"All right if I let Manny the Moog go, Roy?"
"Sure, Doc; if you say so." I didn't have any time for introductions just then; Chief Inspector the Duke of Acrington and I kept going.
Eight minutes later, I pulled up to the post where Officer McCaffery was waiting. Since I'd already talked to him over the radio, all he did was stroll off as soon as we pulled up. I didn't want everyone in the neighborhood to know that there was something afoot. His Grace and I climbed out of the car and walked up toward a place called Flanagan's Bar.
It was a small place, the neighborhood type, with an old-fashioned air about it. Two or three of the men looked up as we came in, and then went back to the more important business of drinking. We went back to the far end of the bar, and the bartender came over, a short, heavy man, with the build of a heavyweight boxer and hands half again as big as mine. He had dark hair, a square face, a dimpled chin, and calculating blue eyes.
"What'll it be?" he said in a friendly voice.
"Couple of beers," I told him.
I waited until he came back before I identified myself. Officer McCaffery had told me that the bartender was trustworthy, but I wanted to make sure I had the right man.
"You Lee Darcey?" I asked when he brought back the beers.
"That's right."
I flashed my badge. "Is there anywhere we can talk?"
"Sure. The back room, right through there." He turned to the other bartender. "Take over for a while, Frankie." Then he ducked under the bar and followed the Duke and me into the back room.
We sat down, and I showed him the picture of Lawrence Nestor. "I understand you've seen this guy."
He picked up the picture and cocked an eyebrow at it. "Well, I wouldn't swear to it in court, Inspector, but it sure looks like the fellow who was in here this afternoon—this evening, rather, from six to about six-thirty. I don't come on duty until six, and he was here when I got here."
It was just seven o'clock. If the man was Nestor, we hadn't missed him by more than half an hour.
"Notice anything about his voice?"
"I noticed the lisp, if that's what you mean."
"Did he talk much?"
Darcey shook his head. "Not a lot. Just sat there and drank, mostly. Had about three after I came on."
"What was he drinking?"
"Whisky. Beer chaser." He grinned. "He tips pretty well."
"Has he ever been in here before?"
"Not that I know of. He might've come in in the daytime. You'd have to check with Mickey, the day man."
"Was he drunk?"
"Not that I could tell. I wouldn't have served him if he was," he said righteously.
I said, "Darcey, if he comes back in here ... let's see—Can you shut off that big sign out front from behind the bar?"
"Sure."
"O.K. If he comes in, shut off the sign. We'll have men here in less than a minute. He isn't dangerous or anything, so just act natural and give him whatever he orders. I don't want him scared off. Understand?"
"I got you."
His Grace and I went outside, and I used my pocket communicator to instruct a patrol car to cover Flanagan's Bar from across the street, and I called for extra plainclothesmen to cover the area.
"Now what?" asked His Grace.
"Now we go barhopping," I said. "He's probably still drinking, but it isn't likely that he'll find many little girls at this time of night. He's probably got a room nearby."
At that point, a blue ElectroFord pulled up in front of us. Stevie stuck his head out and said: "Your office said you'd be around here somewhere. Remember me, Dad?"
I covered my eyes with one hand in mock horror. "My God, the fifty!" Then I dropped the hand toward my billfold. "I'm sorry, son; I got wrapped up in this thing and completely forgot." That made two apologies in two minutes, and I began to have the uneasy feeling that I had suddenly become a vaguely repellant mass of thumbs and left feet.
I handed him the fifty, and, at the same time, said: "Son, I want you to meet His Grace, Chief Inspector the Duke of Acrington. Your Grace, this is my son, Steven Royall."
As they shook hands, Steve said: "It's a pleasure to meet Your Grace. I read about the job you did in the Camberwell poisoning case. That business of winding the watch was wonderful."
"I'm flattered, Mr. Royall," said the Duke, "but I must admit that I got a great deal more credit in that case than was actually due me. Establishing the time element by winding the watch was suggested to me by another man, who wouldn't allow his name to be mentioned in the press."
I reminded myself to read up on the Duke's cases. Evidently he was better known than I had realized. Sometimes a man gets too wrapped up in his own work.
"I'm sorry," Stevie said, "but I've got to get going. I hope to see you again, Your Grace. So long, Dad—and thanks."
"So long, son," I said. "Take it easy."
His car moved off down the street, gathering speed.
"Fine boy you have there," the Duke said.
"Thanks. Shall we go on with our pub crawling?"
"Let's."
By two o'clock in the morning, we had heard nothing, found nothing. The Duke looked tired, and I knew that I was.
"A few hours sleep wouldn't hurt either one of us," I told His Grace. "It's a cinch that Nestor won't be able to find any little girls at this hour of the morning, and I have a feeling that he probably bought himself a bottle and took it up to his room with him."
"You're probably right," the Duke said wearily.
