When the woman fell, Barbara leaped upon her and smeared her with lipstick. Mrs. Latimer tried to cry out and Barbara forced the lipstick into her mouth.
Mrs. Latimer squirmed over on her stomach. Barbara straddled her and lifted her skirt, then, seizing a hand mirror from the bedside table, began to strike her across the buttocks.
The glass shattered but Barbara did not stop. She pounded shards deep into the woman's flesh. When Barbara released her, Mrs. Latimer was only semiconscious.
Barbara calmly put on her coat and hat, rode the elevator to the lobby and caught a taxi home. As always after such an act of violence, she slept soundly....
AUTHOR'S PROFILE
WOMEN OF EVIL marks the publication of Wenzell Brown's 28th book in a distinguished career that has been highlighted by several awards including the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for the best fact-crime book of 1958 as well as the Freedoms Foundation Award for an article in Redbook Magazine.
Born in Portland, Maine, Mr. Brown received his Master of Arts degree from Columbia University and did graduate work at the University of London. Later he became assistant professor of Western languages at the Lingnan University in Canton, China.
For the past several years Mr. Brown has made his home in New York City where he devotes himself exclusively to free lance writing.
CHAPTER ONE
A Scream in the Night
A piercing scream filled the night.
Tenants of the huge housing foundation in lower Manhattan rushed to their windows to see a naked girl crouched precariously on the sill of a window on the twelfth floor of one of the towering, monolithic buildings. Her lithe, high-breasted figure was silhouetted against the pale blur of the room beyond.
To some of the observers it seemed that vague threatening shadows moved in on the girl. A few claimed later that they saw hands trying to thrust her outward so that she would catapult to the concrete parking lot far below.
The wordless, high-pitched scream echoed again.
Before it ended, an overhead light snapped on in the bedroom behind her, bathing the scene in its bright glow. Every line of the girl's body was etched in clear detail: the firm breasts, the narrow waist, the flaring hips, the long tapering legs.
Hitherto, the view of the room's interior had been blocked by the girl but now she cowered to one side, hugging the frame. Two men appeared, flanking the window. The stout, balding man in shirt-sleeves stretched out his hands, his fingers curling to seize her.
"No! No!" she screamed. "Don't touch me or I'll jump!"
The man spoke, but his voice did not carry to the listeners.
The girl shouted hysterically, "Keep your dirty hands off me. I'd rather die than let you maul me."
The man lunged forward, trying to catch her legs, but she shuddered away from him, swaying dangerously over the dark void. She swung back and her bare foot lashed out into the man's face, sending him reeling backwards.
Before he could regain his balance there was a tremendous pounding on the apartment door and a loud order to open up. The command was obeyed almost instantly, but not before the lower panels were stoved in. Three men came crowding into the room. Two wore the pale gray of private guards; the third was in the uniform of the city police.
The young officer brushed past the man who had admitted him and raced to the bedroom. The two men who were already there turned to stare at him, slack-mouthed. But the girl leapt from the ledge and threw herself into the policeman's arms, crying, "Thank God, you've come. You won't let them do anything more to me, will you?"
The embarrassed officer patted her bare shoulder awkwardly. "Don't you worry, girlie. Nobody's going to hurt you while I'm around. But you better get some duds on."
The girl's dress, bra, panties, stockings and slippers were spread about, helter-skelter. She ran around, snatching them up, and disappeared into the bathroom.
Meanwhile, there was a scuffle outside. The man who had opened the door had tried to escape. He had -edged into the corridor, which was now crowded with babbling neighbors, and had darted down the fire stairs. Two teenage youths had taken off after him.
They had cornered him two stories below and had punched and kicked him into submission. With the help of a guard, they had forced him to return to the apartment. This man was badly injured. A long cut had been opened along his cheek, his lip was bleeding, two fingers were broken and his right eye was beginning to swell.
By the time the girl emerged from the bathroom, the police had been reinforced by two officers from a squad car. The guards were urging the curiosity seekers to return to their apartments. The three men huddled together sheepishly in the front room had every appearance of guilt. Quite obviously they had been drinking heavily and their clothes were disheveled. Empty gin bottles, beer cans, glasses and laden ash trays indicated that this was the tail end of a drunken spree.
The stout, nearly bald man was protesting, "We thought we were alone in the place until we heard her scream. We didn't even know she was here."
The girl was white-faced but otherwise appeared composed. She pointed an accusing finger at the man. "That's a lie. He was trying to rape me. They all were."
He lunged forward, his fists balled as though to strike her. He shouted, "You're making it all up, you vicious bitch."
One of the officers pushed his way between them. The man struggled briefly and the officer struck him an open-handed blow that sent him sprawling across a sofa.
The officer turned to the girl and asked her if she wished to file complaints against the men. She had begun to sob and was wringing her hands but she agreed to swear out warrants for their arrest.
The men were led downstairs, herded into a police car and taken to the nearest precinct house. The girl was escorted to a taxi and accompanied by an officer to the station.
Here the girl gave the name of Barbara Reed. She told the following version of the events leading to the alleged rape attempt:
On the preceding night she had met a young bank teller named Chapman in the cocktail lounge of a mid-Manhattan hotel. They had become friendly and she had accepted an invitation to have dinner with him on the evening of the party. After dinner he had told her he was meeting some "old college pals" and asked if she would like to come along. Inasmuch as "he had acted like a gentleman," she agreed.
In the elevator, on the way up to the twelfth floor, Chapman had said, "There'll probably be some frumpy old women up there but we'll soon get rid of them. Then we can have ourselves a ball."
"What do you mean by a ball?"
"Oh, you know. A couple of these guys are rich. There ought to be a hundred bucks in it for you."
She had been too stunned to protest and had let Chapman hustle her into the apartment. There had been six men and three women in the group. Everyone had treated her like a prostitute and she had determined to escape as soon as possible. A climax had been reached when "the fat man" started "pinching and mauling" her.
She had fled from the apartment but, downstairs in the lobby, she was overcome by weakness and collapsed in a chair.
"Everything went all blank and funny," she said. "I'm sure somebody doctored my drinks with knockout drops."
Before she could recover, Chapman appeared and insisted that she return to the party. She thought she must have "blanked out" because the next thing she remembered she was lying on the bed in the apartment and someone had stripped her naked.
She managed to stumble to her feet and peer into the next room. The party had broken up except for the three men under arrest. They were arguing as to "who should have the first crack at me." While she watched, one of them drew out a pack of playing cards and they agreed to draw to determine the order in which they would rape her.
She had tiptoed to the window of the bedroom, crawled up on the ledge and screamed for help.
Barbara was convincing and the police were inclined to believe her, but the three men told a diametrically opposed story.
The stout man identified himself as Dr. Egon Netzelnimski, 42, an associate professor of economics at a famous university. The other men were Samuel Oliver, an account executive, and Jason Moran, a retired businessman.
Netzelnimski was the lessee of the apartment. All of the men gathered there were graduates of the same Midwestern college, the party being in the nature of an alumni reunion. Three of the married men had brought then-wives. They had been talking and drinking amiably when Chapman arrived with Barbara.
The friendly atmosphere was immediately disrupted. She had disdained both beer and gin, which she called "plebeian." At her insistence, Chapman went to a package store and brought back a bottle of Scotch. Barbara sat on the edge of her chair, primly sipping her drink and ignoring any comment made to her.
One of the wives moved to her side and tried to engage her in conversation. Barbara's voice rose shrilly.
"You needn't look down your nose at me just because you went to some jerkwater college. I'll let you know I'm just as good as you are."
The woman beat a hasty retreat. Barbara continued sipping her drink, sometimes tapping the floor with her foot and humming to herself.
Netzelnimski, in an attempt to ease the tension, had mixed her a fresh drink. As he handed it to her, he placed his hand on her shoulder and made some trite remark.
She had rounded on him, shouting, "Keep your filthy paws off me, you disgusting fat pig."
In the shocked silence Barbara rose, knocking her glass to the floor, and turned to Chapman. "Are you going to let him get away with mauling me? What kind of a man are you?"
Chapman said, "Aw, take it easy, Babs. He didn't mean anything."
"He didn't mean anything! In another second he would have had his hand down my dress."
"Cut it out, Babs. You know that's not true."
"So now you're calling me a liar. If I were a man I'd knock your teeth in. I'm getting out of this rotten pigpen while I'm in one piece. I don't ever want to see you or your cheap friends again."
Whirling, Barbara ran to the foyer. The outer door gave a resounding slam that shook the room.
Chapman, red-faced and awkward, said, "Gee, I'm sorry. I didn't know Babs was that way. I only met her last night. I shouldn't have brought her. But how was I to know?"
The others had tried to reassure him but he apologized and left, saying that he'd better make sure Barbara got a cab. Shortly afterward, the married couples took their departures.
The three remaining men tried to overcome the supercharged atmosphere by getting down to some serious drinking. They knew nothing more of Barbara until they heard her scream. They had no idea when she re-entered the apartment and they swore that none of them had touched her except in an attempt to prevent her fall from the window.
Meanwhile, the police had routed John Chapman out of bed. At first he denied knowing Barbara and insisted that he had spent the night at a moving picture house. His obvious lies were more for the benefit of his wife than the police. At the station house he corroborated much of Netzelnimski's account. After Barbara had stormed out of the party, he had made a half-hearted attempt to find her but had soon given up. He was too humiliated to return to his friends. Instead, he had driven home and gone to bed.
The police were in a quandary. The men were all substantial citizens. But why should Barbara make up such a story if it were not true? How could she have returned to the apartment without it being known? Whom were they to believe?
The answers came with unexpected speed. A detective, recently transferred from Greenwich Village, walked into the room where Barbara was being interviewed. He rocked back on his heels. "What's this crazy dame up to now?"
"Do you know her?"
"Know her! She's Babs Reddington. She makes more trouble for the cops than a gaggle of teen-age gangs. I tell you she's a witch."
Once confronted with her true identity and her record of past misadventures, Barbara began to alter her story, admitting that she was "a little confused."
Gradually, the truth emerged. Everything that Netzelnimski had said was accurate.
Barbara, pouting, claimed that the party had been stodgy and that everyone "high-hatted me and tried to put me down with their fancy talk, so I decided to get even."
How did she get back into the apartment?
Smiling at her own cleverness, Barbara explained: "I went as far as the door and slammed it shut but I didn't go outside. Instead, I waited in the foyer and heard them say awful things about me. I hadn't done anything wrong and I decided I'd make them pay for the way they'd treated me."
She'd scampered to the rear of the apartment and had hidden in a pantry until only the three men remained. Then she slipped into the bedroom and undressed, scattering clothing about. She lay down on the bed and waited for one of the men to enter the room, at which time she intended to create a loud scene.
However, the friends had been busy talking over old times and Barbara napped for a while. When she awoke she heard the voices going on, seemingly endlessly. Growing restless, she had decided to precipitate action by mounting the window ledge and screaming.
With the withdrawal of Barbara's charges, the prisoners were released immediately. But already a tremendous amount of damage had been done. Newspaper reporters had caught wind of the story and the tabloids built it up into sensational headlines.
Netzelnimski was evicted from his apartment and the university demanded his resignation.
Several accounts were withdrawn from Oliver and the promotion he had been promised was canceled.
John Chapman's wife refused to believe that his relationship with Barbara had been innocent and sued him for divorce.
The retired businessman, Moran, suffered worst of all. It was he who had been beaten up by the teen-age toughs. He collapsed of a heart attack in the police station and was removed to a hospital. He was discharged after six days but never recovered fully. He died four months later.
Barbara had wrought havoc in the lives of four men who were virtually unknown to her and who had done her no harm. But she had committed no crimes for which she could be punished legally. Conceivably, misdemeanor charges of disorderly conduct or indecent exposure could be filed against her, but it would seem un-likely that they could be prosecuted successfully, and even if they were, she would probably be released with a fine.
Her victims could have pressed civil damage suits against her but this would have entailed additional unfavorable publicity, with little hope of any substantial recompense.
Netzelnimski, however, was a stubborn man. He dug into Barbara's past and learned, among other things, that she was four times widowed. Two of her husbands had committed suicide, a third had died in an accident which could have been the fulfillment of the death wish. The fourth had been killed in a brawl which Barbara had instigated. At twenty-seven, she had brought tragedy to scores of people and varying degrees of unhappiness to many more.
He was particularly impressed by a phrase which was repeated again and again, with only slight variations, by those who knew her: "Barbara seems possessed by some magic power of evil. I think she's a witch."
He remembered that the detective in the precinct house had called her a witch, too.
Determined to put an end to her deviltry, Netzelnimski filed a suit against Barbara for slander. He only dropped it when she agreed, through her lawyer, to place herself under the care of a prominent Manhattan psychiatrist, Dr. Carl Ormond Norfleet.
CHAPTER TWO
Do Witches Walk Among Us? do witches walk among us?
Can Barbara Reddington be one of their number?
To the first question, Dr. Leopold Stein, one of England's most noted psychiatrists, gives a resounding Yes! Writing in the erudite Journal of Analytical Psychology and later in a book entitled Loathsome Women, Dr. Stein has launched the theory that a certain number of women are actually witches. He defends the witchcraft trials of the past as being based upon realities.
The modern witch, however, is not the ugly hag depicted in cartoons. Instead, she is likely to be young, unusually attractive physically and possessed of a striking personality which dominates those with whom she comes in contact. Dr. Stein is convinced that these women have entered into a covenant with the forces of evil and that they have set out to destroy the lives of others for some perverse satisfaction which can be sustained only by creating disturbance, confusion, suffering, humiliation and pain among those who are drawn into their circles.
Preposterous as Dr. Stein's theory may appear at first glance, many psychiatrists agree that the term "witch" is applicable to certain women who have been treated by them, although some indicate that witch should be spelled with a b.
In preparation of this book, a group of seventeen eminent psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers with advanced training in psychiatry were queried on Dr. Stein's thesis. While some of them tended to scoff at the idea of contemporary witchcraft, in each case a little additional thought produced a story of a woman patient who might well be termed a witch. Some of the psychiatrists preferred other diagnostic labels, such as "the shallow personality,"
"the psychopathic inferior" or "the criminal psychopath," but, in each instance, it was admitted in the end that the woman under discussion "really is a witch."
Twenty-three detailed case studies, including that of Barbara Reddington, were made available for contrast and comparison, under the strict proviso that fictitious names should be employed to conceal the true identity of both the psychiatrists and their patients.
Certain common personality traits mark this group of women. Outwardly they are presentable and frequently they are spoken of as being "beautiful." Almost without exception they have a curious primitive magnetism that draws large numbers of men to them. Other common characteristics are that they dress well, have artistic leanings, are witty and quick to establish superficial friendships. On the negative side they are greedy, destructive, cruel, unreliable, habitual liars and usually the victims of a variety of sexual aberrations.
The first indication of the "witch" is the disturbed, supercharged atmosphere with which she is surrounded. Wherever she goes people have a sense of uneasiness, impending danger or excitement. These women are experts at flattery, cajolery and sexual excitation, and also possess unusual talents for stirring up quarrels, stimulating jealousies and spreading slander and malicious rumors.
The "witch" is rarely involved in serious criminal activities which can lead to her own arrest or imprisonment, but she is the catalyst through which otherwise relatively decent men and women are impelled to crimes of violence. She triggers off marital fidelity, fist fights, and, in extreme cases, murder. She makes men who resist her charms feel "unmanly" and even suspect of homosexuality. On occasion she persuades her admirers to commit larceny, armed robbery, suicide or assault.
Rarely does such a woman pay any legal penalty for the crimes which she sets in motion, nor does she feel any remorse for what she has done. However, beneath her bright, brittle surface she is disorganized, insecure, unhappy and unable to achieve any genuine satisfactions in life.
Delving deep into the backgrounds of these women reveals that they share certain childhood experiences. The witch does not spring into life full-blown. Family upheavals can usually be traced back for at least two generations. The personality disturbances found in milder forms in the grandparents and parents have a cumulative effect, reaching fruition in the child.
Without exception, hostility, either latent or active, is felt by the witch for both her mother and father. In her early introduction to sex there has been a confusion between pain and pleasure which has resulted in sadomasochistic complexes. She has had actual sexual experience, usually of a revolting nature, at a tender age. Frequently she has been the victim of harsh and undue punishments. She has been lonely in childhood and, in consequence, has created a fantasy world which is so vivid that, at times, it replaces reality.
The witch is tortured by self-hatred and the desire for self-destruction. However, she is either incapable of recognizing this or refuses to do so. Instead she projects her hate and her destructive impulses outward, many times centering them upon an innocent target.
She also surrounds herself with symbols and talismans of a thinly veiled phallic nature. She resents men and many of her misdeeds are substitutes for the act of castration. She tends to experiment with lesbianism because it enables her to cast herself in the role of male, but she despises her own sex and is incapable of establishing enduring interpersonal relationships.
The fact of the matter is that she has no interest in anyone else but is completely absorbed in self-pity, the compulsive desire for vengeance, and her plans for creating a tumultuous scene in which she holds the center of the stage.
In a surprising number of cases the witch has dabbled in black magic and even managed to work her way into covins in which versions of the Black Mass are performed. She demands a ritualistic approach to sex which instinctively imitates ancient forms of devil worship of which she may have no knowledge.
Dr. Stein, in describing the women whom he brands as witches, notes that none of them were capable of shedding genuine tears and that they disliked to meet his gaze as though in fear that he should recognize that they possessed the power of "the evil eye" which could cast spells on others. He also records their sensitivity to odors and that each of them "suffered from a foul vaginal discharge at one time or another." For these and other reasons, Dr. Stein states that he "arrived at the inescapable diagnosis that his patients were, psychologically speaking, witches-women who in another age would have been harried or burned at the stake."
Actually, the four case studies presented by Dr. Stein seem very mild indeed when compared with the twenty-three cases provided by American psychiatrists. Conceivably, America has developed a more virulent type of witch than England. What seems more likely is that Dr. Stein has drawn his women from the limited number of his own patients. Moreover, by his own statement, each case study is a composite of four or more women.
This is not true of Barbara Reddington, Mickey Hors-dorf, Georgia Mason or Eva Coo. Each is a genuine person, whose life has been explored to the greatest extent of the psychiatrist's skill.
The interviews with Barbara took eighty-one hours. Each fact was checked and rechecked with all available witnesses. Moreover, many of the interviews were conducted while Barbara was in a state of light narcosis induced by sodium pentothal. Hypnosis was also employed, by means of which Barbara was able to recreate scenes and conversations in total recall. But is Barbara a witch?
Dr. Norfleet is more cautious than Dr. Stein in his claims.
The answer to this question, he points out, is largely a matter of definition.
The Lexicon of Witchcraft, edited by Mahler, defines a witch as follows: "A mortal woman who is devoted to the infernal empire and who has entered into a covenant with the Devil through which she is granted unnatural powers, including the ability to practice black magic."
If the Devil is to be used in a symbolic sense to represent the forces of evil, Barbara may well have been said to have entered into such a covenant. Dr. Norfleet cavils at the term "black magic" but admits that Barbara possessed, from childhood, an uncanny skill in recognizing and exploiting the weaknesses, the submerged violence and the hidden frustrations in others.
Dr. Norfleet qualifies his statement that Barbara is a witch.
But beyond question, she is a woman of evil.
CHAPTER THREE
The Seeds of Evil
(The Childhood of Barbara Reddington)
Barbara's early interviews with Dr. Norfleet were not fruitful because she preferred to weave elaborate fantasies to telling the truth. Not until she was in a state of narcosis did the breakthrough occur. But once started, Barbara was only too eager to pour out every detail of her life. Actually, when her story was patched together, with its innumerable acts of sex and sadism, it formed a narrative far more incredible than her wildest lies.
Barbara's father was Mark Reddington, and it is worthy of note that despite her four marriages and her frequent use of aliases, Barbara consistently reverted to the Reddington name. Mark was a man of medium height, slight of build, with blond hair, blue eyes and finely cut, regular features. The Reddington family had once been wealthy and influential in the New Jersey town in which they lived but had lost most of their money in the Depression.
Mark attended a topflight preparatory school and was admitted to an Ivy League college from which he was dismissed at the end of his freshman year because of low grades.
Mark possessed a pleasing personality but was weak and ineffectual. Instead of striking out on his own, he returned to the home of his widowed mother. There were two older sisters in the family but they had married and moved away. The mother-son relationship, always close, now developed into a reciprocally obsessive dependency.
Mark had vague artistic leanings but not set goals. He lounged about the house until, by chance, he drifted into a little theater group. He was an indifferent actor but enjoyed the backstage atmosphere. As most of the players were employed at regular jobs, minor tasks about the theater fell to him. In time, he was selected to become the stage manager.
During this period he received no salary and was supported by his mother. Occasionally he brought friends home from the theater but his mother showed her disapproval so openly that they were too uncomfortable to return. Among the group was the wife of the owner of the local radio station. When an opening cropped up as assistant program director, she suggested Mark. He was hired and, for the first time, found himself employed in work which he enjoyed.
Shortly afterward, Mark met a bit actress and model who used the name of Nancy Shaw. Nancy was flamboyantly pretty. She came from an impoverished background and had not completed grammar school. She used make-up and perfume lavishly, dressed in an exaggeratedly theatrical style and had a warm, husky voice.
Mark, knowing his mother would object to Nancy, never took her home. Instead, he met her clandestinely, spending weekends with her in New York or Philadelphia. He had no intention that the affair should end in marriage but Nancy became pregnant. Reluctantly he agreed to elope and the couple were married by a justice of the peace in Maryland.
Mark took his bride home to his stony-faced and unrelenting mother. Less than five months later a child was born and given the name of Barbara, after the elder Mrs. Reddington.
Barbara's earliest memories were of bickering between the two women, who were constantly at dagger's point. Mark spent less and less time at home because, as soon as he arrived, he was caught up in the feud. Usually, when he did appear, he had fortified himself for the ordeal by copious drinking.
Barbara aligned herself with the grandmother from the start. Mrs. Reddington deliberately poisoned the child's mind against the mother but, in so doing, alienated her from the father, too.
Often, in the child's presence, she would ask, "How could Mark let a cheap woman like that trap him into marriage?"
At other times, when Mark and Nancy had retired, Mrs. Reddington would come and sit by Barbara's bed. Shaking with anger, she would say, "I could die of mortification when I think of that slut in my son's bed."
Like Mark, Nancy took to absenting herself from the home, sometimes for days at a stretch. Her excuse was that she was resuming her work as a model, but often when she did come home she was in a state of advanced intoxication.
Mrs. Reddington insisted that Nancy's modeling was a pretense and that she was actually a call girl. She railed and fumed at her son to secure a divorce.
"She's no good," she would scream. "Unless you get rid of her, God knows what she may do to the child. We've got to keep Barbara away from her."
"After all," Mark would interpose reasonably, "she is Barbara's mother."
"That may be, but the child's a Reddington. I'm going to see to it that she's brought up properly."
Naturally Barbara did not understand the words she overheard, but the atmosphere of friction excited her and piqued her curiosity. She sensed that she was the center of these nagging three-sided quarrels and this gave her a sense of importance.
When Barbara was four, a second child was born into the family. The girl was christened Janina, after her maternal grandmother, but was always called Janie. The sibling jealousy, recognized by psychiatrists as a forerunner of personality maladjustment, took on unusual aspects in this instance.
Mrs. Reddington declared that Janie was not Mark's daughter and refused to have anything to do with her. On the other hand, Nancy, who had always appeared indifferent to her first daughter, was devoted to Janie. Barbara, who had taken it for granted that she was the focus of attention in the household, attempted to woo the mother by following her about, crying and showering her with external signs of affection.
Nancy responded by being irritable and sharp-tongued. To Barbara, Janie appeared the crux of her difficulties, something to be hated and destroyed. When no one was about she would slap and push the infant until Janie began to howl. Then Barbara would rush from the room or pretend innocence by playing in a corner with her toys. There can be no doubt that she would have done serious injury to her sister if she had had the strength and knowledge of how to do so.
One afternoon Barbara tiptoed into the nursery, loosened the side of the crib and yanked Janie out, so that the two of them tumbled to the floor together. Nancy, hearing the screams, rushed upstairs and cuddled and petted the baby. She then turned on Barbara in fury and, laying her across her knee, proceeded to give her a sound spanking with a hairbrush. Mrs. Reddington, who had been napping in her own room, was aroused by the sounds and hurried to the nursery.
Flinging herself on Nancy, Mrs. Reddington wrested the hairbrush from her and shouted, "Don't you ever dare strike Barbara again."
"She's my kid. If she needs a licking, I'm the one to give it to her."
"You try it again and I swear I'll kill you."
"Do you know what she did? She pulled Janie right out of her crib. She might have killed her."
"What do I care about Janie? She's not a Reddington, anyway."
"That's a filthy lie."
"Don't you call me a liar. What's more, you get out of my house. I won't have you here any longer."
"I'll go when Mark tells me to. Not before."
"I'll see to it that Mark tells you tonight."
"So you can have him alone? You'd love that, wouldn't you? Then you can crawl right into bed with him, like you always wanted to."
Mrs. Reddington slapped Nancy hard across the face. Nancy flew at the older woman, clawing at her cheek so that thin lines of blood showed. Mrs. Reddington seized Nancy's wrists and wrestled her back against the bed where they fell down together. Despite her age, Mrs. Reddington was the stronger of the two. Straddling Nancy's body, she gripped her hair with both hands and shook her until she was crying. Finally, Nancy rolled to the floor and lay there in a quivering heap.
More than twenty years later, when Barbara was relating this incident to Dr. Norfleet, she reproduced, in a hypnotic state, her own reactions. She jumped from one foot to the other, giving shrill little cries and clapping her hands. Obviously she'd been far more excited than frightened.
After the fight, Mrs. Reddington rose from the bed, straightened out her clothing and, taking Barbara firmly by the hand, led her into her own bedroom. She bathed the child and dressed her in fresh clothes, caressing her during the process. Later on they went out, stopping in a drugstore where Barbara was treated to a chocolate fudge sundae, then going on to a movie and dinner in a cafeteria. They did not return home until after dark. Mark was already there.
Mrs. Reddington hustled Barbara upstairs and locked her in the bedroom. The sound of quarreling voices came from below but, though she strained to hear, Barbara could only make out an occasional word. Some time later, Mrs. Reddington stamped angrily up the stairs. Barbara spent the night in her grandmother's wide bed.
From that day on, the house was divided into two camps. Mrs. Reddington and Barbara were together constantly. The two women ceased speaking to each other and the children were kept apart. The pattern was only broken during the brief intervals when Mark was home.
Barbara's reactions to her father were highly ambivalent. She claimed there was a deep attachment and devotion on her part. Hostility and bitterness, however, were clearly indicated by her criticism of his inability to control the women and his failure to take a firm stand that would have given security to the home.
Under hypnosis, her resentments became sharper. Subconsciously, at least, she was aware that Mark was the pivot about whom the struggle between the two women revolved. She coveted this position herself. Through overheard quarrels, she recognized that the jealously related to the bedroom activities of her parents. This resulted in a prurient curiosity and, whenever possible, she listened and spied upon them. Without a full understanding of her motives, she wished to strip Mark of his symbols of masculinity and to assume his male role. Thus the castration complex which, according to many psychiatrists, is the root of most female sexual aberrations, had already started to take shape.
When Barbara was eight, her father was offered an executive post with a radio station in New York. In order to be within commuting distance of the city, Mark moved his family to a town in northern New Jersey. Needless to say, the elder Mrs. Reddington made the move with them.
The new home had several unusual facets. It was the last house on a blind street. A previous owner had been a florist, specializing in miniature Japanese pines and other shrub growth. On giving up the house, he had let these trees run wild. In consequence, the large fields at the side and the rear of the house were veritable forests of stunted trees.
A quarter of a mile away, a sluggish stream ran beside the rusted rails of an abandoned railroad spur. This was a natural place for derelicts to congregate and, despite occasional raids by the police, hobo jungles sprang up repeatedly. Because of this, Barbara was strictly forbidden to play in the shrub forrest.
Naturally Barbara disobeyed these orders. One August afternoon, she espied a haze of smoke rising from beside the tracks. She crept through the miniature pines until she emerged onto a clearing.
Two men were sprawled on the parched earth beside a small fire. One was short, with matted gray hair, rheumy eyes and a stubble of beard. His companion was much younger, with olive skin, sleek black hair and coarse features. He was wearing an open sport shirt and stained, rumpled, khaki pants.
Neither man noticed Barbara as she inched into the clearing. The older man stirred and went to the fire to pour coffee into a tin can. He saw the girl and gave a start. The scalding coffee spilled over his hand and he swore.
The young man said, "What's eatin' you, Max?" He followed the other man's gaze and saw Barbara, too.
He said, "For Crizzake, where did you come from, doll? Do you live around here?"
The man called Max interrupted. Making shooing motions toward Barbara, he said harshly, "Beat it, kid. Get the hell out of here."
The young man pulled him back. "Don't be that way. She's real cute. Let her hang around if she wants to."
Max turned angrily on his companion. "Cut it out, Bob. This is just a baby. Leave her alone."
"Don't get your bowels in a uproar. I ain't going to hurt her." He patted his pockets and came out with a package of gum. He asked Barbara, "What about it, doll? Do you like the chewy stuff?"
Barbara took a step toward him but Max pushed between them. He shouted, "Scram, kid. Run for home. Beat it."
Bob grabbed him by the shoulder and twisted him about. He said harshly, "What about minding your own goddamn business? Or do you want me to punch the hell out of you?"
Max squirmed helplessly in the younger man's grip. "I ain't goin' to let you pull any funny stuff."
"Like what?"
"You know. Like that kid in Trenton."
"Keep your mouth shut. And get something straight. If I get the hot squat, I'll see you burn, too."
"I don't care. By God, I ain't going to get mixed up in nothin' else like that."
Bob hit him. The old man reeled and fell beside the fire. When he stumbled to his feet he had the tin of hot coffee in his hand.
Bob charged him and Max flung the coffee at him. Most of the coffee slopped over the edge of the can to the ground but a few drops splattered across Bob's face.
With a bellow of rage, Bob gripped the old man by the throat, lifted him off his feet and flung him into the brush. He pushed the bushes aside and kicked the prostrate man twice in the head.
Barbara watched the fight, half frightened but completely fascinated. This was the first time two men had fought over her and she found the struggle fraught with excitement. It was a situation which she was to re-create over and over again in future years, one with which she could never be surfeited.
When Bob came out of the bushes his eyes were glazed but, seeing that Barbara had made no attempt to escape, he managed a grin.
"Hi, doll! You still here?"
Barbara remained silent, "Well, you ain't got nothin' to worry about. I fixed that old goat good."
