“More an act of Satan,” said one of the newsmen.
“Very well,” said Dr. Peterby, nodding. “Very well, if you want to phrase it that way. Robert Ellington is possessed by a devil, if you will, and we here are the priests trying to exorcise that devil. The devil, in this case, is a mental illness. Once Robert Ellington is cured, if we ever do manage to cure him, he will be as shocked and repulsed at these crimes as you or I, and he will have just as strong a feeling as you or I that he was not the one who committed those crimes. I know I didn’t murder those people. You know you didn’t murder them. If and when he is ever healthy, he will know just as surely that he didn’t murder them, and he will be right. It is the disease within him that is killing, not him. The law recognizes that fact. When caught, he will not be punished; he will be returned here. If cured, he will be released, and he will still not be punished. He will be a free man.”
Dr. Peterby wasn’t sure be was getting through to these people. But he knew he had to, if they were to know Robert Ellington well enough to catch him, and well enough not to damage him mentally even more than he was already damaged. He tried again.
“Let us say,” he said, “as an example, that one of us in this room is a carrier of bubonic plague. Let us say he does not know it, that he himself shows no symptoms of bubonic plague. Soon, those of us in contact with this man will begin to sicken and to die. Our deaths will be horrible, and this carrier will have been the direct cause of those deaths. We may fear him, as being deadly. We may pity him, as being himself doomed eventually by the death he carries with him. But if we hate him, if we blame him, we do him a terrible injustice. He is sick, he carries within him a sickness, but he doesn’t know it. And precisely the same is true of Robert Ellington. He is sick. He carries within himself a mental sickness, which is deadly to those with whom he comes in contact. But he doesn’t know it. No matter how much we are revolted by the results of his sickness, we cannot in all justice hate him or blame him.”
“I don’t hate him,” said one of the police officers. “I just want to catch him.”
“Yes. Yes, of course. We all do. Very well. Very well, you want to know what he is most probably doing at this moment.”
“Strangling somebody,” said a newsman flippantly.
“That is a regrettable possibility,” Dr. Peterby told him. “But I think we all know that already, and don’t require to be reminded of it.”
The newsman looked properly sheepish. Those near him shifted uncomfortably.
“You have established,” said Dr. Peterby, “that Ellington escaped with the suitcase belonging to the young man he killed on the highway. He therefore is now in possession of clothing more suitable to the outside world than that in which he left here. He may even have stolen money from the same young man. With clothing and money, I would imagine that Ellington would next attempt simply to disappear in the crowd. I would guess that he would make his way as quickly as possible to a large city, such as New York. I would also guess that he would use the same protective device in the outside world which served him so well here. That is, I would imagine that he would attempt to become someone else. That he would pick someone he met in a train, perhaps, or a restaurant, study the person’s mannerisms and movements and speech patterns and habits of thought, and then mimic that person from then on. He would be attempting to disguise himself as a free man, and I would guess that he would do so by becoming one of the free men he meets. Now, his mimicry never lasted long here; he would be a different patient at almost every session. Sometimes, when one of his roles particularly pleased him — he had the most fun, I think, with patients of lower mentality — he would keep the part for two or three sessions. But normally he would change from session to session, and I would guess he will do much the same thing in the outside world. That each day, perhaps, he will pick out some different person to be. Because of that, and because he will feel himself to be a hunted man, I would imagine that he wouldn’t stay in any one place for long. I would guess he will live in hotels, changing to a new hotel every day. I would guess he will make no attempt to get a job, afraid of the normal questions asked by any employer, and so, in order to have money for food and shelter, I regret to say that my guess would be he will resort to robbery. He has no background of house-breaking or safe-cracking or anything along those lines, so I would imagine he will be limited to robbery of individuals. What, I believe, is termed mugging.”
“So,” said one of the police officers bitterly, “we can look for him killing people in Central Park.”
“I’m very much afraid you will find him doing something very like that.”
A newsman said, “What about the sex angle, Doctor? He’s been cooped away here for quite a while. Is he liable to go after women?”
“He has absolutely no history of sexual crime of any sort. Whether or not he will attempt a sexual encounter at this time, I couldn’t say. It is possible he will hire a prostitute. It is possible that his fear of exposure will keep him from consciously desiring such intimate relationship with anyone.”
The same newsman asked, “Is it also possible he may try to get his sex by force, the same way you think he’ll get his money? And the same way he got out of here, too.”
“I would not want to see you paint Robert Ellington in your newspaper as a sex maniac,” Dr. Peterby told him. “As I have said, he has absolutely no prior history of sex crime or sexual pathology or sex-based violence. His is a sick mind, a deranged mind. Therefore, no certain predictions can be made about what he will do. It is possible he will attempt rape. It is also possible he will attempt to kill himself. I think both possibilities very unlikely. Remember that while his mind is sick, it is also a highly intelligent mind and a very clever mind. I have no doubt he could carry off a masquerade of normalcy for a limited period of time, with no question in those around him that he is other than what he seems. He is far from inarticulate. He can be, in fact, extremely wordy and facile and chatty, if these happen to be the characteristics of the person he is mimicking. However, and this does relate to the sexual question raised a moment ago, he can be articulate only on non-stress subjects. He cannot express a strong opinion of his own, or a strong emotion of his own, through the play-acting of being someone else. Nor can he successfully simulate strong emotion or strong opinion on the part of the person he is imitating. Once strong emotion is brought into play, he is reduced to a mute condition, necessitated by the need to hide his true self from himself.”
A police officer said, “Doctor, this business about his being in a big city like New York, and stealing to make a living — how good do you think the odds are?”
“What is the chance that I’m wrong?” Dr. Peterby smiled. “A very good chance,” he said. “You must remember that we are dealing with a sick mind, and we can never be absolutely sure what that mind will do. It is entirely possible that at this very moment Robert Ellington is on a farm somewhere, the newly hired handyman, doing the chores and minding his own business and causing trouble to no one. I think this unlikely, because he has no rural background, and because despite his derangement he is clever. I am basing my guesses on the belief that he will consider his situation, decide that anonymity is his best chance to avoid recapture, and further decide that anonymity is much more readily found in a large city than in either a small town or a farm area, where strangers are much more noticeable. I am basing my guess that he will rob rather than work on the same assumption that he will consider his primary goal to be anonymity and so will take no chances on a regular job.”