"He doesn't answer! I'm too late," thought Pat disconsolately as she replaced the telephone. The cheerfulness with which she had awakened vanished like a patch of April sunshine. Now, with the failure of her third attempt in as many hours to communicate with Nicholas Devine, she was ready to confess defeat. She had waited too long. Despite Dr. Horker's confidence in Mueller, she should have called last night—at once.
"He's gone!" she murmured distractedly. She realized now the impossibility of finding him. His solitary habits, his dearth of friends, his lonely existence, left her without the least idea of how to commence a search. She knew, actually, so little about him—not even the source of the apparently sufficient income on which he subsisted. She felt herself completely at a loss, puzzled, lonesome, and disheartened. The futile buzzing of the telephone signal symbolized her frustration.
Perhaps, she thought, Dr. Horker might suggest something to do; perhaps, even, Mueller had reported Nick's whereabouts. She seized the hope eagerly. A glance at her wrist-watch revealed the time as ten-thirty; squarely in the midst of the Doctor's morning office hours, but no matter. If he were busy she could wait. She rose, bounding hastily down the stairs.
She glimpsed her mother opening mail in the library, and paused momentarily at the door. Mrs. Lane glanced up as she appeared.
"Hello," said the mother. "You've been on the telephone all morning, and what did Carl want of you last night?"
"Argument," responded Pat briefly.
"Carl's a gem! He's been of inestimable assistance in developing you into a very charming and clever daughter, and Heaven knows what I'd have raised without him!"
"Cain, probably," suggested Pat. She passed into the hall and out the door, blinking in the brilliant August sunshine. She crossed the strip of turf, picked her way through the break in the hedge, and approached the Doctor's door. It was open; it often was in summer time, especially during his brief office hours. She entered and went into the chamber used as waiting room.
His office door was closed; the faint hum of his voice sounded. She sat impatiently in a chair and forced herself to wait.
Fortunately, the delay was nominal; it was but a few minutes when the door opened and an opulent, middle-aged lady swept past her and away. Pat recognized her as Mrs. Lowry, some sort of cousin of the Brock pair.
"Good morning!" boomed the Doctor. "Professional call, I take it, since you're here during office hours." He settled his great form in a chair beside her.
"He's gone!" said Pat plaintively. "I can't reach him."
"Humph!" grunted Horker helpfully.
"I've tried all morning—he's always home in the morning."
"Listen, you little scatter-brain!" rumbled the Doctor. "Why didn't you tell me Mueller brought you home last night? I thought he was on the job."
"I didn't think of it," she wailed. "Nick said he'd have to make some preparations, and I never dreamed he'd skip away like this."
"He must have gone home directly after you left him, and skipped out immediately," said the Doctor ruminatively. "Mueller never caught up with him."
"But what'll we do?" she cried desperately.
"He can't have gone far with no more preparation than this," soothed Horker. "He'll write you in a day or two."
"He won't! He said he wouldn't. He doesn't want me to know where he is!" She was on the verge of tears.
"Now, now," said the Doctor still in his soothing tones. "It isn't as bad as all that."
"Take off your bed-side manner!" she snapped, blinking to keep back the tears. "It's worse! What ever can we do? Dr. Carl," she changed to a pleading tone, "can't you think of something?"
"Of course, Pat! I can think of several things to do if you'll quiet down for a moment or so."
"I'm sorry, Dr. Carl—but whatcanwe do?"
"First, perhaps Mueller can trace him. That's his business, you know."
"But suppose he can't—what then?"
"Well, I'd suggest you write him a letter."
"But I don't know where to write!" she wailed. "I don't know his address!"
"Be still a moment, scatter-brain! Address it to his last residence; you know that, don't you? Of course you do. Now, don't you suppose he'll leave a forwarding address? He must receive some sort of mail about his income, or estate, or whatever he lives on. Your letter'll find him, Honey; don't you doubt it."
"Oh, do you think so?" she asked, suddenly hopeful. "Do you really think so?"
"I really think so. You would too if you didn't fly into a panic every time some little difficulty confronts you. Sometimes even my psychiatry is puzzled to explain how you can be so clever and so stupid, so self-reliant and so dependent, so capable and so helpless—all at one and the same time. Your Nick can't be as much of a paradox as you are!"
"I wonder if a letterwillreach him," she said eagerly, ignoring the Doctor's remarks. "I'll try. I'll try immediately."
"I sort of had a feeling you would," said Horker amiably. "I hope you succeed; and not only for your sake, Pat, because God knows how this thing will work out. But I'm anxious to examine this youngster of yours on my own account; he must be a remarkable specimen to account for all the perturbation he's managed to cause you. And this Jekyll-and-Hyde angle sounds interesting, too."
"Jekyll and Hyde!" echoed Pat. "Dr. Carl, is that possible?"
"Not literally," chuckled the other, "though in a sense, Stevenson anticipated Freud in his thesis that liberating the evil serves also to release the good."
"But—It was a drug that caused that change in the story, wasn't it?"
"Well? Do you suspect your friend of being addicted to some mysterious drug? Is that the latest hypothesis?"
"Isthere such a drug? One that could change a person's character?"
"Allalkaloids do that, Honey. Some of them stimulate, some depress, some breed frenzies, and some give visions of delight—but all of them influence one's mental and emotional organization, which you call character. So for that matter, does a square meal, or a cup of coffee, or even a rainy day."
"But isn't there a drug that can separate good qualities from evil, like the story?"
"Emphatically not, Pat! That's not the trouble with this pesky boy friend of yours."
