Chapter X

The bus driver they pointed out to him had thick shoulders and sleepy, competent-looking eyes. He was standing by the wall, smoking a cigarette.

"Sure, she must have been in my bus," he told Norman after thinking a moment. "A pretty woman, on the small side, in a gray dress, with a queer-looking silver brooch like you mentioned. One suitcase. Light pigskin. I figured her out as going to see someone who was very sick, or had been in an accident, maybe."

Norman curbed his impatience. If it had not been for the hour-and-a-half delay outside Jersey City, he would have been here well ahead of the bus, instead of twenty minutes late.

He said, "I want, if possible, to get a line on where she went after she left your bus. The man at the desk can't help me."

The driver looked at Norman. But he did not say, "Whatcha wanta know for?"--for which Norman was grateful. He seemed to decide that Norman was O. K.

He said, "I can't be sure, mister, but there was a local bus going down the shore. I think she got on that."

"Would it stop at Bayport?"

The driver nodded.

"How long since it left?"

"About twenty minutes."

"Could I get to Bayport ahead of it? If I took a cab?"

"Just about. If you wanted to pay the bill there and back--and maybe a little extra for the rubber he'd burn--I think Alec could take you." He waved in casual recognition at a man sitting in a cab just beyond the station. "Mind you, mister, I can't say for certain she got on the shore bus."

"That's all right. Thanks a lot."

In the glow of the street lamp Alec's foxy eyes were more openly curious than the bus driver's, but he did not make any comments.

"I can do it," he said cheerfully, "but we haven't any time to waste. Jump in."

The shore highway led through lonely stretches of marsh and wasteland. Occasionally Norman caught the sibilant rustle of the leagues of tall stiff seagrass, and a brackish tang from the dark inlets crossed by long low bridges. The odor of the Bay.

Indistinctly he made out factories and scattered houses.

"There's a dimout some places," Alec volunteered once. He was paying close attention to the road.

They passed three or four busses without Alec making any comment.

After a long while Alec said, "That should be her."

A constellation of red and green taillights was vanishing over the rise ahead.

"About three miles to Bayport," he continued. "What should I do?"

"Just get to Bayport a little ahead of her, and stop at the bus station."

"O.K."

They overtook the bus and swung around it. The windows were too high for Norman to see any of the occupants. Besides, the interior lights were out.

As they drew ahead, Alec nodded confirmingly. "That's her all right."

* * * * *

The bus station at Bayport was also the railway depot. Vaguely Norman remembered the loosely planked platform and packed cinders on the track side. The station building was dark, but there were several cars and a lone local cab drawn up, and there were some men standing around talking in low voices, and a couple of soldiers going back to camp.

He had time to scent the salt air, with its faint and not unpleasant trace of fishiness. Then the bus pulled in.

Several passengers stepped down, looking around to spot the people waiting for them.

Tansy was the third. She was staring straight ahead. She was carrying the pigskin suitcase.

"Tansy!" he said.

She did not look at him. He noted a black stain on her right hand, and remembered the spilled ink on his study table. Odd that it should still be there.

"Tansy!" he said. "Tansy!"

She walked straight past him, so close that her sleeve brushed his.

"Tansy, what's the matter with you?"

He had turned and hurried after her. She was heading for the local cab. He was conscious of a silence, and curious unfriendly glances. It made him angry.

She did not slacken her pace. He grabbed her elbow and pulled her around. He heard a remonstratory murmur behind him, and realized that a couple of the men were closing in.

"Tansy, stop acting this way! Tansy!"

Her face looked frozen. She stared past him without a hint of recognition in her eyes.

That infuriated him. He did not pause to think. Accumulated tensions prodded him into an explosion. He grabbed both elbows and shook her. She still looked past him, completely aloof--a perfect picture of an aristocratic woman enduring brutality. If she had yelled and fought him, the men might not have interfered.

He was jerked back.

