Oh, Murderer Mine - Norbert Davis (best love novels of all time .TXT) 📗

as screwy as one of Salvador Dali’s copyrighted hallucinations.

There had been a certain amount of opposition to Carstairs’ presence on the bus, and Melissa was feeling a little frazzled out when she went up the steps and pushed open the pink, padded door that was billed as “The Pathway to Perfection—Entrance.”

“Well, for goodness’ sakes, come on,” she said impatiently.

Carstairs ambled up the steps and looked inside. He grunted, and the hair stood up on his back.

Melissa kicked him. “Go on!”

Carstairs went in reluctantly. Melissa followed him, and her hair stood up, too.

The foyer was a passageway about five miles long and lined with mirrors. These weren’t distortion mirrors—not quite. They were just very, very clear and brilliantly lighted, and they magnified matters just enough. Melissa watched herself walk, because there was nothing else she could do. She saw herself highlighted from fore to aft and from top to bottom and from some other odd and interesting angles. It was the most sadistically efficient sales promotion for beauty treatments she had ever run across.

Even Carstairs had begun to cringe by the time he had reached the mirror door at the end. Melissa held it open for him, and they entered a plush-lined cubicle which featured a tall, round ebony desk placed in its exact center. There was a girl behind the desk, and she was beautiful. She really was. She had black, glistening hair and a corpse-like pallor and a face so perfectly contoured it was frightening.

Women who look like this usually sound like crows, but this one had been trained. Her voice was soft and insinuatingly confidential.

“How do you do?” she said, as though she were actually interested. “May I help you?”

“I think so,” said Melissa. “Can you do something about my cheek?”

“Your cheek?”

“Yes. Right here. My husband beat me last night.”

“Of course. Do you wish it to look worse or better?”

“What?” said Melissa.

The girl smiled at her. “Those incidents happen so rarely to some of our more unfortunate clients that they often wish to capitalize on them when they do.”

“Capitalize?” Melissa repeated.

The girl moved her right hand casually, and the big diamond on her fourth finger sparkled.

“Oh,” said Melissa. “No. I want it to look better. It always irritates my boyfriend when my husband beats me, and I want the two of them to stay pals.”

“Naturally. May I have your name?”

“Susan Halfinger.”

“And who is sponsoring you?”

“Sponsoring? Oh. T. Ballard Bestwyck. He’s the president of—”

“Oh, we know T. Ballard here.”

“You do?” Melissa said, startled. “Oh, of course. His wife “

“Wife?” said the girl, just as startled. “Oh, yes. Yes, indeed His wife.”

“Hmmm,” said Melissa thoughtfully… “Would your dog like something to play with while he is waiting? We have some very enchanting rubber mice that squeak.”

“No,” Melissa said judicially. “I don’t believe he’d care for that sort of thing.”

“Then if you’ll just step into the anteroom…Through that door…Yes…Our bruise specialist will be prepared for you in just a few short moments.”

“Thanks,” said Melissa.

She opened the door and ushered Carstairs through it into a long, narrow room cluttered with dusty pink lounges with scrolled gilt legs.

There were three fat women sitting in a row on one of the lounges. The nearest one bounced up and down and pointed a pudgy, admiring finger at Carstairs.

“Ooooh! Look!”

The middle one patted her hands and cooed.

“Darling!” said the third one. “Just delicious!”

Carstairs backed up against Melissa. Melissa pushed him away and sat down on one of the lounges. Carstairs crept up and huddled against her legs.

“He’s so pretty!” said the nearest fat one.

“Ippy-ippy-ippy-tweeeeet,” said the middle one.

“Those divine brown eyes,” said the third one.

Carstairs moaned in a soft, terrified way.

Another door opened, and a girl looked in. This one was a cool tall blonde. She was dressed in a white uniform, but it was white silk, and it had been made just for her. She looked like nurses should look but never do.

“Miss Halfinger,” she said. She waited for a moment and then said more pointedly: “Miss Halfinger.”

“Eh?” said Melissa. “Oh! Yes.”

She got up and started for the door. Carstairs started right after her.

“You stay here,” Melissa ordered.

Carstairs stared at her in incredulous dismay.

“Lie down,” Melissa said. “Wait.”

Carstairs whimpered piteously.

Melissa stamped her foot. “Lie_ down!“_

Carstairs began to fold himself up reluctantly.

“Ippy-ippy,” cooed the middle fat one.

“Just too precious,” said the third fat one.

Melissa closed the door and followed the blonde down a passageway that had dark brown cork flooring and beige walls and a yellow ceiling. Along each side, at staggered intervals, there were doors curtained with white oiled silk. From inside of the rooms came sharply distinct slaps, the grisly cracking of reluctant joints, retchings and gaggings and moans, and sobbing pleas for mercy.

Melissa and her guide turned a corner and went past a hideous place full of malignantly coiling serpents of steam vapor and pinkly parboiled things that squeaked and jibbered in their agony.

“Right in here,” said the blonde, swishing aside one of the oiled silk curtains.

This wasn’t a cubicle. It was as large as an ordinary hotel room. It contained a desk and a chair and a couch equipped with smelling salts and a telephone. It was as obtrusively antiseptic as an operating amphitheater.

“Just take off your clothes,” said the blonde. “The shower is behind that door.”

