“What’s the matter, sadpan?” I asked.
“Nothin’.”
I looked at him carefully. There’s generally only one cause for such a beat-up expression. “Honeymoon over?” I asked.
“That’s a lousy thing to say,” Henry snapped. And it was. He and Marie had only been married four months or so. I shrugged. “Don’t let me horn in,” I said. “Only—I’ve known youse guys for a long time.”
He got up out of the chair and kicked it. “Godfrey, did Marie ever have anything to do with Wickersham?”
“Wickersham!” I said in astonishment. “Good gosh no! You know better than that!” Wickersham was the man we worked for. He wasn’t famous for anything because he didn’t want to be. He was remarkable in many ways. His firm manufactured psychological and psychiatric precision equipment—reflex timers, hypnotic mirrors, encephalographs, and the like. Wickersham kept himself to himself; we hardly ever saw him at all. Once every few days he would circulate around the shops and labs, his wide shoulders hunched, his black eyes everywhere. I always had the impression that his eyes were camera lenses, and that he would develop all he had seen later, spread the proofs out in front of him on his desk and study them. Few of us had been in his office—there was no need. If we wanted to see him we pressed a button—there was one in each lab, office and shop in the building. He had an annunciator, and he would show up eventually, in his own time. And Lord help the button-pusher if Wickersham didn’t think the problem in hand required a consultation! But as far as Marie was concerned—as far as any woman was concerned—that was nonsense. The woman didn’t live who could move an icicle like that. “Henry—don’t be dopey. They never even met.”
“Yes they did,” said Henry glumly. “Don’t you remember the union banquet?”
“Oh—that. Yeah, but he … I mean, he wasn’t there for any high jinks. He wanted to see how many of his men were in the union, that’s all. Not that he cares. He pays way above the union scale. But what’s this about Marie?”
Henry shook his head. “Somebody’s nuts. Me, maybe. Marie comes drifting in about an hour after I got home last night. She’s walking on air. She is plenty affectionate always, but—” he ran his finger around his collar—“whew! Not like that. She was all over me. Says she guessed she never appreciated me before. Says it was so brave of me to … to punch hell out of Wickersham, and spoil that Rock of Gibraltar face of his.” His voice went vague. “Took me about five minutes to get all that on a slow double-take. I finally asked her to start from the beginning. I got it piecemeal, but the pitch is that Wickersham was down on one knee pouring his heart out to her, reciting Keats—”
“Wickersham was?”
He nodded dismally. “And I came in, hauled him to his feet, spun him around with the old one-two, and pitched him out on his ear.”
“And where did all this happen?”
He looked up at me dazedly. “In a private room at Altair House.”
“Altair House? You mean that gold-plated eatery on Sixty-fourth Street?”
“Yeh. And that’s the craziest part of it all, because—I was never there in my life.”
“Was she?”
“I asked her. She said sure she was—that one time; and didn’t I remember?”
“She’s kidding you, Henry.”
“Nuts. You know your sister better than that. She kids around some, but not in that way. No; she—well, she says she remembers about it. I asked her when it happened—before or after we were married. That stopped her. She didn’t know! She chewed on that for a while and then apparently decided I was kidding her. She said, ‘All right, darling, if you don’t want to talk about it,’ and dropped the subject. Godfrey, what’s happening to her?”
“She never came out with anything like that before,” I said. “Marie’s a pretty cool-headed gal. Always was, anyway. Maybe she dreamed it.”
Henry snorted. “Dreamed it? Godfrey, there’s a heck of a difference between a good healthy dream and an actual remembrance of something which couldn’t happen.”
And where had I heard something like that recently?
That was the same day that I looked up from my bench and saw Wickersham. The late afternoon sun streaming through the laboratory windows high-lighted his huge, strange face, making velvet hollows of his eyes. There was a nervous ripple along his slab-sided jaw; otherwise he was as always, carven, unnaturally still. Henry’s wild story that same morning returned to me with shocking clarity, as I pictured my little, good-natured puppy of a brother-in-law smashing a fist into that great dark unreadable face.
