The Mind Thing

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“Are you sure you won’t have a beer with me, Miss Talley?” Doc asked. “Dictating is dry work, and taking it down must be even drier.”

Miss Talley smiled slightly, the first time Doc had seen her do so. “If you insist, Doctor. But you must promise to keep it a deep secret. In towns as small as this one, teachers simply do not drink or smoke.”

“I’ll keep your secret,” Doc said over his shoulder as he took a second can of beer from the refrigerator. “I wish I could tempt you to smoke too, but alas, I have only pipes to offer. Uh—it won’t bother you if I smoke while I’m dictating, will it?”

“Not at all. I rather like the smell of pipe smoke, except possibly in very confined quarters. And this is a magnificently large kitchen you have.”

“The better to pace in. I like it; I practically live in it. Except when I’m out fishing or in town.” He came back with two glasses of beer, put one in front of Miss Talley and the other across the table from it. He sat down. “You can put down that pencil, Miss Talley,” he said. “I’m too lazy to start dictating this minute. Unless you’d rather have me dictate than listen to me talk. Sometimes I think my students would rather have me hew to the line more than I do.”

“Your students? Are you a teacher too, Doctor?”

“Yes, Miss Talley. Physics, at M. I. T. I specialize in electronics and, though to a lesser degree, in nuclear physics.”

Miss Talley had put down her pencil; she stared at him. “Staunton—Dr. Ralph S. Staunton? Of course. And you’ve worked on all the big satellite projects.”

Doc smiled. “Not quite all. But I’m really flattered, Miss Talley, that you’ve heard of me. Are you interested in science?”

“Of course I am. Who isn’t? Especially when it comes to matters of reaching the moon and the planets. I’ve been an avid reader of science fiction for a great many years.”

“You, Miss Talley?”

“Of course. Why not?”

Why not indeed, Doc thought, feeling himself backed into a corner. He could hardly tell her that she had looked to him to be just about the least likely person to be an avid reader of science fiction, so he decided he’d best treat the “Why not?” as a rhetorical question. He said, “I’m afraid I do my escape reading in the form of mystery novels. I know some scientists do read science fiction, and enjoy it, but when I read for relaxation I like to get as far away from science as I can.”

“I can understand that,” Miss Talley said. “Is what you’re going to dictate now scientific matter, or are you just catching up on correspondence?”

“Not either—and I’m afraid it’s difficult to explain just what I am doing. But something strange has been going on near here. I’ve been—well, investigating a bit, and I want to put what I’ve learned thus far down in the form of a statement of my investigation to date, before I might forget a point or two.”

Miss Talley stared at him. “You mean—the suicides?”

“Yes. Don’t tell me they’ve aroused your curiosity too? I thought everyone around here, from the sheriff down, took them as perfectly ordinary events.”

“Not quite, Doctor. Incidentally, I know now where I saw you before—at the inquest on Tommy Hoffman. You must have been at the back; I passed you on my way out.”

Doc filled his pipe and started to tamp it down. “I was there. I didn’t see you, that I recall, but that’s because I was trying to keep my eye on Mr. Garner and reach him before he got away. I didn’t succeed, but talked to the sheriff instead.”

“You mean you had further information on something connected with— Oh, never mind answering that, Doctor. If it’s anything connected with Tommy’s suicide, I’ll learn about it while you’re dictating; there’s no need for you to say it twice.”

Doc waited till he finished lighting his pipe before answering. “That makes sense, Miss Talley. But you say you’ve been interested too, so I’m going to ask what you know first. If you have any relevant facts that I don’t already have, I might as well learn them before I start so I can add them to what I do know. Now, on Tommy Hoffman, do you know anything at all that didn’t come out at the inquest?”

“Not facts exactly, but I knew Tommy. Charlotte, too, for that matter. I taught them both freshman English and had them in a class of mine in great English literature again last year. And I know that Tommy was as sane a boy as I’ve ever known. Not bright and not much of a scholar, but sane, ordinary, and uncomplicated. And perfectly sound physically. I talked to Dr. Gruen—he delivered Tommy and was his doctor all of his life—and he tells me that Tommy was in perfect physical shape. Measles and whooping cough, both years ago, were the only illnesses he ever had.”

