THE ABDUCTORS
"Take care of me--please--please!"
A slip of a girl, smartly attired in a fur-trimmed dress and a chic
little feather-tipped hat, hurried up to Constance Dunlap late one
afternoon as she turned the corner below her apartment.
"It isn't faintness or illness exactly--but--it's all so hazy,"
stammered the girl breathlessly. "And I've forgotten who I am. I've
forgotten where I live--and a man has been following me--oh, ever so
long."
The weariness in the tone of the last words caused Constance to look
more closely at the girl. Plainly she was on the verge of hysterics.
Tears were streaming down her pale cheeks and there were dark rings
under her eyes, suggestive of a haunting fear of something from which
she fled.
Constance was astounded for the moment. Was the girl crazy? She had
heard of cases like this, but to meet one so unexpectedly was surely
disconcerting.
"Who has been following you!" asked Constance gently, looking hastily
over her shoulder and seeing no one.
"A man," exclaimed the girl, "but I think he has gone now."
"Can't you think of your name!" urged Constance. "Try."
"No," cried the girl, "no, I can't, I can't."
"Or your address?" repeated Constance. "Try--try hard!"
The girl looked vacantly about.
"No," she sobbed, "it's all gone--all."
Puzzled, Constance took her arm and slowly walked her up the street
toward her own apartment in the hope that she might catch sight of some
familiar face or be able to pull herself together.
But it was of no use.
They passed a policeman who eyed them sharply. The mere sight of the
blue-coated officer sent a shudder through the already trembling girl
on her arm.
"Don't, don't let them take me to a hospital--don't," pleaded the girl
in a hoarse whisper when they had passed the officer.
"I won't," reassured Constance. "Was that the man who was following
you?"
"No--oh, no," sobbed the girl nervously looking back.
"Who was he, then?" asked Constance eagerly.
The girl did not answer, but continued to look back wildly from time to
time, although there was no doubt that, if he existed at all, the man
had disappeared.
Suddenly Constance realized that she had on her hands a case of
aphasia, perhaps real, perhaps induced by a drug.
At any rate, the fear of being sent away to an institution was so
strong in the poor creature that Constance felt intuitively how
disastrous to her might be the result of disregarding the obsession.
She was in a quandary. What should she do with the girl? To leave her
on the street was out of the question. She was now more helpless than
ever.
They had reached the door of the apartment. Gently she led the
trembling girl into her own home.
But now the question of what to do arose with redoubled force. She
hesitated to call a physician, at least yet, because his first advice
would probably be to send the poor little stranger to the psychopathic
ward of some hospital.
Constance's eye happened to rest on the dictionary in her bookcase.
Perhaps she might recall the girl's name to her, if she were not
shamming, by reading over the list of women's names in the back of the
book.
It meant many minutes, perhaps hours. But then Constance reflected on
what might have happened to the girl if she had chanced to appeal to
some one who had not felt a true interest in her. It was worth trying.
She would do it.
Starting with "A," she read slowly.
"Is your name Abigail?"
Down through Barbara, Camilla, Deborah, Edith, Faith, she read.
"Flora?" she asked.
The girl seemed to apprehend something, appear less blank.
"Florence?" persisted Constance.
"Oh, yes," she cried, "that's it--that's my name."
But as for the last name and the address she was just as hazy as ever.
Still, there was now something different about her.
"Florence--Florence what?" reiterated Constance patiently.
There was no answer. But with the continued repetition it seemed as if
some depth in her nature had been stirred. Constance could not help
feeling that the girl had really found herself.
She had risen and was facing Constance, both hands pressed to her
throbbing temples as if to keep her head from bursting. Constance had
assisted her off with her coat and hat, and now the sartorial wreck of
her masses of blonde hair was apparent.
"I suppose," she cried incoherently, "I'm just one more of the
thousands of girls who drop out of sight every year."
Constance listened in amazement. As the spell of her influence seemed
to calm the overwrought mind of the girl there succeeded a hardness in
her tone that was wholly out of keeping with her youth. There was
something that breathed of a past where there should have been nothing
but the thought of a future.
"Tell me why," soothed Constance with an air that invited confidence.
The girl looked up and again passed her hand over her white forehead
with its mass of tangled fallen hair. Somehow Constance felt a tingling
sensation of sympathy in her heart. Impulsively she put out her hand
and took the cold moist hand of the girl.
