“That’s right,” Doctor Crowder told him. “It’s a warm, still night. No lightning, no wind. Not even a breeze. And you’re trying to tell me that your bedroom was wrecked by an electric storm?”

“It was magic!” yelled Neil. “It was done by magic!”

Doctor Crowder looked embarrassed. But he took Neil’s hand and shook it, and said, “I’ll come around in the morning to see how Susan’s getting along. She’s sleeping now. A mild sedative. I think it might be wise if you got yourself some sleep, too. I mean that, Neil. You could have been working too hard.”

Neil was about to burst out again, but then he checked himself and nodded, and said, “Okay, doctor. I’ll try. I’ll see you in the morning.”

He closed the kitchen door after Doctor Crowder had left, and drew up one of the kitchen chairs. He sat at the table for almost ten minutes, with every nightmarish incident of the whole night whirling around in his mind. Again and again, with eerie vividness, he saw the jerking, sexual movements of Susan’s sheets, and the expression of malevolent triumph on Toby’s face.

After a while, he got up to make himself a cup of coffee. He saw his face reflected in the dark window, and he thought how tired and washed-out he looked. He filled the electric hot pot, and went to the cupboard to find the instant coffee.

The clock chimed the half-hour. He walked across to the sink to set his cup on the drainboard, and then, to his horror, he realized that somebody or something was staring at him. He turned, shocked, and saw a pallid face pressed against the glass of the kitchen window.

6

“I hope I didn’t scare you too much,” Harry Erskine said.

Neil, still fidgeting, gave him an uncertain grin. “I was just feeling edgy, that’s all. And I didn’t expect you till the morning.”

Harry stirred his coffee, and set the spoon down in the saucer. “I was through for the day, and my date came down with the chicken pox, so I took the first plane going. There was me and fifty-five rabbis, so I figured the flight just had to arrive safe.”

“You rented a car at the airport?”

“It’s in back of your yard. A yellow Pinto with a slipping transmission. Still, what can you expect for four dollars a day?”

Harry was a round-shouldered thirty-five-year-old with an obvious penchant for permanent-press suits and shirts that could drip dry over the tub. He could have looked quite distinguished, except that his facial features didn’t seem comfortable with each other. His nose was a little too large, his eyes a little too deepset, his chin reasonably determined but too fleshy. His mouse-brown hair was thinning, and his cheeks had the permanent pallor of Tenth Avenue.