Norman looked briefly across the campus before he went into Morton. The
thing that startled him most was something he had not expected--the air
of normality. True, he had not looked forward--at least consciously--to
any outwardly demoniac manifestations, any physical stench of evil. But
this feeling of wholesomeness--the little swarms of students trooping
back to the dormitories or over to the campus soda fountain, the file
of girls in white bound for a tennis lesson, the friendly smiles and
nods, the way his own steps fell so easily and gratefully into the old
familiar paths--almost for a moment he wondered if everything else were
not some crazy dream. It came to him almost with a shock that things
were outwardly as normal as they had ever been, that only with respect
to himself had they changed.
"Don't fool yourself," the voice inside told him. "Some of those
laughing girls are already infected. Their very respectable mammas
have given them delicate hints. Don't be too sure you know what
they're thinking while they sip their cokes or chatter about their boy
friends."
But there was much to be done this afternoon, and he had no right to
waste a second. He turned into Morton and quickly mounted the stairs.
His capacity for surprise was not yet exhausted, however, as he
realized when he saw a group of students emerging from the classroom
at the other end of the third-floor corridor, after having waited the
usual ten minutes for him to appear. That was right--he had classes,
and committee meetings, and appointments. He slipped around the bend in
the corridor before he was noticed.
Taking suitable precautions, he entered his office. Nothing seemed to
have been disturbed, but he was careful in his movements and on the
alert for unfamiliar objects. He did not put his hand into any drawer
without closely inspecting it first.
One letter in the little pile of accumulated mail was important. It was
from Pollard's office, requesting him to appear before a meeting of the
trustees later this week. He smiled with grim satisfaction. His career
was still skidding downhill. Hempnell still had its fangs.
He methodically removed certain sections from his files, stuffed his
brief case full and made a package of the remainder.
Then he took from his pocket a small hard object, and looked at it
reflectively.
It was made of lucite, and its shape was that of an egg. Sealed inside
the thick, transparent shell were tiny bits of metal and fiber. It was
the chief trophy of his stay in New York. His friend in industrial
chemistry had been very mystified. But here it was.
Placed in the Sawtelle home, it ought to constitute the terminal of a
kind of circuit and clear the way for the operations he intended to
begin tonight, for the recovery of that which Evelyn Sawtelle had taken
and was holding captive.
It remained to place it.
After a last glance around, during which he noted that the Estrey
dragon had not been restored to whatever was its original position on
the roof, he started downstairs.
Outside he met Mrs. Gunnison.
This was something he had not anticipated with sufficient vividness. He
was acutely conscious of the way his arms were encumbered by the bulky
notes. For a moment he did not seem able to see her clearly.
"Lucky I found you," she began immediately. "Harold's been trying every
which way to get in touch with you. Where have you been?"
Suddenly she registered on him as her old, blunt, sloppy self. With a
sense of mingled relief and frustration, he realized that the warfare
in which he was engaged was a strictly undercover affair, and that
outwardly all relationships were the same as ever. He found himself
explaining how Tansy and he, weekending with friends out in the
country, had gotten a touch of food poisoning, and how his message to
Hempnell must have gone astray. This explanation was intended merely
for general consumption. Routine excuses were still necessary, and
this one had the added advantage of providing a reason for Tansy's
appearance, if anyone should see her, and it would enable him to plead
a recurrence of the attack as an excuse for neglecting his academic
duties.
He did not expect Mrs. Gunnison to believe it, but he ought to tell it
to her just to be consistent.
She accepted the story without comment, offered her sympathies, and
went on to say, "But be sure and get in touch with Harold. I believe
it has to do with that meeting of the trustees you've been asked to
attend. You know, Harold thinks a great deal of you. Good-by."
Odd, but at the last moment he fancied he caught a note of genuine
friendliness, a strange little look, as if she was appealing to him to
do something. Could he possibly be wrong in his estimation of her?
* * * * *
But there was work to do. Off campus, he hurried down a quiet side
street to where his car was parked. With hardly a sidewise glance at
the motionless figure in the front seat, he stepped in and drove to
Sawtelle's.
The house was bigger than they needed, and the front lawn was very
formal. But the grass was yellow in patches, and the soldierlike rows
of flowers looked neglected.
