Chapter II: Double Trouble

James Forrest Carroll was lazily happy with himself. His needs were quite simple and the apartment he lived in was far beyond them. He had a gnawing doubt that he could keep it forever, because there was something about money that did not jibe.

He could not make enough money to maintain it--and he did not need it anyway. But it was very nice and he viewed it as any normal man might view living in his own ideal home, complete with everything that he ever hoped to have.

He awoke in the morning by physical habit, dressed by instinct and his breakfast was served by the housekeeper. Then he left the place and roamed. He saw the parks and enjoyed with primitive pleasure the greenery and the natural settings of tree, grass and sky. The park squirrels knew no fear of him and he found them interesting. Perhaps he subconsciously envied their obvious adjustment to their environment.

He visited an art institute once but never returned because it made him uneasy. The same was true of the museum of natural history, though it was more to his liking than the artificial art.

On the same street was a museum of science which, because of a strange arrangement of windows, portico, and row of columns, took on a distorted picture of a grinning giant that threatened to swallow whoever entered. Carroll, without knowing the subconscious connection, feared and avoided it even though he had to cross the street to pass it.

They took him from a planetarium once--screaming in fear and crying to be set free. Claustrophobia, one "expert" said, but he didn't know that Carroll had been mentally sitting in deep space with no solidity beneath him when he started to scream.

He--got along.

There was no apparent advance. His actions in life were normal to his preamnesiac self on minor items. He preferred the better restaurants, took an instinctive liking to the same good clothing that he had lived with before. In all outward respects James Forrest Carroll was a well-to-do man without the mental right to carry that position.

Occasionally it bothered him that something was wrong but he avoided the reason for it.

_Why am I?_ he asked himself again and again. _What has happened?_ His evenings were spent in roaming, just walking the quiet streets and trying to think of why he was puzzled. On these walks he noticed little of his fellow men and their actions. If they wanted to be as they were, James Carroll was not to bother them.

He often pondered the question of how he would react if one of them called upon him or spoke to him. Then, he thought, he would act. But he was not to criticize nor object to the way in which his fellow man conducted himself so long as it did not bother James Forrest Carroll.

This wonder of what he would do took ups and downs. There were times when he wished someone would act toward him so that he could find out about himself. At other times he did not care. At still other times he knew that how he would act depended entirely upon the circumstances. In the final analysis, however, Carroll's first act toward anyone came from sheer instinct rather than from any plan.

A girl emerged from a building carrying a file-box of papers. It was dusk and she was hurrying along the street before him by fifty feet. It was obvious that her last job for the day was the delivery of this box of papers to some other building and, once it was delivered, she was finished. That Carroll understood.

She stopped for traffic at the end of the block and as she stood there, a large car drove up to the curb and stopped beside her. Idly she turned and walked to the car slowly, opened the door and started to enter.

That struck a hidden chord in Carroll's mind.

"Hey!" he exploded, running forward to the car. His voice startled her and she partly turned. A hand emerged from within the car and grabbed the box of papers. Carroll arrived at that instant and grabbed for the other end. There was a quick struggle and the box opened and a hundred sheets of notes were strewn on the sidewalk.

* * * * *

The girl stooped and scooped the papers up roughly, shoving them back in the box helter-skelter and clapping the top back on. Carroll did not see this, for the occupant of the back seat was coming out angrily at this instant.

Carroll reached forward and clipped the stranger on the nose, driving him back into the car. The driver's companion snapped his door open, grabbed the box, hurled the girl asprawl on the floor of the back seat. The car leaped away, leaving Carroll standing there in wonder.

That girl--he should know her. Those papers were important to someone. He stooped and picked one last one up and stared at it. It made no sense.

He took it home. It pained him to read it but someone was in bad trouble because of it, and Carroll did not like the idea of a woman being in trouble over a sheet of paper--or a hundred sheets of paper. It made no sense, and he gave up, tired.

But he returned to the same corner at dusk the following evening. And the same girl emerged from the same building with the same box and hurried along the same walk. The same car came up and she entered it this time, and it drove slowly off in the direction she wanted to go.

Carroll's instinctive shout died in his throat. The car turned off about one square further and disappeared. Carroll stood idly on the corner, wondering what to do next. For fifteen minutes he stood there, thinking. Then the car returned, turned the corner, and stopped. The girl emerged and walked up the street for a thousand yards and turned into a building with her box of papers.

Carroll waited in front of the building for her. As she came out she saw him and her face lighted up with mingled pleasure and puzzlement.

