A Puzzle for fools (2 page)

I SAW by the large clock on the mantel that it was one-thirty when Moreno and Warren brought me to the director's study.

In his own sanitarium, Doctor Lenz was like God. You saw him very rarely and then only in a cloud of pomp and circumstance. This was my first informal visit, but I was still impressed. There was something indestructibly divine about that large man with his arrogant beard and calm gray eyes.

As a quasi-celebrated producer, I had met most of the contemporary personalities. Doctor Lenz was one of the few who bore up under close inspection. He was aloof but vital. He had enough electricity in him to run the New York subway.

He listened gravely while Moreno outlined my recent misdemeanors, and then dismissed him with a slight inclination of the head. When we were alone together, he watched me closely for a moment.

"Well, Mr. Duluth," he said with his almost imperceptible foreign accent, "do you feel you are making progress with us?"

He treated me like a human being, and I began to feel fairly normal again. I told him that my spells of depression were not so frequent and that physically, at least, I was improving.

"But I still get scared in the dark. Tonight, for example, I acted like Caspar Milquetoast. And I can't do anything about it"

"You have had a difficult time, Mr. Duluth. But there is no real cause for worry."

"But I swear I heard my own voice—heard it as plainly as I hear you. That's pretty screwy, isn't it?"

"If you thought you heard something," said Doctor Lenz with a sudden change of tone, "there was probably something to hear. You must take my word for it that you would not imagine things of that sort."

Instantly I was on my guard. I felt he was trying to humor me, just like the rest of them. And yet I wasn't sure.

"You mean there might have been something?" I asked doubtfully.

"Yes."

"But I tell you I was alone. And it was my voice—my own voice."

Doctor Lenz didn't speak for a moment. A faint smile lurked in his beard as the large fingers tapped reflectively on the desk. "I am not concerned about your case, Mr. Duluth. Chronic alcoholics are like poets. They are born and not made. And usually they are psychopaths. You are definitely not a psychopath. You started drinking merely because the whole focal point of your life was suddenly taken from you. Your wife and your theatrical career were bound up together in your mind. With the tragic death of Mrs. Duluth, your interest in the theatre died, too. But it will come back. It is merely a question of time, possibly even of days."

I didn't see what he was driving at, but suddenly he added:

"In the seriousness of your own problem, you have forgotten that other people have problems, too. You have lost contact with life." He paused. "At the moment I myself happen to have a problem and I would like you to help me. Perhaps in helping me you will also be able to help yourself."

It was strangely comforting not to be treated like a case history in a book on morbid psychology. I pulled Miss Brush's blanket more closely around me and nodded for him to continue.

"You tell me you heard your own voice this evening," he said quietly. "It is possible that your condition was responsible for your believing that voice to be your own. But I do not doubt that there was something definite and actual behind your experience. You see, this is not the first disturbing thing which has been reported to me recently."

"You mean—?"

Doctor Lenz’ gray eyes were grave. "As you know, Mr. Duluth, this sanitarium is not run for the incurably insane. Everyone who comes here has been suffering from some nervous condition. Many of them are just on the fringe; in real danger of losing their reason permanently. But I do not accept the responsibility of hopelessly demented patients. If such cases develop here, we advise the relatives to have them committed to a State institution. From several unexplainable little incidents, I feel that there may be at this moment someone in the sanitarium who ought not to be here."

He pushed a cigarette box toward me and I took one eagerly.

"You would be surprised to know how difficult it is to put a finger upon the cause of unrest, Mr. Duluth. We cannot really tell from charts, from physical examinations, or even from the closest supervision just how mentally sick a person is."

"And yet you think one of the patients is deliberately causing this trouble for some crazy reason of his own?"

"It is possible, yes. And the damage which such a person could do is incalculable. With the type of patients we have here, even a slight shock might be sufficient to retard their progress for months, might possibly prevent their ever getting well. As a theatrical producer you must have been thrown in contact with highly strung, temperamental people, and you know how little things can upset them."

