"This wind's still cold!" He didn't try to kiss her. Abruptly, almost roughly, he pushed her into the car and shut the door. "Thanks for a wonderful time." He was trying to cover the unresolved conflict of his emotions, and his voice turned brisk and cool. "I'll call you tomorrow at the Trojan Arms."
She looked at him from the wheel. The slow, tantalizing smile on her dark lips suggested an amused and pleased awareness of all the disturbed emotion she aroused in him.
"Night, Barbee," she purred gently, and bent to start the motor. Barbee stood watching as she drove away, fingering the white jade wolf in his pocket. He wondered why he hadn't dared return it. The bitter wind struck him, and he turned uneasily toward his own shabby car.
Barbee covered Mondrick's funeral for the Star. The simple services were held at two, next day. Although the wind had shifted toward the south, the day was blustering and raw, and only the blind widow and a few close friends from the university and the Foundation braved it to watch the graveside ceremony.
Nick Spivak and Rex Chittum were among the pallbearers, looking very taut and grim. Surprisingly, Sam Quain was absent. Barbee walked up to Nora, who stood alone near where Rowena Mondrick waited with her nurse and her great tawny dog, to ask concernedly: "Is Sam ill, Nora?" He saw her start, as if from grave preoccupation. "I thought he'd be here."
"Hello, Will." She gave him a little wan smile; Nora had always seemed friendly, even since Sam and Mondrick changed. "No, Sam's all right," she said. "He just stayed at the house to watch that green box they brought back from Asia. Can you imagine what they have in it?"
Barbee shook his head; he couldn't imagine.
Rowena Mondrick must have heard their voices, for she turned quickly toward them—her attitude, Barbee thought, oddly alarmed. Her taut face was colorless beneath her opaque black glasses; the grasp of her thin fingers on the huge dog's leash and its silver-studded collar seemed somehow almost frantic.
"Will Barbee?" she called sharply. "Is it you?"
"Yes, Rowena," he said, and paused to fumble for some word of consolation that wouldn't merely mock her grief. She didn't wait for that.
"I still want to see you, Will," she said urgently. "I hope I'm not too late to help you. Can you come to the house this afternoon—say, at four?"
Barbee caught his breath, staring uncertainly at the stern purpose which had almost erased even the grief from her thin white face, turning its sad, patient sweetness into something almost terrible. He recalled her telephoned warning against April Bell, and wondered again what Mondrick's death had done to her mind.
"At four," he promised. "I'll come, Rowena."
At five minutes of four, he parked in front of the rambling old red-brick house on University Avenue. It looked rundown and shabby—the Foundation had taken most of Mondrick's own fortune, besides the sums he raised from others. The shutters needed repair and naked spots showed through the unraked lawns. He rang the doorbell and Rowena herself came to let him in.
"Thank you for coming, Will." Her low, gracious voice seemed entirely composed. Tears had stained her face, but her grief had not overwhelmed her. Moving as confidently as if she could see, she closed the door and pointed to a chair.
He stood a moment looking around the gloomy, old-fashioned front room that he had known ever since he and Sam Quain boarded here as students. The room was faintly perfumed from a huge bowl of roses set on her grand piano—he saw the names on the card beside them, Sam and Nora Quain. A gas fire glowed in the dark cavern of the old fireplace. The huge dog Turk lay before it, regarding Barbee with alert yellow eyes.
"Sit down," Rowena Mondrick urged softly. "I've sent Miss Ulford out to do some shopping, because we must talk alone, Will."
Puzzled and rather uncomfortable, he took the chair she indicated.
"I want you to know that I'm terribly sorry, Rowena," he said awkwardly. "It seems so awfully ironic that Dr. Mondrick should die just at the moment of what must have been his greatest triumph—"
"He didn't die," she said softly. "He was murdered—I imagined you knew that, Will."
Barbee gulped. He didn't intend to discuss his suspicions and perplexities with anybody else—not until he had managed to make up his own mind about April Bell.
"I wondered," he admitted. "I didn't know."
