Skeleton Key (33 page)

She looked out dully over the canyon. Far behind her, a heavy step sounded on the gravel of the driveway. There was a noise of battering, and a moment after the garage doors had squawked open, the engine of Professor Paev's car fell silent.

About time the police got here
, she thought. She started around the outside of the house, was interrupted by one last fit of coughing, and went on, feeling almost restored. Probably if you didn't get enough monoxide to make you unconscious, it didn't really hurt you. She had a good strong heart.

There, moving about the garage door, was a tall figure with a handkerchief over mouth and nose. It was—yes; it was Nelsing.

She said his name, hoarsely, and he looked up for a minute as she reached the door. She glanced inside, and stopped short.

Nelsing was bending over Todd McKinnon; and McKinnon was sprawled on the floor, near the exhaust pipe of the coupé, his hand clutching an end of rubber hose.

Caught in his own trap, Georgine thought.

Nelsing had the unconscious form out on the grass, wrapped in a robe from the car. He had straddled it and was beginning artificial respiration, snapping a question at Georgine as he worked.

“Yes, I'm all right,” she said remotely. “He didn't figure on my being able to get out of the lab, I guess. At that, you probably would have got here in time.”

Nelsing, swinging rhythmically back and forth, grunted that he'd been as quick as possible. The sound of the motor had been deceiving, it was a few minutes before it had dawned on him that it was running in a garage.

Georgine leaned against the wall, looking wearily down at the slight figure. It looked much taller, stretched out like that. She felt nothing but an immense desolation, as if she had lost something beyond price.

“Isn't it funny. I can't hate him even when I know what he did,” she said at last. “He never did seem bad.”

Nelsing grunted again.

“Nelse, do you—do you have to work so hard, to bring him to? Wouldn't justice be satisfied if you let him die of this?” She heard herself give a forlorn laugh. “It's almost the same as the lethal chamber.”

Inspector Nelsing looked up at her, his blue eyes stretched wide. Surprise had made him almost falter in his rhythmic pressure. “Good God!” he said loudly, still swinging back and forth. “You didn't think
Mac
was the murderer?”

Georgine gazed at him stupidly. “He—he wasn't? What was he doing in the garage, with the hose—”

“Pulling it off the pipe so you wouldn't get any more of the gas,” Nelsing snarled. “What did you think, that I'd let him stand guard over you if I had any reason to suspect him? Look at that bruise on his head, he must've got caught out somehow and knocked cold—”

“When—when he went into the hall,” Georgine breathed.

“—and thrown into the garage. That inside door won't open, it's wedged somehow. I guess he came to, you can see the grease smear on the floor where he dragged himself over to the car—probably couldn't get up to turn off the engine so he grabbed the hose off and the gas began pouring right into his face.”

Her body felt as if electricity had been shot into it. She was on her knees beside the limp form, “Nelse, he's not dead? Is he—is he going to die?”

“Dunno,” said Nelsing, maintaining the steady, even swing. “Gas might affect him specially. He's only got one good lung.”

“One—what did you say?”

“He got hurt—skiing accident, years ago. Broken ribs, punctured his lungs, and by the time they got the rest of him patched up the lung was flat with adhesions.”

“Nelse,” Georgine said, “get away from him. Let me take over.”

“You're groggy yourself.”

“
Nuts
. I never felt better, and I'm sick and tired of standing by wringing my hands while somebody saves
my
life.”

Her eyes blazed; when he moved it was as if propelled by the sheer force of her look and voice. “It's the right lung,” he said gruffly, getting to his feet. “Go light on it. I've got to go—up there. Somebody'll come to help you in a few minutes.”

Sure enough, she thought vaguely, there had been some commotion on the Road above them. She could not stop to wonder about it. Press gently; squat back and wait; press forward…

They had taught her in first aid class how to gauge the rests, but she found herself remembering the old-fashioned method of her childhood. “Out gas,” you said, pressing, and, “In come the air slowly.” She swayed back and forth, frantically intent.

Presently she began to talk aloud, though jerkily, as if the form were awake and listening. “Todd, you utter dimwit, was that why you wouldn't—even get into competition? All those—stories about why you couldn't get into—the war; I might have known how horribly you minded!”

Out gas; in comes the air slowly.

“You wouldn't say you loved me! You said not to take any—”

Out gas…

“—Anything second-rate. Did you mean
that
?”

In comes the air slowly. Had he moved then, ever so slightly? She dared not stop to make sure.

“Why, you poor lug, if I love somebody—d'you think I go around—counting his lungs?”

Out gas…

“S-second rate! What do you think is tops? What do I want with—a man who doesn't like women? Anybody—who married me would get two of 'em to start with.”

Out gas…

Her back and arms seemed to be full of red-hot rope, her wrists were shaking. In comes the air slowly… You couldn't call it crying when there were no sobs, when the tears just ran out of your eyes and dripped uncomfortably off your chin; but she couldn't see his face through the blur.

“You come out of that, Todd McKinnon, and start breathing. Todd darling…don't you dare die!”

When the ambulance interne came, she had to be lifted away, expostulating, “I can't stop, you mustn't stop it for a minute. Let me go on, or take it over yourself.”

“He's conscious, lady,” the interne said. It was the same one who had supervised the removal of Harry Gillespie, and he gave her a curious look. “He's got his eyes open, didn't you see? I guess he's been conscious for three, four minutes.”

“He has!” Georgine stood trembling, looking down at the eyes which were now innocently closed. “You mean to say I've been falling on him every five seconds, with that lung of his? I might have killed him!”

