The Deadly Percheron

by John Franklin Bardin

  I stuck the photograph in my pocket. I wanted to see if my patient would resent this act of possession. But he did not seem to notice it. Baffled, I tried another tack: “Where did you sleep when you were away from home?”

  “In hotels. In the Park. I spent a lot of time around Central Park. Sometimes at the houses of friends. I always had a lot of friends.”

  “Hardly a normal childhood,” I said. “Why didn’t your father stop you? Didn’t he know what you were doing?”

  Jacob laughed. He threw back his head and laughed loudly, a harsh, cynical laugh. “I tell you my old man didn’t give a damn,” he said, “about me, or anybody! He hired people to look after me – why should he bother?”

  I said nothing. Jacob stopped laughing. He did not go on. I did not know what to think. He had obviously had an extraordinary life so far, and not a healthy one. I was not surprised that he was neurotic. He had never had a family, no one had ever loved him. Or had there been someone…?

  “When did you first fall in love?” I asked. Perhaps, the clue lay there…

  “When I was fourteen. With the cigarette girl at the St Moritz. She was a blonde and she had nice legs. I remember I bought her a black silk nightgown for Christmas. Did you ever buy a girl a black silk nightgown?”

  His grin was contagious. “Why, yes, I suppose so,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “My wife, I guess.”

  “Oh.” He was disappointed. Then he said, “Well, I suppose we all do that at one time or another.”

  “But not at fourteen. That’s a rather tender age, don’t you think?”

  He smiled deprecatingly. “You don’t understand, doc. At fourteen I’d been around. I’d been underfoot in New York hotels since I was knee-high. I knew all about cigarette girls and things at fourteen.”

  “This cigarette girl was your first love, you say? How many times have you been in love since then?”

  He started to count up on his fingers, then stopped and shook his head in mock dismay. “Hundreds of times, I guess,” he said. “Dozens of times between then and when I went to college. At least a score of times at Dartmouth. I don’t know how many times since…I’m in love with a redhead right now! I’d marry her if I wasn’t crazy!”

  “Don’t you think you fall into and out of love too easily?” I asked. “Would you agree that you were emotionally unstable?”

  “No, I wouldn’t!” He was emphatic. “I’m just lucky. I’ve enough money and enough looks to get a woman easily, so it’s only natural that I do. What’s more normal than falling in love?”

  “That’s normal enough,” I admitted, “but what about falling out of it? Most men eventually settle down and get married.”

  “Most men don’t have the money I have,” he said blithely. And then more seriously, “And most men don’t see little men in green and purple suits!”

  Jacob was quiet. During his account of his early life, I was again impressed by his sanity. Except for the “little men” – and the scarlet hibiscus in his curly blond hair – I had seldom met a more normal young man. For example, a neurotic, when invited to talk about himself and his childhood, is likely to respond in one of two ways: he may either tell a long and rambling story in excessive detail that reveals a score of hidden fears and resentments, or he may shut up and refuse to talk. But Jacob had done neither. His response had been of the kind I might have made myself if I should ever have had to answer an over-inquisitive interrogator in this way. He had told a simple, brief, cogent – and, so far as I could tell, truthful – story in a casual, friendly fashion. The only induction I could make about his character that was in any way profitable from a psychiatric point of view was the fact that he hated his father. I could hardly call this abnormal. From what I knew of him, I wouldn’t have liked old John Blunt either. He was the last of the Robber Barons.

