10 - RESCUE FROM ABADDON
Pat slid dizzily from her perch on the table and sank heavily to a chair. The interruption of the mustached keeper of this den of contradictions struck her as extremely humorous; she giggled hysterically as her wavering gaze perceived the consternation in his sharp little face. Some forlorn shred of modesty asserted itself, and she dragged a corner of the red-checked table cloth across her knees.
"Get out!" said Nicholas Devine in that voice of rasping metal. "Get out!" he repeated in unchanging tones.
The other made no move to leave. "Yeah?" he said. "Listen, Bud—this place is respectable, see? You want to pull something like this, you go upstairs, see? And pay for your room."
"Get out!" There was no variation in the voice.
"You get out! The both of you, see?"
Nicholas Devine stepped slowly toward him; his back, as he advanced upon the bartender, was toward Pat, yet through the haze of intoxication, she had an impression of evil red eyes in a chill, impassive face. "Get out!"
The other had no stomach for such an adversary. He backed out of the door, closing it as he vanished. His voice floated in from the hall.
"I'm telling you!" he called. "Clear out!"
Nicholas Devine turned back toward the girl. He surveyed her sitting in her chair; she had dropped her chin to her hand to steady the whirling of her head.
"We'll go," he said. "Come on."
"I just want to sit here," she said. "Just let me sit here. I'm tired."
"Come on," he repeated.
"Why?" she muttered petulantly. "I'm tired."
"I want no interruptions. We'll go elsewhere."
"Must dress!" she murmured dazedly, "can't go on street without dress."
Nicholas Devine swept her frock from its place in the corner, gathered her wrap from the chair, and flung them over his arm. He grasped her wrist, tugging her to an unsteady standing position.
"Come on," he said.
"Dress!"
He snatched the red checked table cloth from its place, precipitating bottles, ash-tray, and glasses into an indiscriminate pile, and threw the stained and odorous fabric across her shoulders. She gathered it about her like a toga; it hung at most points barely below her waist, but it satisfied the urge of her muddled mind for a covering of some sort.
"We'll go through the rear," her companion said. "Into the alley. I want no trouble with that rat in the bar—yet!"
He still held Pat's wrist; she stumbled after him as he dragged her into the darkness of the hall. They moved through it blindly to a door at the far end; Nicholas swung it open upon a dim corridor flanked by buildings on either side, with a strip of star-sprinkled sky above.
Pat's legs were somehow incapable of their usual lithe grace; she failed to negotiate the single step, and crashed heavily to the concrete paving. The shock and the cooler air of the open steadied her momentarily; she felt no pain from her bruised knees, but a temporary rift in the fog that bound her mind. She gathered the red-checked cloth more closely about her shoulders as her companion, still clutching her wrist, jerked her violently to her feet.
They moved into the gulch of the alley, and here she found difficulty in following. Her tiny high-heeled pumps slipped at every step on the uneven cobbles of the paving, and the unsteady footing made her lurch and stumble until the dusty stretch of the alley was a writhing panorama of shadows and lighted windows and stars. Nicholas Devine turned an impatient glare on her, and here in the semi-darkness, his face was again the face of the red-eyed demon. She dragged him to a halt, laughing strangely.
"There it is!" she cried, pointing at him with her free hand. He turned again, staring at her with grim features.
"What?"
"There! Your face—the face of evil!" Again she laughed hysterically.
The other stepped to her side; the disturbing eyes were inches from her own. He raised his hand as she laughed, slapped her sharply, so that her head reeled. He seized her shoulders, shaking her until the checkered cloth billowed like a flag in a wind.
"Now come!" he muttered.
But the girl, laughing no longer, leaned pale and weak against a low board fence. Her limbs seemed paralyzed, and movement was quite impossible. She was conscious of neither the blow nor the shaking, but only of a devastating nausea and an all-encompassing weakness. She bent over the fence; she was violently ill.
Then the nausea had vanished, and a weariness, a strange lassitude, was all that remained. Nicholas Devine stood over her; suddenly he pressed her body to him in a convulsive embrace, so that her head dropped back, and his face loomed above her, obliterating the stars.