"But you saw April Bell last night?"
"We had dinner," Barbee said. He watched the blind woman as she came with her almost disconcerting certainty of motion to stand before him, tall and straight in her severely cut black suit, resting one thin hand on the piano. A faint resentment stirred him to say defensively: "I know Turk didn't seem to like April Bell, but I think she's something pretty special."
"I was afraid you would." Rowena's voice seemed gravely sad. "But I talked to Nora Quain, and she doesn't like the woman. Turk doesn't, and I don't. There's a reason, Will, that you should know."
Barbee sat erect, uncomfortable in his chair. Mondrick's widow and Sam Quain's wife weren't picking girl friends for him, but he didn't say so. Turk stirred before the fire, keeping baleful yellow eyes on Barbee.
"That woman's bad," Rowena whispered. "And bad for you!" She leaned a little toward him, cold lights glowing on her old silver necklace and her heavy silver brooch. "I want you to promise me, Will, that you won't see her any more."
"Why, Rowena!" Barbee tried to laugh—and tried not to think of April Bell's queer confession. "Don't you know I'm a big boy now?"
His attempted lightness brought no smile.
"I'm blind, Will." Rowena Mondrick's white head tilted slightly, almost as if her black glasses could see him. "But not to everything. I've shared my husband's work since we were young. I had my small part in the strange, lonely, terrible war he fought. Now he's dead—murdered, I believe."
The blind woman stiffened.
"And your charming new friend April Bell," she said very softly, "must be the secret enemy who murdered him!"
Barbee caught his breath to protest—and knew there was nothing he could say. A frightened impulse urged him to defend April Bell. But he remembered Mondrick's gasping death and that strangled kitten with the needle in its heart. He remembered her own confession. He swallowed hard and murmured uneasily: "I can't believe she did that."
Rowena Mondrick stood taut and straight.
"That woman killed my husband." Her voice turned sharp, and the big dog rose uneasily behind her. "But Marck's dead. We can't help that. You're the one in danger now."
She came slowly toward Barbee, holding Out both her thin hands. He stood up and took them silently. They felt tense and cold, and they clung to his fingers with a sudden desperate pressure.
"Please, Will!" she whispered. "Let me warn you!"
"Really, Rowena!" He tried to laugh. "April's a very charming girl, and I'm not allergic."
Her cold fingers quivered.
"April Bell won't try to kill you, Will," she told him quietly. "Your danger is something other than death, and uglier. Because she will try to change you—to arouse something in you that should never be awakened."
The big dog came bristling, to stand close against her black skirt.
"She's bad, Will." The blind lenses peered at him disquietingly. "I can see the evil in her, and I know she means to try to claim you for her own wicked breed. You had better die like poor Marck, than follow the dreadful path where she will try to lead you. Believe me, Will!"
He dropped her cold hands, trying not to shudder.
"No, Rowena," he protested uncomfortably, "I'm afraid I can't believe you. I think your husband's death was probably just the unfortunate result of too much excitement and fatigue for a man seventy and ill. I'm afraid you're dwelling too much on it."
He crossed hopefully to the piano.
"Do you feel like playing something? That might help."
"I've no time for music now." She patted the dog's great tawny head, nervously. "Because I'm going to join Sam and Nick and Rex in poor Marck's unfinished battle. Now won't you think
about my warning—and stay away from April Bell?"
"I can't do that." In spite of him, resentment edged his voice. "She's a charming girl, and I can't believe she's up to any ugly business."
He tried to warm his tone.
"But I'm truly sorry for you, Rowena. It seems to me that you've just been brooding too much. I don't suppose there's much I can do, since you feel this way, but you do need help. Why don't you call Dr. Glenn?"
She stepped back from him, indignantly.
"No, Will," she whispered. "I'm entirely sane." Her thin fingers clung fiercely to the dog's collar; and the huge beast pressed close to her, watching Barbee with unfriendly yellow eyes. "I need no psychiatrist," she told him softly. "But I'm afraid you may—before you're through with April Bell."
