Her sensory organs still responded to stimuli. They sent impulses to the brain, where they traveled about and gave rise to impulses which activated glands and muscles, including the motor organs of speech. But that was all. None of those intangible flurries we call consciousness hovered around the webwork of nervous activity in the cortex. What had imparted style — Tansy’s style, like no one else’s — to every movement and utterance of the body, was gone. There was left only a physiological organism, without sign or indication of personality. Not even a mad or an idiot soul — yes! why not use that old term now that it had an obvious specific meaning? — peered from the gray-green eyes which winked at intervals with machinelike regularity, but only to lubricate the cornea, nothing more.
He felt a grim sort of relief go through him, now that he had been able to picture Tansy’s condition in definite terms. But the picture itself — his mind veered to the memory of a newspaper story about an old man who had kept locked in his bedroom for years the body of a young woman whom he loved and who had died of an incurable disease. He had maintained the body in an astonishing state of preservation by wax and other means, they said, had talked to it every night and morning, had been convinced that he would some day reanimate it completely — until they found out and took it away from him and buried it.
He suddenly grimaced. Damn it all, he commented inwardly, why did he let his mind go off on these wild fancies, when it was obvious that Tansy was suffering from an unusual nervous condition, a strange self-delusion?
Obvious?
Wild fancies?
“Tansy,” he asked, “when your soul went, why didn’t you die?”
“Usually the soul lingers to the end, unable to escape, and vanishes or dies when the body dies,” the voice answered, its words as evenly spaced as if timed to a metronome. “But He Who Walks Behind was tearing at mine. There was the weight of green water against my face. I knew it was midnight. I knew you had failed. In that moment of despair, He Who Walks Behind was able to draw forth my soul. In the same moment Your Agent’s arms were about me, lifting me toward the air. My soul was close enough to know what had happened, yet not close enough to return. Its doubled anguish was the last memory it imprinted on my brain. Your Agent and He Who Walks Behind concluded that each had obtained the thing he had been sent for, so there was no struggle between them.”
The picture created in Norman’s mind was so shockingly vivid that it seemed incredible that it could have been produced by the words of a mere physiological machine. And yet only a physiological machine could have told the story with such total restraint.
“Is there nothing that touches you?” he asked abruptly in a loud voice, gripped by an intolerable spasm of anguish at the emptiness of her eyes. “Haven’t you a single emotion heft?”
“Yes. One.” This time it was not a robot’s headshake, but a robot’s nod. For the first time there was a stir of feeling, a hint of motivation. The tip of a pallid tongue licked hungrily around the pale lips. “I want my soul.”
He caught his breath. Now that he had succeeded in awakening a feeling in her, he hated it. There was something so animal about it, so like some light-sensitive worm greedily wriggling toward the sunlight.
“I want my soul,” the voice repeated mechanically, tearing at his emotions more than any plaintive or whining accents could have done. “At the last moment, although it could not return, my soul implanted that one emotion in me. It knew what awaited it. It knew there are things that can be done to a soul. It was very much afraid.”
He ground out the words between his teeth. “Where do you think your soul is?”
“She has it. The woman with the small dull eyes.”
He looked at her. Something began to pound inside him. He knew that it was rage, and for the moment he didn’t care whether it was sane rage or not.
“Evelyn Sawtelle?” he asked huskily.
“Yes. But it is not wise to speak of her by name.”
His hand shot out for the phone. He had to do something definite, or lose control of himself completely.
After a time he roused the night clerk and got the local operator.
“Yes, sir,” came the singsong voice. “Hempnell 1284. You wish to make a person-to-person call to Evelyn Sawtelle — E-V-E-L-Y-N S-A-W-T-E-L-L-E, sir? … Will you please hang up and wait? It will take considerable time to make a connection.”
“I want my soul. I want to go to that woman. I want to go to Hempnell.” Now that he had touched off the blind hunger in the creature facing him, it persisted. He was reminded of a phonograph needle caught in the same groove, or a mechanical toy turned on to a new track by a little push.
“We’ll go there all right.” It was still hard for him to control his breathing. “We’ll get it back.”
