The white-coated medical man--he said that he was associate
psychiatrist at the Phipps Clinic--beckoned me to follow him into a
side-room. He waved me to be seated and closed the door.
"You see, Mr. Tompkins," he told me, "everybody's crazy."
There is no point in recounting the stages which had converted my panic
flight from the wrath of the Secret Service into this interview with
one of Johns Hopkins psychiatric staff, except that I had been amazed
by the ease with which he had drawn me aside shortly after I had sat
down in the waiting-room.
"Of course I realize, doctor," I replied, "that everyone must be
abnormal since that is how you establish an average normality. My case
is so peculiar, though, that I'd like to have you check on me."
"Here we can take you only on the recommendation of a registered
physician or psychiatrist," he told me. "We're understaffed and
over-crowded as it is. My advice to you would be to return to your
home--you live near New York, you say--and put yourself in the hands
of your regular family physician. There are plenty of institutions
in your part of the country which are fully qualified to give the
necessary treatment. Even if you were recommended to us now we could
only put you on the waiting list."
I murmured something vague about war-conditions and neurotics, but he
raised his hand like a traffic-cop and interrupted me.
"The war, at least so far as active service is concerned, has taken a
load off us, Mr. Tompkins," he informed me. "You see, in normal times
people live under any number of pressures which force them to restrain
their natural impulses. War gives them outlets--including sex, a sense
of gang solidarity, and permission to commit acts of violence and
homicide--which would result in jail-sentences for them at other times.
Of course, there are a good many psychos coming out of actual combat
but the government takes care of them. No, the bulk of our current
cases are essential civilians: generals, administrators, politicians,
business executives--who find that the war simply redoubles the
pressures on them. Some of them are really insane in the medical sense
but their positions are so high that we dare not insist on their
hospitalization. Instead, we have a simple prescription which most of
them find no difficulty in taking. Perhaps it would help in your case."
"What's that?" I asked.
"Oh, just go out and get drunk now and then, and find yourself a
girl-friend. Blow off steam, in other words. Find an outlet for your
natural impulses. If the White House had consulted me, Roosevelt might
still--Oh, well, no use crying over spilt milk. Half the mental trouble
in this country is due to people trying to be something they are not,
and the other half is due to people trying not to be something that
they naturally are. Primitive people are rarely troubled with neuroses."
"But you said that everybody's crazy, doctor," I objected. "How does
that fit into the picture?"
"Mr. Tompkins," the psychiatrist remarked, "you must have noticed that
the only sane people today are the alleged lunatics, who do what makes
them happy. Take the man who thinks he is Napoleon. He _is_ Napoleon
and is much happier than those who try to tell him that he isn't. The
real maniacs are now in control of the asylum. There's a theory among
the psychiatrists that certain forms of paranoia are contagious. Every
now and then a doctor or a nurse here and at other mental clinics goes
what they call crazy and has to join the patients. My theory is that it
is sanity which is contagious and that the only sane people are those
who have sense enough to be crazy. They are locked up at once for fear
that others will go sane, too. Now, take me, I'm--"
At that moment two husky young men came in and led him away. After a
short interval one of them returned.
"I'm sorry this happened, sir," he apologized. "Dr. Murdoch is a
tragic case. He was formerly employed here and every now and then he
still manages to escape to one of our consultation rooms. He's quite
harmless. What was he telling you?"
"That the only sane people in the world were the lunatics," I said.
The young man nodded. "Yes, that's his usual line. That's what got him
committed in the first place. For my money, he's right but he oughtn't
to go around saying it. And what can we do for you?"
I told him that the "associate psychiatrist" had advised me to put
myself in the hands of my family doctor and had prescribed a dose of
wine, women and song as a method of restoring my mental balance. I was
troubled by serious loss of memory, I said, and needed treatment.
He nodded again. "Boy, when I finish my internship and start private
practice, am I going to clean up in the upper brackets with that one!
Murdoch's crazy to waste that on these people in Phipps. They can't
follow his advice. This one is strictly for Park Avenue."
I left the clinic, phoned the hotel in Washington from a pay-booth in a
corner drug-store, and told Germaine to join me at Pook's Hill. I said
that I had had to leave Washington in a hurry and would explain when I
saw her. I added that I'd just had a consultation at Johns Hopkins and
had decided to take medical treatment.
"I know one thing you don't need treatment for--your nerve!" she
replied and hung up on me.
When I reached the house in Bedford Hills, I was welcomed by
Mary-Myrtle at the front door and by the loud barking of Ponto from my
bedroom. Germaine had not yet returned.
"How's Ponto?" I asked the maid.
"Oh, he's fine," she told me, "just fine. He eats his food and sleeps
regular and is just like he was."
"Good, I'll take a look at him."
I went upstairs and held my bedroom door ajar.
"Hullo, Ponto old boy," I said in the curious tone one uses towards
dogs, children and public men. "Here I am back from Washington."
He lay on my bed, with ears pricked up, gazing at me intently.
"Yes, Ponto," I continued. "I got the Order of Merit from President
Truman himself and met all the big shots, so if you take a bite at me
now it will be sabotage."
Ponto put his ears back and let his tongue dangle from the side of his
mouth, while his tail made a haze as it thumped delightedly on the
pillow. If he hadn't been an animal, I would have said he was laughing.
"There, old fellow," I soothed him.
He wuffed affectionately, jumped to the floor, and stood beside me,
panting and drooling.
"Thank God, you're well again, Ponto," I told him. "We can't have two
loony people in this house. Now it's my turn to go to the vet's and be
treated."
