Puzzle for Fiends

by Patrick Quentin

  She looked up quickly: “Mimsey and Selena, of course.”

  “Mimsey and Selena?”

  “Ever hear of the word ‘stifled’? You try being a woman in the same house with Mimsey and Selena.” She kicked out savagely with her leg. “It was almost better with Father. At least he wasn’t sinister.”

  “Sinister?” I reacted instinctively to the word.

  “Oh, they don’t know they are.” She pulled her legs up onto the bed and sat cross-legged, her hands on her ankles. “It’s just that they’re both terrifically forceful characters and all that force was bottled up by Father. Now, with him gone, they’re expanding—blossoming like those monstrous South American man-eating plants. They suck everything in, including me. They swallow everyone. Oh, they’d do anything, absolutely anything, however callous. And just because it’s fulfilling them, they’ll be able to sugar it all over with a pretty word and make it seem oh so charming and sympathetic.” She was staring at me fixedly now, the glossy hair swinging free around her shoulders. I had the strange feeling that somehow between the lines of what she said there was a warning.

  “Tell me,” she asked suddenly. “Why are you going through with this plan? There’s nothing in it for you.”

  “There’s nothing in it against me, is there?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Then why shouldn’t I do it out of general chumminess?” She shook her head. “You’re not doing it for general chumminess. You’re doing it for Selena.”

  For some reason I felt uncomfortable.

  “Of course you are. You’re just like all the rest. You’re letting her swallow you up. She swallowed Gordy up—what was left of him, poor guy. And she’s swallowed Nate.” She gave a bitter laugh. “Remember I told you I had my first date with a man three weeks ago? That man was Nate. I met him and brought him home. He was supposed to be my beau. No one ever mentions that now, do they? Selena took one look at him and gobbled him like a hippopotamus gobbling water-weed. And you…”

  “Maybe I can take care of myself.”

  “You?” Marny laughed again. “Just wait and see. Any minute now she’ll be walking into the room. She’ll be so gay and amusing about tomorrow. That’s what will happen first. Then she’ll start having a pain in her eyes and telling you how awful it was being married to a drunk. Then she’ll say Nate’s awfully sweet, of course, and she’s devoted to him, but what big muscles you have.” Her sarcasm was withering. “You take care of yourself? Water-weed! That’s what you’ll be. One big, green mouthful.”

  My reaction was curiously mixed. Part of me said: She's right. Watch out. Another part strained to leap to Selena’s defense. It was checked however by Marny’s clear, ironic stare.

  She said: “You think I’m jealous, don’t you, because Selena’s such a ravishment.”

  “Do I?”

  “Of course you do.” In a quick change of mood her face was deadly serious. “Please believe me, for your own sake. She’ll be poison to you. She’s bad—really bad. It’s not just Gordy, Nate. It’s every man that comes near her.” She paused and added harshly: “Jan, even.”

  “Jan!”

  “Yes, Jan. I saw Selena with Jan just before Father died. I… Oh, I suppose I shouldn’t have told you. It’s bitchy. But what difference does it make if only I can make you see?” A vision of Jan’s huge half-naked body swam across my mind. I thought of his gusty peals of laughter when I’d asked him why Mr. Friend had fired him. Then the image of him—still laughing—merged with Selena’s lithe, suntanned figure, struggling in the pool. Anger, of a violence that startled me, flared up in me.

  Marny was still watching me. “Selena got bored with Gordy. Cynically, without raising her little finger, she let him drink himself into a sudden pulp. She took up with Nate just so she could use him. Soon she’ll be bored with him too. Soon she’ll throw him on the junk pile. And you’re next on the list for liquidation. She can’t help it, I guess. It’s the way she’s made. Without realizing it, she destroys people.”

  Because I didn’t quite know at what my anger was directed, I focused it on her. “Aren’t you being rather goddam helpful? What’s it to you whether I make a fool of myself or not?”

  “What’s it to me?” She gave a little weary shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I can’t bear to see Selena get away with things. She’s got some plan up her sleeve with you. I know she has.”

  “Plan?” I was uneasy again. “What sort of plan?”