  On the other hand, some of Jacob’s actions were quite peculiar. How had he allowed himself to be inveigled into all this ridiculous business of wearing flowers in his hair, giving quarters away, whistling at Carnegie Hall? I could think of only one probable reason why an otherwise apparently rational young man would do what Jacob had done: he did it because he liked doing it. Hadn’t there been a gleam in his eye when he urged me to try whistling a popular tune the next time I attended a concert? Hadn’t he said, “You oughtta try it some time. It does you good!”? And from the way he kept patting at the hibiscus in his hair, I surmised that he enjoyed wearing it. His own account of his past history might supply the cause for the pleasure he took in such outrageous, non-conforming behavior. He had never had a normal home life; he had no respect for authority, and he enjoyed revolt. His whole personality might be built on this latent need to protest. Being an impulsive, extraverted youth, his protest took the for m of tomfoolery and thoughtless waggishness. So he fell in with the suggestions of his “little men” and liked doing what they told him to do…up to a point. Yet the trouble with this seemingly reasonable explanation was that it took for granted the existence of the “little men.” And I was not ready to take that much for granted.

  So I found myself again at a loss. Each time before that I had attempted to analyze my patient’s complaint, I had ended up facing a blank, but quite sane, wall of defense. Now I hesitated to try again.

  It was Jacob who made the suggestion. “Look, doc,” he said, “we’re getting no place fast!” He checked his wristwatch. “And it’s five o’clock already – I’m supposed to meet Eustace at a bar on Third Avenue at six. Why don’t you come back to my place while I shave and change my clothes, and we can both go over to the bar and meet Eustace? Then you can see for yourself!”

  I looked at him. His eyes were begging me to say yes. Unorthodox as it was I had the feeling that what he suggested was the correct way for me to approach his case, especially if he were neurotic. It showed him that I had confidence in his “earnestness,” and if he felt I trusted him, he might come eventually to trust me – it might be a means of accomplishing a transference. Of course, I knew that there was no Eustace, and I had an idea that all we would do at the bar would be to have a few drinks. But it was worth trying.

  “I think that’s an excellent idea, Mr Blunt,” I said. “I should like to meet your friend.”

  “Maybe you’d like to go to work for him, too?” he asked. I could not tell whether he was poking fun at me or not.

  I laughed and said, “I might at that. I could use a little extra cash as well as the next one!”

  I told Miss Henry, my nurse, that I was leaving for the day and asked her to phone my wife at my home in New Jersey to tell her that I would be late and not to keep dinner for me. I also asked Miss Henry at what time was my first appointment the next day. And then, I followed Jacob out of my office into the corridor.

  He was still wearing that ridiculous flower in his hair. If I have an outstanding fault, it is that I am rather vain about my personal appearance. I have regular features and a sober expression. I am perhaps a little too fastidious, although I don’t think I am conceited. Still, when I go out with others, I expect them to be similarly neat and tidy. I disliked having to walk the streets with a man who wore an absurd flower in his hair. While we were waiting for the elevator, I asked him to take it off.

  “Oh, I couldn’t do that,” he said. “Eustace would notice it! He might tell Joe and then Joe wouldn’t want to hire me again. I have to wear it all day to earn the ten dollars.”

  “But can’t you take it off now, and put it in your pocket until we’re about to meet Eustace? You could put it back on then and he would never be any the wiser.”

  “Oh, no! I couldn’t do that. That would be dishonest! You forget that the reason the leprechauns hire me all the time to distribute their money is because I’m so trustworthy! I could never betray their trust.”

  “I see,” I said. There was nothing to be gained by arguing with him.

  Jacob gave me a sidewise look. “Would you feel better if you had one, too?” he asked. “T
he florist I finally found this one at this morning had another one, and his shop is quite near here. They might still have it. If you want, I think we might have time to stop by there so you could have one, too!”

  “No, thanks,” I said.

  “But it might be a good idea!” he insisted. “If Eustace saw you voluntarily wearing a flower in your hair, he might tell Joe about it and it might help you to get into Joe’s good graces. You might be able to work for Joe as well as Eustace!”

  “No, thanks,” I said. “I can do without a hibiscus right now.”

  I was glad the elevator came just then, interrupting the conversation. Sometimes a psychiatrist’s life is a hard one.

