He made no further attempt to voice his bitter thoughts but walked around the mobile and lifted out the body of Taneh. Tenderly he laid it on the floor of the rear compartment. He resumed his seat behind the wheel.
“There’s one thing I can do to make partial restitution,” he said with savage determination. “That’s to kill Cartee. And you’re going to take me to him.”
Jessica studied his face, started to speak, then thought better of it.
“Keep in mind that I have nothing to lose,” Srock warned. “Your life, or even my own, is but small weight on the scales in this game. You’ll take me to him—now. Refuse, or make one attempt to deceive me, and I’ll kill you without a qualm.”
Jessica kept her head bowed and Srock was unable to interpret the emotions that played over her face as he spoke. “I’ll take you to him,” she said; -*you have my word.”
The guardsman standing watch at the entrance to the administration grounds recognized Jessica and waved them on. They were not stopped as they alighted at the Palace, and they went in the entranceway. Down a long corridor they walked, with Jessica keeping her gaze directly ahead.
They walked up a flight of stairs, down a short hallway, and stopped in front of an embossed copper door. “This is it,” Jessica said.
Once again Srock had the feeling that this had been too easy. She should have tried to dissuade or deceive him. “If you’re lying to me you’ll never get another chance,” he said. He drew his gun and shoved it against her spine. “Open the door.”
Unhesitatingly she pressed the button and the door swung wide. Srock pushed her ahead of him and followed, warily. Silence. The room, as far as he could see, was empty. He took two more steps, turned to ask her a question and—froze.
Fully conscious, he fought to move, but he knew it was useless. He had walked into a trap. They had been waiting for him, and had used a paralyzer to render him helpless. He could not even die fighting. In that moment the thought of the futility of everything he had tried to do sickened him.
Two men in the white frocks of doctors walked into the room from a rear entrance and stood on either side of him. “This will take only a minute,” one of them said to Jessica.
They picked Srock up bodily and carried him to a long table. Still conscious, he watched them fix the antennae of a small instrument to his temples. One of the doctors made an adjustment, squeezed a control, and a wave of nausea swept over Srock.
The paralysis passed, he rose—and he had the solution. It was all there. The Srock identity was gone and he…He was Cartee!
“Probably the best hiding place a man ever had,” the first doctor said.
“Perfect protective camouflage,” the other agreed.
ASYLUM
by Alice Bulloch
Uncle Jim Anderson said, “She’s the snoopiest dam kid I ever saw.” He spat and slowly wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, his eyes puzzled. “I will say for her, she don’t seem to embrodiery things none.”
“Well, I for one say she’s crazy. Vicious. ^Something ought to be done about her.” Mrs. Garton glanced uneasily up the slope toward the schoolhouse. Her eyes picked out the thin, slightly-stooped shoulders of Sally Banim. “She’s snoopy all right, and she talks about things it just ain’t possible for her to know. She’s gonna get folks into more trouble than Bill has now, you mark my words.”
“Aw, let the kid alone,” Sam Corbett spoke gruffly. “Ain’t none of you ever seen her sneaking around where she’s got no business have you?” His expression was slightly shamefaced. “I notice everybody always tryin’ to trip her up, and ain’t nobody done it yet. This camp keeps her bawling half the time, and all she does is tell the truth and shame the devil.”
“It ain’t right for a kid to spread scandal,” Mrs. Garton insisted, “and I for one don’t like it.” Her knuckles were firmly anchored against her fat hips, ready to fight for her views. Corbett smiled, a ready retort seemed to tremble on the tip of his tongue; Mrs. Garton was the worst gossip in camp. Instead he shrugged his shoulders. “If you don’t want to know things straight,” he said softly, “’pears to me like you hadn’t oughta ask her.”
“Well I for one ain’t gonna put on kid gloves to handle no snoopy brat,” Mrs. Garton snapped at Corbett’s back as he pocketed his hands and walked away. “Yeah,”
Uncle Jim said, and he, too, walked away leaving Mrs. Garton in full possession of the company store steps; she muttered and puffed her way into the store.
