The Mind Thing

by Fredric Brown

  Doc smiled and tamped his pipe to relight it. “What would you say, Miss Talley, to six suicides, two human and four animal, starting with that of the field mouse, which apparently forced Tommy to kill it by attacking him? What would you say to the apparent suicides of the mouse and a dog—the Hoffman dog—in connection with that of Tommy Hoffman? And the apparent suicides of an owl and a cat—the Gross cat—in connection with that of Siegfried Gross? Not to mention the minor mystery—or is it minor?—of the disappearance from Mrs. Gross’s refrigerator, on the night her husband killed himself, of a quart of soup stock and a bowl of gravy?”

  Miss Talley’s eyes were wide, her face pale with—with what? Doc studied it and decided that it was excitement, not fear.

  She said very quietly, “Dr. Staunton, if you’re not—if those things are true, you’d better start dictating before I explode with curiosity.” She picked up her pencil, opened the shorthand notebook.

  Doc lighted his pipe again and started pacing and dictating. Not steadily, of course; sometimes there were minutes between sentences, since he wanted everything in sequence and in detail, coldly factual and without sensationalism or exaggeration. It took him an hour and a half, making the time a few minutes after three o’clock, to finish his description of the first three deaths and the negative rabies report from the laboratory in Green Bay.

  He sat down across from Miss Talley and knocked out his pipe, which he’d refilled twice and relighted at least a score of times during his pacing. “Think we’d better rest a few minutes before I tackle the Gross case,” he said. “I must have walked a good two miles and you must be getting writer’s cramp.”

  Miss Talley shook her head. “I’m not, but I suppose you do deserve a rest. We’re just getting to the really new part, for me. I knew everything about Tommy, up to the point where you ran over the dog. Almost everything about Mr. Gross will be new to me.”

  “Give me ten minutes, Miss Talley. And meanwhile shall we have another glass of beer?”

  Miss Talley demurred at first, but let him talk her into it. After their first sips, she asked, “How many copies of this will you want?”

  “Three,” Doc said. “One for myself and two I’m going in send to friends of mine for their opinions. One is a top research physician; I’m going to ask him if there’s any possibility of the existence of a rare disease communicable, as is rabies, from animal to man and vice versa, which could lead to insanity and suicidal behavior. The other friend is an excellent mathematician; his speciality is symbolic logic, but he knows actuarial math too, and has cracked some pretty tough problems in it. I want him to quote me the odds on this series of events being coincidental as against interconnected. Later, probably not today, I’ll dictate a letter to each of them to go with his copy of the statement.”

  “Would you mind if I make an extra copy for myself, Doctor?”

  “Not at all, Miss Talley.”

  She smiled. “Wonderful. I would have made myself a copy anyway, but it’s nicer to be able to do it with permission.”

  Doc laughed. He was finding Miss Talley’s wide-open mind and curiosity very stimulating, after his failure to be able to convince the sheriff that his investigation, if one could call it that, wasn’t even scratching the surface of events. And he liked her honesty in admitting she’d have made herself a copy even without his permission. In fact, he liked Miss Talley.

  He was even beginning to think of propositioning her. His department’s budget at M. I. T. had been increased for next year to include provision, for the first time, for a full-time secretary and record clerk. If he could get her in on his recommendation she’d be ideal for the job. It would pay at least as much as she could be making here and she was certainly wasted in teaching high school English in a small town. But he’d wait a while and be sure before mentioning the possibility to her. There was no hurry.

  When their beer was finished Doc started pacing and dictating again. He finished the job at half past four, said, “That’s all, Miss Talley,” and sank into the chair. “Give me a few minutes to rest and I’ll drive you home.”

  “You mean that’s all? Or that’s all for today? I thought you were going to go into your deductions from the facts.”