He squatted on his haunches, and once more brought out the gum. "Come on, baby. You and me can have some fun. You know, you're a real sweet stick of candy."
As he spoke, he -edged closer to her, moving warily. But his caution was unnecessary. Barbara had no thought of flight.
When he approached the edge of the scrub forest, he pulled Barbara to him.
"Do you know what Daddy does to Mommy?"
Barbara shook her head. But now she was really interested. This was something she wanted to find out.
Taking her by the hand, Bob led her into the pine growth. Barbara did not protest, even when he stripped her. He carressed her naked body for a few moments, then forced her to the ground, fell upon her and raped her.
Barbara did scream then, but only because of the physical pain. Bob smothered her cries with the palm of his hand. When the sex act was completed, he crouched over her.
"Listen to me, baby. If you make trouble for me, you'll be one sorry doll. I'll come back and strangle you. So you keep your goddamn mouth shut."
Barbara answered, "I don't care."
"You know what, baby? You're so cool you scare me. If I hadn't proved different, I'd bet you'd been tapped before. Plenty of times."
Barbara watched as he made his way along the railroad tracks, his shoulders hunched, not looking back. Not until years later did Barbara speak to anyone about this sexual assault. Actually, her personality warp seems to have developed prior to the attack and therefore it affected her to only a minor degree.
The very next day she returned to the scene and this time she induced five-year-old Janie to accompany her. As they neared the tracks, Janie became frightened and began to cry. Barbara pushed and jostled the younger child into the clearing. The hobo jungle was abandoned. Barbara went over to the bushes where the old man had fallen. He still lay there, face down, a crust of blood on the side of his head.
Janie was screaming hysterically by now. Barbara took her hand and led her back through the pine maze toward home. Nancy came rushing out and a neighboring couple, who had been sunning themselves on their porch, also joined the group.
Janie babbled out an incoherent story of "a man lying on his face."
Barbara added coolly, "I think he's dead."
Nancy snapped, "Nonsense. He's probably just drunk."
Nevertheless, the neighbors rounded up a group of three men and, armed with golf clubs, they checked the tracks. Max's body was found and the police were summoned.
The town records supply evidence of the murder but the body was never identified, nor the killer apprehended.
When Dr. Norfleet interviewed Barbara about the assault, her answers were revealing of her own shallow personality:
Q. How did you feel about this man Bob?
A. I didn't feel anything. He was nobody.
Q. Didn't you mind that he'd assaulted you?
A. What difference did it make? You got to lose it sooner or later.
Q. Did you derive any pleasure out of the sexual act?
A. No. But when it was over, I knew what it was all about.
Q. You say you were nine at the time? A. I guess so. Maybe ten.
Q. And yet you feel this man didn't do you any real harm?
A. In a couple of years I'd have been wanting it anyway. It was better that way then fumbling around in the back of some teen-ager's car.
Q. Why did you go back the next day?
A. I just wanted to see what would happen.
Q. And so you took Janie with you. Did you hope she'd be assaulted, too?
A. I guess so. Why not? It happened to me so why shouldn't it happen to her? What was so special about her that Nancy had to fuss over her all the time?
Under hypnosis, some of these points were partially clarified. Sex meant very little to Barbara; it was the excitement, tension and violence which surrounded the act that gave it importance.
Moreover, through her experience with Bob, she felt that she had, to some degree, successfully usurped the positions of both her mother and grandmother. More than that, in a roundabout way she had assumed the personality of Mark, inasmuch as two people had fought over her. Although there had been no gratification on the physical level, she had achieved a "sense of triumph" because one man had been killed and the other forced into flight in a situation in which she was the central figure.
Even more curious were her reasons for taking Janie with her on her second trip to the clearing. Some atavistic impulse had compelled her "to bring an offering" to the forces of evil to which, even at such an early age, she had allied herself. She had instinctively reverted to the ancient custom of presenting a human sacrifice to appease the gods whom she served.
The violence in the hobo jungle released the emotional strains which were an integral part of her daily life-but only briefly. As soon as the excitation of the experience dimmed, Barbara put her wits to work to produce a fresh situation which would dramatize her self-chosen role.
A few doors away from the Reddingtons an elderly man lived alone. John Workum was sixty-eight. Three years previously he had retired from an executive post with a large utilities company. At about the same time, his wife had died. Workum had little to do but prepare his meals and putter around in his flower garden.
Barbara took to loitering about his gate and chattering with him. Workum was delighted to have the child's companionship. He rigged up a swing in his yard, bought a kitten for her to play with and sometimes took her into his kitchen for chocolate cake and milk.
After weeks of this innocent play, Barbara slipped upstairs one afternoon, removed her clothing and a few minutes later appeared at the head of the stairs, stark naked. She called down to Workum, "Look at me. Hey, look at me."
Workum, shocked, came to the foot of the stairs and shouted, "Go back and put your clothes on right away."
Instead of obeying, Barbara danced down the steps and, laughing and giggling, threw herself into the old man's arms.
Workum scooped her up and carried her to his bedroom where her clothes lay in a pile at the foot of the bed. He helped her dress, a task which she made difficult by wriggling up against him. He stopped at times to pet and scold her. When she was fully clothed he made her promise never to play such a prank again.
The next day the scene was repeated. After that, Workum made a feeble attempt to bar the child from the house but she constantly found fresh ways of slipping in to renew the game.
Workum was in an unenviable position; he could scarcely complain to her parents. Besides, there is little doubt that he was titillated by the sex play. As time passed, he caressed her more intimately, kissing her breasts and thighs and hugging her naked body close to him. He did not, however, have intercourse with her.
As in the case of Bob, Barbara brought him an offering." This time the child was a neighborhood playmate whose name was Isabelle. While Workum was busy in the yard, Barbara led Isabelle to the bedroom and urged her to undress. When Isabelle refused, Barbara wrestled her onto the bed, giggling and pretending that the whole matter was a joke. Isabelle began to scream shrilly. By the time Workum reached the room, Isabelle's dress was badly ripped. Barbara released the terrified girl, who tried to bolt out of the house.
Workum, in a panic, seized her and attempted to reason with her but Isabelle was too hysterical to listen. She broke free and ran into the street, crying. At home she blurted out a confused story of what had happened.
Within minutes a crowd gathered around Workum's house. Several stones were thrown, smashing a front window. As a police car drove up, there were shouts from the swelling mob: "Lynch the old man!" and "Hang him to a lamppost!"
The police whisked Workum to the city jail. For some time he was too dazed to talk coherently. Meanwhile a check was made on the stories told by Isabelle and Barbara. Barbara pretended not to understand the questions and gave answers open to various interpretations.
A doctor was called in to examine both girls. In Barbara's case, there were signs of violation and it was assumed that Workum was responsible.
Workum was charged with rape and held in prison. Two weeks later his lawyer secured his release on $25,000.00 bail.
Workum's home had been completely vandalized in his absence. He did not return there but spent the night in a cheap hotel. The next morning he appeared at a drugstore and tried to purchase a large number of sleeping tablets. The suspicious pharmacist notified the police, but before an officer arrived, Workum had disappeared.
He was next seen in a supermarket where he bought a bottle of detergent with a high content of carbolic acid. He returned to his room and forced a quantity of the detergent down his throat. Although the pain must have been frightful, he was able to swallow enough to cause his death.
Thus, at ten, Barbara was already the indirect cause of the murder of one man and the suicide of another.
To escape the backlash of the scandal, the Reddingtons moved a third time. They chose a commuting town in Connecticut. Nancy, however, refused to go with them. Taking Janie, she left for Reno where she sued for divorce. Later she drifted to California where she remarried and dropped completely out of sight.
During the next three and a half years there was a lull in the outbursts of violence that marked Barbara's life. In school she appeared docile and passive. Despite high scores in intelligence tests, her academic achievement was only average. She was not popular among her schoolmates. Other girls thought she was sly and a tattletale. Boys were attracted to her because she was pretty but most of them were put off by her haughty, affected mannerisms.
Teachers reacted to her in various ways. One of them wrote in a report that Barbara was "a shy, sensitive and introverted girl, given to daydreaming." Another noted that whenever Barbara was in the room, the class was "jittery."
This teacher said, "There was nothing I could put my finger on. I'd be standing at the blackboard and suddenly I'd realize the class was too quiet. I'd have a prickly sensation and turn around. Barbara would be staring directly at me. No matter where I'd go, she'd always be watching. I'd find myself making mistakes, losing my temper without reason.
"I was ashamed to let a child get on my nerves, but Barbara did. Whenever I'd snap at her, she'd say in a singsong voice that she was sorry. But I always felt that she was gloating. Sometimes it was all I could do not to slap her. I had the feeling that that was what she wanted, for me to do something tangible so that she could make trouble for me."
This comment is particularly worthy of note because it dovetails so closely with testimony given in witchcraft trials over a century ago in which the "witch" was identified by the vague atmosphere of unease and the "prickling sensations" for which she was allegedly responsible.
A series of minor incidents marred Babara's school record. She accused other girls of stealing from her and, on one occasion, planted her purse in a girPs locker to lend credence to her lie. She also complained to the principal that a certain boy had been molesting her and making improper advances, although he claimed that he was "only horsing around." From time to time she absented herself from school in the middle of the session. Her explanation was that she had had to return home because the school toilets were "filthy and unfit to use."
Barbara's special target was her history teacher. Miss Tarbox was a large, ungainly woman, popular with the students because of her quick sympathy. On several occasions the teacher noticed Barbara loitering about the entrance of her apartment house. At other times Barbara appeared at her door with an obviously trumped-up excuse. Miss Tarbox was annoyed but not too much disturbed as she had had experiences with schoolgirl crushes.
The annoyances, however, increased. Late at night her telephone would ring and, when she answered, there would be no sound except the hum of an open wire. She received empty envelopes in the mail. A new coat which she had left in a school closet was ripped its whole length with a razor blade. Miss Tarbox was sure that Barbara was the culprit but did not accuse her as she had no proof.
A climax was reached when an anonymous note was sent to the superintendent of schools charging Miss Tarbox with having an illicit love affair. Unfortunately she had been indiscreet in permitting a man to visit her apartment late at night. When this was disclosed, Miss Tarbox was dismissed from her post. Years later, Barbara gloatingly admitted to Dr. Norfleet that it was she who had written the poison-pen letter.
Throughout this period, the relationship between Barbara and her grandmother was deteriorating steadily. When Nancy and Janie had lived with them, they had been joined by a common enemy. Now they were pitted against each other for Mark's favors. He was spending more time at home. To him the household must have appeared harmonious. In his presence, all bickering stopped and every effort was made to please him. But neither Barbara nor Mrs. Reddington would leave him alone with the other if she could prevent it.
The suspicions sown by Nancy that the relationship between mother and son was incestuous tormented Barbara and this was compounded by her own half-recognized yearnings for her father. When Mark was not present, Barbara flaunted her grandmother's authority by flippant remarks, by staying out late and by direct disobedience.
Mrs. Reddington, who had objected so strenuously to Nancy's spanking the child, now employed corporal punishment herself. This was probably the worst thing she could have done. The pain, the writhing, the bodily contact and the partial removing of clothing, were all associated in Barbara's mind with sex. While she resented the spankings, she was also aroused sexually by them.
The hairbrush became a phallic symbol and the whippings symbolic rape. Mark was a constant, though invisible, third party to the act. The sadistic nature of Barbara's fantasies now took concrete form and she derived erotic pleasure by imagining the roles reversed so that she could inflict similar indignities upon the grandmother or upon some other person who represented authority.
After one such whipping, Barbara ran from the house. She wandered about the streets until late at night, then dropped into the Deerfield Diner, next door to a poolroom which was a hangout for the rougher element in the community.
She perched on a stool, one leg dangling, showing the top of her tautly drawn stocking and inches of white thigh. She had pushed her tam to one side over her long blond hair and smeared her mouth with lipstick. Although she was only thirteen she could have passed for several years older.
The counterman was busy. After a minute or so, Barbara shouted to him in a brassy voice, "How about some service? I don't want to wait here all night."
He called back good-naturedly, "Hold your horses, honey. I'll be with you in a sec."
"Don't call me honey. Just bring me coffee and shut up."
The counterman shrugged and served the coffee. He stood looking at the girl for a moment.
She stared back at him. "Who do you think you're looking at, you stupid jerk?"
He sighed and turned away.
Barbara sipped the coffee, then complained loudly, "You call this coffee? What did you put in it? It tastes like mud."
The counterman ignored her. She dumped the coffee over the counter, then, with sweeping movements of her arms, knocked the saltcellars, pepper shakers, catsup bottles and napkin holders to the tiled floor.
The counterman looked at the mess wearily. He said, "I don't want no trouble in here. There's no charge for the coffee or nothing."
"This joint stinks."
"Okay, so it stinks. Go find a place you like better. Cop a walk, will you?"
Two young men had been listening to this interchange from a booth. They strolled up to the counter, one on each side of Barbara. Both were wearing black leather jackets and dark slacks. The one who spoke to her had dark brown hair and a reddish complexion.
He said, "You're dead right, chick. This is a crummy dive. What do you say we take you somewhere for some real grub?"
Barbara turned toward him, pouting. She said, "How could I? I don't even know you."
"Well, my name is Stan. My pal's called Ted. How's that?"
The counterman leaned over. "Lay off, Stan. This frail's got jailbait written all over her. I bet she ain't more than fifteen."
Barbara rounded on him. "I guess I'll go where I please and do what I please. It's none of your business."
The counterman lifted a shoulder. "If you kids want to mess around, it's okay with me. But do it someplace else. You hear?"
Barbara stalked out of the diner, with the two youths close behind her. She walked haughtily, her high heels clacking on the brick sidewalk, her eyes straight ahead, pretending to ignore the presence of the young men who had -edged up beside her.
Stan was doing the talking. "What's eatin' on you, sweetheart? You had a rumble with your boy friend or something? Don't let it get you down. A flossy piece like you can have as many guys as you like."
Barbara began to cry and dabbed at her cheeks with a handkerchief. Her shoulders slumped and her manners changed.
"Tell us what's the matter, baby," Stan urged. "Maybe we can help you out."
Barbara started on one of the long, rambling and completely false stories in which she delighted.
"I'm locked out," she said. "My mother's entertaining some man and she won't let me in until he goes. It happens all the time. She sends me out and then this man comes and I've got no place to go."
"Are you hungry?"
"No, but I'm cold. Oh, how I hate my mother! I wish there was some way to get even with her."
"We can fix you up, baby." Stan glanced at Ted. "What about taking her over to your uncle's place?"
Ted looked doubtful. "I dunno. It's pretty risky. You know the close call we had last time."
"To hell with that. We can't leave this babe out in the cold, can we? Let's get dangling."
Barbara accompanied the youths to a run-down wooden tenement on the edge of a slum. She let them lead her through a dark narrow hallway and down a rickety flight of stairs to the basement.
A furnace was going and the basement was comfortably warm. Ted's uncle was the janitor for this and two other tenements. Although he lived in a flat across the street, he had rigged up a room for himself out of what had once been a storage bin. He occasionally spent the night there when he had been drinking or had had a spat with his wife.
The cubicle contained an army cot, an overhead light with a green shade, two battered Morris chairs, a pile of comic books and a cupboard stocked with tinned foods, coffee and eating utensils. A hot plate stood on a rickety bridge table.
While Ted busied himself brewing coffee. Barbara removed her coat. Underneath she was wearing a short skirt and a tight yellow sweater that snugged breasts which were surprisingly large for her otherwise slim figure.
She sat down on the edge of the cot. Stan took his place beside her and put an arm around her. She accepted the embrace passively. He tilted her chin up and kissed her on the mouth. She did not respond but did not draw away. He pushed her back on the cot and she lay looking up at him provocatively.
His hand moved along her bare thigh and she began to whimper as though in a state of excitation.
Stan spoke to Ted. "For Crizzake, get upstairs and lay chick. We don't want your Uncle Jerry busting in on us."
"Okay," Ted grumbled. "But what about me? Do I get my turn?"
"Sure. Sure. But get a wiggle on."
Barbara heard this conversation and was able years later to reproduce it while in a state of hypnosis. She had no doubt as to its significance. Nevertheless when Ted was gone, she permitted Stan to remove her undergarments.
When he fell upon her, she arched and writhed in simulation of passion, clinging to him until the sexual act was consummated.
Stan rolled away from her and lurched to his feet. He said, "You're real good, baby. Ted's up there waiting his turn but you say the word and I'll tell him to scram."
"I don't care."
"I don't dig you, baby. You ain't no tramp. So why act like one? Do you want me to tell Ted to come down here?"
"I told you. I don't care."
Stan slammed out of the room and a few minutes later Ted entered.
Barbara was still lying half naked on the bed. Ted, a borderline mental defective, was a mute, clumsy and brutal lover. He pinched her breasts and otherwise hurt her but she did not cry out.
She waited until Stan was back in the room before rising and starting to dress. Stan grabbed her arm and said, "What about seconds, baby? I'm still hot."
She responded archly, "I don't know what you're talking about. I'm going home. I wish I'd never come here."
"Aw, climb off it. Let's try it again. What's the diff?"
She jerked away from him and slapped him across the face. In anger he pushed her down upon the cot.
She began to scream as though in terror. Stan tried to smother her cries by covering her mouth with his hand. She crumpled to the floor and lay in a huddled heap, still screaming.
"Cut it out!" Stan yelled. "Do you want the fuzz here?"
Barbara paid no attention. In panic, the two youths bolted from the room, up the stairs and along the street. But already the house had been aroused. Tenants rushed to the hallways and several of them recognized Ted.
When the police arrived a short time later, they found Barbara still on the floor, her face smudged with dirt and her clothing torn.
Her version of the night's events contained many falsehoods. She claimed that she had never seen Stan or Ted until they accosted her on the street, that she had tried to run but they had overpowered her and dragged her into the basement where they had raped her.
An alarm was sent out for the two youths and the following day they were picked up in front of a friend's house where they had gone to borrow money to leave town.
Each of them was charged with rape. The trial was held in camera. Barbara testified against them, vigorously denying that she had accompanied them to the basement of her own accord. The only witness who might have been helpful to the defense was the counterman at the Deerfield Diner. But he refused to become involved, claiming that he had never seen Barbara and had no memory of the defendants visiting the diner on the night of the rape.
Both youths were found guilty and were sentenced to terms of seven and a half to fifteen years in the state penitentiary.
Barbara had two more feathers in her cap.
Dr. Norfleet's questioning of Barbara regarding this episode indicates the same callous indifference which she had displayed in discussing the earlier rape in the hobo jungle and the fate of John Workum:
Q. Did you feel any hatred for these boys, Stan and Ted?
A. Not especially. They were just a couple of guys.
Q. Yet, through you, they went to prison?
A. Why not? It was statutory rape anyway.
Q. You feel they deserved the long senences?
A. I don't see why not. They wanted to rape me. That's what all men want.
Q. But you encouraged them. Why did you do that? A. I don't know. I was just fed up.
Q. You don't have any sense of guilt about your false testimony?
A. Why should I? They were scum. They're better off in jail. I guess I did society a service by putting them there.
Not long after the trial Mrs. Reddington suffered from a stroke. From then on she lived in her room as a recluse and, about a year later, she died. During this period Barbara's antisocial behavior was reduced to a minimum. Her grandmother's lack of interest in all but her daily needs deprived Barbara of the symbol against which she felt compelled to revolt.
Moreover, Barbara's relationship with her father became more stable than it had ever been before. Mark ceased absenting himself from the home and slept there regularly. When he returned from work, he would usually visit his mother for half an hour, after which he and Barbara would share an evening meal. Although Mark's rise in the world of radio had been limited because of his drinking and personality difficulties, he still held a position of minor importance. Barbara was fascinated by his anecdotes of celebrities whom he met and the intricacies of his profession. For the first time she was fired with personal ambition and expressed a desire to become an actress.
This period of calm was reflected in her schoolwork and, at the end of her freshman year in high school, she made the honor roll. But this situation could not last. With Mrs. Reddington's death, Mark decided to sell the house and move into an apartment in New York. Barbara, he decided, must be sent to a boarding school.
Barbara wept, teased and cajoled, trying to stay with him. But, for once, Mark was adamant.
At the summer's end Barbara was packed off to a private school in Massachusetts.
To Barbara, this seemed the final rejection.
Her covenant with evil was signed and sealed. There was no turning back.
CHAPTER FOUR
Evil Full-Blown
(The Adult Life of Barbara Reddington)
At first Barbara seemed to adjust moderately well to the school. Soon, however, teachers began to notice certain peculiarities about her, the most disconcerting of which was her habit of following them around. However, like Miss Tarbox, they were not too deeply concerned. Any experienced teacher expects to be the object of a certain number of schoolgirl crushes. If the teacher is wise, she will ignore the crush and treat the girl with gentleness and kindness, in which case the emotional dependence gradually diminishes.
However, Barbara's presumed crushes did not run in normal channels. In the first place, they were indiscriminate. Instead of centering her attention upon an individual, she was absorbed in the personal lives of all members of the faculty.
One of the teachers said later: "Barbara really used to give me the creeps. It seemed as though every time I turned around Barbara would be in back of me, or watching me from a doorway. As soon as she saw that I noticed her, she'd look away. I'd speak to her but she'd pretend not to hear and hurry off. I couldn't establish contact with her, yet she was always there."
Some of the teachers, too, noticed that small articles were missing, either from their living quarters or their handbags. These were objects of trifling value such as lipsticks, eye-shade pencils, flasks of perfume or atomizers. Barbara was suspected of this petty thievery and once was caught going through the headmistress' purse. She was scolded but no punitive action was taken.
Barbara admitted she had made a collection of toilet articles, especially lipsticks, which she had rifled from bureaus, dressers and handbags of the faculty. The lipstick is an obvious phallic symbol and its theft represented to her the "castration" of the person from whom it was pilfered which, in turn, stripped the individual of power and authority.
The lipstick, per se, held no fascination for Barbara. She had no impulse to steal unused lipsticks from the counters of stores, nor was she interested in the toilet articles of other students who were subject to the same discipline as herself. A lipstick took on value as a fetish only when it had been used by a teacher.
When she was alone in her room at night, Barbara would select one of these lipsticks and daub her mouth with it. She would then spray herself with perfume or use any other cosmetic which she had pilfered from the lipstick's owner.
On retiring she would imagine that she had assumed the physical being of the chosen woman. This substitution of personality was so vivid that she claimed she could feel the swelling of her breasts and hips as they assumed more mature form. The fantasy would progress until the person embodied within herself was approached by "a cruel lover."
In a reverie that was half nightmare and half waking-dream, she would envision the "lover" taking possession of the woman's body. There was no tenderness in these acts. The "lover" would rip off the clothing of the object of his passion, lash her with whips and finally rape her.
Barbara, who had been unable to attain gratification in the actuality of sexual experiences, would writhe under the imagined blows of the whip and her body would arch to the "lover's" embrace until a state of coitus was reached. It was an integral part of her hallucination that the woman whose body she had "borrowed" shared her pain and ecstasy. Barbara's reason for following these women about was to "memorize" the details of their bodies so that they could be "faithfully recreated" in the night.
Unwittingly Barbara was reverting to practices of ancient witchcraft.
In A Handbook for Sorcerers, published anonymously in 1664, the witch who would "take possession" of a woman's body was advised to "gather the almost invisible parings of her nails, to collect reverently the combings of her hair, and garments of the most intimate nature which have been imbued with the sweat of her body." By possession of such articles the witch was believed to make resistance to her desires impossible. Furthermore, by "scourging" her own flesh, the witch was informed that she could inflict physical pain on the "captive female."
These century-old rites present a striking parallel to the interpretation given by contemporary psychiatrists of the underlying causes of fetishism and kleptomania.
The authoritative Encyclopedia of Criminology defines fetishism as follows: "A compulsive perversion of the substitutive type in which an object possessed by the loved person replaces the love for that person herself. Thus, the fetishist employs the art of magic in investing an intimate object with the attractive evaluation of the individual herself. The object that serves as a fedsh is a symbol. It embodies mysterious qualities which are considered by the victim to emanate from the loved one. By over-evaluating an object, such as a shoe or a stocking, the hair, or any other portion of the loved one's body, the fetishist relinquishes the aim of accomplishing the normal heterosexual act and accepts a mystical substitute which to him offers even more miraculous qualities."
Dr. Vincent C. Branham, Chief of the Outpatient Section of the Neuropsychiatric Division of the Veterans Administration in Washington, D.C., writes that "Kleptomania (the uncontrollable compulsion to steal) has a close resemblance to fetishism. The object stolen has symbolic meaning to the offender. It is the act, however, rather than the object which invests the offense with a value. In kleptomania, the objective is revenge instead of adoration. The stealing is associated with penis envy. The stealing from someone in authority deprives that superior one of an object of power or authority. The object, therefore, symbolizes the penis, and the stealing is a symbolic act of castration of the father."
These observations by eminent psychiatrists tend to substantiate Dr. Stein's claim that witches do move among us, and that, though modern medical terminology may avoid the word "witch," it finds such phrases as "mysterious qualities" and "miraculous powers" completely acceptable.
In Barbara's case, Dr. Norfleet noted the presence of both fetishism and kleptomania, representing her ambivalence toward authority as represented by her father, grandmother and teachers. He also recognized a third factor in her personality disbalance. This was the inability to establish a personality of her own.
In her earlier sexual experiences she had played diverse roles, envisioning herself at various times as her father, her grandmother and her mother. At school she was assuming identities almost at random for, in her fantasies, she imagined that she took on the physical being of nearly every member of the staff. Thus the fragmentation of her own personality was increasing continuously and she was moving farther and farther away from contact with reality.
Even within the fantasy, Barbara wavered between the masculine and feminine roles, sometimes casting herself as the vengeful lover and at others as the writhing victim of the attack.
Despite her tormented fantasies, Barbara gave only superficial signs of her inner turmoil. Her academic work was acceptable and there were no flagrant infractions of school rules. She spent her short holidays with Mark who made considerable effort to entertain her, taking her out to dinner and the theater almost nightly. When he could not accompany her, he arranged that a young man on his staff should be her escort.
Barbara was on her best behavior when she was with Mark. During the long summer vacation she attended a camp in Maine. She returned to the school for the second year as a member in good standing.
Perhaps Barbara would have contented herself with her macabre world of fantasy if it had not been for a shocking incident that occurred at the beginning of the Christmas holidays.
Barbara had written to Mark that she would be home on the Friday preceding Christmas. She was anticipating the round of theaters and parties and her closeness to Mark with a tremulous excitement. By Wednesday she could wait no longer. Violating the school regulations, she packed a suitcase and slipped out of the grounds without permission. Her train arrived at Grand Central Station in New York at 8:05 p.m. She took a taxi directly to Mark's apartment and let herself in. The rooms were empty. She was disappointed but not concerned.
She prepared a light meal, ate it and listened to the radio, constantly alert for the scratch of Mark's key in the lock. At about eleven she gave up hope, knowing Mark's habit of spending nights away from home. She cleaned up all traces of her presence and retired to her room at the rear of the apartment, thinking that when Mark did return, she would give him a pleasant surprise.
She fell into a deep sleep from which she did not awake until after 2 a.m. Slight sounds came from Mark's bedroom and, when she went to the hall, she could see a crack of light under his door.
She threw on a dressing gown and tiptoed along the hall. She opened Mark's door quietly, intending to call out some joke and fling herself into his arms.
Part way through the door she stopped in stunned disbelief. Her grandmother appeared to be reclining on the bed. But that was impossible. Mrs. Reddington had been dead for two years. Yet everything about her was familiar: the beautifully coiffed white hair with its jeweled comb; the finely chiseled, haughty features, made more severe by pince-nez glasses and the splotches of rouge on her pale cheeks; the lavender dress, clasped at the throat with a cameo pin; the double loop of pearls; the diamonds glistening on her fingers.
Barbara had been holding her breath but she let it out with a slight hissing sound. The figure on the bed stirred and turned toward her. Only then did she realize it was Mark, disguised as his mother. The close facial resemblance between the mother and son had always been obvious. But now, wearing a wig and dressed in his mother's clothing, Mark seemed the reincarnation of the dead woman.
In the first moments of discovery, Barbara had been too engrossed in the seeming apparition of her grandmother to recognize the significance of the scene to which she was a witness. A young man knelt beside the bed. Barbara had walked in on her father while he was engaged in the perverted sexual act, technically known as fellatio.
The young man sprang to his feet but Mark did not move. For a few tense seconds the tableau remained unbroken, the three people staring wildly at one another. Then Barbara, jerked back into the hall, slamming the door after her. She ran to her room and threw herself face downward on the bed.
Mark did not come to her. Shamed and revolted by his own acts, he could not face his daughter, then or later.
When Barbara finally ventured from her room the next day, the only traces of her father were a wad of bills laid on a table, two brightly wrapped Christmas packages and a long white envelope with her name scrawled across it. Inside were tickets for two popular musical comedies and a note informing her that Mark had been called out of town on business and that she would have to fend for herself over the holidays.
Barbara ripped open the first of the Christmas gifts. A platinum watch lay in an elaborate case. She flung it to the floor and stamped upon it. The second package contained a black velour evening bag. She twisted back the clasp, breaking it, and shredded the cloth. She then tossed the bag into the incinerator.
Next she went to her father's bedroom where she found an old trunk which had belonged to her grandmother. She flipped open the lid. The wig and the lavender dress lay on top. It is interesting to note that her destructive impulses stopped at this point. She knelt by the trunk and buried her face in the lavender cloth. She wanted to cry but could not.
At length she rose, donned her hat and coat, and wandered out into the streets. She had no idea where she was going and did not care.
Late afternoon found her at the cosmetics counter of an exclusive Fifth Avenue shop, where she demanded to be shown flasks of expensive perfumes. She poured substantial amounts of the perfume on her handkerchief and gloves and tipped over a bottle. The saleslady reprimanded her and Barbara flew into a rage.
The saleslady tried to hush her. Barbara grasped the woman's arms and pulled her halfway across the counter, shattering more bottles. All the time she was shouting that she had been insulted.
A store detective intervened. Barbara insisted on being taken to the store's "president." She was escorted to the manager's office where she made wild accusations against the saleslady, demanding that she be fired. After a hysterical tirade Barbara rushed from the office, sweeping articles from the counters which she passed. No one stopped her. The store was glad to be rid of her, at any cost.
A few blocks away, Barbara deliberately jostled an elderly, dignified woman. Then she shouted at her, "Why don't you look where you're going, you fat slob?"
"Why, I never," the woman protested. "What's the matter with you, child?"
"Don't talk down your nose at me. You're nothing better than a whore."
The shocked woman tried to turn away but Barbara reached for the strand of pearls at her neck and twisted it until the chain snapped. As the woman staggered forward, Barbara knocked her hat into the street.
