They'd Rather Be Right (19 page)

The lieutenant hurried around the desk and caught him by the arm. And was shaken off.

“Please, doctor,” the lieutenant begged, desperation bringing sudden firmness to his voice. “I think it is necessary you examine this woman tonight. I couldn’t reach the commissioner, he’s been on a three-day ... he’s unavailable, but when he learns the facts I’m sure he’ll agree.”

Apparently it broke through the psychiatrist’s indignation.

“All right,” he agreed, as if he were following rule three and humoring a psychotic patient. “Inasmuch as I’m here, I might as well examine her. But it’s a clear case of fraud, or incompetence. I don’t need to see the prisoner to determine that!”

He began to get a certain glow of anticipation. Apparently the girl was cleverly pulling some new stunt, and it would be his pleasure to expose her. Laymen simply didn’t understand these things; but it was always possible to rationalize symbolisms until one found them fitting into theory. He grew almost pleasant in satisfaction at being a master of intricate reasoning which none but a trained psychiatrist could grasp.

He followed the lieutenant back to the desk. He pursed his lips and hm-m-m’d many times, implying that all of this was no mystery to him. He studied the photographs taken forty to fifty years ago, clucked over the poor photography, triumphantly pointed out the differences among the photographs, asked how they could be used to compare with the girl when they were not even identical among themselves, expressed his doubts of the whole science of fingerprinting, and thoroughly enjoyed setting the whole stage to prove his theory of fraud. Faithfully he followed the pattern of the scientist determined to interpret the facts to suit the theory.

“Bring her in, lieutenant,” he said, when he was quite satisfied that he had encompassed everything in the thick dossier of Mabel Monohan. He settled himself into the lieutenant’s swivel chair.

“In here, doctor?” the lieutenant wavered. “Wouldn’t you prefer to use the office of the regular psychiatrist, where they’ve got all the hocus-pocus—” He stopped, aghast at his slip.

“I shall not need the usual equipment for testing, which you term ... ah ... hocus-pocus,” Dr. Fairfax said with asperity, and chalked it up in his memory for delayed retaliation. “This is a simple case of fraud, and I can handle it right here. Bring her in, and then you leave her alone with me. I am sure she will soon recognize my ability to see through her little game.”

*

Dr. Fairfax dismissed the lieutenant and the matron with a curt nod.

“Sit down,” he said coldly to Mabel, and nodded toward a chair. He smiled with faint scorn as he watched her touch the chair on its arm and back, and then seat herself.

“I am sure you know what a chair is,” he said coldly.

She looked at him with a little puzzlement in her fathomless blue eyes.

“Chair:” she said, “Noun. English language. Movable seat with four legs and back, for one person, used by humans.”

“So that’s the way it is to be,” he say cryptically. “What is your name?”

“Mabel,” she answered.

“Address?”

She gave the address of her apartment off Howard Street. It checked with the dossier.

“How many times have you been arrested, Mabel?”

“Thirty-two,” she answered instantly.

He blinked. This was a little out of pattern. She could easily get detailed information about the life of the old woman from other sources, but even the old woman would not remember so precisely how many times she had been arrested; not when there had been so many over such a long period of time.

“How do you know that?” he shot the question at her abruptly, expecting to see the first signs of confusion when she realized she had gone too far; that she shouldn’t have known it so accurately or instantly.

“It is a fact,” she said, without any confusion whatever.

Well, whatever her little game, she was a cool one. This might prove interesting.

“And I suppose you know all the facts,” he said, emphasizing his sarcasm.

“About myself, yes,” she answered. “But I know only facts which have a relationship to me. I do not know all facts. Bossy says all facts are not yet known.”

He blinked again. Somehow the name Bossy seemed familiar, but he could not place it. He seldom read the news, or followed any of the activities of run-of-the-mill people. Since they contrarily refused to fit theory, it was less bothersome simply to ignore them. Then the concept of Bossy clarified.

Of course! It was a childish name for a cow! He marveled at his acumen, and stored it away. It would come in handy to trip her; revealed a farm background, which she couldn’t suspect him of knowing. Oh these silly people who thought they could fool a psychiatrist!

He would get her to talking. She would make further slips, and then when he pointed them out to her, she would realize she was no match for him. The confes-sion would be easy.

“What is this all about, Mabel?” he asked with deceptive gentleness.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “I have assumed it was a dream. Bossy says the dream state in humans is likely to be no more than a random excitation of synaptic patterns creating an irrational sequence of visualiza-tion. All this is certainly irrational.”

He felt slightly uneasy, and not only because it violated the subconscious symbolism theories of Freud, which only a psychologist could interpret—at fifty dollars a séance. This sort of thing must be scotched immediately.

“And a cow told you all that?” he asked bitingly.

“It must be a dream,” she responded. “Or the alternative is that you are insane. Your question is completely irrational. Cows do not speak a language intelligible to humans.”

He grasped desperately at rule five: Never allow the patient to guess you are not completely master of the situation. He decided to use technique B: Switching the frontal attack.

“Why did you appear on the street without any clothes?”

“My therapy was completed. I wished to evaluate my environment. I did not realize it was cold enough for my body to need additional protection beyond that furnished by my skin.”

He gulped, and stared at her intently. She was mad. Stark raving mad.

“Are you sixty-eight years old?” he asked scornfully.

“I have no age now,” she answered simply. “Answer my question,” he commanded sternly.

“I did.”

“Your answer has no meaning. You are either sixty-eight or you are not.”

