The Mind of Mr Soames (20 page)

‘I have given a full description of Mr Soames to the police,’ Dr Breuer said. ‘In addition, there are numerous photographs. At the time of his escape he was wearing a white shirt, open at the collar, and blue-grey slacks... and brown leather sandals which won’t add to his speed. If he follows main roads, he will be found very quickly. On the other hand, if he cuts across country—and there is plenty of scope for that to the north of here—then it may take longer to root him out. Of course, the police might decide to use dogs...’

‘What is Dr Takaito’s opinion?’ Conway asked.

Breuer’s expression became faintly disdainful. ‘Dr Takaito—when I last saw him—seemed relatively unconcerned. If it wasn’t for Dr Wilson’s very serious condition I might be inclined to suspect that our Japanese friend had something to do with it.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Conway said, shaking his head. ‘Once bitten, twice shy. In any case, Takaito would have made sure that he was in control of the situation.’

‘I can only say that his attitude was by no means helpful, and that he retired to bed quite early in the proceedings—soon after midnight.’

Conway shrugged. ‘Well, why not, Dr Breuer? Now that the police are involved there’s no point in all of us staying up all night—least of all Dr Takaito, who after all is only a visitor. Frankly, there’s very little any of us can do here and now. Tomorrow—or rather later today, in daylight—it may well be a different story.’

Dr Breuer tapped the surface of his desk with a silver propelling pencil. ‘As Director of this Institute I cannot abdicate my responsibilities. The Ministry will require a detailed report, and the newspapers will pursue the thing like a pack of wolves. There can only be trouble ahead, so the more I can crystallise the situation factually in writing the easier it will be for all of us in the next few days.’

Conway made a murmur of dubious agreement.

‘I am hoping,’ Breuer continued, ‘that it may be possible to exercise a certain discretion if Mr Soames is recaptured within a few hours. What I mean is this: the assault took place on private premises, so that the police are not in a position to prefer a charge against Soames, provided Dr Wilson recovers in the ordinary way.’

‘Unless Wilson himself makes a charge,’ Conway pointed out. ‘That is extremely unlikely.’

‘And provided Mr Soames doesn’t assault anyone else while he’s over the wall, so to speak.’

‘Yes—well, I’m keeping my fingers crossed.’

‘At least he didn’t take the chair with him,’ Conway said sardonically, ‘and his simple mind is unlikely to find a new weapon in the outer world. Frankly, I imagine right now he’s rather terrified and regretting his initiative. He’d be much happier in his own bed in his own tiny room, where at least he would have security, if not liberty.’

Breuer leaned forward confidentially, still tapping the desk with his pencil.

‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘you have had a great deal of contact with Mr Soames, and you probably visualise him as a personality, if that’s the word, much more than I can. What I would like to know is this—where did we go wrong?’

Conway rubbed his eyes wearily. ‘That’s hard to say, Dr Breuer. I think perhaps, fundamentally, we tended to regard Mr Soames as a specimen rather than a human being—as a kind of moron instead of an intelligent adult whose only failing was lack of education. Certainly we didn’t make allowance for personality and individuality. I don’t think we ever imagined for a moment that a man with a completely blank mind could possess a psychological architecture of his own, with enough will power and stubbornness to reject a system of ideas imposed from outside, as it were. We gave Mr Soames plenty of credit for ignorance, but not for intelligence, and the two are really quite different.’

Despondency darkened Breuer’s expression. ‘You may be right,’ he conceded, ‘but then the whole thing was a fantastic experiment. Who would have imagined that a man born at the age of thirty could prove to be so—so difficult?’

‘He was never subjected to the disciplinary brain-washing of the average child,’ Conway pointed out. ‘He was never a tiny, helpless creature surrounded by dictatorial giants. He was too big to slap and chastise, and too independent to allow himself to be pushed around, even in the interests of academic education. And he had this advantage—that whatever hereditary traits were present in the cells of his body and his brain at the moment of birth, some thirty years ago, they had time to consolidate during the long decades of his unconsciousness. Environment and training can often overcome heredity, but Mr Soames had the benefit of neither. You might say his genes were dominant over all external influences.’

