"I don't know, Polly. I really don't."
She had opened her hand again, and she now held the azka between her thumb and forefinger. Alan bent close to look at ' it, but made no move to touch it this time. It was a small silver object, not quite round. Tiny holes, not much bigger than the black dots which make up newsprint photographs, studded its lower half. It gleamed mellowly in the sunlight.
And as Alan looked at it, a powerful, irrational feeling swept him: he didn't like it. He didn't like it at all. He resisted a brief, powerful urge to simply rip it off Polly's neck and throw it out the open window.
Yes! Good idea, sport! You do that and you'll be picking your teeth out of your lap!
"Sometimes it almost feels like something is moving around inside of it," Polly said, smiling. "Like a Mexican jumping bean, or something. Isn't that silly?"
"I don't know."
He watched her drop it back inside her blouse with a strong sense of misgiving... but once it was out of sight and her fingersher undeniably limber fingers-had gone to work re-buttoning the top of her blouse, the feeling began to fade. What didn't was his growing suspicion that Mr. Leland Gaunt was conning the woman he loved... and if he was, she would not be the only one "Have you thought it could be something else?" Now he was moving with the delicacy of a man using slick stepping-stones to cross a swift-running stream. "You've had remissions before, you know."
"Of course I know," Polly said with edgy patience. "They're my hands."
"Polly, I'm just trying-"
"I knew you'd probably react just the way you are reacting, Alan. The fact is simple enough: I know what arthritic remission feels like, and brother, this isn't it. I've had times over the last five or six years when I felt pretty good, but I never felt this good even during the best of them. This is different.
This is like..." She paused, thought, then made a small frustrated gesture that was mostly hands and shoulders. "This is like being well again. I don't expect you to understand exactly what I mean, but I can't put it any better than that."
He nodded, frowning. He did understand what she was saying, and he also understood that she meant it. Perhaps the azka had unlocked some dormant healing power in her own mind. Was that possible, even though the disease in question wasn't psychosomatic in origin? The Rosicrucians thought stuff like that happened all the time. So did the millions of people who had bought L. Ron Hubbard's book on Dianetics, for that matter. He himself didn't know; the only thing he could say for sure was that he had never seen a blind person think himself back to sight or a wounded person stop his bleeding by an effort of concentration.
What he did know was this: something about the situation smelled wrong. Something about it smelled as high as dead fish that have spent three days in the hot sun.
"Let's cut to the chase," Polly said. "Trying not to be mad at you is wearing me out. Come inside with me. Talk to Mr. Gaunt yourself. It's time you met him anyway. Maybe he can explain better what the charm does... and what it doesn't do."
He looked at his watch again. Fourteen minutes of three now.
For a brief moment he thought of doing as she suggested, and leaving Brian Rusk for later. But catching the boy as he came out of school-catching him while he was away from home-felt right.
He would get better answers if he talked to him away from his mother, who would hang around them like a lioness protecting her cub, interrupting, perhaps even telling her son not to answer. Yes, that was the bottom line: if it turned out her son had something to hide, or if Mrs. Rusk even thought he did, Alan might find it difficult or impossible to get the information he needed.
Here he had a potential con artist; in Brian Rusk he might have the key that would unlock a double murder.
"I can't, honey," he said. "Maybe a little later today. I have to go over to the Middle School and talk to someone, and I ought to do it right away."
"Is it about Nettle?"
"It's about Wilma jerzyck... but if my hunch is right, Nettle comes into it, yes. If I find anything out, I'll tell you later. In the meantime, will you do something for me?"
"Alan, I'm buying it! They're not your hands!"
"No, I expect you to buy it. I want you to pay him by check, that's all. There's no reason why he shouldn't take one-if he's a reputable businessman, that is. You live in town and you bank right across the street. But if something shakes out funny, you've got a few days to Put a stop on payment."
"I see," Polly said. Her voice was calm, but Alan realized with a sinking feeling that he had finally missed his footing on one of those slippery stepping-stones and fallen headlong into the stream.
"You think he's a crook, don't you, Alan? You think he's going to take the gullible little lady's money, fold his tent, and steal off into the night."