The Big Book of Reel Murders by Otto Penzler

Author:Otto Penzler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2019-10-21T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

—

It got lighter outside, but inside my head it didn’t. My ideas, if you could call them that, went around and around and came out nowhere. If I were sane, then somebody was crazy. Because if I’d been the victim of a frame-up engineered by someone or something other than my own disordered imagination, nothing had been accomplished.

The briefcase hadn’t even been stolen. It would have been of no value, other than as a good ten-dollar briefcase, if it had.

But, damn it, there had been a wreck. I’d been there. I’d heard the screams and the ripping sound of metal, and I’d felt the train seat rise up under me and—

Breakfast came, but I wasn’t hungry. I drank all the coffee there was, but didn’t touch the rest of it.

Major Lorne came in at about nine o’clock. He sat down in the chair beside the bed and looked very austere and military. He asked first what hours I’d been working.

I told him, and he shook his head. “Too much, Remmers. A breakdown was bound to happen.”

“You think, then, that I went haywire—that I’m crazy?”

“I wouldn’t put it that way, at all. I think you worked too hard and had a mental breakdown. I talked to Garland before I came up here, and it doesn’t make sense any other way. Does it?”

“Unless somebody thought I’d accomplished something with TNA, major. They might have—” I broke off, because it didn’t make sense that they’d have done it that way. They’d have killed me and taken the papers, and there was no reason for all the razzle-dazzle. And how would it have been done, anyway? Hypnotism? I didn’t believe that any hypnotist could have impressed on my mind the recollections of something that didn’t happen.

Lorne asked, “Did you give anyone cause to think that you might have discovered something important?”

I shook my head slowly. “I haven’t talked about what Carr and I have been doing to many people. And to none of them have I intimated that I had even an important lead. Matter of fact, I haven’t had.”

“You did all right on classifying that ammonium picric.”

“That’s a dead duck. I gave you what you wanted on that a month ago, and haven’t worked on it since. And last week I gave out the story to Andrews, as you told me to. Read his write-up on it?”

Lorne nodded. “Good job. He’s here now, by the way, to see you. I told him no publicity on this…er…misadventure. You’ve got another guest, too. Peter Carr.” He cleared his throat. “Remmers, you’ve got to take a rest cure. There’s a sanitarium near town run by Doc Wheeler. Ever heard of him?”

“No, but I’m not going to any—”

“You’ll be in good company. Several important officials are staying there right now. Worked too hard, like you. Doc Wheeler is sort of semiofficial psychiatrist to the—”

“Nuts,” I said. “I’m not crazy and I’m not going to a private loony bin. I’ll rest up a few days at home, but the work’s got to go on.

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