Before the woman could collect herself, Barbara hurried away. Her immediate need for conflict abated, she went into a moving picture house where she stayed until about nine o'clock. On coming out she took a taxi to the apartment, hoping Mark would be there to greet her and that the scene of the early morning would fade like the horrors of a nightmare.
The apartment, however, was bleak and deserted. She prowled about until she could stand the empty silence no longer, then went out into the hall. Two stories below she could hear the merriment of a pre-Christmas party.
She descended the stairs and, after listening at the door, seated herself on the steps. In a short time guests arrived and were admitted by a young man holding a glass in his hand. He greeted his guests hilariously and glanced curiously at the crouching girl. He said nothing at the time but came out to the hall a few minutes later to ask her if she was in trouble.
Barbara immediately launched into a fabricated story about being locked out while her parents went to the theater.
The young man, whose name was Mathew Thome, was one of three students who shared the apartment, all of whom were in training as undertakers.
He said, "Don't be lonely, sweetheart. Come on in. There's plenty of fun for everybody."
Barbara answered shyly, "Wouldn't I be a nuisance?"
"Think nothing of it. The more the merrier."
She followed him inside and he offered her a cocktail. She refused but accepted a Coca-Cola. She found a place on the floor where she was half shielded by the arm of a couch. The party was small but noisy. Several of the guests spoke to the girl but she ignored them.
Around midnight the party broke up. The two men who shared the apartment with Thome left to take their dates home. Thome accompanied the last of his guests to the elevator and returned to find Barbara still seated on the floor.
In an ebullient mood, he said, "Hi, sweetheart! Are you still here?"
There was no answer. "Isn't it time for you to toddle home?"
"I told you I got no place to go."
"Well, geez, you can't stay here all night."
"Why not?"
"Christ, you know why not. If you were a little older I could go for you, but you're just a kid."
"I'm old enough."
He crossed to her and pulled her to her feet. She looked at him challengingly. He said, "Do you mean what I think you do?"
"Try me and find out."
"Hell! I had you pegged as an innocent. I don't like this."
Barbara calmly passed through the open door to the bedroom. She lifted her skirt and removed her underclothing, then lay on the bed, propped up in much the same position her father had assumed.
Thorne followed and looked down at her. He said, "Damn it, if you aren't a cool one!"
"What's the matter? Are you chicken? Or aren't you a man?"
Thorne flushed scarlet. "Quit that kind of talk. A man can only take so much."
"I don't see any signs of it."
He shook her roughly by the shoulder. "Cut it out. Pete'll be back in a minute."
"So what? Are you afraid of him?"
He ran his hands through his hair. Then suddenly he fumbled with his clothing.
He flung himself upon her in a frenzy. In a minute or two he was spent.
Still gasping for breath, he jumped up and said, "Hurry up and get dressed. Pete'll think I'm a real jerk if he learns about this."
"What's the matter with this Pete? Are you a pair of love birds?"
"For Christ's sake, shut up. You got what you wanted, didn't you?"
"Me? I didn't get a thing."
They were interrupted by the sounds of Pete in the foyer. Thorne whispered, "Get decent and be quick about it. I'll tell Pete you're in the John."
He hurried from the room, closing the door behind him. She could hear the rumble of his voice.
She waited a short time and then opened the door. Her clothes were rumpled, her hair untidy and there were tears in her eyes. She stood forlornly on the threshold, a small, dejected figure.
Pete was a tall, thin man, with a bony face, rimless glasses and an appearance of sternness. He looked at the girl, then at Thorne. He said in a shocked voice, "What's been going on here, Mat?"
Thorne said, "I tell you it's nothing. I didn't touch the girl."
"That's a lie," Barbara broke in. "He did awful things to me."
Pete took a step toward her and stretched out his hand to touch her shoulder. She sidled away and darted behind the sofa.
Pete turned angrily on Thorne. "You must be off your head to pull a stunt like this. You could land us all in trouble."
Barbara was no longer listening. She picked up a heavy ash tray and hurled it through the window. Before the men could stop her she rushed to a corner of the room where there was a Christmas tree, aglow with electric decoradons, and pushed it over.
Next she took two lighted candles from a window sill and dumped them on top of the tree. Instandy a crackling blaze started. As the young men tried to put out the growing fire, she ran out into the hall and up the stairs to her own apartment.
She let herself in and threw herself on the bed, remaining rigid for a long time. The fire was not serious but the halls filled with smoke and soon the whole house was aroused. Someone called the fire department. Barbara listened to the keening wail of the sirens, the blast of the fire marshal's horn, the tramping of feet and the excited, frightened voices.
A strange warmth crept over her and she fell asleep.
What was the purpose of this havoc? Dr. Norfleet questioned her in an attempt to find out.
Q. Why did you do these things, Barbara? , A. I don't know. It was Christmas and everyone was having a good time but me. Q. Did you feel frustrated?
A. Not exactly. I was all mixed up. I mean, I had to do something. I couldn't just hang around the apart-men.
Q. Didn't you have any friends you could visit? A. No. I never had a friend. Nobody ever gave a damn about me. Not even when I was a kid.
Q. When your grandmother was alive, she loved you.
A. No. She'd never leave me alone with Mark. She pretended she loved me but she didn't.
Q. Let's go back to the saleslady at the perfume counter. Why did you pick a quarrel with her?
A. She was standing there like she owned everything, telling me what I could do and what I couldn't.
Q. You mean she represented authority?
A. I guess so. Like the stuck-up teachers at the school. I wanted to see her squirm.
Q. But this young man, Thorne. He was good to you, wasn't he? He invited you in to the party.
A. All he wanted was a piece of tail. I hated him.
Q. But according to your own story, you forced the issue.
A. I gave him what he wanted, that was all. So I guess I had a right to make him pay for it.
Q. Did he remind you of your father?
A. Mark? It wasn't like that, I mean I was-no, he wasn't like Mark at all.
The remainder of the Christmas holidays were filled with a series of orgiastic episodes, each ending in senseless violence. Barbara could not endure the loneliness of the apartment. She spent her time on the streets, wandering into theaters, hotel lobbies, department stores and restaurants.
She was pretty and there was a lost, pathetic quality about her which drew the sympathetic interest of many people. Most of these were men. In the ten days that followed, six of them became her lovers. In each instance, the aftermath was an explosive scene in which she screamed, threatened, destroyed property and did everything in her power to humiliate her partner. The men could not get rid of her fast enough. None of them ever wanted to see her again.
Barbara was equally skillful in attaching herself to middle-aged and elderly women. On Christmas day, she made her way into the lobby of one of Manhattan's most exclusive hotels. She selected as a target a slight, white-haired, expensively dressed woman. Sinking into a chair near her victim, she huddled in a pathetic posture. Soon tears began to trickle down her cheeks and her body was wracked with sobs.
The woman, a Mrs. Latimer from Detroit, could scarcely avoid noticing the pathetic figure. She was a widow whose two sons had been killed in World War II, and who had come to New York to forget the emptiness of her life.
Mrs. Latimer leaned toward the girl and spoke gently. "What's the matter, dear? Are you all alone?"
As always, Barbara was ready with a story. This time she claimed that her parents were to meet her in New York but were unable to do so because of an airplane accident.
Mrs. Latimer invited her to Christmas dinner in the hotel restaurant. Barbara accepted with a gush of tears and a girlish expression of gratitude.
Twice during the meal, Barbara excused herself on the pretext of making telephone calls to the airlines. Each time she came back with a report of further delays.
When dinner was finished, Mrs. Latimer invited her guest to her suite on the fifteenth floor. She said, "You've made me very happy. I looked forward to Christmas with dread because of all its haunting memories. But thanks to you it's been a pleasant day. If I'd known that I was to meet such a charming girl, I would have a present ready. As it is, maybe I can find something that you will accept as a keepsake."
Barbara protested feebly but accompanied the woman to her suite. Mrs. Latimer offered her a small glass of wine diluted with water and went to the next room to rummage in her suitcases for a suitable gift.
As soon as her hostess was gone, Barbara jumped to her feet and crossed to the dresser where Mrs. Latimer had left her handbag. She was searching through it when she looked up and saw the woman's reflection in the mirror.
Mrs. Latimer's expression was one of shock and dismay. She said, "Whatever are you doing, child?"
Barbara whirled about. She had the woman's lipstick in her hand. She raised it and said, "This is all I wanted."
"But why didn't you ask me, darling?"
Barbara's voice was raised in anger. "You thought I was stealing-that's what you thought, you ugly old crow."
"Why, nothing of the kind. I was just surprised. Look what I've brought you."
Mrs. Latimer held out a valuable brooch, a ruby surrounded by seed pearls.
Barbara slapped it out of her hand, shouting, "What do I want with a piece of junk like that?"
"I don't know what's got into you, child. But I can't let you talk to me like that. You'll have to leave."
"Oh, is that so? You thought I was dumb, didn't you? You thought I didn't know why you enticed me up here. Well, I'm not so stupid. You're a goddamn dirty dyke."
Mrs. Latimer was too stunned to answer.
Barbara clutched the frail woman by both shoulders, wrestling her back to the bed in much the same way that she had seen her grandmother do to her mother years before.
Mrs. Latimer squirmed over on her stomach. Barbara straddled her and lifted her skirt, then seizing a hand mirror from the bedside table, began to strike her across the buttocks. The glass shattered but Barbara did not stop. She pounded the shards deep into the woman's flesh.
When Barbara released her, Mrs. Latimer was only semiconscious. Barbara calmly put on her coat and hat, rode the elevator to the lobby and caught a taxi home. As always after such an act of violence, she slept soundly.
With the close of the holidays Barbara, surprisingly, returned to the school. In the eyes of her teachers, her conduct improved. She was more responsive in the classroom and seemingly tractable.
Then, on March 2nd, she disappeared from the school grounds. A search was instituted for her and Mark was informed.
Five days later, at a little past 9 p.m., hysterical screams awakened the guests of a roadside motel in Ohio. Observers saw a man race from a cabin, jump into a car and drive away. Moments later, a disheveled girl with ripped clothing staggered onto the porch and collapsed.
This was Barbara. She was helped to the manager's office where she babbled out a story of kidnapping and rape. The police were summoned. The correct number of the car's license plates had been entered in the motel register. The owner was arrested as he sped along the highway twenty miles from the scene.
This man, John Robbins, admitted that he had picked up Barbara who was hitch-hiking. He insisted, however, that it was her suggestion they spend the night together, and that she had gone with him voluntarily. Once inside the motel, she had demanded money and a quarrel had ensued. Furthermore, he claimed that he did not have intercourse with her.
The last statement was proven to be a lie. A medical examination showed that she had had sexual intimacy during the last few hours. Robbins was arrested and charged with rape. Eventually he was found guilty and sentenced to twenty years imprisonment.
At the time of the trial, Barbara did not explain how she spent the other nights away from school, claiming amnesia. To Dr. Norfleet, however, she confessed that she had inveigled a series of men into having sexual relations with her. In each case she demanded money, threatening to make a scene that would bring the police. All of the men except Robbins had paid.
She claimed she felt no animosity toward Robbins who, at present, is still in prison. But she refused to sign any statement which might help to secure his release. Her attitude can be summed up in her own words: "He had me, didn't he? All I asked for was a few measly dollars but he was too much of a skinflint to pay up. If he chose to go to prison, what's it to me? I didn't rape him. That's for sure."
Barbara was detained in Columbus and officials telephoned Mark. He did not come for her but dispatched a female employee of the radio station to bring her back to New York. The school refused to re-admit her and once more she was back in Mark's apartment.
He did not avoid her completely this time but the situation was tense and fraught with embarrassment. Mark consulted a psychiatrist and both he and Barbara became patients. After a few visits, however, Barbara rebelled and refused to see this man any more.
Through Mark's connections, Barbara joined an off-Broadway theater group in Greenwich Village. She showed promise as an actress but was a constant source of trouble, throwing tantrums and making false accusations against her fellow actors. Soon she quit, leaving a trail of recriminations in her wake.
She had, however, been introduced to the bars, cocktail lounges, cabarets and cafe espressos haunted by would-be artists, writers and actors. She hung about these places, instituting quarrels and sometimes picking up men or older women.
In the shabby little Cafe Zurimo, she met Howard Baulding. He was a pale, rather sickly young man with mouse-colored hair and weak features. Physically, he might have been a poor carbon copy of Mark. His talents as a writer are difficult to evaluate-only two short stories of his had been published in avant-garde magazines. However, an editor of a reputable publishing house had encouraged him to write a book.
Baulding had been at work on his novel for a year, supporting himself by odd jobs. He had completed thousands of pages, mostly in handwriting. Now he needed to organize his work into a cohesive whole. Instead, he kept adding fresh scenes.
The Zurimo specialized in Trinidadian calypso music. Baulding had been visiting the cafe nightly to gather material. In the informal atmosphere it was easy for Barbara to scrape up an acquaintance with him.
Probably she saw in him a reflection of Mark's in-effectuality and abortive literary ambitions. Whatever her reason, she went out of her way to be charming to the shabby young man. It was not hard to persuade him to read aloud passages from his work. Barbara appeared enthralled and was rapturous in her praise. Fame, she assured him, was just around the corner.
Baulding could hardly believe his good fortune. Here was a pretty, vivacious girl who was, in his mind, possessed of high critical judgment, and she had fallen for him. Added to this, she was wealthy. Mark was giving her a substantial allowance which she was supplementing with money she secured from men. Moreover, upon her marriage she would receive money from a trust fund set up by her grandmother.
After a night together, Barbara broached the subject of marriage. To Baulding it seemed a heaven-sent opportunity, a chance to finish his novel without the interruptions of earning a living. The wedding took place less than three weeks after their initial meeting.
Whatever reservations Mark may have had about his son-in-law, he was glad to have his daughter off his hands. As a wedding gift, he purchased an apartment for them in a co-operative.
Baulding was soon to learn of the witchery in Barbara's nature. Once married, she lost all interest in his novel.
When he read to her, she laughed and mocked him. At times, when he was trying to write, she played the radio at full volume or talked on the telephone in a shrill voice. At intervals she would pick up pages of the manuscript and read them with sarcastic remarks and many giggles.
There were no compensations for Baulding. Their sexual relations were nonexistent. Although he and Barbara had had intercourse prior to marriage, she refused to accept him on their wedding night or at any time thereafter. She taunted him with being a homosexual and, although there was no evidence that this was true, she bruited the story about.
She provided him with no money and prepared no meals. The refrigerator was usually empty or stocked with foods which he disliked or to which he was allergic. By the end of a month, Baulding was a nervous wreck.
Barbara went back to her old ways of picking up men. Baulding was almost glad because it gave him some time alone.
One night Barbara returned to the apartment with a tall, powerfully built young man whom she had met at a bar. When they entered, Baulding was writing at his desk.
The swaggering youth goggled in surprise. "Who's this?" he asked. "What's he doing here?"
"Don't mind him, Brad. He's just a poor slob I keep." Baulding said, "Now see here, Babs. This has gone far enough."
"Don't tell me what to do, you filthy goddamn fag." Baulding swung toward Brad. "Get out of here," he yelled.
"What does the lady say?"
Barbara tittered. "Forget about him. Let's you and me have a good time."
"Not with that creep looking on."
Barbara had already unzipped the back of her dress and let it fall about her feet.
Baulding made a rush for her and Barbara screamed to Brad for help. Brad knocked Baulding down, dragged him to the door and shoved him into the hall. As the door slammed, Baulding could hear Barbara's tinkling laughter and the snap of the night lock.
Baulding was penniless. He wandered about the streets for hours, making his way back to the Village. Here he met a friend who put him up for the night. In the morning, he borrowed fifty cents. He told his friend he was breaking with Barbara. All that remained was for him to recover his manuscript.
He took a bus to the apartment and climbed the stairs. As soon as he unlocked the door he saw the place was a shambles. His working desk had been tipped over. Pages of his novel were ripped into pieces and ink spilled across them. The charred remains of other pages were strewn on the kitchen floor or clogged the toilet.
In a daze, Baulding stumbled out of the building. A few blocks away he entered a subway kiosk, bought a token and walked to the platform. An uptown local came thundering in. Baulding cowered away from it. The train filled up and left, with Baulding still on the platform.
He paced up and down, apparently waiting for the next train. As it sped into the station, he flung his arms over his eyes and jumped between the tracks. He was killed instantly.
Barbara spent no time in mourning Baulding. He was scarcely buried when she became involved in another liaison, this time definitely lesbian in nature.
Florence Fennell had once been a highly succesful call girl, grossing over $50,000 a year. At 38, she was considerably overweight and her features had taken on a haughty, unyielding cast which made her look like a stern schoolmistress. Perhaps this was the reason why she fascinated Barbara.
The "good time Charlies" no longer found Florence attractive but she was frequently able to arrange assignments for other girls on a split fee basis. Besides this, she had built up a special clientele who found in her prim, severe manner a challenge to their own aberrations. Invariably there was a sadomasochistic element in the deviations of these men, most of whom had guilt complexes regarding sex which were related to early punishments. Many of them were happily married and would have been horrified at the thought of revealing their abnormal desires to their wives.
The aberrations from which these men suffered tended to be ridiculous rather than dangerous. An extreme case was that of a business executive who hired Florence to lead him about on a leash. He would move around the apartment on all fours, slurp food from a dog's dish, then leap upon Florence, barking and snarling as he engaged in the sex act. Once sated, he would revert to a natural manner and invite Florence to have a drink with him before paying her and bidding her good night.
The relationship between Florence and Barbara was complicated. In it, Florence was the "bull," while Barbara was the passive or feminine partner.
Barbara did not respond erotically to Florence's fondling and caressing but she found the display of affection mildly pleasing. In discussing this with Dr. Norfleet, she explained that she had had a sense of security which was greater than at any other period in her life.
Although Florence made assignations for other girls, she was jealous of Barbara and did not permit her to go out on dates or to leave the apartment alone after dark. Occasionally, when she suspected Barbara of disobedience, she whipped her. Barbara accepted this discipline with unaccustomed docility, finding in it a duplication of her childhood dependence upon her grandmother.
When Florence came home after one of her strange assignments, she was eager to talk. Barbara was an avid audience, curious about every detail. She was building about herself an enlarged fantasy world, replete with flagellation, suspensionism, transvestitism and a host of other abnormalities.
Barbara was particularly fascinated by a man named Blake. He was a wealthy bachelor who lived alone in an old brownstone in upper Manhattan. A room at the back of the house was soundproofed and "rigged up as a torture chamber." After much teasing on Barbara's part, Florence consented to take her to meet Blake, who was titillated by the idea of having a witness to his fantastic rituals.
On a Sunday afternoon they called on Blake. He was a man in his late forties, dark, slender and quite handsome. His hair grew in a low widow's peak and swept backward. His cheekbones were high, his skin tanned and his flesh hard and firm.
There was, without question, a Mephistophelian cast to his features. He came from an impoverished background and, through his own drive, had amassed a fortune, mainly by means of stock market manipulations.
He welcomed his guests and invited them to cocktails. The room was expensively but conventionally decorated. Soft music came from some hidden source. After the first cocktail, Florence slipped away. Blake chatted with Barbara for half an hour or so and then suggested that they go to the back room.
Barbara gasped as she entered the chamber. A thick-napped carpet of royal purple lined the floor from wall to wall. The walls themselves were gilded and set with ikons, triptychs and religious paintings in bright hues.
At the far end of the room was a long, high dais on which was an ornate gold throne. In a dark corner was a replica of an ancient stone cross, upon which a narrow glow of light slanted from a recessed ceiling lamp.
Seated on the throne was a woman whom Barbara scarcely recognized as Florence Fennell. She had bedecked herself in a robe of purple velvet, decorated with lace and gold embroidery. She also wore an ermine stole and high-heeled golden slippers. Upon her head was a massive blond wig topped by a glittering jeweled tiara. Other jewels dangled from her ears and glittered about her throat and on her fingers.
Blake seemed to forget all about Barbara. He walked slowly, diffidently, toward the woman. He climbed the stairs and, with a gesture of obeisance, knelt at her feet.
She extended her hand. He kissed it, first the fingers, then the palm and the wrist. He crouched lower and his lips nuzzled her ankles. He was babbling incoherently, swearing eternal fealty to his "queen."
He lifted his face and rested it against the velvet-covered thighs. The queen caressed his cheek. He clutched her to him, covering her throat and the cleavage of her breasts with kisses.
The embraces grew more frantic. Then suddenly he jerked upright and towered above her.
His voice rang out in anger. "You are the queen of darkness. The source of all evil."
The woman cried out. "No! No!"
"You would enslave me in the meshes of your wickedness. You would betray me into lust."
She cringed away from him but he grasped her wrists and dragged her from the throne. While she screamed and struggled to free herself, he hauled her across the room to the stone cross.
He forced her across the curved top of the cross and bound her wrists and ankles with cords. He tore away her clothing and, seizing a whip, began to flagellate her. Her body writhed beneath the blows and her high-pitched screams echoed deafeningly in the soundproof room. At length, he threw away the whip, untied her and thrust her down upon the floor.
Kneeling beside her, he lifted her face, kissing her and begging forgiveness. Her arms went about him, drawing him to her. He made love to her, tenderly at first, then with an abandoned fury.
When the sexual act was completed, he arose abruptly, arranged his clothing and strode across the room to where Barbara was standing. He led her to the front room and excused himself.
Barbara sat alone, wondering what would happen next. She had been terribly excited by the scene she had witnessed, and she envied Florence her role in it. Some minutes passed before Blake and Florence strolled into the room, chatting as though nothing unusual had happened. Blake offered Florence another cocktail but she said she must hurry along.
He drew out his wallet and paid her with a hundred-dollar bill.
She said, "Thanks, Blake. When do you want me again?"
"What about next Sunday? The same time?"
"Fine."
He smiled. "Bring Barbara, too."
At home, Barbara questioned Florence at great length. Florence treated the whole matter as a zany joke.
"Blake doesn't hurt me. Not much anyhow. Most of the screaming is just an act because he likes to hear me yell."
"It didn't sound that way to me."
"I won't say that the whip doesn't sting. But I got a lot worse wallopings from my Old Man. And I didn't get paid for 'em either."
"Doesn't he ever excite you?"
"The crazy thing is he does, sometimes. All that queen of darkness crap is strictly for the birds, yet he almost gets me to believing it. Anyway, can you tell me an easier way to earn a century note?"
In the ensuing months Barbara witnessed at least a dozen repetitions of the scene but she never tired of it or ceased to be aroused by it. Meanwhile, she and Blake became good friends and he often took her to dinners or social gatherings, where she was on her best behavior.
She offered herself to him but he made it plain that he was not interested in her in a sexual way.
"You're just not my type, Babs," he would say lightly. "I go for the heavy cream."
Barbara was piqued. "What's so special about Flo? She's coarse and vulgar."
"Sure. I know. But if you can't have the genuine .article, you pick the best substitute you can get. Where am I going to find myself a real queen?"
A natural rapport seemed to exist between Blake and Barbara. It was as though he recognized in himself certain satanic qualities and realized that Barbara was tied to him by the bonds of witchcraft. In the course of time he even confided to her the source of his aberration.
He had been born in a festering slum on the East Side of New York. His father, a manual laborer, was a drunkard. His mother, once an attractive woman, also drank heavily and had turned into a slattern and a shrew. As a boy he had often lain awake at night listening to their raucous quarrels which, as often as not, ended up in sodden sexual activity.
He had been revolted by his parents, sex, the degradation of the cold-water flat and the obscenity of his playmates. School was a refuge of sorts and later he found the neighborhood library.
He spent every spare minute there, reading indiscriminately. When he was about ten, he ran across a book entitled The Great Courts of Europe. He read avidly all the details of regal splendor, court intrigue, pomp, battles and executions. He was fascinated by portraits of queens, noble ladies and courtesans. The frontispiece of the volume was a colored plate of a magnificent woman seated on a throne.
Surreptiously, he extracted the picture from the book, took it home and hid it in his bureau drawer. The next day he returned to the library and, fearful that the mutilation of the volume would be discovered and that he would be banned from the premises, he took the book to the washroom and destroyed it. He was never able to find another copy or to learn the identity of his "queen." But he built a whole fantasy world about her.
He reached puberty early and, in his imagination, the queen was always his sexual partner. Masturbation became an integral part of the fantasy, but he was wracked with a constant sense of guilt. Part of this he allayed by placing the blame on his "temptress." Normal sex was, he felt, degrading but he found that he could be aroused to a point of orgasm by creating in his mind an elaborately conceived ritualistic punishment. As this substitute fantasy did not involve intercourse, it seemed "clean" to him.
He was a brilliant student. At seventeen he graduated from high school with a straight A average. He won a scholarship at Yale where he continued his excellent academic record. Later, he was awarded a graduate fellowship in Europe. When he returned to New York, he had left the slums far behind. He had a highly paid post, influential friends and financial success.
But all through the years the secret dreams of his queen had tormented him. He had learned to conform, outwardly. In college and later, he dated girls of his own age. Because he was good-looking, suave and attentive, he was popular. But none of the girls really interested him. Whenever one of them indicated that she was susceptible to his charms, he dropped her quickly.
From time to time he tried to break his block about normal sex by going to a prostitute or to a girl whom he knew to be "easy." Invariably he found himself impotent and this added to his frustration and his desire to punish the creature of his imagination.
On several occasions he had been attracted to older women of "regal bearing." Each time something went wrong. Either the woman did not respond or she did something to offend his fastidious nature. Once, when he was a graduate student, he had had a real scare. He had a brief affair with a married woman. In a state of excitation, he had beaten her. In her struggle to escape, she had fallen down a small flight of stairs. Her leg had been broken and she had been removed to a hospital, screaming in agony.
Fortunately the woman had been as anxious as Blake to conceal the truth of their affair and no charges were brought against him. He had realized, however, that he had placed his whole future in jeopardy. From then on he concentrated his energies on business success.
Four years before his meeting with Barbara, he had built "The Throne Room," doing much of the work himself. He had thought it would be easy to hire prostitutes to act as "queen," but he had run across unexpected difficulties. None of the girls whom he could locate had the dignity or the stateliness he sought. The few who he thought might do, had balked at being flogged. Finally he had come across Florence Fennell. She was far from the perfect queen but, through a suspension of reality, he could project his fantasy and derive sexual gratification out of the strange relationship.
One afternoon when Barbara and Blake were attending a cocktail party, she noted his admiration of an older woman, with bold, imperious features and a heavy, but well-shaped body. This woman had clear skin and a deep musical voice. In brief, she came as close as is humanly possible to the queen of Blake's fantasies.
Barbara set out to make friends with her and learned that she was Mrs. Lotte Lovelace. She had once been a noted opera singer, specializing in Wagnerian roles but had retired to marry a wealthy businessman.
Barbara flaunted her new friend in front of Blake.
Once she taunted him. "You really go for Lotte. So why don't you do something about it? I know she likes you, too."
"Don't be a fool. She's got a rich, jealous husband. I wish you'd drop her."
"That's because you want her so bad. I never suspected you'd turn chicken. Especially when you could have her for the asking."
"Stop talking nonsense."
"What if I could fix things up for you?"
"You couldn't. So forget it."
Meanwhile, Barbara went to work on Mrs. Lovelace. She had a key to Blake's apartment and she invited the older woman there. Eventually she took her to the "throne room." Mrs. Lovelace was delighted.
"Whatever does he use this for?"
With her usual skill at spinning a plausible tale, Barbara explained that Blake had built the soundproof room for making television plays and that he was about to embark on a series of historical dramas that would require a queen as the central character. She had mentioned Lotte for the role but Blake was doubtful.
Mrs. Lovelace, who secretly cherished an ambition to return to the limelight, was thrilled. Barbara concocted a plan by which Lotte would dress up as the queen. She then promised to bring Blake to the chamber.
Barbara told Blake a different story. She claimed that Mrs. Lovelace knew what would happen in the room and was eager to participate. She also warned Blake that Lotte would only "get a bang out of the deal" if the whipping was severe and the rape appeared to be forced upon her.
A few nights later, Barbara arranged the scene with utmost care. She conducted Mrs. Lovelace to the chamber and helped her to dress in the velvet gown, the ermine stole and the glittering jewels. She then summoned Blake and watched in tense excitement as he crossed the room to kneel at the queen's feet.
Mrs. Lovelace was startled when Blake kissed her ankles and pressed his face against her thigh. But she did not protest as she thought this was a test to see if she fitted the designated role. Even when Blake towered above her, calling her "wicked temptress' and "queen of evil," she was amused rather than frightened.
Not until Blake seized her and pulled her from the throne did she scream. By then Blake was in too high a state of excitation to have stopped even if he had recognized that her terror was genuine.
Mrs. Lovelace was a powerfully built woman and, despite the hampering robes and high-heeled slippers, she put up a bitter struggle. Her resistance only served to increase Blake's frenzy. Pulling and tugging the frantic woman across the room, he bound her to the cross.
Her robe had split and her wig had fallen off in the fracas. Her skirt was rucked high above the top of her stockings, showing the white flesh of her thighs and the protective corset. Blake was completely out of control. Seizing a knife, he slashed her corset, raking her flesh so deeply that blood trickled along her thighs. Then, selecting a strap instead of the whip, he began to beat her.
Mrs. Lovelace arched and writhed under the blows, screaming and thrashing helplessly against the thongs. Blake's sexual frenzy knew no bounds. The strap rose and fell until the woman's body suddenly went limp. He released her and she rolled to the floor. Falling beside her and wrenching at his own clothing until he was nearly nude, he raped her repeatedly.
Barbara had watched the whole affair. She was aroused to almost as great an extent as Blake. But to make her gratification complete, a final step had to be taken.
She ran out of the room and telephoned Mr. Lovelace who, she had previously ascertained, would be at home. She gave a breathless account of what was happening and urged Lovelace to come immediately.
The Lovelace apartment was only a few blocks away.
Within minutes Lovelace arrived in a taxi. Barbara was holding the front door open for him and she led him quickly to the back room.
Mrs. Lovelace was attempting to rise but Blake was holding her down, his face pressed against her breasts, babbling to be forgiven.
Lovelace rushed forward, roaring, "Get away from her. Take your hands off my wife."
Both Blake and Mrs. Lovelace looked at him dazedly. Lovelace turned his attention to Lotte. "What are you doing here? What's been going on behind my back?"
Blake lurched to his feet but Lovelace already had a revolver in his hand. Blake swayed toward him and the gun went off. The bullet struck Blake in the shoulder but he managed to lunge forward and sweep the gun from Lovelace's hand.
Barbara did not wait to see more. She fled from the house.
Later she learned that none of the parties took action against the other. Each preferred that the episode should remain secret.
