The Collection (95 page)

I thought it best not to mention to Kit that he'd burned
the place down as well.

"Then he went to his parents' home. They were away on
vacation or something, and he destroyed all the photographs of himself, even
those of himself as a kid. He also took along all the money and jewelry loose,
enough to last him ten years."

"But you have a description, haven't you?"

"I have a description as he was three years ago,"
I said. "A guy can change quite a bit in three years, and if you haven't
got a photograph you're not in much luck. But I know he's got brown hair,
unless he dyed or bleached it. I know he weighed a hundred sixty then. Of
course he might have taken on a paunch since then, or got thin from worry. I
know he's got brown eyes--unless he went to the trouble of getting tinted
contact lenses to change their apparent color."

I grinned at her. "But I do know he's within a couple
of inches of five feet nine. He might make himself seem a couple inches under
by acquiring a stoop, or a couple inches over by wearing these special shoes
with built-up inner heels."

Kit grimaced. "So you'll know that any man you see
between five feet seven and five eleven might be him. That's a big help. How
will
you know?"

I told her I didn't know.

"If it were just a matter of spotting him from a
photograph or a good description," I said, "he'd have been picked up
long ago. I can probably eliminate some of the patients right away. The others
I'll have to study, and use my brains on. It might take longer than a few
days."

"Well, then I'm glad you didn't go out this
evening."

"This evening," I told her, "I'm going to
study. There's a bookstore on Grand Avenue that's open evenings. I've got to
pick up a few books on psychology and psychiatry and bone up a
bit to
make good my story to Dr. Stanley that I know something about it. I don't want
to get bounced the first day because I don't know pyromania from pyorrhoea.

We got the books, and Kit helped me study them. Fortunately
or otherwise, there was a Kraft-Ebbing in the lot and we spent most of the time
reading that. But I did manage to read a little in some of the others, enough
to pick up a bit of the patter.

A New Job

The Stanley Sanitarium was out at the edge of town, as all
respectable sanitaria should be. There was a high brick wall around it, and
barbed wire on top of the wall.

That rather surprised me. So did the size and
impregnability of the iron-work gate in the wall. I couldn't get in it, and had
to ring a bell in one of the gate posts.

A surly looking guy with thick black eyebrows and rumpled
hair came to answer it. He glared at me as though I had leprosy. "Eddie
Anderson," I said. "I got an appointment with Dr. Stanley."

"Just a minute." He called the sanitarium on a
telephone that was in a sentry box by the gate, and then said,
"Okay," and unlocked the gate.

He walked with me up to the house, slightly more friendly.

"I reckon you're the new patient," he said.
"My name's Garvey. The other patients'll tell you you can trust me, Mr.
Anderson. So if there's any little errands you want done or anything you want
brought in, why just see me, that's all."

"That's fine," I said, "and if I ever go
crazy, I'll remember it."

"Huh?" he said. "You mean you ain't
crazy?"

"If I am," I said, "I haven't found it out
yet. But don't worry. That doesn't prove anything."

I left him looking doubtful and wondering whether he'd
talked too much.

Dr. Philemon Stanley had a white walrus mustache and the
kind of glasses that dangle at the end of a black silk ribbon. He twirled them
in a tight little circle while he
talked. I had to look away from that
shiny circle to keep from getting dizzy. I wondered vaguely if he used them on
patients for hypnotic effect.

"Uh--Mr. Anderson," he said, "have you had
any experience at all in--uh--confidential investigations? That is, in making
confidential reports?"

"Can't say I have," I told him. Not quite
truthfully, of course. I couldn't say that was my real occupation. "But
I'd be glad to try my hand at it."

"Fine, Mr. Anderson. I intend to try out a new theory
of mine in the study of mental aberration. A method, not of treatment, but of
more accurate diagnosis and study of the patient. It is my belief that a person
suffering from a mental ailment is never completely frank or completely at
ease in the presence of a doctor, or even of an attendant. There is a tendency,
almost invariably, either to exaggerate symptoms or to minimize and conceal
them."

"Sounds quite logical," I admitted.

"Whereas," said Dr. Stanley, twirling his glass a
bit harder in mild excitement, "they undoubtedly act entirely natural
before the other patients. You see what I'm driving at?"

"Not exactly."

"I would like an attendant--someone experienced, as
you are, with pathological cases--to pose as a patient, to mix among the other
patients, become friendly with them, play cards with them, win their confidence
as fellow-sufferer, and to report confidentially on their progress. The job, I
fear, would be a bit confining."

He broke off, watching me for my reaction.

It wasn't good, at first. Then I began to see the
advantages of it. Certainly I'd be in a better position to find out what I
wanted to know, in the status of a fellow patient.

But it wouldn't do to appear eager. I asked about salary
and when he named a figure higher than an attendant's wages would be, I let it convince
me.

"My clothes," I said. "Will it appear
suspicious to anyone who saw me come here if I leave, and then return with
them?"

"Not at all. You are, as far as anyone knows,
committing yourself to me voluntarily. All my patients, incidentally, are here
of their own free will, although they are under restraint to stay within the
grounds for the period of their cure. There will be nothing unusual about your
having had a preliminary interview."

"Fine,"
I said. "I'll get my stuff and be back. Right after lunch, say. Oh, by the
way, just how insane am I to act, and in what direction?"

"I would suggest a mild psychosis. Something you're
more than usually familiar with. Nothing that would force me to keep you under
restraint or limit your freedom in circulating about with the other patients.
Alcoholism. . . . No, you look too healthy for that."

