AS THE TRAIN approached her destination, Nola Pilgrim sat up expectantly in her seat, displaying a body of utter witchery and a face to match, the face having the advantage of big hazel eyes and a frame of eddying corn-gold hair. None of this was lost on a young man across the aisle. A few minutes later he hastened to assist when Nora stood up to retrieve her bags from the overhead rack. She gave him one of her smiles, which he considered reward enough, and in his stunned condition he stammered regrets that she would be getting off at the next stop.
"Have to," said Nola. "I'm going home."
On the rocking platform, waiting for the clacking train to halt, she noted that her arm Was still tingling where the young man had briefly touched it. What, she wondered, made her so susceptible to males? She reveled in their glances, their touches, the pleasure they showed when she gave any of them her company. Not that she permitted them to go too far; she was a well-brought-up girl and, besides, knew her way around. But, of course, there had been occasions. Like that one yesterday morning, she reminded herself, and had the grace to blush.
The patient had been a stalwart boy, brought into the hospital with a progressive nerve deterioration that could only end in paralysis and death. As his nurse, Nola had come into the most intimate contact with him daily. His hunger for her had been so obvious, his humble yet pleading eyes so melting, that in her pity she had locked the door-and had ministered to him with her warm silky body. Well, she was not sorry, thought Nola, lifting her chin. She had not got anything physical out of it. In fact, the episode had left her stinging with unfulfilled need. But she had given that poor lad the last and only experience of love he would ever know.
Nola felt the train start to slow down. Too bad there had been so little chance for fraternization at the hospital. It was a huge place, handling every type of patient, and the student nurses had been kept too busy to do much playing. But she was grateful to the venerable institution. She was leaving it as a fully qualified graduate nurse. Soon she would be joining her brother, Bridge Pilgrim, who managed a quite large farm. A plantation, they called it in these parts. She would help out as his housekeeper, but meant to find a job at some clinic in the area or with a busy physician. She hoped she would like it around here. She and Bridge, who had been very close since the death of their parents, had been raised in the wheat country hundreds of miles to the north.
The train jerked, squealed, jerked again and stopped. In a few moments, Nola was standing alone with her bags, the only passenger to disembark. The train pulled out. Nola peered about her anxiously. Bridge was not in sight.
Then a man walked up to her. A man still quite young, hardly more than twenty-one, tall and rather thin, with a bony face that bore a sparse, ridiculous chin-beard. "Nola Pilgrim?"
"That's right."
"My name is Barry Norton. Your brother asked me to pick you up. Come on, I'll drive you home."
He lifted her bags and walked to his parked station wagon. It was an expensive model, quite new, and Nola got into it without question.
Normally Nola was pretty careful about things like that. But there was a peculiar hypnotic quality to the man's pale-blue eyes that had disarmed her. Now, as they rode along in silence and he cast repeated sidelong glances at her face, her rounded bosom, her legs, that quality began to disturb her. Furthermore, there was a strange animal vitality about the fellow, a kind of magnetic force that seemed to tug at her; this was even more disturbing.
"Bridge is busy?" she asked uneasily.
"He's castrating calves this afternoon," said Barry.
"What!"
"Making steers out of bulls." Barry licked his lips.
Nola fell silent. The miles sped under the wheels. She had no idea how far off the farm was, but it seemed to her that the trip was taking an inordinately long time. After a while, Barry pointed the station wagon into a narrow dirt road. It threaded dense forest that hardly looked to Nola like farmland. When the road became little more than a dusty, rutted track, she moved herself as far away as possible from Barry on the seat.
"Where is the place?" she asked. "Have we much more to go?"
"Oh," said Barry, giving her one of those glances, "we're stopping at my camp first. It's right on the river. People in these parts, you know, keep a shack somewhere for hunting and fishing."
"But-"
"You'll like it," said Barry. "My camp. Barry Norton's camp. No woman has ever been there. You would not be going there, either, if it weren't for the poetry of your walk-the way your hips sway and bend, the silky motions of your waist. God, I'd like to see all that in the nude. May I?"
Nola was speechless. She glared at him, meaning to tell him off in no uncertain terms.
But his gaze, meeting hers, seemed to hypnotize her. Pale eyes. They seemed to transmit to her own eyes a vision of herself standing nude before him. She could not shake off the picture.
Then he returned his attention to the road and the spell was broken, at least to a degree. She was about to protest, to scream, when unexpectedly the track widened into a clearing.
He stopped the car and turned off the ignition. Before she knew what he intended, his hot devouring mouth was covering hers. His animal spirit seemed to smother her and her will trickled away like water from a broken bottle. He bent her inward to him and clutched her ravenously, then suddenly released her.
When she could think, she realized he was staring at her. Her lips felt as if needles had punctured them. A shuddering wave of air suctioned into her lungs. Those eyes of his were drilling into her brain and collapsing her resistance.
He began to stroke the length of her exposed thigh. Electricity leaped. All her animal instincts soared to meet his. She was helpless. Not only couldn't she stop him- she didn't want to.
"Now I'll show you my camp," he said, and the pale eyes were suddenly opaque.
They left the car. Taking her hand, he led her across the clearing to the cabin on the far side.
It was an old affair, rather capricious, but had been put together originally with care, stout lumber and a good eye. Unfortunately, a couple of generations of neglect had ravaged it. Boards hung loose, panes were broken, nails had rusted. The roof was sway-backed and the steps humped. Ivy and creepers invaded even the doorway.
Beyond the cabin, the meandering river could be glimpsed. Dazzling sun slanted over the treetops, blinding Nola, so that inside the cabin all seemed dark at first. Then she adjusted to the diminished light-and cried out in wonder.
For the cabin's interior, though as decrepit and dusty as the outside, was a riot of flaming color and fascinating pattern. Every wall was blanketed by unframed paintings, some small, others huge, all startling in their power.
"Exhibited in New Orleans before I was out of high school," said Barry. "Had a show in Dallas last year. And I took first prize at the Mississippi art festival." These utterances were made without pride or any other emotion. They were simply statements of fact. "Could have sold every canvas, if I'd wanted to." He laughed. "I'd rather keep 'em."
Nola knew nothing of art. But she felt the enormous vigor of the paintings she beheld-landscapes, still lifes, nudes, all done with clear, thundering authority. "That's why this shack means so much to you?" she asked. "You do your work here?"
"Nope. I work at my house. I have a secret place in the attic." Again he laughed. "I like secrets, don't you?"
"But," she persisted with a kind of desperation, "isn't this the reason you asked me to undress? You need someone to pose-"
"I told you I do no work here. You know the reason I want you naked." The hypnotic eyes were searching her again. "Don't you? Well, don't you?"
Nola nodded mutely. What manner of man was this who painted like a genius, fixed her with his eye like a snake hypnotizing a bird, filled her with the overflow of his magnetic animal spirit? Or was it none of these things, really, that had her blood racing, her nerves quivering? Was it just the piquant danger of the situation, the knowledge that she was in this man's power, that he could ravish her if he wanted to? Was it, alternatively, the unsatisfied longing left in her by the embraces of that sick boy the day before-a longing so intense that any man, even an odd stranger, could trigger it? She had better be on her guard. She had better not encourage this Barry person further.
"So go ahead. Undress," he said.
"Absolutely not. And now that I've seen your paintings, it's time you took me to my brother."
His response was simple. He stepped closer to her, seized her.
She was so shocked she forgot to struggle, and he succeeded easily in stripping off her yellow summer frock without damaging it.
Nola snapped back to awareness, then. She twisted, fought. To get her out of her undergarments, he had to rip them to pieces.
He threw her on the dilapidated bunk in a corner of the main room. Sun found chinks in the walls and sent spears of gold to splash on the floor, on the couple struggling under tiers of color-wild canvases.
Barry did not strike her as she clawed at him and writhed. It was as if he knew that soon her defenses would dissolve. Gasping for breath, wracked by her own mounting impulses and desires, Nola wrestled crazily, screamed as his hands gripped her thighs and inexorably forced them apart. But the first sharp contact stilled her completely.
As he forced his lust upon her, nobly she tried again to throw him off. But all her healthy juices were boiling. Her twistings and twitches, tokens of her resistance, ingloriously ceased. Willy-nilly she gave herself up to the all-consuming fire, the blistering delight, that possessed every cell of her supple young body.
* * *
Sensation served, joy fled quickly. For a few seconds Nola lay still, trying to recapture the steps that had brought her to this rapturous but totally shameful madness. Suddenly violent reaction seized her. With a furious flounce, she dispossessed him and bounded to her feet. She glanced at her torn panties, decided to abandon them. As she shrugged into her dress, she felt violently ill.
"Please take me home," she said tightly.
"What's the hurry?"
She looked down at him. "You're rotten, do you know that? Any man who forces a girl-" Barry swung off the bunk. "You wanted it as much as I did."
"Yes, and if you were man enough, you might have induced me to choose to give it to you. But you're no man. You had to force me-force me-" Her voice wailed hysterically.
He stared at her for a moment in pale-eyed silence. Then he raised his right hand, slammed it backhanded across her face with force enough to knock her sprawling. He stood over her while she climbed slowly to her feet, fingers pressed to her bruised left eye. Could such things actually be happening to her or was she dreaming them? A sense of total unreality possessed her. She was too dissociated even to be frightened.
"Take me home," she said mechanically.
"Sure," he said in a pleasant voice.
And he did take her home, chattering cheerfully all the way as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
When Barry dropped Nola at the cottage, her brother was nowhere in sight. For this she was profoundly grateful. Barry made no attempt to help with the luggage, watching amiably as she unloaded it herself.
But as she started for the house, he said, "I wouldn't mention our fun to anyone. Let's keep it our secret. I told you I like secrets." He started the engine. "Some day I'll be back for you."
"You'd better not," she told him with bleak earnestness.
"Sure I will." He waggled a forefinger at her. "You were the best girl I ever had. Delicious. And so easy!"
CHAPTER TWO
TWO DAYS had passed. Encouraged by his success with the blond nurse he had never seen before, Barry Norton was at it again. This time his appointed victim was no stranger but his own girl, Melody Flemming.
Melody gave herself wholeheartedly to the excitement of his kiss. There was an electric intensity to everything Barry did. His embrace was infused with a frenetic heat to which Melody, being human, could not help respond.
For the moment she overlooked other strange things about Barry, although she was quite familiar with them. His straggly chin-beard, for instance. His long, rather lanky hair and the suggestion of recessive calculation in his pale-blue eyes. No matter what he said or did there was always the impression that the curtain was drawn, an opaque veil obscuring what really was in his thoughts.
Melody was nineteen and full to bursting with elan vital, racing red blood and vivid imagination. These were the keys upon which Barry now was playing for all he was worth. His hope was to evoke from her the ultimate passion that would mean surrender. He had been this far before, and farther, but always she had recovered in time to elude him. Would that happen again? She squirmed against him, finding the male of him with her soft femininity, and suddenly there washed over her the trembling weakness of the healthy woman teased past endurance, and she went limp in his arms.
Mistaking this relaxation for capitulation, Barry went swiftly to work. Before she could recover sufficiently to give battle, he had eased her softly to the pine needles that paved the woods floor, had divested her of the single item of lingerie she wore. A stinging pain ripped through her vitals, shocked her into full realization of what was happening. Shrieking her anger, she made a quick, acrobatic twist that deprived him of what he had achieved. At the same time, grasping his shoulders, she pushed with such desperation that he spun off her to sprawl on the carpet of needles.
Melody fought for possession of herself. In a moment she was showing no particular annoyance externally although she continued to seethe within. She plucked her panties from the bush where he had thrown them, slipped them on. Her dusky brown eyes were intent but without heat, steady but fearless. "After the wedding," she said in an even voice. "I've told you that over and over again."
A perfect hell of fury blasted at Barry's senses but he managed to quell it. The left corner of his mouth twitched uncontrollably and when it finally stopped it left a peculiar half-smile on his face. The pale-blue eyes took on that strange opacity and regarded her fixedly.
A chill tickled the girl's spine. She supposed those eyes of his were what had always rescued her from his advances in the past. Why, she could recall a time when he had looked at her as though she were an animal he wanted to flay while alive and breathing-or so she had imagined, telling herself that she was silly. All men became oddly behaved when in the grip of passion. Still, those eyes and the way they stared had usually been enough to calm her fever of the moment. Today, though, the blast of sensation set off by his kiss had almost proved her undoing.
"Wedding," he said in a carefully controlled voice that was strangely lifeless. "Wedding, I hear. All the time wedding-yet whenever I ask when, you stall and hedge. One day, Melody, you're going to regret tormenting me." He clasped his long fingers and gave them a furious wrench, making the joints pop.
"I don't torment you," she said. "Not on purpose."
"You torment and torture me. You're a girl, and girls like to see men in agony. They like to make men squirm like a worm on a pin... " His eyes were opaque and glassy. "A worm on a pin. Yes."
A shudder coursed through her. "You don't understand, Barry," she said. "It's just that we've been promised since we were children. We've been thrown at each other. Our families decided that some day we would marry and now they take it for granted-but I want to be sure."
"Sure of what?"
"Sure that I love you. Sure that you love me."
"What guarantee do you want from me?"
She tossed her head, her shoulder-length red-brown hair swishing silkily. "That performance you put on a minute ago-was it love? You behaved like an animal in heat."
"Who wouldn't be in heat? You're the most desirable girl alive."
She shrugged. "A man is not a beast. A man is supposed to reason and think-and control himself."
"Come off it, Melody. You want exactly what I want, and just as much as I do. You think I know nothing about women? I've had my share of experience, damn it."
She flushed. "You brag about it enough. I suppose telling me of your conquests is supposed to endear you to me."
"I go to other women only for what you won't give me."
Her chiseled lips twisted. "Well, this would be a fine evening for it. You've been refused here, so go ahead- find some mangy lady of commerce and have yourself a ball. Why should I mind if you come to me slightly used? You'd accept me slightly used by someone, wouldn't you?"
He went white but not a muscle of his face moved. The half-smile seemed frozen on. "All right, Melody." He jumped to his feet. "Will you marry me this week?"
"No," she said tightly.
He nodded. "That's what I thought." He turned his back and walked off. Soon he was lost in the depths of the woods.
Melody sighed, marched away in the opposite direction. Here on the fringe of the pine woods occupying a good part of her family's land, she was only a few hundred yards from home.
A narrow escape, she mused. Technically, she supposed, she was no longer quite a virgin, but she felt no difference in herself.
Melody was a passionate girl as well as an intelligent one. She read romances avidly. She had sinned many times vicariously and the nature of her daydreams made her vulnerability quite plain to herself. Once again, Melody sighed. She was ready. There was no mistaking that. Had it been another man... A cool shiver raced over her skin. Other men stayed away because of Barry.
Everyone knew she was promised to him.
* * *
In front of the sprawling old house with its slender and delicately fluted iron columns stood an ancient Packard phaeton, its top down and the twin windshields folded down. The elegant thoroughbred perched on stainless-steel wire wheels as bright as new. The rich maroon finish glistened with wax.
It was Missy Blumendahl's car, Missy being a neighbor of the Flemmings. Melody loved Missy. The woman meant more to Melody than did her own mother-who had run to fat, constantly complained, and bitterly resented a world that was strange and baffling to her. Joyce Flemming's husband had allowed her unlimited money, had taken fine care of her. But he had died in a nasty plane accident. After that, Joyce had gone to pieces, growing more dissociated and more blindly self-indulgent and apparently more stupid every day.
Missy was sitting on the porch and looking out across the close-cropped lawn that separated the house from the woods.
She snorted like a passionate stallion and smote a thick thigh with gauntleted driving-gloves. "Thought you said she was with Barry."
"She is," replied Joyce, reclining with what she thought was glamour on a wicker lounge.
"Well, she ain't now. Here she comes lookin' thoughtful-and no wonder."
Joyce sat up in a surge of surplus flesh. Her small dark eyes rolled dully. "Whatever do you mean?"
"Oh-." Missy uttered her favorite four-letter word, making Joyce wince. "We've been over this plenty of times, but you refuse to see what's staring at you nose to nose. Barry may have possibilities as an artist-but he belongs in a padded cell. Melody, on the other hand, is not only beautiful but sane. Why are you feeding her to that refugee from a psycho ward?"
Joyce scowled. She had never liked Missy. "Go ahead, call him names. The fact remains that his family is one of the oldest in the state. They have money, name, position-" Missy, quite as well-fleshed as Joyce, now leaped to her feet, controlling her hundred and eighty pounds and five foot five like a trained athlete. Her face was pink and her hair, palpably with the aid of chemicals, a brassy yellow. She was encased in slacks as tight as the skin on a sausage but her bulges, while many, were hard and conditioned. "Dammit, Joyce, the Norton family has gone completely to seed. Barry's father inherited money, yes, but he's a full-blown lush who never did anything constructive in his entire life. Only such a father could produce a warped specimen like Barry."
"Nobody else in the county ever calls him warped. Nobody else sees anything wrong."
"His lunacy sticks out like a sore titty," retorted Missy. "But when you're rich, and something of a painter besides, they don't call you nuts. They call you eccentric." She snorted. "Well, that eccentric boy-friend of Melody's is going to bust loose and carve someone up one of these clays. I just hope to God it isn't your daughter."
Joyce was pale: "You can't mean that," she whispered.
"Didn't you ever hear of the cats he crucified to the smoke house? Or the two puppies he baked alive in the oven? Don't tell me you figured it was just youthful hijinks, something he would outgrow."
Joyce reached for a half-consumed highball, drained the glass. "You've been listening to people talk. Anyone with what the Nortons have is target for all sorts of irresponsible yammer. I'm surprised that you'd be one to spread it. Lurline would never permit... "
"Lurline is up to the eyeballs in Norton lore and Norton wealth, so she chooses to ignore Norton lunacy. As for you, how can you cling to the dark-age idiocy of selling off your own child?" Joyce started weeping. "You don't understand," she blubbered. "All you do is listen to gossip, but you don't understand. Since Fred died, no one understands... It's so hard running the place, seeing that ends meet... "
"Oh, knock it off," blared Missy. "If I'm any judge, Bridge Pilgrim is a better plantation manager than Fred ever was. Bet you he's made you more money per year since Fred's accident than Fred made, but you don't know how to use it. Frankly, old girl, you're incompetent. You thrive on it. You'd rather be an object of self-pity, or any other kind of pity, than buckle down and take hold of things. While my last husband, Ike, was alive-God bless every inch of his Hebraic skin-he taught me all there was to know about business. Fred didn't teach you because he was too moronic or you were, or both. But don't give me any of your poor-mouth about makin' ends meet, because I can tell you to within ten bucks what your bank account reads like."
Joyce wiped her eyes and made a fresh drink. Missy did likewise, helping herself from the bottle and ice bucket standing on a wicker table.
"Well, one thing Fred did teach you-how to buy good whiskey."
"I shouldn't drink," said Joyce sadly. "The stuff has calories."
"Sure does," rumbled Missy. "But no cholesterol." She took a healthy swig. Then, setting down her glass, she grinned. "Say, look who we got here!"
Melody had reached the house. She climbed the steps and walked the length of the veranda.
"Hello, Missy," she said, and went into the bear hug the older woman offered her.
Missy kissed her noisily. "Been wanderin' in the woods?"
Melody nodded grimly. "Barry and I went for a walk."
"You don't seem too happy about it."
"I'm not. He's becoming impossible. Why, he-ah-he depanted me not many minutes ago."
"Child!" gasped Joyce, turning pink. "What on earth are you saying?"
"You need an earphone?" asked Missy offensively. "I heard her perfectly. He tried to get in her breeches. Didn't succeed, I hope."
"No, but he came too close for comfort."
"Well, well and well," remarked Missy mildly, and sat down on a hide-bottomed rocker with a thump.
Joyce started crying again. "Everyone is the same. No one understands. Just gossips and scandal and lying and... "
"Do you mean to imply," asked Melody icily, "that I'm lying?"
"You know that Barry is a perfect gentleman."
"Well for the luwa dandruff," ejaculated Missy.
"See," blared Joyce, "you don't understand, either. Barry is an artist, sort of a Bohemian type with his beard and all, and naturally feels the usual rules don't apply to him. So maybe he takes liberties. But he's a gentleman from a long line of gentlemen. He-"
"Oh, for God's sake," blurted Melody. "You're maundering, Mother. And I've got news for you. I've made up my mind about marrying him."
"You have?" squealed Joyce, perking up. "When?"
"Never," said Melody.
"What?"
"That's right, Mother. I've always tried to ignore it- but there's something about him that makes me think of a snake. For the first time in my life, I've been doing some real thinking."
"Have you told him?" gloated Missy.
"Oh, I hope not!" bleated Joyce. "Surely you'll change your mind, Melody. You two have been keeping company so long."
"Yes-you and his mother saw to that," Melody said slowly. She frowned. "I was never allowed to keep company with anyone else. And you arranged that he was always on hand. You gave me a sort of stubborn brainwashing, feeding it to me from the cradle on up. You had me actually believing your spiel because I couldn't find any good reason not to. But today I came awake. I refused to overlook his strangeness, the way he makes my skin crawl. I realized I had been putting up with him only because I'm a girl and need male company. But I have no further use for him, Mother, and I don't think he has any use for me-except physical."
"Go off to college," advised Missy. "There are plenty of good boys there who would be only too happy to keep you company."
"No," announced Joyce, more iron in her voice than they had ever heard before. "Absolutely and definitely, no. Until you're of age, Melody, you'll do what I say. Now, I want you to give this romance half a chance. You can make a go of it. It's the only thing I'll consider."
"Then," said Missy brassily, "You're a goddamned fool. A fat goddamned fool in the bargain."
"I won't have you talking like that to me," screamed Joyce, struggling to her feet.
Missy smote her powerful right thigh with her gloves and strode down the broad steps. At the bottom she stopped and looked back.
"Come see me, honey, when you _get a chance."
"You bet I will," said Melody, tears of rage glistening on her cheeks.
Missy Blumendahl enthroned herself on the fine old leather of the car seat and flogged the long lean vehicle into motion. Snorting with indignation, she fed gas lavishly. The big phaeton picked up speed. Wind tore at her scarfed head and batted her in the face but she liked it.
She topped the long hill that gave her a view of her ante-bellum home, a tremendous pile of brick and pink stucco with gigantic columns around three sides. Missy was fond of saying that Fahenstock, named for her great-great grandfather, was so much a part of herself that for her to admire it was pure narcissism. She stopped at the crest of the hill and gazed raptly. There the place stood as it had for a hundred and twenty years: majestic, awesome in its rich simplicity, surrounded by a forest of pine and hardwood trees older than the house. Over the double front doors loomed a tremendous fanlight of Belgian stained glass and now the sun, reaching through the old house, through a hallway possibly, shined for a few magic moments on the fanlight and the result was breathtaking. It was like a giant girasol opal glitteringly alive.
Missy nodded with satisfaction and started her car again.
As she drove along, she spoke aloud to herself.
"Too bad we ain't got some sort of head-shrinker in the county. Have to talk to Dr. Fontenot about that."
CHAPTER THREE
DR. HILARY HACKTHORNE, chief of psychiatric service, MacDonald General Hospital, New Orleans, Louisiana, elevated his long legs and arranged his feet on his desk. He was tall and rather Lincolnesque in that he had fierce craggy features plus a ruff of unruly black hair. No matter what the fit of his clothes, he always appeared mussed.
Seated on the other side of the desk was his favorite resident, Rodney Barrett, who would soon be leaving to enter private practice.
The older man leered at the other sourly. "So the doctor now has all his qualifications to go out and diddle with people's minds, hey? I wonder. Think you'll remember anything I've taught you? Think you're tough enough to operate on your own?"
Barrett grinned. "Tough! In order to endure you, a man has to be tough as rawhide."
"I make it that way on purpose. No one, lad, in this pseudoscience we practice can afford a thin skin. Every day, the biologists give us lessons that amount to insults. In psychiatry, we are just beginning to learn how much we don't know."
"Except for the Freudians, of course," said Barrett, and laughed.
"What do you mean by that?"
"They're always quick to tell me that they have all the answers."
"The Freudians think they have all the answers-and the reason they're so dogmatic is the subconscious realization that they have no such thing. They're hung out on that ectoplasmic limb of symbolism, oedipal vapors, retreat to the womb, seeing a penis in every barber pole, dream interpretation and the like. In fact, practically all psychoanalysts lean on such maunderings of black magic. They're stuck with them. And like the kind of modern artist who couldn't paint anything recognizable if his life depended on it, they can't come up with a comprehensible statement or finding. Why, they've invented a whole new language in which to express their obscenities. An internist and a surgeon have no trouble understanding each other, but thrust a psychiatrist into the conversation and all others have to duck for cover." Hackthorne paused to light a long, thin cigar. "By the way, what are your plans? You've been vague about them-"
"Because my plans are fluid at the moment. I'm not sure where to locate, so I'm still looking around. And that's why I asked to talk to you, sir-I thought you might hear of something. If so, please let me know."
Hackthorne nodded. Barrett stood up, shook hands and left.
Alone, Hackthorne scowled expectantly at his intercom box. It replied to the look by buzzing insultingly. "I knew it, you bastard, you can't keep quiet for ten minutes on end," he told it grumpily. He flipped the switch. "All right, what is it this time?"
"A Mrs. Isaac Blumendahl to see you."
"I don't know any Mrs. Isaac Blumendahl," he replied in his most ill-tempered tone.
"It ain't necessary to know me," came the shattering reply, almost causing the squawk box to jump off the desk. "I'll take care of that right now."
She did, kicking the door open and bursting into the office.
Astonished, Hackthorne sized her up. She was stout but obviously strong and active. Her face was round and truculent, her sky-blue eyes hard and knowing. She was dressed in a well-tailored suit of gray gabardine. Her shoes were sensible.
"I'm Missy Blumendahl," she roared.
"Er. How do you do?"
"I do great." She thrust a plump hand at him, a hand ablaze with diamonds. "Dr. Alcide Fontenot sent me to see you."
"Oh, Alcide... " He took the proffered hand and winced as she shut down on his like a man. "You mean that sawed-off little sawbones?"
"The same."
"Why, we served in the Navy together. How the hell is he these days?"
"The same. As ornery and cranky as ever. Like you, I suppose."
Hackthorne guffawed. "Please sit down, Mrs. Blumendahl-"
"Call me Missy," she blared, and perched herself in a leather chair.
"Er, yes, Missy. Well, to start things off right I was about to tackle a before-dinner drink. Join me?"
She blinked owlishly. "Damn, is this the way you practice psychiatry?"
"Not ordinarily. However, being a psychiatrist renders one psychic sometimes. I have divined that if you're in need of psychiatry, I'm a one-legged chimpanzee."
She let go a gust of healthy laughter.
"Bless your soul, you couldn't be more correct. Sure, I'll have that drink-provided it has alcohol in it."
Dr. Hackthorne produced bourbon from a desk drawer, walked to the water cooler and arranged doses. Handing one to Missy, he sipped from the other and sat down.
"Now," he queried, "exactly what can I do for you?"
"As you remarked, nothing's wrong in my belfry. But I do have my vices, among which is meddling. And I have finally meddled myself into something out of my league. You see, we have a fellow back home whom I've elected for the booby hatch-" She made an annoyed gesture. "Hell, I'm not doing this right." She swallowed some bourbon and started over again. "Fact is, Alcide Fontenot said you, as chief of service, might know some young graduate just ready to set up a practice. I ask that you send him to our county to look it over and consider locating there. We've money around, these days. Oil, gas, water power, several small plants and two big ones, prospering plantations-"
"You mean farms?"
"More like ranches. Anyway, people are making money and becoming modern. Why, some can get all the way through a Martini without making a face. They're almost to the place where they can enjoy a rare steak instead of a burnt-out one. We have a number of thriving small towns and Kenton, which is getting to be quite a city. In short, we can support a psychiatrist or such is my opinion."
He nodded and clasped his bony hands. "All right, you can support one. But why do you need one?"
She shrugged. "Modern-type stresses are disturbing to a population not used to them. A cultural revolution is going on, and it has casualties. Also, some of the old ingrown families are producing offspring who are peculiar, to say the least. For instance, this fellow I mentioned-" She took considerable time telling him all she knew about Barry Norton. "I'm fond of the girl who's promised to him and I don't want to see anything happen to her," Missy explained. "Now, I know that the mere presence of a psychiatrist might not even slow down the murdering bastard. But I'd feel a lot better with one around."
"You call him a murderer?"