  TWO

  Gift Horse

  Jacob gave away all his quarters before I managed to get him into a taxi. It was quite embarrassing. He gave one to the elevator operator, another to the starter, one to a lady in mink who was coming out of the revolving door as we were going in, one to a colored shoeshine boy who has a stand outside my office building and the last to the doorman. I felt better when we were finally inside the taxi and Jacob had given the driver an address on West Fifty-third Street. I hadn’t liked the look the lady in mink had tossed at us as she regarded first the shiny new quarter in her hand, and then the scarlet flower in my patient’s hair.

  He told me more about himself during the slow ride through rush-hour streets to his apartment. He had graduated from Dartmouth in 1940. The Army hadn’t taken him because of an old knee injury sustained in a basketball game during his sophomore year. He was only twenty-one when he finished college because he entered at seventeen, having skipped a grade in childhood. He said he liked Bach and Mozart and Brahms, redheads and Hemingway. His present redhead was in the chorus of “Nevada!” – he had met her one night when he went backstage. She was, in his words, “some mouse!”

  The taxi stopped in the middle of the block between Fifth and Sixth Avenues on West Fifty-third, and we entered a very modern apartment building. The desk clerk nodded to Jacob, and the elevator operator smiled and called him “Mr Blunt.” Apparently these people who saw him all the time knew and liked him. If they had thought him queer, they would have treated him differently. Things were certainly not getting any simpler.

  I liked his apartment. It was one extraordinarily large room, a small bedroom, a kitchen and a bath. The walls of the main room were a deep blue, one was lined with bookcases; there was a phonograph with ample record shelves and a fireplace with a good Miró hanging above it. The redhead was on the long divan in the center of the room, half-lying, half-sitting against a striped pillow. Her hair was long, loose, in lovely disarray. Another girl sat more stiffly beside her – a small, neat, childlike creature with soft-brown curls and an open, innocent look in her blue eyes. The redhead glanced up at us as we came into the room, her eyes intense green blurs in her beautiful, blank face.

  “Hello, Jakey,” she said in a low, purring voice. “Denise and I were shopping and we dropped by a minute ago to mix ourselves a drink. Who’s your friend?” Both girls were looking at me with unashamed curiosity.

  Jacob had stopped smiling, and all his casual friendliness had disappeared. He seemed both startled and displeased to find that there was someone in his apartment. Not that this showed in anything he said. It was only that he was suddenly stiff and wary, even, perhaps, suspicious.

  “Dr George Matthews, Nan Bulkely, Denise Hanover,” he mumbled. From the vague wave of his hand, I took it that the tall girl with the blank stare was Nan, the brunette was Denise. Jacob nodded in Nan’s direction and said in a slightly louder voice, “She’ll give you a drink if you want it. I’m going in to shave and dress.” And he went out of the room without saying another word.

  I walked over and sat down in a chair across from the divan. Nan uncrossed her legs – they were delightful legs, long and well-proportioned, a dancer’s legs without a dancer’s unsightly muscles. Denise picked up her cocktail and began to sip it, and her eyes studied the glass. But Nan never took her own remarkable eyes off mine. These were as green as a cat’s in the dark, but wide and open, disarmingly frank. Yet, except for her eyes, Nan’s face was expressionless, empty. Even when she smiled it was like having a full-color advertisement come to life and smile at you – something out of Harper’s Bazaar or The New Yorker.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t catch your name? Jacob mumbles so.”

  “I’m George Matthews,” I said.

  She opened her eyes a little wider. “Didn’t I hear Jacob say ‘Doctor’? Or were my ears playing tricks on me?”

  “I am a doctor,” I said. “A psychiatrist.” I did not like Nan at all. She made me feel as though I was a child being pumped by an adult. I looked at the other girl and, as I did, she stood up and walked out of the big room into the kitchen. It was as if some signal had passed between the two women. This I resented, as well as Nan’s questioning. But I was careful not to let her see my resentment – she might tell me something about my patient that would turn out to be valuable. So I answered her questions.

  “Are you and Jacob old friends?” was the next one.

  “No. As a matter of fact, I saw him for the first time this afternoon in my office. He is my patient.”