"Well," said the girl doubtfully, "I only wish I had as much faith in your psychologies as you have. If you brain-doctors know it all, why do you switch theories every year?"
"Wedon'tknow it all. On the other hand, there are a few things to be said in our favor."
"What are they?"
"For one," replied the Doctor, "we do cure people occasionally. You'll admit that."
"Sure," said Pat. "So did the Salem witches—occasionally." She gave him a suddenly worried look. "Oh, Dr. Carl, don't think I'm not grateful! You know how much I'm hoping from your help, but I'm miserably anxious over all this."
"Never mind, Honey. You're not the first one to point out the shortcomings of the medical profession. That's a game played by plenty of physicians too." He paused at the sound of footsteps on the porch, followed by the buzz of the doorbell. "Run along and write your letter, dear—here comes that Tuesday hypochondriac of mine, and he's rich enough for my careful attention."
Pat flashed him a quick smile of farewell and slipped quietly into the hall. At the door she passed the Doctor's patient—a lean, elderly gentleman of woe-begone visage—and returned to her own home.
Her spirits, mercurial to a degree, had risen again. She was suddenly positive that the Doctor's scheme would bring results, and she darted into the house almost buoyantly. Her mother had abandoned the desk, and she ensconced herself before it, finding paper and pen, and staring thoughtfully at the blank sheet.
Finally she wrote.
"Dear Nick—"Something has happened, favorable, I think, to us. I believe I have found the help we need."Will you come if you can, or if that's not possible, break that self-given promise of yours, and communicate with me?"I love you."
"Dear Nick—
"Something has happened, favorable, I think, to us. I believe I have found the help we need.
"Will you come if you can, or if that's not possible, break that self-given promise of yours, and communicate with me?
"I love you."
She signed it simply "Pat", placed it in an envelope, addressed it hastily, and hurried out to post it. On her return she spied the Doctor's hypochondriac in the act of leaving. He walked past her with his lean, worry-smitten face like a study of Hogarth, and she heard him mumbling to himself. The elation went out of her; she mounted the steps very soberly, and went miserably inside.
Pat suffered Wednesday through somehow, knowing that any such early response to her letter was impossible. Still, that impossibility did not deter her from starting at the sound of the telephone, and sorting through the mail with an eagerness that drew a casual attention from her mother.
"Good Heavens, Patricia! You're like a child watching for an answer to his note to Santa Claus!"
"That's what I am, I guess," responded the girl ruefully. "Maybe I expect too much from Santa Claus."
Late in the afternoon she drifted over to Dr. Horker's residence, to be informed that he was out. For distraction, she went in anyway, and spent a while browsing among the books in the library. She blundered into Kraft-Ebing, and read a few pages in growing indignation.
"I'm ashamed to be human!" she muttered disgustedly to herself, slamming shut thePsychopathia Sexualis. "I wouldn't be a doctor, or have a child of mine become one, if I were positively certain he'd turn into Lord Lister himself! Nick was right when he said doctors live on people's troubles."
She wondered how Dr. Horker could remain so human, so kindly and understanding, when as he said himself his world was a parade of misfits, incompetents, and all the nastiness of mortals.Hewas nice; she felt no embarrassment in confiding in him even when she might hesitate to bare her feelings to her own mother. Or was it simply the natural thing to do to tell one's troubles to a doctor?
Not, of course, that the situation reflected any discredit on her mother. Mrs. Lane was a very precious sort of parent, she mused, young as Pat in spirit, appreciative and enthusiastically fond of her daughter. That she trusted Pat, that she permitted her to do entirely as she pleased, was exactly as the girl would have it; it argued no lack of affection that each of them had their separate interests, and if the girl occasionally found herself in unpleasantness such as this, that too was her own fault.
And yet, she reflected, it was a bitter thing to have no one to whom to turn. If it weren't for Dr. Carl and his jovial willingness to commit any sin up to malpractice to help her, she might have felt differently. But there alwayswasDr. Carl, and that, she concluded, was that.
She wandered back to her own side of the hedge, missing for the first time in many weeks the companionship of the old crowd. There hadn't been many idle afternoons heretofore during the summer; there'd always been some of the collegiate vacationing in town, and Pat had never needed other lure than her own piquant vivacity to assure herself of ample attention. Now, of course, it was different; she had so definitely tagged herself with the same Nicholas Devine that even the most ardent of the group had taken the warning.
"And I don't regret it either!" she told herself as she entered the house. "Trouble, mystery, suffering and all—I don't regret it! I've had my compensations too."
She sighed and trudged upstairs to prepare for dinner.
Morning found Pat in a fair frenzy of trepidation. She kept repeating to herself that two days wasn't enough, that more time might be required, that even had Nicholas Devine received her letter, he might not have answered at once. Yet she was quivering as she darted into the hall to examine the mail.
It was there! She spied a fragment of the irregular handwriting and seized the envelope from beneath a clutter of notes, bills, and advertisements. She glanced at the post-mark. Chicago! He hadn't left the city, trusting perhaps to the anonymity conferred by its colossal swarm of humanity. Indeed, she thought as she stared at the missive, he might have moved around the corner, and save for the chance of a fortuitous meeting she'd never know it.
She tore open the envelope and scanned the several scrawled lines.
No heading, no salutation, not even a signature. Just, "Thursday evening at our place in the park." No more; she studied the few words intently, as if she could read into their bald phrasing the moods and hidden emotions of the writer.