"Lay off her!"

"Who do you think you are, anyway?"

She stood there, with maddening composure. He noticed a scrap of paper flutter out of her hand. Then her eyes met his and for one terrible moment--but one moment only--he saw rise up behind her a shaggy black form twice her height, with hulking shoulders, out-stretched massive hands, and dully glowing eyes.

Only a moment, though. Then she turned away. But he fancied that a great shadow followed hers. Then they swung him around and he could no longer see her.

* * * * *

In a queer sort of daze--for the kind of fear he had just experienced mixes badly with any other emotion--he listened to them jabber at him.

"I ought to take a crack at you," he finally heard someone say.

"All right," he replied in a flat voice. "They're holding my hands."

He heard Alec's voice. "Say, what's going on here?" Alec sounded cautious, but not unfriendly, as if he were thinking, "The guy's my fare, but I don't know anything about him."

One of the soldiers spoke. "Where's the lady? She doesn't seem to be making any complaint."

"Yeah, where is she?"

"She got in Jake's cab and drove off," someone volunteered.

"Maybe he had a good reason for what he did," said the soldier.

Norman felt the attitude of the crowd change.

One of the men holding him retorted, "Nobody's got a right to treat a lady that way." But the other one slackened his grip and asked Norman, "How about it? Did you have a reason for doing that?"

"I did. But it's my business."

He heard a woman's voice, high-pitched. "A lot of fuss over nothing!"

Grumbling, the men let him go.

"But mind you," said the more belligerent one, "if she'd stuck around and complained, I'd 've sure taken a crack at you."

"All right," said Norman, "in that case you would have." His eyes were searching for a scrap of paper.

"Can anyone tell me the address she gave the cab driver?" he asked at random.

One or two shook their heads. The others ignored the question. Their feelings toward him had not changed enough to make them co-operative. And very likely, in the excitement, no one had heard.

Silently the little crowd drifted apart. People waited until they got out of earshot before beginning to argue about what had happened. Most of the cars drove off. The two soldiers wandered over to the benches in front of the depot, so they could sit down while they waited for their bus or train. He was alone except for Alec.

He located the scrap of paper in one of the slots between the worn planks. It had almost slipped through.

He took it over to the cab and studied it.

He heard Alec say, "Well, where do we go now?" Alec sounded dubious.

He glanced at his watch. Ten thirty-five. Not quite an hour and a half until midnight. There were a lot of things he could do, but he could not do more than a couple of them in that time. His thoughts moved sluggishly, almost painfully.

He looked around at the dim buildings. The seaward halves of some of the street lamps were painted black. Up a side street there were signs of life. He looked again at the scrap of paper.

Then he made a decision.

"I think there's a hotel on the main street," he told Alec. "You can drive me there."

* * * * *

"Eagle Hotel" read the black-edged gold letters on the plate-glass window, behind which the narrow lobby with its half-dozen empty chairs was nakedly revealed.

He told Alec to wait, and took a room for the night. The clerk was an old man in a shiny black coat. Norman saw from the register that no one else had checked in recently. He carried his bag up to the room and immediately returned to the lobby.

"I haven't been here for ten years," he told the clerk. "I believe there is a cemetery about five blocks down the street, away from the Bay?"

The old man's sleepy eyes blinked wide open.

"Bayport Cemetery? Just three blocks, and then a block and a half to the left. But--" He made a vague questioning noise in his throat.

"Thank you," said Norman.

After a moment's thought, he paid off Alec, who took the money and with obvious relief kicked his cab into life. Norman walked down the main street, away from the Bay.

After the first block there were no more stores. In this direction, Bayport petered out quickly. Most of the houses were dark. And after he turned left there were no more street lights.

The gates of the cemetery were locked. He felt his way along the wall, behind the masking shrubbery, trying to make as little noise as possible, until he found a scrubby tree whose lowest branch could bear his weight. He got his hands on the top of the wall, scrambled up, and cautiously let himself down on the other side.

