The 27th Golden Age of Science Fiction Read online

“So!” he said, rising. “The patient can get out of bed when she feels like it—and don’t forget that little fib we’ve arranged for your mother’s peace of mind.”

  She stared up at him, still clinging to his hand.

  “Dr. Carl,” she said, “are you sure—quite sure—you’re right about him? Couldn’t there be a chance that you’re mistaken—that it’s something your psychiatry has overlooked or never heard of?”

  “Small chance, Pat dear.”

  “But a chance?”

  “Well, neither I nor any reputable medic claims to know everything, and the human mind’s a subtle sort of thing.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Letter from Lucifer

  “I’m glad!” Pat told herself. “I’m glad it’s over, and I’m glad I promised Dr. Carl—I guess I was mighty close to the brink of disaster that time.”

  She examined the injuries on her face, carefully powdered to conceal the worst effects from her mother. The trick had worked, too; Mrs. Lane had delivered herself of an excited lecture on the dangers of the gasoline age, and then thanked Heaven it was no worse. Well, Pat reflected, she had good old Dr. Carl to thank for the success of the subterfuge; he had broken the news very skillfully, set the stage for her appearance, and calmed her mother’s apprehensions of scars. And Pat, surveying her image in the glass above her dressing-table, could see for herself the minor nature of the hurts.

  “Scars—pooh!” she observed. “A bruised cheek, a split lip, a skinned chin. All I need is a black eye, and I guess I’d have had that in five minutes more, and perhaps a cauliflower ear into the bargain.”

  But her mood was anything but flippant; she was fighting off the time when her thoughts had of necessity to face the unpleasant, disturbing facts of the affair. She didn’t want to think of the thing at all; she wanted to laugh it off and forget it, yet she knew that for an impossibility. The very desire to forget she recognized as a coward’s wish, and she resented the idea that she was cowardly.

  “Forget the wise-cracks,” she advised her image. “Face the thing and argue it out; that’s the only way to be satisfied.”

  She rose with a little grimace of pain at the twinge from her bruised knees, and crossed to the chaise lounge beside the far window. She settled herself in it and resumed her cogitations. She was feeling more or less herself again; the headache of the morning had nearly vanished, and aside from the various aches and a listless fagged-out sensation, she approximated her normal self. Physically, that is; the shadow of that other catastrophe, the one she hesitated to face, was another matter.

  “I’m lucky to get off this easily,” she assured herself, “after going on a bust like that one, like a lumberjack with his pay in his pocket.” She shook her head in mournful amazement. “And I’m Patricia Lane, the girl whom Billy dubbed ‘Pat the Impeccable’! Impeccable! Wandering through alleys in step-ins and a table cloth—getting beaten up in a drunken brawl—passing out on rot-gut liquor—being carried home and put to bed! Not impeccable; incapable’s the word! I belong to Dr. Carl’s parade of incompetents.”

  She continued her rueful reflections. “Well, item one is, I don’t love Nick any more. I couldn’t now!” she flung at the smiling green buddha on the mantel. “That’s over; I’ve promised.”

  Somehow there was not satisfaction in the memory of that promise. It was logical, of course; there wasn’t anything else to do now, but still—

  “That wasn’t Nick!” she told herself. “That wasn’t my Nick. I guess Dr. Carl is right, and he’s a depressed what-ever-it-was; but if he’s crazy, so am I! He had me convinced last night; I understood what he meant, and I felt what he wanted me to feel. If he’s crazy, I am too; a fine couple we are!”

  She continued. “But it wasn’t Nick! I saw his face when we drove off, and it had changed again, and that was Nick’s face, not the other. And he was sorry; I could see he was sorry, and the other could never have regretted it—not ever! The other isn’t—quite human, but Nick is.”

  She paused, considering the idea. “Of course,” she resumed, “I might have imagined that change at the end. I was hazy and quavery, and it’s the last thing I do remember; that must have been just before I passed out.”