"Wait here," he said. "Don't get out of the car under any
circumstances."
To his surprise, Hervey met him at the door. There were circles under
Hervey's always-worried eyes, and his fidgetiness was more than usually
apparent.
"I'm so glad you've come," he said, pulling Norman inside. "I don't
know what I'm going to do with all these departmental responsibilities
on my shoulders! Classes having to be dismissed. Stop-gap instructors
to be obtained. And the deadline on next year's catalogue tomorrow!
Here, come into my study." And he pushed Norman through a huge living
room, expensively but stiffly furnished, into a dingy, book-lined
cubbyhole with one small window.
"I'm almost going out of my mind," he said. "I haven't dared stir out
of the house since Evelyn was attacked Sunday night."
"What!"
"Haven't you heard?" He stopped and looked at Norman in surprise. Even
here he had been trying to pace up and down, although there was not
room enough. "Why, it was in the papers. Though I wondered why you
didn't come over or call up. I kept trying to get you at your home and
the office, but no one could locate you. Evelyn's been in bed since
Sunday, and she gets hysterical if I even speak of going out of the
house. Just now she's asleep, thank heavens."
It was borne in on Norman that Sawtelle was not even aware that he
had been out of town. Hastily he related his trumped-up excuse. He
wanted to get back to what had happened Sunday night. There was an idea
forming at the back of his mind, but it was still nebulous. For the
moment he neglected the real purpose of his visit.
"Just my luck!" Sawtelle exclaimed tragically when Norman had finished.
"The whole department falling apart the very first week I'm in charge
of it. And young Stackpoole laid up with the 'flu'!"
"We'll manage," said Norman. "Sit down and tell me about Evelyn."
Unwillingly, Sawtelle cleared a space so he could perch on the
cluttered desk. He groaned audibly when his eyes chanced to light on
papers concerned with urgent business.
"It happened about four o'clock Sunday morning," he began, still
aimlessly fiddling with the papers. "I was awakened by a terrible
scream. Evelyn's bed was empty. It was pitch dark out in the hall. But
I could hear some sort of struggle going on downstairs. A bumping and
threshing around--"
Suddenly he jerked up his head. "What was that? I thought I heard
footsteps out in the front hall." Before Norman could say anything he
went on, "Oh, it's just my nerves. They've been acting up ever since.
"Well, I picked up something--a vase--and went downstairs. About that
time the sounds stopped. I switched on the lights and went through all
the rooms. In the sewing room I found Evelyn stretched unconscious on
the floor with some ghastly bruises beginning to show around her neck
and mouth. Beside her lay the phone--we have it there because Evelyn
has so many occasions to use it. I nearly went frantic. I called a
doctor and the police."
Norman knew now what must have happened.
"When Evelyn regained consciousness, she was able to tell us about
it, although she was terribly shaken up. It seems the phone had rung.
She went downstairs in the dark without waking me. Just as she was
picking up the phone, a man jumped out of the corner and attacked
her. She fought him off--oh, it drives me mad to think of it!--but he
over-powered her and choked her unconscious."
Norman listened with grim satisfaction.
"Thank heavens I came downstairs when I did! That must have been what
frightened him off. The doctor found that, except for bruises, there
weren't any other injuries. Even the doctor was shocked at those
bruises, though. He said he had never seen any quite like them.
"The police think that after the man got in the house he called Central
and asked them to ring this phone--pretending he thought the bell was
out of order or something--in order to lure someone downstairs. They
were puzzled as to how he got inside, though, for all the windows and
doors were shut fast. Probably I forgot to lock the front door when we
went to bed--one of my pieces of unforgivable carelessness!
"The police think that he was a vicious burglar, but I believe he must
have been a madman besides. Because there was a silver plate on the
floor, and two of our silver forks jammed together strangely, and other
odds and ends. And he must have been playing the phonograph in the
sewing room, because it was open and the turntable was going and on the
floor was one of Evelyn's speech records, smashed to bits."
* * * * *
Yes, the picture was all very clear now. What Norman had forgotten to
take into consideration was the ever-present possibility of reaction,
if magic miscarried--"like the kick of a gun," or, better, like the
breech of a gun blowing up. When he had severed the wire at Bayport,
the thwarted Agency of Death had instantly struck back at the sender.
