The Mindwarpers Read online

  Here was the curse of being burdened with a past dragged willy-nilly into the present and making the present equally grim: the constant, unshakable, never-ending sensation of being watched, suspected, followed. The obsession of being surrounded by eyes that stared and saw the truth and accused.

  Why did I kill Arline?

  There was a faint queasiness in his stomach as he pondered the question. For some elusive reason the details came back more clearly now that he was less preoccupied with immediate dangers.

  He could remember her surname now, Arline La-farge, yes, that had been her name. She had once explained to him that her first name was another version of Eileen and that the last was attributable to French ancestry. She’d had a wonderful figure to which she’d given every possible emphasis and that was as much as could be said for her. In other respects she’d been black-haired, black-eyed, completely calculating and completely callous, an old witch in youthful guise if ever there was one.

  She had gained an almost hypnotic hold over him when he was not quite twenty and must have been a ten times bigger fool than he’d ever been before or since. She’d announced her intention of exploiting her control to the utmost just as soon as he became fit for use, by which she meant she was biding her time until he left college, found a job and started making good money. Meanwhile, he was to be her willing love-slave, waiting and yearning for the ultimate reward of her body. Every once in a while she wanted reassurance that her hold remained good and tight. Dutifully he had put on the required lap-dog acts, wanting her and hating her at one and the same time.

  So then two decades back had come the explosion. She had summoned him to Burleston just for a day, wanting to dangle the bait just beyond reach of the poor fish, wanting to gloat over him, wipe her feet on him, satisfy herself for the twelfth or twentieth time that he was wholly hers, body and soul.

  That had been her mistake, to call him just then. He’d had enough and more than enough of this junior Cleopatra. Something had snapped, his liver had taken over from his heart, and his hatred had built up to critical mass. He could have thrown her over if his fury had not been too great to be satisfied with this simple solution. So he had gone to Burleston and bashed her skull in. Then he had buried her under a tree.

  He must have been crazy.

  The details of that act now shone vividly in his imagination as if embossed thereon a few days ago rather than twenty years back. He could see her pale oval face as she collapsed beneath a vicious blow, her crumpled’ form lying still, unmoving, a thin trickle of blood creeping from the edge of her black hair and matching the blood-red of her lips. He could still sense the insane violence with which he had struck and even as he thought of it his arm tensed as if in readiness to strike again. He could recall with complete clarity the frantic energy with which he had scrabbled a burrow large enough to hold the body, meanwhile watching the lonely road for any on comer who might catch him in the act. He could see himself carefully replacing the last torn-up clods between the tree’s roots and trampling them firm to conceal all signs of disturbance.

  And then had followed a long period of mental training designed to protect him from the past; a stringent form of self-discipline by means of which he had almost convinced himself that the deed never had been done, Arline Lafarge had never existed, never in his life had he been in or near Burleston.

  To some extent he must have succeeded in expunging evil memories as the years rolled by. Today his crime could be pictured in sharp focus and full color but on preceding and subsequent events he was decidedly hazy. It had taken quite a time to remember that Arline’s name had been Lafarge. Try as he might he could not bring the township of Burleston to mind with any accuracy; in fact, his efforts to recall its scenes left him unsure whether he was resurrecting the correct ones or confusing them with some other small place visited in the long ago. In the past he had traveled around quite a lot and had seen plenty of one-horse country towns; at this date it wasn’t easy to sort out one from another. And another thing: right now he couldn’t imagine why Arline had gone to Burleston in the first place.

  Above all, he could not for the life of him recall the precise nature of Arline’s hold over him. Obviously he should be able to remember it because therein lay the basic motivation of his crime. Yet he could not. Even if one made full allowance for the desires and emotions of youth, mere detestation was not enough—or not enough for a man of his thoughtful type. So far as his possibly inhibited memory went, he had not committed more than his share of youthful follies, had never been known as a wildcat. There must have been a better-than-average reason for ridding himself of Arline. Somewhere at some time he must have done something that could effectively have ruined his career if found out, something that Arline had known about and held over him.

  But he had not the slightest recollection of it. What had it been? A theft? An armed robbery? An embezzlement or a forgery? In his imagination he went through the details of his life from babyhood to the twenties and failed to dig out a single deed of enough consequence to place him at the mercy of a scheming female. So far as his memory could be trusted his only delinquencies had been childish ones such as blacking the eye of a mother’s pet or breaking a window with a ball. No more than that.

  Wearily he rubbed his forehead, knowing that intense nervous strain can play hob with rational thought, wondering whether any of the bright brains with whom he worked ever became afflicted with a similar mental hiatus. Once or twice he also speculated rather fearfully about his own mental condition. Was he really normal or was it that some latent abnormality—first evident twenty years ago—was now reasserting itself in readiness to develop into a certifiable condition? He may have been a little mad then—he might not be as sane as he believed now.

  Darkness had fallen by the time he reached Han-bury. He took a room at a small hotel, slept erratically with many tossings and turnings, breakfasted heavy-eyed and without appetite. The first bus to Burleston left at nine-thirty. He caught it, leaving his suitcase at the hotel.

