by Curt Siodmak
A police car drove up the street followed by a black limousine. Both cars stopped in front of the apartment house and two men went in, to return after a few minutes with the girl and her mother. Frightened by the strange abortive attempt on her life, the parents had asked for police protection.
Traveling slowly down the street, the police car had spotted Donovan. It stopped alongside.
Elaborately Donovan took an Upman from his pocket and lighted it.
“Do you live here?” the police officer called suspiciously through the window.
“No.” Donovan shook his head.
“What are you doing?” the policeman asked.
“Lighting a cigar!” Donovan answered, friendly.
One policeman stepped from the car, while the driver stayed ready to back him up in an emergency.
“Didn’t I see you around here yesterday?” The officer was looking the car over.
“No.” Donovan smiled.
“It was a coupé,” the driver called.
“Your license!” The officer stamped his heavy boot on the running board. Donovan took the wallet out of his pocket and opened it.
“Dr. Patrick Cory, Washington Junction, Arizona,” the officer read. He relaxed his suspicion. “What are you doing here, doc?”
“Going downtown to see my lawyer. But it’s early, so I stopped to smoke a cigar. Anything wrong with that?” Donovan answered dryly.
“No, nothing. But you’d better drive along,” the officer ordered cryptically.
Donovan pressed the accelerator slowly, cursing under his breath in the language I did not understand. In the back mirror he saw the officer was taking the license number.
His plan had failed.
On Sunset Boulevard Donovan stopped at a hardware store to buy a strong thin rope, a long heavy kitchen knife, and a trunk, which he had put in his car.
Fear gripped me again. What did he want with a knife and a rope? Whom did he intend to hide in that trunk?
He parked the car in front of the hotel.
Sitting in a chair in the lobby, Sternli waited. His kind old face beamed when he saw Donovan enter, and he hurried over with a happy smile.
“Dr. Cory!” Then he became aware of the change which had occurred in that face. “Are you ill?” He was deeply concerned.
Donovan looked at him with faint indignation. “Certainly not. No! What makes you think so? But you look rather dilapidated.”
Sternli looked at him stupidly. He was so contused that he brought his thick glasses closer to Donovan’s face to make sure he was talking to the right man.
Donovan spoke impatiently. “Did you see Geraldine Hinds? And that plumber in Seattle?”
Sternli answered slowly with a presentiment of evil. He apprehended that strange similarity to his former master, which was not found in a likeness of features, but in similarity of behavior. By the evidence of his eyes it was Dr. Patrick Cory to whom he spoke.
“I wrote a report. The cases are quite uncomplicated.”
“Give it to me.” Donovan held out his hand.
Sternli seemed surprised at Donovan’s urgency. He opened the brief-case and took out a few typewritten pages.
“Geraldine Hinds runs a boarding house in Reno. She is comparatively well off. But the plumber in Seattle is very poor. Well, with a little money they could both be made very happy.”
“Just give me the facts,” Donovan said gruffly.
He grabbed the papers and left the old man standing there alone.
“Send up your expense sheet. I’d like to know how much you spent on the trip,” he called back over his shoulder, limping away.
Sternli stared after him. His face looked haunted. He looked after Donovan, recognizing him for a ghost!
Donovan went quickly to his room, with the papers in his hand. He opened the door, limped over to the writing-desk, and pulled out the middle drawer.
He froze in his motion. My diary was not there!
He sat down for, a while, his head bowed, listening to a message only he could hear.
No doubt Janice had taken the diary as I wanted her to do.
Having learned by now the circumstances and the dangers, she would be careful not to expose herself. I was praying that she had gone beyond Donovan’s reach.
Suddenly Donovan gave a long gasp as if some terrifying message had reached him. Like a blind man he groped his way to the telephone. He sat on his bed, his hands on his lap, and talked to himself in his strange language.
The telephone rang. It was Fuller. “No. She hasn’t been here, Dr. Cory!”
“All right,” Donovan answered, impersonally.
“Everything is going fine,” Fuller added hastily, to cover his lie. “I’ve laid out a strong defense for Cyril Hinds. Saw him today. Tomorrow I’ll give him the answers to rehearse.”
“All right,” Donovan said, without expression.
“About that girl,” Fuller continued with forced optimism. “Well, I’ve decided she isn’t dangerous at all. She’s so scared already, the jury won’t take her seriously. She isn’t even sure she heard or saw now.”
“All right,” Donovan replied. I was aware he was not listening at all.
“Why don’t you come over and have lunch with me? We can discuss a few points I don’t want to mention on the phone. Pulse will be here…” Fuller hesitated. Pulse certainly had informed him of the attempted murder. Not mentioning it at all, Fuller must have some trick up his sleeve.
“All right,” Donovan said.
“And please bring Mrs. Cory with you. I would like to meet her.”
“All right,” Donovan put back the receiver.
He stood like a statue. Suddenly he began to tremble, swaying to and fro without changing his position. Only his hands opened and closed, burying the fingernails deep in the palms.