"Look," I said, "there's no point in your going all the way down to your hotel. My place is just across town, I have plenty of room, it will be no trouble to put you up, and we'll be ready to go in the morning. O.K.?"
He grinned. "Worded that way, the invitation is far too forceful to resist. I'm sold. I accept."
By that time, we had left several dollars worth of untasted beers sitting around in various bars on the West Side, so when I arrived at my apartment on the East Side, I decided that it was time for two tired cops to have a decent drink. The Duke relaxed on the couch while I mixed a couple of Scotch-and-waters. He lit a cigarette and blew out a cloud of smoke with a sigh.
"Here, this will put sparks in your blood. Just a second, and I'll get you an ash tray." I went into the kitchen and got one of the ash trays from the top shelf and brought it back into the living room. Just as I put it down on the arm of the couch next to His Grace, the buzzer announced that there was someone at the front door downstairs.
I went over to the peeper screen and turned it on. The face was big-jawed and hard-mouthed, and there was scar tissue in the eyebrows and on the cheeks. He looked tough, but he also looked worried and frightened.
I could see him, but he couldn't see me, so I said: "What's the trouble, Joey?"
A look of relief came over his face. "Can I see ya, Inspector? I saw your light was on. It's important." He glanced to his right, toward the doorway. "Real important."
"What's it all about, Joey?"
"Take a look out your window, Inspector. Across the street. They're friends of Freddy Velasquez. They been following me ever since I got off work."
"Just a second," I said. I went over to the window that overlooks the street and looked down. There were two men there, all right, looking innocently into a delicatessen window. But I knew that Joey Partridge wasn't kidding, and that he knew who the men were. I went back to the peeper screen just as Joey buzzed my signal again. "I buzzed again so they won't know you're home," he said before I could ask any questions. "Freddy must've found out about my hands, Inspector. According to the word I got, they ain't carrying guns—just blackjacks and knucks."
"O.K., Joey. Come on up, and I'll call a squad car to take you home."
He gave me a bitter grin. "And have 'em coming after me again and again until they catch me? No, thanks, Inspector. In one minute, I'm going to walk across and ask 'em what they're following me for."
"You can't do that, Joey!"
He looked hurt. "Inspector, since when it is against the law to ask a couple of guys how come they're following you? I just thought I oughta tell ya, that's all. So long."
I knew there was no point in arguing with Joey Partridge. I turned and said: "Want some action, Your Grace?"
But he was already on his feet, holding that walking stick of his. "Anything you say."
"Come on, then. We'll take the fire escape; the elevator is too slow. The fire escape will let us out in the alley, and we won't by outlined by the light in the foyer."
I already had the bedroom door open. I ran over to the window, opened it, and started down the steel stairway. The Duke was right behind me. It was only three floors down.
"That Joey is too smart for his own good," I said, "but he's right. This is the only way to work it. Otherwise, they'd have him in the hospital eventually—or maybe dead."
"He looked like a man who could take care of himself," the Duke said.
"That's just it. He can't. Come on."
The ladder to the street slid down smoothly and silently, and I thanked God for modern fire prevention laws. When we reached the street, I wondered where they could have gone to so quickly. Then the Duke said: "There! In that darkened area-way next to the little shop!" And he started running. His legs were longer than mine, and he reached the area-way a good five yards ahead of me.
Joey had managed to evade them for a short while, but they had cornered him, and one of them knocked him down just as the Duke came on the scene. The other had swung at his ribs with a blackjack as he dropped, and the first aimed a kick at Joey's midriff, but Joey rolled away from it.
Then the two thugs heard our footsteps and turned to meet us. If we'd been in uniform, they might have run; as it was, they stood their ground.
But not for long.
The Duke didn't use that stick as though it were a club, swinging it like a baseball bat. That would be as silly as using an overhand stab with a dagger. He used it the way a fencer would use a foil, and the hard, blunt end of it sank into the first thug's solar plexus with all the drive of the Duke's right arm and shoulder behind it. The thug gave a hoarse scream as all the air was driven from his lungs, and he dropped to the pavement.
The second man came in with his blackjack swinging. His hand stopped suddenly as his wrist met the deadly stick, but the blackjack kept on going, bouncing harmlessly off the nearby wall as it flew from nerveless fingers.
That stick never stopped moving. On the backswing, it thwacked resoundingly against the thug's ribcage. He grunted in pain and tried to charge forward to grapple with the Englishman. But His Grace was grace itself as he leaped backwards and then thrust forward with that wooden snake-tongue. The thug practically impaled himself on it. He stopped and twisted and was suddenly sick all over the pavement. Almost gently, the Duke tapped him across the side of his head, and he fell into his own mess.
It was all over before I'd even had a chance to mix in. I stood there, holding an eleven millimeter Magnum revolver in my hand and feeling vaguely foolish.
I reholstered the thing and walked over to where Joey Partridge was propping himself up to a sitting position. His right eye was bruised, and there was a trickle of blood running from the corner of his mouth, but he was grinning all the way across his battered face. And he wasn't looking at me; he was looking at the Duke.
