It was as if he simply materialized there, because none of us saw or heard him enter the room…yet there he stood with his eyes fixed on me. He couldn’t have been there more than a minute. Doctor Calloway makes a commanding impression. He’s six-foot-six , very thin, almost gaunt. He had piercing, black hypnotic eyes, black hair combed straight back and a pale, almost anemic, complexion on his clean-shaven face.
As he was still gazing at me in deafening silence, I intervened by saying, “Good morning, Doctor Calloway, allow me to introduce you to Doctor Franz Lederer.”
Doctor Calloway turned his eyes to Doctor Lederer and said, “I’m very happy to meet you in person, Doctor Lederer. Please let me apologize for not being here last night when you arrived with Alex,” he said in a controlled, stilted manner.
“You don’t have to apologize, Doctor Calloway; no doubt there are going to be unexpected situations that will require your immediate response in a facility like Castillo Del Mar Sanitarium,” Doctor Lederer articulated with a guarded tone.
“Yes, there are often surprising events that take place here…and they’re not always with the residents,” he responded rather accusingly to Doctor Lederer.
“I’m sure they’re not,” he snapped back abruptly to Doctor Calloway.
As the Doctors were bantering back and forth in their somewhat sharp exchange, I could not help but feel an undercurrent of animosity between them. It was as if Mary and I weren’t even there, the way they now focused on each other. I could see that she too was sensing, the cold tension that was beginning to permeate the room. My feeling of uneasiness was pervasive and really started to crescendo, to the point of panic, by the time Mrs. Dudley opened the kitchen door and stepped into the dining room, to announce breakfast was ready.
Again, she appeared at the right time. Bless her.
After a sigh of relief, I looked at Doctor Lederer and proudly announced, “Wait till you savor Mrs. Dudley’s home-made marmalade.”
“After consuming her Irish stew last night, I’m sure the meals at Castillo Del Mar will always be a pleasurable experience,” Doctor Lederer responded with warm anticipation.
Mrs. Dudley came back into the dining room rolling a large cart laden with scrambled eggs, sausages, fried potatoes, toast, marmalade, and a large pot of coffee. Like bees to a honeycomb, we all made a beeline to the table.
After eating several forkfuls of potatoes and drinking a couple of swigs of coffee, Doctor Calloway said, “Please forgive me for being so mysterious, but I had to arrange for the admittance of another patient. The process took longer than I thought it would.”
Mary said, “I’ll ask Miss Hathaway right after breakfast to start the paper work rolling.”
“That won’t be necessary, Nurse Holden, the patient is already here. I arranged it myself, personally,” he quickly retorted.
“Oh?” Mary questioned surprisingly.
I almost choked on some sausage upon hearing this mysterious development.
“Yes. I know I should have informed you and Alex, but there wasn’t time. It all happened so fast, you see…with Alex en route to San Francisco to pick up Doctor Lederer and you so short staffed yesterday…and then there was the episode with Miss Hopkins. There wasn’t time. I know it goes against the standard practice of the six-week entry process; however, this situation required me to bend the rules.”
Doctor Calloway had expressed this in a slow guarded way. After a pause, I asked him, “May I ask who this patient is and why he or she is here?”
“All in due time, Alex,” he answered.
Mary and I looked at each other with expressions of amazement. Why was he being so evasive?
Then Doctor Lederer intervened, “Doctor Calloway and this institution are well known the world over. Naturally there are going to be situations where he has to make sudden decisions and ‘move mountains,’ so to speak; right, Doctor Calloway?”
“You already know me too well, Doctor Lederer,” he responded with an air of superiority.
“I’m learning more all the time. Every day is a learning experience for me…and this is only the beginning of my first day here.”
When Doctor Lederer uttered those words, they seemed to have more than one meaning. I longed to break this unsettling exchange with its coded undercurrent, but hoped they’d soon sort it out.
“I hope you had a restful sleep after your long journey from New York, Doctor Lederer.” Mary said.
“I slept haphazardly, Miss Holden. You know, even though the accommodations were very nice on the train during the cross-country ride, I had a difficult time sleeping because of the constant movement. Six days of it.”