  She sat there for a moment in silence. Then she shook her head slowly. “I don’t know. But there’s something. I can tell it in her eyes.” She leaned forward and touched my hand with a gravity that was almost naive. “Don’t trust her. Please, promise me you won’t trust her.”

  It was a funny moment. This was the warning I had half been expecting. I should have been worrying about it. I should have been worrying too about the vision of Selena that rose, gorgeous and mocking, in my mind. But I didn’t worry about either of them. All that seemed to matter was that Marny was looking very young and tired and forlorn. I slid my arm around her, drew her close and kissed her on the lips.

  “Thanks for the warning, baby.”

  “You won’t pay it any attention.”

  “Who knows?”

  “But you’ll see. Sooner or later you’ll find out what she’s up to and you’ll come screaming to me to say how right I was.”

  “Okay. That’s a bargain. When Selena poisons me, I’ll come screaming to you for an emetic.”

  I kissed her again. For a moment her lips relaxed against mine; then they went tight and hostile. She wrenched herself free. “For God’s sake stop kissing me.”

  “Why, Marny?”

  “Because…” She stared at me, her mouth unsteady. Then she jumped off the bed. “Oh, God, you make me sick. All men make me sick.” She gave a savage laugh. “Didn’t someone say that before?”

  “Marny, baby.”

  “Oh, hell, I’ll go get Jan to put you to bed. You boys should get together anyway and form a club.”

  As she ran to the door, I caught a glimpse of her face. It was white and stricken.

  Suddenly I felt like a heel.

  Soon Jan came. He was in pajamas. His blond hair was ruffled and, from the droopiness of his lids, I imagined Marny had waked him up. But he was as amiable as ever. Mechanically, he went through the routine of preparing me for the night. I’d never liked his touching me. That night, with the vision of him and Selena together in my mind, I felt an unbridled desire to lunge my own good fist into his broad suntanned face.

  He carried me back to bed as if I were a baby, tucked me in, smiled with all the friendly sweetness in the world and loped out.

  It was only after he’d gone that I faced the truth which I should have faced days before.

  Marny was right, of course, about my obsession with Selena. I didn’t love her. It was nothing as fragrant and romantic as that. It was worse. Although she had cheated me and lied to me from the start, Selena was in my blood. That’s the way it was. For better or worse I was stuck with it.

  From the beginning the violence of my reactions to the Friends had really been conditioned by Selena. I had half known it all along but it was as clear to me now as my memory of Selena’s dark blue eyes. I had hated the Friends when I thought they were my enemies because I had hated to have Selena as an enemy. That evening I had ignored every instinct of self-preservation and joined their conspiracy simply because, by joining, I could have Selena on my side again. Even now, when vague suspicions of an even vaguer danger ahead preyed on me, I could still be excited because I knew that at any moment Selena would be coming.

  The door opened and there she was.

  “Hello, darling. Has Marny been warning you against me? I’m sure she has. I saw that predatory gleam in her eyes.”

  She came to the bed and sat down. She took my hand in hers and tilted back her head, laughing out of sheer animal spirits.

  “I’m sorry I’m s
o late, baby. I’ve been having a terrible time with Nate.”

  I was happy now. “What’s Nate been up to?”

  “Oh, he was seething without my sleeping in here. He said since I wasn’t pretending to be your wife any more, I ought to move over into one of those dreary guest bedrooms in the other wing. Really, my dear, he was so stodgy about it. I pointed out that you could hardly become a menace with that cast and, since you’d seen everything there was to see already, it was frightfully hypocritical to go stuffy at this stage of the game.” She leaned over me, kissing me on the mouth. “Besides, all those proprieties, they’re so dismal, aren’t they?”

  “Terribly dismal.” Her shoulders were bare. I let my hand stray over the warm, smooth skin. Dimly, I thought: Poor Nate. But only dimly.

  She slipped back against the pillows, wheedling her hand under the nape of my neck. “Baby, I’m so terribly, terribly glad about tomorrow. You really are an angel. Funny, it all turned out for the best, didn’t it? I mean, Gordy’d never have been sober enough to recite that poem himself.” Under their thick lashes, her eyes slid sidewise to glance at me. “Poor Gordy. I’m devoted to him. Honestly I am. But sometimes—well, it’s rather drab being married to a drunk. Can you understand that, baby?”