The bluish lips moved, and the interne bent over. Then he gave Georgine another penetrating glance. “He says from you it felt good,” the interne said.

“Where are you taking him?” Painfully she moved up the drive, following the stretcher.

“Emergency Hospital.”

“Can I go with him?”

“You his wife?” He shook his head. “Afraid there won't be room. You can come after, if you like, but he'll have to be quiet for a few days.”

“He's not going to die?” She turned to Nelsing, who stood beside the ambulance. “Nelse, he didn't throw away his life for me?”

Nelsing looked at the interne. “Good chance he'll recover, I should think,” the white-coated young man said. “Doesn't seem to be any skull fracture.” The stretcher slid gently into the ambulance.

“He'll be all right, Georgine,” Nelsing said. She closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, he was gazing at her intently. “You look a sight,” he said.

Not until long afterward did Georgine realize that he had been testing her. She didn't lift a hand to her smeared face and disordered hair. “I suppose I must,” she said.

“It's McKinnon, is it?” he said cryptically.

She understood him, and nodded.

There was a murmur from the ambulance. Nelsing swung himself inside, and bent over Todd. She could hear his answers.

“Sure, we knew, as soon as we analyzed the stuff under Mrs. Gillespie's toenails. She lost that slipper in the struggle and her foot scraped the floor. Paint, and—”

“…Almost too late. He hadn't expected us, but he saw us coming, and took gopher poison in the bathroom, with the door locked so we had to break it down. Got a statement, though. They have a few lucid moments even when they're dying of strychnine. Did you see him when he attacked you?”

“…Oh, you guessed. He must have hoped against hope, trying to make it look like a double suicide or something. He'd have the world's best excuse for not knowing that engine was running.”

“…Okay, you get well. I'll be in later.”

He swung down again, and the ambulance backed slowly round in the space at the foot of Grettry Road. “What will happen to him?” Georgine asked breathlessly.

Nelsing looked down at her, frowning a little. “Nothing! You can't punish a dead man.”

“But you said he'd be all right,” she insisted wearily.

“Oh. You're still talking about Mac. Don't you know who the murderer was?”

She shook her head dumbly.

“For the Lord's sake, don't you even care?” said Nelsing incredulously.

Again Georgine shook her head.

He gave her a look of despair, of vast scorn, of something very like relief. He turned and set his hat at a jaunty angle on his head, and walked away up the road, whistling a little tune.

It must have welled up from his subconscious, for Howard Nelsing, who had no laughter lines around his eyes, would never have chosen it deliberately: that song whose words ran, “And they sing, oh,
ain't
you glad you're single!”

She sighed and pressed her palms against her face. It must be well after five, and she must get home to meet Barby, like greeting someone out of another life.

Maybe one of the policemen would give her a lift home. She too began to climb Grettry Road. There were men moving about the doorway in one of the small white houses. One of them was jostled against the door-post, and she heard, as if through a night of fog and impenetrable darkness, a single chime. It sounded like a clock striking the half-hour; but it was Peter Frey's tubular doorbell.

“Visitors, Mr. McKinnon,” said the nurse brightly, opening the door of the hospital room.

“Ah, Mrs. Wyeth,” said Todd, politely bowing. “And Miss Wyeth, I presume?”

Georgine squeezed her daughter's hand, and Barby looked up and smiled at her; the plain, thin little face became luminous with the swift passage of that smile. Then they both looked at Todd.

He seemed perfectly well, he was on his feet to receive them. His face, bent toward Barby, softened and came completely alive.

“How are you, Todd?” Georgine said.

“I could go home this minute,” he said, holding chairs for his visitors and himself perching on the high bed, “but they love me here. And besides, who'd nurse me at home?” He attempted to look pathetic.

“Three guesses,” Georgine said, “but you're probably afraid I'd be too stern with you. That blond nurse would eat out of your hand.”

Barby was looking Todd over, seriously. “Mamma,” she said, “is he the funny man you told me about?”

“He's the one, Barby.”

“Say something funny,” Barby requested courteously.

Georgine had never before seen Todd completely at a loss. He fell back against his pillow, looking at her wildly, reproachfully. “My dear young lady,” he said in a feeble voice, “you paralyze me.”

A small miracle occurred. Miss Wyeth accepted this as an answer to her request. She tried it over under her breath, “you paradise me,” she murmured, and then began to shake with quiet giggles. “He's funny,” she said confidentially to her mother.

“And when he's well,” said Georgine, exchanging a glance with Todd and drawing a long breath simultaneous with his, “he'll play the mouth-organ for you, I have no doubt.”

“
Now
,” Barby whispered, entreating.

“Of course I can,” Todd said in answer to Georgine's dubious look. “I've been getting along on half the normal allotment of air for years. What's a little gas?”

He gave her a level look, and added, “I'm glad you're not a lung counter. Dreadful habit, that.”

“Oh, you heard all that, did you?” She grinned at him, unembarrassed. “Fine. It ought to save a lot of trouble.”

“It will. Okay, Barby, here we go.”

Georgine sat relaxed and serene in the hard hospital chair, watching a technique that might have given points to the Pied Piper himself. The way Todd looked at Barby, they might be sharing a private joke; and Barby was succumbing completely.

She must be an instinctive judge of character
, thought her mother fatuously.

Todd played
Oh Susanna
, and
Camptown Races
and
La Golondrina
. By the time he'd finished repeating
Jingle Jangle
three times, by request, Barby was smiling. Her thin face had grown slowly radiant, and she had risen from her chair and gone to stand by Todd. Barby the solemn, the reserved and undemonstrative, was actually leaning against a stranger's knee.