Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 5, No. 10, October 1960

Strictly Psycho by Bryce Walton

The family is the basic unit of society. To demonstrate this point, may I mention the Hatfields and the McCoys, the Julies and the Kallikaks, and the Capulets and the Montagues. Quite obviously, families that fight together stay together.

It was suddenly necessary for me to escape from Heathstone Rest Sanitarium.

Not that the place was driving me crazy, or becoming a bore. The inmates still interested me, but my burgeoning personality was ready to absorb the greater varieties outside. Heated thoughts were running to wild little sportscars, turning more to girls of which there was a rather lugubrious selection at Heathstone.

But more to the point — I must admit it — I was frightened. If I didn’t get out and have a final showdown with Mother at once, I might never have the chance. I might remain buried in Heathstone until the world abruptly came to an end.

I read the letter again, the one from Mother.

“Dearest Sunny: Happy Birthday! As you read this, I’ll be honeymooning with silly Mr. “Y” whom I mentioned in my last letter. He looks like a crane with an amputated beak and is well into his second childhood if he ever grew out his first. But all is compensated for by his rolling in wealth like a pig in mud (as you might guess, ha ha!).

Stay happy, study hard, add to your genius and finish that delightful novel. If you need anything let me know at once. Mr. “Y” and I will be at the Retreat beginning July 3rd, so remember to write but don’t forget to make it General Delivery. Mr. “Y” is a narrow smug old soul who take philistine offense at the postmark on the letter. Say hello to your eccentric friends for me, especially to that handsome devil, Dr. Lawrence. Hope you enjoy your present. Love always, Mother.”

The first letter in nearly two months when she used to write every week. The birthday present, a wristwatch, wasn’t comparable to her usual expensive gifts, but was a shoddy gesture. It was also a brief formal note compared with her usual long effusive outbursts. She was losing interest in me. She would forget about me completely!

Fear gnawed, then turned to quite ominous rage. As bughouses go, Heathstone was one of the finer institutions. Its guests paid up to fifteen hundred dollars a month for doubious special privileges. But just the same I had no stomach for being walled off there forever. It was adding insult to injury for my Mother to forget about me, as if I were simply buried alive!

No, it was now or never that I get out and settle with Mother. If my being a free spirit irritated her too much, she might find herself choking on her protests. If something really gruesome occurred then so be it. It was now July 1st, the morning of my 17th birthday. They would be at the retreat beginning the 3rd. I had to be there on the 3rd also to connect up with that blissful couple. And it would be a somewhat shocking get-together, I would make sure of that!

I had to escape that evening to reach the Retreat by the 3rd, and fix things so that I would never be sent back to Bedlam.

First, to arrange a transfer from Seclusion Cottage K to Heathstone Hall which housed the administrative staff and the open wards where milder inmates considered well enough not to need close custodial care were herded about.

My cottage window was open. I looked through the heavy wire mesh at the lovely spring morning under the shade trees. Then I began to howl and gibber with a repercussive skill that comes only after long association with pros. A layman shrieking wholeheartedly produces nothing comparable to even the mild outbursts of a practiced lunatic. The most energetic novice can howl himself hoarse and elicit perhaps a few derisive catcalls. But let a pro sound off and every fellow inmate takes up the cry with the lunar urgency of a pack of hungry wolves.

This isn’t tolerated, especially in status institutions such as Heathstone. Burly attendants, who go by the polite euphemism of bughousers, bear down like beerhall bouncers and clubbing fists skillfully find their marks; a report is turned in — you fell over a chair or out of bed. If the bughouser can restrain excessive indignation you’re “necked-out”, that is, choked into insensibility with no marks visible so that the filling out of a form is not necessary. But I rated more humane treatment from Eddie who regarded my 178 I.Q. with awe, and even suspected me of being a spy from some public investigative committee. Above all, he was greedy. And Mother had always provided me with ample bribe-moneys.

I slipped Eddie a ten plus my birthday watch. “Go tell the Director he must see me at once. I’ve been hallucinating rather wildly about my mother.”

“Okay, Sunny,” he said and scurried away.

Dr. Zitner, I knew, would treat my request in a cavalier manner. But Dr. Zitner was away on vacation, replaced by Dr. Lawrence who now doled out salvation, reprieves and purgatives. I expected compassion from Dr. Lawrence. Ever since he had seen my Mother when she came to visit me, he had shown zealous interest in me. “How’s your charming Mother,” he was always asking me.

