A Movement Toward Eden

by Clark Howard

  “Yes, a little,” Devlin answered; he did not elaborate. “Please go on, Doctor.”

  “Well, there really isn’t much more to tell. Abigail had advanced to the delirium stage prior to her arrival here. She has since been receiving treatment to alleviate that problem. Thus far, due to the degree of mental deterioration we are faced with, our success has been minimal.”

  “I see,” Devlin said thoughtfully. He got up and looked out a window a few feet from his chair, momentarily turning his back to the doctor. Beyond the pane lay one side of the sprawling hospital compound, with its neatly placed buildings and precise little sidewalks and exactly trimmed lawns and shrubs. Pity that peoples’ lives aren’t as orderly, he thought.

  “Doctor,” he said slowly, turning around, “I seem to recall reading somewhere that delirium states usually come and go in a patient; that they don’t actually dominate a person’s mind on a constant basis. Is that true?”

  “Why, ah, yes. Yes, as a rule.”

  “How much of the time would you say that Abigail Daniels is in possession of her full mental faculties? At this point in your treatment?”

  “Well,” the doctor said evasively, “that would be difficult to tell exactly—”

  “It doesn’t have to be exact, Doctor. Just estimate.”

  “She has normal or near-normal mental coordination perhaps a third of the time—”

  “Eight hours out of twenty-four?”

  “Approximately, yes.”

  “Good.” Devlin smiled briefly. “I’m told, Doctor, that in the absence of the director and assistant director of the hospital, it will be necessary for you to accompany me if I wish to interview Miss Daniels. Would it be convenient to do that now? ”

  “Why, ah—I’m not certain that Abigail is competent to be interviewed at this time—”

  “But if she’s normal eight hours out of the day, Doctor,” Devlin pointed out, “then it would seem that she’s competent to be interviewed during that time. Perhaps you could check and find out what her condition is right now—”

  “I’m afraid, Mr. Devlin,” the doctor said firmly, “that I won’t be able to permit Abigail to be interviewed at this particular time even during her periods of normal awareness.”

  “May I ask why?”

  “You may. But I’m afraid the only explanation I can give is my stock answer for such questions: At this particular stage of treatment, I feel that it would be mentally damaging to allow my patient to be disturbed by any outside influences.” Dr. Fox smiled craftily. “I believe that statement will be sufficient to combat any stronger insistence on your part, such as court orders or things of that nature.”

  “Yes,” Devlin said slowly, thoughtfully, “yes, I’m sure it would.” No judge on the bench would even consider ordering the examination of a person whose doctor expressed a professional opinion that such an examination might cause permanent mental damage. “You do not intend to have Abigail Daniels questioned, then, is that correct, Doctor?”

  “That is correct, yes.”

  Well now, Devlin thought, I wonder why? Obviously not because it would harm the girl, since the doctor himself admitted it was only a stock excuse he was using. And obviously not because her condition precluded it, because she was in a normal mental state one—third of the time. Why, then, this arbitrary refusal to let her be questioned?

  “Is there anything else I can do for you, Mr. Devlin?”

  Devlin shook his head slowly and moved to the door. With his hand on the knob, a frown creasing his brow, he turned back to face the doctor curiously.

  “One thing, Doctor. You haven’t asked why I’m interested in Abigail Daniels. Don’t you want to know?”

  Dr. Damon Fox’s lips parted slightly and he looked at Devlin with mixed incredulity and embarrassment.

  “Why, I—ah, I—”

  Devlin’s eyes narrowed coldly, knowingly, and he turned his back on the doctor and left the office.

  In the reception area, he walked past the secretary’s desk just as the muted buzz of her phone sounded. He was about to turn into the hall when he heard her speak into the receiver.

  “Yes, Doctor, I’ll get him for you.” She began dialing an outside number.

  Devlin paused and stood quietly, waiting.

  “Reverend O’Hara, please,” the secretary said, “Dr. Fox calling.”

