Chapter IX

Sunlight made a bright, creamy design on the drawn blind. Filtered sunlight filled the bedroom, like a coolly glowing liquid. The birds were chirruping importantly. He closed his eyes again and stretched luxuriously.

Let's see, it was about time he got started on that article for the _Journal_. And there was still some work to do on the revision of his "Textbook of Ethnology." Lots of time, but better get it out of the way. No telling when the government would want another brochure. And he ought to have a serious talk with Bronstein about his thesis. That boy had some good ideas, but he needed a balance wheel. And then his address to the Off-campus Mothers. Might as well tell them something useful--

Eyes still closed, he enjoyed to the full that most pleasant of sensations--the irresistible tug of work a man likes to do and is able to do well.

No need to get started right away, though. Today was too good a day for golf to miss. Might see what Gunnison was doing. And then he and Tansy had not made an expedition into the country this whole spring. He'd talk to her about it at breakfast. Saturday breakfast was an event. She must be getting it ready now. He felt as if a shower would make him very hungry. Must be late.

He opened an eye and focused the bedroom clock. Twelve thirty-five? Say, just when had he got to bed last night? What had he been doing?

Memory of the past few days uncoiled like a loosed spring, so swiftly that it started his heart pounding and brought him up with a jerk. Yet there was a difference. From the very first moment it all seemed incredible and unreal. He had the sensation of reading the very detailed case history of another person. His memories could not be made to fit with his present sense of well-being. What was stranger, they did not seriously disturb that sense of well-being.

He searched his mind diligently for traces of supernatural fear, of the sense of being watched and guarded, of that monstrous self-destructive impulse. He could not discover or even suggest to himself the slightest degree of such emotions. Whatever they had been, they were now part of the past, beyond the reach of everything except intellectual memory. "Spheres of alien thought!" Why, the very notion was bizarre. And yet somehow it had all happened. _Something_ had happened.

His movement had automatically taken him under the shower. And now, as he soaped himself and the warm water cascaded down, he wondered if he ought not to talk it all over with Jones of psychology or a good practicing psychiatrist. The mental contortions he'd gone through in the last few days would provide material for a whole treatise! Feeling as sound as he did this morning, it was impossible for him to entertain any ideas of serious mental derangement. No, what had happened was just one of those queer, inexplicable spasms of irrationality that can seize the sanest people, perhaps because they _are_ so sane--a kind of discharge of long-inhibited morbidity. Too bad, though, that he had bothered Tansy with it. Especially when her own nervous system had been in a shaky state. Poor kid, she had been working hard to cheer him up, last night in particular. It ought to have been the other way around. Well, he would make it up to her.

He shaved leisurely and with enjoyment. The razor behaved perfectly.

As he finished dressing, a doubt struck him. Again he searched his mind, closing his eyes like a man listening for an almost inaudible sound.

Nothing. Not the faintest trace.

He was whistling as he pushed into the kitchen.

* * * * *

There was no sign of breakfast. Beside the sink were some unwashed glasses, empty bottles, and an ice tray filled with tepid water.

"Tansy," he called. "Tansy!"

He walked through the house, with the vague apprehension that she might have passed out before getting to bed. They'd been drinking like fish. He went out to the garage and made sure that the car was still there. Maybe she'd walked to the grocer's to get something for breakfast. Unconsciously he began to hurry as he went back into the house.

This time when he looked in the study, he noticed the upset ink bottle, and the scrap of paper just beside it on the edge of the drying black pool. The message had come within an inch of being engulfed.

It was a hurried scrawl--twice the pen point had gouged through the paper--and it broke off twice in the middle of a sentence, but it was undeniably in Tansy's handwriting.

For a moment it isn't watching me. I didn't realize it would be too
strong for me. _Not two weeks not--two days!_ Don't try to follow
me. Only chance is to do exactly what I tell you. Take four lengths
of four-inch white cord and--

His eyes traced the smear going out from the black pool and ending in the indistinct print of a hand, and involuntarily his imagination recreated the scene. She had been scribbling desperately, stealing quick glances over her shoulder. Then _it_ had awakened to what she was doing and had roughly struck the pen out of her hand, and shaken her. He recalled the grip of those huge horny hands, and winced. And then ... then she had gotten together her things, very quietly although there was little chance of him awakening, and she had walked out of the house and down the street. And if she met anyone she knew, she had talked to them gayly, and laughed, because it was behind her, waiting for any false move, any attempt at escape.

So she had gone.

Where? Anywhere. Wherever the narrow corridor ended for _her_, no longer two weeks but only two days long.

In a flash of insight he understood _why_. If he hadn't been drunk last night, he would have guessed.