"Sorry, Rowena," he said abruptly. "I'm going."
"Don't, Will!" she called sharply. "Don't trust—"
That was all he heard.
He drove back to town, but it was hard to keep his mind on his reportorial chores. He took no stock in Rowena Mondrick's crazy warning. He really meant to call April Bell's apartment, but somehow he kept putting it off. He wanted to see her, yet daylight had failed to dispel any of his tortured uncertainties about her. Finally, as he left the city room, he decided with an uneasy relief that now it was obviously too late to make the call.
He stopped for a drink at the bar across the street, and had more than one, and took a bottle with him when he drove back to his lonely apartment in the dilapidated old house on Bread Street. A hot shower, he thought, might help the alcohol relax him. He was taking off his clothing when he found the white jade pin in his pocket. He stood a long time, absently turning the tiny object on his sweaty palm, staring at it— Wondering—
The tiny malachite eye was the same color as the eyes of April Bell—when she was in her most wary and alarming mood. The fine detail of the running wolf's limbs and snarling head had been cut with careful skill. From the worn sleekness of the white jade, he knew it must be very old. A very odd trinket, it was cut in a wiry, lean-lined style of workmanship he had never seen before.
Remembering the white wolf coat, he wondered suddenly what the wolf, as a symbol, meant to April Bell. Dr. Glenn must have found her, he thought, a remarkably interesting analytic subject—he wished for an instant that it were possible to get a look at Glenn's private records of her case.
He started and blinked, trying to rid himself of a disconcerting impression that the malachite eye had winked at him maliciously. He was almost asleep, standing half undressed in his narrow bedroom beside the ramshackle chiffonier. The damned pin had almost hypnotized him. He resisted a sudden, savage impulse to flush it down the commode.
That would be insane. Of course, he admitted to himself, he was afraid of April Bell. But then he had always been a little afraid of women—perhaps Dr. Glenn could tell him why. Even the most approachable female made him a little uneasy. The more they mattered, the more afraid he was.
His hunch about the pin couldn't mean anything, he assured himself. The damned thing got on his nerves just because it stood for April Bell. He'd have to taper off the whisky—that was all his trouble, as Glenn would surely tell him. If he obeyed that panicky impulse to dispose of the pin, it would only be an admission that he believed April Bell to be—actually— just what she said she was. He couldn't accept that.
He put the pin carefully in a cigar box on the chiffonier, along with a thimble and his old pocket watch and a discarded fountain pen and a number of used razor blades. His uneasy thoughts of April Bell were not so easy to put away. He couldn't escape considering the faint but infinitely disturbing possibility that she really was—he felt reluctant even to think the word—a witch.
A being born a little different, he preferred to phrase it. He remembered reading something about the Rhine experiments at Duke University. Some people, those sober scientists had proved, perceived the world with something beyond the ordinary physical senses. Some people, they had demonstrated, displayed a direct control over probability, without the use of any physical agency. Some did, some didn't. Had April Bell been born with that same difference, manifest in a more extreme degree?
Probability—he recalled a classroom digression of Mondrick's on that word, back in Anthropology 413. Probability, the bright-eyed old scholar said, was the key concept of modern physics. The laws of nature, he insisted, were not absolute, but merely established statistical averages. The paperweight on his desk— it was an odd little terra-cotta lamp which he must have dug out of some Roman ruin, the black-glazed relief on the circular top of it showing the she-wolf suckling the founders of Rome—the lamp was supported, Mondrick said, only by the chance collisions of vibrating atoms. At any instant, there was a slight but definite probability that it might fall through the seemingly solid desk.
And the modern physicists, Barbee knew, interpreted the whole universe in terms of probability. The stability of atoms was a matter of probability—and the instability, in the atomic bomb. The direct mental control of probability would surely open terrifying avenues of power—and the Rhine experiments had seemingly established that control. Had April Bell, he wondered uneasily, just been born with a unique and dangerous mental power to govern the operation of probability?
