"Oh," said Fisher, "I called up Hurd Lennox and asked him. He said you'd retain a lot that you weren't conscious of, in spite of your amnesia."

  "Thank him for me," I said. I poured myself a drink and gulped it. "My buddy, Jeff!" I growled.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  There was a chill in the air when I arrived home that night. Patrice was in the living room, wearing a blue, floor-length dressing robe. She sat on the rug before the fireplace, drinking from that tumbler again, and poking moodily at the fire's embers.

  "You really lap that stuff up," I said.

  "Lately." She didn't look up from the embers.

  "Help any?"

  "Not much." She maintained an indifference, a wall I had to break through.

  "Somebody took a shot at me last night," I told her. That broke it.

  "What!" She got hurriedly to her feet, looking me over anxiously. She saw I was in one piece. "What happened?"

  "I couldn't see who did it," I told her, after sketching it for her, "but I got a shot at him before he got away. Nicked him, too."

  "It's lucky you had that gun of yours."

  "Not lucky. I figured he'd be after me sooner or later."

  "But why?" She brushed the lustrous black hair away from her face. "Why should anyone want to kill you in the first place?"

  "I don't know, remember? Do you have any ideas?"

  "N-no," she said hesitantly. "I've thought about it. I…" She looked away from me, her face tightening bitterly. "Something about that girl, perhaps. Elsie." She had difficulty making herself say that name. She went on softly, not looking at me, her hair hiding her face from me again: "I didn't know about Elsie. She was pretty young for you, wasn't she? I mean, even for someone like you."

  I couldn't stand to look at her when her face held that expression of contempt. I glanced at the clock. It was one-thirty.

  "It's late," I said. "Going to bed tonight?"

  "Yes, I suppose so."

  She stood up and put the glass on the mantel. It was empty now, but Patrice looked sober.

  "Danny," she began, hesitating, "I don't know if I should say anything about it, but you're so sort of stumbling around in the dark, trying to find yourself…"

  "What is it?"

  "You and Jeff," she said. "You two haven't been liking each other lately."

  The muscles of my stomach tightened. I remembered what he'd said in the office that evening.

  "I thought we were good friends," I said.

  "You've been acting surly with each other. And just last week you told me you suspected him of taking money from the business for gambling."

  Strangely, knowing that made me feel better than I had all day. I smiled at Patrice and said, "Thanks. Thanks a lot for that, Pat."

  She stood straight and tall, her head helmeted with the lush black hair, her feet encased in shiny black high-heeled slippers. The pale blue robe hung in straight, graceful folds, except where it molded tight against the outthrust, magnificent breasts. Her dark eyes were soft as newly opened pansies and her ripe, red lips were wet where she'd licked them with the tip of her nervous tongue.

  An insidious languidness spread deliciously through me like warm, thick honey. My legs and arms trembled. I reached out to touch her.

  The distaste with which she shrank from my touch was unmistakable. It hit me like a body blow. I stood there, feeling suddenly like the ungainly stump of a dead tree. She moved away from me and disappeared up the stairs without looking back.

  I seized her empty tumbler from the mantel and poured it full from the bottle she'd left on the floor. My hands shook uncontrollably. I stared into the glowing embers in the fireplace and drank the entire tumbler of whisky in gluttonous, scorching gulps. The whisky joined the rage and thwarted desire coursing through my veins. It tore my blood pressure to shreds. My head spun in a dizzy whirlpool. My body was on fire with damned-up, undirected violence.

  Cursing savagely, I smashed the glass into the fireplace. But that did not provide release. It only stoked the fires that raged in me. I turned and faced the stairs. My violence focused on one object. I walked to the stairs, forcing my emotion-locked limbs to carry me up them to the floor above. I went to the bedroom. I entered.

  Patrice stood before a wall mirror, absent-mindedly brushing her raven hair. My brain was swirling under the shock of the tumbler of whisky. Patrice saw me and turned.

  "I made up your bed in your den," she said.

