Darker Than You Think Read online

  "If you have such wonderful hunches," Barbee retorted, "why ask me?"

  The girl smiled repentently.

  "I'm sorry, Barbee. It's true I just came back, but I do have old friends in Clarendon, and my editor told me you used to work with Mondrick. These people must be waiting to welcome the expedition home. I'm sure you know them. May we talk to them?"

  "If you like." Barbee didn't want to resist. "Come along."

  Her arm slipped through his. Even white fur, where it touched his wrist, felt somehow electric. This girl did things to him. He had believed himself impervious to women; but her warm allure, balanced with that queer, lingering sense of unease, disturbed him more deeply than he wanted her to guess.

  He guided her through the terminal building, pausing beside a clattering teletype machine to ask the busy dispatcher: "Is that the Mondrick plane?"

  "In the pattern, Barbee." The dispatcher nodded, frowning at a wind indicator. "Landing on instruments."

  Still he couldn't see the plane, however, when they came outside again to the edge of the taxiway, and the drum of it seemed fainter in the gloomy murk.

  "Well, Barbee." The girl nodded hopefully toward the people waiting. "Who are they?"

  Barbee wondered what made his voice unsteady.

  "The tall woman with the dog," he began. "The one standing there alone, with the black glasses and the lonely face. She's Dr. Mondrick's wife. A lovely, gracious person. A gifted pianist, even though she's blind. She has been a friend of mine ever since the two years Sam Quain and I lived in her house when we were in the university. I'll introduce you."

  "So that's Rowena Mondrick?" Her voice seemed hushed, oddly intense. "She wears strange jewelry."

  Puzzled, Barbee glanced back at the blind woman who stood very straight, silent and lonely and aloof. As always, she wore plain black. It took him a moment to see her jewels, simply because he knew them so well. Smiling, he turned to April Bell. "That silver, you mean?"

  The girl nodded, her eyes fixed on the old silver combs in Rowena Mondrick's thick white hair, the silver brooch at the throat of the black dress, the heavy silver bracelets, and the worn silver rings on the white and youthful-seeming hands that held the dog. Even the dog's leather collar was heavy with massive silver studs.

  "It's odd, perhaps," Barbee agreed. "Though it never struck me that way, because Rowena loves silver. She says she likes the cool feel of it. Touch, you know, is important to her." He looked at the girl's set face. "What's the matter? Don't you like it?"

  Her burnished head shook slightly.

  "No," she whispered solemnly, "I don't like silver." She smiled at him quickly as if in apology for her long stare. "Forgive me. I've heard of Rowena Mondrick. Will you tell me about her?"

  "I think she was a psychiatric nurse at Glennhaven when she met Dr. Mondrick," Barbee said. "That was probably thirty years ago. She was a brilliant girl and she must have been beautiful then. Mondrick rescued her from some unhappy love affair—I never heard the details of that—and got her interested in his work."

  Watching the blind woman again, the girl listened silently.

  "She went to Mondrick's classes and became an able ethnologist herself," Barbee went on. "She used to go with him on all his expeditions until she lost her sight. Since, for the last twenty years or so, she has lived very quietly here in Clarendon. She has her music, and a few close friends. I don't think she takes any more part in her husband's researches. Most people consider her a little odd—and I suppose that was a dreadful experience."

  "Tell me about it," the girl commanded.

  "They were in West Africa," Barbee said slowly, thinking wistfully of the other days when he had been on expeditions to search for lost fragments of the puzzle of the past. "I think Dr. Mondrick was hunting proof of a notion that modern man first evolved in Africa—that was long before he found those sites in the Ala-shan. Rowena was taking the chance to gather some ethnological data on the Nigerian tribal societies of human alligators and human leopards."

  "Human leopards?" The girl's greenish eyes seemed to narrow and turn darker. "What are they?"

  "Only the members of a secret cannibalistic cult, who are supposed to be able to turn themselves into leopards." Barbee smiled at her taut intentness. "You see, Rowena was preparing to write a paper on lycan-thropy—that's the common belief among primitive tribes that certain individuals are able to transform themselves into carnivorous animals."

  "Is that so?" the girl whispered breathlessly. "Tell me!"

