Michael Gray Novels

by Henry Kuttner

  He was standing in the doorway, hat and briefcase in hand, looking hopefully at the telephone, when at the last moment it finally did ring.

  Gray let out a long breath of relief as Karen’s voice said doubtfully, “Mr. Gray? I wonder if I could possibly—see you sometime today?”

  Gray had already mentally rearranged the day’s appointments to make room for her if she did call. He said promptly, “I want to see you, too. Could you be at my office in an hour?”

  “Oh, I could, yes!” Her voice was a soft, explosive sound. “Mr. Gray, I think I’ve done something terrible. I—I don’t know what to do about it! If you can’t help me I’ll—I’ll—” She broke off with a moist intake of breath like a sob.

  Gray said, “We’ll work it out together. Don’t worry. I’m very glad you called.”

  Afterward, he spent a busy fifteen minutes postponing appointments. He was going to have to do something with Karen Champion that could be very risky indeed, and he wanted to be free to safeguard her in every way he could.

  Over a quick drugstore breakfast he wondered what terrible thing it was she thought she had done. Rationally, you would expect her to feel great relief now that Champion was behind bars. This was what she had been agitating for so long it must now seem like an impossibility come true. But she hadn’t sounded relieved at all.

  She sat forward in her chair, hands clasped on her knee and her palms working against each other with an unending motion of anxiety.

  “I never meant it to work out this way,” she said, her voice tight and high. “I had no idea—I’ve been such a fool I can hardly believe it was me!”

  “Tell me about it,” Gray suggested.

  “I just wanted him to stop hounding me. I guess I wanted to get even with him—but I never meant it to come to this! Honestly, I didn’t! And now they’ve tricked me into—Mr. Gray, I told them about Tahoe! That was why they arrested him—I know that was why! But he couldn’t have killed that man! And Oliver—no, I’m sure Dennis didn’t kill Oliver either. Dennis isn’t a murderer!” She unclasped her hands and dug into her purse for a handkerchief. “I’ve done such terrible things—I’ve been such a fool,” she said indistinctly, mopping at her eyes.

  Gray leaned back in his chair and looked at her. He had rather expected this, somehow.

  “What happened at Tahoe, then—that wasn’t exactly true?” he asked.

  She blinked at him through tears. “Well, yes, it was true—in a way. But—” She blew her nose and said, “Wait. I want to think. I had the oddest feeling this morning when I first found out that Dennis had—had been arrested. The police came to ask me a lot more questions. And when they told me about Dennis—everything changed.”

  “How?” Gray asked.

  “I don’t know—it was the strangest feeling. All of a sudden I got the most wonderful sense of relief. But it didn’t last more than a moment. And the next thing I knew I felt worse—much worse—as if I’d been holding onto the wrong thing and it had given way under me. I felt I was falling….”

  “How do you feel about Dennis?” Gray asked softly, when she paused.

  “Not afraid. Not any more.” She said it almost wonderingly.

  “Well,” Gray said, “you’ve been afraid of him for a long while, haven’t you? If you knew he’d been arrested, I think you’d naturally feel relief. Feel you were safe from him now.”

  “But it only lasted a second! Then—it was worse than ever.”

  Gray said, “You see, there’s been more than one reason why you were afraid of Dennis. Some of the reasons probably didn’t have much to do with Dennis himself, really. They were tied up with older fears, things that may have happened a long time ago. And those problems aren’t solved yet. It sounds as though you felt, for a moment, that Dennis’s arrest meant you were safe. But then you realized that the older conflicts still existed—and it frightened you.”

  She said, “I think that’s true. I’m not afraid of Dennis. Why, I—” She looked at Gray wonderingly again. “I love Dennis! It’s the strangest thing. As though I can see him clearly for the first time. I feel as though I’ve been blaming him for things that weren’t really his fault. Now I can see all the ways where he was so kind—he did try so hard. And now I’ve—I’ve given the testimony that got him accused of murder! They may convict him! And I know he couldn’t have killed anybody—I know it!”

