A Puzzle for fools (14 page)

His large, bearded figure was progressing with professional dignity to the front door. I hurried after him and forced him to notice me.

"Good afternoon, Dr. Lenz," I said pleasantly.

He paused and smiled indulgently. "Ah, Mr. Duluth, I am glad to see you have been getting some exercise."

I smiled back. "I was wondering if you could spare me a few minutes."

The director shot an almost imperceptible glance at his wrist watch. "Certainly, Mr. Duluth. But you are overheated. You should not stand in draughts." A godlike gesture indicated the open door of a visitor's waiting room. "Let us go in here."

He led me into the room and shut the door carefully behind us. His gray eyes were regarding me with kindly serenity.

"Dr. Lenz," I said, coming straight to the point, "the other day you said I might be useful; that you felt there was some subversive influence at work here in the sanitarium."

His face clouded slightly. "Ah, yes, Mr. Duluth."

"Well, I've come across a few things that I feel you ought to know." I did my best to return that level gaze. "I think Mr. Laribee is in danger. I think that somehow all this crazy business—even Fogarty's death—centers around him."

"But why should you think that, Mr. Duluth?" he asked gently.

I told him all the incidents, except that of the will, which directly concerned the financier; the ticking in his room and my finding of the stop watch in his pocket; the broker's voice on the walk, Fenwick's spirit warning and the piece of paper Geddes and I had found in the old man's book.

As I recounted each detail, Lenz nodded slightly, but his eyes never left my face. I had the uncomfortable impression that he was more interested in my personal reactions to the events than in the events themselves.

'That has all been reported to me, Mr. Duluth," he said at length. "All except the piece of paper which you and Mr. Geddes discovered. But I am not surprised at that. Other similar notes have been brought to my attention."

His very calmness baffled me, "But how do you account for it?"

"For twenty-five years, Mr. Duluth, I have been faced daily, hourly perhaps, with things for which I cannot account. And if you believe these incidents to be directly connected with the distressing death of Fogarty, I feel you should know what I personally think of them. I believe that all the manifestations you mention could have a comparatively simple explanation."

I was astonished and I must have looked it for he smiled paternally.

"Since you are in our confidence, Mr. Duluth, I will give you an elementary lesson in psychiatry. I do not make a habit of breaking medical ethics by discussing my patients, but the circumstances are most unusual and Dr. Moreno has told me you have been worrying yourself. In your condition I am particularly anxious for you not to worry."

He made me feel like a small boy who has been interfering impertinently in the affairs of his elders.

"You are right, Mr. Duluth, in saying that these warnings seem to be directed toward Laribee, but you forget that there is someone else involved."

"You mean Miss Brush?" I asked quickly. "Is there danger for her, too?"

Lenz stroked his beard and I saw in his eyes a faint look of amusement. "No, Mr. Duluth, I do not feel there is danger for anyone in particular. But the mentioning of Miss Brush's name in those messages makes things much more simple for us." He was very grave again. "I am afraid that Mr. Laribee is beginning to show signs of schizophrenia, which is merely a long word for a split mind—a mind divided between sanity and delusion. His deluded mind tells him he is going to marry Miss Brush. That is harmless enough because it keeps him from worrying about his financial affairs. But his sane mind and his past experience tells him that young women are dangerous, they are after his money. And so, his sane mind warns him against his own delusions. He writes notes to himself, unconsciously acts on the suggestions of the other patients. It is possible that he even talks to himself about it, in such a manner that a man like Mr. Fenwick could interpret it as a spirit warning and pass it on again so that the whole thing becomes a vicious circle. You have seen a stone thrown into water, Mr. Duluth, seen the ripples spread until the whole pool is agitated. A great many of these trivial incidents might, I think, be explained that way."

"And the stop watch?" I asked dubiously.

"That, Mr. Duluth, seems to me just another manifestation of the same condition. It is perfectly possible for a patient of Mr. Laribee's type to react to his own suggestions as to those of other people. He knows that under his present financial arrangement, the sanitarium will come into a certain amount of money should he be certified insane. From that knowledge, he contracts the idea that he is being deliberately driven mad. It is only a short step to the stage where, to justify himself, he creates definite proof of his delusion. He could, for example, take the stop watch from the surgery, frighten himself with it and in due course forget completely that he was the one responsible for the whole episode."