  The bus got him there at ten-fifteen. Dismounting, he stared up and down the street, entirely failing to recognize it. This did not mystify him. Places can and do change a lot in twenty years. Sometimes they alter out of all semblance to their original form as old buildings are knocked down, new ones take their places, vacant lots become occupied, garbage dumps are cleared away. In twenty years a hamlet can become a village, a village can grow into a town and a town into a city.

  To the best of his judgment Burleston was now a small country town of about four thousand population. It was bigger than he’d expected. He knew of no reason why he had imagined it smaller except, perhaps, that a memory of his last visit was lodged somewhere in his subconscious.

  For some time he stood in the street uncertain what to do next. He hadn’t the vaguest notion why flight from inward fears had brought him to this place, only that he had obeyed an instinct seemingly without rhyme or reason. Perhaps it was the much-vaunted desire of the criminal to return to the scene of his crime. It could be, in fact it was likely to be, because he felt very much impelled to visit the actual scene—without knowing if it were north, south, east or west of his present position.

  His memory supplied only the vision of a length of country road no different from a thousand other roads. In his mind’s eye he could see that stretch vividly enough: a straight two-lane highway, smoothly macadamed, with young trees lining the shoulders at fifty-foot intervals. Fields around full of corn standing knee-high. One tree in particular, the one under which he had dug a tunnel down below the spreading roots. He had shoved her into it head-first. Her shoes had peeped out before he’d hidden them with the last of the earth and reset the lumps of coarse grass.

  Somewhere outside of Burleston it had been, must have been. A mile beyond the outskirts, five miles, ten? He did not know. And in which direction? He didn’t know that, either. In this street were no familiar pointers, nothing to give him a clue.

  Eventuall
y he dealt with the problem in a manner best calculated to avoid the questions of the curious. Hiring a taxi, he told the driver that he was a business executive seeking a site for a small factory outside of town. The driver, accepting him at face value, took him on a comprehensive tour of all roads within ten miles of Burleston. It was a dead loss. At no point did they pass a scene that the passenger could recognize.

  When they got back to their starting point, Bransome said to the driver, “I’ve been tipped to look at a cornfield alongside a two-lane road. The road has trees planted at regular intervals along the sides. Know where that might be?”

  “No, chief. You’ve been along every route outside of this town. There ain’t any more. I don’t know of any tree-lined road nearer than ten miles the other side of Hanbury. Take you there if you want.”

  “No, thanks,” said Bransome, hurriedly. “The advice I was given definitely said Burleston.”

  “Then somebody got it wrong,” asserted the driver. “Wise guys usually get it wrong.” With that piece of philosophy he drove away.

  Well, perhaps the road had been widened and its trees cut down. Perhaps he had ridden within a few yards of the fateful spot without knowing it. But no, that wasn’t likely. The gabby trucker who had scared him in the first place had talked about a tree leaning over the road and near to falling. That one, at least, could not have been cut at the time. It was a good guess that all the other trees were still there—unless cut very recently. But he had seen no evidence of roadside felling during his ride in the taxi.

  Restlessly he walked several times up and down the main street, looking at shops, stores, taverns and service stations, hoping to stimulate his memory and get himself a clue of some kind, any kind. It was to no avail. The whole place remained as completely strange as any unknown town. If in fact it were an unknown town, if indeed he had never been here before, he must have got the name wrong. It couldn’t be Burleston after all. It must be some similar sounding place such as Boylestown or Burlesford or even Bakerstown.

  “It is Burleston!” insisted his brain.

  Confusion.

  His mind said one thing while his eyes said another. His mind flatly declared, “This is where you killed Arline” His eyes contradicted, “You don’t know this place from Singapore or Seringapatam.”

  Then to make matters worse his mind seemed to split into mutually antagonistic halves. One part gloated, “Watch out! The police are collecting the evidence. Watch out!” The other part retorted, “Damn the police! You’ve got to prove it to yourself—that’s all that matters!”

  Schizophrenia: that was his self-diagnosis. Such a mental condition would account for everything. He was living and had lived for years in two separate worlds. Let not thy right hand know what thy left hand doeth. Let not Bransome the scientist be called to account for Bransome the murderer.

  In the last resort it might prove his salvation. They don’t execute certified maniacs. They put them away for keeps, in an asylum.

  Salvation?

  He’d be better off dead!

  A heavy-set man lounging in the doorway of a cheap clothing store spoke to him as he strolled past for the sixth or seventh time.

  “Looking for someone, stranger?”

  Bransome did not hesitate this time. Glib stories come more easily with practice and he’d been getting some of that of late. He had the foresight to make it substantially the same yarn as that fed to the taxi-driver. The gossips in a small town are quick to detect inconsistencies and remark upon them.

  “I’ve been searching for a suggested factory site. Can’t find it any place. My informant must have bungled it somehow.”

  “In Burleston?” asked the other, screwing up his eyes in readiness for deep thought.

