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 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. 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.
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 glasses. . . 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