Barbee clenched a gaunt, hairy fist.
"I—I won't have that!" he choked hoarsely. "That— that's diabolical." He thrust himself forward and gulped for his voice. "That's insane. I tell you, Doctor, Sam and Nora Quain are two of my best and oldest friends."
Softly Glenn asked: "Both of them?"
Barbee knotted his sweaty hands again.
"Shut up!" he croaked. "You—you can't say that to me!"
Glenn retreated hastily into his lighted doorway.
"Just a suggestion, Mr. Barbee." He smiled disarmingly, and nodded again. "Your violent reaction indicates to me that it reaches a pretty tender spot, but I see no need to discuss it any further now. Suppose we just forget all our problems for tonight and go back to bed?"
Barbee caught an uneasy breath and thrust his hands into the sagging pockets of the red hospital robe.
"Okay, Doctor," he agreed wearily. "Sorry I bothered you." He started to leave and turned suddenly back. In a low, shaken voice he added desperately: "But you're dead wrong, Dr. Glenn. The woman I love is April Bell."
With a faint, sardonic smile, Glenn closed the door.
Barbee walked slowly back through the starlit frosty night toward the dark bulk of the buildings where only two or three windows were palely alight. He felt somehow strange to be moving on two awkward legs, seeing only formless shapes with a man's dull eyes, unaware of all the revealing sounds and odors of his dreams.
The neighborhood dogs, he noticed, had stopped their angry barking. He paused to listen for Rowena Mondrick's screaming, peering uneasily across toward the disturbed ward. New windows lit as he watched, and he wondered if some fresh emergency had aroused the ward. That hopeless, horror-choked screaming, however, had ceased.
Uncomfortably, he plodded on back toward the annex. Glenn was a fool—or possibly worse. No honest psychiatrist, Barbee felt, would be quite so reckless with his tongue. It was true, he had to admit, that he had once loved Nora before she married Sam. Perhaps he had seen her more often than was altogether wise in the years Sam was gone—but Glenn's revolting conclusion was absurd. There was nothing Sam shouldn't know, nor any sane reason why he should wish harm to Sam.
About calling the police, however, he decided that Glenn was right. Any such call would brand him as either madman or murderer. Yet he couldn't shake off that shocking certainty that Nick Spivak lay dead beneath that window. He clenched his clammy fists again and drew a long sobbing breath of the chill night air, shivering to Glenn's diabolic suggestion that Sam Quain might be accused of the murder. He had to do something about it.
He hurried back to the second floor of the annex building. Nurse Hellar rather apprehensively let him use her office phone, and he called Nora Quain. She answered at once, as if she had been waiting for the instrument to ring, and her voice seemed sharp with fear.
"Will—what's happened now?" "Sam has a phone at the Foundation?" His own hurried voice was a breathless rasping. "Please call him right away. Wake him up. Have him—have him look for Nick Spivak."
"Why, Will?" she breathed faintly.
"I believe something has happened to Nick," he said. "I believe Sam is in great danger now because of it."
For a long time she didn't speak. He could hear the uncertain whisper of her troubled breath and the ticking of the desk clock in the study where he knew the telephone was, that measured sound queerly calm and slow. At last she asked, in a tight, choked voice: "How did you know that, Will?"
The clock ticked on, maddeningly grave and slow.
"Just routine, Nora," he muttered uncomfortably. "Confidential sources—that's my business, you know." He gulped. "So you had already heard?"
"Sam just called me," she whispered. "He sounded wild, Will—nearly out of his mind."
"What—" No voice came, and Barbee tried again. "What about Nick?"
"He fell out of a window." Her voice was flat with horror. "The window of their special lab, on the top floor of the foundation tower. Sam says he's dead."
The clock ticked, and he heard her harsh breathing.
"That's what my sources said," Barbee muttered hoarsely. "I want you to warn Sam, Nora. I believe he's in danger."
"How could he be?" Hysteria quivered beneath the tight control of her voice. "Sam thinks he fell asleep and walked out—he always walked in his sleep, you know. But that couldn't happen to Sam."
Agony shuddered in her voice.
"Will—what do you think—could happen to Sam?"
