Chapter V: Part 5

They moved slowly over to the Doctor's door, waiting there until his ponderous footsteps sounded. A light flashed in the hall, and his broad shadow filled the door for a moment before it opened.

"Come in," he rumbled jovially. "Fine evening we're spoiling, isn't it?"

"It could be," said Pat as they followed him into the library, "only it'll probably rain some more."

"Hah!" snorted the Doctor, frowning at the mention of rain. "The course was soft. Couldn't get any distance, and it added six strokes to my score. At least six!"

Pat chuckled commiseratingly. "You ought to lay out a course in Greenland," she suggested. "They say anyone can drive a ball a quarter of a mile on smooth ice."

"Humph!" The Doctor waved toward a great, low chair. "Suppose you sit over there, young man, and we'll get about our business. And don't look so woe-begone about it."

Nick settled himself nervously in the designated chair; the Doctor seated himself at a little distance to the side, and Pat sat tensely in her usual place beside the hearth. She waited in strained impatience for the black magic of psychoanalysis to commence.

"Now," said Horker, "I want you to keep quiet, Pat--if possible. And you, young man, are to relax, compose yourself, get yourself into as passive a state as possible. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir," The youth leaned back in the great chair, closing his eyes.

"So! Now, think back to your childhood, your earliest memories. Let your thoughts wander at random, and speak whatever comes to your mind."

Nick sat a moment in silence. "That's hard to do, sir," he said finally.

"Yes. It will take practice, weeks of it, perhaps. You'll have to acquire the knack of it, but to do that, we'll have to start."

"Yes, sir." He sat with closed eyes. "My mother," he murmured, "was kind. I remember her a little, just a little. She was very gentle, not apt to blame me. She could understand. Made excuses to my father. He was hard, not cruel--strict. Couldn't understand. Blamed me when I wasn't to blame. Other did it. I wasn't mischievous, but got the blame. Couldn't explain, he wouldn't believe me." He paused uncertainly.

"Go on," said Horker quietly, while Pat strained her ears to listen.

"Mrs. Stevens," he continued. "Governess after Mother died. Strict like Father, got punished when I wasn't to blame. Just as bad after Father died. Always blamed. Couldn't explain, nobody believed me. Other threw cat in window, I had to go to bed. Put salt in bird seed, broke leg of chair to make it fall. Punished--I couldn't explain." His voice droned into silence; he opened his eyes. "That all," he said nervously.

"Good enough for the first time," said the Doctor briskly. "Wait a few weeks; we'll have your life's history out of you. It takes practice."

"Is that all?" queried Pat in astonishment.

"All for the first time. Later we'll let him talk half an hour at a stretch, but it takes practice, as I've mentioned. You run along home now," he said to Nick.

"But it's early!" objected Pat.

"Early or not," said the Doctor, "I'm tired, and you two aren't to see each other except here. You remember that."

Nick rose from his seat in the depths of the great chair. "Thank you, sir," he said. "I don't know why, but I feel easier in your presence. The--the struggle disappears while I'm here."

"Well," said Horker with a smile, "I like patients with confidence in me. Good night."

At the door Nick paused, turning wistful eyes on Pat. "Good night," he said, leaning to give her a light kiss. A rush of some emotion twisted his features; he stared strangely at the girl. "I'd better go," he said abruptly, and vanished through the door.

"Well?" said Pat questioningly, turning to the Doctor. "Did you learn anything from that?"

"Not much," the other admitted, yawning. "However, the results bear out my theory."

"How?"

"Did you notice how he harped on the undeserved punishment theme? He was punished for another's mischief?"

"Yes. What of that?"

"Well, picture him as a timid, sensitive child, rather afraid of being punished. Afraid, say, of being locked up in a dark closet. Now, when he inadvertently commits a mischief, as all children do, he tries desperately to divert the blame from himself. But there's no one else to blame! So what does he do?"

"What?"

"He invents this _other_, the mischievous one, and blames him. And now the other has grown to the proportions of a delusion, haunting him, driving him to commit acts apart from his normal inclinations. Understand? Because I'm off to bed whether you do or not."

"I understand all right," murmured Pat uncertainly as she moved to the door. "But somehow, it doesn't sound reasonable."

"It will," said the Doctor. "Good night."

Pat wandered slowly down the steps and through the break in the hedge, musing over Doctor Horker's expression of opinion. Then, according to him, the devil was nothing more than an invention of Nick's mind, the trick of a cowardly child to evade just punishment. She shook her head; it didn't sound like Nick at all. For all his gentleness and sensitivity, he wasn't the one to hide behind a fabrication. He wasn't a coward; she was certain of that. And she was as sure as she could ever be that he hated, feared, loathed this personality that afflicted him; he _couldn't_ have created it.

She sighed, mounted the steps, and fumbled for her key. The sound of a movement behind her brought a faint gasp of astonishment. She turned to see a figure materializing from the shadows of the porch. The light from the hall fell across its features, and she drew back as she recognized Nicholas Devine--not the being she had just kissed good night, but in the guise of her tormentor, the red-eyed demon!

25

The Demon Lover

Pat drew back, leaning against the door, and her key tinkled on the concrete of the porch. She was startled, shocked, but not as completely terrified as she might have expected. After all, she thought rapidly, they were standing in full view of a public street, and Dr. Carl's residence was but a few feet distant. She could summon his help by screaming.

"Well!" she exclaimed, eyeing the figure inimically. "Your appearances and disappearances are beginning to remind me of the Cheshire Cat."

"Except for the grin," said the other in his cold tones.

"What do you want?" snapped Pat.

"You know what I want."

"You'll not get it," said the girl angrily. "You--you're doomed to extinction, anyway! Go away!"

