Devlin held her close. He had a curiously guilty feeling of compassion and tenderness as he comforted her, and he wondered desperately what they had been to each other these past twelve days. He had the fleeting impression that she had been kicked around by life and expected to be kicked again — by Joey.
“I’ve been so frightened,” she was saying through her sobs, her head pressed against his shoulder. “I didn’t know what to do when you didn’t come and didn’t phone. Then after I talked to you—” She drew away from him and looked up at him pleadingly, “Everything is all right, isn’t it? You didn’t — they’re not after you? Tell me everything’s all right.”
“I’ll tell you all about it,” he said heavily. “Everything is as right as it can be — under the circumstances — I guess. I’m beginning — to feel dizzy again.”
“You poor thing. Sit down over here on the sofa.” She caught his arm and led him to the soiled couch, fluffed a lumpy cretonne-covered pillow, said, “You just sit there and rest. I’ll get you a drink. I brought home some gin.”
Devlin moaned. “No — I don’t want a drink,” he protested harshly.
“But I got some Tom Collins mixture, Joey. That’s what—”
“It’s my stomach,” he said hastily. “That blow on the head made me nauseated and dizzy. Just get me a glass of ice water.”
He watched her as she turned toward the kitchen. God in Heaven! He put his hands against his head and moaned again as he had his first peek behind the black curtain covering those twelve days. He had become a gin drinker! And from the way Marge had backed away from him, he had, no doubt, also become a woman beater.
Marge came back with the ice water. He drank it eagerly, swallowing the last of the lump that had constricted his throat earlier in the morning.
She sat down beside him and crooned, “Now tell me all about it, Joey. Every single thing. So, he didn’t bring the money — the no-good bastard.” She spoke without rancor; more in sorrow, it seemed to Devlin, than in anger.
“I told you over the phone I didn’t get the money.” He watched her closely. Her expression, her tone of voice were his only cues.
“Too bad he didn’t tell you before you conked him,” she said unfeelingly. “Skid was always an undependable louse. Did you have a fight, Joey? What’d he hit you with?” She moved closer to him, put her arm around his neck, and her finger tips felt gentle and competent as she massaged the swollen area.
He winced when she touched the bruised spot, and she asked with sudden concern, “You sure it’s all right, Joey? It might be a concussion. You never can tell about a lick like that.”
Devlin remembered that Doctor Thompson had said the very same thing and was on the verge of telling her he had seen a doctor. He was saved from making another thoughtless mistake when Marge said abruptly and with startling venom, “What in hell did he hit you with?”
Devlin caught his breath in sharply. “A blackjack,” he told her. “You see, I—”
“But you had the blackjack.” She jerked her arm from around his neck and moved to face him squarely. “If you had just listened to me, Joe Jerome! Just hid behind the door like I told you and let ’im have it as soon as he came in. Instead of that I suppose you shook hands with him politely and said, ‘Good evening, Mr. Munroe. I’m Joe Jerome — Marge’s husband, you know. If you’ll just hand over that money you’ve got in your pocket — Damn it.” Rage thickened her voice and she pounded her fist against his arm. “Sometimes I think you’ve got no guts at all.”
Devlin didn’t answer her for a moment. The little peepholes she was opening up in the black curtain were there before him. Joe Jerome. Skid Munroe. He was Marge’s husband.
“Well — what did happen?” Her sharp voice shocked him out of his reverie.
Devlin looked at her. A bright pinpoint of light gleamed in the center of her sooty irises and her features were hard. “I didn’t get there first,” he said quietly. “He was already in the room when I got there. When I came in he — well — we had a fight and he got the blackjack away from me.” He shook his head ruefully and added, “There was quite a mix-up for a moment, and I thought I was done for.” Marge relaxed as suddenly as she had tensed. She leaned back against the couch. The tonelessness was in her voice again when she said, “But you got him anyhow. He won’t do any talking. We can just forget about the whole thing.” She moved close to him and caught his arm in a gentle caress.
Devlin was astounded, and he was worried. He couldn’t let her stop talking just when he was beginning to find out some of the things he had to know. But he had to be careful. Thus far he hadn’t blundered. She hadn’t suspected him. But henceforth he had to force himself to acquire the cunning of a criminal. He laid one of his hands over hers and said, “They’ll find Skid’s body in the room — as soon as the maid starts cleaning.”
“That’s no concern of ours, Joey,” she purred, and pressed her head against his shoulder. “No one knows you were there.”
“The manager saw me come out,” he told her. “I’m afraid he recognized me because he remembered I’d asked the room number when I went there to meet Skid.” The moment the words were spoken he realized he’d made his first blunder.
Marge’s caressing fingers became claws that dug into the muscles of his arms. Her upper lip drew back from her teeth and she grated, “You knew the room number when you went there. I wrote it down for you so you wouldn’t forget.” She stared at him for an instant and her rage changed to fear that was low and awesome in her voice, “Joey! Did you have another one of those spells?”
Devlin jerked his arm from her grasp. “Suppose I did?” he said harshly. “Could I help it? I tried to remember — and I guess I forgot to take the slip with me. And so I asked,” he ended defiantly. His mind was whirling with hope. If he had spells during his mental blackout it might mean that he was trying to struggle back to consciousness. Could a person afflicted with amnesia unconsciously try to grope his way back to his real identity?
Marge was saying rapidly, “But he didn’t know you. You were just a guy to him. They can’t trace you here. You just stay in close like you’ve been doing. It’ll be all right.” She slowed her words and softened her voice gradually, as though in her mind her fear was going away. “It’ll be all right, Joey. I know it’ll be all right. Marge won’t let them find you. Don’t you worry.”
She kissed his neck and his chin, and moved her face upward to his lips.
Devlin held her close, feeling a tenuous and almost subconscious sense of recognition, as though all of this had happened exactly the same way before — one of those inexplicable moments when one wonders if time has two dimensions whereby it is possible to live through the same experience on different planes at exactly the same moment. He strained to grasp the half-memory. Drops of perspiration broke out on his face. Marge slid her arm around his neck to pull his head down closer, and the feeling was gone.
“Now you stop worrying, Joey. Just don’t think about it any more,” she crooned. “Pretend it’s just another one of those bad dreams you’ve been having. It’s like I promised you in the beginning — when you started forgetting. And Joey — you know what?” Her lips were nuzzling his ear and her voice was a persuasive whisper, wooing and caressing.
A wave of passion spread through him. His lips were dry and he forced them to say, “What, Marge?” giving himself over to the excitation she aroused in him.
“Let’s don’t make the couch up out here for you tonight, Joey. You’re okay now. We don’t have to keep that up any more. Do we, Joey?”
He lay quiescent, her kisses weakening his will and strengthening his body as he fought to break the situation down into its component parts, to probe beyond her words and find some understanding of the situation, some knowledge of how it had been brought about in a space of less than two weeks.