“But I must start for Hempnell soon. My clothes are ruined by the water. I must have the maid clean and press them.”
With a slow, even movement she got to her feet and started toward the phone.
“But, Tansy,” he objected involuntarily, “It’s three in the morning. You can’t get a maid now.”
“But my clothes must be cleaned and pressed. I must start for Hempnell soon.”
The words might have been those of an obstinate woman, sulky and selfish. But they had less tone than a sleepwalker’s.
She kept on toward the phone. Although he did not anticipate that he would do it, he shrank out of her way, pressing close against the side of the bed.
“But even if there is a maid,” he said, “she won’t come at this hour.”
The pallid face turned toward him incuriously. “The maid will be a woman. She will come when she hears me.”
Then she was talking to the night clerk. “Is there a maid in the hotel? … Send her to my room… . Then ring her… . I cannot wait until morning… . I need her at once… . I cannot tell you the reason… . Thank you.”
There was a lomig wait, while he heard faintly the repeated ringing at the other end of the line. He could imagine the sleepy, surly voice that finally answered.
“Is this the maid? … Come at once to Room 37.” He could almost catch the indignant answer. Then
— “Can’t you hear my voice? Don’t you realize my condition? … Yes… . Come at once.” And she replaced the phone in its cradle.
“Tansy —” he began. His eyes were on her still and once again he found himself making a halting preamble, although he had not intended to. “You are able to hear and answer my questions?”
“I can answer questions. I have been answering questions for three hours.”
But — logic prompted wearily — if she can remember what has been happening these last three hours, then surely — And yet, what is memory but a track worn in the nervous system? In order to explain memory you don’t need to bring in consciousness.
Quit banging your head against that stone wall, you fool! — came another inward prompting. You’ve looked in her eyes. haven’t you? Well, then, get on with it!
“Tansy,” he asked, “When you say that Evelyn Sawtelle has your soul, what do you mean?”
“Just that.”
“Don’t you mean that she, and Mrs. Carr and Mrs. Gunnison too, have some sort of psychological power over you, that they hold you in a kind of emotional bondage?”
“No.”
“But your soul —”
“— is my soul.”
“Tansy.” He hated to bring up this subject, but he felt he must. “Do you believe that Evelyn Sawtelle is a witch, that she is going through the motions of practicing witchcraft, just as you did?”
“Yes.”
“And Mrs. Carr and Mrs. Gunnison?”
“They too.”
“You mean you believe they’re doing the same things that you did — laying spells and making charms, making use of their husbands’ special knowledge, trying to protect their husbands and advance their careers?”
“They go further.”
“What do you mean?”
“They use black magic as well as white. They don’t care if they hurt or torment or kill.”
“Why are they different in that way?”
“Witches are like people. There are the sanctimonious, self-worshipping, self-deceiving ones, the ones who believe their ends justify any means.”
“Do you believe that all three of them are working together against you?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because they hate me.”
“Why?”
“Partly they hate me because of you and what your advancement might do to their husbands and themselves. But more than that, they hate me because they sense that my inmost standards are different from theirs. They sense that, though I conform on the surface, I do not really worship respectability. Witches, you see, are apt to have the same gods as people. They fear me because I do not bow down to Hempnell. Though Mrs. Carr, I think, has an additional reason.”
“Tansy,” he began and hesitated. “Tansy, how do you think it happens that these three women are witches?”
“It happens.”
There was a silence in the room then, as Norman’s thoughts dully revolved around the topic of paranoia. Then, “But Tansy,” he said with an effort, “don’t you see what that implies? The idea that all women are witches.”
“Yes.”
“But how can you ever —”
“Ssh.” There was no more expression to the sound than an escape of steam from a radiator, but it shut up Norman. “She is coming.”
“Who?”
“The maid. Hide, and I will show you something.”
“Hide?”
“Yes.” She came toward him and he involuntarily backed away from her. His hand touched a door. “The closet?” he asked, wetting his lips.
“Yes. Hide there, and I will prove something to you.”
Norman heard footsteps in the hall. He hesitated a moment, frowning, then did as she asked him.
