At Hillsbro, Trent registered at the new hotel which had sprung up for the convenience of golfers, a hostelry which called itself an “Inn” and, consequently, charged high rates. He was now a golfer come for a few weeks’ play. In reality he had come to meet and become friendly with a certain Dr. Lang who had found time from his work to become runner-up for the State championship two years in succession. Dr. Lang’s handicap was two, and his position that of superintendent of the Deerfarm Asylum four miles away.
Deerfarm Asylum was behind the times in its buildings and equipment and for a long while there had been dissatisfaction with it. In the southern part of the State there were splendidly-appointed psychopathic institutions, but these were always filled owing to the large increase in insanity, which is one of the warning signs of the rush era. No man had fought for better conditions more consistently than this same golfing physician. Indeed his published articles in professional magazines had occasioned some annoyance to those who administered such institutions and he had been warned that it was disloyal of him to malign his State and State establishments.
When Trent learned that Dr. Lang played almost every day and there were no local golfers fit to give him a game he saw that ere long he would be on friendly terms. A two handicap. This meant that Trent must be on the top of his game. His putting was not too good and when he had joined the club and become acquainted with the professional he putted until dusk and then drove into the old city of Hillsbro.
It was here that More, now president of the Fort Lee, New Jersey, Hosiery Company, had established headquarters. He was living at the Hillsbro House. One of his points of value to Trent was that More never wanted to know anything beyond his instructions. He had been sent to Hillsbro to peddle his wares. After hours he was told to play pool in the principal pool rooms in the town and get in touch with the men who worked at the asylum. Mr. More’s not to reason why. He sold his silk stockings and he played pool. He was an earnest player, slow and cautious, but the recreation cost him twenty dollars a week. He lacked dash and his safety play was not of the modern school.
His bona fides were established. Letters and packages came to him from the More home in Fort Lee and the hotel clerk could see by the labels that he was the president of the concern. He said he was engaged in preparing routes and assigning territories for the salesmen he was to engage when he went home. More went out of his way to be friendly with the attendants from Deerfarm and listened in what was almost horror at the stories they had to tell. When they offered to show him around he rejected the offer. In truth David More had a normal horror of the insane and the stories the attendants told made it deeper. The incredible cunning of these madmen shocked him. Some of them would wait for years until the moment came when they could inflict the vengeance they desired. And all this time they seemed ordinary people reacting apparently to normal stimuli in a way that was calculated to deceive even experts.
More had never played pool so badly as that night when one of the younger men had told him how last night he had occasioned to take an old patient back to the bed from which he was constantly escaping. The attendant, careful not to inflict bruises or injuries which the doctors would detect, took the old man by the ear, and the ear came off in his fingers! Mr. More used to dream of it at night. He was astounded at the courage of his kind. Rather starvation, he told himself, than such a life as these attendants led.
“The pool cost more than I expected,” he said rather timidly, as he laid his expense account before his employer.
“That’s all right,” Trent said, writing a check. “I suppose you know the place pretty well now?”
“I’ve specialized on the Deerfarm people mostly as you told me to. They seem a friendly bunch. That may be because they’re all new here.”
“What do you mean?” Trent demanded.
“There was a big shake-up a few weeks ago and the whole staff got fired and practically every attendant, male and female, is new.”
“Did Dr. Lang go?”
“Yes, him first of all. Politics they say. Lang never would kowtow to the bunch at the State House and they got him at last, and put in a staff that would keep quiet.”
“That’s bad news for me,” Trent said slowly. “At least it seems so for the moment. I had a definite use for Lang. Who is the new man?”
“Dr. Humphries. He’s a politician and once was a State Senator, a good machine man, but they say he isn’t fitted to succeed Dr. Lang.”
“Have you ever been over the asylum?” Trent asked.
“No, but I could any time I want to. I’m afraid of those folks in there, Mr. Trent. A penitentiary ain’t so bad. A crook in them knows it’s no good pulling rough stuff if he wants to get out. He tries to make a good impression, but not them Deerfarm people. It’s the epileptics that are the worse,” More went on retailing his newly acquired knowledge. “You never can trust them especially when there’s a change in the moon.” More described the incident of the ear and was gratified to find that even his listener shuddered. “He was an epileptic, too, and that feller I played pool with has to sit there all alone with a hundred of ’em around him. And he daren’t hit ’em when they begin to act up. The doctors see to that. Those fellers have their own way of protecting themselves. They get soap and knead it so it’s kind of soft and then put it in a sock. It knocks the lunatics out, but it don’t leave a wound. They have to, Mr. Trent. I used to think there was a lot of cruelty in them places, but I was wrong. They’ve just got to protect themselves.”
“You’ve done good work,” Trent said commendingly. He was silent for a little. Presently he began to tell More what he had not yet confided to any one. Trent had implicit faith in the little man.
“More,” he said, “I may have wasted a lot of time and a good bit of money on a hunch that is worthless. I’m here — and you, too — because I have eliminated everybody in the Addison case except one man.”
“Fine,” said More approvingly. He had unbounded faith in the other. “Trust you, Mr. Trent, to find out anything you go after.”
“You may not think so when I tell you that the man I suspect has, I have been told by three distinct persons, been dead these six years.”
“How could that be?” More asked.
“I’m here to find out. Do your friends, the attendants, talk about the people they have in charge?”
“When they get together they do,” More said. “There’s not so many in Deerfarm as in the other asylums, but they’ve got Mrs. Pate who killed her husband by taking him into the garage when he was drunk and then running the motor while she went into a picture show to alibi herself. They’ve got the Hersey brothers who made enough money out of bootlegging to have their murders made out like as if they was crazy when they committed ’em.”
Trent scribbled a name on a piece of paper. “Memorize that,” he said, “and start inquiries about him.”
“Marcus North,” More read, “I never heard of him, Mr. Trent, but I’ll find out about it as soon as I can.”
“I am informed Marcus North died six years ago. If he did I shall have to own myself beaten on the Addison case.”
“But the bureau of vital statistics,” More said. He had often worked on such tables at his employer’s request. “What’s the matter with them?”