The Hour of the Cat (35 page)

 

 

Dunne descended from the El at Westchester Square. He thought there might be a cab waiting but there wasn't. Behind the fountain in the drugstore on the corner, a fat, pockmarked teenager in a paper service hat didn't look up from his comic book when Dunne asked about a cab.

“Won't be none till after five, when people come home from work.”

“What about the trolley?”

“Comes every forty minutes, except when it don't.” He wet his index finger and turned the page.

“When was the last one by?”

“'Bout two hours ago.”

Dunne ordered a Coke. “Ever hear of the Hermes Sanatorium?”

“Yup.” The kid kept reading as he jerked the soda.

“Is it within walking distance?”

“Depends on who's walkin'.” The kid held up his comic book. Underneath the title,
Visitors from Outer Space
, was a creature with a half dozen eyes and a matching number of legs. “Two legs gets you there in about twenty minutes. Six legs, you'd be there a whole lot faster.” He chuckled and buried himself back in the comic.

Dunne slung his suit jacket over his shoulder and started walking. The area east of the El was flat and sparsely populated, the sun strong and relentless. He shielded his eyes. Way off, beyond St. Raymond's Cemetery, an aircraft climbed into the sky. According to John Mayhew Taylor, the Professor's understudy, it wouldn't be long before the Germans or Japs could attack America's coasts. As the plane circled over the Sound and headed out to sea, another appeared and flew off in the same direction. The air traffic, Dunne realized, was part of the growing fleet of planes coming in and out of the North Beach Airport. Their mission wasn't military but commercial and recreational. They were carrying businessmen and wealthy vacationers to California and the Orient, whisking them in a day to places that had once taken weeks or months to reach.

At almost the same moment Dunne reached the pitted, crumbling sidewalk in front of the Hermes Sanatorium, the Tremont Avenue trolley rumbled past. There was no sign on the surrounding wall, but it was the only structure on the entire block. A towering Victorian pile of turrets and dormers, it had obviously been built in the days when this section of the Bronx was still part of Westchester and its fringes—hinterlands once deemed as distant from the metropolis as the Indian territories out West.

The latch on the wrought-iron gate lifted easily. He donned his jacket and walked leisurely up the gravel driveway that curved across a well manicured lawn. The slight movement of the lace curtain next to the front door alerted him that his arrival was being watched. The door opened as soon as he set foot on the porch. A trim, youthful man emerged in white tennis shoes, white pants, and a collarless white shirt tight enough to show off his rock-hard build. He grasped Dunne's hand. “I'm Louis, Mr. Waldruff. We spoke on the phone. Dr. Sparks told us you'd be driving up.”

“I took the train. It seemed easier,” Dunne said. Obviously mistaken for someone else, he decided to play along and use the opportunity.

“Miss Loben is expecting you.” Louis led him into the foyer. It was far cooler inside. He put Dunne's hat in a closet beneath the stairway. Dunne craned his neck and looked up. The walls were painted the same sky blue as those on the first floor. A cascade of sunlight poured through an arched window at the top of the stairs.

The house was airy, cheery, bright, the opposite of how it appeared on the outside. Flanking the stairs were two large, gold-framed watercolors of blossoming plants, yellow nasturtiums, blue larkspur, and a cluster of red bleeding hearts. “I'll let Miss Loben know you're here.” Louis went down a corridor to the right, his rubber-soled shoes moving noiselessly across the thickly carpeted floors, and disappeared.

The soft click-clack, click-clack, click-clack of the ceiling fan slowly revolving above Dunne's head was the only noise. He listened for voices, footsteps, any sound of movement. Nothing. The place felt more like a funeral home than a refuge for those whose minds were feeble or disturbed.

Louis returned and said Miss Loben was ready to see him. Dunne asked to use a bathroom first. Louis's smile instantly soured. “Miss Loben doesn't like to be kept waiting.”

“I think I'd rather be late than have an accident in her office.”