A single phrase, but sufficient. The day was suddenly brighter, and the hope which had glowed so dimly yesterday was abruptly almost more than a hope—a certainty. All her doubts of Dr. Horker's abilities were forgotten; already the solution of this uncanny mystery seemed assured, and the restoration of romance imminent. She carried the letter to her own room and tucked it carefully by the other in the drawer of the night-table.
Thursday evening—this evening! Many hours intervened between now and a reasonable time for the meeting, but they loomed no longer drab, dull, and hopeless. She lay on her bed and dreamed.
She could meet Nick as early as possible; perhaps at eight-thirty, and bring him directly to the Doctor's residence. No use wasting a moment, she mused; the sooner some light could be thrown on the affliction, the sooner they could lay the devil—exorcise it. Demon, fixed idea, mental aberration, or whatever Dr. Carl chose to call it, it had to be met and vanquished once and forever. And itcouldbe vanquished; in her present mood she didn't doubt it. Then—after that—there was the prospect of her own Nick regained, and the sweet vistas opened by that reflection.
She lunched in an abstracted manner. In the afternoon, when the phone rang, she jumped in a startled manner, then relaxed with a shrug.
But this time itwasfor her. She darted into the hall to take the call on the lower phone; she was hardly surprised but thoroughly excited to recognize the voice of Nicholas Devine.
"Pat?"
"Nick! Oh, Nick, Honey! What is it?"
"My note to you." Even across the wire she sensed the strain in his tense tones. "You've read it?"
"Of course, Nick! I'll be there."
"No." His voice was trembling. "You won't come, Pat. Promise you won't!"
"But why? Why not, Nick? Oh, it's terribly important that I see you!"
"You're not to come, Pat!"
"But—" An idea was struggling to her consciousness. "Nick, was it—?"
"Yes. You know now."
"But, Honey, what difference does it make?Youcome. You must, Nick!"
"I won't meet you, I tell you!" She could hear his voice rising excitedly in pitch, she could feel the intensity of the struggle across unknown miles of lifeless copper wire.
"Nick," she said, "I'm going to be there, and you're going to meet me."
There was silence at the other end.
"Nick!" she cried anxiously. "Do you hear me? I'll be there. Will you?"
His voice sounded again, now flat and toneless.
"Yes," he said. "I'll be there."
The receiver clicked at the far end of the wire; there was only a futile buzzing in Pat's ears. She replaced the instrument and sat staring dubiously at it.
Had that been Nick, really her Nick, or—? Suppose she went to that meeting and found—the other? Was she willing to face another evening of indignities and terrors like those still fresh in her memory?
Still, she argued, what harm could come to her on that bench, exposed as it was to the gaze of thousands who wandered through the park on summer evenings? Suppose itwerethe other who met her; there was no way to force her into a situation such as that of Saturday night. Nick himself had chosen that very spot for their other meeting, and for that very reason.
"There's no risk in it," she told herself, "Nothing can possibly happen. I'll simply go there and bring Nick back to Dr. Carl's, along a lighted, busy street, the whole two blocks. What's there to be afraid of?"
Nothing at all, she answered herself. But suppose—She shuddered and deliberately abandoned her chain of thought as she rose and rejoined her mother.
Pat was by no means as buoyant as she had been in the morning. She approached the appointed meeting place with a feeling of trepidation that all her arguments could not subdue.
She surveyed the crowded walks of the park with relief; she felt confirmed in her assumption that nothing unpleasant could occur with so many on-lookers. So she approached the bench with somewhat greater self-assurance than when she had left the house.
She saw the seat with its lone occupant, and hastened her steps. Nicholas Devine was sitting exactly as he had on that other occasion, chin cupped on his hands, eyes turned moodily toward the vast lake that coruscated now with the reflection of stars and many lights. As before, she moved close to his side before he looked up, but here the similarity of the two occasions vanished. Her fears were realized; she was looking into the red-gleaming eyes and expressionless features of his other self—the demon of Saturday evening!
"Sit down!" he said as a sardonic half-smile twisted his lips. "Aren't you pleased? Aren't you thrilled to the very core of your being?"
Pat stood irresolute; she controlled an impulse to break into sudden, abandoned flight. The imminence of the crowded walks again reassured her, and she seated herself gingerly on the extreme edge of the bench, staring at her companion with coolly inimical eyes. He returned her gaze with features as immobile as carven stone; only his red eyes gave evidence of the obscene, uncanny life behind the mask.
"Well?" said Pat in as frigid a voice as she could muster.
"Yes," said the other surveying her. "You are quite as I recalled you. Very pretty, almost beautiful, save for a certain irregularity in your features. Not unpleasant, however." His eyes traveled over her body; automatically she drew back, shrinking away from him. "You have a seductive body," he continued. "A most seductive body; I regret that circumstances prevented our full enjoyment of it. But that will come. Yes, that will come!"
"Oh!" said Pat faintly. It took all her determination to remain seated by the side of the horror.
"You were extremely attractive as I attired you Saturday," the other proceeded. His lips took on a curious sensual leer. "I could have done better with more time; I would have stripped you somewhat more completely. Everything, I think, except your legs; I am pleased by the sight of long, straight, silk-clad legs, and should perhaps have received some pleasure by running these hands along them—scratching at proper intervals for the aesthetic effect of blood. But that too will come."
The girl sprang erect, gasping and speechless in outraged anger. She turned abruptly; nothing remained of her determination now. She felt only an urge to escape from the sneering tormentor who had lost in her mind all connection with her own Nicholas Devine. She took a sudden step.
