If he had to move fast, this seemed a good time. The elevator dropped
him to the street level and, looking cautiously around, he walked out.
In a few minutes, he was blocks away. It was mid-morning, and he swung
along, hands thrust into his jacket. There was a wad of paper inside
and he fished it out and examined it--money, neatly folded with a note
around it.
The note was from Erica, saying that the money was meant for him. The
sum was not great, but she must have given him everything she had in
the house. Mistily, he counted it out.
III
Dan hadn't been stopped and didn't expect to be. He wasn't a criminal,
but until the hospital released him, he was technically a mental case.
But Crander would hardly be anxious to report to the police that a
patient was missing--not until he had tried everything else.
Merrol took the elevator. It was a bright new apartment building, which
conferred some social status and not much else on those living in it.
Miss Jerrems opened the door. "Come in," she said, looking around
furtively as he slipped past her.
He sat down gingerly, watching her scurry about. He tried to protest,
but nothing he said had any effect on her aggressive hospitality.
She thrust a cup of watery coffee in his hand and placed a tray of
breakfast rolls beside him.
She sat facing him. Their knees almost touched--it was a narrow room.
"I came home at once," she said, not very successful in her attempt to
control her excitement. "I told them I was upset and, after my long
years of service, they didn't question me. I tore my dress and told
them you had done it. I said that you ran up toward the top of the
building."
He appreciated her motives, but thought she shouldn't have tried so
hard to convince them. Now they had reason to think he was violent.
"Until today, I've been devoted to Doctor Crander," she said sternly.
He recalled the first look on her face in the doctor's office--and the
one after she had seen him. In seconds, her whole attitude had changed.
Why?
"I heard what he told you." She hissed the word--"Lies."
Dan stared at her skeptically. "They didn't do what he said?"
"Oh, the facts were straight enough," she said bitterly. "It was the
reasons he concealed. They thought you didn't have a chance, so they
did all sorts of strange things they never tried on anyone else. You
were an experiment, that's all--but you surprised them."
The hospital was looking for the wrong mental case. They had one
working for them and didn't know it. He didn't doubt that she was
right--about his being an experiment--but her observations were wrong.
It was due entirely to their unorthodox procedures that he was alive.
She looked him over carefully and he knew that the halves of his face
didn't match by a ridiculous margin, that one shoulder was heavier than
the other, that his hair was in three colors. Even in repose and fully
clothed, so that some of the discrepancies of his physique were hidden,
he was hardly presentable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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