Time Out of Mind (26 page)
Authors: John R. Maxim
Tags: #Horror, #General, #Psychological, #Suspense, #Memory, #Thrillers, #Fiction, #Time Travel
Corbin looked away. “Maybe. I have no reason to think
so.”
“
The truth is you don't really know. Or do you?”
He shook his head.
“
This could have been happening all your life.”
“
I've done things,” Corbin said slowly, “and wondered
why I've done them. But I think everybody has.”
“
True enough and we'll get into that later. But these
complete takeovers of yours. They too could have happened
all your life, could they not? Have you ever experienced
blackouts or memory lapses?”
“
No,” Corbin lied.
“
Never?”
”
I was fine before I came to New York,” he lied again.
Before we go much further,” Harry Sturdevant sug
gested.to Jonathan, “I'd like access to my library and files.
My home is only a ten-minute walk.”
What's happening to me?” Corbin asked. “Am I going insane?”
“
No.”
“
Am I haunted?”
“
Don't be silly.”
“
What does that leave, Doctor? That I've
lived before?’’
“
In a manner of speaking, yes. Yes, Jonathan. You
have.”
Eight
It
is
him,” the old man repeated. He looked small and
frail as he sagged into a high-backed chair behind a large
Sheraton desk in his suite of rooms. His hat lay on the desk
before him. He had not removed his coat. “It's him and he
knows”
Tilden Beckwith II clutched his collar against his
throat.
He knows nothing,
sir.``
The man Lesko knew as Mr.
Dancer stood erect before the desk, his hands folded neatly
at the small of his back. “The detective is another matter.
I have underestimated him.” Lawrence Ballanchine stepped
to the desk console and picked up the telephone. He
punched in the two digits of a coded number from the con
sole's memory.
What are you doing?” Beckwith slapped a hand over
the cradle, breaking the connection before it was made.
“
Ending this, I hope.”
“
Wait a minute. Wait. We must think this out. We must
put our heads together.”
“
Sir.” The small neat man sighed. “There is really very little to think about. You've just told me that Corbin has
accurately retraced the path your grandmother took on the
night she was murdered. The man is obviously acting upon
information of some kind. It's only a matter of time until
his knowledge is sufficient to become actionable. Especially
if he recognized you.”
He didn't, you know. I was quite discreet. Quite
clever.”
You may, in fact, have done the firm a great service,
Mr. Beckwith.” However witlessly, Ballanchine thought to himself. “Still, you took an unacceptable risk. Your connection with Corbin has surely been established by the de
tective. As has mine.”
‘
Then this Lesko, don't you see, is the only link,” Beck
with said eagerly. “Fix that, break the link, and the rest of the chain will fall away. Corbin and the others will wither
on the vine, so to speak.”
“
Sir”—Ballanchine rolled his eyes inwardly—“do you
wish to spend the remainder of your life wondering whether
you'll turn a corner and be face to face with Jonathan Cor
bin or would you rather live out your days in the peace and
comfort you so richly—Others? What others?”
The old man shook his head stupidly.
“
Sir, there is Corbin and there is the Leamas woman.
Are there others?”
“
Only ... no.”
Did you see them in the company of someone else to
day?”
“
They just had tea
...
at the Plaza ... with an older gen
tleman like myself. A doctor, I think.”
“
How would you know that, sir?”
”
I saw them. I watched them.”
“
No, sir. I meant about the other man being a doctor.”
“
I've seen him before. At charitable functions and the
like. I forget his name.” Beckwith made a dismissive ges
ture with his fingers. “He's forever talking about swimmers
and gymnasts and the like.”
“
But they joined this doctor at the conclusion of their
walk from the Osborne building? For a prearranged meet
ing?”
”
I suppose. But that needn't mean anything.”
“
The last surviving Corbin re-creates your grand
mother's last hour on earth. By whatever means, he has
stumbled upon the origins of an
arrangement
that affects a
great many lives, not least his own. Can you really imagine
that as four o'clock came, he could have put aside all that
is obviously vexing him to sit down for a polite afternoon
tea?”
”
I don't know. I...”
Ballanchine picked up the phone.
Harry Sturdevant's home, also his office, took up the first
and second floors of a Greek Revival town house on Sixty-ninth Street off Fifth Avenue, ten short blocks north of the
Plaza. It had been built during the decade following the
Civil War by a lieutenant of steel magnate Henry Clay
Frick. Frick's own mansion, now an art museum, was not
far away. The town house had been inherited by Sturdevant's deceased wife, Mary, and in turn passed on to him.
The two upper floors had been extensively remodeled and
leased to, from the top, a director of the Metropolitan Opera
and a stockbroker. The basement apartment, thoroughly
soundproofed, was occupied by a wide receiver for the New
York Jets.
