by Jerry
“Why would I be foolish?” he asked. “Your Meninger oath of inviolable confidence?”
Bergstrom shook his head. “I know it’s been broken before. But you need me. You’re not through, you know. If you killed me you’d still have to trust some other analyst.”
“Is that the best you can do?”
“No.” Bergstrom was angry now. “But use that logical mind you’re supposed to have! Scenes before this have shown what kind of man you are. Just because this last happened here on St. Martin’s makes little difference. If I was going to turn you in to the police, I’d have done it before this.”
Zarwell debated with himself the truth of what the other had said. “Why didn’t you turn me in?” he asked.
“Because you’re no mad-dog killer!” Now that the crisis seemed to be past, Bergstrom spoke more calmly, even allowed himself to relax. “You’re still pretty much in the fog about yourself. I read more in those comanalyses than you did. I even know who you are!”
Zarwell’s eyebrows raised.
“Who am I?” he asked, very interested now. Without attention he put his pistol away in a trouser pocket.
Bergstrom brushed the question aside with one hand. “Your name makes little difference. You’ve used many. But you are an idealist. Your killings were necessary to bring justice to the places you visited. By now you’re almost a legend among the human worlds. I’d like to talk more with you on that later.”
While Zarwell considered, Bergstrom pressed his advantage. “One more scene might do it,” he said. “Should we try again—if you trust me, that is?”
Zarwell made his decision quickly. “Go ahead,” he answered.
ALL Zarwell’s attention seemed on the cigar he lit as he rode down the escalator, but he surveyed the terminal carefully over the rim of his hand. He spied no suspicious loungers.
Behind the escalator he groped along the floor beneath the lockers until he found his key. The briefcase was under his arm a minute later.
In the basement lave he put a coin in the pay slot of a private compartment and went in.
As he zipped open the briefcase he surveyed his features in the mirror. A small muscle at the comer of one eye twitched spasmodically. One cheek wore a frozen quarter smile. Thirty-six hours under the paralysis was longer than advisable. The muscles should be rested at least every twenty hours.
Fortunately his natural features would serve as an adequate disguise now.
He adjusted the ring setting on the pistol-shaped instrument that he took from his case, and carefully rayed several small areas of his face, loosening muscles that had been tight too long. He sighed gratefully when he finished, massaging his cheeks and forehead with considerable pleasure. Another glance in the mirror satisfied him with the changes that had been made. He turned to his briefcase again and exchanged the gun for a small syringe, which he pushed into a trouser pocket, and a single-edged razor blade.
Removing his fiber-cloth jacket he slashed it into strips with the razor blade and flushed it down the disposal bowl. With the sleeves of his blouse rolled up he had the appearance of a typical workman as he strolled from the compartment.
Back at the locker he replaced the briefcase and, with a wad of gum, glued the key to the bottom of the locker frame.
One step more. Taking the syringe from his pocket, he plunged the needle into his forearm and tossed the instrument down a waste chute. He took three more steps and paused uncertainly.
When he looked about him it was with the expression of a man waking from a vivid dream.
“QUITE ingenious,” Graves murmured admiringly. “You had your mind already preconditioned for the shot. But why would you deliberately give yourself amnesia?”
“What better disguise than to believe the part you’re playing?”
“A good man must have done that job on your mind,” Bergstrom commented. “I’d have hesitated to try it myself. It must have taken a lot of trust on your part.”
“Trust and money,” Zarwell said drily.
“Your memory’s back then?”
Zarwell nodded.
“I’m glad to hear that,” Bergstrom assured him. “Now that you’re well again I’d like to introduce you to a man named Vernon Johnson. This world . . .”
Zarwell stopped him with an upraised hand. “Good God, man, can’t you see the reason for all this? I’m tired. I’m trying to quit.”
“Quit?” Bergstrom did not quite follow him.