“I know,” she commented. “I was affected the same way when I took the train from Indiana last year, to take this position. I remember I only had four days of it but it did take its toll on me.”
“What part of Indiana are you from, Miss Holden?” Doctor Lederer asked.
“Indianapolis, the capital of Indiana.”
I was silently enjoying my breakfast while Mary and Doctor Lederer were making small talk. Then Doctor Calloway said to me.
“Mrs. Dudley mentioned the automobile broke down in San Francisco, and you had to take the train back here. I take it, it’s still there?”
“Yes. I sent Harper by train up to San Francisco to replace the generator and drive the car back here.
“When will we have the car back?”
“Harper took the eight o’clock express this morning carrying a new generator. When he gets there, he’ll replace the old one with the new one and drive the car back. He should get here sometime between five and six this evening,” I explained.
“I see. Well, I’m sure we can get by without the vehicle for one day. I know we have enough supplies to get us through several days.”
When we finished our breakfast, Doctor Calloway went on to tell Doctor Lederer about each of the patients residing at the sanitarium and the reasons why they were here.
“We currently have six patients at our facility, Doctor Lederer. They all suffer from varying degrees of anxiety neurosis. Miss Madeline Gould, for example, is an unmarried thirty-eight-year-old finishing school teacher from Boston, Massachusetts. She came to us three months ago for therapy and treatment because she became overwhelmed with the problems, of teaching young, spoiled, unruly girls, and coping with their wealthy un-cooperative parents.
“Then there’s Penelope Hopkins, an over-made-up, New York stage actress who always wears a red wig. She won’t say how old she is, though her manager told me she’s forty-six. She’s been with us for two months now. She has periodic episodes with dramatic precision every so often. Only yesterday she had a doozie with one of our other patients. Most of those spells are staged, of course, what with her flair for the theatrical. Miss Hopkins’ anxiety is due to the fact that she hasn’t had a part since last year; she says her agent thinks she’s too old for leading lady parts, which she is, of course but refuses to admit it.
“Arthur Duncan is thirty-one. He’s a very accomplished sculptor with brown curly hair and matching full-face beard, and has heavy features. Mister Duncan has been here for…let’s see, I think it is four months. Although he’s English by nationality, he lives in Paris, France six months of the year. His distress is a result of the unsettling events currently going on in Germany.
“You may have heard of Kyle Morgan, the motion picture actor with the classic Adonis look. He came up here from Hollywood last month following the recommendation of his personal psychiatrist. He’s twenty-seven, unmarried…and wants to remain so. His trouble has to do with the pressure his studio boss has been putting on him, to marry a famous actress in order to dispel growing rumors of his ‘true nature.’
“Ernest Lipton is a local man who has accomplished a lot in his thirty-five years of life, although he looks older. He is a writer, an adventurer…and an alcoholic. He has been with us six months for treatment of the third attribute. And lastly and most recently, three weeks
now, is Alfred Strutmire. He is a balding fifty-five-year-old mathematics professor from the University of California at Berkeley. Professor Strutmire suffers from uncontrollable rage. He came here at the behest of the chairman of the Mathematics Department. It seems when some of his students are having problems or don’t understand certain mathematical concepts, he often hits them over the shoulders with a yardstick. Hopefully his treatment and stay at Castillo Del Mar will give him a foundation to build patience, as well as how to handle anxious situations. In fact, it was he who had the hostile encounter with Miss Hopkins yesterday.”
* * * *
It was ten a.m. and we’d finished our first meal together. Mrs. Dudley looked in to see if she could start clearing the table. Doctor Calloway gave her an affirmative nod and went on to say, Mary and I should introduce Doctor Lederer to the rest of the staff and the patients. Meanwhile he would orientate the new seventh patient. Mary and I were also to show Doctor Lederer the layout of the interior of the building. He would then meet us back in his office at eleven o’clock and give Doctor Lederer the Cooke’s tour, as it were, of the outside and surrounding grounds himself before lunch. Although I was troubled with Doctor Calloway’s reluctance to tell me anything about this new patient, I figured he would introduce Mary, Doctor Lederer and me, to him, or her, when we met Doctor Calloway in his office in an hour.