I didn’t blame him for being influenced by my Mother’s charms. I admired her predatory talents that had, in a dangerously competitive business, resulted in her becoming exceedingly wealthy.

“Sit down, Sunny,” Dr. Lawrence said, smiling from behind Zitner’s teakwood desk. He tossed me a pack of smokes and a lighter and I sat down and lit up. He studied me meanwhile through smoke that seemed designed to curtain any clinical light. He was the studied informality type, the I’m-just-a-plain-Joe kind of Doc. This was supposed to inspire confidence, but seemed to me only a cover up for genuine ignorance. “What’s this malarky about Mom hallucinations, Sunny?”

“Malarky?” I feigned astonishment.

“Exactly. During Dr. Zitner’s absence I’ve been examining your personnel files. You’ve had no hallucinations here. There’s something fishy about these reports, too.”

“I’m not here to be pried at like a clam,” I said. “But to ask a favor. I’ve felt a music mood coming on. If I were transferred back to Heathstone Hall I could play Mozart on the recreation piano.”

He studied me as if trying to pretend I was something a bit more than a bug under a microscope.

“We’ll see,” he said, mysteriously.

I tensed. He was holding his permission in abeyance. I was in for more clinical probing. I couldn’t waste time with that jazz. All I could think about was getting upstate for that final gruesome rendezvous with Mother.

“You’re so talented,” he said. “Mozart on the piano. And a novel finished.”

“Not quite,” I said. “My precocity will make it a sure commercial success when it is finished. And its literary value will bring praise from critics. They’ll compare it with early Sagan, which will then seem like the mewlings of a semi-literate sophomore.”

Dr. Lawrence grinned. “You couldn’t convince me you had delusions of grandeur, not even if you came in here saying you were Françoise Sagan.” He blinked slowly like a frog. “Your case intrigues me. Why do you insist on loving your mother? Why no normal resentments?”

I was on guard. My Mother was my own business. I couldn’t afford to have any interference now. She was going to settle up with me. I was going to get everything that was coming to me. And I didn’t intend giving anything away.

“Level with me, Sunny.” He thumped a file folder. “I think you’re the victim of injustice. Something smells.”

“Such as what?”

“In the first place, I don’t think you’re any crazier than I am — if that’s any sort of effective comparison.”

“It’s quite appropriate,” I said. “Anyway, I’m only a patient here myself. Dr. Zitner put the official stamp on me. I’m strictly psycho.”

“I put in my dissenting vote, Sunny.”

“So what? You’ll never go over the head of Dr. Zitner.”

“But you could level with me and we might work out something.”

“Who am I to challenge Dr. Zitner’s diagnosis?” I said.

Dr. Lawrence leaned forward. “It’s easy to railroad a juvenile. Any constituted adult authority can have any juvenile committed. A juvenile has no legal rights. You found that out didn’t you, when at the tender age of fifteen you were accused of being a teen-age maniac? All right, so you were committed. But so far as I’m concerned you were perfectly sane at the time. Now, every month Dr. Zitner gets a big fat check from your Mother, and as a result you remain crazy. So Zitner’s human, and we all must earn a living, granted. But why should you accept it all so meekly? Why no protests?”

“Either because I’m really a loony,” I said, grinning. “Or because I’m too smart to disagree with Doc Zitner. I might be proud of my 178 I.Q. and prefer not to get my cells short-circuited by having Zitner subject me to shock-therapy. Take your pick.”

Dr. Lawrence nodded. “That makes sense.” He fondled his lower lip and mused over my enigmatic presence. Meanwhile I was eagerly trying to control my nervous excitement in anticipation of leaving Heathstone and getting the show on the road. There was a kind of beautiful terror in imagining my Mother and me confronting one another at last — with murder arriving to seal our continued familial affections forever.

“All right, Sunny. It’s a rare thing for an authentic psycho to admit it. And you’re obviously a phony. No one but a psycho can act like one and you’ve never fooled me for a minute. Your being in a booby hatch is about as logical as Noel Coward standing in for King Kong.”

I laughed appreciatively.