"Because," she hesitated, struggling now with re-flooding
consciousness, "because--I don't know. I thought, perhaps--" she added,
dropping her eyes, "you could--help me."
She was speaking rapidly enough now, "I think they have employed
detectives to trace me. One of them is almost up with me. I'm afraid I
can't slip out of the net again. And--I--I won't go back to them. I
can't. I won't."
"Go back to whom?" queried her friend. "Detectives employed by whom?"
"My folks," she answered quickly.
Constance was surprised. Least of all had she expected that.
"Why won't you go home?" she prompted as the girl seemed about to lapse
into a sort of stolid reticence.
"Home?" she repeated bitterly. "Home? No one would believe my story. I
couldn't go home, now. They have made it impossible for me to go home.
I mean, every newspaper has published my picture. There were headlines
for days, and only by chance I was not recognized."
She was sobbing now convulsively. "If they had only let me alone! I
might have gone back, then. But now--after the newspapers and the
search--never! And yet I am going to have revenge some day. When he
least expects it I am going to tell the truth and--"
She stopped.
"And what?" asked Constance.
"Tell the truth--and then do a cowardly thing. I would--"
"You would not!" blazed Constance.
There was no mistaking the meaning.
"Leave it to me. Trust me. I will help you."
She pulled the girl down on the divan beside her.
"Why talk of suicide?" mused Constance. "You can plead this aphasia I
have just seen. I know lots of newspaper women. We could carry it
through so that even the doctors would help us. Remember, aphasia will
do for a girl nowadays what nothing else can do."
"Aphasia!" Florence repeated harshly. "Call it what you
like--weakness--anything. I--I loved that man--not the one who followed
me--another. I believed him. But he left me--left me in a place--across
in Brooklyn. They said I was a fool, that some other fellow, perhaps
better, with more money, would take care of me. But I left. I got a
place in a factory. Then some one in the factory became suspicious. I
had saved a little. It took me to Boston.
"Again some one grew suspicious. I came back here, here--the only place
to hide. I got another position as waitress in the Betsy Ross Tea Room.
There I was able to stay until yesterday. But then a man came in. He
had been there before. He seemed too interested in me, not in a way
that others have been, but in me--my name. Some how I suspected. I put
on my hat and coat. I fled. I think he followed me. All night I have
walked the streets and ridden in cars to get away from him. At last--I
appealed to you."
The girl had sunk back into the soft pillows of the couch beside her
new friend and hid her face. Softly Constance patted and smoothed the
wealth of golden hair.
"You--you poor little girl," she sympathized.
Then a film came over her own eyes.
"New York took me at a critical time in my own life," she said more to
herself than to the girl. "She sheltered me, gave me a new start. What
she did for me she will do for any other person who really wishes to
make a fresh start in life. I made few acquaintances, no friends.
Fortunately, the average New Yorker asks only that his neighbor leave
him alone. No hermit could find better and more complete solitude than
in the heart of this great city."
Constance looked pityingly at the girl before her.
"Why can't you tell them," she suggested, "that you wanted to be
independent, that you went away to make your own living?"
"But--they--my father--is well off. And they have this detective who
follows me. He will find me some day--for the reward--and will tell the
truth."
"The reward?"
"Yes--a thousand dollars. Don't you remember reading--"
The girl stopped short as if to check herself.
"You--you are Florence Gibbons!" gasped Constance as with a rush there
came over her the recollection of a famous unsolved mystery of several
months before.
The girl did not look up as Constance bent over and put her arms about
her.
"Who was he?" she asked persuasively.
"Preston--Lansing Preston," she sobbed bitterly. "Only the other day I
read of his engagement to a girl in Chicago--beautiful, in society.
Oh--I could KILL him," she cried, throwing out her arms passionately.
"Think of it. He--rich, powerful, respected. I--poor, almost crazy--an
outcast."
Constance did not interfere until the tempest had passed.
"What name did you give at the tea room?" asked Constance.
"Viola Cole," answered Florence.
"Rest here," soothed Constance. "Here at least you are safe. I have an
idea. I shall be back soon."
The Betsy Ross was still open after the rush of tired shoppers and
later of business women to whom this was not only a restaurant but a
club. Constance entered and sat down.
"Is the manager in?" she asked of the waitress.
