And then, without her formulas and her Protective Screen, the curse had
proved too strong for her.
He wanted to run out into the street, to shout her name.
But the pool of ink had dried to glistening black flakes all around the
margin. It must have been spilled hours ago--as early as last midnight
even.
He beat his temple in a rage at his own impotence.
This mood did not last long. His anxiety persisted, grew stronger. But
the supernatural terror rapidly died away. It could not sustain itself
now that he no longer experienced it directly. Even the argument that
he had lost his sensitivity only because the curse was now directed
at her, did not convince him for a moment. No, there was nothing
supernatural in this--no guardian except a figment of his and her
neurotic nerves. What _had_ happened was that he had suggested
all this to her. He had forced upon her the products of his own morbid
imagination. Undoubtedly he had babbled everything to her while he
was drunk. And it had worked on her suggestible nature--she already
believed in witchcraft--until she had got the idea of transferring his
curse to herself, and had convinced herself that the transference had
actually occurred. And then gone off, God knew where!
And that was bad enough.
* * * * *
There was a light chime from the front door. He extracted a letter from
the mailbox, ripped it open. It was addressed with a soft pencil, and
the graphite had smeared. But he knew the handwriting.
The message was so jerky and uneven that he was some time reading it.
It began and ended in the middle of a sentence.
--and a length of gut, a bit of platinum or iridium, a piece of
lodestone, a phonograph needle that has only played Scriabin's
"Ninth Sonata." Then tie--
That was all. A continuation of the first message, with its bizarre
formula. Had she really convinced herself that there was a guardian
watching her, and that she could only communicate during the infrequent
moments when its attention was elsewhere? He knew the answer. When you
had an obsession you could convince yourself of anything.
He looked at the postmark. He recognized the name of a town several
miles east of Hempnell. He could not think of a soul they knew there,
or anything else about the town. His first impulse was to get out the
car and rush over. But what could he do when he got there?
The phone was ringing. It was Evelyn Sawtelle.
"Is that you, Norman? Please ask Tansy to come to the phone. I wish to
speak to her."
The question was rapped out with precision, as if its wording had been
carefully planned.
"I'm sorry, but she isn't in."
Evelyn Sawtelle did not sound surprised at the answer--her second
question came too quickly. "Where is she then? I must get in touch with
her."
He thought. "She's out in the country," he said, "visiting some friends
of ours. Is there something I can tell her?"
"No, I wish to speak to Tansy. What is your friend's number?"
"They don't have a phone!" he said angrily.
"No? Well, it's nothing of importance." She sounded oddly pleased, as
if his anger had given her satisfaction. "I'll call again. I must hurry
now. Hervey is so busy with his new responsibilities. Good-by."
He replaced the phone. Now, why the devil--Suddenly an explanation
occurred to him. Perhaps Tansy had been seen leaving town, and Evelyn
Sawtelle had scented the possibility of some sort of scandal and had
wanted to check. Perhaps Tansy had been carrying a suitcase.
He looked in Tansy's dressing room. The small suitcase was gone.
Drawers were open. It looked as if she had packed in a hurry. But what
about money? He examined his billfold. It was empty. Forty-odd dollars
missing.
You could go a long way on forty dollars. The jerky illegibility of the
message made it look as if it had been written on a train or bus.
The next few hours were highly unpleasant. He checked schedules, and
found that several busses and trains passed through the town from which
Tansy's letter had been sent. He drove to the stations and made guarded
inquiries, with no success.
He wanted to do all the things you should do when someone disappears,
but he held back. What could he say? "My wife, sir, has disappeared.
She is suffering from the delusion that--" And what if she should
be found and questioned in her present state of mind, examined by a
doctor, before he could get to her?
No, this was something for him to handle alone. But if he did not get
a line on it soon, he would have no choice. He would have to go to the
police, inventing some story to cover the facts.
She had written, "Two days." If she believed that she were doomed to
die in two days, might not the belief be enough? That was his worst
fear.
Toward evening he drove back to the house, repressing the chimerical
hope that she had returned in his absence. The special delivery carrier
was just getting into his car. Norman pulled up alongside.
"Anything for Saylor?"
"Yes, sir. It's in the box."
The message was longer this time, but just as difficult to read.
At last its attention is somewhere else. If I control my emotions,
it isn't so quick to notice my thoughts. But it was hard for me to
post the last letter. Norman, you _must_ do what I tell you. The
two days end Sunday midnight. Then the Bay. You _must_ follow
all directions. Tie the four white cords into a granny, a reef, a
cat's-paw, and a carrick bend. Tie the gut in a bowline. Then add--
He looked at the post mark. The place was two hundred miles east. Not
on the railroad lines, as far as he could recall. That should narrow
down the possibilities considerably.