Staggering, he walked out of his room, limped down the corridor, and knocked at Janice’s door.
“Who is it?” she asked in a high, childish voice. She had not run to safety!
“Open up,” Donovan ordered.
“The door is unlocked,” she replied.
Janice sat on the bed, her feet tucked under her and my journal in her lap. With strangely quiet eyes she looked at Donovan as if she were trying to see right into his brain, but she made no attempt to hide the book she was holding.
“Hello.” She spoke in a light voice without changing her position. She seemed anxious to have him see the journal, which she had taken without his permission.
She hoped he would talk about it, but he only said: “I want you to come with me.”
She nodded, never taking her eyes off his face. A small frozen smile around her lips betrayed that she was not as much at ease as she wished to appear.
Ostentatiously she closed the diary, then crossed to put it in the desk, which she locked carefully. She picked up her handbag and hid the key in it.
Again she waited, hoping Donovan would talk to her.
I could not guess what Janice was thinking. She must have known that it was fatal to follow Donovan. She must also, having read my report, have known it was the brain, not I, that directed my body. But for some reason I could not divine, she ran headlong into danger.
“Let’s go.” She took her hat and coat and walked out into the corridor in front of Donovan.
If only I could have held her back! She was going to her death! Janice trusted her own strength foolishly. There was not strength enough in anyone to resist Donovan.
As she passed the desk, she dropped her key and told the clerk she would be back soon.
Donovan walked to the car and she followed him to the door.
“Where did you get the Buick?” she asked, hesitating a moment as if to gain a small respite.
“Rented,” Donovan murmured.
She stepped inside. Donovan drove off.
On Highland Avenue he turned north.
“Where are we going?” Janice asked. Her voice was calm.
“I hav
e to talk to you,” he said, as if that were sufficient answer to her question.
On Woodrow Wilson Drive he turned into the hills, and up an unpaved road, then stopped the car on a wide deserted plateau where years ago a real-estate agent had planned to build a big hotel.
Like a huge spider’s web the town sprawled in all directions. The wind carried up the subdued hum of the busy city. Cars hooted, the street cars thundered, all far away and mixed with a deep murmur as of thousands of voices.
The horizon was pale blue where the land met the ocean, and dark oil derricks stood on their thin legs against the sky.
Donovan cut off the engine, slowly turned his head, and looked at the trunk in the rear seat, then turned back like an automaton.
Janice followed his movement, and I was aware that all the time she had realized her danger. But she had never run away from anything, and she did not run away from this moment either.
“Why do you want to kill me?” she asked quietly, almost curiously.
“I can’t let anybody stand in my way,” Donovan murmured, but turned his face aside, not to meet her eyes. “The world is against me. Everybody is against me.” There was no bitterness in his voice, and he spoke without emotion, as if he related plain facts.“Nobody is against you,” Janice said. She put her hand on his shoulder firmly, to make him look at her. “You always saw the world in the wrong focus. All your life you believed people were against you, and it was not true. Believe me! It was just an obsession. You confused cause and effect.”
Donovan listened. For the first time someone talked to him so straightforwardly. He seemed astonished and interested. This was what Janice wanted to try, attacking Donovan with the truth. She went on talking to that monster believing she could approach him with logic.
I saw her danger, and her gallant useless sacrifices.
“All your life it was you who attacked people first,” Janice continued. “And when they fought back—sometimes for their lives—you were amazed. You considered yourself attacked without reason. Whoever opposed you wronged you. You never understood that one’s desires must be controlled. Life is a mutual compromise. If you would only understand that simple law, which makes it possible for society to exist, you would not have been so unhappy. Nobody ever wanted to harm you.”
He listened to her plea, but he did not understand. He was emotionless, like a road machine which pushes boulders out of its way.
Janice swayed a little and her eyes became vacant. With all her will-power and love she was trying to tip the scale of this insane mind.
“If you would only live, the love would come back to you,” Janice said.
She saw me, Patrick, sitting beside her. She only believed that Donovan’s and my personalities had become confused. Now she wanted Donovan to disappear and Patrick to answer. She believed her will and mine, united, were strong enough to break that freakish telepathic paralysis which robbed me of the use of my own sensory system.
She knew I was listening and suddenly, feeling that she fought a losing battle, she appealed to me directly: “Patrick! You can be free if you have faith. Help me!”
“I am not Patrick,” Donovan said.
In his eyes she must have read her doom. Donovan muttered again, swallowing half of his words. There was desperation in his expression, and rage against Janice.
“Why do you interfere with me? You want to make me unhappy, as all of them made me unhappy. Everybody is against me. But you won’t stop me!”
He raised his hands and for a moment Janice trembled in a vague, horrible fear.
“No,” she said.
She seemed to diminish in stature, but still she did not move.
Donovan’s hands shot out, but only got hold of her coat. She had pushed the door open and jumped out of the car. She ran.
She did not shout for help.
Then she stopped and waited.
Donovan followed her slowly.
