Steampunk Omnibus: A Galvanic Century Collection (56 page)

I stifled a smile. "You'd best do as he asks."

Bartleby shot me a sour look. We'd returned to the asylum with Doctor Teague, only to find ourselves halted in the reception room. Several of the mad had settled there once more, one behind the desk, scribbling illegibly on a pad of paper. The Giant and the Weasel stood sentinel by the halls to each wing, watching us silently as we entered. When Bartleby had attempted to pass the Giant and speak to his father once more, the big man had barred his way with a beefy forearm, pointing wordlessly towards the reception desk.

It had taken Bartleby three attempts to acquire the attention of the wild-haired lunatic behind the desk, whereupon he'd squinted up at Bartleby, handed him the box, and made his mumbled request.

"Why would I do that?" Bartleby forced a laugh. "Why would I change my clothes?"

"It's intake procedure," Doctor Teague said.

"What?"

"Intake. When a patient is admitted to the hospital they are processed. Their personal belongings and clothing are confiscated, and they are given the cotton garments we provide them."

"I'm no patient. And he's not staff!" Bartleby glanced at the Giant again. "I have no interest in perpetuating whatever fantasy is being acting out here."

"Take off your clothes--" the receptionist began.

"No," Bartleby said, his tone challenging.

"I don't know that you have the choice." Doctor Teague looked from the Giant to the Weasel.

"Take me to Dennis," Bartleby said.

The Giant did not look impressed with his command.

"Mr. Bartleby, we provide our patients here with a very regimented sort of order. At every hour of every day they know where they should be and what they should be doing. It helps keep them connected to the real world."

"And in the absence of said order?" Bartleby asked, arms folded.

"As you can see, they're doing what they can to keep that order established, casting themselves into the roles of their absent authority figures. They are replacing the staff in an effort to retain that grip on a stable reality."

"And they all just... spontaneously decided to take up this masquerade?" I asked, unwilling to believe in a madness so uniform.

"No, not quite. Most of them are probably deferring to a stronger will, some charismatic figure whose version of reality is stronger than their own. They've allowed themselves to become swept up in his delusion. It gives them meaning and purpose."

"I'll take your word for it," Bartleby said. "But why do they insist upon 'processing' me?"

"They don't really understand the roles they're trying to take on," Doctor Teague said. "Bear in mind that they're not actually becoming staff – they're adopting the patients' conception of what staff are.

"Further, in their world there are only three sorts of people: staff, patients, and visitors. You are not one of them, so you are not staff. They have therefore decided that you are a patient, as they did with the orderlies and doctors."

I was intrigued with the ease with which Doctor Teague was able to deconstruct the behaviour of the deranged into simpler processes. She really was quite the fascinating woman. "Why an inmate? Why not a visitor?"

A look of dawning comprehension had crept over Bartleby's face. "It's because I'm here to deal with and speak to them. Visitors come to see patients. Patients come to see the staff."

"It's a reasonable conclusion," Doctor Teague said. "Are you formally trained in the study of mind?"

Bartleby shook his head. "I'm blessed with an intuitive grasp of people and their workings, not an academic one."

"I fear your talents are wasted. You could be healing the unsound."

Bartleby grinned. "I'm quite content protecting others from their machinations."

"Are we to be treated as patients as well?" I asked. "Or, as we are here to assist Bartleby, are we to be visitors?"

The lunatic behind the desk lurched into action at my words, sliding a logbook towards me. "Visitors must sign in."

"Apparently so." Bartleby took the box from the receptionist.

The Giant put an arm on his shoulder, guiding him gently but firmly towards a door in the back of the reception room. He stopped me with a broad hand to the chest when I moved to follow, his half-lidded eyes narrowing to slits. No small man myself, I knew all too well the fury of the mad, and knew that a creature this large could likely tear me limb from limb should he fly into a rage. I swiftly backed away.

"Visitors must sign in," the receptionist repeated. I moved reluctantly to his desk, my every move tracked by the Giant, and carefully signed my name.

"Visitors must have a seat."

"What now?"

"Procedure is that visitors wait until an orderly escorts them to meet with the patient that they've come to see," Doctor Teague explained.

"I'm not going to just let them take my partner off into the depths of this place to do... God knows what to him," I said in a quiet voice.

Formidable or no, I wasn't going to let the Giant spirit Bartleby off.

"James, I hardly think we've a choice," Bartleby said.

The Giant resumed marching him towards that back door.

Feeling heavy as I sat into one of the provided chairs, I turned towards the doctor. "What will be done to him?"

"If they are still following procedure, Mr. Bartleby will be allowed to change in private, given a physical examination, then placed under observation for twenty-four hours."

"That's all the time we've been given!"

"Indeed," Doctor Teague nodded. "That is our standard procedure, but you must remember, Mr. Wainwright, that these poor men are simply acting out the roles as they imperfectly understand them as an attempt to cleave to routine. Some aspects they may be unable to deviate from, but most of them understand that they must compromise this desire for security with the fact that they need Mr. Bartleby to investigate matters. We can only hope that they're able to give us the time they need."

"Splendid," I said in a sour voice.

***

The Weasel offered us escort some half-an-hour later, responding to some hidden signal that perhaps had originated within his own soul. He led us down the west wing hall to an office near the end. It was appointed with a small personal library, hardwood desk, and wide picture window. Most notable, of course, was the bloodied corpse curled up in the corner, which Bartleby had been hunched over as Doctor Teague and I arrived.