The clock kept ticking, while Barbee tried to swallow the rasping dryness in Ms throat.
"Sam and Nick were alone in that tower room," he muttered huskily. "They were guarding something that seems to be very valuable in that wooden box they brought back from the Gobi Two of the men who knew what was in it were already dead—and the deaths of Mondrick and Rex Chittum are going to look pretty funny, now with Nick's added."
"No!" Nora's whisper was a voiceless scream. "No, Will—no!"
"That's the way it's going to look," Barbee told her. "I know cops. They're going to think Sam killed Nick for his interest in that box. They're going to keep on thinking that, at least until they learn what is in the box —and I don't think Sam will want to tell them."
"But he didn't!" Nora whispered frantically. "Sam didn't—"
Her whisper died. The ticks of the clock were slow ripples in a dead silence. At last he heard Nora breathe again. The sound was a long, weary rasp.
"Thank you, Will." Her voice was dull with a stunned bewilderment, and hot pity caught Barbee's throat. "I'll call Sam right back," she said. "I'll warn him." A sudden protest shuddered in her voice. "But he didn't!
She hung up, and Barbee shuffled heavily back to his room. All this, he thought bitterly, had surely been enough for one night. Surely the white wolf bitch—or his own unconscious terrors, if she were only the symbol of them—would let him finish the night in peace.
He flung off the robe and slippers, and dropped wearily in bed. He tried to sleep, but a dull disquiet possessed him. He couldn't help staring at the steel-meshed glass that had melted before the flowing snake, or stop remembering the brittle feel of Nick Spivak's bones snapping in his closing coils. He rang for Nurse Hellar and had her bring a sleeping pill. But still he hadn't slept when he heard the white bitch whispering: "Will Barbee!" Her thin far voice seemed taut with trouble. "Can you hear, Barbee?"
"I hear you, April," he murmured sleepily. "Good night, darling."
"No, Barbee." He thought he heard her sharp protest. "You must change again, because we've more work to do."
"Not tonight!" Resentment jarred him back toward wakefulness. "We've murdered Nick tonight—and left Sam Quain to be accused of the killing. Isn't that crime enough for tonight?"
Her far whisper seemed fainter, as if his arousing had all but snapped some slender bond between them.
"That was neat," she purred. "But not enough—"
"I've had enough," he told her. "I don't intend to dream again, and I know I don't hear you, really."
"But you do," her whisper insisted. "You can't kid yourself, Barbee—these aren't dreams. I know the change is easier when you sleep, but that's just because the human part of you still dominates your waking mind. Now please relax and listen."
He turned restlessly in bed, muttering drowsily: "I don't hear, and I won't dream—"
"This isn't any dream," she whispered. "The ESP researchers at Duke University found evidence enough of such extrasensory perceptions as this—they could find better, if they knew how to pick subjects with more of our blood. I know you hear—don't kid me!"
He shook his head on the pillow.
"But I won't listen—"
"Barbee!" Her far voice turned sharply imperative. "You've got to listen—and change and come to me. Now! And take the most frightful form you can find —because we've a greater enemy than little Nick Spivak to fight."
"Huh?" he muttered heavily. "What enemy"
"Your blind widow friend!" the wolf
bitch breathed. "That Mondrick woman—supposed to be safe in Glenn's laughing academy, where nobody would mind her ravings. She's out, Barbee—trying to warn Sam Quain!"
Barbee felt an icy tingle along his spine, like the feel of his stiff hair raising when he had been a tall gray wolf. But he was human now, he assured himself uneasily. He could feel the cool smoothness of the sheets against his smooth human skin, and hear the hospital sounds muffled with his dull human hearing: other patients breathing in their rooms, and the distant quick footfalls of Nurse Hellar, and a telephone somewhere buzzing impatiently. He was entirely human, and almost wide awake.
"Warn Sam?" he echoed heavily. "What does she know?"
Terror shivered in that ghostly whispering. "She knows the name of the Child of Night!" The shock of that aroused Barbee again. Shuddering uneasily, he lifted his head to peer about the dark room. He found the pale rectangular glow of the window and the thin streak of yellow light beneath his door. He was still quite human, he informed himself, and surely he was quite awake. Yet his breathless voice came taut and dry with dread.
