“You’re bald, Dr. Bensen. You’re bald and you have bad breath. Your breath stinks, and your eyes are too close together.”
“Only too true, I’m afraid,” the doctor said. He made another note.
Sandy looked from one man to the other. “I didn’t come here to listen to you two trade insults—I came to talk to Sergeant Proudy. If I’m going to get to see him, I’d like to be told that. If I’m not, I’m leaving. Or do you want to start insulting me?”
“Right, Alexandra,” Stubb muttered. “You’re short too.”
Dr. Bensen said, “You’re correct, of course. Yes, you’re going to see your policeman.” He touched a button on his intercom. “Send up Charles Proudy, please.”
“Thank you,” Sandy said.
“I only wanted to see how much paranoia your friend Mr. Stubb displayed. Clearly there is some—he believes that he, and you yourself, are being observed by some mysterious ‘others.’ He has even managed to convince you of it, at least partially. Fortunately, the paranoid fantasies aren’t as well developed as I feared, although I would advise him to seek therapy.”
“Aren’t you forgetting something, Doc?” Stubb grinned at him. “Proudy really was watching us. You said that yourself.”
Dr. Bensen nodded. “One of the most interesting points about mental disorders is that they are communicable, although they do not originate in a virus or bacterium. This man Proudy, who is pronouncedly paranoid, judging from Dr. Roberts’s report, was watching you. You spoke to him, and the disorder was transmitted. Now you believe yourself shadowed by a sinister group, and you have at least partially convinced this young woman that your fears are grounded.”
Sandy made a small, polite, throat-clearing sound. “I wasn’t going to say this, but one of the main reasons we’re here is that these people made a telephone call to my boss. They are real, Doctor.”
“Do they think you want to rule the world?”
Stubb said, “We don’t know what they think. That’s one of the things we’re trying to find out.”
“That is what Proudy thinks, according to Dr. Roberts. He was found in the Consort West, living in a room he hadn’t rented. As he explained things to Dr. Roberts, he was observing a group of four persons who planned a world government that would supersede all national governments. He had his badge and some other police identification, together with handcuffs and a blackjack, but his service revolver was missing. He said these people had taken it from him.”
Dr. Benson looked at Stubb, who shrugged. “Doc, I wouldn’t say his testimony is worth a hell of a lot.”
“But you are eager to talk with him. Ms. Duck, has it ever occurred to you that the telephone call your employer got might have been made by Mr. Stubb here?”
As though by magic, Dr. Benson’s own telephone rang. After listening for a moment he said, “Well, look again … . Of course not. Not until they have him. Neither of them can get out.” He hung up.
“Trouble?” Stubb asked.
The doctor nodded. “We’ve had more disturbances today than we usually see in a week. Just before lunch, a woman and a boy assaulted a receptionist—or at least the woman did. She was clearly disturbed, so we held her for observation until we could notify her family. Dr. Roberts was questioning the boy, as I understand it, when those Gypsies got in. The boy disappeared in the confusion. Now they tell me there’s a police captain down on seven looking for the boy, and the woman who brought him has been released from her restraints.”
“He let her go, in other words?” Sandy asked.
“It certainly looks that way. He was last seen on seven, and that’s a men’s floor; but six is a women’s floor, and there are stairs and several elevators. He’d have had to sneak past the desks on both floors, but we’re so understaffed that the nurses who ought to be on duty there are often gone.”
“We’ve never had any trouble getting by them,” Stubb remarked. When Dr. Bensen looked at him sharply, he added, “Coming up here, I mean. We weren’t ever stopped.”
Sandy asked, “Are the Gypsies gone?”
“Some are still here, I think.” Dr. Benson glanced at his watch. “I can’t imagine what’s holding them up with Proudy.”
“You were just fooling with us, weren’t you?” Sandy glanced at Stubb, then back to the doctor. “All that stuff about our catching paranoia from him. You were just passing the time.”
He smiled. “Partly, I suppose. Let me put it this way. Virtually all normal people exhibit some pathological tendencies. If you can learn—”
There was a knock at the door.
“That should be Proudy now,” Dr. Bensen said.
Three Conspirators
The witch’s glare would have bored holes in steel. She strained at her straitjacket like an athlete and bared her gleaming teeth like a beast.
“You want me to give her another injection?” the nurse asked. “That first one don’t seem to have touched her.”
Dr. Roberts shook his head. “No need to risk it.”
“Think you can get her to talk when she’s like that?”