"Sit down!" She heard the tones of the entity behind her, flat, unchanged. "Sit down, else I'll drag you here!"
She paused in sheer surprise, turning a startled face on the other.
"You wouldn't dare!" she said, amazed at the bald effrontery of the threat. "You don't dare touch me here!"
The other laughed. "Don't I? What have I to risk?He'll suffer for any deed of mine! You'll call for aid against me and only loose the hounds onhim."
Pat stared blankly at the evil face. She had no answer; for once her ready tongue found no retort.
"Sit down!" reiterated the other, and she dropped dazedly to her position on the bench. She turned dark questioning eyes on him.
"Do you see," he sneered, "how weakening an influence is this love of yours? To protect him you are obeying me; this is my authority over you—this body I share with him!"
She made no reply; she was making a desperate effort to lash her mind into activity, to formulate some means of combating the being who tortured her.
"It has weakened him, too," the other proceeded. "This disturbed love of his has taken away the mastery which birth gave him, and his enfeeblement has given that mastery to me. He knows now the reason for his weakness; I tell it to him too late to harm me."
Pat struggled for composure. The very presence of the cold demon tore at the roots of her self-control, and she suppressed a fierce desire to break into hysterical laughter. Ridiculous, hopeless, incomprehensible situation! She forced her quivering throat to husky speech.
"What—what are you?" she stammered.
"Synapse! I'm a question of synapses," jeered the other. "Simple! Very simple! Ask your friend the Doctor!"
"I think," said the girl, a measure of control returning to her voice, "that you're a devil. You're some sort of a fiend that has managed to attach itself to Nick, and you're not human. That's what I think!"
"Think what you please," said the other. "We're wasting time here," he said abruptly. "Come."
"Where?" Pat was startled; she felt a recurrence of fright.
"No matter where. Come."
"I won't! Why do you want me?"
"To complete the business of Saturday night," he said. "Your lips have healed; they bleed no longer, but that is easy to remedy. Come."
"I won't!" exclaimed the girl in sudden panic. "I won't!" She moved as if to rise.
"You forget," intoned the being beside her. "You forget the authority vested in me by virtue of this love of yours. Let me convince you." He stretched forth a thin hand. "Move and you condemn your sweetheart to the punishment you threaten me."
He seized her arm, pinching the flesh brutally, his nails breaking the smooth skin. Pat felt her face turn ashy pale; she closed her eyes and bit her nearly-healed lips at the excruciating pain, but she made not the slightest sound nor the faintest movement. She simply sat and suffered.
"You see!" sneered the other, releasing her. "Thank my kindly nature that I marked your arm instead of your face. Shall we go?"
A scarcely audible whimper of pain came from the girl's lips. She sat palled and unmoving, with her eyes still closed.
"No," she murmured faintly at last. "No. I won't go with you."
"Shall I drag you?"
"Yes. Drag me if you dare."
His hand closed on her wrist; she felt herself jerked violently to her feet, so roughly that it wrenched her shoulder. A startled, frightened little cry broke from her lips, and then she closed them firmly at the sight of several by-passers turning curious eyes on them.
"I'll come," she murmured. The glimmering of an idea had risen in her chaotic mind.
She followed him in grim, bitter silence across the clipped turf to the limit of the park. She recognized Nick's modest automobile standing in the line of cars along the street; her companion, or captor, moved directly towards it, opened the door and clambered in without a single backward glance. He turned about and watched her as she paused with one diminutive foot on the running board, and rubbed her hand over her aching arm.
"Get in!" he ordered coldly.
She made no move. "I want to know where you intend to take me."
"It doesn't matter. To a place where we can complete that unfinished experiment of ours. Aren't you happy at the prospect?"
"Do you think," she said unsteadily, "that I'd consent to that even to save Nick from disgrace and punishment? Do you think I'm fool enough for that?"
"We'll soon see." He extended his hand. "Scream—fight—struggle!" he jeered. "Call them down on your sweetheart!"
He had closed his hand on her wrist; she jerked it convulsively from his grasp.
"I'll bargain with you!" she gasped. She needed a moment's respite to clarify a thought that had been growing in her mind.
"Bargain? What have you to offer?"
"As much as you!"
"Ah, but I have a threat—the threat to your sweetheart! And I'm offering too the lure of that evil whose face so charmed you recently. Have you forgotten how nearly I won you to the worship of that principle? Have you forgotten the ecstasy of that pain?"
His terrible, blood-shot eyes were approaching her face; and strangely, the girl felt a curious recurrence of that illogical desire to yield that had swept over her on that disastrous night of Saturday. Therehadbeen an ecstasy; therehadbeen a wild, ungodly, unhallowed pleasure in his blows, in the searing pain of his kisses on her lacerated lips. She realized vaguely that she was staring blankly, dazedly, into the red eyes, and that somewhere within her, some insane brain-cells were urging her to clamber to the seat beside him.
She tore her eyes away. She rubbed her bruised shoulder, and the pain of her own touch restored her vanishing logical faculties. She returned her gaze to the face of the other, meeting his gaze now coolly.
"Nick!" she said earnestly, as if calling him from a distance. "Nick!"
There was, she fancied, the faintest gleam of concern apparent in the features opposite her. She continued.
"Nick!" she repeated. "You can hear me, Honey. Come to the house as soon as you are able. Come tonight, or any time; I'll wait until you do. You'll come, Honey; you must!"
She backed away from the car; the other made no move to halt her. She circled the vehicle and dashed recklessly across the street. From the safety of the opposite walk she glanced back; the red-eyed visage was regarding her steadily through the glass of the window.