"You hurt, Joey?" I asked. I knew he wasn't hurt badly; he'd taken worse punishment than that in his life.
He looked at me still grinning. "Hurt? You're right I'm hurt, Inspector! Them goons tried to kill me. Let's see—assault and battery, assault with a deadly weapon, assault with intent to kill, assault with intent to maim, attempted murder, and—" He paused. "What else we got, Inspector?"
"We'll think on plenty," I said. "Can you stand up?"
"Sure I can stand up. I want to shake the hand of your buddy, there. Geez! I ain't seen anything like that since I used to watch Bat Masterson on TV, when I was a little kid!"
"Joey, this is Chief Inspector the Duke Acrington, of Scotland Yard. Inspector, this is Joey Partridge, the greatest amateur boxer this country has ever produced."
Amazingly enough, Joey extended his hand. "Pleased t'meetcha, Inspector! Uh—watch the hand. Sorta tender. That was great! Duke, did you say?" He looked at me. "You mean he's a real English Duke?" He looked back at Acrington. "I never met a Duke before!" But by that time he had taken his hand away from the Duke's grasp.
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Joey," the Duke said warmly. "I liked the way you cleaned up on that Russian during the '72 Olympics."
Joey said to me, "He remembers me! How d'ya like that?"
One of the downed thugs began to groan, and I said, "We'd better get the paddy wagon around to pick these boys up. You'll prefer charges, Joey?"
"Damn right I will! I didn't let myself get slugged for nothing!"
It was nearly forty-five minutes later that the Duke and I found ourselves in my apartment again. The ice in our drinks had melted, so I dumped them and prepared fresh ones. The Duke took his, drained half of it in three fast swallows, and said: "Ahhhhhh! I needed that."
We heard a key in the door, and His Grace looked at me.
"That's my son," I said. "Back from his date."
Steve came in looking happy. "You still awake, Dad? A cop ought to get his sleep. Good morning, Your Grace. Both of you look sleepy."
Stevie didn't. He'd danced with Mary Ellen until four, and he still looked as though he could walk five miles without tiring. Me, I felt about as full of snap as a soda cracker in a Turkish bath. The three of us talked for maybe ten minutes, and then we hit the hay.
Three and a half hours of sleep isn't enough for anybody, but it was all we could afford to take. By eight-thirty, the Duke and I were in my office, sloshing down black coffee, and, half an hour after that, we were cruising up Amsterdam Avenue on the second day of our hunt for Mr. Lawrence Nestor.
Since we were now reasonably sure that our man was in the area, I ordered the next phase of the search into operation. There were squads of men making a house-to-house canvass of every hotel, apartment house, and rooming house in the area—and there are thousands of them. A flying squad took care of the hotels first; they were the most likely. Since we knew exactly what day Nestor had arrived, we narrowed our search down to the records for that day. Nestor might not use his own name; of course, but the photograph and description ought to help. And, since Nestor didn't have a job, his irregular schedule and his drinking habits might make him stand out, though there were plenty of places where those traits would simply make him one of the boys. It still looked like a long, hard search.
And then we got our break.
At 9:17 am, Lieutenant Holmquist's voice snapped over my car phone: "Inspector Royall; Holmquist here. Child missing in Riverside Park. Officer Ramirez just called in from 111th and Riverside."
"Got it!"
I cut left and gunned the car eastward. I hit a green light at Broadway, so I didn't need to use the siren. Within two minutes, we had pulled up beside the curb where an officer was standing with a woman in tears. The Duke and I got out of the car.
We walked over to her calmly, although neither one of us felt very calm. There's no point in disturbing an already excited mother—or aunt or whatever she was.
The officer threw me a salute. I returned it and said to the sobbing woman, "Now, just be calm, ma'am. Tell us what happened."
It all came out in a torrent. She'd been sitting on one of the benches, reading a newspaper, and she'd looked around and little Shirley was gone. Yes, Shirley was her daughter. How old? Seven and a half. How long ago was this? Fifteen minutes, maybe. She hadn't been worried at first; she'd walked up and down, calling the girl's name, but hadn't gotten any answer. Then she saw the policeman, and ... and—
And she broke down into tears again.
It was the same thing that had happened a few days before. I had already ordered extra men put on the Riverside and Central Park details, but a cop can't be everywhere at once.
"I've got the rest of the boys beating the brush between here and the river," Officer Ramirez said. "She might have gone down one of the paths on the other side of the wall."
"She wouldn't go too near the river," the woman sobbed. "I just know she wouldn't." She sounded as though she were trying to convince herself and failing miserably.
Nobody said anything about Nestor; the poor woman was bad enough off without adding more horror to the pictures she was conjuring up in her mind.