"I sure do. One of the sweetest kids you ever saw was found dead one morning. Christine Delery was her name. Strangled, raped and slashed to ribbons." Her mouth trembled and her face was pale. "Well, I got him picked for the culprit. I can't prove a thing, of course."
He sipped his drink. "If you have no proof, a psychiatrist can't put him away any more than a cop can. Just the same, I can understand that you'd feel better having a head-shrinker around. Folks might get used to him, a Martini and a rare steak all together in the name of progress."
"Do you have a man?"
"Might have. Name of Barrett. He's from the north but would prefer to locate somewhere down here."
She handed her glass to him for a refill. "Alcide said not to send us some analytical witch-doctor. He said you'd know what he meant."
Dr. Hackthorne raised thick gray eyebrows. "I do, indeed. You see, Alcide and I agree that effort should be devoted to keeping psychiatry honest-which is to say, scientific. Barrett I can guarantee. Of course, he's had some troubles of his own, but I think that should make him a better doctor-"
"What kind of troubles?"
"Oh, the usual, except he took his harder than most. Too much the gentleman, so he would love this female to white heat then leave her high and dry. All he was doing was setting her up for the first Casanova to come along. It finally happened and he was crushed. As therapy I put him on others whose basic trouble was somewhat like his. He's still woman-shy but on the way back to normalcy, I'd say."
Missy nodded, then rose and gave him a strong right hand. "Nice of you to see me, and forgive me if I took too much of your time. Ask the boy to correspond with Alcide."
"I'll do that. You'll hear in a few days."
Her eyes were steady on his. "Look, I got the damnedest shack east of the Mississippi River and enough room to float a liner. I live high on the hog and have some mighty fine friends, including Alcide Fontenot. Why'n hell don't you drag yourself up for a visit? Stay as long as you want to."
He grinned. "I might do that if I get a chance. Can I just fall in without notice?"
"Hell, yes. Any time. I'm going to hold you to it."
CHAPTER FOUR
BARRY NORTON was a little forgetful. In the paroxysm of rage that possessed him after his failure with Melody, he forgot the jeep in which he had driven to the Flemmings. He walked the two miles through the woods to Templehoffe, the fanciful name of his fanciful rococo plantation home, vintage eighteen-ninety, so spangled with minarets, dormers, steeples and bays that it looked like an illustration out of Grimm's fairy tales.
As always happened when he was out of temper, Barry decided he needed a drink in the worst way. When he arrived at the gingerbread house he went directly to the kitchen and hunted for liquor. He could not find any immediately and began searching in unlikely places. Both his father and mother were heavy drinkers, the father a compulsive alcoholic, she having somewhat more control. They had deteriorated to the point where they would hide bottles from each other because often when one would want a drink the other had gotten there first and that would mean a dismally thirsty trip to Kenton, sixteen miles away, or Gary, eight miles, for another bottle. For some reason they never invested in more than a few bottles at a time. Never so much as a case.
Barry found his father's bottle at the bottom of a clothes hamper and took a long, sucking pull at it. It fought its fiery way to his stomach and then threatened to come back. He ran to the kitchen and took a drink of cold water to chase it. It stayed down so he took a few more pulls.
Then he made his way up the stairs, a pitiable object His thin, ascetic face was riven by blasting emotions that he was powerless against now that the alcohol had begun to work. His brain was a wild vortex sucking up tattered impressions like bits of scrap paper. He hung to the bannister and went up like a Parkinson cripple, carefully, ploddingly. Once in his room he sank into a deep chair, his knees wide, his long-fingered hands hanging over them limply. His mouth hung open vacuously and only in his eyes was the hell inside him reflected.
After a time he heard a noise at the door but he did not move. His mother stood in the doorway and looked at him blearily. She ran her wrist across her mouth. "Barry, darling. You're in a state again. Mother is so sorry. What is it this time?"
"Get out," he said, his voice as mechanical as a recording.
She smiled. "Don't speak to Mother so, darling. It isn't nice."
"Get out," he said again, "or I'll show the painting to you. In fact maybe I'll show it to other people-" She went pale. Turning, she stumbled out of the room. The threat was his surest weapon and had never failed.
The peculiar half-smile now decorated one corner of Barry's mouth. He got up and went across the hall to a staircase, climbed it, opened an obscure door behind which was a ladder. He scrambled up, pushed a trapdoor, and was standing in a walled off, gabled attic. He opened a big cabinet and looked inside. Among the paintings stacked there was an oil of his mother; he dragged it out and stared at it. The woman was easily recognizable despite the exaggerated dwarfishness of the shoulders and head, the exaggerated enormity of the buttocks and thighs. She was nude. Her breasts hung long and slack like fat, dispirited sausages. She was seated on a bed and apparently stunned with drink, her eyes vacuous holes in her head. To signify that she had just been ill, vomit was over floor and bed. The portrait was hideous.
Barry had found her that way one night, had been repelled but also fascinated. He had considered the disgusting sight a challenge to his talents as a painter. He had immediately tackled his canvas.
The first time he had showed the painting to her, she had fainted. Since then, it had served as a weapon with which he could control her as he desired.
As he inspected the horrible female figure, hate surged through Barry like heat waves. He wanted to deface the painting, to slash and rend it, to blot out of sight for all time the bloated monstrosity he had created but he knew he could not. There was too much of himself in it, too much of his torture on seeing his own mother in such condition. He had always been a heartless sort, cruel, unfeeling. Yet, as to most young, his mother had been an image. She had defaced that image and had left him with the ultimate horror of a complete emotional vacuum.
Suddenly he pushed the painting back into the cabinet, locked it. He had been afraid his mother might destroy the portrait, so afraid that for months he had slept on a cot here within the cramped confines of the studio, surrounded by his paints and easels and brushes.
He turned, scrambled down the ladder. He felt a little better now, and definitely hungry. He went to the kitchen where the Negro cook always left supper on the table for them to pick from. They could conform to no regular dining routine so the cook had invented the buffet-style supper for them. Breakfast was also buffet. Only dinner, the noon meal, was served at a specified time and often it grew cold before anyone ate it.
Barry chewed with slow, gluttonous deliberation then sat back in a chair and stared through a window at the deepening twilight. He sat thus for a full hour. Occasionally he would blink slowly like an iguana looking at the sun.
When the twilight had become black night, he stood up. With quick steps he went to his room and changed to a suit of faded khakis. In his pale-blue eyes there was no indication of what was going on in his distorted mind as he walked out of the house. To the south and east a long black pall mounted slowly in the sky, cutting off the starlight. Behind it showed the shimmer of violet lightning. Barry took a deep breath, inhaling the suddenly cool air. Then, like an animal, he slunk off through the woods toward a row of dim lights that marked the homes of the Negroes who worked on the plantation.
For some time he haunted the pathways that wound through brush and scattered trees in the area of the Negro quarters. He moved aside from a path as the sound of lusty singing came to his ears. Finally, silhouetted against the sky, he could make out the vague form of a woman coming toward him at a swinging walk, singing in a rich contralto.
Barry gathered his muscles like a puma about to pounce. His mind was now upon a single objective and the fact that he had heard this same voice many times before did not make the slightest impression upon him.
As the woman came opposite him, he launched himself upon her. The force of the attack bore her to the ground and frightened her half out of her wits, the latter fact accounting for a slight delay in retaliatory action. When it did come, though, it was by no means ineffective. From a big armful of soft woman she turned into an incarnate savage. She let loose a scream that almost lifted Barry's scalp from his head. As he grabbed for her mouth, she twisted and clawed, then threw a whirlwind of punches at him. Out of the furious activity came a combination of blows that knocked him bodily into a wall of underbrush. Barry took to his heels, managing to get away before her screams attracted the crowd that quickly gathered and made a diligent search for him.
Having run frantically through the woods for almost a mile, breath abruptly failed Barry. He sank to the ground at the foot of a huge pine that now swayed in the force of a rising wind. He crawled close to its trunk and wept with the harsh intensity of a child. In the west, thunder muttered as the long line of black clouds rolled ever nearer. A glittering shaft of lightning sprang upward like a snake and tore a sprawling crack in the sky. A crackling cannonade of thunder followed.
* * *
Melody Flemming paced up and down in her room. Outside nature raved, rattling sashes and doors. A blaze of lightning exploded over her vision and for a few seconds she was blinded. She smiled and walked to a window. She had a vast love for the rampant efforts of nature: the sluicing rain, the banging roll of thunder and the ripping, the leap of lightning across a dark sky. Tonight her restlessness had been so severe that it had amounted to pain. She was still restless, but now that the storm had broken the pain had become exaltation. The storm, the storm!
The fact was that Melody was a passionate girl with no outlet for her passions. Barry Norton's attempt to ravish her-the constant reading of romantic novels which, in the modern manner, left little to the imagination-the pressures of her own maturing but unfulfilled womanhood-these had combined to incite in her the restlessness boiling in her blood. Her loins ached with a feverish heat and her skin, also hot, felt too tight for her body. Her sensitivity, always acute, was now tingling and leaping with electric reaction. She leaned against the wall and felt a lashing throb go through her swollen, heavy bosom. She rested her forehead against the pane and hugged herself, a sigh of want trickling from her lips.
The storm was doing nothing to soothe her; indeed it was exciting her the more. But she exulted in it. A particularly fierce gust of rain struck the window, and she laughed. As she peered out at the extravagant display, she was wearing a cobwebby creation that would not have been acceptable outside her bedroom even in dim light-a sheer shortie nightgown with scantie pants to match. Even these seemed too warm for her, however, too heavy. How good it would be, she thought, to cool her fever in the pelting rain, to expose her taut skin to the wild kiss of the elements.
Suddenly she threw off the nightie and walked in magnificent nudity to the back veranda. Everyone was gone from the kitchen. The house servants, having done the supper dishes, had run for home to avoid the storm. Joyce probably was snoring in her room after four highballs before supper and three brandies afterward. Not a light showed in the house, not a soul stirred.
So Melody did not hesitate. She bounded out into the cooling downpour and raced toward the clump of yaupon bushes that stood near the barn. She wanted to worship the storm with her body but she also wanted some protection. The corner of the barn would divert winds that otherwise might beat her down.
Even so, the gale whipped into her, driving before it the swirling, pelting rain. The choking deluge distorted the lightning, making it show as big, wallowing balloons of light. Melody gasped and arched her body, coalescing against the crushing downpour. It covered her with glistening cascades, water flowing over her sculptured curves in a slick patina. It streamed downward, fingering her with chilly intimacy, seeking out her every secret and treating each with brash familiarity. She shivered, yet cried out in joy and lifted her face to the wondrous storm. Her hair was slicked against her head. Her breasts strained to meet the flood. Her legs, slim and long, were sturdily spread to sustain her against it.
And under the eaves of the barn Barry Norton stood and watched her, his eyes unblinking even when lightning flashed. His tongue flicked over his wet, cold lips- Barry had seen her run from the house. He had been watching her room, wondering if he could get into it, somehow. Fresh from his defeat at the hands of the redoubtable Negress, on the path, Barry had left the pine tree to stalk Melody. His twisted fury was concentrated on her, for was she not the one who had humiliated him by denying him her body? And the desires she had aroused had sent him after the Negro woman, only to suffer further humiliation.
Ah, if he could but get his hands on Melody, he had thought, spying on her room. She would be helpless. And brutalizing her was what he wanted more than anything else. She would have to pay for what she had done to him. As long as he had been able to hope for marriage, which to him meant merely a ticket to a few days of debauchery without worrying much past that, he had had no particular desire to injure her. But with that hope fading, he had veered to a compulsion to use her as his plaything for a while-then revenging himself on her by making sure no one would ever afterward be able to enjoy her.
And now, here she was. At his mercy. His hands unclenched and became claws. His chest swelled.
He was not surprised that she was nude. He should be, too, he told himself, and repaired the matter expeditiously. And as his own thin body grew as slick with the rain as hers, he slowly crept up behind the unsuspecting girl.
Jumping erect, he swung a blow at her neck that might have broken it had not his aim been bad. Instead, his fist struck her over the right ear, tumbling her to her hands and knees. Then he was upon her like a beast and they rolled in the water that coated the grass. In her stunned condition, she was no match for him. He pinned her down, and took her.
The worst was that at the height of it, Melody's body betrayed her. Even before running out into the storm, she had been in a lather of libidinous want. The elements had lashed her to even higher pitch. All that was missing was a trigger, and Barry Norton served as one. Melody could not help herself. Acute feeling seemed to explode within her and automatically her flesh went into writhing cooperation. A few more moments and for the first time in her life, she knew the shattering ecstasy that can be attained by man and woman. A bubbly scream tore itself from her throat. Her body went into a thrashing, senseless convulsion. And went limp.
But limpness was not afflicting her attacker.
His first onslaught spent, he seemed enveloped in fury as he fell upon her once more. Again he hammered her with rhythmic blows of rigid, penetrating voluptuousness while his hands savaged her breasts. Again she was swept along by the torrent but although her want was unabated, her sanity had returned. Reacting to shame and the shrill voice of reason, she tried to wrestle away from him. His response was to smash her senseless with two or three blows to the chin.
When she came to, she was lying in the area of the barn where cotton was stored. It was warm, soft and prickly to her back. She was spread-eagled, tied hand and foot so that it was impossible for her to move. Equally impossible was it for her to see her assailant. Outside, during the lightning flashes, she had not looked at him and now it was too late. She shrieked, but the storm drowned her voice. Besides, there was no one to hear other than this man unknown to her. He proceeded to subject her to a nightmare of savage licentiousness. She was about to faint when there came a thundering burst of sound as lightning ripped into the barn like a detonating bomb. Barry paid no heed. Not even when flames licked at the cotton room. She had served, and now he was ready to transform her into something no one would ever again care to possess. He smashed at her face with both hands and was gratified to hear her scream.
He got up and started looking for some kind of weapon. Careless of the mounting fire, the smoke, he seized an old, bent pitchfork hanging on the wall. He returned and stood over her. She screamed, tried to roll her body away from him. He lifted the pitchfork and she screamed again.
The figure of a big man hurtled into the storeroom.
For a split second Barry cowered, still holding the pitchfork. Then he threw it from him, leaped through a low window and was swallowed up by the storm.
The big man was Bridge Pilgrim, the plantation manager. Alarmed by the nearness of the lightning strike, he had run out of his cottage, had noted the first signs of fire. Starting the high-pressure pump, he had raced to the barn dragging a hose. He had dropped it, however, when Melody had screamed, and he had bounded to her rescue.
Bridge pulled out his pocket knife, cut the lengths of rope binding her wrists and feet. He swept her up in his arms and raced out of the barn. He knew where her room was so it was there that he carried her. Dumping her on the bed, he looked down into her bruised and dazed face, decided that she was not badly injured.
He dashed out. Negroes had converged to help and in fifteen minutes of touch-and-go fighting, they had wet the flames down to a smoulder. When the flames were under control, Bridge went back to the house, his big body shaking with excitement and fatigue. He found the girl huddled under a blanket, shivering from fright, exposure to cold rain and reactions to her ordeal. She looked at him unseeingly with round, glazed eyes.
Lora, the cook, had returned to the house when the fire-bell was rung. She heard Bridge's yell for help and responded on the double. She was a large woman with a wise but intolerant expression and the thin, tight lips of a born dissenter.
"Gawd!" she gasped. "What happened?"
"Get Miss Joyce," he rasped.
"Ha," she replied. "If all this 'sturbance didn't bring her to, how'm I gonna do it? With what she put away from the bottle today, she's good for twelve, fifteen hours. You didn't tell me what happened to that gal-she looks like she's seen the devil..
Bridge told what he knew in a few crisp words.
Lora cursed with hearty thoroughness. "You didn't see who it was?"
"How could I?" he snapped impatiently. "He was in the shadows. And when he lit out, I couldn't chase him. I was otherwise occupied. Now take care of her, will you? I'm going to call the sheriff."
"Gawd... Gawd," moaned Lora, as he closed the door. Then she stripped back the blanket.
Melody moaned. She was doubled up into a tight knot. She had been bitten and scratched, among other things, and blood smeared her skin as well as the sheets.
Lora turned her over with a gentle hand. "It's Lora, honey. Now calm yourself. Lemme look you over good."
Melody stretched out obediently. Lora examined her with an eagle eye and made several picking motions with her thumb and forefinger, then she covered the girl with a sheet and went out into the big hallway where Bridge was speaking to the sheriff. When he hung up, Lora turned on a table lamp and motioned to him.
"You know she was raped, don't you?"
"I figured as much. I told the sheriff-"
"Now, look here," Lora interrupted. "No colored man in this county would do anything so rotten."
"Hell, I know that." Bridge's big hands were clenching and unclenching spasmodically. "But who could it be?"
She cocked a bright brown eye at him. "Mr. Bridge, maybe it's the same feller."
"Same fellow as who?"
"There was some commotion over near the Norton place before the storm. It reached me second-hand that some feller grabbed Delia Mae Jones when she was comin' home from Pearlie Bate's house. All I got to say, he picked the wrong one. Delia Mae's a ringtailed sowcoon when she gets her musk up and she knocked him loose but they didn't never find out who it was."
He nodded. "I'll tell the sheriff." He frowned, trying to figure out what to do next. "I suppose we should try to wake Miss Joyce."
Lora's bright eyes rolled. "You want to try?"
"Not me!"
"All right. I'll try. I'll pull her outa bed so it will prove somebody did try. Is the sheriff bringin' doctor?"
"Yes. Dr. Fontenot."
"Well, one sure thing. That ole Frenchman knows how to keep his mouth shut 'stead of blabbing the poor girl is damaged goods." Nora started down the hall toward Joyce's room but after a few steps came to a sudden halt. "No, I ain't."
Bridge said, "You ain't what?"
"I ain't goin' in there. I ain't gonna touch Miss Joyce. I'm gonna call Missy. I musta been up in the half-air not to think of that before."
Bridge gave a sour chuckle. "You sure said yourself a mouthful. Call her now."
Lora got busy on the telephone. She winced as Missy's metallic voice crashed through the receiver. "Missy?"
"Dammit, how many people do you know can holler as loud as me? Sure, it's me. What'n hell do you want this time of night?"
Lora gave her a quick resume of the situation. "Miss Joyce is snorin' like a sawmill in high and you know I couldn't wake her now. Sure would be handy if you'd come over, take charge and maybe do Melody some good."
"Joyce ought to be taking care of her own daughter, not me. I'll wake her, by God," said Missy grimly. "I got ways. Now listen to me, Lora. She'll be wearin' that Mother Hubbard she wears winter and summer. I'm leavin' right now and when I get there you have me about a gallon of ice run through that crusher. I'll wake her or I'll put her in deep freeze. I'm on my way... You say Bridge brought her in?"
"Yes'm."
"Did he call the sheriff?"
"Yes'm."
"Good. I'll be there in fifteen minutes. Dr. Fontenot's here. I'll bring him along."
CHAPTER FIVE
WHEN MISSY arrived home after her expedition to New Orleans she found Dr. Fontenot sitting on her verandah.
"Hiya, you decrepit bag of bones. Tangi ain't give you a highball yet?"
"No. I consider Tangi a hazard even at my age and I didn't make a sound as I came in. I want a full report on your trip."
"Sure. Well, in a capsule it was a success. Fellow name of Barrett probably will be coming up soon. And we also may be visited by that old Luciferian bastard you sent me to. Where do you find such friends?"
Fontenot laughed. "We went to school together."
Missy sighed. "I'm not plumb sure a psychiatrist is enough to help us here. What we need is an epidemic of the plague that would miss the harmless and afflict the lunatics that infest this cussed county. Take that Ellison boy-he'll be a father three times in a few months and none of the girls are fifteen yet. He's even worse than that sprain-brained father of his. And take the Norton family. It's full of worms. Back a generation or so, two or three committed suicide. Practically all of them, male and female, have been rummies. They still are." She looked at him darkly. "Comes from inbreeding. Incest all over the county, too. Too many of our men are sick in the head and our women are just as sick. Consider that outsized bag of suet, Joyce Flemming, pushing the booze and her neuroses for all she's worth."
"I guess it's time to tell you," said the doctor quietly. "She's only the girl's stepmother. Not many people know it."
Missy almost choked. "Well, I sure didn't What about Melody?"
"No. Fred asked me not to talk about it."
"How did I miss something like that?" fumed Missy, annoyed with herself.
"It all took place during Ike's last illness, Missy," he told her softly. "You were all wrapped in your own troubles. Fred's first wife died in childbirth in New Orleans. Fred married Joyce six months later, one of the reasons being that Joyce was the nurse who took care of the child during that time. Remember people wondered why he remarried so soon?"
"Oh-sure. Yeah, when Ike was sick, bless his polished little Hebraic soul, I didn't know from nuthin'. Then for a year I was so upset I should have been put in a padded cell-would have been, I guess, except for you. You couldn't save Ike but you did a great job of saving me. You gave me my mind back. I haven't forgotten that."
"It was a bad time," Dr. Fontenot said. "But you worked yourself out of it. You're an intrinsically solid woman, Missy, in the head as well as the behind."
"Just lay off my behind," she advised. "You'd split a gusset watching me get into a foundation garment."
Thunder shook the panes of the ornate fanlight and wind began to kick leaves into the footraces across the broad lawn.
"Storm's overdue," he said absently, draining his glass.
"Yeah," she replied. "Need a good rain for the hay... " Lightning ripped over the shade trees accompanied by a mighty crash of thunder.
Missy jumped sharply and the doctor winced. "Close," he said, with a wry chuckle.
"Too damn close. Probably hit the lightning rod over the kitchen. Let's get off this gallery. I always thought it was sort of silly to get killed by lightning."
They went inside and had another drink. Then Lula, the colored maid, called them to supper. Dr. Fontenot had eaten at Missy's table before and knew he was in for an experience.
They ate from a gigantic, standing rib-roast embellished with fluffy creamed potatoes, buttered broccoli, garden-fresh pole beans cooked with care and attention, home-cured slabs of bacon. Hot cornbread and beaten buttermilk biscuits rounded out the lavish meal.
Later they sat in the small den that adjoined Missy's bedroom and had strong black coffee into which a noggin of aged rum had been poured. The doctor smoked his slender cheroot and Missy her long Russian cigarette in a jade holder.
"I," said Fontenot with a dry grin, "have a putter longer than that cigarette holder. But not by much."
"Shut up and let me tell you more about this psychiatrist. He's just finishing his residency and his plans haven't jelled yet, see? I asked that he come pay us a visit and look the situation over. As for Hackthorne, he impressed me. His clothes don't fit and he's all arms and legs. He puts on a great front of being hard and cynical, though really he's not. And he seems totally without the obfuscating smog that I've gathered is common among his colleagues."
"I," said Fontenot positively, "shudder to think of the times when some of these so-called psychiatrists get persons and diddle with them until no one can do them any good. The patients go to those seances and come away really wormy."
"I diplomatically made the point that we'd rather not have the type," she replied.
They had more coffee and rum and smoked and talked while the storm vented its rage in torrents of rain. Then the muscular downpour began to slacken and the thunder moved off, finally died away.
Suddenly the phone rang. Missy went to answer it in the long hallway. The strident bellow of her voice suggested to the doctor that something was amiss. He was not wrong. She came back striding like a man, hard-heeled and belligerent. "What the hell do you think?"
He winced at the brassy volume of her voice. "About what? It might help if you told me."
"Melody Flemming has been raped and beaten. Come on."
He followed her out of the house and ran into her when she stopped short. "Oh, blast, the top of my car's down. We'll have to go in yours."
"That pleases me," he said. "I recall some rides with you that contributed to my white hairs."
But it took them only a short while to make the trip because the doctor drove faster than Missy had ever done.
* * *
Bridge Pilgrim met them on the front veranda of the Flemming home. "Sure glad to see you, folks. We need a better head than I have."
"Tell me," snapped Missy.
"I did, over the phone."
"Tell me again."
Bridge repeated what he knew, which almost was nothing. "I heard her scream when I ran to the barn... Lightning had struck it and set one corner afire. I was running to it when I heard Melody scream. I went in and there she was naked as a peeled egg, spread-eagled, tied hand and foot. Fellow made off through the window. Flames threw some light but he was in deep shadow and I couldn't make him out. I cut her loose and brought her to the house."
"What does she say?"
"Hasn't talked yet, to my knowledge. Seems dazed. Lora and Nola are with her now."
"Who," Missy wanted to know, "is Nola?"
"Oh... my sister. Got here a couple of days ago. Just out of nursing school."
Missy nodded. "Is Melody in her room?"
"Yes, ma'am. Sheriff's here, too."
"Then if I know Lora, she's got a pot of black on the stove."
"Yes. She made coffee."
"Good. You go in and have a cup. I'll see you in a few minutes. Let's go, Alcide."
Missy blew into the room with a little less notice than the storm had kicked up. Lora stood back. "Am I glad to see you!" she said, her sharp eyes snapping.
Dr. Fontenot bent over the naked girl. "Ah," he said softly.
"Don't give me any of your short lip, you sawed-off squirt. What's the verdict?" Missy went closer. "My God, he punched and clawed her. Honey-can you hear me?"
"Missy?" Melody's head came around and she held out her arms. "Oh, Missy... "
"Get out of my way," the woman blared at Fontenot. Sinking to the edge of the bed, she took the shaking girl in her embrace. Melody exploded into tears.
"Look, honey, who was it?" asked Missy softly.
The girl's face paled and her throat worked.
"Uh-oh," said Lora and thrust forward a basin she had ready for just such an emergency.
For five minutes Melody was actively ill. Later she leaned back and allowed Lora to put a cold towel to her throat.
"I'm gonna ask it again," said Missy harshly. "Who was it?"
"I don't know," wailed Melody.
"White, black, big, little? Dammit, you must know something about him."
"It was so dark," she said in a hoarse whisper. "It was such a nightmare. I don't know... I just can't tell you anything." A frenzied shudder shook her. "I just don't know."
"She'll recall more about it eventually," said Dr. Fontenot, stroking his spade beard and teetering on the balls of his feet. "Right now, she's emerging from shock. No time for questioning."
Missy got up from the bed. "Will she sleep now?"
"I'm giving her a shot," he said. "It would be smart if Miss Pilgrim, being a nurse, would remain with her the rest of the night."
"Who? Oh-" Missy turned and sucked in her breath. Nola Pilgrim was wearing a heavy silk robe because the nylon pajamas beneath it would have hardly been the thing in mixed company. But the robe did not disguise the fact that she was breathtakingly shaped for pleasure. And her face further shook Missy. It was beautiful, delicate with blushing color, engagingly vivacious. Her hair was a yellow gold and her enormous wide eyes a melting gray. Missy had never seen lips with such a satiny quality. But Nola, Missy saw, was recovering from what had been a classic black eye, greenish now, most of the swelling gone.
"I'm Missy Blumendahl," said the older woman, recovering quickly. She stuck out a square hand and Nola Pilgrim took it, her own hand slim and strong.
"Hello," she said softly in a voice that gave Missy the wriggles.
Missy chuckled. "You're lovely, child."
Nola's cheeks pinked more markedly. "Thank you."
"Where'd you get the black eye?"
"I ran into a door," she said evenly.
Missy took the hint and abandoned that line of questioning. "Well," she said, "guess I'd better wake Joyce."
Missy grinned with diabolical malevolence. "Lora, you crush that ice like I told you?"
"Yes'm. Enough to make ice cream."
"Good. Go get it and meet me in her room."
Missy found Joyce sprawled atop her sheet, draped in yards of old-fashioned nightgown. Her adiposity unrestrained was something to see. She seemed to flow in all directions, her breasts huge and pendulous, her body a great blob of protoplasm inside the gown. She snored with such wholehearted earnestness that Missy almost had a qualm of pity. Almost.
"Joyce," she said in a dulcet voice, shaking one fat shoulder gingerly.
Joyce snored the louder.
"Joyce!"
Even this leather-lunged cry broke the sleeper's rhythm only momentarily. Joyce gave a seismic grunt, heaved about a little and settled back, now snoring in real earnest.
At that moment Lora came in with a tureen full of crushed ice and water. "You gonna slosh her right there?"
"Right there," said Missy grimly. "The fat bitch."
"How come us don't drag her outa bed and prop her in the chair. Wettin' that bed's just gonna make more work for me."
"Oh, all right. Grab hold and let's get to heavin'."
By the time they had Joyce propped in the big bedside rocker, they were both spent and sweating.
"Would have been a lot easier to make the bed up fresh," complained Missy wiping her hot, red face and panting.