"Ah!" he said. He seemed about to kiss her when a sound—voices—filtered out of somewhere in the maze of dark courts and littered yards along the alley. He released her, seized her wrist, and once more she was stumbling wretchedly behind him over the uneven surface of the cobblestones.
A numbness had come over her; consciousness burned very low as she wavered doggedly along through the darkness. She perceived dimly that they were approaching the end of the alley; the brighter glow of the street loomed before them, and a passing motor car cut momentary parallel shafts of luminescence across the opening.
Nicholas Devine slowed his pace, still clutching her wrist in a cold grip; he paused, moving cautiously toward the corner of the building. He peered around the edge of the structure, surveying the now deserted street, while Pat stood dully behind him, incapable alike of thought or voluntary movement, clutching desperately at the dirty cloth that hung about her shoulders.
Her companion finished his survey; apparently satisfied that progress was safe, he dragged her after him, turning toward the corner beyond which his car was parked. The girl staggered behind him with diminishing vigor; consciousness was very nearly at the point of disappearance, and her steps were wavering unsteadily, and doggedly slow. She dragged heavily on his arm; he gave a gesture of impatience at her weakness.
"Come on!" he growled. "We're just going to the corner." His voice rose slightly in pitch, still sounding harsh as rasping metals. "There still remains the ultimate evil!" he said. "There is still a depth of beauty unplumbed, a pain whose exquisite pleasure is yet to find!"
They approached the corner; abruptly Nicholas Devine drew back as two figures came unexpectedly into view from beyond it. He turned back toward the alley-way, dragging the girl in a dizzy circle. He took a few rapid steps.
But Pat was through, exhausted. At his first step she stumbled and sprawled, dragging prone behind him. He released her hand and turned defiantly to face the approaching men, while the girl lying on the pavement struggled to a sitting posture with her back against the wall. She turned dull, indifferent eyes on the scene, then was roused to a somewhat higher pitch of interest by the sound of a familiar voice.
"There he is! I told you it was his car."
Dr. Horker! She struggled for clarity of thought; she realized dimly that she ought to feel relief, happiness—but all she could summon was a faint quickening of interest, or rather, a diminution of the lassitude that held her. She drew the rag of a table cloth about her and huddled against the wall, watching. The Doctor and some strange man, burly and massive in the darkness, dashed upon them, while Nicholas Devine waited, his red-orbed face a demoniac picture of cold contempt. Then the Doctor glanced at her huddled, bedraggled figure; she saw his face aghast, incredulous, as he perceived the condition of her clothing.
"Pat! My God, girl! What's happened? Where've you been?"
She found a hidden reserve somewhere within her. Her voice rose, shrill and hysterical.
"We've been in Hell!" she said. "You came to take me back, didn't you? Orpheus and Eurydice!" She laughed. "Dr. Orpheus Horker!"
The Doctor flashed her another incredulous glance and a grim and very terrible expression flamed in his face. He turned toward Nicholas Devine, his hands clenching, his mouth twisting without utterance, with no sound save a half-audible snarl. Then he spoke, a low, grating phrase flung at his thick-set companion.
"Bring the car," was all he said. The man lumbered away toward the corner, and he turned again toward Nicholas Devine, who faced him impassively. Suddenly his fist shot out; he struck the youth or demon squarely between the red eyes, sending him reeling back against the building. Then the Doctor turned, bending over Pat; she felt the pressure of his arms beneath knees and shoulders. He was carrying her toward a car that drew up at the curb; he was placing her gently in the back seat. Then, without a glance at the figure still leaning against the building, he swept from the sidewalk the dark mass that was Pat's dress and her wrap, and re-entered the car beside her.
"Shall I turn him in?" asked the man in the front seat.
"We can't afford the publicity," said the Doctor, adding grimly, "I'll settle with him later."
Pat's head lurched as the car started; she was losing consciousness, and realized it vaguely, but she retained one impression as the vehicle swung into motion. She perceived that the face of the lone figure leaning against the building, a face staring at her with horror and unbelief, was no longer the visage of the demon of the evening, but that of her own Nick.
