"Have you got someplace we can take him, or not? He'll be out of there in a minute."
"Goddamn you, McCoy. Why did you have to tell me he was about to go over the edge?"
"Because he was."
"Dr. Barthelmy's office," Dawn Morris said into the telephone receiver. Miss Morris, who was Dr. Harald Barthelmy's receptionist, was a raven-haired, splendidly bosomed, long-legged young woman. Though she was dressed like a nurse, she had no medical training whatever.
"Dr. Barthelmy, please. My name is Dillon."
"I'm sorry, Sir, the doctor is with a patient. May I have him return your call?"
"Honey, you go tell him Jake Dillon is on the phone."
Dawn Morris knew who Jake Dillon was. He was vice president of publicity for Metro-Magnum Studios... the kind of man who could open doors for her. The kind of man she'd planned to meet when she took a job as receptionist for the man Photoplay magazine called the "Physician to the Stars."
"Mr. Dillon," Dawn Morris cooed. "Let me check. I'm sure the doctor would like to talk to you if it's at all possible."
"Thank you," Jake Dillon said.
She left her desk and walked down a corridor into a suite of rooms that Dr. Barthelmy liked to refer to as his "surgery."
After his undergraduate years at the University of Iowa, and before completing his medical training at Tulane in New Orleans, Dr. Barthelmy spent a year at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. As a result, he'd cultivated a certain British manner: He'd grown a pencil-line mustache, and acquired a collection of massive pipes and a wardrobe heavy with tweed jackets with leather elbow patches. And he now spelled his Christian name with two 'a's and addressed most females as "dear girl" and most males as "old sport."
The surgery was half a dozen consulting rooms, opening off a thickly carpeted corridor furnished with leather armchairs and turn-of-the-century lithographs of Englishmen shooting pheasants and riding to hounds.
Dawn knew immediately where to find Dr. Barthelmy. One of his nurses, a real one, an old blue-haired battle-ax, was standing outside one of the consulting cubicles. This was standard procedure whenever Dr. Barthelmy had to ask a female patient to take off her clothes. A woman had once accused Dr. Barthelmy of getting fresh while he was examining her; he was determined this would never happen again.
"I have to see the doctor right away," Dawn said to the nurse.
"He's with a patient," the nurse said.
"This is an emergency," Dawn said firmly.
The nurse rapped on the consulting-room door with her knuckles.
"Not now, if you please!" a deep male voice replied in annoyance.
"Doctor, it's Mr. Jake Dillon," Dawn called. "He said it's very important."
There was a long silence, and then the door opened. Dr. Barthelmy looked at her.
"Mr. Dillon said it's very important, Doctor," Dawn said. "I thought I should tell you."
"Would you ask Mr. Dillon to hold, my girl?" Dr. Barthelmy said. "I'll be with him in half a mo."
"Yes, Doctor," Dawn said.
The consulting-room door closed.
"He's on line five, Doctor," Dawn called through it, and then went quickly back to her desk.
She picked up the telephone.
"Mr. Dillon, Dr. Barthelmy will be with you in just a moment. Would you hold, please?"
"Yeah, I'll hold," Dillon replied. "Thanks, honey, but you stay on the line."
"Yes, of course, Mr. Dillon."
"Jake, old sport, how good to hear your voice."
"Harry, what do you know about malaria?"
"Very little, thank God."
"Harry, goddamn it, I'm serious."
"It is transmitted by mosquitoes, and the treatment is quinine, or some new medicine the name of which at the moment escapes me. You have malaria, old boy?"
"A friend of mine does."
"And you want me to see your friend? Of course, dear boy."
"I'm twenty minutes out of San Diego. By the time I get to my house, I want you there with the new medicine (it's called Atabrine, by the way), a nurse, or nurses, and whatever else you need."
There was a just-perceptible pause before Dr. Barthelmy replied: "That sounded like an order, old sport. I'm not in the Marine Corps, as you may have noticed."
"Harry, goddamn it..."
"Which house, old boy? Holmby Hills or Malibu?"
"Malibu. I leased the Holmby Hills place to Metro-Magnum for the duration."
"Your contribution to the war effort, I gather?"
"Fuck you, Harry. Just be there," Dillon said, and hung up.
Dawn waited until she heard the click when Dr. Barthelmy hung up, and then hung up herself.
There are not many people, she thought, who would dare talk to Dr. Harold Barthelmy that way. Or, for that matter, call him "Harry. " Only someone with a lot of power. And getting to know someone with a lot of power is what I have been looking for all along. The question is, how am I going to get to meet Jake Dillon?
Dr. Harald Barthelmy himself answered the question five minutes later. He came into the reception area, smiled at waiting patients, and said, "May I speak to you a moment, Miss Morris?"
"Yes, of course, Doctor," Dawn said, rising up from behind her desk and stepping into the surgery corridor with him. He motioned her into one of the consulting rooms.
There was, she noticed, an open book facedown on the examination table. The spine read, "Basic Principles of Diagnosis and Treatment."
I'll bet, Dawn thought, that that's open to "Malaria. "
"If memory serves, Miss Morris, you told me you had accepted the receptionist position as a temporary sort of thing, until you can get your motion picture career on the tracks, so to speak?"
"Yes, Doctor. That's true."
"Something a bit out of the ordinary has come up. I don't suppose you... monitored... my conversation with Mr. Dillon? Major Dillon?"
"Oh, of course not, Doctor."
"I'd rather hoped you would have. No matter. You do know who Major Dillon is?"
"I think so, Doctor."
"He is a quite powerful man in the motion picture community. He rushed to the colors, so to speak, the Marine Corps, of all things, when the trumpet sounded. But that has not diminished at all his importance in the film industry. Do you take my meaning?"
"Yes, Doctor, I think so."
"To put a point on it, my girl, he could be very useful to someone in your position."
"I don't quite understand..."
"Mr.... Major Dillon-who is a dear friend, of long standing-has come to me asking a special favor. One of his friends-I don't know who-is apparently suffering from malaria, and for some reason doesn't want to enter a hospital. I can think of a number of reasons for that. He, or she, for example, may be under consideration for a part, for example, and does not want it known that he, or she, is not in perfect health. You understand?"
"Yes, I do."
"As a special favor to Mr. Dillon, I have agreed to treat this patient at Mr. Dillon's beach house in Malibu. Malaria is not contagious. The regimen is a drug called Atabrine and bed rest. Mr.... Major Dillon has at his house a Mexican couple who would be perfectly capable of dispensing the Atabrine, but he would feel more comfortable if a nurse were present."