"Yessuh." She grabbed up the receiver and began dialing.

I turned and knelt beside Georgia Langston. She hadn't fainted, but her face was deathly pale and her eyes completely without expression as her hands twisted at the cloth of her skirt.

"Mrs. Langston," I said. "It's all right."

She didn't even see me.

"Georgia!" I said sharply.

She frowned then, and some of the blankness went out of her eyes and she looked at me. And this time I was there.

"Oh," she said. She put her hands up to her face and shook her head. "I-I'm all right," she said shakily.

Josie put down the phone. "The doctor'll be here in a few minutes," she said.

"Good." I stood up. "What was the number of that room?"

"That was Five."

I hurried over behind the desk. "Do you know where she keeps the registration cards?"

"I'll get them," Mrs. Langston said. She started to get up. I strode back and pushed her down in the chair again. "Stay there. Just tell me where they are."

"A box. On the shelf under the desk. If you'll hand them to me-"

I found it and put it in her lap. "Do you take license numbers?"

"Yes," she said, taking the cards out one by one and glancing at them. "I've got that one, I know. It was a man alone. He came in about two o'clock this morning."

"Good." I whirled back to the telephone and dialed Operator. When she answered, I said, "Get me the Highway Patrol."

"There's not an office here," she said. "The nearest one-"

"I don't care where it is," I said. "Just get it for me."

"Yes, sir. Hold on, please."

I turned to Mrs. Langston. She had found the card. "What kind of car was it?" I asked.

She was seized by a spasm of trembling, as if with a chill. She took a deep breath. "A Ford. A green sedan. It was a California license, and I remember thinking it was odd the man should have such a Southern accent, almost like a Georgian."

"Fine," I said. "Read the number off to me."

"It's M-F-A-three-six-three."

It took a second to sink in. I was repeating it. "M-F-what?"

I whirled, reached out, and grabbed it from her hand.

"I'm ringing your party, sir," the operator said.

I looked at the number on the card. "Never mind, Operator," I said slowly. "Thank you." I dropped the receiver back on the cradle.

Mrs. Langston stared at me. "What is it?" she asked wonderingly.

"That's my my number," I said. number," I said.

She shook her head. "I don't understand."

"They were the plates off my car."

4

We'll show you tomorrow, he'd said. he'd said. But just a hint! you understand. But just a hint! you understand. The job was for my benefit. He'd done five hundred to a thousand dollars' worth of damage to one of her rooms to get his message across to me. The job was for my benefit. He'd done five hundred to a thousand dollars' worth of damage to one of her rooms to get his message across to me.

I stepped over by her. "Can you describe him?" I asked.

Her head was bowed again, and her hands trembled as they pleated and unpleated a fold of her skirt. She was slipping back into the wooden insularity of shock. I knelt beside the chair. I hated to hound her this way, but when the doctor arrived he'd given her a sedative, and it might be twenty-four hours before I could talk to her again.

"Can you give me any kind of description of him?" I asked gently.

She raised her head a little and focused her eyes on me, then drew a hand across her face in a bewildered gesture. She took a shaky breath. "I-I-"

Josie shot me an angry and troubled glance. "Hadn't you ought to leave her alone? The pore child can't takes no more."

"I know," I said.

Mrs. Langston made a last effort. "I'm all right." She paused, and then went on in a voice that was almost inaudible and was without any expression at all. "I think he was about thirty-five. Tall. Perhaps six foot. But very thin. He had sandy hair, and pale blue eyes, and he'd been out in the sun a lot. You know-wrinkles in the corners of the eyes-bleached eyebrows. . . ." Her voice trailed off.

"You're doing fine," I told her. "Can you think of anything else?"

She took a deep breath. "I think he wore gla.s.ses. . . Yes. . . . They had steel rims. . . . He had on a white shirt. . . . But no tie."

"Any distinguishing marks? Scars, things like that?"

She shook her head.

A car came to a stop on the gravel outside. I stood up. "What's the doctor's name?" I asked Josie.

"Dr. Graham," she said.

I went out. A youngish man with a pleasant, alert face and a blond crew-cut was slamming the door of a green two-seater. He had a small black bag in his hand.

"Dr. Graham? My name's Chatham," I said. We shook hands and I told him quickly what had happened. "On top of all the rest of it, I suppose it overloaded her. Hysteria, shock-I don't know exactly what you'd call it. But I think she's on the ragged edge of a nervous breakdown."

"Yes, I see. We'd better have a look at her," he said politely, but with the quick impatience of all physicians for all lay diagnosis.

I followed him inside.

He spoke to her, and then frowned at the woodenness of her response. "We'd better get her into the bedroom," he said. "If you'll help-"

"Just bring your bag," I said.

She tried to protest and stand, but I picked her up and followed Josie in through the curtained doorway behind the desk. It was a combined living- and dining-room. There were two doors opposite. The one on the right led into the bedroom. It was cool and quiet, with the curtains closed against the sun, and furnished with quiet good taste. The rug was pearl-gray, and there was a double bed covered with a dark blue corduroy spread. I placed her on it.

"I'm all right now," she said, trying to sit up. I pushed her gently back onto the pillow. Framed in the aureole of dark and tousled hair, her face was like white wax.

Dr. Graham placed his bag on a chair and was taking out the stethoscope. He nodded for me to leave. "You stay," he said to Josie.

I went back through the outer room. It had a fireplace at one end, and there were a number of mounted fish on the walls and some enlarged photographs of boats. I thought absently that the fish were dolphin, but I paid little attention to them. I was in a hurry. I grabbed up the phone in the office and called the Sheriff.