  The name registered at once on Devlin’s memory. I wrote one to Abe O’Hara, the doctor had said on the phone while Devlin was in his office. And now, as soon as Devlin had left him, Dr. Fox was placing a call to a Reverend O’Hara—

  And not, I’m sure, Devlin thought, for religious solace.

  “Reverend O’Hara?” he heard the secretary say. “One moment, please, for Dr. Fox—”

  Devlin started walking again.

  Eight

  J. Walter Keyes sat eating his dinner at a small table in the room they had provided for him. It was comfortable, this room in which they kept him all day, even though it was windowless and, obviously soundproof, as silent as a tomb. The room had a good bed in which to sleep, and a nicely upholstered armchair in which to sit and read; and they provided him with ample reading material: books, magazines, newspapers which he devoured daily for some indication that he was being searched for, but which indication, to his utter amazement and great frustration, he had not found. There was even a portable television set in the room, that he used to relentlessly watch the news broadcasts, secretly expecting at any moment to have one of them interrupted with a special bulletin announcing that he was missing, and warning his abductors that a massive search was being launched to locate him. But, of course, no such urgent report was forthcoming, and as each newscast concluded, Keyes sat staring at the set in mute wonder, marveling that he had been missing for nearly a week and nobody seemed to care.

  He ate his dinner with little relish, although the food, he had to admit to himself, was excellent; but he could not, in the evenings, find much appetite with the thought gnawing at him that in another hour that goddamned Jap or whatever he was, yellow, slant-eyed bastard anyway, would be coming for him; coming with that rolling chair to strap him into it as if he were some kind of madman, and then—

  He shut off the thought, trying to force himself to concentrate on his meal, knowing that if he allowed his mind to go any farther that he would only become tense and angry again and then his food would not settle—

  But he found, as usual, that once the thought began there was no getting away from it. He had to proceed, to go through in his mind in preview the ordeal that an hour later he would have to endure in fact.

  The Oriental, dressed in his neat, tailored chauffeur’s uniform, would wheel him out the door of his room into a small foyer where the girl—the one he had seen and whose trim body he had admired that first night—where she would be sitting at a desk which was usually bare save for a telephone, and beside which was a chair where, he assumed, his Jap keeper would wait while the trial was in session. One section of a flight of stairs came down just opposite the desk, and it was down these, probably, that his seven tormentors nightly made their way. The stairs, along with the absence of any windows, made Keyes suspect that he was being held in a basement or cellar of some kind; but aside from that speculation he had not the vaguest notion where he was.

  From the small foyer, he would be wheeled to the left through a large double doorway into the Blue Room. The men of the Eden Movement would be waiting for him. They would already be in their places, all seven of them, smug and business-like, making their obvious little efforts to ignore him—when all along what they really wanted to do was stare at him some more, as they had done the first night and the second; stare at him and examine him, as if he were some kind of—of bug; something alien, curiosity provoking; something unusual, peculiar; something—odd!

  Goddamn them anyway! he thought savagely, pushing the plate of food away from him. Goddamn them, with their calm self-rightousness, their unpenetratable aloofness, their ridicul
ous dedication to truth, utter truth, and only truth—goddamn them all!

  And Abby, he added in silent fury; goddamn her too!

  Abby, she was the one. It was all her fault. She had told them all those things, let them tape record everything she knew; she was the one who had turned on him, set these madmen on him; it was her fault that they had him, her fault that he was being kept locked up like an animal, strapped into that goddamn chair like a maniac, wheeled into that room where everything was blue; her fault that he was nightly subjected to their cold glances, their sudden, probing, unnerving stares, their icy solemness as they listened to all the rotten things she said about him—

  Her fault, yes, her fault, Abby’s fault.

  He shook his head slowly, almost incredulously.

