Pity Him Afterwards

Looking down, Dr. Peterby saw that unconsciously he had made the tent again. He broke it at once, with a sudden feeling of irritation, and pressed his palms down on the desk top. Watching his hands, he said, “It isn’t easy to admit an error like that. It was a grievous error. Methods which had worked with varying success on other men were no good on Robert Ellington. We had not taken into account the strength and adaptability of his mind.”

He raised his head to look at his visitors once more. “That is a vitally important point,” he said. “The adaptability of his mind. The defenses he is capable of erecting are utterly fantastic. He learned here to be a man of a thousand psychic faces. Until he grew violent again and had to be put in the solitary ward, he displayed an amazing ability at mimicry. I could play for you tape recordings of our sessions together during that time, and they would astonish you. He was never the same man twice. He would choose one of the other inmates, and very nearly become that person. His speech, his responses, his attitudes, all would reflect almost a parody of the original, with his own personality showing through only as a muted left hand, as it were, in a minor key. Do you see what he was doing? Ours was a doctor-patient relationship which he could not evade, but which he could not accept because it would inevitably lead to disclosures about himself which he did not want to know. So he altered the doctor-patient relationship by becoming one of my other patients. Whatever I said to him, it was that other patient who answered, and whatever revealing information I might unearth about the other patient, could certainly not harm him.”

Dr. Peterby’s hands fluttered, his face was animated. He had very nearly forgotten this disruption of his office. “Do you see the fantastic implications of what he did? Great intelligence, great cunning, a high order of talent, all bent on this one goal. The potential of this man is very nearly unbelievable. Well, you can see that for yourself. He managed to break out of our maximum-security building. Alone, penniless, his name and face and general whereabouts known to all of you, he nevertheless managed to evade you. If we could yet find the key to this man, break him from the bondage of his illness, unlock his potential, what a value he could be to society!”

“We have to find the man himself first,” said one of the police officers. “And right now he isn’t being a value to society, he’s being a menace to society.”

“Yes. Yes, I know. He must be found, before he does even greater damage to himself. You must know, it is entirely possible that he will kill again. What these three killings have already done to him I can’t begin to guess. The longer he remains free, the more difficult his eventual cure will become. All the time he is out there, he is piling up more and more data he must forever hide from himself; he is making the wall between himself and self-knowledge thicker and thicker and higher and higher.”

“He is also killing people.”

“Good God, I’m well aware of that! Do you think I’m ignoring that? The two men here, I knew them both, knew them for years. I would have said they were friends of mine, as much as there are friendships between the staff and the employees at ward level. One of them — Davis — I know his wife, I’ve met their children. Of course it’s a dreadful thing, I know that as well as anyone. But it’s dreadful in the way a flood is dreadful, in the way an airplane crash is dreadful. You don’t hate the water, or hate the airplane, and if you do you’re just being foolish and wasting your emotions. I realize this is a different situation here, Robert Ellington can hardly be considered an act of God, but—”

“More an act of Satan,” said one of the newsmen.

“Very well,” said Dr. Peterby, nodding. “Very well, if you want to phrase it that way. Robert Ellington is possessed by a devil, if you will, and we here are the priests trying to exorcise that devil. The devil, in this case, is a mental illness. Once Robert Ellington is cured, if we ever do manage to cure him, he will be as shocked and repulsed at these crimes as you or I, and he will have just as strong a feeling as you or I that he was not the one who committed those crimes. I know I didn’t murder those people. You know you didn’t murder them. If and when he is ever healthy, he will know just as surely that he didn’t murder them, and he will be right. It is the disease within him that is killing, not him. The law recognizes that fact. When caught, he will not be punished; he will be returned here. If cured, he will be released, and he will still not be punished. He will be a free man.”

Dr. Peterby wasn’t sure be was getting through to these people. But he knew he had to, if they were to know Robert Ellington well enough to catch him, and well enough not to damage him mentally even more than he was already damaged. He tried again.