“Oh!” I said. “I didn’t see you.”
I was standing in front of my work, but he seemed to look down through me and examine it lying there on the bench. “That’s the Hardin contract?” he said.
“Yes. The tone generators with the secondary amplifier for building up the supersonic beat.”
He moved his hand slowly up, pulled his lower lip, slowly put his hand down again, and I remember thinking that that was the first time I had ever seen him make anything approaching a nervous gesture. Then, “Hardin can wait,” he said. “I want to put you on another job.”
I blinked. This wasn’t Wickersham’s style at all. He did good work for his customers—the best. But once a job was started, it was kept in production until it was finished, no matter who came along with a rush order. His reputation was such that he could tell anyone to go fly it if they didn’t like it. “What’s the job?” I asked.
He looked at me. He had black eyes, and they seemed to be all pupil. He seemed to be daring me to look surprised. “It’s a burglar alarm,” he said.
“But we don’t manufac … I mean,” I said, “What kind of a burglar alarm?”
“An alarm with a psychological appeal,” he said. “One that will not only announce that there is or has been an intruder, but will lead that intruder into being caught.”
“You mean take his picture?”
“I mean, take him.”
“What sort of an installation? I mean, will it cover a room, or a house, or what?”
“A large room, about forty by thirty, with two outside walls. Four windows, one outside door, two inside. Run up any kind of cost you like, but get it done and get it done fast. Use any man or machine in the shop; you have absolute priority. I’ll bring you a floor plan in an hour. I want your preliminary layouts by then. Can you stay here tonight?”
That last was like asking a jailed convict to stick around for a while. Wickersham had other ways besides his customary double time for overtime to persuade his staff to do what he wanted. Oh well, I could use the money. “I’ll have to call my wife,” I said.
Wickersham apparently took that for acquiescence, for he turned and stalked off without another word. I watched him go. He walked as if he were keeping time with slow music; as if he were holding himself back from breaking into a run.
Henry’s jeweler’s lathe whined to a stop and he came over.
“D’ you hear that?” I asked.
“Most of it,” he said. “What’s eatin’ him?”
“You noticed it too?” I shook my head. “He looks like a dope addict. Only I can’t say just how. Henry, I’ve known him and worked close to him for nearly six years now, and I don’t know the first thing about him. What makes him tick anyway?”
“Search me,” said Henry. “I don’t know how he does it. Old George, the night watchman, told me once that the Wick comes in before the sun is up, more often than not, and doesn’t leave until midnight. Sometimes he’s here, day and night, for three days at a stretch. He doesn’t seem to talk to anybody but us, ever, and that’s only occasionally, about the work. A guy just interested in making money don’t carry on like that.”
“He’s making money all right,” I said. “He knows more about applied psychology than most of his clients, and they’re all tops in the field. Most times he gets his orders by clapping together a new gadget for controlled hypnosis or something, and calling in the docto
rs who’d be most interested. He don’t wait for their orders. They come when he calls them, and glad to.” I began to clear a space on my bench. “Maybe he is cracking; I dunno. I wouldn’t be surprised; only—Henry, I just don’t see a guy like that cracking.”
“Maybe he’s human, after all,” said Henry, unhappily, and I knew he was thinking of Marie’s wild tale. “Let’s get to this alarm thing. What’d he say about the building?”
So we got to work on it. At five I called Carole. She wasn’t happy about it, but you’d have to know her as well as I do to guess it. I marry the nicest people.
