Voice Out of Darkness Read Free Page B

asking shyly for a lunch date.
    Two weeks, thought Katy, being firm and gentle with Mr. Wilsham. Two weeks in Fenwick will be enough, because then I’ll either know who and why or I’ll know I can never find out…
    It was, finally, two-thirty when Michael called. Katy had sat, wriggling, through an endless copy meeting in which the advertising manager made windy statements about an institutional approach to all copy in the future and Stan, sitting beside Katy and listening with a rapt and reverent face, wrote a letter to her mother in San Antonio. Immediately after the meeting, Katy had maneuvered for and been granted a two-weeks’ leave of absence, based on one large inspired lie. She had then rushed a protesting Stan through a sandwich at lunch, and at two-twenty-five was smoking a cigarette she didn’t want. When the phone rang and Michael’s far-off voice said, “Hello? Katy? Is Miss Meredith there?” she was lightheaded with relief. “It’s me,” she said. “I. Hello.”
    “Was going to call you earlier,” Michael said, “but I had to get in touch with a friend of mine. He’s a lieutenant in homicide. He—er—we’d like to have a drink with you tonight.”
    All at once Katy felt chilled again. “Oh, Michael—”
    “You’ll like him.” Michael was firm. “He’ll be quite unofficial. He’s probably come up against this before and he’ll know whether there’s anything in it and what you’d better do.”
    “But I know what I’m going to do,” said Katy, bracing herself. “I’m—”
    “—can’t hear you,” Michael said, himself receding. His voice came back. “Is eight all right?”
    “I’m going there,” said Katy. “Going there, Michael.”
    “You’re going out?”
    “No, I said-”
    “Will you be back at nine-thirty?” said Michael, baffled.
    “Five cents, please,” said the operator.
    “Eight,” said Katy desperately.
    “Five, madam,” said the operator coldly.
    “Dear God. Eight, Michael,” Katy said, unnerved, and put an end to it by hanging up.
     
    Michael Blythe and a stranger in a gray overcoat were standing in the fourth floor hall when Katy stepped out of the elevator that night. She had worked late and had dinner at a small Italian restaurant on Tenth Street on her way home. She had told herself, briskly, that she simply had to get next week’s headlines written. She knew perfectly well that she hadn’t wanted to come back, alone, to the unlighted silence of her own apartment.
    She was disconcerted, in the midst of her apologies for lateness, by Lieutenant Hooper’s mild and wrenlike appearance; he looked, she thought, like a portrait of a Pelham commuter. Rubbers. Plaid woolen muffler, an air of having been assembled, eyed critically, and finally dismissed on the 8:32 by a bustling, dutiful wife. Except for his eyes: shrewd, steady, impartial as jewelers’ scales.
    Katy collected coats and hats, bore them off to the bedroom, and came back to the living room to find Michael and Lieutenant Hooper talking amiably about the governor’s speech. Now that the time had come to discuss the letters with an unofficial representative of the law, she felt childish and a little guilty, as though she had just turned in a false fire alarm. Lieutenant Hooper would think she was upset over nothing, he would say kindly that these things happened every day and not to worry, and go off musing tolerantly about taxpayers who wanted to get their money’s worth out of the police force. Katy cursed Michael silently and said aloud with an effort, “I suppose Michael’s told you about the letters, Lieutenant. Have you seen them? ”
    “Yes,” Lieutenant Hooper said. “They refer, according to Mr. Blythe, to the accidental death of your foster-sister. I’d like that in detail in a minute or two. Do you happen to remember the date when you got the first of the letters, Miss Meredith?”
    “Early in October,” Katy said slowly. “The fourth or fifth, I think, because