Chapter 16

FOR A LONG MOMENT Barry stood there, backed up against the wall in a dark corner. He was breathing hard. Suddenly he began to tremble in every muscle. It could not be true! They were still in his power, surely! But some faint echo of reason still whispered in parts of his diseased mind, and it told him that he was wrong, that he had to face the fact. Melody-Nola was openly contemptuous of him.

He walked out, vaulted over the veranda rail and lost himself in the shadows of the garden. He located some thick azalea bushes and crawled up beneath them. Hidden, he watched for the enemies that were out there in the dark. Enemies everywhere, all fantastically colored, throbbing and pulsating in amorphous, ever-changing shapelessness. Then some of the shapes took form. They resembled his composite of Barrett-Pilgrim. Yes. Barrett-Pilgrim had struck him, had seized his girls from him. Barrett-Pilgrim was responsible for all.

Then the sight of a man standing on the back veranda caught Barry's eye. The man was smoking a long cigar. He was plainly visible in the glow of one of the many lamps illuminating the veranda. But Barry's humiliation at the hands of the girls had warped still further his twisted intelligence. He left the bushes in the full knowledge that the man on the veranda was really two men in one: Barrett-Pilgrim.

Barry approached the house with catlike stealth, climbed to the veranda well below the man's angle of vision. Hugging the pink stucco of the wall, Barry advanced until he was directly behind the unsuspecting man. Slowly Barry pulled from his waist-band the broad-bladed butcher knife he had snatched up when leaving Joyce Flemming's house. He bent double to prepare for his stroke. Barry Norton had operated on too many animals not to have some knowledge of anatomy. He would stab Barrett-Pilgrim low about the waistline so that he would die a lingering death.

He sprang silently, slammed the knife into the man's side with all his strength.

Barry felt the knife buckle and break. Dr. Hackthorne felt the blow and the sharp prick of an inch of the knifepoint buried in his loin. His reactions unimpaired by age, he wheeled with blinding speed, his long right arm flailing. It caught Barry at the junction of head and neck. Such was the force behind it that he cartwheeled from the veranda to the grass below.

Hackthorne looked critically at the broken knife protruding from his side. From the prick of it, he felt sure it had not gone in deeply. But what on earth stopped it? The handle and another piece of the blade were on the floor. He opened his mouth and bawled mightily, "Alcide Fontenot! Where the hell are you? Dr. Fontenot! Somebody get Dr. Fontenot!"

Immediately, a curious knot of people pushed out to the veranda and surrounded Hackthorne. Word passed swiftly. Soon Fontenot appeared, along with Missy.

"You're disturbing my guests," she scolded truculently. "What in hell is going on here?"

"A number of things. First and foremost, I've been stabbed. I'm not sure whether we should withdraw this fraction of blade as yet. I might cough my life up in one great blob of gore."

"Bones of General Jackson!" she exploded. "You, Alcide, take a look. Everybody else-scat! I mean it."

As the curious throng shuffled away, whispering excitedly, Dr. Fontenot stripped Dr. Hackthorne down to the essentials. "As I thought," Fontenot said. "Less than an inch of penetration. It got jammed between the stays of this corset you affect to dislike so intensely. I guess the sudden wrench caused it to break. Thin blade-too thin for that sort of thing. Where's the culprit?"

"In the back yard where I knocked him. If he doesn't have a couple of crushed cervical vertebrae, I'm going to retire."

"Who was it?" asked Dr. Fontenot reasonably.

"How the hell do I know?" yelled Dr. Hackthorne. "I get stabbed in the back, so I knock the bastard for a loop. I don't follow to see who it is... You want me to bleed to death? I-" Hackthorne closed his mouth with a click. His brow was suddenly wrinkled in thought. "Where's that nitwit protege of mine?" he demanded. His eyes shone with a feral glitter.

"What do you need him for?" snapped Missy. "Alcide, tape up this man before he messes the floor."

"No! Find Rod Barrett-"

Rod Barrett had drunk both highballs as fast as he could, which was too fast. Unable to find Nola, he had gone to a small sunroom and was sitting there brooding when a handsome couple, taking the air, happened to stop in front of the French doors opening on the veranda.

"This is hell," came the throaty voice of Don Gann. "How can I get to see you? Just the two of us alone, I mean."

Tangi's teasing laugh floated up in the night air.