"Mrs. Palmer? No. But, if you care to wait, I think she'll be back
directly."
As Constance sat toying absently with some food at one of the snowy
white tables, a man entered. A man in a tea room is an anomaly. For the
tea room is a woman's institution, run by women for women. Men enter
with diffidence, and seldom alone. This man was quite evidently looking
for some one.
His eye fell on Constance. Her heart gave a leap. It was her old enemy,
Drummond, the detective. For a moment he hesitated, then bowed, and
came over to her table.
"Peculiar places, these tea rooms," observed Drummond.
Constance was doing some quick thinking. Could this be the detective
Florence Gibbons had mentioned?
"The only thing lacking to make them complete," he rattled on, "is a
license. Now, take those places that have a ladies' bar--that do openly
what tea rooms do covertly. They don't reckon with the attitude of
women. This is New York--not Paris. Such things are years off. I don't
say they'll not come or that women won't use them--but not by that
name--not yet."
Constance wondered what his cynical inconsequentialities masked.
"I think it adds to the interest," she observed, watching him
furtively, "this evasion of the laws."
Drummond was casting about for something to do and, naturally, to a
mind like his, a drink was the solution. Evidently, however, there were
degrees of brazenness, even in tea rooms. The Betsy Ross not only would
not produce a labeled bottle and an obvious glass but stoutly denied
their ability to fill such an order, even whispered.
"Russian tea?" suggested Drummond cryptically.
"How will you have it--with Scotch or rye?" asked the waitress.
"Bourbon," hazarded Drummond.
When the "Russian tea" arrived it was in a neat little pot with two
others, the first containing real tea and the second hot water. It was
served virtuously in tea cups, so opaquely concealed that no one but
the clandestine drinker could know what sort of poison was being served.
Mrs. Palmer was evidently later than expected. Drummond fidgeted after
the manner of a man out of his accustomed habitat. And yet he did not
seem to be interested really in Constance, or even in Mrs. Palmer. For
after a few moments, he rose and excused himself.
"How did HE come here?" Constance asked herself over and over.
As far as she could reason it out, there could be only one reason.
Drummond was clearly up with Florence. Did he also know that Constance
was shielding her?
The more she thought of it, the more she shuddered at the tactless way
in which the detective would perform the act of "charity" by
discovering the lost girl--and pocketing the reward.
If her family only knew, how eagerly they might let her come back in
her own way. She looked up the address of Everett Gibbons while she was
waiting, a half-formed plan taking definite shape in her mind.
What--she did must be done quickly. Here at the tea room at least
Florence, or rather Viola, was known. Perhaps the best way, after all,
was to let her be discovered here. They could not deny that she had
been working for them acceptably for some time.
Half an hour later, Mrs. Palmer, a bustling business woman, came in and
the waitress pointed her out to Constance.
"Did you have a waitress here named Viola Cole?" began Constance,
watching keenly the effect of her inquiry.
"Yes," replied Mrs. Palmer in a tone of interest that reassured
Constance that, if there were any connection between Drummond's
presence and Mrs. Palmer, it was wholly on his seeking. "But she
disappeared last night. A most peculiar girl--but a splendid worker."
"She has been ill," Constance hastened to explain. "I am a friend of
hers. I have a business downtown and could not come around until
to-night to tell you that she will be back to-morrow if you will take
her back."
"Of course I'll take her back. I'm sorry she's ill," and Mrs. Palmer
bustled out into the kitchen, not unfeelingly but merely because that
was her manner.
Constance paid her check and left the tea room. So far she had
succeeded. The next thing she had planned was a visit to Mr. Gibbons.
That need not take long, for she was not going to tell anything. Her
idea was merely to pave the way.
The Gibbons she found, lived in a large house on one of the numerous
side streets from the Park, in a neighborhood that was in fact
something more than merely well-to-do.
Fortunately she found Everett Gibbons in and was ushered into his
study, where he sat poring over some papers and enjoying an
after-dinner cigar.
"Mr. Gibbons," began Constance, "I believe there is a one thousand
dollar reward for news of the whereabouts of your daughter, Florence."
"Yes," he said in a colorless tone that betrayed the hopelessness of
the long search. "But we have traced down so many false clues that we
have given up hope. Since the day she went away, we have never been
able to get the slightest trace of her. Still, we welcome outside aid."
