Dark on the Other Side (15 page)

Michael ambled around muttering apologies, picking up
socks and underwear and books and old letters, and heaping them
unceremoniously on the single chair. His face brightened as he lifted a
drab garment from the floor.

“Here’s my bathrobe,” he said, shaking it out. “Gosh. I’m
afraid it’s pretty wrinkled.”

“Thank you; it looks fine to me.”

“Wait a minute.” He darted into the bathroom, gathered up
shaving equipment, towels, and more books. “There should be a clean
towel someplace….”

They found one, finally, on top of one of the bookcases.
Linda closed the bathroom door and turned the shower on full force. She
put her ear to the door and listened. The bedroom door closed with a
bang, which probably represented one of Michael’s attempts at tact, or
reassurance.

Linda opened the bathroom door just wide enough to slip
out, and eased it shut behind her. There was a telephone extension on
the bookcase by the bed. She eased the instrument out of its cradle,
her fingers on the button underneath. There was a slight click; but
with luck he wouldn’t notice it.

The click was lost in the ringing. She had moved so
quickly that he had barely had time to dial the number. She waited, her
hand over the mouthpiece, so that he could not hear the sound of her
ragged breathing.

Finally the receiver at the other end was picked up. She
knew, from the first syllable, that the voice was not the one she
feared; and the relief was so great she almost lost the words.

“Let me speak to him,” Michael said; and then, after a
pause, “Galen? It’s me, Michael.”

He had been telling the truth. Her astonishment and joy
were so great that she did not concentrate on Michael’s next statement:
something about “said you’d drop in tonight.”

“But, Michael, I’m just leaving for—” the other man said.

Michael cut him off.

“Yes, I know. Hold on a second, Galen.”

That was all the warning she had, and it was barely
enough. She eased the receiver back down into its slot with a care and
speed she had not expected her unsteady hands to know, and then dropped
down, flat on the floor beside the bed, as the bedroom door opened.

The bathroom door was closed and the rush of water was
unchanged. The thud of her heart sounded like thunder in her ears, but
she knew Michael could not hear it. He stood motionless for a few
seconds. Then the door closed.

Linda got to her knees. She didn’t dare pick up the
telephone again. She didn’t have to. There was something wrong, or he
wouldn’t have bothered to check on her before proceeding with the
conversation. And now she remembered what the person on the other end
of the wire had said, at first, “This is Dr. Rosenberg’s residence.”

The mammoth volumes of the city telephone directory were
where she might have expected them to be—on the floor. She scooped up
the classified directory and ran into the bathroom. On her knees on the
floor, she began turning pages. “Department
Stores…Hardware…Machinery…Physicians.” And there he was. Rosenberg,
Galen. A conscientious member of the medical profession; four separate
numbers were listed, including his home phone. Most doctors avoided
giving that one out. But her eyes were riveted to the one word that
mattered, the word that told which medical specialty Dr. Galen
Rosenberg practiced.

It might be a coincidence. Presumably even psychiatrists
had friends, like other people. But if Rosenberg had intended to visit
his friend Michael, why did Michael care whether she overheard the
conversation? And why had he interrupted the other man at that
particular moment? On his way to—where? Not, she thought, to Michael’s
apartment. Not then. He was clever, Michael Collins, but not quite
clever enough.

Her mind worked with the mechanical precision it
developed in moments of emergency. Coat, bag—she had those. Shoes—they
were still in the living room. That was bad. Well, she would just have
to leave them.

Stripping off her dress, she opened the bathroom door and
walked boldly across the bedroom. The door was still closed. She opened
it a crack, and called, “Would it be all right if I washed my hair? It
feels horrible.”

“Sure.” Michael’s footsteps approached the door. It
started to open, but she was ready; she pushed it back, making sure he
saw her bare arm and shoulder.

“Hey,” she said, putting a faint amusement into her voice.

“Oh, sorry. There should be some shampoo, someplace….”

“I found it. Just wanted to let you know I wasn’t
drowned.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

He sounded embarrassed. She pictured him standing outside
the door, his long, thin face alert and compassionate. Linda’s mouth
tightened.

