that with you, Ella.”

“He did, though, didn’t he? And he got away.”

“Don’t worry about him,” I said. “He won’t be coming back to hurt you.”

“I’m not afraid of him. I just don’t want him to get away.”

“Forget about him, too.”

“I’m trying. It is like a sickness, just like you said. Well. I don’t want to wear out my welcome. If there’s anything I can do for you, day or night-” She completed the sentence by adjusting my sheets.

It wouldn’t be long, I thought, before she’d be making some man a good wife. It was the first satisfaction that I derived from the case. She came around to the side of the bed and leaned over me again. Before I could guess her intention, she kissed me lightly on the corner of the mouth and made for the door.

It was not the kind of kiss that goes to your head, but I was feeling very susceptible. I got out of bed and found a striped cotton bathrobe hanging behind my clothes in the closet. I more or less got into it, and reconnoitered the corridor.

The elevator doors were beside the nurses’ station. I went in the other direction, down the fire stairs. On the third floor I found an orderly with gray hair and a paternal expression, to whom I explained my problem, omitting salient details. He escorted me to the door of Sally’s room.

She was lying there with her bright hair spread on the pillow. She looked pale and wan and wonderful.

I kissed her smiling mouth, and she kissed me back. Her arms came around me, with the warmth of reality itself. Then she pushed me back to look at me.

“I got your note. It was sweet. But you’re a wild man, a positive wild man. Are you all right, Bill?”

“Fine. It was only a flesh wound,” I lied.

“Then why is your arm in a sling? And who shot you, anyway?”

“I don’t know. It was dark.”

“Also,” she said, “you have lipstick on your face, and I’m not wearing lipstick. Have you been kissing the nurses?”

“No, they’ve been kissing me. Ella Barker came by to thank me.”

“She better.” Her hand tightened on mine. “Bill, will you promise me something-just one thing? Promise me you won’t take criminal cases and rampage around the countryside and all.”

“I promise.” But I had mental reservations.

My wife may have sensed them. “You have a family to think of now, not just me. She’s beautiful, Bill.”

“Like her mother.”

“Not this morning I’m not beautiful. I’m all washed out this morning. On the other hand, have you noticed my abdomen? It’s getting quite flat already. I can actually see my toes.”

She demonstrated this, wiggling her toes under the covers.

“You’re as flat as a pancake, darling.”

“Not that flat, I hope. Bill?” She turned toward me, pushing her hair back. Her eyes were deeper and softer than I had ever seen them. “Do you mind awfully the fact that our joint product is not a boy? You like little girls, don’t you?”

“I like girls of all sizes.”

“Don’t try to be funny. We have a serious problem.”

“You’re okay, aren’t you?”

“Oh, I feel pretty good. Kind of empty, though, like an elevator shaft after the elevator went down. Except when they bring her in. Then I feel full.”

“Is there something the matter with her? Where is she?”

“Don’t get panicky now. She’s in the nursery, and she’s physically perfect. Not to mention precociously intelligent and aware. I can tell by the way she nurses. That makes the problem even more urgent. We have to give her a name, for her to start forming her personality around. We can’t simply go on calling her Her, like something out of H. Rider Haggard.”

“How about Sally?”

“Negative. One Sally in a family is enough. Do you like Sharon for a name, or is Sharon Gunnarson too cosmopolitan? Rose of Sharon Gunnarson is even more unwieldy, but that is the way I feel about her. Rose of Sharon Gunnarson,” she said dreamily.

“Negative. Rose Sharon Gunnarson, maybe.”

“But Rose by itself is such a florid name. Do you like Sarah? Susan? Martha? Anne? Elizabeth? Sandra?”

“Strangely enough, I like them all. How about Nancy?”

“I like Nancy. But let me think about it. We’ll both think about it. Now you go back and rest, Bill, you look tired. Maybe I can visit you tomorrow. Dr. Trench says my pelvis was formed for motherhood and I should get my strength back very rapidly.”

I told Sally that I adored her pelvis. She bumped it at me under the covers feebly.

I met Dr. Trench outside the door. He was a short man of forty with horn-rimmed glasses and a quick, intelligent smile. A little too intelligent at the moment.

“Well, well, the prodigal husband himself. The wanderer returns.”

“Go ahead and have your bit of vaudeville. Everybody does. Then I want to talk to you seriously.”

“Sally’s in fine shape, if that’s what you’re worried about. You’re fortunate to have a secretary who knows what labor pains are.”

“It isn’t Sally I’m worried about. Can you give me a few minutes in private?”

“I have patients to look after. Including your wife.”

“This concerns one of your patients.”

He consulted his watch. “All right. Five minutes. Where can we talk?”

“Up in my room.”

I was shaky and sweating again when I reached my bed. I sat on the edge of it.

Dr. Trench remained standing. “I suppose the patient you mean is Mrs. Ferguson?”

“Yes. Have you seen her since the-accident?”

“I attended her, yes. Her husband requested me not to discuss her condition with anyone.” His eyes were stern.

“Good. Ferguson has retained me as his attorney. Anything that you tell me will be privileged.”

“What do you want to know about her?”

“I’m interested in her mental condition, for one thing.”

“It’s not too bad, considering what she’s been through. She seems to be blessed with a good strong nervous system. I was afraid she might lose her child, but there seems to be no danger of that now.”