“What?” said Melissa. “Wait a minute. My husband fights fair. He just pasted me one. He didn’t kick me after I was down.”

“The Pathway to Perfection,” said the blonde, “lies in the complete realignment of all the component parts of the body to express the poetry of true beauty.”

“Okay,” said Melissa.

“The towels are on the table. The water is electronized and energized. I will return.”

“Do that,” said Melissa.

She took off her clothes and put on a rubber bathing cap that came in a sealed cellophane container. She opened the frosted door the blonde had pointed out. The shower was about eight by eight, all black shiny tile, and was worked by a control panel as complicated as a transport plane’s. Melissa twisted some knobs and turned others for a while and finally got the right combination. There were approximately one thousand water jets of varying capacity and intensity, and some of them apparently gave out with cologne instead of water.

Melissa walked right in and luxuriated. She stayed until she began to feel washed away and then came out and selected one of the towels. It was as big as a bed sheet and as fluffy as a cloud. Melissa was all tangled up in it when she heard the first scream.

She didn’t pay any attention.

Immediately there were some more screams. They were very loud, very terrorized screams in different voices that blended in a sort of chromatic progression that was not unpleasing to the ear. Melissa stopped rubbing to listen. The screams kept mounting in volume and in pitch, and now there were some other noises—metallic clanging and the crash of shattered glass.

And through all this—as a sort of a minor undertone—something was howling. Melissa suddenly isolated that last sound and identified its source. She ducked out into the hall dragging the towel behind her.

The screams now were multitudinously deafening. They had begun to echo and meet each other in midair. The air began to quiver and palpitate.

Carstairs spun around the corner down the hall, leaning far over and scrabbling for his footing. His mouth was wide open, and he was making a lot of noise.

“Here!” said Melissa, waving the towel.

She wasn’t wearing any clothes, and she still had her bathing cap on. She was just another naked woman. Carstairs wailed and skidded and hiked back around the corner. The screaming redoubled.

Melissa ran, trying frantically to wrap the towel around herself She reached the corner. There were screams to her right and screams to her left and screams in front of her, undulating in weird concatenation. Their intensity seemed to center toward the left. Melissa went that way.

She turned into a long low room where sun lamps coiled like chromium cobras among women who screamed and squirmed and clutched at themselves. She ran through another room where women writhed helplessly in the metallic grip of permanent wave machines. She got out into another hall in time to see Carstairs hurdle gracefully over a pile of whooping casualties.

Melissa fought and clawed her way over cringing, sweaty bodies and made it out into the clear again. Carstairs had hit a dead end and was on his way back, running with desperate, driving effort.

“Stop, you!” Melissa shrieked. She swooped at him, arms spread.

Carstairs dodged and whipped sideways through a curtained doorway, and Melissa went right after him. It was a low-ceilinged, dank room with a white tiled floor and walls that glistened damply. Carstairs was headed for the door at the other end.

Right in front of this door there was an oblong opening in the floor—a little longer and a little wider than a grave. It was filled to the brim with something black and malignantly slick. Carstairs intended to jump over it. His foot slipped.

He yelled—one last, lorn note of utter despair. He fell full length in the mud bath, and the mud bath went off in an explosion that splattered the whole room and everything in it, including Melissa.

Carstairs was incapable of making any more noise, but he wasn’t defeated, even now. He scrambled frantically to get out. Melissa wiped the mud out of her eyes and hit him with her fist m the approximate spot she judged his head was.

“Stop, stop!”

Carstairs couldn’t stop. He got out of the mud bath, carrying most of its contents on him. He got out through the door, staggering, and bumbled down another hall with Melissa scrambling and grabbing behind him.

The door at the end of the hall was closed. Carstairs lunged and hit it with his remaining strength. The door popped open Carstairs fell into the anteroom. The three fat ladies were long gone. Carstairs was trying feebly to crawl under one of the dusty pink lounges when Melissa landed on him.

“Carstairs!” she shouted furiously. She dug through the mud and found an ear and jerked it hard. “I’m me! I’m here!”

Carstairs blubbered at her in pitiable relief. He tried to sit in her lap.

Melissa punched him. “Behave yourself, you fool!” There were knees digging into her back, and Melissa brushed at them absently. “Get away and give me room to… What?” She turned her head slowly.

Eric Trent was sitting on the lounge. His mouth was open.

There was one of those silences.

Melissa suddenly remembered her towel. She pulled it up higher. That was bad. She pulled it down lower. That was not good, either.

“Turn around, you gaping idiot!” she snarled.

Trent behaved as though he hadn’t heard her. There was a look on his face that was half a smile of amusement and half an expression of artistic appreciation. “Gosh, Melissa,” he said, “you’ve got a pretty nice—er—you look pretty wonderful—er—what I mean is…”

“I know what you mean!” Melissa spat. “So this is what those years on an icicle or iceberg or whatever did to you, is it? Ogling helpless unclothed women!” She scraped a handful of mud off her thigh and hurled it at him. “Didn’t you hear me? I said_ turn your head!“_

A glob of mud struck Trent on the nose. He turned his head so fast his neck clicked.

Melissa rewound the towel. “All right,” she told him.

Trent looked at her and swallowed. “Did you have an accident or—or something?”

“Me?” said Melissa. “Oh, no. I