“Done!”
On the way out of the house Acton polished the front door-knob with his handkerchief and slammed it in triumph!
The Small Assassin
Just when the idea occurred to her that she was being murdered she could not tell. There had been little subtle signs, little suspicions for the past month; things as deep as sea tides in her, like looking at a perfectly calm stretch of tropic water, wanting to bathe in it and finding, just as the tide takes your body, that monsters dwell just under the surface, things unseen, bloated, many-armed, sharp-finned, malignant and inescapable.
A room floated around her in an effluvium of hysteria. Sharp instruments hovered and there were voices, and people in sterile white masks.
My name, she thought, what is it?
Alice Leiber. It came to her. David Leiber’s wife. But it gave her no comfort. She was alone with these silent, whispering white people and there was great pain and nausea and death-fear in her.
I am being murdered before their eyes. These doctors, these nurses don’t realize what hidden thing has happened to me. David doesn’t know. Nobody knows except me and—the killer, the little murderer, the small assassin.
I am dying and I can’t tell them now. They’d laugh and call me one in delirium. They’ll see the murderer and hold him and never think him responsible for my death. But here I am, in front of God and man, dying, no one to believe my story, everyone to doubt me, comfort me with lies, bury me in ignorance, mourn me and salvage my destroyer.
Where is David? she wondered. In the waiting room, smoking one cigarette after another, listening to the long tickings of the very slow clock?
Sweat exploded from all of her body at once, and with it an agonized cry. Now. Now! Try and kill me, she screamed. Try, try, but I won’t die! I won’t!
There was a hollowness. A vacuum. Suddenly the pain fell away. Exhaustion, and dusk came around. It was over. Oh, God! She plummeted down and struck a black nothingness which gave way to nothingness and nothingness and another and still another.…
* * *
Footsteps. Gentle, approaching footsteps.
Far away, a voice said, “She’s asleep. Don’t disturb her.”
An odor of tweeds, a pipe, a certain shaving lotion. David was standing over her. And beyond him the immaculate smell of Dr. Jeffers.
She did not open her eyes. “I’m awake,” she said, quietly. It was a surprise, a relief to be able to speak, to not be dead.
“Alice,” someone said, and it was David beyond her closed eyes, holding her tired hands.
Would you like to meet the murderer, David? she thought. I hear your voice asking to see him, so there’s nothing but for me to point him out to you.
David stood over her. She opened her eyes. The room came into focus. Moving a weak hand, she pulled aside a coverlet.
The murderer looked up at David Leiber with a small, red-faced, blue-eyed calm. Its eyes were deep and sparkling.
“Why!” cried David Leiber, smiling. “He’s a fine baby!”
* * *
Dr. Jeffers was waiting for David Leiber the day he came to take his wife and new child home. He motioned Leiber to a chair in his office, gave him a cigar, lit one for himself, sat on the edge of his desk, puffing solemnly for a long moment. Then he cleared his throat, looked David Leiber straight on and said, “Your wife doesn’t like her child, Dave.”
“What!”
“It’s been a hard thing for her. She’ll need a lot of love this next year. I didn’t say much at the time, but she was hysterical in the delivery room. The strange things she said—I won’t repeat them. All I’ll say is that she feels alien to the child. Now, this may simply be a thing we can clear up with one or two questions.” He sucked on his cigar another moment, then said, “Is this child a ‘wanted’ child, Dave?”
“Why do you ask?”
“It’s vital.”
“Yes. Yes, it is a ‘wanted’ child. We planned it together. Alice was so happy, a year ago, when—”
“Mmmm—that makes it more difficult. Because if the child was unplanned, it would be a simple case of a woman hating the idea of motherhood. That doesn’t fit Alice.” Dr. Jeffers took his cigar from his lips, rubbed his hand across his jaw. “It must be something else, then. Perhaps something buried in her childhood that’s coming out now. Or it might be the simple temporary doubt and distrust of any mother who’s gone through the unusual pain and near-death that Alice has. If so, then a little time should heal that. I thought I’d tell you, though, Dave. It’ll help you be easy an