A Puzzle for fools by Patrick Quentin Read Free Book Online Page A

course I'm not mad." He nodded his head savagely. "I've got to tell Miss Brush."
    He rose and lumbered away through the dancers.
    After he left me, I felt a strange sensation of threatening danger. I had thought that Miss Powell was merely comic relief. But now, even she seemed to have become tied up in the development of this strange drama which was acting itself out so deviously in Doctor Lenz' sanitarium.
    The Boston spinster had stolen the stop watch. I felt pretty sure of that. But had she just slipped it into Laribee's pocket when they were dancing together? Or was it responsible for the ticking I had heard in the financier's room the night before? And if it had been, how on earth could it have gotten into the men's wing? I knew enough about stop watches to realize that they could not run for many hours continuously. Someone must have wound it up again. But who? Miss Powell? Someone else who, for some reason, wanted to frighten Laribee? Or could it be the millionaire himself, working out some crazy, intricate plan of his own?
    And then another thought struck me; a thought slightly more sinister in its implications. Laribee's sanity, or rather his insanity, meant a great deal of money to the institution. Was it possible that…?
    I would have given anything for a quart of rye to help me figure it out. But as there wasn't a Chinaman's chance of that, I went in search of fresh air. That opulent lounge with its expensive dresses, its expensive psychiatrists, its dancing puppets, was beginning to get me down.
    I had hoped to find my friend Fogarty in the lobby, but only Warren was there. I asked him for a cigarette and we started to chat. Despite his efficient head-locks, our night attendant was a mournful, rather ineffectual man. He always had a grievance, and this time, as usual, it was his brother-in-law. With uncharacteristic frankness, he hinted at Fogarty's marital short-comings and bemoaned his sister's fate for having married a "four-flusher" like that. In a remarkably short space of time, he managed to explain how even a kid like Billy Trent had shown Fogarty up as a bum wrestler; how his brother-in-law wasn't a champ in America, but only in England and anyone could beat an Englishman at wrestling, anyway.
    "He's scared to take a tumble with me," he said darkly. "He knows darn well he'd get eaten up. One day it'll happen and you'll see."
    This opened up another set of lugubrious thoughts. In the past, it appeared, Warren had himself hoped to become a professional wrestler. He and his sister had had a bit of money but they had both been lured into the stock market and had lost it all.
    "Yeah," he said with strange viciousness, "if I had that cash, I might have been a champ by now. And here I am, having to look after a guy like Laribee, the kind of bird who lost my dough for me."
    I had often wondered vaguely what happened to would-be wrestlers like Warren, superannuated champions like Fogarty and superannuated speculators like Laribee. As I left the night attendant for the dubious delights of the lounge, I felt that I knew the answer. In some role or other, they all inevitably end up in a place like Doctor Lenz' sanitarium.
    When I re-entered the hall the dancing had stopped, and everyone was clustered around the far end of the room. At first I couldn't make out the center of attraction. Then I saw it was Doctor Lenz himself.
    With his beard gleaming black against his white shirt front, he looked like God in his younger and more tolerant days. As I joined the group I could feel his personality just as though I had come into his magnetic field. He moved around, giving a moment's attention, an omniscient word to everyone. He was an extraordinary man. I wondered whether he was conscious of those electrical discharges that emanated from him.
    I had the vague intention of reporting the stop watch incident to him but I forgot it when I caught sight of Iris. She was sitting alone again in a corner. I hurried over to her