  And then, replying to her own objection, “But I didn’t imagine it! I saw it happen once before, that other night when—Well, what difference does it make, anyway? It’s over, and I’ve given my promise.”

  But she was unable to dismiss the matter as easily as that. There was some uncanny, elusive element in it that fascinated her. Cruel, terrible, demoniac, he might have been; he had also been kind, lovable, and gentle. Yet Dr. Carl had told her that split personalities could contain no characteristics that were not present in the original, normal character. Was cruelty, then, a part of kindness? Was cruelty merely the lack of kindness, or, cynical thought, was kindness but the lack of cruelty? Which qualities were positive in the antagonistic phases of Nicholas Devine’s individuality, and which negative? Was the gentle, lovable, but indubitably weaker character the split, and the demon of last evening his normal self? Or vice-versa? Or were both of these fragmentary entities, portions of some greater personality as yet unapparent to her?

  The whole matter was a mystery; she shrugged in helpless perplexity.

  “I don’t think Dr. Carl knows as much about it as he says,” she mused. “I don’t think psychiatry or any other science knows that much about the human soul. Dr. Carl doesn’t even believe in a soul; how could he know anything about it, then?” She frowned in puzzlement and gave up the attempt to solve the mystery.

  The hours she had spent in her room, at her mother’s insistence, began to pall; she didn’t feel particularly ill—it was more of a languor, a depressed, worn-out feeling. Her mother, of course, was out somewhere; she felt a desire for human companionship, and wondered if the Doctor might by some chance drop in. It seemed improbable; he had his regular Sunday afternoon routine of golf at the Club, and it took a real catastrophe to keep him away from that. She sighed, stretched her legs, rose from her position on the chaise lounge, and wandered toward the kitchen where Magda was doubtless to be found.

  It was in the dusk of the rear hall that the first sense of her loss came over her. Heretofore her renunciation of Nicholas Devine was a rational thing, a promise given but not felt; but now it was suddenly a poignant reality. Nick was gone, she realized; he was out of her world, irrevocably sundered from her. She paused at the top of the rear flight of stairs, considering the matter.

  “He’s gone! I won’t see him ever again.” The thought was appalling; she felt already a premonition of loneliness to come, of an emptiness in her world, a lack that nothing could replace.

  “I shouldn’t have promised Dr. Carl,” she mused, knowing that even without that promise her course must still have been the same. “I shouldn’t have, not until I’d talked to Nick—my own Nick.”

  And still, she reflected forlornly, what difference did it make? She had to give him up; she couldn’t continue to see him not knowing at what instant that terrible caricature of him might appear to torment her. But he might have explained, she argued miserably, answering her own objection at once—he’s said he couldn’t explain, didn’t understand. The thing was at an impasse.

  She shook her shining black head despondently, and descended the dusky well of the stairs to the kitchen. Magda was there clattering among her pots and pans; Pat entered quietly and perched on the high stool by the long table. Old Magda, who had warmed her babyhood milk and measured out her formula, gave her a single glance and continued her work.

  “Sorry about the accident, I was,” she said without looking up.

  “Thanks,” responded the girl. “I’m all right again.”

  “You don’t look it.”

  “I feel all right.”

  She watched the mysterious, alchemistic mixing of a pastry, and thought of the vast array of
them that had come from Magda’s hands. As far back as she could remember she had perched on this stool observing the same mystic culinary rites.

  Suddenly another memory rose out of the grave of forgetfulness and went gibbering across her world. She remembered the stories Magda used to tell her, frightening stories of witchcraft and the evil eye, tales out of an older region and a more credulous age.

  “Magda,” she asked, “did you ever see a devil?”

  “Not I, but I’ve talked with them that had.”

  “Didn’t you ever see one?”

  “No.” The woman slid a pan into the oven. “I saw a man once, when I was a tot, possessed by a devil.”

  “You did? How did he look?”

  “He screamed terrible, then he said queer things. Then he fell down and foam came out of his mouth.”

  “Like a fit?”