He had stirred my interest all right. Forgetting that I was a semi-mental case wrapped up in a blanket, I asked questions curiously. Doctor Lenz was surprisingly lacking in reticence. He told me frankly that he had no means of localizing the disturbance to any particular place or person. All he could say was that there was a subversive influence, and that he was worried about his institution.

"My responsibilities are great," he remarked with a slight smile. "Naturally, it means everything to me as an individual and as a psychiatrist that my patients should make good progress. But there are other complications, too. Take the case of Herr Stroubel, for example. He is certainly one of the greatest conductors of our age. His return to health is eagerly awaited by the musical world. The board of directors of the Eastern Symphony Orchestra have even offered to donate ten thousand dollars to the institution on the day he leaves us, a well man. He had been showing splendid progress; but recently there has been a distinct setback."

Doctor Lenz told me no details, but I guessed that the famous conductor must have been frightened just as I had been frightened earlier that night.

"There is another case," continued Lenz slowly, "which is even more delicate. Mr. Laribee, as you know, is an immensely wealthy man. He has made and lost several huge fortunes on the stock market." He passed a hand across his beard. "Mr. Laribee has appointed his daughter and myself as trustees of his estate. By the present arrangement a great deal of money will come to the institution at his death, or at any time when he should have to be certified permanently insane."

"And you mean he's being upset, too?*

"No. Not yet." The gray eyes stared at me fixedly. "But you can imagine how worried I am lest this—er— influence should affect him. He is doing well at present But if he should suffer from any shock while under my care, you can guess what people would think—the scandal."

He broke off and for a moment neither of us spoke. Until then I had been too intrigued to wonder why Doctor Lenz should have confided so casually in a half-cured drunk. Now the thought came into my mind and I asked him point-blank.

"I have told you this, Mr. Duluth," he announced solemnly, "because I want you to help me. Of course, I have absolute confidence in my staff but in this particular case they can be of no great assistance. People who are mentally sick are often reserved. They do not like to tell their medical attendants about the things which upset them, especially when they fancy that those things are part of their own sickness. Patients who would not talk to their physicians might talk to you as a fellow inmate."

It was a long time since anyone had put me in a position of trust. I told him so and he smiled slowly.

"I have deliberately asked your help," he said, "because you are one of the few patients here whose mind is basically healthy. As I have said, I feel that you need nothing more than an interest in life. I thought this might help to give you that interest."

I didn't speak for a moment. Then I asked: "But that voice said there would be murder. Aren't you going to take that seriously?"

"You seem to have misunderstood me, Mr. Duluth." Lenz's voice chilled slightly. "I take everything very seriously indeed. But this is a mental hospital. In an institution of this type, one does not take everything which is heard or seen literally."

I didn't grasp his point, but he left me no time for questions. He spent the next few minutes making me feel good, as only expensive psychiatrists can. Then he rang the bell for Warren to take me back to my room.

As I waited for the night attendant, I happened to glance down at the bedroom slippers which Miss Brush had provided for me. There was nothing particularly unusual about them except that they were large and obviously male.

Miss Brush, I knew, was the most efficient of young women. But it showed almost excessive efficiency to keep slippers in her bedroom against the chance visit of a neurotic male patient in bare feet.

I might have tried to puzzle it out. But Doctor Lenz was speaking again.

"Do not worry, Mr. Duluth. And remember that, if you see or hear anything out of the ordinary, that thing is real and has its basis in fact. Do not let anyone or anything persuade you that you are suffering under a delusion. Good night."

I HAD NO OBJECTIONS now to going back with Warren. Of course, if I had been a little more, or a little less crazy, I might have thought that Lenz had been putting up an elaborate song and dance to get me interested in something . besides myself. But I didn't. Although I had been unable exactly to grasp his attitude toward it, I felt that he actually did believe strange things were going on in the place. Well, it was exciting; something to break the clinical monotony.