Florence Fennell was the only person who berated Barbara for her actions. She learned of the affair from Blake on the following afternoon. When she returned home, Barbara was ironing clothes. Florence let loose an angry tirade.
Barbara said coolly, "Get out, you ugly bitch. Get lost and never come back."
"Don't worry about that. I'll leave as soon as I can collect my clothes."
"You'll go now. This minute." Barbara raised her iron to a threatening position.
"There's something wrong with you, Babs," Florence said. "I mean really wrong. You ought to see a head-shrinker."
"Shut up and scram."
Barbara approached the older woman, jabbing at her with the hot iron.
Florence backed away but Barbara followed, striking out at her breasts. Florence threw up an arm to protect herself and there was a sizzling sound as the iron blistered the bare skin. With a scream, Florence stumbled out into the hall and down the stairs. Barbara watched her, leaning over the balustrade and laughing.
Later the same day Barbara had the lock changed. But she was not alone for long. Already she had picked her next victim.
This was a young man named Epstein who came from a background of extreme wealth. She had met him at a party where Blake had taken her and she immediately recognized that he was strongly attracted to her.
Epstein was a slight and sickly youth who had grown up under the domination of his mother. However, he had made an excellent record at the Wharton School of Finance and had been rewarded with a position of considerable importance in the wholesale furniture business controlled by his family. He was undistinguished of features, wore thick-lensed glasses and stuttered slightly. He was fully aware that most girls did not find him attractive and was greatly flattered by Barbara's attention.
Epstein's parents objected strenuously to Barbara as a daughter-in-law, partly because she was not of their faith, but more because of the unease which she created about her.
The conflict was a lure for Barbara. The pattern of her courtship strongly resembled that which she had used with Howard Baulding. She pretended to be deeply in love with him and indifferent to marriage. She urged him to spend weekends at her apartment. She flattered him, prepared his favorite foods, spent hours listening to his "long-hair" music which she detested, and refrained from drinking and smoking, of which he disapproved. She made expert love to him, simulating the heights of ecstasy.
Epstein was captivated. In defiance of his family, he took out a marriage license. The wedding ceremony was performed in the registrar's office.
As with Baulding, Barbara spurned her new husband on their wedding night. She locked herself in her room and, years later, she gleefully related to Dr. Norfleet the details of Epstein's futile attempts to break down the door, an act which brought a host of complaints from neighbors.
At no time after the marriage did she permit sexual relations. But she derived a perverse pleasure in flaunting her nakedness in front of her young husband and from his fumbling attempts to force the marital act. She would mock his hysterical pleas and taunt him with his masculine inadequacies.
She staged loud tantrums in which she smashed his phonograph records and his glasses. Once she threw boiling water at him and another time poured catsup over his hair. Worst of all, she used racial epithets to humiliate him and repeated over and over again that she could not understand how she could have brought herself to marry a Jew.
After these quarrels, Epstein would sometimes leave the apartment and return to his parents' home in Westchester County. In a day or two he would be back. Barbara would greet him with the same type of jeering obscenities which her mother had employed against Mark.
She would ask, "Did you spend the night in Mamma's bed? That's the right place for you. So why did you marry me?"
Or else she might say, "While you were gone I found a real man. Not a pansy like you."
Epstein was in such a state of nervous tension that his parents feared suicide.
In desperation, his mother sought Barbara out and pleaded for a reconciliation.
Barbara was all sweet innocence. She wept and declared that the fault was not hers. She swore that Epstein had not consummated their marriage. She conveyed the idea that he was a homosexual and talked vaguely about Oedipus complexes.
Mrs. Epstein was horrified. She said angrily, "I don't believe a word of it. Not a word."
Nevertheless the seeds of suspicion were planted in her mind.
The next night Epstein was back in Barbara's apartment. Although usually abstemious, he was in a drunken rage.
"What did you tell my mother, you bitch?" he screamed. "Is nothing too rotten for you?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," Barbara insisted. "Your mother was worried about you. She thinks you're not quite normal."
"Maybe I'm crazy, at that, to ever have got mixed up with a slut like you."
"I know. It's your mother you want, isn't it?"
"By God, I ought to kill you. I've got a good mind to do it, too."
Barbara feigned panic and, running from the apartment, pounded on the door across the hall. When the couple living there came to the doorway, she told them hysterically that her husband had threatened her life.
Epstein, hearing this, plunged down the stairs and out onto the street where he had parked his Jaguar. Less than an hour later the Jaguar crashed through a safety fence along the Hudson and catapulted down the steep bank to the river's edge, turning over and over in its fall. When the police arrived they found Epstein dead. Whether, in his state of intoxication and anger, he had lost control of the car or whether he had deliberately committed suicide, could not be determined. There can be no doubt, however, that the death wish was present and that it was fulfilled.
Barbara did not mourn him. She was enriched by his death to the extent of twenty thousand dollars. Besides, her next project was already under way. Barbara had learned that her mother had died in California and that her sister, Janie, was working in New York as a secretary in the office of a large national magazine.
Barbara looked her up. Janie was far from beautiful but she had a pleasant, wholesome look. She was thrilled with her job, especially since a researcher for the magazine, a young man named Malcolm Hyde, was showing an interest in her.
Whatever unpleasant memories Janie may have had of Barbara, they had been dissipated by time and they completely disappeared in the presence of the charming and obviously wealthy young widow.
Oddly enough, Barbara and Blake had not broken off their friendship. Barbara introduced Blake to Janie. Perhaps she had some idea of delivering Janie to Blake as she had done with Mrs. Lovelace. He, however, was too wary to be caught in the trap a second time.
With Blake as host, the two couples appeared together in famous nightclubs, expensive restaurants and at the theater. Janie was enchanted with this glimpse of a life hitherto unknown to her. Hyde was fascinated, too, but for a different reason. Barbara was at her charming best and, compared to her, Janie seemed drab and ordinary.
Barbara took care to avoid Hyde's admiring glances and to ignore the touch of his hand or knee when they were together. One night, however, when the group planned a dinner party, Barbara called up Blake and Janie and begged off on the grounds that she was ill.
Hyde was not notified of the change of plans. He arrived at Barbara's apartment at eight, expecting to find the others. Barbara went to the door in a diaphanous negligee which clearly showed her slim, high-breasted figure.
Hyde looked around in surprise. He said, "Hello. Am I early or something?"
"I'm sorry, Malcolm. I thought Janie was going to call you to tell you the party was off."
Hyde shuffled his feet. "In that case, I guess I better run along."
"Don't hurry. Now you're here, come in and have a drink. To tell the truth, I was just tired of nightclubs. I thought I'd have a quiet evening but now I'm feeling lonely."
Barbara had no difficulty in cajoling Hyde into staying for dinner. They dined by candlelight in the bay window of Barbara's new apartment. Toward the end of the meal, Hyde reached over and touched Barbara's arm.
She drew away and spoke archly. "When are you and Janie going to be married, Malcolm?"
"I don't know," he mumbled. "We haven't set a date."
"She's a nice girl. I hope you'll be happy together. You were very sensible to pick a girl like Janie."
"Yeah. Sure."
"You don't sound very enthusiastic. You're lucky. She'll make a wonderful wife."
"I know that," Hyde exploded. "Janie's nice and she's wholesome. She'll make a good mother for my kids. But a guy's got a right to expect something more."
"What more do you want?"
"Glamour, I guess. I see you and Janie together and I know I got the wrong end of the stick. You know I'm crazy about you."
"I like you, too, Malcolm. But I wouldn't hurt Janie for anything in the world."
Hyde was on his feet, pacing. "Okay. I guess all I rate is Janie. I guess I love her, too. But all my life I'll be wondering how it would be with you."
"I'm not a good girl like Janie. I mean-" Barbara bit her hp and broke off the words.
"What do you mean, Babs?"
"Well, just that if you had me, you'd be disappointed and glad to go back to Janie."
Hyde slipped down on his knees in front of her. "One night, Babs. That's all I ask. No one will ever know."
Barbara put her arms about him, pressing his face against her breasts. She was crying softly. "Do you mean that, Malcolm? Will you be satisfied with one night?"
He looked up startled. "You mean there's really a chance for me?"
Barbara nodded.
Hyde rose and drew her up with him, kissing her gently. They went to the bedroom and, in the dim light, Barbara disrobed. Hyde made tender love to her while she pretended a response which she was incapable of feeling. When they had finished, they embraced, each in tears over the sacrifice they were making for Janie.
As Barbara had foreseen, Hyde was not satisfied with this brief interlude. Soon he was begging her for a second night. With every appearance of reluctance she agreed to another rendezvous. But for Barbara to gain full satisfaction out of this affair, it was necessary that Janie should learn of the liaison in the most painful way possible.
To accomplish this, she lent Janie a key and designed a plan by which Janie would walk into the apartment and find her in bed with Hyde.
The first time, the plan misfired. Janie was hung up at her office with an emergency job and did not appear. To Barbara's disgust, she was forced into another night of simulated romance.
Her third try brought about as turbulent a scene as even Barbara could have desired. She and Hyde were lying naked on the bed when there was the scrape of the key in the lock, followed by Janie's footsteps in the room beyond.
Janie called, "Babs. Babs. Are you home?"
Barbara called back. "I'm in here. Who is it?"
Meanwhile Hyde, recognizing Janie's voice, jumped from the bed and made a dash for a crammed clothes closet.
Janie arrived just in time to catch a glimpse of his nude figure. She stood transfixed, looking at the familiar scattered clothing.
Barbara was still lying on the bed, propped up on one elbow, smiling. She said, "I'm sorry, Janie. But this is what you get for snooping."
Janie shook her head dazedly. "But you asked me to bring these books. You told me the bell was out of order and to walk in."
"You're having hallucinations, Janie. But what does it matter? Now you know what you should have known all along. The only man you can keep is one nobody else wants."
Janie dropped the books on the floor and swayed against the jamb.
Absurdly, Hyde chose this moment to emerge from the closet, holding a coat of Barbara's in front of him.
"Janie," he pleaded. "It's not the way things look. I mean, we got to talk things over."
Janie pulled herself together, spun on her heel and started to the outer door.
Hyde followed her to the foyer. She slammed the door as she stepped into the hall. Hyde opened it a crack and called after her. Janie did not turn. The woman living next door passed Janie on the steps. Hyde, remembering his state of nudity, ducked back into the apartment.
Barbara was giggling hysterically.
"What's so damned funny?" he growled.
"If you could only see yourself, holding that silly coat in front of you and all bare in the rear, chasing after your sweet Janie."
Hyde threw the coat from him and retreated to the bedroom where he began to dress hurriedly. Barbara lounged in a chair, watching him and laughing.
When he was fully clad, he asked, "What do we do now?"
"Do? Nothing. It was just a roll in the hay. That was all. Do you know something, Malcolm? You're not very good in bed. Janie won't have many chances to get a man but, even so, you're a bad bet."
He leaned over, his fist clenched. "I ought to sock you one, Babs. You're a mean bitch."
Barbara's eyes turned hard. "Just try it if you think you can get away with it."
"How can you stop me?"
Her hand snaked out to an open drawer in the table. There was a glint of steel and a sharp click. A six-inch switchblade was visible.
"Do you still want to make like a he-man?"
Hyde backed off. "To hell with you. All I want is never to see you again."
"That goes double for me. You're just a plain slob."
Hyde blundered out-of the apartment and rushed to the woman's hotel where Janie was living. She refused to see him. After a few drinks at a bar, he returned to the lobby and made such loud demands to see Janie that the police were called to eject him. He struck one of the officers and was arrested for assault.
Before Hyde could disentangle himself from the law, Janie had resigned her job and returned to California. Having destroyed the romance, Barbara lost all interest in her sister and made no attempt to check on her.
Barbara's next step was to get herself involved with a group of Greenwich Village characters. For the most part, these were eccentrics who clung to the fringes of the aritstic world. Among them were drug addicts, pushers, sexual perverts, sadists, prostitutes, pimps and psychopaths.
From Blake she had learned a good deal about demonology. On occasions she had even accompanied him to covins where the Black Mass was celebrated. In consequence she decided to decorate her apartment with cabalistic symbols. The results were bizarre. The ceilings, curtains and drapes were black, but there was a huge white rug in the center of the front room on which floodlights could be played. She often burned black candles and employed other overt signs of witchcraft.
Her apartment became the gathering place for her Bohemian friends. Barbara liked to greet them in a white robe and golden sandals, fancying herself as a "priestess" governing their lives. The floodlighted rug was the scene of many strange and obscene exhibitions.
Barbara did not participate in these acts of perversion but got her "bangs" from watching. Flagellation held a special fascination for her but she was unable to endure pain and did not desire to administer whippings. She preferred the passive role of voyeur.
Her main preoccupation was in setting up situations in which pain or humiliation would be inflicted on others. Her favorite targets were respectable middle-aged or elderly women who bore some resemblance to her grandmother and, therefore, to Mark as she had seen him dressed in her grandmother's clothing.
She made friends with these women in cocktail lounges, hotel lobbies and even in art galleries and museums. When possible she would get them intoxicated or stupefied with drugs and induce them to come to her apartment where, in a variety of ways, they were abused by her circle of intimates.
When these women returned to their senses they were usually too ashamed or too fearful of publicity to go to the police. Eventually, however, one woman did steel herself to file a complaint. In consequence the apartment was raided. No one was arrested but Barbara was forced to move.
Shortly afterward, Barbara married a third time. Bob Krakow was a bartender-rough, crude and violent, the antithesis of the weaklings who had been her previous husbands. His physical resemblance to the tramp who had first raped her, together with the similarity of his name, was the key to Barbara's ambivalent reactions to this brutish man.
Krakow had served prison terms for armed robbery, assault and statutory rape. To him the sex act was essentially obscene. Unlike her other husbands, Krakow could not be denied sexual relations. He would hurl her to the bed and, mouthing vile words, attack her savagely.
The bestiality of the act gave it "an innocence" in Barbara's eyes. As she could not defend herself, she was without responsibility and therefore without any sense of guilt. In discussing this with Dr. Norfleet, she indicated that in her helplessness against Krakow's sexual aggression she reverted to the protected pattern of her early childhood.
Nevertheless, she was determined that Krakow should be punished for his abuse of her. Obviously such a man could not be driven to suicide, so Barbara went out to find a tougher, meaner and more vicious man to pit against him.
Her first choice was a mistake. He was a big, brawling truck driver whom Barbara brought into the bar where Krakow worked. She made up to this man in a blatant fashion. Bob seized the bait and came out from behind the bar ready to fight. The truck driver took one look at Bob's grim face and the sawed-off billiard cue in his hand, then fled into the night.
Barbara did not give up easily. Her next choice fell upon a man named Liston whose background was similar to Krakow's. Liston was a gunman who had spent more than half his life in prison. Barbara induced him to come to her apartment a short time before she knew her husband would return from work.
When Bob arrived, the scene was set. Barbara was lying on the sofa with Liston crouched beside her. When Barbara heard the turn of the key in the lock, she began to scream and rip at her clothing. Bob burst into the room and stared dim-wittedly at the tableau.
Barbara cried out. "This man forced his way in here. He was trying to rape me."
With a bellow of rage, Bob charged the crouching man and hit him on the face, knocking him to the floor.
He yelled, "Get up. I'm going to kill you, you hunk of filth."
Barbara said, "No, Bob. We don't want the police. Just make him leave."
Bob swung toward her, shouting, "Shut up and get in the other room. Leave this bum to me."
This diversion, as Barbara may have suspected, gave Liston the few seconds he needed to reach for the gun which he carried in his shoulder holster.
When Bob turned, Liston had raised himself up on one knee and was holding the gun. Bob tried to kick it out of his hand. Liston jerked back and the gun roared, the bullet ploughing into the ceiling.
Liston managed to cling to the gun and pointed it directly at Bob, who suddenly panicked and rushed for the door. Liston fired twice. The first bullet caught Bob in the small of the back; the second crashed into the base of his skull.
Liston threw down the gun and, leaping over Bob's body, ran from the house. When the police arrived, Bob was dead. Barbara identified his assailant and Liston was arrested within a matter of hours when his car was stopped as he was about to enter the Holland Tunnel in an attempt to leave the city.
Liston went on trial for first degree murder. Barbara was prepared to give perjurious testimony against him. Liston's plea of self-defense was not tenable inasmuch as Bob had been shot in the back and Barbara maintained that Liston had forced his way into the apartment. However, the prosecution must have realized that Barbara, their only witness, would prove to be undependable and vulnerable in cross-examination.
On the second day the trial was halted and the defense was permitted to change their plea of not guilty to guilty of murder in the second degree. Liston escaped the electric chair but was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Before the year was out, Barbara had married for the fourth time. This man, Harry Boyle, was the sorriest of the lot. He had become a drug addict at the age of fourteen. In adolescence he had been confined in the Riverside Hospital and later had "taken the cure" twice in the United States Public Health Service Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky. Each time, he had reverted to his addiction. His "habit" was costing him about fifty dollars a day and, as he was unemployable, his only means of securing the money was through an endless series of muggings, rollings and petty thefts. At various times he had been arrested and had served brief prison sentences.
He had a phobic fear of arrest because this meant that he must go "cold turkey," with no relief from the harrowing cramps, the frightful headaches and cold sweats which are among the withdrawal symptoms of the addict who cannot get his "jolt."
Although Barbara had experimented with marijuana, her instinctive caution where her own safety was concerned had made her shy away from narcotic drugs. But the effects of narcotics on others held a fascination for her.
Boyle, when she met him, was twenty-six, but had the frame and features of a delicate boy of thirteen. He was only five feet one in height and weighed about seventy pounds. He had light brown hair, a triangular, elf-like face and liquid brown eyes. His arms and thighs were a mass of "main-line hitches" where he had injected himself innumerable times with unsterile hypodermic needles.
Dr. Norfleet believed that in Boyle, Barbara found an extension of her image of herself as a helpless child, battered by circumstances beyond her control. Her self-love and self-hatred could be expressed by alternately pampering and punishing Boyle in much the way that her grandmother had treated her.
The marriage seemed unnecessary as Boyle was grateful for a place to sleep and, like most confirmed addicts, was totally disinterested in sex and incapable of intercourse. Barbara's insistence on marriage appears to have been to "establish ownership and absolute control" of another person.
Boyle was not given to violence by nature and his unceasing crimes were a torture to him. He could not bring himself to roll a drunk or snatch a purse until driven to do so by his craving for drugs. Thus he became an easy prey to Barbara's enslavement.
Barbara's preoccupation with Boyle was the most intense which she had experienced in her adult life. She doled out money to him for his "shots," rarely giving him enough for more than a twenty-four-hour supply. She learned how to "cook the caps," tie the torniquet about his arm or thigh and "boot the shot home."
Dr. Norfleet had no doubt that, to her, the hypodermic needle was a phallic symbol and that its penetration into the flesh represented ritualistic rape in which she assumed the power of masculine aggression.
She insisted on accompanying Boyle when he made his "scores" (purchases of drugs) even though her presence made the pushers so wary that they often refused to sell. This meant that he was always searching for new "contacts" and Barbara scoured the city with him, rambling in and out of clubs, cabarets, dance halls, penny arcades and other places where junkies were known to assemble. This constant quest, Dr. Norfleet believes, satisfied some inner yearning, as though she were perpetually seeking her own identity.
At times Barbara refused Boyle the money he required and insisted that he "earn" it. She now engaged in a fantastic game, trailing her husband while he prowled the streets in search of a hapless victim. As he crouched in a doorway or at the dark mouth of an alley she would take her post somewhere nearby, breathlessly awaiting the violence that was to come.
Boyle was far from courageous and never attacked able-bodied men. His victims were usually elderly people, preferably women who were physically handicapped or too stout to give chase. He frequented areas through which scrubwomen, who clean Manhattan's huge office buildings at night, pass in the early hours of the morning.
His favorite weapon was a "billy" loaded with BB shot. A single blow would send the woman sprawling to the sidewalk. He would then snatch her purse and other valuables which might be pawned, and run.
Sometimes Boyle would fell as many as five or six victims before he could collect sufficient funds for his "fix." As soon as the money was in hand, he would head for the hangouts of the pushers in Spanish Harlem or the Times Square area. His first shot was usually taken in a washroom and by the time he reached home he would be "floating."
Barbara would help him prepare his other doses and encourage him to describe the violent acts of the night.
After he nodded off she would relive these scenes in her imagination.
In these fantasies she was both the attacker and the victim and thus, symbolically, both the rapist and the raped. Often while her husband lay beside her in the deep tormented sleep of the addict, she would induce an orgasm manually, which would bring to a climax the dark, conflicting passions of her nature.
In time these vicarious thrills waned and Barbara experimented with new ones. Under the guise of trying to help Boyle "kick his habit," she would deprive him of drugs until he was a twitching, quivering mass of nerves.
To make sure that he would have no access to narcotics, she would lock him in the windowless bathroom and would remain outside listening to his screams and his futile beating on the door. At length she would relent, release him, bring forth a hidden store of drugs and help him "to shoot up."
Boyle frequently talked of suicide and made abortive attempts on his own life. Barbara listened sympathetically and even discussed methods and suggested a suicide pact. One day she locked Boyle in the bathroom around noon and left the apartment. She did not return until five o'clock. She listened at the bathroom door but all was silent. Unbolting the heavy locks, she entered to find him lying in the filled tub, the water of which was darkly stained with his blood.
He had managed to break the glass of the mirror and slash his wrists with the shards. He was dead.
Hysterically she told the police of her efforts to cure her husband of his addiction. She was questioned with the utmost sympathy and released to think up more deviltry.
With the death of Boyle, such slight self-restraint as she possessed seemed to disappear. She was twenty-six and could pass for some years younger. Her sordid life had left no external marks upon her. Her financial position, however, was precarious. Long ago she had spent the money she had inherited from Epstein and her grandmother and was dependent upon the allowance given her by her father.
Mark Reddington had troubles of his own. Through the years he had developed into a chronic alcoholic and as a result was relieved of his post with the radio station. Barbara appeared at his door at intervals, abusively demanding money. Mark gave her what he had but soon he was forced to vacate his apartment. He left without notifying Barbara and she was unable to locate him.
Barbara took openly to prostitution. Dressed neatly and conservatively, she had no difficulty in picking up "Johns." Many of these men failed to recognize her as a prostitute and congratulated themselves on finding a nice, pretty girl who was lonely for male companionship.
But, even though her livelihood was involved, Barbara could not remain pleasant for long. Once she had ingratiated herself with a man, she sought some way to humiliate or injure him. She loudly accused men of molesting her and solicited the aid of barkeepers and passers-by to protect her, doing everything in her power to provoke a fight. Bar after bar refused her service but she never left without a scene.
Although the plush bars were more likely to provide wealthy Johns, Barbara preferred her old haunts in Greenwich Village, especially those which catered to sexual deviates.
She spent many unprofitable nights cruising the "fag" bars and approaching obvious homosexuals. Sometimes these men would be friendly, in which case she would scream denunciations, accusing them of making improper advances. On the other hand, when ignored, she was equally vituperative, branding any man who did not fall under her spell as a homosexual. With Barbara there was no way to win.
Her favorite trouble spot was a notorious bar known as Clarence's. Night after night she would appear there, select a stranger and make up to him. After a few drinks, she would start needling him. No matter how he reacted she would find an excuse for a noisy quarrel. When the bartenders tried to intervene, she would start throwing glasses about, upsetting bar stools and ripping her own clothing.
Barbara also made a custom of dropping into the clubs, cabarets and coffee houses of the district. Here she would attach herself to a group of tourists, being extremely pleasant at first.
When the party was mixed, she would try to take a man from the woman whom he was escorting. If the woman objected, the argument would soon degenerate into a full-scale brawl, with Barbara butting, punching and kicking her opponent, as well as tearing her clothing.
In a six month period, Barbara engaged in fights and rumpuses sufficient to involve the police in at least eighteen instances. Without exception, she was the complainant, accusing men of attempted rape and women of lesbianism. Her victims were usually dominated by the desire to get away and escape publicity.
Barbara was still able to pull herself together on occasion and head uptown to the more luxurious bars. It was on one such expedition that she met John Chapman, the young bank teller who took her to the Netzelnimski apartment. Her conduct that night was only another dramatic episode in her ceaseless trouble-making activities.
Barbara poured out her story to Dr. Norfleet in the most minute detail, but at no time did she express remorse or regret. Nor did she indicate any sincere desire to reshape her life.
Dr. Norfleet reluctantly admits that he made little or no progress with her toward a first essential step to a cure: that of helping her to establish a true identity for herself. Barbara was constantly playing a role in a world of fantasy. As a result she had no personality of her own and, no foundation upon which to build character. She shirked all responsibility and rejected all self-examination except that of the most superficial nature. As soon as she felt that she was safe from prosecution by Netzelnimski, she ceased her visits to the psychiatrist's office.
A subsequent check on Barbara indicates that her mischief-making propensities have not abated.
A few weeks after her final appointment with Dr. Norfleet, she approached a group of teen-age boys in a public park. These boys later claimed she was friendly at first and that they "thought she was a nice girl."
She asked one of the boys if he would like "to go somewhere" with her. In embarrassment, he refused.
She then called him a "stinking fag."
The angry youth slapped her, whereupon one of the other boys entered the fray. The two youngsters began striking and shoving each other, with Barbara egging them on.
A police car appeared at the edge of the park and suddenly the boys bolted.
For once Barbara was not unscathed. She was knocked into a play-pen by the fleeing boys. Her spiked heel caught on the side of the pen and her leg was broken in two places by the fall.
The boys were rounded up and charged with assault. Eventually the case against them was dismissed, but not until they had spent varying periods in jail awaiting trial.
Before the breaks had fully mended, Barbara was on the prowl again.
She was found lying unconscious by the curb on lower Madison Avenue. She claimed to have been mugged and rolled by a colored youth.
Later she made a positive identification of her alleged assailant from police "mug shots." The youth, when questioned, was able to prove beyond any possible doubt that he was not in New York that night.
What will happen to Barbara Reddington?
Dr. Norfleet believes that, with the passage of time, some of the more virulent aspects of her disorder will slacken. She will no longer possess the physical stamina to roam the streets, pick up men, engage in fights and wreak physical destruction. As she grows older, too, she will become less attractive to men and her sexual prowess will diminish. Her violence will tend to be sporadic rather than constant.
Gradually she will lapse more and more deeply into her fantasy world. Eventually she may conceal her self-hate and her hatred for mankind beneath a cloak of respectability. Her self-righteousness may become formalized by outward acceptance of religious or political views which will permit her to denounce the "evil" in others in a pattern which society condones.
Despite this, for a person like Barbara, the whole world must remain an enemy and she must create havoc in the life of every person with whom she comes in contact. In her later years she may become more the hag than the witch, dependent upon such weapons as gossip, slander, malicious rumors, poison-pen letters and anonymous telephone calls.
But one thing seems certain: the forces of evil will never release her from her covenant. As long as she fives, Barbara will be dedicated to bringing grief, despair, ill-will, pain, suffering and humiliation to every person who seeks to befriend her.
In a more primitive society, Barbara Reddington might have been burned at the stake.
But, as Dr. Norfleet wryly observes, it would seem more likely that she would have taken her place among the false accusers.
CHAPTER FIVE
Curb the Dark Stranger
(The Case of Mickey Horsdorf)
The big gray Cadillac was nosed in deep among the bushes, scarcely visible from the rutted country road. The state patrol car would have missed it if their headlights had not glinted across the rear window.
State Trooper Clayton spoke to the driver, Trooper Martinelli. "Some funny business going on. Let's back up and take a look."
"Probably a pair of love birds beating it up in the back seat."
Clayton grunted. Even as he had been speaking, Martinelli had dowsed the lights and snaked the patrol car back along the road.
Clayton, his flashlight in his hand, strode over to the Cadillac. Martinelli had been right. A young couple were twined in tight embrace in the back. The beam fell across the exposed flesh of the girl's thigh, the lean naked hardness of the boy's torso. The trooper swung the light to one side and caught a glimpse of the girl's face, pert and pretty, surmounted by a mass of coppery red hair. The beam moved again and rested on the boy: black hair brushed straight back over a low forehead, sideburns, a thin, angular face, beaded with sweat. The dark eyes narrowed against the rays of the light.
Clayton said, "What's going on here?"
"A game of ping-pong. What do you think?"
"Okay, wise guy. Break it up. Lets see your license."
The boy rolled back into the shadow and the girl spoke for the first time. "Please, Officer, give us a minute. I mean, please...." Her voice faltered and she began to sob.
Clayton shrugged. He had a teen-age daughter of his own. If he ever caught her pulling a trick like this he'd use. a hairbrush on her until she couldn't sit down for a week. All the same, he felt sorry for this girl. Her voice hadn't been tough like the boy's but almost gentle in its pleading.
He let the fight drop to his side and said gruffly, "You kids ought to be ashamed to pull a stunt like this right out in the open. But we're not running you in. So get decent and make it snappy."
He stepped to the rear of the Caddie and ran his light over the license plate. If the car was hot, it wasn't listed yet.
He withdrew to the patrol car, leaned against the window and lit a cigarette. Martinelli said, "The punk sounded tough. Maybe we ought to move in."
"Give 'em a chance to get their clothes on. The girl's naked as a jay bird. If she was my Sue-" He let the words die.
Something was bothering him. What Martinelli had said was true. The boy hadn't acted like a kid who'd be sporting a Caddie. Still you never could tell. Maybe the car belonged to the girl. She'd struck him as a brat-rich and spoiled. If he hauled her out of the car naked, she'd probably yell rape and he'd land in hot water. Anyway, all he planned was to throw a scare into the pair and send them scooting.
Meanwhile, back in the car, the two youngsters were speaking in soft whispers.
The girl asked, "What'll we do, Roy? Have you got a license?"
"Don't talk crazy. Where would I get a license? As soon as the fuzz gives me the once-over, they'll know this baby is hot."
"You mean you stole the car?"
"Like you didn't know. For Crissake, where do you think I got this bus? We're in this jam together. They throw me in the slammer and you'll be sitting in the cell next door."
"You've got to do something, Roy."
"Like what?"
"I don't know, but I didn't think you'd chicken out so easy."
"Who's chickie? If I had a gat I could burn 'em. But I got nothing."
"There's a jack up front."
"Yeah. That's an idea."
"I didn't mean anything. Roy, will they send you back to jail?"
Without answering, Roy slid out of the back seat and rounded the car until he was at the open window beside the wheel. Clayton moved toward him.
"Okay, kid. Let's see some identification."
"Sure. It's in the glove compartment."
Roy reached inside the car and his fingers curled on the jack. He drew it out and, in a single swift motion, lashed at the trooper.
