Candler said. "Prosit!" and they drank, and then Charlie asked, "Have you got your story ready for Doc Irving?"
He nodded. "Did Candler tell you what I'm to tell him?"
"You mean, that you're Napoleon?" Charlie chuckled. Did that chuckle quite ring true? He looked at Charlie, and he knew that what he was thinking was completely incredible. Charlie was square and honest as they came. Charlie and Marge were his best friends; they'd been his best friends for three years that he knew of. Longer than that, a hell of a lot longer, according to Charlie. But beyond those three years-that was something else again.
He cleared his throat because the words were going to stick a little. But he had to ask, he had to be sure. "Charlie, I'm going to ask you a hell of a question. Is this business on the up and up?"
"Huh?"
"It's a hell of a thing to ask. But-look, you and Candler don't think I'm crazy, do you? You didn't work this out between you to get me put away-or anyway examined-painlessly, without my knowing it was happening, till too late, did you?"
Charlie was staring at him. He said, "Jeez, George, you don't think I'd do a thing like that, do you?"
"No, I don't. But you could think it was for my own good, and you might on that basis. Look, Charlie, if it is that, if you think that, let me point out that this isn't fair. I'm going up against a psychiatrist tomorrow to lie to him, to try to convince him that I have delusions. Not to be honest with him. And that would be unfair as hell, to me. You see that, don't you, Charlie?"
Charlie's face got a little white. He said slowly, "Before God, George, it's nothing like that. All I know about this is what Candler and you have told me."
"You think I'm sane, fully sane?"
Charlie licked his lips. He said, "You want it straight?"
"Yes."
"I never doubted it, until this moment. Unless-well, amnesia is a form of mental aberration, I suppose, and you've never got over that, but that isn't what you mean, is it?"
"No."
"Then, until right now-George, that sounds like a persecution complex, if you really meant what you asked me. A conspiracy to get you to-Surely you can see how ridiculous it is. What possible reason would either Candler or I have to get you to lie yourself into being committed?"
He said, "I'm sorry, Charlie. It was just a screwy momentary notion. No, I don't think that, of course." He glanced at his wrist watch. "Let's finish that chess game, huh?"
"Fine. Wait till I give us a refill to take along."
He played carelessly and managed to lose within fifteen minutes. He turned down Charlie's offer of a chance for revenge and leaned back in his chair.
He said, "Charlie, ever hear of chessmen coming in red and black?"
"N-no. Either black and white, or red and white, any I've ever seen. Why?"
"Well-" He grinned. "I suppose I oughtn't to tell you this after just making you wonder whether I'm really sane after all, but I've been having recurrent dreams recently. No crazier than ordinary dreams except that I've been dreaming the same things over and over. One of them is something about a game between the red and the black; I don't even know whether it's chess. You know how it is when you dream; things seem to make sense whether they do or not. In the dream, I don't wonder whether the red-and-black business is chess or not; I know, I guess, or seem to know. But the knowledge doesn't carry over. You know what I mean?"
"Sure. Go on."
"Well, Charlie, I've been wondering if it just might have something to do with the other side of that wall of amnesia I've never been able to cross. This is the first time in my-well, not in my life, maybe, but in the three years I remember of it, that I've had recurrent dreams. I wonder if-if my memory may not be trying to get through.
"Did I ever have a set of red and black chessman, for instance? Or, in any school I went to, did they have intramural basketball or baseball between red teams and black teams, or-or anything like that?"
Charlie thought for a long moment before he shook his head. "No," he said, "nothing like that. Of course there's red and black in roulette-rouge et noir. And it's the two colors in a deck of playing cards."
"No, I'm pretty sure it doesn't tie in with cards or roulette. It's not-not like that. It's a game between the red and the black. They're the players, somehow. Think hard, Charlie; not about where you might have run into that idea, but where I might have."
He watched Charlie struggle and after a while he said, "Okay, don't sprain your brain, Charlie. Try this one. The brightly shining."
"The brightly shining what?"
"Just that phrase, the brightly shining. Does it mean anything to you, at all?"
“No.”
"Okay," he said. "Forget it."
HE WAS early and he walked past Clare's house, as far as the corner and stood under the big elm there, smoking the rest of his cigarette, thinking bleakly.
There wasn't anything to think about, really; all he had to do was say good-bye to her. Two easy syllables. And stall off her questions as to where he was going, exactly how long he'd be gone. Be quiet and casual and unemotional about it, just as though they didn't mean anything in particular to each other.
It had to be that way. He'd known Clare Wilson a year and a half now, and he'd kept her dangling that long; it wasn't fair. This had to be the end, for her sake. He had about as much business asking a woman to marry him as-as a madman who thinks he's Napoleon!
He dropped his cigarette and ground it viciously into the walk with his heel, then went back to the house, up on the porch, and rang the bell.
Clare herself came to the door. The light from the hallway behind her made her hair a circlet of spun gold around her shadowed face.
He wanted to take her into his arms so badly that he clenched his fists with the effort it took to keep his arms down.
Stupidly, he said, "Hi, Clare. How's everything?"
"I don't know, George. How is everything? Aren't you coming in?"
She'd stepped back from the doorway to let him past and the light was on her face now, sweetly grave. She knew something was up, he thought; her expression and the tone of her voice gave that away.
He didn't want to go in. He said, "It's such a beautiful night, Clare. Let's take a stroll."
"All right, George." She came out onto the porch. "It is a fine night, such beautiful stars." She turned and looked at him. "Is one of them yours?"
He started a little. Then he stepped forward and took her elbow, guiding her down the porch steps. He said lightly, "All of them are mine. Want to buy any?"
"You wouldn't give me one? Just a teeny little dwarf star, maybe? Even one that I'd have to use a telescope to see?"
They were out on the sidewalk then, out of hearing of the house, and abruptly her voice changed, the playful note dropped from it, and she asked another question, "What's wrong, George?"
He opened his mouth to say nothing was wrong, and then closed it again. There wasn't any lie that he could tell her, and he couldn't tell her the truth, either. Her asking of that question, in that way, should have made things easier; it made them more difficult.