Back in Wing Two, as the men's quarters were officially titled, Warren handed me over to the dour care of the night nurse, Mrs. Fogarty, who happened also to be his sister.

Apart from the celestial Miss Brush, the staff on Wing Two was a family party and, according to rumor, not a particularly happy one. We patients spent hours of prurient speculation upon the complicated relationships which were worthy of Dostoyevsky or Julian Green.

The angular Mrs. Fogarty was the wife of Jo Fogarty, our day attendant and, either by choice or by accident, their work shifts gave them practically no time together by day or night. Their union, if it was one at all, was obviously of the spirit. And Mrs. Fogarty, as though suffering from a sort of spinsterial hang-over, spent most of her time and her grim affection upon her brother.

Incidentally, she was as plain as Miss Brush was pretty, presumably on the theory that we mental patients needed stimulation by day and sedation by night.

Mrs. Fogarty greeted me with an antiseptically anxious smile and a rustle of starched cuffs. Owing to a slight hardness of hearing, she had cultivated the habit of never speaking herself when a facial expression or a gesture was sufficient to convey her meaning. A nod of the head indicated that I was to go back to my room, and together we started down the corridor.

We had just reached my door when there was a scuffling sound in Laribee's room, next to mine. As we paused, old Laribee ran out into the corridor, his gray woolen pajamas flapping in unbuttoned abandon. His florid face was creased with fear. His eyes had that blank hopeless look which a few weeks in the sanitarium had made me know only too well. Dazedly he came up to us, clutching shakily for Mrs. Fogarty's large-boned hand.

"Tell them to stop," he moaned. "I've tried not to give way. I tried to keep quiet. But they've got to stop."

Mrs. Fogarty's equine face registered professional consolation, and then, as though sensing that the situation demanded words, she added mechanically: "It's all right, Mr. Laribee. No one's hurting you."

"But they've got to stop." He was a tall, heavy man, and it was somehow shocking to see the tears rolling down his cheeks like a baby's. 'Tell them to stop the ticker. It's way behind the market. Stocks must be crashing. Don't you see? I'm ruined. Everything's going. The ticker—make the ticker stop."

The night nurse's fingers gripped his firmly and she drew him back into his room. Through the wall I could hear him, quite hysterical now.

"Put in a stop loss order on my Consolidated Trust— crashing—crashing."

Mrs. Fogarty's answering voice was placid and reassuring. "Nonsense, Mr. Laribee. Stocks are all going up. Now you go to sleep and read about them in the paper tomorrow."

At last she calmed him down. I heard her creak past my door.

What a job, I thought, spending the night looking after nuts like us.

After her footsteps had faded and the room was quiet again, I found myself thinking about old Laribee. I didn't have much sympathy for him, or for any of the Wall Street wizards who in 1929 had wizarded away their own money and, incidentally, quite a bit of mine, too. But it was pathetic to think of a man who still had a couple of million going crazy because he thought he was broke.

And yet I remembered that Doctor Lenz had said he was making progress. A few stray words which I had overheard that morning between Miss Brush and Moreno passed through my mind. They had been talking about Laribee, about his improvement. "It's been weeks now since he's heard that ticker," Miss Brush had said. "Looks as though he's picking up."

It had been weeks since he had heard that ticker! Why had he had this relapse? Was it perhaps due to what Lenz had called the subversive influence?

Mrs. Fogarty must have given him something to make him sleep, because he wasn't whimpering any more. There was silence again; that deep, institutional silence which had scared me earlier in the evening, but which somehow held no fears for me now. I listened to the stillness, not expecting to hear anything. Then for the second time that night I had a shock. But this time it was a shock that intrigued me, not one that set me off blubbering like a frightened kid.

I sat up in bed. Yes, there was no doubt about it. Too soft and muffled for Mrs. Fogarty's ears to have caught, but quite distinct, I could make out a quick, rhythmic ticking, quicker than a clock.

Tick, tack — tick, tack!

It came through the wall from somewhere in Laribee's room.

Tick, tack — tick, tack!