  She was surprised. I saw her throat tighten and her shoulders grow a little more rigid, although on the whole she controlled herself well. If I hadn’t been a trained observer of the subtle psychological reactions that betray a person’s emotions, I would not have known how much my simple statement of fact had shocked her.

  She was quiet for a moment, and then she asked, “Did Jacob come to see you of his own free will?”

  “So far as I know. Why do you ask?”

  “I just never thought he would, that’s all,” she said. “I’m rather glad he has consulted you. I’ve been awfully worried about the way he’s been acting these past few months, but I knew I could never suggest that he visit a psychiatrist. He wouldn’t have listened to me.”

  It was a clever act. When she asked me if Jacob visited me on his own impulse, I felt that she actually wanted to know – in fact, there was an urgency about the way she asked the question that made me think she had to know. But the reason she gave for asking me that question was a contrived excuse. I could not help but wonder why she was so concerned over Jacob’s having come to see me.

  “What has Jacob been doing lately that has you so worried?” I asked her.

  “You saw the flower he was wearing, didn’t you? In his hair! He says that a friend of his pays him to do that! And it has to be a different flower each day!”

  “Have you ever met this friend?”

  She regarded me steadily as if she meant to confide in me. “No, that’s the strange thing about it. He has described them to me – there are several of them you know – not one – several ‘little men’ – he’s told me all about them, even told me their names, but I have never met one of them. I think they exist only in his imagination.”

  “Has he ever shown signs of queerness before, Miss Bulkely?”

  She shook her head, her red hair swirling about her shoulders. “Of course, I haven’t know him long – only since last year. But when I first met him he seemed altogether normal.”

  I stood up and went over to the mantel to get a closer look at the Miro. I’ve always liked Miro. There’s something marvelously fluid and liquescent about his work, something soothing like a fountain plashing in the evening’s distance. But this time I paid little attention to the Miro. I went over to it for the effect, so Nan would not see how important I considered our conversation.

  “Would you say he was abnormal now, Miss Bulkely?” I asked.

  She stood up too, and walked over to where I was standing. She was tall, slender without being angular, high-breasted. I liked to look at her, but when I looked at her it was difficult to keep my mind on what she was saying, “Yes, doctor, I would. I’ve almost decided that Jacob is losing his mind.”

  “That is what he thinks
himself,” I said. “I’m not so sure.”

  She was standing close to me, her eyes level with mine. “Doctor, do you think he might get violent?”

  I reached into my breast pocket for my cigarette. That is the pocket where I keep my cards. As I pulled out my cigarette case, my card folder fell onto the floor. Nan stooped immediately to pick it up – stooped quicker than I did myself – then held it in her hand, looking at it. She tore the top card off and held it to her mouth, smiling.

  “Do you mind if I take this, doctor? I see it has both your telephone numbers on it. If I have it, I can get you at anytime of the day or night if anything should go wrong with Jacob…”

  What could I say but, “Yes, of course. Keep it if you wish”? It was as if she had picked my pocket – I had the definite impression that it was my telephone number that she had been after all along–but I would have been foolish to protest. After all, there was no good reason why she should not call me up.

  I started to say, “I have only seen Jacob for an hour or so this afternoon and I am not thoroughly acquainted with his symptoms, but I see no cause for alarm as yet – ” when I became aware of the fact that someone, not Nan, had coughed. I turned around to see the other girl, Denise, standing behind us. Her face was flushed and her eyes were round and glistened. She seemed to be making an effort to communicate something to her friend, trying to speak without speaking. Then, I became aware of Jacob’s presence at the same moment Nan herself did. He was standing in the doorway that led to the bath; he had changed into a dinner suit and his curly hair was carefully combed. His face was white with anger.

  “What has she been telling you about me, doctor?” he demanded.

  Nan rushed over to him, put her arm around him. “I was just telling him about your friends, Jakey. I didn’t say a thing you wouldn’t have said yourself.”