The alarm we doped out was a nice set-up, and I pitied the burglar who would come up against it—though I couldn’t know how much I would pity him later. The come-on that the Wick wanted was an iron window-grating kept ajar over an unlocked window. The window was free to slide up only six inches, where it was stopped by a chrome-plated and highly visible catch. The catch was so stiff that it would require both hands to release it. The burglar would have to squeeze up close to the wall, put both arms into the half-open window, and reach up with his arms bent to get to the catch. As soon as he swiveled the catch—bang!—the sash came down on his biceps. No bells would ring, nor lights; the alarm was turned in at a remote station and the police could come and get their pigeon at their leisure. The whole layout was put on the ready by a black-light installation; that is, the building was surrounded on its two accessible sides by a lawn and a high stone wall, without a gate. The wall was topped by the beams; another two crossed the gateless doorway in the wall in an invisible X. When anyone approached the building with honest intentions, as for instance, the cop on the beat on his way to try the door, he would be timed by relays. If he went in and stayed inside the wall longer than three minutes, the grating over the side window would unlock and swing ajar. If he tried the door and came right back, the side window would stay locked, and would not tempt investigation. And if anyone climbed over the wall when it was so easy to walk in, then, of course, the trick grating would do its stuff immediately.
Wickersham came in to watch Henry and me about nine o’clock that night, and I handed him the sketch of the installation I had superimposed on his plan of the building. He glanced at it and tossed it on the bench, saying nothing, which was his way of dealing out a compliment. He stayed about half an hour, and we didn’t hear a sound out of him except when Henry stopped working, wiped the sweat out of his eyes, and lit a cigarette. Then Wickersham heaved a sigh, a sigh which was ten times worse than if he had barked at Henry to get back to work. Henry hunched his shoulders and did.
At about half-past one in the morning I finished the window catch and got it mounted on a conventional flush fitting. I went over to Henry’s bench; he was adjusting the focus on the last of the little UV projectors.
“That about all?”
“Yep,” he said. “Buzz the Wick.” He yawned. “And me for bed.”
I pushed Wickersham’s call-button, and we heard his office door crash open. “Jee-hosaphat!” said Henry. “He must’ve been in a racing crouch!”
“Finished?” said Wickersham as he came in. He might have added, “Good!” but it wouldn’t occur to him. “Give me a hand with the parts, down to my car.”
Henry said, “You want us to help with the installation?”
The Wick shook his head impatiently. “That’s taken care of.”
We gathered up everything the plans called for and a bunch of spare cable and fittings besides, and carried them down. As soon as the stuff was loaded, Wickersham swung in behind the wheel and roared off like a P-38.
“Funny business,” I said, watching the car pull into a screaming turn at the first corner.
“Everything he does is funny business,” said Henry, and yawned again. “Take me home and put me to bed.”
I dropped Henry off and went home. The bedroom light went on as I wheeled into the drive, and the kitchen light was on as I locked the garage doors. There was never a time, early or late, when Carole wasn’t up to see that I had something to nosh on when I came home. Which is the way a guy gets spoiled.
“Hi, Muscles,” I said, slinging my hat at her. She caught it deftly, only to throw it over her shoulder and come and kiss me. “How’s the Widget?”
“Talkative,” said Carole, heading for the stove, where water was already heating the coffee. “Still going on about the talking doll in the giggum pinafore.”
“Carole!” I went to her, put my face in the back of her shining hair. “You’re worried about it!” I sniffed. “Mm. You smell good.”
“Wave set,” she said. “Don’t muss me, darling. Yes I am a little worried.” She was quiet a moment, her hands deftly cutting and spreading bread, her mind far from them. “Marie came today.”
“Oh?”
“Henry tell you anything?”
“Yes. He—”
Carole began to cry.
“Darling! Carole, what the … stop it, and tell me what’s wrong!”
She didn’t stop it. Carole doesn’t cry very well. I don’t think she really knows how. “I’ve been too happy, I guess, Godfrey. I feel … I don’t know, darling. Ashamed. I gloated at Marie.”
“Too happy? A heck of a thing to cry about.” I squeezed her. “Don’t cry all over the liverwurst, honey.”
“It isn’t being too happy. I … I don’t really know what it is.” She put down the knife, turned in my arms, and hid her face in my coat. “I’m frightened, Godfrey, I’m frightened!”