One of the oldest and best-established types of conjuration in the world. Transference of evils. Like the medicine man who conjures sickness into a stone, or into an enemy, or into himself--because he is better able to combat it--she had taken his curse upon herself. Shared his drink last night, shared his food. Used a thousand devices to bring them close together. It was all so obvious! He racked his brain to recover those last words she had said to him. "Everything you have is _mine_? All you have is _mine_?"

She had meant the curse.

And he had said, "Yes."

And then, without her formulas and her Protective Screen, the curse had proved too strong for her.

He wanted to run out into the street, to shout her name.

But the pool of ink had dried to glistening black flakes all around the margin. It must have been spilled hours ago--as early as last midnight even.

He beat his temple in a rage at his own impotence.

This mood did not last long. His anxiety persisted, grew stronger. But the supernatural terror rapidly died away. It could not sustain itself now that he no longer experienced it directly. Even the argument that he had lost his sensitivity only because the curse was now directed at her, did not convince him for a moment. No, there was nothing supernatural in this--no guardian except a figment of his and her neurotic nerves. What _had_ happened was that he had suggested all this to her. He had forced upon her the products of his own morbid imagination. Undoubtedly he had babbled everything to her while he was drunk. And it had worked on her suggestible nature--she already believed in witchcraft--until she had got the idea of transferring his curse to herself, and had convinced herself that the transference had actually occurred. And then gone off, God knew where!

And that was bad enough.

* * * * *

There was a light chime from the front door. He extracted a letter from the mailbox, ripped it open. It was addressed with a soft pencil, and the graphite had smeared. But he knew the handwriting.

The message was so jerky and uneven that he was some time reading it. It began and ended in the middle of a sentence.

--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." Then tie--

That was all. A continuation of the first message, with its bizarre formula. Had she really convinced herself that there was a guardian watching her, and that she could only communicate during the infrequent moments when its attention was elsewhere? He knew the answer. When you had an obsession you could convince yourself of anything.

He looked at the postmark. He recognized the name of a town several miles east of Hempnell. He could not think of a soul they knew there, or anything else about the town. His first impulse was to get out the car and rush over. But what could he do when he got there?

The phone was ringing. It was Evelyn Sawtelle.

"Is that you, Norman? Please ask Tansy to come to the phone. I wish to speak to her."

The question was rapped out with precision, as if its wording had been carefully planned.

"I'm sorry, but she isn't in."

Evelyn Sawtelle did not sound surprised at the answer--her second question came too quickly. "Where is she then? I must get in touch with her."

He thought. "She's out in the country," he said, "visiting some friends of ours. Is there something I can tell her?"

"No, I wish to speak to Tansy. What is your friend's number?"

"They don't have a phone!" he said angrily.

"No? Well, it's nothing of importance." She sounded oddly pleased, as if his anger had given her satisfaction. "I'll call again. I must hurry now. Hervey is so busy with his new responsibilities. Good-by."

He replaced the phone. Now, why the devil--Suddenly an explanation occurred to him. Perhaps Tansy had been seen leaving town, and Evelyn Sawtelle had scented the possibility of some sort of scandal and had wanted to check. Perhaps Tansy had been carrying a suitcase.

He looked in Tansy's dressing room. The small suitcase was gone. Drawers were open. It looked as if she had packed in a hurry. But what about money? He examined his billfold. It was empty. Forty-odd dollars missing.

You could go a long way on forty dollars. The jerky illegibility of the message made it look as if it had been written on a train or bus.

The next few hours were highly unpleasant. He checked schedules, and found that several busses and trains passed through the town from which Tansy's letter had been sent. He drove to the stations and made guarded inquiries, with no success.

He wanted to do all the things you should do when someone disappears, but he held back. What could he say? "My wife, sir, has disappeared. She is suffering from the delusion that--" And what if she should be found and questioned in her present state of mind, examined by a doctor, before he could get to her?

No, this was something for him to handle alone. But if he did not get a line on it soon, he would have no choice. He would have to go to the police, inventing some story to cover the facts.

She had written, "Two days." If she believed that she were doomed to die in two days, might not the belief be enough? That was his worst fear.

Toward evening he drove back to the house, repressing the chimerical hope that she had returned in his absence. The special delivery carrier was just getting into his car. Norman pulled up alongside.

"Anything for Saylor?"

"Yes, sir. It's in the box."

The message was longer this time, but just as difficult to read.