‘You talk in the past tense,’ Dr Breuer pointed out, ‘but Mr Soames is still with us.’

Conway smiled ironically. ‘In practical terms he’s not still with us, Dr Breuer, and in any case he will never again be quite the same Mr Soames.’

‘Well, thank you, Conway,’ Breuer said, rising from his desk. ‘I’m sorry to have kept you up so late, though I feel sure, under the circumstances...’

‘I’m happy to be able to help in any way I can,’ Conway stated. ‘All the same, at this stage I think we might profitably snatch some sleep.’

He went back to his own room and to bed, but though tired, his mind rejected sleep. Instead, brittle incoherent images focused, merged and dissolved on the dark backdrop of his consciousness, and his brain was animated by fugitive fragments of thought—about Soames, skulking in the shadow of a hedge in open country, fearing the moon and the lights of civilisation, and Penelope, facing up to a horror with a courage he had not known she possessed, and Ann, calm, patient, understanding, not daring to hope until there was good reason to hope, and himself, David Conway, caught up in the raw cross currents of life and finding himself in some incomprehensible way neither able to swim nor sink. But sleep came, reluctantly and uneasily, after about an hour, and he passed smoothly into the darker unthinking levels of the subconscious.

❖

Mr Soames made front page headlines in the newspapers that morning. The press, acting almost as if in collusion, had decided to launch a mass crusade, and editorial comment was searching and pungent—and in most cases unfair. Dr Breuer staved off telephone inquiries in an efficient if mechanical manner, acting as unofficial press liaison officer under the general supervision of Dr Breuer who, not having slept at all, looked pale and haggard.

SOAMES LOOSE, announced a popular tabloid in black capital letters two inches tall, with an italic sub-head which stated brusquely:
Guinea pig patient goes berserk.
The story, written in the inevitable slick, basic-English journalese, began:
John Soames, the modern Rip-Van-Winkle who slept for thirty years, last night escaped from Osborne Psychoneural Institute after a violent assault on one of the doctors responsible for his ‘education
’. The quotes were offensive, of course, and the tone of the entire story was designed to discredit Dr Breuer and his staff. The other papers tended to follow the same line, though in a more subtle way, and, in fact, it seemed as if Fleet Street had rather taken Mr Soames to its cold heart.

The police were more circumspect and matter-of-fact. They returned to the Institute shortly after nine o’clock for further talks with Dr Breuer and members of the psychiatric staff. Around ten-thirty Conway found himself back in Breuer’s office facing a rubicund but gentle-faced detective inspector while Breuer himself and a tall angular detective sergeant hovered in the background.

The detective inspector, whose name was Bryce, briefly outlined the position concerning Mr Soames. No trace, he said in effect. Soames had been free now for more than twelve hours and apparently nobody had seen him at all. During the morning there had been a number of false alarms, but these were inevitable. They always occurred during a major man hunt. People had telephoned Scotland Yard to say that they had seen Soames, or someone who looked like Soames, in Orpington, Watford, Chalfont St Giles, Brighton, Ilford, Dorking and even as far north as Luton. Every call had been investigated, or was being investigated, but the trouble was that anyone could look like Mr Soames if he happened to be dark and wearing a white open necked shirt.

In twelve hours, Bryce pointed out, Soames could have reached Scotland on a hitch-hiking basis. On the other hand, because of his peculiar psychological make-up, hitch-hiking might be an extremely improbable move. Even taking the most optimistic view that Soames had progressed on foot all night, averaging something less than three miles an hour, he could be anywhere within a radius of thirty miles—and that meant an overall area of nearly three-thousand square miles, including rural and built-up zones. Without a positive lead it would be virtually impossible to make a thorough search, particularly in the country districts.

The only reasonable alternative was to try to predict Soames’s probable movements from an intimate knowledge of his character, and it was for this reason that Detective-Inspector Bryce had returned to the Institute. He had already had long talks with Dr Breuer and Dr Mortimer, and the next step was clearly Dr Conway, who was in charge of the team of three psychiatrists directly responsible for Soames, and held a great deal of personal contact with the patient.

