by Curt Siodmak
I knew Howard would turn up again!
Schratt phoned. He told me Janice is back in Washington Junction. When I inquired why she had gone home, he joked that Janice and he were good friends and they were just taking advantage of my absence to see each other alone.
The brain is doing fine, he says. Size and electric output still increasing.
While Schratt waited at the phone for instructions, my subconscious fear suddenly found expression. I ordered him to keep the brain at its present width and strength, not to feed it too much. My mouth was suddenly so dry my voice sounded harsh.
“I understand,” Schratt replied elusively.
I hung up quickly, angry with myself. Had I admitted I was becoming afraid? My order could not be explained otherwise, and Schratt would interpret it so.
Fear is a natural reaction of all organisms which have weapons of self-defense. I belong to this class, and I have no reason to blame myself. Fear is innate.
I was suddenly tired. Instead of phoning Fuller to, tell him about my visit to the jail, I lay down to rest.
I took a sleeping draught. I did not want to receive Donovan’s messages.
DECEMBER 12
At ten this morning the phone rang and, still under the influence of the drug, I answered. I had a good night’s rest. Even the strange line: “Amidst the mists…” which had accompanied my sleep for weeks, had not troubled me.
A Mr. Pulse was calling from the lobby. Fuller had told him to see me. He thought it would be more convenient to talk in my room. Could he come up?
I asked him to wait, had the barber sent up, and indulged in the luxury of being shaved. Then I dressed, and examined myself in the mirror, relaxed for the first time in months.
Suddenly my reflection became a transparent opacity; the sensation lasted only for a moment, but then Donovan’s brain took possession of me more strongly than ever.
I stared into the mirror, scrutinizing myself from head to foot as if I had never seen my reflection before. I breathed deep, moved my shoulders, without being actually aware of my body. I pinched my wrist with my fingers, but though the skin reddened I felt no pain.
Not walking like myself at all, but with a slight limp in my right leg, I crossed the room, picked up one of the Upman cigars, and began to smoke it.
As always, I was aware of everything I did, but for the first time I was a prisoner in my own body, with no power to do anything except what I was commanded.
I recalled the stages I had passed through during this experiment with Donovan’s brain. At first I had concentrated on Donovan’s orders, forcing myself to understand him. During the second phase I easily interpreted commands, and acted accordingly. Finally I had permitted the brain to direct my body.
Until now I was unable to resist. I had lost control completely!
The brain could walk my body in front of a car, throw it out of the window, put a bullet through my head with my own hands. I could only cry out from the despair of my imprisonment, but even the words my mouth formed were those the brain wanted to hear.
A wave of terror engulfed me as I realized I was like a man fastened in a machine which moves his hands and feet against his will.
The frightening sensation passed and I was free again. I felt the smoke of the cigar in my mouth, though I could not taste it. I stopped limping, and the dull pressure in the kidney area ceased, as if I had just recovered from an attack of nephritis and anuria.
When Donovan’s brain takes possession of my nervous system, it recreates the conditions of its own body the pains in the kidneys, the limp, the same tastes and distastes in food and tobacco. It may soon revert to drink!
Suddenly I remembered the Mr. Pulse waiting for me and phoned the desk clerk to send him up.
A few minutes later a huge man entered, filling the doorway with his bulging presence. Pulse stood over six feet tall. He wore his hair long like a musician’s in a Victorian comedy, and his fat face was set in a cushion of double chin. He looked affably at me with his eyes proptosed as one sees quite often in Graves’ disease.
Introducing himself, he swayed into the room like a hippopotamus. When he sat down, the chair disappeared under him.
He came straight to the point.
“Hinds will be tried next week,” he said. “I have studied the case.”
I had to strain to hear him, for with a voice in strange contrast to his bulk, he whispered thinly, as if afraid of being overheard. His hypertrophied thyroid was causing a pressure on the recurrent laryngeal nerve, which gave his voice a high pitch.
He expounded on his findings: “The jurors are influenced mostly by the impression they get of the accused, and less by the actual facts of the case. A man with a charming manner might receive easier punishment for the same crime than somebody else, like Hinds for instance, who does not bother to put on a good show. I am glad we have no women on this jury; they are guided mostly by their sympathies.”
Not a muscle of his fat face changed, but he moved his hands to make up for his lack of animation.
Pulse seemed to have studied the case thoroughly, and he quickly sketched a plan to save Hinds. Not once did he mention Fuller.
Three hundred names of potential jurors, False explained, were drawn at random from the voting lists and posted on a panel in the court house. Of these three hundred citizens more than two hundred would not care to serve as jurors; they could be discarded at once.
The rest had to be investigated.
Pulse opened his brief-case and took out a list.
“You see,” he whispered listlessly. “I used to work for Southern Tramway. We had minutest information about every juror. Too many unjust claims are brought against big companies, accident claims mostly, and if a friend of the plaintiff should be among the jurors, a lot of harm can be done. That’s why we kept files on everybody, or”—he smiled and showed small white teeth like a woman’s—“nearly everybody!”
“Do you still work for Southern Tramway?” I asked.
“Oh no. It doesn’t pay enough, but I have a copy of their files!”
