by Fritz Leiber
I drove slowly, for it was very necessary that Roberta should talk. By listening I might be able to get straight without betraying myself, and indeed, before we reached home, I had a fairly clear idea of what had happened in the blank interim.
A first wild surmise that the Moore episode had been a dream in its entirety was banished almost at once. As nearly as I could gather, without direct questioning, from the time when I reeled back against the wall until my return to self-consciousness some, sixty minutes later, I had behaved so normally in outward appearance that not even Roberta had seen a difference.
My body had evidently not fallen to the floor, nor showed any signs of fainting or swoon. Alicia seemed to have returned to her senses at the same time that I lost mine, for Roberta spoke of her hostess’s quiet air of indifference that amounted almost to scorn for the concern that we—Bert and I, mind you!—expressed for her.
Moore, for his part, it seemed, had recovered his temper and been rather apologetic and anxious that I, at least, should repeat my visit. I had been non-committal on the subject—for which Roberta now commended me—and then we had come away together.
After that, the hallucination I had suffered, of myself as a disembodied entity, careering from one planetary system to another, had synchronized with an actual career in the car where road-lamps simulated stars and occasional motors traveling in the opposite direction provided the stimuli for my dream-meteors.
A man hypnotized might have done what I did, and as successfully. To myself, then, I said that I had been hypnotized. That in a manner yet to be explained either Moore or his wife had hypnotized me and allowed me to leave their house under that influence. I tried to determine what reckoning I should have with them later. But it was a failure. I was frankly scared.
An hour had been jerked bodily out of my conscious life. If, in the ordinary and orthodox manner, I had lain insensible through that hour, it wouldn’t have mattered so much. Instead of that, an I that was not I appeared to have taken charge of my affairs and in such a manner that a person very near and dear to me had perceived nothing wrong. It was that which frightened me.
As the last traces of daze and shock released my mind, the instinct to keep its lapse a secret only grew stronger. Fortunately I found concealment easy. Speeding was not so far from my occasional habit that Roberta had thought much of that part of the episode. Her vigorous protests had been largely on account of my failure to use the siren.
Dropping that subject with her usual quick good-nature, she talked of our remarkable first experience with a “real medium,” and disclosed the fact—not surprising, perhaps—that she had been considerably less impressed than I. In retrospect she blamed her own nerves for most of the excitement.
“I may be unfair, Gay,” she confided, “but truly, I can’t help believing that Mrs. Moore is just a clever, hysterical woman who has deluded poor Mr. Moore into a faith in ‘spirit voices.”
“The black hand? The little flames?”
“Did we really see them? Don’t you think the woman may have some kind of hypnotic power, like—oh, like the mango trick that everybody’s heard they do in India? You know. A tree grows right up out of the ground while you watch; but it doesn’t, really, of course. You’re hypnotized, and only think you see it. Couldn’t everything we saw and heard tonight have been a—a kind of hypnotic trick? And—now, with all the screaming and fuss she had made, Mrs. Moore was so calm and cool when we left! I think it was all put on, and the rest was hypnotism.”
“You’re a very clever little girl, Bobby,” I commended, and meant it. If there was one thing I wished to believe, it was that Alicia Moore had faked.
We knew nearly as little about hypnotism as we did of psychic phenomena, real or so-called. But the word had a good sound to me. I had been hypnotized. Hypnotized! That Fifth Presence in the room had existed only in my own overborne imagination. The whole affair was—
“Berty,” I said, “we’ve been through a highly unpleasant experience, and it’s my fault. Nils warned me against those people, but I was a stubborn mule enough to believe I wished to know more of them. I don’t, and we don’t—you and I. The truth is, girly, I feel pretty foolish over the whole business. Had no right to take you to such a place. Downright dangerous—queer, irresponsible people like that! Say, d’you mind not telling Cathy, for instance?”
“If you won’t tell mother!”
She giggled. I could picture myself relating that weird and unconventional tale to the stately St. Cecilian! Up went my right hand.
“Hear me swear! I, Clayton S. Barbour, do solemnly vow silence—”
“Full name, or it isn’t legal!” trilled the girl beside me.
“Oh, very well! I, Clayton Serapion Barbour, do—”
I stopped with a tightening of the throat. As the word “Serapion” passed my lips, the Fifth Presence had shut down close about me.
Out of space—time—wrapped away in cloudy envelopes of oblivion—
“Clayton!” A clear young voice out of the clouds. They shriveled to nothing, and I was loosed to my world again. “Why, Clayton!” repeated Roberta. “How did that woman know your middle name?”
My right hand dropped to the wheel, and the car leaped forward.
“Did you tell her?” insisted Roberta.
“No,” I answered shortly. “Berquist told Moore, I suppose. How do I know?”
“Someone must have told her,” Bert agreed. “It isn’t as if it were an ordinary name that she might have hit on by guesswork.”
