Highways in Hiding | Page 3

swift deftness that amazed me, the doctor slid the needle into my arm and let me have the full load.
I was feeling the excitement rise in me because something was wrong, but I could also feel the stuff going to work. Within half a minute I was in a chilled-off frame of mind that was capable of recognizing the facts but not caring much one way or the other.
When he saw the stuff taking hold, Thorndyke asked, "Steve, just who is Catherine?"
The shock almost cut through the drug. My mind whirled with all the things that Catherine was to me, and the doctor followed it every bit of the way.
"Steve, you've been under an accident shock. There was no Catherine with you. There was no one with you at all. Understand that and accept it. No one. You were alone. Do you understand?"
I shook my head. I sounded to myself like an actor reading the script of a play for the first time. I wanted to pound on the table and add the vigor of physical violence to my hoarse voice, but all I could do was to reply in a calm voice:
"Catherine was with me. We were--" I let it trail off because Thorndyke knew very well what we were doing. We were eloping in the new definition of the word. Rhine Institute and its associated studies had changed a lot of customs; a couple intending to commit matrimony today were inclined to take off quietly and disappear from their usual haunts until they'd managed to get intimately acquainted with one another. Elopement was a means of finding some personal privacy.
We should have stayed at home and faced the crude jokes that haven't changed since Pithecanthropus first discovered that sex was funny. But our mutual desire to find some privacy in this modern fish-bowl had put me in the hospital and Catherine--where--?
"Steve, listen to me!"
"Yeah?"
"I know you espers. You're sensitive, maybe more so than telepaths. More imagination--"
This was for the birds in my estimation. Among the customs that Rhine has changed was the old argument as to whether women or men were smarter. Now the big argument was whether espers or telepaths could get along better with the rest of the world.
Thorndyke laughed at my objections and went on: "You're in accident shock. You piled up your car. You begin to imagine how terrible it would have been if your Catherine had been with you. Next you carefully build up in your subconscious mind a whole and complete story, so well put together that to you it seems to be fact."
But, #--how could anyone have taken a look at the scene of the accident and not seen traces of woman? My woman.#
"We looked," he said in answer to my unspoken question. "There was not a trace, Steve."
#Fingerprints?#
"You'd been dating her."
#Naturally!#
Thorndyke nodded quietly. "There were a lot of her prints on the remains of your car. But no one could begin to put a date on them, or tell how recent was the latest, due to the fire. Then we made a door to door canvas of the neighborhood to be sure she hadn't wandered off in a daze and shock. Not even a footprint. Nary a trace." He shook his head unhappily. "I suppose you're going to ask about that travelling bag you claim to have put in the trunk beside your own. There was no trace of any travelling bag."
"Doctor," I asked pointedly, "if we weren't together, suppose you tell me first why I had a marriage license in my pocket; second, how come I made a date with the Reverend Towle in Midtown; and third, why did I bother to reserve the bridal suite in the Reignoir Hotel in Westlake? Or was I nuts a long time before this accident. Maybe," I added, "after making reservations, I had to go out and pile myself up as an excuse for not turning up with a bride."
"I--all I can say is that there was not a trace of woman in that accident."
"You've been digging in my mind. Did you dig her telephone number?"
He looked at me blankly.
"And you found what, when you tried to call her?"
"I--er--"
"Her landlady told you that Miss Lewis was not in her apartment because Miss Lewis was on her honeymoon, operating under the name of Mrs. Steve Cornell. That about it?"
"All right. So now you know."
"Then where the hell is she, Doc?" The drug was not as all-powerful as it had been and I was beginning to feel excitement again.
"We don't know, Steve."
"How about the guy that hauled me out of that wreck? What does he say?"
"He was there when we arrived. The car had been hauled off you by block and tackle. By the time we got there the tackle had been burned and