In the dimness, Rod saw the man's big hands stroking her shoulders. "What do you say to this idea?" He whispered something to her, then raised his head. "What about it? Sound foolproof to you?"

"Sure does," she said, and this time her laugh was threaded through with excitement.

"Good. See you then and there. Now I must leave you for a few minutes. I promised the principal I'd let him introduce me to his daughter-but I won't be gone long. Will you wait here?"

"I might. If you don't let her snatch you away from me."

"Nobody could do that, Tangi," he said. "Nobody. Believe me."

He disappeared into the gloom. Tangi, who had been helping to serve canapes but was now finished with that task, lit herself a cigarette and sat down.

Rod rushed through the French doors and stood over her.

"Oh... hello, Rod."

"That was quite an earful I got," he choked out. "Is that all I mean to you?"

"I don't think you have any beef, doctor. I told you all about me."

"But you were so good to me, so damnably sweet and good-you misled me."

"Not on purpose. That's why I told you what I am like." She rose and touched his cheek with a soft hand. "You're hurt because you see me giving him what was yours. That's wrong. It's neither his nor yours. Not for keeps. It's mine, to do with as I wish. I'm sorry." She walked away, leaving him feeling like a schoolboy.

But he was also feeling light, as if unexpectedly relieved of burdens. And in that instant, as he looked into his own heart, he saw his deepest emotions with sudden new clarity-as if, as a psychiatrist, he had abruptly pierced the layers swathing the psyche of a troubled patient.

His tie with Tangi was the fact that he had known all along that he could not have her for himself, that he must lose her, that there could be no permanent involvement. For that reason, he had felt wholly comfortable with her, had experienced no fear. For that reason, he had used his ostensible "love" for her as an excuse to clamp down on his very real love for Nola. Why, this jealousy he had felt for Gann, this acute sense of loss because Tangi was bestowing herself on another man, were but tricks of his mind. If he accepted the truth that Nola was his beloved, not Tangi, then the tricks did not work. And now he did accept it, fully and gladly. He had been utilizing Tangi as a means of avoiding Nola, but with his new insight came boldness and courage. Yes, he loved Nola. By God, he would tell her at once. He would ask her to marry him and would not take no for an answer.

He wheeled about, meaning to try again to find Nola. But at that moment he heard mighty yells followed by noisy commotion. Then he heard Dr. Hackthorne bawling his name. He made his way along the veranda, followed it around the corner, and came upon the good doctor in the company of Fontenot and Missy.

"Here I am," Rod cried. He took one look at Dr. Hackthorne and broke into a storm of frenzied questions, none of which Hackthorne was disposed to answer.

Instead he impaled the younger man with a piercing eye. "Of all the goddamned, idiotic, frantically upended nincompoops on the face of the globe, you take the prize. If I ever saw a doctor ignoring the obvious, you're that doctor. I had hopes for you. I revise my optimistic estimate."

"Damn," muttered the dazed Barrett. "Who'd I murder?"

"Think for a minute. Who have we all decided actually did commit a murder, not to mention those rapings- and now comes along and stabs me?"

"Barry Norton! You mean he-"

"That's right. Now, a big reason you were wanted in Kenton was to get a line on that menace-maybe get him put away so he couldn't do more damage."

"Sir, I've devoted hours and hours of thought to it. I'm convinced, judging by the patterns, that he's the rapist. And I've repeatedly tried to get the sheriff to lock him up. But he keeps objecting there's no evidence. He can't just take my word for it, he says."

"But there definitely is evidence," Hackthorne scolded. "I've been waiting for you to figure that out-but I waited too long. I got myself knifed."

"You say there is evidence? Where?"

Hackthorne looked at him pityingly. "Have you forgotten? The man is a painter. Have you forgotten?"

"Sure. A good one, by all accounts. What's that got to do with it."

"Remember Ragot, the Englishman? And countless other paranoid artists?"

A great light burst upon the younger man.

"Of course! I've been blind. Willet painted those cat faces. First they were very nice cat faces-then gradually, as he deteriorated, the faces became more bizarre and fantastic until at last they were unrecognizable horrors."

"Precisely. So where would one search for the evidence we want?"

"My God," breathed Rod. "His studio!"

To this interchange of words between master and pupil, Missy Blumendahl and Dr. Fontenot had been listening with baited breath.

