Read Ebook: Conjure wife by Leiber Fritz Kramer Frank Illustrator

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Ebook has 373 lines and 19413 words, and 8 pages

But Norman tipped him and declined the service. He also told him they would carry their own bags. The porter smiled jerkily and backed out.

Norman crossed to the forward window. There was only the gravel wall of a gully, and, above it, dark trees flashing indistinctly past. But almost immediately the gravel wall gave way to a wide panorama, as the tracks swung around and down the hillside.

There was more woodland than field in the valley. The trees seemed to encroach on the town, dwarfing it. From this particular point it looked quite tiny. But the college buildings stood out with a cold distinctness. He fancied he could make out the window of his office.

Those cold gray towers and darker roofs were like an intrusion from some other, older world, and his heart began to pound, as if he had suddenly sighted the fortress of the enemy.

Norman looked briefly across the campus before he went into Morton. The thing that startled him most was something he had not expected--the air of normality. True, he had not looked forward--at least consciously--to any outwardly demoniac manifestations, any physical stench of evil. But this feeling of wholesomeness--the little swarms of students trooping back to the dormitories or over to the campus soda fountain, the file of girls in white bound for a tennis lesson, the friendly smiles and nods, the way his own steps fell so easily and gratefully into the old familiar paths--almost for a moment he wondered if everything else were not some crazy dream. It came to him almost with a shock that things were outwardly as normal as they had ever been, that only with respect to himself had they changed.

"Don't fool yourself," the voice inside told him. "Some of those laughing girls are already infected. Their very respectable mammas have given them delicate hints. Don't be too sure you know what they're thinking while they sip their cokes or chatter about their boy friends."

But there was much to be done this afternoon, and he had no right to waste a second. He turned into Morton and quickly mounted the stairs.

His capacity for surprise was not yet exhausted, however, as he realized when he saw a group of students emerging from the classroom at the other end of the third-floor corridor, after having waited the usual ten minutes for him to appear. That was right--he had classes, and committee meetings, and appointments. He slipped around the bend in the corridor before he was noticed.

Taking suitable precautions, he entered his office. Nothing seemed to have been disturbed, but he was careful in his movements and on the alert for unfamiliar objects. He did not put his hand into any drawer without closely inspecting it first.

One letter in the little pile of accumulated mail was important. It was from Pollard's office, requesting him to appear before a meeting of the trustees later this week. He smiled with grim satisfaction. His career was still skidding downhill. Hempnell still had its fangs.

He methodically removed certain sections from his files, stuffed his brief case full and made a package of the remainder.

Then he took from his pocket a small hard object, and looked at it reflectively.

It was made of lucite, and its shape was that of an egg. Sealed inside the thick, transparent shell were tiny bits of metal and fiber. It was the chief trophy of his stay in New York. His friend in industrial chemistry had been very mystified. But here it was.

Placed in the Sawtelle home, it ought to constitute the terminal of a kind of circuit and clear the way for the operations he intended to begin tonight, for the recovery of that which Evelyn Sawtelle had taken and was holding captive.

It remained to place it.

After a last glance around, during which he noted that the Estrey dragon had not been restored to whatever was its original position on the roof, he started downstairs.

Outside he met Mrs. Gunnison.

This was something he had not anticipated with sufficient vividness. He was acutely conscious of the way his arms were encumbered by the bulky notes. For a moment he did not seem able to see her clearly.

"Lucky I found you," she began immediately. "Harold's been trying every which way to get in touch with you. Where have you been?"

Suddenly she registered on him as her old, blunt, sloppy self. With a sense of mingled relief and frustration, he realized that the warfare in which he was engaged was a strictly undercover affair, and that outwardly all relationships were the same as ever. He found himself explaining how Tansy and he, weekending with friends out in the country, had gotten a touch of food poisoning, and how his message to Hempnell must have gone astray. This explanation was intended merely for general consumption. Routine excuses were still necessary, and this one had the added advantage of providing a reason for Tansy's appearance, if anyone should see her, and it would enable him to plead a recurrence of the attack as an excuse for neglecting his academic duties.

He did not expect Mrs. Gunnison to believe it, but he ought to tell it to her just to be consistent.

She accepted the story without comment, offered her sympathies, and went on to say, "But be sure and get in touch with Harold. I believe it has to do with that meeting of the trustees you've been asked to attend. You know, Harold thinks a great deal of you. Good-by."

Odd, but at the last moment he fancied he caught a note of genuine friendliness, a strange little look, as if she was appealing to him to do something. Could he possibly be wrong in his estimation of her?

But there was work to do. Off campus, he hurried down a quiet side street to where his car was parked. With hardly a sidewise glance at the motionless figure in the front seat, he stepped in and drove to Sawtelle's.

The house was bigger than they needed, and the front lawn was very formal. But the grass was yellow in patches, and the soldierlike rows of flowers looked neglected.

"Wait here," he said. "Don't get out of the car under any circumstances."

To his surprise, Hervey met him at the door. There were circles under Hervey's always-worried eyes, and his fidgetiness was more than usually apparent.