Behind the wall it was very dark. There was a rustling sound, as if he had disturbed some small animal. More by feeling than sight, he located a headstone. It was a thin one, worn, mossy toward the base, and tilted at an angle. Probably from the middle of the last century. He dug into the earth with his hand, and filled an envelope he took from his pocket.

He got back over the wall, making what seemed a great deal of noise in the shrubbery. But the street was empty as ever.

On his way back to the hotel he looked up at the sky, located the Pole Star, and calculated the orientation of his room.

As he crossed the lobby, he felt the curious eyes of the old clerk boring into him.

His room was in darkness. Chill salt air was pouring through the open window. He locked the door, shut the window, pulled down the blind, and switched on the light--a glaring overhead which revealed the room in all its dingy severity. A cradle phone struck the sole modern note.

He took the envelope out of his pocket and weighed it in his hand. His lips curled in a peculiarly bitter smile. Then he reread the scrap of paper that had fluttered from Tansy's hand.

Add a small quantity of graveyard dirt, and wrap all in a piece of
flannel, wrapping widdershins. Tell it to stop me. Tell it to bring
me to you.

Graveyard dirt. That was what he had found in Tansy's dressing table. It had been the beginning of all this. Now he was fetching it himself.

He looked at his watch. Eleven twenty.

He cleared the small table and set it in the center of the room, jabbing in his penknife to mark the edge facing east. "Widdershins" meant "against the sun"--from west to east.

He placed the necessary ingredients on the table, cutting a short strip of flannel from the hem of his bathrobe, and fitted together the four sections of Tansy's note. The distasteful, bitter smile did not leave his lips.

Taken together, the significant portions of the notes read:

Take four lengths of four-inch white cord and a length of gut, a
bit of platinum or iridium, a piece of lodestone, a phonograph
needle that has only played Scriabin's "Ninth Sonata." Tie the
four white cords into a granny, a reef, a cat's-paw, and a carrick
bend. Tie the gut in a bowline. Add a small quantity of graveyard
dirt, and wrap all in a piece of flannel, wrapping widdershins.
Tell it to stop me. Tell it to bring me to you.

In general outline, it was similar to a hundred recipes for Negro tricken-bags he had seen or heard about. The phonograph needle, the knots, and one or two other items, were obvious "white" additions.

And it was all on the same level as the mental operations of a child or neurotic adult who religiously steps on, or avoids sidewalk cracks.

A clock outside bonged the half-hour.

* * * * *

Norman sat there looking at the stuff. It was hard for him to begin. It would have been different, he told himself, if he were doing it for a joke or a thrill, or if he were one of those people who dope up their minds with morbid supernaturalism--who like to play around with magic because it's medieval and aesthetic. But to tackle it in dead seriousness, to open your mind deliberately to superstition--that was to join hands with the forces pushing the world back into the dark ages, to cancel the term "science" out of the equation.

But, behind Tansy, he had seen that thing. Of course, it had been an hallucination. But when hallucinations start behaving like realities, even a scientist has to face the possibility that he may have to treat them like realities. And when hallucinations begin to threaten you and yours in a direct physical way--

He reached out for the first length of cord and tied the ends together in a granny.

When he came to the cat's-paw, he had to consult the page he had torn from the dictionary. After a couple of false starts he managed it.

But on the carrick bend he was all thumbs. It was a simple knot, but no matter how he went about it, he could not get it to look like the illustration. Sweat broke out on his forehead. Very close in the room, he told himself. "I'm still overheated from rushing about." The skin on his fingertips felt an inch thick. The ends of the cord kept eluding them. He remembered how Tansy's fingers had rippled through the knots.

Eleven forty-one. The phonograph needle started to roll off the table. He dropped the cord and laid the phonograph needle against his fountain pen, so it would not roll. Then he started again on the knot.