Pat almost ran the few blocks to her home. She hastened along in a near panic, regardless of the glances of pedestrians she chanced to pass. With the disappearance of the immediate urge, the composure for which she had struggled had deserted her, and she felt shaken, terrified, and weak. Her arm ached miserably, and her wrenched shoulder pained at each movement. It was not until she attained her own door-step that she paused, panting and quivering, to consider the events of the evening.
"I can't stand any more of this!" she muttered wretchedly to herself. "I'll just have to give up, I guess; I can't pit myself another time against—that thing."
She leaned wearily against the railing of the porch, rubbing her injured arm.
"Dr. Carl was right," she thought. "Nick was right; it's dangerous. There was a moment there at the end when he—or it—almost had me. I'm frightened," she admitted. "Lord only knows what might have happened had I been a little weaker. If the Lorddoesknow," she added.
She found her latch-key and entered the house. Only a dim light burned in the hall; her mother, of course, was at the Club, and the maid and Magda were far away in their chambers on the third floor. She tossed her wrap on a chair, switched on a brighter light, and examined the painful spot on her arm, a red mark already beginning to turn a nasty blue, with two tiny specks of drying blood. She shuddered, and trudged wearily up the stairs to her room.
The empty silence of the house oppressed her. She wanted human companionship—safe, trustworthy, friendly company, anyone to distract her thoughts from the eerie, disturbing direction they were taking. She was still in somewhat of a panic, and suppressed with difficulty a desire to peep fearfully under the bed.
"Coward!" she chided herself. "You knew what to expect."
Suddenly the recollection of her parting words recurred to her. She had told Nick—if Nick had indeed heard—to come to the house, to come at once, tonight, if he could. A tremor of apprehension ran through her. Suppose he came; suppose he came as her own Nick, and she admitted him, and then—or suppose that other came, and managed by some trick to enter, or suppose that unholy fascination of his prevailed on her—she shivered, and brushed her hand distractedly across her eyes.
"I can't stand it!" she moaned. "I'll have to give up, even if it means never seeing Nick again. I'll have to!" She shook her head miserably as if to deny the picture that had risen in her mind of herself and that horror alone in the house.
"I won't stay here!" she decided. She peeped out of the west windows at the Doctor's residence, and felt a surge of relief at the sight of his iron-gray hair framed in the library window below. He was reading; she could see the book on his knees. There was her refuge; she ran hastily down the stairs and out of the door.
With an apprehensive glance along the street she crossed to his door and rang the bell. She waited nervously for his coming, and, with a sudden impulse, pulled her vanity-case from her bag and dabbed a film of powder over the mark on her arm. Then his ponderous footsteps sounded and the door opened.
"Hello," he said genially. "These late evening visits of yours are becoming quite customary—and see if I care!"
"May I come in a while?" asked Pat meekly.
"Have I ever turned you away?" He followed her into the library, pushed a chair forward for her, and dropped quickly into his own with an air of having snatched it from her just in time.
"I didn't want your old arm-chair," she remarked, occupying the other.
"And what's the trouble tonight?" he queried.
"I—well, I was just nervous. I didn't want to stay in the house alone."
"You?" His tone was skeptical. "You were nervous? That hardly sounds reasonable, coming from an independent little spit-fire like you."
"I was, though. I was scared."
"And of what—or whom?"
"Of haunts and devils."
"Oh." He nodded. "I see you've had results from your letter-writing."
"Well, sort of."
"I'm used to your circumlocutions, Pat. Suppose you come directly to the point for once. What happened?"
"Why, I wrote Nick to get in touch with me, and I got a reply. He said to meet him in the park at a place we knew. This evening."
"And you did, of course."
"Yes, but before that, this afternoon, he called up and told me not to, but I insisted and we did."
"Told you not to, eh? And was his warning justified?"
"Yes. Oh, yes! When I came to the place, it was—the other."
"So! Well, he could hardly manhandle you in a public park."
Pat thought of her wrenched shoulder and bruised arm. She shuddered.
"He's horrible!" she said. "Inhuman! He kept referring to Saturday night, and he threatened that if I moved or made a disturbance he'd let Nick suffer the consequences. So I kept still while he insulted me."
"You nit-wit!" There was more than a trace of anger in the Doctor's voice. "I want to see that pup of yours! We'll soon find out what this thing is—a mania or simply lack of a good licking!"
"What it is?" echoed Pat. "Oh—it told me! Dr. Carl, what's a synopsis?"
"A synopsis! You know perfectly well."
"I mean applied to physiology or psychology or something. It—he told me he was a question of synopsis."
"This devil of yours said that?"
"Yes."
"Hum!" The Doctor's voice was musing. He frowned perplexedly, then looked up abruptly. "Was it—did he by any chance say synapses? Not synopsis—synapses?"
"That's it!" exclaimed the girl. "He said he was a question of synapses. Does that explain him? Do you know what he is?"
"Doesn't explain a damn thing!" snapped Horker. "A synapse is a juncture, or the meeting of two nerves. It's why you can develop automatic motions and habits, like playing piano, or dancing. When you form a habit, the synapses of the nerves involved are sort of worn thin, so the nerves themselves are, in a sense, short-circuited. You go through motions without the need of your brain intervening, which is all a habit amounts to. Understand?"
"Not very well," confessed Pat.
"Humph! It doesn't matter anyway. I can't see that it helps to analyze your devil."
"I don't care if it's never analyzed," said Pat with a return of despondency. "Dr. Carl, I can't face that evil thing again. I can't do it, not even if it means never seeing Nick!"
