Best Detective Stories Of The Year 16th Annual Collection by Brett Halliday

Author:Brett Halliday
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc.
Published: 1961-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Somehow, nve -feel sorry -for Dr. Melvin Fogg up to the very end of this light treatment of a heavy subject. I particularly liked the doctor 'when he dropped the typewritten sheets into the garbage can. A practical and sensible act, as the author points out with sly himor.

Indeed, the whole story is very practical and very sensible.

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© 1960 by Rog Phillips. Reprinted by permission of the author and the

author's agents, Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc.

ROG PHILLIPS GOOD SOUND THERAPY

DR. MELVIN FOGG sighed heavily and shut off the array of Instrument panels and recording meters that occupied most of the desk-space in his therapy room.

"We aren't getting anywhere yet, Walter," he said, crossing to the man lying on the analysis table. At Ms words the voice typewriter beside the desk clattered swiftly. "Of coarse this Is only our fifth session. We can't expect much yet. But we should be picking up one or two clear-cut syndromes by now and we aren't. I could almost believe you are consciously hiding everything from me that is of any importance."

He began unstrapping electrodes from the wrists, temples, ankles, and bared chest of the patient.

"We haven't even established your truth curve. Your reactions are too mixed up. For example when you think of your wife you go into a rejection psychosis that would be interpreted by an ordinary technician as lying—that you actually had no wife at all. But that is because you reject her. To your subconscious you h&ve no wife."

The voice typewriter ejected the sheet of paper into the hopper and inserted another, then typed faster to catch up. Dr* Fogg sighed again.

The patient, Walter Myers, freed of the dozens of electrodes, sat up. He was a small, thin man, about thirty, with sandy hair and eyebrows, and sallow, slightly freckled skin.

ROG PHILLIPS

"I'm trying not to hide anything," he said defensively.

"Yes, yes, I know." Dr. Fogg ran his stubby fingers through his mane of thick black hair and brought his bushy eyebrows together in a frown.

"I wouldn't throw away twenty-five dollars every Wednesday if I didn't intend for you to do me some good."

"Let's hope not," Dr. Fogg grunted. He glanced at the gold wristwatch on his thick, hairy wrist. "My next patient is waiting. You can find your way out, Walter. Down the hall to the side door."

"Of course, Doc." Walter Myers slipped into his suitcoat, the right hand pocket slapping his side from the weight of some-tiling small and heavy. His eyes darted in alarm to the doctor who seemed not to have noticed.

In the hallway he pressed his ear to the door until he heard the doctor's deep voice and a reply in a shrill female voice. Then on tiptoe he stole down the hall to another closed door. With great care he turned the knob and inched the door open.

The room he entered was a comfortably furnished office with wall to wall carpeting, a walnut desk, walnut-finish, all metal file cabinet and strongbox assembly, davenport, floor lamps, and

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