For a moment he thought he must have picked up the gut, the cord seemed so stiff and unresponsive. Incredible what nervousness can do to you, he told himself. His mouth was dry. He swallowed with difficulty.

Finally, by keeping his eyes on the illustration and imitating it step for step, he managed to tie a carrick bend. All the while he felt as if there were more between his fingers than a cord, as if he were manipulating against a great inertia. Just as he finished, he felt a slight prickly chill, like the onset of fever, and the light overhead seemed to dim a trifle. Eye-strain.

The phonograph needle was rolling in the opposite direction, spinning faster and faster. He slapped his hand down on it, missed it, caught it at the edge of the table.

Just like a Ouija board, he told himself. You try to keep your fingers, poised on the planchette, perfectly motionless. As a result muscular tensions accumulate. They reach the breaking point. Seemingly without any volition on your part, the planchette begins to roll and skid about on its three little legs, traveling from letter to letter. Same thing here. Nervous and muscular tensions made it difficult for him to tie knots. Obeying a universal tendency, he projected the difficulty into the cord. And, by hand and knee pressure, he had been doing some unconscious table tipping.

Between his fingers, the phonograph needle seemed to vibrate, as if it were being pounded by infinitesimal hammers. There was a very faint sensation of electric shock. Unbidden, the torturesome, clangorous chords of the "Ninth Sonata" began to sound in his mind. Rot! One well-known symptom of extreme nervousness is a tingling in the fingers--often painfully intense. But his throat was dry and his snort of bitter contempt sounded choked.

He pinned the needle in the flannel for greater safety.

Eleven forty-seven. Reaching for the gut, his fingers felt as shaky and weak as if he just climbed a hundred-foot rope hand over hand. The stuff looked normal, but it was slimy to the touch. And for some moments he had been conscious of an acrid, almost metallic odor replacing the salt smell of the Bay. Tactual and olfactory hallucinations joining in with the visual and auditory, he told himself. He could still hear the "Ninth Sonata."

He knew a bowline backwards, and it should have been easier because the gut was not as stiff as it ought to be, but he felt there were other forces manipulating it or other mentalities trying to give orders to his fingers, so that the gut was trying to tie itself into a slip-knot, a reef, a half hitch--anything but a bowline. His fingers ached, his eyes were heavy with an abnormal fatigue. He was working against a mounting inertia--a dangerous, crushing inertia. He remembered Tansy telling him that first day--"There's a law of reaction in all conjuring--like the kick of a gun--" Eleven fifty-two.

With a great effort, he canalized his mental energy, focused his attention only on the knot. His numb fingers began to move in an odd rhythm, a rhythm of the "Ninth Sonata," _piu vivo_. The bowline was tied.

* * * * *

The overhead light dimmed markedly, throwing the whole room into a sooty gloom. Hysterical blindness, he told himself in a despairing effort to maintain the appearances of sanity and scientific law. It was very cold now, so cold that he fancied he could see his breath. And silent, terribly silent. Against that silence he could feel and hear the rapid drumming of his heart, accelerating unendurably to the thundering, swirling rhythm of the music.

Then, in one instant of diabolic paralyzing insight, he knew that _this_ was sorcery. No mere puttering about with ridiculous medieval implements, no effortless sleight of hand, but a straining, back-breaking struggle to keep control of _forces summoned_, of which the objects he manipulated were only the symbols. Outside the walls of the room, outside the walls of his skull, outside the impalpable energy-walls of his mind, he felt those forces gathering, swelling up, dreadfully expectant, waiting for him to make a false move so that they could crush him.

He could not believe it. He had to believe it.

The only question was--would he be able to stay in control?