Then he barked suddenly. “So why do you insist on loving your mother who has kept you locked up in a cage for three years?” Lawrence was getting himself worked up. “Of course I know she sent you to the finest institution of its kind, but it isn’t an ivy-walled private school! This is a nuthouse, friend! But you don’t fight. You never protest. Why do you go on loving your mother?” He slammed the desk. “If you were really crazy, then loving the hand that poisoned you might make crazy sense. Guilt, need for punishment, disguised hostility. Name your school, take your choice. But you’re not crazy. So loving your mother has to make some other kind of sense.”

“I don’t love her. Love is a deceptive illusion, a sentimental relic of the past. I admire, respect my Mother.”

“All right! Call it admiration and respect then. But do flies admire Flit? You ought to hate your Mother!”

“But that’s just it,” I yelled. “She’s my Mother!”

“Just simple, old-fashioned loyalty to the clan. That it?”

“The present fad of loathing one’s parents doesn’t appeal to me. Mother did the only possible thing under the circumstances. It hurt her far more than it hurt me, I’m positive of that.”

“Well, for a broken-hearted mother she’s sure been having a good time out there. If your mother’s behavior is supposed to represent celebrated mother-love, then it’s too far out for me. Ever since you were in swaddling clothes it seems your mother’s main concern was to avoid the sight and sound of you. She farmed you out to foster homes when you were less than a year old. Then into private schools, finally into an insane asylum! Mother seems to have considered you an intentional leper, or a carrier of bubonic plague.”

“She had to earn a living,” I said. My face felt flushed. Inside of me, a cauldron of hot lava waited to boil over.

“What kind of work? Come on, tell me. Whisper it in my ear if it’ll make you blush. Write me a note.”

“It was none of my business,” I said.

“Then why do you conceal facts?”

“I’m not!”

“You’re trying to conceal your own sanity!”

I shrugged. “All right, I’m sane, perfectly normal. All I ask is that you don’t tell Dr. Zitner I’ve been arguing about his judgment. Now, what about my transfer to Heathstone Hall?”

“Acquiescence isn’t an explanation,” Dr. Lawrence said. “Now you cooperate, answer questions with some pretense at honesty, and I’ll seriously consider giving you another trial ran in the Hall.”

I tried to appear cool and relaxed. This salvation-happy Doctor was intent on seeking what he thought of as justice in my case. He could foul up everything. He was sharper than I would have given him credit for being. He might even end up having my mother investigated before I could get to her myself!

I lit up another cigarette and grinned. “I know your game,” I said. “You want to expose Zitner as a fraud so you can take over Heathstone yourself.”

His eyelids flickered. “An astute deduction and it only intensifies my conviction that you are not crazy. But listen, Sunny, has it ever occurred to you that I don’t want to see your genius wasted, that I don’t like seeing talent railroaded into a booby hatch?” He glanced at the file. “Three years ago you ran to the police with certain — it says here — ‘fantastic allegations’ concerning your mother. Is that correct?”

I nodded.

“You were enrolled at Black Hills Military Academy and you ran away from there so you could go home for Christmas. Was your charming mother expecting you?”

My throat felt tight. “No, I wanted to surprise her,” I said.

“You mean it surprised your mother to have her only beloved son home for Christmas! Is it possible that you sneaked home for Christmas, Sunny, because you knew that if you gave advance notice she would prevent you from sharing the joyous Yuletide?”

My mouth felt dry. The cigarette tasted foul and I smudged it out.

“Why don’t you admit it, Sunny? She didn’t want you home for the happy holidays. You would have been an impediment, a canker, a wet blanket—”

“Why don’t you try the rack, or thumbscrews?” I asked.

Lawrence studied me a moment. Then he swiveled his chair and looked out the window. “On that Christmas Eve, did you or did you not interrupt a rather bizarre interlude between your mother and a certain Mr. Croats?”

“What is this, a trial?” I yelled.

“And did you then run to the police and tell them that your mother had deliberately, even perhaps maliciously, set Mr. Croats on fire?”

I started laughing.

“It doesn’t strike me as funny stuff, Sunny.”

“Sorry, but you know the basis for humor, Doc. I got a mental picture of old man Croats on fire, running around that blazing Christmas tree trying to put himself out with a bottle of seltzer.”

“You weren’t laughing when you ran to the police,” Dr. Lawrence said wryly. “Anyway, they considered your story to be unrealistic. And they therefore didn’t believe you.”

“Of course not,” I said. “Because at the time I was not in my right mind.”