In the shadowy darkness, Clayton hadn't seen the jack, didn't even have time to raise his arm to ward off the blow. The heavy metal crashed into the side of his face. He went down as though poleaxed.
Martinelli leapt from the patrol car, drawing his revolver. Roy was already behind the wheel. Martinelli raised his gun to fire, then saw the girl, just behind the boy, her face exposed. As the trooper hesitated, Roy gunned the engine and jammed the car into gear. The Caddie swung in a tight arc, aimed directly at Martinelli. He jumped clear but his ankle caught in a tangle of vines and he fell. As the Caddie wheeled toward the roadway, he snapped off a shot. The bullet caromed harmlessly off a fender.
Martinelli rushed to his fellow trooper. Clayton was unconscious but still breathing. The side of his face was a bloody pulp and one foot had been crushed by the swinging wheels of the Cadillac.
Swearing under his breath, Martinelli raced back to the patrol car. He spun it around and started in pursuit. Already the Caddie had hit the blacktop road and had veered toward the highway, two miles away.
In the lead car the boy was crouched low over the wheel, his foot pressing the accelerator to the floorboard. He was slewing along the curves, not daring to let up speed. In the rear-view mirror he could see the twin eyes of the patrol car's headlights and the glitter of the red dome. The siren screamed deafeningly.
The girl was leaning over him.
"Faster. We've got to get away."
"I can't make it. That meat cart's got a souped-up engine."
"Try a side road."
"I don't see none. It wouldn't do no good if I did. I'm flyin' blind."
The girl glanced behind her. The patrol car was coming up fast.
She crouched closer over the boy. "Roy."
"Yeah."
"You know how to play tag, don't you?"
"Sure, but that spells big trouble."
"It couldn't be much worse. I think you killed the cop."
"With a jack? You're blowin' your skull."
"They'll burn you, Roy."
"Shut up, you bitch. Shut up."
"All right, Roy. Let them burn you. See if I care."
Roy gripped the wheel tighter and swayed to the side of the road. His foot eased up on the accelerator but he was still making sixty. He signaled to Martinelli that he would stop.
The trooper had not fired again. He'd needed both hands to control the car. Besides, he was uncertain of the girl's guilt and did not wish to endanger her life.
As the Caddie -edged over to the shoulder of the road he crowded in close, intending to block it off by angling in front of it. But when he drew even, Roy put on a sudden burst of speed, thrusting ahead. Martinelli speeded up, too, and in a matter of seconds was racing neck to neck with the heavier car.
Roy inched toward the patrol car. Then, clamping the wheel with both hands, he spun it hard to the left. There was the grinding crash of metal and a shuddering impact. For a moment the two cars clung together, both drivers fighting their spinning wheels. Then the Caddie jolted ahead and the police car swung across the road at a crazy angle and into a ditch. It ploughed into the moist earth for a hundred yards before crashing into a tree.
The Cadillac sped on.
Roy did not get far. About fifteen miles along the highway he hit "a roadblock. He tried to turn back but he was too late. Before the patrol car was wrecked, Martinelli had been able to summon aid for Clayton via the two-way radio. He had also described the Cadillac and its occupants, and given its license number.
As the officers roughly yanked Roy from the front seat, they asked, "Where's the girl?"
"In back."
They found her lying on the floor between the seats. Her dress was torn and her cheek bruised. She appeared to be in a semiconscious state.
As she stumbled to the roadway, she gasped, "Thank heaven, you saved me. He kidnaped and raped me. I think he was going to kill me."
Roy lunged toward her, screaming, "What the hell are you trying to pull? You're in this as much as me!"
The officers shoved him back and held him. The girl shrank away from him, into the arms of a policeman. "Don't let him have me again," she sobbed hysterically. "I think he's crazy. Oh God, what he did to me."
Roy was pushed into a patrol car and taken to a nearby towns where he was placed under formal arrest. The girl followed in a second car.
Here the boy was identified as Roy Spurjack. He was eighteen and had a record of three arrests, one for assault and two for automobile theft. He had served time in Coxsackie and was currently on parole.
The girl was Michelle "Mickey" Horsdorf. She had no record.
Roy confessed, placing as much of the blame on the girl as he could. After leaving Coxsackie he claimed that he had tried to go straight. He had got a job as a trucker's assistant and was getting along fine.
"Then I meet this broad in a candy shop a couple of blocks from where I live. As soon as she's hip to my record, she's all over me. Why don't I take her for a ride sometime? We could have ourselves-a ball. I say, 'What's wrong with a roof or a cellar club?' But she says nix on that. When she does things, she wants to do them in style.
"She's always getting me worked up, giving me a feel, telling me how good it would be. But she's got to have a bus, a real ritzy job, before she puts out.
"I keep telling her I'm a straight John now but she just laughs and calls me chicken, says I'm losing my nerve."
Roy finally had agreed to "borrow" a car. Early on the evening of his arrest, he had hung around a parking lot in downtown Manhattan where he knew the attendant occasionally left his post for "a quick one" in the bar across the street. When this happened, Roy pretended to be in charge. He had waited until a customer had driven in and, as soon as the owner was out of sight, Roy had driven off in the Cadillac.
He insisted that Mickey had known the car was stolen, that it was she who had suggested the long ride into the country, and that she had voluntarily submitted to sexual intercourse. Moreover, he claimed she egged him on to attack Trooper Clayton and to "play tag" with Martinelli.
Even if his story were accepted it constituted no legal defense. His viciousness toward the girl, as well as his obscenity of speech, tended to militate against him rather than help him.
Besides, Mickey Horsdorf had a completely different tale to tell.
She admitted she had met Roy casually in a candy store, but insisted that from then on, he was the aggressor. He dogged her footsteps, hung about the entrance of her house and followed her, making indecent proposals and lewd remarks. She had wanted to get rid of him but hadn't known how without antagonizing him to a point where he might become dangerous.
On the night of the attack, she said, she had met him by chance near the candy store. He had shown her the Cadillac and had told her that it belonged to his uncle who had let him borrow it for a few hours.
He had offered to take her for a ride but she refused. At length, however, she had agreed to sit in the front seat and listen to the radio. Once she was in, he had started up the car without warning. She protested but he said jokingly that he'd take her for "just a little spin." She had acceded rather than make a loud scene.
He had driven through Central Park and on to Riverside Drive. She had not been unduly disturbed until they reached the highway. By then Roy was driving too fast for her to alight and he only laughed when she begged him to turn back.
Hours passed before he had found the rutted back road and had nosed into the clearing. He had then produced a switchblade and had forced her into the back seat of the car.
He had said, "Do as I tell you or I'll rip your throat open."
He had then ordered her to undress and had raped her, all the time clenching the knife in his hand.
Mickey had been greatly relieved when the patrol car had arrived on the scene but she'd been afraid to call out for help because Roy still held the knife at her side, whispering, "You let one yip out of you and you're going to get this right in the gut. So play it soft and easy."
Mickey denied any knowledge of the jack in the front seat and branded as a he Roy's statement that she had incited him to "play tag" with Martinelli. On the contrary, she said she had urged Roy to surrender and that, in anger, he had struck her and knocked her down.
Her torn clothing and swollen face served to confirm her version of the night's events, as did the open switchblade found in the tonneau of the car.
The officers were sympathetic until they had a chance to talk to Clayton and Martinelli. Both troopers were severely injured and had been removed to a hospital. Clayton had a fractured skull, eye damage and broken bones in his foot. Martinelli's arm had been broken and two ribs fractured in the crash. Each man, however, was able to make a statement.
"She didn't act terrified," Clayton said. "She was as pert as you please. And I didn't see any knife."
"She had plenty of chances to holler," Martinelli added. "I got the idea she was working in cahoots with the boy." He paused, then said shame-facedly, "Of course, I could be wrong."
Once Roy had had a chance to cool down and talk with a lawyer, his story gradually shifted until it substantially supported that told by Mickey. The only radical difference was his denial of rape. Already a deal was in the making. If she would drop the rape charge, the most serious of the offenses, he would absolve her from witting participation in other stages of the crimes. Perhaps he realized, too, that a show of belated chivalry would be less harmful to him than a display of vindictiveness.
A long string of charges were filed against Roy, including assault with intent to kill, automobile theft, transporting a stolen car across a state line and resisting arrest.
Mickey was held for two days as a material witness and then released in the custody of her brother-in-law, Dr. Claude Damerick, a Manhattan dentist.
She agreed to testify against Roy but this became unnecessary. He was permited to "cop a plea" of guilty on the charges of assault and theft. In exchange, the more serious accusation of "intent to kill" was dismissed. He was sent back to prison to serve out an indeterminate term.
Mickey Horsdorf went free.
The matter might have rested there but certain authorities were far from satisfied with Mickey's innocence. During the two and a half years that she had resided in New York, Mickey had been involved, in one way or another, in a whole series of crimes. In each instance she appeared to be an unwilling participant, even the victim of the offense. Outwardly she was merely a passenger in a stolen car, the recipient of gifts from a holdup artist, the innocent cause of a deadly brawl, the victim of mass rape.
In no case was she legally culpable, but she was the catalyst that set the crime in motion and there was reason to believe that she nourished the antisocial drives of her male associates.
An investigatory probation officer was sent to discuss the matter with Dr. Damerick and his wife, Margaret, who was Mickey's half-sister. The Damericks were already deeply distressed about Mickey and they accepted the suggestion of the officer that she should undergo psychiatric observation.
The psychiatrist chosen was Dr. Robert E. Hazel.
When Mickey appeared at Dr. Hazel's office a few days later, she was an attractive, rather coquettish figure. Her face was pert, almost mischievous, with a light sprinkling of freckles about the ridge of her nose and an unformed, childish mouth. She was well built, slim but wiry. All in all, she might have posed as a typical, wholesome high school girl.
Mickey was on the defensive, at first. She kept her eyes on the rolled-up handkerchief in her hand, only shooting an occasional glance at Dr. Hazel.
"I've been in a lot of trouble," she admitted. "But none of it was my fault. I try my best and then, bang! everything goes wrong. People blame me but it isn't fair. I'm just unlucky." She began to sob and dab at her eyes with her handkerchief.
Dr. Hazel remained silent. He was certain that above everything else, Mickey craved an audience, someone to whom she could boast of her extraordinary exploits. If he was to help her, there must first be this unburdening.
Most of what Mickey told Dr. Hazel in the initial interviews was sheer fabrication. As with all the "witches" interviewed, there was a confusion between erotic sexual pleasure and pain. Just as in the case of Barbara Reddington, there was preoccupation with writhing bodies, whips, the theft or destruction of phallic symbols and the usurpation of masculine power. In each case there was a fragmentation of the individual's identity and the absence of any restraining super-ego.
Each girl escaped reality through elaborate dream sequences. The similarity of these fantasies is most easily demonstrated by a story which Mickey told Dr. Hazel in one of their early sessions. She claimed that, in childhood, she had witnessed a scene in which a woman dressed in white had been bound to a tombstone and flogged by black-clad figures.
Here, in a slightly changed form, is the same fantasy which tormented both Barbara Reddington and Blake. Such fantasies cannot be dismissed. They form the hard core of the disbalanced personality which assumes rigidity in adolescence. This is emphasized by one of the world's leading psychiatric theoreticians, the late Dr. Edmund Bergler, who wrote in an article in the New York Times that "there is only one basic neurosis, that which has its origin in the fantasies of early childhood."
To Mickey Horsdorf, truth and fantasy were so interwoven that she had difficulty in untangling them. However, by a conscious effort of will, she was usually able to do so.
This became evident when Dr. Hazel questioned her concerning the flogging scene she had allegedly witnessed.
Q. Where did this take place? A. In a cemetery, of course. Q. In a big cemetery?
A. Yes. There were hundreds of tombstones, all white.
Q. Were there flowers? Grass?
A. Yes. I remember some roses. Big red ones. But they were all faded.
Q. And you saw this at night?
A. I guess so. But I could see the color of the roses awfully clear.
Q. When did this happen? How old were you?
A. I don't know. I was only little.
Q. Could it have happened in a dream?
A. (A hesitation, then a nervous giggle) I guess it must have but it seems so clear.
Q. You think now that this was a dream?
A. I guess so. What would I have been doing in a cemetery when I was a little kid?
After a while, finding the truth became a game with Mickey. Her first version of any episode was almost always a compilation of lies and distortions. She would then go over her story, step by step, meticulously separating the true from the false. Whenever there was doubt of her accuracy in Dr. Hazel's mind, he tested her under hypnosis or light narcosis. Finally, under his expert guidance, her full story unrolled.
One of the peculiar aspects of Mickey's life was the number of dentists who appeared in it. The first of these was her father, Dr. Walter Horsdorf. He had been a successful practitioner in a New England coastal city. He had married as a young man and had had two daughters, Margaret and Elizabeth.
This marriage lasted for twenty-two years and was terminated by his wife's death. At about the same time, his daughters married and moved away from home. In his loneliness, Dr. Horsdorf remarried. This woman was in her late thirties and had been his housekeeper for some years. Michelle was the child of this second marriage.
Michelle's first memories of her father were of a stern, irritable, grim-faced man, with thinning gray hair and bleak eyes behind steel-rimmed spectacles. Her mother was a plump bird-like woman who suffered from deafness and was constantly in fear of offending her husband.
Dr. Horsdorf had always dabbled in real estate, and when the war brought a boom to the town he became quite wealthy. For some years he had been afflicted with arthritis and, as the disease progressed, he was forced to give up his practice. He continued, however, to speculate in the purchase and resale of houses, a venture in which he was highly successful.
The house in which Mickey had been raised lay in the heart of the city, a big three-story building of red brick to which ells had been added on the two lower floors. The street was a short one, running parallel to the main street for three blocks. Most of the houses were occupied by professional men but some had been made into funeral homes, private hospitals and medical syndicates.
Originally, Dr. Horsdorf had his office on the ground floor and had opened up a second dental office in the room beyond. The family living quarters were on the second floor and there were three bedrooms on the third floor.
After his retirement, Dr. Horsdorf sublet both dental offices but continued his previous living arrangements. One of these lessees was Dr. Samuel Cape. The friendship between these two men can only be attributed to the attraction of opposites.
Sam Cape had a well-deserved reputation as a playboy. He was a short, stocky man with black, curly hair, a dark predatory face and glittering brown eyes. He came from one of the town's oldest and most respected families, by which he was regarded as the black sheep.
Despite his size, Cape had been a topnotch athlete, star of his college hockey team, a polo player and a racer of sports cars. His vices were drink and women. In college he had been suspended twice for drinking and, because of his spotty academic record, had been refused admission to medical school.
At thirty-five, he had been twice divorced and had been the corespondent in a sensational divorce suit. To top things off, he had been arrested on four occasions; once for drunken brawling, the other times for driving while intoxicated. On one of these counts he had served a sixty-day prison sentence.
Cape's practice was almost nonexistent and he was frequently delinquent on the matter of rent. Dr. Horsdorf was curiously tolerant of these lapses and even permitted Cape the free use of the empty ell at the rear of the offices for living quarters.
Mickey was strangely isolated in the huge, skeletal house. Her father usually retired to his third-floor bedroom immediately after an early dinner and insisted that his wife accompany him. He showed little interest in Mickey and, when he did, there were usually unpleasant consequences. He made it clear that he had not wanted another child and even questioned Mickey's paternity. Mickey did not understand but it was amply clear that she was rejected.
The mother did little to help. She was of French-Canadian extraction and was beset by a sense of guilt because she had not been married in the Catholic Church. Her prettiness had long since faded and her deafness prevented her communication with others. She went about the house almost like an automaton, completely under her husband's thumb.
Like most children headed for trouble, Mickey's earliest and most vivid memories were of punishment. Her father hated noise. Any shouting, crying or noisy play was dealt with summarily.
In such cases, Dr. Horsdorf would order his wife to spank the child. The spankings themselves were not unduly severe and Mickey might not have resented them so deeply if they had been administered by the father.
The circumstances surrounding these punishments were the cause of their traumatic shocks. To make his wishes known, Dr. Horsdorf would bellow at his wife. She complied with his demands reluctantly and struck the child lightly. In a rage, her husband would scream for her to "lay it on."
Once, when Mrs. Horsdorf rebelled, a particularly shocking scene ensued which was etched on Mickey's mind.
Dr. Horsdorf had grabbed the paddle from his wife's hand and shouted, "I'll show you what I mean."
He had then hauled his wife across his knee and, lifting her skirt, had paddled her until she was screaming and writhing in agony.
"Now do what I tell you!" he roared.
He watched while his wife spanked the child, then stalked away. Mrs. Horsdorf made some effort to comfort Mickey, drawing her close and caressing her, but the child was beyond caring. She hated her father and was contemptuous of her mother for her compliancy.
Because her presence irked her father, Mickey was banished to a room on the second floor of the house. She was glad for the separation from her parents but frightened by the silence and sense of desolation which surrounded her.
In time she grew bolder and wandered about the house late at night. She invaded the ground floor offices and waiting room. Her favorite pastime was to sit in the dental chair which faced a bay window, watching the comings and goings on the street.
Inevitably, Dr. Sam Cape's activities attracted her attention. Cape was kind to her in an offhand way. Sometimes he would give her nickels, candy or chewing gum, or stop to tousle her hair and play with her for a minute or two. He had no idea of the wild emotional response set up in the lonely little girl.
In spite of his financial difficulties, Cape was a snappy dresser and owned a second-hand Jaguar. Late at night he would park the car in the driveway at the rear of the house. Frequently he was so drunk he had difficulty in negotiating the short distance to the back door and would fumble with the lock.
Quite often he was not alone. A variety of women accompanied him to his room. Mickey listened to the hushed whispers and muted laughter. She was curious and would creep as near as she dared to his quarters. She would hear voices, the clink of glasses and, later, sounds which she could not understand but which excited her.
She was determined to learn what was going on. When the ell had been built, the original windows at the rear of the house had not been removed but had been smeared over with white paint. One of these windows fronted an inside stairway and was nearly concealed by a high railing. A triangle, however, was visible. Mickey scraped away some of the paint and found that, by standing on tiptoe, she had a clear view of Cape's bedroom.
Night after night, Mickey would wait for the sounds of Cape's car, then run to the window to see if he was alone. If a woman was with him, she would scurry to her peephole and watch.
Cape would seem to have possessed an irresistible fascination for women of some standing in the community. He avoided prostitutes and young girls. Most of his guests were middle-aged matrons with full-blown figures. Also among their number were several nurses and teachers, a woman lawyer and a librarian.
Cape's approach to sex had a ritualistic quality. After a drink or two he would persuade the woman to stand in the glow of an infrared lamp and would slowly strip off her clothing, piece by piece, stopping before removing each article to caress and kiss the exposed flesh. If she tried to help with the disrobing, he would playfully slap her hand away and insist on performing the rite himself.
When she was naked he would lead her to a leather couch, press her down among the pillows, and kiss her eyes, lips, throat and breasts. Then he would fall upon her in frenzied passion.
Mickey became completely absorbed in a fantastic game of her own. One or two of the women she knew; others she had recognized as females she had seen on the street; still others she saw later and recognized. She began trailing these women, learning everything she could about them. In a few cases, she managed to scrape up acquaintances with them and to gain access to their homes. Some of them must have been mystified by the curious small girl but it is doubtful that any of them recognized the dangerous symptoms beneath the seemingly innocent prying.
Mickey was nine when she decided to present herself to Sam Cape. She waited undl a night when he came home alone, staggering drunk. She watched through the peephole while he gulped a drink. Then she slithered down the stairs, clad only in a frilly white nightdress and a yellow flannel robe.
The door was unlatched and she slid into the room. Cape had thrown himself down in a leather armchair and his eyes were closed. Mickey took her place under the lamp and turned it on. The brightness roused Cape from his torpor and he sat bolt upright, staring at the doll-like figure.
"Jumping Judas Jehosaphat!" he yelled. "Where the deuce did you spring from, kid?"
Mickey swayed, imitating the arch smiles and coy gestures of the women she had observed.
"Aren't I pretty? Don't you like me?"
Cape gagged and his eyes bugged. "You're Walt Horsdorfs kid. I thought for a while I was hallucinating."
"I'm Mickey."
"All right, Mickey. You beat it right back where you came from. Go ahead. Scram!"
Instead of obeying, Mickey let the yellow robe slide to her feet and pulled off her nightgown, so that she was stark naked.
Cape was on his feet, his forehead ridged with sweat. "Cut that out. If I tell your Old Man, he'll wham the tail off you."
"You won't tattle."
"Why not?"
"Because I can tell plenty, too-about all the ladies you bring here." She pointed toward the window. "I could see and hear everything."
Cape's voice was pleading. "Please, kid. Put your clothes on and get out of here. You don't know what you're doing. You could land us both in bad trouble."
"I'm not afraid."
"Well, I am. Now get moving."
Mickey began to cry. "I thought you'd be glad. What's wrong with me?"
"Nothing. You're just a baby. Now scoot, I tell you."
"I won't. I won't."
"Listen, I'll give you 'til I count to ten. If you're not out of here, you'll be sorry."
He counted ten slowly. Mickey remained still, pouting in defiance.
He crossed the room and snatched her up in one arm. With his free hand he scooped up her clothing. She screamed, kicked and tried to bite him, but he held firmly.
He carried her to the dark hallway above, set her down and gave her a resounding slap across the buttocks with the palm of his hand. Then he plunged down the stairs and bolted the door.
Mickey tiptoed back to the peephole. He was drinking again. She trailed up to her room, threw herself on the bed and cried. She had no feeling of having done anything wrong, only one of overwhelming rejection. The sullen hatred born of isolation and frustration found a definite target in Sam Cape.
She swore to "get even."
Cape was more careful in the future. He blackened the window from the inside, put a bolt on the door at the head of the stairs and, for some months, refrained from bringing women to his room.
Gradually, however, he resumed his former habits. One of his visitors was a blowzy, strawberry blonde who used the name of Irene Howe. Mickey had seen her often. She was the cashier at a restaurant near the school which Mickey attended.
The Kayo Cafe was the gathering place for the athletic crowd. Its proprietor, Mike O'Toole, was a schoolboy hero. He was a former prize fighter of local repute who had invested his savings in the restaurant. He was a big, ungainly man who had gone to seed and developed a paunch, but he was still powerful and his battered face was awesome.
O'Toole's wife had been confined to a mental hospital for many years. He was living openly with Irene Howe in a bungalow six miles out of the city on the Shore Road.
Irene was a popular figure with the high school boys. An ex-show girl, she was rumored to have been a stripper in burlesque. She was good-natured and laughed easily. The boys joshed her a lot but they knew where to draw the line. She was Mike O'Toole's private property and no one wanted to tangle with Mike.
Mickey picked up enough information to lay plans to avenge herself on Sam Cape. She learned that Irene and O'Toole spelled each other at the restaurant. Unlike most of Cape's women, Irene drove to the house in her own car.
On a night when both Cape's Jaguar and Irene's car were in the driveway, Mickey telephoned the Kayo Cafe. O'Toole answered.
Trying to make her voice sound adult, Mickey asked, "Do you know where Irene is?"
"Sure. She's home. Do you want her number?"
"No. She's with Sam Cape in the room back of his office."
"Hey! Who is this?"
Mickey hung up.
She watched the street from the bay window. About fifteen minutes later O'Toole came striding along the sidewalk. He stopped in front of the house, looked up at the dark windows, then moved into the driveway surreptitiously.
Mickey, following from window to window, saw him approach Irene's car. He hesitated, then tiptoed to the back door and tried it. It was locked. He attempted to peer through the drawn shades of the window, then withdrew to the shadows of a huge lilac bush.
He remained there, chain-smoking, until the back door opened and Cape started across the driveway, holding Irene Howe's arm. They were laughing and joking. O'Toole waited until they reached Irene's car. Then, with a roar, he charged across the yard.
Cape was quick on his feet. He danced away. O'Toole drew up short, ham-like fists dangling at his sides.
Cape spoke in a high-pitched voice. "You got this wrong, Mike. Irene had a toothache. I was fixing her up."
Irene gripped O'Toole's sleeve. "That's the truth, darling."
"You're goddamn lousy bars. I been out here close to an hour. There weren't no lights in the office. Just the back room."
Cape back-pedaled, turned and tried to dash for the door. O'Toole blocked him off, caught his arms and swung him around. His fist smashed into the dentist's jaw.
Cape was no coward. He went down but he rolled to his feet and attacked the heavier but older man. He struck low, aiming at the other's midriff and landed three solid blows.
O'Toole grunted and his arms circled the dentist in a bear hug. He squeezed the breath from him, then released him with a shove and hit him in the face so hard that he went sprawling to the ground again. Cape tried to rise. O'Toole kicked him in the chest, then kicked him a second time when he was down.
O'Toole stood over his fallen enemy, yelling, "That's just a beginning, you bastard. You ever as much as speak to Irene again and I swear I'll kill you."
Turning to Irene, O'Toole slapped her hard and josded her into the car, shouting, "I'll fix you when I get you home."
The car drove off, leaving Cape a motionless heap on the drive. Meanwhile, lights had snapped on next door and neighbors were soon on hand to give Cape help. An ambulance was summoned and he was removed to a hospital.
Mickey had watched the whole scene from a dark window. The eruption of violence had awakened a tremulous excitement within her.
She did not go to bed until the last stragglers had departed. Then she lay awake a long time, reliving the scene and hugging herself in delight.
There were several sequels to the events of that night. Dr. Horsdorf, who had slept through the brawl in his back yard, was told of it the next morning. When Cape was released from the hospital, Horsdorf promptly evicted him.
Cape was permanently disfigured. His jaw had been broken and the bone of his nose smashed. He began drinking more heavily than ever and boasted in the bars that "one of these days" he would "get Mike O'Toole."
The following winter O'Toole's mangled Buick was found on the rocks beneath the Shore Road where there was a sixty-foot drop. Motorists notified the police that they had seen Cape's Jaguar and the Buick racing at a breakneck speed along the icy roadway a few minutes before the crash.
The police picked up Cape for questioning. He admitted his presence on the Shore Road but claimed that he was in flight from O'Toole. Inasmuch as the Jaguar was the faster car and Cape was a skilled driver, there was a strong suspicion that he had deliberately nosed his enemy off the cliff and sent him hurtling to his death. This could not be proved, however, and Cape was released.
Mickey never doubted his guilt.
After this one explosive incident, she entered a period of outward quiescence. Her schoolwork was below her capacity and, as in the case of Barbara Reddington, teachers reported that she was unresponsive, withdrawn and given to daydreaming.
None of them, however, had the slightest inkling of the bizarre nature of her fantasies, most of which were centered about the scenes which she had witnessed in Sam Cape's bedroom.
Like Barbara, she played a dual role, alternating between the passive entity of the woman and the aggressive male partner. Woven into the fabric of these waking dreams was the memory of her father whipping her mother. Sex and pain were equated. Mickey found a maximum of sexual stimulation in her assumption of masculine authority. As with Barbara, she subconsciously wished to strip her father or, in this case, the father-surrogate as personified by Sam Cape, of his male attributes. Thus the castration complex was firmly established.
Gradually the image of Cape faded and its place was taken by "a dark stranger" who was a projection of herself, to whom, through some magic power, male prowess had been granted.
Mickey was also absorbed with the death of Mike O'Toole. She told Dr. Hazel that she had visions of Cape whipping through the night, using the Jaguar as a weapon to kill his enemy. Whenever this happened she got "a big thrill." To her, a high-powered car became a phallic symbol, while speed and a sense of flight or falling were constant sources of sexual stimulation.
At thirteen a swift change took place in Mickey's personality. The shift was from outward docility to open rebellion. She became loud, quarrelsome and abusive. When reprimanded, she was insolent and defiant. On several instances the principal of her school protested to her parents. Dr. Horsdorf appeared indifferent. His wife came to the school, but because of her deafness it is doubtful that she understood the situation.
Such shifts in personality are typical of girls headed for trouble, so much that it has been reported in the Proceedings of the Law Enforcement Institute, held at New York University, that: "With the onset of adolescence, the disturbed girl whose manifestations have previously been aloofness, moodiness and an almost sick quiet, suddenly erupts into violence. Previously unexpressed resentment against authority figures manifests itself dramatically and explosively in complete disregard for acceptable conduct as viewed by the community at large."
Mickey pilfered a key from her mother's purse and, after her parents retired, took to roaming the streets at will, looking for excitement, which usually meant finding a way of starting a quarrel.
Her first sexual act was shared by a youthful army private from a nearby military camp. One of her favorite haunts was the bus depot where she would wander about forlornly until some man spoke to her. She would encourage the conversation to a point and then would start screaming denunciations. Often she would appeal to a third person for protection.
On this particular night she was accosted by the night manager of the depot, who ordered her to leave the premises. She shrilly refused and when he pushed her, screamed that he was making improper advances.
The young soldier intervened, saying, "What's goin' on here?"
Mickey swayed against him. "He's always trying to put his hands on me. Make him leave me alone."
"Don't you believe it," the manager growled. "She's a trouble-maker. All I want of her is that she gets out."
"He's lying, the nasty old goat."
"Beat it," the manager roared and moved forward as though to give her a shove.
The soldier caught his arm. "Hey, cut that out."
"I'm the boss here. What I say goes."
"Not with me it don't."
The altercation became more heated and suddenly the soldier lashed out with his fist. The manager toppled to the floor and started shouting for the police.
Mickey grabbed the young man's wrist. "Come on, let's go."
They ran through the door and along the streets until they came to a dark spot. The soldier said, "We've got to find some cover. If the M.P.'s catch up with me, my goose'll be cooked. What about the flicks?"
"I know a better place."
She took him back to the house. Unlocking the front door, she led him through the dark dental offices to the abandoned room that had once been Sam Cape's. The leather sofa and the infrared lamp were still there.
The soldier said, "This joint gives me the creeps. I mean, it's spooky."
Mickey had been sexually aroused by the fist fight and it was now her intendon to play the game through in exact imitation of the scenes she had witnessed between Cape and his numerous inamoratas. But the soldier was impatient. Instead of removing her clothing piece by piece, he ripped it from her and made love to her in a crude fumbling fashion. As soon as possible he left without even saying good-bye.
Mickey was angry and let down. Her excitation had been dissipated and the only sensation she had derived from the sex act was pain.
For a few weeks she kept off the streets but soon she found a new center of interest. This was a combined bar, bowling alley, roller-skating rink and dance hall, known as Aliberty's. It had an unsavory reputation and had once been put off bounds for army personnel. A large portion of its customers were workers in local shoe factories, most of whom were French-Canadians.
The proprietor, Gus Aliberty, had cleaned the place up, denying entrance to minors and known prostitutes. As a result, the army had lifted its restrictions.