  She looked at Gray appealingly, her breath coming fast. Gray hesitated, of two minds whether to speak or not. The case against Champion did not, of course, rest wholly on Karen’s testimony. After all, the man had been arrested actually standing over the murdered body of Fenn.

  But Gray decided in a moment that it would be poor therapy to point this out to Karen just now. The real question was her own strong feeling of guilt, partly valid, partly invalid from a logical viewpoint. So all he said was, “You feel it’s your fault entirely? Why is that?”

  “Because I—sometimes don’t tell the truth. But I had to—I had to! Don’t ask me why. It’s as though I had to—tell lies—because if I didn’t something terrible would happen. But I don’t know what.” She drew a long breath. “And now something terrible’s happened anyway. And that’s my fault too.”

  She laughed a shaken little laugh, without amusement in it. “It’s so funny—up to now nobody would believe me. No matter whether I told the truth or not. But now they want to believe me and I—I wasn’t telling the truth. I was lying.” It was very hard for her to say.

  “Yes?” Gray said encouragingly.

  “I’m all mixed up.” Her voice was unsteady. “I don’t know what’s true and what isn’t. But one thing I’m sure of—Dennis didn’t kill Oliver. He didn’t kill Fenn. I know it.”

  “How do you know it?”

  The query seemed to distress her. She put her hands to her face and muttered, “How do I know it? How do I know it? I’m not sure how I know—it frightens me to think about it.” She shook her head, took her hands down again and said, “I want to think about other things. Not this. This is too—it makes me dizzy. It scares me.”

  Gray said, “All right,” and waited.

  After a moment Karen shook herself. “No, I have to think about it. Dennis depends on me, doesn’t he? I got him into this. Now I have to get him out. What was I saying?”

  Gray didn’t answer. He was afraid to. Only Karen knew how far she could push herself along a path so painful she had spent her lifetime building elaborate lies to hide the truth.

  “Who killed Oliver?” she said. “That was it. Now listen—a man broke into my bedroom that night. And then a man broke in again and killed Oliver. Was it the same man?”

  “Was it?” Gray prompted her.

  “I think it was. I saw him the first time. I think now I may have got just a glimpse of him the second time, when he went out the door after he—after he killed Oliver. Just a glimpse of his head and shoulders from behind. And I think it was the same man.” She was concentrating fiercely. “And did the same man kill Fenn?” she demanded.

  “We don’t know, yet,” Gray told her. “Do you think so?”

  “How could I know? The police seem to think so. They’re convinced Dennis killed them both. So if I could only make them believe that man who broke into my apartment twice wasn’t Dennis—would they let him go now?”

  Gray said carefully, “It would be very important evidence—if the police could be convinced of it. But they take a lot of convincing. Are you convinced?” He had led her back, as cautiously as he could, to a subject she had violently shied away from a few minutes earlier. Now he watched very carefully to see how she would handle it this time.

  She gripped the chair arm hard, fixed Gray with a wide-eyed gaze and said almost breathlessly, “I know it wasn’t Dennis because I saw the man. It was Dennis and it wasn’t. I knew him—I didn’t know him—I can’t look!”

  She had spoken very rapidly, running the words together. Now she stopped entirely and shut her eyes tight, breathing as if she had
been running.

  Watching her anxiously, Gray said, “Sometimes it’s better not to push things. Suppose we—”

  “No!” Her voice was vehement. “It scares me nearly to death, but I’ve got to follow it through. Help me! What do I do next?”

  Gray wasn’t sure himself. He said, “Well, we could have a cigarette and back off a little for a minute. Let me think it over too. We’ll work it out one way or another.”

  They smoked in silence briefly. Karen’s hand began to shake a little less, holding the cigarette.

