Dimension Of Horror Part 13

"I've always liked Berkeley," he mused. "J and I were here once. Did he tell you? A bit of the wet stuff in cooperation with the yanks. A lot goes on here. A spy can see plenty simply by renting a room in the hills and a telescope." He gestured toward the bay. "When a navy vessel drops anchor out there, it's no use trying to hide the fact-"

They came to a wire-mesh fence topped with barbed wire.

Blade said, "Is this electrified?"

"I don't know."

"Probably not. But it doesn't matter."

He started along the fence. She hurried after him. "d.i.c.k, what are you doing, anyway?"

"Taking my evening const.i.tutional, love. You say I'm sick. Well, what could be better for me than a brisk walk out in the fresh air?"

She caught up and he encircled her waist with a powerful arm and gave her a peck on the forehead. She felt a rush of emotion that should have died long ago, yet still remained as strong as ever. That painful ambivalence! At one instant she felt warm and protected, at the next vulnerable and afraid, as if Richard were an ancient G.o.d who might in one mood perform miracles of healing, and in another mood demand a human sacrifice.

How could she propitiate him?

Her body! That would satisfy him. It had always satisfied him before. How strange it was to love a man, and at the same time fear him! With Reginald it had been perhaps a little dull, but not frightening. At least not frightening!

"Oh, d.i.c.k," she whispered, pulling his head down, pulling herself up. They kissed. She realized that if he killed her she wouldn't mind. It would be all right.

The darkness was settling in around them.

A plane pa.s.sed overhead, blinking its lights red, green, white, red, green, white.

Gently she pulled herself free of his arms.

"Will you come with me to my room?" she asked, her voice shaking.

He nodded, but his face was in shadow so she could not read his expression.

They started back toward the mansion.

Zoe noticed, as she pa.s.sed them, the two white-clad guards standing in the bushes, tranquilizer pistols in hand.

When Richard emerged from Zoe's room shortly before noon the following day, J and two guards were patiently waiting for him in the hall.

"Good morning, J," Richard said, smiling.

"Good morning, Richard," J answered, returning the smile somewhat stiffly. "You look refreshed."

"I feel positively top-hole." Richard yawned and stretched. Indeed, in his white T-s.h.i.+rt and white slacks (though the slacks were rumpled) he looked top-hole, at least physically.

J said, "You had an appointment with Dr. Colby this morning. Did you forget?"

"That's right!" Blade snapped his fingers. "It completely slipped my mind. I'm awfully sorry, really I am. Why didn't you remind me?"

J looked down, shuffling his feet uncomfortably. "I did not think you'd want to be disturbed."

"You're always a true gentleman, sir. How refres.h.i.+ng in this decadent age!" At times like this Blade was as charming as a pet giant panda. J could not stay angry with him.

"Well, come along to lunch, Richard. Dr. Colby will be able to give you another appointment this afternoon, I'm sure." J turned and started down the hall.

"That's good of him." There was no trace of sarcasm in Richard's voice, yet J glanced at him sharply. Blade's roughhewn features were expressionless, perhaps too expressionless. J realized with uneasiness that Richard's animal cunning was returning much more rapidly than his memory.

The two men went downstairs side by side in silence, the guards a few steps behind.

As they entered the sunlit dining room, J noticed Richard's glance darting around the room, taking in every detail in an instant. The rectangular tables. The paper plates and plastic tableware. The paper tablecloths. The patients, some of whom turned to eye the newcomers sullenly. The doctors and nurses at the head table. J thought, What's he looking for?

Colby waved and smiled.

"Let's sit at the head table," J suggested.

"As you like," Blade agreed.

They made their way down the center aisle, between two rows of tables. The murmur of conversation went on. Some of the patients had begun eating. Others were waiting as the hara.s.sed waiters rushed to and fro from the kitchen and back. Too few waiters. J took this as yet another indication, that poor Colby's sanitarium was, at best, a marginal operation from the financial standpoint.

Colby stood up and leaned forward to shake hands, first with Richard, then with J. J noted (and he was sure Richard must have noticed too) that the lean psychiatrist's palms were sweating.

"Do sit down," Colby said brightly. "And where is the charming Mrs. Smythe-Evans?"

"She decided to sleep in," Richard answered, pulling back a chair.

Colby sat down. "I'm sure she'll be able to find a snack later."

"No doubt," Richard agreed.

J and Richard found themselves facing Colby across the table, the patients behind them. With a quick glance over his shoulder, J rea.s.sured himself that the two guards were still on duty, then saw that Blade was watching him and felt, for some reason, deeply embarra.s.sed.

Colby too was ill at ease, so it was Blade who, after a considerable period of strained silence, said, "I want to apologize for missing my session with you this morning, Dr. Colby."

Colby, speaking with his mouth full, answered, "That's quite all right."

"Could I have another appointment for this afternoon?" Blade inquired.

J felt a twinge of surprise. This was the first time Richard had shown more than the most perfunctory co-operation in his therapy. Now, suddenly, Richard was requesting an appointment!

Colby, also surprised, said, "Of course. Two o'clock is open."

"Two o'clock it is." Richard smiled warmly, then added, "I've been bonkers for over ten years, haven't I?"

Colby said sharply, "Did someone tell you that?"

Richard shook his head. "If you wanted to keep it a secret, you should have gotten rid of all the calendars in this place."

J said guardedly, "You haven't been-as you put it bonkers for that long."

"How long then?" Richard demanded.

"A little over a week," J replied.

