The doctor had first employed a chauffeur in order to make full use of hours otherwise, from his point of view, wasted. Sitting in the back of the big car, undisturbed by pedestrians, traffic lights, or other vehicles, he was able to explore neat mental files, and with the material thus conveniently at hand weigh and consider the manifold eccentricities of the human animal. This morning his thoughts ran in the groove that interested him above all others. Believing as he did that heredity was a stronger factor than environment in the formation of any given individual, and determined to prove this, he faced a challenge that he found coldly exhilarating. That he should have to produce not only tangible proof, but an enormous weight of it, in support of anything so obvious, at times irritated him profoundly: so much so, that he had even considered abandoning surgery entirely in favour of devoting all his energies to research. That he did not do this revealed an Achilles heel that he did his best to conceal. Contemptuous of other people, he was yet driven by a need to impress them in every way possible. Childless, he had no need of a large house, but he could not give it up. The constant parties given in that house bored him, but without them his possessions would have had no audience. His household staff was too large, but he added to it rather than cutting it down, and his chauffeur had become a sign of status without which he would have felt naked in the eyes of the multitude.
Arriving at the hospital, he got out of the car without a word, and, his long legs taking him quickly but without loss of dignity up a flight of broad steps, disappeared through doors manipulated for him by a doorman who touched his cap in silent respect.
Expressionless, the chauffeur watched him go. There was a coffee stand half a block from the wide avenue on which the hospital faced, but with no indication as to when his services would next be required, he knew that he would not dare go to it.
The doctor, when he reached Psyche’s room, dismissed the nurse with a curt nod, and drew a chair up beside the bed of this. one of the most interesting guinea pigs he had ever had the good fortune to run across.
“Do you remember me?” he asked.
Turning her head on the pillow. Psyche said, without enthusiasm, “I remember your eyes.”
“Do you know how you got here?”
Psyche remained silent.
Now that she was fully conscious he wanted her co-operation. His manner underwent a subtle but definite change, and his brilliant eyes, instead of probing, asked for her trust and confidence.
“You were struck by a large truck, and were brought here with concussion and a skull fracture. I am the doctor who operated on you, and I can assure you that you will suffer no future ill effects. Do you remember any of this?”
“No.”
“That is quite normal. Don’t let it disturb you. Would you tell me what you last remember?”
“I went out for a walk.”
“At what time did you leave home that evening?”
The question was very casually put, but Psyche recognized it for a leading one.
“I went out after dinner. About seven,” she replied, and volunteered no further information.
He did not press her further. Diagnosing her defensive lassitude as a natural concomittant of her weakened condition, he decided it would be best to leave her alone for the time being. Later he would elicit a consecutive and willing recital of a story he already knew in part.
“Any headache or soreness at the back of the head?” “Not now.”
He nodded his satisfaction. “That is as it should be. The last dressings were removed a week ago. You will find that you have lost some of your hair. Fortunately it’s underneath and won’t show.”
“You think that matters?” Psyche asked flatly.
“It will. To you.”
He had found out all he wished to know at present. The crude English she had used at times while delirious belonged to an earlier stage. To speak well was now natural to her; she had perception; and she gave evidence, both in manner and in facial expression, of a high degree of intelligence. She would be supremely useful to him.
Rising, he said, “I will leave you now. I will be in again tomorrow.”
He came in every day, and Psyche, either propped up in bed or sitting listlessly in a big chair by the window, accepted his visits with the same indifference she showed to everyone and everything with which she came in contact.
Any further protection of Bel rendered futile by Bel’s disappearance, she told him, bit by bit, almost everything he wanted to know, without bothering to try and fathom his reasons for questions that often seemed haphazard, entirely pointless. She did not, however, tell him her name. To give him that would be to deliver herself into his hands completely, which she was not prepared to do. Guarding this, the one thing she truly possessed, she held it, an amulet, between herself and a powerful modern witchcraft.
Only twice, during the weeks she spent convalescing, was her indifference pierced. Once when she woke in the night to hear a ragged voice screaming broken words and phrases that trailed into silence with the swift, soft passing of a rubber-wheeled stretcher. Chilled through and through, she thought, “Did I perhaps sound like that?”
And again, when the young auburn-haired nurse came into her room with a bouquet of flowers.
“You’ve made a mistake,” Psyche stated, rather than asked.
The girl smiled, and shook her head. “No. No mistake. They’re from me and some of the other nurses. Happy middle of July. We thought it terrible that you should be here so long and not have any flowers.”
“You shouldn’t have—you’re too kind.”
“Yes, we should. You’re a very nice patient. We think you deserve them.”
Her smile heartbreaking, Psyche said, “Thank you so much. Thank them all, and wish them a—happy middle of July from me.”
It was the doctor who informed her that she was ready to be discharged from the hospital, and at the same time presented her with a solution to the problem of where she was to go until such time as she would be strong enough to look for work.
“My wife has suggested that I bring you home with me for a few weeks,” he told her casually.
Frowning her incredulity. Psyche asked, “Why should she?”