As usual the director had succeeded in being interesting, if not completely convincing.

"But there are other things," I persisted.

I told him about Miss Powell and her soliloquy on knives. Dr. Lenz looked concerned.

"That disturbs me, Mr. Duluth, but it disturbs me only as a doctor. You confirm my belief that some of the patients are losing ground. Miss Powell has not talked to herself before, but there is nothing unusual about her stealing."

"No," I said. "I've already seen a demonstration of that."

"Miss Powell is a kleptomaniac. She is a clever cultured woman, but she has this strange impulse to steal. There is no desire for gain. She simply steals things and hides them. Of course, she, too, is suggestible. You or I could suggest to her that she take something and she would probably take it. At times her own impulses urge her to theft and then, it is possible that she might voice those impulses and speak out loud as you heard her do."

"So you don't think there's anything behind it all?" I asked. "You don't think that someone is fooling around with hypnotism or mesmerism, or whatever you call it?"

Dr. Lenz' strangely magnetic eyes met mine. "Mesmerism, Mr. Duluth, is obsolete quackery which exists only in parlor games and sensational fiction. As for hypnotism, it is only another name for extreme suggestibility. Occasionally it has its therapeutic value as a means of unearthing something which is buried in the patient's subconscious mind. But it is nonsense to suppose that through hypnotism one could upset another person's ethical standards and persuade him to do anything at all violent, unless, of course, there were a pre-existing tendency toward violence."

I almost blurted out to him how that voice was trying to work on Iris' suggestibility, trying to capitalize her morbid aversion to Laribee, but I stopped myself in time.

The recollection of her pale, sad face had risen in my mind, and the pleading in her eyes when she said: "Don't tell Dr. Lenz. Whatever you do, don't tell him. He'd keep me locked up in my room. He wouldn't let me work. . . "

The memory of her fears of the director made me a little doubtful of him, myself. His theories seemed to come a trifle too pat.

"But there's no explanation for that voice," I said bluntly. "I heard it and I'm reasonably sane. Laribee heard it as the voice of his broker. Fenwick heard it as the spirits, And now there's Geddes."

I told him of the two occasions on which the Englishman had been warned. He listened in silence and I had the fleeting impression that his face had turned a shade more solemn.

"I must admit that both in the case of yourself and that of Mr. Geddes it is not easy to account for the delusion," he murmured. "But I believe there is an explanation even for that. It is difficult, even for a trained physician, to hypnotize another person. But it is easy, even for the most feeble-minded patient to hypnotize himself. People who are mentally sick are sensitive to atmosphere; what is commonly called psychic. They sense danger or uneasiness around them, especially when they are confined in a sanitarium. They are also very egoistical, and that makes them instinctively centralize that danger in themselves, in their own egos. They imagine things, warning voices, for example, and their suggestibility is greatly increased by their imaginations. It is a sort of self-hypnotism."

This was a reversal of what the director had told me the other day. He seemed to have an astonishing talent for going to earth in warrens of psychological intricacy.

"Even if that is so," I said rather accusingly, "you're not going to make me believe it was self-hypnotism that persuaded a hard-headed individual like Fogarty into that strait-jacket."

"No, indeed," Dr. Lenz was smiling sadly now, the smile of a man who is constantly faced with things more tragic than death. "To attempt an explanation of that is not exactly within my sphere as a psychiatrist. I have merely tried to convince you of your mistake in believing that these other, purely psychiatric phenomena have any connection with the death of Fogarty."

I stared at him intently, trying to guess what went on behind that bearded, Jovian front.

"But, even so, there must be some explanation for Fogarty's death, Dr. Lenz. The police aren't going to sit around ..."

"The police," broke in Lenz rather coldly, "are already almost satisfied that Fogarty's death was the result of an unfortunate accident."

"But how on earth ... ?"