“All right.” Louis directed Dunne to a door close to the stairway. “I'll let her know you're delayed a minute.” Louis went off in the same direction as before.

Dunne examined the inside lock on the bathroom door. He cracked the door open, reached outside, and removed the key. The door could only be locked or unlocked from outside, a precaution, Dunne supposed, to prevent the inmates from locking themselves inside. He took the change from his pocket, picking through it until he found a coin that fit into the keyhole. It turned out to be the last of Hubert's slugs. He flushed the toilet and stepped out into the empty hallway. He locked the door, removed the key, and stuck the slug in the hole. He buried the key in the dirt of the potted palm next to the door.

“Welcome.” A blonde woman, short but well proportioned, approached. Louis was directly behind her.

“I'm Irene Loben.” She took her hand from the pocket of the yellow smock she was wearing and extended it to Dunne. “Louis told me you were driving up. Now he tells me you came by train.”

“That's what Dr. Sparks's office told me,” Louis said.

“Mr. Waldruff, I apologize that no one was at Westchester Square to meet you, and I appreciate your arriving exactly at the appointed time. If only the whole country were run that way, we'd all be better off.”

Louis had an unhappy look on his face, like a dog who'd just been scolded. “But Miss Loben, it wasn't my fault. That's what Dr. Sparks's office . . .”

“Not now, Louis,” Miss Loben snapped. “We'll settle this later.”

“Actually, I enjoyed the exercise,” Dunne said.

“I'm glad to hear it. But be assured that Louis will drive you back to the train.” Miss Loben dismissed Louis with a few curt words and guided Dunne to a sunny corner office that had her name on the door. A large desk was catty-cornered between two casement windows that looked out on a playground, which contained a slide and a set of bars for climbing and swinging. The ground beneath was covered with what appeared to be a mixture of sand and ash, meticulously raked, no sign of any footprints. To the rear, the high weeds of the Bronx swamplands stretched off toward Long Island Sound.

Miss Loben sat behind the desk, Dunne in the chair directly in front of her. She lifted a pair of wire-rimmed glasses from the breast pocket of her smock and removed a crystal paperweight from atop the lone file on the empty expanse of the desk. “The paperwork is all complete. We just need your signature.” Her stare was made more severe by the glasses.

Dunne gestured at the window behind her, where another plane could be seen ascending. “It must be nice to be on one of those planes headed to some lush resort.”

“I suppose.” Miss Loben didn't bother to look. “But our work doesn't permit such frivolity.” She turned the paperweight to face him, as though she wanted him to read the motto incised on it:

“Of course.” Whoever Miss Loben thought he was, he didn't want to say anything that might tip her off he wasn't.

“Dr. Sparks has undoubtedly covered most of the particulars with you.”

“He was pressed for time, a tennis match on Long Island that he was late for.”

“Yes, the doctor takes his tennis quite seriously.”

“He said you'd go over everything.”

Her eyebrows lifted above the wire rims. “
Everything?”

“Dr. Sparks wanted to be sure there are no misunderstandings.”

Her jaw tightened visibly. She removed her glasses. “As the director of a public institution, you're correct to pay careful attention to what happens to those committed to your care. But, at the very least, you're acquainted with our reputation for the care we provide to a wide range of defective children—idiots, imbeciles, morons, mongoloids, the feeble-minded, epileptics, those with hydrocephalus. That's why you're here, isn't it?”

“Yes, but you can never be too careful. Wouldn't you agree?”

“Very well, then, let me put your mind at rest.” She flashed her flawlessly straight smile, perfect except for a fleck of blood-red lipstick on the top right front tooth. “The twin boys you're requesting be transferred here are both chronic defectives, bereft of parents or close relatives, and have been resident with you for almost a decade. We understand your dilemma all too well. The state legislature of Vermont cuts your funding and at the same time insists you take more inmates. The situation grows worse each year. Even compulsory sterilization seems to make no dent in the increasing crop of mentally diseased defectives.

