II

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.

Betterman and Kendall went down on my list as possibles. As we walked on, I elicited from my guide the fact that Betterman was an alcoholic--a dipsomaniac--and Kendall the anemic, was suffering from recurrent amnesia. Periodically, he would forget who he was and where he was and what he was doing there.

We saw another recreation room in the basement, with ping-pong tables and a shuffleboard set-up as well as one billiard table with warped cues and a few rips in the cloth. We encountered several other patients in our walk around the outside grounds, and I was introduced to each.

Five men, out of eight I met, could have been Paul Verne.