Because of her age, Mickey was not permitted to enter Aliberty's. Nevertheless, she made a habit of loitering on the street outside and persuading men to try to take her in. The doorman would always bar her but usually her escort would protest. Angry words and sometimes blows would follow. Mickey reveled in these quarrels and often would appear at the door three or four times in a single night. On other occasions she would slip in through back doors or windows and would scream, kick and bite while being ejected.
Mickey flirted with the men who hung about the dance hall. She would permit those who had cars to take her for drives. Invariably she encouraged them to speed recklessly. If she was sufficiently stimulated by the movement of the car, she would consent to sexual intercourse.
A feud of long standing had existed between the French-Canadians and the soldiers. Mickey delighted in trading on this ill will. Deliberately she would let a man from one group pick her up and then transfer her attention to a member of the enemy camp. In this way, she managed to bring about innumerable brawls, fist fights and, finally, a full-scale battle in which thirty to forty men participated.
Mickey practically crowed as she related the details of this mass fight to Dr. Hazel. The soldiers swirled their buckled belts as weapons while most of the workers were armed with knives. Five men were injured so severely that they required hospitalization and a score more were arrested. As a result of this incident both the army and the town officials cracked down on Aliberty and closed the dance hall permanently.
That summer Mickey became pregnant. Only one responsible older person had befriended her. This was Miss Goheen, the nurse attached to the dental office on the ground floor of the Horsdorf house. Mickey sought the nurse out and concocted a completely false story. She told her she had been alone in the house one night when the doorbell had rung. She had answered it and found a well-dressed Negro who complained of a toothache. On being told that the dentist was not there, he had forced his way into the house and raped her.
Miss Goheen was sympathetic, especially as she knew how relentless Dr. Horsdorf would be in condemning his daughter. Mickey cried piteously and begged the nurse to help her abort the child.
Finally, Miss Goheen consented. She was engaged to an intern in the local hospital. After much soul-searching, this man agreed to perform the operation. No fee was involved.
The abortion was undertaken under the maximum sanitary conditions and all went smoothly. The next day, however, Mickey complained of a severe headache and abdominal pain. She was also running a fever. Miss Goheen decided she must take the girl to the hospital. After swearing Mickey to secrecy, the nurse risked her own reputation and freedom, as well as that of her fiance, by accompanying her to the clinic.
Mickey's condition was not serious and, in a few days, she was fully recovered. The medical examination had, however, revealed the abortion. Although no great pressure was put upon her, Mickey not only violated her promise of secrecy but accused the intern of being the father of her unborn child.
Both Miss Goheen and her fiance were arrested and each was brought to trial for performing an illegal operation. The local newspapers scare-headed the story. As the result of Mickey's testimony, the intern was sentenced to eighteen months in prison. Miss Goheen was placed on probation for a year. The reputation of each was utterly destroyed and neither will ever be permitted to practice professionally again.
Although technically sharing their guilt, Mickey was regarded as an innocent victim and not charged. Because of her age, her name was withheld from the papers but word of her identity leaked out. A social worker was assigned to the case. On learning of the home conditions, this woman suggested that Mickey be sent away from the city. When it was determined that her half-sister was willing to take her in, Mickey was packed off to New York for a fresh start.
The Damericks made every effort to help Mickey adjust to a new situation. Dr. Damerick had an office and apartment on the ground floor of a large apartment house in one of the best sections of Fifth Avenue. Mickey was given a comfortable, pleasant room of her own and she was registered at a private school nearby.
For a while it looked as though she had really turned over a new leaf but soon the novelty wore off and she became bored. She considered the girls at the school "prissy" and "prudes." Her sister's friends she described as "a bunch of dried up old crabs."
She began her old trick of wandering the streets looking for excitement. Only a few blocks to the east was one of the city's worst slums, ridden with drug addiction, juvenile gangs, prostitution and every conceivable type of crime.
On one of these excursions, Mickey drifted into a candy shop which was the hangout for a juvenile gang known as the Mosquitoes. At the time, the store was deserted except for the proprietor and his wife. Sensing that the well-dressed girl would bring them trouble, they asked her to leave.
Her curiosity piqued, Mickey indignantly refused. While they were arguing, four black-jacketed boys entered the shop. Mickey subsided and left meekly. She had not gone far when the boys overtook her and surrounded her.
The leader of the group said, "Hey, you want to go back and have a Coke?"
"They won't serve me."
"The hell they won't. Nobody cuts up rough when I'm around."
"Why? What could you do?"
The boy's hand darted to the pocket of his jacket and came out with a switchblade. There was a click and the six-inch steel blade glinted in the sun.
"How about it? You want that Coke?"
Mickey returned to the shop with the boys. They led her to a rear booth. The leader, who was called Frankie, swaggered to the counter and ordered soft drinks for the whole group. Mickey had been expecting further argument but the elderly couple were obviously intimidated and served Frankie without protest.
Mickey sensed the imminence of danger and that each of the boys coveted her. This excited her. When they had finished the drinks, Frankie suggested they "drag" over to the clubhouse. Mickey agreed.
The clubhouse was a basement beneath a closed upholstery shop. It was crudely furnished with chairs, cots, divans and a table, all of them salvaged from dumps and trash heaps. There was also a stolen radio. Shortly after entering, Frankie told the other boys "to cop a walk."
They left reluctantly and Frankie and Mickey were alone.
Frankie bolted the door and said, "You know why I brought you here, don't you?"
"I guess so."
"You better be sure. I don't mess around."
Mickey walked to the center of the room. "All right, but be careful of my clothes. I don't want my clothes dirty or torn."
Frankie undressed her and she went to a cot and lay down.
After they were finished, Frankie said, "You're a real cool cookie. I don't dig you."
Mickey shrugged. "It doesn't mean a thing."
Frankie slapped her angrily and reached for his knife. He held the blade against her breast and said, "Get this straight, baby. From now on you're my deb. You start messing around with anyone else and I'll slice you up."
Mickey answered laconically, "All right."
Actually, she had no intention of being owned by Frankie or anyone else. She had enjoyed the atmosphere of danger and violence but she had experienced no sexual response.
Mickey continued to hang around the candy shop and to meet others of the gang. Among these was Pedro, a youth of nineteen, who was president of the Mosquitoes.
Pedro questioned her about Frankie. "Why you puttin' out for a punk kid like that? He ain't even dry behind the ears."
Mickey told him about Frankie's threat.
"Don't you worry none about that stud. Me and him'll have a little talk."
Later a group of them went down to the clubhouse. Pedro stood in the middle of the floor and said in a loud voice, "Things have changed around here. From now on, Mickey's my dame." He glanced from one to another until he met Frankie's eye. "You got anything to say about it, Frankie?"
The younger boy blustered, "What's the idea muscling in on my broad? It's against the rules."
"I make up the rules around here, Frankie."
Frankie was frightened but tried to put on a bold front.
Pedro approached him with an open switchblade and Frankie backed away. Pedro dropped the knife and grabbing Frankie by the shirt front, slashed him across the face half a dozen times with the back of his hand. Pedro was wearing heavy rings set with sharp stones and the younger boy was bleeding profusely and blubbering with pain. Pedro slammed him against the wall and tripped him up.
He stood over the cringing boy. "That's just a taste of what you get if you ever mess around with Mickey any more. Try it and I'll go to Slicetown."
That same night Mickey submitted to Pedro.
She cared no more for the older boy than she had for Frankie, but being Pedro's deb gave her status among the Mosquitoes. No one dared to offend her for fear of incurring his wrath. She enjoyed being able to lord it over the other members of the gang and to make them cower away from her.
More than that, she was excited by her vicarious participation in their criminal activities and soon she was guiding them toward more serious crimes.
The offenses of the Mosquitoes were petty: the theft of hub caps, pilfering from ten cent stores, purse snatching and the occasional rolling of a drunk.
Mickey baited Frankie. "Why bother with a bum in the subway? What do you get out of it? A couple of bucks at the most."
"Yeah, you're so smart. I don't see you pullin' no scores."
"I could if I wanted to."
"How?"
"First off, I'd choose a place where people have money-like up on Fifth Avenue."
"You're crazy. There's too many lights, cars whizzing by, cops, too."
"You'll always be in the small time, Frankie. Just for kicks I worked out a plan. There's a dark entryway between two buildings. So dark nobody could see me. I'd wait up there late at night when the theater crowd is coming home. I'd pick a woman who looked like she was heavy with gold, a fat one in spiked heels who couldn't move around quick."
"Right on Fifth Avenue! You're flipping. How'd you get away? You'd have to run right out in the open."
"Not me. I checked that entry. There's an underground passage that leads to the far end of the block."
Frankie was interested. "You make it sound easy."
"It is. But don't try it, Frankie. You'd goof. You always goof everything."
"Where is this place? Show me."
A few nights later, Frankie and a friend followed Mickey's blueprint. Their victim was an elderly woman who was struck down from behind with a piece of lead pipe. Fortunately, a thick matdng of hair prevented a fatal injury but her skull was fractured. Mickey watched the rolling from a block away. The scene excited her far more than any direct sexual act.
Mickey had tired of Pedro's domination and his repeated sexual demands. One afternoon she had a talk with him similar to the one with Frankie.
A stout, middle-aged widow lived alone on the eighth floor of the apartment house where Dr. Damerick had his office. She was a friend of Mickey's sister and Mickey had visited the apartment on various occasions. She nurtured a secret hatred of Mrs. Goodrich, partly because of the woman's patronizing manner and partly because she had "tattled" to Margaret about having seen Mickey on the street "with unsuitable companions."
Mickey cultivated Mrs. Goodrich's friendship and learned where she kept substantial sums of money and valuable jewels. This information she passed on to Pedro.
Pedro shook his head. "They'd never let me in a flossy fleabag like that. The moment this dame spotted me, she'd start hollering her head off.
"I don't think so. She buys all her groceries at Boskin's. The boy comes over about half past three almost every day. If you said you were from Boskin's she'd let you right in."
"Yeah, and I could get me a box of groceries. But what about the lobby and the elevator?"
"The elevators are self-service. Besides, there are fire stairs in back. But, Pedro, don't do it. I was just thinking out loud. Besides, Mrs. Goodrich is a friend of mine, even if she did-" Mickey hesitated.
"Did what?"
"You know. Make passes."
"You mean she's a dyke?" Mickey nodded.
Pedro rose angrily. "It looks like I'm going to pay a visit on this dame. The sooner the better. What about tomorrow?"
"Don't Pedro. I'm scared."
"You ain't got nothin' to do with this. It's all my idea. You got that straight?"
The next afternoon Pedro went through with the robbery plan. While he was at it, he taped Mrs. Goodrich's mouth, tied her to the bed, stripped and beat her.
When the police arrived, Mickey waited for a chance to talk to a detective in privacy. After being promised immunity and that her information would be held confidential, she told an elaborately contrived story of becoming innocently involved with the Mosquitoes and of being terrorized by them.
She claimed that Pedro had asked her many questions about Mrs. Goodrich and that, on the afternoon of the robbery, she had seen him on the service stairs. For good measure, she added the details of Frankie's attack on the old woman and of several other crimes, most of which she had engineered.
The Mosquitoes were rounded up. Armed with such complete information, it did not take the police long to get full confessions. Seven of the leaders, including Pedro and Frankie, received long sentences in prison or reformatories. Also caught in the net was the proprietor of the candy shop and his wife who had been supplying the gang with "bammies" (cheap marijuana cigarettes). They also went to prison.
Mickey had not only avenged herself on Mrs. Goodrich and the members of the gang, but was also free to move farther afield.
At this time, tension was high between several Puerto Rican street gangs and those which were predominantly Italian and Irish. This was a situation made to order for Mickey. She deliberately set about to increase the friction to a point where it would erupt into violence.
Mickey dated youths from both groups. Among these was sixteen-year-old Joe Malloy. One night when Malloy had been drinking, she persuaded him to take her to the Barcelona-Madrid Cafe, which she knew to be frequented by members of the Ponce Dukes.
Shortly after they entered, a youth named Rodriguez came to their table and ordered Malloy to leave. He refused and insults were exchanged between the two.
When Mickey and Malloy finally left, Rodriguez and two of his friends followed them. Waiting until they reached a dark street, they closed in on the pair. Malloy was dragged into the hallway of a dimly lit tenement, beaten and stabbed twice. He was left unconscious behind the stairs.
Mickey was unharmed. She voluntarily accompanied Rodriguez back to the cafe, explaining to him that Malloy had been molesting her. She said that the only way which she could think of to get rid of him was to bring him to the Barcelona-Madrid in the hope that the Dukes would come to her rescue.
A few days later, a group of Corsicans, the gang with which Malloy was affiliated, raided the territory of the Dukes. They could not find Rodriguez but picked up another Puerto Rican boy, forced him into their car, took him to their headquarters and beat him with belts with heavy steel buckles. When they were through, they bundled him back into their car and tossed him into the street in front of the Barcelona-Madrid Cafe.
In the following weeks almost nightly raids were made by members of one or the other gang. Usually a single boy was captured and beaten but, on one occasion, a carload of Corsicans sped through territory claimed by their rivals. Bricks were thrown from their car and several shots were fired from zip guns-homemade weapons which can discharge .22 bullets.
An elderly man, sunning himself on the stoop of his house, had his ankle shattered by one of these bullets.
Another passed through the top of a baby carriage, narrowly missing the infant sleeping there.
As passions rose, Mickey inflamed both sides by talking with the leaders, pretending that she had been raped by members of the rival group. At her instigation, the Ponce Dukes met and "declared war" on the Corsicans. Two of their ace men (secondary leaders) were dispatched to challenge their enemies to a full-scale battle, or "rumble."
On a hot summer afternoon the two gangs assembled on opposite corners of a small park. The boys were armed with nail-studded barrel staves, bicycle chains, switchblades, brass knuckles made from the covers of ash cans, aerial whips and an assortment of other weapons. A few of them carried zip guns and one had a Smith and Wesson .32 which he had stolen from a hock shop.
Police later estimated that the Ponce Dukes numbered about thirty-five and the Corsicans about twenty. The Corsicans, however, were older, tougher boys with more experience in street fighting.
Mickey watched from the sidelines with a score or more of debs.
The boys waited in silence, each side hoping for reinforcements. Then suddenly the Corsicans formed a phalanx and came whooping across the park, chains swinging and knives glittering. The Dukes scattered but many of them circled back to the attack.
The battle raged for only a minute or so before it was broken up by the keening wail of sirens as three prowl cars dashed to the side of the park. Seconds later other cars arrived, debouching uniformed police and detectives.
The boys fled in panic. One of them lurched into the arms of a policeman. Two others were captured on the scene. Despite the brevity of the battle, there were casualties. A boy lay writhing on the sidewalk, a jagged slash across his abdomen. Another lay in the park unconscious, from a head wound. An officer received a deep cut across his knuckles from a knife wielded by his captive.
Mickey did not flee but remained among the bystanders, watching avidly as the boys were carted off to the precinct house.
The police rounded up all the members of the warring gangs upon whom they could lay their hands. Most of them were released on bail in custody of their parents, but half a dozen of the leaders were detained in prison.
Mickey was not questioned by the police but apparently she was not as clever in her duplicity as she had thought. From time to time she had had sexual intimacy with members of both gangs and, when the boys were placed in adjacent cells, this fact was revealed.
Sometimes she had permitted the sex act to take place in the presence of the assembled gang. Later, in discussing this with Dr. Hazel, she explained that she had not been excited by the act itself but by the ritual which surrounded it. Inasmuch as possible, she followed the pattern of the scenes which she had witnessed, in childhood, in Sam Cape's back room. She wished to be bathed in bright light and slowly undressed. She also required watching eyes, symbolic of her own childhood role, to make the imitation complete.
Dr. Hazel also noted the similarities in the imitations of today's street gangs and the performances of the Black Mass. In each instance "the naked body of a woman is employed as an altar upon which sacrifice is made," flogging is used to discipline recalcitrant members, symbols of authority are destroyed, social taboos are openly defied, and the conclusion is usually an orgy of prohibited sex practices.
While the leaders of the two street gangs were still awaiting trial, three members of the Corsicans waylaid Mickey on the street. With her, at the time, was Mary Johnson, who attended the same private school as Mickey. Mary was one of several girls whom Mickey had enticed into the fringes of the underworld.
One of the boys said, "Shorty wants to see you."
Mickey knew Shorty. He was one of the gang leaders who had escaped arrest because he had not been present at the rumble.
Mary Johnson was frightened and cringed away, saying, "I don't want to go."
A boy moved close and pressed a knife against her. He said, "You're both coming. Shorty's the boss now. What he says goes."
Mickey laughed. "Come on, Mary. You don't have to be scared of Shorty. He's a creep. He'd run from his own shadow."
The boys jostled the girls toward a car waiting at the curb. Mary shrieked but a hand was put over her mouth and her arm was held in a hammer lock. Onlookers who saw her shoved into the back seat did not realize that anything more serious was going on than a good-natured scuffle among teen-agers.
The abductors drove their captives to an old brown-stone on East 116th Street and led them up a back stairway to the second floor. Throughout, Mickey had made no protest. She was contemptuous of Shorty and confident of outwitting him.
A door opened into a rear flat. Mary had to be dragged in, but Mickey sauntered in and boldly faced Shorty and the four friends who were with him.
She asked coolly, "Why all the rough stuff? Have you got a beef, Shorty?"
"Yeah, plenty, you double-crossing bitch. We hear you been screwing around with the Dukes while making out like you was one of our debs."
Mickey tried to talk but, for once, no one would listen.
Shorty yelled, "Grab her."
The boys hauled both girls into the next room, tied them to a big double bed, and flogged them with metal aerial whips.
The boys then piled upon the girls and took turns raping them.
When it was over, Shorty went to the kitchen for a bread knife. He stood over Mickey and ordered her to roll on her stomach. He then cut two deep crosses between her shoulder blades.
He said, "This is just the beginning. If you or this other bitch start running off at the mouth, we're coming after you. You're going to end up in the bottom of the river. So get wise and keep your hp zipped."
After the boys had gone, Mickey managed to loosen her bonds. Mary was unconscious. Mickey left her in the flat and stumbled down the stairs to the street, where she collapsed. Soon a crowd gathered around her and they flagged down a passing prowl car.
Mickey immediately babbled out the names of her attackers.
The boys were arrested. They admitted the rape, under the mistaken impression that they could not be prosecuted because each of the girls had voluntarily submitted to sexual relations with members of the gang in the past.
All eight boys went on trial and were convicted, some of them receiving sentences up to thirty years. Because the rape was the aftermath of gang warfare, the judge was unduly severe on the boys involved in the rumble. In all, fifteen boys went to jail. Eleven others were placed on probation.
During and after the trials, the Damericks were besieged with threatening letters and phone calls. Twice, windows in the dental office were shattered by stones. Mickey was temporarily subdued by the storm which she had raised. For a while she mixed with people of her own general social and economic background. However, she was contemptuous of the young men she met because they were "squares" who could not be goaded into criminal acts. She sought revenge on one of these men by writing anonymous letters to his mother, charging him with homosexuality. In another instance, she caused a quarrel between a young married couple by planting faked love letters in their apartment. There were many other malicious acts but her victims rarely recognized the source of the ugliness which had crept into their lives.
In time she became restless and wanted more "action." She had always found it easy to slip in and out through the ground floor window of her bedroom. Now that she was fearful of the gangs, she ranged farther afield, favoring Greenwich Village and the area around Times Square.
She had a genius for picking up unstable youths who could be incited to criminal acts. She persuaded a high school student of good family to smash the window of a jewelry shop to secure a pair of gold clips, set with pearls, which she wanted. Later, when the clips were found in her possession, she denied any knowledge that they were stolen. Her contention could not be disproved.
Two other youths were set the task of pistol-whipping a middle-aged couple who had incurred her wrath by discussing her unfavorably with the Damericks.
Her fascination with speed remained unabated. Whenever a man took her driving she egged him on to break the speed limits. When the driver was arrested, Mickey was immune from punishment-she was merely a passenger in the car.
Riding in a stolen car added to her sense of excitement. Roy Spurjack was only one of half a dozen youths who had "borrowed" expensive cars as a means of securing sexual intimacy with her.
All of these things Mickey admitted to Dr. Hazel. But the knowledge did nothing to help Roy Spurjack, or the score of other young men who were in prison because they had consorted with her. Nor could the broken lives of people like Miss Goheen and her fiance be mended. Other of her victims, like Mrs. Goodrich and Trooper Joe Clayton, will probably remain crippled as long as they live.
Dr. Hazel's problem was how to avert further tragedies. His prognosis for Mickey Horsdorf is surprisingly hopeful.
Like Barbara Reddington, Mickey's emotional disorders spring from a split personality and the confusion between fantasy and reality. But there is a subtle, yet important difference in the nature of the disorientation. Barbara's personality was fragmented, attaching itself almost at random to one person after another, so that no identity of her own was permitted to develop. In Mickey's case, the personality was divided on classical lines, with a clear-cut separation between the passive or "good" Mickey, who was essentially feminine, and the "dark stranger," who represented her masculine characteristics and who motivated her antisocial behavior.
In an earlier age, it would have been said that Mickey was possessed of a demon and, through flagellation, torture, prayers and incantations, attempts would have been made to exorcise "the Devil."
Modern psychiatry says much the same thing, although with different terminology, and attempts the same cures with more humane methods.
Recognition of dual personality has been granted since the dawn of psychiatry. Stevenson dramatized the conflict between the good and evil within the individual in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a book which has fascinated generations of readers through its implication that malign forces lie dormant in every one of us and that these are ready to take over unless rigorously repressed.
In more recent years, the black and white of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is no longer acceptable. Psychiatry recognizes that the pattern of the personality structure is far more complicated and that there are many warring factors within the individual, each seeking domination and control.
The most thorough study of multiple personality is found in The Three Faces of Eve, written by Dr. Corbett H. Thigpen and Dr. Hervey M. Cleckley, both of whom are professors of psychiatry and neurology at the Medical College of Georgia. In this study Eve has three such distinct and diverse personalities that each had no recognition of the acts of the other, even under hypnosis. In effect, Eve is three women, coexisting in a single body.
Such an extreme does not exist in Mickey Horsdorf, yet many of the factors are present. Her early rejection by her parents forced her to the conclusion that she was essentially "bad." With subconscious deliberation she projected this evil outward until it took concrete form. The part of herself which she must punish was first personified in Sam Cape. Later it became a vague "dark stranger" who found embodiment in scores of young men.
Who is the dark stranger who dominated Mickey's life? In earlier days he would be called the Devil and Mickey would have been considered a witch. Dr. Nandor Fodor, writing in the Psychiatric Quarterly, finds another explanation. He claims that every person possesses a bodiless, immaterial double of the opposite sex, a twin who exerts a remarkable influence over the biological brother or sister.
When Mickey instigated assault, robbery or rape, the dark stranger moved outward to commit the act through her chosen surrogate. Thus the evil departed from her temporarily and the punishment, which she felt was due, could be inflicted on her male counterpart rather than herself. In the joyless sexual coupling which was so often the aftermath of violence, the stranger again joined and became a part of her.
Gradually, slowly, Dr. Hazel is leading Mickey toward recognition of the sources of her disturbance.
He does not expect that the devil of self-hatred will be cast out altogether.
It is enough that the dark stranger shall be curbed.
CHAPTER SIX
Cocktails and Sympathy
(The Case of Georgia Mason)
Larry Place was lonely. Back at the fraternity house a dance was in full swing. Everybody was having a good time except he. Betty, the girl he'd invited to the football game and the festivities afterward, had stood him up. He was pretty sure that this was her way of breaking off with him. Besides being lonely, he was angry and resentful.
When he entered the Varsity Inn, it was with the intention of "tying one on." He'd never been really drunk in his life but there had to be a first time for everything.
Halfway across the lobby he stopped in mid-stride for a second look at the woman seated beside a reading table with a book in her lap.
She was beautiful, he thought, not just pretty but really beautiful. She wasn't young but she had a quality about her that could not be attained in youth. Her jet-black hair, swept back and perfectly coiffed, gave her clear, opaque skin a lustrous sheen. Deep-set, dark eyes sparkled behind pince-nez glasses. Her breasts were ripe and full and the way they were pushed up showed the deep cleft between them. His gaze dropped to her legs. The calves were full and rounded, tapering down to slim ankles. For some reason his eyes lingered on the alligator-skin pumps and the thread of brown leather beneath the arch. A fragment of exciting memory stirred within him but it was blurred by time.
He glanced up and saw that the woman was observing him, a hint of a frown puckering her smoothly rounded forehead. He flushed and turned away abruptly, heading for the bar.
The bar was jammed with revelers. A juke box was tuned up loud and the crowd was laughing and singing. Larry eased himself onto a stool but he didn't care that the barman was too busy to serve him. He'd forgotten about Betty. He was thinking about the woman whom he'd passed in the lobby. He'd like to go back and speak to her. But what would that buy him? She'd probably snap his head off.
He must have rocks in his head to think he could pick her up. The chances were that she was the mother of one of the college students. Wouldn't he look like a fool if some guy he knew came along and found him messing around with his mother?
All the same, he couldn't stop the tremor in his hands and the excitement that formed a tight ball in the pit of his stomach. What harm could there be in strolling through the lobby to see if she was still there?
Once he'd made up his mind, he couldn't wait. He pushed his way roughly through the crowd, fearful that he'd miss her by a matter of seconds.
In the lobby, he took a deep breath. The woman hadn't stirred and appeared completely absorbed in her book.
He passed as close to her as he dared. She looked up, seemingly startled. The book slid from her lap and toppled to the floor.
Larry scooped it up, noting the tide: The Love Poems of Elizabeth Browning. He handed it to her and saw that she was smiling.
He tried desperately to think of a conversational gambit but he was tongue-tied. She thanked him but did not take the book immediately. She was regarding him inquisitively. When she spoke, her voice was soft and warm, with a trace of southern accent. She said, "I noticed you watching me a few minutes ago and I had a feeling you were in trouble, that you needed to talk to someone."
"Well, not trouble exactly. To tell the truth, my girl friend gave me the bum's rush. I was feeling pretty low."
"A handsome young man like you shouldn't have any difficulty in replacing her. I think she must be a very silly girl."
She spoke lightly but he felt the sincerity in her words. In spite of himself his cheeks grew hot. But her flattery emboldened him. "I'd much rather spend the time with you-I mean if you're not waidng for anybody."
She responded archly, "That's very sweet. But I'm just a frumpy old woman. You'll soon be bored."
"No, I won't. Let me buy you a drink."
She glanced toward the noisy bar and shook her head. Then she brightened as a bellboy passed. "Maybe we can persuade them to serve cocktails out here."
A few minutes later they had moved into a quiet corner. The bellboy arrived with martinis. She insisted on paying and produced a small black purse from her bag. Larry saw that it was stuffed with bills.
Soon Larry was talking about himself. Not that there was much to tell. His father was a successful corporation lawyer in a Midwestern city. Larry had attended public schools, then transferred to a crack prep school. At eighteen, he was a sophomore in the Ivy League college in the town. He had wanted to become an actor but his father had persuaded him that the practical thing to do was to study law.
He made it plain that he was not seriously interested in Betty or any other girl. Although he did not say so, he had always been repelled by heavy petting. Sometimes he had been beset by fears that he had homosexual tendencies. To prove his masculinity, he had wanted to experiment with sex. But when an opportunity came along, he always backed down. This was partly because he feared venereal disease but mostly because he was uncertain of his own adequacy and afraid that he might be subjected to ridicule.
When he was finished, the woman picked up her own story. She was Mrs. Georgia Mason and she lived in New York.
She said, "If I tell you why I'm here, you'll think me silly and sentimental."
"Oh, no."
"I had a son who attended college here. He didn't graduate. He was killed in an automobile accident. The last time I saw him was here at the Varsity Inn, after a football game. I come back for a weekend once every year because it makes me feel close to him." She dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.
Larry said, "I'm sorry. I mean, that's rough."
"Don't be sorry. You've been very kind. You see, my boy was named Larry, too. He even looked a bit like you. I noticed that the moment I saw you."
Larry was both embarrassed and sympathetic. Mentally, he was kicking himself all over the lot for the thoughts he'd been harboring about Mrs. Mason.
"Gee, I wish there was something I could do."
Mrs. Mason smiled bravely. "Just stay with me a little longer. It's as though something dead had come to life again."
While they had been talking, the revelers had spilled from the bar into the lobby. Some of them were drunk and rowdy.
She leaned close and touched his arm. "Maybe we could go to my suite for a while. We could really talk there."
Larry crossed to the elevator with her. He was acquainted with some of the fellows in the lobby. He felt conspicuous but proud, too. Later, if they asked about the woman, he could say she was his mother, or maybe an aunt.
The inn was old-fashioned. The "suite" was actually a single room with a bath. At one end an alcove was separated from the rest of the room by velvet drapes which were pushed back to show a wide bed, turned down for the night.
Mrs. Mason ordered ice and mixed fresh cocktails, then she sat down in a chair close to his and prodded him into telling her more about his ambitions to go on the stage. In a short time he was reading aloud the love poems from her book.
When he looked up, Mrs. Mason appeared enthralled. She knelt beside him and took one of his hands in both of hers.
"You can be an actor, Larry. Don't let anyone tell you differently. You can be anything you want."
Her face was raised to his and, on an impulse, he leaned toward her and brushed her cheek with his lips. She twisted and his mouth found hers. Her lips were soft and yielding.
For a minute they clung together, then she broke away. She said, "That was wrong, Larry. Forgive me for forgetting how old and fat I am."
Larry was on his feet, shaking. "You're beautiful. I like you just the way you are."
"Don't be foolish. You need someone young and gay."
"I don't want a callow schoolgirl. I want you."
Mrs. Mason rose, too. She said, "You're a very nice boy. Now give Mother a kiss and run along."
He seized her in his arms. The warmth of her ripe breasts pressed against him and he could feel the softness of her thighs. He kissed her" hard. Her body arched and tremors ran through it.
"Larry-Larry. Do you really want me?"
"More than anything else in the world."
"You won't hate me afterward?"
"Oh, God, no."
"And you'll never tell a soul?"
"Never."
"Larry, it's wrong, but I can't help myself."
Her hand slid away from his body and she snapped off the table lamp. She wrenched herself free from his embrace and walked quickly to the alcove. He came up in back of her, his heart beating wildly. He could see her silhouette, dark against the pale glimmer of the window.
The rusde of silk told him that she was disrobing. He was startled by the flare of a match as she lit a bedside candle. She was still wearing her black dress, her stockings and pumps, but he caught a glimpse of the white flesh of her thighs as she lay down in the bed.
He was tearing wildly at his clothing but, when he was naked, he was suddenly overcome by embarrassment. He was without sexual experience and he felt awkward and clumsy.