"Easier for you," said Lora, eyeing the sleeping beauty critically. "Look at 'er. All I got to do is pull that gown out and you got a straight shot right between them titties." Lora grinned expectantly, shivered a little. "Lord, Lord, but I'm glad it's you and not me."
"So stow the gab and yank the tent open."
Lora did so. With an accurate hand, Missy shot a gallon and a half of ice and freezing water straight for the goal. It bounced from Joyce's chest and cascaded downward, as Lora had anticipated, to collect in a frigid mass squarely over home base.
Joyce screamed like a wounded hippo. She heaved up from the chair so violently that she fell forward and crashed to the floor. This initiated fresh contact with the ice mush and again came a genuine and earnest scream. She floundered about for a moment then managed to get up on all fours. Somewhat clearer-headed now, she began to yowl...
"On your feet, dammit," bawled Missy just as vigorously. "You look like something the cat should drag out."
Joyce managed to struggle. "What is the meaning of this?" she yelled. "What in the name of all the saints in heaven do you mean coming in my room and dousing me with ice water? Answer me!"
"Because you couldn't be stopped sawing logs long enough to hear what happened tonight. The whole hod-tasseled place could have burnt down and you'd still have been blowing and going."
Joyce dissolved into an incoherent squall of rage and began to weep stormily. Missy promptly slapped her. "Now, listen to me or I'll slap you again." And Missy thereupon told the full story, making it as horrible as possible.
Her wet gown sticking to her like a second skin, Joyce was not a sight to attract when she collapsed into the chair and began to weep again. "Oh, dear God... my daughter... my daughter! What have I done to deserve this?"
"See?" said Missy to Lora, whose eyes were narrowed and wise as she watched her mistress. "She don't give a damn about the kid. All she's thinking about is herself. You wanted her wakened. There she is. As for me, I can't stand the smell in here." She whirled and marched out, a burst of curses from Joyce ringing deliriously in her ears.
Missy advanced noisily into the kitchen where a maid was serving buttered strawberry fritters to all hands, steaming hot to go with the coffee.
"What did you do?" asked Dr. Fontenot, "eviscerate her? We could hear the anguish all the way back here."
"The fat slob," snorted Missy, flopping down at the table. "It took all that ice to wake her." She grinned malignantly, took a sip of coffee and turned to eye the wispy little man who sat in the shadows of the big range. "Jess-durnit, I almost didn't see you. Hidin'?"
Jess Townley, the sheriff, took a stubby pipe from between his thin lips. His pale amber eyes were slitted with amusement. "I thought it best," he said in his habitually gentle voice, "the minute I heard you coming. How're you this evening?"
"Never mind me. What about the crime?"
"Haven't any thoughts about it yet. Nothing to go on. I went over the ground but you know how that rain was. Not a sign of anything. Of course, I haven't spoken to the girl yet-" Missy grunted and sipped coffee. "She claims it was too dark to make him out." She turned her head and looked at Bridge Pilgrim. "Bridge, what about her clothes?"
"I told you, she didn't have on any."
"I know that. But do you suppose she was parading around in the raw at night during a rainstorm?"
Millicent, the maid, cat-footed and the color of good molasses, made a sound. "She's done it before."
"Done what?" asked Missy.
"Well, Miss Melody likes to get stripped and let it rain on her. I seen her do it before."
"Well, I'll be a suck-egg mule," croaked Missy. "Imagine that."
"Oh, I think it's a rather mild eccentricity," said Jess Townley. "When I was a kid, I used to like to do that myself-in private, of course."
"I guess," said Millicent reasonably, "she thought she was in private."
Townley nodded. "You know, an attempt was also made tonight on a colored woman-over near the Nortons."
"Did you ask about Barry?" asked Missy ominously.
"I did. His mother swore he had been in the house from suppertime on. He was there when I called."
Missy made an ugly sound. "She was as drunk as a coot, I'LL bet. Probably didn't even know what she was saying."
Townley shrugged. "I'll admit she seemed a little, er, befuddled."
"If it was Barry," said Missy, "surely Melody will remember his beard."
Townley blinked. "He wears a beard?"
"Where men and cats have chin whiskers, Barry has a blob of pale fuzz you could stretch to call a beard."
Townley examined the cap of his left shoe. "I wouldn't place a lot of hope on her remembering anything like that. She must have been in a state of blind panic. I'll query her on it, though, soon as she's feeling better."
Townley got up and held out his cup, which Millicent filled again. He had a look of imperishability despite his slight but wiry build. His hair and eyes were the same peculiar amber color and his face was all planes and angles. Strapped about his waist he wore a .22 target pistol. No one Wears a small-bore target pistol for protection unless very good with it or very foolish. Townley had been sheriff for twenty years and there were three men whose demise at the other end of the little gun spoke well of his marksmanship.
He tasted his coffee. "I'm as disturbed about this as anyone," he said. "And I'm on the spot. Everyone looks to me for action but I have nothing upon which to base action. Until I do my hands are tied."
"Barry Norton," said Missy stubbornly.
"A likely candidate," he admitted. "I've heard a lot of peculiar things about him. But that isn't enough to pick him up on."
Missy spun about. "Bridge, how did Nola get that black eye?"
Bridge was silent for a moment. "Said she ran into a door."
Dr. Fontenot laughed. "Yes. She told Missy that. And I must say, it squelched the old girl."
"You shut up," snapped Missy, smiting her right thigh with her gloves. "Bridge, she said she ran into a door but you sound as if you have reason to doubt it."
"I do," he said shortly. "But I've nothing further to say."
She looked at him sharply. "All right, have it your own way. But if I was sheriff I'd take you to jail and hose it out of you. It might make interesting listening."
Bridge shook his head, causing a hank of dark hair to fall over his high forehead. "It's not like that, Missy. Thing is, I don't really know anything. She turned up with that black eye and wouldn't give me a straight answer when I questioned her about it."
"Have you noticed any change in her?"
"Yes. She's quiet. She never has been very talkative, but she's even less so now."
Missy nodded. "Bridge, y'all come see me some night with her. Come to supper."
A look of relief came over Bridge's tanned face. "Yes, ma'am. First chance we get."
Missy stood up. "Well, looks like we've done all we can here. How about driving me back to my shack, Alcide?"
"Sure thing," the doctor said. "I'll drop by here early tomorrow. Melody will hold until then."
CHAPTER SIX
IT WAS a clear, cool morning but Hilary Hackthorne, M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc., F.A.C.P. and numerous other alphabetical honors was in ill humor. At Kenton's modest airport there had been three cars for rent-two of such scrubby vintage as to repel him, the third a miniature import, that paraded euphemistically under the label of compact. It was not compact at all; it was just hardly there. But he had taken it because it was new. Now on the road, Hackthorne found it a snorting, jerking, panting undersized demon that darted hither and yon at the slightest movement of the steering wheel. Though he had cursed it steadily for the last three miles, he still could not make it behave properly.
The worst was that when he finally got the bucking import out to Dr. Fontenot's, the man was not there and would not be until afternoon. So Hackthorne decided to see the country. Unwittingly he took the road that led past Missy Blumendahl's house. When he rounded the curve just before the cattle gap leading to her place, Fahenstock struck him a physical blow sitting sedate, rich and majestic atop the hill it had occupied for more than a century.
Seeing it thus, Hackthorne forgot many things. He forgot he was on a curve. He forgot he had relaxed a little and was going too fast for off-the-road absorption. He forgot that he was driving a temperamental machine, nothing like the heavy Detroit vehicles. By the time he realized he was in danger, he was already on the edge of a deep ditch running parallel to the highway. Frantically he jerked the wheel toward the road, the act throwing the small car into a skid. It slid like a toboggan to the bottom of the ditch and flipped neatly to its top, all four wheels in the air.
At that moment Missy Blumendahl's big phaeton happened to roll across the cattle gap. She stopped with a jerk, flung open a door and stepped out.
Shaken and bruised but not seriously hurt, Hackthorne was doing a slow job of eeling himself through the window on the driver's side.
"Why'n hell don't you open the door, you simpleton," she roared helpfully.
"Madam," he said in a choked voice, "if you can't help you can at least shut up. It happens this door is stuck, irrevocably it seems. So is the other... " He strained, grunted and slid his pelvis through, then carefully drew his long legs after him.
"What happened?" yelped Missy.
He tried to stand up, failed, and winced all over. "I was looking at that house on the hill."
"Oh, blast," roared Missy. "Get the hell out of that ditch and I'll take you home and feed you. Well-what's keeping you?"
"It seems I've wrenched my back... "
"Oh, bilge. Nothin' to that." She went behind her car and opened the old-fashioned trunk that perched atop the back bumper. Dragging out a catch rope, she tossed the loop to him. "Throw that around you. I'll tie this end to the bumper and drag you out." She stooped, made a quick tie to the front bumper and faced him again. "All ready?"
"As ready as I'll ever be. Take it easy, will you?"
"Sure. You just hang on to the rope."
With her backing up slowly, Dr. Hackthorne success- fully scrambled up the side of the ditch. As soon as he was on the road and had dropped the rope, he fell full length on the macadam.
"Double damnation," bellowed Missy. "What's the matter now?"
He rolled over and sat up with great care. "I think I've slipped a disk or something," he replied. "When I try to stand, it grabs me."
She maneuvered the car close. "Grab hold of something and pull yourself erect. Don't be in such a tizzy."
Hackthorne turned bitter eyes toward her. "If I ever get into that antediluvian behemoth there, I shall try to impress upon you that I'm injured. I'm sure your house is attractive and I should love at some more appropriate date to visit it, but at the moment I prefer the X-ray room at Fontenot's office with that sawed-off old goat leaning over me making cackling references to my lineage, intelligence and whatnot." During this torrent of protest, Hackthorne managed to get in beside her. He sighed with relief when he found that he could sit with relative comfort.
"Also," he continued, "we'd better tell the owner of that miserable bucket of bolts in the ditch what has happened to his so-called vehicle." He sighed and leaned back. "Please drive carefully."
"Up your ufa," she said coarsely. "I'll drive, you sit."
"What's an ufa?" he wanted to know.
"I'm not sure. My son Ike brought it back from the Pacific. It's probably unprintable."
"You're unprintable," he said tiredly and closed his eyes.
* * *
Melody Flemming woke from her drug-induced sleep by degrees, each more painful than the one preceding it.
For a long time she lay perfectly still and stared at the ceiling. Gradually everything was taking shape as though a book were being read chapter by short chapter. Her eyes were swollen, her face was puffed and blotched, and there was an overlay of dull, pervading ache.
She made a tentative wriggle as if to test herself then went stiff and tense. Her fingers knotted and with a shrill scream she went into a hard fit, jerking the covers up and covering herself with them.
Nola Pilgrim, who had been a silent witness, leaped to the bed. She grasped Melody's wrists and tried to restrain her, being only partially successful.
She was grateful when the door opened and Lora walked in. The maid was followed by Joyce, haggard and befuddled from the night's events and loss of sleep.
"She woke up and flipped," said Nola. "I was watching. She woke, began to think, then it hit her."
"And why not?" exploded Joyce, striving to focus her eyes. "After that experience... "
Melody's wild eyes rested on her mother. "Get out Get out, you." The eyes sought Lora's. "Get her out of here. I'll throw something. I'll... " She went into a screaming frenzy, whereupon Lora slapped her.
"Now, you can just cut out these here 'sterricks and ack like a human," snarled Lora. Melody crumpled and went into the colored woman's arms, there to weep with such passionate intensity that Nola ached in sympathy. Joyce, her face blank, beat a hasty exit.
When at last Melody could breathe without sobbing, Lora loosed her embrace. "All right, now. We know you had a bad time last night. You got took by a man and beat up. But since then you've had a good night's sleep and you're a strong, healthy gal. So why the big fuss?"
Melody gulped and fell back on the bed, her eyes turned to the wall. "Go away, Lora," she said woodenly.
"I ain't agoin'," said Lora. "Look, I raised you from a kitten. You don't wanta talk to your mama and I don't blame you. You ain't ever got anything from talking to her. But you can talk to me."
"I can't talk to anyone," Melody said lifelessly.
"How come you say that?"
"You know what happened to me."
"You didn't ask for it and you couldn't help it."
"That doesn't change anything. It still happened and what does that make me?"
"A gal who got in an accident. What did it make you when you flipped the car into Rogue River that time? A special sort of fool, maybe. Nothing worse."
Anguish flickered across Melody's face, anguish mingled with despair. "Oh, that-that terrible man. He was like an animal." Melody shuddered, looked from Lora to Nola and back again. "Listen, you two, I'm not sick or anything. Please go away and leave me alone. If I need anyone, I'll call."
The graduate nurse and the colored housekeeper walked out slowly. The former was twinging. A shocking idea had begun to take shape as soon as she had heard of the rape. By now it was a conviction that pierced her brain like a needle.
"You go on home, miss," said Lora. "Like she say, she ain't sick. Not in the body anyhow."
Nola took in a shuddering breath. "I hope the poor girl isn't pregnant by that beast."
Lora shrugged. "We'll see."
Her lips compressed, she turned and made her way to the kitchen.
Joyce, whose breakfast always consisted of innumerable cups of coffee laced liberally with cream and sugar, was sitting at the table and working on her fifth one. "What on earth is the matter with that girl?" she asked.
"You ever been raped?" asked Lora bluntly.
Joyce flushed. "Of course not In any case, what good does it do to have hysterics?"
"You practically had 'em last night when that ice hit you."
Joyce seemed to swell with rage. "I'll have a word or two to say to Missy about that. As for your part... "
"I helped her try to wake you. I helped her put you in the chair. That ice and water was her own idea and I must say it worked like a charm."
"But was that the only way?"
"When you sleeps, you dies."
Joyce pouted. "I sleep heavily, I'll admit... "
"You dies," insisted Lora, hammering a half-frozen hen about, trying to work the stiffness out of it preparatory to baking it for lunch. "This bird has had its share of ice, too."
Joyce sighed and lit a cigarette. "I'll have to ask Barry to come over. He can't have heard what happened."
Lora dropped the hen and turned on her. "You mean you gonna tell people?"
Joyce blinked stupidly. "Well, won't they find out anyhow?"
"Not less you tell it around. And believe me, if that gal finds out her own mama spouted she's liable to come after you with a razor or sompn'. You done lost your mind?"
Joyce was confused. People would surely know. How could they help it? "The sheriff will tell or that old doctor," she said defensively.
Lora was not foul-mouthed. She had a low opinion of anyone who "talked under people's clothes." But this time she could not help it. A solid four-letter word burst out of her mouth, shocking Joyce speechless.
"You mean to say," demanded Lora, slamming liver, gizzard and heart on the chopping board, "you think Dr. Fontenot or Mr. Townley is loose at the jaw?"
"People do talk," Joyce said darkly. "People sure do. My advice to you is not to be one of 'em." She picked up a carving knife, brandished it, then rammed it point first into the board.
CHAPTER SEVEN
AFTER SEEING that weed-clipping in the big hay pasture was well started and the soy beans were side-dressed with ammonium nitrate, Bridge Pilgrim returned to his cottage for coffee. Nola, fighting the erstwhile bachelor quarters with strong-armed concentration, had failed to brew a pot at the appointed time. She snatched the dust cloth from her golden hair and made a face as Bridge walked through the front door. "I was so busy I forgot your coffee. I can make it now, or you could drop by at the big house for it."
He looked at her queerly. "I don't go up there unless I have to," he said in his habitually soft voice.
"Why? They seem quite democratic. We seemed welcome enough last night."
He grunted and sank into a big hide-bottomed rocker. "I'd appreciate some coffee in my own kitchen, if you don't mind. If you don't wish to make it, I'll do so myself."
Hurt, she jerked around to face him. "Bridge, I'll gladly make coffee any time you want it Did I say something wrong?"
"No." He hesitated. "You see, Nola-well, it's just that the big house in some ways is a sore subject with me. Democratic as they are, they don't go all the way. Who'd expect them to?"
Without replying, she walked off toward the small kitchen. He followed her in and sat down at the chromium-legged table.
"What about you, Nola? You haven't said a word about any plans for yourself. Since you got here, you've just been taking care of me."
"Is that bad?"
"Well, you're a nurse now. You came here because we two are all that's left of the family and this is your place, with me, for as long as you want to stay. But there's little nursing to be done here. You must have thought of that."
"I did," she said, turning on the gas under the percolator. "Still, a nurse should be able to find work almost anywhere."
"Sure, if she wants to take private duty. I wouldn't be too happy about that. I'd just as soon you had a regular job."
"Me, too. I want general nursing. Something steady and without too much night work." She smiled. "If it hadn't been so hectic last night, I'd have asked Dr. Fontenot about a job. He and his son run a pretty active office, I hear."
"By the way," he asked casually, "how did you get here from the train station the other day?"
She turned her back and reached for two cups. "A cab brought me."
"I had to take care of some cattle, and couldn't leave them," he said evenly. "So I asked Mrs. Flemming to arrange to have you picked up at the station. Is that what she arranged? A cab?"
"It seems so," his sister replied.
"Long ride," he said. "And you bumped your eye on a door?"
"That's what I said."
"I know that's what you said."
She faced him. "All right, what do you want me to say?"
His eyes held hers steadily. "The truth might do, for a starter."
"Bridge, you've always been wonderful to me. Won't you be wonderful once more and not press me?"
Twin lumps of muscle leaped into definition at the angles of his strong jaw. "Why are you afraid to speak up?"
"Because I've seen you in your rages. I remember the Borden boy, the one I had that little trouble with on the front porch when we lived in Neville. You broke one of his arms and three ribs."
He nodded. "And you know what? I'll bet you he never tried to pull a stunt like that again."
She laughed. "I don't suppose he did. But Bridge, this time let it go. Please?"
He balled his big hands into fists. "Answer me one thing. Was force involved?"
She shrugged and looked away. "I'll tell you this much. The black eye was my fault. I struck him and he struck back. He seemed to think he was doing the right thing-and that's all I'm going to say, Bridge."
He thrust his hands into his pockets and stared out of the window. "All right. Pour the coffee."
"And remember, I'm not just your kid sister now," she said, filling the cups with steamy brew. "I'm a big girl now."
"Sure you are." His voice was deep and affectionate. "But one of these days I'm going to find out who gave you that shiner-and he'll wish to hell he hadn't."
* * *
Melody lay in her bed, striving might and main to drive from her mind remembrance of the savage joy she had experienced in the embrace of a rapist.
It was this remembrance that had been torturing her ever since the assault, had driven her to hysterics, had impelled her to reject the women who wanted to help her.
Yes, Melody was crushed because, as she was honest enough to admit to herself, she had enjoyed the episode wildly, marvelously. The man had been a beast, had beaten her, but that had been unnecessary. Once he had plumbed her virgin womanhood, physically she had been his completely. Tying her had been equally unnecessary, as far as sex had been concerned. She remembered his biting and his forays of other kinds and broke out in a chill sweat, not because of revulsion but because of guilt. Her tender flesh had responded ecstatically to his brutal liberties.
Was she this kind of woman, a creature so vile that she enjoyed being subjected to sordid attack?
Never in all her young life had Melody been victim of such mental anguish. Compared to it, her physical aches and pains were nothing. She turned her face to the pillow and wept, full of loathing for herself.
Then suddenly she could no longer bear to be alone. She jumped up and donned a robe. Leaving the room, she started for the kitchen. She tottered along, her body one vast ache.
She met her mother in the big hallway just off the dining room.
"Well," said Joyce. "So glad you've recovered enough to move about. I thought you would, though. So I called Barry. He's coming over soon."
"In that case," Melody said flatly, "you can entertain him, for I will not see him. You had your nerve! I suppose he knows all about what happened."
Joyce looked unhappy. "I didn't tell him."
"You'll get around to it I know you. I've known you a long time, but I didn't know I knew you. And what I know makes me sick." She turned and walked back to her room.
She flung herself on the bed. Again the horrors of the night before descended upon her, and again the real horror was not the assault but the way she had responded to it. And as the bestial scenes passed through her mind, something happened. Her body began to throb. It was begging for repetition of the brutal treatment that had been visited upon it. Melody tried to deny it, then to fight it, but could do neither. She was feverishly eager for more of the primitive assault. She could feel the heat of the man's body, feel him lunging.
She sat up and pushed back her hair and pressed fingers to her temples. "I'm going mad," she whimpered. "I'm going stark mad!"
But she did not mean that. What she meant was that she had discovered she was bad, dirty. Nice girls did not have such feelings. Nice girls did not think as she did. She had always considered herself not a prude but decent enough, nice enough. And here she was, thirsting for an encore to the sordid revel of the night before.
* * *
Barry Norton had fled the menace of fire and Bridge Pilgrim like any wild animal fleeing for its life. Yet his panic had not been completely blind. He had retained enough reason to snatch up the clothes he had tossed to the flooded grass. But, instead of heading for the woods and the anonymity of the dark, he had sneaked through the bushes to the Jeep he had completely forgotten earlier in the day.
He drove off slowly, trying to preserve quiet until he was out of hearing. He need not have troubled. Any noise the vehicle made was buried beneath layers of crashes from the heavens, splashing rain, the cries of the throng assembled to put out the fire. He drove home fast, his heart gradually calming to a normal beat.
He entered through the front door, which the wind had blown open. Water had sluiced into the foyer, all the way through to the hallway where it formed a puddle inches deep.
Barry sloshed stark naked to his room, dragging his sodden clothes behind him. He dropped them to the floor, and sat down heavily in a chair. He was shaking violently from chill and emotional tension. A wretched groan forced its way between teeth clicking like castanets.
He found a bottle, one of his own, and drank until he choked, then weaved his way to the bathroom and drank a glass of water in an effort to hold the alcohol. He sat on the toilet until sure the drink would stay down, then he tottered to the tub and drew a steaming bath. He sighed with relief when the hot water closed over his chilled, jerking body. He languished, adding hot water until his body was lobster red and sweating. He got out, soothed now, the shakes and jerks gone. He dried himself, donned pajamas, and lit out for the kitchen.
There he found roast pork, cheese, milk and a long loaf of French bread. He sat down to eat a tremendous meal. After he had gorged himself, he sat back and lost himself in the wild whirlwind that was his mind.
Barry Norton was not often defeated by women. But on this night he had been defeated by two. First by the Negress, who had fought him off on the path. Then by Melody, who had avoided being rendered unfit for any man again to enjoy her-even if that rendering would mean maiming her, perhaps killing her. The two humiliations, as he viewed them, had been preceded by another at Melody's hands. She had spurned him the day before, and had gone so far as to refuse to marry him. Soon in his mind the defeats and humiliations in some manner melted into one. Melody bore all the culpability.
Barry cut off the light, backed into a corner and skulked like a beast. For a long time he listened for an enemy to make a sound but no sound came. So they had not traced the rapist to this abode. Good. He slipped quietly into the hallway. Ignoring the puddle of water although his feet were bare, he continued on to the stairs and stopped. He could hear the snores of his mother and a faint babbling from his father, both in their bedrooms above. He had not seen his father in a week but this did not bother him. For his father he had no feeling at all. For his mother, on the other hand, he entertained an active, acid hatred and could remember every time in his life that she had ever balked him.
He laughed. Well, he had certainly got the upper hand by painting that picture... Picture! He held his hands to his eyes and breathed deeply as a storm of form and color burst on his inner vision.
The riotous hues were dazzling, blinding. He opened his eyes to rid himself of the impressions but they were imprinted on his retinas as though he had been staring at brilliant lights. They moved and reassembled, like the images in a kaleidoscope, then boiled over, ran wild. Finally out of this riot emerged the form of his mother, now half cat and half serpent, slender translucent fangs protruding from her slack-lipped mouth.
Barry smiled. He went up the stairs two at a time, climbed the ladder to his attic studio. There he locked the door, took the portrait out of the cabinet. He returned to the door, unlocked it, peered craftily about for a long time. Then he locked the door again, slipped the painting on an easel. With smooth, expert speed he attacked the canvas with brush and pigment, using an old cedar shingle for a palette.
For several hours he worked with great speed but also with patient, painstaking attention to detail. Now his mother was a horror for certain. He had made an even greater and more loathsome nightmare of her. She still wore the dazed look of the sick drunk, still wallowed in the evidence of recent and active illness. But this evidence had been transformed into tiny colorful toads, lizards and snakes. Nor was that all.
Each creature unmistakably was the child of his mother, each having been vomited from that hideous maw. They were not ordinary reptiles. They had all the florid flourishes of a Byzantine fantasy. Each looked poisonous enough to kill by mere touch, let alone bite, but showed diminutive translucent fangs like its horrid mother.
Barry stood back, viewing his work, and chuckled. He picked up the canvas and returned it to its hiding place. He locked the door, hid the key under a floorboard and returned to his bedroom. He lay down and went to sleep instantly. It was as though he had finally purged his soul of all poison and unrest.
He awoke next morning rather early. He went down to breakfast and pleasantly greeted the cook and maid. He ignored, perhaps was not aware of, the fact that the cook was the same Delia Mae Jones with whom he had collided so disastrously the night before. Her sin had been swallowed whole by Melody's and thus wiped out. He sat at the table and ate an enormous breakfast He drank no coffee, however.
Rising from the table, he went out on the front veranda where he stood looking toward the Flemming place. A vast wall of pine and hardwood hid it but he could see it in his mind. He played a game with himself, pretending he had two girls ready and waiting there, dying for his attention. One was Melody, the other that recent arrival, Nola. Gradually the pretense became fact in his mind. He appreciated the dangers attendant to approaching either of them, but illogically that did not mar the illusion. No doubt about it. Two girls. His creatures, only too happy to do what he wished, give him whatever he wanted.
The phone rang. After a brief talk with Joyce, Barry's illusion was reinforced at least as far as Melody was concerned. The girl was anxious to see him about something, Joyce had said.
He got in his Jeep and drove through the woods to his favorite parking place. It was in the thin fringe of trees at the edge of the open meadow that surrounded the Flemming home.
Two hundred yards to the back and a little to the southern side was the overseer's cottage. This Barry could reach by following the old road that had served the big house before the paved driveway had been put through. The road was flanked by thick growths of oaks, yaupon bushes and Cherokee rose vines. It was his habit of long standing never to drive up to the house. He would approach by the most oblique possible route and on foot. He was a master of stealth. Usually before anyone knew he was around, he would be standing silently at one or the other end of the veranda, a twisted smile on his lips.
Today he pondered. Should it be blonde or brunette? Melody or Nola? Time meant little to him. He sat down with his back to a tree, sat as still as a carving, his eyes blinking only seldom, and tried to make up his mind. He watched Nola leave the house and go to the cottage after having stayed the night with Melody. He watched as Bridge came in from the fields for his morning coffee and was watching when he left. This acted as a signal. His mind made up, Barry jumped to his feet. Taking a wide detour that kept him concealed by the growth flanking the old road, he approached the cottage. He watched from the concealment of the bushes as Nola hung out clothes. He glutted himself on the sight of her fabulous curves, glad that she was wearing only scanty white shorts and a halter.
Feeling secure within her own home, Nola was careless of open doors. When she went into her bedroom, he was behind her in the hall. When she went into the bathroom to shower, he took up position in the bedroom. When she emerged, dry but still nude, he made his move.
* * *
Having served Bridge's coffee, and with him back on the job, Nola Pilgrim dusted furiously for a while. She was trying to make her upsurging blood and a kind of wanton urgency subside. These manifestations of lust had been provoked by Bridge's questions, which had brought back shameful but sultry memories of the interlude in the shack of that strange artist. She hung out her washing, vacuumed the house for the second time then, feeling hot and sweaty, took a stingingly cold shower. Using a rough towel, she burnished her soft skin until it glowed with ruddy health.
The bathroom door had a full-length mirror and she observed herself in it for a time, her skin pebbling with narcissistic appreciation. She was built generously yet without grossness. Her breasts were large and youthfully lithe. Her waist was long and so were her shapely, tapering legs. She flushed furiously as she recalled that when the time had come for them to protect her, those legs had been powerless to clamp together, instead had eagerly parted. The man's furious energy and electric animalism had imparted itself to her, aroused in her a passion that had amounted to insanity. She had returned to a balanced state of mind only after utter satiation. And now desire was plaguing her again. Desire for that marvelous peak of bodily delight a selfish and unscrupulous savage had given her. How evil could a girl get?