Sally, slowly climbing the schoolhouse hill, felt her eyes fill with tears; she knew they were talking about her. She had tried so hard to be like the other kids here. She was different, but she couldn’t figure out how.
No matter how hard she tried, she said the wrong things so often—and it made grown people angry, or afraid, or both. When they began to be afraid of her, it didn’t take long to begin to hate her. Sally knuckled her eyes, bit her lip and started counting steps as hard as she could. She didn’t want to go to an asylum!
Two steps to the big white pebble; ten steps to the juniper bush. She guessed fifty steps to the comer of the schoolhouse coalshed and it took forty-eight. If you hopped on one foot did it count one step to a hop or could you count two hops one step? When you shifted your weight to the other leg the free leg could swing twice as far as a hop would go. Once again, nine year old Sally forgot her problems and quietly amused herself, keeping her body and mind busy with the mechanics of counting steps and hops.
Sally was alternately packing and hopping when Miss Trenchard came to the schoolhouse door and called her. Her heart in her throat she walked quietly to where the teacher waited. Miss Trenchard wasn’t mad, but Sally wished a little she were.
“Come here Sally. I want to talk to you,” Miss Trenchard said.
“Yes ma’am,” Sally answered meekly.
“Sally,” the teacher sat down in her own chair back of her big desk, “will you answer some questions for me please?” Sally’s big green eyes lifted. They were beautiful eyes, fringed with long curling lashes, her only outstanding feature. The rest of her face was thin, cheek bones prominent, chin pointed, a pugged nose sprinkled with freckles, mouth too wide.
Sally looked at the teacher now and began to tremble. “Miss Trenchard,” she faltered, “they ast me. Honest they did, and they couldn’t get the cage outta the mine if they didn’t find Bill. He’s the only one that can fix it!”
A look of mixed compassion and incredulity swept over the teacher’s face. She had wanted to question Sally about last night, but it astonished her that Sally knew it. She wasn’t in the habit of pumping children, though she was curious about the stories that had swept the little coal camp about Sally Banim since the family had moved in, nearly three months ago.
Sally shook even harder. “Don’t, Sally!” the teacher begged. “I’m not going to punish you, dear; I just want to know. You were right here in the schoolroom with me until four-thirty last night. That’s right, isn’t it?”
Sally nodded miserably.
“We—you and I—walked down the hill together. We didn’t see Bill; how did you know where he was?”
“You were right there by the porch at the store and you saw Mr. Garton come out of the store with Uncle Jim! Mr. Garton said to get the school kids lookin’ for Bill, because the cage was stuck and the men couldn’t find him.” Sally was evading the teacher’s question. She leaned forward now, twisting her hands. “Miss Trench-ard, I had to tell ’em. My Dad was in the cage, and if it dropped somebody could of got hurt bad. Don’t you see, Miss Trenchard? I had to tell.”
“Yes, Sally; of course you had to tell them.” The teacher felt pity for this strange, thin little girl with the big green eyes.
Sally sighed deeply. “So I tole ’em,” she finished.
The teacher’s mind raced over the events of the night before. The coal camp here had a shaft mine, with miners carried down into the mine and out again in crude elevators called cages. Something had gone wrong with th
e wiring, and the cage had hung suspended half way up the shaft. A drop to the bottom, out of control, could have killed or badly injured every man in the cage. Bill, the mine electrician, couldn’t be found until Sally had told Garton and Uncle Jim that he was at Minnie Kennedy’s.
Minnie Kennedy was, in camp parlance, “No better than she should be.” Pert, pretty, excelsior blonde Minnie lived on the outskirts of camp, with no visible means of support. Bill had been located at Minnie’s.
Today the camp was seething. Bill’s wife, Dorothy, had left him and gone home to her mother, fifteen miles away at County Seat. Dorothy had wailed that she was going to divorce Bill. Bill had mended the wiring, and the cage surfaced safely.
The camp was split, and Sally was being blamed for blurting out where Bill was, instead of quietly telling a key person. But how was the child to know about such things as Minnie? Had this been the only case, the camp would not have paid much attention; but Sally had the knack of saying the most disconcerting things in the place that was most embarrassing.