"Of detectives?" she asked.
"Official and private--paid and volunteer--anybody," he answered. "I
myself have come to the belief that she is dead, for that is the only
explanation I can think of for her long silence."
"She is not dead," replied Constance in a low tone.
"Not dead?" he repeated eagerly, catching at even such a straw as an
unknown woman might cast out. "Then you know--"
"No," she interrupted positively, "I cannot tell you any more. You must
call off all other searchers. I will let you know."
"When?"
"To-morrow, perhaps the next day. I will call you on the telephone."
She rose and made a hasty adieu before the man who had been prematurely
aged might overwhelm her with questions and break down her resolution
to carry the thing through as she had seen best.
Cheerily, Constance turned the key in the lock of her door.
There was no light and somehow the silence smote on her ominously.
"Florence!" she called.
There was no answer.
Not a sign indicated her presence. There was the divan with the pillows
disarranged as they had been when she left. The furniture was in the
same position as before. Hastily she went from one room to another.
Florence had disappeared!
She went to the door again. All seemed right there. If any one had
entered, it must have been because he was admitted, for there were no
marks to indicate that the lock had been forced.
She called up the tea room. Mrs. Palmer was very sympathetic, but there
had been no trace of "Viola Cole" there yet.
"You will let me know if you get any word?" asked Constance anxiously.
"Surely," came back Mrs. Palmer's cordial reply.
A hundred dire possibilities crowded through her mind. Might Florence
be held somewhere as a "white slave"--not by physical force but by
circumstances, ignorant of her rights, afraid to break away again?
Or was it suicide, as she had threatened? She could not believe it.
Nothing could have happened in such a short time to change her
resolution about revenge.
The recollection of all the stories she had read recently crossed her
mind. Could it be a case of drugs? The girl had given no evidence of
being a "dope" fiend.
Perhaps some one had entered, after all.
She thought of the so-called "poisoned needle" cases. Might she not
have been spirited off in that way? Constance had doubted the stories.
She knew that almost any doctor would say that it was impossible to
inject a narcotic by a sudden jab of a hypodermic syringe. That was
rather a slow, careful and deliberate operation, to be submitted to
with patience.
Yet Florence was gone!
Suddenly it flashed over Constance that Drummond might not be seeking
the reward primarily, after all. His first object might be shielding
Preston. She recollected that Mr. Gibbons had said nothing about
Drummond, either one way or the other. And if he were both shielding
Preston and working for the reward, he would care little how much
Florence suffered. He might be playing both ends to serve himself.
She rang the elevator bell.
"Has anybody called at my apartment while I was out?" she asked.
"Yes'm. A man came here."
"And you let him up?"
"I didn't know you were out. You see I had just come on. He said he was
to meet some one at your apartment. And when he pressed the buzzer, the
door opened, and I ran the elevator down again. I thought it was all
right, ma'am."
"And then what?" inquired Constance breathlessly.
"Well, in about five minutes my bell rang. I ran the elevator up again,
and, waiting, was this man with a girl I had never seen before. You
understand--I thought it was all right--he told me he was going to meet
some one."
"Yes--yes. I understand. Oh, my God, if I had only thought to leave
word not to let her go. How did she look?"
"Her clothes, you mean, Ma'am?"
"No--her face, her eyes!"
"Beggin' your pardon, I thought she was--well, er,--acted
queer--scared--dazed-like."
"You didn't notice which way they went, I suppose!"
"No ma'am, I didn't."
Constance turned back again into her empty apartment, heart-sick. In
spite of all she had planned and done, she was defeated--worse than
defeated. Where was Florence! What might not happen to her! She could
have sat down and cried. Instead she passed a feverishly restless night.
All the next day passed, and still not a word. She felt her own
helplessness. She could not appeal to the police. That might defeat the
very end she sought. She was single-handed. For all she knew, she was
fighting the almost limitless power of brains and money of Preston.
Inquiry developed the fact that Preston himself was reported to be in
Chicago with his fiancee. Time and again she was on the point of making
the journey to let him know that some one at least was watching him.
But, she reflected, if she did that she might miss the one call from
Florence for help.
Then she thought bitterly of the false hopes she had raised in the
despairing father of Florence Gibbons. It was maddening.
Several times during the day Constance dropped into the Betsy Ross,
without finding any word.