Unlikely, he told himself. But nothing at all, old Mondrick himself had insisted, was completely impossible in this statistical universe. The remotest impossibility became merely remotely improbable. Barbee shrugged impatiently, and turned on the shower—the new physics, with its law of uncertainty and its denial of all the comfortable old concepts of matter and space and time, and its atom bombs, became suddenly as disquieting as the dark riddle of Mondrick's death.
In the shower, he fell to wondering what that terracotta lamp had meant to Mondrick. What racial memory could be represented in the legend of those Roman heroes mothered by the wolf bitch? Barbee couldn't quite imagine.
He toweled himself wearily, poured himself a generous nightcap and went to bed with a magazine. His mind refused to be diverted, however, from those disquieting channels. Why had Mondrick and his obviously frightened companions taken such elaborate precautions at the airport and yet failed to take enough? That must indicate, he thought, a peril even greater than those four fearful men had believed.
Something far more alarming than one exotic redhead.
If April Bell were indeed a witch, his unwilling speculations ran on, there might very reasonably be others —more powerful and less charming to go dancing with. There might be other parapsychological experimenters, to phrase it differently, busy discovering their inborn gifts and developing scientific techniques for the mental control of probability. If so, they might be organized, preparing for the time to test their power, awaiting the appearance of an expected leader —the Child of Night—to lead their Saturnalian rebellion.
Barbee's aching eyes had closed, and he pictured that coming dark Messiah. A tall, lean, commanding figure, standing amid shattered rocks, terrible and black in a long hooded robe. He wondered what manner of being it could be—and why April Bell had smiled. Breathlessly, he peered under the black hood to see if he could recognize the face—and a white skull grinned at him.
He awoke with a start—yet it wasn't the shock of that ghastly dream that roused him, but rather the quivering intensity of some vague eagerness that he couldn't quite define. A thin little pain shuddered in the back of his head, and he took a second nightcap to ease it. He turned on the radio, heard the oily beginning of a singing commercial and turned it off again. He was suddenly desperately sleepy—
And afraid to sleep.
He couldn't understand that dim terror of his bed. It was a slow, creeping apprehension, as if he knew that the vague unease which haunted him now would possess him entirely when he slept. But it wasn't completely—fear. Mingled with it was that unresolved eager yearning which had roused him, the breathless expectancy of some obscure and triumphant escape from all he hated.
Neither could h
e quite understand the way he felt about April Bell—and that feeling was somehow a part of the other. He thought he ought to have a shocked horror of her. After all, she was either the witch she claimed to be, or else more likely a lunatic. In one way or another she had almost certainly caused Mondrick's death. But the thing that haunted him was his puzzled dread of that frightful, chained and yet dangerous something she awakened in himself.
Desperately, he tried to put her out of his mind. Certainly it was too late to telephone her now. He wasn't sure he wanted to see her—though that dimly dreadful yearning insisted that he did. He wound up his alarm clock, and went to bed again. Sleep pressed upon him with an urgency that became resistless.
And April Bell was calling to him.
Her voice came clearly to him, above all the subdued murmur of traffic noises. It was a ringing golden chime, more penetrating than an occasional beep of a driver's horn or the far clamor of a streetcar. It shimmered out of the dark, in waves of pure light as green as her malachite eyes. Then he thought he could see her, somehow, far across the slumberous town.
Only she wasn't a woman.
Her urgent velvet voice was human, still. Her long, dark eyes were changed, with that same exotic hint of a slant. Her white wolf coat was evidently part of her now. For she had become a white she-wolf, sleek and wary and powerful. Her clear woman-voice called to him, distinct in the dark.
"Come, Barbee. I need you."
He was aware of the cracked, dingy plaster of his narrow bedroom, of the steady tick of his alarm clock and the comfortable hardness of the mattress beneath him and the sulphurous odor of the mills that came through his open window. Surely he wasn't actually asleep, yet that calling voice was so real that he tried to answer.
"Hello, April," he murmured drowsily. "I'll really call you tomorrow. Maybe we can go dancing again."
Strangely, the she-wolf seemed to hear.
Darker Than You Think Page 9