“And it’s a good thing they didn’t believe you, isn’t it, Sunny?” Dr. Lawrence stood up suddenly and leaned across his desk. “Imagine people thinking, even erroneously, that a charming woman like your mother would go around setting old men on fire!”

“Especially,” I said with a calm grin, “on Christmas Eve.”

Dr. Lawrence sat down with a sigh. “A convenient time for a fatal accident, wasn’t it? Your mother explained all of that afterward, of course, how it was a terrible accident. Croats was trying to put out the Christmas tree blaze and in so doing contracted a fatal dose of the flames.”

“That’s what happened,” I said. “A fatal accident.”

“And the original story to the police was only the result of hallucinations, right, Sunny?”

“That’s all in the report,” I said. “Stamped by Dr. Zitner. You see, emotionally, I had never really understood being kept away from home all those years. I resented it. I was jealous of the men who replaced me in my mother’s affections and I wanted revenge. When I sneaked back home for Christmas and saw Mr. Croats on fire I imagined that he had been deliberately set afire, because that was what I wanted to do to him. Later, probably because of moral cowardice or because I wanted my mother to show how she hated those men as much as I and that she loved me after all, I imagined that mother had set him on fire.”

“Very neat,” Dr. Lawrence said. “But granting all that was true why must you remain crazy and incarcerated here, Sunny? Any other mother, or most mothers, would have forgiven you and sought your release. You’re cured. You could be released any time.”

“Not according to Dr. Zitner,” I said. “According to Dr. Zitner, I’m a hotbed of repressed hostility, capable of anything. It would be dangerous for me to roam around loose out there.”

Dr. Lawrence, smiling warmly, stood up. He walked around the desk and looked down at me. “Thank you, Sunny, for an extremely interesting discussion. I’ll tell Eddie to transfer your stuff over to the Hall.”

I stood up. “Thank you, sir.”

“But no funny stuff, Sunny. Don’t try running away.”

“Why should I do that?”

“A better question would be, why shouldn’t you? But I know the answer. Your mother would send you back. Strictly for your own good, of course, even though her heart would be breaking.”

“I wouldn’t necessarily say that.”

“But you’ve never taken the chance and put the proposition to the test, have you?”

“No, because that would be stupid.”

“Not only stupid, but it would upset your mother, right? The devotion you two have for one another is really a touching thing. If you were released, you might start spreading unpleasant gossip about your mother again. And we wouldn’t want that, would we?”

“No,” I said. “Her life is difficult enough as it is.”

Soon as Eddie transferred my personal belongings to a locker in the open ward at Heathstone Hall, I packed a few items, including my Leica camera, into a padded bundle and tossed it through the window bars into some brush in the rear of the institution’s north wing. After that, I entertained a few of my fellow inmates with Mozart and Brahms. I wasn’t in the mood for it. I kept thinking of the bloody rendezvous waiting at the Retreat, and the result was hardly a polished performance. But my audience wasn’t the discriminating sort and it did have a properly therapeutic atmosphere.

Later, about sundown, I mixed with the patients in the recreation rooms and later edged outside for more strenous play — that included tennis, swimming and a few rounds of croquet.

Only the mildest and most malleable patients were allowed to roam about in that relatively free manner. Most of them found Heathstone a pleasant place compared with the complex world outside and wouldn’t have escaped if urged to do so. Most of the others were literally scared into submission. This is by way of pointing out that the attendant of the open wards had been lured into complacency. My particular attendant lolled in a sunchair, half-dozing as I casually stroked a croquet ball into the brush, walked in to retrieve it and never reappeared at Heathstone.

I continued on along the wall of the North wing, picked up my bundle and hiked away into the woods and over the wall.

I glanced back with a touch of nostalgia at Heathstone Rest. My companions there had much to recommend them. They had merely, for the most part, sought refuge from a frightening world. There is a justifiable logic in regarding what is whimsically known as “sane society” with alarm. Like the poor, God must be on the side of the disturbed people, for there are getting to be so many of them.

As for me, I saw only a quantitative difference between the inside and outside of Bedlam. I was ready to start living fast and on a scale that would allow for no imposed limitations. I was ready to live dangerously and meeting Mr. “Y” and my mother would give me a good sendoff.