"Suppose," said the other with a strange, cold, twisted smile, "it were _he_ that's doomed to extinction--what then?"

"It isn't!" cried Pat. "It isn't!" she repeated, while a quiver of uncertainty shook her. "He's the stronger," she said defiantly.

"Then where is he now?"

"Dr. Carl will help us!"

"Doctor!" sneered the other. "He and his clever theory! Am I an illusion?" he queried sardonically, thrusting his red-glinting eyes toward her. "Am I the product of his puerile, vacillating nature? Bah! I gave you the clue, and your Doctor hasn't the intelligence to follow it!"

"Go away!" murmured Pat faintly. The approach of his face had unnerved her, and she felt terror beginning to stir within her. "Go away!" she said again. "Why do you have to torment me? Any one would serve your purpose--any woman!"

"You have an aesthetic appeal, as I've told you before," replied the other in that toneless voice of his. "There is a pleasure in the defacement of black hair and pale skin, and your body is seductive, most seductive. Another might afford me less enjoyment, and besides, you hate me. Don't you hate me?" He peered evilly at her.

"Oh, God--yes!" The girl was shuddering.

"Say it, then! Say you hate me!"

"I hate you!" the girl cried vehemently. "Will you go away now?"

"With you!"

"I'll scream if you come any closer. You don't dare touch me; I'll call Dr. Horker."

"You'll only damage _him_--your lover."

"Then I'll do it! He'll understand."

"Yes," said the other reflectively. "He's fool enough to forgive you. He'll forgive you anything--the weakling!"

"Go away! Get away from here!"

The other stared at her out of blood-shot eyes. "Very well," he said in his flat tones. "This time the victory is yours."

He backed slowly toward the steps. Pat watched him as he moved, feeling a surge of profound relief. As his shadow shifted, her key gleamed silver at her feet, and she stooped to retrieve it.

There was a rush of motion as her eyes left the form of her antagonist. A hand was clamped violently over her mouth, an arm passed with steel-like rigidity about her body. Nicholas Devine was dragging her toward the steps; she was half-way down before she recovered her wits enough to struggle.

She writhed and twisted in his grasp. She drove her elbow into his body with all her power, and kicked with the strength of desperation at his legs. She bit into the palm across her mouth--and suddenly, with a subdued grunt of pain, he released her so abruptly that her own struggles sent her spinning blindly into the bushes of the hedge.

She turned gasping, unable for the moment to summon sufficient breath to scream. The other stood facing her with his eyes gleaming terribly into her own; then they ranged slowly from her diminutive feet to the rumpled ebony of her hair that she was brushing back with her hands from her pallid, frightened face.

"Obstinate," he observed, rubbing his injured palm.

"Obstinate and unbroken--but worth the trouble. Well worth it!" He reached out a swift hand, seizing her wrist as she backed against the bushes.

Pat twisted around, gazing frantically at Doctor Horker's house, where a light had only now flashed on in the upper windows. Her breath flowed back into her lungs with a strengthening rush.

"Dr. Carl!" she screamed. "Dr. Carl! Help me!"

The other spun her violently about. She had a momentary glimpse of a horribly evil countenance, then he drew back his arm and shot a clenched fist to her chin.

The world reeled into a blaze of spinning lights that faded quickly to darkness. She felt her knees buckling beneath her, and realized that she was crumpling forward toward the figure before her. Then for a moment she was aware of nothing.

She didn't quite lose consciousness, or at least for no more than a moment. She was suddenly aware that she was gazing down at a moving pavement, at her own arms dangling helplessly toward it. She perceived that she was lying limply across Nicholas Devine's shoulder with his arms clenched about her knees. And then, still unable to make the slightest resistance, she was bundled roughly into the seat of his coupe; he was beside her, and the car was purring into motion.

She summoned what remained of her strength. She drew herself erect, fumbling at the handle of the door with a frantic idea of casting herself out of the car to the street. The creature beside her jerked her violently back; as she reeled into the seat, he struck her again with the side of his fist. It was a random blow, delivered with scarcely a glance at her; it caught her on the forehead, snapping her head with an audible thump against the wall of the vehicle. She swayed for a moment with closing eyes, then collapsed limply against him, this time in complete unconsciousness.

That lapse too must have been brief. She opened dazed eyes on a vista of moving street lights; they were still in the car, passing now along some unrecognized thoroughfare lined with dark old homes. She lay for some moments uncomprehending; she was completely unaware of her situation.

It dawned on her slowly. She moaned, struggled away from the shoulder against which she had been leaning, and huddled miserably in the far corner of the seat. Nicholas Devine gave her a single glance with his unpleasant eyes, and turned them again on the street.

The girl was helpless, unable to put forth the strength even for another attempt to open the door. She was still only half aware of her position, and realized only that something appalling was occurring to her. She lay in passive misery against the cushions of the seat as the other turned suddenly up a dark driveway and into the open door of a small garage. He snapped off the engine, extinguished the headlights, and left them in a horrible, smothering, silent darkness.

She heard him open the door on his side; after an apparently interminable interval, she heard the creak of the hinges on her own side. She huddled terrified, voiceless, and immobile.

He reached in, fumbling against her in the darkness. He found her arm, and dragged her from the car. Again, as on that other occasion, she found herself reeling helplessly behind him through the dark as he tugged at her wrist. He paused at a door in the building adjacent to the garage, searching in his pocket with his free hand.

"I won't go in there!" she muttered dazedly. The other made no reply, but inserted a key in the lock, turned it, and swung open the door.

He stepped through it, dragging her after him. With a sudden access of desperate strength, she caught the frame of the door, jerked violently on her prisoned wrist, and was unexpectedly free. She reeled away, turned toward the street, and took a few faltering steps down the driveway.

