The Terrorizers (6 page)

“Be nice now,” said the man beside me, Dugan. “See, you’re getting the VINP treatment. Very Important New Patient. Show your appreciation by not giving us any trouble…” The car stopped. He opened the door. “Watch him, Tommy,” he said to the big, blond young man. “He’s being too good. Don’t trust him. All right, Madden, out.”

I got out. The two men placed themselves strategically on either side of me. It was clear that, from long practice, they had it all worked out how they’d grab me if grabbing was required; but for the moment they let me stand there untouched. We waited for the man in the dark pants and the woman in the thick nylons. I had a moment to think, which was just as well, since I had to decide just how much warning, if any, I owed these people—and if that sounds strange, it was. I didn’t really know what it meant. I just knew it was something I had to do; or not do. It wasn’t something that could be let go by default.

Then they were standing in front of me. The man was tallish, although he missed my six-four by several inches. He had a distinguished, professional, gray-at-the-temples look. The woman was the ugliest human female I’d seen in my life—well, as far as I could remember, which wasn’t very far. It wasn’t that she was seriously deformed in the body. She had all the normal limbs and they all seemed to work. Her legs were ordinary middleaged female legs, not good, not bad. Her hands were perfectly functional human hands. But her face was a collection of bony features out of a scare-the-kids comic book, with a spade chin and a misshapen nose displaying large bulldog nostrils. Under the massive eyebrow ridges, however, the brown eyes were cool and intelligent and dangerous.

“This is Dr. Elsie Somerset, Paul.” Kitty had got out beside me to perform the introductions. “And Dr. Albert Caine… They’ll take very good care of you, darling. You really shouldn’t be out of the hospital so soon; you’re much better off…”

I said, “Kitty, why don’t you turn off the bullshit?” She gasped and was silent. I looked at Dr. Elsie Somerset—Elsie, for God’s sake! I’d made my second big decision for the day. I was going to give them the breaks, silly though it might seem; I was going to give them a chance to back away unharmed. After all, they were only amateurs and I was a pro. Somehow, I was quite sure, now, that I was a pro, even though I didn’t know exactly what I was professional at. I asked, “Are you the manager of this funny farm, Dr. Somerset?”

The tall man beside her cleared his throat. “I am the director of this institution, Mr. Madden.”

I said, “Fine. Then I’ll direct my protest at you. I’d like to state that I’ve been brought here against my will. I want to leave. I want to go home to Seattle. Okay?”

The two men surrounding me, if you can be surrounded by two men, didn’t move, but I could feel them kind of bracing themselves for action.

“I’m afraid that isn’t possible, Mr. Madden,” said Dr. Caine smoothly. “You’ve been brought here for treatment—”

“On whose authority?”

“Miss Davidson—”

“The hell with Miss Davidson,” I said. “We may or may not be engaged to be married, but even if we are that’s hardly a binding legal relationship unless she wants to sue me for breach of promise. I doubt very much that it gives her the right to have me committed to a booby hatch; and where are the commitment papers or whatever the legal equivalent is here in Canada? Let’s see something signed by a judge or somebody empowering you to hold me here.”

It was play-acting in a way, of course; but there were no longer any guns in sight, and the stuffed shirt in front of me obviously liked to put on a show of legality, even when he was kidnaping perfectly normal strangers off the streets. If I could be considered perfectly normal.

Caine said quickly, “The papers are being drawn up, Mr. Madden. And I would like you to understand that this is an institution of mental healing, not a funny farm or… or a booby hatch!”

I said, “Swell, draw up your papers and serve them on me. In Seattle, U.S.A. In the meantime, I’ll take my leave, thanks. I won’t bother your driver. That’s a busy highway out there. I guess it won’t take me too long to hitch a ride back to the airport.”

I turned. The two men grabbed for me. Again, as with Kitty and her gun, I could see with almost frightening clarity how to handle it: first crippling one and then turning to deal with the other, but that wasn’t the point of the exercise. I therefore just swung a clumsy fist at the dark one, and he got mad and slammed me alongside the head so I fell down. I heard a slight murmur of protest from the blonde one. Okay, that was something learned. They took me by the arms and hauled me back to a standing position.

