Master of Chaos (The Harry Stubbs Adventures Book 4)

by David Hambling

  There were a couple of tables occupied by an untidy arrangement of wooden boxes connected by wires. The room was wired for electricity, and a long cable snaked across the room to the outlet socket.

  “Secure Jenkins into this one, will you.” Easton patted an armchair fitted with stout leather straps for the restraint of patients’ arms and legs.

  Jenkins gave me a look of alarm, as though he were an animal entering the slaughterhouse, scenting its own blood. Easton ignored him, busying himself with the equipment.

  “This is all part of the procedure,” I told him as I buckled up the straps. “You sit here now and listen to what the doctor says.”

  “Is he secure?”

  I nodded affirmation.

  Dr Easton, clucking to himself, leaned over Jenkins, attaching wires to his ears and wrists with clips. “There we are,” he said.

  “What is this?” asked Jenkins.

  “This is the long-overdue first step on your road to recovery, Mr Jenkins,” said Easton. He pulled up a chair and paged through a sheaf of handwritten notes.

  “You sit there, Stubbs,” he said. “I will need you to operate the apparatus for me while I conduct the interview.”

  “I’m afraid I’m not familiar with this equipment,” I said, surveying the dials and Bakelite knobs.

  “There’s nothing to it,” he said. “You just turn that knob when I tell you to. See the numbers round the circumference here? That’s the setting. And throw that switch”—a big wooden handle like the ones in a railway signal box—”when I tell you to. Is that clear?”

  “Quite clear, Dr Easton.”

  “What do I do, Doctor?” asked Jenkins.

  “You will take your medicine,” said Dr Easton. “It is an electrical medicine, administered through these wires. It will correct those defects in your brain which have muddled your thinking.”

  “How does it do that?” asked Jenkins. He was stalling for time, trying to keep the doctor talking.

  “Well… let’s see, shall we?” said Easton. “I have a list of questions written here, and I’d like you to answer them as quickly and honestly as you can.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Quickly and honestly.” He looked intently at Jenkins. “First question—why are you here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Easton shook his head and made an X on the page in front of him.

  “This is Faradisation therapy,” said Easton. “The workings of the brain are electrical in nature. By applying electricity, we work to correct the faulty brainwaves which are causing your condition. Stubbs, turn the dial to forty volts and throw the switch, if you please.”

  The equipment was comprised of a series of mahogany boxes, some with protruding glass domes and tubes, and interconnected wires. More wires went to the dials and meters in front of me, and to the connections on Jenkins’s arms. The control in front of me was simple enough, though, and Easton could have managed it himself. But for some reason that was not how it was done.

  “Dial set to forty volts,” I affirmed.

  “Excellent. Now pull the switch,” Easton ordered.

  With some trepidation, I complied. Jenkins jerked violently, throwing himself backwards and forwards in the chair, an agonised expression on his face. After a few seconds, Easton signalled for me to turn it off again.

  “God alive!” said Jenkins.

  “It seems to be in working order,” said Easton, in the tone of one who has set off a firework more powerful than he had realised but does not wish to alarm the spectators. “I should mention that there is a danger of biting your tongue, Mr Jenkins. It’s best to try and keep your mouth shut when the current is being applied.”

  “It hurts,” said Jenkins.

  “Yes, that’s quite normal,” said Easton, nodding. “Now then, let’s try the second question. Do you believe you belong in this institution?”

  “No, I don’t,” said Jenkins.

  “Another clearly erroneous belief.” Easton slashed a large X on the paper in front of him next to the question. “Set the dial to sixty volts and activate.”

  I hesitated.

  “Come on Stubbs, we haven’t got all day.”

  This time there was an audible crackling sound from the machinery. Jenkins thrashed about again, and a groan escaped his lips as the current racked him. Easton watched with professional detachment and made a small note, then held up his hand to me. I cut the electricity at once.

  “Are you starting to feel any different, Jenkins?”

