Queer Patterns by Lilyan Brock

Author:Lilyan Brock [Brock, Lilyan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Lesbians
Google: 7CYFywAACAAJ
Amazon: B001NRSW3G
Publisher: Avon Book Division
Published: 1963-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

PART FIVE

Jo Trent

You entered in my daily scheme of living

So stealthily I did not know that Life

Had caught our threads together in weaving.

And when I knew, I tried too late to stop her.

Already you were woven in my soul,

And when I tore you out

…It raveled… —Author Unknown

Have you a new case for me, Doctor Harkness—a nice hard case for a change? My last one was deadly dull, as perhaps you know—just a madman for whom I had to have a man assistant, so we could keep him held to the bed; an attempted murder—the wife, poor dear—he decided he didn't like her; then when they put him away for a rest among the other Napoleons, I had a nerve-shattered woman to care for, for weeks. Then her—her—family stepped in and took her away—and the upshot of it is that I'm all tired out from too much doing nothing."

Jo Trent dropped into a chair by the desk with a jarring laugh. Doctor Harkness looked at her searchingly, brought up sharply by her mad flow of words, her unreal laughter, her feverish eyes, her restless uncontrolled body. The matter-of-fact, capable, poised Jo Trent, his pet nurse on whom he had relied for years for cool efficiency in any crisis—that Jo Trent was gone; in her place was a very nearly hysterical woman, babbling, making no attempt to hide her mental and emotional confusion. His thoughts raced: how to question her; how to ease the tension of the taut nerves; how to get to the root of this alarming change in the woman before him. Too well he knew the wall of reserve which she had built between herself and all who might try to pry into the secrets of the woman she really was.

For the six years during which Jo Trent had worked with him, she had fascinated him, largely because he had never been able to fathom her, to classify her as a type, to feel as though he definitely knew her. Always to be depended upon, yes. Steady as a rock, mechanical as any automaton when precision was indicated; pliant on occasion, sympathetic to just the right degree; warmly friendly, yet at the first suggestion of intimacy, aloof and distant—always that insurmountable wall of reserve baffled him. But at least she had always been master of her own emotions. What had happened to her superb mastery of herself?

Freeman Harkness thought back to the beginning of the Allison Graham case. Sheila Graham—Sheila Case. "Her—er—family came to take her away." He recalled now Jo's hesitation over those words.

"What a fool I've been all these years! And what a dolt I was to send her on that case! She asked for it, and yet I suspected nothing. She wanted to be with that woman—and it has broken her."

Harkness had only a cursory interest in homosexual cases, but he had perforce read enough and seen enough to be aware of their existence and their potentialities. Still, it had never occurred to him in connection with Jo Trent.

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