He called the Imperial Plaza and got Melton’s room number and also learned that Melton was just then checking in. MacNeel went to the hotel and took a seat in the lobby and sat reading a newspaper until Clarissa’s husband appeared. He followed him out to the street, dodging through the moderately heavy pedestrian traffic, keeping his eyes fastened on the back of the man’s head. Perspiration beaded his body. It was now only a matter of waiting for the right moment to come along.
And then Melton turned down a side street, still walking fast, and in the determined manner of a man taking a constitutional.
The phone rang behind the bar and Barney answered it. “Oh, hello,” he said. He listened with deep interest for a number of seconds, then nodded his head. “It’s done then. Good, good... Stop your worrying. There’s nothing to worry about. So he wasn’t caught. So what? If he tries to make any trouble for you, he’d just be cookin’ his own goose and he’d find himself in the chair... No, honey, no, there’s no way he can be connected with you...”
Barney listened to the voice on the other end of the wire for quite awhile. He nodded slowly as he listened, as though the caller could see him, and when he spoke at last his voice was muted with tenderness. “I know you love me, Clarissa. And you know how I feel about you, but it just wouldn’t look right so soon after Harry’s death. It just wouldn’t... In a couple of months. Yes. Sure. No reason why we couldn’t go and get married then...”
Strictly Psycho
by Bryce Walton
The family is the basic unit of society. To demonstrate this point, may I mention the Hatfields and the McCoys, the Julies and the Kallikaks, and the Capulets and the Montagues. Quite obviously, families that fight together stay together.
It was suddenly necessary for me to escape from Heathstone Rest Sanitarium.
Not that the place was driving me crazy, or becoming a bore. The inmates still interested me, but my burgeoning personality was ready to absorb the greater varieties outside. Heated thoughts were running to wild little sportscars, turning more to girls of which there was a rather lugubrious selection at Heathstone.
But more to the point — I must admit it — I was frightened. If I didn’t get out and have a final showdown with Mother at once, I might never have the chance. I might remain buried in Heathstone until the world abruptly came to an end.
I read the letter again, the one from Mother.
“Dearest Sunny: Happy Birthday! As you read this, I’ll be honeymooning with silly Mr. “Y” whom I mentioned in my last letter. He looks like a crane with an amputated beak and is well into his second childhood if he ever grew out his first. But all is compensated for by his rolling in wealth like a pig in mud (as you might guess, ha ha!).
Stay happy, study hard, add to your genius and finish that delightful novel. If you need anything let me know at once. Mr. “Y” and I will be at the Retreat beginning July 3rd, so remember to write but don’t forget to make it General Delivery. Mr. “Y” is a narrow smug old soul who take philistine offense at the postmark on the letter. Say hello to your eccentric friends for me, especially to that handsome devil, Dr. Lawrence. Hope you enjoy your present. Love always, Mother.”
The first letter in nearly two months when she used to write every week. The birthday present, a wristwatch, wasn’t comparable to her usual expensive gifts, but was a shoddy gesture. It was also a brief formal note compared with her usual long effusive outbursts. She was losing interest in me. She would forget about me completely!
Fear gnawed, then turned to quite ominous rage. As bughouses go, Heathstone was one of the finer institutions. Its guests paid up to fifteen hundred dollars a month for doubious special privileges. But just the same I had no stomach for being walled off there forever. It was adding insult to injury for my Mother to forget about me, as if I were simply buried alive!
No, it was now or never that I get out and settle with Mother. If my being a free spirit irritated her too much, she might find herself choking on her protests. If something really gruesome occurred then so be it. It was now July 1st, the morning of my 17th birthday. They would be at the retreat beginning the 3rd. I had to be there on the 3rd also to connect up with that blissful couple. And it would be a somewhat shocking get-together, I would make sure of that!
I had to escape that evening to reach the Retreat by the 3rd, and fix things so that I would never be sent back to Bedlam.
First, to arrange a transfer from Seclusion Cottage K to Heathstone Hall which housed the administrative staff and the open wards where milder inmates considered well enough not to need close custodial care were herded about.
My cottage window was open. I looked through the heavy wire mesh at the lovely spring morning under the shade trees. Then I began to howl and gibber with a repercussive skill that comes only after long association with pros. A layman shrieking wholeheartedly produces nothing comparable to even the mild outbursts of a practiced lunatic. The most energetic novice can howl himself hoarse and elicit perhaps a few derisive catcalls. But let a pro sound off and every fellow inmate takes up the cry with the lunar urgency of a pack of hungry wolves.
This isn’t tolerated, especially in status institutions such as Heathstone. Burly attendants, who go by the polite euphemism of bughousers, bear down like beerhall bouncers and clubbing fists skillfully find their marks; a report is turned in — you fell over a chair or out of bed. If the bughouser can restrain excessive indignation you’re “necked-out”, that is, choked into insensibility with no marks visible so that the filling out of a form is not necessary. But I rated more humane treatment from Eddie who regarded my 178 I.Q. with awe, and even suspected me of being a spy from some public investigative committee. Above all, he was greedy. And Mother had always provided me with ample bribe-moneys.
I slipped Eddie a ten plus my birthday watch. “Go tell the Director he must see me at once. I’ve been hallucinating rather wildly about my mother.”
“Okay, Sunny,” he said and scurried away.
Dr. Zitner, I knew, would treat my request in a cavalier manner. But Dr. Zitner was away on vacation, replaced by Dr. Lawrence who now doled out salvation, reprieves and purgatives. I expected compassion from Dr. Lawrence. Ever since he had seen my Mother when she came to visit me, he had shown zealous interest in me. “How’s your charming Mother,” he was always asking me.
I didn’t blame him for being influenced by my Mother’s charms. I admired her predatory talents that had, in a dangerously competitive business, resulted in her becoming exceedingly wealthy.
“Sit down, Sunny,” Dr. Lawrence said, smiling from behind Zitner’s teakwood desk. He tossed me a pack of smokes and a lighter and I sat down and lit up. He studied me meanwhile through smoke that seemed designed to curtain any clinical light. He was the studied informality type, the I’m-just-a-plain-Joe kind of Doc. This was supposed to inspire confidence, but seemed to me only a cover up for genuine ignorance. “What’s this malarky about Mom hallucinations, Sunny?”
“Malarky?” I feigned astonishment.
“Exactly. During Dr. Zitner’s absence I’ve been examining your personnel files. You’ve had no hallucinations here. There’s something fishy about these reports, too.”
“I’m not here to be pried at like a clam,” I said. “But to ask a favor. I’ve felt a music mood coming on. If I were transferred back to Heathstone Hall I could play Mozart on the recreation piano.”
He studied me as if trying to pretend I was something a bit more than a bug under a microscope.