Dark on the Other Side (5 page)

It didn’t matter. She had finished the search. There was
nothing here, and she ought to have known there would be nothing. Only
her desperate desire for something concrete, some proof that might
affect an unprejudiced mind, had driven her to what she knew would be a
wasted search. It was his study she ought to investigate. His study, or…

The sunlight seemed brighter; it hurt her eyes. Her
breathing was so uneven, it caught at her throat in sharp gasps.
Nerves. She was getting upset. And that was bad, because tonight she
had to be perfect. Calm, and composed, and…She needed something to calm
her nerves.

Gordon’s study, or—the other place. The most likely
place, and the one room that she could not risk searching. Because the
secretary had arranged with the servants to clean it himself, and there
was no conceivable reason why she should need to enter Jack Briggs’s
private quarters. If anyone found her there—if
he
found her…

A long shiver ran through her body. Dropping the last
scarf back into the drawer, she turned and ran across the room, on soft
stockinged feet. The bottle, the comforting, reliable bottle in the
bottom drawer of her dressing table…

She closed the door and shot the bolt into place—leaving
behind the marks of her feet imprinted as clearly in velvety pile as in
snow, and two drawers standing open, spilling out their contents onto
the floor.

WHEN LINDA WOKE, IT WAS GETTING DARK
OUTSIDE.
The high windows were gray oblongs; the dim
light within the room reduced furniture and hangings to unfamiliar
menaces.

She sat up, brushing the strands of hair back from her
face. Her mouth was horribly dry. She reached for the glass of water on
the bedside table and swallowed it down, so grateful for the relief to
parched membranes that she hardly noticed its stale taste. Still fuzzy
with sleep, she didn’t think about the time until her half-closed eyes
lit on the illumined dial of the clock.

She jumped up from the bed and stood swaying dizzily as
the sluggish blood moved down from her head. Late. It was very late.
She had meant to take extra time over her dressing, to apply makeup
with extra care. She had hoped to speak privately with Andrea before
the others joined them.

Where the hell was that stupid maid?

She groped for the buzzer and jabbed it impatiently. She
had just found the light switch when the door burst open. Dazzled,
Linda blinked at her maid.

“You’re supposed to knock,” she said angrily. “And why
did you let me sleep so long? You know I’m late.”

Anna’s mouth drooped open another inch. She was silent
for a moment, as if trying to decide which criticism to answer first.

“But, madam, you’ve told me time and again not to bother
you unless you ring. And this time, the bell—it sounded sort of
frantic, and I thought maybe you’d hurt yourself or something—”

“Oh, shut up,” Linda said. The very reasonableness of the
girl’s defense infuriated her. “Straighten up this mess. Find me
something to wear.”

With a murmured “Yes, madam,” Anna picked up the shoes
Linda had left in the middle of the floor and carried them to the
dressing room.

From where she stood, Linda could see the far wall of the
dressing room, which was one huge mirror, polished to shining
perfection. Out of its depths, another Anna advanced briskly to meet
the one who was entering the room. The identical twin figures were an
uncanny sight; but Linda paid no attention to that, or to the
expression on the mirrored face, which had relaxed when Anna thought
herself no longer under observation. Part of the bedroom was reflected
in the mirror, and it was, as she had said, a mess. She had thrown
herself down on the bed without turning back the spread; the satin
surface was wrinkled and ugly, with a dark spot near the pillow where
her mouth had rested. Her gardening clothes, which she had changed
before lunch, lay in crumpled heaps on the floor. Beside the bed, as if
fallen from a nerveless hand, was an empty bottle.

Linda gaped at it in vague surprise. Had she really
finished the whole bottle? Surely this one had been almost full when
she took it out of the drawer.

She shoved it aside with her foot, wrinkling her nose at
the sour reek of spilled liquor. Her tweed skirt was twisted and her
right stocking marred by a run. There were stains on the front of her
blouse.

“Run my bath,” she called, tugging at the zipper of the
skirt.

Anna appeared in the doorway.

“But, madam, it’s late—”

“Whose fault is that?” Linda asked pettishly. “Oh, for
God’s sake, I’ll make it a shower then. Get my clothes out. The black
culotte thing, stockings, the gold sandals—and hurry up, damn you.”

She moved toward the bathroom, shedding clothes as she
went, watching with malicious satisfaction as Anna stooped to pick up
each item. Anna grunted when she bent over. She was too fat, that was
her trouble. Linda gave the right hand tap a vicious twist and stepped
under a spray of water that felt as if it had been refrigerated.