  “I can’t understand life ever being drab for you. After all, there’s not only Gordy. Nate’s crazy about you.”

  “Nate.” She gave a little throaty sigh. “Yes, I suppose he is. He wants me to divorce Gordy and marry him.”

  “He does?” I asked sharply.

  “That’s why he helped us. He didn’t want to at all until I pointed out how depressing it would be to marry him if I was penniless. After all, if I was going to divorce Gordy, it was so much more sensible to have Gordy rich, so’s I could get a great fat cash settlement, wasn’t it?”

  She lay back, staring happily up at the ceiling. For a moment the shamelessness of that admission took my breath away. So that was how the Friends had got the invaluable assistance of Nate Croft. Selena had used herself as a lure to induce the young doctor to risk his entire professional career. Poor Nate, I thought again. Less dimly this time.

  I said: “So after this is over, you’re going to divorce Gordy and marry Nate?”

  “Oh, baby, it’s so bleak thinking of things way in the future like that. Of course Nate’s awfully sweet. But he’s a bit of a stuffed shirt. Don’t you think he is? Just a bit of a stuffed shirt?”

  She rolled over onto her hip so that she faced me. Idly her fingers started playing with the sleeve of my pajama jacket. She pushed it back, staring down at my arm.

  “Baby, such hands. I’ve always adored them. And the muscles—really, like a stevedore’s.”

  It amazed me how separate my mind and my emotions had become. Clearly, as if she was in the room right then saying them, my mind remembered Marny’s cynical words. She had prophesied almost exactly the sequence of Selena’s conversation. But instead of acting as a warning, that knowledge gave me a strange exhilaration.

  “Know something, baby?” Selena was stroking the blond hairs on my arm. “I never enjoyed anything so much as pretending to be your wife. Somehow it was exciting lying all the time. And it’s exciting touching you too. Darling, I love touching you.” She leaned one inch closer and kissed me on the mouth. “You’re like something fizzing in my veins. Oh, things are such fun always.”

  She drew away from me, reaching up and twisting a lock of my hair out from under the bandages.

  “Darling, don’t you really know who you are?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe you’re married.”

  “Maybe.”

  “To a nasty little woman with a stringy neck and curl papers.”

  “Could be.”

  “Baby, wouldn’t it be wonderful if you never got your memory back?”

  I stroked her cheek. “Would it?”

  Her eyes were flat, dreamy. “I think it’s that really that makes you exciting. Who are you? Nothing. No identity. No habits. No taboos. Just Man. That’s what you are, baby. Man. Oh, don’t ever get your memory back.”

  “Like me this way?”

  She was smiling a swift, enchanting smile. “That’s it, baby. Never get your memory back. I’ll divorce Gordy. I’ll be rich, stinking rich. You can be rich too because you can hold Gordy up for an enormous check too. And we’ll go off together and do the most wonderful things. And you’ll be part of me. You’ll be something I’ve made. I’ll have taught you everything you know.” Her hands fluttered over my chest. “I’ll have taught you everything you know—when the cast comes off.”

  My pulses were racing. I couldn’t stop my pulses. My blood was racing too so that it was almost a pain. I hadn’t forgotten about Nate. I hadn’t even forgotten about Jan. I just didn’t care.

  “Baby.” She whispered that, her lips warm against my ear. “Baby, tell me. Do you love me?”

  “Love?” I gripped her shoulder, drawing her back so I could look at her. “Love’s a rather prissy word to use around you, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, baby.” She laughed, a deep, husky laugh. “You and me.”

  She jumped off the bed then, her hair tossing around her shoulders. She moved around the bed where I couldn’t see her.

  “Baby?”

  “Yes, Selena. “

  “I’m undressing. Turn the other way.”

  “I am turned the other way. It’s perfectly respectable. I can’t see you.”

  “I know you can’t, you dope. That’s what bothers me. Turn around.”

  I moved around in the bed. She was standing between me and the window. She undid her dress at the back and let it fall to the ground at her feet.