"How about kleptomania?" I suggested. "I'd
have to swipe a few things from time to time, but I'll put them under my bed,
and if your fountain pen disappears, you'll know where to look for it."

"Excellent. Any time this afternoon will be
satisfactory, if you have affairs of your own to wind up. Uh--you sign nothing,
of course, but if any patient asks, tell him you committed yourself here for
say, sixty days. At the end of that time, we'll know how satisfactory our
arrangement is."

We shook hands and he sat down again at his desk while I
went to the door and opened it. I took one step to go into the outer hallway,
and then I stopped short as though I'd run into a brick wall.

I stood staring, and then I wrenched my eyes away and
looked back at my employer.

I had to clear my throat before I could say:

"Dr. Stanley?"

"Yes, Anderson."

"You have any homicidal patients here?"

"Homicidal? Of course not. That is. . . . Of course
not."

"There is a corpse in the middle of the hallway, with
the hilt of a dagger sticking out of his chest," I said. "Right over
the heart."

"Eh? Oh, I should have warned you. That would be
Harvey Toler."

It didn't faze him in the least. He didn't even get up from
his desk or reach for the telephone. Was he crazy, or I?

"I don't care if it's J. Edgar Hoover," I said.
"The fact remains that there's a knife in his chest."

I heard a sound in the hall and looked through the door. The
corpse had got up and was walking away. He was a slender, dark young man with
thick shell-rimmed glasses. He put something in his pocket that looked like the
hilt of a dagger without any blade.

I looked back at Dr. Stanley.

"Harvey Toler," he repeated. "Uncontrollable
exhibitionism. He must have heard I had a caller in my office. A strange
case--arrested development in one respect only. A brilliant mind, but he cannot
control impulses to shock people. I want particularly careful reports on his conduct
among the other patients. I think you'll like him when you get to know
him."

"I'm sure I will," I said. "Is that a
favorite stunt of his, with the dagger?"

"He's used it before, but he seldom repeats himself.
He may . . . Well, I'd rather not tell you too much about him. I'd rather have
your impressions without prejudice."

Without prejudice, my grandmother, I thought as I walked to
the bus line. If Harvey Toler pulled another one like that one, I'd take
advantage of being a fellow-patient to pop him on the nose, exhibitionism or
not. And maybe that would be the best cure, at that.

I went to my rooming house, told my landlady I'd landed a
job and she could keep the rest of the week's rent I'd paid her.

Then I went to the hotel and woke up Kit. She'd had early breakfast
with me and then gone back to sleep.

"Got the job," I told her. "And I'll have to
live there. Hope it won't take me more than a few days to decide one way or the
other about whether I'm on the right track or not."

"What is the job, Eddie?"

"I'm in charge of the hypochondriac ward, honey. It's
confidential. I'd better not tell you about my duties."

"Eddie! Be serious. What
is
the job?"

I told her and she wouldn't believe me. But by dint of
repeating it four or five times, I finally convinced her.

I packed a few things in a suitcase, rather regretfully
leaving my automatic out of it. Hardly the sort of thing I'd be carrying, if I
was what I pretended to be. But if I really found Paul Verne, it might not be
any picnic to handle him. I took a chance on including brass knuckles, rolling
them up carefully inside a pair of thick woolen socks.

Kit and I had lunch and then she walked with me to the bus.
I told her I might or might not be able to phone her. I couldn't be sure till I
knew the set-up at the sanitarium. And not to worry if she didn't hear from me
for a week.

"Eddie, why didn't you tell me the truth?" she
said.

"Huh? What didn't I tell you?"

"That Paul Verne is a homicidal maniac. That what
you're going to do is dangerous, really dangerous. After breakfast this
morning, I went to a newspaper office and I read their file of clippings on
him. I wouldn't have tried to stop you, Eddie. But--but I want you to be honest
with me."

From her face, I could tell she was being brave.

"Okay, honey," I said. "I just didn't want
you to worry."

The bus pulled up.

"I won't, Eddie," she said.

I kissed her good-by and got on. She turned away, crying
quietly, and I felt like a heel.

I was still feeling punk when I rang the bell that brought
Garvey to the gate.

"You again?" he said, and opened it.

I grinned at him. "Well, I found it out," I said.

"Found what out?"

"I'm crazy."

"Huh?"

"That's it. I told you this morning that if I was, I
hadn't found it out yet. I found it out."

He digested that as we went up the walk.

"Oh, well, what I told you goes, then," he
finally said. "If you want anything just let me know."

We had reached the door, and he turned to leave.

I said, "Sssst," and when he turned back, I
leaned over and whispered:

"Can you get me a machine-gun?"

He backed off.

Dr. Stanley turned me over to an attendant who took me to
Room Twenty and told me it was to be mine. The attendant said if I wanted he
would show me around the place, so I left my suitcase on the bed and went with
him.

My room was at the end of the corridor and was the highest
number on the second floor. My guide--fortunately he was over six feet tall, so
I didn't have to study him as a possible suspect--told me that these twenty
rooms, with five others on the first floor, were all the rooms assigned to
patients, and that attendants and other employees had quarters on the third
floor. He said that, counting me, there were now twelve male patients and seven
female. The remaining rooms were empty.

He took me first to the main recreation room on the first
floor. There was a bridge game going on in one corner. My friend Harvey Toler
was one of the players. The others were a nondescript little woman with gray
hair and mousy eyes, a gaunt, dissipated-looking man of about forty, and an
anemic youth. They were introduced to me as Miss Zaner, Frank Betterman and
Billy Kendall.