Almost instantly her tormentor was upon her, and his hand closed again on her arm. Pat had no further strength; she sank to the pavement and crouched there, disregarding the insistent tugging on her arm.

"Come on," he growled. "You only delay the inevitable. Must I drag you?"

She made no reply. He tugged violently at her wrist, dragging her a few inches along the pavement. Then he stooped over her, raised her in his arms, and bore her toward the dark opening of the door. He crowded her roughly through it, disregarding the painful bumping of her shoulders and knees. She heard the slam of the door as he kicked it closed, and she realized that they were mounting a flight of stairs, moving somewhere into the oppressive threatening darkness.

Then they were moving along a level floor, and her arm was bruised against another door. There was a moment of stillness, and then she was released, dropped indifferently to the surface of a bed or couch. A moment later a light flashed on.

The girl was conscious at first only of the gaze of the red eyes. They held her own in a fascinating, unbreakable, trance-like spell. Then, in a wave of dizziness, she closed her own eyes.

"Where are we?" she murmured. "In Hell?"

"You should call it Heaven," came the sardonic voice. "It's the home of your sweetheart. His home--and mine!"

26

The Depths

"Heaven and Hell always were the same place," said Nicholas Devine, his red eyes glaring down at the girl. "We'll demonstrate the fact."

Pat shifted wearily, and sat erect, passing her hand dazedly across her face. She brushed the tangled strands of black hair from before her eyes, and stared dully at the room in which she found herself.

It had some of the aspects of a study, and some of a laboratory, or perhaps a doctor's office. There was a case of dusty books on the wall opposite, and another crystal-fronted cabinet containing glassware, bottles, little round boxes suggestive of drugs or pharmaceuticals. There was a paper-littered table too; she gave a convulsive shudder at the sight of a bald, varnished death's head, its lower jar articulated, that reposed on a pile of papers and grinned at her.

"Where--" she began faintly.

"This was the room of your sweetheart's father," said the other. "His and my mutual father. He was an experimenter, a researcher, and so, in another sense, am I!" He leered evilly at her. "He used this chamber to further his experiments, and I for mine--the carrying on of a noble family tradition!"

The girl scarcely heard his words; the expressionless tone carried no meaning to the chaos which was her mind. She felt only an inchoate horror and a vague but all-encompassing fear, and her head was aching from the blows he had dealt her.

"What do you want?" she asked dully.

"Why, there is an unfinished experiment. You must remember our interrupted proceedings of a week ago! Have you already forgotten the early steps of our experiment in evil?"

Pat cringed at the cold, sardonic tones of the other. "Let me go," she whimpered. "Please!" she appealed. "Let me go!"

"In due time," he responded. "You lack gratitude," he continued. "Last time, out of the kindness that is my soul, I permitted you to dull your senses with alcohol, but you failed, apparently, to appreciate my indulgence. But this time"--His eyes lit up queerly--"this time you approach the consummation of our experiment with undimmed mind!"

He approached her. She drew her knees up, huddling back on the couch, and summoned the final vestiges of her strength.

"I'll kick you!" she muttered desperately. "Keep back from me!"

He paused just beyond her reach. "I had hoped," he said ironically, "if not for your cooperation, at least for no further active resistance. It's quite useless; I told you days ago that this time would come."

He advanced cautiously; Pat thrust out her foot, driving it with all her power. Instantly he drew back, catching her ankle in his hand. He jerked her leg sharply upwards, and she was precipitated violently to the couch. Again he advanced.

The girl writhed away from him. She slipped from the foot of the couch and darted in a circle around him, turning in an attempt to gain the room's single exit--the door by which they had entered. He moved quickly to intercept her; he closed the door as she backed despairingly away, retreating to the far end of the room. Once more he faced her, his malicious eyes gleaming, and moved deliberately toward her.

She drew back until the table halted her; she pressed herself against it as if to force her way still further. The other moved at unaltered pace. Suddenly her hand pressed over some smooth, round, hard object; she grasped it and flung the grinning skull at the more terrible face that approached her. He dodged; there was a crash of glass as the gruesome missile shattered the pane of the cabinet of drugs. And inexorably, Nicholas Devine approached once more.

She moved along the edge of the table, squeezed herself between it and the wall. Behind her was one of the room's two windows, curtainless, with drawn shades. She found the cord, jerked it, and let the blind coil upward with an abrupt snap.

"I'll throw myself through the window!" she announced with a sort of desperate calm. "Don't dare move a step closer!"

The demon paused once more in his deliberate advance. "You will, of course," he said as if considering. "Given the opportunity. Your body torn and broken, spotted with blood--that might be a pleasure second only to that I plan."

"You'll suffer for it!" said the girl hysterically. "I'll be glad to do it, knowing you'll suffer!"

"Not I--your sweetheart."

"I don't care! I can't stand it!"

The other smiled his demoniac smile, and resumed his advance. She watched him in terror that had now reached the ultimate degree; her mind could bear no more. She turned suddenly, raised her arm, and beat her fist against the pane of the window.

With the surprising resistance glass sometimes displays, it shook at her blow but did not shatter. She drew back for a second attempt, and her upraised arm was caught in a rigid grip, and she was dragged backward to the center of the room, thrown heavily to the floor. She sat dazedly looking up at the form standing over her.

"Must I render you helpless again?" queried the flat voice of the other. "Are you not yet broken, convinced of the uselessness of this struggle?"

She made no answer, staring dully at his immobile features.

"Are you going to fight me further?" As she was still silent, he repeated, "Are you?"

She shook her head vaguely. "No," she muttered. She had reached the point of utter indifference; nothing at all was important enough now to struggle for.

"Stand up!" ordered the being above her.

