“My poor darling,” she said. The soft stuff of her blouse whispered against my shirt. I half rose, then fell – convulsively – upon her, bore her to me. We were together many minutes under the bald brilliance of the unshaded electric bulb. Her body had the warmth of fever, while I rid myself of a cold, mechanical urge. Later, the shamelessness of the dangling light bulb seemed to mock me and I walked across the room to turn it off. Sonia lay watching me, a smile on her lips.
“Why did you do that?” she asked.
“It hurt my eyes,” I said. I sat down on the chair. The slats were cold to my flesh.
“Aren’t you coming back?”
“I have come back. That’s the trouble.”
“I don’t understand you, John.”
It was queer sitting there on the cold chair in the blackness of the small room. I felt then that Sonia was hardly real, and that I was even less so. Although I heard her voice, I would have been only too glad if I could have persuaded myself that she did not exist…that my being in this room, at this time, close to her was but another part of a continuing nightmare. But I could not deny her reality. The last quarter-hour had been only too real. “You’re acting so peculiarly.” Her voice sounded hurt.
“My name isn’t John,” I said. “I told you before that my name is George Matthews.”
“I’ve always called you John.” Her tone was flat, subdued, a dissonance.
“I explained how that came to be,” I said. “Perhaps, I should have told you that I still love my wife…that someday I hope to go back to her…”
Sonia did not speak. I felt I knew what she was thinking. “Yes, I will,” I said, as if my affirmation could, once and for all, refute her unspoken denial. “I know the way I look. I know that many things could have happened to come between us in this past year. But I’ll take the chance. I tell you that she loves me. I know that she will understand…”
I could hear Sonia moving about on the bed. She was dressing. I went over to the bureau, knocked against the wall and scraped my shin in the dark, and found my shirt. While I was groping for my trousers (I had thrown them on the floor a short time before), Sonia spoke again.
“I’ll need the light. You might as well pull it on.”
I did. She was standing beside the bed trying to button her blouse. I saw that I had torn it badly. The fabric was hanging loose from one shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll get you another.”
“It doesn’t matter. I have others.” She walked to the closet
and began to take her clothes off the hangers. When she had all her slacks and sweaters she laid them on the bed. She went over to the bureau and began to empty another drawer that contained her other things. I watched.
“Where will you go?” I asked stupidly. I had become used to her – more than that – and now I realized that I did not want her to leave.
“I have a place of my own.” She said this sharply. Then she glanced up at me. “Surely you remember that?”
“Yes. I haven’t forgotten.”
She sat down on the bed. The varicolored garments in her lap began to slip and fall on the floor. She made no move to pick them up. “What’s wrong with you?” she asked.
“I think I am suffering from the aftereffects of prolonged insulin shock and repeated concussion,” I told her. “That kind of shock frequently results in extended amnesiac periods. At least, I think that is what is wrong with me. I have all the characteristic symptoms.”
She put her hand to her forehead and looked away from me. “I don’t understand.”
I told her what I had remembered about Nan and the “doctor” and his “treatments.” I tried to tell my story quickly and not to emphasize its more terrible aspects, but even so she reacted emotionally. It was the first time I had seen her cry. “Oh, how terrible!” she said. “Why did they do all that to you? What was behind it all?”
“That’s what I want to know,” I said. “And that’s what I intend to find out – not only ‘what,’ but also ‘who.’”
She sat quietly. Her eyes never left mine. “Why won’t you let me help you?” she asked.
“I told you. I am married. I have a wife. This business between us can’t go on.”
She hesitated before she spoke. Her eyes were still wet and some of her hair had fallen over her brow. “That doesn’t matter – you must understand what I say. Your wife, what you intend to do later – none of that matters. Only let me help you now. I don’t want to leave you…alone.”
After Sonia had hung her clothes back in the closet and put her other things back in the bureau drawer, we sat across from each other while I told her again (she insisted on knowing every detail) the entire story of my strange experience. I began at the beginning with Jacob’s appearance in my office and worked slowly forward to the accident in the taxi and my escape. There, as before, I stopped.
Sonia leaned towards me, her dark hair eclipsing her eyes. “Can’t you remember anything more? That’s a lot of it, of course, but not enough to take up the time from the middle of October until the first of May.”
“There is more,” I admitted. “Not much… I don’t think it tells us anything.”
“Let me judge that,” she said.
I stood up and walked to the window. The streetlights were out and only an occasional glimmer from a house or restaurant enabled me to descry the man who was still leaning in the doorway across the street, Anderson’s man. A chill ran down my back as I remembered that he was placed there for my protection. I turned back to Sonia.
“After the accident I ran for blocks until I could run no more. By then I was in the neighborhood of the East River. I entered the courtyard of an apartment house and sat on a bench opposite a fountain. I don’t know how long I sat there. It must have been for hours. I know it was late at night when I finally got to my feet and began to walk to the other side of town. I had only one idea: to get home to Sara. It was like an obsession.”
“Sara is your wife?”
“Yes. Haven’t I told you her name before?”
“If you have, I don’t remember.”