Dr. Scarletti was, several generations back, of Italian origin, and his expression just then was that of a Venetian doge putting poison into the goblet of someone unwise enough to dispute his authority. “Because I guided her to the suggestion,” he replied softly.
Shivering a little, Psyche thought, “I do not envy his wife. I wonder what she is like.” Aloud she said, “Thank you. I’m afraid I am going to refuse your invitation.”
Taking out a cigarette, fitting it into a black holder, he said, “And I think you will change your mind.”
“I feel like a bird being hypnotized by a snake,” Psyche thought. “I wish he would look away?”
“Why should I?”
“Because with your help I think we may be able to find out who you are, and where you came from originally. That is, always presupposing that you came more or less directly from there to the shack where you were brought up.”
“Of course I did!”
He had thought long and carefully as to the best approach to take with her, and was now objectively pleased with the success of his reasoning. One could nearly always anticipate the reactions of an intelligent and well-balanced individual.
“How do you know?”
Badly shaken, faced for the first time with the possibility of more than one hiatus in her life, Psyche said, “I just know.” “You mean you can remember?”
This is what he was like in the beginning, when I didn’t really know what I was saying. This is what his eyes looked like. “You know very well I can’t remember!” she flared.
“I can help you to, if anyone can. To work together on it would be in both our interests. In mine, because I am engaged in proving certain general theories. In yours, because you wish to know specific facts at present securely locked in
the farthest recesses of your memory.”
“I was too young,” Psyche said uncertainly.
“You were not. Given timewecan reach back at least six months into the sealed section of your memory that represents your life before your somewhat dramatic arrival at the shack. I am not, I might say, in the habit of introducing strangers into my household, but I see it as the only way in which we can collaborate satisfactorily. I am an extremely busy man, and what spare time I have is found during the late evening.”
“He is doing this for himself, not for me at all. He will make charts and diagrams; he will fill notebook after notebook; he will question me and question me; he will dissect every move I make. If I agree to this idea, I will be haunted by those eyes even when they are not fixed on me. And for what? In all probability nothing of any value to me. Yet—what have I got to lose? And where else can I go?”
“All right,” she said. “I’ll come.”
Dr. Scarletti rose from the chair in which he had been sitting. “I will fetch you when I leave the hospital tomorrow evening.”
“You are sure your wife won’t mind?”
“Quite sure,” he said calmly, and there was no reflection in his brilliant eyes of the scene with which Nora had greeted what had been an ultimatum.
3
NORA SCARLETTI was not beautiful, and never had been, but there were few women who could compete successfully with her in any ring she thought worth entering. When she wanted something, material or otherwise, she went after it. when presented with something she did not want, she got rid of it. but whatever she did, she never came out into the open. smiling, she worked under cover, and her manoeuvres were a sleight-of-hand rarely seen through.
To have married a man whom she could not always deceive had been a cardinal error, one which, when she discovered what she had done, she had at first thought to rectify at once. However, seeing a certain spice in the situation, and realizing that it would be difficult to find a better trophy to hold before the world, she changed her mind. Knowing that he would be unlikely to endanger either his professional or his personal reputation by divorcing her, appreciating the convenience of his sexual coldness, she found it refreshing to be able to unsheathe her claws in private without undue risk. Before any audience at all—even the servants, whom she looked upon as robots rather than human beings—she was charmingly devoted to him, not only because this was one of the unwritten laws in their agreement, but because she was more jealous of him in all ways than she would have been if she had loved him.
She was alone in her bedroom on the evening when he was to bring Psyche home with him. She had been dressed and ready for half an hour, but until she heard the front door open, she intended to stay where she was.
Slowly she walked up and down the length of a pale-green carpet, the reflection of her petite, black-clad figure caught and lost and caught again by gold-framed mirrors, her slim shadow falling in distorted patterns across cream and gold brocade.
It had been a hot day, but the house, its curtains drawn until seven o’clock, had remained cool; and Nora, in her high-necked black silk dress, was coolness personified, sophistication at its most highly polished. She nearly always wore black relieved only by a single striking piece of jewellery, this evening a hand-carved jade clip the colour of her eyes. If you were a woman, you were stabbed immediately by one of two convictions when you met Nora—either that you were almost vulgarly over-dressed, or unforgivably under-dressed. In spite of this, if it were part of her strategy of the moment that you like her, you probably would. Men nearly always liked her. Her smooth dark hair and deceptively simple clothes appeared to them unstudied, their effectiveness a very attractive natural phenomenon. And her pointed face, with its slightly crooked nose, creamy skin, and smiling green eyes, was a subtle invitation to intimacy.
Pausing before open windows, she looked down on a large garden, the lawn chequered with lengthening shadows. A year earlier she had had roses and delphiniums torn out and replaced with a formal planting of flowering shrubs. A marble fountain, from which a tall column of spray still rose through direct rays of sunlight, had been her latest innovation, and one with which she was objectively pleased. But now, although she looked at it, she was not thinking about it.