She pulled herself wearily to her feet, leaning against the wall. She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them dully as the other moved.

"What--are you--are you going to do?" she murmured.

"First," said the demon coldly, "I shall disrobe you somewhat more completely than on our other occasion. Thereafter we will proceed to the consummation of our experiment."

She watched him indifferently, uncomprehendingly, as he crooked a thin finger in the neck of her frock. She felt the pressure as he pulled, heard the rip of the fabric, and the pop of buttons, but she was conscious of no particular sensation as the garment cascaded into a black and red pool at her feet. She stood passive as he hooked his finger in the strap of her vest, and that too joined the little mound of cloth. She shivered slightly as she stood bared to the waist, but gave no other sign.

Again the thin hand moved toward her; from somewhere in her tormented spirit a final shred of resistance arose, and she pushed the questing member feebly to one side. She heard a low, sardonic laugh from her oppressor.

"Look at me!" he commanded.

She raised her eyes wearily; she drew her arm about her in a forlorn gesture of concealment. Her eyes met the strange orbs of the other, and a faint thrill of horror stirred; other than this, she felt nothing. Then his eyes were approaching her; she was conscious of the illusion that they were expanding, filling all the space in front of her. Their weird glow filled the world, dominated everything.

"Will you yield?" he queried.

The eyes commanded. "Yes," she said dully.

She felt his hands icy cold on her bare shoulders. They traveled like a shudder about her body, and suddenly she was pressed close to him.

"Are you mine?" he demanded. For the first time there was a tinge of expression in the toneless voice, a trace of eagerness. She made no answer; her eyes, held by his, stared like the eyes of a person in a trance, unwinking, fascinated.

"Are you mine?" he repeated, his breath hissing on her cheek.

"Yes." She heard her own voice in automatic reply to his question.

"Mine--for the delights of evil?"

"Yours!" she murmured. The eyes had blotted out everything.

"And do you hate me?"

"No."

The arms about her tightened into crushing bands. The pressure stopped her breath; her very bones seemed to give under their fierce compression.

"Do you hate me?" he muttered.

"Yes!" she gasped. "Yes! I hate you!"

"Ah!" He twisted his hand in her black hair, wrenching it roughly back. "Are you ready now for the consummation? To look upon the face of evil?"

She made no reply. Her eyes, as glassy as those of a sleep-walker, stared into his.

"Are you ready?"

"Yes," she said.

He pressed his mouth to hers. The fierceness of the kiss bruised her lips, the pull of his hand in her hair was a searing pain, the pressure of his arm about her body was a suffocation. Yet--somehow--there was again the dawning of that unholy pleasure--the same degraded delight that had risen in her on that other occasion, in the room of the red-checked table cloth. Through some hellish alchemy, the leaden pain was transmuting itself into the garish gold of a horrible, abnormal pleasure. She found her crushed lips attempting a feeble, painful response.

At her movement, she felt herself swung abruptly from her feet. With his lips still crushing hers, he raised her in his arms; she felt herself borne across the room. He paused; there was a sudden release, and she crashed to the hard surface of the couch, whose rough covering scratched the bare flesh of her back. Nicholas Devine bent over her; she saw his hand stretch toward her single remaining garment. And again, from somewhere in her harassed soul, a spark of resistance flashed.

"Nick!" she moaned. "Oh, Nick! Help me!"

"Call him!" said the other, a sneer on his face. "Call him! He hears; it adds to his torment!"

She covered her eyes with her hands. She felt his hand slip coldly between her skin and the elastic about her waist.

"Nick!" she moaned again. "Nick! Oh, my God! Nick!"

27

Two in Hell

The cold hand against Pat was still; she felt it rigid and stiff on her flesh. She lay passive with closed eyes; having voiced her final appeal, she was through. The words torn from her misery represented the final iota of spirit remaining to her; and her bruised body and battered mind had nothing further to give.

The hand quivered and withdrew. For a moment more she lay motionless with her arms clutched about her, then she opened her eyes, gazing dully, hopelessly at the demon standing over her. He was watching her with a curious abstracted frown; as she stirred, the scowl intensified, and he drew back a step.

His face contorted suddenly in a spasm of some unguessable emotion. His fists clenched; a low unintelligible mutter broke from his lips. "Strange!" she heard him say, and after a moment, "I'm still master here!"

He _was_ master; in a moment the emotion vanished, and he was again standing over her, his face the same impassive demoniac mask. She watched him in a dull stupor of despair that was too deep for even a whimper of pain as he wrenched at the elastic about her waist, and it cut into her flesh and parted. He tore the garment away, and the red eyes bored down with a wild elation in their depths.

"Mine!" the being muttered, a new hoarseness in his voice. "Are you mine?"

Pat made no answer; his voice croaked in more insistent tones. "Are you mine?"

She could not reply. She felt his fingers bite into the flesh of her shoulder. She was shaken roughly, violently, and the question came again, fiercely. The eyes flamed in command, and she felt through her languor and weakness, the stirring of that strange and unholy fascination that he held over her.

"Answer!" he croaked. "Are you mine?"

The torture of his searing grip on her shoulder wrung an answer from her.

"Yes," she murmured faintly. "Yours."

She closed her eyes again in helpless resignation. She felt the hand withdrawn, and she lay passive, waiting, on the verge of unconsciousness, numb, spirit-broken, and beaten.

Nothing happened. After a long interval she opened her eyes, and saw the other standing again with clenched fists and contorted countenance. His features were writhing in the intensity of his struggle; a strange low snarl came from his lips. He backed away from her, step by step; he leaned against the book-shelves, and beads of perspiration formed on his scowling face.