One word from the letter was repeating itself in his mind, like a
musical note struck again and again until it becomes unendurable.
Bay. Bay. Bay. Bay.
* * * * *
The memory came of a hot afternoon fifteen years ago. It was just
before they were married. They were sitting on the edge of a ramshackle
little pier. He remembered the salt smell, and the faintly fishy,
dry-wood smell of the splintery old planks.
"Funny," she had said, looking down into the green water, "but I always
used to think that I'd end up down there. Not that I'm afraid of it.
I've always swum way out. But even when I was a little girl I'd look at
the Bay--maybe green, maybe blue, maybe gray, covered with whitecaps,
glittering with moon-beams, or shrouded by fog--and I'd think, 'Tansy,
the Bay is going to get you, but not for years and years.' Funny, isn't
it?"
And he laughed and put his arms around her tight, and the green water
had gone on lapping at the piles heavy with seaweed.
He had been visiting with her family, when her parents were still
alive, at their home near Bayport on the southern shore of New York Bay.
The narrow corridor suited itself to its victim's most cherished fear.
It ended for her in the Bay, tomorrow midnight.
She must be heading for the Bay.
He made several calls--first bus lines, then railroad and air. It was
impossible to get a reservation on the air lines, but tonight's train
would get him into Jersey City an hour ahead of the bus she must be
traveling, according to the deductions he made from the place and time
of the postmarks.
He had ample time to pack a few things, cash a check on his way to the
station--
He spread her three notes on the table--the one in pen, the two in
pencil. He reread the crazy incomplete formula. He shook his head.
He frowned. Would a scientist neglect the millionth-and-one
possibility? Would the commander of a trapped army disdain a stratagem
just because it was not in the books? This stuff looked like gibberish.
Yesterday it might have meant something to him emotionally. Today it
was just nonsense. But tomorrow night it might conceivably represent a
fantastic last chance.
"Norman, you _must_ do what I tell you." The scrawled words stared
at him.
He went out in the kitchen and got a ball of white twine.
He rummaged in the closet for his squash racket and cut out the two
center strings. That ought to do for gut.
The fireplace had not been cleaned since the stuff from Tansy's
dressing table had been burned. He poked around the edges until he
found a piece of lodestone.
He located the recording of Scriabin's "Ninth Sonata" and started the
phonograph, putting in a new needle. He glanced at his wrist watch and
paced the room restlessly. Gradually the music took hold of him. It was
not pleasant music. There was something tantalizing and exasperating
about it, with its droning melody and rocking figures in the base and
shakes in the treble and elaborate ornamentation that writhed up and
down the piano keyboard. It rasped the nerves.
He began to remember things he had heard about it. Hadn't Tansy once
told him that Scriabin called his "Ninth Sonata" a "Black Mass" and had
developed an antipathy to playing it? Scriabin, who had conceived a
color organ and tried to translate mysticism into music, and had died
of a peculiar lip infection. An innocent-faced Russian with a huge
curling mustache. Critical phrases Tansy had repeated to him floated
through his mind. "The poisonous 'Ninth Sonata'--the most perfidious
piece of music ever conceived--" Ridiculous! How could music be
anything but an abstract pattern of tones?
And yet--while listening to the thing--one could think differently.
Faster and faster it went. The lovely second theme became infected,
was distorted into something raucous and discordant--a march of the
damned--a dance of the damned--breaking off suddenly when it had
reached an unendurable pitch. Then a repetition of the droning first
theme, ending on a soft yet grating note low in the keyboard.
He removed the needle, sealed it in an envelope, and packed it along
with the rest of his stuff.
On an afterthought, he tore out of the big dictionary a page carrying
an illustrated list of knots.
The telephone stopped him as he was going out.
"Oh, Professor Saylor, would you mind calling Tansy to the phone?" Mrs.
Carr's voice was very amicable.
He repeated what he had told Mrs. Sawtelle.
"I'm glad she's having a rest in the country," said Mrs. Carr. "You
know, Professor Saylor, I don't think that Tansy's been looking so well
lately. I've been a little worried. You're sure she's all right?"
"How do you mean?"
It was then the other voice broke in.
"What's the idea of checking up on me? Do you think I'm a child? I know
what I'm doing!"
"Be quiet!" said Mrs. Carr. Then, in her sweet voice. "I think someone
must have cut in on us. Good-by, Professor Saylor."
The line went dead.
He picked up his suitcase and walked out.