She closed her eyes and leaned against the cold mirror. She was trying to banish the man from her thoughts. But she could not. She fell away from the glass, hating herself and her traitorous body, unable to quell the thundering beat of her heart and the rushing roar of aroused blood in her ears. She slipped on a thin robe, walked barefoot into the small bedroom, fell prone and in despair to the bed.
The door to the hall, standing open, hid menace. Nola did not know it. But she heard the slight creak as it moved and Barry stepped from behind it. She stiffened, afraid to turn. She did not turn even when the voice came.
"I told you I'd be back."
She still did not turn or in any way move. She seemed sunk in a state of physical paralysis. It took the touch of his hands, hands skidding up her feverish thighs, to arouse her. And then she did not react as if to a menace. She did not scream for help, did not struggle or try to flee. No. With a choking cry of gladness, she turned. They came together, she as eager as he. And as before, a primordial mating blazed-a mating that could not be confined to such a small place as the bed and soon had them both on the floor, neither being aware of the transition.
It was long and breathtaking, with nothing of love or affection in it. Actually it was less like a mating than a physical beating they both craved madly. Then as it had come, as it had wildly risen, the craving died. Rapture relieved, Nola instantly returned to her normal self. She did a furious twist and bounded to her feet. She swept up the robe, fled from Barry into the bathroom where she slammed and locked the door. Barry, having abandoned the bed, stood looking at the door, his sly half-smile twisting his lips, his eyes vacant blue holes in, his head. He licked his lips.
"Come out," he said hoarsely. "Come out and let's play some more."
"It's past noon. Bridge will be here any minute," she shrilled. "You'd better go!"
The mention of Bridge's name had made Barry pale a little. "I'll be back," he said, and left the bedroom. He cat-footed through the living room to the kitchen and out the back door. From there to the old sunken woods road was but a few yards, and just beyond were the woods.
From a window, Nola watched him go. Then she suddenly went weak. She sat down on the bathtub rim with a thump. Her nerves were still tingling with the delights Barry had found it unnecessary to force upon her, for she had welcomed them-but now reaction was in command. As she regained strength she became more and more ashamed, more angry with herself. She shook with a complex emotion that was part humiliation, part panic and part resentment against her traitorous body. As reality moved in on her, it drew harsh and sordid pictures that stabbed her eyes like ice-picks until a merciful curtain of tears blotted the spectacle. She dragged herself to her feet, bathed furiously, went to her closet for white slacks and a blue jersey shirt.
In the kitchen, steaks had been put out to defrost earlier. She rushed to get them on the grille. She was salting them when she heard the chugging of Bridge's Jeep. She did not try to meet his eyes as he walked in. She kept working on the steaks, wiping them with a cut garlic pod and sprinkling Tabasco over their richly red surfaces.
Bridge raised his eyebrows. When the Negro housekeeper had been tending him, his food had always been ready and waiting.
"Chow in a jif," Nola said. "Just the potatoes to fry and a salad to make. Shall I heat the coffee?"
"I could use a swallow. What did you do this morning?"
She could feel his eyes on her back but she dared not face him. "Oh-cleaned up, mostly. Put out a wash. Dusted, got hot and took a shower."
He chuckled and she breathed easier. "Full morning, huh?"
"It's not nearly as much work as a nurse's morning at a hospital. I find this kind of a vacation."
"At least there's no tension here."
She made no answer to that.
He pulled up a chair and accepted the coffee she poured. Lighting a cigarette, he said, "Tonight we start introducing you around. You need to know people."
She cut a quick, inquisitive eye at him. His ruggedly handsome face was without guile and his greenish-gray eyes were bland. "Why?" she wanted to know.
"Because it isn't healthy for a girl not to have friends, that's why. And you ought to cultivate Missy Blumendahl. She's the social arbiter of this neck of the woods, and a grand old lady. If she likes you, she'll go to the limit for you. And spending time with her is an education-"
"She's nosy."
"She sure is. Her nosiness has uncovered injustices, ferreted out inequities, disclosed scoundrels and... "
"Such language," she interrupted. "Your dictionary is showing."
"You're not the only one who's had some education," Bridge said. "Point is, sure she's nosy. But the whole damn county loves her for it."
"Okay. I'll try to love her, too. But she does seem rather a character."
"That she is. I want her to invite you to one of those gigantic socials she throws. What doesn't happen at them never will. Everyone thinks she's Miss Social Empress of all time and flocks around to kiss her feet, eat her prime beef and drink her Bradsher's whiskey. She stands around, simpers and preens, curses them under her breath and plays the empress part for them right up to the hilt. I've accused her of putting on the affairs just to stick people on pins and watch them wriggle."
"Does she deny it?"
"No. All she does is grin and blow me down with some ear-busting remark or a laugh like a bugle blast. Usually she's the noisiest one woman you ever heard. But at one of her parties she's so proper it makes me laugh."
"And what about you, Bridge?" asked Nola. "Are you cultivating friends, too? It isn't natural for a man to live alone, you know."
He turned pink. "I have you, sis."
"That's even less natural. Aren't there any girls around here that you find attractive?"
"There's one," he said, turning pinker.
"Have you got to first base yet?"
"I haven't even had a turn at bat."
"Why not? You weren't shy with the girls back home. I don't get it."
"Who's nosy now?" demanded Bridge. "Aren't those steaks done yet?"
"Sure they are. Nice and rare-" She served up the sibling meat and they fell to with a will.
CHAPTER EIGHT
DR. FONTENOT, Dr. Hackthorne and Missy Blumendahl sat on her broad veranda and drank potent highballs. Hackthorne was decidedly uncomfortable, laced up as he was in a corset designed to support his injured back.
"Don't give a hoot what your X-rays show. I can definitely feel two bones rubbing ends. I'm ruined."
"Cowflop," replied Dr. Fontenot rudely, bobbing his spade beard. "You had a little sprain and some spasm around the point of L-five. That crepitation is in your mind only. Who'd have thought you would turn out to be a hypochondriac?"
"Who'd have thought he'd turn over a car," snorted Missy, fitting a cigarette into her long jade holder. "Gawping at my house and running off the road as pretty as you please. I always said I wouldn't ride in one of those newfangled beetles."
"It was the only transportation to be had," replied Hackthorne patiently.
"Then you should have walked or hitched or something. By the way, when is your Barrett coming?"
"Any minute. He would have come with me, but he had some loose ends to tie up." Hackthorne reached for the drink that rested on a nearby table, flinched, groaned. "Broken back, sure as shootin'. Damn but that thing grabbed me then."
"I warned you about sudden movements," admonished Dr. Fontenot. "You'll be feeling pretty sore for a couple of weeks."
Hackthorne scowled. "I can't stay here a couple of weeks. I have a job."
Fontenot sneered openly. "Let Van Delkin take care of it. You won't be going anywhere for a while."
"If that head-hunter tinkers around with my residents, I'll murder him." The scowl came on again.
Fontenot's grin was devilish. "Why? Van Delkin is practically the direct descendant of Freud. I'll bet he has a ball with your boys."
"Yeah," growled Hackthorne, "and I have to smelt all that fertilizer out of them as fast as he puts it in."
"You don't believe in analysis?" asked Missy mischievously.
I didn't say that It has a place. Just as narcotics have a place. But in most cases I must seriously question any treatment that is habit-forming and administered on flimsy pretexts. In addition, I think analysis is by its nature subjective rather than objective, unscientific, and used about a thousand times to every one time it is indicated. It has value in the confessor sense but as I always say, a clergyman is much better at it than a doctor. The cleric doesn't have to apologize for his mysticism and witchcraft."
Missy blew her nose. "By God, you sound just like Ike, Junior. He's a psychiatrist too, you know."
"Why isn't he here feeling heads then?" demanded Hackthorne.
"Because if he did, the psychiatry departments at four Veterans' Hospitals would have to shut down."
Hackthorne frowned, "Blumendahl... of course! I never connected the names. Why, I've met the lad. We downed a few together at the convention last year. He tore the pants off these crack-headed geniuses and their fairy stories about childhood schizophrenia. Van Delkin walked out on him. In spite of what Heath et al have discovered about the schizophrenic blood factor, Van Delkin still thinks it's caused by frog warts, trauma, suppressed desire for one's grandma or some equally fatuous nonsense. Someone is coming," he finished, pointing.
A cab was turning into the driveway. It ground to a stop and discharged its passenger.
Missy stared. "He's a stranger to me."
"Not to me," snapped Hackthorne. "It's Rodney Barrett himself."
Handsome and broadshouldered, Rod mounted the steps at Missy's bellowed invitation. His generous mouth was stretched in a wide smile as Hackthorne introduced him to the others. But the smile wiped away instantly when Hackthorne announced with a grimace, "For your information, son, I have a broken back."
"What? You've hurt yourself?"
"He was ogling my place," Missy said, "and riding in one of those miserable little buckets of nuts they make abroad out of discarded beer cans. The thing flipped on him and now he's stuck here until he can travel." She grinned. "I expect you to stay here, too, Dr. Barrett. I couldn't handle your crank friend alone."
Rod looked startled. "Stay here-with you?"
"Sure. I have exactly eleven bedrooms. Lula and Ella stay in one downstairs near the kitchen. Tangi in another one. I use one and old Hack will be using one. Rooms awastin'."
"Well-I haven't looked Kenton over yet. I'm not quite sure... "
"Oh, hell," snarled Hackthorne, wincing against a twinge. "Certainly you'll stay here. Best eats for miles around. Don't fight it."
Rod nodded. "Thanks, Mrs. Blumendahl."
"Missy, to you. Who's hungry?"
None admitted he was but all proved it when, seated at the supper table, each found before him a plump stuffed squab with a cross of bacon over its breast. Conversation flew wild through the meal. And without seeming to, Missy observed Rod carefully, weighing him, measuring him, making up her mind about him.
While the others ate German chocolate cake and ice cream, Missy excused herself, went to the hall phone. She spoke guardedly when Bridge Pilgrim answered. "Get that gal over here," she told him. "I got the best-lookin' psychiatrist here you ever saw. He'll put up an office in Kenton if he likes things, and who'd make him a better nurse than Nola?"
"Say," replied Bridge excitedly, "that sounds good. In an hour or so? I've been wanting her to meet people."
"An hour would be just right." She hung up and returned to the dining room, her long cigarette holder poking from her lips at a jaunty angle.
"This," said Dr. Hackthorne, pointing his fork at a second piece of cake, "is fairly wriggling with calories and cholesterol."
"You should worry," retorted Missy, attacking her own slice. "Anyone as shad-bellied and strung out as you needn't worry about such things. What about all those calories in Bradsher's Special Age?"
He looked at her severely. "Madam, calories in whiskey are legal, or didn't you know?"
She laughed. "How about brandy calories? Shall we repair to the veranda and try some?"
All agreed that the idea had its merits. They rose and made their way to the big porch, Hackthorne twinging and cursing with each painful step.
After they had dawdled a while over coffee and brandy, Missy got up and beckoned to Rod. "Son, come with me. These others will excuse us long enough for me to show you your room."
He followed her from the veranda into the hallway, up the carpeted, richly gleaming staircase, and to a gigantic bedroom. It was filled with heavy antique furniture; the cherrywood bed looked as if it weighed a ton and was so high it had to be mounted by means of steps.
"Didn't you bring any luggage, son?" she asked.
"I left a bag at the railroad station. Thought I'd be staying in town-"
"I'll send for it later. Set a while, will you? I want to talk to you."
She perched herself on an overstuffed chaise. Rod chose a chair and sat down, watching her warily.
"Did you notice me sizing you up downstairs?" she asked. "All through supper, and before, I was making notes."
"I didn't notice, especially." He smiled easily. "Naturally you would be curious about me-would try to judge whether I measured up to your image of a psychiatrist. Did I pass the test?"
"Did I?" she retorted.
"Don't tell me I was that obvious."
"Oh, you were quite subtle about it. But the leading questions you asked once or twice-the way you sometimes steered the conversation-the penetrating glances when you thought I wasn't looking... Do you think I'm a fool, son?"
"The farthest thing from it," Rod said. "In fact, I've decided you're smart as hell. And a darling, for all your bluster. Your psyche is positively hypenic. And if a man wants a reason to locate around here, you'll do as well as any."
Her voice softened. "Thanks, son. For your information, you passed your test, too. Warm, charming, knowing-just the type to do patients a lot of good. And deep in your eyes, there's a devil lurking. That's fine. Shows you're human. But a trace of something else is in your eyes, too. Fear."
He looked away. "Not fear. Hurt."
"Fear, I say. Forgive me for being so nosy on first acquaintance, but what in tarnation are you so afraid of?"
He shivered slightly. "Missy, I had a dilly of a crack-up. You see, I placed this girl on a pedestal...
"Oh, sure. And you discovered she didn't belong there. It's as old and common as bad breath. Ten to one you loved her up until she was steaming, then refused to delve into her lingerie. So she did what came naturally. She became a pushover for the first Lothario who did a good job of titty-tickling. Right?"
He flushed. "You've been reading my mail."
"And you a psychiatrist! Didn't you ever run into this sort of thing while in residency?"
"Of course. Dr. Hackthorne put me on cases with certain parallels."
"Did it work?"
"In a sense. It dredged me up out of the doldrums. But I can't get rid of my hurt."
"Not hurt. Fear. My guess is that you're scared to death of lovely young women. Of becoming involved with them, that is."
"Hurt or fear, what's the difference?" Rod queried bitterly. "Until I conquer whatever it is, I won't be much of a psychiatrist."
"Nonsense. But I got a newscast for you. Hang around here, and you'd better beat that fixation. Did you know that the Kenton area has more good-looking women than places ten times its size? Why, just in this neighborhood-" Missy began ticking them off on her fingers. The fourth girl she named was Melody Flemming, whom she characterized as a "neighbor gal." She added reflectively, "Then there's this new nurse, Nola. You'll meet her soon. And Lula, my cook. And my personal maid, Tangi... Now there's a beauty!" Grinning like a female demon, Missy pulled at a nearby bell-rope.
A minute or so later, a stunning young woman appeared in the doorway. She had the figure of a Venus, a complexion like beige velvet, black hair hanging to her waist.
Rod felt as though his skin had suddenly grown too small for his body.
"Tangi," said Missy fondly, "this is Dr. Rodney Barrett. He may be staying with us for a while. See that he's comfortable, will you? Get rid of those frilly sheets on the bed, the skirt hangers, all that-bring in man-stuff. Don't forget glasses, and shove a bottle of Bradsher's into a drawer."
"Sure thing," warbled Tangi, in so melodious a contralto that Rod melted like wax. She threw him a sidelong glance, smiled. "If there's anything you want, sir, just ring." She turned with the grace of a ballet dancer and lithely stepped out of the room, her south end undulating entrancingly.
There was a moment of silence, while Rod tried to recover.
Missy's grin had become wicked. "Is she rape walkin' or isn't she?"
"My God! Who is she?"
"I told you. My maid. Daughter of my Portuguese herd boss," Missy said. "Every bit as good as she looks, too. A heart like gold, a wonderful sense of humor, and I'd flat die if she quit me. Consequently I pay her twice what she's worth." Missy's grin was now making her look like a female Mephistopheles. "See that fabulous body of hers? In her book, its most exalted mission is to give her sensual pleasure. She's as objective about it as a bird after a worm. If she takes a shine to you, you'll have company some night and there's no way you can escape it outside of jumping from your window."
Rod was looking at her soberly. "Missy, a man could fall in love with Tangi. Without any trouble at all."
"Lots of men do. Nothing ever comes of it, though, so don't get any ideas in your head. Tangi is strictly not a one-man woman. Besides, I have other plans for you." She pushed herself up from the chaise. "You must think I'm awful meddlesome. Well, I am. Shall we rejoin the other guests?"
As they walked down the stairs, Rod made up his mind. He would give Kenton and the county a try.
Fears or no fears, things around here were too fascinating to pass up.
CHAPTER NINE
WHEN THEY REACHED the veranda, they saw that Bridge and Nola Pilgrim had arrived. She wore a simple dark skirt and a lightweight sweater, the combination not blaring forth her endowments but advertising them with taste and decorum. The region of her eye, although much improved, still was slightly swollen. Most of the discoloration she had carefully masked with make-up.
Bridge was making introductions. "... and this is Dr. Fontenot... Oh, I forgot. You two have met." Bridge stopped.
"Of course," Fontenot said, gallantly ignoring the eye. 'My dear, you look even lovelier than you did the other night. Allow me to present Dr. Hackthorne and Dr. Barrett, both of MacDonald Memorial, New Orleans. Missy, of course, you know."
"Sure she does," said Missy, pulling up a big rocker for herself. "First time we met, she turned me off because I was too curious."
Nola smilingly said, "I'm sorry about that."
"Nonsense. You were entirely right. I was new to you and I presumed. Of course, you had no way of knowing that within this ignoble exterior resides a noble soul." Missy laughed immoderately. "So you're the nurse, are you?"
"Yes, ma'am. Not much of one yet, though. I just got out of school."
"Well, there's plenty of nursing to be done. Funny... Say, Hack, how did you get up off your dead arse long enough to be introduced? You're actually standing!"
Dr. Hackthorne had the decency to blush. "Dammit, this girl is therapeutic. I didn't feel a thing. So I bounced to my feet like a well man."
"Well, sit down again," said Missy. "Bridge, sit over there by ole Hack. Nola, you sit in this rocker here by me. Coffee? Brandy?"
Bridge said, "I don't get good brandy often enough to refuse."
"Or good coffee," remarked Nola. "I've been doing the cooking lately."
"Young lady, to be cooked for by you must be the height of bliss," said Dr. Hackthorne gallantly, and almost fell trying to sit down as smoothly as he had arisen. With a groan, he collapsed into the chair. "What's the matter with you?" he snarled at Rod savagely. "Didn't I train you never to pass up an opportunity to make a telling speech?"
"You didn't give the boy time," snapped Missy. "You were so hod-blasted intent on being cute."
A peal of merry laughter rose from Nola. Not because anything said had been so funny. The fact was that things were happening to Nola Pilgrim. No sooner had her eye fallen on Rod Barrett than strange premonitions had gone to work in her. Her spirits, which had never been lower, instantly had soared so high that without knowing why, she felt giddy.
It was as though Rod Barrett had just walked through Barry Norton, demolished him with such utter finality that Barry seemed never to have existed. What had been sickening her was the sure knowledge that should Barry appear on the scene again she would be as powerless to resist him as she had the first two times. Self-hate, stemming from this knowledge, had been approaching pathological proportions. It was a saving thing, this meeting Dr. Rodney Barrett. Her chest felt tight and her eyes a little misty.
She realized that she was staring at Rod. She lowered her eyes. What a fool she was. All aflutter, and she had spent not even five minutes with the man. Besides, he seemed to take no interest in her. He had spoken not one word to her. He had been avoiding looking at her, if anything. Was he, she asked herself, one of those shy types?
Suddenly Rod's head lifted and his eyes locked on hers. His gaze held intently for a long time, but she could not guess its meaning. When he looked away, she noticed that his hands were clenched on his lap, the knuckles white. Why, he was acting almost as if he were afraid of her, she thought.
But by some quirk of the household workings, it was not Lulu who came to the veranda to replenish the brandy and pour more coffee. This time it was Tangi.
And Rod certainly did not act afraid of Tangi. He smiled at her boldly and did not spare his glances, which were even bolder. Dr. Fontenot and Dr. Hackthorne also were watching Tangi with rapt attention. So was Bridge.
And Nola did not blame them. Never in her life had she seen such a marvelously honeyed creature. Nola had been told by more than one man that she was exceptionally attractive, devastatingly desirable, fetchingly lovely. Yet she felt drab in comparison with the golden girl.
After the latter had vanished, her duty done, the talk rose again, swirling around Rod and Nola without either of them taking much part in it.
Finally Missy swung around and blasted at Rod, "Well, you gonna ask her or hot?"
He was startled, not to say scorched. "Ask who? About what?"
"You're a doctor. And I'm expecting you to set up an office in Kenton. You'll need an office nurse, won't you? And Nola's a nurse, isn't she? You want me to draw you a picture?"
Rod fidgeted, flashed a glance at Nola.
"I-uh-I think we would have to talk it over carefully. There are considerations like pay, hours-oh, lots of things."
"Can you drive a thirty-year-old Packard?"
"I guess so. Straight stick, or have you swapped transmissions?"
"Straightest you ever saw. Right out of the floor. Y'all go for a ride into Kenton-she'll show you the sights and you can talk."
Rod felt pushed, pushed too hard. But he could not politely refuse.
As he walked down the bricked path with Nola, Hackthorne was shaking his head. "Missy, you're digging a pit for that boy."
"How so?"
"Rod is snakebit. Beautiful women throw him into a tailspin. How'n hell will he work in an office with that gal every day?"
"You're maundering," she rasped. "If he tumbles for her, that will cure him. And what's wrong with taking a tumble for Nola?"
"The question is," Bridge put in edgily, "will she take a tumble for him? And what will happen after that?"
"The usual thing," answered Hackthorne, "is to get married, although some of the younger generation might give you an argument about that. But aren't we moving along a little fast? You can lead a horse to water, Missy, and a man to a girl, but-"
"Oh, hell," interrupted Fontenot, bobbing his beard. "Falling in love with one's office nurse this day and age is almost established procedure."
Missy was glaring at Hackthorne. "I take it that you're worried he'll have enough complications arising out of counter-transference and the normal rubbing up against the local beauties not to go stashing more complications in his office. That it?"
"Long-winded but well put, and what do you know of counter-transference?"
"Plenty," she assured him. "I've a son in the racket, remember? And I think you're worrying to no purpose."
"How so, Missy?"
"If Rod falls in love with his office nurse and marries her, he won't be a sitting duck for every neurotic twitch-bitch that comes in overflowing with the hots."
Hackthorne tried to sit up straight and winced. "Can't even straighten my back any more," he complained. "As for you, Missy, you ought to equip this mansion of yours with a couple of pool tables. You get such satisfaction out of calling the shots." He snorted. "Here's a girl you've met only once or twice, and a young man you've seen once, and already you're busting out of your britches to push them together. What makes you so sure they'd be good for each other?"
"How do I know? I just got a feelin', that's all."
"Well, my feeling is that another Bradsher's would make me sleep better."
"What do you think of that prescription, Alcide?" asked Missy.
"Good for the patient," said Dr. Fontenot. "And what's good for the patient is good for the physician. So while you're about it, pour me a shot, too."
"After all that fine brandy I've been wasting on you? You two never will acquire refined tastes," grumbled Missy, tilting the bottle of bourbon whiskey and pouring. "Now that the young folks aren't here, Alcide, tell me something. Who do you think attacked the Flemming girl?"
"I know who you want me to name," Dr. Fontenot said. "But I won't. A man is to be considered innocent unless proved guilty. And not only is there no proof-there isn't even evidence."
"But if Rod would open an office here, and we could get that weirdie to go for a consultation, maybe Rod could come up with the evidence."
"Lady, it is virtually impossible for a psychiatrist to take protective steps with someone suspected of sex crimes. Which is too bad. My observation is that sex crimes are often merely the beginning. The end is murder."
"Sex crime, murder," agreed Hackthorne, whom Missy had apprised of all that was known about the attack on Melody. "I'm not certain just why they should go hand in hand. Of course, a certain frenzy accompanies a sex attack, and if opposed the rapist may administer a beating so as to achieve his object-the beating sometimes proving fatal. Or he may kill the woman to shut her mouth. But more often than not in my opinion, the killing is a matter of sadistic impulses breaking loose."
"The sheriff told me," said Fontenot, "he believes Melody would have been killed for sure if Bridge hadn't showed up. The girl reports that the rapist was standing over her with a pitchfork... And I see by the papers that they're thinking of eliminating the death penalty for rape even in the states that still have it. They're saying the penalty is too stiff for the crime."
Missy growled deep in her throat. "Remember the Delery case, Alcide?"
"I do. I was never so shocked and revolted in my life."
"Tell me," said Hackthorne, trying to find a comfortable position, failing, and drowning his resultant groan in a liberal swallow of Bradsher's. "Missy mentioned it to me once, but tell me more."
"She was barely eleven," replied Fontenot. "A lovely little thing-fearlessly walking home through a wooded lot in Kenton. Taking a shortcut, you understand. She was intercepted, raped repeatedly, strangled, then butchered... butchered!" He kicked the chair next to him. "And of course they never discovered the culprit."
"It may be the same fiend who attacked Melody. If so, he'll surely strike again. And the likelihood is that he'll murder again."
"What's the use of pussyfooting?" snarled Missy. "I have the very guy elected on all counts. Barry Norton."
"I know," said Fontenot. "A lot of people elect Barry Norton. Because he's peculiar. But peculiarities aren't evidence. Anyway, he's had chances at Melody all her life and never roughed her up."
"No-but his condition, I don't doubt, has been getting worse," snapped Missy. "Any little thing can trigger a type like that, make him rape or kill. The only wonder is that such a nut shouldn't leave behind a clue, some shred of evidence-"
"Hah," barked Hackthorne. "Paranoiacs in particular can be dad-blasted smart. Man, with those specimens you can be prepared for the most fantastic examples of involved thinking. That's what makes them so dangerous. Their talent for dissimulation is unbelievable. They are the ones who sometimes go on a religious kick and think they're the right hand of God. Often they make powerful appeal to certain emotional types. Alcide, what's this Barry Norton like?"
Dr. Fontenot sipped his drink and, after a while, said carefully, "A talented painter. Brilliant and well-behaved in school, too-but so were his father and his mother, both now far gone in alcoholism. The family, to use an ancient term, is tainted. In fact, tarred."
"You can say that again," put in Missy vehemently. "Nuttiest damn collection of inbred lunatics you ever saw. All I got to say is that if he's the rapist, God forbid Melody gets pregnant." She paused to take a deep breath. "You can add, Alcide, that he has a way with women-" The doctor's spade-beard bobbed as he nodded. "Definitely. In high school, he had girls falling all over him. Older women have a tendency to be attracted to him, too, until they learn how odd he is-and sometimes even after that. I'll tell you something, though. I've seen some of his paintings. In my opinion, they're nothing short of great."
Hackthorne stroked his chin. "I'd better pass on this odd-lot of information and opinion to Rod. It might come in handy to him."
CHAPTER TEN
BARRY STARED down the long upstairs hall of the Norton home. For a long time he had been standing in shadow, watching, listening. Dusk had fallen. The old house was still as death. At last a faint sound came from a far bedroom and, like a cat, he stealthily crept toward it. He knew his mother was wandering aimlessly in the grove back of the house. She often did this but could never give a coherent reason. She just liked to wander in the grove, especially after having eaten. Later she would come in and soak up whiskey and make it to her room where she would fall across the bed and sleep.
Barry approached the bedroom of his father and peeped cautiously around the doorframe. Sometimes the son would get this impulse to spy on the old man and always yielded to it if certain he would not be detected. Once or twice he had been caught at it, and the drunken parent had beaten his son unmercifully. Barry had never been able to stand up to the man in any physical contest.
Alex Norton was lying supine on the bed, eyes closed, snoring, a straight razor held in the quivering fingers of his right hand. Apparently he had been trying to shave but alcoholic stupor had overcome him and he had fallen to the bedclothes. He had cut himself badly on the left cheek. Blood was oozing over the wrinkled skin and staining the pillows. Bloody though he was, there seemed a curious, settled relaxation about his body and his expression was peaceful. When enough liquor was in him, at least he was free of the terrible storms that otherwise tore at his mind.
Barry stood motionless, staring down at his thin but hulking father. The son felt a cold, wild void within him. Nothing else. Then a faint thread of reason touched him. Blood. All that blood. Maybe the old man would bleed to death. The typical half-smile quirking his lips, Barry backed out of the room and pulled the door shut. The redness of blood formed a film before his eyes as he retreated to his own room. He sat down in a chair and lived that morning over again. Since quite a while ago he had been wanting to try to paint with blood. After the furious interlude with Nola he had thought of it briefly. Now the sight of his father's blood had reminded him of his longing.
He had been obliged to flee Nola's house lest he be caught by Bridge. Too bad. Nola's blood especially should make a wonderful pigment if only there were some way to prevent it darkening. Animal blood he had used before but it had always turned too dark. Maybe human blood wouldn't. Yes it would, too. He had saved a quantity of the Delery girl's blood, he remembered. That had dried and darkened. He thought of his father's blood, how brilliant red it had been. He even thought of going back to the bedroom and getting a supply of it. No. He hated his father's blood. What other blood was there? His mother's? Who wanted that poison? Melody's, then? Ah, Melody's blood! It might be even better than Nola's. How exhilarating, how satisfying, to beat her and conquer her that night when he had come on her naked in the wind and rain.
