Darker Than You Think (37 page)

Barbee
walked slowly back through the starlit frosty night toward the dark
bulk of the buildings where only two or three windows were palely
alight. He felt somehow strange to be moving on two awkward legs,
seeing only formless shapes with a man's dull eyes, unaware of all
the revealing sounds and odors of his dreams.

The
neighborhood dogs, he noticed, had stopped their angry barking. He
paused to listen for Rowena Mondrick's screaming, peering uneasily
across toward the disturbed ward. New windows lit as he watched, and
he wondered if some fresh emergency had aroused the ward. That
hopeless, horror-choked screaming, however, had ceased.

Uncomfortably,
he plodded on back toward the annex. Glenn was a fool—or
possibly worse. No honest psychiatrist, Barbee felt, would be quite
so reckless with his tongue. It was true, he had to admit, that he
had once loved Nora before she married Sam. Perhaps he had seen her
more often than was altogether wise in the years Sam was gone—but
Glenn's revolting conclusion was absurd. There was nothing Sam
shouldn't know, nor any sane reason why he should wish harm to Sam.

About
calling the police, however, he decided that Glenn was right. Any
such call would brand him as either madman or murderer. Yet he
couldn't shake off that shocking certainty that Nick Spivak lay dead
beneath that window. He clenched his clammy fists again and drew a
long sobbing breath of the chill night air, shivering to Glenn's
diabolic suggestion that Sam Quain might be accused of the murder. He
had to do something about it.

He
hurried back to the second floor of the annex building. Nurse Hellar
rather apprehensively let him use her office phone, and he called
Nora Quain. She answered at once, as if she had been waiting for the
instrument to ring, and her voice seemed sharp with fear.

"Will—what's
happened now?" "Sam has a phone at the Foundation?"
His own hurried voice was a breathless rasping. "Please call him
right away. Wake him up. Have him—have him look for Nick
Spivak."

"Why,
Will?" she breathed faintly.

"I
believe something has happened to Nick," he said. "I
believe Sam is in great danger now because of it."

For
a long time she didn't speak. He could hear the uncertain whisper of
her troubled breath and the ticking of the desk clock in the study
where he knew the telephone was, that measured sound queerly calm and
slow. At last she asked, in a tight, choked voice: "How did you
know that, Will?"

The
clock ticked on, maddeningly grave and slow.

"Just
routine, Nora," he muttered uncomfortably. "Confidential
sources—that's my business, you know." He gulped. "So
you had already heard?"

"Sam
just called me," she whispered. "He sounded wild,
Will—nearly out of his mind."

"What—"
No voice came, and Barbee tried again. "What about Nick?"

"He
fell out of a window." Her voice was flat with horror. "The
window of their special lab, on the top floor of the foundation
tower. Sam says he's dead."

The
clock ticked, and he heard her harsh breathing.

"That's
what my sources said," Barbee muttered hoarsely. "I want
you to warn Sam, Nora. I believe he's in danger."

"How
could he be?" Hysteria quivered beneath the tight control of her
voice. "Sam thinks he fell asleep and walked out—he always
walked in his sleep, you know. But that couldn't happen to Sam."

Agony
shuddered in her voice.

"Will—what
do you think—could happen to Sam?"

The
clock kept ticking, while Barbee tried to swallow the rasping dryness
in Ms throat.

"Sam
and Nick were alone in that tower room," he muttered huskily.
"They were guarding something that seems to be very valuable in
that wooden box they brought back from the Gobi Two of the men who
knew what was in it were already dead—and the deaths of
Mondrick and Rex Chittum are going to look pretty funny, now with
Nick's added."

"No!"
Nora's whisper was a voiceless scream. "No, Will—no!"

"That's
the way it's going to look," Barbee told her.
"I
know
cops. They're going to think Sam killed Nick for his interest in that
box. They're going to keep on thinking that, at least until they
learn what is in the box —and
I
don't
think Sam will want to tell them."

"But
he didn't!" Nora whispered frantically. "Sam didn't—"

Her
whisper died. The ticks of the clock were slow ripples in a dead
silence. At last he heard Nora breathe again. The sound was a long,
weary rasp.

"Thank
you, Will." Her voice was dull with a stunned bewilderment, and
hot pity caught Barbee's throat. "I'll call Sam right back,"
she said. "I'll warn him." A sudden protest shuddered in
her voice. "But he
didn't!

She
hung up, and Barbee shuffled heavily back to his room. All this, he
thought bitterly, had surely been enough for one night. Surely the
white wolf bitch—or his own unconscious terrors, if she were
only the symbol of them—would let him finish the night in
peace.

