by Curt Siodmak
Schratt called too. Janice took the phone into her room and had a long conversation with him. Generally she dislikes talking at length, so I anticipated that the situation in Phoenix was becoming involved.
When the hospital called for the fourth time, I decided to go before they became suspicious.
Janice wanted to ride into town with me. She sat silent and tense in the car. It annoyed me to feel her watching me out of the corner of her eye.
I made up my mind to clear all the accumulated issues between us as soon as possible. I resented her intensity, which interfered with my work. I had to end this household disharmony.
When we arrived in town, Janice decided to stay in the car. I did not ask why she had suddenly changed her mind or why she had bothered to ride with me at all. I went into the hospital.
At the entrance a thin shabby-looking man with a camera took pictures of me and I did not like it.
The nurse at the reception desk sent me straight up to Dr. Higgins, the superintendent.
In Higgins’s waiting-room sat Schratt, dilapidated and looking greenish. I nodded at him, but his shifting eyes registered no recognition. As I was walking over to speak to him, Higgins opened a door and called me inside.
Webster, a manager of the airline, was with him. Webster did not wait for formalities. “Dr. Cory,” he said, “Schratt tells me you led the emergency party to the ranger station.”
“Yes,” I replied. “It was the obvious thing to do. If Dr. Schratt had had to form a rescue party in Konapah, he would have arrived much later.”
“As I understand it, you are not a practicing physician in this district?” Higgins spoke sharply, but I was prepared for the question.
“I am a medical doctor, Mr. Higgins.” I spoke as sharply as he. “In an emergency every physician has his duty to perform.”
I turned to Webster. He nodded perfunctorily as if I had ordered him to affirm my statement.
Webster was uneasy. The man who had died was too important to be disposed of with just an ordinary report. Every newspaper in the country will blow up this incident. Webster’s activities the night of the disaster will be discussed in detail.
Donovan could not have been saved if all the specialists of the Mayo clinic had been waiting at the spot of the accident, and Higgins seemed to know it. But Webster was to blame that an old crackpot doctor was in charge the night of the disaster and an unknown physician undertook a major operation on one of the richest men in America.
It was to my advantage that Webster urgently wished to hush up the facts and have the incident closed as quickly as possible. But Higgins, on the warpath, was out for blood. He called Schratt in.
Schratt was shaky on his feet. He looked far from presentable as the physician for an emergency airfield. Webster gazed at him with misgivings and Higgins turned away as if disgusted by Schratt’s demoralized appearance.
He said hurriedly: “Please follow me!”
I walked beside Webster with Higgins in front. Ignored and left to trail behind, Schratt grew increasingly desperate.
Schratt is so unpredictable. I was afraid he might blurt out the truth in a fit of repentance. He had tried to drown his conscience in alcohol, but like most heavy drinkers he got no relief, only a still more desperate feeling of remorse.
I slowed down a little for Schratt to catch up with me. His steps were faltering, but I was afraid to touch him for fear he would imagine I meant to help him walk straight. Even such a small gesture might have provoked a display of nerves.
Higgins was leading us to the morgue. At the door Schratt, in a brave effort at self-control, pulled himself together and straightened his shoulders.
Only the one body covered with a sheet lay in the small tiled room. I knew the corpse was Donovan’s, for the linen caved in at the foot of the bier where a man’s legs would ordinarily have held it up.
Higgins uncovered the body and we all stared at Donovan’s decaying face. I felt a chill creeping up my spine. The bandages around the head had been tampered with
Schratt, too, observed that they were wound differently. He stepped back, but his expression did not change. He always accepts misfortune fatalistically.
“Dr. Schratt states in the death certificate that Mr. Donovan died following amputation of both legs. You did not, by any chance, bring those extremities back with you, Dr. Cory?” Higgins inquired.
“If you doubt the necessity for the operation, you had better exhume the legs. You’ll find them buried at the Ranger station,” I said coldly, resenting the insinuation.