  Gray said finally, “I’ll tell you what’s been going through my mind as you talk. Your husband wouldn’t be a hard man to imitate, would he? Anybody who puts on a pair of horn-rimmed glasses and a false moustache could look like him, in the dark. But he’d look like him only from the front. It isn’t only by their faces that we recognize our friends. Sometimes the silhouette’s enough, or the turn of a head, or the back view of somebody going down the street. I’m wondering if this could be partly what you remember from that night.”

  Karen’s face lit up briefly. “Yes!” she said. “It was something like that. I remember now. The outline against the window. Somebody’s head—” She caught her breath with a gasp and dropped her cigarette unheeded to the floor as she clapped her hands to her face again. “No, I can’t look at it! I knew who it was, but my mind—it shuts up like a trap. I can see the face—not Dennis. Almost see it. But the face was—” Her voice wavered. “All hairy!” she said. “Like an animal…”

  Gray watched her carefully, not sure whether she was going too far. It was much too soon to disturb these frightening emotions. Was it time yet to pull her back? And if he did, might the important memory be lost for good? He decided to risk a little prompting.

  He said cautiously, “The moustache, maybe? A thick moustache might look hairy—”

  “No, an animal’s face—and the foam, the white foam—oh, God, it couldn’t have been real!” She was shaking now, long, deep shudders going over her, and all the color had drained out of her face. Gray had to bring her out of it fast.

  He said firmly, “No, it couldn’t have been real. You know that. Things just get mixed up sometimes.” Deliberately he opened his fingers and let his cigarette fall to the floor beside hers. He saw her eyes follow it. She caught her breath and laughed a shaky laugh.

  “I know. Of course. It couldn’t be real. It was just—I don’t know.” She pointed. “Look—did you know you dropped your cigarette? I guess I dropped mine, too. No, wait—I’ll get them.”

  Gray sighed with relief. She had bypassed the bad spot, then, at least for now. But she had had enough. They were out on very thin ice. The pressure of events was hurrying a crisis, a possible insight into her own problems, that otherwise might have been delayed for weeks or months. And it could be dangerous. A patient confronted too soon with his own frightening unconscious conflicts can find himself in deep trouble.

  When this happens, sometimes the therapist must help the patient recover his neurotic defenses temporarily, like a life raft on which he can support himself until he is strong enough to swim alone.

  Gray looked at Karen thoughtfully. What was happening now? For some reason her imagination and memory had filled in the silhouette of the man’s head she had glimpsed with the mask of the foaming mad dog, old Spot, who had to be shot a long time ago. It was the recurring nightmare about Spot. But more than Spot. The memory would have to be clarified somehow. Normally they could take their time about it.

  But this wasn’t a normal situation. The memory was mixed up now with her memory of a murderer. It had to be clarified at once. Not later—now.

  And he didn’t think she could endure to face it. He would have to find a way.

  “Look,” he said. “We’ve got a problem. You’re pushing yourself too hard and too fast. We need to get at the information, but we don’t have to do it the hard way. I have an idea—see what you think. Remember the other night when you couldn’t sleep? Hypnosis helped you then. I think it might help now. What do you say, shall we try it?”

  “You mean we could—get past the bad things? We could find out the truth?”

  “I think so. I think we might try. What do you think?”

  She said quickly, “Oh, yes, yes—anything!”

  Gray smiled.

  “All right. Sit down, then, and relax. It’s very easy. Just leave the hard part to me. Lean your head back and do as I ask you to. That’s right.” He picked up a pencil and rested it, end up, on the table. “Look at the tip of this pencil, now. Keep watching it. Now, I’m going to count, and as I count your eyelids will begin to feel heavy. You’ll begin to feel sleepier and sleepier…”

  26

  It wasn’t easy.

  But Karen sank gradually into a light hypnotic trance, and then deeper and deeper under. When she was profoundly asleep at last, and her face had more of a look of peace on it than Gray had ever seen there before, he began to talk in a quiet voice.

