“Nothing. I was merely—”
“No. I think you know something that you’re not telling me. You’re holding out on me. Why?”
“I have no knowledge at present,” Mac said, “that would be of any value or comfort to you.”
“That’s only a fancy way of saying you won’t tell me.” There was a silence, filled with sudden distrust and uneasiness. “Who are you, anyway? What are you? How did you get into this?”
“I gave you my name, Ralph MacPherson. I’m a lawyer and an old friend of Mrs. Oakley’s.”
“She didn’t waste much time contacting a lawyer. Why?”
“She called me as a friend, not a lawyer. I’ve known her since she was Jessie’s age... Let’s see, I take the next turn, don’t I?”
“Yes.”
All the houses in the block were dark except for two. In the driveway that separated the two, a black Chrysler sedan was parked. Mac recognized it as one of the unmarked police cars used for assignments requiring special precautions.
Except for the number of lights burning in the two houses, there was no sign that anything had happened. The streets were deserted, and if the immediate neighbors were curious, they were keeping their curiosity behind closed drapes in dark rooms.
Mac braked the car, leaving the engine running. “I’d be a damned fool if I said I’m glad to have met you, Brant. So I’ll just say I hope we meet again under more pleasant circumstances.”
“Aren’t you coming inside?”
“It didn’t occur to me that you might want me to.”
“I can’t face Ellen alone.”
“I don’t see that I’ll be of much help. Besides, you won’t be alone with her, the police are there.”
“I won’t — I can’t walk into that house and tell her I didn’t find Jessie. She was so full of hope. How can I go in there and take it all away from her?”
“She has to be told the truth, Brant. Come on, I’ll go with you.”
The two men got out of the car and began walking toward the house. Mac had no thought of involving himself in the situation. He felt that he was merely doing his duty, helping a person in trouble, and that the whole thing — or at least his part in it — would be over in a few minutes. He could afford a few minutes, some kind words.
Suddenly the front door opened and a woman rushed out. It was as if a violent explosion had taken place inside the house and blown the door open and tossed the woman out.
She said, “Jessie?” Then she stopped dead in her tracks, staring at Mac. “Where’s Jessie?”
“Mrs. Brant, I—”
“I know. You must be the doctor. It happened the way I thought. Jessie was on her way to Mary Martha’s by the short cut and she fell crossing the creek. And she’s in the hospital and you’ve come to tell me she’ll be all right, it’s nothing serious, she’ll be home in a—”
“Stop it, Mrs. Brant. I’m a lawyer, not a doctor.”
“Where is Jessie?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know.”
Dave said, “She didn’t go to Mary Martha’s, Ellen. I haven’t found her.”
“Oh God. Please, God, help her. Help my baby.”
Dave took her in his arms. To Mac it was not so much an embrace as a case of each of them holding the other up. He felt a deep pity but he realized there was nothing further he could do for them now. He started back to his car. The letter in his pocket seemed to be getting heavier, like a stone to which things had begun to cling and grow and multiply.
He had almost reached the curb when a voice behind him said, “Just a minute, sir.”
Mac turned and saw a young man in a dark gray suit and matching fedora. The fedora made him look like an undergraduate dressed up for a role in a play. “Yes, what is it?”
“May I ask your name, sir?”
“MacPherson.”
“Do you have business here at this time of night, Mr. MacPherson?”
“I drove Mr. Brant home.”
“I’m sure you won’t mind repeating that to the lieutenant, will you?”
“Not,” Mac said dryly, “if the lieutenant wants to hear it.”
“Oh, he will. Come this way, please.”
As they walked down the driveway Mac saw that there was another police car parked outside the garage, its searchlight had been angled to shine on the window of a rear bedroom. A policeman was examining the window; a second one stood just outside the periphery of the light. All Mac could see of him was his gray hair, which was cut short and stood up straight on his head like the bristles of a brush. It was enough.
“Hello, Gallantyne.”
Gallantyne stepped forward, squinting against the light. He was of medium height with broad, heavy shoulders, slightly stooped. His posture and his movements all indicated a vast impatience just barely kept under control. He always gave Mac the impression of a well-trained and very powerful stallion with one invisible saddle sore which mustn’t be touched. No one knew where this sore was but they knew it was there and it paid to be careful.
“What are you doing here, Mac?” Gallantyne said.
“I was invited. It seems I come under the heading of suspicious characters seen lurking in the neighborhood.”
“Well, were you?”
“I was seen, I don’t believe I was lurking,” Mac said. “Unless perhaps I have a natural lurk that I’m not aware of. May I return the question? What are you doing here, Gallantyne? I thought you were tied to a desk.”
“They untie me once in a while. Salvadore’s on vacation and Weber has bursitis. Come inside. I want to talk to you.”
For reasons he didn’t yet understand, Mac felt a great reluctance to enter the house. He didn’t want the missing child to seem any more real to him than she did now; he didn’t want to see the yard where she played, the table she ate at, the room she slept in. He wanted her to remain merely a name and a number, Jessie Brant, aged nine. He said, “I’d prefer to stay out here.”
“Well, I prefer different.”
Gallantyne turned and walked through an open gate into a patio. He didn’t bother looking back to see if he was being followed. It was taken for granted that he would be, and he was.
The back door of the house had been propped open with a flowerpot filled with earth containing a dried-out azalea. A policeman in uniform was dusting the door and its brass knob for fingerprints. There was no sign that the door had been forced or the lock tampered with.
The kitchen contained mute evidence of a family going through a crisis: cups of half-consumed coffee, overflowing ashtrays, a bottle of aspirin with the top off, a wastebasket filled with used pieces of tissue and the empty box they’d come in.
Gallantyne said, “Sit down, Mac. You look nervous. Are you the family lawyer?”
“No.”
“An old friend, then?”
“I’ve known Brant about an hour, his wife for five minutes.” He explained briefly about responding to Kate’s phone call and meeting Brant on the porch of her house.
“It sounds crazy,” Gallantyne said.
“Anything involving Mrs. Oakley has a certain amount of illogic in it. She’s a nervous woman and she’s been under a great strain, especially for the past few days.”
“Why the past few days?”
“Two reasons that I know of, though there may be more. She thinks the husband she’s divorcing has hired someone to spy on her. And this week she received an anonymous letter warning her to take better care of her daughter.”
Gallantyne’s thick gray eyebrows leaped up his forehead. “Have you read it?”
“Yes. Mrs. Oakley brought it to my office right away. She’d pretty well convinced herself that Mr. Oakley had written it to harass her. I didn’t believe it. In fact, I didn’t really take the whole thing seriously. Now I’m afraid, I’m very much afraid, that I made a bad mistake.”