She made things easy for him. Putting her arms about him, she pulled him down beside her.
She whispered hoarsely, "Hurry, Larry baby. Mother needs you so."
He could feel the spasmodic jerking of her body, the swelling of her breasts, the grip of her thighs. She was crying, "It's wicked of me, Larry. You swept me off my feet. Larry, Larry, I love you so."
When he was spent and gasping for breath, she cradled his head against her breasts. "You were wonderful, Larry, but we must never, never do such a thing again. This is the last time for Mother but you've given her a memory to cherish. She'll think of you when you go on to do important things."
She urged him to get up. He went to the bath, showered and dressed. When he returned to the front room she was sitting placidly in the chair she had previously occupied.
She said, "Larry, you'll have to go now. And we must never meet again."
"No," he protested. "I won't give you up. Not after this."
"That's the way it's got to be. I'm so ashamed. It's as though you were my own son and I'd desecrated something holy." She broke off and began to sob.
"I tell you it can't end like this. Let me come tomorrow night."
"But Larry, I'm leaving in the morning."
"Then I'll come to New York on my next vacation."
The argument went on for some minutes, with Larry close to hysteria. Finally, Mrs. Mason relented. "You can come, Larry, but only as a son. Promise me that."
"I'd promise anything not to lose you."
She snapped open her leather bag and scrabbled around for the purse inside. She frowned and dumped the contents of the bag on the table. The purse was missing.
"What could have happened to it?" she said. Her eyes passed over him speculatively. He flushed, wondering if she thought he had stolen it.
He stammered, "Downstairs, when you paid for the cocktails. Could it have slipped out then?"
Her dark eyes brightened. "That must be it."
"I'll go down and see."
"No, Larry. It would look strange if you inquired about my purse. I'd better go. Wait for me, Larry. Please."
She was gone for about ten minutes. When she came back, she was visibly shaken. "It wasn't there. I asked at the desk but they didn't know anything about it. Whatever shall I do?"
"How much was in it?"
"I don't know. Three or four hundred dollars. How could I have been so careless? My bankbook was in it, too. I can't even write a check."
"I've got about twenty bucks if that will help."
"My bill here must be close to a hundred dollars. Then there's my fare back to New York."
They discussed her plight for some time. When Larry went he left the twenty dollars and the promise that he'd try to bring her another fifty in the morning.
Raising the money was difficult. He closed out his small bank account and borrowed what he could from fraternity brothers. He even pawned his typewriter. It seemed the least he could do for the woman who had been so kind to him.
At ten o'clock the next morning he was knocking at her door. In his hand was an envelope containing ninety dollars. She came to the door in a kimono and accepted the envelope.
But when he tried to kiss her, she said, "Larry, don't. The maid's around. Please don't spoil things. Wait until you come to New York. We'll go to the theater and have a wonderful time."
She thrust a piece of hotel stationery into his hand. On it was written a Park Avenue address.
For the next few days Larry was in seventh heaven, making plans for the approaching holidays, expecting each mail to receive a check from Mrs. Mason.
Then suddenly his dreams crumbled. A fellow student named Kelly stopped him on the campus.
"Hello, sucker."
"What do you mean?"
"How much did the Mason bitch take you for?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Sure, you do. I saw you going topside with her at the Varsity Inn."
"So what?"
"Wake up, kid. That dame is a real con artist. A couple of years back, she dug fifty bucks out of me. Jack Robinson laid a hundred and fifty on the line. God knows how many others she's got her hooks into. She comes to town once a year and picks up a fresh crop."
"I don't believe it."
"Okay. I didn't at first, either. I even rushed up to New York to check on that phony Park Avenue address she handed me. Believe me, that dame has got a smooth racket. If you put up a squawk, you've got to admit you spent a night with a broad at the Varsity Inn and that's enough to get you tossed out of school on your ear. I tell you she's hard as rocks underneath that sweet mother act. I tried to get my money back when I spotted her this year. Do you know what she told me? If I didn't leave her alone, she'd yell rape. She would, too. Then where would I be?"
Larry was too stunned to answer.
The other youth grinned. "Well, so long, sucker. Don't take any wooden nickels."
Larry still didn't quite believe he'd been bilked. It took a trip to New York and a visit to the Park Avenue address to convince him. No one named Mason lived in the luxurious apartment house. The doorman studied him curiously and Larry guessed the reason why. He was only one of a stream of young men who had come around to inquire about Georgia Mason. .
The con game might have paid off indefinitely if Mrs. Mason had not been so unwise as to lodge a complaint of rape against one of Larry's fraternity brothers the following year. Larry, Kelly and Jack Robinson got together. They knew the student was innocent and they decided to dare official wrath to tell the truth.
As a result the student was released and Mrs. Mason was placed briefly in custody. Neither the police nor the college wanted a scandal. A conference was held and it was decided to dismiss the charge against her if she would agree to place herself under psychiatric care. Mrs. Mason co-operated fully. She realized she was playing a dangerous game and seemed grateful to secure the services of one of New York's most able psychiatrists, Dr. Alexander Grunstahl.
The "College Widow" is a proverbial part of America's academic scene. Probably there is not a college town in the country that does not have its quota of older women, prepared to cater to the sexual needs of students. These range from out-and-out prostitutes to seemingly respectable women, sometimes the wives or widows of faculty members, who occasionally entertain students in the privacy of their homes.
The highly successful Broadway production, Tea and Sympathy, was based on such a theme. In this case the youth, a preparatory school student, sought solace for his fears of becoming a homosexual in the arms of the wife of one of his teachers. College students, especially those preparing for the professions, can have no socially acceptable sexual outlets during the very years when it has been proven, the sex drives are strongest.
In the authoritative study Sex Histories of American College Men, prepared by Drs. Phyllis and Eberhard Kronhausen, a full chapter is given over to the sexual intimacies between these youths and older and more experienced women.
In a second college survey, it is estimated that one college boy out of four has his initial sexual contact with a woman at least five years older than himself. The Kronhausens explain this on the basis that the youth feels safe, secure and free from the embarrassment he might feel with a girl of his own age. Undoubtedly, too, he is aware that the dangers of impregnation and entrapment into marriage are greatly reduced and he is fighting clear of a possible charge of statutory rape.
What is not mentioned is that many sensitive youths, like Larry Place, show a clear-cut preference for women much older than they. Thus, Georgia Mason was able to make a circuit of college towns and, by her own estimate have sexual intimacies with more than eight hundred boys.
The attraction of the college boy for the "safe" older woman is relatively easy to understand. But what psychiatric quirk sends a woman out on an endless quest for inexperienced youths?
This was a question which aroused Dr. Grunstahl's professional curiosity and he believes that his is the first full-scale study of the "witchery" which such a woman employs to lure young men into sexual involvements which cannot fail to hold overtones of incest and black magic.
When Mrs. Mason was first ushered into Dr. Grunstahl's office, he was impressed, even as Larry Place had been, by her excellent, rather aristocratic features, her expressive eyes and unblemished skin. She had an air of good-natured competence and seemed eager to ferret out the cause of her deviations from normal attitudes relating to sex. With smiling complacency, she narrated a series of hair-raising sexual exploits which almost defied credence.
She had been born Georgia Bitt, in a small town on the coast of Florida. Her mother, Lena, had been a tall, gaunt puritanical woman whom Georgia remembered with a bitter resentment that bordered on hate. Her father, Gregory Bitt, was a tall, handsome ne'er-do-well who made a living of sorts by chartering a fishing boat during the tourist season.
Georgia spoke adoringly of her father but further probing revealed that she was deeply jealous of him and hurt by his neglect of the home and his indifference to her.
There was also an older brother, Leonard, whom she heardly disliked-and with good reason.
While the Bitts were nominally living together in a rundown house on the edge of town, Gregory was rarely there. His brief stays were punctuated by acrimonious quarrels which usually ended by his storming out of the home to sleep on his boat.
Frequently Georgia would hear her father's voice, raised in anger, shouting, "How did I ever let an ugly old harridan like you trick me into marriage?"
And her mother's answer: "Go back to your cheap barroom floozies. They're your kind. Not a decent, Godfearing woman like me."
"That's exactly what I'll do."
"Good riddance. That's all I've got to say."
As in so many cases of serious sexual aberrations, Georgia was marked by harsh and unreasonable punishments in childhood. Some of these were administered by the mother, others in school.
Georgia was a fat girl. By the time she was nine, though only of average height for her age, she weighed one hundred and sixty-five pounds. She was a victim of a glandular disorder, later ascribed to a pituitary-ovarian deficiency. She was fully developed sexually and already menstruation had set in.
Georgia felt that she was a freak and her sense of shame was enhanced by the ridicule of other children. Wherever she went her gross body, swollen breasts and bulging buttocks caused ribald comment.
Each day at school was a torment and she dreaded passing through the main street of the town on the errands which her mother constantly found for her.
The loungers in the front of the drugstore or the pool room would pass remarks to one another:
"Ooh-ooh! Look what's coming."
"Hey, kid, do you like Jello?"
"I bet you could get a gallon of milk out of her."
Sometimes the rougher among the boys would stop her and make obscene suggestions, feel her breasts or pinch her buttocks.
Two or three times when this happened, more sober men would warn the malefactors, "Watch your step there. That's Greg Bitt's kid. You don't want to mix it up with Greg, do you?"
Georgia realized that such trifling security as she might have, rested on her father's reputation as a "mean man to cross."
At school she was the constant butt of pranksters. To make matters worse, she cried easily, which increased the pleasure of her tormentors.
The school was a ramshackle wooden building with only two teachers for the eight grades. The principal was a big, strapping woman, the wife of the police chief. Corporal punishment was a part of the daily routine. This was usually administered across the palm of the hand with a strap or ruler.
During recess, the boys played on one side of the school yard, the girls on the other. The boys often gathered at the rail fence to taunt the girls. Georgia was their favorite target.
One day a boy chanted, over and over, an obscene rhyme about Georgia. In an explosion of frustrated fury, she ran through the gate, seized the boy by the hair and began to pummel him.
The children's excited shouts brought the principal running to the scene. Seizing Georgia by the ear, she frog-marched her into the school. She took a thick ruler from the drawer and ordered the crying child to hold out her hand.
Rebellious, angry and believing herself to be in the right, Georgia refused. The principal struck her across the arm and breast. Georgia clutched the ruler and wrenched it from the woman's hand.
The principal called to the other teacher for help. The two of them wrestled with the girl and managed to wedge her in between two school desks. While one of them held her, the other beat her mercilessly, first with the ruler, then with a strap.
After this senseless beating, a character transformation developed in the girl. Hitherto, she had been timid but friendly and eager to please. Now she became withdrawn, resentful and hostile.
Among the symptoms of her glandular disorder was that she was wracked by violent sex urges and torn by cravings concerning which she had no knowledge.
At night she would weep in frustration and clutch in her arms a male doll, dressed in a sailor suit, which was one of her father's rare gifts. Her mother, irked by the child's absorption with the doll, seized it one day and threw it into the kitchen fire. Georgia was inconsolable.
In her fantasies, she would imagine that she was giving birth to the doll which eventually began to resemble her father. She would grip the edges of the bed and her body would arch and writhe. She suffered from a deep confusion between sexual excitation and the pain of birth pangs. She equated an orgasm with the act of birth.
In her loneliness, she took to reading. She managed to collect a pile of magazines of the true confession type and stored them in the attic. Whenever she could escape her mother's nagging demands that she do housework, she would climb to the attic storeroom to read and daydream.
One afternoon she heard stealthy footsteps mounting the stairs to her hideaway. The trap door opened and the face of her brother Leonard appeared. He stepped into the storeroom grinning.
He asked, What you doin' up here, sis?"
"Nothing."
"Yeah, I'll bet." He came closer and kicked at the magazines.
He said, "I been hearin' funny things about you, kid."
"I don't know what you mean."
"The boys around the corner say you're a pretty good lay."
"Go away. Leave me alone."
"Don't pull that fancy stuff on me. I guess if other guys can cut themselves a piece, so can I."
She tried to scramble to her feet but he pushed her back to the floor and fumbled with her clothing.
She said, "Stop or I'll scream."
"Scream your head off and see what good it does. Mom's at the church fair. She won't be back for hours. There's nobody to hear you."
He jumped upon her then. She fought as hard as she could but she was no match for him. He rolled her on the floor, ripped off her underclothing and raped her.
When he was finished, he punched her a half dozen times.
"That's just a starter," he warned her. "You go blabbing to Mom and I'll kick all your teeth in."
Despite this threat, Georgia did tell her mother. Leonard denied the charge and declared that he had caught Georgia with another boy and that she was lying to cover herself.
The mother believed Leonard and inflicted a savage punishment on the girl. She was locked in her room for two weeks with only bread and water. Each day the mother visited the girl and thrashed her.
After that, Georgia lived in constant fear. There was danger in the home, at school and on the streets. She took to hanging about the wharves to be close to her father. When he was near, she felt safe, but more often than not he was at sea.
The town, meanwhile, was undergoing a rapid change. A development company had moved in, building hotels, beach houses, a golf course and other tourist attracdons. Several industries had opened branch factories. The population had tripled. Among other advantages was a modern high school.
Georgia made a good record in high school, standing close to the top of her class. While she was still excessively stout, she had grown taller and was well formed. She was no longer the freak of her childhood. Outwardly she adapted herself socially. She appeared pleasant, even jolly. Other girls liked her. The boys joked with her but none of them wanted to date her or take her to a dance.
Georgia's face was attractive, with rosy cheeks, black hair and large eyes. Even her big soft body had a sexual allure. Boys didn't like to go out with her openly but those who had cars would sometimes pick her up on the street and suggest going for a drive. Invariably they made advances to her. Georgia learned that the only way she could have a pleasant evening with these boys was to submit to sexual intimacy. To her, it seemed a small price to pay for the companionship which she needed so badly.
She did not enjoy intercourse and, afterwards, often suffered from fears of pregnancy or venereal disease. She had guilt complexes, too, and believed that she would "go to hell" when she died, a hangover from her mother's fierce religiosity. But, as she was "damned" anyway, it didn't seem to matter.
When Georgia was fifteen, her mother died of cancer. At about the same time, her brother enlisted in the Marine Corps. Georgia was alone in the house and neighbors put pressure on Gregory Bitt to make some better provision for his daughter.
Bitt had frequently chartered his boat to Mrs. Florence Whitlock, a wealthy widow, who spent her winters in the town. Arrangements were made for Georgia to five in the Whitlock home, where her role was halfway between that of guest and servant.
Mrs. Whitlock was a woman of great charm, well educated, widely traveled and socially prominent. She was gay, loved to play bridge, dance and entertain. She had two sons. The older was a successful businessman. The younger, Warren was a student at Princeton.
Mrs. Whitlock took a lively interest in the ungainly girl, teaching her manners and how to dress, as well as providing money for new clothes. She also encouraged her interest in reading, music and art. Georgia was an apt pupil. She repaid Mrs. Whitlock's kindness with a slave-like devotion.
This was the first real affection Georgia had ever experienced, the first time that she had thought of "loving" another person. She was tremendously moved by the older woman's caresses and kisses and would lock herself in her room and cry if she was spoken to sharply or neglected.
In discussing this with Dr. Grunstahl, Georgia denied any lesbian attraction. But he was sure it had existed, though possibly in a subconscious form. Even after the passages of decades, Georgia spoke of her feeling for Mrs. Whitlock as something "sacred and holy."
Gregory Bitt came to the Whitlock home to visit his daughter with increasing frequency. Often the three of them had dinner together and Georgia remembered these times as the "happiest" in her life.
During the Christmas holidays of the following year, the Whitlock home was filled with guests, including Warren Whitlock and two of his Princeton friends. On Christmas Eve, Mrs. Whitlock made a surprise announcement. She and Gregory Bitt had secretly married. They planned to leave in a few days for a prolonged honeymoon in Europe.
Georgia was stunned by the news. She learned that she was to be enrolled in an exclusive finishing school, while the two people whom she loved-and who, she had thought, loved her-went off together. She was tormented by a complex set of emotions. She felt that her father had usurped her rightful place in Mrs. Whitlock's affections. This was only possible because of his male attributes. Her mind certainly did not equate her actions with a desire to castrate but she needed to work out a symbolic pattern through which both her father and Mrs. Whitlock would be punished.
Warren Whitlock was almost as upset by the marriage as Georgia. He accused Bitt of being socially unacceptable and a fortune hunter.
The two young people consoled each other during long walks along the beach. On the evening before he went north, Warren enticed Georgia into an abandoned beach cottage on the Whitlock estate. He locked the door and, in swift frenzy, struck Georgia and knocked her onto a couch. She pleaded with him to wait but he forced down her underclothes and fell upon her. As his body thrust into hers, he cried out hysterically, "Mother! Mother! Oh, darling! How could you?"
For the first time, in a heterosexual relationship, Georgia experienced a moment of ecstatic happiness.
They clung together for a long time in the darkness. She cradled his head and a great hope rose within her.
She said, "Warren, what do we care about them? We've got each other."
"What do you mean?"
"We could get married, have a life of our own."
Warren jerked away from her. "Are you crazy? I still got two more years of college. Anyway-"
He hesitated and Georgia waited for the final blow.
"Just because my mother gets mixed up with the Bitts, doesn't mean I'm going to wreck my life. For Pete's sake, don't tell me you thought that. I didn't say anything about marriage."
Georgia drew away from him, numb with the sudden knowledge of this final rejection. He slammed out of the cabin. He left early the next morning. She did not see him again until years later when he was married and the father of a family.
Georgia permitted herself to be packed off to the finishing school because she could think of nothing better to do. She covered her unhappiness with a doggedly cheerful manner.
The following year she entered a small coeducational college in Virginia. She appeared to do well there. She graduated a Phi Beta Kappa and was the recipient of a medallion awarded by the faculty to "a student of outstanding character and personality."
This was ironic in view of her secret life. By her own admission to Dr. Grunstahl, she had intercourse with "forty or more" men during her college years. Feeling that no man could "really care" for her, she set out to cultivate the lonely and isolated youths on the campus. She became adept at encouraging their advances and in finding spots where they could conduct their haisons free from interruption or suspicion.
In each instance she was re-enacting her scene with Warren but, at a more deeply submerged level of consciousness, she was engaging in taboo fantasies in which she was a participant in the marital relations between her father and stepmother. In the recesses of her mind there also lurked the memories of the dreams in which she gave birth to a doll which later became the image of her father.
After the sexual act, Georgia always spurned her lover. Pretending that she had been carried away by emotions beyond her control, she exacted a promise of silence from the man and a guaranty that he would cease seeing her. If he rebelled, she was usually able to intimidate him by hints that she would demand marriage or bring charges of rape against him.
With college over, Georgia lived for a while in her parents' apartment in New York. But soon Florence set out to find a suitable husband for her "ugly duckling." The suitor she produced was a distant cousin, a wealthy, elderly man who had served in various ambassadorial posts before being forced to retire through ill health. He was more in need of a nurse than a wife.
Harold Mason suffered a heart attack in attempting to consummate his marriage. Under doctor's orders, he refrained from further attempts. Georgia was glad. To her, repeated sex acts within the framework of marriage were "ugly and disgusting."
For eleven years Georgia nursed her husband. They traveled widely and led an active social life. Strangely enough, she remained faithful to him, abjuring all sex. During these years, she was contented and mildly happy because she had a sense of importance and belonging.
She was thirty-three when she became a widow. The years had been kind to her. The obesity that had plagued her youth had been partially corrected by proper diet, medical care and a glandular operation. She was still plump but she had a look of serenity and kindliness which drew many men to her who would not have given her a second look in her youth. There was only one hitch: Georgia was not interested in men of her own age. Her fantasies were still woven about the images of her childhood.
Chance brought Georgia Mason into the Ivy League circuit. Included in her husband's estate was a house in a New England town which was the seat of one of the country's oldest colleges. To arrange details of the sale of this property, she made a train trip to the town. On the way, she became friendly with a student who invited her to dinner at his fraternity house. He suggested that, as a lark, she pose as his aunt.
The big, warm, pleasant woman was an immediate hit with the students. They trailed her about the campus in groups, sat with her under the maples and vied with one another to show her the college sights. The brief business trip extended into a three-week holiday. Boy after boy sought her out to tell her his troubles. Georgia was always sympathetic. Sooner or later she would take the youth into her capacious arms and croon words of comfort. More often than not the motherly caresses would develop into the heat of passion and she would be "carried away by the boy's fervor."
So skillful was Georgia in the choice of these boys that, although nine of them shared her bed for a night, none of them appeared to suspect her intimacy with their friends.
Unlike most promiscuous women, Georgia Mason claimed to obtain genuine pleasure from these encounters. She felt no guilt but, for reasons obscure to herself, she had no wish to repeat her experiences with the same youths. Dr. Grunstahl's probing indicated that, inasmuch as she equated the initial sexual contact with birth, each of these boys became a "son." Thus any second contact would have been, in her mind, incestuous.
Her attitude is partly revealed in her answers to Dr. Grunstahl's questions:
Q. How did you feel toward these boys? A. I loved them all. Q. Equally?
A. No, of course not. Every mother has her favorites.
Q. Did you have any sense of guilt afterward?
A. Why should I? Most of these boys had never known a woman before. If it hadn't been for me, they would have learned about women from prostitutes and tarts, or maybe some silly little girl they'd have had to marry. I gave them something beautiful to remember. I didn't do them any harm.
Q. But you didn't love any of them enough to repeat the act?
A. I loved them too much for that. After the first time, it would have been horrid, like-like, well, I don't know what.
Q. Like incest perhaps?
A. (Angrily) No. No. More like marriage, I guess-where you're bound to the same man forever and ever, even after you're tired of him and wish he were dead. That's the wicked part of sex-not what I did.
Once having started on the round of colleges, Mrs. Mason's craving seems to have been unquenchable. She moved from college town to college town, haunting the campuses, the eating places and lounges where students gathered. Her skill at spotting responsive boys was uncanny.
In the early days of her fantastic quest, Mrs. Mason was independently wealthy and made no effort to secure money from the youths. However, she always exacted a token payment such as a fraternity pin, a good-luck charm, a ring or some other prized possession. Dr. Grunstahl believes that these trophies represented phallic symbols and that, like Barbara Reddington and Mickey Horsdorf, she was seeking to emasculate her victims and assume their male characteristics through a process of magic that is allied to witchcraft.
With the passage of the years, her fortune dwindled, partly through poor investment and partly through the chicanery of the trustees of her estate.
She was hard-pressed for funds and put her mind to work to devise means of exacting payments for her services. Sometimes her methods smacked of blackmail but it is doubtful that she could have been prosecuted successfully even if her victims had been in a position to press charges.
Mrs. Mason's most bizarre adventure occurred at a small Southern college, notable for its attraction to wealthy youths. Here the president of the college, observing her popularity with students, naively offered her a post as house mother in a fraternity. Georgia accepted with alacrity.
Two rooms with a private bath and kitchenette were provided for her on the ground floor of the building, while the boys slept in an upstairs dormitory. No one thought it odd when they visited "Mother Mason" in the evening to discuss their problems. Before the year's end she had seduced more than half of the thirty-two members of the fraternity.
She had other favorites on the campus. Among these was Tom Perkins, a senior, taking a premedical course. About two weeks before the end of the term, a farewell dance was given for the graduating students, at the nearby country club. A request was made for Mrs. Mason to chaperone this dance and she accepted gladly.
Throughout the dance she sat placidly with the other chaperones and faculty wives, refusing smilingly all invitations to dance. At one o'clock the party was over but Mrs. Mason lingered on as she had assumed the responsibility of closing the building for the night. Tom Perkins also remained because he had been assigned to take her home in his car.
She stood in the doorway, bidding the last guests goodnight and waving gaily to them as they drove off. Finally the club was abandoned; only she and Tom remained.
She looked at the litter of crepe ribbons, confetti and glasses and said, "What a mess! Well, we don't have to worry about that. The caretaker will clean up in the morning. All the same, I think it would be a kindness to stack the cups."
Between them they carried cups, glasses and punch bowls to the kitchen and piled them in the sink. As they did, Tom brushed up against her several times. She pretended not to notice.
She said, "In a week now, you'll be gone, Tom. I'll miss you. You've been almost like a son to me."
Tom reddened and stuttered, "I'll miss you, too, Mrs. Mason. Gee, I mean-well, I guess I'll never see you again."
Georgia archly tapped his arm with her fan. "Don't be silly, Tom. You'll find a nice girl and settle down. You'll never give an old woman like me a second thought."
Tom answered ruefully, "I was watching all the girls at the dance. None of them can hold a candle to you."
"Why, Tom, that's very flattering. But you know you mustn't say things like that. Mother's been a widow for a long time."
"I was hoping-well, gee, I won't be seeing you again, so I thought maybe you'd let me kiss you good-bye."
"You know I couldn't permit that."
"I guess not."
"And you're a naughty boy to tempt me. Now, I've got to put out all the lights and make sure the windows are locked."
She went from room to room, switching off the lights and testing the windows. Tom followed at her heels. Finally only one room remained lit. This was a small room, fitted up with a day bed to be used in case of sickness or emergency.
Georgia moved down the darkened hall and raised her hand to the switch. Tom, emboldened by the sudden darkness, put his arms around her, tilted her head back and kissed her clumsily. She stiffened, then twisted in his grip and pressed against him.
"If you've got to kiss me, do it right, Tom."
He kissed her again. With a sob, she broke away. "It's wicked of me to let you do such a thing."
"I don't care. I'm crazy about you. I think I could die happy if I could make love to you just once."
"You mustn't say such a thing. Besides, it's too dangerous."
"Who'll ever find out? The parking lot's empty. Everyone's gone. The caretaker won't be here until morning."
"Tom, if I did what you want, would you swear never to tell another soul?"
"Of course I wouldn't tell. What do you think I am?"
"Promise, Tom."
"I'd die before I made trouble for you."
"I believe you and trust you."
She drew him into the room and, unloosening her clothing, lay down on the bed.
They were in the final paroxysm of fulfillment when there was the slam of the door and the swift, blinding glare of the overhead light. In the shadowy hallway beyond, two figures loomed, that of a young man and a girl.
The young man said, "Holy Moses! It's Mrs. Mason! Who'd have thought it of her."
The girl giggled. "Let's get out of here."
"Sure. On the double." As he turned away, he said mockingly, "Why, Mrs. Mason, I'm ashamed of you."
With a'roar of rage, Tom leapt across the room. The young couple was already in flight. They sped through the kitchen door, which Mrs. Mason had forgotten to lock.
Tom chased them as far as the outer steps, then, realizing his state of undress, he stopped. He saw them clamber into a car and race away.
When he returned, Mrs. Mason was crying. She clung to him. "They'll tell and my reputation will be ruined. How could I have been such a fool!"
"Maybe they won't. I wonder why they came back here."
"Perhaps the girl forgot her purse."
"No. They headed straight for this room. I bet they've used it plenty of times. In that case, they won't dare blab."
"But you heard that awful boy-the way he was making fun of me. He'll talk. I know he will. Did you recognize him?"
"No. First the glare, then the shadows. If I knew, I'd fix him up so he couldn't talk. The girl, too."
Mrs. Mason was pleading. "Tom-Tom! You won't betray me?"
Tom's jaw set. "If it comes to a showdown, I'll say I jumped you, that you fought me all the way."
They drove home together in glum silence.
The next morning, bright and early, Mrs. Mason was at the president's office. She realized that if the young people reported first, her own story would be discredited. She claimed that Tom had assaulted her but denied the completion of the sex act, due to the providential arrival of an unidentified young couple.
Tom was immediately summoned by the president. Believing that Mrs. Mason had been forced to tell her story, he backed it to the hilt.
The president, in a burst of self-righteous anger, not only expelled Tom on the spot but slapped him across the face. The youth was warned that if he was not out of town by noon, he would be arrested for attempted rape. Needless to say, this was the end of the medical career he had planned.
Actually, Mrs. Mason's accusation was unnecessary. The young couple never came forward.
Mrs. Mason was not only permitted to finish her year at the college but was offered a contract for the following year, which she was wise enough to turn down.
She returned to her apartment in Montclair, New Jersey. The next season she renewed her college rounds. Her schedule was flexible but customarily she visited the colleges of her choice on alternate years. She seldom spent more than a week at any one place. Her take would sometimes run as high as fifteen hundred dollars on a visit; at other times it might drop to a hundred or even less.
At home, Mrs. Mason conducted herself with the greatest circumspection. She had a circle of close women friends, attended church regularly, belonged to several social clubs and was available for char'table fund-raising campaigns. Her only peculiarity, as noted by friends, was that although she frequently spoke of nephews attending Princeton, Yale or Amherst, none of these young men ever called upon her. She took the utmost care to prevent her name from appearing in print and had an unlisted telephone number, but such idiocyncracies were attributed to shyness.
Although, on occasion, students gave her trouble, she had learned to cope with them. Usually a threat to report them to college authorities or the police was sufficient to send them scuttling. No serious difficulty arose until Larry Place and his two friends joined forces against her.
Dr. Grunstahl was frankly perplexed. Just how much damage had Georgia Mason wrought?
A few of the young men whom she had seduced were available for interviews. Although some of them were sheepish, not a single one bore her any ill will. Most of them went so far as to feel that they owed her a debt of gratitude because she had given to their first sexual experience a quality of glamour. Some were eager to see her again and badgered Dr. Grunstahl for her address. Even Tom Perkins had no regrets. He had become a member of a brokerage firm and was highly successful. He had married well and had four daughters. In a way, he felt that Mrs. Mason had done him a favor and he said that he'd like to "see the old girl again."
Nevertheless, Georgia Mason's conduct can in no way be condoned. And even more truly than Barbara Reddington or Mickey Horsdorf, she may be catalogued as a "witch." To evaluate this statement, it becomes necessary to examine briefly the history of witchcraft, the most extensive study of which is found in Jacques Michelet's Satanism and Witchcraft.
Although the rites of the Witches' Sabbath and the Black Mass pre-date Christianity, they became powerful forces in Medieval Europe and England as a counteraction to the sex taboos imposed by the Church. The communities of the period were closely knit. The Church defined incest as any sexual relationship between cousins, up to the sixty-fourth degree. This meant that marriage within the community was virtually impossible and, if the the young men left their villages, their clans would be so weakened that they would fall easy prey to marauders.
To keep these young men home, the bacchanals of the Black Mass provided a sexual outlet. The priestess of the cult was usually a woman beyond the age of child-bearing and her body became an "altar" for the use of unmarried males. In her own pattern, Georgia Mason performed a similar function for young men, who, in a contemporary society, must postpone socially acceptable sex practices far beyond puberty, in order to train for the professions or employment in the upper-income brackets.
