The 27th Golden Age of Science Fiction Page 6

  She transferred her glance to the building opposite which they had stopped. The strains of the mechanical piano had ceased; blank, shaded windows faced them, around whose edges glowed a subdued light from within. A drab, battered, paintless shack, she thought, dismal and unpleasant; while she gazed, the sound of the discordant music recommenced, adding, it seemed, the last unprepossessing item.

  “It doesn’t look very attractive, Nick,” she observed dubiously.

  “I find it so, however.”

  “Then you’ve been here?”

  “Yes.”

  “But I thought you said you didn’t know any place to go.”

  “This one hadn’t occurred to me—then.”

  “Well,” she said crisply, “I could have done as well as this with my eyes closed. It doesn’t appeal to me at all, Nick.”

  “Nevertheless, here’s where we’ll go. You’re apt to find it—interesting.”

  “Look here, Nicholas Devine!” Pat snapped, “What makes you think you can bully me? No one has ever succeeded yet!”

  “I said you’d find it interesting.” His voice was unchanged; she stared at him in complete bafflement.

  “Oh, Nick!” she exclaimed in suddenly softer tones. “What difference does it make? Didn’t I say anywhere would do, so we went together?” She smiled at him. “This will do if you wish, though really, Honey, I’d prefer not.”

  “I do wish it,” the other said.

  “All right, Honey,” said Pat the faintest trace of reluctance in her voice as she slipped from the car. “I stick to my bargains.”

  She winced at the intensity of his grip as he took her arm to assist her. His fingers were like taunt wires biting into her flesh.

  “Nick!” she cried. “You’re hurting me! You’re bruising my arm!”

  He released her; she rubbed the spot ruefully, then followed him to the door of the mysterious establishment. The unharmonious jangle of the piano dinned abruptly louder as he swung the door open. Pat entered and glanced around her at the room revealed.

  Dull, smoky, dismal—not the least exciting or interesting as yet, she thought. A short bar paralleled one wall, behind which lounged a little, thin, nondescript individual with a small mustache. Half a dozen tables filled the remainder of the room; four or five occupied by the clientele of the place, as unsavory a group as the girl could recall having encountered on the hither side of the motion picture screen. Two women tittered as Nick entered; then with one accord, the eyes of the entire group fixed on Pat, where she stood drawing her wrap more closely about her, standing uncomfortably behind her escort. And the piano tinkled its discords in the far corner.

  “Same place,” said Nick shortly to the bartender, ignoring the glances of the others. Pat followed him across the room to a door, into a hall, thence into a smaller room furnished merely with a table and four chairs. The nondescript man stood waiting in the doorway as Nick took her wrap and seated her in one of the chairs.

  “Quart,” he said laconically, and the bartender disappeared.

  Pat stared intently, studiously, into the face of her companion. Nick’s face, certainly; here in full light there was no trace of the red-eyed horror she had fancied out there in the semi-darkness of the street. Or was there? Now—when he turned, when the light struck his eyes at an angle, was that a glint of crimson? Still, the features were Nick’s, only a certain grim intensity foreign to him lurked about the set of his mouth, the narrowed eye-lids.

  “Well!” she said. “So this is Paris! What are you trying to do—teach me capital L—life? And where do we dance?”

  “In here.”

  “And what kind of quart was that you ordered? You know how little I drink, and I’m darned particular about even that little.”

  “You’ll like this.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “I said you’ll like it,” he reiterated in flat tones.

  “I heard you say it.” She regarded him with a puzzled frown. “Nick,” she said suddenly, “I’ve decided I like you better in your gentle pose; this masterful attitude isn’t becoming, and you can forget what I said about wishing you’d display it oftener.”

  “You’ll like that, too.”

  “Again I doubt it. Nick, dear, don’t spoil another evening like that last one!”

  “This one won’t be like the last one!”