"Hello, Mr. Carroll," she said brightly.

"Are you all right?" he asked her.

"Fine," she said. "And you?"

"I was concerned about you last night," he told her. "What happened?"

"Why--nothing happened to me." Her eyes widened in wonder and in them he saw some unknown uneasiness. He smiled at her paternally.

"Do this every night?" he asked.

"Uh-huh. You know that I have for years."

Her name was Sally. And Carroll wondered how he should come to know her name. But--she knew his. Or at least she knew what everybody claimed was his name, and what was tattooed on his body.

He wondered again, and in wondering, let the opportunity for further conversation pass. The girl was impatient and said, "You must come back to us someday."

"That I will," he said--but it was to her retreating back. Sally was hurrying up the street again.

Strange, he thought. Does she ride in that car every night? And if he--or they--were friends, why was there a bit of fight last evening? Why was Sally surprised at his question about last evening? She seemed to ignore the fact that she had been roughly hurled into the black car and that he had tried to help her. She shouldn't be riding in strange cars all over the city when important papers were in her possession.

He watched her every evening for a week after that, just to see. And every night the same performance was played. It bothered Carroll, and he determined to see what was going on.

The next evening he was in front of her building as she came out. Her face again lighted up.

"Hello, Mr. Carroll," she said brightly. "Can't stay away?"

"No," he smiled, wondering _away from what?_ "Mind if I walk along?"

"Not at all," she said. There was no uneasiness in her now. Carroll was safe enough, an amnesia victim according to Dr. Pollard, who had told her to cultivate his friendship if she could. Sally and Dr. Pollard had been in a three hour conference on the day after Carroll had met her outside of the typing bureau. So Sally was prepared.

"Mind?" he said, reaching for the box.

"I shouldn't let you," she said seriously. "I'm charged with their delivery, you know. But--I guess you may, Mr. Carroll. I know it makes a man feel foolish to walk along with a woman carrying a big bundle. Go ahead."

* * * * *

He took it. Now they'd have to deal with him!

They came to the corner, stopped for traffic and Carroll looked about him nervously. He was expecting trouble of some sort, but no trouble came. The lights changed with absolutely no sign of that black sedan and, as they were in mid-street, Sally said, "Mind if we stop off at the drug store for a sandwich?"

"Is that all right?" he countered.

"Yes," she said. "I live a long ride from here and the typing bureau is on the way to the station. I asked Mr. Majors if this was okay, and he said it was. I've been doing this every night, now, for months."

"But the--" he stubbed his toe on the far curb and stumbled.

She laughed. "I'm sorry," she said, "but the picture of the great James Carroll stumbling over a curb--"

"What's so peculiar about me falling over a curb?" he demanded.

Sally blushed. Her remark had been instinctive. To her youth, barely out of adolescence, a brilliant physicist of thirty-five years should not be heir to the mundane misfortunes of the ordinary mortal. But she knew that she should not call attention to his past at all.

"Nothing," she chuckled. "Excepting the sight of a man trying to keep his balance and hang on to a box at the same time. Just struck my funnybone. I was not laughing at you; I was laughing more at the situation. Please--"

He nodded absently. They entered the drug store and sat down. She ordered and he repeated it.

"Doesn't this spoil your dinner?" he asked.

"Nope. It's a long ride home and by the time I get there I'm hungry all over again."

"I suppose this snack is a sort of habit," he remarked idly.

"Uh-huh," she answered. "But it isn't too bad a habit."

He nodded in silent agreement. The sandwich came and was finished in a short time, after which Carroll and his young companion left the drug store.

Carroll took a quick look around him as they left but there was no car near them. He walked with her to the typing bureau, waited outside for her and then walked with her to the station. Then he went home to ask himself a multitude of questions.

This was her regular procedure. She said so. But which procedure was regular? Her drugstore and sandwich habit or the taking of a joyride with the characters in the car?

He picked up the paper she had dropped on the first encounter and looked it over. It was a formal report on the testing of some equipment that was too complex to understand. Something about a trimetal contact in an atmosphere of neon, completely sealed in a double-wall shield of copper with a low noise-level radio amplifier stage enclosed with the samples of metal in gas.

It became vaguely familiar after about an hour of study but it was painfully difficult for him to concentrate on such an abstract idea.

He considered again. Perhaps his presence had scared off the men in the black car. He'd do it differently next time. Again he watched her for a solid week--watched her reach the corner, turn, enter the black car--watched her return and continue on down the street with her box after fifteen minutes of being completely gone.

