The Mindwarpers Read online

  “I’ll find somewhere. At the worst I can snooze in the station waiting-room.”

  “Didn’t you come by car?”

  “No—I left it with the wife.”

  “You’re not in the big metropolis here,” Henderson reminded. “You’re deep in the woods. There won’t be a train before ten-thirty in the morning. Why not stay here? I’ve got a spare bed.”

  “That’s very kind. Sure I won’t be imposing?”

  “Not at all. Be glad of your company. We have something in common—if only mental deficiency.”

  “You have spoken sooth.” Resuming his seat, Bransome gave the other a quizzical look. “What are you going to do about it?”

  “I know I must do something. I can’t understand why it didn’t occur to me to check back in the first place, as you have done. I should have thought of it immediately but I did not. My only impulse was to get lost.”

  “One good reason may be that you had a hiding-place in mind whereas I hadn’t,” Bransome suggested. “I was at my wit’s end where to go for the best. About the only out-of-the-way dump I could think of was Burleston. I went there mainly from sheer inability to imagine anywhere else.” He had another thought and added, “Perhaps I was more scared than you, too scared to figure out a better move.”

  “I doubt it. You’re not the go-haywire type. I think some small measure of incredulity was at work in your mind and urged you to go to Burleston. After all, human beings are not the same. They may react similarly—but not identically.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “To return to my own problem,” Henderson went on. “I shall have to check back. That means Old Addy will have to help me out, if he’s willing.”

  “Who’s Old Addy?”

  “The character who used to own this store. He splurged some of my money on a vacation, not having had one for many years. He returned about ten days ago after enjoying as good a time as one can at the age of seventy-two. Since then he’s been hanging around like a lost child. Can’t get used to doing nothing. A couple of times he’s hinted that he’s available if and when I need help. I sure could do with it if I take time off to examine my past. I’ve too much hard-earned money tied up in this store to neglect business even for a week or two. If Old Addy will chip in I’ll be able to take a trip to—”

  As Henderson’s voice petered out, Bransome said, “Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”

  “On second thought I can’t see it matters in the circumstances. After all, you’ve told me about Burleston.”

  “Yes, because I feel safer in giving forth. I’ve done most of my checking while you’ve done none. That makes all the difference. Until you satisfy yourself that you’re being tormented by a fantasy, you’ll be happier in the thought that I don’t know enough to pin you down. So don’t add to your worries after I’ve gone by wondering whether you’ve talked too much. You’ve got trouble enough. I know—I’ve had my share of it.”

  “Maybe you have something there,” Henderson conceded.

  “If you care to tell me, there’s one thing I’d like to know.”

  “What is it?”

  “Suppose you check back and discover that all is illusion—what are you going to do then? Will you enjoy your relieved conscience and remain in the hardware business? Or will you sell out and return to your former work?”

  “There’ll be no place for me at the plant. They’ll have put someone else in my job by now. In any case, they’ll have no time for characters who leave when they like and come back when they please.”

  “What, when they’ve been pestering you to return?”

  “It hasn’t looked that way to me. A couple of official snoops have nagged at me to give my reasons for leaving. It seemed to be the only thing that interested them. If they wanted me to return it was for further chivvying.” Henderson let go a resigned sigh. “I beat them off. They got no change out of me. Soon afterward I moved here and I haven’t been bothered since. I made up my mind that if they traced me and harassed me yet again, my next move would be over the border.”

  “That’s where most of the others have gone.”

  “I know.”

  “Wish we could find and talk to them,” said Bransome for the second time. He toyed with the notion of telling Henderson that already he had been traced and that a sly watch was being kept upon him, but after brief thought he dismissed the idea as something that would create unnecessary alarm and serve no useful purpose. So he continued, “What you do in the future is strictly your own affair. However, I think we should keep in touch.”

  “So do I.”

  “How about my phoning you here now and again? If you make another move you can find some way of advising me how to regain contact. I’d like to learn the result of your checking and you’ll want to know about mine. One of us may stumble over something particularly enlightening to the other. We lunatics must stick together if we want to avoid being locked up.”

  “I couldn’t agree more. Call me any time you like. Similarly I’ll phone your home if and when I’ve something to say worth saying.” Henderson threw a glance at the clock. “How about us turning in?”

  “I’m ready.” Bransome got up, stretched, yawned. “Tomorrow the police. I should have baited them in Burleston but I lacked the nerve. You must have given me some courage.”

  “You’ve given me plenty,” said Henderson. “It’s a fair swap.”

  In the morning Henderson wanted to go to the station and see his visitor depart. Bransome discouraged the idea.

  “Let’s not draw even casual attention to ourselves. You preside in the store and I’ll walk out looking like a satisfied customer.”

  They shook hands and parted. Outside, Bransome glanced around in search of Reardon’s watcher. The only suspect he could find was a scruffy idler on the near corner. This character eyed him dully as he brushed past. Farther along the street, Bransome looked back. The idler was still on the corner and making no attempt to follow. Either the supposed watch on Henderson’s place was a half-hearted, sloppy job or, perhaps, too expert to be detected.