  She was wearing soft, silver pajamas that clung loosely to her sweet body. I closed the distance between us and grabbed her. Her arms came up between us, elbows against my chest. Her provocative face was a mask of stubborn refusal.

  The bubble of my violence exploded. I crushed her body against mine. One of my arms locked her waist; my other hand grasped the hair behind her head, cruelly forced her head back, held it viselike. Her struggles were futile in the grip of my rage. I bent forward and tasted her red mouth for the first time.

  The effect left me weak and trembling from head to feet. I released her so suddenly she fell back against the bed. She crouched there, frozen with terror.

  "You're my wife," I mumbled, moving my tongue with great difficulty. "I have to have you. I have a right to you."

  She sprang around me and darted for the door. My hand caught the back of her pajama top, jerking her to a sudden stop for an instant. Then the buttons of her pajama shirt ripped apart under the force of her forward momentum, and she fell to the floor.

  "No!" she panted, looking up at me as I stood there with the material of her pajamas in my hand. Her slim chest heaved. Her big, firm breasts trembled. Her resistance fanned the fires of my lust. A vicious devil was in me. I seized her wrist and pulled her to her feet and locked my arms about her. She moaned, her lips jerking away from her white teeth. Her fists beat at me futilely. I held her, swinging her around toward the bed, forcing her back onto it. Sobs shook her glorious body as I kissed her, tasting her sweetness.

  And then, suddenly, her fists unclenched and her smooth warm arms were around me, clutching my body to hers. Her mouth was soft under mine, then eager and demanding. Her wide-open eyes shone into mine, and her nails began their work in the skin of my bare back.

  ***

  Afterward, lying weakly twined together, we kissed each other's lips with gentle languor. Her face held a new happy secret.

  "Danny?" she murmured.

  "Yes, darling?"

  "It's been so long since you wanted me like that. Is it going to be this way from now on? Or are you going to get bored with me again?"

  "Pat, Pat," I whispered, kissing her eyelids. "I told you before. I'm not the same guy you married. And this is the way it'll be, from here on out."

  She smiled impishly and pulled away from me. She stretched like a well-fed cat, arching her body, holding her stretch while my hands made caressing love to her. She let go of the stretch with a gusty sigh and snapped off the bed lamp. I heard her chuckling in the dark.

  "I'll make sure of that," she whispered. "From now on you're going to be too tired for anyone else."

  And this time, in the dark, I was hers.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The next morning was sunny bright. A breeze blew and there wasn't a cloud in the light blue sky. It all fitted perfectly with my frame of mind. I walked with a new spring in my step. I loved the woman who loved me. I whistled as I dressed, watching Pat hide her adorable body in a bright orange dress.

  "Well," she said, her dark eyes sparkling, "aren't you feeling well today! I wouldn't be surprised if you get over your amnesia soon."

  "I don't want to," I told her. "Nuts to the past. The present's too damn beautiful to spoil with the past."

  While she made breakfast, I shifted my clothes back from the den to our bedroom closets. I found a pipe and tobacco pouch on top of one of the bedroom bureaus. I filled up the pipe and lit it, dragging at it contentedly.

  Pat appeared to announce that breakfast was ready.

  I hugged her hard.

  She took my hand, leading me down to the kitchen. I took a last puff on the pipe, put it down on the table, and dug into her bacon and eggs.

  "You're a damn good cook, darling," I said with my mouth full. "You're good at everything you do, it seems."

  I leered at her.

  "You're darn tootin' I am, mister. Treat me right and you can keep me, maybe."

  "I'll treat you right, all right."

  "Just treat me like you do that pipe," she ordered, "and I'll be satisfied. You've had it as long as I've known you, and you're always smoking it. Now why can't you be a one-woman man? You're a one-pipe man."

  "From now on," I swore, "we'll be happy together, just the three of us. Me, you, and my pipe."

  "Screwball! "

  I began thinking back, and that made me lose some of my high spirits.

  "Pat," I asked, "what was I like, before? I mean, what sort of guy was I?"

