CHAPTER II

His muscles were aching and sore and he felt sick to his stomach.

His eyes wouldn't focus at first and he stayed flat on his mattress and stared at the hazy outlines of the room. It was a funny kind of hospital. Nobody had bandaged his cuts—they were still caked with blood—and he still had on the same torn clothes that smelled of sweat and dirt.

Where had the man taken him?

He shook his head, trying to make out the details of the room, and his vision cleared a little.

The room didn't even come close to a hospital. It was more like a jail. There was the cot that he was sitting on and the washbasin and the flush bowl and the barred door at the entrance. Nothing else. No windows, no desk, no calendar, nothing. Just a small cell of gray, featureless metal.

He stood up, holding on to the cot for support, and touched the bars wonderingly. He hadn't done anything wrong, he thought. Not a damn thing!

"
Guard! Guard!
"

He'd get a lawyer! Larry had connections and maybe....

There were footsteps outside the cell door and a moment later it swung open. The man who opened it wasn't a guard—at least he didn't dress like one, Stan thought. Just a man in a blue suit. Smiling and urbane and what the ad writers would call dapper.

Except for his eyes. The same kind of cold eyes that an executioner might have. Eyes that had watched people die—slowly.

Stan shivered.

Death. In a blue serge suit.

"I was wondering when you were going to wake up," the man said pleasantly. He held out his hand. "My name's Fred Tanner. You...."

Stan didn't take the hand. "I want to know what's coming off here! Where's the joker who brought me here? Where's...."

"Somebody else can tell you all you want to know," the man said easily. "Just follow me."

Stan didn't move.

"You coming?"

It wasn't a question, it was a statement. Tanner stood there, his head half cocked, watching Stan curiously, like somebody might watch an ant or a bird. Stan started to say something but the words died in his throat. Tanner was no weakling. He had thick wrists and a bull neck and a feeling of power that he wore like a suit of clothes.

He was the type, Stan thought coldly, who could break you in two if he wanted.

He shrugged and followed Tanner down the corridor for a hundred feet and then into a room about the size of his own cell. There was an oval shaped desk in one corner and a tubular chair by it, both of the same metal as the walls and the floor. The whole assembly looked like it had been punched out of one sheet.

The man behind the desk looked like an ex-football player ten years later, Stan thought. A husky man, just starting to go to fat, with thick lips and thinning hair.

Tanner pushed Stan forward. "Here's the boy, Mr. Malcolm."

Stan wet his lips. "I ... I'd like to know what this is all about, sir."

"Fred," the man behind the desk said in a bored voice. "He lacks manners."

Tanner casually lashed out with the flat of his hand and caught Stan on the side of the head—hard. Stan staggered against the wall and half-slid to the floor. He could feel the tears start again.

"Hey! What's the...."

"Again, Fred."

Stan crumpled to the floor, shook his head, and struggled back to his feet. He was dazed but he knew enough not to say anything.

"What's your name?"

"Stanley Martin. I told...."

"Fred."

The blow rocked him but he managed to keep his feet. His legs felt like water.

"How many of your family are living, Martin?"

"Just my mother." He licked his cracked lips. "And my brother. That's all."

"You've lived in Chicago all your life?"

"Yes ... yes, sir."

Mr. Malcolm finally put down the reports he had been reading and looked up at him. If Tanner's eyes had been cold, Stan thought, then Mr. Malcolm's eyes were frozen.

"You don't like Chicago, do you?"

"I ... I guess I like it well enough."

"No, you don't," Mr. Malcolm said smoothly. "You told the other copy boys you hated the city and as soon as you could, you were going to leave it."

Stan gaped. "How did you know?"

"We know a lot of things." Mr. Malcolm leaned casually back in his chair, inspecting Stan like he would a butterfly on a pin. "We know that you hate your mother. And your brother."

"Where do you get that stuff?" Stan bleated, his voice rising. "What are you trying to prove?"

"Fred. Again."

Tanner had to help Stan up.

"I'm going to be sick," Stan said faintly.

The man behind the desk ignored him. "Your mother used to take a strap to you when you came home late, Martin. She used to accuse you of stealing in the stores."

Lies, Stan thought. But he didn't dare talk back.

"Your brother, Larry. He was always your mother's favorite, wasn't he? She always did a lot of things for him that she never did for you, didn't she?"

"Larry never...!"

"Fred."

"
I'm sick
," Stan whimpered. "
Honest to God, I'm sick!
"

"You hate the city," Mr. Malcolm repeated coldly. "You hate your family."