  He was not joined on the train by anyone he could deem suspicious. The journey involved a change at one point, with a half-hour wait. He filled in his time at the latter by finding a phone booth and calling the Hanbury police. When a voice responded he asked for the chief. The voice became curious, and showed an officious tendency to argue the request until Bransome became tough and threatened to hang up. At that point he was switched through.

  “Chief Pascoe,” announced a deeper and gruffer voice. “Who’s calling?”

  “My name is Robert Lafarge,” said Bransome, glibly. “About twenty years ago my sister Arline went on a visit to Burleston and never returned. We had reason to believe that she’d run off with a man or something like that—you know, a secret romance. She always had been a wayward and impulsive character.”

  “What’s all this to me?” asked Chief Pascoe, patiently.

  “Not known! Not known!” shouted eerily in Bransome’s brain. It had a touch of triumph.

  He continued, “Recently I’ve been talking to a fellow from your town. He mentioned that some time ago—I don’t know exactly when—you had found the bones of a girl buried under a tree. The discovery was obvious evidence of an old crime, according to him. It got me worried. I wondered if the victim could be Arline and whether you’d found any evidence in support.”

  “Who is this informant? A friend of yours?”

  “No, sir—just a casual acquaintance,”

  “You’re sure he said Hanbury?”

  “He said it was just outside Burleston. That’s in your jurisdiction, isn’t it?”

  “Certainly is. And if such a thing had happened we’d know of it. We don’t know of it.”

  “You mean—”

  “We’ve unearthed no bones, Mr. Lafarge. Have you any good reason to suspect that your sister met with foul play?”

  “Afraid I haven’t. It’s only that we haven’t
heard from her in years, and this story sort of made me put two and two together.”

  “Did your informant know about your sister?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “You said nothing to him about her?” “Definitely not.”

  “Then he’s given you a figment of his imagination.”

  “That may be so,” Bransome conceded, noticing that the other was making no attempt to hold him on the line long enough to make a pickup. “But I see no point in it. He had nothing to gain by feeding me a fairy story.”

  “He gained a listener,” retorted Chief Pascoe, sounding cynical. “A yap needs a listener like a drug addict needs a shot in the arm. That’s why every once in a while we get people confessing to crimes they didn’t commit and begging us to take them in. It would be a good thing if there were bigger penalties for being a public nuisance. We get more than enough of our time wasted as it is.”

  “So you don’t think it’s any use my coming there to have a look around?” asked Bransome, knowing full well that Pascoe would make unhesitating use of his willingness to enter the trap—if a trap actually existed.

  “There’s nothing for you to see, Mr. Lafarge.”

  “Thanks!” said Bransome, vastly relieved. “Genuinely sorry to have troubled you.”

  “Think nothing of it. You took the proper action in the circumstances. Our best leads come from people with suspicions, but yours have no basis so far as we are concerned. That’s all we’re able to say.”

  Bransome thanked him again and ended the call. Leaving the booth, he sat on a nearby bench and thought things over. He was baffled. So far as one can judge a voice without actually seeing the speaker, Chief Pascoe was sincere and forthright. He had not tried to hold his caller while an aide got the local police racing to the booth; that would have been his obvious tactic when saddled with an unsolved murder and in telephone contact with a suspect.

  He’d even turned down Bransome’s offer to stick his head in the lion’s mouth. That clinched the matter—there had not been any gruesome exhumation in Burleston despite that Bransome’s memory made it possible and despite the trucker’s statement that it had been done.

  The easiest and most enticing solution of this puzzle lay in the theory already considered and rejected a dozen times, namely, that the trucker had talked about some other remarkably similar crime and thus unwittingly had awakened Bransome’s guilty conscience. But the idea had several flaws. While it might explain his own panic-stricken gallivantings, it did not explain Henderson’s. It did not rationalize Reardon’s activities or those of the mysterious big man thought by Dorothy to be a foreigner.

  Even Reardon’s own explanations did not fully fit the peculiar circumstances. According to him the country’s various defense establishments had lost a number of good men and at that time he was keeping tab on two of them, one of whom was Bransome. How could one account for all the others—in terms of a gabby trucker?

  What was it Reardon had said? The company may become a regiment and the regiment an army—if we don’t stop it. Stop what? Answer: whatever it is that makes intelligent men seek a hiding-place. All these men were scientists, or high-grade specialists of some sort, and therefore of the calm, logical and somewhat unemotional type least likely to go off the rails. What could unbalance men like that?

  He could imagine only one thing. Fear of death.

  Any kind of death—especially judicial execution.

  The train came in and he got himself an isolated seat where he could handle his problems in peace. For the moment he was only dimly aware of the existence of other passengers and little concerned about whether any were interested in him.

  Thought was a good deal more orderly and systematic now that a hefty slice of his emotional disturbance had been removed. He felt as if an invisible hand had been thrust into his skull and taken away a cluster of impeding marbles that had been rolling around too confusingly and too long. One or two remained, but they weren’t of the heart-straining, sweat-making variety. His guilt persisted to some extent but was no longer fitted with a clamorous alarm-bell; Chief Pascoe had snatched away that distracting accessory and tossed it on the junkpile. For the first time in days he could sit and listen to his own thinking processes.