  Pat looked sad again, too.

  "Oh, you were a charmer. Too much of one, it turned out. I loved your way of taking everything easy and good-natured, at first. But then, when I began to get fed up, you were still easygoing. I'd get mad, and you'd just grin and tell me not to worry so damn much. You very seldom lost your temper, but I think I'd have preferred you to."

  "Pat," I began hesitantly, "the night we had your folks over here for dinner, your father told me a little about why we weren't getting along before this."

  Pat concentrated on lighting a cigarette.

  "What did he tell you?"

  "He said you were… well, sore because I wouldn't go to work in his mill."

  "That wasn't it at all!" Pat shot out with a flash of her old anger. "It wasn't that I wanted you to work there especially. I was just unhappy because you didn't want to work anywhere-except down at that bar of yours. Oh, don't misunderstand me, Danny. I don't think there's anything menial or anything about running a bar. That's what you were doing when I married you. But most men, after they're married, they try to better themselves."

  "I know," I interrupted. "Your father told me all that. He figured you were sore because I didn't have any ambition."

  Pat snubbed out the cigarette she had just lighted. She leaned across the table toward me, her hands folded Lightly together-as though she were praying for something, or begging.

  "Danny," she said, "is there really anything wrong with my feeling unhappy about that? After all, look at it this way. I'm used to living a certain way, and I have a certain standing with the people around here. Look at this house we live in, for instance."

  "I know," I groaned. "Your father paid for it. It'll help you to get to know me better again. Even about the time I was fat and knock-kneed."

  I kissed her.

  "If I could only track her down," I muttered.

  "Why, Danny?" Pat was worried. "We're happy now; I don't like thinking of the past like this."

  "Yes," I agreed, "I know. And I don't like probing the past. But I have to. It's too dangerous, living like this, with some mysterious guy just waiting for a chance to shoot me in the back some night. He's bound to succeed, eventually."

  "But what's that woman, or maybe it was even women, got to do with him?"

  "I don't know," I said. "But I've got to investigate everything about me, about what I was doing before I got my head banged. Somewhere around here there's got to be something that points right to why this happened, why two people have been murdered, why someone is trying to kill me now. I've got to knock on a lot of doors to "find a room with all the answers. For instance, why hasn't my mysterious gal friend contacted me?"

  I finished the last of my coffee and stood up, shoving back my chair. I looked down at Pat, with her bright dress and her black hair tied back in an orange ribbon, and I was filled with the joy of love and possession of such a delightful creature.

  "I've got to be going now," I told her.

  "Going? But you don't have to be down at the bar till early this evening."

  "I have a lot of questions to ask a lot of people before then. The sooner, the better."

  "Damn!" Pat said, making a pout. "I thought we might take the camera out and shoot some pictures of each other on our first day of regained happiness." She laughed and hugged me around the waist, turning her lovely face up for a kiss. "That's another thing about me, honey," she said. "I'm a camera nut. I believe every occasion is an occasion for taking pictures."

  "We'll do it tomorrow," I promised her.

  "All right. And I'll show you the picture album up in our room. I've been taking pictures since I was seven. It'll help you to get to know me better again. Even about the time I was fat and knock-kneed."

  I kissed her.

  "You go back to bed and rest up," I said insinuatingly. "I want you all full of energy when I get home tonight."

  She made a face and stuck her tongue out at me.

  "I'll go play tennis all afternoon," she threatened. "Then I'll be too tired tonight. Then maybe you'll learn to stay home and keep me inactive."

  I slapped her cute rear and started out.

  "Where are you going first?" Pat asked, walking along with me.

  "I'm going," I said, "to ask a few questions of a kid named Ernie Stewart."

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I turned off the main highway and drove up the road Jeff Hull had pointed out as we drove to my home the other day. After a few miles I came to a small gas station and inquired about the address I'd looked up in the phone book at home. The house I was looking for was two miles farther on a huge white mansion with blue shutters and a tall, white-pillared entrance.

