Thorn by Fred Saberhagen (reading like a writer TXT) 📕

very far in the things we talk about. Not right away. Suppose we began with that night when, how shall I describe it, that night when Annie was here for the first time? Would it bother you—I see it would. All right. All right. You needn’t do anything that you don’t want to do. Not at all. Not for Uncle Del. Would you rather talk to me about the painting, then? It’s a nice, fascinating old thing, isn’t it?”

      “Yes. Oh yes, it is.” And Helen’s agitation, that had been growing, eased somewhat.

      “Who painted it, my dear? Who do you think did?”

      Brandreth, somewhat surprised at himself that he still hadn’t passed out again, heard a small, strange sound from somewhere nearby. From Thorn.

      Delaunay Seabright’s image explained: “You see, my dear, some people think it may have been done, long years ago, by a famous painter called Verrocchio. Have you heard of him?”

      “Yes.”

      “Now don’t say you have, don’t say anything just to please me. You really did hear of Verrocchio, before I mentioned him?”

      “Yes.”

      Seabright paused, as if hopeful that the girl might say more. When she did not, he went on: “Others, on the other hand, think it barely possible that a certain young boy did that painting. A boy who became quite famous in later life. Most authorities believe the boy was too young when this was painted, that he hadn’t yet started to work in Mr. Verrocchio’s studio. Now I wasn’t there myself and I don’t know. But I’d like very much to find out. If—”

      The girl was toppling forward in her chair. Seabright moved quickly for all his bulk, to catch her, ease her tenderly back into a sitting position. Her face had gone completely pale, drained-looking. “All right, Helen. All right, that’s it for today. You are feeling fine. You are going to wake up soon, when I tell you, as from a deep, refreshing sleep.” It took another minute of careful coaxing and urging to bring the girl back into what appeared to be her original hypnotic state.

      “I’m going to wake you up soon, Helen. First, though, would you like to give Uncle Del his big hug for the day?”

      The girl’s eyes opened for a moment, then closed again. She arose, dutifully, and walked to the man’s chair to bend over him and hug him, gently, almost formally, like some shy distant niece. The huge man patted her back with one hand. His other hand went to the hidden control beneath his desk. The screen went dark.

* * *

      The ringing phone jarred Chicago police lieutenant Joe Keogh out of sleep. He was lying in his and Kate’s bedroom in their condominium apartment on the North Side, just off Lake Shore Drive. This was not one of the supremely expensive towers down close to Michigan Boulevard, but an older building of modest height, somewhat farther north. The place had large rooms, from the days when they built them that way, and hardwood floors and a fireplace. Joe would have been hard pressed to make the mortgage payments on his pay unaided, let alone trying to furnish and decorate the place the way Kate had. He found it really pleasant to have married into money.

      He rolled his spare, muscular body over in the wide waterbed, establishing waves, and lifted the phone. “Hello, who’s this?” At home he used a more guarded answering technique than the efficient response that was his habit at the office.

      “Joseph, I have some information for you.”

      Joe was fully awake in an instant. He switched on the bedside lamp, and at the same time glanced over his shoulder toward Kate, as if for reassurance that she still slept at his side. He could see, between a mounded blue blanket and a white pillow, a familiar mass of honey-blond hair and the curve of one naked shoulder. For a man with his job, middle-of-the-night phone calls were nothing out of the ordinary, and in six months of marriage Kate had already schooled herself to sleep through most of them.

      Joe was sitting up straight now, running a hand through his sandy hair. The waterbed was no scene for serious drama; it wobbled gelatinously, gently rocking his body and his wife’s. “Are you hurt?” he asked the phone.

      “No, Joseph, not seriously. I appreciate your concern.” The voice sounded much as it had on the comparatively few occasions when Joe had heard it before: precise, slightly accented in a vaguely middle-European way. Good-humored. Still good-humored, after a bombing, oh my God.

      Joe found himself sweating slightly, and turned back the covers a little. “Go ahead, then.”

      “First of all I would like to confirm what I have heard about how it could have been done; how the bomb could possibly have been planted where it was.”

      “Yeah, the bomb. I heard about that. They called me about it. Were you near the car when it blew up?”

      “I was in it.”

      “Oh.” Good God. “And you’re … who do you think planted the bomb?”

      “On that I believe I now have information that is accurate, if incomplete. The technician was a man named Brandreth, acting on orders from a man called Gliddon. The very same, I believe, whose aircraft was supposedly lost not long ago.”

      “Ah. That business about the painting. And where are Brandreth and Gliddon now? And how do you spell Brandreth?”

      “Gliddon is probably somewhere in Arizona or New Mexico; I have no precise information. And Brandreth can be found in the Seabright mansion in Phoenix. The place is otherwise unoccupied.”

      “He’s in—”

      “You need make no hurried calls, nor be concerned to write down his name. He will be there.”

      “Oh.”

      “Now about the bomb. By the way, Joseph, is your home telephone secure?”

      “I guess. Internal Investigation doesn’t tap it any more, if that’s what you mean. Since you were here in Chicago they’ve given up. They don’t want to know what’s going on with me.”

      “Then let us discuss the bomb. No one, I think, could have planted it in that vehicle between the last proper