"Sensible," said the Doctor approvingly. "I'd like to have a chance at him, but not enough to keep you in this state of jitters. Although," he added, "a lot of this mystery is the product of your own harum-scarum mind. You can be sure of that, Honey."
"Youwouldsay so," responded the girl wearily. "You've never seen that—change. If it's my imagination, then I'm the one that needs your treatments, not Nick."
"It isn'tallimagination, most likely," said Horker defensively. "I know these introverted types with their hysterias, megalomanias, and defense mechanisms! They've paraded through my office there for a good many years, Pat; they've provided the lion's share of my practice. But this young psychopathic of yours seems to have it bad—abnormally so, and that's why I'm so interested, apart from helping you, of course."
"I don't care," said Pat apathetically, repressing a desire to rub her injured arm. "I'm through. I'm scared out of the affair. Another week like this last one and Iwouldbe one of your patients."
"Best drop it, then," said Horker, eyeing her seriously. "Nothing's worth upsetting yourself like this, Pat."
"Nick's worth it," she murmured. "He's worth it—only I just haven't the strength. I haven't the courage. I can't do it!"
"Never mind, Honey," the Doctor muttered, regarding her with an expression of concern. "You're probably well out of the mess. I know damn well you haven't told me everything about this affair—notably, how you acquired that ugly mark on your arm that's so carefully powdered over. So, all in all, I guess you're well out of it."
"I suppose I am." Her voice was still weary. Suddenly the glare of headlights drew her attention to the window; a car was stopping before her home. "There's Mother," she said. "I'll go on back now, Dr. Carl, and thanks for entertaining a lonesome and depressed lady."
She rose with a casual glance through the window, then halted in frozen astonishment and a trace of terror.
"Oh!" she gasped. The car was the modest coupe of Nicholas Devine.
She peered through the window; the Doctor rose and stared over her shoulder. "I told him to come," she whispered. "I told him to come when he was able. He heard me, he or—the other."
A figure alighted from the vehicle. Even in the dusk she could perceive the exhaustion, the weariness in its movements. She pressed her face to the pane, surveying the form with fascinated intentness. It turned, supporting itself against the car and gazing steadily at her own door. With the movement the radiance of a street-light illuminated its features.
"It's Nick!" she cried with such eagerness that the Doctor was startled. "It'smyNick!"
Pat rushed to the door, out upon the porch, and down to the street. Dr. Horker followed her to the entrance and stood watching her as she darted toward the dejected figure beside the car.
"Nick!" she cried. "I'm here, Honey. You heard me, didn't you?"
She flung herself into his arms; he held her eagerly, pressing a hasty, tender kiss on her lips.
"You heard me!" she murmured.
"Yes." His voice was husky, strained. "What is it, Pat? Tell me quickly—God knows how much time we have!"
"It's Dr. Carl. He'll help us, Nick."
"Help us! No one can help us, dear. No one!"
"He'll try. It can't do any harm, Honey. Come in with me. Now!"
"It's useless, I tell you!"
"But come," she pleaded. "Come anyway!"
"Pat, I tell you this battle has to be fought out by me alone. I'm the only one who can do anything at all and," he lowered his voice, "Pat, I'm losing!"
"Nick!"
"That's why I came tonight. I was too cowardly to make our last meeting—Monday evening in the park—a definite farewell. I wanted to, but I weakened. So tonight, Pat, it's a final good-bye, and you thank Heaven for it!"
"Oh, Nick dear!"
"It was touch and go whether I came at all tonight. It was a struggle, Pat;heis as strong as I am now. Or stronger."
The girl gazed searchingly into his worn, weary face. He looked miserably ill, she thought; he seemed as exhausted as one who had been engaged in a physical battle.
"Nick," she said insistently, "I don't care what you say, you're coming in with me. Only for a little while."
She tugged at his hand, dragging him reluctantly after her. He followed her to the porch where the open door still framed the great figure of the Doctor.
"You know Dr. Carl," she said.
"Come inside," growled Horker. Pat noticed the gruffness of his voice, his lack of any cordiality, but she said nothing as she pulled her reluctant companion through the door and into the library.
The Doctor drew up another chair, and Pat, more accustomed to his devices, observed that he placed it in such position that the lamp cast a stream of radiance on Nick's face. She sank into her own chair and waited silently for developments.
"Well," said Horker, turning his shrewd old eyes on Nick's countenance, "let's get down to cases. Pat's told me what she knows; we can take that much for granted. Is there anything more you might want to tell?"
"No, sir," responded the youth wearily. "I've told Pat all I know."
"Humph! Maybe I can ask some leading questions, then. Will you answer them?"
"Of course, any that I can."
"All right. Now," the Doctor's voice took on a cool professional edge, "you've had these—uh—attacks as long as you can remember. Is that right?"
"Yes."
"But they've been more severe of late?"
"Much worse, sir!"
"Since when?"
"Since—about as long as I've known Pat. Four or five weeks."
"M—m," droned the Doctor. "You've no idea of the cause for this increase in the malignancy of the attacks?"
"No sir," said Nick, after a barely perceptible hesitation.
"You don't think the cause could be in any way connected with, let us say, the emotional disturbances attending your acquaintance with Pat here?"
"No, sir," said the youth flatly.
"All right," said Horker. "Let that angle go for the present. Are there any after effects from these spells?"
"Yes. There's always a splitting headache." He closed his eyes. "I have one of them now."
"Localized?"
"Sir?"
