“No need to be nervous, my dear. The process is painless. You will in fact, feel more relaxed than you have in quite a while.”
“Let’s just get it over with,” Judy said, worrying her small handbag in her hands.
“Quite.”
Mr. Eggleston crossed the room, partially closed the blinds, and motioned toward a big easy chair.
Judy sat down like she was forcing her knees to bend. Mr. Eggleston stood smiling and quiet before her.
“To be wholly successful, my dear, I must have your total cooperation. Put yourself in my hands completely.”
Judy gulped slightly. I thought she was going to back out. But she must have thought of all the money that would be in her teller’s cage tomorrow.
Mr. Eggleston’s manner was gentle and comforting. He drew a light occasional chair close to her and sat down. From his pocket, he took a shiny piece of metal about the size of a quarter.
“Focus your eyes on the coin. Judy, and blank your mind... Relax completely... Offer no resistance... It is so pleasant to relax...”
He continued to talk soothingly. Judy’s lids began to droop.
“You are sleepy, my dear... So gently and delightfully sleepy... Sleep... You are going to sleep... How pleasant to sleep... You are asleep, Judy... deeply asleep... very deeply, Judy.”
Mr. Eggleston began to draw away from her slowly. “You are in a deep, deep trance, Judy. You will remain in this trance until I count to three and snap my fingers.”
My throat was starting to get a little dry. I evenly shifted from one foot to the other.
Mr. Eggleston glanced at me. “She’s a most interesting subject, David. A very wonderful subject. Proof of her intelligence. The moron cannot be hypnotized, you know.”
He returned his attention to Judy. “When at last I count to three and snap my fingers, Judy, you will awaken from the trance immediately. Your conscious mind will remember nothing. To your conscious mind it will seem as if you have merely drifted off for a few seconds. But your subconscious will retain everything that is done during the trance to prepare you psychologically and physiologically for what is ahead. Is all this clear?”
“Yes, it is.” Judy’s voice was so everydayish and normal that I wondered for a second if she was faking the trance. But I knew better. There’d be no point in it. And I remembered how natural Shorty Connors had sounded while Mr. Eggleston had him under.
“Now, Judy,” Mr. Eggleston said, “there are a few things we must understand and make clear at the outset. There is nothing magical or supernatural in what we are doing. I can merely assist you. I cannot force you to do anything which you are absolutely determined not to do. For example, I could not force you to remove your clothing in the public square unless you had, in the secret depths of your personality, an exhibitionist urge to do such a thing. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“If you could stretch a moral point and obtain a great deal of money without injuring anyone, would you do so?”
“Why not?”
“Would you tell a straight-out lie for ten dollars?”
“No.”
“A hundred dollars?”
Judy didn’t hesitate. “No.”
“A thousand dollars?”
Judy hesitated.
“Fifty thousand dollars?” Mr. Eggleston persisted.
Judy rushed the answer: “Any day in the week! Just any old day!” Mr. Eggleston glanced at me with a satisfied smile, which I returned rather weakly while wiping beads of perspiration from my face.
Then Mr. Eggleston returned to his subject: “Judy, since you are a bright and intelligent girl, I’m sure you know the basic principle of the lie detector. When a person tells a lie, he or she experiences a slight rise in pulse rate, heart beat, blood pressure. The graph registers these changes and the operator of the machine determines if a person has told the truth.”
“I understand,” Judy said.
“Good. The reason for these physiological changes lie in the psyche, the subconscious. Mind over matter, so to speak.”
“I understand,” Judy repeated.
“But that is a two-way street, my dear. Isn’t it? If the subconscious can control the pulse rate, the subconscious can also ignore it. Tomorrow you will tell a lie in police headquarters. Your conscious mind will recognize it as a lie. But to your subconscious, in that instant, it will not matter. That is the whole crux of the thing, Judy. It’s simple. Very simple. Your subconscious will not care one whit whether or not you have told a lie on that single subject.” Mr. Eggleston’s voice became a soft, but insistent lash. “Your subconscious will experience a momentary moral lapse when you describe the man who robbed the bank. Hence, you will exhibit none of the physiological symptoms for the graph to record. Repeat after me, Judy: It will not matter whether I am lying about the description of the bank robber.”
“It — will — not — matter—”
“You must accept this thought in such a way as to be comfortable, Judy. Are you comfortable?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now we shall awaken. One... two... three...”
I started slightly when his fingers snapped.
Judy opened her eyes, gazed at me blankly a moment, then looked at Mr. Eggleston.
He was paying her no attention. “David, tomorrow night at ten, I shall call at your rooming house for the five thousand dollars you’ve agreed to pay me.”
Judy said, “I must have dozed off a second. When do we begin with this hypnotism?”
“We have finished with it,” Eggleston smiled.
She frowned. “Is that true, Davie?”
I nodded.
“But I don’t feel any different,” Judy said. “Are you sure?”
“Positively,” Mr. Eggleston said. He patted me on the shoulder. “And it’s a brilliant idea, my boy, one I might have come up with myself!”
I woke the next morning, Friday, with about two hours’ total sleep during the preceding night. My stomach was jerky, and I nicked myself while shaving. I had a cup of coffee for an indigestible breakfast.
I walked around the block twice, waiting for the hardware store to open. Inside, I had the bank deposit prepared in record-breaking time. I had to kill several minutes arranging a display of fishing gear for the simple reason that I didn’t think it wise to be the very first customer in the bank.
Feeling as if every eye in the grubby factory town was focused on me, I forced myself past the glass and brass doors of the bank. The guard, Mr. Sevier, was looking directly at me.
Normally, Mr. Sevier appears to me as a kindly middle-aged man with an elfin sort of face and tufts of white hair in his ears. Today, he grew horns; his skin was a threatening purple; there was brimstone in his slitted eyes.
“Good morning, Mr. Sevier.”
“Nice to see you, Davie.” He slapped me on the back as I passed.
Behind her teller’s wicket Judy gave me a warm smile. She appeared to have slept quite well, and I wondered if maybe I shouldn’t have let Mr. Eggleston put me under also.
I handed the heavy leather and canvas bag to Judy. She opened it checked the deposit.
Nobody paid any attention to my lingering at Judy’s window. There was just enough early business to keep the other employees occupied. Anyhow, everyone in the bank knew that Judy and I were collecting pennies in a joint account toward the day we could be married.
With a nod that no one else noticed, she finally returned the satchel to me.
My heart started going like sixty. I felt as if the weight of the bag were pulling me to one side, making me walk out of the bank at a crazy angle.
I was almost at the doors when Judy called my name quietly.
I had to stop right beside Mr. Sevier.
“Don’t forget lunch, Davie,” Judy said.
“I won’t.”
She blew me a little kiss. Mr. Sevier chuckled fondly as he gave me a little punch on the shoulder.