Ponto's answer was to lick my hand convulsively and wag his tail and
otherwise give a splendid impersonation of an affectionate "Friend of
Man" whose beloved master has returned. So I took him downstairs with
me and turned him out for a run on the lawn while I sat in my den and
tried to get my thoughts in order.
What worried me most was Virginia Rutherford's sudden change in
manner. From having been definitely the woman scorned--angry, hurt and
hell-bent for revenge--she had adopted an air of friendly complicity
the moment I had left the White House. This made no sense to me.
Germaine was unchanged but that was because she was a simple woman who
was in the obvious process of falling in love with her own husband.
Whatever I did would be all right with her, which was a great comfort
but not much help. Then, too, I was beginning to get uneasy at the
increasing glibness and complexity of the lies I was telling. It was
almost as though I were playing a part for which at some time I had
once rehearsed. As Tyler had told me in the State Department, it
_would_ be interesting to know how I happened to invent the legendary
"Z-2."
There was the crunch of gravel as an automobile slowed to a stop
outside, the click of a key in the lock and then Germaine was in the
den and in my arms, with all the etchings of ducks staring at her.
"Winnie," she exclaimed. "You _are_ the most unexpected person. I had
the most awful time at the Willard after you phoned me. When I tried to
pay the bill they wouldn't take my check because my name wasn't Grant.
In fact, I had to telephone that nice Mrs. Jacklin before I could find
a bank that would give me the money. Then that Mr. Harcourt from the
F.B.I. came in and talked to me for the longest time. He seemed quite
surprised when I told him you had gone to Johns Hopkins. Don't you feel
well, dear?"
"I never felt better," I assured her. "No, Jimmy, that was because
somebody in the Secret Service got the idea that I ought to be put in
an asylum. It's a nasty little trick of theirs, I gather, to send a man
to the booby-bin for life if they don't like him but have no evidence
against him. So I thought I'd play it smart and beat them to the punch.
That's why I went to Baltimore, to get a mental check-up at the Phipps
Clinic."
"Did they--Are you--Are you all right?" she faltered. "I couldn't bear
it if--"
I laughed and gave her a good hug. "I'm all right," I told her. "They
didn't have time to examine me but gave me two bits of advice. First,
I was to get Jerry Rutherford to handle my case. I guess you need
political influence now to get yourself locked up. And then, I was told
that I ought to have more licker and wimmin in my life. It seems I'm
getting in a rut."
"Winnie!"
"Uh-huh! They recommended it for curing highly inhibited cases like
mine. I'm repressed or something."
"It must be something," Germaine observed fifteen minutes later. "Oh,
dear, I didn't even think whether the door was locked. I'm a sight. You
don't act repressed to me."
She turned her face towards me, her eyes laughing.
"In any case, I'll have to see a doctor," I said, "and it might as
well be Rutherford. He knows so much about me that I won't have to do a
lot of explaining."
"Winnie!"
Germaine swung her feet to the floor and straightened her clothes.
"Winnie," she repeated, "_must_ you go to a doctor? Can't we try the
_other_ prescription--I mean, give it a _good_ try?"
I shook my head.
"No can do. I've got to get my memory straightened out. You and
I--well, _we're_ all right now. But there's my business and then
there's the Secret Service. I _can't_ seem to remember a thing before
the second of April and I did so much lying in Washington, trying to
cover up, that I may get into real trouble. That's what Virginia said,
that I'd lied myself into a worse mess than I'd lied myself out of."
My wife pouted. "Don't these treatments take a long time?" she asked.
"I remember when they sent Cousin Frederick to the asylum after
that time when he put tear-gas in the air-conditioners in the Stock
Exchange, it was three years before they let him out. Of course he
_was_ crazy, though we pretended it was only drink. That time he tried
to tattoo the little Masters girl--But won't they keep you locked up
and do things to you?"
"Hanged if I know," I said, "but they can't keep me there a day longer
than you or I want. It isn't as though I was being committed to an
asylum. It's just that there's a bad crack in my memory. They'll try to
find out what's wrong and patch it up. Perhaps I won't have to stay
after all."
"Do they let wives come and visit their husbands?" she asked dreamily.
"I mean--"
"I've never heard that the medical profession encouraged that kind of
therapy," I told her.
"Speaking of insanity," I continued, "Ponto, you will be glad to know,
is back to normal."
She got up and made a face at me. "Of course," she remarked with
deliberate provocation, "If you think more of Ponto than you do of me.
I'm so glad, Winnie, to know that Ponto is better. He's your dog, isn't
he? What was wrong with him? What medicine did you give him? What did
the vet say--"
She ended in a startled squeak and ran for the door.
"You beast!" she exclaimed, turning on me, "it _was_ locked, all the
time. Oh, Winnie--"
A thousand years later she said once more, "Oh, Winnie!"
Then she laughed.
"Just the same," she said, "I'm glad about Ponto. I still think I don't
like the way he's been acting."
She yawned.
"And now, sir," she added, "will you please let me go to my room. I'm
_still_ rather dirty from my trip and I ought to get a few things
unpacked. And besides," she laughed again, "I'm ravenously hungry."
"So am I," I remarked truthfully, "but--"
"I _know_ we're both crazy," she told me some time later, "and perhaps
they'd better give us a double-room at the asylum. But I know that
unless I eat something right away I'll be dead in the morning."
"Let's see if there's anything in the ice-box," I said. "Mary's
probably given up dinner long ago."
"Her name is Myrtle," Germaine corrected me.