was a woman who probably loved her profession. She loved it so much she saw a chance to further her career by aiding York, then using it as a club to gain scientific recognition for herself.
“But you on . . . hell.” I spit the word out. “You banked on getting away scot-free first, then as a second-best choice facing a court. Maybe you’d even get a suspended sentence. Sure, why not? Any psychiatrist would see how that could happen. Under the pressure of your studies your mind snapped. Boy, have you got a brain! No chair, not for you. Maybe a couple of years yanked from your life span, but what did it matter? You were twenty years ahead of yourself anyway. That was it, wasn’t it? Ha!
“Not so, little man. The game just doesn’t go that way. I hate to go ex post facto on you, but simply because you’re nicely covered by the law doesn’t mean you’ll stay that way. I’m making up a new one right now. Know what it is?”
He still smiled, no change of expression. It was almost as if he were watching one of his experiments in the rabbit cage.
“Okay,” I said, “I’ll tell you. All little geniuses . . . or is it genii? . . . who kill and try to get away with it get it in the neck anyway.”
Very deliberately I let him see me flick the safety catch on the .45. His eyes were little dark pools that seemed to swim in his head.
I was wondering if I was going to like this.
I never killed a little genius before.
For the first time, Ruston spoke. “About an hour ago I anticipated this,” he smiled. I tightened involuntarily. I didn’t know why, but I almost knew beforehand what he’d say.
“When I threw my arms around you inside there feigning happiness over your miraculous reappearance, I removed the clip from your gun. It’s a wonder you didn’t notice the difference in weight.”
Did you ever feel like screaming?
My hand was shaking with rage. I felt the hollow space where the clip fitted and swore. I was so damn safety conscious I didn’t jack a shell into the chamber earlier either.
And Ruston reached behind the music rack on the piano and came out with the .32.
He smiled again. He knew damn well what I was thinking. Without any trouble I could make the next corpse. He fondled the gun, eyeing the hammer. “Don’t move too quickly, Mike. No. I’m not going to shoot you, not just yet. You see, my little knowledge of sleight of hand was quite useful . . . as handy as to know how to open locks. The Normanic sciences weren’t all I studied. Anything that presented a problem afforded me the pleasure of solving it in my spare time.
“Move your chair a little this way so I can see you to the best advantage. Ah . . . yes. Compliments are in order, I believe. You were very right and very clever in your deductions. Frankly, I didn’t imagine anyone would be able to wade through the tangle that the murder preceded. I thought I did quite well, but I see I failed, up to a certain point. Look at it from my point of view before you invite any impetuous ideas. If you turned me over to the police and proved your case, I would, as you say, stand before a juvenile court. Never would I admit my actual adulthood to them, and I would be sent away for a few years, or perhaps not at all. You see, there’s a side to my story too, one you don’t know about.
“Or, Mike, and this is an important ‘or’ . . . I may kill you and claim self-defense. You came in here and in a state of extreme nervous tension hit me. I picked up a gun that dropped out of your pocket”—he held up the .32 —“and shot you. Simple? Who would disbelieve it, especially with your temperament . . . and my tender years. So sit still and I don’t think I’ll shoot you for a little while, at least. Before I do anything, I want to correct some erroneous impressions you seem to have.
“I am not a ‘few’ years ahead of my time . . . the difference is more like thirty. Even that is an understatement. Can you realize what that means? Me. Fourteen years old. Yet I have lived over fifty years! God, what a miserable existence. You saw my little, er, schoolhouse, but what conclusion did you draw? Fool that you were, you saw nothing. You saw no electrical or mechanical contrivances that had been developed by one of the greatest scientific minds of the century. No, you merely saw objects, never realizing what they were for.” He paused, grinning with abject hatred. “Have you ever seen them force-feed ducks to enlarge their livers to make better sausages? Picture that happening to a mind. Imagine having the learning processes accelerated through pain. Torture can make the mind do anything when properly presented.
“Oh, I wasn’t supposed to actually feel any of all that. It was supposed to happen while I was unconscious, with only the subconscious mind reacting to the incredible pressures being put upon it to grasp and retain the fantastic array of details poured into it like feed being forced through a funnel down a duck’s gullet into its belly whether it wants it or not.
“Ah, but who is to say what happens to the mind when such a development takes place? What may happen to the intricate mechanism of the human mind under such stimulation? What new reactions will it develop . . . what new outlets will it seek to repel the monster that is invading it?
“That is how I became what I am . . . but what I learned! I went even farther than was expected of me . . . much farther than the simple sciences and mathematics
“I researched, studied and very unobtrusively collected my data, putting myself not
He gave me a wry grin. “Or should I say a little behind me?” With his head he indicated the gun in his hand, “. . . seeing that at present I hold the most advantageous position.”
I started to rise, but his gun came up. “Remain seated, please. I only said I didn’t
I sat down again.
“Yes, Mr. Hammer, if I had but given it a few days more study your case would have been a hopeless one. Yet you did find me out with all my elaborate precautions, but I still have a marvelous chance to retain my life and liberty. Don’t you think?”
I nodded. He certainly would.
“But what good would it do me? Answer me that? What good would it do me? Would I ever have the girl I love . . . or would she have me? She would vomit at the thought. Me, a boy with an adult mind, but still a boy’s body. What woman would have me? As the years passed my body would become mature, but the power of my mind would have increased tenfold. Then I would be an old man within the physical shell of a boy. And what of society? You know what society would do . . . it would treat me as a freak. Perhaps I could get a position as a lightning calculator in a circus. That’s what that man did to me! That’s what he did with his machines and brilliant thoughts. He crumpled my life into a little ball and threw it in the jaws of science. How I hated him. How I wish I could have made him suffer the way he made me suffer!
“To be twisted on the rack is trivial compared to the way one can be tortured through the mind. Has your brain ever been on fire? Have you ever had your skull probed with bolts of electrical energy while strapped to a chair? Of course not! You can remain smug and commonplace in your normal life and track down criminals and murderers. Your one fear is that of dying. Mine was of not dying soon enough!
“You can’t understand how much the human body can suffer punishment. It’s like a giant machine that can feed itself and heal its own wounds, but the mind is even greater. That simple piece of sickly gray matter that twists itself into gentle shapes under a thin layer of bone and looks so disarming lying in a bottle of formaldehyde is a colossus beyond conception. It thinks pain! Imagine it . . . it thinks pain and the body screams with the torture of it, yet there is nothing you can call physical in the process. It can conceive of things beyond normal imagination if it is stirred to do so. That is what mine did. Things were forced into it. Learning, he called it, but it might as well have been squeezed into my brain with a compressor, for it felt that way. I knew pain that was not known by any martyr . . . it was a pain that will probably never be known again.
“Your expression changes, Mr. Hammer. I see you believe what I say. You should . . . it is true. You may believe it, but you will never understand it. Right now I can see you change your mind. You condone my actions. I condone them. But would a jury if they knew? Would a judge . . . or the public? No, they couldn’t visualize what I