Sturdevant chose to walk to his house with Corbin and
his niece for several reasons. Not least, he wanted those ten
minutes to collect his thoughts and justify the utterly un
scientific and unprofessional suggestions he would soon of
fer this troubled young man. Second, Jonathan's relative
equanimity would not last much longer, assuming, of
course, that it was only the propranolol that was keeping
him steady. But he also hoped, privately, that a walk
through wintry New York at night might evoke another of
the several apparent possessions his niece had already wit
nessed.
tance. Gwen had already taken his hand, which she released
only to slip on her coat, and did not again let it go. Walking
down the Plaza's front steps, Corbin breathed audible relief
at the sight of a moon that was nearly full. No more snow would fall this evening. By the time they'd crossed the open
expanse of the Grand Army Plaza, Corbin had relaxed further. At the promenade entrance to the Central Park Mall, where the carriages of the wealthy had paraded a century
before and where courting young couples were permitted
to stroll unchaperoned, Sturdevant thought he saw a hesi
tation in Corbin’s step and the trace of a smile on his lips.
He had about made up his mind to dismiss it as the work
of wishful thinking when he saw Corbin's shoulder jerk
downward, as if Gwen had tugged sharply at his hand. He
saw that once again as they passed the shadowy outlines of the old Central Park Arsenal, and more clearly as the Frick
museum came into view. That time Gwen also reached
across him and took away the umbrella he carried. Stur
devant was becoming annoyed with his niece. Each time
Corbin showed signs of drifting off she would snap him back as if he were on a leash, and she would keep up a
running chatter that was studiously irrelevant. He tried scowling her into silence, but Gwen Leamas cheerfully
avoided his eyes.
Something did happen, he was sure, a few moments after
the three turned onto Sixty-ninth Street. In large part, the
block on which Sturdevant lived looked much as it had a
century before. There were now automobiles, of course, and the graceful gas lamps were gone, and all but the shallowest
stoops and sidewalk gardens had been removed. Still, Corbin would guide Gwen past each building entrance in an unnecessary arc, pausing on one occasion as if to allow the
passage of a pedestrian coming down steps that weren't
there. As they arrived at Sturdevant’s street-level door, the
doctor wondered what would happen if he were to warn
Corbin that the steps, which also weren't there, were icy,
but he chose to avoid the appearance of toying with the
man.
at once by a woman's tinny voice coming from a speaker
box. The sound caused Corbin to straighten and blink rapidly. The door soon opened and the three were greeted by Sturdevant’s housekeeper, a large, pleasant-looking black
woman who hugged Gwen Leamas and was then intro
duced to Corbin as Mrs. Starling. Corbin, the doctor
thought, seemed more than a little startled. Did she seem somehow familiar to him, he wondered, or could it be that the man within him was unaccustomed to being introduced
to servants. He made a mental note to explore both roads.
Sturdevant’s office, more of a study actually, was as Corbin
would have imagined it. Three of the ten-foot-high walls
were lined with built-in bookshelves. Corbin had always felt one could tell much about a person by the books he
reads, although less by the books he displays. Sturdevant
seemed to read everything from current fiction to classics,
some in their original languages, historical texts with par
ticular emphasis on Renaissance Europe, a full wall of
books covering every conceivable sport from ballooning to
yachting, and another full wall containing medical and psy
chological texts, most dealing with the stresses of competitive sport. Among his well-worn reference works were a
current copy of
Who's Who
and a small bound copy of the
Social Register.
Between groupings of books there were autographed baseballs, an ancient lacquered soccer ball, an
even older football from the Harvard-Yale game of 1924,
and a score of pewter sailing trophies. The fourth wall displayed at least two dozen photographs and framed letters covering a time span of more than sixty years. Sturdevant,
little changed except for the color of his hair and the stra
tegically tailored cuts of his suits, had posed with seven
different U.S. presidents. There he was, smiling, chatting,
or shaking hands with an unbroken line of chief executives
from Gerald Ford back to Franklin Roosevelt, then skipping
to Woodrow Wilson, then once again back to Teddy Roosevelt. Sturdevant could not have been more than fifteen in that one. Also in the fading photograph was a man Corbin
took to be Sturdevant’s father. With Teddy Roosevelt.
Teddy. What was it about Teddy Roosevelt? Standing
there, Corbin found it hard to think of Teddy Roosevelt as
president. Not objectionable. Not at all. Just hard.
There were also autographed photos of a number of
Olympic legends whom Corbin recognized at once. Jesse Owens, shy, almost apologetic. An aging Jim Thorpe. A
skinny young Cassius Clay, and several sepia team pictures,
all Harvard, all presumably including Harry Sturdevant. In front of these sat Sturdevant’ s leather-topped desk, which
was equally awash with memorabilia. Sturdevant stepped
to the desk and picked up a small pile of letters and mes
sage slips, which he leafed through disinterestedly.