“That wouldn’t prove anything. I have only your word for it that sugar-pill has a secret meaning — the meaning you claim it has — for you and Mrs. Tully.”
Tully shook his head and laughed. “The one thing that didn’t occur to me was that you’d doubt my word.” He shrugged. “Well, that’s the only proof I can give you, Julian. I can’t see that you and I are going to have much more to say to each other. I’ve had it.”
He made for the office door.
Lieutenant Smith said, “Wait, wait, will you?”
Tully stopped, waited.
“Damn it all, Dave, this puts me in a real spot. It might mean my job...” But then the Homicide man got to his feet, and when he spoke again it was with decision. “If your analysis is right, I’ll have to reverse my field. And fast, because Ruth is in for it. Go home and stay out of my hair!”
16
Tully went home.
He let himself into the silent house and sank limply into the big chair in the living room. His legs felt like old rubber and a great lassitude had sucked him dry. How long was it since he had come home from the capital — a day, two days, three? He could not remember.
Julian was right. He could do no more. Now it was in the hands of the police... now that they were looking for an innocent woman in danger of being murdered instead of for a murderer.
Funny how this thing, Tully thought, has kept testing my faith in Ruth. Down, up, down, up... He laid his head far back and stretched his legs gingerly.
Twilight was coming on and the room was sinking into shadow.
First he had destroyed her image. Then he had resurrected its fragments and put them back together. Now she was to be destroyed in the flesh... dead...
The shadows deepened into near-darkness. The thought of turning on the lights made him wince. Light meant seeing the things they had bought together, lived in, cherished. Light meant Ruth. Better the black gloom and the silence.
The silence.
The silence?
Noiselessly Tully shifted his position in the chair until he was sitting up, ears cocked, straining. There had been something in the silence that made it not quite silence. A sense of presence... With one leap he was out of the chair and across the room, his hand shooting out to the light switch.
He whirled.
Norma Hurst stood in the archway that separated the living room from the rear of the house. She must have been standing there, Tully thought, for a long time — perhaps since he had come home.
He felt the flesh of his forearms gather itself into little eruptions of dread.
This was a Norma Hurst he had never seen before. She had combed her drab hair with great care but the result was curiously fumbling. Her long thin face was grotesque with make-up, as if a small child had tried to imitate her mother’s toilet. And her eyes... her eyes were not Norma’s at all. They were overlarge and underbright; they looked blind.
“Norma,” Tully said; he tried to make his voice sound natural, but it came out in a croak. “What are you doing here? How did you get in?” She must have climbed through one of the bedroom windows.
Norma put her forefinger to her wildly rouged lips. “Not so loud,” she said. “She’ll hear me.”
Her voice was strange, too. It had a throb in it, a sort of excitement, that gave it an unpleasantly eerie timbre.
“Who’ll hear you, Norma?”
“Mother, of course.” He saw her shrink a little, as if she were afraid.
It took all his will-power to go to her, smiling, and take her hand. Her flesh was icy. She resisted his pull.
“You’re going to take me to her. She’s here, I know she’s here. I don’t want to see her.”
“There’s no one here but us, Norma.”
“You shouldn’t call me that.”
“What?” Tully said, bewildered. “Call you what?”
“That name. The name of that flat-chested horror.”
“You mean... Norma?”
“Please,” Norma said sharply. “You know perfectly well that my name is Kathleen.”
She had plunged over the edge.
Tully knew he must reach the telephone, call for help. Ollie? She must have slipped away from him. Ollie was undoubtedly hunting for her right now. The police? No... Dr. Suddreth!
Dr. Suddreth was the nearest thing the Tullys had ever had in the way of a family physician. Suddreth was no psychiatrist, but he would do in an emergency. At least control her, know whom to call...
Norma had drifted toward the middle of the living room. Her face was twisted with worry. “I can’t seem to remember where Ollie introduced us. Was it at the country club dance last week?”
“Why, yes,” Tully said, managing a smile. Oh! Would you excuse me a moment?”
“For what?” she said with sudden sharpness.
“I forgot. I have a call to make.”
“No!” she said. “No — phoning — mother.” Her lower lip stuck out resentfully.
“Mother?” he repeated mechanically. How was he to get to the phone?
“As if you don’t know! Don’t try to fool me. You know very well my mother is Mercedes Lavery.” She got into a crouch, looking around, whispering. “She’s here, isn’t she? You’re in this with her! And Ollie calls you his best friend! Where is she hiding?” Her glance kept darting about.
“Merce — your mother isn’t here,” Tully said in a reassuring tone. “And of course I’m Ollie’s best friend. Now why don’t you sit down and make yourself comfortable while—”
“You are, aren’t you?”
“What?”
“Ollie’s best friend. Otherwise you wouldn’t let us meet here. Mother’s made it impossible for us to meet anywhere else.”
It was hard to follow the logic of her delusion. The damn phone, so near. But the delusion might be a temporary thing. I can’t risk pushing her toward the thin edge of total madness, Tully thought.
She was wandering about the living room now, humming a shapeless little tune. Suddenly she stopped before the bar.
“I want a drink,” she said.
“You, Norma—?” He stopped quickly. Surprise had made him forget. Norma didn’t drink.
She was looking at him with mean, hopeless resentment. “I ask you once more to stop calling me that name. Do you hear me? Do you?”
“Yes. Yes, of course, Kathleen. Sorry.”
“Kathleen. That’s my name.”
“Kathleen.”
He wondered if he dared try force. He might be able to wrap her in a blanket or something and tie her up until Dr. Suddreth arrived. No, he thought, she might tumble right over the edge. The safest thing was to humor her as best he could while he figured out a way to make the phone call without upsetting her.
“I want a drink,” Norma Hurst said in exactly the same way as before. As if their interchange betweenwhiles had not taken place at all.
“What would you like... Kathleen?”
It pleased her. “Now you remember,” she said gayly. “Why, Scotch on the rocks. Make it a double.”
Norma asking for a double Scotch!
But then a thought struck Tully.
“Sit down, Kathleen. I’ve got to get some ice from the kitchen for your drink—” He could phone for help from the kitchen extension.
But Norma said, “No ice, thank you.”
“You said on the rocks,” he said desperately.
“No ice,” she repeated.
He poured a huge slug of Scotch into a highball glass and handed it to her, hope returning. Norma didn’t drink because she couldn’t; hard liquor either made her sick or sleepy. In either event...
“Thank you,” she said, and held the glass without attempting to drink from it.
“Drink up, Kathleen,” Tully said heartily. “You asked for a double.”