He had already found out how many were unwilling to serve as jurors in the Hinds case. Here were the rest: sixty-seven names.
Among these were twenty-eight retired business men, former petty city officials, pensioned military men, all eager to serve just to make the three dollars a day.
“The prosecuting attorney likes men like these. They know the routine and the defense attorney cannot rattle them. We know all of them! Well, they can be approached!”
Small droplets of sweat dotted Pulse’s forehead, and his voice dropped lower.
“But the rest require some serious work! I can find only a few of their names in my files and must send out my men to inquire into the private affairs of these other would-be jurors. Most people have something in their lives—something they want to hide.”
His protruding eyes suddenly discovered the cigars on the table, and a flicker of interest crossed his face.
“Please help yourself,” I said. Immediately his hand shot out and he grabbed an Upman. For the first time he showed an emotion.
“Upman’s!” he exclaimed. “Dollar apiece!” And he went on talking with the same impersonal tone, but his attitude was cordial.
“Here’s an example. Last time one of the jurors, a new one to us, was an undertaker, married, about fifty years old. He had a pretty secretary who helped him run his outfit. We found out about his personal interest in the girl. Well, he was shocked when we told him what we knew. He would have hated to have the affair uncovered by the defense. So he accepted twenty-five hundred and we had a ‘pill in the box.’”
He inhaled the smoke with relish.
“A ‘pill in the box’ is a juror who is on the side of the defendant,” he explained. “It does not mean the juror has been suborned, but sometimes he is in a quandary himself how to cast his vote and this money helps him decide. It prevents him, too, from condemning an innocent man and being party to legal mu
rder!”
Pulse’s big eyes twinkled at me amusedly and he suddenly asked: “Well, in case we have to do something about all twelve jurors, are you prepared to put down that much?”
“I must talk to Mr. Fuller first,” I answered.
Pulse pursed his lips.
“The case can only be handled through me, as I am anonymous and your lawyer is a public figure, so to speak. You understand?” He spoke listlessly.
Fuller did not want to be mixed up in bribing jurors; he did not want to know anything about the arrangements.
“My fee will be five thousand dollars, and I cannot vouch for the jury’s decision,” Pulse added, and hid his face in a cloud of smoke.
I did not care how much money found its way from Donovan’s account into the pocket of Pulse’s tweed coat, but I wanted for once to produce some show of human emotion in that fat face.
“It’s a high price to pay with no guarantee of results!” I said.
Pulse hunched his fat shoulders. “The charge is first-degree murder, and the whole case is very delicate to handle. Consider how easy it will be for the district attorney. Cyril Hinds never worked at a job in his life. He hung out in pool halls with a questionable crowd. He owed money to everyone and stole it from his old mother, who scrubbed floors at the Biltmore Hotel. The cruel circumstances of her death! Well, doesn’t it sound like blackening the character of the accused with cheap exaggerated effects?”
“And why did he kill his mother?” I asked.
Pulse did not look surprised even at this question. “You should know the case better than I do or I would not be here. Hinds stole money from the old lady. He knew she would turn him over to the police this time. It was a little she had saved to bury her. People do things like that; if they have been poor all their lives they want a fine funeral. Maybe she would have gone to the police. To prevent that, Hinds hung around the hotel until she came out to go home. Then he ran over her. Anyway, that is how the district attorney will build up the case. Hit-and-run, with intent to murder.”
Pulse stood up as if shocked by his own story.
“Forty thousand is not too much, considering the case,” he murmured.
I took him to the door.
“You want it in cash?” I said.
“Of course,” he answered, but stopped suddenly and stared at me. His eyes proptosed from their sockets.
“He’s not your son?”
“Do I look as old as that?” I asked, astonished. An expression of strange, consternation crossed Pulse’s face.
“For a moment you did.”
DECEMBER 13
This morning I went to the hospital to have the cast removed.
Some actors, to play their roles more smoothly, fasten weights to their hands and feet during the daytime. When they take the weights off for the performance, they experience that same floating, featherlike sensation I had when the nurse cut off the twenty pounds of plaster.
I took a bath, the first time in weeks, and felt boundlessly happy. I discarded the oversized suit and put on one of my old ones.
My back, stiff at first, slowly regained some freedom of motion.
In the pocket of my suit I found the key Sternli had given me. I went to the California Merchants Bank. The sallow-faced teller with the small mustache saw me come in and disappeared at once, to return with the manager.
This man had resigned himself to my being the unorthodox customer I was, and on my request he led me straight to the safe-deposit vault.
After I had turned the combination to the number 114474, the box opened with the key.
It was empty except for a small envelope, which I put in my pocket.
In the street I opened it.
It was a receipt for eighteen hundred and thirty-three dollars and eighteen cents, written in Donovan’s handwriting and signed by Roger Hinds. The date was February 7. The place, San Juan, California.
I turned the paper over, but it gave me no clue why Donovan had kept it so carefully.
San Juan, a small town of about five thousand inhabitants, is the place where Donovan opened his mail-order business.
I put the paper in my wallet. Sternli might tell me more when he returned. I had a wire this morning saying he has contacted Geraldine Hinds.