  She was smiling at me, her teeth gleaming white between the red, parted lips.

  “You and me, baby,” she said.

  Chapter 17

  When Jan wakened me the next morning, Selena had disappeared. My first glimpse of the Dutchman was sufficient to remind me that this was The Great Day. His huge body, normally naked except for his scanty swimming trunks, had been forced into a white shirt, with knotted black tie, and a seersucker suit. His blond hair had been slicked down too. He looked awkward and unconvincingly holy. He must have been told not to smile, for he maintained a stubborn sobriety as he bathed me and dressed me, as completely as the casts would allow, in an equally dour suit-and-shirt combination with a mourning arm-band of black. I was arranged in the wheel chair with the least colorful of the robes wrapped over my legs and pushed out to the glassed breakfast porch where the others were all assembled.

  At a first glance I scarcely recognized the Friend woman. Mrs. Friend had always worn black, but her bright lipstick and her rakish upswept hair-do had given the effect of a faintly disreputable goddess in slapdash disguise as a widow. All that was changed. Her face now was devoid of make-up. Her hair was pulled into a tight bun at the nape of her neck. She wore no jewelry and had managed somehow to switch off her magnetism and assume an air of meek, bereaved piety.

  Both the girls were in unrelieved black too. I was amazed how it obliterated Marny. She looked the way she’d claimed she’d always looked until her father’s death—a little mousey thing ready to scuttle to safety at the first “boo”. Selena’s transformation alone was unsuccessful. In spite of the shapeless black frock, in spite of the preposterous way in which she’d coiled her hair into fat braids around her ears, she still looked bravely voluptuous.

  “Darling.” She surveyed me, grinning. “You’re wonderful—that repulsive suit. Try to look a little more constipated. There. Perfect. Gordy Friend—the reformed drunk.”

  In spite of her subdued appearance, Mrs. Friend was as efficient as ever. Mr. Petherbridge, she told me, was arriving before the League convened. It was part of his duties as executor of Mr. Friend’s will to inspect the house for signs of depravity—bottles of liquor, ashtrays, things like that. He would be coming in an hour.

  Mrs. Friend whisked us through breakfast and held a conference in the
living-room where the Clean Living League meeting was to be held. In spite of the room’s lavish splendor Mrs. Friend had contrived by sheer genius to create an atmosphere of respectable stodginess. There were no ashtrays, of course. Photographs of old Mr. Friend himself and of sour-looking relatives had been exhibited clumsily in the least suitable places. A genteel Paisley shawl had been draped over the piano. On it stood a vase stuffed with dead reeds of the type associated with the better boarding houses. Wooden chairs had been arranged in rows to seat the members of the League; and at one end a cluster of chairs around a table indicated where Mr. Moffat and the family party would preside.

  Mrs. Friend made me recite the Ode to Aurora three times and even coached me as to the right tone of voice and the correct demeanor for a sheepish ex-sinner who had seen the light.

  “We don’t have to worry about Mr. Petherbridge,” she said. “He’s an old fuss-budget, but I think he’s on our side. Mr. Moffat’s the danger, of course. He’ll be crazy for something to go wrong. The slightest slip-up and he’ll make a claim. We can’t very well afford a law-suit and all the embarrassing things a law-suit might bring out. You realize that?”

  The last remark was addressed to me. I nodded. I saw only too well why we couldn’t afford a law-suit.

  “You’d better know the pattern of these meetings, dear. First there’ll be a jolly song. Then Mr. Moffat will give a jolly speech about your father. Then you’ll recite the poem. Then Mr. Moffat will probably launch into a jolly harangue about another lost brother redeemed. Then you’ll sign the abstinence pledge. That means you’re never to drink again, darling boy. After that, maybe it would be nice if you gave a jolly little speech too. No, maybe you shouldn’t. I don’t quite trust your sense of humor. We’ll skip your jolly speech. Then the meeting’ll end with another jolly song, and they’ll all troop up to greet you as a fellow member. I’ve told Mr. Moffat they can spend their sunshine hour in the pool so we’ll get rid of them from the house after that. Got it?”

  “Yes,” I said.