Webster, who wanted least of all a further medical inquiry, quickly interrupted.
“If Donovan had died instantly, we would have been spared these fruitless post-mortems.” He turned to the door. “I think there is no use discussing the case further. It won’t bring Donovan back to life and may only arouse controversy.”
He was putting it plainly to Higgins that he wanted the incident closed, but Higgins ignored the plea.
“The report did not mention a head injury,” Higgins continued stubbornly.
“You found the ribs are broken, too,” I answered quietly, knowing what he was up to. “Do you want that stated also? Are you trying to charge me with negligence? Just what is the complaint? I did all I could do.”
Higgins pondered. He sensed Schratt’s mounting panic, but he did not know what caused it, and that made him uncertain.
“Let’s go,” Webster urged. “I’m feeling a little weak. I’m not accustomed to…”
He opened the door of the morgue and inhaled deeply, as if trying to keep from fainting.
We left. I felt cold sweat on my forehead and did not raise my head for fear of betraying myself. We went back to Higgins’s office.
“You’d better change physicians, Mr. Webster.” Higgins had to slaughter some scapegoat. “Dr. Schratt has clearly neglected his duty. It was up to him to go at once to the scene of the disaster, not to send anyone else. But, as I understand it, Dr. Schratt was incapacitated.”
Schratt lifted his flabby, bloated face. He looked crushed.
“I’m obliged to dismiss you,” Webster said to him hurriedly, glad to have found a way to satisfy Higgins. “Sorry, Dr. Schratt.”
Webster looked at me inquisitively and added: “Since I must have a physician in residence near the emergency field, perhaps Dr. Cory could take over these duties.”
He looked at Higgins for approval, but I was in a mood to put both men in their places.
“I’m not interested,” I said gruffly, and walked to the door.
Higgins followed me. His attitude changed at once when he saw I could not be bullied.
“Dr. Cory.” His tone was conciliatory. “I’m sorry. You see I had to investigate…”
I looked at him coldly.
“Donovan’s family are here. At the De Anza. Please do me a favor. Go and see them. They are anxious to talk to you.”
“All right,” I answered, grabbing my hat, and left without a good-by.
I still felt uneasy. Higgins had acted strangely. Did he know I had removed Donovan’s brain?
Who had looked beneath Donovan’s bandages?
I heard steps behind me. It was Schratt, who passed without looking up as it I were responsible for his misfortune.
I left the hospital and walked straight across the market place to the De Anza Hotel. I passed my car and Janice was not in it.
When I asked for Mr. Donovan, the room clerk treated me as if I were a millionaire too.
A bellboy took me all the way up to the fourth floor. He confided in an awed voice the management had closed all the rooms on that floor except the suite occupied by Howard Donovan and his sister, Chloe Barton.
The way he spoke Chloe Barton’s name told me she was good-looking.
It was her brother who received me, a man of forty-five, heavily built and tall, with the same skull conformation as his father’s. He stood back of the writing-desk, rustled through papers a moment as if he we
re looking for something, then suddenly, straight into my face, he said:
“I’m glad you came, Dr. Cory.”
Howard Donovan continued to scrutinize me embarrassingly, as if I were there for a cross-examination and he were the prosecuting attorney. His money had given him an exaggerated conception of his own importance and a fine contempt for other people. He ignored my resentment.
On his desk lay his father’s Worn, blood-stained wallet, and old-fashioned watch, and the small notebook that had been found on Donovan senior.
Howard Donovan spoke almost without moving his lips, as if he were miserly even with words.
“I wanted to thank you, Dr. Cory,” he said slowly as if the words had been torn from his mouth. “I’m sure you did everything for my father that could be done.”
I was tempted not to answer in the affirmative, just to study his reaction. When I said nothing, he moved his hulk nimbly across the thick carpet toward a door.