"I think you're crazy," Stan said weakly. "I want a lawyer."

Mr. Malcolm turned back to his reports.

"Take him to the other cell, Fred."

Back to a cell, Stan thought weakly, following Tanner out. Where at least he could lie down....

But the other cell was too small to lie down in. It measured two feet square and there was no room to lie down. Or even sit down. The most he could do was lean.

He touched the wall with his hand and screamed with pain. The walls were wired for electricity, a thin strip of insulation separating them from the floor. He couldn't lie down, he thought. He didn't have room to sit down and he couldn't even lean against the walls. The only thing he could do was stand up ... and stand still.

They took him out eight hours later, when he was too hoarse to scream and the electric walls had no effect on his sagging body.

It was a different room, this time. A comfortable room with carpets on the floor and pictures on the wall and an over-stuffed sofa of some plastic material along one side.

The man waiting for him was the same young, saintly faced man who had picked him up on the street.

"This is Mr. Ainsworth," Tanner said in a low voice, and nudged him forward.

Mr. Ainsworth looked at him, shocked. "My God, son, haven't they taken care of your cuts?"

Stan just stared at him. Mr. Ainsworth's shocked look faded into one of grim efficiency.

"We'll have to do something about that, son—and right away!" He pressed a button and turned to Tanner. "Take this man to the infirmary immediately, Fred! And don't bring him back here until he's been bathed and issued new clothes!"

He looked back at Stan, his face a study in sympathy and pity. "Believe me, I had no idea...."

It was a reprieve from hell.

He was taken to an infirmary where doctors and nurses, their faces entirely hidden behind gauze masks, bathed him and washed his cuts and covered them with collodion and gave him a hypodermic shot of something that relaxed his muscles and banished his pain completely. They destroyed the rags he had on and in their place he was issued a suit of blue serge, like the one Tanner wore.

When he went back to the room with the carpets and the sofa, Mr. Ainsworth had set up a small dinner table. The room was thick with the fragrance of fried eggs and bacon and hot buttered toast and steaming coffee.

Stan's stomach knotted and turned and he suddenly was sick.

"Take it easy," Mr. Ainsworth said gently. "Go slow at first."

Stan pulled a chair over to the table. He felt weak. Eggs and bacon and coffee.... After he had finished, he sat back and took the cigarette that Mr. Ainsworth offered him.

"What am I doing here, Mr. Ainsworth? Why can't I get a lawyer?"

"I wish I could answer all your questions," the saintly faced man said thoughtfully. "But you have to understand that I'm just a hired hand here. There are some things I'm not at liberty to tell you."

"If I'm not in jail, then just where the hell am I?" Stan asked bitterly.

Mr. Ainsworth held up his hands. "I'm sorry, Stan."

Things weren't adding up, Stan thought, confused. Where was he if he wasn't in jail? The cell and the slightly curving corridor, all of metal. And the doctors and the nurses, their faces almost hidden behind their gauze masks....

"They took me to see a Mr. Malcolm the other day," Stan said in a low voice. "He told me I hated the city and that I even hated my own mother and brother. Can you beat that? Honest, this character...."

His voice trailed away. Mr. Ainsworth was staring at the floor, a frown on his face.

"Everybody builds up resentments against parents who are overly strict, Stan. And it's not unusual for a mother to favor one of her children over the others."

Stan stared at him, open-mouthed.

"But you're agreeing with Mr. Malcolm," he whispered. "Honest, you must be a little crazy, too."

Mr. Ainsworth looked hurt.

"I'm your friend, Stan—I wouldn't lie to you! I didn't save your life just so I could tell you lies!"

It was crazy, Stan thought. He had been on his way to the stockyards one morning and the roof had fallen in. He had been kidnapped and tortured apparently for no other reason than to be told he hated his family.

It didn't make sense.

He dropped his cigarette on the carpet and ground it out under his heel. "You're just as bad as the others—you're working right in with them!"

Mr. Ainsworth looked disappointed and pressed a button on his desk. Tanner appeared in the doorway, his face as impersonal as ever.

"You'll have to take him back, Fred." He looked at Stan sadly. "We're trying to be your friends, son, and you won't let us. We're only telling you the truth!"

Stan started to shake. "You can go to hell," he blurted.

Tanner took him by the arm to lead him out and the very touch of his hand made Stan tremble even more. He was shaking like a leaf, and he couldn't stop it. It had been such an odd thing. When he had told Mr. Ainsworth he was as bad as the others, Mr. Ainsworth had ... flickered.