  “But Honey—” she paused at the entrance of the bartender bearing a tray, an opened bottle of ginger ale, two glasses of ice, and a flask of oily amber liquid. He deposited the assortment on the red-checked table cloth.

  “Two dollars,” he said, pocketed the money and silently retired.

  “Nicholas,” said the girl tartly, “there’s enough of that poison for a regiment.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, I won’t drink it, and I won’t let you drink it! So now what?”

  “I think you’ll do both.”

  “I don’t!” she snapped. “And I don’t like this, Nick—the place, or the liquor, or your attitude, or anything. We’re going to leave!”

  Instead of answering, he pulled the cork from the bottle, pouring a quantity of the amber fluid into each of the tumblers. To one he added an equal quantity of ginger ale, and set it deliberately squarely in front of Pat. She frowned at it distastefully, and shook her head.

  “No,” she said. “Not I. I’m leaving.”

  She made no move, however; her eyes met those of her companion, gazing at her with a cold intentness in their curious amber depths. And again—was that a flash of red? Impulsively she reached out her hand, touched his.

  “Oh, Nick!” she said in soft, almost pleading tones. “Please, Honey—I don’t understand you. Don’t you know I love you, Nick? You can hear me say it: I love you. Don’t you believe that?”

  He continued his cold, intense stare; the grim set of his mouth was as unrelaxing as marble. Pat felt a shiver of apprehension run through her, and an almost hypnotic desire to yield herself to the demands of the inexplicable eyes. She tore her glance away, looking down at the red checks of the table cloth.

  “Nick, dear,” she said. “I can’t understand this. Will you tell me what you—will you tell me why we’re here?”

  “It is out of your grasp.”

  “But—I know it has something to do with Wednesday night, something to do with that reluctance of yours, the thing you said you didn’t understand. Hasn’t it?”

  “Do you think so?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I do! And Nick, Honey—didn’t I tell you I could forgive you anything? I don’t care what’s happened in the past; all I care for is now, now and the future. Don’t you understand me? I’ve told you I loved you, Honey! Don’t you love me?”

  “Yes,” said the other, staring at her with no change in the fixity of his gaze.

  “Then how can you—act like this to me?”

  “This is my conception of love.”

  “I don’t understand!” the girl said helplessly. “I’m completely puzzled—it’s all topsy-turvy.”

  “Yes,” he said in impassive agreement.

  “But what is this, Nick? Please, please—what is this? Are you mad?” She had almost added, “Like your father.”

  “No,” he said, still in those cold tones. “This is an experiment.”

  “An experiment!”

  “Yes. An experiment in evil.”

  “I don’t understand,” she repeated.

  “I said you wouldn’t.”

  “Do you mean,” she asked, struck by a sudden thought, “that discussion of ours about pure horror? What you said that night last week?”

  “That!” His voice was icy and contemptuous. “That was the drivel of a weakling. No; I mean evil, not horror—the living evil that can be so beautiful that one walks deliberately, with open eyes, into Hell only to p
revent its loss. That is the experiment.”

  “Oh,” said Pat, her own voice suddenly cool. “Is that what you wish to do—experiment on me?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what am I supposed to do?”

  “First you are to drink with me.”

  “I see,” she said slowly. “I see—dimly. I am a subject, a reagent, a guinea pig, to provide you material for your writing. You propose to use me in this experiment of yours—this experiment in evil. All right!” She picked up the tumbler; impulsively she drained it. The liquor, diluted as it was, was raw and strong enough to bring tears smarting to her eyes. Or was it the liquor?

  “All right!” she cried. “I’ll drink it all—the whole bottle!” She seized the flask, filling her tumbler to the brim, while her companion watched her with impassive gaze. “You’ll have your experiment! And then, Nicholas Devine, we’re through! Do you hear me? Through!”

  She caught up the tumbler, raised it to her lips, and drained the searing liquid until she could see her companion’s cold eyes regarding her through the glass of its bottom.