  “I’ve changed my mind,” Doc said. “For one thing, I don’t know what my deductions are, not surely enough to put them down. Besides, for the purpose for which I intend this, it would be wrong for me to draw conclusions. The two friends I mentioned, the medico and the mathematician, should have just the facts and draw their own conclusions without being influenced by mine, such as they are. Miss Talley, I have only wild ideas—and I can’t believe any of them.”

  “I see your point. But it shouldn’t take you long to dictate the two covering letters, should it? Why not get them out of the way today, so when I turn over the statements to you the letters will be with them, and you can mail them right away?”

  “It makes sense, but I’m afraid I’m just not up to giving any more dictation today. Tell you what—when I drop around to your place to pick up the statements I’ll dictate the two letters. They won’t be long and you can type them while I’m reading over what I’ve just dictated, for any corrections. And if you’ll address envelopes too, I can mail them while I’m in town. Will that be all right?”

  “That will be fine.” Miss Talley leafed back quickly through her notebook to see how many pages she had filled. “I think this is just about two full days’ typing. And today is Tuesday. I think I can promise to have this ready for you any time after noon on Thursday, if I work evenings too.”

  “Do you usually work evenings?”

  “Ordinarily I don’t. But this isn’t work—and I’m not going to take any pay for it, so that makes it different. Doctor, having the opportunity to do this is the most exciting and fascinating thing that’s ever happened to me. And I don’t need the money. So if you’re going to insist on paying me, you’ve wasted an afternoon. I’ll type myself a copy from these notes, but you’ll have to dictate them all over to someone else for your copies.”

  Doc sighed. He realized that she meant what she said and that there was no use in arguing. His only recourse would be to send her a present from Boston after he was back there so she couldn’t refuse it. Unless, of course, she did want and could get the secretarial job he had in mind for her there; in that case he’d make it up to her some other way.

  “Very well, Miss Talley. But that makes you my partner in this, and I may ask you to do even more.”

  “I’ll be glad to. What did you have in mind?”

  “You might keep your ear to the ground for a while, in town. I usually get in once a day—at least since I got interested the day of the Hoffman boy’s inquest—so if anything important happens I’ll hear about it without too much delay, as I heard about the Gross suicide a few days ago. But, short of another human death, something interesting might happen without my hearing of it, something not necessarily spectacular in itself but that just might fit in with whatever I—I mean we—are investigating. You know as much as I do now, so your judgment would be as good as mine as to what might be worth reporting.”

  “I’ll be more than glad to do that. But how shall I get in touch with you if I learn anything? You don’t have a telephone this far out, do you?”

  “No, I haven’t. And now I’m sorry for the first time. But the one place I invariably go in town is the post office, to pick up my mail, if any. If you leave a message with the postmaster for me to phone you I’ll be sure to get it. Well, everything’s settled then and I’ll see you early Thursday afternoon at your place. I’m rested now. Are you ready?”

  She put notebook and pencil in her handbag and they left by the front door and went to the station wagon. Doc started the engine and threw the car into gear; he was just about to release the clutch when Miss Talley said, “Oh, I was going to ask you to introduce me to your cat, but I forgot. It doesn’t matter.”

  Doc kept his foot on the clutch pedal and turned to her. �
�Cat?” he said. “Miss Talley, I don’t have a cat. Do you mean you saw one in the house?”

  “I—why, I thought I did. I was sure at the time, but—”

  Doc put the shift lever back in neutral and turned off the ignition. “Must be a stray cat that got in somehow,” he said. “If you don’t mind waiting, I’ll check. Might as well let it out so it can go home, if it’s got a home.”

  He got out of the car and let himself back into the house, closing the door behind him. He made a quick round of the lower floor, seeing no cat. Nor any open window through which a cat could have come and left. Several windows were open an inch or two, but none wide enough for a cat larger than a small kitten to get through—and besides, a kitten couldn’t jump up to a window ledge. The cellar door was closed and had been that way all day. He went upstairs. Again no cat was in sight, although he didn’t look under beds or behind the bathtub or other possible hiding places. The only window open upstairs was in the bedroom he slept in.