  I rang the bell. An old, gray-haired Negro opened the big door. I told him who I wanted and he ushered me into a small waiting room with a big mirror filling one wall. Then he went to notify Ernie Stewart.

  While I waited, I looked myself over in the mirror. I thought I showed the effects of the night before. The meanness I'd previously detected around my mouth was gone. The swelling of my broken nose was entirely gone. Only two dark, thin bruises on my forehead, near my hairline, recalled what had happened to me.

  A tall, red-haired, bulky-shouldered kid in his middle twenties appeared. He grinned at me and reached out his open hand. That startled me. I hadn't expected him to be friendly. I shook hands with him.

  "You look fine," he said. "I heard you were all beat up and lost your memory."

  "That's right," I told him. "The beat-up job is wearing off, but I still can't remember anything."

  "Oh. Yeah? Well, I'm Ernie Stewart, in case you don't remember that."

  "I figured, but I don't remember you."

  "Don't you even remember the fight we had the other night at your place?"

  "No. But I heard about it. That's one of the things I'd like to talk about."

  "Sure," he said, looking at me curiously. "Sure. Let's go into the library where we can be comfortable."

  I followed him down a wide hall to a book-lined room with a fireplace. Ernie shut the doors behind us. He took a bottle and two glasses from a breakfront.

  "Scotch O.K.?" he asked.

  "No, thanks," I said. "I'm not drinking. Got too much to do today."

  "I'll drink yours too." He grinned. He poured a glassful, took a gulp of it, and sat down. "Shoot. What do you want to know?"

  "About what happened," I told him, watching his face closely for his reactions. "I understand you held out a half buck on us."

  Ernie scowled disgustedly.

  "Kid's trick," he growled. "I just was feeling tricky that night. The fifty cents doesn't mean anything to me, you know."

  "You slugged Jeff over it," I pointed out.

  "Aah, he put me on the spot. He caught me and got nasty about it. I guess I felt ashamed and took it out on him."

  "And then I took it out on you, right?"

  "You sure did," he said admiringly. "You grabbed me by the shirt, leaving yourself wide open. I pasted you and you went down. I'd hit you so hard I figured you were down for the night. Big mistake. I started to walk past you to leave and you kicked my ankle and knocked me down. Last thing I knew you were kneeling over me swinging at my jaw. When I came to, you were dumping me out the back door into the alley."

  "You don't seem too sore about it. I expected you would be."

  "Naw. I was, but I got over it. I was asking for it. You're the kind of tough baby I like. Say, how about going at it with gloves on down at the Y some day soon?"

  "Sure," I said, "some day, one of these days."

  I was impatient, because he wasn't the kind of guy I'd expected him to be.

  "Anything else you want to know?" he asked, taking another swallow of his drink. He didn't seem perturbed at all.

  "Yeah," I said. "Where were you between midnight and three a.m. the morning Elsie Daniels was murdered?"

  Ernie put his glass carefully on the sideboard and stopped looking friendly.

  "If you think I had anything to do with that, you're nuts. Maybe that beating you took mixed up your brains, huh?"

  "You had a motive for what happened," I said. "I'd beaten you up and I'd taken your girl away from you."

  "Who? Elsie?" He laughed harshly. "She wasn't my girl. If she was anybody's girl, she was Buddy Crown's. He was always hanging around, waiting for her to get tired of her current torch and come back to him for a while."

  "That couldn't have been much fun for him," I said.

  "He's nuts. He's been crazy about her since they were kids. He was her little lap dog. I don't think he even got to bed with her, ever. He respected her! Can you beat that?"

  "How about you?" I asked, trying to play on his vanity. "Did you ever get to bed with her?"

  "Goddamn right I did." He leered and looked ugly. "What a juicy piece! All round and soft and asking for it."

  "Quite a girl."

  "Sure. Too bad you can't remember her. You must have enjoyed it too."

  "Think so?"

  "You weren't fooling around to buy her lollipops."

  "And you weren't sore about my taking her when you went for her so much?"

 

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