“But that could mean the doctor hadn’t seen him for quite a few years.”

“It could, but as it happens it doesn’t. Tommy was injured playing high school baseball last spring. No, not a head injury; it was a broken rib. Dr. Gruen treated it. And our school has a strict rule, a very good one I believe, requiring that when a student is injured in any athletic contest he must have a thorough physical examination before his re-admittance to the team. Dr. Gruen told me, when I asked him last week, that when he examined Tommy only about two months ago he was absolutely sound and in perfect health. Mens sana in corpore sano. I can guarantee the mental part; literally or figuratively, he didn’t know what a neurosis is.”

“Nor apparently,” said Doc drily, “was he suffering from sexual repression. What do you know about Charlotte Garner?”

“A good girl—and I mean that; I’m not a prude, Doctor, despite my age and occupation. And a smart girl, a little smarter than Tommy was. Even smart enough never to have let him suspect she was the smarter of the two.”

“Imaginative?”

“No, very literal, Doctor. If you’re thinking about her story about the field mouse, it would have happened just as she described it, not exaggerated in the slightest. And I admire her courage for having managed to bring it out at the inquest, despite the coroner and the sheriff both pooh-poohing it as irrelevant when they talked to her before the inquest. I don’t know how it might not be irrelevant, but it’s too—too bizarre an episode to be brushed off when it occurred in connection with as bizarre a suicide as that of Tommy.”

“I agree with you, Miss Talley. Anything else you can tell me? Aside from what was brought out at the inquest, of course.”

“I’m afraid not. And I know very little about the suicide of Mr. Gross. I mentioned ‘two suicides’ simply because of the coincidence of two suicides so close together, in time and in location, when we hadn’t had a suicide closer than Wilcox for years, and when there could be no possible connection between them. I mean, Tommy must have known Gross by sight and possibly vice versa, but they wouldn’t really have known each other.”

Doc smiled and tamped his pipe to relight it. “What would you say, Miss Talley, to six suicides, two human and four animal, starting with that of the field mouse, which apparently forced Tommy to kill it by attacking him? What would you say to the apparent suicides of the mouse and a dog—the Hoffman dog—in connection with that of Tommy Hoffman? And the apparent suicides of an owl and a cat—the Gross cat—in connection with that of Siegfried Gross? Not to mention the minor mystery—or is it minor?—of the disappearance from Mrs. Gross’s refrigerator, on the night her husband killed himself, of a quart of soup stock and a bowl of gravy?”

Miss Talley’s eyes were wide, her face pale with—with what? Doc studied it and decided that it was excitement, not fear.

She said very quietly, “Dr. Staunton, if you’re not—if those things are true, you’d better start dictating before I explode with curiosity.” She picked up her pencil, opened the shorthand notebook.

Doc lighted his pipe again and started pacing and dictating. Not steadily, of course; sometimes there were minutes between sentences, since he wanted everything in sequence and in detail, coldly factual and without sensationalism or exaggeration. It took him an hour and a half, making the time a few minutes after three o’clock, to finish his description of the first three deaths and the negative rabies report from the laboratory in Green Bay.

He sat down across from Miss Talley and knocked out his pipe, which he’d refilled twice and relighted at least a score of times during his pacing. “Think we’d better rest a few minutes before I tackle the Gross case,” he said. “I must have walked a good two miles and you must be getting writer’s cramp.”

Miss Talley shook her head. “I’m not, but I suppose you do deserve a rest. We’re just getting to the really new part, for me. I knew everything about Tommy, up to the point where you ran over the dog. Almost everything about Mr. Gross will be new to me.”

“Give me ten minutes, Miss Talley. And meanwhile shall we have another glass of beer?”

Miss Talley demurred at first, but let him talk her into it. After their first sips, she asked, “How many copies of this will you want?”