  Jenkins took a second to recover himself before replying warily. “I-I don’t know. I don’t like this. It’s very painful.”

  “Medicine is rarely pleasant,” said Easton complacently. “You see, sometimes it has to have a nasty taste if it’s to be effective. Your brain is set in the wrong pattern; we must tear up that pattern and replace it with something healthy. Now, tell me, do you think people are conspiring against you?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “It’s a simple enough question,” said Easton. “Do you believe that people are talking about you behind your back, watching you, plotting against you?”

  “I don’t know.” Jenkins was wary of giving the wrong answer, not sure which way to go.

  “You’ve said your wife was ‘plotting against you’—your exact words,” said Easton. “Many times.”

  “I thought she was,” said Jenkins. “But…”

  “I see.” H slashed another X on the page. “Please continue, Stubbs—one hundred volts.”

  That did not seem fair. Jenkins sounded as though he had doubts, as though he was ready to recant, only he had not expressed himself very clearly. “But he didn’t say yes,” I offered. “I think he means no.”

  “We have to follow the protocol, or the whole thing is useless.” He tapped the paper in front of him with his pen. “The treatment requires you to continue. One hundred volts.”

  With a regretful look at Jenkins, I turned the dial and threw the switch. The boxes crackled and spat, and current flowed. Jenkins jumped like a landed fish, arched his back, then stayed in that position. Long seconds passed, and it seemed like an eternity before Easton, who was silently counting off the seconds to himself, raised his hand for me to stop.

  At the end, Jenkins slumped forward, breathing heavily but not moving or raising his head.

  The setup was starting to make some sense to me. Easton could not have inflicted the shocks himself, but he could bring himself to do it by proxy. In persuading me to throw the switch, he had to persuade himself. And I, compelled by his authority, had to comply. I was concerned though about how much farther up the scale we would progress.

  There was a red band on the dial at the setting for a hundred and twenty volts, and the voltages continued all the way up to a hundred and fifty. The word DANGER was spelled out along the length of the red band. I resolved that I would not turn the voltage up any higher, not after seeing the effects of the hundred-volt jolt.

  “Some signs of positive response in the patient,” said Easton, speaking to me. “It’s not easy, but it gets results. You can have madness, or you can have treatment. A bitter pill, but a potent one. We have no choice but to continue. Now, Jenkins—can you hear me, Jenkins?”

  Jenkins did not respond.

  “I’m not sure if he’s conscious,” I said.

  “His conscious mind is not necessary for the process,” said Dr Easton. “Jenkins, do you think that your neighbours were trying to poison you?”

  We heard Jenkins breathe, in and out, twice, and Easton looked up at me.

  “One hundred and—”

  “No,” said Jenkins weakly, still without lifting his head or opening his eyes, and Easton smiled.

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “I’m sure,” said Jenkins, still not moving, his voice no more than a mumble. He swallowed and spoke up. “They never tried to poison me. I imagined it. It’s all my own fancy, a mania that was all in my head. Just paranoia
. My neighbours are perfectly decent people. They wouldn’t hurt anybody. I have paranoid delusions of persecution.”

  Those were the words and phrases that the doctors always used when they were talking to him. I never knew he even heard them, but they must have been stored away somewhere.

  Dr Easton made some notes and waited to see if Jenkins would say any more.

  “I imagined the whole thing,” said Jenkins. He opened his eyes to appeal to Easton. “Made something out of nothing. They never tried to poison me. Nobody tried to poison me. Not out there, or in here, either.”

  Easton was pleased. These were the answers he wanted to hear. A patient was recovering before his eyes—or, at any rate, had been coerced into saying what the doctor wanted him to say. From Easton’s perspective, compliance may have been the same as recovery.

  “Very good,” he said, turning to me. “Clearly the treatment is beginning to work! Set to one hundred and thirty volts, and throw the switch, Stubbs.”

  “Is it really—”

  “It’s the protocol. You have no other choice but to continue,” he said.