11 - WRECKAGE
Pat opened her eyes reluctantly, with the impression that something unpleasant awaited her return to full consciousness. Something, as yet she could not recall just what, had happened to her; she was not even sure where she was awakening.
However, her eyes surveyed her own familiar room; there opposite the bed grinned the jade Buddha on his stand on the mantel—the one that Nick had—Nick! A mass of troubled, terrible recollections thrust themselves suddenly into consciousness. She visioned a medley of disturbing pictures, as yet disconnected, unassorted, but waiting only the return of complete wakefulness. And she realized abruptly that her head ached miserably, that her mouth was parched, that twinges of pain were making themselves evident in various portions of her anatomy. She turned her head and caught a glimpse of a figure at the bed-side; her startled glance revealed Dr. Horker, sitting quietly watching her.
"Hello, Doctor," she said, wincing as her smile brought a sharp pain from her lips. "Or should I say, Good morning, Judge?"
"Pat!" he rumbled, his growling tones oddly gentle. "Little Pat! How do you feel, child?"
"Fair," she said. "Just fair. Dr. Carl, what happened to me last night? I can't seem to remember—Oh!"
A flash of recollection pierced the obscure muddle. She remembered now—not all of the events of that ghastly evening, but enough. Too much!
"Oh!" she murmured faintly. "Oh, Dr. Carl!"
"Yes," he nodded. "'Oh!'—and would you mind very much telling me what that 'Oh' of yours implies?"
"Why—". She paused shuddering, as one by one the events of that sequence of horrors reassembled themselves. "Yes, I'd mind very much," she continued. "It was nothing—" She turned to him abruptly. "Oh, it was, though, Dr. Carl! It was horrible, unspeakable, incomprehensible!—But I can't talk about it! I can't!"
"Perhaps you're right," said the Doctor mildly. "Don't you really want to discuss it?"
"I do want to," admitted the girl after a moment's reflection. "I want to—but I can't. I'm afraid to think of all of it."
"But what in Heaven's name did you do?"
"We just started out to go dancing," she said hesitatingly. "Then, on the way to town, Nick—changed. He said someone was following us."
"Some one was," said Horker. "I was, with Mueller. That Nick of yours has the Devil's own cleverness!"
"Yes," the girl echoed soberly. "The Devil's own!—Who's Mueller, Dr. Carl?"
"He's a plain-clothes man, friend of mine. I treated him once. What do you mean by changed?"
"His eyes," she said. "And his mouth. His eyes got reddish and terrible, and his mouth got straight and grim. And his voice turned sort of—harsh."
"Ever happen before, that you know of?"
"Once. When—" She paused.
"Yes. Last Wednesday night, when you came over to ask those questions about pure science. What happened then?"
"We went to a place to dance."
"And that's the reason, I suppose," rumbled the Doctor sardonically, "that I found you wandering about the streets in a table cloth, step-ins, and a pair of hose! That's why I found you on the verge of passing out from rotten liquor, and looking like the loser of a battle with an airplane propellor! What happened to your face?"
"My face? What's wrong with it?"
The Doctor rose from his chair and seized the hand-mirror from her dressing table.
"Look at it!" he commanded, passing her the glass.
Pat gazed incredulously at the reflection the surface presented; a dark bruise colored her cheek, her lips were swollen and discolored, and her chin bore a jagged scratch. She stared at the injuries in horror.
"Your knees are skinned, too," said Horker. "Both of them."
Pat slipped one pajamaed limb from the covers, drawing the pants-leg up for inspection. She gasped in startled fright at the great red stain on her knee.
"That's mercurochrome," said the Doctor. "I put it there."
"You put it there. How did I get home last night, Dr. Carl? How did I get to bed?"
"I'm responsible for that, too. I put you to bed." He leaned forward. "Listen, child—your mother knows nothing about this as yet. She wasn't home when I brought you in, and she's not awake yet this morning. We'll tell her you had an automobile accident; explain away those bruises.—And now, how did you get them?"
"I fell, I guess. Two or three times."
"That bruise on your cheek isn't from falling."
