Free The Galton Case by Ross MacDonald Page B

an old hotel on the bluff above it. You could see it from the Browns’ front porch. Their bungalow must have stood quite near here.”
    “They probably tore it down when they put in the road. It wouldn’t have done me much good to see it, anyway. I was hoping I’d run across a neighbor who remembered the Browns.”
    “I suppose you could canvass the tradesmen in Luna Bay.”
    “I could.”
    “Oh well, it’s nice to get out in the country.”
    Bolling wandered off along the edge of the bluff. Suddenly he said: “Whee!” in a high voice like a gull’s screak. He began to flap his arms.
    I ran toward him. “What’s the matter?”
    “Whee!” he said again, and let out a childish laugh. “I was just imagining that I was a bird.”
    “How did you like it?”
    “Very much.” He flapped his arms some more. “I can fly! I breast the windy currents of the sky. I soar like Icarus toward the sun. The wax melts. I fall from a great height into the sea. Mother Thalassa.”
    “Mother who?”
    “Thalassa, the sea, the Homeric sea. We could build another Athens. I used to think we could do it in San Francisco, build a new city of man on the great hills. A city measured with forgiveness. Oh, well.”
    His mood sank again. I pulled him away from the edge.He was so unpredictable I thought he might take a flying leap into space, and I was beginning to like him.
    “Speaking of mothers,” I said, “if John Browns wife had just had a baby, she must have been going to a doctor. Did they happen to mention where the baby was born?”
    “Yes. Right in their house. The nearest hospital is in Redwood City, and Brown didn’t want to take his wife there. The chances are she had a local doctor.”
    “Let’s hope he’s still around.”
    I drove back through the housing-tract until I saw a young woman walking a pram. She shied like a filly when I pulled up beside her. In the daytime the tract was reserved for women and children; unknown men in cars were probably kidnappers. I got out and approached her, smiling as innocuously as I could.
    “I’m looking for a doctor.”
    “Oh. Is somebody sick?”
    “My friend’s wife is going to have a baby. They’re thinking of moving into Marvista Manor, and they thought they’d better check on the medical situation.”
    “Dr. Meyers is very good,” she said. “I go to him myself.”
    “In Luna Bay?”
    “That’s right.”
    “How long has he practiced there?”
    “I wouldn’t know. We just moved out from Richmond month before last.”
    “How old is Dr. Meyers?”
    “Thirty, thirty-five, I dunno.”
    “Too young,” I said.
    “If your friend will feel safer with an older man, I think there is one in town. I don’t remember his name, though. Personally I like a young doctor, they know all the latest wonder drugs and all.”
    Wonder drugs. I thanked her, and drove back to LunaBay in search of a drugstore. The proprietor gave me a rundown on the three local doctors. A Dr. George Dineen was the only one who had practiced there in the thirties. He was an elderly man on the verge of retirement. I’d probably find him in his office if he wasn’t out on a call. It was only a couple of blocks from the drugstore.
    I left Bolling drinking coffee at the fountain, and walked to the doctor’s office. It occupied the front rooms of a rambling house with green shingle walls which stood on a dusty side street. A woman of about sixty answered the door. She had blue-white hair and a look on her face you don’t see too often any more, the look of a woman who hasn’t been disappointed:
    “Yes, young man?”
    “I’d like to see the doctor.”
    “His office hours are in the afternoon. They don’t start till one-thirty.”
    “I don’t want to see him as a patient.”
    “If you’re a pharmaceutical salesman, you’d better wait till after lunch. Dr. Dineen doesn’t like his mornings to be disturbed.”
    “I’m only in town for the morning. I’m investigating a disappearance. He may