IV

Mystery Patients

Calmly I went back to bed.

And lay there, getting less and less calm by the moment. It was silly for me to want to make any move tonight. I needed more time to study the people with whom I had come in contact.

But just the same, I couldn't sleep, and the longer I lay there, the less sleepy I got. My mind went in circles.

Finally I gave up, and got up. I got the little pencil flashlight from the pocket of my suit coat, and started to work on the lock. I got it open within ten minutes.

The hallway was empty, and all the doors along it were closed.

My bare feet made no sound in the hallway and on the stairs. The recreation room was dark, but there was a dim light in the corridor that led to the office.

The door of the office was locked, too, and that cost me another ten minutes or so. But time didn't matter. It couldn't be later than about one o'clock and I had the whole night ahead of me.

I took a look around the office, shading my tiny flashlight so its beam would not show outside. I don't know just what I was looking for. I opened a closet door and jumped back when a skeleton confronted me. But it was a conventional wired medical skeleton and entirely harmless. An odd thing, it occurred to me, for a psychiatrist to have, but possibly it was a relic of his medical student days, with which he hated to part.

There was a safe, a big one. It looked to be well beyond my lock-picking abilities. And it probably wouldn't contain anything of sufficient interest to justify the attempt.

The desk would probably have what I wanted. And I found it in the first drawer I opened.

A small card file of names and addresses. It was divided into two sections, one for patients and the other for employees. Into a notebook I quickly copied the names and addresses of all the male patients and male employees.

Oh, yes, it was remotely possible that Verne might be masquerading as a woman. But the more likely prospects came first.

I found myself with a list of eleven male patients and four male employees. Then I began marking off those who couldn't possibly fit the description of Verne. First the attendant who was over six feet tall, and another who was barrel-chested and had arms like a gorilla. A man can change his weight by taking on fat, but he couldn't take on that sort of a muscular development.

Three of the patients were definitely too tall-- including the man with the paper hat and the inverted astrological theories. One was too short--only about five-feet five.

Seven patients left, two employees. I didn't mark off any more names, but I ticked off with check marks four which seemed the most unlikely of the nine. All four had physical characteristics so different from Verne's as to put them at the bottom of my list, if not to eliminate them entirely.

That left only five names as my best bets. They were not the only possibilities, but they were the ones who rated attention ahead of the others.

I picked up the telephone and, speaking so softly I couldn't have been heard outside the office, I gave the number of the New World Hotel and then gave my own room number.

Kit's sleepy voice answered.

"Take a pencil, honey," I said, "and copy down these names and addresses. Ready?"

When she was, I gave her the names and addresses of Garvey, Frank Betterman, Harvey Toler, Bill Kendall and Perry Evans. The latter was a paranoiac whom I'd seen in the recreation room and at dinner, but with whom I had not yet talked.

"Got 'em, Kit? Attagirl. Now here's one more name, only you get it for a different reason. Joe Unger. He has an office on the third floor of the Sprague Building here in town. Joe's a private detective and we've worked together. I mean, when he has any work in Chicago he throws it my way and when anything I'm working on, when I'm home, has a Springfield angle, Joe handles it for me.

"Now bright and early tomorrow morning--I think he gets to his office at eight--you look up Joe Unger and give him those names. Don't tell him where I am or what I'm working on, but have him get all the dope he can on each of those names."

Kit sounded wide awake now.

"How about the out-of-town ones?" she asked. "One's in Chicago and one in Indianapolis?"

"Joe can handle them by phone, somehow. Main thing I want to know is whether they're on the up and up. One address might turn out to be a phony, and then I can concentrate my attention on that name. And any general information Unger can pick up will help. Tell him to get all he can in one full day's work."

"How shall I tell him to report to you, Eddie?"

"You can get the dope from him tomorrow evening. I'll phone you tomorrow night about this time. Oh, yes, one other thing I want him to check. What kind of a reputation Dr. Stanley has. Whether he rates as being ethical and honest."

"All right, Eddie. But why?"

"The bare possibility that Paul Verne might be here-- if he's here at all--with Stanley's knowledge. Verne would have plenty of money, and he might bribe his way in and make it worth anyone's while."

"All right, I'll have him check on that. What's happened since you got there?"

"Here? Not a thing. Life is dull and dreary."

"Eddie, are you lying to me?"

"I wouldn't think of it, honey. 'By now. I'll call you tomorrow night."

I got back up to my room without being seen.

After I fixed the lock back the way it had been, I wedged the blade of my penknife between the door and the jamb, near the top. I sleep lightly, and if the door opened again during the night the fall of the knife onto the floor would wake me.

But the knife was still in place when I awakened in the morning.

Just after lunch I was summoned to Dr. Stanley's office.

"Close the door, Anderson," he said, "and then sit down."

I took the chair across the desk from him.

I spoke quietly. "You want a report on what I've seen?"