"We'll find her," I said soothingly, "don't you worry about that. You're pretty upset. We'll have the police doctor look you over and maybe give you a tranquilizer or something to make you feel better." No point in telling her that the doctor might be needed for a more serious case. "Keep an eye on her till the doctor comes, Ramirez. Meanwhile, we'll look around for the little girl."
I walked over to the wall and looked down. I could see uniformed police walking around, covering the ground carefully.
Riverside Park runs along the eastern edge of Manhattan Island, between Riverside Drive and the Hudson River, from 72nd Street on the south to 129th Street on the north. In the area where we were, there is a flat, level, grassy area about a block wide, where there are walks and benches to sit on. The eastern boundary of this area is marked by a retaining wall that runs parallel with the river. Beyond the wall, the ground slopes down sharply to the Hudson River, going under the elevated East Side Highway which carries express traffic up and down the island. The retaining wall is cut through at intervals, and winding steps go down the steep slope. There are bushes and trees all over down there.
I thought for a minute, then said, "Suppose it was Nestor. How did he get her away? It's a cinch he didn't just scoop her up in broad daylight and go trotting off with her under his arm."
"Precisely what I was thinking," the Duke agreed. "There was no scream or disturbance of that kind. Could he have lured her away, do you think?"
"Possible, but not likely. Little girls in New York are warned about that sort of thing from the time they're in diapers. If she were five years old, it might be more probable, but little girls who are approaching eight are pretty wise little girls."
"It follows, then, that she went somewhere of her own accord and he followed her. D'you agree?"
"That sounds most reasonable," I said. "The next question is: Where?"
"Yes. And why didn't she tell her mother where she was going?"
I gave him a sour grin. "Elementary, my dear Duke. Because her mother had forbidden her to go there. And, from the way she was talking, I gather the mother had expressly directed her to stay away from the river." I looked back over the retaining wall again. "But it just doesn't sound right, does it? Surely someone would have seen any sort of attack like that. Of course, it's possible that shedidfall in the river, and that this case doesn't have anything to do with Nestor at all, but—"
"It doesn't feel that way to me, either," said the Duke.
"Let's go talk to the mother again," I said. "There are plenty of men down there now; they don't need us."
The woman, Mrs. Ebbermann, had calmed down a little. The police surgeon had given her a tranquilizer with a hypogun, Officer Ramirez was getting everything down in his notebook, and his belt recorder was running.
"No," she was saying, "I'm sure she didn't go home. That's the first place I looked after she didn't answer when I called. We live down the block there. I thought she might have gone home to go to the bathroom or something—but I'm sure she would have told me." She choked a little. "Oh, Shirley, baby! Where are you? Whereareyou?"
I started to ask her a question, but she suddenly said: "Shirley, baby, next time, I promise, you can bring your water gun with you to the park, if you'll just come back to Mommie now! Please, Shirley, baby! Please!"
I glanced at the Duke. He gave me the same sort of look.
"What was that about a water gun, Mrs. Ebbermann?" I asked casually.
"Oh, she wanted to bring her water gun with her, poor baby. But I made her leave it at home—I was afraid she might squirt people with it. But I shouldn't have done that! She's a good girl! She wouldn't squirt anybody!"
"Sure not, Mrs. Ebbermann. Does Shirley have a key to your apartment?"
"Yes. I gave her her own key, a pretty one, with her initials on it, for her seventh birthday, so she wouldn't have to push the buzzer when she came home from school."
"Where's your husband?" I asked taking a look at Ramirez' notebook to get her address.
"Shirley's father? Somewhere in Boston. We've been separated for two years. But I wish he were here!"
"Would you give me the key to your apartment, Mrs. Ebbermann? We'd like to take a look around."
She gave me a key. "But she's not there. I told you, that's the first place I looked."
"I know," I said. "We just want to look around. We won't disturb anything."
Then His Grace and I got out of there as fast as we could.
Ikeyed open the front door of the apartment building, and we went inside. Neither of us said anything. There was no need to. We knew what must have happened, we could see it unfolding as plainly as if we'd watched it happen.
Nestor had seen Shirley sneak off from her mother and had followed her. In order to get into the building, he must have come right in with her, right behind her when she unlocked the outer door. Then what?
The chances were a billion to one against his ever having been in the building before, so it stood to reason that all he would have been doing is watching for an opportunity and—the right place.
The foyer itself? No. Too much chance of being seen. The basement? Unlikely. He must have followed her into the elevator, and she would have pushed the button for the seventh floor, where her apartment was, so there wouldn't be much likelihood of his getting a chance to see the basement. Besides, there was a chance that he might run into the janitor.
The Duke and I went into the old-fashioned self-service elevator, and I pushed number seven. The doors slid shut, and the car started up. The roof? No. Too much danger of being seen from other buildings higher than this one.
Where, then? I looked at the control panel of the elevator. The button for the basement was controlled by a key; only the employees were allowed in the basement, so that place was ruled out absolutely.
I began to get the feeling that we were on a wild goose chase, after all. "What do you think?" I asked His Grace.
