He’d described several ways of doing it; apparently the treatment was varied to suit the individual case. I personally thought the idea was screwy when I read about it, but then I’m not a psychiatrist, thank heaven. Anyhow, it sounded interesting, and for a moment I wished that that book hadn’t tipped me off in advance so I could tell how I’d feel if things really were what they were maybe going to be.
The guy with the gun was talking now, to Mac. He said, “Come out from behind that desk, Doc. You and this other mug stand close together. Who is he?”
What faint light came in the window fell on Mac’s face when he stood up, and he was doing it well. He didn’t look frightened, but he looked deadly serious, and a little pale. He kept his hands up level with his shoulders. He started to edge around the desk toward my chair. Then his face got into the shadow again.
He said, “This is just a friend of mine, Herman. Now—when did you escape?”
I stood up and bowed ceremoniously. If I’d been sober, by that time I’d have been suspecting my diagnosis of the situation. There was something just a little phony about it to be wrong. It was too slow an approach, it lacked the zip and tempo, the suddenness of shock described in that book. But I wasn’t sober, quite.
Anyhow, I bowed low and said, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume,” or something equally idiotic, and started across the room toward the guy Mac had just addressed as Herman. The gun jerked up in my direction.
I heard Mac call out sharply, “Don’t shoot! I’ll—” and I didn’t hear the rest of it for something that must have been Mac’s fist clouted me on the side of the jaw. Mac is no lightweight and that wallop had, I guessed, his whole weight behind it. I went down, groggy, but not completely out.
Something—it must have been common sense—told me to stay there. I heard Mac say, “Whew!” and this guy Herman say coldly, “Another funny move like that from either of you—”
“Another funny move won’t happen, Herman,” said Mac, soothingly. “My friend is a little drunk, that’s all. Quite a little. What can I do for you?”
“First, you will tie up your friend so I’ll not have to watch him. Who else is in the house?”
I heard Mac say, “No one, Herman. I have one servant but he has the day off. Drove in to Wellfleet.”
He was telling the truth, I knew. That proved nothing one way or the other, of course. Mac said, “There’s rope in the kitchen, Herman. Shall I—”
“Take off his necktie and yours, Doc. You tie his ankles with one and his wrists, behind him, with the other. Tight.”
Mac came over and untied my cravat. He pretended to have trouble unknotting it, and bent down close and whispered. “Careful, Bryce. Homicidal maniac. Escaped. I had to sock you or—”
He didn’t have to finish that “or—” if the rest of it was true. At an order from the man with the scattergun, he stepped back. At another order, he opened a drawer in his desk in which he kept a gun and then stepped back flat against the wall while the maniac pocketed the gun.
Then he said, “Sit down, Doc.” He kept the scattergun in his hand ready for action.
I’d rolled over, cautiously, so I could keep an eye on what went on. Mac had tied my wrists and ankles, and had done a good job of it, probably thinking he’d be checked up on it. I saw Mac cross cautiously to the desk and sit down.
He said, “What are you going to do, Herman?”
Sitting at the desk, Mac was in what little light came in from the windows. The other man was now nothing but a huge dark shadow standing there. He didn’t say anything for a moment, and in the silence you could hear the waves lapping on the shore outside and the far squeaky cry of a circling gull.
He said, “I’m going back to finish. To kill the rest of them. Do you think I’m crazy?” He laughed a little, as though he had said something very funny.
“Your father and your brother both?” Mac’s voice was quiet. “Why? Your sister—well, I thought you killed her, Herman, because there was always enmity between you. But Kurt—what have you got against Kurt? Why should you want to kill your brother?”
The madman chuckled. His voice started out soft, almost a whisper in the darkness, and got louder. “The ears, Doc. Like the rest of them. Dad, too. I never told anybody about that, but I didn’t really hate Lila, except for them. Those damned ears—they—”
Unless it was magnificent acting, he was starkly mad. His voice had risen in pitch and volume until he was shouting meaningless obscenities. I heard Mac’s voice cut in quietly, calmly.
“Herman-”
“You can’t stop me, Doc. I—I just stopped here to show you that I’m not crazy, like you said I was at the hearing. See? Why don’t I kill you? This friend of yours? Because I don’t have to. I’ll shoot you in a minute if you try to stop me, both of you, but if what you said about me was true, why don’t I do it now?”
He went on arguing, calmer now, sometimes talking almost sensibly, sometimes with the perverted logic of paranoia. Mac egged him on, tried to reason with him from his own premises, tried to convince him without contradicting flatly any of the madman’s statements.
I started quietly to work on the knots in the cravat that held my wrists behind me. I knew Mac was stalling, trying to hold the fellow as long as he could. He wasn’t stalling for help from me. I knew that from the way he’d tied those blamed knots so tightly. He figured me as a liability rather than an asset after that fool stunt I’d pulled, and I couldn’t blame him for that. But I went to work on those knots just the same.
“You won’t believe me, Doc,” I heard Herman say. “All right, so you won’t. But don’t think I don’t know why you’re stalling. You think they’re after me, and will trail me here.” He laughed again.
“How did you get away, Herman?”
“They aren’t after me, Doc. Not here, I mean. They’ve got a swamp surrounded back ten miles from the sanitarium, and I’m supposed to be in it, armed, and they’re taking their time. I’ve got till morning. I’ve got lots of time. It’s just getting dark now.”
“Herman, you won’t get away with it. They’ll catch you and—”
“And what? Listen, I’m crazy; you said so and you swore to it, and other doctors, too. If they do catch me, what can they do but put me back, see? I’m going to tie you up now, Doc, so you won’t go running for help. Stand up and turn around.”
“I’m anxious to talk to you more about your father and about Kurt. Herman, you mustn’t—”
“I’ve talked enough, Doc. Get up. And before I tie you, I’m going to hit you on the head hard enough to knock you out, because I don’t want any trouble. But I won’t hit hard enough to kill you.”
Mac’s voice again, persuasively; the madman’s, sharper. He took a step nearer the desk, and that put him within a yard of where I lay. Those knots hadn’t budged a millimeter. But, standing where the guy was, and with Mac on hand to finish what I could start, I saw a chance.
If I swiveled around and doubled up my legs and lashed them out right at the back of his knees, he’d go down like a ton of bricks. And Mac is no mean scrapper; he should have been able to take over from there.
Maybe if I’d been cold sober, I wouldn’t have been ready to take a chance like that. But I wasn’t. And I wasn’t entirely convinced that there wasn’t something phony about the set-up. It seemed just a bit theatrical to be true, like a second act that needs patching.