Conway found it difficult to be precise. ‘In theory Mr Soames should have been a naïve man,’ he explained, ‘and perhaps in many ways he was, but there was a devious quality to his mind that made him unpredictable. Certainly his ignorance, in educational terms, would not prove to be much of a handicap. He possesses a keen intelligence which shows itself in the form of cunning.’

‘Hitch-hiking?’ Bryce questioned tersely.

‘On the surface, no. But Soames knows about cars—about transport in general. That is, he’s been told about them, and has seen pictures and films. I wouldn’t rule out hitch-hiking, though it does seem a little improbable.’

Bryce sighed. ‘That means a countrywide search, I’m afraid. Can we eliminate certain areas on the grounds of possibility? By that I mean—would Soames be likely to choose open country or woodland in preference to urban areas?’

‘Almost certainly. For Mr Soames buildings symbolise captivity. During his maniac phases he enjoyed nothing better than a walk round the grounds of the Institute, among the trees, and so on. I think it was the only time he felt free.’

‘Then we might reasonably assume that he will stay away from towns and villages. On the other hand, he has to eat and drink. What would he be likely to do?’

Conway considered for fully a minute before he replied. ‘We have to remember that Mr Soames is a stubborn, single-minded character, so he will be quite willing to subject himself to starvation and thirst for quite a long time before he comes out into the open. So far as thirst is concerned he has no established prejudices—that is, he will probably drink from a stream or pond. Food is a different matter. After perhaps three or four days he may be forced to steal...’

‘Or commit a further assault?’

‘Possibly—if it were a matter of urgency.’

‘From where?’

‘That’s hard to say. Probably an isolated farmhouse. I don’t think he would venture into a town or village.’

Detective-Inspector Bryce looked slightly happier. ‘Actually, we’d assumed as much, and we’ve already taken steps to alert all farms within a radius of a hundred miles. Now, the next thing is this. Having escaped from the Institute—climbed over the wall or whatever it was that he did—in which direction would Soames be likely to proceed?’

‘I think that question answers itself,’ Conway said. ‘North of the Institute there’s an area of open land towards Bushey, and it’s possible to walk for twenty miles or more without having to pass through built-up areas—though one would have to cross a number of main roads.’

‘Is there any reason at all why Soames should choose to go in any other direction?’

‘None that I can think of. Every other way leads into London suburbs or London itself.’

‘But Soames wouldn’t know that.’

‘True. On the other hand he would follow a route that avoided houses and streets.’

‘All right,’ Bryce said affably. ‘Now, knowing what you do of Soames, what is his psychological state likely to be right now?’

Conway shrugged. ‘That depends on how he spent the night, and whether he had any sleep or not. But at a guess I’d say he’s extremely fatigued and depressed, and probably frightened.’

Bryce nodded. ‘That would correspond to what you call, I believe, a depressive phase. After a while it would presumably pass off and give way to an opposite type of reaction.’

‘A manic phase.’

‘Which would mean...?’

‘Self-assurance, a certain degree of truculence. Mr Soames in a manic phase might prove to be dangerous.’

‘How long do these phases last?’

‘That’s difficult to say,’ said Conway, frowning in concentration. ‘Usually a day or two, sometimes longer.’

‘So we may assume that Soames has gone to ground for at least two days. At the end of that time, when hunger and discomfort begin to take their toll, he is likely to revert to an attitude of stubborn aggressiveness, and he will come out of hiding in the interests of survival.’

‘Yes,’ Conway agreed, ‘that seems reasonable. There’s one point I should like to emphasis, though. When we talk about violence in connection with Mr Soames, it means something rather different from violence in the ordinary sense. In a way he’s going through a process of evolution, self-preservation, survival of the fittest, and so on. He doesn’t really understand the true meaning of violence in its criminal sense. The attack on Dr Wilson, for instance, was not a premeditated violent assault—it was rather a matter of expedience. I doubt very much whether Mr Soames understands the meaning of death, and it probably has not occurred to him at all that violence might result in death. I think it was simply a question of,’—and he paused and shrugged—‘well, seizing the initiative and using superior force in order to escape. A question of tactics rather than strategy, if you like.’

‘Such tactics could hang the man, if they were applied too frequently and ruthlessly.’