  “The Priest, he said it was a devil. He came and prayed over him, and after a while he was real quiet, and then he was all right.”

  “Possessed by a devil,” said Pat thoughtfully. “What happened to him?”

  “Dunno.”

  “What queer things did he say?”

  “Wicked things, the Priest said. I couldn’t tell! I was a tot.”

  “Possessed by a devil!” Pat repeated musingly. She sat immersed in thoughts on the high stool while Magda clattered busily about. The woman paused finally, turning her face to the girl.

  “What you so quiet about, Miss Pat?”

  “I was just thinking.”

  “You get your letter?”

  “Letter? What letter? Today’s Sunday.”

  “Special delivery. The girl, she put it in the hall.”

  “I didn’t know anything about it. Who’d write me a special?”

  She slipped off the high stool and proceeded to the front hall. The letter was there, solitary on the salver that always held the mail. She picked it up, examining the envelope in sudden startled amazement and more than a trace of illogical exultation.

  For the letter, post-marked that same morning, was addressed in the irregular script of Nicholas Devine!

  CHAPTER 13

  Indecision

  Pat turned the envelope dubiously in her hands, while a maze of chaotic thoughts assailed her. She felt almost a sensation of guilt as if she were in some manner violating the promise given to Dr. Horker; she felt a tinge of indignation that Nicholas Devine should dare communicate with her at all, and she felt too that queer exultation, an inexplicable pleasure, a feeling of secret triumph. She slipped the letter in the pocket of her robe and padded quietly up the stairs to her own room.

  Strangely, her loneliness had vanished. The great house, empty now save for herself and Magda in the distant kitchen, was no longer a place of solitude; the discovery of the letter, whatever its contents, had changed the deserted rooms into chambers teeming with her own excitements, trepidations, doubts, and hopes. Even hopes, she admitted to herself, though hopes of what nature she was quite unable to say. What could Nick write that had the power to change things? Apologies? Pleas? Promises? None of these could alter the naked, horrible facts of the predicament.

  Nevertheless, she was almost a-tremble with expectation as she skipped hastily into her own room, carefully closed the door, and settled herself by the west windows. She drew the letter from her pocket, and then, with a tightening of her throat, tore open the envelope, slipping out the several pages of scrawled paper. Avidly she began to read.

  “I don’t know whether you’ll ever see this”—the missive began without salutation—“and I’ll not blame you, Pat dear, if you do return it unopened. There’s nothing you can do that wouldn’t be justified, nor can you think worse of me than I do of myself. And that’s a statement so meaningless that even as I wrote it, I could anticipate its effect on you.

  “Pat—How am I going to convince you that I’m sincere? Will you believe me when I write that I love you? Can you believe that I love you tenderly, worshipfully—reverently?

  “You can’t; I know you can’t after that catastrophe of last night. But it’s true, Pat, though the logic of a Spinoza might fail to convince you of it.

  “I don’t know how to write you this. I don’t know whether you want to hear what I could say, but I know that I must try to say it. Not apologies, Pat—I shouldn’t dare approach you for so poor a reason as that—but a sort of explanation. You more than any one in the world are entitled to that explanation, if you want to hear it.

  “I can’t write it to you, Pat; it’s something I can only make you believe by telling you—something dark and rather terrible. But please, Dear, believe that I mean you no harm, and that I plan no subterfuge, when I suggest that you see me. It will be, I think, for the last time.

  “Tonight, and tomorrow night, and as many nights to follow as I can, I’ll sit on a bench in the park near the place where I kissed you that first time. There will be people passing there, and cars driving by; you need fear nothing from me. I choose the place to bridle my own actions, Pat; nothing can happen while we sit there in the view of the world.

  “To write you more than this is futile. If you come, I’ll be there; if you don’t, I’ll understand.

  “I love you.”

  The letter was signed merely “Nick.” She stared at the signature with feelings so confused that she forebore any attempt to analyze them.

  “But I can’t go,” she mused soberly. “I’ve promised Dr. Carl. Or at least, I can’t go without telling him.”

