Читать книгу The Two Moons of Tranquillia - Arthur Leo Zagat - Страница 5
II
ОглавлениеGeorge’s eyes were gray steel, black-dotted by pinpoint pupils. “If they’ve done anything to Pete ...” He slid off the desk and started stiff-kneed toward the door.
“Wait,” I barked. “You’ve still got twenty minutes to make that train. I want to try something.”
He swung around. “What?” but I was rattling the bar for Jen. She came in on the line and I told her, “Get me Carseville 465.”
“I didn’t let them know I was coming,” George cautioned. “I—” His mouth twitched: “I wanted to surprise Pete.”
In my ear a low, musical voice said, “Hello. Who is it, please?”
“My name’s Harold Gatlin.” George tugged at the receiver and I moved it so he could get his ear to it too. “I’m calling with regard to your personal in this morning’s NEW YORK GLOBE.”
“You are interested in placing a child?”
“A little girl. Have you any preference?”
The woman hesitated. Or perhaps I imagined it. At any rate, her reply was definite when it came. “Not at all.” I saw a brown hand tighten on the desk edge, its knuckles go white. “How old is your daughter, Mr. Gatlin?”
“About ten,” I replied. “But she is not my daughter. I am her grandfather.”
“Her grandfather!” I was sure, this time, that the voice at the other end of the wire had changed. “I am afraid you do not quite understand,” it said coldly. “What we have in mind is to release someone for military service—”
“You’ll be doing exactly that in this case.” The rather nebulous impulse that had prompted me to say “grandfather” was crystallizing into a definite plan. “My daughter is a trained nurse. Her hospital unit has been ordered overseas and she will have to resign unless Kay can find a home where she can be happy.”
“Surely she could be happy with you.”
“Surely. But, unfortunately, I too am leaving the country. I happen to be on the staff of a—a certain magazine,” I’d almost said newspaper, realized just in time this would be too clear a tie-up with George, “and have been given an assignment that will keep me abroad indefinitely.”
“I see.” Her tone was still tentative. “Are there no relatives, or close friends perhaps, who can take care of the little girl?”
It was evident now what she was after. “None. Helen was divorced shortly after Kay was born and— Well,” I ventured an embarrassed little laugh, “it would be about the worst possible thing for the child if she were to come under the influence of her father or his family. I’m sure you understand, Mrs—”
“Barret,” she filled in. “Mary Barret. Yes. I think I do.” She paused, began again. “Would you care to bring your granddaughter up here, Mr. Gatlin?”
There it was, on a silver platter. “Precisely what I had in mind.”
“And her mother too, please. Mr. Barret will be here and we can all get to know each other before we make any final decisions. Shall we say for lunch tomorrow?”
George had only till midnight—“I’m afraid not. I shall have several important conferences and Helen will be on duty at the hospital. Would it be inconvenient if we were to skip the lunch and make it this afternoon?”
Not at all. They would be happy to have us. I jotted down the directions she gave me and after a final exchange of inanities, hung up.
George’s jaw was ridged, with knotted small muscles, his nostrils pinched. “It’s being a girl didn’t faze her.”
“No,” I agreed softly. “But did you get the rest of it? Your Mary Barret was plenty careful to make sure that no one would be dropping in unexpectedly—”
“Someone’s going to drop on them, like a ton of coal, just as soon as that train—”
“Hold, it, son. Hold everything, we’re not going up there by train.”
He stared. “We!”
“What the blue exes do you think you’d accomplish, rushing in there like a red-eyed bull, except to make things tough for Peter if there’s really something wrong about that set-up? I’m keeping the appointment I just made, and if I don’t know the whole layout before I’ve been in that house half an hour, I’ve been in the wrong business for forty-three years.”
Shadows were blue in the hollows of his gaunt cheeks. “It won’t work. They’ll smell a rat when you show up there without this family you invented.”
“The only thing I invented,” I chuckled as once more I picked up the ’phone, “was that stuff about Helen’s being a nurse— Oh, Jen. Will you ask Mrs. Clark to step in here, please?” I cradled the instrument. “She’s been Martha Propper’s assistant on the Woman’s Page since about two weeks after you left us.”
“You never told me you had a daughter.”
“I never had one, till Kay Clark adopted me as her grandfather and her mother seconded the motion. Quite something, that youngster. She— But here’s Helen.”
As she pulled the door shut behind her, she saw George. Her irises, a luminous brown flecked with gold, dilated slightly and for the briefest instant breath was caught between the warm, red bows of her lips. Then she turned to me.
“You asked to have me come in?”
Helen is long-flanked, slender, but her voice is a deep contralto underlaid by a vague huskiness that pulls at my old heartstrings. “I did.” Her dark gray suit was professional enough looking, in spite of the sweater that moulded her curves, but something would have to be done about that unruly tousle of chestnut hair. “This is George Carson, Helen. I think you’ve heard me speak of him.”
“Once or twice.” The smile with which she acknowledged the introduction was frank. Friendly. “Did you know, Lieutenant, that not a single stick of literate copy has appeared in the GLOBE since you beat your typewriter into a torpedo tube?”
“I shouldn’t wonder,” he said, abstractedly looking at his wrist-watch. I watched the girl’s upper lip start to curl, said, “Helen! You’re going up to Westchester with us this afternoon. Right now.”
“I couldn’t possibly. I’ve got four more ways of disguising watercress as food to think up before deadline, and a column of lovelorn blah—”
“ ’Phone Kay’s school to have her ready for us to pick up.” I pushed creakingly to my feet. “I’m going downstairs to Circulation, to wangle the loan of a car out of Ramsey. Meet me out front in ten minutes.”
Amusement crinkled the corners of Helen’s eyes and mouth. “Perfect!” she exclaimed, applauding with silent palms. “ ‘Call yourselves reporters?’ snarled Scrooge, the demon editor. ‘Come with me and I’ll show you how to get the story.’ ”
“Right. A story the radio won’t beat us to, for once.”
“It is—Oh, no.” Her face fell. “No, you’re kidding me. If it was, really, you wouldn’t want Kay along.”
“Kay’s the key to the whole thing,” I said from the door. I was to recall saying that, in a moment of horror. “George will explain, while you’re getting your duds.”
I stopped a moment to fix things up with Helen’s boss. Martha’s never liked me, but there’s one advantage in being around a shop as long as I have. You know where all the skeletons are buried.