Colby shot J a warning glance. "It's best if these things come out under controlled conditions, during therapy. Has your memory started to return, Mr. Blade?"

Blade mused, chewing on a chicken leg, then said, "So, it's amnesia I'm in for. No, I'm afraid my memory isn't coming back, but I do have eyes."

Very sharp eyes, thought J. He wondered how long Richard had been playing dumb and watching, watching, watching. In fact, Richard was not above pretending not to remember even though completely recovered. The man was a trained special agent, d.a.m.nit! Deception was his business. And they had only Richard's few, perhaps deliberately misleading, remarks to go on.

J found himself staring at Blade's profile, trying to read that unreadable face.

Blade said suddenly, "Have I killed someone?"

Colby stiffened but did not reply. J, too, found himself unable to speak.

Blade nodded slowly. "I see that I have."

Colby said, "How did you guess?"

Blade gestured with his plastic fork toward the two nearby guards. "You're watching me so closely. You're all so frightened of me. I knew I must have done something frightful." Who was it I did in?"

Colby said, "It wasn't your fault. It's better we don't talk about it now." He had turned quite pale.

Blade said, "Not polite lunch conversation, eh? Well, I'll see you at two this afternoon, doctor. I promise you a more than usually interesting hour."

Richard was the only one at the table who was smiling.

Chapter 10.

Dr. Saxton Colby was radical in his willingness to explore the more hidden and occult aspects of the mind, to advance into those shadowed areas normally reserved for quacks, charlatans, fanatics and madmen. In this he followed the example of the great psychologist C.J. Jung. In his therapeutic methods, however, Colby was an archconservative. Thus his office was furnished with an old-fas.h.i.+oned psychoa.n.a.lytical couch, not unlike the one used by Dr. Freud in Austria in the early years of this century, the favored symbol of cartoonists to this day. The couch was a Victorian antique, armless, raised at one end, deep-tufted, fringed all around, and upholstered in maroon crushed plush. As Richard Blade sat down on it, Colby looked on with ill-concealed agitation.

"Lie back and relax, Richard," the doctor instructed.

Richard obeyed. "Like this?"

"Exactly."

Colby quickly crossed to close the heavy maroon window drapes, plunging the small cluttered room into semidarkness, then returned to seat himself behind the couch on a st.u.r.dy Morris chair, outside Richard's field of vision, next to a three-foot-tall pedestal on which rested a lifesize bronze bust of the logotherapist Joseph Fabry.

Colby opened his notepad, and with his faintly gleaming silver ballpoint pen wrote Richard's name and the date at the head of the first blank page he came to. He glanced at Richard, who seemed, in white T-s.h.i.+rt and slacks, almost to be glowing. He thought, Today we'll make some progress. Five daily one-hour sessions had thus far yielded Colby little more than Richard's name, rank and serial number, plus the definite impression that Richard had mislaid ten years and was in no hurry to track them down. Colby pursed his lips and waited. When Richard said nothing, he prompted, "In the dining room you promised me an interesting hour."

"So I did," Richard mused. "I fully intend to keep that promise."

"Have any more memories returned?"

"No, but I am gradually beginning to understand what's happened to me, by detective work rather than recall. You're a detective of sorts, aren't you?"

"One might say that."

"Your job is to unearth all your patients' dirty little secrets. That's detective work. You might do well in my line, doctor. I think I'd do well in yours."

"You don't say. Do you think you could-as you put it-unearth all my dirty little secrets?" Colby had confronted this psychological gambit before. In fact, sooner or later every patient took a turn at trying to switch places with the therapist. They were never very good at it, but the false ideas they came up with were often their own problems projected, and thus worth listening to.

"Nothing profound, of course. Your speech tells me you've lived in London, Scotland and Ireland," said Blade.

"Well, not bad. You're right so far."

"You were educated in the USA, or at least went to a university here."

"Right again. Did you get that from the way I talk?"

"No, but from where I'm lying I can see the books on your shelves. All the college-level texts are from American, not British, publishers."

"Bravo!" Colby was genuinely amused.

"The books also tell me you have a lasting and deep interest in the occult. It would take time to collect as many occult t.i.tles as you have, and some of them are books of considerable rarity and value. You've spent money on those books, doctor, as well as time."

"Right again!"

"You come from a theatrical family. . "

"What? How did you guess that?"

"Your movements. The way you project. The theater-probably the legitimate theater-has left its mark on you, yet you yourself have no greasepaint in the blood. Your library, though it contains works of fiction, does not boast a single collection of plays or book on the theater."

"Very clever, Mr. Blade."

"You did not like your father."

"Now you're simply guessing."

"No, I'm not. Your profession is so profoundly different from his you could not have chosen it without a violent rupture. Show business is a particularly difficult subculture to escape from, but you appear to have managed it all too well. At the same time your occultism and your stance in your profession is rebellious. I sense in your att.i.tude toward the father-figures of psychology a carried-over hostility toward your own father. A substantial hostility, since it still influences you so much after all these years!"

Colby had become uncomfortable. Richard was. .h.i.tting much too close to the mark. "That's enough Sherlocking, Richard. Can we get back to you? It is you, not I, who has a problem."

"I've solved my problem, doctor."

"You have? How?"

"By forgetting it."

Colby burst out laughing. When he could speak, he said, "I shall remember that one, Richard. You're a wit, aren't you, as well as a detective and amateur psychotherapist?"

"On your desk is a photo of a little girl. From the fading of the color it must be an old photo. Your daughter?"