I proceeded to make my way exuberantly and directly, without wasting time, toward the Retreat upstate. I hitchhiked into the nearest town, picked up suitable clothes in a hockshop. I had saved a neat little nestegg from the liberal allowance sent me regularly by Mother. At a war-surplus store I bought a canteen, a blanket, and an army knapsack. I expected to spend at least one night sleeping under the stars. I went to a gunshop and bought a high-powered BB target pistol. These weapons are perfectly lethal when fired accurately at close range, and they require no gun permit or a certificate of legal age. I bought film for my Leica, then boarded a Greyhound bus that was headed upstate.

With my knapsack and appropriate attire, I suggested a rather sophisticated nature boy heading out to the boondocks to replenish my spirit with open sky and earthiness.

A lovely young girl challenged me with hot dark eyes, and my unleashed senses stirred me toward aggressive action, but I kept myself under control. I would no more make a move to exploit my freedom until it was assured, than I would go to the races with only a dime in my pocket.

Meanwhile, I sat back and watched the night lights of my world — my oyster — rolling past. I would appropriate whatever I demanded of it which would be considerable. My Mother would furnish the financial means, and murder itself would, of course, be no obstacle. It never has been, as you know, for really ambitious people.

First, I would acquire a wardrobe and a sportscar, custom-built. By then my novel would be published and fame added to financial status. That is important because, after all, any rigidly grooved idiot can be wealthy.

As the bus rocked through the night, I lay back on a cushion of anticipation. There would be interviews, television appearances, tours. There would be a European jaunt, visiting a few individuals important in the world of international art. I could even hear a broadcast tape-interview with Françoise Sagan in Paris.

“But, Sunny,” she said in her sulky French. “You’re so young!”

“My dear, I was never young,” I said. “Early in life I decided not to waste my life on youth.”

“But you’re only seventeen. And this novel — it sounds so autobiographically mature. You couldn’t already have spent three years in a mad house!”

“Oh yes. I had myself put away so I could mature at once.”

“You didn’t! Why, that’s so philosophically correct!”

I laughed. “Isn’t it, my dear Françoise. What better training could a young artist have for interpreting the present state of the world than to spend his formative years in an asylum?”

I lay staked out about fifty yards from the cabin, back up among the pine trees. It was a wild pleasant nest on top of a pile of boulders, curtained off from below by brush. Dead pine needles were my bed. I lay listening to nature’s song, watching the cabin and the lake. Night came again. Moon and stars appeared in familiar patterns. Night prowlers and their prey came out to cavort in their eternal drama of bloody pursuit and flight. I munched chocolate bars and studied the sky. Each star seemed to be but a glittering facet of my multiple destiny.

Early on the morning of the 3rd I practiced a little, plunking BB shot into birds and squirrels. I loaded my Leica carefully.

Although I had no idea what name my Mother would be honeymooning under this time, finding the cabin had been a simple bit of detective work. I knew she would own the cabin. Every letter I had ever gotten from her when she was honeymooning or vacationing with some guy had been written from the Retreat — postmarked Stevens Corners, a whistle-stop in a secluded valley. I knew, from letter references, that it was on the lake. I had only to find that section of the lake reserved for private cabins as opposed to the public campsites. This being the heart of the vacation season, I had only to find the one empty cabin among those privately owned after determining that my Mother wasn’t in any of the others. Anyway, she had said she would arrive on the 3rd.

At nine a.m. a spanking new station wagon drove up and parked in front of the cabin near the front porch. I controlled my excitement with difficulty as Mother jumped exuberantly out of the car followed by Mr “Y” who moved in a much less animated manner.

Mother, wearing a red skirt and white blouse, urged him to even greater animation, goading him with laughter and polite teasing as he struggled unloading and carrying heavy suitcases onto the porch. Mother had always been carefully selective so, of course, Mr. “Y” was hardly up to this sort of unabated workout. Mother’s description of him had been amusing, but understated. Compared with Mr. “Y”, old Croats could have won the Mr. Universe contest hands down. My Mother, although she was a bit plumper now and a blonde, had not changed, but was as spry and effervescent as ever.

After Mr. “Y” wheezed and staggered the suitcases onto the porch, I heard Mother giggling as she asked him to carry her over the threshold. I shuddered, but didn’t see what happened then as they moved out of sight under the porch roof.

Later they appeared on the back patio with lunch and a batch of martinis. Mother wore sunshorts and seemed to have acquired a nice suntan. Mr. “Y” in an old-fashioned bathing suit reminded me of a spindly, pale insect that had lived all of its life in a dark cellar.