Dr. Lenz glanced once more at his watch. He seemed less interested now that we had abandoned the fertile fields of speculative psycho-pathology. "I am telling you this in confidence, Mr. Duluth, because I feel it is best for you to know the truth. Mrs. Fogarty admits that she and her husband quarreled on the night that he died. Apparently Fogarty told her he had decided to leave the sanitarium to try his luck in your sphere of activity, Mr. Duluth, the theatre, or, perhaps I should say the entertainment world. He wanted her to go with him, but she refused and advised him very strongly against making such a move."

The director paused. He had, at least, given me an explanation of why Mrs. Fogarty had been crying on the night of her husband's death.

"Yes," he continued, and once more a slight smile moved his mouth, "in a way, Mr. Duluth, I believe that you were responsible for his death. At least, the presence here of a celebrated theatrical man aroused in him those enthusiasms for the stage which, normally, are associated with younger people. I am reluctant to apply psychological dogmas to the perfectly normal. But we all know that Fogarty was a vain man, intensely proud of his strength. And his wife had just pricked his vanity. It is convincing to suppose that in a moment of pique, he went to the physio-therapy room alone, determined to assure himself of his ability. He tried to perform some trick—possibly a variation of the well-known strait-jacket trick. And ..."

"But the police ..." I broke in.

"The police, Mr. Duluth, have found no evidence to invalidate the theory that Fogarty tied himself up and was unable to free himself. Captain Green has discussed the matter with me exhaustively and, as a psychologist, I can see nothing which may not be interpreted in that manner."

The director rose with a swift glance at his watch. Obviously this was my dismissal.

As I followed him to the door, I remembered how much the time of such a man is worth. He had, I felt, been more than generous. I could only hope that this little lecture would not appear as an item on my next bill.

"Well, Mr. Duluth, I am glad to have had this opportunity to talk with you. Come to me at any time, and—" he paused at the door "I must congratulate you on your …. er … improved appearance. It is gratifying to know that all this mental stimulation has done you no harm."

A brief, bearded smile. Then he was gone.

As I went upstairs, I tried to figure out whether Lenz really believed what he told me; or whether he had been indulging merely in a little psychiatric torn-foolery to make me feel good. Well, in that at least, he had succeeded. It was impossible to listen to him for long without being more than half convinced.

And yet my instinct warned me to suspect the disarming logic of his explanations. I felt that my newly acquired optimistic frame of mind was just what the sanitarium itself was intended to be—a fool's paradise.

ONCE BACK in my room, I took Laribee's will from my overcoat pocket. The millionaire bad begged me to keep it safe, so I looked around for a good spot in which to conceal it. Hiding places were few and far between in those hygienically bare rooms. I ended by slipping the document under the rubber mat which was attached to the floor beneath the wash-basin. I suppose it was rather foolish, but I had reached the stage where nothing seemed particularly foolish any more.

When I strolled down to the smoking room, everything was surprisingly peaceful. Billy Trent, who had cheered up considerably, offered to shake me a soda after my squash game. Stroubel was sitting at a table, smiling vaguely at his moving hands. Fenwick was playing double dummy with Miss Brush, apparently ignoring the spirits' emphatic warning against her.

For a moment I found myself believing that Lenz had been right; that nothing more sinister had happened in the sanitarium than a tragically unsuccessful strongman act; and that all the other strange incidents could be explained as the results of normal abnormality.

But the next minute I thought of Iris and the expression on her face when she told me about that voice. It had been twenty-four hours since I had seen her, and in the restricted life of the sanitarium that seemed like several eternities. I was desperately eager for the evening with its accompanying mixed sociabilities. She would have to be in the lounge that night, I reflected. If she wasn't, I would raise hell until they convinced me she was all right.

At last dinner was over and the tirelessly brisk Miss Brush took us down to the central lounge. I saw Iris as soon as we entered. She was sitting by the piano, away from the other women.

I started excitedly toward her but was blocked by Miss Brush. The day nurse was smiling brightly, and asking me to be a fourth at bridge. I said I was sorry; I didn't feel like it. I was almost rude. But still she stood in my way, commanding and statuesque despite her ingénue dress of robin's egg blue.