Darker Than You Think (36 page)

"Quickly!"
the she-wolf warned. "Quain's waking up!"

She
trotted to the window, and Barbee reached to help her grasp the glass
and wood and putty and steel to open a path. She shook her slender
head.

"Not
that way," she breathed quickly. "We must raise the sash.
There's no screen, and I believe your old friend Spivak had a way of
walking in his sleep when he got overtired. He was very tired
tonight. That's the linkage I found to help you kill him."

Feebly,
ill from that foul sweetness, she scratched at the catch. Barbee
tried to help her and swayed weakly back, sinking in a shuddering
pile on the warm, broken corpse. The she-wolf toiled frantically with
supple paws and prying fangs, and the window came up with a bang. Sam
Quain seemed to hear it, for he moved heavily on the cot.

"Nick,"
he muttered thickly. "What the devil's going on?"

He
didn't get up, however, and the white bitch whispered sharply: "He
can't wake now—that would break the linkage."

Clean,
cold air, pouring in through the open window, began to dispel that
evil sweetness. The she-wolf caught her breath and shook out her fur,
and Barbee felt revived. He started rolling awkwardly toward the
window, moving his crushed, still-pulsating burden. It left a reeking
trail of spattered blood on the floor.

"Drop
him!" the white bitch gasped. "While the linkage lasts."

It
wasn't easy to move even so slight a form as Nick Spivak's, not when
you were wrapped around and around it. Not when you were faint with
the venom of the Stone. The cold air was clean and good, however, and
Barbee's flowing strength returned. He hooked his flat head outside
the window and caught the desk with his tail, lifting the broken body
toward the windowsill.

"Quickly!"
April Bell was urging. "We must get out of here before Quain can
wake—and I've still some writing to do."

She
trotted past the fallen chair, sprang lightly to the desk, and
grasped the dead man's pencil in her pliant paws. Barbee had paused
to ask what she wrote when Sam Quain groaned on the cot. Desperately
he tightened his coils and toppled the limp weight of the crushed
body over the sill. His coils slipped on a smear of blood, and he
fell with it. The white bitch must have seen him fall, for her
anxious voice floated after him: "Get away, Barbee—before
Quain wakes!"

Hurtling
downward through those nine stories of darkness, Barbee unwound his
coils from the dripping, still-twitching thing that had been Nick
Spivak. He flung it beneath him. Frantically he groped for the
hateful husk he had left on his bed at Glennhaven, sick with fear of
Sam Quain's awakening.

Beneath
him, he heard the broken body crunch again on the concrete walk in
front of the Foundation tower. The dull sound of yielding bone had a
flat finality, and he had time to see that the last shudder of life
had ceased in the misshapen frame sprawled flat in a puddle of red.
Faintly, his sensitive ears caught the weary nasal voice of the guard
called Charlie, inside the building: "Hell, Jug, you ain't
supposed to think.
I
tell
you again, the cause of Mondrick and Chittum dying is the coroner's
business, and I don't want to know what's inside that box. Twenty
bucks a night is twen—"

Barbee
came crashing down—

But
not upon the concrete walk beside Nick Spivak. For he had grasped his
body as he fell, and that flowing change was quicker and less painful
now. He fell on the floor beside his bed in the room at Glennhaven,
and clambered stiffly upright.

He
was a very ordinary biped, rusty with sleep. His head was choked with
cold, and it throbbed from the bump against the floor. He wanted a
drink. His stomach was fluttering. A dull weariness ached in him. Dr.
Glenn, he thought, would doubtless tell him that he had merely rolled
off the pillows on which he had propped himself to read, that all his
dreadful dream had arisen afterward, from the unconscious effort to
explain his fall.

CHAPTER
FIFTEEN

The
Human Side

All
the ruthless elation of that dream had drained away, and Barbee was
flooded with a dull sickness of horror in its stead—for a
stunned conviction gripped him that Nick Spivak was really dead,
lying flat and broken on the walk in front of the Foundation tower.

He
stood beside the bed, swaying with a gray illness, rubbing at the
bruise on his temple. He fingered a smarting scratch on his neck, and
remembered that the white wolf's fangs had nipped him there. He
caught a long breath, and shook himself stiffly. He couldn't get rid
of that sick certainty that Nick Spivak had really died in that
dream.

Dazedly
he snapped on the light and looked at his watch. It was two-fifteen.
He reached for the clothing he had left on a chair, but the night
nurse must have removed it; he found only the red robe and soft
slippers. Trembling, clammy with sweat, he pulled them on. He pressed
the call button, and shuffled out impatiently to meet the nurse in
the hall—Miss Hellar had a gorgeous fluff of pale bleached hair
and the physique of a lady wrestler.

"Why,
Mr. Barbee! I thought you were asleep—"

"I've
got to see Glenn," he told her. "Right now."

Her
broad, alarming face broke into a gentle smile.

"Of
course, Mr. Barbee." Her masculine voice tried to be soothing.
"Why don't you just go back to bed, while we see—"

"Lady,"
Barbee interrupted grimly, "this is no time to show off your
maniac-buttering technique. I may be crazy and I may not—I hope
that's all I am. Crazy or not, I've got to talk to Glenn. Where does
he sleep?"

