The Dark Other by Stanley G. Weinbaum (best classic books TXT) 📕

lumbered away toward the corner, and he turned again toward Nicholas Devine, who faced him impassively. Suddenly his fist shot out; he struck the youth or demon squarely between the red eyes, sending him reeling back against the building. Then the Doctor turned, bending over Pat; she felt the pressure of his arms beneath knees and shoulders. He was carrying her toward a car that drew up at the curb; he was placing her gently in the back seat. Then, without a glance at the figure still leaning against the building, he swept from the sidewalk the dark mass that was Pat's dress and her wrap, and re-entered the car beside her.

"Shall I turn him in?" asked the man in the front seat.

"We can't afford the publicity," said the Doctor, adding grimly, "I'll settle with him later."

Pat's head lurched as the car started; she was losing consciousness, and realized it vaguely, but she retained one impression as the vehicle swung into motion. She perceived that the face of the lone figure leaning against the building, a face staring at her with horror and unbelief, was no longer the visage of the demon of the evening, but that of her own Nick.

11
Wreckage

Pat opened her eyes reluctantly, with the impression that something unpleasant awaited her return to full consciousness. Something, as yet she could not recall just what, had happened to her; she was not even sure where she was awakening.

However, her eyes surveyed her own familiar room; there opposite the bed grinned the jade Buddha on his stand on the mantel—the one that Nick had—Nick! A mass of troubled, terrible recollections thrust themselves suddenly into consciousness. She visioned a medley of disturbing pictures, as yet disconnected, unassorted, but waiting only the return of complete wakefulness. And she realized abruptly that her head ached miserably, that her mouth was parched, that twinges of pain were making themselves evident in various portions of her anatomy. She turned her head and caught a glimpse of a figure at the bed-side; her startled glance revealed Dr. Horker, sitting quietly watching her.

"Hello, Doctor," she said, wincing as her smile brought a sharp pain from her lips. "Or should I say, Good morning, Judge?"

"Pat!" he rumbled, his growling tones oddly gentle. "Little Pat! How do you feel, child?"

"Fair," she said. "Just fair. Dr. Carl, what happened to me last night? I can't seem to remember—Oh!"

A flash of recollection pierced the obscure muddle. She remembered now—not all of the events of that ghastly evening, but enough. Too much!

"Oh!" she murmured faintly. "Oh, Dr. Carl!"

"Yes," he nodded. "'Oh!'—and would you mind very much telling me what that 'Oh' of yours implies?"

"Why—". She paused shuddering, as one by one the events of that sequence of horrors reassembled themselves. "Yes, I'd mind very much," she continued. "It was nothing—" She turned to him abruptly. "Oh, it was, though, Dr. Carl! It was horrible, unspeakable, incomprehensible!—But I can't talk about it! I can't!"

"Perhaps you're right," said the Doctor mildly. "Don't you really want to discuss it?"

"I do want to," admitted the girl after a moment's reflection. "I want to—but I can't. I'm afraid to think of all of it."

"But what in Heaven's name did you do?"

"We just started out to go dancing," she said hesitatingly. "Then, on the way to town, Nick—changed. He said someone was following us."

"Some one was," said Horker. "I was, with Mueller. That Nick of yours has the Devil's own cleverness!"

"Yes," the girl echoed soberly. "The Devil's own!—Who's Mueller, Dr. Carl?"

"He's a plain-clothes man, friend of mine. I treated him once. What do you mean by changed?"

"His eyes," she said. "And his mouth. His eyes got reddish and terrible, and his mouth got straight and grim. And his voice turned sort of—harsh."

"Ever happen before, that you know of?"

"Once. When—" She paused.

"Yes. Last Wednesday night, when you came over to ask those questions about pure science. What happened then?"

"We went to a place to dance."

