Jeffers interrupted. “If what you say is true, then every woman in the world would have to look on her baby as something to dread, something to wonder about.”
“And why not? Hasn’t the child a perfect alibi? A thousand years of accepted medical belief protects him. By all natural accounts he is helpless, not responsible. The child is born hating. And things grow worse, instead of better. At first the baby gets a certain amount of attention and mothering. But then as time passes, things change. When very new, a baby has the power to make parents do silly things when it cries or sneezes, jump when it makes a noise. As the years pass, the baby feels even that small power slip rapidly, forever away, never to return. Why shouldn’t it grasp all the power it can have? Why shouldn’t it jockey for position while it has all the advantages? In later years it would be too late to express its hatred. Now would be the time to strike.”
Leiber’s voice was very soft, very low.
“My little boy baby, lying in his crib nights, his face moist and red and out of breath. From crying? No. From climbing slowly out of his crib, from crawling long distances through darkened hallways. My little boy baby. I want to kill him.”
The doctor handed him a water glass and some pills. “You’re not killing anyone. You’re going to sleep for twenty-four hours. Sleep’ll change your mind. Take this.”
Leiber drank down the pills and let himself be led upstairs to his bedroom, crying, and felt himself being put to bed. The doctor waited until he was moving deep into sleep, then left the house.
Leiber, alone, drifted down, down.
He heard a noise. “What’s—what’s that?” he demanded, feebly.
Something moved in the hall.
David Leiber slept.
* * *
Very early the next morning, Dr. Jeffers drove up to the house. It was a good morning, and he was here to drive Leiber to the country for a rest. Leiber would still be asleep upstairs. Jeffers had given him enough sedative to knock him out for at least fifteen hours.
He rang the doorbell. No answer. The servants were probably not up. Jeffers tried the front door, found it open, stepped in. He put his medical kit on the nearest chair.
Something white moved out of sight at the top of the stairs. Just a suggestion of a movement. Jeffers hardly noticed it.
The smell of gas was in the house.
Jeffers ran upstairs, crashed into Leiber’s bedroom.
Leiber lay motionless on the bed, and the room billowed with gas, which hissed from a released jet at the base of the wall near the door. Jeffers twisted it off, then forced up all the windows and ran back to Leiber’s body.
The body was cold. It had been dead quite a few hours.
Coughing violently, the doctor hurried from the room, eyes watering. Leiber hadn’t turned on the gas himself. He couldn’t have. Those sedatives had knocked him out, he wouldn’t have wakened until noon. It wasn’t suicide. Or was there the faintest possibility?
Jeffers stood in the hall for five minutes. Then he walked to the door of the nursery. It was shut. He opened it. He walked inside and to the crib.
The crib was empty.
He stood swaying by the crib for half a minute, then he said something to nobody in particular.
“The nursery door blew shut. You couldn’t get back into your crib where it was safe. You didn’t plan on the door blowing shut. A little thing like a slammed door can ruin the best of plans. I’ll find you somewhere in the house, hiding, pretending to be something you are not.” The doctor looked dazed. He put his hand to his head and smiled palely. “Now I’m talking like Alice and David talked. But, I can’t take any chances. I’m not sure of anything, but I can’t take chances.”
He walked downstairs, opened his medical bag on the chair, took something out of it and held it in his hands.
Something rustled down the hall. Something very small and very quiet. Jeffers turned rapidly.
I had to operate to bring you into this world, he thought. Now I guess I can operate to take you out of it.…
He took half a dozen slow, sure steps forward into the hall. He raised his hand into the sunlight.
“See, baby! Something bright—something pretty!”
A scalpel.
Marionettes, Inc.