  He went to the open window and looked out speculatively at a tree branch that came close to it, but considerably above the level of the sill. He leaned out and tugged lightly at the end of the branch; it bent downward easily. Yes, even a small cat’s weight could bend that branch down so it might be able to jump to the window sill. But it could never get out that way. Nor, he decided, after looking down, by jumping down. Onto soft grass, just possibly, but the ground under the window was hard-baked and stone-studded. A cat jumping that far to such a surface would be, if not killed, too seriously injured to be able to get away.

  But it came to him suddenly that a cat, if there was one in the house, just might want to die; the Gross’s cat had scared to want to be killed, and the other animals—

  He closed the window, went downstairs and left the house. If there was a cat inside now, it would still be there when he got back and he’d worry about it then.

  He got back in the car, started it, and backed it around. “I didn’t see a cat, Miss Talley,” he said. “Are you sure you saw one? And just when and where?”

  “I thought I was sure at the time, but I suppose it could have been a momentary optical illusion. It was while you were dictating; or rather, while you were pausing between sentences. I looked up, and saw, or thought I saw, the head of a cat sticking around the corner of the hallway passage leading to the kitchen alongside the stairs. I didn’t say anything or call to it because I didn’t want to interrupt your train of thought. Then you started dictating again, and when I looked that way again, it was gone.”

  She paused a moment. “Now that I think back, though, I’m sure I must have imagined seeing it. It was just a quick momentary glance and then I looked back at my notebook as you started talking. It’s very easy to imagine something under those circumstances.”

  “I suppose so,” Doc said, making his voice easier than he felt. “Well, if I do find a cat there, I’ll let you know.”

  For a few minutes they rode in silence and then Miss Talley said, “Doctor, you don’t really believe there could be—a disease, a contagious disease, that could pass from man to animal and vice versa and—make its victims insanely suicidal?”

  “I’ll admit I’ve never heard of one, so it would have to be pretty rare.”

  “Pretty rare—but pretty well known just because it would be so unusual. If it were known at all, one of us would certainly have heard or read of it somewhere, sometime.”

  “I’m afraid that’s rather probable. But, Miss Talley, aside from that possibility—or sheer coincidence—can you think of any other explanation?”

  “Certainly I can. Don’t you remember about the Gadardene swine, Doctor?”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Gadardene swine…” Doc said musingly. “They sound familiar, but I’m afraid I can’t place them.”

  “In the Bible,” Miss Talley said. “Book of Luke, I think. Christ came upon a man who was possessed by devils, and ordered them to leave him. There was a herd of swine nearby. Let’s see; I think I can quote the crucial verse: ‘Then went the devils out of the man, and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the lake, and were choked.’ ”

  Doc groaned softly. “Miss Talley, don’t tell me you believe in demoniac possession. Please.”

  “Of course I don’t. That is, I don’t believe in demons. But possession—”

  “Possession by what, then? I’m a materialist, Miss Talley. I’ll admit that the Rhine experiments and some other things have shaken me just a little bit, enough so I don’t dogmatically deny the possibility of wild talents like telepathy and telekinesis. And of course hypnosis and post-hypnotic suggestion are fully accepted scientifically. But not even the wildest enthusiast for parapsychology has suggested that one mind can take over another and control it from inside.”

  “One human mind,” said Miss Talley firmly. “There are billions of planets besides Earth in the universe, and millions of them must be inhabited. How do we know what capabilities and limitations a non-human mind might have? How do we know what an alien, an extraterrestrial, might be able to do?”

  “Hmmm,” said Doc. Wondering for a moment if Miss Talley was joking, he moved his head far enough to be able to see her face in the rear vision mirror. Her eyes looked excited, the rest of her face was calm.

  She said, “Aren’t we working right now to get men onto other planets? What makes you think we’re the most advanced race in the universe? How do you know there isn’t an alien here?”