"I can't imagine where he might have taken her. We may have to search the whole building."
The car stopped at the seventh door, and we stepped out as the doors slid open. The hallways stretched to either side, but there were no apparent hiding places. I went over to the stairwell, which was right next to the elevator shaft and looked up and down. No place there, either.
Then it hit me.
Again, I could see Nestor, like a scene unfolding on a TV drama, still following little Shirley. Had he spoken to her in the elevator? Maybe. Maybe not. He was still undecided, so he followed her to the door of her apartment. Wait—very likely, hehadmade friends with her on the elevator. He saw her push button seven—
Well, well! Do you live on the seventh floor?
Yes, I do.
Then we're neighbors. I live on the seventh, too. I just moved in. Do you live with your mommie and daddy?
Just my mommie. My daddy doesn't live with us anymore.
And, since he knew that mommie was in the park, he could guess that the apartment was empty.
All that went through my mind like a bolt of lightning. I said: "The apartment! Come on!"
The Duke, looking a little puzzled, followed me to the door of 706. I put my ear against the door and listened. Nothing. Then I eased the key in and flung the door open.
No one in the living room. I raced for the bedroom. No one in there, either, but the clothes closet door was shut.
When I opened it, we saw a small, dark-haired girl lying naked and unconscious on the floor.
Then there were noises from the front room. The sound of a door opening and closing, and the clatter of hurrying footsteps in the hall outside.
We both turned and ran.
In the hallway, we could hear the footsteps going down the stairwell. The slow elevator was out of the question. We took off down the stairs after him. He had a head start of about a floor and a half, and kept it all the way down. We saw the door swinging shut as we arrived in the foyer. Outside, we saw our man running toward the corner. I started to reach for my gun, but there were too many people around. I couldn't risk a shot.
And then that amazing walking stick came into action again. The Duke took a few running steps forward and hurled it like a javelin, the heavy silver head forward. Robin Hood couldn't have done better with an arrow. When the silver knob hit the back of the running man's head, he fell forward to the sidewalk.
He was still struggling to get up when we grabbed him.
The Duke and I were waiting for Dr. Brownlee when he came back from talking to Lawrence Nestor in his cell. "He's one of our zanies, all right," he said sadly. "A very sick man."
"He's lucky he wasn't lynched," I said. "Did he tell you what happened?"
Brownlee nodded. "Just about the way you had it figured. He had the little girl's clothes off when her mother came back. He heard her putting her key in the door, so he grabbed Shirley and dragged her into the closet with him. The mother didn't search the place at all; she just went through the main rooms, called her daughter's name a few times and then left."
"That's what threw us off at first," I said. "We both accepted Mrs. Ebbermann's word that Shirley wasn't in the apartment. Then I realized that she wouldn't have taken time to look in all the closets. Why should she? As far as she knew, there wasn't any reason for Shirley to hide from her."
"It's a good thing Mrs. Ebbermann did come back." Dr. Brownlee said. "That was the only thing that saved the girl from rape and death. Nestor was so unnerved that he just left her in the closet, still unconscious from the blow he'd given her.
"Any normal man would have gotten out of there right then. Not Nestor. He went looking for a drink. Fortunately, he found a bottle of whisky in the kitchen. He was just getting in the mood to go back in after the girl when you two came charging in.
"He saw you run to the bedroom, so he knew the girl's mother must have called for help. He decided it was time to run. Too late, of course."
"Too late for a lot of things." I said. "Much too late far Angela Donahue, for instance. And, as a matter of fact, we were so close to being too late with Shirley Ebbermann that I don't even want to think about it. I should have let Shultz go ahead and tell the newsmen. At least people would have been warned."
"There's no way of knowing," said the Duke, "But I think there's just as good a chance that he'd have gotten his hands on some other little girl, even if the warning had gone out. There will always be parents who don't pay enough attention to what their children are doing. They may blame themselves if something happens, but that may be too late. As it happens, weweren'ttoo late. Let's be thankful for that.
"By the way, am I wrong in assuming that Nestor will not get your psychotherapy treatment?"
"No, you're right," I said. "The warden at Sing Sing will be taking care of him from now on." I turned to Brownlee and said: "Which reminds me—what's going to be the disposition on the Hammerlock Smith case?"
"I talked to Judge Whittaker and the D.A. Your recommendation pulled a lot of weight with them. They agreed that if Smith will plead guilty to felonious assault and agree to therapy, he'll get off with eighteen months, suspended. When I release him, he'll never bother young boys again."
The Duke looked puzzled. "Hammerlock Smith? Odd Name. What's he up for?"
I told him about Hammerlock Smith.
He thought it over for a while, then said: "Just what is it you do to men like that? How can you be so sure he'll never hurt anyone again?"
Brownlee started to answer him, but a uniformed officer put his head in the door. "Excuse me, Dr. Brownlee, the District Attorney would like to talk to you."
