The Doomsters

2

I LET THAT LAST WORD hang in the silence, turning this way and that, a question and a threat and a request. Carl Hallman looked at the window over the sink, where morning shone unhampered. Sounds of sporadic traffic came from the street. He turned to look at the door he had come in by. His body was taut, and the cords in his neck stood out. His face was thoughtful.

He got up suddenly, in a brusque movement which sent his chair over backwards, crossed in two strides to the door. I said sharply: “Pick up the chair.”

He paused with his hand on the knob, tension vibrating through him. “Don’t give me orders. I don’t take orders from you.”

“It’s a suggestion, boy.”

“I’m not a boy.”

“To me you are. I’m forty. How old are you?”

“It’s none of your–” He paused, in conflict with himself. “I’m twenty-four.”

“Act your age, then. Pick up the chair and sit down and we’ll talk this over. You don’t want to go on running.”

“I don’t intend to. I never wanted to. It’s just – I have to get home and clean up the mess. Then I don’t care what happens to me.”

“You should. You’re young. You have a wife, and a future.”

“Mildred deserves someone better than me – than I. My future is in the past.”

But he turned from the door, from the bright and fearful morning on the other side of it, and picked up the chair and sat in it. I sat on the kitchen table, looking down at him. His tension had wrung sweat out of his body. It stood in droplets on his face, and darkened the front of his shirt. He said very youngly: “You think I’m crazy, don’t you?”

“What I think doesn’t matter, I’m not your head-shrinker. But if you are, you need the hospital. If you’re not, this is a hell of a way to prove you’re not. You should go back and get yourself checked out.”

“Go back? You must be cr–” He caught himself.

I laughed in his face, partly because I thought he was funny and partly because I thought he needed it. “I must be crazy? Go ahead and say it. I’m not proud. I’ve got a friend in psychiatry who says they should build mental hospitals with hinged corners. Every now and then they should turn them inside out, so the people on the outside are in, and the people on the inside are out. I think he’s got something.”

“You’re making fun of me.”

“What if I am? It’s a free country.”

“Yes, it is a free country. And you can’t make me go back there.”

“I think you should. This way, you’re headed for more trouble.”

“I can’t go back. They’d never let me out, now.”

“They will when you’re ready. If you turn yourself in voluntarily, it shouldn’t go against you very hard. When did you break out?”

“Last night – early last evening, after supper. We didn’t exactly break out. We piled the benches against the wall of the courtyard. I hoisted the other fellow up to the top and he helped me up after him, with a knotted sheet. We got away without being seen, I think. Tom – the other fellow – had a car waiting. They gave me a ride part of the way. I walked the rest.”

“Do you have a special doctor you can see, if you go back?”

“Doctor!” It was a dirty word in his vocabulary. “I’ve seen too many doctors. They’re all a bunch of shysters, and Dr. Grantland is the worst of them. He shouldn’t even be allowed to practice.”

“Okay, we’ll take away his license.”

He looked up, startled. He was easy to startle. Then anger rose in him. “You don’t take me seriously. I came to you for help in a serious matter, and all I get is cheap wisecracks. It makes me mad.”

“All right. It’s a free country.”

“God damn you.”

I let that pass. He sat with his head down for several minutes, holding himself still. Finally he said: “My father was Senator Hallman of Purissima. Does the name mean anything to you?”

“I read in the papers that he died last spring.”

He nodded jerkily. “They locked me up the next day, and wouldn’t even let me go to his funeral. I know I blew my top, but they had no right to do that. They did it because they didn’t want me snooping.”

“Who are ‘they’?”

“Jerry and Zinnie. Zinnie is my sister-in-law. She’s always hated me, and Jerry’s under her thumb. They want to keep me shut up for the rest of their lives, so that they can have the property to themselves.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’ve had a lot of time to think. I’ve been putting things together for six months. When I got the word on Dr. Grantland – Well, it’s obvious they paid him to have me committed. They may even have paid him to kill Father.”

“I thought your father’s death was accidental.”

“It was, according to Dr. Grantland.” Carl’s eyes were hot and sly, and I didn’t like the look of them. “It’s possible it really was an accident. But I happen to know that Dr. Grantland has a bad record. I just found that out last week.”

It was hard to tell if he was fantasying. Like any other private detective, I’d had to do with my share of mental cases, but I was no expert. Sometimes even the experts had a hard time distinguishing between justified suspicion and paranoid symptoms. I tried to stay neutral: “How did you get the word on Dr. Grantland?”

“I promised never to divulge that fact. There’s a – there are other people involved.”

“Have you talked to anybody else about these suspicions of yours?”

“I talked to Mildred, last time she visited me. Last Sunday. I couldn’t say very much, with those hospital eavesdroppers around. I don’t know very much. It’s why I had to do something.” He was getting tense again.

“Take it easy, Carl. Do you mind if I talk to your wife?”

“What about?”

“Things in general. Your family. You.”

“I don’t object if she doesn’t.”

“Where does she live?”

“On the ranch, outside Purissima – No, she doesn’t live there now. After I went to the hospital, Mildred couldn’t go on sharing the house with Jerry and Zinnie. So she moved back into Purissima, with her mother. They live at 220 Grant – but I’ll show you, I’ll come along.”

“I don’t think so.”

“But I must. There are so many things to be cleared up. I can’t wait any longer.”

“You’re going to have to wait, if you want my help. I’ll make you a proposition, Carl. Let me take you back to the hospital. It’s more or less on the way to Purissima. Then I’ll talk to your wife, see what she thinks about these suspicions of yours–”

“She doesn’t take me seriously, either.”

“Well, I do. Up to a point. I’ll circulate and find out what I can. If there’s any real indication that your brother’s trying to cheat you, or that Dr. Grantland pitched any low curves, I’ll do something about it. Incidentally, I charge fifty a day and expenses.”

“I have no money now. I’ll have plenty when I get what’s coming to me.”

“Is it a deal then? You go back to the hospital, let me do the legwork?”

He gave me a reluctant yes. It was clear that he didn’t like the plan, but he was too tired and confused to argue about it.