Chapter 32

I walked down Lenox Avenue to the first cigar-store and telephoned the office.

As soon as I was connected with Arthurjean I asked her to meet me at her apartment as soon as she could make it. Then I hailed a cab and was driven south through Central Park to the upper east Fifties’ and my secretary’s apartment. She was waiting.

“Gee, honey,” she exclaimed. “I just got here. What’s cooking?”

I followed her in and went straight to the kitchenette. I poured myself a stiff drink and downed it rapidly. I poured myself another and turned to see her staring at me.

“You look terrible,” she told me. “What’s happened to you?”

“I can’t tell you,” I replied. “You’d think I’m crazy and you’d turn me in.”

“I will not!”

She came up close to me and looked me square in the eye. “I don’t care if you’re crazy as a bed-bug,” she announced. “Go on and ‘pit it out in momma’s hand. I won’t squeal.”

“Sit down!” I ordered, “and get yourself a drink first. This is tough.”

She sat and listened quietly as I outlined the latest developments.

“So you see,” I concluded, “I can’t tell anyone. They’d have me locked up for keeps.”

She nodded. “Yeah,” she agreed. “I can see that ... Maybe your wife--”

“I couldn’t tell her,” I contradicted. “It would be too damn cruel just now when she’s really happy.”

Arthurjean sat and thought for a while. “Yep,” she remarked, as though she had just concluded a long argument. “You’re right. You can’t tell nobody that. How about this nosey A. J. Harcourt? Won’t he find out? He’s still having you tailed.”

“I don’t see how he could,” I told her, “unless that Madame la Lune is a complete phoney--which doesn’t make sense. She and I were alone in the room. If it was a plant, there’s nothing to tell. If she’s on the level she won’t remember what went on.”

“That’s no plant,” Arthurjean Briggs announced. “It wouldn’t make sense for the F.B.I. to pull it. Harcourt sent you there in the first place but he wouldn’t put her up to a trick like that.”

“He’ll be hot on my trail then,” I said. “All those clergymen I saw will have to be checked--when all the time--”

“Do you know what I’d do if I was you,” she said abruptly. “I’d get rid of that damn dog--but fast.”

“You mean sell it?” I asked.

“I mean kill it. It isn’t natural, acting that way. It’s been worrying you nigh crazy, that’s what it’s been doing. You just take it to the vet’s and have it chloroformed. They do it all the time on account of the rabbis--”

“Rabies,” I corrected.

“That’s right, but they do it, don’t they? You don’t have to get permission. He’s your property. You can tell the vet he bit you--”

I started up. “Hell!” I exclaimed. “I’ve got to get him away from the kennels fast. It’s--it’s--”

Arthurjean put her large, strong hand on my shoulder.

“There, honey,” she soothed me. “It’s all right. It’s going to be all right.”

I looked at her and realized that she hadn’t believed a word of my story.

“See here--” I began, when the door-bell rang.

“Two-to-one it’s Harcourt,” I remarked.

“I hope so,” said Arthurjean coloring faintly.

“Well, what’s all this about?” I demanded, as a slow blush gathered in sunset fury upon her pleasant face. “Why, Arthurjean--”

“Lay off,” she begged. “He’s a nice guy and he hasn’t got that family in Brooklyn he kept talking about. You and me are washed up--and--well, he’s from the South, too, and he talks my language.”

“Good luck,” I told her. “But he’s also on the doorstep, so take hold of yourself.”

He was. She did.

“‘Evening, Miss Briggs,” the Special Agent said politely. “Any luck, Mr. Tompkins?”

I shook my head.

He looked reproachful. “Oh, come now,” he pleaded. “Something must have happened. You got out of Harlem like a bat out of hell and almost shook the agent who was tailing you. You don’t look to me like nothing happened. Have you filled in that gap? Started to remember anything?”

“On my word of honor, Andy,” I swore, “I haven’t remembered a thing. The gap’s still there.”

He said nothing for a few minutes and exchanged a glance with Arthurjean.

“Something must have happened,” he requested. “You’ve changed. Come clean, can’t you? I’m only trying to help you.”

“I can’t tell you much of anything,” I told him. “You wouldn’t believe me if I did. There’s been a sort of locked door inside my mind for the last three weeks. Now the door’s unlocked and is beginning to swing open. I haven’t looked inside, but I think I know what I’ll find. I can’t tell you more than that now.”

“But you’re going to look, aren’t you?” he asked.

“I’ve got to look,” I said.

He sighed. “Well, we’ll just have to keep an eye on you so as to be around when you do. See here, Mr. Tompkins, you know your own business but this Von Bieberstein guy is nobody to monkey around with. He’s plenty tough and he’d as soon kill as sneeze. Can’t you give me a hint? I’m trained to take those risks and know how to take care of myself, and anyhow the Bureau is back of me.”

I leaned back in my chair and laughed and laughed and laughed until I noticed that both Arthurjean and Harcourt were staring at me without smiling.

“Sorry,” I apologized. “It’s just that something struck me as rather funny. Well, Arthurjean, I’ll be catching the train back to Westchester. You and Andy blow yourself to a dinner at my expense. I’ll go down to the vet’s first thing in the morning and follow your advice. Good night, Andy. I’ll be seeing you.”

That night I locked myself in my bedroom and slept alone. Germaine was worried but I put her aside with the explanation that I had a splitting headache--too much to drink, probably, was my explanation. The truth was that I didn’t want to see or talk to my wife so that she could not guess the perfectly appalling knowledge that had come to me.

This was insane, I repeated to myself. Even Arthurjean Briggs, who had sworn never to turn me in, had not believed it. Yet no other explanation was open to me. The dog’s whole conduct since that fatal afternoon of April second was consistent only with the utterly irrational theory that the body of the Great Dane had been possessed by the soul of Winnie Tompkins at the very moment when the latter’s body--now mine--had been possessed by the soul of Frank Jacklin.

Everybody had a fairly nice set of words for the latter phenomenon--trauma, schizophrenia, neurasthenia, the Will of God--and the best advice was uniform: forget about it; it will wear off in time; take things easy, you’ve been working too hard; everybody’s crazy.

Now just imagine trying to convince the F.B.I. or a psychiatrist that, in addition to this delusion, you know for a fact that a Great Dane is now inhabited by the soul that once resided in your own body. I could hear the clanging of the gong on the private ambulance as it raced me to the nearest asylum, I could feel my arms already in the strait-jacket. No one must ever know; Arthurjean must never tell. If she doubted me, she must never tell.

The way I figured it was this: Winnie had been asleep at the Pond Club. He had been worried about Ponto and Ponto was desperately ill--dying even--from distemper. Both of their--what was the word?--their ids or psyches were relaxed, weakened, off-guard. Then the atomic explosion in the Aleutians, by some freak, had hurled my soul half-way around the world into the sleeping body of Winnie Tompkins. His soul had then crowded into the body of Ponto. Ponto’s soul--if dogs have them, which I don’t doubt--was out of luck. Permanently withdrawn.