'You're not going to leave him like that, are you?' asked Leonard incredulously.
'I told you his reactions aren't those of a normal person.'
'But good God…'
'Oh, very well.'
With ill grace the doctor put Underwood back as he had been. Watching this, Leonard suddenly caught sight of the lion-like figure in the center of the pond. He screwed up his eyes against the sun.
'What on earth is that thing?'
'Oh, our mascot.' The doctor seemed gratified. 'That was done by one of our paranoiacs, as occupational therapy originally. It worked very well from that point of view, in the sense that as soon as he'd finished it his personality suffered rapid and complete disintegration. We couldn't allow him anywhere near a chisel now. Well, I got the idea of having the carving set up where everybody could see it. There was a poor copy of a Romanesque statue there originally, some nymph or other, a piece of sentimental trash quite frankly. This thing is much more… arresting. And useful. We get quite a lot of people in here of whose condition one could say little more with any certainty than that they are mad, in a generic, undifferentiated sort of way-screaming and weeping and so on. Then, perhaps overnight, such a case will issue in a fully crystallized, distinctive, autonomous psychosis- anything from suicide attempts to unsocial behavior with excrement. I've been interested to note how often, in this asylum, progressants of this type have indicated the experience of seeing our mascot as the one which triggered off their psychic shift. There was even one fascinating case last year of a woman who believed she had counterfeited violent mania in order to be confined in one of the closed wards and thus escape the sight of our mascot, which, as you'll have noticed, lies unavoidably in the path of anybody entering or leaving the main building. A delusion, of course-she was as mad as a hatter-but a significant one.
'Long before the human mind became an object of scientific study it was recognized that abnormal mental states were highly communicable, not to say contagious, and I've often admired the instinctive good sense of those early practitioners who, without any body of theory to assist them, knew empirically that, by throwing together raving lunatics and those who were merely disturbed-as in Bedlam and other such mad-houses-they were encouraging the latter type of patient to make his psychic shift and bring the real nature of his illness into the open. This communicability is, as I say, notorious; but I don't think it's ever been adequately noted before that this can work via an outward symbol or artefact, so that state-of-mind produces object which in turn produces state-of- mind. There are obvious analogies here with aesthetic theory, in particular with Eliot's notion of the objective correlative.'
Dr. Best had evidently ceased to notice that it was Leonard he was talking to. The sunlight was reflected from his spectacles in such a way that they seemed to flash and glisten with the disinterested love of his profession. Now, however, as the two men strolled past the water-tower towards the entrance to his quarters, the doctor paused in his discourse and glanced briefly at his companion.
'I noted just now,' he said, 'that when I invited you to accuse the man Underwood of the deadliest crime you could think of, you chose to accuse him of being a Communist spy. Why was that, Captain Leonard?'
'Because it is the deadliest crime I can think of. What other reason could I have?'
The doctor beamed. 'Deadlier than murder?'
'Of course. A successful spy is far more destructive than even a mass murderer.'
'Oh, do you think so? More repulsive, too? More horrifying?'
'You didn't ask me for that. Anyway, why did you choose to accuse him of those disgusting things, or at least of wanting to do them?'
'Because my experience tells me that such accusations are the likeliest to produce a reaction in withdrawn subjects.'
'He didn't react, though, did he?'
'No. I wasn't expecting him to. But you did.'
'Good God, that was just because I thought you were being unkind to the poor swine.'
'Weren't you being unkind by accusing him of what according to you is the worst crime in the world?'
'That was different, doctor. I knew he couldn't be a spy, but he might quite conceivably have had some sort of hankering after the things you mentioned to him.'
'Ah. You knew he couldn't be a spy, and yet you accused him of being one. Why?'
Leonard hesitated. 'It's the sort of accusation a lot of people might resent even if it was utterly untrue.'
'Or is this accusation the one you instinctively bring against people whatever the circumstances and whatever your reason tells you about its inapplicability? Aren't you perhaps in danger of seeing spies everywhere?'
'In the circumstances,' said Leonard with more than his habitual urgency, looking hard at Dr. Best, 'it's necessary that I do see spies everywhere.'
This came just as the doctor was stepping aside to allow Leonard to precede him through the outside door of the staff block. He looked as if he had found himself stepping aside further than he had intended, perhaps at a convulsion of laughter.
'You really are a character, Captain Leonard, I do declare,' he said. 'Really quite a card in your way. Now, if you'd like to leave your things here… That's right, come along.'
Leonard arranged his cap and cane on a hallstand that sheltered an immense golf-bag. Then he followed Dr. Best into what might have been the board room of a small but prosperous private company. There was shoulder-high oak paneling and the ceiling was buttressed in the same wood. On a handsome Jacobean sideboard was ranged a double row of bottles and cut-glass decanters and what looked like a silver-plated ice-bucket. Some elaborate lilies in elaborate bowls gave off a thick and rather nasty scent.
