Wax Apple by Donald E. Westlake Page B

there was in fact something very strange about him made him seem more strange. Whether this was the full explanation, or if in fact he was more menacing tonight, I had no way to tell for sure.
    We walked to the stairs in silence and started down them, and he said, “Did you find your ring?”
    I drew a blank. “I beg your pardon?”
    “The ring you lost when you hurt your arm,” he reminded me. “You were looking for it when we met.”
    Then I remembered the quick lie I’d invented last night, and I said, “Oh! No, no I didn’t find it. I don’t know what happened to it.”
    We reached the foot of the stairs and he opened the door, saying, “Well, of course, it didn’t exist. That’s why it’s so hard to find.”
    I stepped through and looked back at him. He came through and shut the door and smiled amiably at me and I said, “What do you mean?”
    “I knew you were fibbing all along, Mr. Tobin,” he said. “When someone wears a ring all the time, there’s always some sort of mark on their finger, but you don’t have any marks at all. And if you did have a ring and you lost it, you would have looked at the bottom of the staircase instead of at the top. I know you’re on your way to Doctor Cameron’s office, but why not walk with me to the kitchen first? I’d like to talk with you, if you don’t mind.”
    I was flabbergasted, and could think of nothing to do but go along with him. “Sure,” I said. “I’ll walk with you.”
    “Thank you,” he said.
    We started off, toward the kitchen, and I said, “You’re quite a detective, Dewey.”
    “I think that’s what you are,” he said, and gave me his mild smile again. “I think you’re a detective in disguise.”
    “Not a very good disguise,” I said.
    “Oh, yes, it is,” he assured me. “I’m sure no one else guesses at all. I just had a special reason to be wary, that’s all.”
    “So does the person I’m looking for.”
    “That’s what I want to talk with you about,” he said, and held the kitchen door open for me. We went into the kitchen together and he said, “Would you like a cup of coffee?”
    “No, thank you.”
    “I’m making a pot anyway.”
    “All right, then, thank you.”
    I sat down at the table, and he began to get out the things he needed. It was exactly like last night, except that now we knew much more about one another. But the echo was strong, as though somehow lost innocence was represented by this repetition of a pleasant interlude under ambivalent circumstances, and I felt oppressed by the duplication.
    As he made the coffee he talked. He said, “At first, I couldn’t think I was right about you, because why would a detective be here at The Midway in disguise? Then I thought it was perhaps because some District Attorney somewhere was afraid that psychiatry meant narcotics and free love, but you just weren’t the right sort of man to be looking for illicit pleasures in a place like this.” He smiled at me, sharing with me the idea of his joke, and went on: “Then I thought it perhaps was me you were after, but of course that was mere paranoia. In the first place, I was certain absolutely no one knew I was here. And in the second place, you didn’t behave last night as though you were looking for someone who isn’t legally here and who prowls mostly at night. You weren’t suspicious of me, and if you were looking for such a person you would have been.” He turned to me again, his smile self-deprecatory. “I’m not a true detective,” he said, “despite my lucky observation about your ring. I can only go by the way people feel to me.”
    “That’s the best way to be a detective,” I said.
    “Is it?” He sounded both pleased and interested. “I thought that might be your way,” he said. “I’m sorry to say I searched your room. I didn’t steal anything and it wasn’t to be malicious, it was just because I was curious about you. And you had no detective things at all. Nothing for