Then for the second week he watched from the drugstore.

And he emerged more puzzled than ever. For Sally joined him daily and talked with him as she had learned to do.

Then, to top his confusion, he watched the girl enter the car and drive off one day, after which he entered the store across the corner, to see Sally sitting there waiting for her sandwich and obviously expecting him.

"You're late," she said with a smile.

"I'm confused," he said dully.

"Did you ever see a big black sedan?" he asked her.

"Lots of them," she said. "Why?"

"Any one that you especially noted?"

"No. Most of them are filled with people going somewhere in a hurry," she returned with a laugh. "I often wish I had a car--or a friend with a car. I haven't got any--at least none that work in this region of the city."

"Uh," he grunted. "I've got to hurry," he said with what he knew to be unpardonable shortness. "See you tomorrow?"

* * * * *

She nodded, and Carroll went out on the street in time to see her emerge from the black car and finish her delivery of the package to the typing bureau. He looked back into the store, but she was gone. Nor had she passed him.

That was enough for Carroll. He sought Dr. Pollard and told him the story. Pollard looked up with pleasure. James Carroll's acceptance of such a problem and the attempt to figure it out was an excellent sign. He could give no answer, of course until ...

"Then come along," said Carroll. "We've time."

They went silently. Carroll pointed out the black car as it approached the curb and then took Pollard into the store to meet Sally. She greeted them pleasantly and did not demur when they left precipitately because she knew that Dr. Pollard was trying to help Mr. Carroll out of his difficulty. Carroll showed Sally's return from the black car, and the subsequent delivery of the box of papers to the typing bureau.

"Carroll," said the psychologist sadly, "forget it!"

"Forget it?" demanded Carroll.

"I saw no black car. You claim that Sally walked to the corner, turned away and entered a black sedan. Actually--though I said nothing--Sally crossed the street and entered the store. As we finished there and left she followed us, passed us on the sidewalk and delivered her package. This is merely a delusion, James."

"Delusion?" said Carroll doubtfully. "Am I--Am I...?

"I plead with you, James. Let me give you psychiatric help? Please?"

Carroll considered. Delusion--he must be going mad. "I'll be in to see you tomorrow," he said.

Pollard took a deep breath.

"Thank God!" he said.

James Carroll returned home in a dither. Regardless of the pain of--whatever it was--he was going to go through with this. Delusions and hallucinations of that vividness should not be. He must be in a severe mental state. He hadn't believed them when they told him that he had been a brilliant physicist. But this well-proven hallucination was final. And before he got worse....

James Carroll was in a state over his state by the time he opened his front door. He entered the room, looking idly about him, half in fear of what he might see next.

What he saw was the sheet of paper with the report on it.

Could you feel an hallucination? Could you read an hallucination? How could a man with five nominal senses, all run by one brain, reach any decision?

He pressed the button on his wall and the housekeeper entered.

"Mrs. Bagby, I am in a slight mental turmoil. Please trust me to the extent of asking no questions but I beg of you to tell me exactly what I will be doing for the next few minutes?"

"I'll try," she said, knowing from Dr. Pollard all about Mr. Carroll's state of mind. She was willing to help.

"You are sitting at your desk, reading a sheet of paper upon which are some handwritten notes and a sketch. Now you are rising. You have just torn off an inch from the bottom of the page--where there is no writing. You are lighting a match, touching it to the end of the paper. It burns.

"You are walking toward the fireplace--moving swiftly now because the paper is burning rapidly. You drop it on the hearth--and the already-laid fire is catching. The chimney is smoking a bit and you are poking the fresh blaze."

He turned and faced her.

"Thanks," he said. "That's what I thought I was doing. Now, to avoid a mental discussion of personal metaphysics, I must establish the validity of this sheet of paper!"

The housekeeper asked if there were anything more to do, and Carroll shook his head idly. She left, and James Carroll faced himself in the mirror.

"Whose hallucination?" he asked himself. "Mine--or Pollard's?"

He recalled a tale of a man so convinced of his hallucination of utter smallness that he prepared trick pictures of himself, completely overwhelmed in size by the common water-hydra and its associated animalcules. Could he have prepared this report to support his own belief?

He smiled. Tomorrow he would know for certain! If his sheet were valid, it would be missing from the files. If anybody had interfered with the official channels of the reports it had been someone other than James Forrest Carroll. Perhaps Dr. Pollard could identify the report.

Then he'd know who was hallucinating!