Brownlee excused himself and followed the cop out, leaving me to explain things to His Grace.
"Do you remember that, a couple of centuries ago, the laws of some countries provided the perfect punishment for pickpockets and purse-snatchers?"
He gave me a wry grin. "Certainly. The hands of the felon were amputated at the wrist. Usually with a headsman's ax, I believe."
"Exactly. And they never picked another pocket again as long as they lived." I said. "Society had denied them the means to pick pockets."
"Go on."
"Do you remember Manny the Moog? The little fellow who was brought in yesterday?"
"Distinctly. I thought it was odd at the time that you should release a man who has a record of such activities as car-stealing and reckless driving, especially when the witness against him turned out to be a perfectly respectable person. I took it for granted that he was one of your ... ah ... 'tame zanies', I think you called them. But I did not and still don't understand how you can be so positive."
"I let Manny go because he's incapable of driving a car. The very thought of being in control of a machine so much more powerful than he is would give him chills. Did you ever see what happens when you lock a claustrophobe up in a dark closet—the mad, unreasoning, uncontrollable panic of absolute terror? That's what would happen to Manny if you put him behind the wheel of a running automobile. It's worse than fear; fear is controllable. Blind terror isn't.
"Manny had one little twist, in his mind. He liked to get into a car—anycar, whether it was his or not—and drive. He became king of the road. He wasn't a little man any more. He was God, and lesser beings had better look out.
"We got to him before he actually killed anyone, but there is a woman in Queens today who will never walk again because of Manny the Moog. But there won't be any more like her. We took the instrument of destruction away from him; we 'cut off his hands'. Now he's leading a reasonably useful life. We don't need to sacrifice another's life before we neutralize the danger."
"What about Joey Partridge?" His Grace asked. "He's one of your zanies, too, isn't he?
"That's right. He couldn't keep from using his fists. He liked the feel of solid flesh and bone giving under the impact of those big fists of his. Boxing wasn't enough; he had to be able to feel flesh-to-flesh contact, with no padded glove between. He almost killed a couple of men before we got to him."
"What did you do to his hands?"
"Nothing. Not a thing. There's nothing at all wrong with his hands. But hethinksthere is. He's firmly convinced that the bones are as brittle as chalk, that if he uses those fists,hewill be the one who will break and shatter. It even bothers him to shake hands, as you saw last night. It took a lot of guts to do what he did last night—walk over to those two thugs knowing he couldn't defend himself. He's no coward. But he's as terrified of having his hands hurt as Manny is of driving a car."
"I see" the Duke said thoughtfully.
"There are other cases, plenty of them," I went on. "We have pyromaniacs who are perfectly harmless now because they have a deathly terror of flame. We have one fellow who used to be very nasty with a knife; he grows a beard now because the very thought of having a sharp edge that close to him is unnerving. The reality would send him screaming. We have a girl who had the weird idea that it was fun to drop things out of windows or off the tops of high buildings. Aside from the chance of people below being hurt, there was another danger. Two cops grabbed her just as she was about to drop her baby brother off the roof of her apartment house.
"But we don't worry about her any more. People with acute acrophobia are in no condition to pull stunts like that."
"What will you do to this Hammerlock Smith, then?" His Grace asked.
"Actually, he's one of the simpler cases. A large percentage of our zanies lose control when they're under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Alcohol is by far the more common. Under the influence, they do things they would never do when sober.
"As long as they remain sober, they have control. But, give them a few drinks and the control slips and then vanishes completely. One of our others was a little like Manny the Moog; he drove like a madman—which he was when he was drunk. Sober, he was as careful and cautious a driver as you'd want—a perfectly reliable citizen. But, after losing his license and the right to own a car, he'd still get drunk and steal cars.
"He has his license back now, but we know we can trust him with it. He will never be able to take another drink.
"Smith is of that type. So, apparently, is Nestor. When we get through with Smith, he'll be sober, and he'll stay that way to his grave."
"Astounding." The Duke looked at me again. "I can see the results, of course. I'm going to see that some sort of similar program is started in England, even if I have to stand up in the House of Lords to do it. But, I still don't understand how it can be done so rapidly—a matter of hours. What is the technique used?"
"It all depends on the therapist," I said. "Brownlee is one of the best, but there are others who are almost as good. Some of the officers have started calling themhexpertsbecause, in effect, that's exactly what they do—put a hex on the patient."
"Ageas, in other words."
I'd never heard the word before. "A what?"
"Ageas. A magical spell that causes a person to do or to refrain from doing some act, whether he will or no. He has no choice, once thegeashas been put on him."
"That's it exactly."
"But, man, it isn't magic we're discussing, is it?"
"I don't know," I admitted frankly. "You tell me. Was it magic this morning when both you and I had a hunch that little Shirley wasnotin the park, in spite of the way it looked? Was it magic when we eliminated, without even searching, every spot but the place where she actually was?"