Breathless, and a little dazed by the blow, I looked at Kitty. “Let’s hear it again, doll. Nobody was going to hurt me, remember? Socking the head of a guy just recovering from concussion doesn’t count, huh?”

“Oh, I told you not to do anything—”

“Sweetie,” I said, “considering the painless reception I’m getting outside, I can hardly wait to see what treatments I’m due for inside.” Before she could speak, I looked at the two doctors and said, “We’ve now established clearly that I’m being kept here by force, against my will, right?” A little uneasiness flickered in the man’s pale gray eyes, but the woman’s brown eyes just looked faintly amused by the antics of the laboratory specimen impaled on the pin. Kitty looked thoroughly miserable. There was something I needed to know. Considering that I’d been brought here at gunpoint, it was a ridiculous question to ask, but I asked it anyway: “Okay, if you won’t let me leave, how about letting me make a phone call?”

“I’m sorry, that isn’t possible—”

Dr. Caine’s smooth voice was interrupted by a hoarse question from the woman: “Whom do you want to call, Mr. Madden?”

Acromegaly was the word, I remembered. It gives them that kind of voice in addition to the other deformities. The pituitary gland goes haywire, I believe, but you’d better look it up for yourself if you’re really interested.

“That’s my business,” I said, but I had my answer. Actually, of course, I had no idea whom to call, but Kitty had looked uneasy. Obviously there was somebody I could call and she knew about it. All I had to do was find out the identity and phone number. “What about it?” I asked the lady doctor. “One phone call? It’s mandatory in the States before you’re thrown in jail.”

The gentleman doctor winced. “Mr. Madden, please! This is
not
a jail—”

The woman said, “Never mind, Albert. This man is merely playing games with us. The other patients have seen enough of their new fellow-inmate; now bring him inside and we’ll run him through the rest of the routine for their benefit.” She glanced at the driver. “Oh, Gavin, take Miss Davidson home and stand by. I may want to send for you later this evening.”

“Yes’m,” said Lewis.

“All right, Dugan, Trask, bring him along.”

“Dr. Somerset,” I said.

“What is it now?”

She was a bright woman, but she didn’t understand. I felt obliged to make a final try at explaining it to her. “I’d like to make a point, if it isn’t clear already,” I said. “To me, you’re kidnapers. In my country, kidnaping is a capital offense, and I don’t suppose they smile on it here in Canada.”

“Yes, yes,” she said impatiently, “I’m sure the presiding judge will order us all hanged in a row, like apples on a tree, Mr. Madden. Now come along, please.”

I felt better. It hadn’t been the best move in the world, strategically speaking. It would have been better to keep a low profile, as they say, from the very beginning. However, I’d discharged my obligation to them, all of them. Whatever happened now, my conscience was clear; and I could start lowering the profile inch by inch until they forgot the little glimmer of resistance I’d shown on arrival and considered me absolutely harmless.

The only trouble was, they might be right. I wouldn’t really know how harmless I was, or wasn’t, until the time came.

As I was being marched up the steps to the front door by my two-man escort, I was aware of Kitty getting back into the Mercedes. Her troubled face appeared at the window, looking my way pleadingly. It was too bad. I mean, a girl ought to get a big bang out of her betrayals, or why bother? I decided she wasn’t the girl I really wanted to marry, after all.

“This way, Mr. Madden.”

It was Dr. Somerset’s hoarse voice; and I followed the woman through the door and into the headquarters building. There was a spacious, hotel-type lobby in which several people were sitting, some in sports clothes, some in pajamas and dressing gowns. They looked bored and dull and not particularly insane. My hunch was that they were well-paying patients who’d come here to find temporary refuge from the bottle or the needle under medical supervision. Aside from the invalid-type costumes of some of the guests, the only thing out of the ordinary was a kind of discreet sentry-box just inside the door in which a uniformed, armed guard was lounging. I realized that, the way the fences were arranged, coming right up to the house, this front door was the only visible exit from the place. You’d have to get by the security man and then make a quarter-mile sprint down the long lane to the highway, with no assurance that somebody would stop and pick you up when you got there.