“I want you to meet my sister,” he muttered. He stopped at the door, turned toward me with his hand on the knob, then knocked rather softly and called his sister’s name.
Chloe Barton entered. She was a dark-haired girl with white teeth and straight shoulders, very conscious of her looks. She greeted me and sat down, folding her hands in her lap in a graceful, unnatural pose.
I knew women like this well from my years at the hospital. They have to have the admiration of a male before they can be at ease with themselves. They are erotomaniacs, only happy as long as they are sure of a man’s adoration.
Her nose, short and turned up, showed a slight thickening of the lesser alar cartilage, a sure sign that it had been worked on by a plastic surgeon.
I remembered her story. She had been a stout, plain girl with a hooked nose, had married three times in quick succession and always big brutal men. After the third unhappy marriage, which ended in a scandal, she had her nose remodeled and changed her character completely.
She dieted away forty pounds and when she found she had become handsome, she enwrapped herself in a new aura as in a cloak, became elusive with her friends, egocentric to the point of mental unbalance. She gave up her promiscuousness and concentrated on herself in a quiet, narcissistic way.
“We wanted to thank you for making my poor father’s death easier.”
Chloe Barton spoke as if she had studied the sentence. Not a muscle in her face twitched. The transparent skin remained pale. “We want to know what he said before he died—what message he left for his children.”
Howard Donovan had stepped behind the desk again and was watching me intently. The light from the window fell hard on my face, while he was in semi-darkness. Chloe’s lips were curved in a frozen smile. I could not make out what they expected to hear, but it seemed of great importance to them.
“I must disappoint you,” I said. “I don’t remember.”
Mrs. Barton seemed shocked by my words and turned to Howard Donovan with undissimulated consternation.
“I wish he could remember,” the girl said, as if it was up to Howard to make me do it.
Howard nodded, and said to me: “It’s extremely important to us. Just try to remember a few words.”
They stared at me again as if to read some secret they thought I was hiding. I could only shrug my shoulders.
“Listen, Dr. Cory,” Howard Donovan insisted, “we’ll make it worth your while.” He seemed to think I was purposely holding something back. With a quick gesture, he snatched up the blood-stained wallet as if to give it to me.
“I can’t tell you anything.” I was annoyed. “Your father was unconscious all the time. Anything he did say didn’t make sense.”
“Are you sure?” Howard asked sharply.
The scene was embarrassing.
“Quite sure!” I took my hat. “Following extreme loss of blood no one can talk coherently.”
I walked toward the door, but Chloe called after me:
“We want to pay you for trying to save my father’s life.”
“No charge,” I answered, and walked out.
Their behavior was very mysterious. Obviously they were afraid the old man had confided in me. I thought of Donovan but could not recall anything he had said.
I went to my car and drove off. I wanted to get out of this town, fast. Watching so many faces, listening to so many voices, being cross-charged with so many mental currents upset me.
My work demanded concentration. I was groping in the dark tunnel of science, developing my sense of touch. These annoying disturbances were blinding lights in the darkness that stunned and left me bewildered.
I had to get hold of myself, calm down, arrest the wildly swinging membrane of my powers of concentration.
Higgins, Webster, Schratt—I wanted to banish them all from my mind, but they kept creeping back.
When I had driven a few miles, I realized I had forgotten Janice. She should have stayed in the car!
Moving along the straight highway and concentrating on the point of the end where the macadam seemed to lance the horizon, I suddenly knew how to watch the brain more closely.
At rest, relaxing, it was sending out ten-cycle alpha waves. As soon as it reacted to a stimulus, the alpha frequencies changed to beta, with twenty fluctuations per second. If I sent the amplified alpha wave through an alternate circuit which in turn was connected with an electric bulb, any change of frequency would change the circuit and switch on the lamp.
When the brain was thinking the bulb would burn. When the bulb was dark the brain would be at rest. How simple!
I drove home as fast as I could, jumped out of the car, and rushed to the door of the laboratory, but entered quietly, not to disturb the brain.