Eleven fifty-seven. He gathered the objects together on the flannel. The needle jumped to the lodestone and clung. It shouldn't; it wasn't that magnetic. He took a pinch of graveyard dirt. Between finger and thumb, each separate particle seemed to crawl, like a tiny maggot. He sensed that something was missing. He could not remember what it was. He fumbled for the formula. A current of air was blowing the scraps of paper off the table. He sensed an eager, inward surge of the forces outside, as if they knew he was failing. He clutched at the papers, managed to pin them down. Bending close, he made out the words "platinum or iridium." He jabbed his pen against the table, broke off the whole nib, and added it to the other objects.

He stood at the side of the table away from the knife that marked the east, trying to steady his shaking hands against the edge. His teeth were chattering. The room was utterly dark now except for the impossible bluish light that beat through the window shade.

Abruptly the strip of flannel started to curl like a strip of heated gelatine, to roll itself up from east to west, _with_ the sun.

He jerked forward, got his hand inside the flannel before it closed, drew it apart--in his numb hands it seemed like metal--and rolled it against the sun, widdershins.

The silence was intensified. Even the sound of his beating heart was cut off. He knew that something was listening with a terrible intensity for his command, and that something was hoping with an even more terrible avidity that he would not be able to utter that command.

Yet somewhere a clock was booming--or was it not a clock, but the secret sound of time? Nine--ten--eleven--twelve.

His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He kept on choking soundlessly. He could feel the walls giving way.

Then, in a dry, croaking voice, he managed: "Stop Tansy. Bring her here."

* * * * *

The walls were shaken as if they were at the center of a whirlpool. Darkness became absolute. There was an eruption of force from the table. He felt himself flung across the room.

Then the forces were gone. In all things, tension gave way to limpness. Sound and light returned. He was sprawled across the bed. On the table was a little flannel packet, no longer of any consequence.

He felt as if he had been doped, or were waking after a debauch. There was no inclination to do anything. Emotion was absent.

Outwardly everything was the same. Even his mind, with automatic rationality, could still wearily take up the thankless task of explaining his experiences on a scientific basis--weaving an elaborate web in which psychosis, hallucination, and improbable coincidences were the strands.

But inwardly something had changed, and would never change back.

Considerable time passed.

He heard steps mounting the stairs, then in the hall. They made a _squish-squish_ sound, as if the shoes were soaking wet.

They stopped outside his door. There was a soft rap.

He crossed the room, turned the key in the lock--

A strand of seaweed was caught in the silver brooch. The gray suit was dark now and heavy with water, except for one spot which had started to dry and was faintly dusted with a white powder--salt. The odor of the Bay was intimate and close. There was another strand of seaweed clinging to one ankle against the wrinkled stocking.

And around the stained shoes, a little pool of water was forming.

His eyes traced the wet footprints down the hall. At the head of the stairs the old clerk was standing, one foot still on the last step. He was carrying a small pigskin suitcase.

"What's all this about?" he quavered, when he saw that Norman was looking at him. "You didn't tell me you were expecting your wife. She looks like she'd thrown herself in the Bay. We don't want anything queer happening in this hotel--anything wrong."

"It's quite all right," said Norman, prolonging the moment before he would have to look at her face. "I'm sorry I forgot to tell you. May I have the bag?"

"--only last year we had a suicide"--the old clerk did not seem to realize he was speaking his thoughts aloud--"bad for the hotel--" His voice trailed off. He looked at Norman, gathered himself together, and came hesitatingly down the hall. When he was a few steps away, he stopped, reached out and put down the suitcase, turned, and walked rapidly away.

Unwillingly, Norman raised his eyes until they were on a level with hers.

The face was pale, very pale, and without expression. The lips were tinged with blue. Wet hair was plastered against the cheeks. A thick lock crossed one eye socket, like a curtain half drawn, and curled down toward the throat, where it merged with a strand of seaweed. The dull eyes stared at him, without sign of recognition. And no hand moved up to brush the lock of hair away.

From the hem of the skirt, water was dripping.

The lips parted. The voice had the monotonous murmur of water.

"You were too late," the lips said. "You were a minute too late."