The recollection sent Barry into a fever. He rushed out of his room, climbed to the attic. There he went to work on a fresh piece of canvas with furious energy.
Always a fast painter, he was twice as fast tonight. The cotton-room in the barn swiftly took form. Spread-eagled on the soft white surface in lush beauty was the ravishing figure of Melody. Anatomical detail took a little time but the result was worth it. Nothing was omitted. Then with speed but great care he painted himself superimposed upon her, again faithful to anatomical detail.
Finished, he stepped back, dripping with the sweat of his labor, and triumphantly surveyed the painting. It was shocking in its message.
On the canvas, Melody was not being raped. He had caught her at the very height of consummation. She was giving herself with an unholy frenzy. Every line of her fabulous body, every contorted muscle and writhing sinew, the crazed glee on her face, spoke of the stark surrender of orgasmic convulsion.
Barry opened the cabinet, hid the still wet picture among the others. Then he left the studio, locked the door. He slipped down the stairs, got into his Jeep and drove off.
* * *
Rodney Barrett was driving a car, too. The Packard. And he was having his troubles with it. At first, every time he engaged the clutch, he stalled the gigantic engine. Shifting without benefit of syncromesh caused him to all but strip the gears. As for the steering, when he moved the wheel the locomotive under him seemed to dart about like a drunken dinosaur.
But after a couple of miles he began to get the hang of it and actually began to enjoy the antique juggernaut. He relaxed, confident now that he would not pile up auto and passengers against a tree, and devoted some attention to the girl beside him.
He had been dying to do this. Nola's intent scrutiny of him on Missy's porch had not been lost on him but he had not known what to make of it. He himself had felt inexplicably drawn to Nola-well, not so inexplicably; after all, she was strikingly attractive. But the very fact that he had been drawn had rendered him wary, distrustful, and he had fought down his interest in her. Now, however, all the cuddlesome pulchritude on the seat beside him was overcoming his wariness. And the girl had shown herself, he thought, to be bright as well as beautiful. He really ought to get to know her, even if it meant fighting his distrust, fear or whatever it was.
"Ah-did you ever do any psychiatric nursing while in training?"
"A little," she responded easily. "I spent three months on the psychiatric ward in Mobile Polyclinic."
"Not that it matters particularly," he said. "About all such training does is give the office nurse an understanding of what the doctor is trying to do. Actually, we won't expect to handle psychotic cases. They're the province of institutions equipped to handle them. Of course, we might get a psychotic occasionally-"
"We? Are you telling me that I'm hired?"
"That's right. If you want the job."
"Strange. I had the feeling," she said in a low voice, "that you rather resented the way Missy shoved me on you."
"I did. I hate being pushed around. But that has nothing to do with you. You didn't do the shoving or pushing-and I'm sure you'll make a fine office nurse."
He smiled, cut his eyes toward her and tooled the big phaeton around a cow that had chosen to bed down in the middle of the road.
"Thanks, doctor," Nola said. Her heart was pounding. This Rodney Barrett was a most fetching man. It would be wonderful, she told herself, to be married to a man like that. She added silently, stop dreaming, Nola. He's a stranger. What do you know about him? What does he know about you? Anyway, his interest in you, if any, is strictly professional.
"Do you realize," Rod blurted unexpectedly, "that you're a remarkably beautiful woman?"
Nola blushed. The candid outburst nonplused her, but only for a moment. She had been admired by too many men not to be able to take a compliment gracefully. "I don't regard myself as beautiful," she said. "But I've been told that I'm not unattractive."
"Then maybe you can see that being cooped up in the same office every day might lead to complications."
"I've thought of that, too," she said, quietly. "Would that be bad?"
"I-I'm not sure." He lapsed into a short silence, during which he struggled to manhandle the Packard into second gear so he could get it up the long hill overlooking Kenton. "Before you agree to go to work for me, I guess there's something I'd better tell you. I'm allergic to beautiful women."
Nola flashed a glance at him. What did he mean? Was he trying to explain why he had avoided her eyes, avoided talking to her, avoided so much as giving her a polite smile after they had been introduced on Missy's veranda? But when that stunning young girl-what was her name -Tangi?-had served the coffee, Rod like all the others seemed to have been mesmerized. He had not reacted then like a man with a grudge against womankind.
"I don't follow you," Nola said. "You don't strike me as one of those misanthropic types. And obviously you aren't dulled to beauty-female beauty, that is."
"Certainly not. That's what I'm telling you. I'm oversensitive to it." There was a curious lack of animation in Rod's voice. "You see, I had a rather shocking experience a couple of years back and it left a mark on me. Dr. Hackthorne deliberately put me on cases rather resembling mine and this was a good cathartic for my emotional block. But I'm not cured by a long shot. I'm like a man afraid of snakes, but so fascinated by them that he exposes himself needlessly."
"You needlessly expose yourself to women?"
"Oh, hell-I didn't mean quite that. All I'm trying to say is that I was hurt by a woman-"
"And you're afraid of being hurt again?"
"That's it, I suppose. Neurotically afraid. How am I going to be able to rule it out of my thought processes? I can't live forever ducking what comes naturally."
"Why don't you just relax and enjoy it?"
He laughed. "That's very uncomplicated advice from a very uncomplicated person. I'll bet you wouldn't know a fixation if you met one face to face."
"You're wrong. I have a terrible one, and I recognize it as such. I had it, rather. Past tense. You see, doctor, it happens that you cured the fixation."
"Me?" His eyebrows lifted.
"That's right. You're a better healer than you know. But not even you can take away the memory and stain of it."
Once more his laugh bubbled. "I can't forget what happened to me. You can't forget what happened to you. Two of a kind, are we?"
"Maybe together we would do better at forgetting. So shall I report for work Monday morning?"
"If there's any work to report for. Dr. Fontenot says he's arranged for me to look at a suite in the Dunphy Building."
She smiled. "That's our one and only skyscraper. Nine stories. When my brother drove me into town to show me around, we ate lunch on the roof."
"You brought sandwiches?"
"Don't be silly! They have a delightful bar and restaurant up there."
This time she laughed as well as he, the mutual guffawing rising blithely above the guttural commotion being kicked up by the Packard's gigantic cylinders.
"Seriously, Nurse Nola. Even in the Dunphy Building with a bar on top-who, at a guess, would come to see me?"
"Oh, psychiatry isn't the forbidding mystery it once was. I'd say every neurotic who hears of you will come. Think how they'll be able to brag to their neighbors and friends."
He decided suddenly that he was certainly feeling a lot better than he usually did. Strangely all loads seemed light. "Let's aim this iron monster at a drive-in and find us a couple of drinks."
She shoved her arm through his. "Dr. Rod, I never was thirstier!"
They drove through Kenton to the outskirts where a garish burst of neon announced Jason's Hop Inn.
Rod bought a bottle of Bradsher's and setups from a girl whose shorts were so short a slice of peach-colored panty peeped out a quarter of an inch. Both shorts and panty were full of tender young flesh and Rod immediately concluded that it was because of her and her colleagues that Jason's establishment was a success. Twenty or thirty other cars were parked around. Some were loaded with youngsters, some with mature couples.
They had slow, delightful highballs, Rod discovering that when alone with Nola, conversation was not something one had to battle to maintain. For the most part talk came easy and when it didn't, the pause was not uncomfortable.
"Ummm," she said, parking her glass on the tray. She looked out at the brilliant orb of the moon hanging over the horizon.
"Something?" he asked.
"I feel so-so-well, full of something. I feel magic. As if I could point a finger and a star would slide down it and... "
"And take a good look at your eyes, get its feelings hurt by the comparison, and scoot for home to sulk and plot."
She wrinkled her nose at him. "My, how bold. Still scared of me?"
"At least I've squelched my urge to run."
"That's good. I, too, have an urge to run but I won't. I'll just walk. To the ladies' room."
She got out before he could help her and walked across the hard surface of the parking lot, her softly rounded figure swaying with natural and seductive grace. He watched, admiring her, until she passed out of sight beyond the cars and shade trees.
Barry Norton, from his hiding place in the shadows of an ornamental cedar, also watched-and gloated.
He watched Nola's swaying hips and recalled how compliant they had been to his manly stimulation, how soft and eager, how resilient under his touch. Sometimes Barry came here and parked the Jeep in an obscure corner, then hid in the shadows to watch the parade of young flesh with drooling avidity. That was what he had been doing tonight For some reason he never considered asking one of the cute young car-hops for a date. His big hope was to catch one of them alone in a dark spot. This was not likely to happen. The girls knew very well that the unlit, isolated margins of the place were to be avoided.
When Barry had caught sight of Nola, he had been overwhelmed by his luck. Why, if he could get hold of her, she would not even fight him. He might have followed her into the women's retreat, except that lights flooded the path. The incongruity of the act the possibility that others might be in there and raise a hue and cry, were not what had deterred him. Just the light. But she had been hidden momentarily in the darkness of a sort of cul-de-sac formed by an L in the conformation of the service building. He slunk around the border of cedars, protected from sight until he was close to the rest-room. There he waited.
Nola emerged after a time, and to avoid the dark patch in the L of the building she swerved. In so doing, she came close to the cedar that concealed Barry.
Silent as a commando, he leaped from the shadows and grabbed Nola. He dragged her behind the tree, slammed her against the board fence that divided the drive-in from the lot next to it.
Nola could not scream for his hand was over her mouth. But she fought and kicked.
Barry's response was to crush her so hard in his arms that she thought her bones would break. And as he hugged her that way, something happened. Those bones of hers melted. Her whole body became wax. She had thought herself cured of him, but his magnetic power and the contact of his frenzied flesh had awakened an answering madness in her.
Feeling her sag against him, and recognizing it for the surrender it was, Barry laughed softly. This was his girl, his creature-just as the other one, Melody, was his creature, he told himself. The images of Nola and Melody ran together in his mind, swam before his eyes as a single being. He took his hand from Nola-Melody's mouth but she uttered no cry. He fussed with his trousers but she did not try to twist away.
In fact, backed up against the fence, she lifted her dress, spread her thighs to receive him. His hands clutched those soft hips. He plunged himself into all that quivering womanhood. A shattering ecstasy detonated within her as Barry convulsed.
No word had passed between them. The spasm past, he let his head fall to her shoulder. But now that the damage was done, she was prey to utter disgust and tried to tear herself away from him. Still she did not scream. She did not want to call public attention to her sin, just wanted to flee it. Barry raised his head and gripped her the tighter. He wanted more of the same from this delicious girl, this Nola-Melody of his.
Meanwhile, Rod in the Packard had grown impatient, then a bit alarmed. Nola had certainly been gone an unconscionably long time. What was keeping her? He decided to take a stroll toward where he had seen her vanish, A few steps beyond, in a dark jag of the building, he halted. It seemed to him that he had heard a noise in the fringe of trees.
So it was that he came on Barry and Nola struggling.
Rod shoved her aside. He smashed a brutal right hook into the stomach of the slighter man, wringing from him a strangled bleat of pain. Then a pile-driver left ripped upward and almost tore off Barry's head. He fell to his knees. Rod seized him, dragged him erect.
"Call help. We'll turn this maniac over to the cops. Did he hurt you, Nola? If he did, I'll-"
"No, Rod. He didn't hurt me. Let him go."
"Let him go! A man attacks you and you tell me to let him go!"
"Please, Rod. I don't want to make a scene." But the young psychiatrist, unable to believe his ears, did not release Barry.
Desperately Nola said, "It wasn't all his fault. I-I encouraged him."
Astounded, Rod let go of Barry. He slunk off silently, hunched over, and disappeared among the trees.
Rod and Nola faced each other. In the darkness, neither could see the other's expression.
"You encouraged him?"
"That's right. And it's not the first time."
"Let's get back to the car," Rod said shortly.
She was expecting Rod to burst into a storm of questions, to scold her, to express loathing or shock or both. But his professional discipline had taken over.
So he led the trembling Nola to the Packard and helped her in. And all he said was, "Want a drink to steady the nerves?"
She replied shakily, "I just want to get out of here."
As soon as he had the Packard out on the road, Nola collapsed into a spell of weeping. Once he was clear of town, Rod stopped the car, caught her by the shoulders and pulled her close to him.
His heart was swelling. "Don't cry, Nola. Don't rack yourself like that-"
"I'm rotten. Don't you understand... I'm rotten, unclean... "
"You're just feeling guilty about something. You don't have to, you know."
"Take me home, please," she sobbed.
"All right." He released her. "But you'll have to show me the way."
She gave him muffled directions. He shifted into first and put the car in motion.
When they reached the fork that turned off to the Pilgrim cottage, Lora dashed out in front of the headlights.
"Missy... Missy!" She ran to the driver's side of the car as Rod braked to a stop. Seeing him, the woman was astonished.
"Thought sure you was Missy... Oh, Miss Nola, thank the Lord. Please ma'am, hurry. I think Miss Melody done cut herself to death."
"This is Dr. Barrett, Lora," snapped Nola. "Get here! hurry!"
Lora leaped over the back door without bothering to open it.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MELODY WALKED up and down in her room most of the afternoon. Her mind was swirling with tattered thought. The harder she tried to still the voice of conscience, the more insistent it became.
She paced without pause, her hands clenched tight and her body taut. "How can I want him?" she whimpered. "How can I? I hate him, I hate what he did to me... " She fell silent. Was that the truth? Oh, it was easy enough to hate her unknown assailant. He had been cruel. He had hurt her. But did she really hate what he had done to her? No... It would be a lie to say so. Her body begged and ached for a repetition of his degrading treatment of her-miserable and horrid slut that she was.
Melody was still pacing when her mother walked in and eyed her stupidly. "You ate no dinner," she said nonsensically.
"I didn't want any dinner."
"I phoned Barry, dear. He said he was coming over. I'm surprised that he isn't here yet."
"Even if he were, I wouldn't see him. Can't you get that through your thick head?"
"Don't talk like that to me. I'm your mother. Anyhow, you know that you and Barry are promised-" Melody stopped pacing at last. She clenched her jaws to keep from screaming. "Didn't what I told you make any impression on you at all?"
Joyce made a shallow gesture with one hand, almost spilling the drink she held in the other. "You tell me lots of things, my dear. Specifically what are you referring to?"
Controlling herself with a titanic effort, Melody said as calmly as she could, "I told you I wouldn't marry him. Didn't you understand me? Then I'll repeat it. I will not marry Barry Norton, promised or not-and not you or anyone else can make me do it."
Joyce took a sip from her glass. "But Melody, dear, you are promised. And I'm sure you will marry him."
Melody stared at her dizzily. How, she asked herself despairingly, do you talk to a woman like that? "Mother, get out of my room."
"Why, dear?"
"Because you're a fool. Apparently you are simply too stupid to understand anything I say."
"Be careful," Joyce said ominously. "I'm still your mother."
"I can hardly believe that."
Joyce swallowed jerkily. "What do you mean?" she blazed.
Melody was taken aback. Her mother was positively infuriated! "I just made a remark. All I meant was that you don't care a fig about what I think, what my wishes are. You persist in sticking to that archaic business of being promised. I dare say Dad and Mr. Norton made that promise as a big joke when they were drunk together-" Joyce was not listening. "Don't ever make remarks again about me not being your mother," she said harshly.
The girl looked at her stonily. "Why are you so upset? Maybe I should investigate. Maybe you really aren't my mother."
The woman went pale. "How would you like to be locked in your room?"
"I'd climb out of the window."
"I'd lock the window."
"What would keep me from unlocking it? I think you're out of your mind, if you want an opinion."
Joyce went purple with fury. Turning, she slammed out of the room.
The girl ran to the bed and fell face downward on the snowy counterpane, her shoulders jerking with sobs. After a time the sobbing ceased. A tremendous shudder tore through her.
She shoved her face into the pillow and beat her head with her fists. Then, moaning, she jumped up and went into her adjoining bathroom. There she slammed the door and locked it. Furiously she stripped off her pajamas and stared at herself in the full-length mirror.
"I don't look like a street-walker," she cried, "but I'm rotten, rotten, and I can't help it... I'm rotten inside and out and someone has been inside me and I want him again... Oh, God!" She sank to her knees, head falling forward, soft hair cascading across her face.
She remained in that position for some time, wild thoughts scattering through her mind like confetti blown from an airpipe. She got up slowly, arms pressed to her head as though to ward off some danger, and walked slowly out into her room. She stood nude in the middle of the floor for a while, not pacing, suddenly not even thinking.
Then something within her seemed to crack. She screamed and ran madly toward the big picture window near her bed. She burst through the glass with a tremendous crash and fell three feet to the ground.
Rod skidded the Packard to a halt. He jumped out of the car, Nola and Lora right behind him. As the three ran up the steps to the veranda, Rod snapped at Lora, "Call Missy Blumendahl's. Dr. Fontenot and Dr. Hackthorne are there."
"Can't," she panted as they hurried into the house. "Sumpn's wrong with the phone. I tried. I brung her back to her room. She's on the bed."
Joyce was in the bedroom running her fingers through her fallen hair and screaming like someone demented. "Shut her up," rasped Rod. He bent over the bleeding girl.
Lora slapped Joyce with such lustiness that the woman tumbled to the rug. But the screaming ceased. "Get towels," Rod snapped at Nola. There were innumerable small, superficial lacerations all over Melody's body. While all were bleeding freely, only one seemed serious-a long, deep gash below the neck. A couple of inches higher and it might have reached the carotid artery.
"Now, I'm going to pull this rip together," Rod told Nola after he swabbed away the blood and made a swift examination. "Get me a sewing needle and any kind of strong thread. Don't waste time trying to sterilize it. She's losing blood fast-" Nola raced off with Lora to find the wanted articles. When they returned, Rod was staring down at Melody. He had realized how beautiful she was. What had driven her to mangle herself? Most women of beauty were careful at all costs not to risk marring it.
He tied off three of the worst bleeders, then brought the edges of the jagged wound together with four mattress sutures that might have been deemed insufficient but were enough to serve his purpose. "All right, now. Dress her in clean pajamas."
"But she'll bleed all over them," bleated Joyce, who had regained her feet.
He looked at her, choking with annoyance. "Too damn bad!" He turned to Nola and Lora. "Clean pajamas, and if you can find a terrycloth robe or some such thing, wrap her in that. Otherwise use an armload of towels. Move!"
* * *
Two hours later, they were sitting in Dr. Fontenot's office at the clinic and drinking strong coffee. Present were Dr. Fontenot, Dr. Hackthorne-complaining bitterly that being an invalid he should not have been dragged out-Dr. Barrett and Missy Blumendahl.
"So go ahead," said Missy, as she sugared her coffee. "Tell it."
"She ran through the window, apparently," said Rod. "Lora stopped us on the road. I guess she was looking for anyone to stop. Their telephone isn't working. Dr. Fontenot, what was her blood pressure?"
"One hundred over sixty-five. I've started five percent glucose. I don't think she'll need a transfusion." He looked at Rod a little apologetically. "I removed your bleeder sutures. I doubted that they were sterile."
Rod chuckled. "Nothing was sterile. Right then I wasn't sure how much blood she had lost, and she looked about ready to go bad on me. I was in a hurry, I'll tell you."
"Where's Joyce?" queried Missy, poking her lips into a pout.
"Oh, her... " Rod hesitated.
"Hah, of course. Too drunk to make it here."
"Well, she did seem a little unsteady. Frankly she was one hell of a nuisance. She had a really colorful fit of hysterics and Lora slapped her hard enough to knock her down."
Missy brayed with laughter. "I guess Lora has been wantin' to do that for a long time. And where, may I ask, is Nola? I entrusted you to her care, Rod, remember?"
Dr. Fontenot said, "She's with the patient, of course. She'll remain the rest of the night."
Dr. Hackthorne fidgeted, searching for a comfortable position. "I never saw two gals better off in the looks department. Any luck with Nola?"
"Yes, sir," replied Rod. "She's agreed to be my office nurse. But I'm not sure it's a good idea."
"Why isn't it?" Missy fiercely blasted.
Rod shrugged. "You know why. I'm gun shy. Think what working with her day in and day out will mean." He did not mention that the incident in the drive-in had given him much food for thought.
Missy snorted. "I've got another thought for you. Suppose you didn't have her there day in and day out. How long do you think a filly with a shape like hers will go unroped? Unless you get your lasso around her, you'll lose the finest piece of woman-flesh you ever saw in your life."
He flushed. "What makes you think she would welcome the rope? I see no evidence that she finds me especially attractive." He was thinking again of that strange occurrence in the drive-in-the man there, and Nola's blurted confession that she had encouraged him. Who the hell was that man, anyway?
"Listen," persisted Missy, "I was watching when she first glanced at you, Rod. I'm telling you, she went in right up to the hairline."
Dr. Fontenot gave a dry giggle, but obviously he felt it was time to change the subject. "Rod," he said, "I've been doing what I can to help Melody Flemming. Now it's time a psychiatrist stuck his oar in, don't you think? I mean, when a young girl gashes herself by jumping through a window... "
A short discussion followed about what might have caused Melody to take the plunge. Then everyone eyed Rod expectantly.
"Dr. Hackthorne," asked Rod, "why don't you look in on her?"
"I'm an ill man," snapped Hackthorne bad-temperedly. "Besides, this is your bailiwick. I've wet-nursed you for the last time. The way to swim is to jump into the water."
Rod wiped wet palms on his pants. He asked nervously, "Has she regained consciousness, Dr. Fontenot?"
"She came out of the anesthetic about twenty minutes ago."
"She's been started on antibiotics?"
"I've given her trisulfapyrimidine, along with tetracycline."
"And her respiration-?"
"Oh, get to your patient," Hackthorne interrupted sourly. "As for me, I know I'LL never make it but I'd like to try and get back to my bed. What do you say, Missy?"
"Let's go," she said, rising. "By the way, I had my pick-up brought here. When you're finished, Rod, you can drive home in it."
Rod nodded. "You're wonderfully thoughtful, Missy."
"Lay off the conversation, will you?" pleaded Hackthorne. "I'm suffering. I'm twice as sick as that girl in there."
"Oh, quit complaining," scolded Dr. Fontenot. "I'll give you the results of your dry readings tomorrow, but I can assure you that nothing is wrong. You're just neurotic."
Helped by Missy, the aching psychiatrist succeeded in getting to his feet. "Good night then, you shriveled little Gallic worm."
"Good night you head-shrinking hypochondriac," retorted Fontenot cheerfully.
CHAPTER TWELVE
WHEN ROD WALKED into Melody's room at the clinic, she was sleeping. Her shiny hair was spread upon the pillow fanwise, her lovely face was in complete repose. But occasionally, as he watched, one cheek or the other would twitch and once her lip lifted, then relaxed.
He turned to Nola, who was sitting on a metal chair near the bed. "How is she?"
"Coming along well, I think."
Rod took Melody's pulse routinely, saw that the glucose bottle was nearly empty. "We might as well take down this infusion set. She won't need it any more. Do you have a swab and some alcohol?"
"Yes." She rose and produced the requested articles. He took the tape from the infusion needle, pressed a finger firmly over the puncture and withdrew the needle with a swift, sure movement. He pressed the pledget of cotton over the site. "Tape this down securely, will you, Nola? Sometimes we get a hemotoma from a needle this large."
All Rod's nervousness and hesitation had vanished. The small surgical attentions he was obliged to give Melody seemed to have restored his aplomb. He was completely the professional now, alertly watching Nola deftly execute his command.
The nurse was hardly finished when Melody's eyes opened. She looked about muzzily.
"Go get yourself some coffee, Nola," advised Dr. Barrett softly.
"I'll be just down the hall if you need me. At the nurse's desk," she replied.
Quietly she left the doctor alone with his patient.
Rod stood at the foot of the bed and watched the girl's pansy-soft eyes as they wandered over the room, watched as a frown creased her brow. Then Melody looked at him, and licked dry lips.
"Like some water?"
"Please. Where am I?"
He gave her the water first and she drank thirstily.
"You're in the Fontenot Clinic in Kenton. How good is your memory?"
"Not too good, I'm afraid." The frown stayed put. "Why am I here? And who are you?"
"Well, it seems you ran through a window of your room. You're sort of cut up. I'm Dr. Barrett."
The frown deepened. "I ran through a window!"
"So we think. You were found beneath it. The window was shattered. You don't remember?"
"No."
"How far back tonight do you remember?"
"Well, I remember waking up a while ago in this room. But I felt weak and dizzy. I guess I fell asleep again-say, what time is it?"
"Nearly two in the morning. Do you remember anything at all about the evening just past?"
She concentrated, knitting her brows. "I'm drawing a blank. Can you give me a clue? Who brought me here?"
"Miss Pilgrim and myself. I was taking her home. We'd been to Kenton in Missy's car, riding around and-uh -discussing business. You see, she's to be my office nurse. My name is Rodney Barrett and I've just come to Kenton. I expect to practice here." Rod was deliberately loquacious, trying to establish a certain familiarity between his patient and himself-inviting her confidences, so to speak.
Her eyes found his. "Doctor, welcome to Kenton. I hope you make out well. I'm glad you were here to help me."
He smiled. "Well, thank you. I-" He stopped. A flash of pain had crossed the girl's features.
"Oh, yes," she said. "I'm beginning to remember. My mother and I had a fearful row about... " Her lips came down tight.
Rod moved to her, sat on the side of the bed and took her hand.
"I'm going to call you Melody, and I'm going to ask you not to wall yourself away from me. Obviously, something has been giving you a bad time. Talking it out often helps." He gave her the full benefit of his warm, generous smile. "And you can tell me anything. I'm the most understanding guy you're likely ever to run into!"
Her mind was gradually becoming clearer. She looked into his eyes deeply, trying to find something there. And apparently she did find it. Yes, the doctor was understanding. And kind. A nice person, she thought. Suddenly a hard lump seemed to melt inside her. Rolling to her side, she began to cry bitterly, desperately. The bulky surgical dressing below her neck and the pain of the wound, made her move to her back again. Her breasts poked high against the material of her pajamas. It was opaque but soft and clinging. Her whole bosom heaved as she sobbed and wailed.
He let her cry it out, even at the risk of starting the wound to bleeding. When she began to calm, he leaned over, plucked tissues from a box on the table, held them against her nose. "Blow."
Dutifully she blew, and he performed the rest of the job with a gentleness that made her heart ache fiercely. His attitude completely disarmed her. He was taking possession of her smoothly, without visible effort. Already she felt safe and comfortable with him. He had mentioned talking. Well, never had she wanted to talk more. But the things she wanted to talk about, she told herself, were filthy, unmentionable.
"You say you had a row with your mother?" he prompted.
"Yes. About Barry Norton."
"Norton?" It was Rod's turn to frown. Wasn't that the fellow that Hackthorne had spoken of, the one Missy suspected of criminal rape? "Who is he?" Rod asked carefully. "A friend of yours?"
"He's the man I'm supposed to be engaged to. I want to break it off. My mother doesn't want me to-so we had this awful quarrel about-"
"And that's why you walked through your window?"
"Oh, no!"
"You mean it was an accident? You tripped or something, and fell through the glass?"
The frown returned to her face. "No. It was not an accident. I deliberately threw myself through it."
"But why, Melody? Why?"
She hesitated. "I know that people can tell a doctor what they would not tell anyone else. Still-you won't be shocked?"
"Nothing shocks me," he said soberly and not quite truthfully, but he needed the effect. "As I remarked before, you can tell me anything. Anything and everything. When a patient does that, often I can be of help."
"You sound like a psychiatrist, Dr. Barrett."
"That's exactly what I am."
She turned her face away. "That makes it harder. You'll come up with all sorts of bizarre reasons for my actions."
"I think you're jumping the gun, Melody. You have no idea what I'll find. I'm sure I don't. How much do you know about psychiatrists? You're not full of that TV and press nonsense, are you? Now, don't let's you and me get ahead of ourselves and make snap judgments. All I'm asking is that you confide in me a little. Tell me why, for instance, you tangled with all that glass?"
Now her need to unburden herself, carefully nurtured by Rod, overcame all defenses and hesitations, all shame. She smiled tremulously. "All right, doctor. I'll try to explain. You know, I suppose, that I-that I-"
"Yes?"
"That a few days ago I was raped. Beaten and raped!" She paused, waiting to see how he would take that statement.