How deeply Georgia Mason should be condemned is largely a matter of individual judgment. In Berjowski's Patterns of Primitive Culture, it is pointed out that: "Today in certain primitive island societies a boy, upon reaching puberty, must be initiated into the rites of sex by his grandmother, and any other woman who performs such a function may be stoned to death."
The Kronhausens, in their college studies, state that it was a common practice in prewar France for mothers to arrange for their ten-year-old sons to be introduced into the mysteries of sex by older women chosen from among their friends.
Sex taboos, however, cannot be flaunted with impunity. Dr. Grunstahl recognized this. For Georgia Mason, the solution of her problems seemed simple. She had been relatively happy in the eleven years of her sexless marriage. He advised that she find another such man as Harold Mason.
On her final visit to Dr. Grunstahl's office, Mrs. Mason appeared radiandy happy. She had, she said, taken his advice and married a man of her own age who had been hopelessly crippled in an airplane crash.
Dr. Grunstahl congratulated her, then as she babbled on, he felt the hairs rise at the nape of his neck.
"He's such a wonderful man," she explained, "and besides that, I'll have a family. He has two sons. Peter will be entering Yale next fall. Johnnie's only twelve but he's a dear. He'll be going to an Ivy League college, too. I know everything's going to work out just fine."
CHAPTER SEVEN
Burn, Witch, Burn
(The Case of Eva Coo)
Not all witches escape burning.
The huge funeral pyres have disappeared, together with the stake used to pierce the witch's heart to prevent her from coming to life again in animal form.
But the twentieth century has developed a symbol of vengeance as fearsome and as savage as any employed in the past. This is the electric chair in which, from time to time, women convicted of acts closely akin to witchcraft have been condemned to die.
One of these was Eva Coo. And if ever a person fitted the popular conception of a witch, it was this woman who always referred to herself as "Litde Eva," her one hundred and eighty pounds notwithstanding.
Presumably Eva Coo had a childhood, but all traces of it seem to have been lost. After her arrest for a murder, which for sheer lunacy can only be compared to the light-hearted crimes of the charming old ladies in Arsenic and Old Lace, Eva told various stories of her youth. None of them were true.
Eva appeared to have come out of nowhere to disrupt the peace and quiet of the little town of Oneonta, New York. The time was the early 1930's, when Prohibition brought its own pecular brand of violence to the land.
Oneonta is a deceptive community. It has two colleges, broad tree-lined streets and more churches than its population would seem to warrant. But it is also a railroad town, the site of extensive repair shops. On "the wrong side of the tracks," it has a tumultuous life seldom glimpsed by its more austere citizens.
Almost from the day of Eva's arrival in town her "house" became the center of strange revelries and nightly bacchanals. Her speakeasy was just a few doors off the main street. On the floors above, were rooms where her "girls" entertained and sometimes put on weird exhibitions.
Eva was a big, blond, buxom woman with an exuberant manner and a cheery voice. Despite her age and size, men of many ages and varied backgrounds fell under her spell. Politicians, wealthy businesmen and college boys went to Eva's place to rub shoulders with the cleaners and sweepers of the railroad yards. If they were surprised by the black gauze curtains, the burning candles, the elaborate peepholes and the scanty attire of the girls, they were also titillated by the sense of mystery and hidden pleasures.
When people asked her how she dared to run her establishment so openly, Eva boasted that she was "protected by the devil and her little black book." If she were arrested, she threatened to "break the town wide open with scandal."
The black streets around the railroad station grew dangerous after dark. Girls lurked in the doorways to accost any man who passed. If he accepted the invitation, he was usually rolled. If he rejected the temptress, the chances were that he would be attacked and robbed before he reached the end of the block.
Eva was a friend to the unfortunate victims. She would always stake a penniless man to enough money to see him through to his next payday. She also could recover treasured possessions, at a price.
Finally, however, Oneonta had enough of Eva Coo. She was haled into court and fined $425. At the same time, her "house" was closed.
Eva did not go far. She purchased the Woodbine Inn, halfway between Oneonta and Cooperstown. Behind the inn was a row of cabins which served the same purpose as her upstairs rooms previously had.
A night at the Woodbine Inn was a lark. There were always laughter, revelry, plenty to drink and plenty of girls. As mistress of ceremonies, Eva was a never-ceasing source of merriment.
The inn also had its "characters." One of these was Eva's young, dark, handsome, knife-wielding boy friend. But the chief attraction was Harry "Gimpy" Wright. Gimpy was a dark, slight, dull-witted man of fifty-three, who, as his nickname implies, was lame. Every evening Gimpy would limp along the road from his lonely home in the nearby town of Schevenus to take up his post in a rocking chair just inside the front doorway.
He would remain there all night long, the butt of every practical joke. Eva would give him an occasional beer, but, when she was in the mood, she would haul him about by the ear, slap him and even spank him in public. Gimpy didn't seem to mind. As soon as possible he would resume his position in the rocking chair, an idiot's grin on his face.
Gimpy seems to have been a born victim, the sort of man who attracts violence like a magnet. Until he was over fifty, his mother had taken care of him. She was a domestic worker who hired out by the day. She scrimped every penny so that she might leave a house to her son and an inheritance of about $4,000. She even bought a cemetery lot and had a tombstone erected there with Harry's name and the date of his birth chiseled on it. The death date would be carved out later.
When Mrs. Wright knew she was about to die, she called in her closest friend, Eva Coo, and begged her to take care of her son. Eva accepted the trust. In about a year she persuaded him to sign over the deed of the house to her. She accompanied him on periodic trips to the bank in Oneonta. Each time, Gimpy withdrew $500 and handed it to Eva.
What more could she do for Gimpy? She solved the problem by giving him an insurance policy, of which she was the beneficiary. Gimpy was pleased. The idea grew. Eva took out policy after policy. In all she accumulated twenty-eight known policies. Perhaps there were others that never came to light.
Some of the companies charged higher rates for a man over fifty. Eva was undaunted. With Gimpy in tow she visited the cemetery and tried to change the date on his tombstone. This was beyond her skill and she was forced to hire a stonecutter to help her. The tombstone, with its altered date, was then photographed and submitted as proof of Gimpy's age.
All that remained was to kill Gimpy. But how? Eva discussed methods with her boy friend, her "girls," and the clientele of the Woodbine Inn. Everybody had ideas. The murder plot became a community project. The pros and cons of various schemes were argued at length. To most people the plot was a drunken jest. But not to all. Martha Clift, one of Eva's "girls," had a problem of her own. She needed $200 for the down payment on a second-hand car. To secure it, she offered her assistance in killing Gimpy.
Both women agreed that the murder must look like an accident. The thing to do was to get Gimpy to a lonely spot and run over him. The place selected was the abandoned Scott farm, high up on Crumhorn Mountain. The dilapidated frame house and the overgrown lawns formed a setting worthy of a Charles Addams cartoon.
On a hot summer's day, Eva and Martha met, by chance, on the main street of Oneonta. They repaired to a drugstore where they sipped ice cream sodas and laid final plans for the killing.
The next morning Martha drove a battered Willys-Knight to the rear of the inn. Eva declared it suitable for their purposes. Gimpy was doing a painting job on a cottage. Eva went to talk with him. She told him that for some time she had had her eye on some young cherry trees growing on the Scott farm. Would he go up there tonight and help dig them up? Gimpy agreed amiably to this piece of petty thievery. Eva told him that he must finish the painting job first.
The trip was to be made after dark but Eva became impatient. At five-thirty, Eva ordered Gimpy to put some old gunny sacks in the car and they started off on a long aimless drive that would eventually take them to Crumhorn Mountain. Martha was at the wheel with Eva beside her. Gimpy was in back.
Every time they passed a house or another car, Eva squeezed down in her seat, so as not to be seen, and commanded Gimpy to do the same.
As Martha was later to testify, "Pretty soon Gimpy got well learned. He got down on his own hook."
Dusk had not yet fallen when they arrived at the Scott farm. The car's three occupants sat, smoking and chatting, watching darkness creep over the deep valleys.
Once Gimpy wanted to get out and stretch. Eva snapped at him, "We got to wait some more so nobody will see us getting them trees."
Finally it was dark enough to satisfy her.
She opened the car door and said, "Come on, Gimpy, get out of there."
The two of them walked together along the drive, Eva in the center, Harry in the right-wheel track. When they had gone a short way, Martha put the car in gear. Eva had agreed to give her a signal. But as Martha later explained, she was too jumpy to wait. With the car still in low gear, she bore down upon the pair.
Gimpy stepped to one side and the car went past harmlessly and braked. Eva was disgusted. She directed Martha to back to the foot of the drive and told Gimpy to remain where he was.
Eva trudged to a tool shed beside the house and, forcing the door open with her knee, picked up a wooden carpenter's mallet. Only half hiding the mallet in the folds of her striped cotton housedress, she returned to the spot where Gimpy was waiting obediently.
She signaled Martha to come on. Martha drove down the drive, still in low gear. Eva put her hand on Gimpy's chest and shoved him into the path of the car. While he blinked in astonishment, she hit him over the head with the mallet.
The slow-moving Willys-Knight rolled over him. Then Martha lost control and drove out into the field. She managed to turn the car around and drove over him a second time before stalling.
Eva came to her window. She whispered hoarsely, "For God's sake, hurry up. There's somebody coming."
For the first time Martha became aware of headlights cutting a bright swathe in the darkness as a car plodded up the steep mountain road. Under Eva's direction, she managed to maneuver the car over Gimpy's body in such a way as to "straddle it and hide it from sight." The first time she "overshot the mark." Eva told her to back up six inches.
The second car had, meanwhile, reached the foot of the driveway. Neighbors, seeing the unaccustomed lights about the deserted building, had come up to investigate. Among the four adults and three children crammed in the car was Mrs. Iva Scott Fink, who had inherited the farm upon her parents' death.
Mrs. Fink was in a towering rage. The farm house had been broken into previously and certain objects had been stolen. She suspected that the thieves had returned.
As Mrs. Fink got out of her car, Eva Coo went to meet her.
"What are you doing here?" Mrs. Fink demanded.
"I just came in to empty my bladder."
Mrs. Fink then accused her of theft.
Eva was shaking with self-righteous anger. "I got enough without stealing from you."
By this time Mrs. Fink recognized Eva. She said, "I should think you'd have enough of everything, considering the business you're in."
The altercation grew louder. At Eva's insistence, Mrs. Fink examined the doors of the house and saw that the locks were fast.
Eva shouted, "I don't like being called a thief. If you don't believe me, call in the troopers. Go ahead, see if I care."
The men, alarmed by the quarrel, had come up. Mrs. Fink suggested they search the Willys-Knight. As one of the men opened the door, the dome light clicked on. Ah the men saw was a quilt, an old felt hat and the gunny sacks on the back seat. They circled around to look at the trunk with their flashlights, but no one thought to look under the car where Gimpy's body was lying.
Finally satisfied, the neighbors returned to their car, Mrs. Fink offering a parting shot over her shoulder, "You get out of here right away. We're going to sit in our car and make sure you do. We won't leave until after you've gone."
Mrs. Fink and her friends piled into then car but they did not move. The headlights stared steadily along the drive.
The minutes dragged on. Eva and Martha discussed their plight in whispers. There was nothing they could do except sit it out. Once the Willys-Knight started forward, Gimpy's huddled body would be exposed to full view.
"Maybe they'll get tired and go away," Eva said without hope.
At length, Martha took affairs into her own hands. Approaching Mrs. Fink, she apologized for Eva's behavior.
"She's stubborn, you know. And you made her mad calling her a thief."
Mrs. Fink appeared adamant but the men in the car were impatient. There was a prize fight on that night and they wanted to listen to it on the radio.
Martha begged, "Please go on. I promise you I'll get her right out of here."
"All right," Mrs. Fink conceded, "but if she's not right behind, we'll be back."
Feverishly the two women pulled and tugged at the limp body until they managed to bundle it into the back seat and cover it with the quilt.
Martha was at the wheel again. She caught up with the Fink car at the foot of the mountain.
"Now what'll we do?" she asked.
"We'll have to dump him somewhere. Stop at the next dark spot we come to."
But luck was against them. Every time they stopped, headlights would spear along the road from one direction or another.
Eva complained petulantly. "It's just like Gimpy. Getting us into a mess like this."
As they approached the Woodbine Inn, Martha could stand the strain no longer. She halted the car by the roadside and, when there was a lull in the traffic, Eva dragged Gimpy into a ditch. Actually, they would have been hard put to find a better place. This was on the route which Gimpy traveled every night.
Back at the Woodbine Inn, hilarity had reached a high pitch. The fight which had drawn the Fink car from Crumhorn Mountain, was being reported full blast on the radio. Afterward the winners of bets treated the losers. Even so, now and then someone stopped Eva to ask why Gimpy Wright was not in his rocking chair.
At eleven o'clock Eva telephoned the state police to notify them that she was worried because Gimpy was missing. Within the hour a patrol car found his body.
Eva wept when she heard the news.
No one suspected her. Perhaps no one ever would have if it had not been for the horde of insurance adjusters who made their way to the Woodbine Inn. At one time, three of them were on the premises simultaneously.
Once suspicion was aroused, the trail was wide open. The twenty-eight policies came to light. So did the change of the date on the tombstone, the endless discussions of murder mehods and Eva's strange conduct on Crumhorn Mountain. Martha Clift was arrested, confessed and turned state's evidence.
In paper after paper, Eva Coo became "The Witch of Oneonta."
Her trial, which took place in Cooperstown, was certainly reminiscent of earlier witchcraft trials.
A gala atmosphere pervaded the town. Thousands of cars jammed the streets. Venders of balloons, ice cream and souvenirs did a thriving business. The courthouse was jammed with people, struggling with one another for the privilege of attending the hearings. The park between the courthouse and the prison was lined with men, women and children eager to catch a glimpse of Eva, to shout insults and derision and, now and then, a word of encouragement.
Eva did not seem to understand. She waved gaily back at them.
Throughout most of the trial, she sat placidly at the prisoner's table, glancing smilingly about.
And when she was condemned to die, she said, with a good-natured shrug of her shoulders, "Poor little Eva, I guess she was never in line to get a break."
The tabloids treated Eva Coo with a mixture of horror, ribaldry and macabre humor.
On the morning of her execution, one of them scare-headed the news: THE WITCH OF ONEONTA BURNS.
But was Eva Coo really a witch?
Or was she a lost soul, living so deeply in a world of fantasy that she was no longer able to establish contact with reality?
No psychiatric reports are available on which to form judgment. But two incidents on the final day of her life may serve as guideposts.
When her last meal was delivered to her death cell, she pushed it away archly and, with every appearance of seriousness, said, "Oh, I don't dare eat such rich food. It's bad for my figure. Don't you know I'm on a diet?"
And when zero hour finally came, she seemed almost exultant. She dressed with the utmost care, examined herself in a mirror, manicured her nails, rouged her cheeks and paid loving attention to her hair. She walked erect and smiling through the corridor, supporting the weeping matron on her arm and crooning words of comfort to her.
"Good-bye, darling," she said as the matron clung to her, "you've been so good to me. I'll always remember you, darling, as long as I live."
Then, still smiling, she walked through the green door to be strapped in the chair.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Cult of Eve
Witchcraft is not a thing of the past.
Today, to the author's knowledge, the Witches' Sabbath is celebrated intermittently by at least four covins in New York City.
May Day is the traditional date for such Bacchanalian revels. The seemingly innocent Maypole is a relict of witchcraft. Originally it was a phallic symbol and the dancing around its foot is a modification of the Witches' Round. In times past, priests were forbidden to engage in May Day festivities under pain of death.
Each year on this night, celebrants of the Black Mass hire an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of Greenwich Village. Just inside the door is erected a huge shaggy figure of the Devil, his virile attributes exaggerated to the point of caricature. Before entering, the celebrant must bestow a kiss upon the life-like buttocks as a repudiation of orthodox religion and proof that he "prefers Satan's backside to the Christian diety."
Within the dimly lit hall, weird, dirge-like music, counterpointed by the jungle beat of tom-toms, invites the, assemblage to swaying movement. The initiated dance back to back, buttocks often touching, stripping off clothing as they dance, until at length, made dizzy by the Witches' Round, they sink to the floor as though sodden with drink.
As the night wears on, the candles gutter and are not replaced. The fumes of alcohol mingle with the sweet acrid smoke of marijuana cigarettes.
At the height of the festivities, the remaining candles are extinguished and a bright spotlight floods the center of the floor. A horned figure, dressed in the red tights and the flowing robes of the Devil, enters the circle of light and intones a travesty of the Mass in which the name of the Devil is constantly invoked.
As he moves back into the shadows, the stage is taken over by a troup of Pan-like dancers, leaping and cavorting in an obscene ballet. In turn, this gives way to a scene depicting the traditional rape of a priestess by the satanic goat, complete with tail, horns, shaggy leggings, a goat's mask for a face and a long, looped tail.
The exhibitions which follow depict every form of taboo sex, catering to the deviate tastes of the strange gathering.
The spotlight clicks off and the celebrants, aroused and titillated by the forbidden acts which they have witnessed, grope for one another in the darkness. They pair off, some moving into deeper shadows, some to the center of the floor, some to beneath stairways and behind stacked crates. This is the last step of the Black Mass, a vast formless orgy in which all participate.
To some, this carousal may appear to be no more than an uninhibited spree of sex, drink and drugs, in which the participants thumb their noses at the mores of modern society. Indeed, this was the attitude of the police when they broke up one such gathering. But actually, both the spirit and the form of the Black Mass had been adhered to closely.
The Christian Church, in the Dark Ages, was the tool of the feudal lords who corrupted it to control and repress the ordinary people. Those who rebelled against the floggings by the priests, the inhuman tortures ordered by the Church, the laws that banned marriage between kinsmen and the sex taboos which restricted their lives, reverted to an earlier religion.
As an act of rebellion, they allied themselves to God's adversary, the Devil. To attract a following, they substituted for Christian austerity, the licentiousness, the drunkenness, the excitation of aphrodisiacs and the euphoria of such drugs as were known at the time.
The rituals of the Black Mass have always been elastic, adapting themselves to circumstances but invariably attacking respectability and the status quo. This is exactly what the assorted crowd of beatniks, lesbians, male deviates and thrill seekers do when they attend the annual May Day bacchanal in Greenwich Village. Atavism, not accident, guides them back to the ancient practices of Devil worship.
In Harlem, where black magic is an integral part of the weird rites of Voudun, Obeah, Shango, Ocolio Nanigos and other exotic West Indian and African cults, elements of the Black Mass are constantly present. Devotees seem to be seized by invisible hands and sometimes they are spun about like tops until they collapse on the floor. The priestesses walk through flames unharmed, cast death curses, mix love potions and sell amulets against the evil eye, as witches have done through the centuries.
The Black Mass, in its purest form, is performed by a group of well-to-do lesbians whose clubhouse is the entire top floor of an apartment building just off Riverside Drive. Perhaps this is natural as these women regard themselves as social outcasts and, to them, the devil is "the exile of eternity."
Throughout the ages lesbianism and witchcraft have moved hand in hand, so much so that each has often been referred to as "The Cult of Eve."
In The Origins of Witchcraft, published more than four hundred years ago in France, it is explained that, through the Black Mass, women have sought to redeem themselves from "the curse that Christianity has imposed upon their sex by attributing man's downfall to Eve. At the Witches' Sabbath, woman performs every office. She is priest, altar and consecrated Host and, as such, she cannot be held in light esteem.
The linkage between lesbianism and witchcraft continues to engage the interest of the Church today. In the February 1962 issue of Esquire magazine, a prominent Catholic priest of Boston is quoted as calling lesbianism "pure witchery" and condemning it because "it is essentialy selfish, precluding not only pregnancy but the necessity of depending on a male for gratification."
Witchcraft and lesbianism have a common goal which is to destroy the dominance of the male and set up a matriarchal society. Perhaps this desire is inherent in all women.
In America, the ascendancy of female power has long been regarded with alarm.
All major religions have been patriarchal, centering about a masculine figure. In witchcraft, as in lesbianism, the symbol of Christ has been supplanted by that of Mary. She is not the fertile mother, but the Virgin, cold, cruel, aloof and untouched by man.
Modern psychiatry has an explanation for the witchery of women. Within recent years at least a dozen articles have appeared in scholarly psychiatric journals, signed by such authorities as Brunswick, Healey, Bronner and Bowers, in which the thesis has been presented that "all little girls from three to five believe that they have been genitally mutilated."
In one of these articles it is stated that: "The desire to seize the male organs for her own use or, failing that, to destroy them, is a common fantasy of the female child. In most cases this fantasy subsides into the subconscious but remains as a hidden motivation in the life of the adult woman."
This theory which, according to Cleckley and Thigpen, has gained general acceptance in psychiatric circles, indicates that the castradon complexes shared by Barbara Reddington, Mickey Horsdorf, Georgia Mason and Eva Coo, were exceptional only in the intensity of their outward manifestations. Their aggressive drives, which sought release in venomous attacks and false accusations against men, would appear to be found universally among women, at least in dormant form.
New York, like most large cities, is covered with a loose network of lesbian cults, supplemented by bars, cafes and cabarets catering specifically to female devotees.
Exact figures on lesbianism are impossible to ascertain, but in 1961, when the American Psychoanalytic Association conducted its first symposium on overt female homosexuality, it was estimated that lesbianism had increased 600 per cent since the end of World War II. No less than twenty lesbian clubs operate in Manhattan alone and, wherever they exist, signs of witchcraft are clearly evident.
Many of these clubs are governed by an inner circle of thirteen, like the covins of old. Each centers about an older woman or "priestess" of the cult who may inflict corporal punishment on her followers for violation of the rules. The culprit is frequently stripped and whipped in the presence of the group, especially if her sin is "carnal knowledge" of a man. Black candles, flowing drapes, pyxes containing black wafers, altars inscribed with demonic symbols and all the paraphernalia of witchcraft are common decorations in the clubhouses.
DeL'ancre wrote in 1612: "Never was thoroughbred witch yet but was child of incest, born of mother and son." The Devil's Bride, it is explained, must be "full thirty or more, white of skin, full of limb and with an untamable torrent of dark hair."
This description fits, with a high degree of accuracy, a woman who is the self-styled "high priestess" of the Jacquerie Club, which gathers in an apartment off Riverside Drive. She boasts that she is the offspring of a mother-son relationship, in which the latter was only fourteen at the time of impregnadon. She is a good six feet in height, full-breasted and clear-skinned. Her features are bold and strong, her eyes piercing, and her hair is jet black.
She claims to possess supernatural gifts, including the power to kill at a distance, to make miraculous cures, to communicate with the dead, to compel others to obey her through telepathy and to foresee the future. Whether she is madwoman, seeress, charlatan or witch is difficult to determine. Perhaps she combines elements of all four.
This woman refuses to discuss her past, but a few facts are obtainable. She attended a topflight woman's college where she was a brilliant student of classical languages until she was expelled, for a scandal involving lesbianism, in her junior year.
She has written two highly successful books, has been on the stage briefly and has served a sixty-day prison sentence for assault on another woman. Twice she has been questioned by the police regarding mysterious deaths of her intimates. She appears to be independently wealthy, although the source of her income cannot be determined.
The Black Mass is celebrated four times each year at the Jacquerie Club. The admission fee is a flat hundred dollars. The women who attend the night's saturnalia arrive with the greatest circumspection. Most of them are dressed in evening gowns, fur coats or stoles. Anyone whose conduct in the past has not been acceptable is turned away at the door.
The celebrants, with rare exceptions, are women. They form a cross-grain of upper-income-bracket society. Some are successful businesswomen, writers, artists and even university professors. A few are high-priced call girls whose inclinations tend toward lesbianism. Most are outwardly respectable matrons or widows whose deviations from the norm would escape any but the probing eye.
Among these are women who lead exemplary lives throughout the rest of the year but who seek relief from the boredom of marriage or the celibacy of widowhood in the excitation of a bacchanal in which they can be assured that "no woman shall leave heavier than she has come."
No one may enter the inner rooms of the club who is not masked. Anterooms are provided for those who wish to change their clothing or otherwise alter their appearances. A certain number of the women are transvestites. Men's evening clothes may be donned on the premises but no one may arrive in masculine attire. The inside rooms are dimly lit with candles which reflect dully on slate-gray walls. Cocktails are served by uniformed maids and soft hypnotic music is piped to the waiting guests. At this stage, the proceedings have the air of the prelude to a sedate masked ball.
The "hostess" is a serious student of satanism. She tries to recreate the four acts of the Black Mass, as described in detail in Michelet's Satanism and Witchcraft and elaborated upon by H.T.F. Rhodes in The Satanic Mass.
At precisely ten o'clock the doors of the "inner temple" swing open. At first glance this might be mistaken for the nave of a church with the pews removed. The plate-glass windows, the tiers of flickering candles and the stark white figure on the cross lend a medieval splendor to the spectacle.
A closer examination, however, reveals that the windows, instead of depicting holy scenes, are reproductions of the grotesquely evil and obscene paintings of Bosch and Brueghel the Elder, showing the denizens of the underworld. The candles flickering in the blood-red sconces are black. And, most shocking of all, the body on the crucifix is that of a full-breasted woman.
An introit is chanted by a red-robed priestess, the Latin words a mockery of the original holy theme. Slowly the assemblage pairs off and starts a stately march about the room. As the circle grows tighter, the music rises to a frenzied pitch. The dancers tangle with one another, whirling and gyrating in the overheated hall. Back arches against back, sending the partners lurching into other couples. The masked figures pair off anew and continue their swaying movement.
According to the high priestess, this version of the Witches' Round "abolishes old age and uglinness by a satanic miracle, so that each woman believes herself lovable and confusedly loved."
A gong is struck seven times. The dancing stops. At the far end of the hall, velvet curtains of deep purple part to unveil a chapel, separated from the rest of the room by an elaborate wrought-iron grill. A high altar is bedecked with demonic symbols. A wide couch, in the shape of a casket, lies on a dais at its foot, seemingly empty and shrouded in black.
The shrouds stir and are thrust backward. The gleaming body of the high priestess is revealed lying naked on the couch, stark white against the background of dark velvet.
A woman dressed in the abbreviated costume of a nun rears up from behind the couch and two scantily clad female acolytes move in from the wings. The body of the high priestess becomes the altar. Mass is said on her loins, the words a jumble of Latin spoken backwards. The Credo is pronounced, the name of Satan substituted for God, and the offertory of the faithful is deposited on the gleaming flesh.
The attendants withdraw and the priestess lies alone, motionless. The tense silence is broken by the light tap of footsteps as a grotesque figure approaches the dais. The face is hooded by a devil's mask and the feet are shod in high-heeled slippers. The rest of the body is naked, painted a deep black that catches the glow of the votive candles. Satan is a woman with full pendulous breasts but with the artificial accoutrements of a male strapped to her loins.
She approaches the inert priestess, draws away, pirouettes, approaches again and retreats as though in fear and doubt. The weird ballet of lust and abnormal desire continues for some minutes.
Satan stoops to kiss the priestess' throat and breasts. There is a moan and, with a nimble leap, Satan is astride the recumbent body.
The priestess lies as though drugged. Then a shudder passes through her. Her arms encircle her satanic lover and her body writhes in a slow rhythm. The arms grow taut in an impassioned embrace. There is the soft thud of breasts against breasts. The rhythm quickens and the huge white body arches upward, until a scream of ecstasy echoes through the hall.
The curtains are drawn rapidly. And now the breathless assembly is ready for the final act of the Black Mass. Masked strangers pair off to relive, in their minds' eyes, the scene which they have witnessed on the stage. "In the darkness they shed every physical imperfection. Each loves and is confusedly loved in an anonymity which quenches guilt," it is claimed.
Are these women witches? Or are they simply indulging forbidden passions which can only be liberated through some stylized ceremony which gives group approval to their taboo acts?
Without mass psychiatry the answers are not forthcoming. But it would seem likely that each individual is working out a childhood fantasy in which the sex act has been sublimated.
The shadowy figure of "the dark stranger" which troubled the dreams of both Barbara Reddington and Mickey Horsdorf would appear to be shared by these women and to be represented symbolically in the person of Satan. Because the lesbian cannot accept a true explanation of "the dark stranger," which is her unrecognized impulse toward incest with father or son, she must reject all heterosexual love and find a "pure substitute" in the sterile concept of the virgin.
The Black Mass may be sheer hocus-pocus, but that the mummery which surrounds it has an allure for women whose personality imbalances cause other people to speak of them as "witches" cannot be denied.
This can be noted repeatedly in the detailed case studies presented in the earlier chapters of this book. It can be seen in Barbara Reddington's preoccupation with the formalized love-making of her friend Blake, in Mickey Horsdorf's split personality in which a part of her became "a stranger in fl'ght," in Georgia Mason's role as a priestess in a fantastic fertility rite, and in Eva Coo's conviction that she was protected by "the devil and her little black book."
These cases were selected from twenty-three submitted by trained psychiatric personnel. They are not extremes. Seventeen of the woman admitted to sexual intimacy with over a hundred individuals; seven of them placed their estimates over the thousand mark. Their histories are filled with suicide, adultery, assaults, false charges of rape and repeated acts of violence.
On the other hand, two of the "witches" denied any sexual activity, heterosexual or otherwise. Two others had had only unsatisfactory marital relations. Ironically, these women raised more havoc in the lives of those about them them than did their promiscuous sisters. Instead of acting out their fantasies, they superimposed the evil upon their acquaintances, friends and families. The venom they spewed forth was masked by sanctimony. They ruined marriages and reputations through sheer malice. They were experts in the use of the poison pen, the anonymous telephone call, the dropped rumor and slander which could not be brought home to them.
These women could never abide happiness, success or integrity in others. With a witch's uncanny skill they supplanted joy with grief, accomplishment with failure and pride with humiliation and disgrace.
The Cult of Eve, wherein all mankind is the enemy, seems to be spreading constantly. Now, emboldened by Dr. Stein's assertion that witches are real, the attack upon them has heightened.
In a lead article of a recent issue of Esquire, entitled The Entrenchment of the American Witch. George Frazier describes the "true witch" as a woman whose charm is often cyanide "and who delights in annihilating not only her men but anyone else who hampers her hateful hedonism."
Mr. Frazier's description is strangely reminiscent of Michelet's "witch-wife" who is "soft and silky, stealthy of approach and shy but a wanton from her very cradle, bursting with low-minded tricks and naughty caprice, awaiting a dark and evil moment for her vile reverie."
We know that such women exist. Indeed, there are few among us who have not suffered from their wiles and their deviltry.
Whether or not they should be called witches is largely a matter of semantics. Beyond question they are women dedicated to evil.