“But what are you afraid of?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered. She trembled suddenly, violently, and then was still. “I’m afraid of something, and I don’t know what that something is. That’s part of it. And part of it is that I’m frightened because I don’t know what it is. There’s a difference, do you see?”
“Sure I see.” Suddenly I felt about her the way I do about the Widget. She seemed so tiny; there was so much she couldn’t understand yet, somehow. I talked to her as if she were a child. I said, “What kind of a something is it, darling? Is it something that can hurt you?”
She nodded.
“How can it hurt you?” She was still so long that I thought she hadn’t heard. “How can it hurt, darling? Can it jump out at you and knock you down? Is it that kind of a something?”
She shook her head promptly.
“Can it hurt—us?”
She nodded. I said, “How, Carole? How can it do something to us? Can it take something away from us?”
“It did take something away.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know,” she mumbled.
I held her and stroked her shoulder, and I felt lost. After a while I went and sat at the table and she finished making sandwiches for me.
It didn’t stop there. In three days I was in the shape Henry had been in when Marie first came out with that fantasy of hers—and in three days Henry was worse. Working, we did little more than to interrupt each other with accounts of the strange goings-on of our wives, and it wasn’t fun.
“She won’t forget it,” said Henry, staring blindly at his bench. His production was way off—the little guy was a worker, but this thing had got between him and his work. “If I’d only known how serious it would be to her, I’d have grinned and said, ‘yes, yes, go on.’ But I couldn’t then, and it’s no use trying now. I’ve done my best to persuade her the thing between her and the Wick never happened, but it’s no use. The more I persuade, the more upset she gets. If she believes me, she begins to doubt her own sanity. If she doesn’t believe me, she can’t figure out what motive I might have for lying about slugging the man.” He spread his hands, his eyebrows coming up sorrowfully. He looked more than ever like a little lost puppy. “Dead end. What can you do?”
“You’re lucky. At least Marie can put a name to what’s worrying her. Carole can’t. She’s afraid, because she doesn’t know what she’s afraid of. She feels she’s lost something, som
ething important, and she is frightened because she doesn’t know what it is. Where Marie’s worried and—shall I say jealous, maybe?—and generally upset, Carole’s scared silly. I’ve seen Marie worried before. I’ve never seen Carole scared.”
Henry gave up his pretense of working and came around to my bench. “Carole is the coolest head I think I’ve ever run across,” he said thoughtfully. “Maybe I am lucky. I … don’t feel lucky though—Godfrey, let’s quit griping about the effects and try to figure out causes. Do the two of them have the same trouble, or is it a coincidence?”
“Coincidence? Of course, Henry. The symptoms, if you want to call them that, are totally different.”
“Oh, are they?”
“Well, what have they in common?” I said.
“Yeah,” said Henry doubtfully. “Um—Nothing, I guess. Except—they’ve both lost something and it worries them.”
“Lost something? Carole has, but what has Marie—oh. Oh, I think I see what you mean. Marie has a memory of an event which is itself lost, as far as placing it in her life is concerned. Like the Widget’s doll with the giggum pinafore.”
“Like what?”
I told him about it. “I have a feeling that’s what sent Carole off the deep end, when you come to think about it,” I said. “She worried about … hey! the Widget’s trouble is the same as Marie’s when you break it down. She had a vivid memory of something that never happened, too. And she frets because she thinks she’s lost it.” I stared at him.
“For that matter, you and I both have the same trouble,” said Henry suddenly. “We’ve certainly lost something.”
I knew what he meant—particularly for himself. There is a certain something about being newly married that shouldn’t be spoiled. His was being spoiled suddenly, which was so much worse. “No, Henry, I don’t know why, but I think that’s a side issue. Marie, the Widget, Carole. They have something. It’s because they have something that we’re in the state we’re in.” I suddenly noticed the remarkable fact that Henry wasn’t even pretending to work. “Henry—we’ve got a deadline to meet on this job. Wickersham—”
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