“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 it were the 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.
CHAPTER 20
The Assignation
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 on him.”
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. There had been an ecstasy; there had been 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.
CHAPTER 21
A Question of Synapses
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 Lord does know,” 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.”
&nbs
p; “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.”
The 27th Golden Age of Science Fiction Page 12