"Well, no, I shouldn't say so. I think every good policeman gets hunches like that every so often. He gets a feel for his work and for the types he's dealing with."
"Well, then, call it hunch or telepathy or extra-sensory perception or thingummybob or whatever. Brownlee has just what you say a good cop should have—a feel for his work and for the types he's dealing with. Within a very short time, Dr. Brownlee can actually get the feel of being inside his patient's mind—deep enough, at least, so that he can spot just what has to be done to put a compensating twist in a twisted mind.
"He says the genuine zanies are very simple to operate on. They have already got the raw materials in them for him to work with. A normally sane, normally well integrated person would require almost as much work to put a permanent quirk in as removing such a quirk would be in a zany. The brainwashing techniques and hypnotism can introduce such quirks temporarily, but as soon as a normally sane person regains his balance, the quirks tend to fade away.
"But a system that is off balance and unstable doesn't require much work to push it slightly in another direction. When Brownlee finds out what will do the job, he does it, and we have a tame zany on our hands."
"It sounds as though men of Brownlee's type are rather rare," His Grace said.
"They are. Rarer than psychiatrists as a whole. On the other hand, they can take care of a great many more cases."
"One thing, though," the Duke said thoughtfully. "You mentioned the amputation of a pickpocket's hands. It seems to me that this technique is just as drastic, just as crippling to the person to whom it is done."
"Of course it is! No one has ever denied that. God help us if it's the final answer to the problem! A man who can't drive a car, or use a razor, or punch an enemy in the teeth when it's necessary is certainly handicapped. He's more crippled than he was before. The only compensation for society is that now he's less dangerous.
"There are certain compensations for the individual, too. He stands less chance of going to prison, or to a death cell. But he's still hemmed in; he's not a free man. Of course, in most instances, he's not aware of what has been done to him; his mind compensates and rationalizes and gives him a reason for what he's undergoing. Joey Partridge thinks his condition is due to the fractures he suffered the last time he beat up a man; Manny the Moog thinks that he's afraid to drive a car because of the last wreck he was in. And, partly, maybe they're both right. But they have still been deprived of a part of their free will, their right of choice.
"Oh, no; this isn't the final answer by a long shot! It's a stopgap—anecessarystopgap. But, by using it, we can learn more about how the human mind works, and maybe one of these days we'll evolve a science of the mind that can take those twistsoutinstead of compensating for them.
"On the other hand, we can save lives by using the technique we have now. We don't darenotuse it.
"When they chopped off those hands, centuries ago, the stumps were cauterized by putting them in boiling oil. It looked like another injury piled on top of the first, but the chirurgeons, not knowingwhyit worked, still knew that a lot more ex-pickpockets lived through their ordeal if the boiling oil was used afterward.
"And that's what we're doing with this technique right here and now. We're using it because it saves lives, lives that may potentially or actually be a great deal more valuable than the warped personality that might have taken such a life.
"But the one thing that I am working for right now and will continue to work for is arealcure, if that's possible. A real, genuine, usable kind of psychotherapy; one which is at least on a par with the science of cake-baking when it comes to the percentages of successes and failures."
His Grace thought that over for a minute. Then he leaned back and looked at me through narrowed eyes. There was a half smile on his lips "Royall, old man, let's admit one thing, just between ourselves," His voice became very slow and very deliberate. "Both you and I know that this process, whatever it is, isnotpsychotherapy."
"Why do you say that?" I wasn't trying to deny anything; I just wanted to know the reasoning behind his conclusions.
"Because I know what psychotherapy can and can't do. And I know that psychotherapy cannotdo the sort of thing we've been discussing.
"It's as if you'd taken me out on a rifle range, to a target two thousand yards from the shooter and let me watch that marksman put fifty shots out of fifty into a six-inch bull's-eye. I might not know what the shooter is using, but I would know beyond any shadow of doubt that it wasnotan ordinary revolver. More, I would know that it could not be any possible improvement upon the revolver. It simply would have to be an instrument of an entirely different order.
"If, in 1945, any intelligent military man had been told that the Japanese city of Hiroshima had been totally destroyed by a bomber dropping a single bomb, he would be certain that the bomb was a new and different kind from any ever known before. He would know that, mind you, without necessarily knowing a great deal about chemistry.
"I don't need to know a devil of a lot about psychotherapy to know that the process you've been describing is as far beyond the limits of psychotherapy as the Hiroshima bomb was beyond the limits of chemistry. Ditto for hypnosis and/or Pavlov's 'conditioned reflex', by the way.
"Now, just to clear the air, whatisit?"
"It has no official name yet," I told him. "To keep within the law, we have been calling it psychotherapy. If we called it something else, and admitted that itisn'tpsychotherapy, the courts couldn't turn the zanies over to us. But you're right—it is as impossible to produce the effect by psychotherapy as it is to produce an atomic explosion by a chemical reaction.
