Puzzle for Fiends Read Free

Course. But if you start having weird symptoms, I’ll have to get one of those professionals after all and she’ll keep giving you bed pans and plumping out your pillows and breathing down your neck.” She smiled and patted my hand. “You wouldn’t like that, would you?”
    I didn’t know whether I would like it or not. I was lost now in self-pity. Her smooth, warm fingers had curled around my left hand again.
    “Darling, tell me. Just how much do you remember?”
    “I remember the hospital. I remember white…”
    “No, dear. I don’t mean about the hospital. I mean the real things—the things about you.” She turned her head, indicating the second bed beyond her. “Who sleeps in that bed?”
    “I—I don’t know.”
    “Who’s Selena? Who’s Marny?” She must have seen the blank expression on my face because she didn’t wait for me to attempt an answer. She added quickly: “What’s your name?”
    “My name is...” I began, then panic wormed through me. Since my return to consciousness, I had never actually thought about my name. You don’t think about your name. I knew I was me, that my personal identity was inviolable. But what was my name? I stared at her as if her big, curving body would act as an anchor, steadying me.
    “You don’t remember even that, do you?” she said.
    I shook my head. “It’s crazy. When I try to think there’s nothing. There’s...”
    “Don’t worry, my baby. “Her voice was rich, soothing. “It’s just the hit on the head. That often happens. I know it does. You’ll soon be well again, Gordy.”
    “Gordy?”
    “Yes, dear. That’s your name. Gordy Friend. Gordon Renton Friend the Third.”
    There was a gentle tap on the door. The woman called: “Who is it?” The door opened a crack and the head of a uniformed maid peered around it. I noticed that her eyes, greedy with curiosity, flashed instantly to my bed.
    “What is it, Netti?”
    “Dr. Croft, Mrs. Friend. He’s just arrived. Shall I send him up?”
    “Thank heavens. No, Netti. I’ll come down.” The woman rose. She stared down at me and then bent over me, kissing me on the forehead. Loose strands of the auburn hair tickled my cheek. The perfume wreathed into my nostrils. “Just lie there calmly while I’m away, dear. Don’t be frightened. Don’t try to force yourself. Just say it over and over again. Say “I’m Gordy Friend’. Do that—for me.”
    She moved out of the room, large and majestically voluptuous in spite of the drab widow’s weeds. After she had gone, I did what she said, I lay in that luxurious bed in that great sunsplashed room, marshalling my pathetically small array of facts. I had been in an accident; I had broken my left leg and my right arm. I had been hit on the head. I was home in my own room in my own house in Lona Beach, South California. My name was Gordy Friend. I said that over and over:
    I am Gordy Friend. I am Gordy Friend. I am Gordon Renton Friend the Third.
    But the words just remained words. I presumed that was my name. After all, my mother had told me it was.
    My mother? My name?
    The propellers started to whir again. And, although I hated them and feared them, somehow they had more reality than everything that had happened or been said in this room.
    If only I could remember what the propellers meant.
    Propellers—a plane... seeing someone off on a plane...
    Was that it?
    Had I seen someone off on a plane?

Chapter 2
    Seeing someone off on a plane . Those few words, linked together, seemed to have terrific significance. For a moment I felt I was teetering on the brink of an ultimate revelation. Then the words and the image they almost conjured up blurred and dissipated in my mind. I felt spent from the effort of concentration. Like a torpedoed sailor clinging to a floating board, I clung for security to the one established fact of my life.
    I am Gordy Friend.
    Curiosity, without much motive behind it, made me raise my bandaged