The treatment was drastic, but effective; she knew, from
past experience, how effective. When she came out of the bathroom, she
felt fairly human again, and by the time she was seated at the dressing
table, with Anna’s nimble fingers working at her hair, she was able to
be cunning.

“I’m sorry I spoke to you as I did,” she said, watching
Anna’s face in the mirror. “I’m always cross when I sleep in the
afternoon. It was my own fault that I was late.”

The sullen pink face did not change, nor the pale eyes
move from their work.

“That’s quite all right, madam,” Anna said.

So much for that. There was no use trying to influence
the girl now; she knew too much.

When Linda went down, she knew that she looked as good as
skilled grooming and expensive clothes could make her look. But the
black outfit had not, perhaps, been a wise choice. She liked the
freedom of the wide black trousers, so full that they resembled a skirt
except when the wearer was in motion; but the bodice left her arms and
throat bare, and seemed to show more bone than flesh. She had had to
send Anna to bore a new hole in the belt, and when it was buckled
tightly it gathered the dress in unbecoming folds around the waist.
I’m
too thin
, she thought, and then:
Pathos; I’m
appealing to his sense of pity. Nice. And it probably won’t work, either
.

The others were already assembled in the drawing room,
not in the library this time. Gordon did seem to get a perverse
pleasure from Andrea’s company; he loved baiting her. But he would
never admit her into his sanctum.

As she went down the hall, Linda knew she was walking
faster than usual, almost running. Something pulled at her like a
magnet acting on a lode-stone. She had felt it that morning, sensing
his presence even before she saw him. Tonight the tug was even
stronger. That was all it was so far, nothing reasoned or desired, only
a blind, mindless need. Like a fish on a line, she thought angrily, and
shoved at the hangings over the doorway.

Andrea had already arrived. Sprawled with her usual lack
of grace in an armchair near the fire, she raised a fat hand in
greeting, and Linda saw her suddenly, not as the familiar friend, but
as she must have appeared to a stranger, even one as tolerant and
sophisticated as Michael Collins.

She was a very ugly old woman. Her ugliness was not the
distinguished plainness some homely girls acquire in old age; it was
plain, unvarnished, positive ugliness, strengthened by cultivated
sloppiness. Her wrinkled face was overlaid with a thick coating of
powder; her lipstick, applied in a wide slash without the aid of a
mirror, always left smears on cigarettes and glasses. Her hair was
another, clashing, shade of red, worn in a frizzy halo. Her dresses
looked like the sort of thing that might be worn by a gypsy
fortuneteller at a fair. Tonight, in honor of the occasion, she had
added a few more yards of beads to the collection around her neck, and
changed her long, full calico skirts for a magenta taffeta one of the
same style. Long brass earrings dangled from her ears. In her left hand
she held a jade cigarette holder.

I hate her
, Linda thought.
Fat,
ugly old woman…

She knew a moment of despair so absolute that it felt
like death. What had possessed her to ask Andrea to dinner? Some
unformed idea of help, of support? But it wouldn’t work that way.
Andrea’s weight would be on the other side of the scales, pushing them
down, against her.

“Hello, Andrea,” she said. “I hope the trip was
successful.”

“Darling girl,” Andrea said effusively. She waved the
cigarette holder, endangering her mop of hair. “Yes, I was just telling
the boys about it. It was nasty, but I managed.”

“A case of demonic possession,” Gordon explained
solemnly. “By—Beelzebub, was it, Andrea? Or Belial?”

“Oh, you nasty skeptic,” Andrea said. She grinned at
Gordon. The effect was hideous—white, unnaturally perfect teeth framed
in smeary scarlet lipstick. “You know I’m never sure who it is. I just
reel off a list of names and tell them all to get the hell out of the
patient. It has to be one of the bunch.”

Linda glanced at Michael. His expression was just what
she had expected it to be—incredulity and amusement covered by a thin
glaze of polite interest.

“Andrea, you are too much,” she said irritably. “You
sound like a charlatan.”

“The fakers are the ones who bother with fancy words,”
said Andrea, flicking the ash off her cigarette. It landed on the
Aubusson carpet, and she smeared it around with her foot. “I tell it
like it is.”

“Tell me,” Michael said, leaning forward, “how do you go
about exorcising an evil spirit? I know the Roman Church has a ritual
for that purpose, but I don’t imagine you—”

“No, I’ve got my own methods,” Andrea said complacently.
“Not that the other isn’t effective enough. But it has to be performed
by an ordained priest.”

“That’s right. I’d forgotten.”

“You’ve studied the subject? Mm-hm. But you don’t
believe.”

“No.”