"You needn't lower your voice. This room is quite soundproof--naturally, as I interview my patients here. No, I didn't have a report in mind. You haven't been here long enough. It will take you several days to get to know the patients well enough to--uh--recognize changes in their mental attitudes.

"What I had in mind was to ask you to concentrate for the moment on Billy Kendall. Try to win his confidence and get him to talk to you freely. I am quite disturbed about him."

"That's the fellow with recurrent amnesia, isn't it?" I said.

Dr. Stanley nodded. "At least up to now, that is all that's been wrong with him. But--" He hesitated, twirling the gold-rimmed glasses faster on their silk ribbon, and then apparently made up his mind to tell me the rest of it. "But this morning the maid who cleaned his room found something strange under the bed. An--uh--extremely lethal weapon. A submachine-gun, to be frank."

I looked suitably surprised. "Loaded?" I asked.

"Fortunately, no. But the mystery is no less deep for that. Two mysteries, in fact. First, why he would want one. He has shown, thus far, no symptoms of--uh--that nature. Second, where and how he could have obtained it. The second question is the more puzzling, but the first is, in a way, more important. I mean, it involves the question of whether or not he is still a fit inmate for this particular institution. In short, whether it may be necessary to suggest his transfer to a place where they are prepared to cope with that sort of insanity. You see what I mean?"

"Perfectly, Doctor," I said. "I'll look him up at once." I stood up. "What room is Kendall in?"

It wasn't until I was out in the hall that I realized he had said Room Six. I had put that tommy gun in Room Twelve. Had the occupant of Room Twelve found it and passed the buck? Or what?

Billy Kendall could wait. I went to Room Twelve and knocked on the door. Frank Betterman opened it and I pretended I had known it was his room and suggested a game of ping-pong.

So we played ping-pong and I couldn't think of any way of asking him if he had found a tommy gun under his bed without admitting I had put it there. Which hardly seemed diplomatic.

I managed to sit at the same table with Billy Kendall at supper. But he wouldn't talk at all, except to answer my questions with monosyllables.

I swiped another pocketful of silverware.

A bridge game constituted the excitement of the evening and I began to think I had been telling Kit the truth in saying events were dull and dismal.

After turning in, I waited until well after midnight before my second foray into the office to phone Kit. She didn't sound sleepy this time. She had been waiting for the call.

"Get anything exciting?"

"Yes, Eddie. That Indianapolis address was a phony. There isn't any such street there."

The Indianapolis address had been that of Harvey Toler. I whistled softly. Was Harvey Toler the man I wanted?

"Thanks a million, angel," I said. "Now I can go ahead."

"Wait, Eddie. There was something funny about one or two of the others. Frank Betterman--his address was okay, a cheap  rooming house, but he'd lived there. Used to be a reporter on the Springfield Argus. He got fired for drinking too much."

"But that makes sense," I said. "He's a dipso--"

Then I saw what she meant. Where would a fired newspaper reporter get the kind of dough to stay at a fancy sanitarium? Particularly a lush, who would hardly have saved his money while he was working.

"And Kendall, William Kendall," Kit said. "He used to work for a bank and left there under a cloud. There was a shortage, and he was suspected of embezzlement. But they couldn't prove anything and he was never arrested."

"Um," I said. "Maybe that's where he got the dough to stay here. And since he's got amnesia, maybe he forgot where it came from. What about my friend Garvey?"

"That one was okay. He's got a sister, married and with six kids, living at that address. The other patient, Perry Evans, we couldn't get much on."

"That was the Chicago address, wasn't it?"

"Yes, and it's a hotel. A little one, Joe Unger said. All we could find out was that Perry Evans had stayed there for three months up to a month ago. They didn't know anything about his business, or wouldn't tell."

Nuts, I thought. That didn't eliminate Evans, by any means. For all anyone knew, Paul Verne could have stayed three months in a Chicago hotel under that name. But the heck with it, Harvey Toler had given a nonexistent out-of-town address.

"Okay, honey," I said. "I'll keep him in mind as second choice. What'd you find out about Doc Stanley?"

"He came here only a little over a month ago, rented the property out there. It had been built ten years ago as a small, select girls' school.

"And failed three years ago," I said, "and has been vacant since. Yes, toots, that was all in the newspapers. Also that Stanley came here from Louisville, Kentucky. What I want to know is about his reputation."

"Good, as far as we can find out. Joe Unger called a Louisville detective agency and they made inquiries there. He practiced as a psychiatrist for ten years there, then got sick and gave up his practice a year ago. His reputation was good, but presumably he didn't want to start at the bottom again to build up a new practice when he recovered, and got the idea of starting a sanitarium instead."

"I suppose somebody told him he could get this place here for a song," I said. "So he came to Springfield. Okay, honey. Anything else?"

"No, Eddie. How soon will you be through there?"

"Not over a few days, I hope. I'll concentrate on my friend Toler with one eye and Perry Evans with the other, and I ought to know pretty soon. 'By now."