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."That Miss Nirdlinger to see you again, Mr.Huff.""Hold her a minute.I've got to make a call."She went out.I made a call.I had to do something to get myself in hand.I called home, and asked the Filipino if there had been any calls.He said no.Then I buzzed Nettie to send her in.She looked different from the last time I had seen her.Then, she looked like a kid.Now, she looked like a woman.Part of that may have been that she was in black, but anybody could see she had been through plenty.I felt like a heel, and yet it did something to me that this girl liked me.I shook hands with her, and sat her down, and asked her how her stepmother was, and she said she was all right, considering everything, and I said it was a terrible thing, and that it shocked me to hear of it."And Mr.Sachetti?""I'd rather not talk about Mr.Sachetti.""I thought you were friends.""I'd rather not talk about him.""I'm sorry."She got up, looked out the window, then sat down again."Mr.Huff, you did something for me once, or anyhow I felt it was for me—""It was.""And since then I've always thought of you as a friend.That's why I've come to you.I want to talk to you—as a friend.""Certainly.""But only as a friend, Mr.Huff.Not as somebody—in the insurance business.Until I feel I know my own mind, it has to be in the strictest confidence.Is that understood, Mr.Huff?""It is.""I'm forgetting something.I was to call you Walter.""And I was to call you Lola.""It's funny how easy I feel with you.""Go ahead.""It's about my father.""Yes?""My father's death.I can't help feeling there was something back of it.""I don't quite understand you, Lola.How do you mean, back of it?""I don't know what I mean.""You were at the inquest?""Yes.""One or two witnesses there, and several people later, to us, intimated that your father might have—killed himself.Is that what you mean?""No, Walter, it isn't.""Then what?""I can't say.I can't make myself say it.And it's so awful.Because this isn't the first time I've had such thoughts.This isn't the first time I've been through this agony of suspicion that there might be something more than—what everybody else thinks.""I still don't follow you.""My mother.""Yes.""When she died.That's how I felt."I waited.She swallowed two or three times, looked like she had decided not to say anything at all, then changed her mind again and started to talk."Walter, my mother had lung trouble.It was on account of that that we kept a little shack up at Lake Arrowhead.One week-end, in the middle of winter, my mother went up to that shack with her dearest friend.It was right in the middle of the winter sports, when everything was lively up there, and then she wired my father that she and this other woman had decided to stay on for a week.He didn't think anything of it, wired her a little money, and told her to stay as long as she wanted; he thought it would do her good.Wednesday of that week my mother caught pneumonia.Friday her condition became critical.Her friend walked twelve miles through snowdrifts, through the woods, to get a doctor—the shack isn't near the hotels.It's on the other side of the lake, a long way around.She got into the main hotel there so exhausted she had to be sent to a hospital.The doctor started out, and when he got there my mother was dying.She lived a half hour.""Yes?""Do you know who that best friend was?" I knew.I knew by the same old prickle that was going up my back and into my hair."No.""Phyllis."".Well?""What were those two women doing in that shack, all that time, in the dead of winter? Why didn't they go to the hotel, like everybody else? Why didn't my mother telephone, instead of wiring?""You mean it wasn't she that wired?""I don't know what I mean, except that it looked mighty funny.Why did Phyllis tramp all that distance to get a doctor? Why didn't she stop some place, and telephone? Or why didn't she put on her skates, and go across the lake, which she could have done in a half hour? She's a fine skater.Why did she take that three-hour trip? Why didn't she go for a doctor sooner?""But wait a minute.What did your mother say to the doctor when he—""Nothing.She was in high delirium, and besides he had her in oxygen five minutes after he got there.""But wait a minute, Lola.After all, a doctor is a doctor, and if she had pneumonia—""A doctor is a doctor, but you don't know Phyllis.There's some things I could tell.In the first place, she's a nurse.She's one of the best nurses in the city of Los Angeles—that's how she met my mother, when my mother was having such a terrible fight to live.She's a nurse, and she specialized in pulmonary diseases.She would know the time of crisis, almost to a minute, as well as any doctor would.And she would know how to bring on pneumonia, too.""What do you mean by that?""You think Phyllis wouldn't be capable of putting my mother out in the night, in that cold, and keeping her locked out until she was half frozen to death—you think Phyllis wouldn't do that? You think she's just the dear, sweet, gentle thing that she looks like? That's what my father thought.He thought it was wonderful, the way she trudged all that distance to save a life, and less than a year after that he married her.But I don't think so.You see—I know her.That's what I thought, the minute I heard it.And now—this.""What do you want me to do?""Nothing—yet.Except listen to me.""It's pretty serious, what you're saying.Or at any rate intimating.I suppose I know what you mean.""That's what I mean.That's exactly what I mean.""However, as I understand it, your mother wasn't with your father at the time—""She wasn't with my mother either.At the time.But she had been.""Will you let me think this over?""Please do.""You're a little wrought up today.""And I haven't told you all.""What else?"".I can't tell you.That, I can't make myself believe.And yet—never mind.Forgive me, Walter, for coming in here like this.But I'm so unhappy.""Have you said anything to anybody about this?""No, nothing [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]