Legacy Of Terror

herself for being unable to control her fear. There was nothing to fear. Nothing concrete. Not until he returned, if he did. She had always believed in keeping things as simple as possible, hadn't she? All right, then. The danger had passed. Relax. Don't let your imagination run away with you.
    She drew the easy chair to a spot ten feet away from the door, and she sat down in it, facing the only entrance to the room. She would maintain a vigil. And she did. Until she fell asleep, utterly exhausted, two hours later.

Chapter 11
    It was 9:45 when she woke the following morning, and the knowledge that she was going to be late performing Jacob's morning checkup helped to keep her mind occupied and held the previous night’s terror at bay. When she had showered and dressed and applied what little makeup she required, she found herself hesitant to unbolt the door. But, because she was late and because she was-above all else-professional in the performance of her duties, she overcame that hesitancy in short order.
    The corridor was empty; the house was quiet
    She unlocked Jacob's door and entered his room to find him sitting over the remnants of his breakfast, perusing the morning paper.
    “Ah,” he said, “good morning! As always, you look charming.”
    “Thank you,” she said, a bit embarrassed, as she always was when anyone complimented her. “I hope your locked door wasn't the cause of any trouble. I should have been up earlier, but-”
    “Nothing to it, nothing to it,” he said, waving away any apology or excuse she had prepared. “Bess unlocked it and locked it after herself.”
    “Well, shall we go through the ritual?”
    “Get out your infernal devices,” he scowled in mock perturbation. “See if I'm alive or not.”
    When everything checked out as well as they might have expected, she said, “Is Lee home this morning?”
    “He and Gordon are in the city on business again. If I'd worked myself as hard as they do when I was young, I'd never have lived to earn a pretty nurse!”
    She could not understand his cheerfulness or why he had decided to take last night's incident so lightly. He did not appear-except for his insistence that the door remain locked-to fear anyone or anything.
    She had hoped to find out what she wanted to know and unburden herself to Lee Matherly. If he was not at home, the next best sympathetic ear was Jacob's.
    “Have the police talked to Celia yet?” she asked, watching the old man carefully.
    “Yes,” he said.
    Then that is why he's relieved, she thought. The girl must have positively identified her assailant as a stranger. Yet, why should he still want his door locked if that were the case?
    “What did she tell them?”
    Jacob pretended to want to return to his paper, but he did manage an answer for her. “She can't remember it at all. It was too much of a shock to her, poor child. Those last few minutes, from the moment she turned into the driveway, are blank. No memory of them.”
    She did not say anything as she considered the consequences of Celia's hysterical memory loss.
    “Her doctor is bringing in a psychiatrist to see if he can make her relive those missing minutes,” Jacob explained.
    “Do they think he can do that?”
    “He uses hypnosis to cause age-regression in his patients, to make them remember traumatic episodes in their childhood. He should be able to regress Celia to the time of the attack.” He peered over the rims of his glasses at a story on the sports page.
    “When?” she asked.
    “Excuse me?” He looked up, quizzical, as if he had become so quickly immersed in the story that he had forgotten their train of conversation. It was clear that he did not want to consider the subject and that he was putting on an act he hoped would dissuade her from questioning him about it.
    “When will the psychiatrist treat Celia?”
    “Today, perhaps.”
    “Perhaps?”
    “Or tomorrow,” he said.
    “And Captain Rand is just going to wait?”
    “What else should he do?” Jacob asked, finally putting the paper down, convinced his ruse was worthless.
    “Have you told him what happened last night?”
    “Nothing happened,” he said.
    She was so surprised by his statement that she could not speak.
    “We'll know soon enough,” Jacob said. “When the psychiatrist gets Celia to describe the hitchhiker, they'll round him up in no time.”
    “Last night, you didn't think it was a hitchhiker,” she said.
    “I had a bad dream last night.”
    “It was more than that.”
    “No,” he said. “A nightmare.”
    She realized