He was no longer master! She saw the change; imperceptibly the evil vanished from his features, and suddenly they were no longer his, but the weary, horror-stricken visage of her Nick! The red eyes were no longer Satanic, but only the blood-shot, troubled, gentle eyes of her sweetheart, and the lips had lost their grimness, and gasped and quivered and trembled. He reeled against the wall, staggered to the chair at the table, and sank weakly into it.

Pat was far too exhausted, far too dazed, to feel anything but the faintest sensation of relief. She realized only dimly that tears were welling from her eyes, and that sharp sobs were shaking her. She was for the moment unable to stir, and it was not long until the being at the table turned stricken eyes on her that she moved. Then she drew her knees up before her, as if to hide her body behind their slim, chiffon-clad grace.

Nick rose from the table, approaching her with weary, hesitant tread. He seized a cover of some sort that was folded over the foot of the couch, shook it out and cast it over her. She clutched it about her body, sat erect and leaned back against the wall in utter exhaustion. Many minutes passed with no word from either of the occupants of the unholy chamber. It was Nick who broke the long silence.

"Pat," he murmured in low tones. "Pat--Dear. Are you--all right?"

She stared at him dazedly without answer.

"Honey!" he said. "Honey! Tell me you're all right!"

"All right?" she repeated uncomprehendingly. "Yes. I guess I'm all right."

"Then go, Pat! Get away from here before he--before anything happens! Put your clothes on and hurry away!"

"I can't!" she said, faintly. "I--can't!"

"You must, Honey!"

"I'm just--not able to. I will soon, Nick--honest. When I--when I get my breath back."

"Pat!" There was anguish in the cry. "Oh, God--Pat! We mustn't ever be together again--not ever!"

"No," she said. A bit of sanity was returning to her; comprehension of her position sent a shudder through her. "No, we mustn't."

"I couldn't bear another night like this--watching! I'd go mad!"

"Oh!" she choked, tears starting. "If you hadn't come back, Nick!"

"I conquered him," he said. "I don't think I could do it again. It was your call that gave me the strength, Pat." He shook his head as if bewildered. "He thought it was being in love with you that weakened me, but in the end it was that which gave me the strength to subdue him."

"I'm scared!" said the girl suddenly. "Oh, Nick! I'm frightened!"

"You'd better go. You'd better dress and leave at once, Honey. Here." He gathered her clothes from the floor, depositing them beside her on the couch. "There are pins in the tray on the table, Pat. Fix yourself up as well as you can, dear--and hurry out of here!"

He turned toward the door as if to leave, and a shock of terror shook her.

"Nick!" she cried. "Don't go away! I'm more afraid when I can't see you--afraid that _he_--" She broke off sobbing.

"All right, Honey. I'll turn my back."

She slipped out from under the blanket, found the pins, and repaired her ruined costume. The frock was torn, crushed and bedraggled; she pinned it together at the throat, though her trembling fingers made the task difficult. She pulled it on and took a tentative step toward the door.

"Nick!" she called as a wave of dizziness sent her swaying against the wall.

"What's the matter, Honey?" He turned anxiously at her cry.

"I'm dizzy," she moaned. "My head aches, and--I'm scared!"

"Pat, darling! You can't go out alone like this--and," he added miserably, "I can't take you!" He slipped his arm around her tenderly, supporting her to the couch. "Honey, what'll we do?"

"I'll be--all right," she murmured. "I'll go in a moment." The dizziness was leaving her; strength was returning.

"You must!" he said dolefully. "What a parting, Pat! Never to see you again, and then having this to remember as farewell!"

"I know, Nick. You see, I love you too." She turned her dark, troubled eyes on him. "Honey, kiss me good-bye! We'll have that to remember, anyway!" Tears were again on her cheeks.

"Do I dare?" he asked despondently. "After the things these lips of mine have said, and what these arms have done to you?"

"But you didn't, Nick! Could I blame you for--that _other_?"

"God! You're kind, Pat! Honey, if ever I win out in this battle, if ever I know I'm the final victor, I'll--No," he said his tones dropping abruptly. "I'll never come back to you, Pat. It's far too dangerous, and--can I ever be certain? Can I?"

"I don't know, Nick. Can you?"

"I can't be, Pat! I'll never be sure that _he_ isn't just dormant, as he was before, waiting for my weakness to betray me! I'll never be certain, Honey! It _has_ to be good-bye!"

"Then kiss me!"

She clung to him; the room that had been so recently a chamber of horrors was transformed. As she held him, as her lips were pressed to his, she thought suddenly of the words of the demon, that Heaven and Hell were always the same place. They had taken on a new meaning, those words; she drew away from Nick and turned her tear-bright eyes tenderly on his.

"Honey," she murmured, "I don't want you to leave me. I don't want you to go!"

"Nor do I want to, Pat! But I must."

"You mustn't! You're to stay, and we'll fight it out together--be married, or any way that permits us to fight it through together."

"Pat! Do you think I'd consent to that?"

"Nick," she said. "Nick darling--It's worth it to me! I'm realizing it now; I thought it wasn't--but it is! I can't lose you, Nick--anything, even that _other_, is better than losing you."

"You're sweet, Pat! You know I'd trade my very soul for that, but--No. I can't do it! And don't Honey, torture me by suggesting it again."

"But I will, Nick!" She was speaking softly, earnestly. "You're worth anything to me! If _he_ should kill me, you'd still be worth it!" She gazed tenderly at him. "I'd want to die anyway without you!"

"No more than I without you," he muttered brokenly. "But I won't do it, Pat! I won't do that to you!"

"I love you, Nick!" she said in a low voice. "I don't want to live without you. Do you understand me, dear? I don't want to live without you!"