  CHAPTER 9

  Descent into Avernus

  Pat slammed the empty tumbler down on the checked table cloth and buried her face in her hands, choking and gasping from the effects of the fiery liquor. Her throat burned, her mouth was parched by the acrid taste, and a conflagration seemed to be raging somewhere within her. Then she steadied, raised her eyes, and stared straight into the strange eyes of Nicholas Devine.

  “Well?” she said fiercely. “Is that enough?”

  He was watching her coldly as an image or a painting; the intensity of his gaze was more cat-like than human. She moved her head aside; his eyes, without apparent shift, were still on hers, like the eyes of a pictured face. A resurgence of anger shook her at his immobility; his aloofness seemed to imply that nothing she could do would disturb him.

  “Wasn’t it enough?” she screamed. “Wasn’t it? Then look!”

  She seized the bottle, poured another stream of the oily liquid into her glass, and raised it to her lips. Again the burning fluid excoriated her tongue and throat, and then suddenly, the tumbler was struck from her hand, spilling the rest of its contents on the table.

  “That is enough,” said the icy voice of her companion.

  “Oh, it is? We’ll see!” She snatched at the bottle, still more than half full. The thin hand of Nicholas Devine wrenched it violently away.

  “Give me that!” she cried. “You wanted what you’re getting!” The warmth within her had reached the surface now; she felt flushed, excited, reckless, and desperately angry.

  The other set the bottle deliberately on the floor; he rose, circled the table, and stood glaring down at her with that same inexplicable expression. Suddenly he raised his hand; twisting her black hair in his fist, he dealt her a stinging blow across the lips half-opened to scream, then flung her away so violently that she nearly sprawled from her chair.

  The scream died in her throat; dazed by the blow, she dropped her head to the table, while sobs of pain and fear shook her. Coherent thought had departed, and she knew only that her lips stung, that her clear, active little mind was caught in a mesh of befuddlement. She couldn’t think; she could only sob in the haze of dizziness that encompassed her. After a long interval, she raised her head, opened her eyes upon a swaying, unsteady world, and faced her companion, who had silently resumed his seat.

  “Nicholas Devine,” she said slowly, speaking as if each word were an effort, “I hate you!”

  “Ah!” he said and was again silent.

  She forced her eyes to focus on his face, while his features danced vaguely as if smoke flowed between the two of them. It was as if there were smoke in her mind as well; she made a great effort to rise above the clouds that bemused her thoughts.

  “Take me home,” she said. “Nicholas, I want to go home.”

  “Why should I?” he asked impassively. “The experiment is hardly begun.”

  “Experiment?” she echoed dully. “Oh, yes—experiment. I’m an experiment.”

  “An experiment in evil,” he said.

  “Yes—in evil. And I hate you! That’s evil enough, isn’t it?”

  He reached down, lifted the bottle to the table, and methodically poured himself a drink of the liquor. He raised it, watching the oily swirls in the light, then tipped the fluid to his lips while the girl gazed at him with a sullen set to her own lips. A tiny crimson spot had appeared in the corner of her mouth; at its sting, she raised her hand and brushed it away. She stared as if in unbelief at the small red smear it left on her fingers.

  “Nicholas,” she said pleadingly, “won’t you take me home? Please, Nicholas, I want to leave here.”

  “Do you hate me?” he asked, a queer twisting smile appearing on his lips.

  “If you’ll take me home I won’t,” said Pat, snatching through the rising clouds of dizziness at a straw of logic. “You’re going to take me home, aren’t you?”

  “Let me hear you say you hate me!” he demanded, rising again. The girl cringed away with a little whimper as he approached. “You hate me, don’t you?”

  He twisted his hand again in her ebony hair, drawing her face back so that he stared down at it.

  “There’s blood on your lips,” he said as if gloating. “Blood on your lips!”