And afterward Evelyn Sawtelle had invented the obvious story.
One thing bothered him. If the police should trace that phone call in
an effort to prove their own theory, they would find it had been placed
by Norman Saylor, at Bayport. But at the worst that would only convict
him of a peculiar lie. For the present he would say nothing about it.
"It's all my fault," Sawtelle was repeating mournfully. Norman
remembered that Sawtelle always assumed that he was guilty whenever
anything hurt or merely upset Evelyn. "I should have awakened! _I_
should have been the one to go down to the phone. When I think of that
delicate creature feeling her way through the dark, and lurking just
ahead of her that--Oh, and the department! I tell you I'm going out of
my mind. Poor Evelyn has been in such a pitifully frightened state ever
since, you wouldn't believe it!"
"Good," thought Norman. "If she's really frightened, she may be easier
to deal with." The idea of pity never occurred to him. Moreover, if
what he had been told about the lodgment of captive souls were true,
then Tansy's soul had suffered equally with that of Evelyn Sawtelle
here in this very house on Sunday night.
"I tell you, I haven't slept a wink," Sawtelle was saying. "If Mrs.
Gunnison hadn't been kind enough to spend a couple of hours with her
yesterday morning, I don't know how I'd have managed. Even then she was
too frightened to let me stir.... My God!... Evelyn!"
But it was really impossible to identify the agonized scream, except
that it had come from the upper part of the house. Crying out, "I knew
I heard footsteps! He's come back!" Sawtelle ran full tilt out of
the study. Norman was just behind him, suddenly conscious of a very
different fear. It was confirmed by a glance through the living-room
window at his empty car.
He beat Sawtelle up the stairs and was the first to reach the bedroom
door. He stopped. Sawtelle, almost gibbering with anxiety and guilt,
ran into him.
It was not at all what Norman expected.
The pink silk coverlet clutched around her, Evelyn Sawtelle had
retreated to the side of the bed nearest the wall. Her teeth were
chattering, and her face was a dirty white.
Beside the bed stood Tansy. For a moment Norman felt a great, sudden
hope. Then he saw her eyes, and the hope shot away with sickening
swiftness. She was not wearing the veil. In that heavy make-up, with
those rouged cheeks and thickly carmined lips, she looked like some
indecently daubed statue, impossibly grotesque against that background
of ridiculously feminine pink silk hangings. But a hungry statue.
Sawtelle scrambled past him, shouting, "What's happened? What's
happened?" He saw Tansy. "I didn't know you were here. When did you
come in?" Then, "You frightened her!"
The statue spoke, and its quiet accents hushed him.
"Oh, no, I didn't frighten her. Did I, Evelyn?"
Evelyn Sawtelle was staring at Tansy in abject, wide-eyed terror, and
her jaw was still shaking. But when she spoke, it was to say, "No,
Tansy didn't ... frighten me. We were talking together ... and then ...
I ... I thought I heard a noise."
"Just a noise, dear?" Sawtelle said, somewhat taken aback.
"Yes ... like footsteps ... very quiet footsteps in the hall." She did
not take her eyes off Tansy, who nodded once when she had finished.
Norman accompanied Sawtelle on a futile search of the top floor. When
they came back, Evelyn was alone.
"Tansy's gone out to the car," she told Norman weakly. "I'm sure I just
imagined those footsteps."
But her eyes were still full of fear when he left her, with Sawtelle
fussing about straightening the coverlet and shaking out the pillows.
As he went down the stairs he became aware of a hard object in his
pocket, and he remembered the lucite egg. He had not placed it. But, as
things stood now, he must first know more.
Tansy was sitting in the car, staring ahead. He could see that the body
was still dominated by its one emotion. He did have to ask a question.
"She does not have my soul," were the words. "I questioned her at
length. As a final and certain test I embraced her. That was when she
screamed. She is very much afraid of the dead."
"What did she tell you?"
"She said that someone came and took my soul from her. Someone who did
not trust her very much. Someone who desired my soul, to keep as a
hostage and for other reasons. Mrs. Gunnison."
And he had seen it and not known. The knuckles of his hands were white
on the steering wheel. That puzzling look of appeal that Mrs. Gunnison
had given him. For an instant Tansy had managed to look out of her
eyes. And he had not known it.