He stared at her somberly. "I've thought of that too," he said. "Pat--if I only believed that we'd be together after, together _anywhere_, I'd say yes. If only I believed there _were_ an afterwards!"

"Doesn't he prove that by his very existence?"

"Your Doctor would deny that."

"Doctor Carl never saw _him_, Nick. And anyway, even oblivion together would be better than being separated, and far better than this!"

He gazed at her silently. She spoke again. "That doesn't frighten me, Nick. It's only losing you that frightens me, especially the fear of losing you to _him_."

He continued his silent gaze. Suddenly he drew her close to him, held her in a tight, tender embrace.

28

Lunar Omen

After a considerable interval, during which Nick held the girl tightly and silently in his arms, he released her, sat with his head resting on his cupped palms in an attitude of deep study. Pat, beside him, fell mechanically to repinning the throat of her frock, which had opened during the moments of the embrace. He rose to his feet, pacing nervously before her.

"It isn't a thing to do on the impulse of a moment, Pat," he muttered, pausing at her side. "You must see that."

"It isn't the impulse of a moment."

"But one doesn't abandon everything, the whole world, so easily, Honey. One doesn't cast away a last hope, however forlorn a hope it may be!"

"Is there a hope, Nick?" she asked gently. "Is there a chance left to us?"

"I don't know!" His voice held an increasing tenseness. "Before God--I--don't know!"

"If there's a chance, the very slightest shadow of the specter of a chance, we'll take it, won't we? Because the other way is always open to us, Nick."

"Yes. It's always open."

"But we won't take that chance," she continued defiantly, "if it involves my losing you, Honey. I meant what I said, Nick: I don't want to live without you!"

"What chance have we?" he queried somberly. "Those are our alternatives--life apart, death together."

"Then you know my choice!" she cried desperately. "Nick, Honey--don't let's draw it out in futile talking! I can't stand it!"

He moved his hand in a gesture of bewilderment and frustration, and turned away, striding nervously toward the window whose blind she had raised. He leaned his hands on the table, peering dejectedly out upon the street below.

"What time," he asked irrelevantly in a queer voice, "did the Doctor say the moon rose? Do you remember?"

"No," she said tensely. "Oh, Honey! Please--don't stand there with your back to me now, when I'm half crazy!"

"I'm thinking," he responded. "It rises a little earlier each night--or is it later? No matter; come here, Pat."

She rose wearily and joined him; he slipped his arm about her, and drew her against him.

"Look there," he said, indicating the night-dark vista beyond the window.

She looked out upon a dim-lit street or court, at the blind end of which the house was apparently situated. Far off at the open end, across a distant highway where even at this hour passed a constant stream of traffic, flashed a narrow strip of lake; and above it, rising gigantic from the coruscating moon-path, lifted the satellite. She watched the remote flickering of the waves as they tossed back the broken bits of the light strewn along the path. Then she turned puzzled eyes on her companion.

"That's Heaven," he said pointing a finger at the great flowing lunar disk. "There's a world that never caught the planet-cancer called Life, or if it ever suffered, it's cured. It's clean--burned clean by the sun and scoured clean by the airless zero of space. A dead world, and therefore not an unhappy one."

The girl stared at him without comprehension. She murmured, "I don't understand, Nick."

"Don't you, Pat?" He pointed again at the moon. "That's Heaven, the dead world, and this is Hell, the living one. Heaven and Hell swinging forever about their common center!" He gestured toward the sparkling moon-path on the water. "Look, Pat! The dead world strews flowers on the grave of the living one!"

Some of his bitter ecstasy caught the girl; she felt his somber mood of exaltation.

"I love you, Nick!" she whispered, pressing closely to him.

"What difference does it make--our actions?" he queried. "There's the omen, that lifeless globe in the sky. Where we go, all humanity now living will follow before a century, and in a million years, the human race as well! What if we go a year or a million years before the rest? Will it make any difference in the end?" He looked down at her. "All we've been valuing here is hope. To the devil with hope! Let's have peace instead!"

"I'm not afraid, Nick."

"Nor I. And if we go, _he_ goes, and he's mortally afraid of death!"

"Can he--prevent you?"

"Not now! I'm the stronger now. For this time, I'm master."

He turned again to stare at the glowing satellite as it rose imperceptibly from the horizon. "There's nothing to regret," he murmured, "except one thing--the loss of beauty. Beauty like that--and like you, Pat. That's bitterly hard to foreswear!" He leaned forward toward the remote disk of the moon; he spoke as if addressing it, in tones so low that the girl, pressed close to him, had to quiet the sound of her own breath to listen. He said:

"Long miles above cloud-bank and blast,
And many miles above the sea,
I watch you rise majestically
Feeling your chilly light at last--
Cold beauty in the way you cast
Split silver fragments on the waves,
As if this planet's life were past,
And all men peaceful in their graves."

Pat was silent for a moment as he paused, then she murmured a low phrase. "Oh, I love you, Nick!" she said.

"And I you, dear," he responded. "Have we decided anything? Are we--going through with it?"

"I've not faltered," she said soberly. "I meant it, Nick. Without you, life would be as empty as that airless void you speak of. I'm not afraid. What's there to be afraid of?"

"Only the transition, Pat. That and the unknown--but no situation could possibly be more terrible than our present one. It _couldn't_ be! Oblivion, annihilation--they're preferable, aren't they?"

"Oh, yes! Nothing I can imagine could be other than a change for the better."

"Then let's face it!" His voice took on a note of determination. "I've thought to face it a dozen times before this, and each time I've hesitated. The hesitation of a coward, Pat."

"You're no coward, dear. It was that illusion of hope; that always weakens one. No one's strong who hasn't given up hope."

"Then," he repeated, "let's face it!"

"How, Nick?"

