A Man Obsessed

by Alan Edward Nourse

But I've got to, I've got to. I've got to find him and kill him. Daddy told me to—

He woke with a jolt, his screams still echoing in the still room, sweat pouring from his forehead and body, soaking his clothes. He sat bolt upright. He searched for his watch, but couldn't find it. How long had he slept?

His eyes shot to the opposite bed, standing empty, and he rolled out onto his feet. He had the horrible feeling that the world had passed him by, that he had missed something critical while he slept.

He stared at his wrist. The watch was definitely gone. Then, with a curse, he crossed the room and ripped open Blackie's foot locker. Sure enough, the watch lay with the heap of gold jewelry on the dirty clothes pile. He stared at it as he re-strapped it on his wrist. Then he walked into the lavatory, splashed cold water into his face and tried to quell the fierce painful throbbing in his head. The watch said eight-thirty. He had slept for five hours—five precious hours for Conroe to hide, cover his tracks, disappear deeper into this mire of human trash.

Jeff stumbled to the door, glanced out to see two gray-clothed guards passing in the corridor. Quietly he pulled the door shut. His stomach was screaming from hunger and he searched the room restlessly. Finally, he unearthed a box of crackers and a quarter pound of cheese in the bottom of Blackie's locker. He ate ravenously and drank some water from the lavatory tap. Then he sank down on the edge of the bed.

The dream again, the same horrible, frightening, desperate dream—the dream that recurred and recurred; always different, yet always the same. The same face that had haunted him all his life, the face that had almost driven him insane that day, five years before, when he met it face to face for the first time; the face of the man he had hunted to the ends of the earth. But never had he caught the man, never had he seen him but for brief glimpses. Conroe had slipped from every trap before it was sprung. Yet finally he had become so desperate that he was forced to retreat down a one-way road that led to hellish death.

Jeff shook his head hopelessly as he tried to piece together the situation. He was in a half-world of avaricious men and women out to sell themselves for incredible fees. It was a half-world that seemed to Jeff only slightly more insane than the warped, intense world of pressure and fear and insecurity that lay outside the Hoffman Center. And in this half-world were a doctor who knew Jeff was a fraud, a kleptomaniac girl who thought he was an addict, and somewhere—the slender figure of the man he hunted.

Again he walked to the door. After peering out cautiously, he started down the corridor. From the far end he heard a burst of laughter, the sound of many voices. The smell of coffee floated down the corridor to tantalize him. He followed the sounds and reached the large, long room that served as a lounge and library for the Mercy Men in his unit.

The room was crowded. A dozen groups were huddled on the floor in a buzz of frantic excitement. The room was blue with cigarette smoke, and the lights glowed harshly from the walls. He saw the dice rolling in the centers of the groups and he also saw half a dozen tables, crowded with bright-eyed people. He heard the riffle of playing cards and the harsh, tense laugh of a winner drawing in a pot. And then he spied the Nasty Frenchman, his eyes bright with excitement, a cup of exceedingly black coffee in one hand and a pile of white paper tags in the other.

He grinned at Jeff with undisguised malice and said, "Come on in, wise guy. Things are just beginning to get hot."