Among those who inclined more to superstition than to religion, the number of theories about the Martians was as near as matters infinite. As were suggested methods of dealing with or exorcising them. (The churches at least agreed that, whatever the nature of the Martians, prayer to God to free us from them was indicated.)
But among the superstitious, books on sorcery, demonology, and black and white magic sold prodigiously. Every known form of thaumaturgy, demonomancy and conjuration was tried, and new forms were invented.
Among the soothsayers, the practitioners of astrology, numerology and the myriad other forms of prediction from the reading of cards to the study of the entrails of sheep, predicting the day and hour of the departure of the Martians became such an obsession that at no matter what hour they might have left us hundreds of the diviners must have been proved right. And any prognosticator who predicted their departure at any hour within a few days could gain followers, for a few days.
11.
“The strangest case of my entire experience, Mrs. Devereaux,” said Dr. Snyder.
He sat at his expensive mahogany desk in his expensively furnished office, a short, stocky man with piercing eyes in a bland moon face.
“But why, Doctor?” asked Margie Devereaux. She looked very pretty, sitting straight in a chair made for lounging. A tall girl with honey hair and blue eyes. Slender, but she filled a nurse’s uniform (she had come to the sanitarium directly from her job at the hospital) beautifully in the right places. “I mean, you say you diagnose it as paranoia.”
“With hysterical blindness and deafness to Martians, yes. I don’t mean the case is complicated, Mrs. Devereaux. But he is the first and only paranoiac I have ever known who is ten times as well off, ten times as well adjusted, as though he were sane. I envy him. I hesitate to try to cure him.”
“But—”
“Luke—I’ve got to know him well enough to call him by his first name—has been here a week now. He’s perfectly happy—except that he keeps demanding to see you—and is working beautifully on that Western novel. Eight and ten hours a day. He has completed four chapters of it; I’ve read them and they are excellent. I happen to enjoy Westerns and read several a week and I am a good judge of them. It’s not back work; it’s fine writing, up to the best of Zane Grey, Luke Short, Haycox, the other top writers in the field. I managed to find a copy of Hell in Eldorado, the one other Western Luke wrote some years ago—Was that before he and you were married?”
“Long before.”
“—and read it. The one he’s writing now is infinitely superior. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be a best seller, or as near to a best seller as a Western can become. Best seller or not, it should definitely become a classic in its field. Now if I cure him of his obsession—his purely negative obsession that there are no Martians—”
“I see what you mean. He’d never finish it—unless the Martians drove him insane again.”
“And happened to drive him again into exactly the same form of aberration. A chance in thousands. Is he going to be happier seeing and hearing Martians again and being unable to write because of them?”
“So you suggest not curing him?”
“I don’t know. I’m puzzled, Mrs. Devereaux—and that’s putting it mildly. It’s completely unethical to care for a patient who might be cured without attempting to cure him. I’ve never considered such a thing, and I shouldn’t be considering it now. Nevertheless—”
“Did you find out about those checks?”
“Yes. I telephoned his publisher, Mr. Bernstein. The smaller of the two, the four hundred dollar one, is money his publisher owed him. It will be all right for us to have him endorse that and deposit, or use it for him in any case. At the hundred dollars a week I charge here, it alone will cover the past week and the next three. The—”
“But your own fee, Doctor?”
“My own fee? How can I charge a fee if I don’t even try to cure him? But about the other check, the thousand-dollar one; it was an advance against a Western novel. When I explained the circumstances to Mr. Bernstein—that Luke is definitely insane but still working well and rapidly on the novel—he was skeptical; I fear he didn’t trust my literary judgment. He asked me to borrow the manuscript from Luke, telephone him back collect and read him the first chapter over the phone. I did so—the call must have cost him well over a hundred dollars—and he was enthusiastic about it. He said that if the rest of the book held up to that level, it would earn Luke at least ten thousand dollars and possibly many times that. He said that of course Luke could cash and keep the check for the advance. And that if I did anything to Luke that would stop him from finishing it, he would personally fly out here and shoot me. Not that he meant that literally, of course, and even if I thought he did I couldn’t let it affect my decision, but—”
He spread his hands apologetically and a Martian appeared, sitting on one of them, said “-- you, Mack,” and disappeared again.
Dr. Snyder sighed. “Look at it this way, Mrs. Devereaux. Take ten thousand dollars as the minimum figure Trail to Nowhere—he changed the title as well as the opening from the one he originally projected—will bring Luke. The four chapters he has written in the week he’s been here constitute approximately one-fourth of the book.
“On that basis, he’s earned two and a half thousand dollars within the past week. If he keeps on producing at that rate, he will have earned ten thousand dollars within a month. And, even allowing for vacations between books and for the fact that he’s writing unusually rapidly at present as reaction against not having been able to write at all for so long—well, he should earn at least fifty thousand dollars within the next year. Possibly a hundred or two hundred thousand if, as Mr. Bernstein said, the book may earn ‘many times’ the minimum figure. Last year, Mrs. Devereaux, I cleared twenty-five thousand dollars. And I should cure him?”
Margie Devereaux smiled. “It rather frightens me to think of it myself. Luke’s best year thus far, the second year of our marriage, he made twelve thousand. But one thing I don’t understand, Doctor?”
“And what is that?”
“Why you sent for me. I want to see him, of course. But you said it would be better if I didn’t, that it might disturb or distract him and cut down or even stop his production. Not that I want to wait any longer, but if at the rate he’s writing he can finish that novel within another three weeks, might it not be wiser for me to wait that long? To make sure that, even if he—changes again, he’ll at least have that book finished?”
Dr. Snyder smiled ruefully. He said, “I’m afraid I was given no choice, Mrs. Devereaux. Luke went on strike.”
“On strike?”
“Yes, this morning he told me he wouldn’t write another word unless I phoned you and asked you to come to see him. He meant it.”
“Then he lost a day’s writing today?”
“Oh, no. Only half an hour—it took me that long to get you on the phone. He started working again the moment I told him you’d promised to come this evening. He took my word for it.”
“I’m glad. Now before I go up to see him, any instructions, Doctor?”
“Try not to argue with him, especially about his obsession. If any Martians come around, remember that he can neither see nor hear them. And that it’s quite genuine; he isn’t pretending in the slightest.”
“And ignore them myself, of course. But you know perfectly well, Doctor, that isn’t always completely possible. If, for instance, a Martian suddenly shouts in your ear when you’re not expecting it—”