It was asleep, the encephalograph showed.
Silently I went to work, connected the amplifier with the relay and connected an electric bulb on the circuit.
I switched on the current and watched the lamp.
Producing alpha frequencies, the brain was at rest.
I tapped at the vessel in which the organ was suspended and at once it became aware of the disturbance. The encephalograph registered delta waves, the alpha cycles were blocked out, the relay cut in on the current and lighted the bulb!
I stared at the miracle and sat down to rejoice.
The lamp went out again; the brain was relaxing. But when I got up, it felt my movement and the light reappeared.
Crossing to my desk to register the time of my discovery, I had another idea. If the brain had emotions and perceptions, it was thinking systematically. It was aware of outside disturbances certainly, or its alpha waves would not have changed to beta or delta frequencies. Without a doubt a precise thought process was going on in this eyeless, earless matter.
It might, like a blind man, fed the light or, like a deaf one, perceive sound. It might, in its dark mute existence, produce thoughts of immense clarity and inspiration. It might, just because it was cuff off from the distractions of the senses, be able to concentrate all its brain-power on important thoughts.
I wanted to know those thoughts! But how could I get in touch with the brain?
It could not talk or move, yet if I could study its thinking, I might learn about the great unsolved riddles of nature. The brain might, in its complete solitude, have created answers to eternal questions.
I heard a car stop. It was Schratt bringing Janice home. I was disturbed, of course. The noise of the auto, Janice’s footsteps, the pronounced quiet opening of the front door, shoved my thoughts off their narrow track.
I waited till Janice had gone to her room, but I could not concentrate again. I left the laboratory and knocked at her door.
She called me and I altered.
Janice was sitting on the bed, her face turned toward me, her hands on her knees, her body hunched over as if she were weighed down in thought.
“Scary I had to leave Phoenix without you,” I said to begin this conversation which must clear the issues between us once and for all.
> “Schratt brought me home,” she answered soberly.
“May I sit down?” I asked. I had not been in her room for months.
She nodded and went on in the same quiet voice. “Schratt lost his job.” She looked at me as if I could have prevented his misfortune.
“I know. What could I do?” I replied.
She nodded again, but not in confirmation of my words. “You did nothing to help him.”
For a moment I was stunned. Was this a rebuke from Janice?
“Did he say so?”
“He’s desperate,” she answered.
“Like most drunkards, he shows signs of Korsakow’s psychosis, if you remember the symptoms from your lectures. Lessening of the power of observation, inability to correlate new experiences with the apperceptive mass, conjectures, retrograde amnesia, altogether polyneuritis alcoholic!”
Her face was sad.
“I’ve invited him to live with us,” she said. “I hope you won’t refuse. He can have the room off the back garden and he won’t disturb you.”
Her kindness had no limits. She would have filled the house with hoboes if I were willing.
“Now we’re stuck with him for the rest of his life! Pretty smart! I have to buy his discretion. He knows that he knows too much and he means to cash in on it.”
She did not answer, but she paled and her mouth grew very white.
It was her house. She could do whatever she liked with it. She paid for all the machines and experiments. I was completely dependent on her and she never said a word about it. She may even never have thought of it
But I wanted to be free!
Janice did not want to fight. Her expression grew soft as she withdrew into a shell where no rough word and no hard blow could reach her. She surrendered her personality and won, as she always did, by refusing to defend herself.
“All right,” I said. “Did Schratt tell you Webster offered me his job? Maybe I ought to have taken it. Maybe I will.”
She smiled kindly, understandingly. She knew my work consumed all my time and thought. Even the fact of our marriage had been dissolved in my work’s acid domination. She knew I could not divert my strength.
Exhausted, I sat there in front of her. I knew I could not order her to leave me. Even my command would carry no conviction. And she would rather die, desiccated by hot winds and sweltering desert heat, than leave me!