"Such things do sometimes happen to girls," he remarked matter-of-factly. Dr. Fontenot, Dr. Hackthorne and Missy Blumendahl had been debating the crime in Rod's presence only half an hour before. They had seen fit to acquaint him with the matter because they had thought it might have some bearing on why Melody had made her bloody plunge. "Is that what you feared might shock me?"
"No, not that, doctor. Not the fact that I was raped and beaten." She gripped the covers with slender white fingers. "The thing is, I want it to happen again!"
Carefully he battled for his composure. Her admission had rocked him, all right. But he had to preserve the role of the understanding, shockproof confidant. He nodded sympathetically and inquired in ordinary tones, "The beating, too?"
"If that's a part of the big thing. I want that man to do the same things again, doctor. I want it so badly I'm sick. Now tell me, can a girl who has any decency, who is at all normal want something as sordid as rape? Of course not! So I'm indecent, dirty and indecent. And furthermore, I'm abnormal!"
"And that's why you took a dive through the window?"
"Yes. I was in despair, doctor. I still am in despair. Right now, as I talk to you, I feel that same impulse to punish myself, maybe kill myself. I'm rotten and dirty and sick-"
"Hey, take it easy. We don't want the bleeding to start again. We went to lots of trouble to stop it." Rod rose. "Gal, you do need talking to! Please believe me-nothing whatever is wrong with you, except a few cuts."
Melody was gaping at him.
"But you've had enough of me for now," Rod continued. "Get some rest. Don't worry, I'll be back and explain it all to you."
And he walked out of the room.
* * *
He returned early in the afternoon, right after Melody had been given a light luncheon. She had slept rather well, thanks to sedatives prescribed by Dr. Fontenot. Some of the sparkle was back in her eye. Apart from the dressings and tape covering the lacerations on her body, she hardly looked like an invalid.
She greeted Rod warmly. He pulled a chair close to the bed and got right down to business.
"Melody," he began, "you've been quite frank with me so far. Now, I want you to continue to be frank."
"I'll try," she promised.
"Fine. Then tell me this. Before the rape incident, did you ever really want a man? Did you ever actually crave sex?"
She averted her eyes. "Yes."
"When?"
"When I did some kissing and petting with Barry. It... it always seemed to set me on fire."
"Ah," said Rod. "A very normal reaction, I assure you. It's definite proof that you're healthy."
"What do you mean, doctor?"
"I mean that sexual desire is to be expected of any full-blooded, healthy woman when she sustains physical contact with a male who wants her." Rod paused, pursed his lips. Then he said, "Next question. When you found yourself craving sex, did you ever yield to temptation and go the distance?"
"No. Not voluntarily."
"Why not?"
"Because I-I considered myself decent. I considered sex before marriage immoral, not for nice girls." She reflected a moment. "Of course, there was that afternoon before I was... before it happened."
"Tell me about it."
"You see, Barry and I have been 'promised' since childhood. Naturally, over the years, that understanding resulted in some pretty warm situations. I guess you could say that I've allowed Barry some pretty shocking liberties-"
"Nothing can shock me, remember?"
"Maybe not, doctor. But they sure would shock other people. You know how it is. You don't start off with sex in mind. It just sort of creeps up on you. Well, usually I was on top of these scenes, and when danger approached I was able to wriggle away from it. But that day, somehow, things were different. We were in the woods. It was warm and pleasant. He had taken the usual liberties I spoke of, and all of a sudden I wasn't me any more. I seemed to lose control of myself. Before I knew it, he was taking off my briefs and I was helping him. It almost happened." She stopped, breathing hard as she remembered.
"Almost?"
"It was close, very close."
"How close?"
Her lips compressed. "Penetration."
"Pain?"
"Yes. Sudden, sharp pain. It lasted only a second or two-but it was enough to restore me to my senses. I tore away from him."
Rod nodded. He could visualize the incident clearly. "And what," he asked, "was your reaction after you got home and thought it over?"
"You say I should be frank. All right, doctor. Then I must tell you that I wished I hadn't jerked away. Rather, I wished he hadn't let me-had forced me to let him finish the job."
"This wish, I venture to guess, was detestable to you. You told yourself it was not the wish a nice girl should have."
"That's it, exactly. But by nightfall I was in a fever, doctor. That-that penetration-it had aroused me beyond bearing. It wasn't that I wanted Barry-I had already decided he wasn't for me. What I wanted was another man-any man." Melody looked at Rod pleadingly. "Do you understand? I was on fire. So I went out into that storm naked and let the storm have my body. I guess I was trying to cool myself, or maybe symbolically fulfill myself or something. Or maybe I was hoping, deep inside myself, that someone would come on me nude-would be incited to rape me-" Rod said nothing, knowing she had not finished her recital. As he anticipated, she waited only a moment before plunging on.
"And that's what actually did happen, doctor. Someone saw me there, all naked like that. He sneaked up behind me and struck me. I didn't actually lose consciousness. Down in all that grass and water, I had a-a-"
"A consummation?" Rod supplied.
"Yes. A wild, marvelous consummation. Then he took me to the barn and tied me. It started all over again, and I had another consummation equally marvelous. Oh, I'm an animal. A dirty animal!"
He smiled and squeezed her hand. "Melody, you're just a human being, with the good, healthy desires of a human being. That little episode with Barry Norton in the woods was hardly satisfactory, was it?"
"Oh, no. It wasn't satisfactory at all! But it certainly did light the fire."
"Correct. And later, when the fire was burning hottest and you were most vulnerable, you were taken pirate fashion. That time you got lots of satisfaction. Right?"
She was blushing. "You have no idea how right."
"Very well." He shrugged. "So the only complete, successful sex in your life, as far as your body was concerned, occurred when you were raped and beaten. Therefore you now associate successful sex with raping and beating. And you hate yourself, because you think that you're longing for that raping and beating." He laughed. "But you're not. You're just longing for the successful sex. Can you see that?"
Her mouth was open. "You mean?"
"Exactly," said Rod. "You've confused the objective of your longing with the means of attaining that objective. There are many means other than rape. Try one of the others. You might like it." He cocked a quizzical eyebrow at her.
"Oh, doctor. I've been a complete fool!"
"That's for sure," he agreed. "And not only because you didn't realize that being loved in one of the usual ways might give you even more satisfaction than being raped."
She sucked in a quick breath. "What else did I do wrong?"
He leveled a stern finger at her. "You chose to regard perfectly normal, perfectly healthy sexual desire as something abnormal, sick!" He shook the finger in mock severity. "Young lady, I thought such thinking went out with the dark ages."
"I was raised to think that way." Melody frowned. "My mother was always telling me sex was wicked. I know that as much as she could, she avoided going to bed with my father. She let him find it elsewhere and welcome."
"Never mind the past. Let's concern ourselves with the present-and, of course, the future. Do you understand what I've been trying to tell you?"
Her smile was warm. "I understand so well, I'm a little scared. I think that for the first time I see myself as I really am." Her face pinked. "I have healthy desires, not sick ones-but maybe too much of them. In other words, I'm a well-endowed girl in a loose sort of way." She lifted her eyes to his. "Too much of a good thing, you might say. Doctor, how can I cope with it?"
"Why not relax and enjoy it?" he suggested, quoting Nola. "Sort of do what comes naturally."
"But what about morals?"
"Oh, I leave those to the individual patient. It's only when one of them tries to foist his own particular moral values on others that I interfere." This time Rod was echoing not Nola but Dr. Hackthorne. "Just remember-stop telling yourself you're a bad girl. You're not a bad girl. You're simply a normally warm-blooded girl who has a normal and therefore demanding body."
"Again I ask," she said, averting her eyes, "what will I do about that?" Her cheeks were still pink.
"Don't you have friends? Male ones? I should think you'd have to fend them off by the dozen."
"No! That's the trouble. With Barry always around, the others gave up long ago." She shivered. "Anyway, I just wouldn't know how to go about it. Man-chasing, I mean."
He looked at her closely. "You won't have to chase anybody. You'll see. Soon enough, someone will be chasing you."
"But all these cuts," she said sadly. "I won't be attractive any more. I'll be scarred."
"Nonsense," Rod said. "Dr. Fontenot took all precautions. Most of the lacerations are superficial and will heal invisibly. Even the big wound there-" he pointed above her breast-"won't leave more than a trace of scar tissue. And even that will become virtually undetectable as time passes."
There was a long silence as doctor and patient regarded each other.
"You know," Melody said, "you're absolutely wonderful. You'll be a great success here, I'm certain. Just by talking to me, you've completely relieved my mind, made a new person out of me. You've pulled me out of despair, rescued me from-from insanity!"
"Oh, I wouldn't put it that strongly."
"Thank you. Thank you, doctor." In an understandable excess of gratitude, she seized his hand and kissed it. "Thank you!"
Thoroughly embarrassed, Rod retrieved his hand.
"I've got to be going," he said. "I'll drop in tomorrow and see how you're doing."
"I'll be doing fine," Melody promised.
* * *
Three days later, accompanied by Nola, Rod drove Melody home in Missy's pickup.
All during the drive, Melody sat relaxed and cheerful. In spirit, she was much removed from the girl whose frenzy and despair had made her charge a glazed window.
Besides, Melody had bethought herself of the fact that she did indeed have an admirer-a man, other than Barry Norton, who was both susceptible to her and accessible. Bridge Pilgrim.
Not once had he made the slightest effort to press his case. But she had seen more than once the stricken look on his face, although she had forced herself to ignore it. After all, he was of a somewhat older generation. She had blamed his obvious entrancement on the curves she didn't mind displaying and a man's normal reaction to them. But on thinking it out, she convinced herself she had divined something more. To picture the man, now, made her heart beat faster.
As the car carried her along, in her mind's eye she could see the proud way that Bridge carried his head, the quiet regularity of his features, the firm set of his lips, and the well-groomed softness of his dark hair, the swing of his big shoulders. He was always scrupulously clean, she had noticed. He had soft, kind eyes and Melody knew that she was in need of kindness.
Yes, Bridge was something to look forward to. Bridge was a man who would certainly bear a little investigation on her part...
Doctor and nurse deposited Melody at the house, saw her comfortably in bed. Rod ordered her to stay there for a few days to give the large wound a chance to heal thoroughly. He gave Lora careful instructions, and Nola promised to look in from time to time.
Then the two drove toward the Pilgrim cottage, Nola saying gravely, "She's a lovely girl, Rod. Will she be all right now?"
"All those cuts and lacerations will heal nicely, I think. As for the rest, we'll have to see."
"She seems fine to me. Not at all mixed up any more. I'd say you did a superlative job on her."
"Thanks. All I did was spread things out and place them in order, something she couldn't do for herself."
"Nor can I," Nola told him. She sighed heavily.
Rod glanced at her. "What do you mean?"
"I hate myself, just as she hated herself. And for much the same reasons."
Rod's response was to stop the truck. He turned on the seat and squarely faced Nola.
"What do you know of Melody's reasons? For that matter, how did you know she was mixed up?"
"I didn't eavesdrop, doctor," Nola replied with spirit. "Melody had a great lift in spirits after that second time you spoke to her. Whenever I happened to be in her room, she bubbled over, insisted on telling me all about it. She seemed to take quite a shine to me, wanted me to know everything-including the way you went about curing her." Nola bit her hp. "I'm jealous. When are you going to start curing me?"
"Of what, Nola? From the first, I've thought of you as thoroughly adjusted, as free of neurosis as any intelligent and sensitive person can be-"
"Oh, hell," Nola answered inelegantly. "You know perfectly well something is wrong, or at least mighty peculiar. You caught me practically with my pants down at that drive-in booze parlor."
Rod was delighted that she had at last brought up the subject. He had had all he could do, since that evening, to restrain himself from asking who the man was, how she felt about him, why she had chosen that particular time and place to yield to him.
"I suppose," he said carefully, "that bit of passion is what you think you hate yourself for."
"You bet, doctor. The way Melody hated herself for her passion. And suppose I told you that her passion, and mine, was serviced by exactly the same man?"
"What? Barry Norton? You must be joking!"
"I," insisted Nola, "never was more serious."
Stunned, Rod automatically started up the truck. In dazed silence he drove it a few hundred yards to the cottage, stopped it again.
She made no move to get out.
Rod cleared his throat. "Would you-ah-would you like to tell me about it?"
"Of course I would! Why do you think I brought it up? I was hesitant about going into it with you before- but after that smooth snow-job you did on Melody, I changed my mind." Her show of lightness, of bravado, suddenly deserted her. Trembling, she fell against him. "You must help me, Rod. I'm weak. Horribly weak. I can't withstand that man. There's something about him that simply hypnotizes me. I lose my will. He puts his arms around me and all I want is to-to yield to him-"
"Sounds as if you might love him."
"Oh, no, Rod! Believe me, I detest him."
His brow wrinkled, Rod was trying to put two and two together. "Did he force you?"
"No. He didn't have to." She told him about Barry picking her up at the train station, about what had happened at his camp. She told about Barry coming to the cottage, how on that occasion she had again yielded.
"I didn't know I was like that." She lifted big eyes swimming in tears. "When I met you, Rod, something miraculous happened. I felt that Barry suddenly had lost all his fascination for me. I don't know how to explain but you seemed to demolish him. Remember? I mentioned to you that you had saved me." Nola shuddered. "But I guess I was wrong. When he waylaid me in the drive-in, I let him take me once more. It gave me enormous physical relief. Now hate me."
She turned and started to open the door, but he pulled her back.
"Stay here, Nola. And get it out of your mind that I could hate you."
She turned and rested her face in the curve of his neck.
"No. Sit up, Nola. Let me tell you about you."
She stiffened, obediently raised her head.
"You're quite right," he said. "In my opinion, your case truly does parallel Melody's. Now, answer me truthfully... Are you a virgin?"
"Not exactly," she answered slowly. "Not technically-"
"What does that mean? That you never had an orgasm?"
"Yes." Nola's face was flaming. "That is, I never had one until Barry came along-"
"Why not? Anything wrong with you?"
"I should say not!" Nola flared. "I have all the natural desires and feelings, and in ample quantities. I enjoy being with men, and they enjoy being with me. But-"
"Yes?"
"You see, I was never promiscuous. I never went to bed with a man simply to cater to my own wicked feelings. There was always some other reason. For instance, after the senior prom at high school, a couple of the boys fed me drinks and then took advantage of me."
"Let's skip that," growled Rod.
"Then I felt sorry, one day, for a soldier about to leave for Vietnam. And just before I came here, there was another boy. In the hospital. Headed for sure death. I pitied him, and so I let him use me."
"Noble of you," snapped Rod. "But you didn't expect any fulfillment for yourself from episodes like those, did you?"
The tears welled up. "Don't be angry with me, Rod."
"Oh, I'm not. A psychiatrist is not allowed to be angered by what he hears." He took a deep breath. "Nola, it's even more obvious, now, that you've been in a state resembling Melody's. The adventurous new surroundings, your own long-denied passions, the animal magnetism Barry Norton seems to have-these combined to make you yield to him the first time. Besides, you had no choice. If you had not surrendered, he would have taken you anyway. But the big point is that your body responded nobly, as it should have. So, like Melody, you associated Barry with successful sex. After that, you could not help yielding to him again. Perfectly natural."
"Is it? Then how am I ever to be free of him?"
"By accepting the truth of what I'm going to tell you," Rod stated with professional firmness. "If you don't throw yourself away on cripples or out of pity, you'll find yourself responding as successfully to other men as you did to Barry Norton. And if you love one of those men, your response will be even more successful- much more so."
"Yes, doctor," Nola said solemnly. "And are you the man I love?"
Rod, although a trained psychiatrist, was so taken aback that for several moments he could not speak.
At last he managed to sputter, "What-what makes you ask that?"
"Are you forgetting that when I first saw you, you made me feel that Barry's power over me was broken? True, I had a relapse at the drive-in. But now, while I'm with you, that same feeling comes over me. You destroy Barry for me. You destroy all men for me!"
She seemed so wrought up that involuntarily Rod reached out and stroked her arm.
But touching her, he instantly realized, had been a mistake. The smooth skin, the pliant flesh, kindled a wild flame in him. Powerless to stop himself, he pulled her into his arms-a warm, vibrant woman, so sweet-smelling and soft and quiescent. The suppressed hungers of months and years burst free. His lips made a feast of hers, his hands clutched and probed.
Her surprised voice stopped him. "No!"
In stupefaction, he lifted his head and saw what he had done. Her thighs were bared almost to the waist, and one of his hands was still in place. He started to withdraw it, but she pushed it back. "It's all right, Rod. I don't really want you to stop. I just feel that this isn't exactly the best place... right in the bungalow driveway... "
But the spell had been broken. Rod released her, moved away from her. What, he asked himself, was he getting himself into? She was talking about love. But he feared to entrust himself to a woman. He feared the prospect of permanent alliance. He feared Nola herself. Suppose he did allow himself to fall in love with her? And suppose that then, maybe in one of her pitying moods, she gave herself to some soldier or some suffering boy-or to some beast like Barry Norton.
Rod sat at the wheel until he thought he could speak without his voice breaking.
"Well, I guess you'd better go in, Nola. And don't worry about Barry. My feeling is that you're cured of him."
"Oh, Rod. What's going to happen to us?"
He sighed. "Let's make a pact."
"Like what?"
"Let's agree to work together, play together, learn about each other-and see what happens. I think it's too soon for weighty commitments, don't you?"
She hesitated. "Logically, yes. Emotionally, no." Smiling, impulsively she moved closer and kissed him.
"I've already arranged about the office," he said. "They're redecorating it now. I'll let you know when we're ready for business."
"Good night." Her voice was a caress and a benediction. She got out of the truck.
Rod ate dinner in town, then let himself into his new quarters. The smell of fresh paint all but suffocated him; nevertheless, he remained at his newly acquired desk for hours-writing up Melody's case, and thinking, thinking...
Fahenstock was dark when at last he arrived there. Tangi was up, however, waiting to let him in.
"Can I get you something to eat? A drink?"
"Thanks, no, Tangi. I'm bushed."
"That's a shame," she said, eyeing him boldly.
Catching her meaning, he blushed. She smiled, then led the way up the stairs. There one dim light was burning, revealing to him the seductive roll of her lush bottom. There was a lot of Tangi, but all of it was of superb quality. She was wearing a nylon robe that hugged her with such mouth-watering exactitude that she could not have hidden a mole.
She opened his door, switched on the lights. It was then that her sultry beauty stabbed him fatally.
Her eyes were dark, her lashes long and sweeping. Her chiseled lips twitched with amusement as she viewed his expression.
"Yes, I am tempting, aren't I? And tempted, too," she said. "It's not often that a man so young and good-looking sleeps right here in this house-"
"My God! Are you always so direct, Tangi?"
She laughed. "I think I say things like that because I like to shock people."
Staring, he tried to swallow the thick lump in his throat. This girl was beauty itself, classic beauty. Why, then, was he not afraid of her? Where were the neurotic caution and dread that female loveliness usually loosed in him. The hot, flooding desire that had been awakened by Nola now was evoked irresistibly by the magnificent Tangi. She swayed closer to him and bathed him in the warm glow of her eyes.
"Sit down on the bed. You're tired, aren't you?"
He kicked off his shoes, climbed up on the high bed.
She joined him. "Lie back." He did as instructed, and deftly she undressed him. "Comfortable?"
"Never more so," he responded huskily. Tautly he sat up, his arm going around her.
Her creamy lips touched his briefly. Her stunning breasts, now exposed, kissed his chest. Then, above the thunder in his ears, he heard her melodious laughter.
"I wouldn't want to exhaust you," she said. "So just you stretch out. Lie there. I'll take care of everything."
And she did.
Rod's apparatus was already rigid with need but she devoted herself to it lovingly. Her palms fondled and stroked, her fingertips teased. "Oh, it's cute," she whispered, and kissed it. At the same time he was gorging himself on those marvelous breasts, filling his hands with them, hefting and testing them, ravenously tonguing the winking coral nipples. As the flames leaped in him, he started to roll her to her back, meaning to pounce on her.
She slid out of his grasp, pushed him down. "Tired man, let me do it. You won't even raise a sweat." She crossed one impossibly long and shapely leg over him, raised her whole delightful torso-and with a flick of her bottom came down on him, impaling her hot, moist cleft on his distended instrument of love. Squeezing it with her thighs to give maximum pleasure as well as receive it, she did a slow grind like a burlesque shipper. Rod yelped for joy. She did a bump or two. He groaned. Then she went into a slow oscillation like a belly dancer in a frenzy.
It was too much for Rod. Grasping her buttocks, he drove upward. She fell forward, kissing, her tongue slithering over his lips, as her pungent vulva lifted, lowered agonizingly, lifted, lowered...
Together they stiffened in a mighty burst of bliss, milks spurting, nerves shattering like glass, bodies racked by wave upon wave of sharpest rapture.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
WHEN BARRY NORTON fled the drive-in, he had a bad bruise on the jaw where Rodney Barrett had struck him Otherwise he was intact. Physically, that is. Mentally he was in a boil of sickly emotion. He simmered down considerably, however, after he had slunk back to his car. During the drive home, his mind was rather a blank. All he wanted to do was sleep.
Reaching the Gothic horror where he lived with his strange drunken parents, he marched straight to his room. But once again he found himself restless. The diseased thoughts and maunderings boiled up again, and after a while he was so disturbed that he was shaking.
He went into a bathroom, tore off his clothing. For a long time he lay in a tub of very hot water. At last the shakes subsided. He left the tub and, without bothering to dry himself, flung himself on his bed. He was asleep instantly.
Next morning he could not get out of bed. He bleated for his mother, who came and hovered for a while. He cursed her, finally, with such shrinking violence that she tottered away to drink some coffee laced richly with bourbon.
For some reason his whole body was aching.
It was midday before he could drag himself from the bed down to the kitchen. He sat at a table not far from the big range and ate with his usual slow preoccupation. The help discreetly found business elsewhere, a fact that gradually reacted on him. They were off in some dark corner, he decided, plotting. He wiped his mouth on his wrist, got up and slunk into the darkened hall. He spent the rest of the afternoon spying on the activities of the servants and his mother.
The next several days Barry passed in similar fashion, nursing his bruise and his maniacal ego. Then came the early evening when the phone rang and rang. Realizing that no one was going to answer it, he did so himself. He was relieved to hear Joyce's voice. He liked Joyce Flemming. She liked him. She supported him and encouraged the romance between him and Melody. He talked with Joyce in low tones for quite a while. Then he hung up and stood rigidly still for a full fifteen minutes, his eyes staring unblinking at the wall, the twitchy half-smile jerking his lips occasionally.
Then he went soundlessly upstairs to his studio. Locking its door behind him, he took out all his paintings. He studied them with a careful eye. The picture of the rape of Melody was well set, thoroughly dry now. He was quite satisfied with it. It was not as satisfactory, though, as the portrait of his mother or the depiction of the Delery girl. Recalling her, he scowled. What a wonderful evening that had been. So wonderful that it frightened him to think of it. If they ever found out who did those things to the girl, it would mean the end of him and he knew it. The part of his brain devoted to animal cunning never ceased to function, although at times it suffered a short circuit enabling him to ignore it temporarily.
He studied the ghastly oil painting some more. A masterpiece, he assured himself. But there was something stark and pale about the Delery girl, he decided, as though she'd never had any blood in her body. After all, paint was no more than paint even when red. The reddest paint had little more richness than the pale olive colors. Blood, though. Blood might supply the proper red, thought Barry. An opaque mist seemed to fall over his eyes.
He put away his treasures and sat in the gloom. He was trying to decide what to do. On the telephone, Joyce had told him of Melody's accident, had suggested with rhinocerine subtlety that he come visiting. Melody would have to receive him. Her scratches were just about healed up but she was still confined to her room.
Something was telling Barry not to go. He wanted to see Melody and repeat the wild night of the thunderstorm. But that cunning of his was holding him back. He tried to overcome it by thinking of blood. Rich red blood...
* * *
Rod Barrett, still using Missy's truck, had driven by early that morning to pick up Nola Pilgrim. Since neither of them was in a hurry, they tarried long enough to join Bridge in a second cup of coffee.
"Seen Melody yet?" he asked Bridge.
"No. Been pretty busy these last few days. And nights I'm too worn out to go calling."
They both looked at him skeptically. Bridge was a man as strong as a horse, strictly not the type to tire.
"I get up so early," he explained lamely. "This is my second time around for coffee, you know. I always like to start things, then come back for a second coffee and breakfast."
"Then later on he takes another coffee break," Nola said to Rod. She looked crisp and efficient in her trim white uniform. She managed to look ravishing at the same time, the well-cut nylon clinging to her smooth curves.
Nola rose and donned her nurse's cape. Rod got up, too. Looking Bridge straight in the eye, he said, "Go see her, Bridge. I'm sure she'd welcome it."
Bridge blushed pink and stared into his coffee.
As they tooled along the road to Kenton, Rod remarked, "Is your brother shy of women or something?"
"Oh, no," Nola assured him. "Back home he always had lots of dates and things. He's a marvelous dancer, you know."
"Then what's with him?"
"He has an idea the Flemmings, mother and daughter, are too class-conscious for his taste. Undemocratic. They look at him, he says, as if he were a farm implement, not a man."
"That might be true of the mother," Rod protested, "but Melody-why she's as warm and friendly and-well, democratic-as a girl can possibly be."
"I know," Nola agreed. "But a girl raised on a big, wealthy plantation... Maybe, without knowing it, she's in the habit of taking the help for granted."
Rod turned on the seat and looked at her. "I'll never take my help for granted."
"I should hope not! If you do, I'll quit."
They both laughed. They were in a cheerful mood. He was driving her to town to show her his new office space. The painting and finishing had been completed on schedule and both doctor and nurse were elated by the prospect of soon being able to get to work.
In town, he took her directly to the Dunphy Building. The self-service elevator lifted them to the ninth floor. That was high enough to feel, as they looked through the windows, that they were soaring above the countryside.
Nola clapped her hands in delight. "Oh, it's a beautiful view. And lots of light. I'm glad we're so high."
"I wanted to be as near as I could to that bar and grill overhead," he joked. "Of course, this would be practically underground at MacDonald General. That place sticks up thirty-two stories."
The suite consisted of a tiny foyer, a large outer room, a smaller inner room, a bathroom and an alcove that could serve as laboratory and darkroom. The only furniture visible was the broad desk and matching swivel chair in the inner office.
Rod strode about, making a minute examination of the suite. He had chosen it, actually, on the advice of Dr. Fontenot. But it was plain many things would be needed to which that gentleman had given no thought.
Rod prowled back and forth, giving terse orders while Nola took notes. He had her list supplies, apparatus, tools, cabinets, and told her where he wanted them placed. "And don't forget a typewriter. Might as well get an electric one," he finished.
"Gosh, Rod! Do you have money enough for all that?"
"Why? Gonna offer to lend me some?"
"Not me. I don't have a penny. But Bridge has managed to put a few dollars away. If I asked him to, I'm sure he would lend you what you needed."
He pulled her close and kissed her. "Thanks, Nola. You're a darling. But for several years I was a hardworking general practitioner, you see, before I decided to specialize in psychiatry. I made some money and saved quite a bit of it."
Her smile was bright. "Good. Then all that remains is for you to pick out a rug and some furniture."
"Not on your life. That's your job. Your salary starts as of today, and as of tomorrow you'll have to start earning it. By the way, I suppose you've heard that Missy is giving what she calls a 'fang-dang' next week. I gather a fang-dang is some sort of hootenanny without the folk music or the beatniks."
"Oh, don't fool yourself. They don't use Yankee terms like beatniks or hipsters down here-but I hear that for eccentrics, this county ranks with any. And my guess is that every one of them will be on hand."
"Yes... but will you?"
"Wouldn't miss it for the world, if I'm invited," Nola assured him. "Bridge has told me all about Missy's parties. They're famous."
"Missy says the hair comes down first, then the pants."
Nola chuckled. "Let me tell you, when they made Missy they threw the mold away-and maybe that's a good thing."
"I suppose. I doubt if the country could stand two like her. Well, does Kenton have a decent furniture store?"
"I wouldn't be surprised. Where do you think you are, doctor? On the moon?"
"Well, you go and pick out what we need and I'll go to the bank. When you're through, meet me in the drugstore on the ground floor."
"Shall I let go or watch the pennies?"
"Might as well get good stuff. Be sure it complements or blends or matches or something. Soothing, you understand. No clashing colors."
She walked out ahead of him and he locked up the office.
* * *
After lunch, having no further business in Kenton, they started for home in the pick-up truck.
