Behind the administration building were three other buildings, all the same two stories in height, and connected by covered walkways amid more landscaping. One of these buildings was the infirmary, where the physical sicknesses of the mentally ill were cared for. One housed the non-violent patients, those well enough to be allowed freely to walk the grounds; the doors of this building were never locked, and the rocking chairs on the veranda were full throughout these soft spring days. Only the third building, farthest back, most hidden from the sight of the casual visitor, bore the physical appearance of the stock asylum. Somehow, the brick of this building seemed dingier and darker. The windows were smaller, and all were heavily barred. The door was stout, and always locked. Spotlights at the corners of the roof gleamed down at night, washing over the walls and the near grounds.
Standing in his office in the administration building, Dr. Edward Peterby gazed out his window at the maximum-security building. It was from that building that the madman had escaped, killing two male nurses on the way.
“He has a high degree of intelligence,” said Dr. Peterby, still looking out the window. Behind him, the police officers and the newsmen shifted position, cleared their throats, made small noises. Dr. Peterby nodded at the maximum-security building. “No one has ever escaped from there before. We would have said it was impossible. But he did it. With a combination of great intelligence and a capability for direct incisive action, he managed to get away.”
Dr. Peterby turned away from the window at last, and faced the roomful of men. “Before his sickness,” he said, “his IQ was rated at 168. That puts him in genius class. Economic pressures had forced him into a job that would have frustrated an IQ of 120. That was one of the reasons he eventually wound up here.”
Dr. Peterby paused. He felt this was important, though he knew it wasn’t the part these men had come to hear. But he wanted them to understand. “This man,” he said, “is more to be pitied than hated. I can say that although he has murdered at least five times that we know of, twice before being sent here, and three times on the way out. If we are to include the young man murdered by the hitchhiker.”
One of the police officers cleared his throat and said, “We include him, Doctor. The timing is right, the method is right, the descriptions from the other drivers are right.”
“Well, then.” Dr. Peterby sat down at his desk, spread his hands flat on the warm wood. This crowding of his office had unnerved him somewhat; extra chairs had been brought in, and the room was full of his visitors. He was used to the warmth and spaciousness of this office, and now it was cool and crowded, the coolness emanating from the cold faces of the police officers and newsmen. He was used to dimness and silence in this room, and now the overhead light was on — which it never was when he was in it; he only used the desk lamp, even at night — and there were constant small noises from the waiting group of men.
Dr. Peterby made a tent, joining the fingertips of both hands together, analyzed it as symbolic of a desire to crawl away into a small dim place away from all these faces, and broke the tent apart. “Well, then,” he said again. “You all have photos of Robert Ellington; you know what he looks like. You know, to a certain extent, what he has done. Now, as I understand it, you want to know what he is, what sort of man he is, what we can expect him to do.”
He paused. They waited. He said, “Robert Ellington is, as I said, a highly intelligent man. He is also an extremely cunning man, an admission which I make with some regret. He was not a cunning man when he came here. We strove to cure him when he first came here, and in so doing we were striving to force him to understand himself, and to understand the enormity of what he had done. To understand that he had been wrong, and that he had been wrong in a terrible and inhuman way. He resisted us, as of course he must. If he is to retain his own regard, his own self-respect, he cannot believe that his actions were anything less than proper and necessary and inevitable. When he came to us, he was a violent man, but an open man, revealing himself completely, revealing himself far more than he knew. But in our attempt to hold up a mirror before his gaze, to reflect back to him the insights he had given us about himself, we only succeeded in teaching him how to avoid giving us any more revelations. We underestimated him — more than once, as you can see; he got away — but we underestimated him, and we only made matters worse.”
Looking down, Dr. Peterby saw that unconsciously he had made the tent again. He broke it at once, with a sudden feeling of irritation, and pressed his palms down on the desk top. Watching his hands, he said, “It isn’t easy to admit an error like that. It was a grievous error. Methods which had worked with varying success on other men were no good on Robert Ellington. We had not taken into account the strength and adaptability of his mind.”
He raised his head to look at his visitors once more. “That is a vitally important point,” he said. “The adaptability of his mind. The defenses he is capable of erecting are utterly fantastic. He learned here to be a man of a thousand psychic faces. Until he grew violent again and had to be put in the solitary ward, he displayed an amazing ability at mimicry. I could play for you tape recordings of our sessions together during that time, and they would astonish you. He was never the same man twice. He would choose one of the other inmates, and very nearly become that person. His speech, his responses, his attitudes, all would reflect almost a parody of the original, with his own personality showing through only as a muted left hand, as it were, in a minor key. Do you see what he was doing? Ours was a doctor-patient relationship which he could not evade, but which he could not accept because it would inevitably lead to disclosures about himself which he did not want to know. So he altered the doctor-patient relationship by becoming one of my other patients. Whatever I said to him, it was that other patient who answered, and whatever revealing information I might unearth about the other patient, could certainly not harm him.”
Dr. Peterby’s hands fluttered, his face was animated. He had very nearly forgotten this disruption of his office. “Do you see the fantastic implications of what he did? Great intelligence, great cunning, a high order of talent, all bent on this one goal. The potential of this man is very nearly unbelievable. Well, you can see that for yourself. He managed to break out of our maximum-security building. Alone, penniless, his name and face and general whereabouts known to all of you, he nevertheless managed to evade you. If we could yet find the key to this man, break him from the bondage of his illness, unlock his potential, what a value he could be to society!”
“We have to find the man himself first,” said one of the police officers. “And right now he isn’t being a value to society, he’s being a menace to society.”
“Yes. Yes, I know. He must be found, before he does even greater damage to himself. You must know, it is entirely possible that he will kill again. What these three killings have already done to him I can’t begin to guess. The longer he remains free, the more difficult his eventual cure will become. All the time he is out there, he is piling up more and more data he must forever hide from himself; he is making the wall between himself and self-knowledge thicker and thicker and higher and higher.”
“He is also killing people.”
“Good God, I’m well aware of that! Do you think I’m ignoring that? The two men here, I knew them both, knew them for years. I would have said they were friends of mine, as much as there are friendships between the staff and the employees at ward level. One of them — Davis — I know his wife, I’ve met their children. Of course it’s a dreadful thing, I know that as well as anyone. But it’s dreadful in the way a flood is dreadful, in the way an airplane crash is dreadful. You don’t hate the water, or hate the airplane, and if you do you’re just being foolish and wasting your emotions. I realize this is a different situation here, Robert Ellington can hardly be considered an act of God, but—”