“It started on my home colony,” Zarwell explained listlessly. “A gang of hoods had taken over the government. I helped organize a movement to get them out. There was some bloodshed, but it went quite well. Several months later an unofficial envoy from another world asked several of us to give them a hand on the same kind of job. The political conditions there were rotten. We went with him. Again we were successful. It seems I have a kind of genius for that sort of thing.”
He stretched out his legs and regarded them thoughtfully. “I learned then the truth of Russell’s saying: When the oppressed win their freedom they are as oppressive as their former masters.’ When they went bad, I opposed them. This time I failed. But I escaped again. I have quite a talent for that also.
“I’m not a professional do-gooder.” Zarwell’s tone appealed to Bergstrom for understanding. “I have only a normal man’s indignation at injustice. And now I’ve done my share. Yet, wherever I go, the word eventually gets out, and I’m right back in a fight again. It’s like the proverbial monkey on my back. I can’t get rid of it.”
He rose. “That disguise and memory planting were supposed to get me out of it. I should have known it wouldn’t work. But this time I’m not going to be drawn back in! You and your Vernon Johnson can do your own revolting. I’m through!”
Bergstrom did not argue as he left.
RESTLESSNESS drove Zarwell from his flat the next day—a legal holiday on St Martin’s. At a railed-off lot he stopped and loitered in the shadow of an adjacent building watching workmen drilling an excavation for a new structure.
When a man strolled to his side and stood watching the workmen, he was not surprised. He waited for the other to speak.
“I’d like to talk to you, if you can spare a few minutes,” the stranger said.
Zarwell turned and studied the man without answering. He was medium tall, with the body of an athlete, though perhaps ten year beyond the age of sports. He had a manner of contained energy. “You’re Johnson?” he asked.
The man nodded.
Zarwell tried to feel the anger he wanted to feel, but somehow it would not come. “We have nothing to talk about,” was the best he could manage.
“Then will you just listen? After, I’ll leave—if you tell me to.”
Against his will he found himself liking the man, and wanting at least to be courteous. He inclined his head toward a curb wastebox with a flat top. “Should we sit?”
Johnson smiled agreeably and they walked over to the box and sat down.
“When this colony was first founded,” Johnson began without preamble, “the administrative body was a governor, and a council of twelve. Their successors were to be elected biennially. At first they were. Then things changed. We haven’t had an election now in the last twenty-three years. St. Martin’s is beginning to prosper. Yet the only ones receiving the benefits are the rulers. The citizens work twelve hours a day. They are poorly house, poorly fed, poorly clothed. They . . .”
Zarwell found himself not listening as Johnson’s voice went on. The story was always the same. But why did they always try to drag him into their troubles?
Why hadn’t he chosen some other world on which to hide?
The last question prompted a new thought. Just why had he chosen St. Martin’s? Was it only a coincidence? Or had he, subconciously at least, picked this particular world? He had always considered himself the unwilling subject of glib persuaders . . . but mightn’t some inner compulsion of his own have put the monkey on his back?
“.
. . and we need your help.” Johnson had finished his speech.
Zarwell gazed up at the bright sky. He pulled in a long breath, and let it out in a sigh.
“What are your plans so far?” he asked wearily.
TALENT
Robert Bloch
Life’s but a walking shadow—says the Bard—but this Player was heard forever!
IT is perhaps a pity that nothing is known of Andrew Benson’s parents.
The same reasons which prompted them to leave him as a foundling on the steps of the St. Andrews Orphanage also caused them to maintain a discreet anonymity. The event occurred on the morning of March 3rd, 1943—the war era, as you probably recall—so in a way the child may be regarded as a wartime casualty. Similar occurrences were by no means rare during those days, even in Pasadena, where the Orphanage was located.
After the usual tentative and fruitless inquiries, the good Sisters took him in. It was there that he acquired his first name, from the patron and patronymic saint of the establishment. The “Benson” was added some years later, by the couple who eventually adopted him.