Donovan’s chauffeur was waiting for me in the hotel lobby. Acting on inspiration, or a telepathic contact, I greeted him by his first name: “Hello, Lonza!”
He looked at me dumbfounded; he had never seen me before. Then he grinned all over his face as if I had cracked a joke.
We drove north on Ventura Boulevard toward Encino. I leaned back comfortably, smoking a cigar I did not enjoy.
The borderline between my consciousness and Donovan’s became blurred. I talked, but it was Donovan who made me talk. When I walked, this was still my own doing. Or did I only think it was? I had to concentrate hard to know if Donovan moved my hands or I did. But always my thoughts were clear.
At Encino we drove through a big wrought-iron gate, which seemed familiar to me.
We crossed a wide park with dry artificial lakes and empty aviaries. The garden looked forlorn, as if at the owner’s death the flowers had stopped blooming.
The car drove up to a sprawling Spanish building, with extensive patios and shady loggias. Most of the windows were shuttered or the blinds drawn.
In the big hall the furniture was hidden under dust covers. A lonely lamp burned in a niche. The house looked as deserted as the gardens.
The chauffeur led me into the library, where a huge log fire was burning, throwing lambent shadows over the paneled walls. Howard Donovan and his sister waited for me, but to my surprise Fuller, the lawyer, was with them.
“Hello, Cory.” Howard walked briskly up to me, his hand outstretched, but stopped with a questioning look on his face. He stared at my hand.
“Sorry,” I said, and threw the cigar into the fire. “I forgot. I should have left it outside.”
“It’s an Upman, isn’t it?” Howard said. “My father used to smoke that kind. Funny how a smell will stick in your nose!”
He took my arm amiably.
Fuller only nodded when I greeted him, withdrew to the farthest corner of the room, and busied himself looking at bocks. Mrs. Chloe Barton spoke my name, but made no move to give me her hand.
Howard walked over to the bar. “A drink, doctor?”
“Thank you, no!” I said.
“Only when nobody’s looking,” he laughed dryly, obviously thinking of his father. He spoke like a district attorney who wanted to wheedle the witness into good humor for the questioning.
Chloe sat in a corner, watching me. She seemed amused, but in a tense, neurotic way. She was strangely still and the expression in her dark eyes disconcerted me. She watched me with intense interest, drinking in every word of mine. That intensity irritated me. She seemed a woman about ready for a fit of hysterics.
I was surprised how her face had changed. The flesh seemed to have fallen away, and the skin was tightly drawn over the bones. She kept smiling at me, but she had the appearance rather of making a grimace.
We exchanged a few superficial remarks, which did not relieve the tension between us.
“Fuller! A whiskey?” Howard shouted across the room, and his question seemed designed to conceal his thoughts.
“Thank you, I’ve not finished this one,” Fuller mumbled, and went on turning pages.
Howard sat down beside me and jovially slapped my knee “How is old man Sternli?” he asked.
It was the opening shot of the attack. Fuller closed his book with a dull slap, put it back on the shelf and turned toward us, while Chloe lifted her folded hands to her cheek in an unnatural gesture. The hands were extremely thin, showing the bones through transparent skin.
“Sternli? He is all right,” I said indifferently.
“He is a good man with a remarkable memory. I’d have given him a job if he weren’t so nearly blind!” Howard hurried to explain.
“I
had an ophthalmologist examine his eyes for lenses.”
I did not mean to rebuke my host, but my reply must have sounded like it, for his face reddened. He did not expect to be reprimanded.
It was as if the brain were amusing itself while I looked on, remote and emotionless. I knew every question and answer beforehand, like listening to a well-known story, where every complication is the more enjoyed for being anticipated.
Howard went on talking, but it was evident what he was leading up to.
“So my father told you about Sternli before he died,” he said.
Fuller, at the window, made a gesture of impatience. He was irritated at Howard’s clumsy approach.
“Oh no, I told you before, your father did not talk. I read about his faithful secretary in the papers.” I took another cigar from my pocket and glanced at Fuller. My answer belied the story I had told him about Donovan’s advising me to see him, but the lawyer made no move to contradict me.
Howard became impatient. He was not accustomed to making haste slowly. His face contorted and he said sharply: “Let’s drop that pretense, Cory. Aren’t you getting tired of it?”
He got up and stepped back irritated. The smell of the Upman cigar exaggerated his growing dislike for me.
“Please be more implicit,” I helped him along.
Fuller suddenly took over, stepping closer to me.
“Mr. Donovan has made inquiries about you, Dr. Cory. We can stop fencing.”
“No doubt he has had detectives on my trail. That’s part of the family tradition!” I said smilingly.
“I am an old friend of this family,” Fuller replied, on his guard. “When you told me Mr. Donovan senior had sent you to me—and Howard informed me his father had died without leaving a will, and without having talked to anyone at the hour of his death—well, it was my duty to inform Howard and his sister of these contradictions in your story.”
He was already sure of my fifty thousand dollars. By telling Howard about me, he might bring more money his way. He was like Yocum, always out for more. But while Yocum was torn by conscience, Fuller had no such handicap.