Nurse
Hellar crouched a little, as if she faced an opponent in the ring.

"Don't
get fresh," Barbee advised her sharply. "I imagine you know
how to handle common lunatics, but I believe my case is just a little
different." He thought she nodded in uneasy agreement, and he
tried to leer malevolently. "I think you'll run when I turn into
a big black rat."

She
retreated, turning a little pale.

"All
I want is to talk to Glenn for five minutes— right away,"
Barbee told her. "If he doesn't like it, let him put it on my
bill."

"That
would come pretty high," Nurse Hellar warned. Barbee grinned at
her, dropping to all fours. "But I won't try to stop you,"
she said shakily. "I'll show you his house."

"Smart
girl!"

He
stood up again. Nurse Hellar stepped back watchfully and waited for
him to walk ahead of her down the hall to the stairs—he
couldn't put aside a disquieting idea that she really believed he
could turn himself into a rat. From the rear door of the annex she
pointed out Glenn's dark mansion, and he thought she seemed relieved
when he left her.

Lights
sprang on in the upper windows of Glenn's brick house before he
reached it, and he knew Nurse Hellar must have telephoned. The tall,
suave psychiatrist himself, clad in a rather barbaric dressing gown,
opened the front door before Barbee had found the bell. Glenn looked
sleepier than ever.

"Well,
Mr. Barbee?"

"It
has happened again," Barbee blurted. "Another dream—that
I know is more than just a dream. This time I was a snake. I—I
killed Nick Spivak." He paused to catch a rasping breath. "I
want you to call the police. They'll find him lying dead under an
open ninth-floor window in front of the Humane Research Foundation
building—and I'm his murderer!"

Barbee
mopped his wet forehead, peering anxiously to see Glenn's reaction.
The psychiatrist blinked his heavy-lidded hazel eyes, and shrugged
easily in that splendid robe. He smiled a little, sympathetically,
tilting back his tousled, curly head—and something in the
movement woke in Barbee that warm, inexplicable sense of recognition.

"Won't
you?" Barbee insisted sharply. "Won't you call the police?"

Calmly,
Glenn shook his head. "No, we can't do that."

"But
Nick's dead!" Barbee shivered. "My friend—"
"Let's not be hasty, Mr. Barbee." Glenn lifted his tall
shoulders lazily. "If there is really no corpse, we should be
troubling the police department for nothing. If there is, we might
find it awkward to explain how we knew about it." His brown face
smiled likably. "I'm a strict materialist—but the police
are brutal materialists,"

Barbee's
teeth chattered. "Do you think I—I really killed him?"

"By
no means," Glenn told him smoothly. "Hellar assures me that
you were sound asleep in your room until a few minutes ago. However,
I do see another very interesting possibility, which might explain
your dream."

"Huh?"
Barbee caught his breath. "What's that?" Glenn blinked
sleepily.

"You've
been trying to solve a mystery which surrounds the behavior of your
old friend Quain and his associates in the real world." Glenn's
deep voice was casual and slow. "Consciously, you have failed to
reach any certain solution. But the unconscious, remember, is often
more astute than we ordinarily suspect."

Deliberately,
he set the tips of his long brown fingers together.

"Unconsciously,
Mr. Barbee," he continued gravely, "you may have suspected
that Nick Spivak would be thrown out of a certain window tonight. If
your unconscious suspicion should happen to tally neatly enough with
reality, the police might find his body where you dreamed it fell."

"Nonsense!"
Barbee stiffened angrily. "Only Sam was with him—"

"Exactly!"
Glenn's handsome head made a slight I-told-you-so nod. "Your
conscious mind rejects the notion that Sam Quain might be a
murderer—and even your rejection has an emphasis which appears
significant, because it suggests that unconsciously you may want Sam
Quain to die for murder."

Barbee
clenched a gaunt, hairy fist.

"I—I
won't have that!" he choked hoarsely. "That— that's
diabolical." He thrust himself forward and gulped for his voice.
"That's insane. I tell you, Doctor, Sam and Nora Quain are two
of my best and oldest friends."

Softly
Glenn asked: "Both of them?"

Barbee
knotted his sweaty hands again.

"Shut
up!" he croaked. "You—you can't say that to me!"

Glenn
retreated hastily into his lighted doorway.

"Just
a suggestion, Mr. Barbee." He smiled disarmingly, and nodded
again. "Your violent reaction indicates to me that it reaches a
pretty tender spot, but I see no need to discuss it any further now.
Suppose we just forget all our problems for tonight and go back to
bed?"

Barbee
caught an uneasy breath and thrust his hands into the sagging pockets
of the red hospital robe.

"Okay,
Doctor," he agreed wearily. "Sorry I bothered you." He
started to leave and turned suddenly back. In a low, shaken voice he
added desperately: "But you're dead wrong, Dr. Glenn. The woman
I love is April Bell."

With
a faint, sardonic smile, Glenn closed the door.