"My father has left us the means. There in the cabinet are a hundred deaths--swift ones, lingering ones, painful, and easy! I don't know one from the other; our choice must be blind." He strode over to the case, sending slivers of glass from the shattered front glistening along the floor. "I'd choose an easy one, Dear, if I knew, for your sake. Euthanasia!"

He stared hesitantly at the files of mysterious drugs with their incomprehensible labels.

Suddenly the scene appeared humorous to the girl, queerly funny, in some unnatural horrible fashion. Her nerves, overstrained for hours, were on the verge of breaking; without realization of it, she had come to the border of hysteria.

"Shopping for death!" she choked, trying to suppress the wild laughter that beat in her throat. "Which one's most suitable? Which one's most becoming? Which one"--an hysterical laughing sob shook her--"will wear the longest?"

He turned, gazing at her with an illogical concern in his face.

"What's the difference?" she cried wildly. "I don't care--painful or pleasant, it all ends in the same grave! Close your eyes and choose!"

Suddenly he was holding her in his arms again, and she was sobbing, clinging to him frantically. She was miserably unstrung; her body shook under the impact of her gasping breath. Then gradually, she quieted, and was silent against him.

"We've been mad!" he murmured. "It's been an insane idea--for me to inflict this on you, Pat. Do you think I could consider the destruction of your beauty, Dear? I've been lying to myself, stifling my judgment with poetic imagery, when all the while it was just that I'm afraid to face the thing alone!"

"No," she murmured, burying her face against his shoulder. "I'm the coward, Nick. I'm the one that's frightened, and I'm the one that broke down! It's just been--too much, this evening; I'm all right now."

"But we'll not go through with _this_, Pat!"

"But we will! It's better than life without you, Dear. We've argued and argued, and at last forgotten the one truth, the one thing I'll never retract: I can't face living without you, Nick! I can't!"

He brushed his hand wearily before his eyes. "Back at the starting point," he muttered. "All right, Honey. So be it!"

He strode again to the cabinet. "Corrosive sublimate," he murmured. "Cyanide of Potassium. They're both deadly, but I think the second is rapid, and therefore less painful. Cyanide let it be!"

He extracted two small beakers from the glassware on the shelf. He filled them with water from a carafe on the table, and, while the girl watched him with fascinated eyes, he deliberately tilted a spoonful or so of white crystals into each of them. The mixture swirled a moment, then settled clear and colorless, and the crystals began to shrink as they passed swiftly into solution.

"There it is," he announced grimly. "There's peace, oblivion, forgetfulness, and annihilation for you, for me, and--for _him_! Beyond all doubt, the logical course for us, isn't it? Do we take it?"

"Please," she said faintly. "Kiss me first, Honey. Isn't that the proper course for lovers in this situation?" She felt a faint touch of astonishment at her own irony; the circumstances had ceased to have any reality to her, and had become merely a dramatic sequence like the happenings in a play.

He gathered her again into his arms and pressed his lips to hers. It was a long, tender, wistful kiss; when at last it ended, Pat found her eyes again filled with tears, but not this time the tears of hysteria.

"Nick!" she murmured. "Nick, darling!"

He gave her a deep, somber, but very tender smile, and reached for one of the deadly beakers, "To another meeting!" he said as his fingers closed on it.

Suddenly, amazingly, the strident ring of a doorbell sounded, the more surprising since they had all but forgotten the existence of a world about them. Interruption! It meant only the going through once more of all that they had just passed.

"Drink it!" exclaimed Pat impulsively, seizing the remaining beaker.

29

Scopolamine for Satan

The glass was struck from Pat's hand, and the water-clear contents streamed into pools and darkening blots over the table and its litter of papers. She stared unseeingly at the mess, without realizing that it was Nick who had dashed the draught from her very lips. She felt neither anger nor relief, but only a numbness, and a sense of anti-climax. Somewhere below the bell was ringing again, and a door was resounding to violent blows, but she only continued her bewildered, questioning gaze.

"I can't let you, Pat!" he muttered, answering her unspoken query.

"But Nick--why?"

"There's somebody at the door, isn't there? Mustn't we find out who?"

"What difference can it make?" she asked wearily.

"I don't know. I want to find out."

"It's that illusion of hope again," she murmured. "That's all it is, Nick--and it means now that it's all to do over again! The whole thing, from the beginning--and we were so near--the end!"

"I know," he said miserably. "I know all that, but--" He paused as the insistent racket below was redoubled. "I'm going to answer that bell," he ended.

He moved away from her, vanishing through the room's single door. She watched his disappearance without moving, but no sooner had he passed from sight than a curious feeling of fear oppressed her. She cast off the numbness and languor, and darted after him into the darkness of the hall.

"Nick!" she called. Somewhere ahead a light flashed on; she saw the well of a stair-case, and heard his footsteps descending. She followed in frantic haste, gaining the top step just as the pounding below ceased. She heard the click of the door, and paused suddenly at the sound of a familiar voice.

"Where's Pat?" The words drifted up in low, rumbling, ominous tones.

"Dr. Carl!" she shrieked. She ran swiftly down the stairs to Nick's side, where he stood facing the great figure of the Doctor. "Dr. Carl! How'd you find me?"

The newcomer gave her a long, narrow-eyed, speculative survey. "I spent nearly the whole night doing it," he growled at last. "It took me hours to locate Mueller and get this address from him." He stepped forward, taking the girl's arm. "Come on!" he said gruffly, without a glance at Nick standing silently beside her. "I'm taking you home!"

She held back. "But why?"

"Why? Because I don't like the company you keep. Is that reason enough?"

She still resisted his insistent tug. "Nick hasn't done anything," she said defiantly, with a side glance at the youth's flushed, unhappy features.

