Boone, Ill.
Sunday, P.M.
My Dearest Louise:
You undoubtedly already know the final results, Louise. I suppose every news ticker and every radio commentator in the midwest has had a field day. Especially those in Illinois. But all the little details, the somewhat dry step-by-step coverage they ignore, go like this:
Eleanor was sleeping. Doc Burbee had undressed her and put her to bed while I was raiding his ice box.
He stood beside her bed, alternately looking down on the girl and then at me. His fingers fumbled at the collar of his dressing gown for a bow tie that wasn’t there.
“I’ll have to report this, you know. Gun wound.”
“Yeah, I know. Are you particular who you report it to?”
“The police, of course!” he snapped.
“I can make a better suggestion.”
He waited for the better suggestion, glowering.
“Report it to Thompson. Ask him to pass it along to the City Hall.”
Still the doctor waited, trying again to tug at a tie.
“Look, Doc, you know something about this business. Thompson and me, we’re in it together — now. He came out to the hospital to see me about it. This girl is a part of it; as the other one was. Oh, hell! Where’s the telephone? I’ll call him myself.”
He showed me, and hung around to listen.
The State’s Attorney was in bed and said so. I guessed that. He had picked up his phone, put it back on the cradle, and picked it up again. Or maybe he had hit the cut-off button with his hand. Anyway, there were two clicks.
“Now wait a minute, please...” I tried to placate him after identifying myself. “This is important.”
“So is my sleep!” Mr. Thompson was somewhat annoyed. “I thought you were in the hospital?”
“So does the hospital... or maybe they know better by this time. Now hold on! Don’t shout at me like that. I haven’t broken and entered anything, yet. This is about another matter we were discussing.”
“I’m listening,” he reminded me impatiently.
“Not over the phone, ninny.”
There was considerable silence on his end while he thought that over. I heard heavy breathing. Finally he asked, “Something we discussed at the hospital?”
“That’s right.”
“Something that worried us considerably?”
“Right again.”
“And you have the answer?”
“I have the one answer you wouldn’t be foolish enough to go to court with.”
Silence. Then, “I think I understand. Where are you?”
“Remember your five fingers?”
“Uh? Oh yes, certainly.”
“Then think, you have one there with you, one is out of reach, one has a new job. The fourth and fifth are here.”
I could hear his feet hit the floor. “I’m on my way,” he snapped at me and dropped the phone into the cradle. Then someone else dropped another phone into another cradle. When I hung up it made the third click.
The listener was an amateur. Always wait until both parties hang up before you hang up yourself.
Burbee was standing beside me. He motioned to the phone.
“I heard two clicks on the other end.”
I nodded. “You’re beginning to get the idea.”
We walked back into the bedroom. Eleanor hadn’t moved. Her face seemed calm and less pale under the shaded light.
Burbee commented, “She bears a remarkable resemblance to that other girl. The one in the lake.”
“Sisters.”
He pursed his tongue in his cheek and studied me. “I wonder how much you know?”
“Me? The works. Thompson told me about the water in the stomach, if that’s what you mean. It’s funny how you guys keep overlooking that match; me, I can’t forget it.”
“Where did you find this... this...”
“Her name is Eleanor. Behind the door in my office. God knows how long she lay there. I’ve been in the hospital for a couple of days. Is she bad off?”
“No. She’ll get over it. Slight wound. Shock, and loss of blood mostly. Also hunger. I’ll wager she was behind that door for from fifteen to twenty hours, probably longer.”
I whistled, and recalled the dried blood spots.
Fifteen to twenty hours. That meant from about the time I had tried to get out of the hospital Friday night and had been stopped by the owlish nurse. Maybe longer.
The State’s Attorney arrived in almost no time with his wife chasing after him. Neither of them had taken time to dress. He wore a pair of trousers and an old sweater over his pajamas. His wife, whom he introduced as “Trudy,” kept her coat on. Maybe she didn’t have an old sweater. Trudy had a stenographer’s notebook and a couple of pencils.
“Where is she?” Thompson demanded anxiously. “Is she hurt?”
Doc Burbee answered both questions with a minimum of words, and asked him if he knew his phone was tapped. By the expression on Thompson’s face, I’d hazard a guess that he didn’t know it. He bent to inspect the sleeping girl and then turned to me for the story.
I gave it to him. While I was doing it, Eleanor heard me talking and opened her eyes.
They widened with alarm as they saw past me and discovered Bur-bee and Thompson standing there. She apparently didn’t remember Burbee from a short while ago. Before she could become alarmed I sat down on the edge of the bed and held one of her cold, unresisting hands.
In turn I introduced Burbee, Thompson, and Trudy.
