I was fighting my body upright when Doctor Thorndyke came running.
"Easy, Steve," he said with a quiet gesture. He pushed me gently back
down in the bed with hands that were as soft as a mother's, but as firm
as the kind that tie bow knots in half-inch bars. "Easy," he repeated
soothingly.
"Catherine?" I croaked pleadingly.
Thorndyke fingered the call button in some code or other before he
answered me. "Steve," he said honestly, "you can't be kept in ignorance
forever. We hoped it would be a little longer, when you were stronger--"
"Stop beating around!" I yelled. At least it felt like I was yelling,
but maybe it was only my mind welling.
"Easy, Steve. You've had a rough time. Shock--" The door opened and a
nurse came in with a hypo all loaded, its needle buried in a fluff of
cotton. Thorndyke eyed it professionally and took it; the nurse faded
quietly from the room. "Take it easy, Steve. This will--"
"No! Not until I know--"
"Easy," he repeated. He held the needle up before my eyes. "Steve," he
said, "I don't know whether you have enough esper training to dig the
contents of this needle, but if you haven't, will you please trust me?
This contains a neurohypnotic. It won't put you under. It will leave you
as wide awake as you are now, but it will disconnect your running gear
and keep you from blowing a fuse." Then with swift deftness that amazed
me, the doctor slid the needle into my arm and let me have the full
load.
I was feeling the excitement rise in me because something was wrong, but
I could also feel the stuff going to work. Within half a minute I was in
a chilled-off frame of mind that was capable of recognizing the facts
but not caring much one way or the other.
When he saw the stuff taking hold, Thorndyke asked, "Steve, just who is
Catherine?"
The shock almost cut through the drug. My mind whirled with all the
things that Catherine was to me, and the doctor followed it every bit of
the way.
"Steve, you've been under an accident shock. There was no Catherine with
you. There was no one with you at all. Understand that and accept it. No
one. You were alone. Do you understand?"
I shook my head. I sounded to myself like an actor reading the script of
a play for the first time. I wanted to pound on the table and add the
vigor of physical violence to my hoarse voice, but all I could do was to
reply in a calm voice:
"Catherine was with me. We were--" I let it trail off because Thorndyke
knew very well what we were doing. We were eloping in the new definition
of the word. Rhine Institute and its associated studies had changed a
lot of customs; a couple intending to commit matrimony today were
inclined to take off quietly and disappear from their usual haunts until
they'd managed to get intimately acquainted with one another. Elopement
was a means of finding some personal privacy.
We should have stayed at home and faced the crude jokes that haven't
changed since Pithecanthropus first discovered that sex was funny. But
our mutual desire to find some privacy in this modern fish-bowl had put
me in the hospital and Catherine--where--?
"Steve, listen to me!"
"Yeah?"
"I know you espers. You're sensitive, maybe more so than telepaths. More
imagination--"
This was for the birds in my estimation. Among the customs that Rhine
has changed was the old argument as to whether women or men were
smarter. Now the big argument was whether espers or telepaths could get
along better with the rest of the world.
Thorndyke laughed at my objections and went on: "You're in accident
shock. You piled up your car. You begin to imagine how terrible it would
have been if your Catherine had been with you. Next you carefully build
up in your subconscious mind a whole and complete story, so well put
together that to you it seems to be fact."
But, #--how could anyone have taken a look at the scene of the accident
and not seen traces of woman? My woman.#
"We looked," he said in answer to my unspoken question. "There was not a
trace, Steve."
#Fingerprints?#
"You'd been dating her."
#Naturally!#
Thorndyke nodded quietly. "There were a lot of her prints on the remains
of your car. But no one could begin to put a date on them, or tell how
recent was the latest, due to the fire. Then we made a door to door
canvas of the neighborhood to be sure she hadn't wandered off in a daze
and shock. Not even a footprint. Nary a trace." He shook his head
unhappily. "I suppose you're going to ask about that travelling bag you
claim to have put in the trunk beside your own. There was no trace of
any travelling bag."
"Doctor," I asked pointedly, "if we weren't together, suppose you tell
me first why I had a marriage license in my pocket; second, how come I
made a date with the Reverend Towle in Midtown; and third, why did I
bother to reserve the bridal suite in the Reignoir Hotel in Westlake? Or
was I nuts a long time before this accident. Maybe," I added, "after
making reservations, I had to go out and pile myself up as an excuse for
not turning up with a bride."
"I--all I can say is that there was not a trace of woman in that
accident."
"You've been digging in my mind. Did you dig her telephone number?"
He looked at me blankly.
"And you found what, when you tried to call her?"
"I--er--"
"Her landlady told you that Miss Lewis was not in her apartment because
Miss Lewis was on her honeymoon, operating under the name of Mrs. Steve
Cornell. That about it?"
"All right. So now you know."
"Then where the hell is she, Doc?" The drug was not as all-powerful as
it had been and I was beginning to feel excitement again.
"We don't know, Steve."
"How about the guy that hauled me out of that wreck? What does he say?"
"He was there when we arrived. The car had been hauled off you by block
and tackle. By the time we got there the tackle had been burned and the
car was back down again in a crumpled mass. He is a farmer by the name
of Harrison. He had one of his older sons with him, a man about
twenty-four, named Phillip. They both swore later that there was no
woman in that car nor a trace of one."
"Oh, he did, did he?"
Dr. Thorndyke shook his head slowly and then said very gently. "Steve,
there's no predicting what a man's mind will do in a case of shock. I've
seen 'em come up with a completely false identity, all the way back to
childhood. Now, let's take your case once more. Among the other
incredible items--"
"Incredible?" I roared.
"Easy. Hear me out. After all, am I to believe your unsubstantiated
story or the evidence of a whole raft of witnesses, the police detail,
the accident squad, and the guys who hauled you out of a burning car
before it blew up? As I was saying, how can we credit much of your tale
when you raved about one man lifting the car and the other hauling you
out from underneath?"