"Is the pain in any particular region? Forehead, temples, eyes, or so forth?"
"No. Just a nasty headache."
"But no other after-effects?"
"I can't think of any others. Except, perhaps, a feeling of exhaustion after I've gone through what I've just finished." He closed his eyes as if to shut out the recollection.
"Well," mused the Doctor, "we'll forget the physical symptoms. What happens to your individuality, your own consciousness, while you're suffering an attack?"
"Nothing happens to it," said Nick with a suppressed shudder. "I watch and hear, but whathedoes is beyond my control. It's terrifying—horrible!" he burst out suddenly.
"Doubtless," responded Horker smoothly. "What about the other? Does that one stand by while you're in the saddle?"
"I don't know," muttered Nick dully. "Of course he does!" he added abruptly. "I can feel his presence at all times—even now. He's always lurking, waiting to spring forth, as soon as I relax!"
"Humph!" ejaculated the Doctor. "How do you manage to sleep?"
"By waiting for exhaustion," said Nick wearily. "By waiting until I can stay awake no longer."
"And can you bring this other personality into dominance? Can you change controls, so to speak, at will?"
"Why—yes," the youth answered, hesitating as if puzzled. "Yes, I suppose I could."
"Let's see you, then."
"But—" Horror was in his voice.
"No, Dr. Carl!" Pat interjected in fright. "I won't let him!"
"I thought you declared yourself out of this," said Horker with a shrewd glance at the girl.
"Then I'm back in it! I won't let him do what you want—anyway, not that!"
"Pat," said the Doctor with an air of patience, "you want me to treat this affliction, don't you? Isn't that what both of you want?"
The girl murmured a scarcely audible assent.
"Very well, then," he proceeded. "Do you expect me to treat the thing blindly—in the dark? Do you think I can guess at the cause without observing the effect?"
"No," said Pat faintly.
"So! Now then," he turned to Nick, "Let's see this transformation."
"Must I?" asked the youth reluctantly.
"If you want my help."
"All right," he agreed with another tremor. He sat passively staring at the Doctor; a moment passed. Horker heard Pat's nervous breathing; other than that, the room was in silence. Nicholas Devine closed his eyes, brushed his hand across his forehead. A moment more and he opened them to gaze perplexedly at the Doctor.
"He won't!" he muttered in astonishment. "He won't do it!"
"Humph!" snapped Horker, ignoring Pat's murmur of relief. "Finicky devil, isn't he? Likes to pick company he can bully!"
"I don't understand it!" Nick's face was blank. "He's been tormenting me until just now!" He looked at the Doctor. "You don't think I'm lying about it, do you, Dr. Horker?"
"Not consciously," replied the other coolly. "If I thought you were responsible for a few of the indignities perpetrated on Pat here, I'd waste no time in questions, young man. I'd be relieving myself of certain violent impulses instead."
"Icouldn'tharm Pat!"
"You gave a passable imitation of it, then! However, that's beside the point; as I say, I don't hold you responsible for aberrations which I believe are beyond your control. The main thing is a diagnosis."
"Do you know what it is?" cut in Pat eagerly.
"Not yet—at least, not for certain. There's only one real method available; these questions will get us nowhere. We'll have to psychoanalyze you, young man."
"I don't care what you do, if you can offer any hope!" he declared vehemently. "Let's get it over!"
"Not as easy as all that!" rumbled Horker. "It takes time; and besides, it can't be successful with the subject in a hectic mood such as yours." He glanced at his watch. "Moreover, it's after midnight."
He turned to Nicholas Devine. "We'll make it Saturday evening," he said. "Meanwhile, young man, you're not to see Pat. Not at all—understand? You can see her here when you come."
"That's infinitely more than I'd planned for myself," said the youth in a low voice. "I'd abandoned the hope of seeing her."
He rose and moved toward the door, and the others followed. At the entrance he paused; he leaned down to plant a brief, tender kiss on the girl's lips, and moved wordlessly out of the door. Pat watched him enter his car, and followed the vehicle with her eyes until it disappeared. Then she turned to Horker.
"Do you really know anything about it?" she queried. "Have you any theory at all?"
"He's not lying," said the Doctor thoughtfully. "I watched him closely; he believes he's telling the truth."
"He is. I know what I saw!"
"He hasn't the signs of praecox or depressive," mused the Doctor. "It's puzzling; it's one of those functional aberrations, or a fixed delusion of some kind. We'll find out just what it is."
"It's the devil," declared Pat positively. "I don't care what sort of scientific tag you give it—that's what it is. You doctors can hide a lot of ignorance under a long name."
Horker paid no attention to her remarks. "We'll see what the psychoanalysis brings out," he said. "I shouldn't be surprised if the whole thing were the result of a defense mechanism erected by a timid child in an effort to evade responsibility. That's what it sounds like."
"It's a devil!" reiterated Pat.
"Well," said the Doctor, "if it is, it has one thing in common with every spook or devil I ever heard of."
"What's that?"
"It refuses to appear under any conditions where one has a chance to examine it. It's like one of these temperamental mediums trying to perform under a spot-light."
Pat awoke in rather better spirits. Somehow, the actual entrance of Dr. Horker into the case gave her a feeling of security, and her natural optimistic nature rode the pendulum back from despair to hope. Even the painful black-and-blue mark on her arm, as she examined it ruefully, failed to shake her buoyant mood.