“Is she at home?”

“Yes. She doesn’t seem to require hospitalization. I found that her injuries were superficial.”

“Is she in fit shape to be questioned?”

“It depends on the questioner, and the nature of the questions. She’s resting quietly, at least she was two hours ago. I’d leave it for a few days, if I were you. You can use the rest yourself.”

“It won’t wait, Doctor. I have to get a statement from her about the events of last night. Not to mention the night before and the night before.”

“I don’t see how she can help you much. She was unconscious, as you know, literally dead to the world.”

“Is that what she told you?”

“Yes, and I have no medical reason to doubt it. She was in a state of drugged sleep throughout her period of-ah-detention. It’s lucky for her the kidnappers knew how to handle drugs. They could so easily have killed her.”

“They gave her drugs?”

“Who else? I gather from her fragmentary memories, and from the medical indications, that she was forcibly drugged at the actual moment of the kidnapping. It occurred in the parking lot of the Foothill Club. She was lured out there by a telephone call from someone purporting to be a relative. They seized her at the door of her car and gave her an injection of pentothal or some other quick-acting anesthetic.”

“Do you believe all this?”

“I know it sounds melodramatic, but the marks of the needle are on her arm. Later, to keep her under, they evidently gave her spaced shots of morphia or demerol. I suppose their idea was to keep her quiet and make it impossible for her to identify them later.”

“What if I told you that I talked to her last night?”

“Around what time last night?”

“It must have been about one o’clock when I got to the mountain house. Your patient was very much alive and kicking.”

“What did she say?”

“I’d hate to repeat it.”

Trench took off his glasses and polished them with a handkerchief. Under cover of this business, he was studying my face. “I’d say that one of you was lying, or hallucinating. Mrs. Ferguson was still in a drug-induced coma when she came into my hands early this morning. When she did rouse out of it, she had no memory of the previous forty-eight hours or so. Her physical condition supported her subjective account.”

“You should have seen her last night. She was moving around like a cat on a hot stove, and spitting like one. It occurred to me at the time that she had been taking drugs. Is it possible she took an overdose and it suddenly caught up with her?”

“Took an overdose of her own accord?”

“Yes. There are indications that she is an addict.”

The doctor’s eyes widened. He put on his glasses as though to protect them from seeing too much. “You must be mistaken. She’s been visiting me biweekly for two months. I’ve noticed no-” His voice broke off. He looked up sideways at a corner of the ceiling and stayed with his eyes fixed in that position.

“Have you remembered something, Doctor?”

He answered in a rather flustered way. “I’m sure it’s of no great significance. In one of her visits to me, Mrs. Ferguson did bring up the subject of drug addiction. It was a purely academic discussion-at least it seemed so to me-having to do with the effect of drugs on an unbalanced mind. I told her that most addicts probably have some degree of mental or nervous illness to begin with. That’s what makes them addicts. She seemed very interested in the subject.”

“Personally interested?”

Trench looked up at the ceiling again, as if he were balancing pros and cons on his chin.

“I’d say so, yes. I gathered, from another discussion we had, that some friend or relative of hers is a psychopath-what the psychiatrists call a severely maladjusted personality. She was very much concerned with the question of inherited character defects. I assured her that such things weren’t inherited. That isn’t entirely true, of course, but we know so little about the genes as they affect mind and emotions, there’s no use worrying a pregnant woman about it.”

“Is she psychopathic herself?”

“I’ve observed no signs of it.” But a deep cleft of concern had appeared between his eyebrows. “I wish I knew where your questions are leading.”

“So do I. Consider this possibility. This friend or relative she blames things on-couldn’t it be her way of referring to her own alter ego? A second personality that gets out of control and jumps out at her when she’s disturbed?”

“If so, I’ve never seen it. I understand-books and movies to the contrary-that a true case of multiple personality is rare. Of course I don’t pretend to be a psychiatrist.” After a pause, he added: “You may be interested to know that I’ve asked Mrs. Ferguson to have a neuropsychiatric examination. Perhaps she’ll agree to share the findings with you, if it really is so important.”

“Why did you suggest it?”

“Simply as a precautionary measure. She seems to have come through her ordeal without brain damage. But it’s dangerous to spend such a long period under drugs, even in good hands.” He looked at his watch impatiently.

“You mentioned her interest in heredity. Was there any thought of her not having her child?”

“She’s very eager to have it. So is the father, now that he knows about it. It’s true, with an older father, the probability of mutation rises, but not to the point of negative indication.”

“Ferguson is the father, then?”

“I have no reason to doubt it.” Trench gave me a queer, cold look. “In any case, I’m sure your client wouldn’t authorize you to ask that question about my patient.”

“Is that intended to be a negative answer?”

“Absolutely not. The question doesn’t deserve an answer. You seem to be trying to rake up any dirt you can about Mrs. Ferguson.”

“I’m sorry it looks that way to you, doctor. It’s true I have to know the worst about her, if I’m going to do anything for her.”

“What are you trying to do for her?”

“Give her the legal protection she’s entitled to. She’s likely to be arrested some time today.”

“On what charge?”

“I prefer not to name it. If the police or the D.A.’s men try to ask you any questions about her, tell them you’ve already communicated your information to me. Tell them if charges are laid, I expect to use you as a witness for the defense. And don’t tell them a damn thing else.”