Free Puzzle for Fiends by Patrick Quentin Page B

victim.
    Victim. The word, falling on my mind, was chilling as the touch of the unknown old woman’s hand on my cheek.
    For all their cloying kindliness, I was the Friends’ victim, the sacrificial lamb being petted and pampered in preparation for—what sacrifice?
    Selena’s voice, low and cautious, sounded through the extreme quiet of the room.
    “Gordy. Gordy, baby.”
    I lay still, I did not answer.
    “Gordy, are you awake?”
    I could feel the pulses in my temples throbbing against the bandages.
    “Gordy.”
    I heard her bedclothes being softly pulled back. I heard the faint scuffle of her feet pushing into slippers, then her tiptoeing footsteps. For a moment she came into the range of my vision, slender, graceful, her hair gleaming. She was bending over my bed, staring down at me. There was something purposeful, calculating about her. It was a bitter sensation being half in love with an enemy.
    After a long moment she turned and moved away from the bed. I heard the door open and close carefully behind her.
    I couldn’t follow her to find out where she was going. It was that one little fact which brought home to me my extreme helplessness. I was more than a victim, I was an immobilized victim with a broken leg and arm, a victim without a sporting chance to escape.
    I was a victim with a broken mind too. As I took stock of my predicament, that fact loomed above all the others. I knew I was not Gordy Friend, but I had not the faintest idea of who I was. I struggled to make something of the few, feeble hints that drifted in my mind like dead flies in a jar of water. The irises, a sailor, propellers, Peter, the dog... Peter… For a second, I seemed on the brink of something. Then it was over. I felt dizzy from the effort of concentration. There was no help from memory. I had nothing to help me except my own wits.
    I was really on my own.
    Not quite on my own. For I realized that I had two potential allies. The old woman knew I was not Gordy Friend and was ready to admit it. If somehow I could contact the old woman,
    I might at least find out who I was. It would be difficult, of course, because the Friends were obviously keeping her from me. But there was someone to whom I did have access—Netti with the red-veined gums. I would have to move warily. If I let the Friends know that my suspicions were anything more than an invalid’s hazy vagaries, I would have played and lost my only trump card. But perhaps, carefully, through Netti…
    My mind, so recently free from the influence of sedatives, was easily tired. I felt spent, incapable of coping with the situation any more. Netti’s white maid’s cap started to spin around in my mind like a pin-wheel.
    I was asleep before Selena came back.
    I awakened, as I had awakened the morning before, with warm sunlight splashing across my face. I opened my eyes. The gay luxury of the room betrayed me. Selena was lying asleep in the next bed. I could just see the curve of her cheek on the pillow behind the shimmering fair hair. She was as warm and desirable in the sunlight as she had been cool and insidious in the moonlight. I wanted her to be my real wife, I wanted to pretend everything was all right.
    For a moment, because I wanted it to so much, the elaborate edifice of logic that I had built up in the night seemed a morbid fantasy. It was true that Selena had lied about the old woman. But, even if Selena was trying to prove she didn’t exist, why should I take the old woman’s word that I was not Gordy Friend? Perhaps she was crazy and Selena was keeping her existence from me out of consideration for an invalid. Or perhaps her old eyes were dim and in the moonlight she had made an honest mistake. The bandages alone might easily have confused her.
    How pleasant it would be to forget my doubts and relax. How pleasant to be Gordon Renton Friend the Third.
    The faint odor of lavender drifted up from my pajama pocket. Its effect was tonic as a