“The same story, in one form or another, is repeated across our country, which is why this sanatorium was founded. Thanks to private funding, we're able to take a select number of patients off the public rolls and offer a level of care they could find nowhere else. That's why it's so important to be utterly discreet about the transfer. Otherwise, we would be overwhelmed with requests.” She placed a pen on the open file and pushed it toward him. “All we need is your signature, Mr. Waldruff. It's as simple as that.”

He closed the file and turned it sideways. An ordinary file, standard size and color, available in most stationery stores, identical to the one he'd rescued from the Hoover Flats. “My one concern is, well, if something happens to the twins.”

“Happens?”

“What if they die?”

“In that eventuality, after examining the body for any clues to the eugenic origin of its defects, the cremated remains are properly disposed of. In ten years, there's never been a single question asked. Remember, we only take those cases where there are no close family members, or contact has been broken.”

“I have one more problem, Miss Loben.”

“Which is?” She gripped the pen tightly.

“My stomach's giving me trouble. I need to use the bathroom again.”

She jabbed a buzzer on her desk. Louis must have been right outside her office, because he reappeared immediately. “Please escort Mr. Waldruff to the bathroom.”

“Again?” Louis asked.

“I'll be as quick as I can,” Dunne said.

“Please do.” She put her glasses back on and read, or pretended to read, the file on her desk.

Louis led him to the same bathroom as before, and was about to walk away when Dunne called him back. “The door seems to be locked,” he said.

“Here, let me give it a try.” Louis jiggled the doorknob. “The key's missing.”

“It was there when I went before. Please get it open. I
really
have to go.”

“It's okay. I got the master.” Louis tried to slide the key chained to his belt into the hole but it wouldn't go. “Damn,” he said. “Feels like something's stuck in there.” He knelt on one knee to peer inside.

Dunne hopped from foot to foot. “God, I can't wait anymore.”

Louis stood and pushed his shoulder against the door. He twisted hard on the knob. “Shit,” he muttered.

Arms round his stomach, Dunne let out a moan.

“All right, quick, follow me.” Louis hurried up the stairs. Dunne followed, still moaning and bent over. Louis pushed open the first door on the right. “In here.”

Dunne slammed the door shut. He flushed the toilet and moaned again, but softly, as if in relief rather than desperation.

“You all right, Mr. Waldruff?”

“Yeah, thanks, just made it. Be a few minutes, I'm afraid.” He flushed the toilet several more times. He sat and listened. There was no sound from outside. He opened the door a crack and peeked out. Louis was gone. Tiptoeing into the hallway, he pulled the door gently shut. One after another, he tried the doors that lined the corridor, but they were all locked. He stopped and listened. The house was enveloped in silence. The last door he tried, next to the servant's stairway, swung open.

He entered a handsomely appointed office. The furniture was heavy and oaken. The bookcases lining the walls were filled with leather-bound volumes, gold-embossed titles in Latin or German on their spines. He sat behind the desk, its leather blotter stamped with a gold caduceus, and opened the deep, capacious drawers. A few sheets of stationery and some medical forms were all they contained. He was about to close the bottom left drawer when he noticed how shallow it seemed. There was a small indentation on the bottom of the drawer. He used his penknife as a lever. The bottom lifted like the lid on a box. Beneath was a honeycombed box; each cell held a sealed vial. The drawer on the other side had the same trick bottom and arrangement of sealed vials. He stuck one in his pocket, restored the papers to the desk, and closed the drawers.

He crossed to the door set between the built-in bookcases, which opened to a large closet. He pulled on the cord that hung from the ceiling and turned on the light. The closet contained six oak filing cabinets, three on either side. He took the key from his pocket, the one he'd rescued from beneath Miss Lynch's highboy. It went smoothly into the lock. The key opened all the filing cabinets. They were stuffed with files similar to the one he'd taken from Toby Butts—hundreds of them. The same word,
Sektionen
, and the same numbering system deciphered by the Professor were on each. Inside were photos of children as well as adults, detailed drawings and measurements of skulls and facial features, and pages of medical observations transcribed in both German and English.