As they jogged along, Nola's knees were drawn up on the seat, almost touching his right thigh. Her left arm was stretched out, fingers dangling close to his right shoulder, and her head lay on the arm. He could feel her eyes on him as he drove along, but he kept his on the road.
Suddenly she sat up, sighed. She ran her fingers through her heavy, silky hair. "Oh, Rod-I don't really want to go back so soon. It's such a glorious, golden day! Let's ride around and explore a little."
"Explore? Where?"
"Look, there's a side road. Let's see where it goes. You know, I'm practically a stranger in these parts, just like you."
He slowed, turned into a narrow, rutted road overgrown with weeds.
"Doesn't look as if it goes anywhere," he said dubiously. "Looks as if it quit going a long time ago."
But it wound on stubbornly through a heavily wooded area. Tall pines whispered at them as they passed. The sun dappled the weeded roadway in fanciful shapes. A red squirrel dashed in front of them and swarmed up a pine, sending back a spray of loose bark. He stuck his head around the bole and chattered shrilly at the truck.
A mile or more from the main highway the road ended in a wide grassy sward, the edge of which was marked by a steep bluff. He drove the truck near the edge and they looked over. It was an old gravel pit, the sides and bottom eroded, a miniature Grand Canyon, the brilliant reds of the clay standing out sharply in the bright sunlight. In the bottom was a still pool of clear blue water.
"How does the water get itself so blue? You'd think that with so much red clay about... "
Nola stifled a sound of annoyance. Maybe he was talking because he was afraid of what might come next, she thought. But she, living ahead of time, was short-tempered with delay. And it was not merely because she had a warm, stinging desire for him. There was a better reason than that. There was something she had to find out, and the sooner the better. In fact, there were two things she had to find out. First, what would it be like with someone she was certain she was in love with? Would it, as this psychiatrist had promised, be really better than the crazed paroxysms she had known in Barry Norton's steely embrace? And second, was she really released from the spell Barry Norton had cast upon her? A touch of near panic made her tremble. How could anyone so revolting have such a grip on her? True, when she was in Rod's presence, she always felt delivered of that hold, as if Barry were destroyed, disintegrated. But when Rod was absent, gradually doubts assembled. Because sometimes a lust would gather in her loins and she would think back to the times with Barry. And she would feel that if Barry would appear, surely she would turn water weak and yield to him again. So now she wanted to find out whether it was Barry she craved-in which case she would hate herself forever-or just a man, any man. This was the diagnosis that Rod had made of her trouble. It differed from Melody's apparent compulsion to repeat an act-the act of being raped-because that compulsion had been for the act itself and not the man who had performed it. Now Nola was desperate to confirm Rod's diagnosis of her weakness.
She insinuated herself closer to him, looked up at him. She flogged herself into action, though he might think it indecent of her-her heart trembling in her soft eyes, her lips twisted into an aching smile. She ground her thighs against his, and said, "Now let's pick up where we left off the other day-" He remembered well where they had left off. Right at calamity's door. And now she was begging for that calamity. Already he was involved professionally with this warm, lovely woman. She was his office nurse. That was strain enough, surely. To take her body, use it as so clearly she wanted him to, would mean still further involvement- the involvement of love. Because surely to know the delights of that body would break down his last defenses. He would surrender to the tug of his heart. He would find himself in the same spot as when he had loved that other lovely girl: vulnerable to hurt, to thralldom, to betrayal.
How could he risk it? A soul as generous and affectionate as Nola might some day, for instance, feel sorry for some soldier-boy again. She might fall in love with some other man, or for her own reasons accept the advances of someone like Barry Norton. Any such occurrence would mean disaster for Rod if he allowed himself further involvement, and so he neurotically feared it. Icy fear sleeted over him. He opened his mouth to say something; he was not quite sure what. But she covered it with her soft, hot lips, pressing herself to him and throwing her arms around his neck.
Blood thrashed through his system. Want pounded him. And then, as she twisted and squirmed, trying to suck sweetness from his mouth, he cracked. After all, Rod was only human. His quivering nerves and his reflexes and his whole physiological heritage took over, banishing his fears and constrictions and dynamiting his mental blocks. He clutched her to him frantically.
Sensing triumph, the woman in her gloated. She took one of his hands and guided it to a sensitive goal. The effect was to make both of them ravenous for consummation. But they were still on the front seat of the truck, awkwardly constrained, hampered by the steering wheel.
"Let's improve the environment," he whispered.
He helped her from the truck, found an old threadbare blanket in the back and took it with him. They sought a shady, secluded spot under the trees and he spread the blanket. When he looked up, he saw that she had divested herself of the nurse's cloak and white nylon uniform, and of what had been beneath them. The garments fluttered on a nearby bush, and she was standing beside him, straight, proud, trembling for his touch, utterly nude.
The fearful, hesitant, unsure man was wholly gone. In his place was one who knew what he wanted, and meant to get it at all costs. With sure instinct, Rod pulled her to the blanket and did exactly those things, in exactly the right manner, to bring the squealing, twitching Nola to exactly the right pitch of physiological readiness. And as she squirmed, kissed him thirstily, intimately and boldly fondled him, her love for him made of it all a wondrous delight, a rapture beyond any that heaven itself could have given her.
And then she felt him pierce the velvety heart of her womanhood. With a glad cry, she lifted to receive him, accommodate him. With slow, mighty strokes he brought her to utmost pleasure, then stiffened galvanically. Again she cried out. Her long legs supplely kicked and thrashed. Her whole body shook and quivered. In a paroxysm of bliss, they rocketed together into paradise.
Some moments later, a wail emerged from her mouth and a great sob from his. Then she went as limp as death...
* * *
The sun was westering and low when finally they were ready to leave. He helped her dress. They were sharing a feeling of unutterable oneness, a closeness that man and woman can achieve in only one way. They did not speak as they got back into the truck. Nor did they speak during the return drive. But each was busy with private thoughts.
Nola was thinking that she loved this man. He had been absolutely right about love being the finest source for sex, too. Never, with Barry Norton or anyone else, had her body responded so ardently. It seemed certain to her now that Barry's spell was broken. Of course, she reflected, it had seemed that way to her before...
As for Rod, driving carefully in the twilight, he too was thinking of love. Did he love Nola? He could hardly deny it. But he did not allow himself to confirm it, either. By a complicated mental process, he managed to evade answering the question. The very thought of love, of commitments, of enduring alliances with an attractive woman, made him shudder. Now that physical urgency was not upon him, his fears and hesitations were reverting. Besides, this emotion of his, centering on Nola... not long before, it had been centering on someone else. On the unique, inimitable, overwhelming Tangi.
Ah, thought Rod. Now there was a girl. Tangi.
Why did he feel no fears or reservations as far as Tangi was concerned?
He stole a somewhat absorbed glance at Nola. He did not feel less one with her, less close. Yet here he was thinking of another girl, of Tangi. It was downright treachery on his part. Impulsively he took one hand from the wheel, reached out and stroked Nola's golden hair.
She turned in response and smiled like a sunburst.
"Nola, darling-"
"Yes?"
"Will you go with me to Missy's party?"
"If I'm invited."
"Oh, I'm sure we both will be. She thinks you're great. And by the way, so do I."
That was not exactly the declaration she had been hoping to hear. But it was still too early, she supposed, for him to speak of love.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
BRIDGE PILGRIM had suffered in silence for two years while Melody ripened into a beautiful woman. He had suffered with especial keenness because she seemed to accept without resistance the exclusive company of Barry Norton, a condition that rang every alarm bell in Bridge's being.
He was elated when, from his sister, he learned that Melody had rejected Barry Norton completely, refused even to see Barry. But Bridge was honest enough with himself to realize that this did not advance his own cause except in a negative sense. Actually, he had no cause to advance; not one that he had put before her, at any rate. Not one word had he ever said to her that she might construe as suggesting romantic intent.
Thinking of these things, Bridge was sitting in the cozy living room of the cottage. It was approaching eight o'clock. He had eaten and was playing with a small glass of brandy.
"Why," asked Nola as she dried the last supper dish, "don't you go see how Melody is doing?"
"I guess she's doing all right, or you'd tell me. You're over there a couple of times every day."
"Just the same, it's considered polite to call on a convalescing person. And you'd better hurry up about it. She won't be convalescing much longer. When Dr. Barrett brought me home, he dropped in on her and gave her permission to leave her room as soon as she felt up to it."
"Yeah-well, I do have a few things I should talk over with Mrs. Flemming. I reckon I might as well kill two birds... "
"Oh, for goodness sake, Bridge. You don't have to find excuses. I'm sure Melody will be delighted if you drop in on her."
He grinned, his face hot. "Oh, all right. You don't have to shove so hard."
"Then get along with you."
"You know," he said, looking at her curiously, "I don't believe I've ever seen you so radiant. Did anything special happen today?"
It was her turn to blush. "I like my new boss, that's all. Now get out of here or I'll throw something," she yelled. Bridge laughed and skipped out by way of the back door.
Full night had fallen. The path was in darkness. Bridge walked along quietly, surely; his feet knew every step of the way. After a time the lights of the Flemming house came into view. Approaching from the rear, he circled the kitchen garden and then was startled to see a man silhouetted against what Bridge knew to be Melody's window. It was the very window Melody had plunged through, but it had since been repaired.
Bridge stopped, then catfooted closer. He was near enough to see over the man's shoulder. Melody lay on the bed in a translucent pink nightgown, making a sumptuous sight for prying eyes.
Rage was boiling in Bridge. He was bunching his muscles to charge when the intruder turned, left the window. He moved crabwise along the house, hugging the wall, till he reached the front entrance. It was early yet. The house was not yet locked up for the night. He opened the door and went inside.
* * *
She heard a faint noise and swung her head toward the doorway. For a terrible moment her mind ceased functioning. Stupefied, she could only stare.
"Hello," he said. "Your mother phoned. She asked me to come over and see you."
She could not stand his expressionless stare.
"Get out!" she screamed.
Barry started walking toward her.
"Get out! Get out!"
He kept on going. Standing over the bed, he extended his arms. His hands reached for her.
At that moment, Bridge Pilgrim came through the doorway like a battering ram. He hurtled into Barry, smashed him to the floor.
Barry bleated like a calf caught in barbed wire. Bridge let him squirm away and he leaped to his feet. Bridge came up also, lashed out with a whistling left that popped suddenly on Barry's scraggly chin-beard and sent him back to the rug.
Barry struggled to his knees, crawled on all fours to the door. There he jumped erect, pounded down the hall as fast as he could go. Then they heard his footfalls receding on the gravel outside.
Bridge turned to the girl. "He didn't have time to touch you, did he?"
"No, no! You got here soon enough." She covered her eyes with her hands. "Oh, Bridge, I'm so afraid of him. The very sight of him makes me freeze. It didn't used to be that way."
"He didn't used to do the things he does now. Or if he did, he kept it secret. I'll kill the bastard if I ever catch him here again-" Joyce blundered into the room, all fat and fluffy peignoir. "What's all this? What's all the screaming and noise? You, Bridge-what are you doing in here?"
"He's here because I screamed," Melody told her with hostile distinctness. "I screamed because Barry sneaked into my room without even knocking. He said you told him to come."
Joyce braced herself against the walnut dressing-table. "Certainly I did. He's your fiance. Why shouldn't he come?"
Melody looked at Bridge helplessly. "What do you do with someone like that? How do you reach her? She's ten days behind yesterday!"
"I threw him out," Bridge volunteered grimly. "If he comes back, I'm going to kill him."
Joyce reared back so violently she almost fell, her great fleshy breasts bobbing heavily. "And who gave you leave to do any such thing?"
"Any time I come on a man peeping in your daughter's window, who then slips into her bedroom and makes your daughter scream for help, I'm going to do my best to break his goddamned neck."
"Barry Norton is a friend of the family," Joyce scolded densely. "He and Melody are promised."
"Mrs. Flemming, your daughter was recently raped. Am I supposed to stand by and let her get raped again?"
Joyce gave him a severe look, drew herself up haughtily. "Mr. Pilgrim, you're a hired hand. You will take orders from me. And I order you never to raise your hand against Barry Norton."
"That's an order I will not take," he retorted. "If I ever see him on the place again, I'll break him into small pieces."
"In that case, you're fired. Get your things and leave my plantation."
His smile was bitter. "That I would do with pleasure. Except for two small considerations. First, I think Miss Melody will need me around here for a while. Second, we have a contract, or had you forgotten? If I do leave, you'll have to pay me just about two years' salary."
Although she affected helplessness with respect to money matters, Joyce harbored a vast cupidity. She sucked in her breath and her face paled a little. "This," she said slowly, "is insufferable."
"Insufferable! Why it's wonderfully kind of Bridge to think of me. Besides, I couldn't do without his sister. Nola has become my best friend." Melody had calmed enough to realize that she must be making quite a picture for Bridge to develop in his mind's eye later if he were too distracted to appreciate it now. As the thought struck, the tips of her breasts hardened and spiked upward, making delicate erections in the thin fabric of the nightgown. Deliberately, Melody rolled into a position that would give Bridge a better view, and not only of her bosom.
Joyce's eyes narrowed. "Ah, so that's it. I suspected as much. I've watched him look at you."
"Why shouldn't he like to look at me?" Melody demanded. "I think I'm quite nice to look at."
"You can say that again," Bridge muttered, his full attention caught by the immodest display.
"I'm going to tell you something," Joyce snorted. "My daughter is not for the hired help. I have my sights set higher than that, thank God."
"Sure," growled Bridge. "You prefer a fuzz-chinned nitwit I wouldn't trust as far as I could knock him."
"You will not refer to him again. I've said all I'm going to say!" She turned and walked out of the room.
Melody was sitting up on the edge of the bed now, the nightgown curling around her thighs. She was taking pleasure in deliberately giving Bridge the eyeful of his career. As every girl knows, it takes a bit of sugar to catch a fly-and besides, it can be fun to display one's charms.
"Bridge!" her voice was throaty, caressing-"you're a darling. Thanks for saving me from Barry. And thanks for standing up to my mother."
Bridge was staring at her in abject fascination. He smiled, but the effort hurt. His chest was bursting.
"I'm glad I could help," he mumbled. Then, without exactly intending to, he said a peculiar thing. "Let's call it a labor of love." He gasped, turned scarlet. Why had he let that escape him? What would she do now, laugh at him?
But her eyes were petal-soft as she gazed at him. Her face was grave. A solemn silence hung between them. Then her lips trembled, and she spoke.
"Bridge, why didn't you tell me?"
He looked away. "As your mother says, I'm the hired help. You never seemed to take notice of me."
Her gaze had turned misty. "I apologize. I was brought up wrong." She slipped off the bed, stood barefoot on the rug. "Bridge, I'm too restless to sleep. Will you come back in fifteen minutes and take me for a walk?"
He looked dubious. "Are you up to it?"
"Of course I am. Dr. Barrett told me I'd be off the invalid list, starting tomorrow-so I might as well jump the gun a little."
"But-but your wounds-"
"Oh, all those cuts have healed, as you can see. There's just this one bandage-" She touched herself above the breast. "But it's mostly to keep out dirt. Underneath, everything is just dandy."
Bridge nodded crisply. "Sure. Fifteen minutes."
After he had gone, Melody went into the bathroom. She was not allowed to shower, but she sponged herself thoroughly. Then she threw on a gay shift she favored because of its burnt orange hue and softly caressing material. Dispensing with undergarments, she stepped into a pair of sandals.
* * *
Barry Norton ran insanely along the woods road toward his home, his brain bursting with pain and disorder. The physical assault on his person had frightened him to his core and he was fleeing as though pursued by vampires. This quickly exhausted him. He had to slow to a walk. He clasped his chest tightly, his arms crossed over it Dry sobs jerked at his throat. As usual, since there were two, now, who had struck him with blows, he confused them and they became one, a kind of cloudy composite person. Deep in his heart was stark, black murder but this never emerged as a goal. It simply squatted there in the recesses of his guts and smoldered.
When he got home he was shaking so badly he could hardly uncork the bottle he found after much search. But the alcohol only seemed to make his shaking worse. As before, he had to take refuge in the tub of hot water. That stopped the shaking. But it was followed by profuse sweating and a deathlike lassitude. He dressed in a warm, paint-spattered robe and sat in his room for an hour, staring at the wall. Restored, he got up, climbed to his studio and prepared a square of new canvas.
All night he painted with a frenetic singleness of purpose. When dawn peeped through the window, he cleaned his brushes meticulously, put them away. Then he stretched out on the floor.
On the easel was another horror. A composite painting of Bridge Pilgrim and Dr. Rodney Barrett. It was a perfectly executed painting, showed complete anatomical fealty. Instead of the usual pride of manhood, however, there dangled from the figure a dead snake. Its head was split open and sprouting a sunburst of color done in florid Moorish detail. The figure itself was standing tall and looking into a mirror which reflected the chest, also split wide. The heart was exposed, and from it flowered another burst of color. The ends of the ribs were clearly delineated where they had been severed and pulled back to reveal the heart area with its great fungus of riotous paint.
Barry Norton fell asleep with a memory in his mind. The memory of the look on Melody's face. Rejection, utter and complete.
He slept restlessly. No woman could reject him. Especially Melody. Was she not promised to him? The idea of her rejecting him was something he could not fit into his understanding.
* * *
They had walked and they had talked. Mostly nonsense with many a burst of free laughter from Melody, many a forced chuckle from the pain-smothered chest of Bridge. He was so full of love that he was choking on it.
By the time they turned back, Melody knew a lot more about him. She had an inkling of the torture she must have caused him. And she had more than an inkling that he was the kind of man for her.
As they walked past the cotton bins built into the side of the barn, moonlight showed them the blackened corner where lightning had struck.
"Does it bother you?"
"What? Oh, you mean the cotton room? Oh, no." She laughed. "Thanks to Dr. Barrett, what happened in there has left me without emotional hangover."
"Really? I'm surprised," Bridge said, thinking that, after all, this girl had hurled herself through a glass window.
"I'll prove it," she said. "Let's go in. Otherwise you'll think me afraid."
He hesitated. "Do you think we should?" His heart was hammering.
"Oh, come on." She caught his hand and led him through the door and into the gloom. Bridge's resistance, which had won many a skirmish, now lost the battle. As the cotton bin closed about them, he swept her into his arms-which was exactly what she had planned.
"Forgive me," he muttered into her hair. "You're so beautiful. So desirable! And you've been deliberately tempting me all evening."
"Of course I have."
"But why?"
She lifted her face to his. "You need me, don't you, Bridge?"
"Oh, Melody, yes. I need you and I want you-"
"Well, I've something to confess. I need you every bit as much as you need me." And lifting herself on tiptoes, she kissed him.
He could hardly credit his ears. Yet in spite of the primordial urge that shook him, it was with wonderful gentleness that he lowered her to the slanting thicknesses of cotton. Then he was enfolding her, his lips finding hers.
With primitive objectivity, the female sought the male with sinuous insistence. At the same time, his hands still gentle, he swept the burst orange creation from her. Now she lay palpitant, waiting breathlessly and in an agony of want. He kissed the chalices of her throbbing breasts, spiked high with excitement; he kissed the soft trembling platter of her stomach. And those gentle hands of his all the while were searching, caressing with a feather-touch driving her wild.
Then he became a canopy covering her. The gentle power of his arms held her soft body fast. He moved smoothly, but devastatingly, and the invasion jarred her into yet a higher stratum of shrieking sensuality.
The unabashed fervor of her response triggered Bridge swiftly, but not before she too was succumbing to the magic crescendo. One more lunge, met by her answering paroxysm, and the two, man and maid, soared into a shattering ecstasy.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
SEVERAL DAYS went by, and Rodney Barrett was disturbed. He knew that in actuality what had occurred in the deep woods near the old gravel pit amounted to a tremendous emotional cleansing. He admitted to himself now that he was in love. By rights, then, he should at long last be free of his fixation, of the fear of emotional entanglement. Yet doubts and trepidations still troubled him.
Tangi did little to help. After he had retired to his room that night, she slipped in without knocking. Closing the door behind her, she leaned against it in a pose artlessly but heartbreakingly graceful.
"I watched you at supper," she said softly.
"You did?" he asked, his voice lifting spuriously in a weak attempt at lightness. "What did you see?"
"A man whose mind wasn't on his food. It wandered."
A single lamp was lit in the sumptuous old bedroom. Its light bathed Tangi in a golden glow. The sight of her reached inside him like a barbed hook. "You see too much," he said.
"No. Only that you seem confused. And in pain. Maybe I can help... like morphine."
"Tangi, I've told it to Missy and now I'll tell it to you. I could fall in love with you."
"I know. Practically every man reacts that way to me.
"Well, Dr. Hackthorne says that's exactly what love is. A reaction... a very special reaction intended to perpetuate the human race."
She smiled. "He left out one thing."
"What's that?"
"Give a man the right sort of love, and he wants it all for himself. Even when he is physically not deserving of it, he still wants it to the exclusion of all other men. What's that got to do with perpetuating the race?"
"But aren't women as guilty? I mean, don't they want one man exclusively for themselves?"
She shrugged. "Not this woman. I've never seen a man I'd want exclusively. I may be fickle-or maybe I'm just too much woman for one man. Or maybe my vanity is such that I need lots of men to stroke it. Anyway, right or wrong, that's me."
"And did you come to this room to tell me that?"
"Oh, no," she said, stepping forward into the room. She unsnapped a snap and unzipped a zipper, and her dress fell, pooling about her feet. "That was so delicious the other night, I thought I'd try some more of it."
Rod was sitting on the chaise. She deposited herself on his lap.
Convulsively his hands stroked her flank, fondled the lush swells of her hips. Then his palms lifted to her leaping, erect breasts. She shuddered with utter delight. For an instant, with a pang of guilt, he remembered his beloved Nola. But it was as impossible to resist the nude, magnificent Tangi as it would have been to resist Venus herself. Tangi was not of this earth. She was a goddess sent to delight mortal men and take delight in them-as she was doing now.
For an hour she bestowed on him the sweetest, sauciest and sharpest pleasures of the flesh, and drew them from him, too. She whipped his nerves to frenzies of which he had never known himself capable. She worked his body as if it were an inexhaustible mine of fiery bliss, worked it from end to end and back, inspiring him to mighty feats as only a goddess can.
And when it was over, when they were lying lax in each other's arms on the bed, recovering breath and strength, she kissed him gently.
"See?" she said. "The pain is cured."
He sighed jerkily. "Yes. But another has replaced it."
"And that is?"
"The pain of craving possession... just as you predicted. I can't bear the thought of sharing you. I want to growl and show my teeth at other males."
She brushed his cheek with a soft hand. "You'll get over it. There haven't yet been any fatalities from it."
She was teasing him. Strangely, at the time, it made him feel better. But after she had gone he felt worse- because now he was certain he was in love with two women.
And he was the guy supposed to fear lovely females!
* * *
The following Saturday was a day many would long remember. But it dawned just about like most days in that part of the world. Dewy and misty at first, then gradually clearing. By late morning, the sun was bright and hot. It caught Nola Pilgrim in town, buying a party dress. She was determined to look her best at Missy's affair that night.
Rod and Nola had learned they would receive no invitations from Missy Blumendahl. They also had learned they would be welcome along with everybody else in the county. She never sent invitations, just let word of mouth pass around.
During the preceding few days, though, a coolness that Nola Pilgrim found harassing and inexplicable had sprung up between Dr. Barrett and herself. He dutifully picked her up every morning. They worked side by side getting the office ready. Already she had made sixteen appointments for the week to come, and she could not understand why he did not seem as excited about them as she was. He lived in a state of preoccupation so thick that she was not able to penetrate it.
He had made no further reference to the party at Missy's. So Friday evening, as he dropped her at the cottage she was obliged to ask, "Will you pick me up tomorrow night-or have you forgotten that you asked me to the party?"
He started guiltily. "Oh. Oh, of course. I definitely will pick you up. Seven-thirty be too early?"
"No. I'll be ready."
And that's why Nola went to Kenton early Saturday for a new dress. She was determined to look her very best that night and, hopefully, recapture Rod's apparently flagging interest in her. Bridge was good enough to drive her to the store and help her choose.
While they were engaged in that task, Bridge was being discussed on the telephone by Joyce Flemming.
"She thinks," said Joyce Flemming in guarded tones to Barry Norton, "that she's going to Missy's party with that Bridge Pilgrim person. But he's trash. That's what he is-trash!"
"The lowest kind of Yankee trash," agreed Barry readily.
"I'm not going to let him take Melody."
"How will you stop him?" Barry asked.
"I'll lock her in her room."
"Smart. Then I'd do better to go to your house tonight than to the party."
"Naturally. Melody sees you're determined, she'll give in. After all, you're a Norton. You're not trash like Bridge Pilgrim. You don't have to work for a living. Your family has lots of money-"
"Will you let me into her room?"
"Of course," she simpered. "You two are promised, aren't you?"
Fifteen minutes later she confronted Melody in the hallway. "Let's go to your room. I want to talk to you." She led the way and Melody followed, mostly out of simple curiosity.
Joyce did not close the door, stood with her back to it. "Now, you listen to me. I'm not permitting you to go to Missy's party. I know you're planning on it. Planning to go with Bridge. But you're to remain right here."
Oddly, the girl kept her temper. She found her mother actually amusing. "I am?"
"That's right."
"How will you make me remain?"
"This way," Joyce screamed, and with a speed unexpected in a woman of her ungainly weight, she backed through the doorway, slammed the door. Melody heard a key grate in the lock.
An incredulous smile touched her lips. Quietly she sat down on a chair and began to thumb through a magazine.
By midafternoon, according to Melody's calculations, Joyce would have drunk three or four stout highballs and would be snoring through her afternoon nap. Melody was correct in this assumption. When the time came she got up, went to the opposite side of the room. She opened a closet, took out a terrycloth robe and wrapped herself in it. She donned her heaviest boots. She found a big bath towel, twisted it around her head and face until she looked like a turbaned Arab. Then she carefully stepped through the newly glazed window.
There was the crash and tinkle of glass, but Melody got to the other side without a scratch.
She discarded robe, boots and towel, and ran to the kitchen. No one was in sight. She lifted the kitchen phone, called Missy Blumendahl and told her of Joyce's orders. "Missy, what do you think I should do?"
"What do you want to do?"
"I want to go to the party. And with Bridge."
"If you're locked up, how come you're talking to me?"
"I stepped through that same window. Don't worry. I'm not hurt."
"You're kidding!"
"No. You know, Missy, my mother is simply not all there. I hate to say it, but-"
"Listen to me, Melody. I think the time has come to tell you. A couple of us old-timers know it, and I believe you should, too. Joyce is not your real mother."
"My God, Missy. Is that true?"
"You bet. Ask Dr. Fontenot." Melody gasped.
"But I don't understand. I-"
"You see, child, your own mother died in childbirth. Joyce was hired to nurse you, and married your father. He made a lousy bargain, believe me. Feel relieved? I was when I heard it."
"Oh, Missy!"
"Now, tell you what. Go back to your room, pack a bag, and when it gets dark sneak over to Bridge's place. Make him or Nola drive you to my house. You're over twenty-one and can do as you please-and you can stay with me as long as you like. My home is your home, Melody."
"Oh, Missy, I'll never be able to thank you enough!"
"Forget it, child."
Melody cradled the receiver, returned to her room by way of the shattered window.
* * *
"One of these days I'm gonna quit this dad-ratted foolishness," said Missy raucously to Tangi, to Ella the cook and to Melody. The girl had been driven over by Bridge, who had left and who would return later for the party. Missy was red and sweating. Tangi and Ella were breathless with laughter.
"Looky there," snorted Missy. "Tore the hell out of my brand-new girdle-and now I feel like a gusseted horse in this other one. All so I won't look so much like a damned blimp when I put on my hundred and fifteen yards of chiffon." Her voice rose brazenly. "And if you creeps don't quit laughin' at me, I'm gonna brain you."
Tangi ran and Ella choked back her guffaws. "Er, Mose asked how you want the barbecue? Well-done or rare?"
"That's just a hod-blasted he to get you off the hook. Mose knows damn well how to do the barbecue. He's been doing it for thirty years! Why ask me now all of a sudden? Get outa here and see to that potato salad." Ella, her face buried in her apron, her eyes streaming with tears of mirth, trotted from the room. Melody, however, sat down with a thump and screamed her hilarity.
"Missy, I'm sorry! But the sight of Tangi and Lula stuffing you into that new girdle... then when you let your breath go, it just split right down the side and you poured out... I just can't help... " She dissolved into fresh blasts.