At last its attention is somewhere else. If I control my emotions,
it isn't so quick to notice my thoughts. But it was hard for me to
post the last letter. Norman, you _must_ do what I tell you. The
two days end Sunday midnight. Then the Bay. You _must_ follow
all directions. Tie the four white cords into a granny, a reef, a
cat's-paw, and a carrick bend. Tie the gut in a bowline. Then add--

He looked at the post mark. The place was two hundred miles east. Not on the railroad lines, as far as he could recall. That should narrow down the possibilities considerably.

One word from the letter was repeating itself in his mind, like a musical note struck again and again until it becomes unendurable.

Bay. Bay. Bay. Bay.

* * * * *

The memory came of a hot afternoon fifteen years ago. It was just before they were married. They were sitting on the edge of a ramshackle little pier. He remembered the salt smell, and the faintly fishy, dry-wood smell of the splintery old planks.

"Funny," she had said, looking down into the green water, "but I always used to think that I'd end up down there. Not that I'm afraid of it. I've always swum way out. But even when I was a little girl I'd look at the Bay--maybe green, maybe blue, maybe gray, covered with whitecaps, glittering with moon-beams, or shrouded by fog--and I'd think, 'Tansy, the Bay is going to get you, but not for years and years.' Funny, isn't it?"

And he laughed and put his arms around her tight, and the green water had gone on lapping at the piles heavy with seaweed.

He had been visiting with her family, when her parents were still alive, at their home near Bayport on the southern shore of New York Bay.

The narrow corridor suited itself to its victim's most cherished fear. It ended for her in the Bay, tomorrow midnight.

She must be heading for the Bay.

He made several calls--first bus lines, then railroad and air. It was impossible to get a reservation on the air lines, but tonight's train would get him into Jersey City an hour ahead of the bus she must be traveling, according to the deductions he made from the place and time of the postmarks.

He had ample time to pack a few things, cash a check on his way to the station--

He spread her three notes on the table--the one in pen, the two in pencil. He reread the crazy incomplete formula. He shook his head.

He frowned. Would a scientist neglect the millionth-and-one possibility? Would the commander of a trapped army disdain a stratagem just because it was not in the books? This stuff looked like gibberish. Yesterday it might have meant something to him emotionally. Today it was just nonsense. But tomorrow night it might conceivably represent a fantastic last chance.

"Norman, you _must_ do what I tell you." The scrawled words stared at him.

He went out in the kitchen and got a ball of white twine.

He rummaged in the closet for his squash racket and cut out the two center strings. That ought to do for gut.

The fireplace had not been cleaned since the stuff from Tansy's dressing table had been burned. He poked around the edges until he found a piece of lodestone.

He located the recording of Scriabin's "Ninth Sonata" and started the phonograph, putting in a new needle. He glanced at his wrist watch and paced the room restlessly. Gradually the music took hold of him. It was not pleasant music. There was something tantalizing and exasperating about it, with its droning melody and rocking figures in the base and shakes in the treble and elaborate ornamentation that writhed up and down the piano keyboard. It rasped the nerves.

He began to remember things he had heard about it. Hadn't Tansy once told him that Scriabin called his "Ninth Sonata" a "Black Mass" and had developed an antipathy to playing it? Scriabin, who had conceived a color organ and tried to translate mysticism into music, and had died of a peculiar lip infection. An innocent-faced Russian with a huge curling mustache. Critical phrases Tansy had repeated to him floated through his mind. "The poisonous 'Ninth Sonata'--the most perfidious piece of music ever conceived--" Ridiculous! How could music be anything but an abstract pattern of tones?

And yet--while listening to the thing--one could think differently.

Faster and faster it went. The lovely second theme became infected, was distorted into something raucous and discordant--a march of the damned--a dance of the damned--breaking off suddenly when it had reached an unendurable pitch. Then a repetition of the droning first theme, ending on a soft yet grating note low in the keyboard.

He removed the needle, sealed it in an envelope, and packed it along with the rest of his stuff.

On an afterthought, he tore out of the big dictionary a page carrying an illustrated list of knots.

The telephone stopped him as he was going out.

"Oh, Professor Saylor, would you mind calling Tansy to the phone?" Mrs. Carr's voice was very amicable.

He repeated what he had told Mrs. Sawtelle.

"I'm glad she's having a rest in the country," said Mrs. Carr. "You know, Professor Saylor, I don't think that Tansy's been looking so well lately. I've been a little worried. You're sure she's all right?"

"How do you mean?"

It was then the other voice broke in.

"What's the idea of checking up on me? Do you think I'm a child? I know what I'm doing!"

"Be quiet!" said Mrs. Carr. Then, in her sweet voice. "I think someone must have cut in on us. Good-by, Professor Saylor."

The line went dead.

He picked up his suitcase and walked out.