"The man they fear?" he said. "This conspirator—murderer—secret agent—whatever he is—that old Mondrick was talking about when he died?" "Our awaited Messiah," the whisper said. Barbee lay stiff and shuddering. "Who is he?" he demanded harshly. "What's his name?"
"Really, Barbee!" Faintly, far away, he thought he heard April Bell's purring laugh. "Don't you know?" He caught his breath impatiently.
"I think I can guess," he muttered suddenly. "I think it must be your good friend, Mr. Preston Troy!"
He waited for her answer, and it didn't come. He was alone in the dark room, awake and unchanged. He could hear the racing tick of his watch, and see the luminous dial—the time was four forty. The dawn was still two hours away, but he wasn't going to sleep until he saw the sun. He didn't dare— "No, Barbee." That tiny whisper turned him almost ill with shock. "The Child of Night isn't Mr. Troy, but you must prove your right to know his name. You can do that tonight—by killing Rowena Mondrick!"
He stiffened in the bed, angrily pushing back the covers.
"You can't make me hurt her," he insisted bitterly. "Dreaming or awake! Anyhow, I don't think she's out. I could hear her screaming in her room earlier tonight. She's in the disturbed ward, behind locked doors, with nurses on duty. She couldn't get out."
"But she did." The whisper had thinned to the smallest possible thread of thought. "And she's on her way to warn Sam."
"She'll never find him," he scoffed. "An old blind woman, out of her mind—"
"But she isn't!" that remote whisper reached him. "No more than many another, confined because they know too much. Asylums are very convenient prisons, Barbee, to hold such enemies. But your little black widow is stronger than I thought—because she's kin to us, and she has powers that are a little more than human."
"She's old!" he gasped. "She's blind."
"I know her eyes are blind," the white bitch purred. "Because we ripped them out! But she has developed a different vision—keen enough to discover the Child of Night. She worked with old Mondrick, and she knows too much."
"No—" Barbee choked hoarsely. "I won't—"
He sat up on the side of the bed, trembling, clammy with sweat, violently shaking his head.
"Come, Barbee!" Still he couldn't snap that tugging thread of thought—or was it merely madness? "Take the deadliest shape you can," the she-wolf urged. "Bring claws to pull her down, and fangs to slash her throat. Because we've got to kill her—"
"I won't!" he shouted hoarsely, and then dropped his voice lest Nurse Hellar should hear. "I'm through, Miss April Bell!" he whispered bitterly. "Through being the tool of your hellish schemes—through murdering my friends—through with you!" "Are you, Barb—"
Shuddering, he surged to his feet, and that taunting whisper died. His fury and alarm had broken that dreadful thread of illusion—and he certainly didn't intend to harm Rowena Mondrick, in his dreams or wide awake. He walked uneasily about the room, still gasping weakly for his breath and damp with the sweat of his panic.
That monstrous whispering had really ceased—he paused inside his door, listening to be sure. Near him he heard a gurgle and groan and sob, gurgle and groan and sob—the white-bearded man who had upset the checker board was snoring across the corridor. That was all he heard, until a man shouted something in a harsh brittle voice on the floor below.
He opened his door, listening. Other men were shouting somewhere. Women raised excited voices. Feet pounded hallways. The door of a car slammed hard. A starter whined. A motor roared suddenly and tires screamed as the car raced too fast around the curving drive toward the highway.
Rowena Mondrick had really got away—the certainty of that struck him with a numbing, cold impact. He knew—how, he wasn't sure. Perhaps—as suave Dr. Glenn would doubtless explain it—his own troubled unconscious mind had merely translated all the muffled sounds of alarm and search into the white bitch's whispering.
Silently he put on his slippers and the robe, pausing to stuff his thin pocketbook and his keys into the sagging pockets. He didn't know what was fact and what illusion. He couldn't define the danger to Rowena—he dared not believe that whispering. But this time he intended to take a hand in whatever happened—and not as a pawn of the Child of Night Something checked him at the door. Some dim unease drew his eyes back to the high bed, and he was somehow vastly grateful to find it empty. Relieved to see no vacant human husk behind, he shuffled cautiously out into the corridor. It was deserted. He ran silently to the head of the rear stair and paused there when he heard Dr. Bunzel's metallic voice twanging angrily: "Well, Nurse?"