"And that's the reason, I suppose," rumbled the Doctor sardonically, "that I found you wandering about the streets in a table cloth, step-ins, and a pair of hose! That's why I found you on the verge of passing out from rotten liquor, and looking like the loser of a battle with an airplane propellor! What happened to your face?"

"My face? What's wrong with it?"

The Doctor rose from his chair and seized the hand-mirror from her dressing table.

"Look at it!" he commanded, passing her the glass.

Pat gazed incredulously at the reflection the surface presented; a dark bruise colored her cheek, her lips were swollen and discolored, and her chin bore a jagged scratch. She stared at the injuries in horror.

"Your knees are skinned, too," said Horker. "Both of them."

Pat slipped one pajamaed limb from the covers, drawing the pants-leg up for inspection. She gasped in startled fright at the great red stain on her knee.

"That's mercurochrome," said the Doctor. "I put it there."

"You put it there. How did I get home last night, Dr. Carl? How did I get to bed?"

"I'm responsible for that, too. I put you to bed." He leaned forward. "Listen, child—your mother knows nothing about this as yet. She wasn't home when I brought you in, and she's not awake yet this morning. We'll tell her you had an automobile accident; explain away those bruises.—And now, how did you get them?"

"I fell, I guess. Two or three times."

"That bruise on your cheek isn't from falling."

The girl shuddered. Now in the calm light of morning, the events of last night seemed doubly horrible; she doubted her ability to believe them, so incredible did they seem. She was at a loss to explain even her own actions, and those of Nicholas Devine were simply beyond comprehension, a chapter from some dark and blasphemous book of ancient times—the Kabbala or the Necronomicon.

"What happened, Pat?" queried the Doctor gently. "Tell me," he urged her.

"I—can't explain it," she said doubtfully. "He took me to that place, but drinking the liquor was my own fault. I did it out of spite because I saw he didn't—care for me. And then—" She fell silent.

"Yes? And then?"

"Well—he began to talk about the beauty of evil, the delights of evil, and his eyes glared at me, and—I don't understand it at all, Dr. Carl, but all of a sudden I was—yielding. Do you see?"

"I see," he said gently, soberly.

"Suddenly I seemed to comprehend what he meant—all that about the supreme pleasure of evil. And I was sort of—swept away. The dress—was his fault, but I—somehow I'd lost the power to resist. I guess I was drunk."

"And the bruises? And your cut lips?" queried the Doctor grimly.

"Yes," she said in a low voice. "He—struck me. After a while I didn't care. He could have—would have done other things, only we were interrupted, and had to leave. And that's all, Dr. Carl."

"Isn't that enough?" he groaned. "Pat, I should have killed the fiend there!"

"I'm glad you didn't."

"Do you mean to say you'd care?"

"I—don't know."

"Are you intimating that you still love him?"

"No," she said thoughtfully. "No, I don't love him, but—Dr. Carl, there's something inexplicable about this. There's something I don't understand, but I'm certain of one thing!"

"What's that?"

"That it wasn't Nick—not my Nick—who did those things to me last night. It wasn't, Dr. Carl!"

"Pat, you're being a fool!"

"I know it. But I'm sure of it, Dr. Carl. I know Nick; I loved him, and I know he couldn't have done—that. Not the same gentle Nick that I had to beg to kiss me!"

"Pat," said the Doctor gently, "I'm a psychiatrist; it's my business to know all the rottenness that can hide in a human being. My office is the scene of a parade of misfits, failures, potential criminals, lunatics, and mental incompetents. It's a nasty, bitter side I see of life, but I know that side—and I tell you this fellow is dangerous!"

"Do you understand this, Dr. Carl?"

He reached over, taking her hand in his great palm with its long, curious delicate fingers. "I have my theory, Pat. The man's a sadist, a lover of cruelty, and there's enough masochism in any woman to make him terribly dangerous. I want your promise."

"About what?"

"I want you to promise never to see him again."

The girl turned serious eyes on his face; he noted with a shock of sympathy that they were filled with tears.

