Do Evil In Return by Margaret Millar Page A

at my bedazzlement. Well, that covers everything, actually. There you have it.”
    “What am I expected to say?”
    “Oh, you don’t have to say anything. Just blush now and then. It encourages me.”
    “You’re—you’re insufferable.”
    “Only at first glance,” Easter said, patiently. “Second and third glances reveal my sterling, less obvious qualities.”
    “I don’t care to see them.”
    “You will, though. I’ll be around.”
    She looked at her watch, attempting to appear cool and indifferent. “I have to get back to my office.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “Don’t bother driving me. I can walk.” She got up. “Thank you for the lunch.”
    “I hope there’ll be others.”
    “That’s unlikely.”
    “Other autopsies, other lunches,” Easter said. “By the way, there’s one thing I forgot to mention.” “What is it?”
    “Any time you and Ballard need a chaperon, give me a call.”

13
    At five o’clock Miss Schiller started making preparations to go home. Ever since lunch, when she’d read in the newspaper about Violet’s death, she had been talking continually to a succession of patients, enlarging now and then on the truth: “There she stood in the doorway, looking so alive, you know what I mean? Yet I knew, I knew by her eyes that something was up.”… “It’s a blot on the city, but then of course she wasn’t a native. She came from a little town in Oregon, it says in the paper.”
    A rich, a full, a satisfying afternoon, marred only by an occasional black look from Charlotte and the fact that some patients selfishly preferred to discuss their own symptoms.
    Miss Schiller combed her hair and replaced the net over it. With the net on, it hardly looked like hair at all but like a fuzzy gray cap under which the real Miss Schiller hid, bald as an egg.
    The newspaper that she’d bought at lunchtime lay on her desk folded so that she could glance at Violet’s picture whenever she felt the excitement beginning to deflate inside her. Mrs. Violet O’Gorman, of Ashley, Oregon, whose body was found this morning on West Beach apparently a suicide …
    Miss Schiller was reading the report all over again, with the intense fascination of one reading about herself, when Charlotte came out of her office dressed for the street and carrying her medical bag.
    Miss Schiller hurriedly turned the paper over and said in her most alert, efficient voice, “Yes, doctor?”
    “How many house calls to make?”
    “Only three. Here they are.”
    “Lord,” Charlotte said. She leaned against the desk and closed her eyes for a moment. The thought of even three house calls appalled her.
    “It’s none of my business, doctor, but I must say you haven’t been looking at all well the past few days.”
    “No?”
    “Haggard, you look, real haggard.”
    “Thanks.”
    “I was reading only the other day that doctors die sooner than people in any other profession. Now this new herbal tonic I’m taking, really, it’s so invigorating.”
    “The stuffs probably loaded with alcohol. No wonder it peps you up.”
    “Alcohol?” Miss Schiller blanched. “Oh no. They wouldn’t dare…”
    “Cheer up. It won’t kill you,” Charlotte said.
    “But I don’t drink. I don’t believe in alcohol.”
    “Well, maybe the tonic will help you change your mind.”
    The phone rang, but Miss Schiller was too perturbed to answer it. In her imagination she was already an alcoholic, doomed to a drunkard’s grave, through no fault of her own. The vicious stuff was right this minute churning around in her bloodstream, corroding her will, destroying her character. That’s what they told her when she took the pledge—that one never knew when one’s will was being corroded until it was too late. Oh dear. She felt quite giddy.
    “Charley? Bill Blake.”
    “Hello Bill,” Charlotte said.
    “I have to go out of town the beginning of next week. I thought we’d try a switch again, if you’re willing.”
    “Certainly.”
    “If