"Yes, Doctor," a frightened girl whispered. "What's your excuse?" "I have none, sir."
"How the blazes did that patient escape?" "I don't know, sir."
"Better find out," Bunzel rapped. "You had her under restraint, in a locked ward, with particular orders to watch her. You knew she had been trying to get away." Scorn oiled his voice. "Did she vanish through the wall?"
"I think so, sir."
Bunzel uttered an incredulous roar.
"I mean, sir—" the girl stammered, "I don't know how she got out."
"What do you know about her?"
"Poor Mrs. Mondrick—" The girl sounded as if she were trying not to sob. "She was terribly upset, you know—ever since her walk yesterday morning. She had been awake all night, begging me to let her go to this Mr. Quain."
"So what?"
"The dogs started howling—that must have been about midnight—and poor Mrs. Mondrick started screaming. She wouldn't stop. Dr. Glenn had ordered a hypo if she needed it, and I decided she did. I went to get it ready. When I came back with it, just a minute later, she was gone."
"Why didn't you report this sooner?"
"I was searching the ward, sir—she isn't there."
"Look again," Bunzel rapped. "I'm going to organize a systematic search. She's acutely disturbed—I'm afraid of what she'll do."
"I know, sir," the girl sobbed. "She's dreadfully disturbed."
"Caution everybody not to alarm the other patients," Bunzel added. "And don't let any word of this get outside the building. Such affairs can result in very unfortunate publicity. I sent Dr. Dora to check with the police. That woman must be found."
Their voices had receded toward the front of the building, and Barbee didn't hear the girl's reply. Silently he slipped down the rear stair, and peered along the lighted corridor. The frightened nurse was following the bristling little doctor into an office room. He waited until they were gone from sight and walked out the back door.
Grim elation steeled him, and cold purpose hurried him. Rowena Mondrick had really escaped, as the whispering bitch had told him—but this time he wasn't running with her monstrous pack to pull the blind woman down. He had triumphantly defied her evil call—or was it just his own sick unconscious?
He was fully awake, anyhow, and in his true human shape. He knew Rowena's dan
ger—from the same cunning killers who had murdered her husband with a black kitten's fur and Rex Chittum with a wreck on Sardis Hill and Nick Spivak with a fall from the Foundation tower. But this time he would be no reluctant tool of April Bell and her unknown accomplices in witchcraft—or was it only common crime?
Still he didn't know all the rules of this strange game, or the stakes, or the players. But he was a rebel pawn, and now he meant to play it to the finish, for himself, on the human side.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Most Frightful Shape
Breathless in the frosty dark, shivering a little in the red cotton robe, Barbee found the shabby old coupe on the gravel lot where he had left it, behind the main building. He dug for the keys in his pocket, and started the cold motor as silently as he could. A floodlight came on suddenly as he was backing toward the drive; and a heavy man in wrinkled whites darted from the building, shouting at him.
He didn't stop. He let the car lunge forward to the racing motor, swerved narrowly past the gesturing attendant to reach the drive, and came skidding recklessly to the dark highway. Anxiously he peered into the little rearview mirror; it showed no pursuit, and he slowed as much as he dared, turning back toward Clarendon along the new river road and watching breathlessly for the blind fugitive.
He was afraid to drive too slowly, for he had to find her first. Before the attendants came to drag her back to scream her life out in the disturbed ward at Glennhaven. Or before she died, as her husband had, slain by a hand from mad nightmare.
He held the car at forty, desperately scanning the dark roadsides. He could see the glow of distant headlamps along the main highway to the west, but he met no traffic on the river road. Once the eyes of some animal winked yellow in the dark and vanished as they turned. Nothing else moved, and his hope ebbed when he saw the concrete barriers of Deer Creek bridge.
For that narrow bridge—where the truck had almost killed him as he drove back from his first vain attempt to see Rowena—was a full two miles from Glennhaven.
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