Well, I’d already passed up an opportunity to get away, and a quarter-mile dash was beyond me, anyway. I was aware that the trip had already taken most of my limited strength, and that if a crisis arose involving physical effort it would be just too damned bad. The inmates watched us dully as we crossed the lobby.

“Our dining room and kitchen are over there.” Dr. Somerset leading the way, made a gesture with her hand, obviously speaking for our uninterested audience. “I think you’ll find our food first class, Mr. Madden, although you’ll be eating it in your quarters for the time being… This way, please.”

It was a large office. I was led through it to an examining room with the usual stainless steel table, with cabinets full of medical-looking bottles and jars along the walls. Obeying instructions, I stripped to my shorts and submitted to a thorough physical examination while one of the guards—the other had vanished—stood at the door to see that I behaved myself. He was Dugan, the darker and meaner-looking of the two. I was happy to note that he had to keep dabbing at a cut lip, where my deliberately inexpert swing had connected. It occurred to me that I didn’t seem to be a very charitable person, basically. Well, I suspected that my situation was one in which I wouldn’t find charity very helpful.

Dr. Somerset wrote down my height, weight, pulse rate, blood pressure, and various other vital statistics. She looked down my throat and up my rear in the way of doctors everywhere. After the time I’d just spent being cared for like a baby by the nurses in the Prince Rupert Hospital, being examined by a lady doctor didn’t bother me a bit. Finally, I was allowed to dress. Then I was taken back into the outer office and parked in a chair while Dr. Somerset seated herself behind the gray metal desk and made some final notes on my case—obviously, if anybody came looking they’d find that that poor, unfortunate lunatic, Paul Horace Madden, had received precisely the same processing as any other sanitarium patient. At last the woman looked up deliberately.

“Mr. Madden,” she said, “you were kind enough to make it clear that to you I’m a kidnaper and a criminal. Therefore let me now make it clear that to me you’re a perfectly sane man with a perfectly good memory. From time to time I’ll ask you for information. You’re entitled to refuse to give it. If I find it necessary, I’ll try to persuade you to change your mind by various means, but I won’t hold your refusal against you. I do not, however, like to be taken for a fool. Forget what you told those idiots at the hospital. I don’t want to hear the word amnesia. Answer my questions or don’t answer them, but don’t say you don’t remember. That response will not be accepted, Mr. Madden. Do you understand?”

It was an interesting approach; and obviously we’d finished with the phony doctor-patient routines. I wondered if she really meant it or if she was running a bluff. Either way, the results were likely to be painful.

“When does the game start?” I asked.

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Are we playing under those rules right now?” I asked. “I don’t want to incur an unnecessary crack on the head for breaking them.”

She hesitated. “Let’s say the rules don’t apply yet. Why?”

“I just wanted to get it on record that you’re wrong, Dr. Somerset. Unless you’ve got some very good tricks in your back room—I suppose there’s a back room full of tricks in this place—you’re not going to get anything out of me about a certain period of my life, not unless your tricks are good enough to let
me
get through to what’s missing. I don’t know what’s there myself, so I can’t tell you about it. A little early stuff has come back, but there’s still no recent material in sight. Unless you’ve got something that’ll let me break through into the storage vault, you’ll be wasting your time asking questions about it.”

“I have plenty of time. I don’t mind wasting a little.”

“Sure,” I said. It was no use, but I had to keep trying. Something might register that would save me suffering later. I went on: “It’s what you’ll be doing while you’re wasting that time that bothers me, Doctor. I may not know exactly who I am, but I do know I’m no hero. Please get that straight. I’m not about to suffer in stoical silence if I can help it. Any answers I’ve got, you’ve got. All you have to do is ask. Don’t go haywire with a lot of scientific tortures just because you refuse to recognize the truth, which is that I simply can’t remember certain things.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed. “Tortures? Who said anything about tortures, Mr. Madden? And what does a respectable photographer know about tortures, anyway?”

“Nuts,” I said. “Your boy Dugan isn’t exactly closemouthed; he likes a spot of menace. And he brought me here with a gun. I was knocked down when I tried to leave. I’ve just been told that if I refuse to answer questions you’ll try to persuade me to change my mind. Persuade! Any TV-watcher worth his salt knows what that means, particularly in a place like this. How stupid am I supposed to be?”