The Residents
The elevator door opened on the second floor. Mary, Doctor Lederer and I went to the nurses’ station, where Miss Hathaway was waiting for us. The station was centered in the middle of the floor, like a hub. Last year a telephone switchboard had been installed, to make it the new central communication center of the Castle.
“Miss Hathaway,” Mary said, “allow me to introduce you to Doctor Franz Lederer, our visiting psychiatrist.”
“How do you do, Doctor Lederer, welcome to Castillo Del Mar. I am Dorothy Hathaway, the administrative secretary.”
“How do you do, Miss Hathaway, I’m very happy to meet you,” Doctor Lederer said with his professional protocol as he took her hand.
Then Mary said, “Our office is on the east side of this floor, Doctor Lederer.”
The four of us then proceeded down the corridor, turned left, walked past several rooms to the end of the hall where the administrative office was. The office itself was partitioned, as it was shared by both Mary and Miss Hathaway; we entered on Miss Hathaway’s side to the right. She asked us to sit down. I knew what was on Mary’s mind and what she was about to ask Miss Hathaway…because if she didn’t, I would have.
“Miss Hathaway, are you aware of the new patient that Doctor Calloway admitted last night?”
“New patient. Admitted last night?” she bellowed with surprise.
“Yes. Doctor Calloway told us he, ‘personally’ brought in a new patient last night.”
“I’m most certainly not aware of it, Nurse Holden. Why didn’t he tell me? I should have known about this at least six weeks ago. He didn’t tell me. Nobody told me. Nobody told me anything.” she said, trying to control her reaction.
“It’s not your fault, Miss Hathaway. Mary and I didn’t know about it either, not until about an hour ago; that is, when Doctor Calloway told us,” I said.
Doctor Lederer said, “Yes, Doctor Calloway apparently admitted the ‘mystery’ patient sometime last night, in secret.” Then he looked at me and said, “Alex, do you think it was before or after we got here?”
“I don’t know, Doctor Lederer, I don’t know. I’m not sure how he brought this patient in either…unless he used his own car, or a taxi. Ordinarily, our policy is to use the staff vehicle for transporting and admitting patients…or any official hospital business for that matter. So I don’t know. The car is still in San Francisco. I don’t even know where the patient is. None of us do.”
“Well, I’m sure Doctor Calloway will tell us everything, including the patient’s name, and the reason for the cryptic entry. I mean, I can’t imagine he would treat this person on his own without the assistance of the hospital staff…the thought of that is utterly absurd,” Doctor Lederer said with an air of superiority.
“Yes, it certainly would be,” I responded.
Then Miss Hathaway said, “Well, I hope he tells me soon so I can start the paper work.”
Then Mary assured Miss Hathaway, “I didn’t mean to imply that you knew about this and deliberately didn’t tell, or that you weren’t doing your job; if I did give that impression, I apologize. It’s just that we’re all so surprised Doctor Calloway didn’t say anything to any of us about it.”
I also chimed in by saying to Miss Hathaway, “Not only that, but we don’t know if the patient is a man or a woman or what the nature of the condition is. What’s more, we don’t even know where this patient is. None of us knows anything about this individual. We only know that he or she is somewhere in this building.
Because Doctor Calloway told Mary, me, and Doctor Lederer that he’d brought him, or her, to our Castle retreat last night. He didn’t say what time it was either. He was very secretive. All he said this morning was that he was going to orientate our new patient while we introduce Doctor Lederer to you, the rest of the staff, and to our six known residents. I expect him to orientate us about the new arrival when we meet him in his office at eleven.”
“I hope so,” Miss Hathaway said.
Then Mary looked at her watch and said, “It’s already ten fifteen, Doctor Ramsey. You’ve got to take Doctor Lederer around now to introduce him to our on-duty staff and all six of our guests if you can, as well as show him the interior of the Castle. Who knows? You and Doctor Lederer might stumble upon the whereabouts of the ‘shadow’ patient during your tour through the Castle. Remember, you only have forty-five minutes because we’re to meet Doctor Calloway in his office at eleven. I have some patient progress reports I have to review with Miss Hathaway so I’ll meet you and Doctor Lederer at Doctor Calloway’s office at eleven o’clock sharp, okay?”
