A Puzzle for fools (16 page)

His calmness only aggravated me further. I did not care if he thought I was crazy. I did not care if it meant my being shut up for an extra six months. I was getting out of my system all my frustrated loathing of officialdom. It was an exceedingly pleasant sensation.

At length I paused for breath and he said quietly:

"If you have finished, Mr. Duluth, I suggest we now talk to each other as man to man. I have been considering you as a patient and you, I gather, have been treating me as a doctor. Shall we drop it for an instant?"

"I don't believe Lenz is away," I said doggedly. "And I'm not going to talk to anyone but him."

"You are at liberty to try and find him, but it will only be a waste of time. Look." He tossed me a medical magazine which announced Lenz as speaker at some meeting that evening.

"Did you have anything definite to tell him?" He asked the question with a trace of sarcasm in his tone. "Or were you just going to talk about a few more mysterious voices which you and the—"

"Definite!" I cut in. "Would you call it definite if I told you that knives have been stolen from the surgery?"

"I would say it was definitely impossible, Mr. Duluth, though I am willing to check up on it."

"So you don't believe me?"

"I said I thought it quite impossible. Dr. Stevens has charge of the surgery and—"

"All right, perhaps I can convince you."

I had worked myself to such a pitch that I could hardly control my voice. All my jitteriness had come back. I could only just get my shaking hand into my pocket.

"Look!"

"I am waiting to be convinced, Mr. Duluth."

My hand had come out of my coat pocket and was running through my other pockets—breast, trousers, vest.

"I am still waiting, Mr. Duluth."

His voice was so calm and so assured that I was certain he knew what to expect.

I had searched every one of my pockets. There could be no mistake about it now.

The knife was gone!

And then something must have snapped, for the next thing I knew was that I was in bed, and Mrs. Fogarty was pouring something sweet and soporific down my throat.

NEXT MORNING I was kept in bed and coddled. Moreno came to see me early and acted the composed young psychiatrist as though nothing had happened. Miss Brush hurried brightly in and out to make sure I had everything I wanted. I suppose they were trying to soothe my troubled nerves.

But they didn't succeed. I tossed and turned, thinking about that knife and what a precious fool I had made of myself. I was still calm enough to be certain that the whole incident in the lounge hadn't been imaginary. Someone had deliberately stolen that knife from me. There was no doubt of that.

Time and time again I reviewed in my mind my sporadic movements after leaving Iris. There was only one depressing conclusion to draw. In my eagerness not to involve her, I had talked to almost everyone in the sanitarium, giving them all equal opportunity to take the knife from my pocket.

To my surprise, the middle of the morning brought Dr. Stevens. The sight of his plump solemn face led me to suppose that the drama of the night before had brought on some unexpected physical set-back. But I was soon to realize that his visit was only nominally official. As he poked and prodded, I could see him nerving himself to say something. It came out abruptly.

"I heard from Moreno that David, my—er—half-brother was here in your room the other night," he said as I rebuttoned my pajamas. "You know how anxious I am about him. I thought perhaps you could tell me why ..."

He broke off and looked rather sheepish. I myself was in too absorbed a mood to feel overmuch sympathy for his family problems.

"Oh, there's nothing to worry about," I said vaguely. "A couple of the others were in here and Fenwick heard us. I guess he thought we were spirits or something."

"I see." Dr. Stevens drew up a chair and sat down. His fingers found their invariable resting place on his stethoscope. "As I've started to explain my position to you, Mr. Duluth, I feel it's only fair to tell you what I intend to do. These last few days, David has been getting distinctly worse. I've decided that, whatever may be the effect on the other patients, I am going to take him away. He is to leave tomorrow. Of course, it will all be done quietly. There will be no fuss made. I intend to speak to Dr. Lenz about it when he returns from New York."

"You suppose the police will let anyone go?" I asked casually. "There's been some pretty funny business around here, you know."

"I don't understand what you mean." The cherubic Stevens contrived to look cold and forbidding. "Surely you aren't suggesting ..."

