you can have a look-see.”
He hoisted the small man, and Mr. Montrose clutched at the transom, peering into the doctor’s room. He shuddered violently and said, “Oh-my God!”
Shayne let him slide down and looked at his face. Then he set his teeth together, drew back, and lunged at the locked door with his left shoulder. He snarled with pain, as the impact shook his injured right shoulder, then drew back and threw himself at it again. The lock gave this time, and he crashed into the room as the door swung on its hinges. He staggered upright and moved to the side of the bed. Mr. Montrose followed him, making a curious whimpering noise as he stared at the doctor’s body.
Dr. Joel Pedique looked exceedingly peaceful in death. Fully clothed, he lay outstretched upon the bed. His thin features were composed, and there was a lurking expression of triumph on his lips. His left hand dangled down by the side of the bed. An overturned glass lay on the rug just beneath where it had dropped when his fingers relaxed their hold. On a bedside table there was an open cardboard box containing a number of pinkish wafers. A pink residue clung to the bottom of the glass. The top of the box was marked with the familiar symbol of poison.
Lying beside the box were a number of sheets of note-paper filled with evenly spaced script. Shayne picked them up and read the superscription aloud. “‘To Whom It May Concern.’”
He said wearily to Montrose, “For Christ’s sake, stop whimpering. You ought to be used to this around here by this time. Go and call Painter and tell him to bring the coroner along.”
Then he moved over to a window through which the sunlight streamed, slumped into a rocking chair, and began reading the strange document which Dr. Pedique had left behind.
CHAPTER 11
“I am guilty” (Dr. Joel Pedique had written) “of a crime so horrible that I cannot go on with the conviction of guilt burdening my soul. The death of two innocent women and the destruction of a beautiful girl’s mind are an overwhelming weight upon my conscience. I shall expiate my crime in the only possible manner after setting down this true account so I may be assured the guilt will rest squarely upon my shoulders and mine alone after I am gone.
“Since boyhood I have been cursed with an evil curiosity which has led me into many shameful practices, though I early lost my sense of shame. These finally culminated in the tragic denouement which the law will doubtless call matricide-unjustly, for I alone stand self-convicted as Mrs. Brighton’s murderer. Yes, and as the murderer of Charlotte Hunt, also.
“A deranged intellect has been my tool-but I feel that I must go back into the past to make understandable the events of the last few days.
“Scientific experimentation is good; it is only through experimentation that science has made its tremendous forward strides; yet an irrational zeal for charting the unknown can blacken the soul and lead to the most evil consequences if one be driven to carry such experimentation to its completely logical conclusion, as I have done.
“It is with no thought of exculpation that I use the word ‘driven’ as above. Before God, I seek no exculpation. Yet, I use the word advisedly. Since youth a strange inward force has driven me to acts which I consciously realized were an affront to God and to humanity. I have been like one possessed of a demon which I recognized yet could not exorcize.
“So much for motivation. It has not been a recent seizure nor can I plead ignorance of the evil inherent in such odious practices. As a child I recall wondering if chickens could survive without their protective feathering. There were chickens in the yard. I plucked one of them alive-and wept bitterly over its cold body after death.
“Time and again has this selfsame tragic drama been repeated in my life, manifesting itself in a strange and unreasoning passion to thwart nature regardless of consequences, followed by bitter remorse over the inevitable consequences of each cruel experiment.
“With this background I entered upon the study of medicine. It is needless to relate in detail how this cancerous growth upon my soul, nourished by ever-widening opportunities, spread its unwholesome tentacles to engulf every decent instinct within me” (Shayne’s lips twitched slightly as this paragraph passed under his eye) “blighting my life and destroying what might otherwise have been a brilliant career.
“Early in my study of medicine I became aware that it was in the mental realm rather than that of the physical that the most fascinating opportunities for experimentation present themselves. Cunningly, then, I devoted myself to a comprehensive survey of the vast field of psychology, psychiatry, psychometry, eventually specializing in psycho-physics, which treats of the psychical and the physical in their conjoint operation.
“Here, indeed, I was enthralled. Here, verging upon the metaphysical was my long-sought opportunity for experimentation in a practically untouched field.
“I shall not catalogue my long list of failures with the dire results which followed upon the heels of each unsuccessful experiment. I plunged into my chosen work with a dreadful zest, reassuring myself with the stern credo that the individual must be sacrificed on the altar of scientific advancement.
“I shudder tonight as I consider in retrospect the wrecks of normal intellects I have left behind me. With ingenuity which might better have been employed otherwise, I have contrived to achieve an almost perfect balance between sanity and insanity-an almost perfect balance. Perfection has eluded me, as the shattered intellects of my subjects will tragically attest.
“These generalities will not suffice. I am strong now. I have achieved the perfect balance which I have unsuccessfully sought to educe in others. As I set down these words I feel myself straddling that void into which I have sent so many of my patients plunging. I question how long this delicate balance may be maintained and I hasten to get on with my lengthy avowal before I am overtaken by the same nemesis which has relentlessly pursued those who have trusted me.
“In brief: I have for years been working upon the theory that certain drugs fed to the human body in conjunction with a form of mental suggestion which I shall term psychocatalysis — reverse psychoanalysis-might be employed to bring on certain forms of mental derangement. It has been, and is, my firm belief that if such a procedure could be successfully devised and completely charted, by reversing the exact process-substituting for the insanity-producing drugs and mental suggestions their exact opposites-it would be possible to effect a cure from insanity.
“A fantastic theory? A grotesque chimera? Perhaps. Yet it is basically sound. A dream, however, which will be made into reality by others stronger than myself. I bequeath my charts and my findings to some fellow scientist who is utterly conscienceless. I find that I cannot continue.
“The opportunity offered me by the Brighton case was a godsend to me. Not many months ago I was forced to close the door of my private asylum for mental patients in the city of New York. My almost perfect record of failures to effect cures had induced in people a hesitancy to entrust their dear deranged ones to my care. Without subjects for further experimentation I was lost, and I felt I was very near to final success.
“The opportunity to accompany an aged sick man and two young people to Miami where I would be free to work with the young folks without interference was too admirable to reject.
“I will here enter into no detailed analysis of the methods by which I proceeded to transform an intelligent and normal young girl into a maniacal matricide-a prowler in the night seeking victims to satisfy the blood-lust which I have aroused in her innocent breast. These details are fully set forth in my notes and observations of her case. They can be of interest only to science.
“Suffice to say that upon arriving in Miami I immediately turned my attention to the two young people. With little time for an old man who was obviously near death I called in a local physician who has largely taken his care off my hands.
“In past experiments I have discovered that every individual possesses some latent phobia or complex, more or less well-defined, which presents a certain path toward insanity if such phobia be developed and encouraged by mental suggestion.
“Selecting Clarence first, I soon discovered in the boy an unnatural leaning toward homosexuality. Proceeding to encourage this trait and develop it, I was discouraged when he did not respond to mental stimulus as I had