“Please, Miss Trenchard!” The teacher had been so busy with her thoughts she had almost forgotten the child standing there. “Miss Trenchard, are they going to put me in—in the asylum?” Sally was crying now, sobs shaking her thin>body. “Mama thinks maybe they will. She thinks maybe it would be the best thing for me to have good doctors who know how to take care of—people like me.” Shudderingly the child gulped it out.
“Sally! What in the world do you mean? Asylums are for people who have lost their minds; you aren’t crazy!”
“I’m not?” Sally’s eyes widened, then filled again. “I guess I just fooled you Miss Trenchard. I tried to fool everybody here, but I forget sometimes and say things.” The teacher looked her astonishment.
“I don’t mean to, Miss Trenchard,” Sally hastily explained. “Why do folks say I’m crazy because sometimes I answer questions like last night? Other kids answer questions, and no one thinks nothing about it. It’s only when I do that everybody gets mad. They get mad if I don’t say nothing when they ask me questions, too—and it’s a sin to tell lies. How can I say I don’t know when I do?”
“Sally, there’s nothing crazy about you answering questions, even Uncle Jim’s question last night. Bill was needed badly, and he was found because you told them where to find him. But Sally, how did you know where he was? You couldn’t have seen him, I know that. How?”
The teacher’s arm went around Sally, drew her close. Sally twisted her head and struggled feebly. “Please, Sally,” Miss Trenchard tried to lift the child’s pointed chin.
“I ain’t got a hankie." Sally wailed, “and my nose is running’
Miss Trenchard laughed softly. “Of course,” she said, and reached in her desk drawer for a box of tissues. “Here, blow!”
Sally blew and managed a shaky smile, then stiffened a second before the teacher spoke again. “How did you know, Sally?”
Sally’s head dropped, her foot kicked aimlessly at a chair leg.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“But Sally—you must know! I won’t be angry, whatever it is. Just tell me.”
“Miss Trenchard, I don’t never know how I know. People are always asking me, ‘How do you know Sally?’ How does anybody know what they know Miss Trenchard? They ain’t always saying to everybody else, ‘How do you know?’ Why does everybody pick on me? I try to be good Miss Trenchard; honest I do. I bet I try harder than any kid in camp.”
Sally twisted away now, weeping and defiant. “I wisht I was dead,” she said slowly. Horror-stricken, the teacher saw that Sally meant it; her green eyes were hurt and incomprehending, tragic.
“Oh, Sally! My dear, my dear!” The teacher forgot her questions in pity for this unhappy pupil. She had to do something to help Sally. Whatever it took, she had to do it. It was monstrous that a child this young should be so desperately unhappy.
Defiance went out of Sally’s stance. “Mama said mostly I was doing real well here until last night,” Sally whimpered. “Now she thinks maybe we all better move again. That or let ’em take me to—to the asylum. I don’t want to go to no asylum!”
The school bell rang as Miss Trenchard opened her mouth. Her question was never voiced. Instead she said, “Take your seat now Sally. Don’t worry, child; we’ll have another talk later.”
Miss Trenchard was principal of this two-room school, and as she walked to the door to supervise the lines forming to march in, she wished there were someone that she could go to for advice and help.
Perhaps Kenneth would have a suggestion. She fingered the solitaire on her fourth finger gently. She would talk to him about Sally tonight. Certainly the camp was becoming explosive about Sally, and something needed to be done. But what?
The afternoon raced. There was so little time, with four grades to handle and classes for subjects in each grade to be heard. The children had been dismissed when the teacher remembered she hadn’t spoken to Sally. She would walk down to the Banim home anyway, she thought, remembering Sally’s big eyes and the desperation in them. She was such a sensitive, unhappy child.
Sally was waiting outside the schoolroom door. “Oh, hello Sally. I’m so glad you’re here; I meant to tell you I wanted to walk home with you.”
“Yes, ma’am. I waited.” Sally spoke apathetically. Miss Trenchard looked at her sharply. She had only meant to speak to Sally, but she hadn’t done it. It was uncanny the way the child seemed to know so many things. No wonder camp people were uncomfortable around her. Few people do not have something they would just as soon that others did not know.