  He clutched her hair more tightly; abruptly he bent over her, pressing his mouth to hers. Her bruised lips burned with pain at the fierce pressure of his; she felt a sharp anguish at the impingement of his teeth. Yet the cloudy pall of dizziness about her was unbroken; she was too frightened and bewildered for resistance.

  “Blood on your lips!” he repeated exultingly. “Now is the beauty of evil!”

  “Nicholas,” she said wearily, clinging desperately to a remnant of logic, “what do you want of me? Tell me what you want and then let me go home.”

  “I want to show you the face of evil,” he said. “I want you to know the glory of evil, the loveliness of supreme evil!”

  He dragged his chair around the table, placing it beside her. Seated, he drew her into his arms, where she lay passive, too limp and befuddled to resist. With a sudden movement, he turned her so that her back rested across his knees, her face gazing up into his. He stared intently down at her, and the light, shining at an angle into his eyes, suddenly struck out the red glow that lingered in them.

  “I want you to know the power of evil,” he murmured. “The irresistible, incomprehensible fascination of it, and the unspeakable pleasures of indulgence in it.”

  Pat scarcely heard him; she was struggling now in vain against the overwhelming fumes of the alcohol she had consumed. The room was wavering around her, and behind her despair and terror, a curious elation was thrusting itself into her consciousness.

  “Evil,” she echoed vaguely.

  “Blood on your lips!” he muttered, peering down at her. “Taste the unutterable pleasure of kisses on bloody lips; drain the sweet anguish of pain, the fierce delight of suffering!”

  He bent down; again his lips pressed upon hers, but this time she felt herself responding. Some still sane portion of her brain rebelled, but the intoxication of sense and alcohol was dominant. Suddenly she was clinging to him, returning his kisses, glorying in the pain of her lacerated lips. A red mist suffused her; she had no consciousness of anything save the exquisite pain of the kiss, that somehow contrived to transform itself into an ecstacy of delight. She lay gasping as the other withdrew his lips.

  “You see!” he gloated. “You understand! Evil is open to us, and all the unutterable pleasures of the damned, who cry out in transports of joy at the bite of the flames of Hell. Do you see?”

  The girl made no answer, sobbing in a chaotic mingling of pain and excruciating pleasure. She was incapable of speech or connected thought; the alcohol beat against her brain with a
persistence that defied resistance. After a moment, she stirred, struggling erect to a sitting posture.

  “Evil!” she said dizzily. “Evil and good—what’s difference? All in a lifetime!”

  She felt a surge of tipsy elation, and then the muffled music of the mechanical piano, drifting through the closed door, penetrated her befuddled consciousness.

  “I want to dance!” she cried. “I’m drunk and I want to dance! Am I drunk?” she appealed to her companion.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I am not! I just want to dance, only it’s hot in here. Dance with me, Nicholas—show me an evil dance! I want to dance with the Devil, and I will! You’re the Devil, name and all! I want to dance with Old Nick himself!”

  She rose unsteadily from her chair; instantly the room reeled crazily about her and she fell sprawling. She felt the grasp of arms beneath her shoulders, raising her erect; she leaned against the wall and heard herself laughing wildly.

  “Funny room!” she said. “Evil room—on pivots!”

  “You’re still to learn,” came the toneless voice of Nicholas Devine. “Do you want to see the face of evil?”

  “Sure!” she said. “Got a good memory for faces!”

  She realized that he was fumbling with the catch of her dress on her left shoulder; again some remnant, some vestige of sanity deep in her brain warned her.

  “Mustn’t,” she said vaguely.

  Then suddenly the catch was open; the dress dropped away around her, crumpling to a shapeless blob of cloth about her diminutive feet. She covered her face with her hands, fighting to hold that last, vanishing vestige of sobriety, while she stood swaying drunkenly against the wall.

  Then Nicholas Devine’s arms were about her again; she felt the sharp sting of his kisses on her throat. He swung her about, bent her backwards across the low table; she was conscious of a bewildered sensation of helplessness and of little else.