“Your friend,” she said, through the crack. “Did you
reach him?”

“Friend? Oh, I’m afraid I wasn’t able to put him off. He
won’t stay long. Don’t worry, I’ll tell him something.”

I’m sure you will
, she thought.

“Okay,” she said, and closed the door.

So that was that. Naïve of her to expect anything
else.

Letting the water run, Linda closed the bathroom door and
slipped into her dress. The skirt was still damp; it felt clammy and
cold against her skin. Gathering up coat and bag, she went to the
window of the bedroom.

For several terrifying minutes, she was afraid she
couldn’t open it. The latch was a flimsy, old-fashioned thing, but the
frame refused to yield to her frantic shoves. Outside, dim through the
filthy glass, the angular black shape of a fire escape mocked her
efforts. When the window finally gave, it went up with such a rush that
she almost fell out.

Sprawled across the sill, she lay still for a moment,
with the rain beating down on her head and the cold air in her face.
Then she pulled herself back. Folding her coat, she went across the
room to the wardrobe and opened its wide double doors.

The bedroom door opened, and Michael’s voice called, with
hideous cheerfulness, “Linda? Hey, are you decent? Friend of mine wants
to meet you.”

Huddled in the back of the wardrobe, behind a heap of old
newspapers and dirty laundry, Linda held her breath. Not that she
needed to; when the truth dawned on him, Michael made enough noise to
drown out a squad of heavy snorers—bellowing for his friend, splashing
around in the bathroom as if he expected to find her submerged in the
tub, and then rushing to the open window.

“She’s gone,” he kept repeating. “Damn it, Galen, she’s
gone.”

Linda heard the other man’s deep voice for the first
time. They had talked in the other room for some minutes, but they had
kept their voices so low, they were only murmurs.

“Out through the window? That’s a hell of a route,
Michael. I wouldn’t have thought that old rattletrap of a fire escape
would hold any weight.”

“It obviously did. The dust on the windowsill is smeared
where she crawled out. And—yes, her coat’s gone. Her purse too.
But—wait a minute—” Linda heard him run out and return. “Her shoes are
still here! She went out in the rain, barefoot…. She’s out there now,
somewhere. Oh, God. I muffed it, Galen. If she gets hurt, it’s my
fault.”

“Calm yourself. You sound like a bad performer trying out
for Hamlet.”

“Sorry,” Michael muttered. “Damn it, Galen, I don’t see
how she knew. I was so careful—”

“There’s a telephone extension in here. If she’s as
intelligent as you say, she could have managed.”

“You mean it isn’t that hard to outsmart me. And you’re
right.”

“Cunning and intelligence are two different things. But
before you go flying off in all directions again, let’s stop and figure
this out. Are you sure that fire escape is still functional? She may be
out there still, halfway down. Or lying below, with something broken.”

Michael rejected the last suggestion with a wordless
sound; but Linda scarcely heard it. Her eyes were fixed, in horror, on
the doors of the wardrobe. They were old and warped and did not close
completely; a narrow line of yellow had announced the switching on of
the light when Michael entered the bedroom. Now the crack altered its
shape, widening and narrowing in turn. Someone was trying to open the
door.

Her attention flickering wildly from the attempt on the
door to the conversation, she realized what the older man, the one
named Galen, was saying. My God, she thought; he knows I’m here. He’s
smarter than Michael, smarter and tougher; he knows I’d be afraid to
step out on that fire escape. He must be leaning against the doors,
making them move, just to frighten me.

Then the door opened and she saw the source of her
terror. Not the doctor. Something worse. The cat, the damned cat. She
was afraid of the cat. It looked like a diabolical animal, and it hated
people; Michael had said so. It would take one look at her and yowl or
spit, and back out, and then they would know where—

Linda saw its eyes shine with that eerie fire, which is,
scientifically, due to a perfectly normal phenomenon of light
refraction. Then the eyes disappeared. Deliberately the animal sat
down, its back to her, and began washing its tail.

“There’s nothing in the alley,” Michael said, with a loud
sigh of relief.

