Thieves of the Mind
Judy found Pauline’s advice hard to follow.
“Don’t worry about a thing,” she had said when they parted on Sunday.
But the words had meant very little. In church, in the restaurant, in
front of the bullet-riddled door, on the subway returning to the
hospital, and especially on the train going back to Long Island—wherever
Judy went a vague worry went with her.
“What’s the matter with me?” she wondered. “Why can’t I clear my head
and think straight the way I used to?”
Judy spent a restless night, haunted by the faceless golden-haired
people of her dream. Again she was looking for Clarissa. But now she had
a clue. They had all dreamed about hair—Pauline, Flo, and herself. But
why? If they had been hypnotized as part of a confidence game, Peter
ought to know about it. The next day Judy told him.
“You’d almost think someone had taken possession of our minds. All three
of us had nightmares. What do you suppose caused them?” she asked when
she was visiting him in the afternoon.
Peter shook his head. He was sitting up with his shoulder in a cast and
feeling very much better. She hadn’t wanted to tire him the day before.
But now it was different. There were a number of things she knew she
mustn’t keep from him any longer.
“Nightmares are sometimes caused by something hidden in the subconscious
mind,” he replied. “I’m sure I don’t know what you have hidden there.”
“Oh, Peter! I’m not hiding it on purpose. I feel silly telling you about
it after all you’ve been through,” Judy burst out impulsively. “Will you
forgive me?”
“On one condition,” he told her.
Judy thought he was serious until she saw the twinkle in his eyes.
“And what is that condition?”
“That you tell me more. You told me yesterday that the patient you
visited wasn’t Clarissa, but you didn’t tell me much of anything else.
What happened to this phantom friend, as you call her?” Peter asked
curiously. “Begin at the beginning and tell me exactly how you met her.”
“We met her—in a restaurant. We went back there yesterday but didn’t
find out anything.” Judy sighed. It was good to be telling Peter about
it. She had so much to tell him that she thought she might as well dish
it out in small doses. The big surprise would come when she handed him
the post office box number of the thief he had been trailing. But that
could wait. She told him about church first, and how the minister had
said, “Love ye therefore the stranger.”
“It was easy to like Clarissa,” she continued in answer to his first
request. “You asked how we met her. Well, the four of us were having
lunch when there was a commotion at the cashier’s desk, and this
stranger—we found out later that her name was Clarissa Valentine. Well,
anyway, she claimed that she had given the cashier a twenty-dollar bill.
He opened the cash drawer to prove that her bill wasn’t in it, but she
insisted and we believed her. Was that wrong, Peter?”
“Not at all,” he replied. “I might have believed the girl myself and
suspected the cashier of palming the bill.”
“Then I’m glad we believed her. Not that it makes what happened
afterwards any easier to explain,” Judy added. “Pauline thought she had
tricked us, but that was after she disappeared with the money we lent
her. I don’t know how she could have vanished the way she did if it
wasn’t a trick. Besides, the things she said—”
“What things?” asked Peter, more interested in the story than Judy had
expected him to be. “If you can remember exactly what she said it may
help us find out what happened to her.”
“Oh dear, no! I’m afraid not. So much happened! This is going to sound
unbelievable to you,” cried Judy, “but she said things that made it seem
almost as if she—she didn’t exist. Things like telling us she looked in
a mirror once and saw no reflection. And then—you won’t believe this at
all, but when we toured Radio City and looked at ourselves on
television, all the rest of us showed, but Clarissa was nothing but a
big white light closing in until it disappeared just the way she
did—without a trace. We called her a phantom friend for a joke at first,
but after that it seemed so real it wasn’t funny any more. Peter, what
do you think happened?”
“Well, for one thing, a tube probably blew out on the TV set. That would
cause the picture to close in and disappear. I’ve seen it happen myself,
and it is weird—”
“It certainly was that,” Judy agreed. “I suppose a tube could have blown
out. We didn’t wait to see what was wrong with the set, because Clarissa
fainted. She wasn’t faking, either. She was really frightened. We went
back and saw ourselves after the set was fixed, but she wouldn’t go near
it. She said her hair was dull and drab and then we all started saying
it—as if we were hypnotized or something. Was that a trick? Was Clarissa
playing some sort of confidence game?”
“Someone was. I’ll have to look into this myself,” declared Peter. “It
may tie in with what we found out. There are all kinds of thieves, you
know. That cashier is probably a petty thief and should be reported. A
thief like Clarence Lawson plays his confidence game for bigger
winnings. But the most insidious kind, I think, are thieves of the mind.
Do you follow me, Angel?”
“No, I’m afraid I don’t,” Judy admitted. “I’ve heard of brain washing,
of course. I wish someone would wash those golden-haired people out of
my brain, so I could stop dreaming about them and think straight. Is
that what you mean?”
“I mean they may have been deliberately put there by the enemies of our
most precious possession. You know what it is, don’t you? It’s our
freedom to think our own thoughts.”
“You mean—oh, Peter! I do see what you mean!” cried Judy. “I don’t know
how it was done, but someone has been doing things to our subconscious
minds—to frighten us—and make us dream. Clarissa was frightened, too.
She couldn’t have done it. But who was it, Peter? How do we find out who
did this horrible thing to us?”
“One way,” said Peter, “is to review the facts. Judy, I’m serious. I
want you to go back over everything that happened Saturday.”
“But we’ve been doing that. We haven’t come up with very many answers,
only more questions. You said what happened to Clarissa might tie in
with what you found out. What did you mean?” asked Judy.
“I told you we overheard some plans,” Peter began. “Mind manipulation
could have been part of them. If only we knew the name of the missing
actress—”
“Is some actress missing? Maybe Irene knows her,” Judy suggested. “She
could give you the names of all the people who appeared on her show.
There was the witch. She could have cast some sort of hypnotic spell
over us, I suppose. Hypnotism is one sort of mind manipulation, isn’t
it?”
“Yes, but there are other sorts. There’s a machine, for instance, called
the tachistoscope. It’s sort of a magic lantern with a high-speed
shutter—”
“There were a lot of machines,” Judy interrupted. “The studio floor was
filled up with them. I tried to remember their names when we were on the
tour, but I couldn’t possibly remember them all.”
“What else happened on that tour?” asked Peter. “You haven’t told me
everything.”
“There’s so much to tell. I can’t think of it all at once. Irene invited
Francine Dow to be her guest star. Did I tell you she didn’t arrive
until the last minute?” asked Judy. “Then she left hurriedly with her
aunt before we had a chance to meet her.”
“Did you meet the aunt?” Peter questioned. “A phony aunt would fit in
very nicely with what we already know.”
“What do you know? I can see you’re not free to tell me,” Judy added
when Peter was silent. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not free to think
about it. These thieves of the mind may invent machines to make me
dream, but when I’m awake I intend to do my own thinking, and right now
I think Francine Dow may be in danger. She didn’t sing. Irene thought
she had a cold. But maybe something else was wrong. I didn’t tell you,
but there was an argument in the film storage room. The projectionist
was very angry. I heard him say something might be as dangerous as an
atom bomb. I had no idea what the danger was, but if Francine Dow is
missing—”
Judy stopped. It wasn’t Francine Dow, it was Clarissa Valentine who was
missing. The two girls, as she remembered them, were somewhat alike. The
absurd idea came to her that one of them could have been real and the
other a changeling. But Peter didn’t want fairy tales. He wanted facts.