Pity Him Afterwards

“Let us say,” he said, “as an example, that one of us in this room is a carrier of bubonic plague. Let us say he does not know it, that he himself shows no symptoms of bubonic plague. Soon, those of us in contact with this man will begin to sicken and to die. Our deaths will be horrible, and this carrier will have been the direct cause of those deaths. We may fear him, as being deadly. We may pity him, as being himself doomed eventually by the death he carries with him. But if we hate him, if we blame him, we do him a terrible injustice. He is sick, he carries within him a sickness, but he doesn’t know it. And precisely the same is true of Robert Ellington. He is sick. He carries within himself a mental sickness, which is deadly to those with whom he comes in contact. But he doesn’t know it. No matter how much we are revolted by the results of his sickness, we cannot in all justice hate him or blame him.”

“I don’t hate him,” said one of the police officers. “I just want to catch him.”

“Yes. Yes, of course. We all do. Very well. Very well, you want to know what he is most probably doing at this moment.”

“Strangling somebody,” said a newsman flippantly.

“That is a regrettable possibility,” Dr. Peterby told him. “But I think we all know that already, and don’t require to be reminded of it.”

The newsman looked properly sheepish. Those near him shifted uncomfortably.

“You have established,” said Dr. Peterby, “that Ellington escaped with the suitcase belonging to the young man he killed on the highway. He therefore is now in possession of clothing more suitable to the outside world than that in which he left here. He may even have stolen money from the same young man. With clothing and money, I would imagine that Ellington would next attempt simply to disappear in the crowd. I would guess that he would make his way as quickly as possible to a large city, such as New York. I would also guess that he would use the same protective device in the outside world which served him so well here. That is, I would imagine that he would attempt to become someone else. That he would pick someone he met in a train, perhaps, or a restaurant, study the person’s mannerisms and movements and speech patterns and habits of thought, and then mimic that person from then on. He would be attempting to disguise himself as a free man, and I would guess that he would do so by becoming one of the free men he meets. Now, his mimicry never lasted long here; he would be a different patient at almost every session. Sometimes, when one of his roles particularly pleased him — he had the most fun, I think, with patients of lower mentality — he would keep the part for two or three sessions. But normally he would change from session to session, and I would guess he will do much the same thing in the outside world. That each day, perhaps, he will pick out some different person to be. Because of that, and because he will feel himself to be a hunted man, I would imagine that he wouldn’t stay in any one place for long. I would guess he will live in hotels, changing to a new hotel every day. I would guess he will make no attempt to get a job, afraid of the normal questions asked by any employer, and so, in order to have money for food and shelter, I regret to say that my guess would be he will resort to robbery. He has no background of house-breaking or safe-cracking or anything along those lines, so I would imagine he will be limited to robbery of individuals. What, I believe, is termed mugging.”

“So,” said one of the police officers bitterly, “we can look for him killing people in Central Park.”

“I’m very much afraid you will find him doing something very like that.”

A newsman said, “What about the sex angle, Doctor? He’s been cooped away here for quite a while. Is he liable to go after women?”

“He has absolutely no history of sexual crime of any sort. Whether or not he will attempt a sexual encounter at this time, I couldn’t say. It is possible he will hire a prostitute. It is possible that his fear of exposure will keep him from consciously desiring such intimate relationship with anyone.”

The same newsman asked, “Is it also possible he may try to get his sex by force, the same way you think he’ll get his money? And the same way he got out of here, too.”