I'd never heard the word before. "A what?"
"A geas. A magical spell that causes a person to do or to refrain from doing some act, whether he will or no. He has no choice, once the geas has been put on him."
"That's it exactly."
"But, man, it isn't magic we're discussing, is it?"
"I don't know," I admitted frankly. "You tell me. Was it magic this morning when both you and I had a hunch that little Shirley was not in the park, in spite of the way it looked? Was it magic when we eliminated, without even searching, every spot but the place where she actually was?"
"Well, no, I shouldn't say so. I think every good policeman gets hunches like that every so often. He gets a feel for his work and for the types he's dealing with."
"Well, then, call it hunch or telepathy or extra-sensory perception or thingummybob or whatever. Brownlee has just what you say a good cop should have—a feel for his work and for the types he's dealing with. Within a very short time, Dr. Brownlee can actually get the feel of being inside his patient's mind—deep enough, at least, so that he can spot just what has to be done to put a compensating twist in a twisted mind.
"He says the genuine zanies are very simple to operate on. They have already got the raw materials in them for him to work with. A normally sane, normally well integrated person would require almost as much work to put a permanent quirk in as removing such a quirk would be in a zany. The brainwashing techniques and hypnotism can introduce such quirks temporarily, but as soon as a normally sane person regains his balance, the quirks tend to fade away.
"But a system that is off balance and unstable doesn't require much work to push it slightly in another direction. When Brownlee finds out what will do the job, he does it, and we have a tame zany on our hands."
"It sounds as though men of Brownlee's type are rather rare," His Grace said.