“Three,” Doc said. “One for myself and two I’m going in send to friends of mine for their opinions. One is a top research physician; I’m going to ask him if there’s any possibility of the existence of a rare disease communicable, as is rabies, from animal to man and vice versa, which could lead to insanity and suicidal behavior. The other friend is an excellent mathematician; his speciality is symbolic logic, but he knows actuarial math too, and has cracked some pretty tough problems in it. I want him to quote me the odds on this series of events being coincidental as against interconnected. Later, probably not today, I’ll dictate a letter to each of them to go with his copy of the statement.”

“Would you mind if I make an extra copy for myself, Doctor?”

“Not at all, Miss Talley.”

She smiled. “Wonderful. I would have made myself a copy anyway, but it’s nicer to be able to do it with permission.”

Doc laughed. He was finding Miss Talley’s wide-open mind and curiosity very stimulating, after his failure to be able to convince the sheriff that his investigation, if one could call it that, wasn’t even scratching the surface of events. And he liked her honesty in admitting she’d have made herself a copy even without his permission. In fact, he liked Miss Talley.

He was even beginning to think of propositioning her. His department’s budget at M. I. T. had been increased for next year to include provision, for the first time, for a full-time secretary and record clerk. If he could get her in on his recommendation she’d be ideal for the job. It would pay at least as much as she could be making here and she was certainly wasted in teaching high school English in a small town. But he’d wait a while and be sure before mentioning the possibility to her. There was no hurry.

When their beer was finished Doc started pacing and dictating again. He finished the job at half past four, said, “That’s all, Miss Talley,” and sank into the chair. “Give me a few minutes to rest and I’ll drive you home.”

“You mean that’s all? Or that’s all for today? I thought you were going to go into your deductions from the facts.”

“I’ve changed my mind,” Doc said. “For one thing, I don’t know what my deductions are, not surely enough to put them down. Besides, for the purpose for which I intend this, it would be wrong for me to draw conclusions. The two friends I mentioned, the medico and the mathematician, should have just the facts and draw their own conclusions without being influenced by mine, such as they are. Miss Talley, I have only wild ideas—and I can’t believe any of them.”

“I see your point. But it shouldn’t take you long to dictate the two covering letters, should it? Why not get them out of the way today, so when I turn over the statements to you the letters will be with them, and you can mail them right away?”

“It makes sense, but I’m afraid I’m just not up to giving any more dictation today. Tell you what—when I drop around to your place to pick up the statements I’ll dictate the two letters. They won’t be long and you can type them while I’m reading over what I’ve just dictated, for any corrections. And if you’ll address envelopes too, I can mail them while I’m in town. Will that be all right?”

“That will be fine.” Miss Talley leafed back quickly through her notebook to see how many pages she had filled. “I think this is just about two full days’ typing. And today is Tuesday. I think I can promise to have this ready for you any time after noon on Thursday, if I work evenings too.”

“Do you usually work evenings?”

“Ordinarily I don’t. But this isn’t work—and I’m not going to take any pay for it, so that makes it different. Doctor, having the opportunity to do this is the most exciting and fascinating thing that’s ever happened to me. And I don’t need the money. So if you’re going to insist on paying me, you’ve wasted an afternoon. I’ll type myself a copy from these notes, but you’ll have to dictate them all over to someone else for your copies.”

Doc sighed. He realized that she meant what she said and that there was no use in arguing. His only recourse would be to send her a present from Boston after he was back there so she couldn’t refuse it. Unless, of course, she did want and could get the secretarial job he had in mind for her there; in that case he’d make it up to her some other way.

“Very well, Miss Talley. But that makes you my partner in this, and I may ask you to do even more.”

“I’ll be glad to. What did you have in mind?”

“You might keep your ear to the ground for a while, in town. I usually get in once a day—at least since I got interested the day of the Hoffman boy’s inquest—so if anything important happens I’ll hear about it without too much delay, as I heard about the Gross suicide a few days ago. But, short of another human death, something interesting might happen without my hearing of it, something not necessarily spectacular in itself but that just might fit in with whatever I—I mean we—are investigating. You know as much as I do now, so your judgment would be as good as mine as to what might be worth reporting.”