There followed a fast and prolonged game of ping-pong at which Mother was adept. Mr. “Y” almost collapsed, but was goaded into the woods in the rear of the cabin where Mother led him skipping grotesquely, like a Diane who had stumbled onto a decrepit and disgruntled old faun.

Mother wouldn’t waste any time. She had often said she was strictly a city girl. The Retreat was a necessary evil. Her dislike of nature and open spaces bordered on allergy. She would work fast.

I checked my Leica with the exposure meter, rolled a fresh charge of BB shot into the pistol, and followed them into the woods.

From less than ten feet away, I began snapping pictures of their idyllic little pagan rite. From behind a curtain of thick leaves I could observe and record without fear of detection. The creek had been dammed up to form a large pool. I could almost hear the precarious knocking of the old boy’s heart as he tested the icy water with his foot and jumped back shivering. “Why didn’t we go in the lake?” he croaked dismally. “Warmer in the lake.”

“You tenderfoot,” my Mother said, giggling girlishly. Then, without hesitation, she dived in, came up sputtering and laughing in uninhibited joy. “Oh come on, don’t be a wet blanket!” she yelled, good humoredly. “Come on, dear, let’s play!”

Mr. “Y” bent down and rubbed his pale bones. “Ah,” he whined. “Ah, honey.”

She grabbed at his ankles, but he stumbled away. She taunted and teased, but he crouched a few feet from the edge of the water, and assumed a stubborn sullen expression. “Well,” Mother pouted charmingly, “I’ll just have to play by myself.”

She surface-dived, clowned, cavorted like a water nymph. Mr. “Y” watched her with that sullen stubborn resistance. There might be trouble with Mr. “Y”, I thought. For all his outward appearance, he could well be made of extremely stern stuff.

Suddenly Mother gasped, doubled over in the water. She beat at the water futilely and began to choke and cry out for help.

Mr. “Y” was a reluctant and cautious hero. He approached the water with the enthusiasm of a house-cat and leaned over it trying to reach my Mother who managed to remain out of reach.

I was busily snapping my Leica as Mother grabbed his ankles and pulled him in. Then I realized that the main reason why he had been reluctant to go in was because he couldn’t swim. Mother immediately took advantage of this handicap by leaping up and pushing his head under repeatedly. But as I feared, Mr. “Y” was fired by unexpected reserves of survival urges. He began crawling desperately up the bank, digging and wriggling in the mud. Mother’s usually capable hands slipped. She lunged to reclaim her hold, this time by the straps of Mr. “Y’s” antique bathing suit. I continued clicking away with my Leica as his suit began sliding off, causing him to turn — a victim of false modesty — in an effort to hold the suit on. He even succeeded in continuing his frantic flight up the bank with one hand.

I could see that Mother was desperate, even as desperate as Mr. “Y”. Deciding it was time to establish my postponed partnership with my Mother and define it uncontrovertibly forever, I stepped out of concealment. Bending down I banged the barrel of the pistol against Mr. “Y’s” forehead.

The shock was sufficient. Stunned and terrified, he slid back down into the water where my Mother quickly disposed of him.

Following the initial surprise at seeing me, Mother hugged and kissed me with genuine spontaneous joy. This I appreciated.

“But what on earth are you doing here?” she asked.

“A boy should be with his mother,” I said.

“I know, but you’ll just have to go back, honey,” she said regretfully. Then her eyes flickered toward Mr. “Y”, bobbing like a misshapen bottle in the pool.

“No, I’m not going back,” I said. “I’m staying with you now. It wouldn’t be fair for either of us, for me to stay in there indefinitely. Actually, it was never necessary for me to be put away.”

I patted her wet shoulder in reassurance. “I know what just happened with Mr. “Y.” And it’s all here in my Leica. That’s just in case I’m ever called on to prove that what I’ve just seen wasn’t an hallucination.”

“Why, Sunny, that sort of sneaky business isn’t like you!”

“It’s just in case,” I said, smiling. I lifted the pistol. “Just as this is. There’s no need to send me back and you mustn’t. My assistance with the difficult Mr. “Y” should be proof enough of that. I know about all the others, too. I’ve always known. No need to mention names, but I know and I understand.”

“And you don’t — don’t care?”

“Of course not. On the contrary, I admire your success.”