It is difficult, at this late date, to determine what sort of a child Andrew was; orphanage records are sketchy, at best, and Sister Rosemarie, who acted as supervisor of the boys’ dormitory, is long since dead. Sister Albertine, the primary grades teacher of the Orphanage School, is now—to put it as delicately as possible—in her senility, and her testimony is necessarily colored by knowledge of subsequent events.
That Andrew never learned to talk until he was nearly seven years old seems almost incredible; the forced gregarity and the conspicuous lack of individual attention characteristic of orphanage upbringing would make it appear as though the ability to speak is necessary for actual survival in such an environment from infancy onward. Scarcely more credible is Sister Albertine’s theory that Andrew knew how to talk but merely refused to do so until he was well into his seventh year.
For what it is worth, she now remembers him as an unusually precocious youngster, who appeared to possess an intelligence and understanding far beyond his years. Instead of employing speech, however, he relied on pantomime, an art at which he was so brilliantly adept (if Sister Albertine is to be believed) that his continuing silence seemed scarcely noticeable.
“He could imitate anybody,” she declares. “The other children, the Sisters, even the Mother Superior. Of course I had to punish him for that. But it was remarkable, the way he was able to pick up all the little mannerisms and facial expressions of another person, just at a glance. And that’s all it took for Andrew—just a mere glance.
“Visitors’ Day was Sunday. Naturally, Andrew never had any visitors, but he liked to hang around the corridor and watch them come in. And afterwards, in the dormitory at night, he’d put in a regular performance for the other boys. He could impersonate every single man, woman or child who’d come to the Orphanage that day—the way they walked, the way they moved, every action and gesture. Even though he never said a word, nobody made the mistake of thinking Andrew was mentally deficient. For a while, Dr. Clement had the idea he might be a mute.”
DR. Roger Clement is one of the few persons who might be able to furnish more objective data concerning Andrew Benson’s early years. Unfortunately, he passed away in 1954, a victim of a fire which also destroyed his home and his office files.
It was Dr. Clement who attended Andrew on the night that he saw his first motion picture.
The date was 1949, some Saturday evening in the late fall of the year. The Orphanage received and showed one film a week, and only children of school age were permitted to attend. Andrew’s inability—or unwillingness—to speak had caused some difficulty when he entered primary grades that September, and several months went by before he was allowed to join his classmates in the auditorium for the Saturday night screenings. But it is known that he eventually did so.
The picture was the last (and probably the least) of the Marx Brothers movies. Its title was Love Happy, and if it is remembered by the general public at all today, that is due to the fact that the film contained a brief walk-on appearance by a then-unknown blonde bit player named Marilyn Monroe.
But the Orphanage audience had other reasons for regarding it as memorable. Because Love Happy was the picture that sent Andrew Benson into his trance.
Long after the lights came up again in the auditorium the child sat there, immobile, his eyes staring glassily at the blank screen. When his companions noticed and sought to arouse him he did not respond; one of the Sisters (possibly Sister Rosemarie) shook him, and he promptly collapsed in a dead faint. Dr. Clement was summoned, and he administered to the patient. Andrew Benson did not recover consciousness until the following morning.
And it was then that he talked.
He talked immediately, he talked perfectly, he talked fluently—but not in the manner of a six-year-old child. The voice that issued from his lips was that of a middle-aged man. It was a nasal, rasping voice, and even without the accompanying grimaces and facial expressions it was instantaneously and unmistakably recognizable as the voice of Groucho Marx.
Andrew Benson mimicked Groucho in his Sam Grunion role to perfection, word for word. Then he “did” Chico Marx. After that he relapsed into silence again, and for a moment it was thought he had reverted to his mute phase. But it was an eloquent silence, and soon it became evident that he was imitating Harpo. In rapid succession, Andrew created recognizable vocal and visual portraits of Raymond Burr, Melville Cooper, Eric Blore and the other actors who played small roles in the picture. His impersonations seemed uncanny to his companions, and the Sisters were not unimpressed.