"You warned me I'd get burned playing with fire," she said. "You did, didn't you?"

"I'm an old fool, Honey. If I'd believed my own advice, I'd have seen that this never happened to you." He patted her hand. "Have I your promise?"

She averted her eyes. "Yes," she murmured. He winced as he perceived that the tears were on her cheeks.

"So!" he said, rising. "The patient can get out of bed when she feels like it—and don't forget that little fib we've arranged for your mother's peace of mind."

She stared up at him, still clinging to his hand.

"Dr. Carl," she said, "are you sure—quite sure—you're right about him? Couldn't there be a chance that you're mistaken—that it's something your psychiatry has overlooked or never heard of?"

"Small chance, Pat dear."

"But a chance?"

"Well, neither I nor any reputable medic claims to know everything, and the human mind's a subtle sort of thing."

12
Letter from Lucifer

"I'm glad!" Pat told herself. "I'm glad it's over, and I'm glad I promised Dr. Carl—I guess I was mighty close to the brink of disaster that time."

She examined the injuries on her face, carefully powdered to conceal the worst effects from her mother. The trick had worked, too; Mrs. Lane had delivered herself of an excited lecture on the dangers of the gasoline age, and then thanked Heaven it was no worse. Well, Pat reflected, she had good old Dr. Carl to thank for the success of the subterfuge; he had broken the news very skillfully, set the stage for her appearance, and calmed her mother's apprehensions of scars. And Pat, surveying her image in the glass above her dressing-table, could see for herself the minor nature of the hurts.

"Scars—pooh!" she observed. "A bruised cheek, a split lip, a skinned chin. All I need is a black eye, and I guess I'd have had that in five minutes more, and perhaps a cauliflower ear into the bargain."

But her mood was anything but flippant; she was fighting off the time when her thoughts had of necessity to face the unpleasant, disturbing facts of the affair. She didn't want to think of the thing at all; she wanted to laugh it off and forget it, yet she knew that for an impossibility. The very desire to forget she recognized as a coward's wish, and she resented the idea that she was cowardly.

"Forget the wise-cracks," she advised her image. "Face the thing and argue it out; that's the only way to be satisfied."

She rose with a little grimace of pain at the twinge from her bruised knees, and crossed to the chaise lounge beside the far window. She settled herself in it and resumed her cogitations. She was feeling more or less herself again; the headache of the morning had nearly vanished, and aside from the various aches and a listless fagged-out sensation, she approximated her normal self. Physically, that is; the shadow of that other catastrophe, the one she hesitated to face, was another matter.

"I'm lucky to get off this easily," she assured herself, "after going on a bust like that one, like a lumberjack with his pay in his pocket." She shook her head in mournful amazement. "And I'm Patricia Lane, the girl whom Billy dubbed 'Pat the Impeccable'! Impeccable! Wandering through alleys in step-ins and a table cloth—getting beaten up in a drunken brawl—passing out on rot-gut liquor—being carried home and put to bed! Not impeccable; incapable's the word! I belong to Dr. Carl's parade of incompetents."

She continued her rueful reflections. "Well, item one is, I don't love Nick any more. I couldn't now!" she flung at the smiling green buddha on the mantel. "That's over; I've promised."

Somehow there was not satisfaction in the memory of that promise. It was logical, of course; there wasn't anything else to do now, but still—

"That wasn't Nick!" she told herself. "That wasn't my Nick. I guess Dr. Carl is right, and he's a depressed what-ever-it-was; but if he's crazy, so am I! He had me convinced last night; I understood what he meant, and I felt what he wanted me to feel. If he's crazy, I am too; a fine couple we are!"

She continued. "But it wasn't Nick! I saw his face when we drove off, and it had changed again, and that was Nick's face, not the other. And he was sorry; I could see he was sorry, and the other could never have regretted it—not ever! The other isn't—quite human, but Nick is."

She