“And no signs of her having gone that way, either.”

“A flashlight doesn’t show that much detail from up here.
What did you expect, a glove draped daintily over a garbage can? Damn
it, Galen, she had to go that way. There’s no place to hide in here. I
was in the kitchen the whole time, she couldn’t have gotten past me.”

A small contorted shape in the corner of the wardrobe,
Linda could almost feel the other man’s gaze, moving thoughtfully
around the room. Oh, yes, he was much smarter than Michael. It never
occurred to that innocent idiot that she hadn’t left. But he knew, the
doctor—he had had considerable experience with people like her.

Whether he actually bent over to look under the bed, she
did not know; a snort of amused disgust from Michael might have been
his response to such a gesture. But she knew when the doctor’s
searching eyes lit on the wardrobe—the only other place in the room
where a person might be concealed.

“There’s Napoleon. Still as unsociable as ever?”

“He hates everybody,” Michael said absently. “Likes it in
there, though…. Galen, what am I going to do?”

Napoleon finished washing his tail, turned around, and
prepared to go to sleep. After the first knowing look, he had not
glanced in Linda’s direction.

“Well,” the doctor said finally, “let’s sit down and talk
about it. Your original account was somewhat abbreviated.”

“Have you got time?”

“Sixteen minutes. Then I’ll have to drive like hell. I
must catch that plane.”

They went out, talking about the medical conference the
doctor was going to attend. Linda let her head fall back against one of
Michael’s coats. Against the light from the half-open door of the
wardrobe she saw the solid, unmoving black lump that was Napoleon. An
odd smile curved her mouth. How very appropriate, she thought.

For the moment, at least, she was safe; reprieved by the
hallowed familiar of legend, by the animal sacred to the powers of
evil. What would happen next she neither knew nor cared; she still had
to get out of the apartment, but she would worry about that later. Now
she could relax, for a little time, enjoying the omen, and listening
intently to the conversation, which was clearly audible through the
open door.

“I wonder,” the doctor said, “why she should come to you.
Is she in love with you? Or you with her?”

“I don’t know what the word means,” Michael said quietly.

“No more do I.”

“Then why the hell did you bring it up? No, I don’t think
she’s running to anyone, or anything—unless it’s safety. She’s running
away from something. Not her husband—”

“How do you know?”

“Well, for God’s sake! Modern women don’t run away from
husbands, they divorce them. Besides, he—he’s devoted to her.
Desperately worried about her. He’s out in this filthy rain now,
looking for her. He was here, not five minutes before she came.”

“He was?”

“I wish to God you people could carry on a normal
conversation instead of trying to make it into a Socratic dialogue,”
Michael said irritably. “Yes, he was. And before you can ask, I’ll tell
you. I don’t know why he should expect to find her here—that’s the
truth, Galen. But he did. He says she’s run away before—to other men.”

“What other men?”

“How the hell should I know? I didn’t ask.”

“I think I might have asked,” the doctor said
thoughtfully. “If a nervous husband told me I was number three on any
list, I’d be curious about my predecessors. All right, never mind that.
She runs away. He pursues.”

“You make it sound…Galen, I tell you the girl is off her
head.”

“How do you know?”

“Oh, for—”

“All I’m trying to indicate is the stupidity of jumping
to conclusions. As a writer you ought to know that a single set of
observed facts may be capable of varying interpretations. And you know
the human tendency to misinterpret evidence in terms of a preconceived
theory. So far, all you’ve conveyed to me is that the woman is running
away from something she fears. Either her husband is the source of her
fear, or he is closely connected with it. Certainly it’s possible that
her fears are unjustified or imaginary; that she is, as you so
elegantly put it, off her head. But it is also possible that she fears
a real danger, one which even you would admit to be a legitimate cause
of fear if you knew what it was. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t
mean it isn’t there.”

“I know what she’s afraid of,” Michael said reluctantly.
“And it—isn’t there.”

“What is it?”

“A dog. A black dog. She saw it one night and it
terrified her so badly she went into a fainting fit.”