Now Missy found her voice. "He has a shack out in the woods," she volunteered. "Maybe he paints there."

"No," said Rod. He knew from what Nola had told him that Barry Norton did no painting in that shack. "If I judge his type right, his studio must be somewhere in his home. To him it would be a lair, a den-like any animal's den. I'm going over and take a look."

With that, Rod ran down the veranda steps. A couple of minutes later, they heard the pick-up truck roar off.

Both Missy and Dr. Fontenot were glaring at Hackthorne accusingly. "You old devil," rasped Missy. "If you had it figured out, why didn't you tell him before? When did you figure out that painting gimmick?"

Hackthorne's grin was never more Satanic. "About five minutes ago."

"You rail-built jackass! Do you realize you've chased the boy off to face that madman alone?"

"Oh, I thought we'd toddle along after him. I want to give him a little lead on us so he'll have enough time to shine. It will do his self-confidence no end of good."

"Alcide, round up the sheriff. I'll get Bridge. Let's go get that boy out of trouble." Missy whirled on Hackthorne. "You think you're up to this? It might be rough."

He gave her a sour glance. "I feel fine. Outside of a busted spine and a small knife-wound. Thanks for extracting the point so neatly, Alcide. It's hardly bleeding at all."

Rodney Barrett knew where the Norton grotesquerie of a house was. He had passed it once or twice during exploratory drives about the county. When he reached it, he found it lit from top to bottom.

Barry had rushed home some time before. In his unpredictable way, he had been disturbed by the darkness and the shadows. He had switched on every light, then had rushed into his father's room.

At the massive door, Rod looked for a bell-button, found none. He seized the massive brass knocker and pounded with all his might. No one came to answer. Exasperated, Rod pushed on the door. It opened.

He plunged in, saw no one. He marched through the ground-floor rooms, then climbed the big staircase. On the second-floor landing, he paused, listened. He heard nothing. He was about to explore the rooms when he thought he caught the sound of whimpering. He cocked an ear, waited. Yes. Some person or some animal was whimpering somewhere over his head.

Rod ran down the hall, saw another staircase. He climbed it swiftly. Off the landing were three doors. The whimpering was coming from behind the one furthest off. He rushed to it, put his ear to the panel.

Whoever was on the other side must have heard his footsteps. They evoked a muffled cry. "Let me out of here! Let me out!"

The door was locked, but it took Rod only three seconds to kick it in. At his feet huddled an unutterably horrid hag.

She lifted herself to her feet, pushed past him to the landing. She started painfully down the stairs, muttering to herself, "Whiskey. Got to find whiskey-" That must be Mrs. Norton, Rod told himself, his hair standing on end. Senility, he diagnosed swiftly. Senility and something more.

He noticed the ladder in front of him. Lights overhead were blazing; the bag, in despair, must have switched them on. On impulse, Rod climbed the ladder. The sight that met him almost made him lose his own reason.

Scattered about were the paintings. After he got over his first shock, Rod gazed at them carefully, one after the other. The Delery girl. Barry's mother. The composite Barrett-Pilgrim horror. The rape of Melody.

"Talk about evidence!" Rod exploded aloud. "He had to be there to paint that scene with Melody-" He stepped closer, bent over it to examine the concentrated malignance that went into each tiny detail. He shivered as he took in the virulence of the man's hatred, the insane savagery that motivated every stroke of the brush.

And while he was examining the repulsive canvases, their perpetrator was about to leave his father's room.

Barry Norton had only gone in there in the first place to get the man's straight razor. As usual, his father was snoring on the bed, bewhiskered, sodden with alcohol. He did not move while Barry searched drawers, coming at last on the gleaming razor.

Barry opened it, stared with relish at the murderous blade. He flourished it once or twice experimentally. And great, dripping blobs of blood appeared before his eyes. Barrett-Pilgrim blood would be good, he thought. It would be balm to soothe his seething mind and the humiliations heaped upon him. But it would be no good to paint with. So after spilling it, he would have to cut the throat of Melody-Nola. The razor would be perfect for the job, now that he had lost the butcher knife.

Then suddenly Barry heard a sound. He lifted his head, recognized the mutterings and whimperings of his mother, heard her curses and her tottering steps. Hadn't he locked her in the studio? How had she got out? And had she damaged his paintings? He had been a fool, he told himself now, to leave her in there.