"I'm not suggesting anything," I broke in, feeling weary and unable to cope with an argument. "And I guess you're right, Stevens. This isn't exactly the place for anyone who's trying to get well."

Instead of putting an end to the conversation, I seemed only to have given it fresh life. Stevens started to press me eagerly for an explanation. Had I heard or seen anything that made me believe something was wrong? Had I told Dr. Lenz what I knew? Was it anything about David? I shamelessly denied everything. It seemed the only thing to do.

In his endeavor to force me into an admission, Stevens once more overrode the bounds of professional delicacy. To give me the lead, he remarked:

"You don't think that David is worried because of Miss Brush? I can't imagine why he gave out that warning against her, unless ..."

"That's because you're not a psychiatrist, Dr. Stevens." We both looked guiltily at the door where the day nurse was standing, stern and radiant as the angel with the flaming sword. Her deep blue eyes reflected anger and disapproval. Portentously she moved toward the bed.

"I don't know what started this interesting discussion," she said, "but I'm sure Dr. Lenz does not approve of gossip between staff and patients. You have only been with us a short time, Dr. Stevens, and you will learn eventually that this is a mental sanitarium and that the elementary rules for working here include a certain amount of tact."

I'd never seen her so alarming before. I couldn't make out whether her anger was motivated by loyalty to the institution or personal pique at Stevens' unfortunate remark about herself. In any case, the result was an overwhelming victory for the day nurse. Stevens rose, went very red, muttered something inaudible and hurried from the room.

After he had gone, Miss Brush offered me a dazzling smile of forgiveness, but her eyes were shrewd.

"I'm afraid it was wrong of me to lose my temper in front of a patient, Mr. Duluth. But we're all having quite a lot of trouble with Dr. Stevens. He's a bit of an old woman, you know."

"He was just asking me about his half-brother," I explained lamely.

"Even so there's no reason for him to discuss anything like that with you." The day nurse started vigorously to make me comfortable, plumping out the pillows, tugging at the sheets. At length, she glanced up and her expression was alarming in its determination. "You've got to stop worrying, Mr. Duluth. If you have a feeling something's not right, you're all wrong. It's just your imagination."

And that, from Miss Brush, was an order. She pulled down her starched cuffs, rustled her skirts and departed with dignified serenity.

The storm which yesterday was threatening had broken during the night. All the morning, a thick icy sleet poured down outside my window.

After a few hours of solitude, I was granted Miss Brush again. She made her seventh or eighth entrance to announce the fact that there was to be a film showing afternoon. Movies were a regular part of sanitarium and one had been scheduled for that evening. But because of the storm and the impossibility of giving the patients their outdoor exercise, the entertainment had been shifted to immediately after lunch. We inmates were to be given no spare time to mope on our own misfortunes.

"Of course you must come, Mr. Duluth," the day nurse commanded. "It will do you a world of good."

"What's the film?" I asked testily.

She smiled. "Some sort of animal picture. Animals are very soothing, you know."

"Not to me," I muttered glumly. "I belong to Broadway. I get no kick out of the sex-life of the white-tailed baboon."

"Don't say that until you've seen the white-tailed baboons."

Miss Brush laughed. I wondered how on earth she managed to keep so depressingly cheerful.

Lunch was brought to me in bed—a wing of fried chicken and some caramel custard. I was only given time to wash the fried chicken from my ears when I was ordered to dress. Hastily I put on my clothes and was hustled into the procession on its way to the movies.

I spotted Geddes and contrived to loiter at the back with him as the little queue progressed down the corridor. The Englishman's face was drawn and tired; he didn't seem pleased with the movie idea.

"Damn stupid of them to make me see this flicker," he said morosely. "If it's dull, I'll go to sleep anyway and if it starts getting exciting, it'll send me off into one of my rigid attacks. Still, I suppose the routine must go on."

