A light rain was beginning to fall as we crammed ourselves into di Cesare’s diminutive Fiat and headed for the police station. As usual, di Cesare drove as if the traffic regulations were for mere mortals, not himself. Only a few minutes later, we pulled up in front of the building that housed the Phillipsburg police.
The light was on in the second-floor office of Detective Sergeant Berkowitz. He rose to greet us as we entered, his jowly, usually-affable face looking dark and fretful.
“A terrible business, Dr. di Cesare. Four young women in their twenties going off their rockers like this.”
“Have you found my wife yet, Sergeant?”
Berkowitz glared witheringly at Collins. “I’ve got a six-state alarm out for her,” he said. “And every off-duty cop in town is on emergency call, hunting for her. That’s the best I can tell you now.”
“Do you suspect kidnapping?” I asked.
Berkowitz shrugged. “I wish I knew what I suspected. Look—in each case, the girl was out of her head for a couple of days before disappearing. Talked about a mysterious cave, bugs, whatnot. Same sort of gabble with each girl. And all four walked out of their houses in broad daylight while nobody was looking. Elinor Collins left in her birthday suit, according to the nurse. I tell you, it don’t make sense. Four girls having the same nightmare, and all of them going into thin air …” He shrugged in the elaborate manner of his ancestors. “I don’t know. That’s why I sent for Dr. di Cesare. He seems to do just fine with cockeyed cases like this.”
Di Cesare grinned. “Indeed, some mysteries are beyond even the efforts of the so-efficient police force. But I beg you, more details!”
Berkowitz handed him a sheaf of papers. “Here’s the statements of the people concerned in the other three disappearances. That’s about all I can give you right now.”
Di Cesare took the papers and skimmed rapidly through them, muttering to himself in a steady stream of unintelligible Italian. When he put the last sheet down, he looked up and said, “Amici miei, there is something weird at work here.”
“What have you discovered, di Cesare?”
“Nothing, as yet, sorrowfully. Except that this is a most strange case. Consider: identical hallucinations on the part of four young women who did not know each other at all. And identical disappearances under mysterious circumstances. It tests disbelief.”
“But doesn’t Freud say,” I asked, “that many hallucinations well up from the common unconscious of mankind? And so it shouldn’t be surprising that four girls would have the same kind of dream, according to his theory.”
“True, mio caro. But the racial unconscious is not so efficient, eh? It does not simultaneously smite four young women of the same town with identical dreams, especially when the four have had no contacts. I fear that what we have to contend with is something that the good Viennese sage never dreamed of, signori.”
“For the love of God, what’s he talking about?” Collins demanded. “Where did my wife go? What’s all this babble about Freud?”
Di Cesare chuckled. “I am merely saying, my friend, that I am in doubt. But perhaps there will be an end to our doubts shortly. Your telephone, Sergeant?”
“Sure.”
“Whom are you calling?” I asked.
“Norman Burke,” di Cesare said. “The president of the local speleological society. I wish him to mobilize his forces on our behalf.”
Ninety minutes later, a motley group of some twenty men and women had assembled at police headquarters. They wore leather jackets and sturdy trousers, despite the warm mugginess of the evening, and they were equipped with ropes, pickaxes, powerful searchlights, “walky-talky” radio communicators, and all manner of other paraphernalia. They were the Phillipsburg Speleological Society, and they had come from their homes at the urgent request of their president, Norman Burke.
Burke himself, a stocky, red-faced man in his middle fifties, was a local veterinarian whose hobby was “spelunking,” or cave-exploring. I knew him vaguely, since, after all, we were both members of the healing profession, albeit of distant branches.
He said now, “I want to thank you all for responding to this emergency call. I’m not in much of a position myself to explain why you’re here, except to say that Dr. di Cesare needs you to help him with an important case. He’ll tell you the rest himself.”
Di Cesare stepped forward, his eyes flashing eagerly. “I apologize for the suddenness with which I had you yanked from your homes this evening,” he said. “But the fates of four young women may depend on your skills.”
“Really,” Berkowitz exclaimed, “just because those women dreamed about caves doesn’t mean they’re actually in a cave, Dr. di Cesare …”
“Let me do this my way, per piacere,” di Cesare told the Sergeant, silencing him with an imperious wave of his hand. “Your men are searching the area in the orthodox way. We shall supplement them. And has not Freud said many times that the most obvious methods should never be discarded merely on the grounds of their obviousness?”
Berkowitz subsided. Di Cesare faced the eager, curious speleologists once again and said, “During the last two days, four young women have vanished mysteriously from their homes—one of them the wife of the unfortunate Mr. Collins, whom you see here. In all four cases the disappearance was preceded by strange hallucinations, dreams of caves and insects. I suspect that perhaps a search of the caves in this vicinity would not be ill-advised. Sergeant Berkowitz, you have a city map?”
Berkowitz produced a map of Phillipsburg and environs from a shelf in his office closet. Di Cesare spread it out on the detective’s desk and said, “Dr. Burke, will you be good enough to mark the location of the major caves in this area?”
“Of course.”
Taking a red pencil from Berkowitz’ desk, the speleologist rapidly sketched in X-marks in eight or ten areas, chiefly in the wooded, hilly section that surrounded broad Lake Thomas.
“Bene,” di Cesare muttered. “And now, Sergeant, kindly indicate the locations of the homes from which the four missing women came.”
Consulting his notes, Berkowitz laboriously colored in four marks. I peered over di Cesare’s shoulder and saw that the homes were in four different areas of the city—but they were situated in a rough semicircle that ran along the borders of the lake! All four women, then, had come from houses near the lakefront and near the cave region! Obviously di Cesare had something in mind which he was keeping from the rest of us. But I knew him well enough, after all these years, to refrain from trying to probe his hypothesis. In his own good time, if all went well, he would let us in on his secrets.
He looked up from the map. “A pattern takes place, amici! And now, andiamo, off to the caves!”
The spelunkers began to gather up their equipment and file out. Di Cesare smiled at me. “Perhaps you had best go home and get your rest, mio vecchio. The night is damp, and the dankness of caves will do your old bones no good.”
“Curse you, di Cesare, my bones aren’t a month older than yours!” I yelped.
There was a mischievous twinkle in the little Italian’s eyes. “Very well, then. Let us go—a n d consider yourself warned.”
The rain had ceased, but an oppressive damp still clung tight to the town. Burke and his spelunkers were having a conference in the street, dividing up the various caves of the region among themselves. Finally they reached some understanding, went to their separate cars, and drove off. Di Cesare, Collins, and I re-entered the tiny Fiat; Sergeant Berkowitz, having expressed skepticism about this entire enterprise, was on his way home for his belated evening’s repose.