"I'm so glad you've come," he said, pulling Norman inside. "I don't know what I'm going to do with all these departmental responsibilities on my shoulders! Classes having to be dismissed. Stop-gap instructors to be obtained. And the deadline on next year's catalogue tomorrow! Here, come into my study." And he pushed Norman through a huge living room, expensively but stiffly furnished, into a dingy, book-lined cubbyhole with one small window.

"I'm almost going out of my mind," he said. "I haven't dared stir out of the house since Evelyn was attacked Sunday night."

"What!"

"Haven't you heard?" He stopped and looked at Norman in surprise. Even here he had been trying to pace up and down, although there was not room enough. "Why, it was in the papers. Though I wondered why you didn't come over or call up. I kept trying to get you at your home and the office, but no one could locate you. Evelyn's been in bed since Sunday, and she gets hysterical if I even speak of going out of the house. Just now she's asleep, thank heavens."

It was borne in on Norman that Sawtelle was not even aware that he had been out of town. Hastily he related his trumped-up excuse. He wanted to get back to what had happened Sunday night. There was an idea forming at the back of his mind, but it was still nebulous. For the moment he neglected the real purpose of his visit.

"Just my luck!" Sawtelle exclaimed tragically when Norman had finished. "The whole department falling apart the very first week I'm in charge of it. And young Stackpoole laid up with the 'flu'!"

"We'll manage," said Norman. "Sit down and tell me about Evelyn."

Unwillingly, Sawtelle cleared a space so he could perch on the cluttered desk. He groaned audibly when his eyes chanced to light on papers concerned with urgent business.

"It happened about four o'clock Sunday morning," he began, still aimlessly fiddling with the papers. "I was awakened by a terrible scream. Evelyn's bed was empty. It was pitch dark out in the hall. But I could hear some sort of struggle going on downstairs. A bumping and threshing around--"

Suddenly he jerked up his head. "What was that? I thought I heard footsteps out in the front hall." Before Norman could say anything he went on, "Oh, it's just my nerves. They've been acting up ever since.

"Well, I picked up something--a vase--and went downstairs. About that time the sounds stopped. I switched on the lights and went through all the rooms. In the sewing room I found Evelyn stretched unconscious on the floor with some ghastly bruises beginning to show around her neck and mouth. Beside her lay the phone--we have it there because Evelyn has so many occasions to use it. I nearly went frantic. I called a doctor and the police."

Norman knew now what must have happened.

"When Evelyn regained consciousness, she was able to tell us about it, although she was terribly shaken up. It seems the phone had rung. She went downstairs in the dark without waking me. Just as she was picking up the phone, a man jumped out of the corner and attacked her. She fought him off--oh, it drives me mad to think of it!--but he over-powered her and choked her unconscious."

Norman listened with grim satisfaction.

"Thank heavens I came downstairs when I did! That must have been what frightened him off. The doctor found that, except for bruises, there weren't any other injuries. Even the doctor was shocked at those bruises, though. He said he had never seen any quite like them.

"The police think that after the man got in the house he called Central and asked them to ring this phone--pretending he thought the bell was out of order or something--in order to lure someone downstairs. They were puzzled as to how he got inside, though, for all the windows and doors were shut fast. Probably I forgot to lock the front door when we went to bed--one of my pieces of unforgivable carelessness!

"The police think that he was a vicious burglar, but I believe he must have been a madman besides. Because there was a silver plate on the floor, and two of our silver forks jammed together strangely, and other odds and ends. And he must have been playing the phonograph in the sewing room, because it was open and the turntable was going and on the floor was one of Evelyn's speech records, smashed to bits."

Yes, the picture was all very clear now. What Norman had forgotten to take into consideration was the ever-present possibility of reaction, if magic miscarried--"like the kick of a gun," or, better, like the breech of a gun blowing up. When he had severed the wire at Bayport, the thwarted Agency of Death had instantly struck back at the sender. And afterward Evelyn Sawtelle had invented the obvious story.

One thing bothered him. If the police should trace that phone call in an effort to prove their own theory, they would find it had been placed by Norman Saylor, at Bayport. But at the worst that would only convict him of a peculiar lie. For the present he would say nothing about it.

"Good," thought Norman. "If she's really frightened, she may be easier to deal with." The idea of pity never occurred to him. Moreover, if what he had been told about the lodgment of captive souls were true, then Tansy's soul had suffered equally with that of Evelyn Sawtelle here in this very house on Sunday night.

"I tell you, I haven't slept a wink," Sawtelle was saying. "If Mrs. Gunnison hadn't been kind enough to spend a couple of hours with her yesterday morning, I don't know how I'd have managed. Even then she was too frightened to let me stir.... My God!... Evelyn!"

But it was really impossible to identify the agonized scream, except that it had come from the upper part of the house. Crying out, "I knew I heard footsteps! He's come back!" Sawtelle ran full tilt out of the study. Norman was just behind him, suddenly conscious of a very different fear. It was confirmed by a glance through the living-room window at his empty car.

He beat Sawtelle up the stairs and was the first to reach the bedroom door. He stopped. Sawtelle, almost gibbering with anxiety and guilt, ran into him.

It was not at all what Norman expected.

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