  That last thought, she realized, was a concession. Heretofore she hadn’t let herself consider the possibility of seeing Nicholas Devine again, and now suddenly she was weakening, arguing with herself about the ethics of seeing him. She shook her head decisively.

  “Won’t do, Patricia Lane!” she told herself. “Next thing, you’ll be slipping away without a word to anybody, and coming home with two black eyes and a broken nose. Won’t do at all!”

  She dropped her eyes to the letter. “Explanations,” she reflected. “I guess Dr. Carl would give up a hole-in-one to hear that explanation. And I’d give more than that.” She shook her head regretfully. “Nothing to do about it, though. I promised.”

  The sun was slanting through the west windows; she sat watching the shadows lengthen in the room, and tried to turn her thoughts into more profitable channels. This was the first Sunday in many months that she had spent alone in the house; it was a custom for herself and her mother to spend the afternoon at the club. The evening too, as a rule; there was invariably bridge for Mrs. Lane, and Pat was always the center of a circle of the younger members. She wondered dreamily what the crowd thought of her non-appearance, reflecting that her mother had doubtless enlarged on Dr. Carl’s story of an accident. Dr. Carl wouldn’t say much, simply that he’d ordered her to stay at home. But sooner or later, Nick would hear the accident story; she wondered what he’d think of it.

  She caught herself up sharply. “My ideas wander in circles,” she thought petulantly. “No matter where I start, they curve around back to Nick. It won’t do; I’ve got to stop it.”

  Nearly time for the evening meal, she mused, watching the sun as it dropped behind Dr. Horker’s house. She didn’t feel much like eating; there was still a remnant of the exhausted, dragged-out sensation, though the headache that had accompanied her awakening this morning had disappeared.

  “I know what the morning after feels like, anyway,” she reflected with a wry little smile. “Everybody ought to experience it once, I suppose. I wonder how Nick—”

  She broke off abruptly, with a shrug of disgust. She slipped the letter back into its envelope, rose and deposited it in the drawer of the night-table. She glanced at the clock ticking on its shiny top.

  “Six o’clock,” she murmured. Nick would be sitting in the park in another two hours or so. She had a twinge of sympathy at the thought of hi
s lone vigil; she could visualize the harried expression on his face when the hours passed without her arrival.

  “Can’t be helped,” she told herself. “He’s no right to ask for anything of me after last night. He knows that; he said so in his letter.”

  She suppressed an impulse to re-read that letter, and trotted deliberately out of the room and down the stairs. Magda had set the table in the breakfast room; it was far cozier than the great dining room, especially without her mother’s company. And the maid was away; the breakfast room simplified serving, as well.

  She tried valorously to eat what Magda supplied, but the food failed to tempt her. It wasn’t so much her physical condition, either; it was—She clenched her jaws firmly; was the memory of Nicholas Devine to haunt her forever?

  “Pat Lane,” she said in admonition, “you’re a crack-brained fool! Just because a man kicks you all over the place is no reason to let him become an obsession.”

  She drank her coffee, feeling the sting of its heat on her injured lips. She left the table, tramped firmly to her room, and began defiantly to read. The effort was useless; half a dozen times she forced her attention to the page only to find herself staring vaguely into space a moment or two later. She closed the book finally with an irritable bang, and vented her restlessness in pacing back and forth.

  “This house is unbearable!” she snapped. “I’m not going to stay shut up here like a jail-bird in solitary confinement. A walk in the open is what I need, and that’s what I’ll have.”

  She glanced at the clock; seven-thirty. She tore off her robe pettishly, flung out of her pajamas, and began to dress with angry determination. She refused to think of a lonely figure that might even now be sitting disconsolately on a bench in the near-by park.

  She disguised her bruised cheek as best she could, dabbed a little powder on the abrasion on her chin, and tramped militantly down the stairs. She caught up her wrap, still lying where the Doctor had tossed it last night, and moved toward the door, opening it and nearly colliding with the massive figure of Dr. Horker!