  Abby’s fault. And after all he’d done for her, too—

  Behind him, he heard the door being unlocked. He turned to see the uniformed Oriental entering the room, pushing the blue leather chair before him on its shiny ball casters. He was a fairly young man, this Jap or whatever he was; at least, he seemed to be young; Keyes found it difficult to tell with Orientals. But he was sure that the man was no more than, say, twenty-nine or thirty. And he was small, no taller than Keyes himself, and much slighter of build—

  I wonder, Keyes thought suddenly, if I could handle him? Handle him physically. He was younger, the Jap, but Keyes was heavier and would have the element of surprise on his side. A quick, damaging attack; then make a run for it to those stairs out there—no one to stop him, the others would all be in the Blue Room waiting, only the girl in the foyer—

  “It is time, Mr. Keyes,” the Oriental said tonelessly, standing beside the chair, waiting to strap Keyes into it.

  Keyes turned around on the armless chair and shifted his body forward slightly, tensing his legs to spring. One hand, still on the table next to his plate, jerked nervously.

  “Mr. Keyes,” the Oriental said quietly, “I urge you not to attempt anything physical. For your information, I happen to be an expert at karate. I can temporarily paralyze, permanently cripple, or kill you, with a single blow. It will be much less trouble for both of us if you simply get into the chair as usual.”

  Keyes relaxed, sighing heavily with disgust. He moved into the chair and sat silently fuming while the Oriental strapped first his wrists, then his ankles.

  The girl was standing next to her desk when Keyes was wheeled into the foyer. She was an attractive girl, in her mid-twenties, with an obviously good body under the tailored skirt and paisley blouse she wore. She looked freshly scrubbed and clean; her face was rosy, smooth, young. If instead of being darkhaired she had been a blonde, she would have reminded him a great deal of—

  Abby! Goddamn her, it was her fault he was here—

  Through the double doors he was pushed, across the thick blue carpet, up to a point facing the oddly bluish-hued table behind which sat the one they called the Examiner.

  After his chair stopped, he felt the Oriental’s hands move away from the back, and a second later heard the double doors being closed behind him. A brief moment of silence followed—and then it began.

  “Mr. Keyes, you have heard all the statements made against you which pertain to the charge of Undermining Civilization—”

  It was, Keyes saw, the elderly man at the end of the panel table who was speaking. The one they called the Moderator. Stupid, senile old fool, Keyes thought, noticing that, as usual, the old man wore a dying carnation in his lapel.

  “—and now is the proper time for you to speak in your own defense, if you care to. Have you anything to say?”

  Keyes swallowed and smiled his very best ingratiating smile.

  “Ah, yes—yes, I do have—”

  “Very well,” the Moderator consented. “You will direct all your remarks to the Examiner. And please be advised that any statement you make is subject to rebuttal comment by the Examiner. You may proceed.”

  “Well,” Keyes said, trying to look solemn and sincere, “I would like to point out that what you heard on that tape insofar as my own attitude and feelings regarding the situation between Hal—Mr. O’Brien—and Miss Atkins were concerned, was strictly the personal interpretation of Abby—Abigail Daniels. It was quite obvious to me from the things she said that she is harboring some sort of ill will toward me, though for what reason I can’t imagine, after all I did for that girl—”

  “We will grant,” said the Examiner, “that even though under hypnosis or subconscious—releasing drugs, Miss Daniels might render her version of your part in the affair with a certain amount of animosity; however, that does not alter the nature of the actual facts revealed, Mr. Keyes.”

  “No, of course not,” Keyes quickly agreed, “but I did want to point out that I may have acted with considerably more compassion and understanding toward Miss Atkins—”

  “We will further grant,” the Examiner said patiently, “that it is possible that you are capable of a more humane conduct than was described. May I ask if you intend to discuss the factual evidence on the tape?”

  “Certainly, of course,” Keyes replied, unable to keep the edge out of his voice. He was not accustomed to being hurried along in this manner; he liked to take his own good time, set a stage for himself, create a wise, all-knowing image, cast a spell—and then make his point. But the Examiner was having none of this; he was, to Keyes’ way of thinking, far too quick in granting the minor considerations with which Keyes had hoped to impress the panel. And in his quickness, he was depriving Keyes of the one weapon he still had left: his sincere-sounding, impressive, and convincing manner of talking.