“See you then, Mary,” I said.
I could see Doctor Lederer’s intense concentration on every word, Miss Hathaway, and I were exchanging, and the way he was looking at our facial expressions and bodily movements. I felt he was suspicious of a ruse. Whether he suspected any of us, Doctor Calloway, or the whole lot of us, for that matter, I didn’t know, but he suspected ‘something.’
Since my time was limited, I thought I’d take Doctor Lederer to the fourth floor first and work down to the ground floor. The tour would terminate there and the fact that Doctor Calloway’s office was on the first level also, would be convenient.
“As you know, this building has four stories, and there are four rooms up here. Two we use for therapy and treatment; one is a sitting room and the other is for staff conferences. The patients are housed on the second and third floors only,” I told Doctor Lederer as I showed him each one.
“Alex, you said you currently have six patients…and now the phantom makes seven. How many patients is the Castle equipped to handle?” Doctor Lederer asked as we were making our way back down to the third floor.
“We can hold a total of ten at a time. This is a private facility so it isn’t very big and we don’t have a large staff, but we’re well equipped with the latest technology. We have five residence rooms on both the second and third floors. We ought to be able to locate our sub rosa patient in one of the rooms not assigned to any of our six patients. Currently, we have Miss Hopkins and Mister Morgan on the second floor, both of whom you will meet when we get there. Mister Strutmire, Mister Lipton, Miss Gould, and Mister Duncan are on this floor.”
As we stepped out of the elevator, Doctor Lederer said, “Most likely Doctor Calloway has the patient on the second floor because there are four vacant rooms whereas there’s only two on this one, yes, Alex?”
“I can’t say, Doctor Lederer, because as of yet, I don’t know the reason for the admittance. I can only say we’ll both find out together. We normally put patients who don’t have hobby pastim
es, or may require more therapy such as a more complex medication regimen for example, on the third floor because it is closer to the fourth floor treatment rooms. So it’s a question of proximity and convenience, you see.”
“Of course, Alex,” he said, as I knocked on Mister Strutmire’s door.
Mister Strutmire opened the door. He had a newspaper in his hand. He was fifty-five years old, short and portly, clean-shaven with a shiny bald pate and a horseshoe gray fringe around his head. He took off a pair of round horn-rimmed glasses, then looked at Doctor Lederer and me in an agitated manner. He didn’t say a word.
“Good morning Professor Strutmire” I said. “This is Doctor Franz Lederer from Zurich, Switzerland. He’s visiting with us in order to observe the operations and care at our facility.”
“Everyone around here is always observing,” he tersely responded. “Anyway, how do you do Doctor…Lederer, is it?” he said, while putting his glasses back on.
“Yes, Lederer, Doctor Franz Lederer. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Professor Strutmire.”
“Well, I suppose you gentlemen would like to come in,” he said in a rather annoyed way.
“No, not now because we really don’t have much time. I wanted you to meet Doctor Lederer,” I replied.
“Well, I’ve met him. So now, if you will excuse me, I’ll go back to reading my paper…as I was doing before I was interrupted,” he barked back. Then he pulled off his glasses again and slammed the door in our faces.
As we proceeded to Mister Lipton’s room, I sheepishly said to Doctor Lederer: “I apologize for Mister Strutmire’s rudeness. As you can see he has a problem with public relations.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it, Alex,” Doctor Lederer said as he made a sweeping motion with his right hand, “he wouldn’t even be here, if he didn’t have a problem in the first place.”
As I was about to knock on Mister Lipton’s door, Nurse Jenkins came by with a sedative for him. I introduced her to Doctor Lederer and we entered the room. Mister Lipton was sitting on his high-back leather chair with his arms resting in his lap. His far-off stare gave the impression he was completely oblivious to our presence. Nurse Jenkins got his attention by calling his name at which point he then looked at her, took the sedative and swallowed it with water. After she left the room, I proceeded to offer salutations and introduce Doctor Lederer to Mister Lipton.
Castle on the Edge Page 2