"He hasn't? Look at yourself, girl! Look at your clothes, and your forehead! What's more, I saw enough from my window; I saw him bundle you into that car!" His eyes were flashing angrily, and his grip on her arm tightened, while his free hand clenched into an enormous fist.

"That wasn't Nick!"

"No. It was your devil, I suppose!" said Horker sarcastically. "Anyway, Pat, you're coming with me before I do violence to what remains of your devil!"

Nick spoke for the first time since the Doctor's entrance. "Please do, Pat," he said softly. "Please go with him."

"I won't!" she snapped. The sudden shifts of situation during the long hours of that terrible evening were irritating her. She had alternated so rapidly between horror and hope and despair that her frayed nerves had seized now at the same reality of anger.

Her mind, so long overstrained, was now deliberately forgetting her swing from the pit of terror to the verge of death. "You come up like a hero to the rescue!" she taunted the doctor. "Hairbreadth Horker!"

"You little fool!" growled the Doctor. "A fine reception, after losing a night's sleep! I'll drag you home, if I have to!" He moved ponderously toward the door; she gave a violent wrench and freed her arm from his grasp.

"If you can, you mean!" she jeered. She looked at his exasperated face, and suddenly, with one of her abrupt changes of mood, she softened. "Dr. Carl, Honey," she said in apologetic tones, "I'm sorry. You're very sweet, and I'm really grateful, but I can't leave Nick now." Her eyes turned troubled. "Not now."

"Why, Pat?" Mollified by the change in her mien, his voice rumbled in sympathetic notes.

"I can't," she repeated. "It's--it's getting worse."

"Bah!"

"So it's 'Bah'!" she flared. "Well, if you're so contemptuous of the thing, why don't you cure it? What good did your psychoanalysis do? You don't even know what it is!"

"What do you expect?" roared the Doctor. "Can I diagnose it by absent treatment? I haven't had a chance to see the condition active yet!"

"All right!" said Pat, her strained nerves driving her to impatience. "You're here and Nick's here! Go on with your diagnosis; get it over with, and let's see what you can do. _You_ ought at least to be able to name the condition--the outstanding authority in the Middle West on neural and mental pathology!" Her tone was sardonic.

"Listen, Pat," said Horker with exaggerated patience, in the manner of one addressing a stupid child, "I've explained before that I can't get at the root of a mental aberration when the subject's as unstrung as your young man here seems to be. Psychoanalysis just won't work unless the subject is calm, composed, and not in a nervous state. Can you comprehend that?"

"Just dimly!" she snapped. "You ought to know another way--you, the outstanding authority--"

"Be still!" he interrupted gruffly. "Of course I know another way, if I wanted to drag all of us back to my office, where I have the equipment!--which I won't do tonight," he finished grimly.

"Then do it here."

"I haven't what I need."

"There's everything upstairs," said Pat. "It's all there, all Nick's father's equipment."

"Not tonight! That's final."

The girl's manner changed again. She turned troubled, imploring eyes on Horker. "Dr. Carl," she said plaintively, "I can't leave Nick now." She seized the arm of the silent, dejected youth, who had been standing passively by. "I can't leave him, really. I'd not be sure of seeing him again, ever. Please, Dr. Carl!"

"If these frenzies of yours," rumbled Horker, "are so violent and malicious, you ought to be confined. Do you know that, young man?"

"Yes, sir," mumbled Nick wretchedly.

"And I've thought of it," continued the Doctor. "I've thought of it!"

"Please!" cried Pat imploringly. "Won't you try, Dr. Carl?"

"The devil!" he growled. "All right, then."

He followed the girl up the stairs, while Nick trailed disconsolately behind. She led him back into the chamber they had quitted, where a curious odor of peach pits seemed to scent the air. Horker sniffed suspiciously, then seized the remaining beaker, raising it cautiously to his nostrils.

"Damnation!" he exploded. "Prussic acid--or cyanide! What in--" He caught sight of Pat's tragic eyes, and suddenly replaced the container. "Pat!" he groaned. "Pat, Honey!" He drew her into the circle of his great arm. "I'll help you, dear! All I can, with all my heart, since it means that much to you!" He groaned again under his breath. "Oh, my God!"

He held her a moment, patting her tousled black head with his massive, delicate fingered hand. Then he released her, turning to Nick.

"This the stuff?" he asked, brusquely, indicating the cabinet of bottles, with its splintered front.

Nick nodded. Pat sank to the chair beside the table and watched Horker as he scanned the array of containers. He pulled out a tiny wooden case and snapped it open to reveal a number of steel needles that glinted brightly in the yellow light. He grunted in satisfaction and continued his inspection.

"Atropine," he muttered, reading the labeled boxes. "Cocaine, daturine, hyoscine, hyoscyamine--won't do!"

"What do you need?" the girl queried faintly.

"A mild hypnotic," said the Doctor abstractedly, still searching. "Pretty good substitutes for psychoanalysis--certain drugs. Dulls the conscious mind, but not to complete unconsciousness. Good means of getting at the subconscious. See?"

"Sort of," said Pat. "If it only works!"

"Oh, it'll work if we can find--ah!" He seized a tiny cardboard box. "Scopolamine! This'll do the work."

He extracted a tiny glassy something from one or other of the boxes he held, and frowned down at it. He seized the carafe of water, plunged something pointed and shiny into it.

"Antiseptic," he muttered thoughtfully. He seized a brown bottle from the case, held it toward the light, and shook it. "Peroxide's gone flat," he growled. "Nothing but water."

He pulled a silver cigar-lighter from his pocket and snapped a yellow flame to it. He passed the point of the hypodermic rapidly back and forth through the little spear of fire. Finally he turned to Nick.