“I had a very hard time getting home. I had no money. They had been thorough – they had thought of everything even to taking my billfold away from me. I had to walk. By the time I reached the George Washington Bridge, far up on Riverside Drive and clear across town, I was literally dead on my feet.”
“How did you get into Jersey?” Sonia asked.
“There is a bar near the approaches to the Bridge. I went in and begged. I had little success at first. I guess I was disheveled and weary enough to look drunk. Then a man gave me a quarter and another man gave me a dime. That was enough to get home on.”
“Poor George!” I looked at Sonia, aroused by the feeling in her voice. There was no doubting the depth of her emotion. She was sincerely moved by my story–I only hoped she did not pity me.
I hurried on, embarrassed. “I took a bus to my town,” I said. “And then I was on my own street, walking towards my own house. Only then did I begin to wonder about the reception I would get; until then I had not realized that, since I had no way of knowing how long I had been missing, I had no way of knowing whether Sara was still my wife!”
“Did you have doubts?” Sonia was surprised.
“Only for a moment. Put yourself in my place. How would you have felt if you had gone through what I had? My experiences had been so terrible that I found it difficult to believe that they were over and done with and that I would be allowed to resume a normal life. It was too much to expect that in a few minutes I would be home, kissing my wife, safe at last.”
“Then what happened?”
“I’m getting to that. I remember going up, on the porch and ringing the doorbell. I remember noticing that there were lights on downstairs, although it must have been after midnight. I don’t remember anyone answering the doorbell though…”
“Don’t you know?”
“No. I can’t be sure. The res
t is very confused. The next thing I remember and, I believe, the last thing I remember until I recall coming to in the psychopathic ward of the hospital is a terrific, blinding pain in my head – not that I feel again the pain, but that I know that I felt such a pain. After that…nothing. I must have lost consciousness at that point.”
“But what happened?” Sonia had jumped to her feet. Her eyes seemed to be starting out of her head. I went to the window and lifted the blind to look for Anderson’s man. The sight of him lounging in the dark doorway across the street was reassuring to me.
“I don’t know what happened,” I said. “Somebody must have hit me on the head with a blackjack or a gun butt or something equally murderous. I suppose that blow, coupled with the incessant strain and stress of the shock treatments, did me in for sure. I must have suffered a concussion in the subway, you see; amnesia often follows concussion. Amnesia also often follows metrazol or insulin injections. And severe amnesia almost invariably follows frequent head injuries. Concussion plus the repeated shock of the ‘treatments’ plus another concussion…I marvel that I am alive!”
“But why would anyone try to kill you on your own doorstep? And who would do such a thing? It couldn’t have been Tony – you said he was injured badly in the auto crash.” Sonia thought for a moment, her hand at her forehead. “Could Nan have followed you?” she asked.
I shook my head. “Sonia, I tell you I don’t know! It’s only one more thing I must find out.”
We talked it all over a thousand times that night; in fact, we talked until the light began to seep under the drawn blind. I crossed to the window and saw that another detective stood in the doorway across the street, a heavier, older man than the one who had been there before. The night had fled; it seemed as if the hours had never been, yet neither of us felt tired or needed sleep. Indeed, we were both ravenous and Sonia set about at once to prepare breakfast.
With the smell of fresh coffee and bacon in my nostrils, I thought back over the tentative conclusions we had arrived at during our nightlong discussion. “Sonia,” I said, “I am going to call out the major steps in our plan for action while you’re busy there. I want you to stop me and correct me if you think of anything I’ve missed.”
“All right, George,” she said, “I’m listening.”
“First of all,” I said, “there is what I shall call the ‘timetable’ of my amnesia. It begins when I fell or was pushed in the subway on the morning of October 12, 1943. I then lost consciousness for a short period of time, no more than a few hours, regaining it when I awoke in Nan’s apartment. From then until I escaped from the taxi and made my way home a month to six weeks later, the period of the ‘treatments,’ I must have been conscious a good part of the time. When I was struck a second time on the porch of my house, I lost consciousness for a longer period – or if I did not lose consciousness for the entire period, I did lose my ability to remember what happened then. As it is I have no memory of what happened from that instant until I awoke in the hospital – an interval of probably seven months.”
Sonia gestured with the cooking spoon she held in her hand. “What do you suppose did happen during that time, George? Are you sure you can’t remember anything?”
I shook my head. “Not a thing. I believe that the key to the puzzle lies hidden in those lost months. Or I may have just wandered aimlessly. Remember the police report they had at the hospital said, ‘John Brown, homeless, picked up wandering.’”
“But you must be able to remember something that happened during all that time!”
“Not necessarily. Amnesia plays queer tricks, especially amnesia that is at least partially conditioned by the use of shock therapy. When they were first learning to administer shock treatments to patients, before the improved electrical methods were perfected, I have seen schizoids return to consciousness after the spasm to find that they could not remember their names or their previous illnesses! Those patients often effected a complete recovery, except that it would be days or even months before they regained their memories. Now, however, with the refinement in technique such amnesia is only an occasional concomitant of the treatment and short-lived. But I have no assurance that the ‘doctor’ who administered the drug in my case knew or even cared about modern methods. It was his job to make each injection as traumatic as possible to make me tell Jacob’s whereabouts. He may not have known that amnesia would be the result, or he might not have cared.” Sonia laughed abruptly. “But you’re not suffering from schizophrenia!”