  "The animals are usually the most dangerous ones found in the locality," Barbee went on, eager to keep her interested and glad to find some use at last for the dry facts he had learned in Mondrick's classes. "Bears in the north countries. Jaguars in the Amazon basin. Wolves in Europe—the peasants of medieval France lived in terror of the loup-garou. Leopards or tigers in Africa and Asia. I don't know how the belief could have spread so widely."

  "Very interesting." The girl smiled obliquely, as if to a secret satisfaction. "But what happened to Rowena Mondrick's eyes?"

  "She would never talk about it." Barbee lowered his voice, afraid the blind woman might hear. "Dr. Mondrick told me all I know—once we were talking in his study, before he fell out with me."

  "Well, what did he say?"

  "They were camped deep in Nigeria," Barbee said.

  "I believe Rowena was looking for data to connect the human leopards of the cannibal tribes with the leopard familiars of the Lhota Naga medicine men of Assam and the 'bush soul' of certain American tribes." "Yes," the girl whispered.

  "Anyhow, Rowena had been trying to get the confidence of the natives and asking questions about their rituals—too many questions, Mondrick said, because their bearers got uneasy and one of them warned her to look out for the leopard men. She kept on, and her investigations led her to a valley that was taboo. She found artifacts there that interested Mondrick—he didn't say what they were—and they were moving camp into that valley when it happened."

  "How?"

  "They were on the trail at night, when a black leopard jumped on Rowena out of a tree—it was actually a leopard, Mondrick said, and not a native in a leopard skin. But I guess the coincidence was a little too much for native bearers. They all lit out, and the beast had Rowena down before Mondrick's shots frightened it away. Her wounds were infected, of course, and I think she very nearly died before he got her back to any sort of hospital.

  "That was her last expedition with him, and he never went back to Africa—I believe he gave up the idea that Homo sapiens originated there. After that, do you think it's any wonder if she seems a little strange? The leopard's attack was so tragically ironic— huh?"

  Glancing at the taut white face of April Bell, he had caught an expression that shocked him—a look of burning, cruel elation. Or had the gray dusk and the harsh light from the building merely played an unkind trick with her unusual features? She smiled at his startled grunt.

  "It does seem ironic," she whispered lightly, as if not much concerned about Rowena Mondrick's old disaster. "Life plays queer tricks sometimes." Her voice turned grave. "It must have been a dreadful blow."

  "It was, I know." Barbee felt relieved at her solicitude. "But it didn't break Rowena. She's a charming person, really. No self-pity. She has a sense of humor, and you soon forget she's blind."

  He caught the girl's arm, feeling the sleek softness of that snowy fur. The black kitten blinked at him with huge blue eyes from the snakeskin bag.

  "Come along," he urged. "You'll like Rowena."

  April Bell hung back.

  "No, Barbee!" she whispered desperately. "Please don't—"

  But he was already calling heartily: "Rowena! It's Will Barbee. The paper sent me down to get a story on your husband's expedition, and now I want you to meet my newest friend—a very charming redhead—Miss April Bell."

  The blind woman turned eagerly at the sound of his voice. Nearing sixty, Mondrick's wife preserved a youthful slenderness. The
thick coils of her hair had been entirely white since Barbee first knew her; but her face, flushed now with excitement and the cold, seemed firm and pink as a girl's. Used to them, Barbee scarcely saw her opaque black glasses.

  "Why, hello, Will." Her musical voice was warm with pleasure. "It's good to know your friends." Shifting the dog's short leash to her left hand, she held out the right. "How do you do, Miss April Bell?"

  "Very well." The girl's voice was sweetly remote, and she made no move to take the blind woman's extended hand. "Thank you."

  Flushed with embarrassment for Rowena, Barbee tugged sharply at the girl's fur sleeve. She jerked stiffly away. He peered at her face and saw that her cheeks had drained colorless, leaving her lips a wide red slash. Narrowed and darkened, her greenish eyes were staring at Rowena's thick silver bracelets. Nervously, Barbee tried to save the situation.

  "Careful what you say," he warned Rowena with attempted lightness. "Because Miss Bell is working for the Call, and she'll put every word down in shorthand."

  The blind woman smiled, to Barbee's relief, as if unaware of April Bell's puzzling rudeness. Tilting her head to listen again at the whispering sky, she asked anxiously: "Aren't they down?"

  "Not yet," Barbee told her. "But the dispatcher says they're in the landing pattern."