Late that night the buzzer on her door sounded. It was Mrs. Palmer
herself, with a letter at last, written on rough paper in pencil with a
trembling hand.
Constance almost literally pounced on it.
"Will you tell the lady who was so kind to me that while she was out
seeing you at the tea room, there was a call at her door? I didn't like
to open it, but when I asked who was there, a man said it was the
steam-fitter she had asked to call about the heat.
"I opened the door. From that moment when I saw his face until I came
to myself here I remember nothing. I would write to her, only I don't
know where she lives. One of the bell-boys here is kind enough to
smuggle this note out for me addressed to the Betsy Boss.
"Tell her please, that I am at a place in Brooklyn, I think, called
Lustgarten's--she can recognize it because it is at a railroad
crossing--steam railroads, not trolleys or elevateds.
"I know you think me crazy, Mrs. Palmer, but the other lady can tell
you about it. Oh, it was the same horrible feeling that came over me
that night as before. It isn't a dream; it's more like a trance. It
comes in a second--usually when I am frightened. I suddenly feel
nervous and shaky. I can't tell what is going on around me. I lose my
hearing. Part of the time it is as though, I had a paralytic stroke of
the tongue. The next day, perhaps, it is gone. But while it lasts it is
terrifying. It's like walking into a new world, with everybody,
everything strange about me."
The note ended with a most pathetic appeal.
Constance was already nervously putting on her hat.
"You are going to go there?" asked Mrs. Palmer.
"If I can locate the place," she answered.
"Aren't you afraid?" inquired the other.
Constance did not reply. She ostentatiously slipped a little
ivory-handled revolver into her handbag.
"It's a new one," she explained finally, "like nothing you ever heard
of before, I guess. I bought it only the other day after a friend of
mine told me about it."
Mrs. Palmer was watching her closely.
"You--you are a wonderful woman," she burst out finally. "It isn't good
business, it isn't good sense."
Constance stopped short in her preparations for the search. "What are
business and sense compared to the--the life of--"
She checked herself on the very point of revealing the girl's real name.
"Nothing," replied Mrs. Palmer. "I had already made up my mind to go
with you before I spoke--if you will let me."
In a moment the two understood each other better than after years of
casual acquaintance.
Back and forth through the mazes of streets and car lines of the city
across the river the two women traveled, asking veiled questions of
every wearer of a uniform, until at last they found such a place as
Florence had described in her note.
There, it seemed, had sprung up a little center of vice. While
reformers were trying to clamp down tight the "lid" in New York, all
the vicious elements were prying it up here. Crushed in one place, they
rose again in another.
There was the electric sign--"Lustgarten." Even a cursory glance told
them that it included a saloon on the first floor, with a sort of dance
hall and second-rate cabaret. Above that was a hotel. The windows were
darkened, with awnings pulled down, even on what must have been in the
daytime the shady side.
"Shall we go in? Are you game?" asked Constance of her companion.
"I haven't gone so far without considering that," replied Mrs. Palmer,
somewhat reproachfully.
Without a word Constance entered the door down the street followed by
her companion.
A negro at the little cubby hole of an office pushed out a register at
them. Constance signed the first names that came into her head, and a
moment later they were on their way up to a big double room on the
third floor, led by another, younger negro.
"Will you send the bell-boy up?" asked Constance as they entered the
room.
"I'm the bell-boy ma'am," was his disconcerting reply.
"I mean the other one," replied Constance, hazarding, "the one who is
here in the day time."
"There ain't no other boy, ma'am. There ain't no--"
"Could you deliver a note for me at a tea room in New York to-morrow?"
interrupted Constance, striking while the iron seemed hot.
The boy turned around abruptly from his busy occupation of doing
something useless that would elicit a tip. He quietly shut the door,
and wheeled about with his hand still on the knob.
"Do you want to know what room she's in?" he asked.
Constance opened her handbag. Mrs. Palmer suppressed a little scream.
She had expected that ivory-handled thing to appear. Instead there was
a treasury note of a size that caused the white part of the boy's eyes
to expand beyond all the laws of optics.
"Yes," she said, pressing it into his hand.
"Forty-two-down the hall, around the turn, on the other side,"
whispered the boy. "And for God's sake, ma'am, don't tell nobody I told
you."
