Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [103]
Watching Jack Cray move toward the policeman, she had been reminded once again that the American was nothing more than a proficient killer, a weapon of war loosed on Berlin, just like a B-17. But less philosophical and repentant. He was going to kill again, this time the policeman by the car.
But the crazy American said a few words into the policeman's ear and then let the man go. Just turned him loose. Jack Cray was continually complicating her assessment of him.
The doctor walked to the far side of his examining table before he turned to look more closely at them. When his eyes settled on Jack Cray, his face turned pale in blotches and his shoulders hunched. His face slackened and his lips parted, and a small sound escaped him, perhaps the beginnings of a plea for mercy. Then the doctor saw the blood, and realized that the American whose face littered Berlin had come to him for the same reason everyone else came to him. Slowly the doctor's face came together again, wrinkling around hostile eyes.
"He's been stabbed in the arm," Katrin said. "And along his back, though it's a slight wound there."
"Easy for you to say how slight it is." Cray's jaws were clamped with pain. "It's not your back that's hurting."
Katrin had seen firsthand the resources the Hand was committing to its mission, and knew that the American had been entrusted to her care, and so sensed that she had been invested with substantial authority, however undefined it was for her.
So she said bluntly, "We are in a hurry. Clean his wounds and do whatever else you need to do, and do it quickly."
The doctor scowled blackly at her, but he must have thought better of protesting or making an inquiry, for he reached for Cray's arm, but tentatively, across the wide distance between him and the American, afraid to get closer to the killer.
"Is this your knife hand?" Dr. Holenbein asked pointedly.
"Nah, fortunately," Cray replied.
Katrin stared at Cray.
"Can you take the coat off?" the doctor asked.
During the day, the doctor hid his baldness with several carefully placed strands. In his irritation and haste, he had forgotten to arrange his hair, and the long strands hung down one side of his head almost to his shoulder. His eyebrows were vast and black, covering a good portion of his forehead. His eyes were shallow and close together. His salt-and- pepper goatee looked carefully tended.
In a glass case against a wall was on otoscope, a blood-pressure gauge, and holders for thermometers and syringes and medicine droppers. The door to the stairs to his private quarters was in one wall. An eye chart was on another wall.
When Cray struggled with the coat, the doctor assisted, still maintaining a distance. Cray grimaced as the sleeve was slipped along his arm and the coat lifted off his shoulders. Next came the uniform blouse, stained dark brown on one sleeve and along the hollow of his back. The wound lay open to the light, the entrance hole on top of his upper arm, the exit hole below. Clotted bits of blood hung from the lower wound. A pistol was in Cray's belt. Katrin wondered where the knife was. Cray had prisoner's ribs, clearly defined, the skin sunk deeply between them. Blond hair on his chest was in tight curls.
"Sit on the end of the surgical table." Holenbein glanced around at the blackout curtains, all in place, then flicked on an examining light. He placed a mirror on his head and leaned over the wound. After a moment he said, "I must open the wound to abrade it properly. Do you know if you have reactions to anesthesia?"
"No anesthesia," Cray said.
"I'm already impressed," Katrin said. "You needn't do anything more."
Cray smiled at her.
Dr. Holenbein said, "I cannot clean and mend this wound while you are conscious. It needs to be properly opened—the wound enlarged—to satisfactorily rid it of dirt. Otherwise it will pus out, and