  "I'll be so glad when they're down safe." she told him uneasily. "I've been so dreadfully worried, ever since Marck went away. He isn't well, and he insists on taking such frightful risks."

  Her thin hands quivered, Barbee noticed, and clutched the dog's short leash with a desperate tenseness that turned the knuckles white.

  "Some buried things ought to stay buried," she whispered. "I tried to get Marck not to go back to those digs in the Ala-shan. I was afraid of what he would find."

  April Bell was listening intently, and Barbee heard the catch of her breath.

  "You," she whispered, "afraid?" Her pen shuddered above the tiny notebook. "What did you expect your famous husband to find?"

  "Nothing!" The blind woman gasped the word, as if alarmed. "Nothing, really."

  "Tell me," the girl insisted sharply. "You may as well, because I believe I can already guess—"

  Her low voice broke into a stifled scream, and she stumbled backward. For the shepherd's leash had slipped out of the blind woman's fingers. Silently, the huge dog lunged at the cowering girl. Barbee kicked desperately, but it rushed past him, fangs bared viciously.

  Barbee spun, snatching for the dragging leash. The girl had thrown up her arms instinctively. Her snake-skin bag, flung out in an accidental arc, fended the slashing jaws from her throat. Savagely silent, the animal tried to spring again, but Barbee had caught the leash.

  "Turk!" Rowena called. "Turk, to heel."

  Obediently, still without a growl or bark, the big dog trotted toward her. Barbee put the leash back in her groping hand, and she drew the bristling animal to her side.

  "Thank you, Will," she said quietly. "I hope Turk didn't hurt your Miss Bell. Please tell her that I'm extremely sorry."

  But she didn't scold the dog, Barbee noticed. The huge tawny beast stood close against her black skirt, snarling silently, watching April Bell with baleful eyes. Pale and shaken, the girl was retreating toward the terminal building.

  "That nasty dog!" A sallow, sharp-featured little woman came back from the group ahead, scolding in a plaintive nasal whine. "Now remember, Mrs. Mondrick, I begged you not to bring him. He's getting ugly, and he'll hurt somebody."

  Calmly, the blind woman stroked the dog's head. She caught the wide collar with a small deft hand, gently fingering the heavy silver studs. Rowena, Barbee recalled, had always loved silver.

  "No, Miss Ulford," she murmured softly. "Turk was trained to guard me, and I want him with me always. He'll not attack anybody, unless they're trying to harm me." She listened to the throbbing sky again. "Isn't the plane down yet?"

  Barbee had seen no threatening gesture from April Bell. Shocked and puzzled by Rowena's behavior, he hurried back to the red-haired girl. Standing beside the glass door of the bright-lit waiting room, she was caressing the black kitten, murmuring softly: "Be still, darling. That big, bad dog doesn't like us, but we needn't be afraid—"

  "I'm sorry, Miss Bell," Barbee said awkwardly. "I didn't know that would happen."

  "My fault, Barbee." She smiled at him contritely. "I shouldn't have taken poor little Fifi so near that evil brute of a dog." Her greenish eyes glowed. "Thank you so much for pulling him off me."

  "Turk never acted that way before," he said. "Mrs. Mondrick wants to apologize—"

  "Does she?" April Bell glanced obliquely at the blind woman, her long eyes quite expressionless. "Let's forget the incident," she said briskly. "The plane's coming in, and I want you to tell me about those others waiting."

  She nodded eagerly at the little group beyond the blind woman, all hopefully watching the low, ragged cloud bases that now began to glow with a soiled pink from the reflected lights of the city.

  "Okay." Barbee was glad to ignore that awkward and somewhat baffling occurrence. "The sharp-nosed little woman who came back to Rowena is her nurse, Miss Ulford. She's the one that's usually ailing, though, and Rowena actually does most of the nursing."

  "And the others?"

  "See the old gent just lighting his pipe—only he's too excited to get the match struck? That's old Ben Chittum. Rex's granddad, and the only relative he has. Runs a newsstand down on Center Street, just across from the Star building. He put Rex through school, until Mondrick got him that scholarship."

  "And the rest?"