"He's not here," a man's voice said. "This is Redfield. What can I do for you?"

"I'm calling from the Magnolia Lodge-" I began.

"Yes?" he interrupted. "What's wrong out there now. The voice wasn't harsh so much as abrupt and impatient and somehow annoyed.

"Vandalism," I said. "An acid job. Somebody's wrecked one of the rooms."

"Acid? When did it happen?"

"Sometime between two a.m. and daylight."

"He rented the room? Is that it?" In spite of the undertone of annoyance or whatever it was, this one obviously was more on the ball than that comedian I'd talked to yesterday. There was a tough professional competence in the way he snapped the questions.

"That's right," I said. "How about shooting a man here?"

"You got a license number? Description of the car?"

"The car's a green Ford sedan," I replied, and quickly repeated her description of the man. "The number was phony. The plates were stolen."

"Hold it a minute!" he cut in brusquely. "What do you mean, they're stolen? How would you know?"

"Because they were mine. My car's in the garage, being worked on. The big garage with a showroom-"

"Not so fast. Just who are you, anyway?"

I told him. Or started to. He interrupted me again. "Look, I don't get you in this picture at all. Put Langston on."

"She's collapsed," I said. "The doctor's with her. How about getting a man out here to look at that mess?"

"We'll send somebody," he said. "And you stick around. We want to talk to you."

"I'm not going anywhere," I said.

He hung up.

I stood for a moment, thinking swiftly. The chances were it was sulphuric. That was cheap, and common, easy to get. And if I could neutralize it soon enough I might save a little something from the wreckage. The woodwork and furniture could be refinished if the stuff didn't eat in too far. But I had to be sure, first. Turning, I hurried back into the room behind the curtained doorway, and took the door on the left this time. It was the kitchen. I began yanking open the cupboards above the sink. In a moment I found what I was looking for, a small tin of bicarbonate of soda.

Grabbing it, I went out and up to Room 5 at the double. I stood in the doorway and rubbed my handkerchief into the sodden ruin of the carpet until it was damp with the acid. Then I spread it on the concrete slab of the porch, sprinkled a heavy coating of soda over one half of it and waited. In a few minutes the untreated part tore at a touch, like wet paper, but that under the soda was merely discolored. I kicked it off onto the gravel and went back. My hand itched where it had been in contact with the acid. I found a tap in front of the office and washed it.

I could take her car if I could find the keys. But I wanted to talk to the doctor before he left, and I had to be here when the men from the Sheriff's office showed up. I went inside and called a taxi. When I hung up I could hear the professional murmur of the doctor's voice in the bedroom. With nothing to occupy my mind for the moment, I was conscious of the rage again. The yearning to get my hands on him was almost like s.e.xual desire. Cool off, I thought; you'd better watch that. In another minute or two a car stopped outside. I went out.

It was Jake, with his keyboard of grave and improbable teeth. "Howdy," he said.

"Good morning, Jake." I handed him a twenty. "Run over to the nearest grocery store or market, will you, and bring me a case of baking soda."

He stared. "A case? You sure must have a king-size indigestion."

"Yeah," I said. When I offered no explanation, he took off, still looking at me as if I'd gone mad.

There'd probably be very little chance of tracing the acid, I thought. We were dealing with a sharper mind than that: he'd know better than to buy it, and if he could break into that garage to lift my number plates he could certainly do the same to some battery shop to steal it.

I glanced at my watch with sudden impatience. What the h.e.l.l was keeping them? It had been ten minutes since I'd called. I went back inside. Josie had come out and was standing by the desk in doleful and anxious suspension as if she couldn't figure out which way to turn to pick up the broken thread of her day. The doctor came out through the curtains and set his bag on the desk. He was carrying a prescription pad.

"What do you think?" I asked.

He glanced at me, frowning. "You're not a relative by any chance?"

"No," I said.

He nodded. "I didn't think she had any here-"

"Listen, Doctor," I said, "somebody's got to take charge here. I don't know what friends she has in town, or where you could run down her next of kin, so you might as well tell me. I'm a friend of hers."

"Very well." He put down the prescription pad, undipped his pen, and started writing. "Get these made up right away and start giving them as soon as she wakes up. I gave her a sedative, so it'll be late this afternoon or tonight. But what she needs more than anything is rest--"

He stopped then and glanced up at me. "And what I mean by rest is exactly that. Absolute rest, in bed. Quiet. With as few worries as possible and no more emotional upheavals if you can help it."

"You name it," I said. "She gets it."

"Try to get some food into her. I'd say off-hand she was twenty pounds underweight. I can't tell until we can run lab tests, of course, but I don't think it's anemia or anything organic at all. It looks like overwork, lack of sleep, and emotional strain."

"What about nervous breakdown?"

He shook his head. "That's always unpredictable; it varies too much with individual temperament and nervous reserve. We'll just have to wait and see what she's like in the next few days. Off-hand, I'd say she's dangerously close to it. I don't know how long she's been over-drawing her account, and I'm no psychiatrist, anyway, but I do think she's been under too much pressure too long-"

His voice trailed off. Then he shrugged, and said crisply, "Well, to get back to more familiar ground. This is a tranquillizer. And this one's vitamins. And here's Phen.o.barbital." He glanced up at me as he shoved the prescriptions across the desk. "Keep the phen.o.barbs yourself and give it to her by individual dose, as directed."

"That bad?" I asked.