He
flung off the robe and slippers, and dropped wearily in bed. He tried
to sleep, but a dull disquiet possessed him. He couldn't help staring
at the steel-meshed glass that had melted before the flowing snake,
or stop remembering the brittle feel of Nick Spivak's bones snapping
in his closing coils. He rang for Nurse Hellar and had her bring a
sleeping pill. But still he hadn't slept when he heard the white
bitch whispering: "Will Barbee!" Her thin far voice seemed
taut with trouble. "Can you hear, Barbee?"

"I
hear you, April," he murmured sleepily. "Good night,
darling."

"No,
Barbee." He thought he heard her sharp protest. "You must
change again, because we've more work to do."

"Not
tonight!" Resentment jarred him back toward wakefulness. "We've
murdered Nick tonight—and left Sam Quain to be accused of the
killing. Isn't that crime enough for tonight?"

Her
far whisper seemed fainter, as if his arousing had all but snapped
some slender bond between them.

"That
was neat," she purred. "But not enough—"

"I've
had enough," he told her. "I don't intend to dream again,
and I know I don't hear you, really."

"But
you do," her whisper insisted. "You can't kid yourself,
Barbee—these aren't dreams. I know the change is easier when
you sleep, but that's just because the human part of you still
dominates your waking mind. Now please relax and listen."

He
turned restlessly in bed, muttering drowsily: "I don't hear, and
I won't dream—"

"This
isn't any dream," she whispered. "The ESP researchers at
Duke University found evidence enough of such extrasensory
perceptions as this—they could find better, if they knew how to
pick subjects with more of our blood. I know you hear—don't kid
me!"

He
shook his head on the pillow.

"But
I won't listen—"

"Barbee!"
Her far voice turned sharply imperative. "You've got to
listen—and change and come to me. Now! And take the most
frightful form you can find —because we've
a
greater
enemy than little Nick Spivak to fight."

"Huh?"
he muttered heavily. "What enemy"

"Your
blind widow friend!" the wolf bitch breathed. "That
Mondrick woman—supposed to be safe in Glenn's laughing academy,
where nobody would mind her ravings. She's out, Barbee—trying
to warn Sam Quain!"

Barbee
felt an icy tingle along his spine, like the feel of his stiff hair
raising when he had been
a
tall
gray wolf. But he was human now, he assured himself uneasily. He
could feel the cool smoothness of the sheets against his smooth human
skin, and hear the hospital sounds muffled with his dull human
hearing: other patients breathing in their rooms, and the distant
quick footfalls of Nurse Hellar, and a telephone somewhere buzzing
impatiently. He was entirely human, and almost wide awake.

"Warn
Sam?" he echoed heavily. "What does she know?"

Terror
shivered in that ghostly whispering. "She knows the name of the
Child of Night!" The shock of that aroused Barbee again.
Shuddering uneasily, he lifted his head to peer about the dark room.
He found the pale rectangular glow of the window and the thin streak
of yellow light beneath his door. He was still quite human, he
informed himself, and surely he was quite awake. Yet his breathless
voice came taut and dry with dread.

"The
man they fear?" he said. "This conspirator—murderer—secret
agent—whatever he is—that old Mondrick was talking about
when he died?" "Our awaited Messiah," the whisper
said. Barbee lay stiff and shuddering. "Who is he?" he
demanded harshly. "What's his name?"

"Really,
Barbee!" Faintly, far away, he thought he heard April Bell's
purring laugh. "Don't you know?" He caught his breath
impatiently.

"I
think
I can guess," he muttered suddenly. "I think it must be
your good friend, Mr. Preston Troy!"

He
waited for her answer, and it didn't come. He was alone in the dark
room, awake and unchanged. He could hear the racing tick of his
watch, and see the luminous dial—the time was four forty. The
dawn was still two hours away, but he wasn't going to sleep until he
saw the sun. He didn't dare— "No, Barbee." That tiny
whisper turned him almost ill with shock. "The Child of Night
isn't Mr. Troy, but you must prove your right to know his name. You
can do that tonight—by killing Rowena Mondrick!"

He
stiffened in the bed, angrily pushing back the covers.

"You
can't make me hurt her," he insisted bitterly. "Dreaming or
awake! Anyhow, I don't think she's out. I could hear her screaming in
her room earlier tonight. She's in the disturbed ward, behind locked
doors, with nurses on duty. She couldn't get out."

"But
she did." The whisper had thinned to the smallest possible
thread of thought. "And she's on her way to warn Sam."

"She'll
never find him," he scoffed. "An old blind woman, out of
her mind—"

"But
she isn't!" that remote whisper reached him. "No more than
many another, confined because they know too much. Asylums are very
convenient prisons, Barbee, to hold such enemies. But your little
black widow is stronger than I thought—because she's kin to us,
and she has powers that are a little more than human."

"She's
old!" he gasped. "She's blind."

"I
know her eyes are blind," the white bitch purred. "Because
we ripped them out! But she has developed a different vision—keen
enough to discover the Child of Night. She worked with old Mondrick,
and she knows too much."