  "The little fellow in the long overcoat is Nick Spivak's father. The proud-looking, dark-haired woman is Mrs. Spivak. They have a tailor shop in Brooklyn, on Flatbush Avenue. Nick's the only son. He's got over saying 'woik' and 'goil,' but he still thinks the world of them. They've been awfully upset ever since Nick went back with the expedition. They must have written me a dozen letters, wanting to know if I had heard anything. They came down to meet Nick on the morning plane. I suppose he wired them from the coast.

  "Most of the others are friends, and people from the Foundation. There's Professor Fisher, from the anthropology department at the university. And Dr. Bennett, who has been in charge out at the Foundation—"

  "Who's the blonde?" interrupted April Bell. "Smiling at you."

  "Nora," Barbee said softly. "Sam Quain's wife."

  He had first met Nora the same night Sam did—at the freshman mixer during registration week at Clarendon. Fourteen years hadn't dimmed the friendly sparkle of her eyes; the smiling matron now, he thought, waiting for her husband, looked as happily breathless as that slim girl had been, excited over the bright new world of the university.

  Barbee started toward her with April Bell, circling cautiously wide of Rowena Mondrick's watchful dog. Nora glanced hopefully again at the murmuring clouds and came to meet them, leading little Pat.

  Patricia Quain had just turned five years old and was very proud of that accomplishment. She had her mother's wide blue eyes and cornsilk hair, but her pink stubborn face showed a reflection of Sam's square chin. She was tugging back, peering hungrily into the darkening sky.

  "Will Daddy be safe, up there in the cold night?"

  "Of course, darling. Nothing could happen to them now." But Nora's warm voice was not so cheerful as she tried to make it, and she called anxiously: "Do you think they'll be much longer, Will? We can hardly wait. I made the mistake of looking up the Ala-shan country in Sam's library, and after that I could hardly sleep.

  Two years is such a long time. I'm afraid Pat won't know her father."

  "Yes, I will, Mother." The child's firm voice showed Sam's own determination. "I'll know my own Daddy."

  "There!" Barbee heard the bark of wheels scuffing the runway. The anxious tension of those breathless watchers had got into him, and he smiled at Nora, sharing her glad relief. "They're down safe, and they'll taxi in now."

  Holding the girl's fur sleeve, he glanced
watchfully at Rowena Mondrick's great dog, standing against his mistress and glaring ominously at April and the blue-eyed kitten.

  "Nora, this is Miss April Bell. She's learning to be a sob sister on the Call. Anything you tell her may be quoted against you."

  "Really, Barbee!"

  April made that protest with a charming little laugh. When the eyes of the two women met, however, Barbee sensed fire—something like the sudden shower of sparks when hard metal meets the grinding wheel. Smiling with angelic sweetness, they shook hands.

  "Darling! I'm so happy to meet you."

  They hated each other, Barbee knew, savagely.

  "Mother!" little Pat cried eagerly. "May I touch the dear little kitten?"

  "No, honey—please!"

  Nora caught hastily at the child, but her small pink hand was already reaching eagerly. The black kitten blinked and spat and scratched. With a sob of pain, that she stubbornly tried to stifle, Pat drew back to her mother.

  "Oh, Mrs. Quain," purred April Bell. "I'm so sorry."

  "I don't like you," Pat declared defiantly.

  "Look!" Old Ben Chittum limped past them, pointing with his pipe into the gloomy dusk, shrill with excitement. "There's the plane, rolling down the taxi-strip."

  The Spivaks ran after him.

  "It's our Nick, Mama! Our Nick—safe at home from that cruel desert across the sea."

  "Come on, Mother." Pat tugged impatiently at Nora's hand. "Daddy's back—and I will too know him."

  Rowena Mondrick followed that breathless group, proud and straight and silent. She seemed entirely alone, even though little Miss Ulford held her arm to guide her and the huge tawny dog stalked stiffly at her side. Barbee glimpsed her face under the opaque black lenses, and its white agony of hope and terror made him look hastily aside.

  He was left with April Bell.

  "Fifi, you were very naughty!" She patted the kitten reprovingly. "You spoiled our interview."

  Barbee felt an impulse to follow Nora and explain that April Bell was a stranger. He still had a tender spot for Nora—sometimes he wondered, wistfully, how different life might have been if he and not Sam Quain had drawn her to be his partner at that freshman mixer. But April's long eyes smiled again, and her voice chimed contritely: "I'm sorry, Barbee—truly I am."