The Lower Deep (12 page)

Dr. Clermont appeared then and beckoned George into his office, where he aimed a searching scowl at his caller's face. "What the hell is going on here in Dame Marie, George?" he said. "Do you mind enlightening me?"

"Going on, Doctor?"

"You and your tongue-biting. The Jourdan girl with a completely mystifying change of personality. The manager of the alcoholics' place with his sleepwalking, or whatever it is he does. And if I know about you three, how many others are there that I don't know about?"

"I'm not sure I follow you."

"Last night must have been a real Witches' Sabbath. You, Henninger, and Ginny Jourdan's mother all called me this morning. Well, never mind. Maybe I'm making too much of what is probably only a coincidence." Returning to the chair behind his desk, Clermont let out a big breath and allowed himself to relax, looking more than ever like a dark Abe Lincoln as he shaped his long, lank form into a position of comfort. "All right, shoot. Tell me what happened to you."

It suddenly seemed important to George that he tell the whole story of last night, not just the tongue-biting part of it. He did so, starting with Alice's dream-visit to his room.

"Told you to sleep?" Clermont echoed. "To sleep and to dream?"

"Over and over."

"Hmm. I'm no expert on this sort of thing, but maybe there's something about dreaming in your subconscious, and Alice is some way involved in it. Your relationship with her, that is. You want to be frank with me?"

George hesitated, as he had before when their talk reached this point. Then he nodded in surrender.

"All right. My home life is lousy, and has been for at least four years now. I loved my wife when I married her, but she's turned out to be a beautiful bitch who enjoys sleeping with almost anyone but me."

"And?"

"What do you mean, 'and'?"

"This is a small town, George. I've heard talk."

George hesitated, then surrendered with a sigh. "Okay. I've found a woman here I'm comfortable with. Happy with."

"Happy with. Now we might be onto something." And what we might be onto, Clermont told himself, is the ravages of a guilty con
science. The dreaming, the subconscious fear of dreaming, the tongue-biting when the controls
give way . . . somewhere in that muddled scenario, Old Man Conscience just may be getting in his licks.

He said, "You know something, Brother Benson? If we could pack your wife up and send her back to the States, I'll bet you all the fish in the sea that your tongue-biting would cease. Since we can't, I think I'll just prescribe tranquilizers for a while."

"I'll take anything if it will help," George said fervently. "I'm just beginning to appreciate what it must have been like in the old days when Genghis Khan, or whoever it was, cut his captives' tongues out."

Clermont got up and came around the desk. "Let's see what you've done to yourself this time. Not that I need to." Peering into George's mouth, he wagged his head. "If the tranquilizers don't work, you'd better use a mouthpiece."

"A what?"

"They're available. I don't have one here, but we can find one in St. Joe City, I think. They're something like the ones boxers use."

"Oh," George said unhappily.

"Anyhow, we'll lick this somehow, George. Don't let it get you down."

When his patient had departed with a supply of tranquilizers, Clermont walked into the outer office to tell Simone Valcin he was going over to
"the alcoholics' place."

"And after that," he added, "I'll be at the Jourdans' if anyone wants me. But don't let it be some bored female who just wants her hand held. If I want to hold a hand, I'll hold yours."

She would let him, too, Simone knew. He was a really marvelous man, even if he was too old for her.

L
ouis Clermont had been called to the Azagon a few times when it was a hotel, but not since it had become a retreat for alcoholics. As a hotel the place had seemed to him a stupid idea and a waste of money. As a retreat it interested him more—he had patients of his own who drank too much—but, sensing a certain indifference toward him on the part of the staff, he had kept his distance.

The staff at the Azagon considered him a country bumpkin, he supposed. They probably found it difficult to accept that a man with a medical education as good as that of most American doctors—in some cases perhaps better—could be content to serve in a town that hadn't even a paved street.

Having rung the Azagon bell he waited patiently, hands in his pockets, until the door was opened by a maid. She was a Dame Marie girl and flashed him a bright smile.

"Ah, Dr. Clermont! Mr. Henninger is expecting you. But Dr. Spence would like it if you would see him first. Will you come with me, please?"

Clermont hesitated. Paul Henninger, not Spence, was the one who had phoned him. He wasn't sure he wanted to talk to the new man in charge. Not before seeing his patient, at least. But, oh, well—

With a shrug, he trailed the girl across the lobby, where she halted before a closed door.

When the maid knocked, Steve Spence was seated at his desk, poring over a list of food expenses supplied by the man in charge of the kitchen, Ti-Jean Lazaire. "Just a minute, please," he responded without looking up.

His scrutiny of the figures finished, he slid the paper into a drawer and voiced a grunt of satisfaction at having completed a tedious chore. After all, this was really the manager's job, not his, but Henninger was not up to it at present. Or up to much of anything else, for that matter.

"All right. Come in, please."

It surprised him to see a black Abraham Lincoln slouch in behind the maid.

"Dr. Spence, this is our Dr. Clermont." The girl's voice rang with pride.

Steve rose and offered a firm, friendly hand while looking his caller over. "Thanks for coming, Doctor. Shall I take you to Henninger's room at once, or would you rather hear what I know first?"

"Depends on how sick he is," Clermont said. "By
the way, I hope he told you he's been to see me several times, and that's why he sent for me. I believe he didn't want anyone here to know he had
problems."

Steve nodded. "I understand. And he was sleeping when I looked in on him a few minutes ago."