  “No—just outside the town somewhere.”

  “What sort of a site? If you can give a description I might be able to help you.”

  Bransome gave it in as much detail as he could and added, “I’m told that one of the trees has been brought down by a flood.” That was a daring item to put in. He waited edgily, half-expecting the other to burst out, “Hey, that’s where they found a girl’s bones!”

  But the other merely grinned and said, “You must be talking of more than half a century ago.”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “I’ve been here fifty years. We’ve had no flood any-where’around these parts in my time.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “Couldn’t be more positive.”

  “Perhaps I’ve got the wrong Burleston.”

  “I doubt it. I’ve never heard of another one, not in this part of the world, anyway.”

  Bransome shrugged, trying to look careless and indifferent. “Nothing for it but to go back and recheck. This trip has been a waste of time and money.”

  “Tough luck,” sympathized the other. “Why don’t you try Raster’s real estate office in Hanbury? That fellow knows every farm and field for a hundred miles around.”

  “It’s an idea. Thanks!”

  He returned to the bus terminal, baffled. In a town as small as this an event as large as murder—even an old one recently revived—should be the talk of the place. Proximity to the scene should have made the taxi-driver mention it as the cab went past. The heavy-set man should have responded to the tale of the falling tree with all the lurid details of what the uprooting had revealed. Yet neither had reacted.

  It then occurred to him that the local newspaper should be able to provide information without his having to entice it in a manner likely to attract attention. He could have kicked himself for not having thought of it before and he filed the oversight under the heading of criminal amateurism. In spite of days of ducking and dodging he was not yet adept at being on the run.

  The current issue of the town paper might contain nothing of significance to him, especially if the case were hanging fire or the police giving no handouts to the press. But some issue in the last few weeks should hold the original story, the theories pertaining to it and perhaps some hint of what was being done about it.

  He spoke to a bewhiskered oldster sitting on a nearby bench. “Where’s the office of the local paper?”

  “We don’t have one, mister. We take the Hanbury Gazette. It comes out every Friday.”

  The bus arrived, he got aboard and sat looking through the window. Across the street the beefy man was still loafing in the doorway of his shop, his bored attention on the bus. It was more than certain, Bransome decided, that that observant character would remember him and, if asked, would be able to give a fairly accurate description of him together with times of arrival and departure. He looked like the gabby, miss-nothing type who could come up with damning evidence when required.

  Oh, Lord, why were other people’s memories so good and his own so bad?

  If ever the hunt caught up with him this visit to Burleston might be awkard to explain. He may have made a serious mistake in coming here. Perhaps he should not have given way to the dictates of an abnormal mind or some insistent part of it. The journey could weigh heavily against him when the official questioning began.

  “All right, so you’re not guilty. Let’s accept that. Let’s agree that you don’t know what we’re talking about. Let’s agree that you’ve never heard of Arline Lafarge. Then why did you take it on the lam? Why did you beat it away from home just about as fast as you could go?”

  “I didn’t beat it. I wasn’t running away from anything. I merely treated myself to a week free from work. I was tensed up and needed a rest.”

  “Did your doctor tell you that?”

  “No—I didn’t consult my doctor.”

  “Why not? If you were all that near to collapse he’d have prescribed something, wouldn’t he?”

  “I wasn’t near to collapse and haven’t claimed that I was. Don’t put words into my mouth.”

  “We need no instructions from you. Just give straight answers to straight questions. You’ve nothing to hide, have you?”
r />   “No.”

  “Okay then. You say you were exhausted and wanted to take it easy for a while?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You diagnosed your own trouble and prescribed your own treatment?”

  “Yes, I did. There’s no law against it.”

  “We know all about the law. Now answer this: isn’t it a wonderful coincidence that you should need a rest way out in the wilds at the very time that we picked up your tracks? Why couldn’t you have rested at home, with your wife and kids?”

  “We weren’t doing each other any good.”

  “How d’you mean?”

  “My mental condition worried them and that added to my worry. It was a vicious circle that aggravated the situation. The worse I felt the worse they made me feel. Seemed to me the only solution lay in taking a few days away from home, somewhere quiet and peaceful.”

  “Such as Burleston?”

  “If I were going away I had to go somewhere, didn’t I? I could have gone anywhere, anywhere at all.”

  “You said it, mister! You could have gone anywhere in the wide, wide world. But you had to go to Burleston. How d’you account for that?”

  “I can’t account for it.”

  Perhaps at that point he’d start shouting and they’d give each other sly glances, knowing from experience that he who shouts is in a corner and soon to crack. He’d shout his answers in effort to emphasize his innocence and thereby convince them of his guilt.

  “I don’t know why I went where I did. I was heading for a nervous breakdown and in no condition for logical thought. I went off at random, believing that the trip would do me good. It was by sheer chance that I ended up in Burleston.” “That and no more?”

  “Yes.”

  “It was just by accident you got to Burleston?”

  “Correct.”

  “You’re quite sure about that?”