She looked like a child, her brown hair swept by the strong loud wind that blew gray dust over the flat hilltop.
He must have looked like a lunatic as he closed in on her. His right hand held the knife. The other swung the rope.
Janice did not retreat. She held him with her steady blue eyes as if she could will him to keep his distance.
When he lifted the knife, she hit his wrist with the flat of her hand. As a nurse she had been trained to defend herself against the insane.
I cried out her name, but I could not make her hear. I, who wanted to stop that beast, would have to look on at the murder!
She made him drop the knife, but he lashed her across the face with the rope, and as she staggered, he caught her and grabbed her throat with his right hand. She was no match for him.
I stammered a prayer. “Faith!” Janice had said.
I could not think clearly any more. I was in a burning hell, staring into her thin helpless face, as my hand bent her head back to the ground.
Suddenly I was conscious of the muscles of my shoulders and the pain in my wrist where Janice had hit. I was breathing, moving. Like the tide running off from a steep beach, Donovan’s personality flowed away, and I, Patrick Cory, returned into my own body!
I released her throat. When the grip relaxed, she did not faint. I held her in my arms, looking into her poor, pale face. Her eyes, still steady and defiant, met mine, and in their depths I saw a fear that vanished.
She must have recognized me instantly, for she gasped my name and closed her arms around me.
I lifted her up and kissed her. I stammered, not knowing what I said. I only knew I was free.
We sank down on the dusty ground together, both exhausted. She held me tight, her head close to my chest as if she were listening to my heart beat.
We could not talk.
Slowly my senses returned, and I lifted her to her feet. “Quick!” I said in terror. “Take the car and drive away. Before he returns!”
She looked into my eyes and, prompted by her clairvoyance, she said with a smile: “He will never come back.”
I drove to the highway.
While dozens of cars passed us, we stopped, too exhausted to move, waiting for our strength to return.
At the next service station I put through a long-distance call to Washington Junction.
I heard the telephone ring for a long time, but Schratt did not answer.
MAY 20
In front of me lie a few handwritten pages, a report by Schratt. Janice brought it in today. She did not want to give it to me before, but she thinks I should read it now.
When I look out of my room—Janice has pushed the bed to the window—I can see the garden of the Phoenix hospital with its palm trees. Convalescents wander along the narrow garden paths. Some just sit in the sun, some are still in wheel chairs.
In a few days I will be down there too.
I shall have some difficulty reading Schratt’s report. His writing is hieroglyphic, jotted down in terrific haste. Sometimes he forgot to date the entry.
Janice offered to transcribe it, but I wanted to read it from Schratt’s own hand.
Schratt wrote:
NOVEMBER 22
The futility of psychology to account for mental reactions is due to an attempt to explain everything in terms of consciousness. Donovan’s actions cannot be judged that way. His sphere of mind is not coextensive with the sphere of his consciousness. His thought process is an imperfect, disjointed series of feelings, all pointing to an abstract goal.
He is insane, measured by the common conception, and he must be treated as an incurable lunatic. Patrick’s method of trying to explore this mind, which is not rational, can end only in disaster.
The borderline between lunacy and genius is not to be precisely defined, but it is my contention that exactly at the moment Donovan’s brain began to influence Patrick’s Patrick too crossed that borderline. He cannot be considered a normal person. A good scientist should have been aware of his own limitations, and not have transgressed into the une
xplorable. Deluded by his own seeming ingeniousness, Patrick cannot see facts clearly any longer.
Granting that ideas are the sole reality in experimentation, their practical use has to be restrained.
Watching and weighing this dangerous experiment, I see clearly now that nothing valuable has been added to Donovan’s brain. Only its bad concepts, its criminal instincts, its undesirable reflexes have been strengthened, until they have reached monstrous proportions.
For years I have known the dangers latent in Patrick’s impetuous desire for dangerous experiments. Having warned him frequently, I have only one course left; I must interfere with the progress of this experiment before it is too late.
Patrick’s intelligence is superior to mine. I cannot fight him with arguments or reasons. To stop him, I shall have to deceive him.
The moment of my decision came when Patrick tried to kill me, following a telepathic order of this insane piece of flesh which he keeps preserved in the vessel.
Afterward it was not difficult to convince him I honestly wanted to assist him. The brain itself helped to persuade him to go.
Patrick left Washington Junction on the 21st of November.
I am in charge of the brain. Truly an irony. It appointed its own killer! But at that time the brain could not read my thoughts. Since then it has gained so much power I would not dare suggest my help at this point.
To protect myself from giving away my intention to the brain, I use a very simple trick. I remember a silly tongue twister I learned as a child. My mother practiced it with me to cure me of a lisp. Now I repeat the lines incessantly whenever the lamp is burning and the brain awake. “Amidst the mists and coldest frosts he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghost!”
While I say this sentence continuously, no thought can possibly enter my brain.
I have connected a buzzer with the lamp to warn me if I should ever overlook the light and go on writing when the brain is awake.