  Firstly, Arline, real or imaginary, was still down wherever he’d’put her and with luck would remain there until the crack of doom. From his personal point of view that was item number one, the most important of the lot. The police did not want him, did not suspect him, did not care a hoot about him or the murky episode in his past. The death-chamber did not have his name upon it; if it was being held in readiness it was for another who, no doubt, was viewing it in his dreams exactly as Bransome had done.

  Secondly, he was being chivvied by groups other than the police for an unknown something of lesser consequence—because any misdeed is of consequence lesser than the one that carries the capital penalty. Alternatively, he was being chased for something he had not yet done but was considered capable of doing and likely to do.

  It was nothing he’d done already, of that he was sure. Positively and beyond all doubt Arline monopolized the only dark space in his mind. There was no other guilt, nothing with which to reproach himself.

  So it must be a future crime, the possibility if not the probability of what he might yet do. In his special position there were only two things he could do to outrage the powers-that-be: he could go over to the enemy or at least desert his own side. This was what bothered Reardon, who had said so in plain terms. It wasn’t flattering. It implied that both sides, friend and foe, had weighed him up as a weak sister. Both sides recognized him as an easy mark, a sucker.

  He scowled at the thought of it. Other people’s opinions of him must be pretty low if it was apparent to all and sundry that he was an open chink in his country’s armor. They wouldn’t pick on hard, taciturn men like Markham, Cain, Potter and several more. Oh, no, they’d just naturally go for a soft touch like Richard Bransome who needed no more than a gentle shove.

  Becoming emotional again, he thought. Men tend to get that way when they think their self-esteem is being kicked around. Ego is dangerously diversionary and misleading. It must not be taken into consideration. Let’s look at things objectively.

  Why should an enemy select me as a suitable target in preference to others? Answer: their tactics are determined by expediency and they choose the target available at a given moment in given circumstances. Then when am I peculiarly suitable? Answer: when the enemy is ready and I am immediately available while others are not. I represent an opportunity. Why does Joe Soap get knocked down by a car while none of his friends and neighbors suffer the same tragedy? Answer: because Joe and the car created the event by coinciding in time and space.

  Knocked down?

  Knocked down?

  His ringers curled into a tight grip while his eyes expressed startlement. That evil day had begun with an inexplicable tumble down the steps. In his mind’s eye he could see himself right now doing it all over again. Descending the first ten or twelve steps with forty more waiting below. Then the flash of light and the headlong, neck-breaking dive from which he’d been saved only by two men on their way up. He could picture vividly their outstretched arms, their anticipatory faces as he plunged down upon them.

  Their hands had grabbed him a split second before he’d hit and had saved him from crashing the whole way down. Now that he came to think of it, he realized they’d been amazingly swift to sum up the situation and do something about it, almost as if they had known what was about to happen and been ready to play their part. They’d reacted with all the promptitude of men blessed with prevision, and that alone had saved him from serious injury.

  Nevertheless, he had banged himself around more than he’d cared to admit to Dorothy. He had knocked himself out and regained consciousness sitting midway down the steps with his two catchers tending to him and showing plausible concern. The big bruise on his elbow was understandable because he could remem
ber striking it upon a concrete step just before he’d passed out. The blow on the skull and the large bump it raised were something else again; he had no recollection of that injury in the making.

  Holy smoke, could he have been slugged from behind?

  At that time the incident had shaken him mentally and physically to such an extent that his work-free morning had been hopelessly muddled. Recapturing it now, he could not recall what he’d done with the rest of his time before reaching the plant at mid-day. He had worried about the mental blackout that had either accompanied or caused his fall, had wondered if his heart were acting up and whether he had better consult a doctor at risk of being told the worst.

  Yes, his subsequent confusion had been so great that temporarily he had lost all sense of time. Somehow or other two hours had disappeared out of his morning, he’d suddenly found it far later than he thought, and he’d had to take a taxi to reach the plant by deadline.

  And so had commenced Friday the Thirteenth.

  His unlucky day. A fall. Two men ready to catch him. A bump on the skull from nowhere. Time missing from his morning. A pair of truckers gossiping within earshot and giving him the heebies. The big man following him around. The flight of a frightened rat. Reardon on the trail. A company, a regiment, an army.

  He sat taut in his seat as inexorably his mind carried its thoughts along. It takes arduous and careful preparation to make an atomic bomb after which the contraption is of no use except potentially.

  “It doesn’t mean a thing if you don’t pull the string.”

  Suppose, just suppose that one could apply a somewhat similar technique to the human mind, adding to its data-banks an item large enough to create critical mass. The brain would remain at rest until it and the new part were brought forcibly together. It could be left in peace, maybe for weeks or months, until the moment arrived to Trigger the situation thus set up.

  A few words spoken by a mock-trucker.

  The detonating mechanism.

  Mental explosion I

  He came out of the railroad station in a hell of a hurry, brushing passers-by, bumping into one or two and throwing them a muttered apology. Several people turned to stare after him. He was aware of their scrutiny and knew that he was making himself conspicuous but was too absorbed in himself to care.