Sally’s shoulders drooped more than usual as she trailed along at the teacher’s side, kicking rocks. The teacher shook mental shoulders; she mustn’t allow camp gossip to influence her. When they stepped on the porch of the Banim home, Sally called, “Mama! Teacher’s here with me.”
Mrs. Banim, a nervous, middle-aged woman, hurried to the door to greet them.
“Come in, Miss Trenchard. Come in. Sally hasn’t—Sally isn’t in trouble at school is she?” The woman peered into the teacher’s face with a worried little frown.
“Oh, no. I never have any trouble with her, Mrs. Banim,” the teacher answered. “But I did want to talk to you. Sally, do you want to go out and—” Miss Trenchard glanced down to where Sally had stood; she was gone. There it was again! It made Miss Trenchard a little nervous herself. It was spooky!
Mrs. Banim was dusting a chair with the comer of her apron. “Sit down, Miss Trenchard,” she invited with words and erratic little gestures.
“I don’t quite understand Sally,” Miss Trenchard said as she sat. “I thought perhaps you might be able to help me.
“I can’t.” There was hopelessness in Mrs. Banim’s voice. “I wish I could, but I don’t understand her myself. None of the other children are—they’re all healthy, normal children. A body knows what to do with them. But Sally! I’m scared to death what she’s going to say next when anyone is around. She’s continually getting not only herself but the whole family in trouble.”
Mrs. Banim was peering closely at the teacher’s face, her eyes the color of faded blue denim. The cheek-muscles on her right cheek quivered slightly and repeatedly in a nervous tic. Perhaps this mother was the root of Sally’s trouble the teacher thought momentarily.
Mrs. Banim went on. “Some folks are saying Sally shouldn’t have spoken out last night,” she said. “I suppose you’ve come about that, since it ain’t something at school. Well, I don’t blame Sally this time. Her father was in that cage, and goodness only knows what would have happened if Bill hadn’t been found quick. I tell you, I don’t blame Sally. I’d a-told myself if I had a-known.”
Miss Trenchard leaned forward. “That’s just it, Mrs. Banim. How did Sally know? I’m not blaming her for telling where Bill was, even if Dorothy does get a divorce. It’s not Sally’s fault that he was—where he shouldn’t have been. But how did she know where he was, and that her father was in that one cage? He m
ight have been on any trip coming out, but you tell me he was on that one. Sally said he was on that trip last night; I heard her. How could she know?”
Mrs. Banim’s hands spread in a helpless gesture. “Nobody has ever figgered out how Sally knows things, Miss Trenchard. We’ve tried and tried to get her to tell us, and all she does is cry and say she don’t know.
“It’s always been that-a way, and she’s right when she says people are a-scared of her and blame her with all kinds of things she ain’t done. Like they did in Brownsville. We ain’t told why we left there and come here. Well, the reason is the same as what is a-building up here. And two other places a-fore that.”
“What do you mean Mrs. Banim? Sally’s a good, obedient child; she never does anything vicious or mean!”
“No, she don’t. Some people get mad at her, and some get afraid. Either one is as bad as t’other. Her father says—” Mrs. Banim’s chin sought to hide on her scanty fleshed breast, “that if things—go wrong—here we’ll just have to send Sally to an asylum.”
Walking to her boarding house in the gathering dusk, the troubled teacher paused to speak to Mrs. Schnitzler, perched on a ladder, hammering at the top door facing of her front door.
“What in the world are you doing Mrs. Schnitzler?” she inquired conversationally.
Mrs. Schnitzler half turned on the ladder. “I put cross on door for witch,” she said. “I think no witch in this country. Now I see was wrong. Is one here.”
“Oh, no!” Miss Trenchard said gently. “We don’t have witches in America, Mrs. Schnitzler.”
“Is so,” the woman answered. “That Sally Banim is witch. Me, I know! I haf seen witch in Vienna. Just lak her, but more older.”
In spite of herself, Miss Trenchard found her eyes searching other door-facings as she slowly walked away. This coal camp population was in main immigrants from Europe. It would indeed go hard with Sally if some way were not found to stop the hysteria immediately.
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