  “Yes, Dr Easton,” I said, but I hesitated a long second before I threw the switch.

  Apart from a loud click, nothing happened. No electrical sizzling, and Jenkins remained slumped as before. I worked the switch to and fro a few times, to no effect.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Easton.

  “The fuse has probably blown because of the high voltage,” I said. “The plug in here isn’t meant for heavy-duty equipment. It’s only rated for lamps, wireless sets, and that sort of thing.”

  “Oh, that is a shame,” said Easton, though he did not sound so very disappointed. Fixing a main fuse would mean calling out the electrician; it was not something any of us was qualified to deal with. “There isn’t another room in this section with an electricity supply, is there?”

  “The patients’ common room might have one,” I said.

  “Oh well,” he said, knowing as I did that we could hardly clear the place on short notice and move the whole apparatus over. “I think we’ve made excellent progress for one day, don’t you? Stubbs, disconnect Jenkins and take him back to the ward.”

  There was something more beneath Easton’s hail-fellow-well-met demeanour. He was pleased at the success, but beneath the surface he seemed as alarmed as I was at the torture we had inflicted. He had been compelled, as was I, to carry it out.

  Dr Beltov was a stickler, but he was humane. Or so he seemed. Donnelly had called him a slave to science, unable to resist its remorseless logic. If science said that electrocution was a proven, effective way of curing patients, Beltov would obey science, according to Donnelly.

  Jenkins did not say a word to me the whole way back. I patted his shoulder as I left, but he shrank away from my touch.

  I did not tell him the reason the treatment had ended was not the fuse. While Dr Easton had been looking at his notes, I had stealthily tugged the leads to one of the boxes until I heard them snap inside. The sabotage would be discovered soon enough, but it had bought Jenkins and me both a little time.

  Chapter Twelve: Stormy Seas

  To my great frustration, I did not have a minute to myself the rest of the day. Circumstances seemed to conspire against me, and every time it looked like I might be able to get a break to confer with Dr Beltov, there was another interruption.

  My problems were trivial ones, though, within the larger context. The triggering event was the sudden death of Hooper, the word-tangled patient who had always seemed so amiable. He had said the end is nigh, and it was for him.

  He had shown increasing levels of disturbance and had been placed in the segregation section. Restraint had been applied. Hooper had appeared to calm down, but in the interval between checks he had killed himself. His arms and legs had been securely fastened, but he had thrashed about violently enough to snap his own neck.

  This form of self-destruction could not have been anticipated. In the experience of all the attendants, some who had been working in asylums for twenty years, it was unprecedented. Miller, who had been on duty, was distressed but resigned. “It’s like a curse on me,” he said. I had forgotten how he had been the first to discover Gillespy, likewise dead in one of the segregation cells.

  As with Gillespy, there was no question of murder: Hooper had been in a locked cell. But I could not help but recall Ryan’s remark that a tiger will kill a victim by breaking its neck.

  They told me after Gillespy that deaths always put a strain on the place and raise the psychic temperature. Patients became unruly, and accidents happened. Something occurred during a hydrotherapy session that Vanstone was supervising, and he came back with red welts across his face which he did not wish to discuss. The patient, Collier, was evidently distressed as well and had to be put in segregation, requiring assistance, all of which took up more time.

  Then, I was drafted to supervise a basket-weaving session for a dozen of the patients; Miller was rostered for it, but he was being given the third degree by Beltov on the circumstances surrounding Hooper’s death. Miller was co-operative, but I doubted whether the speed or details of his answers would be sufficient for the exacting doctor, and it was likely to be a long session.

  Tempers were frayed, and that made everything worse. Even Donnelly was talking about rubber truncheons and sedating the lot of them, and Miller’s jokes wore thin indeed.

  I did glean one piece of information. FitzRoy was among the group of basket weavers; the royal personage found this occupation relaxing. No stranger, I suppose, than our real king, who was said to spend his spare hours engaged in philately, endlessly sticking depictions of his own crowned head into albums. As Donnelly said, it’s a finer line than we sometimes cared to notice.