“But you did go to the police about Mr. Croats.”

“That was before I wised up, as they say. That was before I really understood you, Mother. I bore a grudge. I thought you boarded me out just to get rid of me. Now I know you did it because you didn’t think I would understand. You thought I would condemn your actions.”

“Of course I thought you would.”

“I felt bitter that night and went to the police — mostly because you just never confided in me, never shared your work and dreams. If you had been honest with me from the first, you would never have had to have me committed so that whatever I might have said would be considered the hallucinations of a mad person. I would have understood the truth. After all, I’m your son.”

“I know, I know,” she half-sobbed with joy and relief and then embraced me. “And you really sympathize with my — kind of enterprise?”

“Of course, Mother!”

“I didn’t want to put you in that place, but I couldn’t think of anything else to do after you told about Mr. Croats.”

“Oh there was one alternative, Mother. And I got to thinking about that. I knew that because you didn’t take that logical alternative you really loved me.”

“What else could I have done Sunny?”

“You could have murdered me.”

“Oh no, Sunny!” she screamed. “I could never have done such a thing. Why, I’m your Mother!”

She heard it too, just as I did. A slight chuckling sound from the brush nearby. I twisted around and grabbed up the pistol. I edged forward. At that moment, Dr. Lawrence stepped into view and stood there grinning at me.

Dr. Lawrence chuckled again and casually lit a cigarette. Either he was a brave man or didn’t consider me a threat. I walked a few feet nearer so some high-compression BB slugs could easily penetrate his stupid head.

He ignored me, bowed slightly and said good morning to Mother. Without looking at her, I caught the very agreeable tone in her voice as she acknowledged his affable greeting.

“All right, Doc,” I said. “Now maybe you figure to die happily because you’ve solved everything.”

Dr. Lawrence exhaled thoughtfully into crisp morning air. “Yes, my research can lead back to odd sources. But I don’t like to waste time. I was sure you intended to run away, Sunny. I had been confiscating your letters. The pattern became clear to me, but I followed you, a sort of a shortcut to the heart of the matter.”

I pointed the pistol at his face. “Too bad you won’t live to receive the Nobel Prize for snooping,” I said.

“I hope I didn’t exaggerate your intelligence, Sunny.”

“Only your own,” I said.

He laughed. “You mustn’t compare me with Mr. Croats, Mr. “Y” or those other lucrative expendables, Sunny. I wouldn’t be easily explained away. Especially with a load of buckshot in my head.”

“But you won’t be worried about it,” I said.

“Now wait, Sunny, please,” my Mother said. She swayed past me in that seductive walk and smiled at Dr. Lawrence.

“Get out of the way!” I screamed at her. But she ignored me and walked right up to him and there they stood gazing into each others’ eyes. It was the sort of unabashed drooly gaze often seen in Ladies Home Companion illustrations. It was nauseating and incredible and if filled one with choking rage.

“Get out of the way, Mother!” I yelled again. “We’ve got to kill the damnable snoop!”

She continued to gaze up into Lawrence’s face, transfixed. “But Sunny,” she whispered, without turning toward me, “Dr. Lawrence saw everything didn’t he? He saw what was happening and he didn’t do a thing to prevent poor Mr. “Y’s” unfortunate accident.”

I stumbled back and sat down heavily on Mother’s florid beach-towel. It was true, horribly true. No need to speculate about Dr. Lawrence’s game which he had probably been playing, or planning to play, for some time. He wanted half of what my Mother had acquired, he wanted to share the wealth that I had expected to monopolize. And Mother was also eager to play the game, only this time I could see it was true love in all of its sentimental odiousness. Dr. Lawrence knew everything. From now on he would be calling the plays. I realized suddenly that I had better admit the facts, make a fast adjustment, or I would be lucky to end up with a weekly allowance.

I jumped up as Dr. Lawrence, his arm around Mother’s waist, walked toward me smiling. He put his other arm over my shoulders.

“It’s my business to know things of this sort,” he said. “And what you’ve always needed, my boy, is a father. A real father. You’ve needed a genuine, warm, family relationship. I want you to call me Dad.”

I had to grin. “You’re the doctor, Dad,” I said.

Then, Dr. Lawrence being a legally constituted medical authority, we discussed the proper sort of obituary report for Mr. “Y.” Then we carried him back to the patio and went into the cabin for lunch before making our emergency call.