“Why, he even looked like Groucho,” Sister Albertine insists.
IGNORING the question of how a towheaded moppet of six can achieve a physical resemblance to Groucho Marx without benefit (or detriment of make-up. it is nevertheless an established fact that Andrew Benson gained immediate celebrity as a mimic within the small confines of the Orphanage.
And from that moment on, he talked regularly, if not freely. That is to say, he replied to direct questions, he recited his lessons in the classroom, and responded with the outward forms of politeness required by Orphanage discipline. But he was never loquacious, or even communicative, in the ordinary sense, The only time he became spontaneously articulate was immediately following the showing of a weekly movie.
There was no recurrence of his initial seizure, but each Saturday night screening brought in its wake a complete dramatic recapitulation by the gifted youngster. During the fall of 49 and the winter of 50, Andrew Benson saw many movies. There was Sorroicful Jones, with Bob Hope: Tarzan’s Magic Fountain: The Fighting O’Flynn; The Lite of Riley: Little Women, and a number of other films, current and older. Naturally, these pictures were subject to approval by the Sisters before being shown, and as a result movies depicting or emphasizing violence were not included. Still, several Westerns reached the Orphanage screen, and it is significant that Andrew Benson reacted in what was to become a characteristic fashion.
“Funny thing,” declares Albert Dominguez, who attended the Orphanage during the same period as Andrew Benson and is one of the few persons located who is willing to admit, let alone discuss, the fact. ‘At first Andy imitated everybody—all the men, that is. He never imitated none of the women. But after he started to see Westerns, it got so he was choosey, like. He just imitated the villains. I don t mean like when us guys was playing cowboys—you know, when one guv is the Sheriff and one is a gunslinger. I mean he imitated villains all the time. He could talk like ’em, he could even look like ’em. We used to razz hell out of him, you know?”
It is probably as a result of the “razzing” that Andrew Benson, on the evening of May 17th, 1950, attempted to slit the throat of Frank Phillips with a table-knife. Probably—although Albert Dominguez claims that the older boy offered no provocation, and that Andrew Benson was exactly duplicating the screen role of a western desperado in an old Charles Starrett movie.
The incident was hushed up, apparently, and no action taken; we have little information on Andrew Benson’s growth and development between the summer of 1950 and the autumn of 1955. Dominguez left the orphanage, nobody else appears willing to testify, and Sister Albertine had retired to a rest-home. As a result, there is nothing available concerning what may well have been Andrew’s crucial, formative years. The meager records of his classwork seem satisfactory enough, and there is nothing to indicate that he was a disciplinary problem to his instructors. In June of 1955 he was photographed with the rest of his classmates upon the occasion of graduation from eighth grade. His face is a mere blur, an almost blank smudge in a sea of preadolescent countenances. What he actually looked like at that age is hard to tell.
The Bensons thought that he resembled their son, David.
LITTLE David Benson had died of polio in 1953, and two years later his parents came to St. Andrews Orphanage seeking to adopt a boy. They had David’s picture with them, and they were frank to state that they sought a physical resemblance as a guide to making their choice.
Did Andrew Benson see that photograph? Did—as has been subsequently theorized by certain irresponsible alarmists—he see certain home movies which the Bensons had taken of their child?
We must confine ourselves to the known facts, which are, simply, that Mr. and Mrs. Louis Benson, of Pasadena, California, legally adopted Andrew Benson, aged 12, on December 9th, 1955.
And Andrew Benson went to live in their home, as their son. He entered the public high school. He became the owner of a bicycle. He received an allowance of one dollar a week. And he went to the movies.
Andrew Benson went to the movies, and there were no restrictions. No restrictions at all. For several months, that is. During this period he saw comedies, dramas, Westerns, musicals, melodramas. He must have seen melodramas. Was there a film, released early in 1956, in which an actor played the role of a gangster who pushed a victim out of a second-story window?