  FitzRoy sat at the head of the table, the others disposed around him like a court. Grogan, demurely quiet, was among them. His, or her, peculiarity had been accepted in exchange for recognising the monarch.

  I showed FitzRoy the storm glass, hoping that he might know something about it.

  “I believe this was invented by a relation of yours,” I said. “Vice-Admiral FitzRoy of the Meteorological Office.”

  Some of the others glowered at me. A growing number of them now accepted FitzRoy as their monarch, and they viewed my attitude as being excessively forward. Or perhaps they suspected me of mockery. But FitzRoy himself was in good humour, buoyed up by the attention he was receiving from his subjects. He was no longer bothered that some of us did not address him as “your majesty.”

  “A rather unstable branch of the family,” he said lightly. “The vice admiral thought he was a prophet who could predict the weather. Sheer madness! Chaos cannot—will not—be foretold by any man, whether he claims to be a scientist or a magician.” He laughed, and the others all laughed with him.

  It gave me a most peculiar feeling, as though I should laugh along and agree that weather forecasting was a species of lunacy.

  “My great-uncle – the old Duke of York, you know – told me the vice admiral experimented with all sorts of alchemical toys for prognosticating wind and rain and whatnot. Nothing was too absurd for him.” He shook his head. “Poor Robert FitzRoy couldn’t stand all the mockery about his weather prophecies. They laughed at him in the House of Commons. And the newspapers were merciless.”

  “Is that so?” I asked.

  “In the end, the poor fellow killed himself. Cut his throat with a straight razor. Quite mad.” FitzRoy spoke with cheerful contempt. “They gave him a decent plot in All Saints’ Church, anyway.”

  He held up the glass to the light to study the murky green liquid. “A curiosity. Maybe it changes with the winds from the moon, or the earth’s magnetism, or the dances of the angels on pinheads. Here. A little thing for little minds.”

  “I dare say you’re right,” I said, pocketing the glass again.

  “The worst of it,” FitzRoy went on, “is that it stains the family reputation. That wretched doctor…tried
to imply there was something wrong with my brain…he calls it a medical opinion, I call it treason. George III’s doctors…”

  He trailed off into an irritable mutter.

  “That’s just your Dr Nye,” said Grogan sympathetically. “He sees madness everywhere. Those doctors should try looking in a mirror.”

  The conversation moved on. I was not going to learn anything more, but it seemed to me that this particular glass was not meant to foretell the weather, that it had been made sensitive to other sorts of current. Given that it was in Gillespy’s possession, my guess was that it was a sort of tiger detector. Not that it had done him any good.

  At the end of the working day, I was rostered on night shift. I was drowsy after the evening meal and resolved to take a nap to fortify myself before taking further steps—specifically, having a look at patient Ross’s notes and writing a letter to Dr Beltov so that even if I did not see him, he would be able to advise me.

  You were not supposed to go to sleep on duty, but everyone did. The pattern of shift work practically guaranteed it, and since there was only enough occupation for one of three men on duty at any one time, all that mattered was that you were there to be roused when the need arose.

  I was stretched full-length on the floor, the couch being too short to accommodate me, with my head resting on a seat-cushion. Not the most comfortable billet, but fatigue makes the hardest floor into a feather mattress. Except for one thing; the solid lump digging into my side was the storm glass in my pocket. I took it out: filled with dark clouds.

  Sleep overtook me in a rush. It was more like that groggy, dizzying experience of unconsciousness that you fall into at the extremes of fatigue or physical hardship, something I had seen enough times in the ring. Your body gives up on you, and your mind pitches into the dark. That time, I seemed to be dragged down into it by innumerable shadowy figures clutching my arms and legs.

  I was wandering through a desert in the dark, under a night sky full of shooting stars. I did not know where I was going or why, but with the logic of dreams, I knew I had to carry on.