He saw Linda staring at him. There was concern in her face, but no fear; apparently the meaning of his sudden movement had escaped her.
“What is it?” she repeated.
“Liver, or something,” Michael said promptly. His voice and body were once again under his control. The mental grasp had left his mind, but he derived no comfort from his victory. This might have been only a preliminary, testing thrust. He knew that he did not dare tell Linda what had happened.
“Hadn’t you better let Napoleon out?” she asked. “He’s beside himself.”
“Huh? Oh, yeah.”
Michael opened the door warily, putting himself into a posture of defense. Napoleon’s shrieks stopped abruptly, but he did not appear; looking around the corner of the door, Michael saw him crouched in the farthest corner, behind the hamper.
“It’s all right,” he said. “You can come out now.”
The cat refused to move until Linda called him. He curled up on the foot of the bed.
“I’ll make some coffee,” Michael mumbled, and fled without waiting for an answer.
He got to the kitchen before his legs gave way, and collapsed into a chair, letting his head drop down onto the table. For a long time he sat and shook, while his mind raced desperately from one blank wall to another. He had thought, when he fought Linda for his life, that that was the worst thing that could happen. He knew now that he had yet to experience the worst. If he hurt Linda, Gordon wouldn’t have to take any further steps; he would sit screaming in a cell for the rest of his life, until he found some means of ending it. And even this might not be the ultimate disaster. Gordon had a fertility of imagination that was far beyond his own feeble concepts of evil…
And the end of it all was that there was nothing he could do. He was boxed into a corner. Whatever he did now would be dangerous. He could lock himself in one room and Linda in another; but his controlled mind would find some means of breaking through any barricade he could construct. He could go out, and smash a window, or insult a cop, and maybe get thrown in jail-if he could find a cop willing to arrest him. That would leave Linda alone, at the mercy of whatever attack Gordon planned next. He could let the police take Linda-which would be just what Gordon wanted. If he untied her, and begged her to immobilize him, she would know what had happened, and with her susceptibility to suggestion-or mental control, call it what you liked-she would then become his Nemesis, instead of the reverse. There was no way out.
The sound of knocking roused him, after a timeless interval of sheer despair; and he was, somehow, not surprised to realize that his lips were moving soundlessly in words he hadn’t used since childhood. He moved like a machine to answer the door. Neither hope nor fear drove him; he was simply geared to accept, and deal with, whatever was there.
For a few seconds after he had opened the door he stood with his mouth slightly ajar, assessing the man on the threshold as he might have studied a perfect stranger. The tall, spare figure and unlined face; the odd, silvery-gray eyes and the close-cropped hair that was a matching silver…Galen had been gray ever since Michael had known him. He carried a light suitcase and a top-coat. No hat. Galen never wore a hat.
Michael stepped back, throwing the door wide.
“How did you know I wanted you?” he asked.
“I called from the airport,” Galen said prosaically. He threw his coat onto a chair and put his case down on the floor beside it. “Henry said you’d been phoning all day.”
His gaze swept the room and returned to Michael; and the latter was conscious of his appearance, which was both haggard and unkempt. He ran his hand self-conciously over the stubble of beard on his jaw and glanced down at his unspeakable shirt-rumpled, sweat-stained, dirty-before meeting Galen’s eyes.
“I’m glad you’re back,” he said inadequately.
“Why?”
Michael opened his mouth, and closed it again. Coherent explanation was beyond him.
“You might as well see the worst,” he said. “Come into the bedroom.”
He had always admired Galen’s phlegm, and wondered what degree of shock it would take to startle him out of it. He found out. Galen paled visibly at the sight that met his eyes.
Flat on the bed, arms outstretched and bound, ankles tied to the footboard, Linda looked like a character out of one of the books Michael never read, much less wrote. Apparently she had recognized Galen’s voice; she was not surprised to see him, but she blushed slightly as the incredulous gray eyes swept over her.
“It isn’t what you think,” she said.
“I’m not sure what I think.” Galen sat down in the nearest chair. “Give me a minute to catch my breath. Michael…”
Michael talked. It was an unspeakable relief; he knew how Linda had felt all those months, bottling up her fears. He talked without critical intent or editing, mixing theory and fact, interpretation and actuality. And Galen listened. He blinked, a little more often than was normal, but his face had smoothed out into its professional mask. Michael finished with an account of the mental attack he had just experienced. Linda, who was hearing this for the first time, gasped audibly, but Galen went on nodding.
“Well, well,” he said, after Michael’s voice had stopped. “No wonder you look like hell.”
“Is that all you can say?”
“What do you want me to say?” He glanced from one of them to the other, and smiled faintly. “If it comes to that-what do you want me to do? Put on my wizard’s robes and exorcise the devil?”
Michael sat down on the bed. He grinned.
“I rather expected you to put in a call for the men in the white coats, and order rooms for two.”
“I may yet,” Galen said coolly. “You realize-neither of you is unintelligent-that everything you’ve told me can be explained in terms of pathological mental conditions?”
Michael glanced apprehensively at Linda and was reassured by what he saw. The strain, the underlying fear were still there, but Galen’s comment had not shaken her. She had anticipated it. Perversely, he was moved to marshal the very arguments he had once demolished himself.
“Andrea’s death?”
Galen shrugged.
“The phenomenon is sometimes called thanatomania. With the heart condition you mentioned, the result was virtually a foregone conclusion. I’ve seen several cases myself where there was no diagnosable organic weakness. You must have read the newspaper accounts, a few years ago, of an excellent example of thanatomania. The woman had been told, by a soothsayer, that she would die on a certain date. She died. In a modern hospital, under professional care.”
“I read about it,” Michael admitted unwillingly. “What about the dog, then? I saw it too.”
“Then the dog is a collective hallucination, or a real dog.”
“Hallucinations don’t bite,” Michael said.
Galen glanced at the dirty bandage on his arm.
“I’ll have a look at that later,” he said calmly. “Aside from my concern, personal and professional, for your physical health, I’d like to examine the marks.”
Bemused by fatigue and relief, Michael grappled with that one for several seconds before he understood enough to get angry.
“Another example of thanatomania?” he said sarcastically.
Galen’s tone of annoyance was indicative; he usually had better control of himself.
“Good God Almighty, Michael, do I have to synopsize the professional journals? You’ve read enough of the popular literature to know that patients have inflicted everything from fake stigmata to signs of rape on themselves, in order to prove whatever point they feel they must make. And don’t try to tell me you aren’t deeply enough involved, emotionally, with Mrs. Randolph, to be suggestible.”
Linda spoke for the first time.
“So involved that he would be forced to concoct a crazy theory in order to excuse my attempt to kill him.” It was a statement, not a question. Galen nodded, watching her. She went on calmly, “Yes, I can understand that kind of reasoning. But I do have one question, Doctor. Why did you give Michael his father’s letters?”