His shuffle down the hall had scarcely ceased before the two women were
stealthily creeping in the opposite direction, looking eagerly at the
numbers.
Constance had stopped abruptly around the turn. Through a transom of
one of the rooms they could hear voices but could see no light.
"Well, go back then," growled a gruff voice. "Your family will never
believe your story, never believe that you came again and stayed at
Lustgarten's against your will. Why," the voice taunted with a harsh
laugh, "if they knew the truth, they would turn you from the door,
instead of offering a reward."
There was a moment of silence. Then a woman's voice, strangely familiar
to Constance, spoke.
"The truth!" she exclaimed bitterly. "He knew it was a case of a girl
who liked a good time, liked pretty clothes, a ride in an automobile,
theaters, excitement, bright lights, night life--a girl with a romantic
disposition in whom all that was repressed at home. He knew it," she
repeated, raising the tone to an almost hysterical pitch, "led me on,
made me love him because he could give them all to me. And when I began
to show the strain of the pace-they all show it more than the men--he
cast me aside like a squeezed-out lemon."
As she listened, Constance understood it all now. It was to make
Florence Gibbons a piece of property, a thing to be traded in,
bartered--that was the idea. Discover her--yes; but first to thrust her
into the life if she would not go into it herself--anything to
discredit her testimony beforehand, anything to save the precious
reputation of one man.
"Well," shouted the other voice menacingly, "do you want to know the
truth? Haven't you read it often enough? Instead of hoping you will
return, they pray that you are DEAD!"
He hissed the words out, then added, "They prefer to think that you are
dead. Why--damn it!--they turn to that belief for COMFORT!"
Constance had seized Mrs. Palmer by the arm, and, acting in concert,
they threw both their weights against the thin wooden door.
It yielded with a crash.
Inside the room was dark.
Indistinctly Constance could make out two figures, one standing, the
other seated in a deep rocker.
A suppressed exclamation of surprise was followed by a hasty lunge of
the standing figure toward her.
Constance reached quickly into her handbag and drew out the little
ivory-handled pistol.
"Bang!" it spat almost into the man's face.
Choking, sputtering, the man groped a minute blindly, then fell on the
floor and frantically tried to rise again and call out.
The words seemed to stick in his throat.
"You--you shot him?" gasped a woman's voice which Constance now knew
was Florence's.
"With the new German Secret Service gun," answered Constance quietly,
keeping it leveled to cow any assistance that might be brought. "It
blinds and stupefies without killing--a bulletless revolver intended to
check and render harmless the criminal instead of maiming him. The
cartridges contain several chemicals that combine when they are
exploded and form a vapor which blinds a man and puts him out. No one
wants to kill such a person as this."
She reached over and switched on the lights.
The man on the floor was Drummond himself.
"You will tell your real employer, Mr. Preston," she added
contemptuously, "that unless he agrees to our story of his elopement
with Florence, marries her, and allows her to start an undefended
action for divorce, we intend to make use of the new federal Mann
Act--with a jail sentence--for both of you."
Drummond looked up sullenly, still blinking and choking.
"And not a word of this until the suit is filed. Then WE will see the
reporters--not he. Understand?"
"Yes," he muttered, still clutching his throat.
An hour later Constance was at the telephone in her own apartment.
"Mr. Gibbons? I must apologize for troubling you at this late, or
rather early, hour. But I promised you something which I could not
fulfill until now. This is the Mrs. Dunlap who called on you the other
day with a clue to your daughter Florence. I have found
her--yes--working as a waitress in the Betsy Ross Tea Boom. No--not a
word to anyone--not even to her mother. No--not a word. You can see her
to-morrow--at my apartment. She is going to live with me for a few days
until--well--until we get a few little matters straightened out."
Constance had jammed the receiver back on the hook hastily.
Florence Gibbons, wild-eyed, trembling, imploring, had flung her arms
about her neck.
"No--no--no," she cried. "I can't. I won't."
With a force that was almost masculine, Constance took the girl by both
shoulders.
"The one thousand dollar reward which comes to me," said Constance
decisively, "will help us--straighten out those few little matters with
Preston. Mrs. Palmer can stretch the time which you have worked for
her."
Something of Constance's will seemed to be infused into Florence
Gibbons by force of suggestion.
"And remember," Constance added in a tense voice, "for anything after
your elopement--it's aphasia, aphasia, APHASIA!"