Her mood held most of the day; it was only at evening that a recurrence of doubt assailed her. She sat in the dim living room waiting the arrival of her mother's guests, and wondered whether, after all, the predicament was as easily solvable as she had assumed. She watched the play of lights and shadows across the ceiling, patterns cast through the windows by moving headlights in the street, and wondered anew whether her faith in Dr. Carl's abilities was justified. Science! She had the faith of her generation in its omnipotence, but here in the dusk, the outworn superstitions of childhood became appalling realities, and some of Magda's stories, forgotten now for years, rose out of their graves and went squeaking and maundering like sheeted ghosts in a ghastly parade across the universe of her mind. The meaningless taunts she habitually flung at Dr. Carl's science became suddenly pregnant with truth; his patient, hard-learned science seemed in fact no more than the frenzies of a witch-doctor dancing in the heart of a Rhodesian swamp.
What was it worth—this array of medical facts—if it failed to cure? Was medicine falling into the state of Chinese science—a vast collection of good rules for which the reasons were either unknown or long forgotten? She sighed; it was with a feeling of profound relief that she heard the voices of the Brocks outside; she played miserable bridge the whole evening, but it was less of an affliction than the solitude of her own thoughts.
Saturday morning, cloudy and threatening though it was, found the pendulum once more at the other end of the arc. She found herself, if not buoyantly cheerful, at least no longer prey to the inchoate doubts and fears of the preceding evening. She couldn't even recall their nature; they had been apart from the cool, day-time logic that preached a common-sense reliance on accepted practices. They had been, she concluded, no more than childish nightmares induced by darkness and the play of shadows.
She dressed and ate a late breakfast; her mother was already en route to the Club for her bridge-luncheon. Thereafter, she wandered into the kitchen for the company of Magda, whom she found with massive arms immersed in dish water. Pat perched on her particular stool beside the kitchen table and watched her at her work.
"Magda," she said finally.
"I'm listening, Miss Pat."
"Do you remember a story you told me a long time ago? Oh, years and years ago, about a man in your town who could change into something—some fierce animal. A wolf, or something like that."
"Oh, him!" said Magda, knitting her heavy brows. "You mean the werewolf."
"That's it! The werewolf. I remember it now—how frightened I was after I went to bed. I wasn't more than eight years old, was I?"
"I couldn't remember. It was years ago, though, for sure."
"What was the story?" queried Pat. "Do you remember that?"
"Why, it was the time the sheep were being missed," said the woman, punctuating her words with the clatter of dishes on the drainboard. "Then there was a child gone, and another, and then tales of this great wolf about the country. I didn't see him; us little ones stayed under roof by darkness after that."
"That wasn't all of it," said Pat. "You told me more than that."
"Well," continued Magda, "there was my uncle, who was best hand with a rifle in the village. He and others went after the creature, and my uncle, he came back telling how he'd seen it plain against the sky, and how he'd fired at it. He couldn't miss, he was that close, but the wolf gave him a look and ran away."
"And then what?"
"Then the Priest came, and he said it wasn't a natural wolf. He melted up a silver coin and cast a bullet, and he gave it to my uncle, he being the best shot in the village. And the next night he went out once more."
"Did he get it?" asked Pat. "I don't remember."
"He did. He came upon it by the pasture, and he aimed his gun. The creature looked straight at him with its evil red eyes, and he shot it. When he came to it, there wasn't a wolf at all, but this man—his name I forget—with a hole in his head. And then the Priest, he said he was a werewolf, and only a silver bullet could kill him. But my uncle,hesaid those evil red eyes kept staring at him for many nights."
"Evil red eyes!" said Pat suddenly. "Magda," she asked in a faint voice, "could he change any time he wanted to?"
"Only by night, the Priest said. By sunrise he had to be back."
"Only by night!" mused the girl. Another idea was forming in her active little mind, another conception, disturbing, impossible to phrase. "Is that worse than being possessed by a devil, Magda?"
"Sure it's worse! The Priest, he could cast out the devil, but I never heard no cure for being a werewolf."
Pat said nothing further, but slid from her high perch to the floor and went soberly out of the kitchen. The fears of last night had come to life again, and now the over-cast skies outside seemed a fitting symbol to her mood. She stared thoughtfully out of the living room windows, and the sudden splash of raindrops against the pane lent a final touch to the whole desolate ensemble.
"I'm just a superstitious little idiot!" she told herself. "I laugh at Mother because she always likes to play North and South, and here I'm letting myself worry over superstitions that were discarded before there was any such thing as a game called contract bridge."
But her arguments failed to carry conviction. The memory of the terrible eyes of thatotherhad clicked too aptly to Magda's phrase. She couldn't subdue the picture that haunted her, and she couldn't cast off the apprehensiveness of her mood. She recalled gloomily that Dr. Horker was at the Club—wouldn't be home before evening, else she'd have gladly availed herself of his solid, matter-of-fact company.
She thought of Nick's appointment with the Doctor for that evening. Suppose his psychoanalysis brought to light some such horror as these fears of hers—that would forever destroy any possibility of happiness for her and Nick. Even though the Doctor refused to recognize it, called it by some polysyllabic scientific name, the thing would be there to sever them.
She wandered restlessly into the hall. The morning mail, unexamined, lay in its brazen receptacle, she moved over, fingering it idly. Abruptly she paused in astonishment—a letter in familiar script had flashed at her. She pulled it out; it was! It was a letter from Nicholas Devine!
She tore it open nervously, wondering whether he had reverted to his original refusal of Dr. Horker's aid, whether he was unable to come, whetherthathad happened. But only a single unfolded sheet slipped from the envelope, inscribed with a few brief lines of poetry.