"Suppose we talk, then." Clermont seated himself on one of two straight-backed chairs Steve had provided for visitors.

Steve sent a glance of dismissal at the maid, and she quietly withdrew, closing the door behind her. Before speaking, he propped his elbows on the desk and rested his chin on his laced fingers in unconscious imitation of the very man he was frowning at.

"I think I'd better fill you in on what happened here last night, Doctor," he said then.

Beginning with the knock on his door by Tom Driscoll, he kept his account of the night's events as brief as possible. "But I ought to tell you, too, that one of our patients here, a young doctor named Juan Mendoza whom I've known for years, followed Paul and says he didn't go to Anse Douce at all. He went to the town's red-light district, Juan insists."

"The Hounfor? Then what about the fish that attacked him?"

"Yes, of course. If he didn't go for his long-distance swim, how do we explain the fish?" Steve shrugged with his hands. "Anyway, I ought to tell you, too, that Paul Henninger and Lawton Lindo are not the only ones here with problems. There are several others."

"Patients, you mean? Or staff?"

"I don't think the list includes any staff yet, other than Henninger."

"What do you make of Paul, Dr. Spence? Do you really believe he sleepwalks?"

"I want to."

"Hmm, yes, I can see why you might. Well, I'll be frank with you. There's something going on in this town that I don't completely understand." Wincing at his own remark, Clermont promptly, corrected it. "Completely, my foot. I don't understand it at all. And what you've just told me about last night only compounds the mystery. Let's go have a talk with the fat fellow and see if he can enlighten us, shall we?"

Henninger's door was open, and he was not alone when they entered his room. Propped on a mound of pillows, he was directing, or thought he was, the activities of a woman who was trying to put the room straight. Circée Orelle, forty or so, was nearly as round as the man on the bed, but in her case the plumpness was deceptive; she was composed mainly of muscle. A St. Joseph woman, she lived nearby and came daily to help with the housekeeping chores.

Steve said to her, "Good morning,
commère.
Come back a bit later, will you?"

With a brisk nod she departed.

Clermont stepped to the bed. "How are you, Paul?" And don't lie to me, he silently added while taking in everything from the transparent lips to the glassy dullness of the Belgian's eyes.

"I feel a little better now, Doctor. Thank you for coming."

"You
went for a swim in your sleep and got
chewed by a fish, Dr. Spence tells me. Let's have a look at you, hey?"

Henninger pulled down the sheet and wriggled out of his pajama bottoms, but said, "I don't believe this is the real trouble, Doctor."

It probably wasn't, Clermont decided after examining the wounds. The trouble might have been real enough had the fish been bigger, though. Opening his bag, he listened to the manager's heartbeat and took his blood pressure. The B.P. was surprisingly low for one so overweight. But Clermont was already half convinced that nothing a general practitioner could do would help much. Spence would already have done it, anyway.

What was happening to this man was apparently a thing of the mind. The question was not what Paul Henninger had done on his nocturnal prowl, but what had made him go on such a prowl. And that was out of Clermont's field.

"What I think you need, Paul, is a psychiatrist." Clermont turned to Steve Spence. "Don't you have one here on your staff, Doctor?"

"Tom Driscoll has a degree in psychiatry. I'm afraid he's too ill to be much help, though."

"Then, Paul, what do you say about a trip to Miami?"

Henninger looked unhappy. "You don't think there's anything physica1ly wrong with me, then?"

"Only some pretty sophisticated testing would tell us, wouldn't it? But if you ask me, this obsession with water—the dreams about undersea swimming and this weird business of actually finding yourself in the sea last night—if it's physical, it's an ailment I've never heard of." With a shake of his head, Clermont leaned over the bed and gave Henninger a friendly pat on the shoulder. "Do you want to go to a head man, Paul?"

"I'll—have to think about it." As he pulled his pajama pants back on, Henninger tried to smile but managed only a grimace. "Thank you, though, Doctor."

Back in Steve's office the two medics discussed others at the Azagon who seemed to be having problems. It was odd, Clermont thought, how quickly they had found something to like in each other. Now a sudden desire to solidify the liking led him to betray a confidence, though he was sure George Benson would not object and might even be grateful for a second opinion.

He told the head of the Azagon about George's problems.

"I'm damned," Steve said.

"Of course, what's been happening to him is not quite the same as what Henninger is complaining about. But I get the feeling there's a tie-in somewhere. Then again"—a shrug—"I could be way wide of the mark. Poor George is married to a woman who's all wrong for him, and that could be his trouble."

"But you feel something sinister is going on in Dame Marie, you say, Doctor."

"Definitely. Call me Louis, please."

"Gladly. I'm Steve." After frowning into space for a few seconds, Steve added solemnly, "Let me tell you something, Louis. Tom Driscoll thinks we've become a target for some kind of evil force here. Would you laugh at that?"

"Voodoo, you mean? I was born here in Dame Marie."

"Meaning?"

"I don't laugh at voodoo. Or voudoun, vodun, vodoun—however you want to pronounce it. I've seen
houngans
and
mambos
do things I can't do."

"Such as?"

"Cure people who seemed hopelessly ill. Or, in reverse, make healthy people so sick I couldn't cure them."

"I understand Dame Marie is a hotbed of voodoo," Steve said.

"Haven't you heard the drumming?"

"Well, at times. Seemingly from a pretty good distance, though."

"Not that far," Clermont said. "Only from the part of town they call The Hounfor. If you like, I'll take you there for a look-see one night."