Chapter 15
I HAD a rough time of it all day Sunday with Judith Call. Once, during the morning, she tried to throw herself through the window and I had to bat her hard, driving her against the wall, to keep her from winding up in the street. Later in the. afternoon she tried it again and this time I slapped her face until it was beet-red. Finally, she fell exhausted upon the bed. She lay there sobbing.
"You have to believe me, Judith," I said as patiently as I could. I sat down on the bed. "You've got to realize that I'm trying to help you."
We stayed there like that, two people in a small room and yet very far apart, until long after dark. Her miserable seff-recriminations episode had began, of course, about nine that morning when she'd suddenly come awake. Her mind, even late in the day, was still clogged from the effects of the dope and, I suppose, the tortures of her previous experiences.
"Judith," I pleaded again, "Please be reasonable! I want to help you. Your father wants to help you. Everybody wants to help. But you have to stop this crying long enough so we can talk. The tears won't solve anything. Believe me, they won't. My God, do you know what time it is? Almost ten o'clock! And neither one of us has had a thing to eat all day. Aren't you hungry? Maybe if you ate something you'd feel better."
I kept talking to her this way, reasoning with her, trying to make her trust me and feel unafraid. Finally, when I mentioned her father again, she suddenly sat up. Her glance was defiant and bitter.
"A lot he cares!"
"But he does, Judith. He cares a great deal. He's your father and he wants to help you."
A smile twisted her lips and she didn't look at all like the pretty young girl I had first seen in New Rockford.
"It's too late now," she said. Her eyes became angry as she stared at me. "Who are you? Another one?"
She hadn't recognized me. I was not surprised.
"I brought you here," I said. "But I'm not one of them."
"I slept in your bed?"
"That's right, you did."
"And you had your-fun?"
I could have struck her for saying that. "I sat in that chair over there, watching you. I didn't know what you might try to do when you woke up. And it was a good thing that I did. Twice, I had to stop you from jumping out of the window."
"You did?" She shook her head in disbelief. "I don't remember doing anything like that. I think you're lying."
"I'm not lying," I told her. "You were at a party-do you remember that?"
She sat up straighter on the bed, frowning.
"I remember going somewhere. It was a big house."
"Yes. Were you drunk when you went there?"
"We always drink, every day." Then, as an afterthought, "How else can you live this way?"
"You were given some dope. Sodium amytal. Undoubtedly it was given to you in the form of a pill. Can you recall taking anything like that?"
She got up from the bed, wavering. Her hair, I noticed for the first time, was a terrible mess. She looked at least twenty years older.
"Who are you?" she demanded. She glanced around the room, as though she were seeing it for the first time. "And what are you doing with me here?"
"I'm a friend," I repeated gently, moving between the girl and the window. "And I'm trying to help. If you'll let me." She stood perfectly still by the bed, trembling, and I walked toward her slowly, speaking as I did so. "Don't you recognize me, Judith? Don't you recall having seen me before?"
Her eyes lifted to my face, lingering for an instant. And then, with an agonized sigh, she covered her face with her hands.
"Oh, God," she whispered, "I don't remember you."
"I met you in New Rockford."
"You-did?"
"When I came up to get material for an article on that sports car. Don't you remember? Look at me, Judith! I've changed myself a little-a moustache, short hair, the glasses-but I'm the man who was there in the garage, taking pictures, the day you went off."
Her hands came away from her face and I stood there very close to her, looking down into her eyes.
"Don't you remember me, Judith?"
Recognition came to her slowly, like the morning sun bursting through a cloud bank. And, not unlike the blazing fire of the sun coming up over a new horizon, it was sort of wonderful to see.
"Oh, Mr. Morgan!" she sobbed, pressing in against me. "Mr. Morgan!"
She clung to me for a long while, sobbing. But this time her tears were not those of fear or regret. They were the tears of hope.
"I've been an awful fool," she said at last.
"All of us are, at one time or another."
"I want to be able to trust you, Mr. Morgan."
I stroked her damp hair, forcing her head back so that I could see her face.
"You can trust me," I told her seriously. "I risked my life to bring you here."
She turned her head away and pushed free of my arms.
She sat down on the bed again. She looked every bit like an innocent young schoolgirl who has just been berated by her favorite teacher.
"I didn't come to the city for this," she reminded me sadly. "I came here because I thought I could get a job and because I wanted to be somebody." Her hands went down over her body, touching it hesitantly as though it were now something dirty. Her eyes glistened again, filling with tears, but her voice was tragically steady. "Look at me now, Mr. Morgan. I'm a prostitute. The daughter of a minister-and in less than a month I've become nothing but a cheap-"
"You mustn't say that."
"But it's true."
"It's true only if you believe it."
We talked for a long while, until almost midnight, before I suggested that we go out and have something to eat.
"But I look so terrible," she protested. "And I haven't any coat."
I told her not to worry about the coat, that I'd pick up another one for her in the morning. "Tell you what, I'll go down and get something," I said, opening the door. "I won't be gone long."
Truthfully, I didn't want to leave her alone in the room but there wasn't much I could do about it. And, anyway, she seemed to have calmed down considerably. She seemed thankful for what I had tried to do for her. As I walked to the restaurant in the next block, I thought again of some of the things she had told me. She hadn't blamed Elsa Lang for any of her troubles. Elsa had told her that she didn't know Anderson very well but Judith had taken a chance on the lead because she'd been so sick of things at home in New Rockford. I had asked her if she had any recollection of her night at the house, but all she could tell me was that she felt she had been talking to someone and that she had said many horrible things that she would not normally say. Her memory, I realized, was fogged with liquor, dope and terror. I might have insisted that she bare her indiscretions to me, but I did not. I am not morbidly curious.
There was a newsstand on the corner near the restaurant and I picked up a copy of the Sentinel and two packs of Winstons. While I waited for the girl behind the counter to fix up two roast beef sandwiches and coffee to take out, I scanned hastily through the pages of the paper. Just as the waitress finished packing the food, I found the item I had been seeking.
GIRL CONFESSES TO STARTING MODEL AGENCY FIRE
The account was brief and to the point It related that Miss Diana Sanderson, an employee of the Montana Model Agency, had been arrested for putting the torch to her employer's premises. The damage, it stated, had been considerable and Miss Sanderson, before her removal to the City Hospital for examination by a psychiatrist, had said her only reason for starting the fire had been to get even with the management for not having put her on as a model. "Who wants to be a file clerk all her life?" Miss Sanderson had inquired.
I paid the waitress and carried the carton into the street. The more I thought about Diana Sanderson the more I felt myself gaining respect for the girl. Perhaps her attention-getting method had been somewhat more drastic than I might have suggested but it had, without a doubt, created the desired effect. The only trouble now was that she might get sent to jail for what she had done. Or, facing jail, she might blurt out the truth and this could very easily reach Miller's alert ears. I knew without deciding upon the method to be used, that I would have to do something to help her.
Then I got a shock. My room, I discovered upon my return, was empty.
The girl was gone.
Not only that, but the top drawer of the dresser was open and a careful examination of it failed to reveal the twenty dollars I had left there for my room rent.
I sat down on the bed, cursing. Either Judith Call was basically a good girl and she was merely trying to run away from herself and everyone who knew her, or she wasn't any good at all and she was on her way back to the syndicate. Remembering her, I tried to believe that the former was true. But I could not be sure. And even though she might betray me to them, I had to keep on with my plans until the ring was smashed. Or until I was killed.