“That is Aristotelian logic,” she said reflectively. “Bossy says humans can never understand themselves through Aristo—”

“Bossy says! Bossy says!” He all but screamed the words at her in exasperation. “Look here, young woman—”

“... telian logic,” she continued. “Reasoning along that line is comparable to Zeno’s proof that mo-tion does not exist. This is a most interesting dream in that your thought-processes are consistent with those currently in vogue in the cult of psychiatry. By any chance, do you imagine yourself to be a psychiatrist?

Bossy says—”

Dr. Fairfax thrust himself to his feet, and almost ran to the door.

“Take her away,” he told the waiting matron harshly. “Lock her up alone for the night. I will have to see her again when she is less disturbed. And she’s dangerous. She’s very dangerous!”

The old matron looked at him with veiled contempt. For thirty years she’d been handling her girls.

She knew a sweet, innocent, young thing when she saw it. They were saying this was old Mabel. Well, they were all nuts—including the psychiatrist.

“It’s all right, dearie,” she said soothingly, and put her arm around Mabel’s waist to lead her away.

Dangerous, indeed! “It’s all right, baby. You can de-pend on old Clarkie.”

“I know,” Mabel said. “You always were a good scout. Twenty-two years ago, the last time I was here, you got my attorney for me. There was a reform ticket in office, and they were holding me incommunicado.”

The matron drew back from her, turned pale, tot-tered, and clung to the wall.

“Nobody ever knew it was me,” she gasped. “I’d of lost my job. Nobody knew except Mabel, herself. And Mabel wouldn’t have told nobody—not nobody!”

“I told you she was disturbed, dangerously disturbed!” the psychiatrist snapped. “Now take her away!”

Tentatively at first, then comfortingly, the matron took Mabel’s arm and guided her down the hall.

“But you can’t be Mabel,” the matron was saying. “You just can’t be. Even then, Mabel was getting old and fat. Tell me,” she said desperately, “tell old Clarkie, dearie. How did you do it—Mabel?”

The lieutenant came back into the hall from another office, and saw the psychiatrist leaning against the door jamb.

“What do you think, Dr. Fairfax?” he asked brightly.

The doctor straightened himself, drew himself up, and looked down his nose professionally.

“A clear case of ... a clear case of—” He was unable to find, in the pat little repertoire of psychotic patterns, a name which precisely fitted this kind. He would have to rationalize it out through symbolisms until it neatly fitted something or another before he expressed his diagnosis. He must be sure to use the established and orthodox patterns of symbolism ma-nipulation so that other qualified psychiatrists would confirm him—if it came to that.

“A layman wouldn’t understand,” he finished, loft-ily.

The long corridor leading to the courtroom was packed with jostling, noisy people, mostly women.

This was not a trial. It was only a hearing for the purpose of setting Mabel’s bail. But old Clarkie had talked again, and this time to reporters.

The papers hadn’t had much time to work on it before the deadline of morning editions, but they’d done their best. And the results were quite satisfactory. Most of the articles about this old woman, who had turned into a young girl, were written with tongue-in-cheek, for, as frequently occurs with reason, the editors did not believe the stories turned in by their reporters.

But the public believed. The public wants miracles. The public demands miracles; and if one source ceases to provide them, they will turn to another source which seems to accomplish the spectacular. Even while they resented and opposed the scientific attitude, they lapped up the miracles which this attitude accomplished with glee.

The Fountain of Youth, long denied consciously, was still the great secret dream. They believed it because they wanted to believe it. They wanted to see this young and beautiful girl who, up until her disappearance ten days ago, had been a fat old woman. That hers had been an unsavory reputation somehow added to the credibility.

“If an old thing like that can do it, then I, much more worthy, can also do it,” was the tenor of the refrain in every woman’s mind.

Joe Carter slowly edged his way along one wall toward the high double doors of the courtroom. He gasped as a stout woman dug her elbow into his stomach, and then forgot about the elbow when a spiked heel ground down on his foot.

The jam grew tighter as he neared the door, and further progress seemed impossible. A perspiring bailiff stood against the door, and stared unhappily at the surging crowd.

“No more room inside, ladies,” he kept insisting. “You might as well turn around and go home.”

Groans, catcalls and derisive laughter answered his words. This was a mere male, and they knew and exercised their power to give him a bad time.

“I can’t go home like this,” one woman yelled. “My old man wants me to look like eighteen again tonight!”

“Eighteen!” another woman shrieked. “I’ll settle for thirty-five!”

“Let us see her!” another yelled. “It won’t cost you anything to just let us see her.”

“It ain’t fair,” screamed another.

In desperation, Joe singled out one of the loudest of he women and fed the idea into her mind that the hearing had been postponed until two o’clock.

“Why you—” the woman suddenly yelled at the bailiff. “You know that hearing’s been put off, and you just let us stand here!”

“Put off?” someone else shrilled. “They’ve put off the hearing?”

“Of course they have!” the first woman yelled again. “The politicians want to hog everything for themselves. Come on, let’s go to the mayor’s office. Let’s see about them holding out on us taxpayers!”

The hallways began to clear as the word spread. The tightly packed knot of people around the bailiff began to loosen, untangle itself. Joe squeezed through the first break and stepped up to the bewildered bailiff.

“Good work,” Joe whispered his congratulations. “It could have been a riot if you hadn’t acted just in time. I’ll not forget to mention it!”

The bailiff, without realizing quite why, opened the door just wide enough for Joe to slip inside.

Several of the women saw it, but the massive doors closed off their rising clamor.

The courtroom was relatively quiet. A bitter legal wrangle was going on in front of the bench; but Joe ignored it for the moment while he searched for Mabel. He missed her as he swept the fenced-off arena in front of the judge’s box the first time. Then he spotted her at the counsel table where she was almost hidden by a massive gray-haired man who stood behind her chair and was holding up his hand to catch the judge’s eye.