"Have yourself a treat on me," bawled Missy. "Treasure the sight. And when you're finished amusin' your skinny self at my expense, you may continue with your story about Joyce and Barry and what-all."
"But I've told you everything." Again she related the details of the night Barry had burst into her room and Bridge had chased him off.
"Should have broken his neck," Missy growled. "Only confirms what I believe-that Barry is the one who raped you in the barn. Someone will have to kill the bastard. There's no other way. We can't convict him in a court of law. No evidence. Do you reckon he's really that smart?"
"I know him better than any of you, Missy. He was brilliant in school. And after that, for a long time, he clearly hid from me how awful he is. Yes, he's smart."
"I've discussed Barry with our new young psychiatrist several times," Missy confided to Melody. "You know, one reason I wanted Dr. Barrett to set up shop here was to get the goods on Barry. But maybe it's too tall an order-"
"Oh, if anybody can manage it, Rod's the one," Melody said worshipfully. "Look what he did for me. Got rid of my scars outside and inside. I'd set my cap for him, let me tell you-if it weren't for Bridge." With the mention of Bridge's name, her voice had become even more worshipful.
"Well, let's hope for the best." She raised her head and trumpeted, "Tangi! Where are you? Come on back here and finish dressing me!"
* * *
Joyce had awakened with a grouch and had started feeding it bourbon immediately. Pretty soon she remembered that she had locked Melody in her room and, feeling contentious, walked through the house with hot argument in mind. She would show the girl who was boss around here.
She unlocked the door and walked in. Her face slackened stupidly. The room was empty. The window was smashed.
She began to talk to herself, shaking her head in disbelief. Then she turned, still with that stupid look on her face, and went down to the front veranda.
* * *
Barry Norton sat in his hidden attic studio, staring at his painting of the rape of Melody. It filled him with a vast, gluttonous satisfaction. Soon it would be repeated, he promised himself, this time to his specifications.
He was fearfully annoyed when his mother appeared at the foot of the ladder leading to that section of the attic. He had forgotten to lock the door below.
"You've been drinking my whiskey," she yelled up.
"No," he lied. He rushed to the ladder, stared down. What a hag she had become, he thought. Dirty, a veritable witch, long stringy hair falling uncombed over her eyes.
"You or your father, you've drunk my whiskey." She rubbed her mouth with a dirty hand. "I think it's you." She began to climb the ladder. Reaching the top, she looked narrowly at her son. "Got any whiskey?"
"No. Go away." He was exasperated. To think that he had such a hag for a mother. "Go away or I'll show you the portrait."
This time the threat did not work. She was too desperate for alcohol. "Give me my whiskey, son."
Infuriated, Barry dropped the painting of the rape of Melody. He snatched up the portrait of his mother, the one he had doctored to make it even more horrifying. He held it up for the woman to see.
She shrieked insanely. Throwing her hands up before her eyes, she backed toward the ladder.
There was another scream, a crash, and the thud of her body as it struck the landing below. Then she lay still. Quite casually Barry descended the ladder, stepped over her gingerly. This time he did not forget to lock the door. It locked his mother in there, he thought, just as Melody was locked in. The parallel amused him. To give himself a treat, he took the station-wagon instead of his jeep.
* * *
Joyce Flemming was still simmering with the ingratitude of humanity in general and her daughter in particular. After Lora, having finished the dinner dishes, had gone, Joyce started restlessly for the front veranda. She almost ran into Barry, who stood quietly in the hall.
She gasped, backed away. "My God! Don't you ever knock?"
He was hurt by the animus in her voice. This was not like Joyce. Usually she fawned on him. "Let me in to see her," he said tightly.
"She's not here," Joyce mouthed complainingly. "She got out. She broke the window and got out."
The news jolted Barry. "Imagine that!" He did not believe for an instant that Melody could have escaped without connivance. So Joyce had tricked him, had she? She had conspired with her daughter to make a fool of him!
Frightened by his expression, Joyce said weakly, "Well, I tried."
He stared at her. Melody had suddenly slipped his mind. Joyce was not just a fat blob of a woman any more. She blossomed with violent, vibrant color. She had taken on all the bizarre shadings and hues of his wilder paintings. A twitching smile showed on his mouth, and with all his strength he swung a blow at her soft belly. It knocked her to the floor.
She had not the breath to scream as he dragged her into the living room. He tore off her dress, ripped away the big hammock of a brassiere supporting her enormous breasts. "Don't," she whimpered. "Don't, Barry-"
"Shut up," he said, letting down his trousers. "Don't make a sound or I'll beat you to death."
Grabbing her hair, he forced her to a kneeling position, the huge fatty breasts swaying and billowing, white as milk, each with a brown nipple long and thick as a man's little finger. Seizing the obese mounds, he sunk his swollen staff between them, rubbing and massaging it with plump handfuls of the marshmallow flesh. In moments the lascivious friction had him at the point of climax, but he bethought himself of something that would punish her more, humiliate her. "Lick it," he rasped, pushing his groin toward her mouth. "Lick it! Kiss it!"
"Madman," gasped Joyce. "No. I-" His backhand blow nearly tore off her head. "Want me to kill you?" He backhanded her again. "Do as I say!" Fearing for her life, Joyce opened her mouth, took the engorged member between her lips. Responding to his commands, she licked with her tongue, kissed, slobbering and suckling like a calf at its mother's teat. Barry squealed with bliss. He lifted the huge soft breasts, pressed them to his thighs and scrotum. Riding them triumphantly, he rammed into Joyce's gullet, all but choking her as his hot juices spurted.
Joyce expected his shuddering ecstasy to end her torture. She was mistaken. With hardly a pause, Barry slammed the quaking woman to her back. Though wet and soiled, his rampant member was still fully erect as he poised above her. Fat and a drinker, Joyce nevertheless was healthy. She could not fail to be aroused physically by Barry's hard young lust. And psychologically she was stimulated also. Never had a man so dominated her. Perhaps it was the kind of treatment she had needed all her life.
For when he fell upon her, she spread her great hams to receive him. A fat obscene blob on the carpet, she whined and protested-yet gurgled her gladness as he plunged the full length of his phallus deep into her moist viscera.
He withdrew halfway, then plunged again, muttering crazy obscenities. "Fat bitch. Rock that fat ass. I'm going to fuck you till you bust." One hand was mauling and savaging Joyce's tremendous bosom. With the other he began to slap her face, a slap for each stroke of his loins as he pumped convulsively.
She gloried in the pain. Her fat thighs ecstatically clamped his driving hips. At the shuddering peak, her joy was as insane as his.
* * *
Nola and Rod drove to Fahenstock in relative silence. The cool distance between them seemed greater than ever. That the fault was his, Rod knew, but he could not conquer his uncertainties.
As they walked into the enormous living room, it seemed to Rod there must be fifty people of all sorts and varieties there. The halls and the other downstairs rooms, as well as the verandas, were equally thronged. Laughter and conversation assailed the ears like roaring tides. Glasses clinked. Above the tides, people called greetings to one another in uninhibited yells.
"There he is," Rod exclaimed, pointing.
"Who?" asked Nola, lovely in a seductive sheath of dull rose.
"Dr. Hackthorne." He was sitting stiffly in a high-backed chair. He was strapped into a heavy surgical corset Dr. Fontenot had wished on him, a fact he was trying to hide from the four or five girls of the younger college set who were crowded around him. Hearing of the great man, they were ganged up on him in an effort to learn things about that fascinating subject, psychiatry.
The master was delighted by the youthful pulchritude displaying itself to him at such close range, and also by the quality of the whiskey in his glass. Accordingly he was filling the young ears with thumping tales calculated to make them blush, although not one of them was more than half true.
Rod approached with Nola and they both smiled at the older man. At the same moment, Missy Blumendahl herself grandly approached. The young things, overawed, fled in search of other male company.
"You scared them off," Dr. Hackthorne complained. "But I forgive you. Frankly, I prefer older and more substantial women. Like yourself, Missy."
"You old codger. According to what I hear, you're locked up in a corset that amounts to a chastity belt!"
"Well, at least it holds my spine together." Hackthorne now addressed Rod and Nola. "Have you taken yourselves a look around? My God, the people!"
Nola squeezed Rod's arm. "Get us a couple of drinks, will you, while I go look at myself in the powder room? I just saw Melody headed in that direction."
Rod set off toward the big bar that had been set up in the dining room. Missy ran interference for him, stopping every couple of seconds to introduce him to guests. They were everywhere-tall and short, thin and fat, young and old.
"Whoosh." Missy blew like a whale. "This is the one to end 'em all. Guess how many."
"Can't. A hundred?"
"Pretty close. A hundred and sixty-two at last count." She heaved herself through an opening between couples, and Rod followed. She was swathed in enough yard goods to provide sails for a fair-sized schooner. On most women, Rod thought, it would have looked ridiculous. On Missy it looked regal.
Thanks to Missy's influence, Rod managed to get two drinks quickly although guests were crowded ten deep around the bar. Carrying a glass in each hand, one for Nola and one for himself, he backed off carefully. Lifting his head, he found himself staring at Tangi.
She was separated from him by several couples. But even at that distance, the ravishing quality of her beauty, encased in a simple, skintight white gown, all but floored him. He felt as if he had been struck by a mallet.
"Shut your mouth, Rod," Missy commanded. "You look like the village idiot."
He gulped. "Who's that with her?"
"With Tangi? His name is Don Gann. He's the gym instructor and football coach at our high school."
Rod's jaw got hard and his eyes slitted. "Why, that bastard! Look at him. He's got his arm around her-"
"Hold it. Don has had troubles, too. He's been deeply hurt, like someone else I know-and Tangi is a good hurt doctor. Besides, you're here with Nola, aren't you?"
Rod felt stabbed. "I'm confused, Missy."
She snorted so loudly he jumped. "You emotionally bankrupt bastard. How in hell can you work people out of their troubles if you can't handle your own?"
Rod, suffering, pushed on back to the huge living room in search of Nola.
But at the moment she was in the powder room, and delighted to find no one but Melody there. Of course, "powder room" was a euphemism. It was actually a sort of lounge adjacent to two bathrooms, and built originally as a bedroom, but altered by Missy for just such occasions as this one.
Melody spun around. "Nola, guess what! Bridge just up and asked me to marry him. I came in here... "
She covered her face with her hands and burst into a fit of giggles. "I wasn't too sure whether I would laugh or cry, but I thought this would be the best place for either."
"Oh, Melody! That's wonderful!" Nola tried to keep her voice from breaking. "Congratulations, dear."
Melody looked at the nurse. "Say, what's wrong with you? You look miserable. Does the thought of me as a sister-in-law make you so unhappy?"
"You know that I'm delighted." Nola sat down on the nearest chair. "It's that brass-brained psychiatrist of mine. Of mine! Like hell. He's about as interested in me as he is in paper dolls. I'm so mad I could burst."
"Try crying," said Melody practically. "Or getting drunk."
Nola nodded. "I'll try the latter. Let's go wrap ourselves around a few tall ones. And Melody... I'm awfully happy for you and Bridge. He'll make you a fine husband."
Between the powder room and the central part of the mansion was a kind of foyer that opened on the long veranda. When the girls had passed through previously, it had been blazing with fight; now only a single dim lamp was burning. Both started to remark on it, but Barry Norton stepped out of the shadows and stood in front of them.
"Ah. My two beauties." He gave a short, hard laugh. His pale eyes were as blank as stones. "Melody, you're not supposed to be here. I'm taking you home. You too, Nola."
They stood in silence. Would the magic hold? Would the spell work, as it had in the past?
"Come on," he said dangerously. "We'll leave by way of the veranda."
Nola felt something snap. She was so relieved that she laughed.
Melody gave Barry a single scornful look and said, "Drop dead."
"That's a good idea, only don't do it here,' said Nola. Arm in arm, the girls pushed past him and through the doorway.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
FOR A LONG MOMENT Barry stood there, backed up against the wall in a dark corner. He was breathing hard. Suddenly he began to tremble in every muscle. It could not be true! They were still in his power, surely! But some faint echo of reason still whispered in parts of his diseased mind, and it told him that he was wrong, that he had to face the fact. Melody-Nola was openly contemptuous of him.
He walked out, vaulted over the veranda rail and lost himself in the shadows of the garden. He located some thick azalea bushes and crawled up beneath them. Hidden, he watched for the enemies that were out there in the dark. Enemies everywhere, all fantastically colored, throbbing and pulsating in amorphous, ever-changing shapelessness. Then some of the shapes took form. They resembled his composite of Barrett-Pilgrim. Yes. Barrett-Pilgrim had struck him, had seized his girls from him. Barrett-Pilgrim was responsible for all.
Then the sight of a man standing on the back veranda caught Barry's eye. The man was smoking a long cigar. He was plainly visible in the glow of one of the many lamps illuminating the veranda. But Barry's humiliation at the hands of the girls had warped still further his twisted intelligence. He left the bushes in the full knowledge that the man on the veranda was really two men in one: Barrett-Pilgrim.
Barry approached the house with catlike stealth, climbed to the veranda well below the man's angle of vision. Hugging the pink stucco of the wall, Barry advanced until he was directly behind the unsuspecting man. Slowly Barry pulled from his waist-band the broad-bladed butcher knife he had snatched up when leaving Joyce Flemming's house. He bent double to prepare for his stroke. Barry Norton had operated on too many animals not to have some knowledge of anatomy. He would stab Barrett-Pilgrim low about the waistline so that he would die a lingering death.
He sprang silently, slammed the knife into the man's side with all his strength.
Barry felt the knife buckle and break. Dr. Hackthorne felt the blow and the sharp prick of an inch of the knifepoint buried in his loin. His reactions unimpaired by age, he wheeled with blinding speed, his long right arm flailing. It caught Barry at the junction of head and neck. Such was the force behind it that he cartwheeled from the veranda to the grass below.
Hackthorne looked critically at the broken knife protruding from his side. From the prick of it, he felt sure it had not gone in deeply. But what on earth stopped it? The handle and another piece of the blade were on the floor. He opened his mouth and bawled mightily, "Alcide Fontenot! Where the hell are you? Dr. Fontenot! Somebody get Dr. Fontenot!"
Immediately, a curious knot of people pushed out to the veranda and surrounded Hackthorne. Word passed swiftly. Soon Fontenot appeared, along with Missy.
"You're disturbing my guests," she scolded truculently. "What in hell is going on here?"
"A number of things. First and foremost, I've been stabbed. I'm not sure whether we should withdraw this fraction of blade as yet. I might cough my life up in one great blob of gore."
"Bones of General Jackson!" she exploded. "You, Alcide, take a look. Everybody else-scat! I mean it."
As the curious throng shuffled away, whispering excitedly, Dr. Fontenot stripped Dr. Hackthorne down to the essentials. "As I thought," Fontenot said. "Less than an inch of penetration. It got jammed between the stays of this corset you affect to dislike so intensely. I guess the sudden wrench caused it to break. Thin blade-too thin for that sort of thing. Where's the culprit?"
"In the back yard where I knocked him. If he doesn't have a couple of crushed cervical vertebrae, I'm going to retire."
"Who was it?" asked Dr. Fontenot reasonably.
"How the hell do I know?" yelled Dr. Hackthorne. "I get stabbed in the back, so I knock the bastard for a loop. I don't follow to see who it is... You want me to bleed to death? I-" Hackthorne closed his mouth with a click. His brow was suddenly wrinkled in thought. "Where's that nitwit protege of mine?" he demanded. His eyes shone with a feral glitter.
"What do you need him for?" snapped Missy. "Alcide, tape up this man before he messes the floor."
"No! Find Rod Barrett-"
* * *
Rod Barrett had drunk both highballs as fast as he could, which was too fast. Unable to find Nola, he had gone to a small sunroom and was sitting there brooding when a handsome couple, taking the air, happened to stop in front of the French doors opening on the veranda.
"This is hell," came the throaty voice of Don Gann. "How can I get to see you? Just the two of us alone, I mean."
Tangi's teasing laugh floated up in the night air.
In the dimness, Rod saw the man's big hands stroking her shoulders. "What do you say to this idea?" He whispered something to her, then raised his head. "What about it? Sound foolproof to you?"
"Sure does," she said, and this time her laugh was threaded through with excitement.
"Good. See you then and there. Now I must leave you for a few minutes. I promised the principal I'd let him introduce me to his daughter-but I won't be gone long. Will you wait here?"
"I might. If you don't let her snatch you away from me."
"Nobody could do that, Tangi," he said. "Nobody. Believe me."
He disappeared into the gloom. Tangi, who had been helping to serve canapes but was now finished with that task, lit herself a cigarette and sat down.
Rod rushed through the French doors and stood over her.
"Oh... hello, Rod."
"That was quite an earful I got," he choked out. "Is that all I mean to you?"
"I don't think you have any beef, doctor. I told you all about me."
"But you were so good to me, so damnably sweet and good-you misled me."
"Not on purpose. That's why I told you what I am like." She rose and touched his cheek with a soft hand. "You're hurt because you see me giving him what was yours. That's wrong. It's neither his nor yours. Not for keeps. It's mine, to do with as I wish. I'm sorry." She walked away, leaving him feeling like a schoolboy.
But he was also feeling light, as if unexpectedly relieved of burdens. And in that instant, as he looked into his own heart, he saw his deepest emotions with sudden new clarity-as if, as a psychiatrist, he had abruptly pierced the layers swathing the psyche of a troubled patient.
His tie with Tangi was the fact that he had known all along that he could not have her for himself, that he must lose her, that there could be no permanent involvement. For that reason, he had felt wholly comfortable with her, had experienced no fear. For that reason, he had used his ostensible "love" for her as an excuse to clamp down on his very real love for Nola. Why, this jealousy he had felt for Gann, this acute sense of loss because Tangi was bestowing herself on another man, were but tricks of his mind. If he accepted the truth that Nola was his beloved, not Tangi, then the tricks did not work. And now he did accept it, fully and gladly. He had been utilizing Tangi as a means of avoiding Nola, but with his new insight came boldness and courage. Yes, he loved Nola. By God, he would tell her at once. He would ask her to marry him and would not take no for an answer.
He wheeled about, meaning to try again to find Nola. But at that moment he heard mighty yells followed by noisy commotion. Then he heard Dr. Hackthorne bawling his name. He made his way along the veranda, followed it around the corner, and came upon the good doctor in the company of Fontenot and Missy.
"Here I am," Rod cried. He took one look at Dr. Hackthorne and broke into a storm of frenzied questions, none of which Hackthorne was disposed to answer.
Instead he impaled the younger man with a piercing eye. "Of all the goddamned, idiotic, frantically upended nincompoops on the face of the globe, you take the prize. If I ever saw a doctor ignoring the obvious, you're that doctor. I had hopes for you. I revise my optimistic estimate."
"Damn," muttered the dazed Barrett. "Who'd I murder?"
"Think for a minute. Who have we all decided actually did commit a murder, not to mention those rapings- and now comes along and stabs me?"
"Barry Norton! You mean he-"
"That's right. Now, a big reason you were wanted in Kenton was to get a line on that menace-maybe get him put away so he couldn't do more damage."
"Sir, I've devoted hours and hours of thought to it. I'm convinced, judging by the patterns, that he's the rapist. And I've repeatedly tried to get the sheriff to lock him up. But he keeps objecting there's no evidence. He can't just take my word for it, he says."
"But there definitely is evidence," Hackthorne scolded. "I've been waiting for you to figure that out-but I waited too long. I got myself knifed."
"You say there is evidence? Where?"
Hackthorne looked at him pityingly. "Have you forgotten? The man is a painter. Have you forgotten?"
"Sure. A good one, by all accounts. What's that got to do with it."
"Remember Ragot, the Englishman? And countless other paranoid artists?"
A great light burst upon the younger man.
"Of course! I've been blind. Willet painted those cat faces. First they were very nice cat faces-then gradually, as he deteriorated, the faces became more bizarre and fantastic until at last they were unrecognizable horrors."
"Precisely. So where would one search for the evidence we want?"
"My God," breathed Rod. "His studio!"
To this interchange of words between master and pupil, Missy Blumendahl and Dr. Fontenot had been listening with baited breath.
Now Missy found her voice. "He has a shack out in the woods," she volunteered. "Maybe he paints there."
"No," said Rod. He knew from what Nola had told him that Barry Norton did no painting in that shack. "If I judge his type right, his studio must be somewhere in his home. To him it would be a lair, a den-like any animal's den. I'm going over and take a look."
With that, Rod ran down the veranda steps. A couple of minutes later, they heard the pick-up truck roar off.
Both Missy and Dr. Fontenot were glaring at Hackthorne accusingly. "You old devil," rasped Missy. "If you had it figured out, why didn't you tell him before? When did you figure out that painting gimmick?"
Hackthorne's grin was never more Satanic. "About five minutes ago."
"You rail-built jackass! Do you realize you've chased the boy off to face that madman alone?"
"Oh, I thought we'd toddle along after him. I want to give him a little lead on us so he'll have enough time to shine. It will do his self-confidence no end of good."
"Alcide, round up the sheriff. I'll get Bridge. Let's go get that boy out of trouble." Missy whirled on Hackthorne. "You think you're up to this? It might be rough."
He gave her a sour glance. "I feel fine. Outside of a busted spine and a small knife-wound. Thanks for extracting the point so neatly, Alcide. It's hardly bleeding at all."
* * *
Rodney Barrett knew where the Norton grotesquerie of a house was. He had passed it once or twice during exploratory drives about the county. When he reached it, he found it lit from top to bottom.
Barry had rushed home some time before. In his unpredictable way, he had been disturbed by the darkness and the shadows. He had switched on every light, then had rushed into his father's room.
At the massive door, Rod looked for a bell-button, found none. He seized the massive brass knocker and pounded with all his might. No one came to answer. Exasperated, Rod pushed on the door. It opened.
He plunged in, saw no one. He marched through the ground-floor rooms, then climbed the big staircase. On the second-floor landing, he paused, listened. He heard nothing. He was about to explore the rooms when he thought he caught the sound of whimpering. He cocked an ear, waited. Yes. Some person or some animal was whimpering somewhere over his head.
Rod ran down the hall, saw another staircase. He climbed it swiftly. Off the landing were three doors. The whimpering was coming from behind the one furthest off. He rushed to it, put his ear to the panel.
Whoever was on the other side must have heard his footsteps. They evoked a muffled cry. "Let me out of here! Let me out!"
The door was locked, but it took Rod only three seconds to kick it in. At his feet huddled an unutterably horrid hag.
She lifted herself to her feet, pushed past him to the landing. She started painfully down the stairs, muttering to herself, "Whiskey. Got to find whiskey-" That must be Mrs. Norton, Rod told himself, his hair standing on end. Senility, he diagnosed swiftly. Senility and something more.
He noticed the ladder in front of him. Lights overhead were blazing; the bag, in despair, must have switched them on. On impulse, Rod climbed the ladder. The sight that met him almost made him lose his own reason.
Scattered about were the paintings. After he got over his first shock, Rod gazed at them carefully, one after the other. The Delery girl. Barry's mother. The composite Barrett-Pilgrim horror. The rape of Melody.
"Talk about evidence!" Rod exploded aloud. "He had to be there to paint that scene with Melody-" He stepped closer, bent over it to examine the concentrated malignance that went into each tiny detail. He shivered as he took in the virulence of the man's hatred, the insane savagery that motivated every stroke of the brush.
And while he was examining the repulsive canvases, their perpetrator was about to leave his father's room.
Barry Norton had only gone in there in the first place to get the man's straight razor. As usual, his father was snoring on the bed, bewhiskered, sodden with alcohol. He did not move while Barry searched drawers, coming at last on the gleaming razor.
Barry opened it, stared with relish at the murderous blade. He flourished it once or twice experimentally. And great, dripping blobs of blood appeared before his eyes. Barrett-Pilgrim blood would be good, he thought. It would be balm to soothe his seething mind and the humiliations heaped upon him. But it would be no good to paint with. So after spilling it, he would have to cut the throat of Melody-Nola. The razor would be perfect for the job, now that he had lost the butcher knife.
Then suddenly Barry heard a sound. He lifted his head, recognized the mutterings and whimperings of his mother, heard her curses and her tottering steps. Hadn't he locked her in the studio? How had she got out? And had she damaged his paintings? He had been a fool, he told himself now, to leave her in there.
Alarmed, but still with the blood-red mist before his eyes, he stole from the room, silently climbed the stairs. With automatic stealth, he climbed the ladder.
As his head poked above the floor, he saw his enemy. Barrett-Pilgrim.
The enemy's back was turned.
Barry raised the razor, stared at it. He willed the blade to be red with a dancing light of electric blue along the thin, whetted edge. It would let blood to his order. Gushing blood. Barrett blood, and the blood of Bridge Pilgrim. And after that, girlish blood.
With preternatural stealth, he lifted himself from the ladder. He crouched to spring.
In that instant, he heard pounding steps and loud cries from the landing below. He did not falter in his purpose however.
But his quarry, hearing the noises, turned.
He threw himself to one side, avoiding Barry's arcing blade.
Sheriff Jess Townley emerged over the top of the ladder. He was followed by Bridge, Dr. Fontenot, Dr. Hackthorne and the panting Missy in that order.
Barry turned and faced them, an animal at bay.
"Watch it, Jess," said Dr. Fontenot quietly.
"Watch it damn closely," contributed Dr. Barrett, white around the gills. "I know that look. He doesn't know what he's doing."
Missy stood stiff, horrified and taut as Jess Townley advanced on Barry, who brandished the razor dangerously.
"You fool," she yelped. "Draw that sidearm!"
"Barry," said Townley, "drop the razor."
Barry stared at the sheriff uncomprehendingly, his eyes glazed with his ecstatic vision of red.
"Drop it, Barry. Drop it and come with us."
But Barry raised his weapon. Walking as if his legs were stilts, he advanced to meet the sheriff.
"Now's the time, Jess," said Missy crisply.
The sheriff must have agreed. His long-barreled gun snaked easily from its holster and hesitated.
Barry stalked closer, his eyes fixed on the sheriff's neck. He swung as the pistol tilted, steadied, snapped out a crisp report.
Barry Norton was dead before he hit the floor. Not in a tide of lovely red. But with a tiny hole, twenty-two hundredths of an inch in diameter, showing between the eyes.
Like Dr. Hackthorne's knife-wound, the hole hardly bled at all.
* * *
Next morning, back on her home grounds, Missy ordered coffee served and dropped heavily into a chair. "All right, you wise men. Any post mortems? In my opinion he was a mad dog. Now he's a good mad dog."
Dr. Hackthorne nodded soberly. "From the standpoint of the public good, what you say is true. Yet I feel very sorry for that unfortunate boy."
"Sorry?" she blared. "For that raping murderer?"
"Yes," Hackthorne insisted. "Sorry. Because you've got to agree, on the strength of his paintings, that he was a genius. If it were not for his ill mind, he might have taken his place among master artists. Who knows? Psychiatry might have saved him, if he had been lucky enough to run into it when young enough."
"I doubt it," Rod said, his arm comfortably around Nola. "Psychiatry does not know enough yet about cases like his."
"I agree. I'm saying that at least he would have had a chance-an outside chance-of escaping the cold labyrinthine gloom that must have been his world."
"Probably he's better off dead," Dr. Fontenot said. "At least he no longer has to endure the gloom you describe, and all the other internal tortures of insanity."
Missy nodded. "By the way, Lora phoned me a while ago. Seems Joyce was raped and beaten by our poor Barry. But she's quite happy about the whole thing, boasted about it to Lora. And Joyce wept when she heard Barry was dead." Missy made a coarse noise. "Well, that's Joyce for you... Rod, where are you? It's obvious you aren't with us."
He snapped to attention. "Well, I heard everything Dr. Hackthorne said, but from long habit I can listen to him and think about something else."
"I'm not sure how I should take that," snapped the older man. "Just what were you thinking about?"
"A double wedding," Rod said. "Melody and Bridge- Nola and me."
"Wow!" announced Missy. "I'll throw a fang-dang that will make last night's look like a tea party."
Tangi, who had just walked in with the refilled and steaming percolator, smiled stunningly.
"Tangi, my girl," said Hackthorne, eyeing her with appreciation, "a little bird has told me you're good for hurts and wounds and such."
Tangi had the grace to blush.
"Well, my dear girl," Hackthorne continued, "it might interest you to know that I'm wounded."
"Well, I'll be a suck egg mule," Missy said softly.
"Me'n you both," said Sheriff Townley. "How 'bout some more coffee?