During the idle hours of the morning I had decided that the time had come to let Geddes know all I knew. Lenz’ psychiatric quibblings, Moreno's pompousness, Stevens' inquisitiveness and Miss Brush's brisk officiousness, had taught me once and for all to expect neither sympathy nor co-operation from the staff. And I was horribly in need of both. I wanted someone who could talk sense instead of discussing insanity, someone who would believe what I told him instead of bringing my mental condition up as a major problem at board meetings. Geddes was investigating on his own. The two amateurs should go into partnership and to hell with authoritative red-tape.

"Listen," I began furtively, "I've got a lot to tell you— things I’ve known all along but have been too much of an idiot to talk about."

Geddes paused. Ahead of us the others clattered on their way to the films.

"You mean something about that voice?"

"Yes. You know what it said about Fogarty? Well, Fogarty didn't leave the sanitarium. He was murdered."

"Murdered!" A look of utter astonishment spread over the Englishman's face. "What on earth do you mean?"

"The police think it was an accident, but I..."

"When did it happen?"

"A couple of days ago."

"Right here in the sanitarium?"

"Yes. In the physio-therapy room some time Saturday night."

"So that's it!" Geddes' eyes gleamed with an expression of understanding, then they went very grave. "I see it all now, Duluth, see why they've been trying to drive me away, why they threatened to kill me. God—if only I'd known this before…! Listen, I've got to go to Lenz right away."

"Don't do that," I urged. "Not until you've told me. You mean you saw something or…?"

"Yes, I saw something all right and …"

We were both too worked up to have noticed the approach of Miss Brush. Before we realized it, she was standing about two feet away from us, smiling brightly.

"Come on, you two slow pokes. If you don't hurry, you'll miss the movie."

She had a talent for appearing at the wrong moment, that woman. I couldn't tell whether or not she had heard anything, but she showed no sign of it. Slipping between us, she took both our arms and led us along like two little rich boys with their expensive nurse-maid.

Of all its modern conveniences, the Lenz Sanitarium was proudest of its moving picture theatre. The director himself believed strongly in the tranquillizing effect of certain carefully chosen movies and in order to extract the maximum benefit from them he had installed a particularly luxurious projector in a room which originally had been constructed as a legitimate theatre.

The greatest difficulty to overcome in a mental institution is the sense of restriction. Lenz had done his best to recreate the outside world in this theatre so that we could feel we had just dropped across the street to see a show. The place was small, but its seating arrangements were those of the authentic movie houses, with cushioned chairs set in rows. The lighting was controlled from the projection room and appropriately dimmed and raised from there. And as a final splendid touch, the films were thrown onto the screen from a sound-proof projection room in the rear so that the whirring of the movie should not disturb the more sensitive patients.

Only one divergence from the normal had been adopted and that, I believe, is a perfectly regular Asiatic custom. The sexes were strictly segregated: women to the left of the aisle, men to the right.

The women were already assembled when we entered. The left of the aisle was alive with femininity, heads bobbing over sanitarium gossip, excited chattering and laughter. I saw Iris immediately. She had an aisle seat next to Miss Powell. Although I did my best to catch her eye, she didn't seem to notice me.

The men were milling around, making a fuss about who was to have the best seats. I was eager to get back to Geddes and hear what he had to say, but while I was moving toward him, Miss Brush took me under control again. Before I had time to protest, I was sitting in the last row next to Billy Trent.

I was too preoccupied to take much interest in what was going on around me, but gradually everyone became satisfied with his place. The talking subsided into an expectant silence. And from somewhere in the sound-proof projection room, Warren, who acted as projection man, dimmed the lights. I had just caught a glimpse of Laribee's burly figure taking an aisle seat immediately opposite Iris when the illumination was extinguished altogether.

There was a nervous giggle from one of the female patients, a shuffle of feet, then in portentous silence, the animal film began.

Wide-eyed gazelles, strangely reminiscent of David Fenwick, were tripping about on the African veldt. A sloth munched a banyan or some such fruit. Baby baboons scratched one another's backs. I found it all rather tame. But the others didn't. Almost immediately the atmosphere was charged with interest. Young Billy Trent in the chair next to me was leaning forward with shining eyes. There was an occasional loud comment of approval from someone on the women's side.