Maggie Moran, she thought—princess in beggar-maid’s clothing! If it were anyone other than you, my dear doctor, I would consider you out of your mind. And you are out of your mind if you think I am going to put up with this impossible situation meekly. Come into my parlour, Maggie, and see how you like it. My God—what a name! And I have been asked—no, told—to make you at home. Well, I shall. So much at home that you will be more uncomfortable than you have ever been in your life.
Glancing at a small platinum wrist-watch, she saw that it was seven-thirty.
Psyche, looking at her watch as the car came to a noiseless halt, saw that it was seven-thirty. As uninterested in the magnificent, double-fronted stone house as she had been in the big car, she waited while the doctor stepped out on to the sidewalk. Then, climbing out past a chauffeur who stood rigidly to attention, her suitcase in his hand, she fell into line in the small procession that proceeded up the walk to the front door.
Another door, she thought bleakly, and did not care whether this one opened for her or not.
What Nora had expected of Psyche, if she had given it shape and form at all, had been something resembling an uncombed Alice in Wonderland. The tall blonde girl with the almost arrogant pride of carriage, who lifted indifferent blue eyes to her as she came down the stairs, was an extremely unpleasant surprise.
Antagonism licking through her, she came forward, her hand extended, her light, musical voice warm with welcome. “I’m so glad John brought you here. We’ll have such a nice time together while he is out brainstorming his other patients.”
“Thank you,” Psyche replied, and acknowledged Nora Scar-letti’s charm with a brief smile.
Turning to her husband, Nora laid one finger on his arm, and rising on tiptoe brushed his cheek with her lips. It was a delightful gesture, one that suggested that further demonstration was withheld only because they were not alone. “Tired, darling? Cocktails are ready in the conservatory.” Then, addressing the maid who had been waiting unobtrusively in the shadows at the back of the hall, she said crisply, “Marie, take Miss Moran’s coat and bag up to her room for her. There’s just one bag, is there, Miss—my dear, I’m going to call you Maggie right away. So stupid to be formal. This is all your luggage, isn’t it?”
“I think I’ll like her,” Psyche decided, and wondered why she had been so sure in advance that she would not. “Yes, that’s all. I hadn’t that much yesterday. One of the nurses went shopping with me this morning.”
“On whose money, I would like to know,” Nora thought viciously. “You poor darling. We’ll have to do something about that later on.”
“I have all I need just now,” Psyche told her. The auburn-haired nurse had been right. It was better to have a few really good things in this household than to have quantity. She had, pushed by the young nurse, drawn out all but fifty dollars from her bank account in order to do this. In a different frame of mind, she would probably have refused, have been afraid to strip herself of any of this meagre protection, which she had remembered only that morning.
“Mrs. Scarletti is terribly nice,” the girl had said, “but she’ll make you feel like something the cat dragged in if you aren’t properly dressed.”
The conservatory, walled on three sides by glass, was like an extension of the garden, and Psyche, sitting in a comfortable lounge chair, was more off-guard than she had intended to be. The doctor, staring thoughtfully into the single cocktail he allowed himself, left her alone, and Nora, chatting easily, banished any restraint there might have been.
When the dinner gong rang at eight o’clock, the doctor rose, thinking, “Nora is showing good sense for once. She understands that I meant what I said.” That Nora’s attack was about to commence he did not
foresee and because she was clever enough to choose weapons invisible to him, he did not recognize them as such. If the dinner that night had been too casual, he would have remarked the omissions. Accustomed to pomp and circumstance, he did not notice that it was over-elaborate.
Psyche’s first sensation, on seeing the long, candle-lit table, was one of pure delight in its perfection and beauty; her second, as she took in the multiplicity of crystal goblets, forks and knives and spoons, that surrounded each of the three places set at it, was one of the most acute dismay.
“Over there, Maggie dear.”
Left to herself. Psyche could at least have seated herself gracefully. Taken unawares by a white-coated houseman who drew out her chair for her, she was awkward, and knew it.
“I do hope you like oysters, darling?” Nora’s voice was anxious, begged her to say that she did.
Helpless in the face of such an appeal, Psyche replied in the affirmative, while she wondered wildly what she was supposed to do with objects she had never seen before, with crushed ice, lemon, and sauce.
Hers was a poise that was strengthened by direct attack, that accepted an open challenge with confidence. Now, blind to Nora’s malice, having taken the first fatal step in a direction from which there seemed to be no retreating, she became mired deeper and deeper in difficulties of which only she appeared to be aware.
Attempting to see what Nora did, which fork she used and how, she found her view obstructed by flowers whose heavy perfume made her a little sick. By evil chance—she never thought of it as design—the same thing applied when she glanced obliquely toward the doctor. Realizing that she was being watched from three directions, from behind as well as from either side, and that seated as she was she could be clearly observed, she felt as an animal might, trapped in the open, its every move followed by eyes concealed in the thick coverts around it.
Three times during a six-course dinner she tried to ask for help, and somehow not only failed to get it but to make it clear that she needed it. “Oh, God,” she thought, “I should never have come here. Never. How can anything as simple as eating be made so horribly complicated?”
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