Reading their faces, Linda leaned back with a feeling of
relief. Andrea’s judgments of people were quick and violent—like or
dislike, immediate and instinctive. Apparently she approved of Michael
Collins. She grinned at him and he grinned back, remarking,

“At this point I’m supposed to say, ‘Not that I haven’t
seen things, strange things, that were hard to explain by the normal
laws of nature.’ But I can’t say that. I’ve never had the faintest
flash of clairvoyance, nor seen a ghost.”

“Never had the feeling that you’d been somewhere before,
done the same thing at another time?”

“
Déjà vu?
Of course.
Everyone has had that experience. It’s easily explained in terms of
subconscious resemblances, forgotten memories, without resorting to
theories of precognition or reincarnation.”

“Touché,”
said Gordon softly,
from the depths of his chair.

Andrea turned on him with a metallic jangle of jewelry.

“Touché
, hell. Skeptics always
drag that one out. They have an answer for everything—if you let them
throw out half the evidence. I can quote you, offhand, a dozen cases of
genuine precognition. Impressions of a scene, a house, a face—recorded
and witnessed—which appeared at a later time.”

It was the old familiar ground; they had been over it a
dozen times, arguing in a perfectly good-humored way, which still made
Linda queasy and nervous. Gordon was leading Andrea on again, not only
for his own amusement but to entertain his guest. But now the
conversation took an unexpected twist.

“Precognition, telepathy, clairvoyance,” Michael said.
“Aren’t we wandering a bit from the track? ESP is one thing; demons are
another. Or so it seems to me.”

The room was brightly lit. One of Gordon’s phobias was a
dislike of darkness. There was no reason why Linda should have had the
impression of something pale and shapeless stirring in a shadowy
corner. There were no shadows; and the movement was only that of Jack
Briggs, shifting in his chair. He was so quiet most of the time that
his infrequent movements were startling.

“Your assumption is correct,” he said in a precise,
lisping voice, “if we accept your definitions of normal and
extranormal. But there is a single consistent hypothesis which accounts
both for what you call clairvoyance, and for—demons.”

Andrea gave him a queer look of mingled respect and
hostility.

“That’s right,” she said reluctantly. “Look here, Mr.
Collins, do you believe in God?”

Michael was silent. Andrea chuckled. Her laugh was not
the dry cackle her appearance led one to expect, but a high-pitched,
childish giggle.

“Funny,” she said drily. “That question really gets
people these days. They’ll answer impertinent questions about their sex
life and their emotional hang-ups, just to prove they’re modern,
emancipated intellectuals. But ask ’em about God and they squirm like a
spinster when you mention virginity.”

“Touché
yourself,” Michael
said good-humoredly. “No, I was speechless out of ignorance, not
embarrassment. I just don’t know. That’s as honest an answer as I can
give.”

Andrea nodded. Her face was grave, and not without a
certain dignity.

“Fair enough. Let’s avoid the embarrassing word, then. Do
you believe in the existence of Good?”

“Philosophically, theologically, or historically?”

“Cut that out.”

“All right,” Michael said resignedly. “But you’ll accuse
me of equivocating again. Sometimes I do believe. Sometimes I have
serious doubts.”

Gordon leaned forward.

“No one who has studied history can believe in a
benevolent creator,” he said.

Michael looked at him curiously. Andrea ignored him.

“All right, Mr. Collins,” she said. “You’ve already
answered the next question, but I’ll put it anyhow. Do you believe in
the existence of Evil?”

Gordon, sensing his guest’s discomfort, started to
protest.

“Andrea, this is a ridiculous conversation. Can’t we—”

“No,” Linda interrupted. She had not meant to speak. The
sound of her own voice startled her; it was harsh and peremptory,
unlike her usual tones. “No. Let him answer.”

“Of course,” Michael said easily. “I’m enjoying this,
Gordon. I’m just afraid of sounding like a fool. Philosophy was never
one of my subjects.”

“Philosophy be damned,” Andrea said rudely. “I’m not
interested in quibbles about Kant’s categories of whatever the hell
they are. Evil is a living, conscious force, operating in this world
and the next. Anyone who denies that does sound like a fool.”

“Evil deeds,” Michael said. “Even evil men. “But—Evil,
with a capital E? An impersonal, active power?”

“There is nothing impersonal about Lucifer,” said
Briggs’s soft voice.

The ensuing silence was broken by Gordon.

“Jack is inclined to be dogmatic about his faith.”

He spoke to Michael, who smiled politely. Briggs laughed
aloud.

“You needn’t apologize for me, Gordon. The orthodox
believer must walk softly these days, it is true. But I feel sure that
Mr. Collins is not offended by any expression of honest faith.”