“That makes little difference. It is the extreme effect the sudden shock has on the brain and nervous system that induces amnesia. Although I have never seen it used on a sane patient, I think such a patient would be just as likely to forget after extended treatment as a schizoid.”
Sonia went back to her cooking. “I hate to think what you must have been like during those months without a home or money, not being able to remember who you were or what.”
I did not like to think of it either. It is difficult to think of one self as being destitute, vagrant, a bum. No wonder the staff at the hospital scoffed when I claimed to be a psychiatrist: they had seen me when I was admitted and thought I was just another wandering lunatic with delusions of grandeur.
“Let’s get back to the ‘timetable,’” I suggested. “I can’t remember what happened from the moment I lost consciousness in Jersey until the day I awoke in the mental ward. We do know, roughly, how long that was. Frances Raye was murdered on the 12th of October, 1943. Since it must have been at least a month or six weeks after that when I escaped from the taxi and went home that would make that day sometime in the last part of November or the first of December, 1943. Then from December, 1943, until the first of May – the day I entered the hospital – is still a blank.”
“How long did you stay in the hospital?” asked Sonia.
“Until July 12, 1944. That’s a little over two months. I shall never forget the day ‘John Brown’ walked out of that place a free man.”
Sonia smiled slowly. She finished putting the plates of bacon and eggs on the card table. “And now it’s the end of August and if you don’t come eat your eggs they’ll get cold.”
I joined her at the table. “The other night when I was struck by the car, the knock on my head did something again, relieved a pressure, perhaps. I believe that eventually I’ll remember everything, even that long blank period. Yesterday, when I came to after my accident in the street, I was confused for an instant. It seemed as if something I had forgotten, something I have not remembered yet, was struggling to come to the surface of my mind.”
“You can’t tell me what it was?” Sonia was watching me intently. A frown wrinkled her forehead.
“No. As I said it is all coming back, but in its own way, capriciously, in patches. I am still confused but ultimately everything will fit into place.”
“Then when you awakened night before last in this room, the first person you saw was that funny little man, Mr Mather, and you thought you were awakening from your fall in the subway!”
“Only for a moment, for one perplexing instant, did I think that. But I pretended that I did not remember anything more at that time in an attempt to learn something from Felix.”
“Are you glad I was here?” she asked, not looking at me.
“Very glad,” I said.
We ate our breakfast and afterwards I helped her wash the dishes. When the room was straight again, the dishes back in place in the closet next to the hot plate (we used the washstand for a sink), we lighted cigarettes. Sonia sat on the bed, while I sat on the one chair.
“Now what are we going to do?” she asked.
“I’ve decided to wait until Anderson comes,” I said. “He promised to be around this morning. Then we’ll get the facts on Frances Raye’s death from him, how she was killed and under what circumstances – if possible, we’ll get him to take us to the scene of the crime. Until you spoke of it last night I had never realized how incongruous it was for me
to know practically nothing about the murder that seems to have gotten me into all this trouble.”
Sonia sat swinging her legs over the side of the bed. “Yes,” she said, “there must be some connection.”
“Then I think we should call on Eustace – I mean Felix Mather – and take Anderson along to see if we can’t get him to tell more of what he knows,” I said.
“Do you think he knows more than he is saying?”
“I still don’t understand how he knew me now that I have this.” I fingered my scar. “When he first saw me I looked entirely different.”
“Perhaps not as different as you think. Anyway, that was no reason for trying to strangle the poor little fellow!” Sonia came over and put her arms around me to show that she did not mean to sound too severe. I looked up at her long, intent face. “George,” she said, “don’t be hard on Felix. I think he was telling you the truth the other night.”
Sonia was too near to me – suddenly I did not like the feeling I had when she was close to me like this, as if Sonia, not Sara, were my wife. As if Sara was over and dead like the past. “But you should love Sara,” I told myself. “It is not her fault that all this has happened. She will want you to be with her again. You cannot go on like this.”
I pushed Sonia away and stood up. She went over to the bed and began to smooth the covers; she was trying not to show me that I had hurt her. I walked to the window and looked out. Anderson’s man was still there. “I think we must see Felix again,” I said.
“You’re probably right,” sighed Sonia. “Only the one I’d see first would be Nan. You know what she did to you!” Her voice had risen until she was almost shouting. I realized that we were on the verge of a quarrel and I did not want to quarrel with Sonia. She was right about Nan, too. I should see her first.
I stood staring out of the window, biting my lip to keep from saying the hot words I felt compelled to say. I knew that I was being unfair to Sonia and that my desire to talk again to Felix was nothing but a hunch. I also knew that the real cause for my irritation had nothing to do with the investigation I proposed to make. If I had a friend it was Sonia, yet somehow she stood between me and Sara. Sara who was…well, for all I knew… little more than a comfortable memory.
The Deadly Percheron Page 13