The girl shuddered. Now in the calm light of morning, the events of last night seemed doubly horrible; she doubted her ability to believe them, so incredible did they seem. She was at a loss to explain even her own actions, and those of Nicholas Devine were simply beyond comprehension, a chapter from some dark and blasphemous book of ancient times—the Kabbala or the Necronomicon.
"What happened, Pat?" queried the Doctor gently. "Tell me," he urged her.
"I—can't explain it," she said doubtfully. "He took me to that place, but drinking the liquor was my own fault. I did it out of spite because I saw he didn't—care for me. And then—" She fell silent.
"Yes? And then?"
"Well—he began to talk about the beauty of evil, the delights of evil, and his eyes glared at me, and—I don't understand it at all, Dr. Carl, but all of a sudden I was—yielding. Do you see?"
"I see," he said gently, soberly.
"Suddenly I seemed to comprehend what he meant—all that about the supreme pleasure of evil. And I was sort of—swept away. The dress—was his fault, but I—somehow I'd lost the power to resist. I guess I was drunk."
"And the bruises? And your cut lips?" queried the Doctor grimly.
"Yes," she said in a low voice. "He—struck me. After a while I didn't care. He could have—would have done other things, only we were interrupted, and had to leave. And that's all, Dr. Carl."
"Isn't that enough?" he groaned. "Pat, I should have killed the fiend there!"
"I'm glad you didn't."
"Do you mean to say you'd care?"
"I—don't know."
"Are you intimating that you still love him?"
"No," she said thoughtfully. "No, I don't love him, but—Dr. Carl, there's something inexplicable about this. There's something I don't understand, but I'm certain of one thing!"
"What's that?"
"That it wasn't Nick—not my Nick—who did those things to me last night. It wasn't, Dr. Carl!"
"Pat, you're being a fool!"
"I know it. But I'm sure of it, Dr. Carl. I know Nick; I loved him, and I know he couldn't have done—that. Not the same gentle Nick that I had to beg to kiss me!"
"Pat," said the Doctor gently, "I'm a psychiatrist; it's my business to know all the rottenness that can hide in a human being. My office is the scene of a parade of misfits, failures, potential criminals, lunatics, and mental incompetents. It's a nasty, bitter side I see of life, but I know that side—and I tell you this fellow is dangerous!"
"Do you understand this, Dr. Carl?"
He reached over, taking her hand in his great palm with its long, curious delicate fingers. "I have my theory, Pat. The man's a sadist, a lover of cruelty, and there's enough masochism in any woman to make him terribly dangerous. I want your promise."
"About what?"
"I want you to promise never to see him again."
The girl turned serious eyes on his face; he noted with a shock of sympathy that they were filled with tears.
"You warned me I'd get burned playing with fire," she said. "You did, didn't you?"
"I'm an old fool, Honey. If I'd believed my own advice, I'd have seen that this never happened to you." He patted her hand. "Have I your promise?"
She averted her eyes. "Yes," she murmured. He winced as he perceived that the tears were on her cheeks.
"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."
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!
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 his 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!
"Well!" boomed the Doctor as she started back in surprise. "You're pretty spry for a patient. Think you were going out?"
"Yes," said Pat defiantly.
"Not tonight, child! I left the Club early to take a look at you."
"I am perfectly all right. I want to go for a walk."
"No walk. Doctor's orders."
"I'm of legal age!" she snapped. "I want to go for a walk. Do I go?"
"You do not." The Doctor placed his great form squarely in the doorway. "Not unless you can lick me, my girl, and I'm pretty tough. I put you to bed last night, and I can do as much tonight. Shall I?"
Pat backed into the hall. "You don't have to," she said sullenly. "I'm going there myself." She flung her wrap angrily to a chair and stalked up the stairs.
"Good night, spit-fire," he called after her. "I'll read down here until your mother comes home."
The girl stormed into her room in anger that she knew to be illogical.
"I won't be watched like a problem child!" she told herself viciously. "I know damn well what he thought—and I wasn't going to meet Nick! I wasn't at all!"
She calmed suddenly, sat on the edge of her bed and kicked off her pumps. It had occurred to her that Nick had written his intention to wait for her in the park tomorrow night as well, and Dr. Horker's interference had confirmed her in a determination to meet him.
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