“Oh, it isn’t so unusual. There have been Ser—there have been men of that name in my mother’s family for generations. I was given the name in remembrance of my mother’s brother. He died only a few months before I was born, and she had cared a lot for him. But don’t let’s talk of the name anymore. I always hated it. Sounds silly—like a girl’s name—I—I—oh, forget the name! Here we are at home, and there’s your mother in the window looking for us.”
“We’re awfully late!”
“Tell her the Moores were very interesting people,” I suggested grimly.
That night, though I slept, Alicia Moore and the Fifth Presence—in various unpleasant shapes—haunted me through some exceedingly restless hours.
CHAPTER VII.
THE COMING OF THE FACE.
That a man may retire to his bed unknown and wake up famous is a truism of long standing. There is a parallel truth not half so pleasant. A man—a whole family—may retire wealthy and wake up paupers.
My father was the practically inactive senior member of his firm, and the reins had so far left his hands that when the blow fell it was hard for him to get a grasp on the situation or even credit it.
Rather shockingly, the first word we had of disaster came through the morning papers in a blare-headed column announcing the suicide of Frederic Hutchinson. Suicide without attempt at concealment. A scrub woman, entering the private offices of Barbour & Hutchinson early that morning, had fairly trodden in the junior partner’s scattered brains.
There followed a week of torment—of sordid revelations and ever increasing despair. A week that left dad a shaken, tremulous old man, and the firm of Barbour & Hutchinson, grain brokers, an unpleasant problem to be dealt with by the receivers.
Dad had known his partner for a clever man, and no doubt he was formerly a trustable one. But when the disease called speculation takes late root, its run is likely to be more virulent than in a younger victim. All Hutchinson’s personal estate had been absorbed. His family were left in worse predicament than ours—or would have been, save that dad’s peculiar sense of honor cast every cent he owned, independent of the firm, into the pit where that firm’s honor had vanished.
Unfortunately he possessed not nearly enough to satisfy the creditors and reestablish the business. As my mother pointed out, the disgrace
that had been all Fred Hutchinson’s was now dad’s for impoverishing his family when, under the terms of partnership and the law of our State, most of his personal investments and realty could have been held free from liability.
And to that dad had only one and to my mind somewhat appalling, reply:
“Let Clay go to work in earnest, then. Perhaps some day my son will clear the slate of what scores I’ve failed to settle!”
Well, great God, can a young fellow carefully trained to have everything he wants without trying turn financial genius in a week?
If it hadn’t been for Roberta, I think I should have thrown up the sponge and fairly run away from it all. Her faith, though, stirred a chord of ambition that those of my own blood failed to touch, and her stately Charlestonian mother emerged from stateliness into surprising sympathy.
Then Dick Vansittart, the unregenerate youngster who had been my dearest pal in college days, got me a job with the Colossus Trust Company, the bank of which his father was president and where he himself loafed about intermittently.
Even I knew that the salary offered was more commensurate with our needs than with what I was worth. Vansittart, Sr., a gruff old lion of a man, growled at me through a personal interview which ended in: “You won’t earn your salt for six months, Barbour, but maybe Terne can put up with you. Try it, anyway!” Terne was the second vice-president, whose assistant, or secretary, or general errand-boy, it was proposed that I become. I reached for my hat.
“Sorry to have bothered you, Mr. Vansittart! I would hardly care to receive pay except on the basis that it was earned.”
The lion roared. “Sit down! Don’t you try Dick’s high mannerisms with me! If I can tolerate Dick in this bank, I can tolerate you; but there’s going to be one difference. You’ll play the man and work till you do earn your wages, or you’ll go out! Understand?”
“I merely meant—”
“Never mind that.” The savage countenance before me softened to a leonine benevolence. “Clayton Barbour’s son wants no charity, but, you young fool, don’t I know that? Your father has swamped himself to pay debts that weren’t his. Now I choose to pay a debt that isn’t mine, but Dick’s!”
I must have looked my bewilderment.
“I mean,” he thundered, “that when my son was expelled from the college he disgraced he nearly took you with him! You cubs believe you carry your shame on your own shoulders. You never think of us. I’ve crossed the street three times to avoid meeting your father—I! Earn your wages here, so that I can shake hands with him next time. Here—take the note to Mr. Terne. His office is next the cashier’s. Go to work!”
I went, but outside the door found Van waiting for me, smiling ironically.
“You heard?” I muttered.
“Not being stone deaf, yes. The governor doesn’t mind publicity where I’m concerned, eh? Interested passers-by in the street might hear, for all he cares. Oh, well—truth is mighty and must prevail! Wish you luck, Clay, and there’s Fatty Terne coming now. So long!”
I was left to present my note to a dignified person who had just emerged from the cashier’s office. “Fatty” was a merciless nickname for him, and unfair besides. The second vice-president’s large figure suggested strength rather than overindulgence. Beneath his dignity he proved a kindly, not domineering man, much overworked himself, but patient with early mistakes from a new helper.
He shared one stenographer with another official, and seemed actually grateful when I offered to learn shorthand during spare hours in order to be of more use with the correspondence. I was quite infected with the work fever for a while, and saw little of Van, who let me severely alone from the first day I entered the bank.
