The ax came down on the encephalograph and Berry burst into tears and
allowed Titus to lead him away.
Titus seated himself at his desk and waited for the sobbing Berry to
subside. "That's it," he said unctuously, "let's just get it right out
of our systems, shall we? Hm-m-m?"
Berry stopped in mid-sob and became all tiger again. "Stop talking to me
as if I were a schizo!" he roared.
"Now, now, we are not going to become hostile all over again are we?
Hm-m-m?"
"Hm-m-m all you want to, Titus, but you'll change your tune soon enough
when you hear what happened. It was no band-aid brouhaha this time. I've
warned you time and again about Wims and you've chosen to treat the
matter as airily as possible--almost to the point of being elfin.
However, the casualty list ought to bring you back down to earth." Berry
ticked off the names on his fingers: "Dr. Wilholm hospitalized with a
broken back; Dr. Castle, a broken leg; Dr. Angelillo, Dr. Bernstein, Dr.
Maranos and four lab technicians severely burned; Dr. Grossblatt and two
assistants, badly clawed; Dr. Cahill, clawed and burned; and no one
knows what's wrong with Dr. Zimmerman. He's locked himself in the broom
closet and refuses to come out. Twelve other people will be out a day or
two with minor injuries, including your secretary who was pursued by
Elvira, the orangutan, and is now being treated for shock."
Titus protested, "Why Elvira wouldn't harm--"
"Elvira has been misnamed. Elvis might be more appropriate."
"Why I had no idea," Titus mused. "Now I'll have to rerun those tests
with the new bias."
Berry flared up again. "You don't even have a lab left to run a test in.
You can't keep Wims after this!"
"Are you blaming poor Wims for what happened?"
"How can you sit there and ask that question without choking? Ever since
that two-legged disaster was hired to sweep up, everybody in the
psycho-research division has suffered from one accident after another;
even you haven't remained unscathed. Why within the month he arrived we
lost the plaque we had won two years running for our unmarred safety
record. In fact, the poor fellow who came to remove it from its place of
honor in the staff dining room fell from the ladder and broke his neck.
Guess who was holding the ladder?"
"I was there at the time," Titus said, "and I saw the entire
performance. Wims did nothing but hold the ladder as he had been
instructed to do. Old John, instead of confining his attention to what
he was doing, kept worrying about whether or not the ladder was being
held firmly enough and, as could be expected, he dropped the plaque,
made a grab for it and down he went."
"Don't you think it significant, Titus, that Old John had been the
university handyman for eighteen years, had climbed up and down ladders,
over roofs, and had never fallen or had a serious accident until Wims
came upon the scene? And this is just about the case with everyone
here?"
"Yes, I think it is very significant."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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