“I’ll be more than glad to do that. But how shall I get in touch with you if I learn anything? You don’t have a telephone this far out, do you?”

“No, I haven’t. And now I’m sorry for the first time. But the one place I invariably go in town is the post office, to pick up my mail, if any. If you leave a message with the postmaster for me to phone you I’ll be sure to get it. Well, everything’s settled then and I’ll see you early Thursday afternoon at your place. I’m rested now. Are you ready?”

She put notebook and pencil in her handbag and they left by the front door and went to the station wagon. Doc started the engine and threw the car into gear; he was just about to release the clutch when Miss Talley said, “Oh, I was going to ask you to introduce me to your cat, but I forgot. It doesn’t matter.”

Doc kept his foot on the clutch pedal and turned to her. “Cat?” he said. “Miss Talley, I don’t have a cat. Do you mean you saw one in the house?”

“I—why, I thought I did. I was sure at the time, but—”

Doc put the shift lever back in neutral and turned off the ignition. “Must be a stray cat that got in somehow,” he said. “If you don’t mind waiting, I’ll check. Might as well let it out so it can go home, if it’s got a home.”

He got out of the car and let himself back into the house, closing the door behind him. He made a quick round of the lower floor, seeing no cat. Nor any open window through which a cat could have come and left. Several windows were open an inch or two, but none wide enough for a cat larger than a small kitten to get through—and besides, a kitten couldn’t jump up to a window ledge. The cellar door was closed and had been that way all day. He went upstairs. Again no cat was in sight, although he didn’t look under beds or behind the bathtub or other possible hiding places. The only window open upstairs was in the bedroom he slept in.

He went to the open window and looked out speculatively at a tree branch that came close to it, but considerably above the level of the sill. He leaned out and tugged lightly at the end of the branch; it bent downward easily. Yes, even a small cat’s weight could bend that branch down so it might be able to jump to the window sill. But it could never get out that way. Nor, he decided, after looking down, by jumping down. Onto soft grass, just possibly, but the ground under the window was hard-baked and stone-studded. A cat jumping that far to such a surface would be, if not killed, too seriously injured to be able to get away.

But it came to him suddenly that a cat, if there was one in the house, just might want to die; the Gross’s cat had scared to want to be killed, and the other animals—

He closed the window, went downstairs and left the house. If there was a cat inside now, it would still be there when he got back and he’d worry about it then.

He got back in the car, started it, and backed it around. “I didn’t see a cat, Miss Talley,” he said. “Are you sure you saw one? And just when and where?”

“I thought I was sure at the time, but I suppose it could have been a momentary optical illusion. It was while you were dictating; or rather, while you were pausing between sentences. I looked up, and saw, or thought I saw, the head of a cat sticking around the corner of the hallway passage leading to the kitchen alongside the stairs. I didn’t say anything or call to it because I didn’t want to interrupt your train of thought. Then you started dictating again, and when I looked that way again, it was gone.”

She paused a moment. “Now that I think back, though, I’m sure I must have imagined seeing it. It was just a quick momentary glance and then I looked back at my notebook as you started talking. It’s very easy to imagine something under those circumstances.”

“I suppose so,” Doc said, making his voice easier than he felt. “Well, if I do find a cat there, I’ll let you know.”

For a few minutes they rode in silence and then Miss Talley said, “Doctor, you don’t really believe there could be—a disease, a contagious disease, that could pass from man to animal and vice versa and—make its victims insanely suicidal?”

“I’ll admit I’ve never heard of one, so it would have to be pretty rare.”

“Pretty rare—but pretty well known just because it would be so unusual. If it were known at all, one of us would certainly have heard or read of it somewhere, sometime.”

“I’m afraid that’s rather probable. But, Miss Talley, aside from that possibility—or sheer coincidence—can you think of any other explanation?”

“Certainly I can. Don’t you remember about the Gadardene swine, Doctor?”