Merrick Page 0,66
in the morning," I told her. "We want you to make that coffee for us. We've been fools, drinking the wrong coffee. We refuse to have breakfast without you. Now you must sleep."
She gave me a grateful and kindly smile, even though the tears were still spilling onto her cheeks. Then, asking no one's permission, she went to the frilly dressing table, where the bottle of rum stood quite incongruously among the other fancy little bottles, and took a good slug of the drink.
As we rose to go, Mary answered my call with a nightgown ready for Merrick, and I took the bottle of rum, nodded to Merrick to make certain that she had seen me do it, so there would be some civil pretense of her permission, and Aaron and I retired to the library below.
I don't remember how long we talked.
Possibly it was an hour. We discussed tutors, schools, programs of education, what Merrick should do.
"Of course there can be no question of asking her to display her psychic powers to us," Aaron said firmly, as though I was going to overrule him. "But they're considerable. I've sensed it all day and yesterday as well."
"Ah, but there's another matter," I said, and I was about to broach the subject of the weird "disturbance" which I had felt in Great Nananne's house while we had sat in the kitchen. But something stopped me from speaking.
I realized that I sensed the same presence now, under our Motherhouse roof.
"What's the matter, man?" asked Aaron, who knew my every facial expression and who could probably read my mind if he really chose to do it.
"Nothing," I said, and then, instinctively, and perhaps selfishly, with some desire to be heroic, I added, "I want you to stay where you are."
I rose and went through the open doors of the library out into the hallway.
From above, from the upstairs rear of the house, there came a sardonic and ringing laugh. It was a woman's laugh, there was no doubt about it, only I could not attach it to Mary or to the female members of the Order who were then living in the house. Indeed Mary was the only one in the main building. The others had gone to sleep some time ago in the "slave quarters" and cottages which made up part of the out buildings some distance from the rear doors of the house.
Once again, I heard the laugh. It seemed an answer to my very query.
Aaron appeared at my shoulder. "That's Merrick," he said warily.
This time, I didn't tell him to remain behind. He followed me as I went up the stairs.
The door to Merrick's room was open, and the lights were on, caus ing a brilliant glow to spill into the long broad center hallway.
"Well, come on in," said a womanish voice as I hesitated, and when I did, I was quite alarmed by what I saw.
In a haze of cigarette smoke, there was a young woman sitting in a highly seductive posture at the dressing table, her youthful and fast ripening body clothed only in a scant white cotton petticoat, its thin cloth hardly disguising her full breasts and pink nipples, or the dark shadow between her legs.
Of course it was Merrick, but then it wasn't Merrick at all.
With her right hand she put the cigarette to her lips and drew on it, deeply, with the casual air of an accustomed smoker, and let her breath out with ease.
Her eyebrows were raised as she looked at me, and her lips were drawn back in a beautiful sneer. Indeed, the expression was so alien to the Merrick I had come to know that it was very simply terrifying all to itself. One couldn't imagine a skilled actress so successfully altering her features. As for the voice which came out of the body, it was sultry and low.
"Good cigarettes, Mr. Talbot. Rothmans, aren't they?" The right hand toyed with the little box which she had taken from my room. The woman's voice continued, cold, utterly without feeling, and with a faint tone of mockery. "Matthew used to smoke Rothmans, Mr. Talbot. He went to the French Quarter to buy them. You don't find them at the comer store. Smoked them right up until he died."
"Who are you?" I asked.
Aaron said nothing. He relinquished command to me at this moment completely, but he stood his ground.
"Don't be so hasty, Mr. Talbot," came the hard toned answer. "Ask me a few questions." She gave more of her