  “As long as you are so concerned with facts,” Keyes nearly blurted now, “there is one very important one which you seem to have overlooked completely: in my position as personal business manager for Mr. O’Brien, I am responsible for him; I am obligated to see to his best interests at all times—”

  “Mr. Keyes,” the Examiner intoned, “a hired murderer might likewise be ethically obligated to the best interests of his employer; but that in no way will excuse him if he does in fact commit murder. Surely you must recognize the shallowness of what you are saying.”

  “No, I don’t,” Keyes argued, piqued by the classification of shallowness being applied to his statement. Nothing he ever said could possibly be considered shallow. “I don’t think it’s shallow at all. I think it is essential for you to take into consideration that I was not acting in my own interests in this situation, that I was seeking to protect the welfare of one of my clients—”

  “But your own interests were being served, were they not, Mr. Keyes?”

  “Oh, indirectly I suppose they were—”

  “Do you recall a statement Miss Daniels made on the tape to the effect that you had been very pleased with yourself at being able to strike such a favorable financial bargain with Miss Atkins? I believe that you considered it something of an accomplishment that you had prevented Miss Atkins from securing a claim on Mr. O’Brien’s future income. Income, I might point out, of which you, as his business manager, receive a percentage.”

  “I remember that, yes, but I’m afraid that Abby—Miss Daniels—took what I said entirely out of context—”

  “You deny then that you were acting primarily in your own financial interests when you negotiated the agreement with Miss Atkins to protect Mr. O’Brien against future parental responsibilities with regard to the then unborn child?”

  “Yes, I do,” said Keyes. His face fell into a hurt expression. “I was merely acting as a—a go-between; I was simply trying to find a sensible solution to a very unfortunate situation. I was concerned with what was best for both parties, and for the child too; after all, I have a daughter of my own, you know—”

  “Yes, we know, Mr. Keyes,” the Examiner advised him, glancing rather pointedly at the six men occupying the panel table. “You would have us believe, then, that throughout the entire arrangements being made between Miss Atkins and Mr. O’Brien, that your role was
solely that of an impartial arbiter; a neutral, so to speak, who was there to see that a settlement was reached which would be fair to both parties?”

  “Yes,” Keyes said flatly, “that was my role, exactly.”

  The Examiner sat back in his chair and folded his hands on the table before him. The soft blue light of the room laid a slightly tinted cast over his erectly held head, lessening the starkness of his white-slashed temples, evening the shadows of his finely chiseled face. His eyes, deep and almost harshly penetrating, fixed upon Keyes unmovingly.

  “Mr. Keyes, prior to listening to the Investigator’s testimony, were you aware what kind of environment your client Mr. O’Brien’s illegitimate child was living in?”

  “Why, no, of course not—”

  “You knew the address where the boy and his mother were living, did you not?”

  “Yes, I knew the address, naturally; the bank handling the trust fund kept me advised of that. But I didn’t know it was in a—a—”

  “Slum is the word, Mr. Keyes. You didn’t know they were living in a slum? ”

  “No.”

  “Considering the deep sense of responsibility you felt, had you known of the boy’s circumstances, would you have tried to rectify the situation?”

  “I certainly would have,” Keyes said firmly. “And when you gentlemen see fit to release me, that will be the first matter I will look into. As I said, I have a child of my own—”

  “Tell me, Mr. Keyes,” the Examiner interrupted, “did your deep sense of responsibility ever prompt you to take steps to personally assure yourself that the boy was being properly cared for?”

  “Uh, no—no, it didn’t,” he said hesitantly. Smiling rather sadly, he added, “I’ll have to admit that I was probably quite lax in that one respect. But I assumed, you understand, that as long as the money was being paid promptly—”