Do Evil In Return by Margaret Millar Page B

you haven’t anything critical on your books, I could take over your practice for the rest of this week, and you take mine next Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.”
    “That suits me.”
    “Swell,” Blake said. “Dare I hope that Miss Schiller has quit and gone into a nunnery?”
    “You dare not.”
    “All I can do is keep her under ether, then. I’ll see you, and thanks, Charley.”
    “Good-bye.” She hung up and turned to Miss Schiller. “Dr. Blake sends you his love.”
    “He does?” Miss Schiller bounced out of her drunkards grave with the single-minded agility of a rabbit “Well, I must say I’m flattered. Dr. Blake is such a sweet man.”
    “Yes. He’ll be around now and then for the rest of the week. Any calls that come in, just relay to his office. And in the morning you’d better phone the patients who have appointments and send them to Dr. Blake, or else make new appointments. The charts are all in order?”
    “Of course.” Miss Schiller was offended. “Well, I mean, really. I’ve been in this business for…”
    “No offense meant.” Charlotte picked up her medical bag from the desk where she’d put it when she answered the telephone. It seemed heavier than usual. She realized that for the first time in years she felt exhausted. She moved slowly, as if part of her brain tissue had been destroyed like a spastic’s, and each physical move she made had to be thought out and the muscles forced to obey.
    “What a nice coincidence that Dr. Blake phoned,” Miss Schiller said. “Now you can have a good rest for a few days. Go down to the beach and lie in the sun.”
    “Perhaps I will.” She wondered, briefly, about the “nice coincidence,” and then forgot about it as soon as she reached the street and got into her car.
    It was nearly seven and the sky was showing its first stars, when she arrived home. Even before she turned into the driveway she could hear her phone ringing, a shrill rising, falling, like the sound of tree toads. The ringing stopped as she was unlocking her front door and began again a few seconds later.
    She thought it might be Lewis calling and when she answered the phone she tried not to sound tired. Lewis hated her to sound tired; it always started an argument about her working too hard.
    “Hello?”
    “You work late,” Easter said.
    “I wish you’d stop bothering me.”
    “Who’s bothering you? I have a new lead in Violet’s case and I thought you’d like to hear about it.”
    “What is it?”
    “I’ve just learned that Violet has an older sister who lives in Ashley, a war widow by the name of Myrtle Reyerling. Violet may have confided in her about the man we’re after—let’s call him Mr. B.”
    “Why Mr.—B?”
    “No reason. I’m driving up to Ashley tomorrow, unofficially, to have a talk with Mrs. Reyerling. Do you want to come along?”
    “No thanks.”
    “Think it over.”
    “I’ve thought.”
    “The trip will do you good,” Easter said. “Fresh air, etcetera.”
    “There’s fresh air here.”
    “But the Oregon fresh air is said to have therapeutic qualities for nervous women—a sort of gaseous Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound.”
    The door chime pealed. “I’ve never been nervous in my life and my doorbell’s ringing.”
    “I hear it.”
    “So if you’ll excuse me…”
    “I will, but I don’t want to.”
    “Thank you for the invitation.”
    “Keep thinking it over,” Easter said, and hung up. As she was going towards the door it occurred to her that Easter’s invitation was oddly coincidental with Dr. Blake’s offer to take over her practice for a few days. There was no connection, of course, but it worried her. She wondered about Easters motives, whether he was falling in love with her as he pretended, or whether he thought she knew more about the case than she had told him.
    Before she opened the door she glanced out of the little window at the top and saw that her caller was Lewis.
    For a moment he looked to Charlotte