Alarmed, but still with the blood-red mist before his eyes, he stole from the room, silently climbed the stairs. With automatic stealth, he climbed the ladder.

As his head poked above the floor, he saw his enemy. Barrett-Pilgrim.

The enemy's back was turned.

Barry raised the razor, stared at it. He willed the blade to be red with a dancing light of electric blue along the thin, whetted edge. It would let blood to his order. Gushing blood. Barrett blood, and the blood of Bridge Pilgrim. And after that, girlish blood.

With preternatural stealth, he lifted himself from the ladder. He crouched to spring.

In that instant, he heard pounding steps and loud cries from the landing below. He did not falter in his purpose however.

But his quarry, hearing the noises, turned.

He threw himself to one side, avoiding Barry's arcing blade.

Sheriff Jess Townley emerged over the top of the ladder. He was followed by Bridge, Dr. Fontenot, Dr. Hackthorne and the panting Missy in that order.

Barry turned and faced them, an animal at bay.

"Watch it, Jess," said Dr. Fontenot quietly.

"Watch it damn closely," contributed Dr. Barrett, white around the gills. "I know that look. He doesn't know what he's doing."

Missy stood stiff, horrified and taut as Jess Townley advanced on Barry, who brandished the razor dangerously.

"You fool," she yelped. "Draw that sidearm!"

"Barry," said Townley, "drop the razor."

Barry stared at the sheriff uncomprehendingly, his eyes glazed with his ecstatic vision of red.

"Drop it, Barry. Drop it and come with us."

But Barry raised his weapon. Walking as if his legs were stilts, he advanced to meet the sheriff.

"Now's the time, Jess," said Missy crisply.

The sheriff must have agreed. His long-barreled gun snaked easily from its holster and hesitated.

Barry stalked closer, his eyes fixed on the sheriff's neck. He swung as the pistol tilted, steadied, snapped out a crisp report.

Barry Norton was dead before he hit the floor. Not in a tide of lovely red. But with a tiny hole, twenty-two hundredths of an inch in diameter, showing between the eyes.

Like Dr. Hackthorne's knife-wound, the hole hardly bled at all.

Next morning, back on her home grounds, Missy ordered coffee served and dropped heavily into a chair. "All right, you wise men. Any post mortems? In my opinion he was a mad dog. Now he's a good mad dog."

Dr. Hackthorne nodded soberly. "From the standpoint of the public good, what you say is true. Yet I feel very sorry for that unfortunate boy."

"Sorry?" she blared. "For that raping murderer?"

"Yes," Hackthorne insisted. "Sorry. Because you've got to agree, on the strength of his paintings, that he was a genius. If it were not for his ill mind, he might have taken his place among master artists. Who knows? Psychiatry might have saved him, if he had been lucky enough to run into it when young enough."

"I doubt it," Rod said, his arm comfortably around Nola. "Psychiatry does not know enough yet about cases like his."

"I agree. I'm saying that at least he would have had a chance-an outside chance-of escaping the cold labyrinthine gloom that must have been his world."

"Probably he's better off dead," Dr. Fontenot said. "At least he no longer has to endure the gloom you describe, and all the other internal tortures of insanity."

Missy nodded. "By the way, Lora phoned me a while ago. Seems Joyce was raped and beaten by our poor Barry. But she's quite happy about the whole thing, boasted about it to Lora. And Joyce wept when she heard Barry was dead." Missy made a coarse noise. "Well, that's Joyce for you... Rod, where are you? It's obvious you aren't with us."

He snapped to attention. "Well, I heard everything Dr. Hackthorne said, but from long habit I can listen to him and think about something else."

"I'm not sure how I should take that," snapped the older man. "Just what were you thinking about?"

"A double wedding," Rod said. "Melody and Bridge- Nola and me."

"Wow!" announced Missy. "I'll throw a fang-dang that will make last night's look like a tea party."

Tangi, who had just walked in with the refilled and steaming percolator, smiled stunningly.

"Tangi, my girl," said Hackthorne, eyeing her with appreciation, "a little bird has told me you're good for hurts and wounds and such."

Tangi had the grace to blush.

"Well, my dear girl," Hackthorne continued, "it might interest you to know that I'm wounded."

"Well, I'll be a suck egg mule," Missy said softly.

"Me'n you both," said Sheriff Townley. "How 'bout some more coffee?