“I’ll leave the door a little ajar,” he said. “See, like this.”
The robot nod was his only answer.
There was a tapping at the door, Tansy’s footsteps, the sound of the door opening.
“Y’ast for me, ma’am?” Contrary to his expectations, the voice was young. It sounded as if she had swallowed as she spoke.
“Yes, I want you to clean and press some things of mine. They’ve been in salt water. They’re hanging on the edge of the bathtub. Go and get them.”
The maid came into his line of vision. She would be fat in a few years, he thought, but she was handsome now, though puffed with sleep. She had pulled on a dress, but her feet were in slippers and her hair was snarly.
“Be careful with the suit. It’s wool,” came Tansy’s voice, sounding just as toneless as when it had been directed at him. “And I want them promptly at nine o’clock.”
Norman half expected to hear an objection to this unreasonable request, but there was none. The girl said, “All rightie, ma’am,” and walked rapidly out of the bathroom, the damp clothes hurriedly slung over one arm, as if her one object were to get away before she was spoken to again.
“Wait a moment, girl. I want to ask you a question.” The voice was somewhat louder this time. That was the only change, but it had a startling effect of command.
The girl hesitated, then swung around unwillingly, and Norman got a good look at her face. He could not see Tansy — the closet door just cut her off — but he could see the fear come to the surface of the girl’s sleep-creased face.
“Yes, ma’am?” she managed.
There was a considerable pause. He could tell from the way the girl shrank, hugging the damp clothes tight to her body, that Tansy had lifted her eyes and was looking at her.
Finally: “You know The Easy Way to Do Things? The Ways to Get and Guard?”
Norman could have sworn that the girl gave a start at the second phrase. But she only shook her head quickly, and mumbled, “No, Ma’am, I… I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You mean you never learned How to Make Wishes Work? You don’t conjure, or spell, or hex? You don’t know the Art?”
This time the “No” was almost inaudible. The girl was trying to look away and failing.
“I think you are lying.”
The girl twisted, hands tightly clutching her overlapping arms. She looked so frightened that Norman wanted to go out and stop it. but curiosity held him rigid.
The girl’s resistance broke. “Please, ma’am, we’re not supposed to tell.”
“You may tell me. What Procedures do you use?”
The girl’s perplexity at the new word looked real.
“I don’t know anything about that, ma’am. I don’t do much. Like when my boyfriend was in the army, I did things to keep him from getting shot or hurt, and I’ve spelled him so that he’ll keep away from other women. And I kin annernt with erl for sickness. Honest, I don’t do much, ma’am. And it don’t always work. And lots of things I can’t get that way.” Her words had begun to run away with her.
“Very well. Where did you learn to do this?”
“Some I learned from Ma when I was a kid. And some from Mrs. Neidel — she got spells against bullets from her grandmother who had a family in some European war way back. But most women won’t tell you anything. And some spells I kind of figure out myself, and try different ways until they work. You won’t tell on me, ma’am?”
“No. Look at me now. What has happened to me?”
“Honest, Ma’am, I don’t know. Please, don’t make me say it.” The girl’s terror and reluctance were so obviously genuine that Norman felt a surge of anger at Tansy. Then he remembered that the thing beyond the door was incapable of either cruelty or kindness.
“I want you to tell me.”
“I don’t know how to say it, ma’am. But you’re… you’re dead.” Suddenly she threw herself at Tansy’s feet. “Oh, please, please, don’t take my soul! Please!”
“I would not take your soul. You would get much the best of that bargain. You may go away now.”
“Oh, thank you, thank you.” The girl hastily gathered up the scattered clothes. “I’ll have them all ready for you at nine o’clock. Really I will.” And she hurried out.
Only when he moved, did Norman realize that his muscles were stiff and aching from those few taut minutes of peering. The robed and toweled figure was sitting in exactly the same position as when he had last seen it, hands loosely folded, eyes still directed toward where the girl had been standing.
“If you knew all this,” he asked simply, his mind in a kind of trance from what he had witnessed, “why were you willing to stop last week when I asked you?”