His new standoffishness didn’t please me exactly, but I was too busy to think much of him one way or the other. At home, however, things went not so well. Since the house had been sold over our heads, we were forced into painfully small quarters. There was a little place near by that belonged to my mother. It had stood empty for a year, and though not much better than a cottage, her ownership of it solved the rent problem, and, as she bitterly explained, we no longer needed servants’ rooms nor space for the entertainment of guests.
Mother and Cathy undertook the housework, while dad fooled about with paint-pots and the like, trying to delude himself into the belief that paint, varnish, and a few new shelves here and there would make a real home for us out of this wretched shack; for that is what Cathy and I called it privately.
All the problems of home life had taken on new, ugly, uncomfortable angles, and I spent as little time among them as I decently could.
Roberta had no more complaints to make of “sixty miles an hour and never touched the siren.” My car had gone with the rest. We went on sedate little walks, like a country pair, tried to prefer movies to grand opera, and piled up heart-breaking dream-castles for consolation.
Two months slid by, and in that while our adventure at the “dead-alive house,” as Roberta had named Moore’s place, was hardly mentioned between us. Once or twice, indeed, she referred to it, but there was for me an oppressive distastefulness in the subject that made me lead our conversations elsewhere.
On the very heels of Barbour & Hutchinson’s catastrophic passing I had received a brief note from Moore. He expressed concern and sympathy, adding in the same breath, as it were, that he hoped I had been “well enough interested the other evening to wish to walk farther along the path of psychical research.”
I regarded his concern as impertinent and his hope as impudent, considering my unpleasant memories of the first visit. I tore the letter up without answering it. After that I heard no more from him, and it was not until the second month’s ending that a thing occurred which forced the whole matter vividly upon my recollection.
“If dear Serapion had not been taken from us,” said my mother, “we should be living in a civilized manner, and my children and I would not have been driven to actual labor with our hands!”
Dad kept his eyes on his plate, refraining from answer. He had been guilty of an ill-advised criticism on Cathy’s cooking, and, from that, discussion had run through all the ramifications of domestic misery until I was tempted to leave dinner unfinished and escape to my usual refuge, the Whitingfields.
But the mention of my uncle’s name had a peculiar effect on me. A slight swimming sensation behind the eyes, a gripping tightness at the back of my neck—Serapion!
The feeling passed, but left me trembling so that I remained in my place, fearing to rise lest I betray myself. As before, some deep-seated instinct fought that. The weakness was like a shameful wound, to be at all costs hidden.
“Had he lived,” continued my mother, “he would have seen to it that we weren’t brought to this. No one near poor Serapion was ever allowed to be uncomfortable!”
Dad’s eyes flashed up with a glint of spirit that he had never before showed in this connection.
“Is that so? I know he kept remarkably comfortable himself, but I can’t recall his feathering anyone’s nest but his own.”
“Don’t slander the dead!” came her sharp retort. “Why, you owe the very house over your head to him! And if it hadn’t been that his thoughtfulness left it in my name you wouldn’t have that. You would have robbed your children and me of even this pitiful shelter—”
“Evelyn—please!”
“It’s true! And then you dare cast slurs and innuendoes at my dead brother!”
“I gave him the house in the first place,” dad muttered.
She rose, eyes flashing and filled with tears. “Yes, you did! And this shameful little hole was all he had to live in—and die in! Serapion was a saint!” she declared. “A saint! He was—he was universally loved!”
And with that, my mother swept from the room. Cathy followed, though with a sneaking glance of sympathy for dad.
Tempestuous exits on mother’s part had been frequent as far back as I could remember, and as they were invariably followed by hours in which someone must bathe her head with cologne and the house be kept dead silent, we other three had the fellow-feeling of victims.
Dad eyed me across the table. “Son,” he said, “what is your middle name?”
“Ser—Ser—Samuel!” I ended desperately. My heart, for no obvious reason, had begun a furious palpitation. Why couldn’t they let that name alone?
He looked surprised, and then laughed. “You are right, son! I was about to give you warning—to forbid your becoming such a saint as your esteemed namesake. But I guess that isn’t needed. The Samuels of the world stand on their own feet, as you do now, thank God! A Samuel for the Serapion in you, then, and never forget it!”
“I won’t sir.”
He could not guess the frantic struggle going on beneath my calm exterior. There is, I believe, a psychopathic condition in which soundwaves produce visual sensations; a musical note, for example, being seen as a blob of scarlet, or the sustained blast of a bugle as a ribbony, orange-colored streak. Some such confusion of the senses seemed to have occurred in me, only in my case one single sound produced it, and the result was not color, but a feeling of pressure, dizziness, suffocation.
Fighting for control, I knew that another iteration of the sound in question would cost me the battle. Dad’s mouth opened, and simultaneously I rose. Opinions on my uncle’s character, pro or con, didn’t interest me half so much as the problem of excusing myself in a steady voice, walking from table to doorway without a stagger, and finally escaping from that room before the fatal name could be spoken again.