"I've got a hunch that, just as chemistry and nucleonics are both really branches of physics, so psychotherapy and Brownlee's process are branches of some higher, more inclusive science—but that doesn't have a name, either."
"That's as may be," the Duke said, "but I'm happy to know that you're not deluding yourself that it's any kind of psychotherapy."
"You know," I said, "I kind of like your wordgeas. Because that's exactly what it seems to be—ageas. A hex, an enchantment, if you wish.
"Did you know that Brownlee was an anthropologist before he turned to psychology? He has some very interesting stories to tell about hexes and so on."
"I'll have to hear them one day." His Grace took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. "Cigarette?"
"No, thanks. I gave up smoking a few years back."
He puffed his alight. "Thisgeas," he said, "reminds me of the fact that, before the medical profession came up with antibiotics that would destroy the microorganisms that cause gas gangrene, amputation was the only method of preventing the death of the patient. It was crippling, but necessary."
"No!" My voice must have been a little too sharp, because he raised one eyebrow. "The analogy," I went on in a quieter tone, "isn't good because it gives a distorted picture. Look, Your Grace, you know what's done to keep a captive wild duck from flying away?"
"One wing is clipped."
"Right. Certain of the feathers are trimmed, which throws the duck off balance every time he tries to fly. He's crippled, right? But if you clip theotherwing, what happens? He's in balance again. He can't fly aswellas he could before his wings were clipped—but hecanfly!
"That's what Brownlee'sgeasdoes—restore the balance by clipping the other wing."
His Grace smiled. There was an odd sort of twinkle in his eyes. "Let me carry your analogy somewhat farther. If the one wing is too severely clipped, clipping the other won't help. Our duck wouldn't have enough lift to get off the ground, even if he's balanced.
"Now, a zany who was that badly crippled—?"
I grinned back at him. "Right. It would be so obvious that he would have been put away very quickly. He would not be just psychopathic, but completely psychotic—and demonstrably so."
"Then," the Duke said, still pursuing the same track, "the only way to 'cure' that kind would be to find a method to ... ah ... 'grow the feathers back', wouldn't it? And where does that put today's psychotherapy? Providing, of course, that the analogy follows."
"It does," I said. "The real cure that I want to find would do just that—'grow the feathers back'. And that's beyond the limits of psychotherapy, too. That's why Dr. Brownlee and his boys want to study every zany we bring in, whether he can be helped or not. They're looking for acure, not a stopgap."
"Let me drag that analogy out just a tiny bit more," said His Grace. "Suppose there is a genetic defect in the duck which makes it impossible—absolutely impossible—to grow feathers on that wing. Will your cure work?"
I was very quiet for along time. At least, it seemed long. The question had occurred to me before, and I didn't even like to think about it. Now, I had to face it again for a short while.
"Frankly," I said as evenly as I could, "I doubt that anything could be done. But that's only an opinion. We don't know enough yet to make any such predictions. It is my hope that some day we'll find a method of restoring every human being to his or her full potential—but I'm not at all certain of what the source of that potential is.
"But when we do get our cure," I went on, "then our first move must be to abolish thegeas. And I wish that day were coming tomorrow."
There seemed to be a sudden silence in the room. I hadn't realized that I'd been talking so loudly or so vehemently.
The Duke broke it by saying: "Look here, Royall; I'm going to stay on here until I've learned all about every phase of this thing. It may sound a bit conceited, but I'm going to try to learn in a few weeks everything you have learned in a year. So you'll have to teach me, if you will. And then I'd like to borrow one or two of your therapists, your hexperts, to teach the technique in England.
"Allowing people like that to kill and maim when it can be prevented is unthinkable in a civilized society. I've got to learn how to stop it in England. Will you teach me?"
"On one condition," I said.
"What's that?"
"That you teach me how to use a walking stick."
He laughed. "You're on!"
The officer stuck his head in the waiting room again. "Pardon me. Inspector Acrington? The District Attorney would like to see you."
"Surely."
After he had left, I sat there for a minute or two, just thinking. Then Brownlee came back from his conference with the D.A. and sat down beside me.
"I met your noble friend heading for the D.A.'s office," he said with a smile. "He said that any man who was as determined to find a better method in order to replace a merely workable method is a remarkable man and therefore worth studying under. I just told him I agreed with him."
"Thanks," I said. "Thanks a lot."
Because Brownlee knows why I'm looking for a cure to replace the stopgap. Brownlee knows why I gave up smoking three years ago, why I don't have any matches or lighters in the house, why I keep the ashtrays for guests only, and why, for that reason, I don't have many guests. Brownlee knows why there are only electric stoves in my apartment—never gas.
Brownlee knows why my son quivers and turns his head away from a match flame. Brownlee knows why he had to put thegeason Stevie.
And I even think Brownlee suspects that I concealed some of the evidence in the fire that killed Stevie's mother—my wife.
Yes, I'm looking for a cure. But until then, I'll be thankful for the stopgap.