An Old Friend of the Family

Ignoring the younger woman for the moment, he turned to Clarissa and took her hands in his and let her see a smile of reassurance. “Clarissa!” he greeted, in his best old-doctor voice. “It has been many years.”

“Oh yes, it has,” she breathed in answer, and that was enough to make the policeman retire for the time being. She went on: “You know—you’ve heard about our awful troubles here?”

“You shall tell me about it right away.” And, after a few minutes of polite and blurred conversation with the daughter-in-law, he managed to get the aged woman to himself. Apparently having her own reasons to want to talk to him alone, she led him into what looked like a functioning library—and yes, there was the table the vision had shown him sixteen hours ago, complete with a speck of red candle-wax adhering to the darkly polished wood. On the carpet beside one table-leg there lay a minute sliver of broken glass.

The door closed by Clarissa’s hand, they sat facing each other across the little table, he with his back to the windowful of winter daylight that now hung on as if it never meant to fade.

Neither of them spoke immediately. Clarissa’s eyes, though she fought to keep them from doing so, flicked up once, twice, three times, to a high shelf behind him.

At last she had to say something. “You know, it’s been so long . . . I’m afraid . . . I’m ashamed to have to ask, but—what is your name?”

“Corday,” she repeated after him, mystified, when he had told it yet again. “Corday. Do you know, Doctor, I have the impression that I met you once when I was a small girl? I know that’s . . .”

“In that impression I believe you are correct, Clarissa.”

“But . . . no. Do you suppose that could have been your father?”

Now she was threatening to burble and gush. He sat in regal patience. Eventually he would hear more, learn more. Eventually he would confront his actual summoner, who had not yet appeared.

“It seems . . . it seems a strange coincidence that you should decide to visit us just now.”

“It is nothing of the kind, my dear Clarissa, as I think you know full well. Where is the girl?”

Almost as if he had suddenly drawn a knife. “What girl?”

“An attractive young girl of seventeen or so dwells in this house. Last night—more precisely, about sixteen and one half hours ago—she sat in this room, at this table, with candle and mirror and a certain old book which is probably now on one of these high shelves behind me. I intend to see this girl and speak with her.”

Clarissa’s face was crumpling, along with the pretense that she had tried to maintain, that folk usually tried to maintain, that the world was a sane place whose basic rules they understood. She shook her head and moaned like someone choking on a bone. At last she got a few words out: “The mirror broke . . . I thought it might have been the candle’s heat.”

He waited silently.

“I—I hope I did the right thing.” Her voice was very tiny now. Her eyes were those of a frightened bird.

“Indeed, I share your hope. I have affairs of my own, as you must realize, to which I should prefer to be attending.” He sighed inwardly, wondering just how much Clarissa knew about him. Enough to scare her, obviously. “So, you instructed this girl—what is her name?”

“Judy.” With a gulp.

“You instructed this young Judy in the means of summoning me.”

“I was the one responsible. She only read the words.”

“Only?”

Somewhere outside the library, male voices were droning, drearily determined.

“Clarissa, while I will do practically anything to please your dear grandmother, give every aid I can to anyone as near and dear to her as you are, I would not be amused to find my time and strength being wasted upon trivialities. So if this is a matter, say, of some stolen jewel, or perhaps some juvenile romantic difficulty—or even, God help us, a prank—let me warn you once and bluntly that this family will be left the unhappier for my visit.” He had seen indications already that things were more serious than that, but he wanted to make the point. “And in that depressing event I believe I can explain my actions to your grandmother so that she will understand.”

There was a pause in which Clarissa could be seen marshalling reserves of strength. She sat up straight and looked him in the eye, almost for the first time. “Dr. Corday. My grandmother, Wilhelmina Harker? She died in 1967. She was ninety-five then.”

Again the visitor fetched an inward sigh. “I am aware that in that year dear Mina ceased to breathe. That she was then consigned to her tomb . . . but we are straying from our business. Pray tell me, just what is the nature of this family difficulty which reddens every eye, and populates the house with such discreet policemen?”

The tale came out in a hurried, exhausted fashion. The granddaughter found mysteriously dead, yesterday morning. The grandson kidnapped last night, and mutilated for the pure hell of it, as it might seem; there was not even a ransom demand as yet.

Then someone exists who does such things to folk whom Mina loves. He nodded, showing little of what he felt. He might have been considering a strange problem in chess. “There is no doubt that the finger in the little package was cut from your grandson’s hand?”

“They said it was—”

“What?”

“Not cut. More like—oh God, more like it had been torn from his hand. I didn’t see it. But they had no doubt that it was Johnny’s finger. He—he had a distinctive wart on it.”

At least, mused the visitor, he is now free of that.

“And the police say that they believe that it was taken from a living hand. They have their scientific tests.”

“To be sure. The finger must be still in their possession?”

“It must be. Yes.”

“And the girl’s body, too?”

“In the Chicago morgue, the medical examiner’s office, whatever they call it. They’re supposed to have the best facilities there for tests.”

It was now time to be nice, and he startled Clarissa away from the brink of collapse by reaching across the little table and reassuringly pressing her fingers between his own. “It is a good thing that you and Judy called me.”

“Good?”

“Yes, yes. I should have been angry if I were not called on in such a matter. Evil people have, for whatever reason, launched an assault upon her family. But soon it will be the turn of those wicked folk to be unhappy.”

Although he smiled as he whispered those last words, wanting them to be comforting, she pulled back.

He looked sharply over Clarissa’s shoulder in the direction of the door. Two seconds later the door opened.

“Gran? Sorry, I didn’t know you had company.”

He hardly heard the girl’s words, though. He found himself on his feet, with no memory of having risen, and staring at her uncontrollably. The first impression, which struck him like a club, was that Mina herself stood before him, young as when he had first met her, in the first flush of warmblooded, breathing life.

Yesterday’s vision of his summoner had been no more than a passport photo, compared to this reality. The girl’s clothing and hairstyle were of course of the late nineteen-seventies, not of eighteen ninety-one. But the face and the sturdy body and the bearing were Mina’s—although at second glance, of course, not quite.

The girl was staring at him also—small wonder, given his reaction to his entrance. How long had it been since anything had caused him so to lose his self-possession? But thank heaven she did not seem frightened.

Clarissa had also risen to her feet. When she spoke her voice was calmer than the visitor had expected. “Dr. Corday? This is my granddaughter Judy. Judy, Dr. Corday has known the family for some time. He’s just flown in from London.”

“Your servant, my dear,” the visitor murmured, smiling, and took the young girl’s hand. He would have felt the slightest pullback in her fingers, as he bent to kiss the air above them in the old European style. But pullback there was none.

Some surprise, though, showed in her voice. “You say that as if you meant it.” Her voice was jarringly American. Well, what else?