As I neared, I could see that our victim was an older man in his late forties or early fifties, dressed professionally in a blood-stained charcoal sack coat and lighter grey trousers. The shirt beneath his waistcoat had once been white, but was now stained a deep crimson, almost matching the hue of the bow-tie around his neck. A black bowler lay on the carpeting near his head, most likely where it had landed when he collapsed.

Bartleby was rifling through the man's pockets. His own fashionable attire had been replaced with the rough white cotton shirt-and-trouser set the patients wore, the cuff of his left arm stained with the blood of the dead man on the floor.

Doctor Teague blanched at the sight of the murder, but to her credit she did not recoil. I could not help but admire her resolve.

"I trust you weren't mistreated too badly?" I asked, feeling a bit of relief at his apparent well-being.

"Not at all, actually," Bartleby didn't look up. "After I changed, I was given a surprisingly complete and professional medical examination."

"What did the doctor look like?" Doctor Teague asked.

"Small man. Fairly old. Bald, but with simply astounding eyebrows. You should have seen them, James. Caterpillars warring over a cantaloupe."

"Ah, that would be Doctor Vogle," she nodded.

"At least they're letting the staff perform the actual medical examinations." I examined the victim's books. Director Paddock seemed to have split his professional library between the works of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung; each author had their own devoted shelving. A slim volume caught my eye, leatherbound, without a title. I picked it up and examined it, noting that it appeared to be the deceased's personal journal.

"No. Doctor Vogle is a patient here. He is a certified doctor, though, and did have a successful practice several years ago."

"Not... Doctor Joost Vogle?" Barlteby asked. "Well, that certainly explains the blood."

"You know him?" I slipped the journal into my surcoat and hastened to the corner of the office, where sat a reclining chair, similar to that employed by barbers. Some sort of mechanism had been affixed to the back, incorporating what I at first took to be a large example of a Fleming valve, an advanced electrical rectifier. It wasn't a design I was familiar with, however, and this absorbed most of my attention.

"By reputation. He had his license to practice revoked following a series of indiscretions – horrific medical experiments, to be frank. It was in all the broadsheets but a decade ago, James."

"I was out of the country."

"Even so, James, I can't imagine that the news wouldn't have made it to the Americas."

I shrugged. I'd never paid much attention to the sensationalisms of yellow journalism, and I'd spent most of the 1890s entirely wrapped up in my work. Not that designing commercial automobile chassis and engines for Duryea was particularly engaging, but the tedious monotony had enabled me to retreat into a haze of mindless productivity.

Medical science wasn't a speciality of mine in any case, no matter how cutting edge. The works attached to the back of the chair was far more interesting to me at any rate; doubtlessly, it was the creation of the Director. What was it, though? Some sort of tool for electronic therapy? A number of smaller electrodes seemed designed to affix to the cranium of the subject seated in the chair itself.

"The courts declared him criminally insane," Doctor Teague said. "He was committed to Bethlem Royal Hospital, and several years ago transferred here to partake in an experimental treatment programme."

"Splendid." Bartleby gave a full-bodied shiver. "I can still feel that butcher's hands on me."

"The drug-therapy we've got him on seems to have dulled his more malevolent urges."

"And when it wears off?" Bartleby asked. "Without a pharmacist free to mix his dosage--"

"He's not one of my patients, and I'm not privy to Doctor Nash's notes. If I had to hazard a guess, I would assume that he will gradually revert to his earlier psychosis."

"Not comforting."

"He may exhibit additional aberrations due to withdrawals from the drug treatments he's been under."

"Rather not comforting. You've quite the... clinical way of discussing these patients."

"Of course." Teague blinked. "I'm a doctor."

"Worry not, Bartleby. I'm sure that Scotland Yard's deadline will pass long before Doctor Vogle starts vivisecting about all willy-nilly." I was only half-paying-attention. What I had first taken to be a large central diode was in fact some sort of amplification device. It was not designed to filter electrical impulses, but to receive and interpret the charges passed to it from the smaller diodes attached to the reclining subject. "Doctor Teague, do you know the workings of this device?"

"It's the Director's own invention. I believe he finds it of some use in his dream therapy."

Dream therapy. It was conceivable that it was designed to record the electrical impulses of a subject in a state of dreaming, but I couldn't see any output recorders. "Have you seen it in action?"

"No. Our sessions here are closed. We aren't privy to the workings of one another's research."

"So there's no ethical oversight?" Bartleby stood, a leather-bound date-book in hand. He flipped through it absently.

"Psychiatry acts on a foundation of trust," Doctor Teague said. "And we put a lot of energy into our own experimental therapies. Until we're ready to publish we tend to guard our research very carefully."

"That's an odd trust."

"The only trust you'll find in academia," I said, turning from the machine. It was interesting, but we were working, and we did have a deadline. "What have you learnt from the body, Bartleby?"

"Cause of death appears to be multiple stabs throughout his chest and abdomen." He wiped the blood from his hands on the man's waistcoat. "They seem to be quite deep. Nothing less than what I'd expect from an enraged madman."

Doctor Teague closed her eyes, lips drawn tight. I felt bad for her, there, before her murdered colleague.

"Should I perform a forensic autopsy?" I asked.

"Later, if we've time." Bartleby held out the appointment book. "I'll need to speak to the patients he met with earlier yesterday. Something must have set one of them off, though I'm not sure whether his escape attempt released the others or if the murderer simply took advantage of the chaos of the mass releases."

Doctor Teague examined the list of names. "I'm at least passingly familiar with all of the patients. We'll have to speak to your father to arrange interviews with them, however."

"As acting director." Bartleby said. "Splendid."