  “Hmmm,” said Doc. “I suppose I don’t, but then again I don’t know that there is. But why an alien, instead of aliens?”

  “Because only one person or animal has been—I’ll call it possessed, for lack of a better word—at a time. The field mouse, then Tommy after the field mouse was dead, the hound after Tommy was dead, the owl after the hound was dead, the cat— You see what I mean, Doctor. Never two at any one time. And that’s why he makes his hosts commit suicide, so he can get his mind back out of them and be free to take a different host.”

  Something seemed to prickle between Doc’s shoulder blades. But he said, “You certainly have an imagination, Miss Talley. Possibly I should read science fiction instead of mysteries.”

  “Possibly you should. But with what’s happening, possibly you won’t have to, to have your imagination stimulated. If there is a cat at your place, maybe it’s host to an alien who was spying on us. You might ask him.”

  Doc laughed. “And then kill the cat so the alien can take me over, eh? If that happens, I’ll let you know, Miss Talley.”

  But after he’d dropped her off at her little house, his expression was thoughtful and a little worried as he drove home. It was ridiculous, of course, but what if—?

  He let himself in the door carefully, making sure nothing got out past him. He saw nothing, heard nothing, out of the ordinary.

  He leaned against the inside of the door, filled his pipe with tobacco and lighted it.

  He went into the living room and sat down in his favorite chair, a leather upholstered Morris. Backed against the biggest window and with a lamp standing beside it, it afforded excellent light for reading either by day or by night. A paper-back mystery novel lay open on one arm of the chair, but he didn’t pick it up.

  Should he search the house? It would be a long and tedious job to look everywhere a cat might hide. And besides, down-stairs here an intelligent cat wouldn’t even have to hide, since there was no door in the doorway between living room and kitchen, or in the doorway between the kitchen and the hallway that led to the front door and back to the living room again. It could simply move from room to room ahead of him and stay out of his sight that way. Right now it could be sitting in the kitchen. And if it heard him heading that way it could come back here by way of the hall—or through the kitchen-living room door if he went by the hallway. It could move more silently than he could and would have better hearing.

  That is, if there was a cat.

  And if there was, why shoul
dn’t it be a perfectly ordinary cat, here for perfectly good catlike reasons? Well… certainly it wasn’t very usual for a cat to enter a house, without good reason at least, by making what must have been a fairly dangerous jump from a tree branch to an upstairs window. And another thing, why would it keep itself so well and thoroughly hidden for so long, all the time he’d been dictating?

  His pipe had burned out and he knocked the dottle out of it and wondered if he should get himself something to eat, or drive into town for something. Somehow he didn’t feel like making dinner for himself.

  But the cat…?

  Suddenly he thought of a way of telling, on return, whether or not there was a cat here in the house—at least, if it moved around and didn’t stay hidden in one place. Along with the pots and pans in one of the cupboards there was a flour sifter; he’d used it a few times to flour fish when he was going to fry them. He got it now and put a little flour in it. Then he went to the foot of the stairs and over the bottom few steps scattered a thin, almost invisible film of flour, not turning the handle of the sifter but merely tapping the side of it lightly with one finger as he moved it. He did the same thing in the middle of the hallway, and at the doorway between the living room and the kitchen.

  Then, so he wouldn’t have to walk through any of the cat-traps he had just set, he left by the back door and drove into town.

  He ate at the place where he knew he’d be served by the most talkative waitress in town. She lived up to her billing—but there was no new suicide, nothing new in the form of strange actions of either wild or domestic animals. The most exciting thing that had happened in the past twenty-four hours had been a fire at Smalley’s Feed Store; the damage had been slight and the cause had been traced to defective wiring.

  No pigs had sprouted wings; no dogs had been seen climbing telephone poles. He’d asked about those points specifically, not so much to get a laugh—although he had—but because they’d make her remember if she had heard any stories about animals behaving unnaturally.