“Pat, you’re being a fool!”
“I know it. But I’m sure of it, Dr. Carl. I know Nick; I loved him, and I know he couldn’t have done—that. Not the same gentle Nick that I had to beg to kiss me!”
“Pat,” said the Doctor gently, “I’m a psychiatrist; it’s my business to know all the rottenness that can hide in a human being. My office is the scene of a parade of misfits, failures, potential criminals, lunatics, and mental incompetents. It’s a nasty, bitter side I see of life, but I know that side—and I tell you this fellow is dangerous!”
“Do you understand this, Dr. Carl?”
He reached over, taking her hand in his great palm with its long, curious delicate fingers. “I have my theory, Pat. The man’s a sadist, a lover of cruelty, and there’s enough masochism in any woman to make him terribly dangerous. I want your promise.”
“About what?”
“I want you to promise never to see him again.”
The girl turned serious eyes on his face; he noted with a shock of sympathy that they were filled with tears.
“You warned me I’d get burned playing with fire,” she said. “You did, didn’t you?”
“I’m an old fool, Honey. If I’d believed my own advice, I’d have seen that this never happened to you.” He patted her hand. “Have I your promise?”
She averted her eyes. “Yes,” she murmured. He winced as he perceived that the tears were on her cheeks.
“So!” he said, rising. “The patient can get out of bed when she feels like it—and don’t forget that little fib we’ve arranged for your mother’s peace of mind.”
She stared up at him, still clinging to his hand.
“Dr. Carl,” she said, “are you sure—quite sure—you’re right about him? Couldn’t there be a chance that you’re mistaken—that it’s something your psychiatry has overlooked or never heard of?”
“Small chance, Pat dear.”
“But a chance?”
“Well, neither I nor any reputable medic claims to know everything, and the human mind’s a subtle sort of thing.”
XII
Letter from Lucifer
“I’m glad!” Pat told herself. “I’m glad it’s over, and I’m glad I promised Dr. Carl—I guess I was mighty close to the brink of disaster that time.”
She examined the injuries on her face, carefully powdered to conceal the worst effects from her mother. The trick had worked, too; Mrs. Lane had delivered herself of an excited lecture on the dangers of the gasoline age, and then thanked Heaven it was no worse. Well, Pat reflected, she had good old Dr. Carl to thank for the success of the subterfuge; he had broken the news very skillfully, set the stage for her appearance, and calmed her mother’s apprehensions of scars. And Pat, surveying her image in the glass above her dressing-table, could see for herself the minor nature of the hurts.
“Scars—pooh!” she observed. “A bruised cheek, a split lip, a skinned chin. All I need is a black eye, and I guess I’d have had that in five minutes more, and perhaps a cauliflower ear into the bargain.”
But her mood was anything but flippant; she was fighting off the time when her thoughts had of necessity to face the unpleasant, disturbing facts of the affair. She didn’t want to think of the thing at all; she wanted to laugh it off and forget it, yet she knew that for an impossibility. The very desire to forget she recognized as a coward’s wish, and she resented the idea that she was cowardly.
“Forget the wisecracks,” she advised her image. “Face the thing and argue it out; that’s the only way to be satisfied.”
She rose with a little grimace of pain at the twinge from her bruised knees, and crossed to the chaise lounge beside the far window. She settled herself in it and resumed her cogitations. She was feeling more or less herself again; the headache of the morning had nearly vanished, and aside from the various aches and a listless fagged-out sensation, she approximated her normal self. Physically, that is; the shadow of that other catastrophe, the one she hesitated to face, was another matter.
“I’m lucky to get off this easily,” she assured herself, “after going on a bust like that one, like a lumberjack with his pay in his pocket.” She shook her head in mournful amazement. “And I’m Patricia Lane, the girl whom Billy dubbed ‘Pat the Impeccable’! Impeccable! Wandering through alleys in step-ins and a table cloth—getting beaten up in a drunken brawl—passing out on rotgut liquor—being carried home and put to bed! Not impeccable; incapable’s the word! I belong to Dr. Carl’s parade of incompetents.”
She continued her rueful reflections. “Well, item one is, I don’t love Nick any more. I couldn’t now!” she flung at the smiling green buddha on the mantel. “That’s over; I’ve promised.”
Somehow there was not satisfaction in the memory of that promise. It was logical, of course; there wasn’t anything else to do now, but still—
“That wasn’t Nick!” she told herself. “That wasn’t my Nick. I guess Dr. Carl is right, and he’s a depressed whatever-it-was; but if he’s crazy, so am I! He had me convinced last night; I understood what he meant, and I felt what he wanted me to feel. If he’s crazy, I am too; a fine couple we are!”
She continued. “But it wasn’t Nick! I saw his face when we drove off, and it had changed again, and that was Nick’s face, not the other. And he was sorry; I could see he was sorry, and the other could never have regretted it—not ever! The other isn’t—quite human, but Nick is.”
She paused, considering the idea. “Of course,” she resumed, “I might have imagined that change at the end. I was hazy and quavery, and it’s the last thing I do remember; that must have been just before I passed out.”
And then, replying to her own objection, “But I didn’t imagine it! I saw it happen once before, that other night when—Well, what difference does it make, anyway? It’s over, and I’ve given my promise.”
But she
