Salty twisted his mouth into a smile. Little puffs of white smoke emerged at regular, contented intervals. “Why don’t you poison him, Nell?”
Of a sudden, her face became utterly wooden in its lack of expression. She took the empty glass from Banning Clarke, started away, then turned and said meaningly to Salty, “Many a time in jest we cast pearls of wisdom before swine,” and marched away.
Mason, grinning broadly, opened his cigarette case, passed it to Della Street, offered one to Banning Clarke. “I’d say,” he announced, “she’s quite a character. Where does she get the garbled proverbs?”
“No one knows,” Clarke said. “Sometimes I think she twists them unintentionally; and then again, I think she’s done it deliberately to make them conform to a philosophy of her own. At any rate, she’s made a lot out of her stuff. The boys around Mojave used to come in to hear her talk as much as to eat her grub. Can you fix up that agreement here?”
Della Street opened the portable typewriter, balanced it on her lap, opened her brief case, fed in paper and carbons. “I’ve never typed out a pooling agreement in an imitation desert in the millionaire row of San Roberto,” she said, “but I can certainly try. It may not be a very neat job.”
“We don’t care what it looks like,” Banning Clarke said, “just so it’s binding.”
Mason nodded, asked a few questions, and started dictating the agreement to Della Street. When he had finished, he handed a copy to Clarke and one to Salty Bowers.
Clarke studied the paper carefully. Bowers didn’t even bother to read his copy.
“You’ve got to read it,” Mason told him.
“Why?”
“It might not be legal unless you did.”
Bowers picked up his copy, laboriously read through it, his lips moving as he silently pronounced the words.
“All right?” Mason asked.
Banning Clarke whipped out his fountain pen, scrawled a signature across the agreement, handed the fountain pen to Salty Bowers.
Bowers signed both agreements, gravely handed the pen back to Banning Clarke, picked up his pipe, started to put it back in his mouth, then changed his mind, let his eyes bore into those of his partner. “She’s going to fool you,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Clarke asked with that quick nervousness which showed embarrassment.
“You know what I mean,” Salty said, and then put the pipe to his lips and scraped a match into flame. He paused with the flaming match held over the bowl of the pipe, shifted his eyes once more to Banning Clarke.
“She’ll stick,” he announced, and then sucked flame down into the crusted brier bowl of the pipe.
Chapter 4
Velma Starler, R.N., had been troubled of late with insomnia. Nurselike, she fought against taking drugs, particularly as she realized that her sleeplessness was due to an inner conflict.
She knew what “Rinkey” would say. Rinkey was her brother, a year younger, supercharged with the spirit of adventure, his head filled with a lot of definite ideas — new, unconventional ideas about people, about property, and about human rights. Rinkey would think she was wasting her time being tied by a golden chain to a pampered millionaire whose life was of no great importance. Rinkey was flying a plane somewhere in the South Seas. The Army needed nurses. Why didn’t Velma get in where she could do some good, he kept writing.
That was one side of the picture. The other was Velma’s mother. Her mother said, “Velma, you aren’t like Rinkey. He’s restless. He can’t stay still for a minute. He’ll always be in danger. He loves it. That’s his nature. I wouldn’t change it, even if I could. I’ve known ever since he was a boy that I must prepare myself for the shock, that someday they’d come to break the news to me — perhaps bluntly, or perhaps stumbling around trying to break it easy. A speeding automobile and a blown-out tire. Trying some new stunt in that airplane of his. I always knew it would be something swift and sudden; and that’s the way he would want it, and that’s the way I would want it. But you’re different, Velma. I can depend on you. You’re steady. You look ahead. You have a sense of responsibility... Oh, please don’t go, darling. After all, one in the family’s enough. I couldn’t stand to be left all alone. The world’s in such a hurry, it pushes you to one side and rushes on past you if you haven’t some anchor to hold you to the current of life.”
Then there was Dr. Kenward, tired, patient, overworked, knowing that he was no longer physically robust enough to stand the strain of night calls. Day after day he coped with an endless procession of sick people constantly crowding his office, with the same old symptoms, with the same old ailments, only the patients being new. Dr. Kenward had said, “Velma, you’re the only one I can depend on. The good ones have all gone. You won’t have to do much, just be there with the hypodermic in case he needs it. But don’t think what you are doing won’t be important. Keep him quiet, let him build himself up, and he’ll snap out of this. But the trouble with him is that the minute he begins to get well he’ll think he’s cured. He’ll crowd too much strain on that tired muscle, and then — well, that’s when you’re going to have to be there with the hypodermic — and minutes will be important. The way things are now, they won’t be able to get me in time. You’ll have to be on the job. A man of a different type could go to a hospital or a sanitarium. With him, it would be fatal. Remember, Velma, I’m counting on you to stand by me.”
And so Velma Starler lived in the big red-tiled house, had a spacious room which looked out over the ocean, her professional duties being virtually nil, more psychological than physical. Her patient had moved out of the house, sleeping under the stars, eating an unbalanced diet, scorning advice — and thriving on the treatment.
The one concession he had consented to make was to have the push-button call bell wired to an extension so that a mere pressure of his thumb would summon Velma at any hour of the day or night.
Velma fought against a desire to turn over in the bed. Once give away to that twisting and turning and the cause was lost. She also knew better than to try to go to sleep. Trying to sleep was a mental effort. Sleep won’t come when it’s summoned; only when one is indifferent and completely relaxed... There was a mosquito somewhere in the room... Velma frowned annoyance.
A part of her mind was trying to concentrate on restful relaxation, another part was definitely irritated at the intermittent buzzing of that mosquito. She tried to locate the sound — apparently over in that far corner— Well, she’d have to get up, turn on the light and kill him. She simply couldn’t sleep with a mosquito in the room, not the way her nerves were now.
She reached up and switched on the bed lamp over the head of the bed.
Almost instantly the mosquito ceased buzzing. Velma thrust her legs out of the side of the bed, kicked her delicate pink feet into sturdy slippers, and frowned at the corner of the room. She had known it would be like that. Turn on the light and the dratted mosquito would play possum somewhere — hiding in the shadows behind one of the pictures, probably. By the time she found him, she’d be wide awake for the rest of the night... Oh well, she was awake now anyway.
Velma picked up a fly swatter from the table near the bed, the table on which various articles were arrayed with professional efficiency. A little alcohol lamp for boiling the water, the hypodermic, the five-cell flashlight, a little notebook in which she kept track of the activities of the patient — a supervision which Banning Clarke would have bitterly resented had he known of it.