"And from there?"
"To the state hospital at Fairview."
Fred Starratt flung down the brush. "Why don't you call it by its right name? … I'm told it's an insane asylum."
Watson stared and then came forward with a little threatening gesture. "You better not start any rough-house, Starratt—at the eleventh hour!" he admonished, with a significant warmth.
Fred turned slowly, breaking into a laugh. "Rough-house?" he echoed. "Don't be afraid. … I've got to the curious stage now. I want to see the whole picture." He reached for his hat. "I'm ready … let's go."
A half hour later Fred Starratt was booked at the detention hospital. They took away his clothes and gave him a towel and a nightgown and led him to a bathroom… Presently he was shown to his cell-like room. Overhead the fading day filtered in ghostly fashion through a skylight; an iron bed stood against the wall. There was not another stick of furniture in sight.
He crawled into his bed and the attendant left him, switching on an electric light from the outside. A nurse with supper followed shortly—a bowl of thin soup and two slices of dry bread. Fred Starratt lifted the bowl to his lips and drank a few mouthfuls. The stuff was without flavor, but it quenched his burning thirst… After a while he broke the bread into small bits—not only because he was hungry, but because he was determined to eat this bitter meal to the last crumb. When he had finished he felt mysteriously sealed to indifference.
The nurse came in for the tray and he asked her to switch off the light. He lay for hours, open-eyed, in the gloom, while wraithlike memories materialized and vanished as mysteriously. Somehow the incidents of his life nearest in point of time seemed the remotest. Only his youth lay within easy reach, and his childhood nearest of all. He was traveling back … back … perhaps in the end
oblivion would wrap him in its healing mantle and he would wait to be made perfect and whole again in the flaming crucible of a new birth… Gradually the mists of remembrance faded, lost their outline … became confused, and he slept.
He awoke with a shiver. A piercing scream was curdling the silence. From the other side of the thin partition came shrieks, curses, mad laughter. He heard the heavy tramp of attendants in the hallway … doors quickly opened and slammed shut. … There followed the sounds of scuffling, the reeling impact of several bodies against the wall … then blows of shuddering softness, one last shriek … dead silence!