Vanish in an Instant by Margaret Millar Page B

no Public Defender here as there is in Los Angeles.”
    â€œI didn’t realize we had such a thing. I’ve never had oc­casion to be interested in—matters like that.”
    Quick light footsteps sounded in the hall, and a moment later Alice appeared in the doorway. She looked as if she had been working. Her hair was drawn back tightly be­hind her ears and tied with a blue ribbon, and she wore an apron that reached almost to her ankles. Her face was warm and flushed and pretty.
    Mrs. Hamilton frowned, faintly but pointedly, in Alice’s direction, like a mother silencing a little girl, warning her not to interrupt while the grownups were talking. Or, if she had to interrupt, at least to remove her apron first.
    â€œMy dear Alice,” she said, “what have you been doing?”
    â€œCleaning.”
    â€œYou know perfectly well you’re not expected to do any of the household work.”
    â€œI don’t mind. And it needed doing.”
    Mrs. Hamilton turned to Meecham with a smile that seemed forced. “Now what would you do with a girl like that?”
    â€œI don’t know,” Meecham said. He felt, quite irration­ally, that Alice’s appearance had changed something in the room, broken a tension, snapped an invisible wire. He got up from the chair, pushing the glass table away until its bamboo legs shrieked in protest. The table was lighter than he thought.
    Alice was watching him gravely from the doorway. “Your office called, Mr. Meecham. You’re to drop in there after you talk to Mr. Loftus.”
    â€œThank you.”
    In the silence that followed Meecham could hear the ivy-planted wall bracket still dripping, very slowly and softly, like the final blood from a death wound.
    Mrs. Hamilton had risen too, to face Meecham. “I think you might be quite a clever and devious creature, Mr. Meecham.”
    â€œSo is a weasel, so I won’t bother thanking you for that, Mrs. Hamilton.”
    â€œYou’ve been stringing me along,” she said in a cold flat voice. “ You’re going to be Loftus’ lawyer, aren’t you?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œYou can lie about it. Go on. Everybody else lies.”
    â€œI’m not lying.”
    â€œHow can I believe you? How can I believe anybody?” She crossed the room, moving with agonizing slowness like a deep-sea diver forcing his leaden feet across the ocean floor, fighting a pressure he can’t see or understand. “I. . . Alice, I think I’ll go up to my room and rest awhile. Please see that Mr. Meecham is—looked after.”
    Meecham watched her until she disappeared around a corner of the hall. Then he turned his head and looked at Alice, and in that moment he had two wishes, diverging in means, but with a common purpose: to get Alice away from that house. His first wish was that he had a mother or a father or a family of some kind so that he could invite Alice to stay with them. Since he had no family at all, he wished that Mrs. Hamilton would take Alice and board the earliest plane for home. Some day, some remote day when he had surplus time and money, he might go to see her. She might be married, by that time, married and with a couple of children; a placid contented matron, shopping, going to movies, lying in the sun. This projection into the future was so vivid, his sense of loss so acute, that he felt a tide of rage rise in him, rise and ebb, leaving a taste of salt.
    He said, abruptly, “When are you leaving for home?”
    â€œYou mean L.A.?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œI don’t know. Mrs. Hamilton hasn’t told me.”
    â€œYou could tell her. Tell her you want to leave.”
    â€œBut I don’t want to,” she protested.
    â€œHave you seen Virginia?”
    â€œYes, a few minutes ago, with Carney.”
    â€œSuppose I told you I think Virginia is dangerous?”
    â€œAre you trying to scare me? I don’t understand.