  “Now, after you wake up, I want you to forget everything we’ve been talking about this morning. I want you to forget all the new memories and all the old ones you’ve thought about today. But I don’t want you to forget them permanently. Later on, when you feel really convinced that a memory is true and you fully understand it, then you’ll remember.”

  He impressed the command firmly on her mind. It was important to make sure she would be protected against too disturbing memories until she advanced to a point where she was strong enough to handle them.

  “Now,” Gray said, “we’re going back to the night in your bedroom when you told me a man came in. You’re in bed, asleep. Does anything happen?”

  “A noise,” Karen said, her eyes shut. She was very suggestible, a good hypnotic subject.

  “What happens then?”

  “I sit up. I look.”

  “What do you see?”

  “Somebody—somebody in the room.” She was breathing quicker now.

  “Who is it?”

  Karen’s head moved slowly from side to side.

  “Watch,” Gray ordered. “Tell me what you see.”

  “Somebody … an outline against the window. Head and shoulders. Now he’s turning. I see his face. Dennis, Dennis—what are you doing here?”

  Gray said, “Do you see Dennis’s face?”

  “His eyes—all shiny—the glasses. I see the glasses.”

  “But is it light enough to see his mouth, his nose?”

  She shook her head. “All I see is glasses. And the moustache.”

  Gray said, “Go back a minute. Go back to the silhouette against the window. Is that Dennis?”

  “I don’t know—I can’t….” Karen moaned a little. “Black—empty. Just the black outline. All empty inside.”

  “Whose outline is it?”

  She caught her breath. “I’ll fall if I look! I can’t look! It’s an empty hole, empty….”

  Gray said soothingly, “All right. We won’t look any more. We’ll go on to that other night, in your kitchen, the night Oliver Albano died. Tell me what happened after you came in with Albano.”

  “I went into the bedroom. Oliver went to the kitchen to mix drinks.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “I heard Oliver—he called out something. I heard a gun go off. And then—thuds. Heavy thuds.” She shivered, her eyes still closed. “I ran into the kitchen. Oliver was on the floor….” She paused, a look of confusion crossing her face.

  Gray said alertly, “Now you’ve just come into the kitchen. You see Oliver on the floor. What else do you see?”

  “Somebody at the door, going out. Somebody—nobody—just an outline—just a glimpse. Yes, I do see a glimpse. A man’s head and shoulders—and then the door shuts.”

  “What man?”

  “The same one. The one who was in my bedroom.”

  “Do you know his name?”

  She turned her head from side to side almost feverishly. “I can’t look. He’s all black
, empty—a hole with nothing in it. I have to—”

  “What do you have to do, Karen?”

  “Fill up the hole. There mustn’t be any emptiness. Nobody must ever know. If they find out they’ll know what I am….”

  “What are you?”

  She said in a whisper, “Judy….”

  “Who is Judy?” Gray asked.

  Karen drew a deep breath and stirred restlessly. “I don’t know any Judy. There is no Judy. There never was.”

  Gray looked at her intently. Her hands were clenched hard on the chair arms. Judy, he thought. Judy, and the terror of falling, and the compulsive lies—they were all tangled up together somehow. And this new business of having to fill up emptiness, that seemed to be part of it too. He might have to unravel the whole thing to get at any one piece of it.

  Judy, Judy. Who was Judy?

  If his hunch was right, Judy had been a sister around whom some constellation of memories clustered, so frightening that Karen had wiped out of her mind every conscious thought connected with that part of the past. The sleeping sickness associations—if Gray’s hunch was right—would be part of the same pattern. A child who has suffered encephalitis may undergo quite startling personality changes, changes that could terrify a younger child….

  He would have to find out about Judy.

  He said, “Karen, I want you to tell me about your family when you were a little girl. Will you do that?”

  Her brow furrowed. Slowly, reluctantly, she said, “Yes—”

  “All right. I want you to give me their names. Who was in your family?”

  She said, “Mother….” and stopped.

  “Yes? Go on.”

  “Daddy….”

  “Go on.”