the age of twenty. Has been consulted numerous times by Scotland Yard, MI5, and the OSS."
"Why?"
Teddy nodded. It seemed a reasonable question.
"Well..." McPherson seemed at a loss.
"The OSS," Teddy said. "Try them for starters. Why would they consult a psychiatrist?"
"War work," McPherson said.
"Pdght," Teddy said slowly. "What kind, though?"
"The classified kind," McPherson said. "Or so I'd assume." "How classified can it be," Chuck said, one bemused eye catching Teddy's, "if we're talking about it?"
McPherson paused in front of the hospital, one foot on the first step. He seemed baffled. He looked off for a moment at the curve of orange wall and then said, "Well, I guess you can ask him. He should be out of his meeting by now."
They went up the stairs and in through a marble foyer, the ceil'.mg arching into a coffered dome above them. A gate buzzed open as they approached it, and they passed on into a large anteroom where an orderly sat at a desk to their right and another across from him to their left and beyond lay a long corridor behind the confines of another gate. They produced their badges again to the orderly by the upper staircase and McPherson signed their three names to a clipboard as the orderly checked their badges and IDs and handed them back. Behind the orderly was a cage, and Teddy could see a man in there wearing a uniform similar to the warden's, keys hanging from their rings on a wall behind him.
They climbed to the second floor and turned into a corridor that smelled of wood soap, the oak floor gleaming underfoot and bathed in a white light from the large window at the far end.
"Lot of security," Teddy said.
McPherson said, "We take every precaution."
Chuck said, "To the thanks of a grateful public, Mr. McPherson, I'm sure."
"You have to understand," McPherson said, turning back to Teddy as they walked past several offices, doors all closed and bearing the names of doctors on small silver plates. "There is no facility like this in the United States. We take only the most damaged patients. We take the ones no other facility can manage."
"Gryce is here, right?" Teddy said.
McPherson nodded. "Vincent Gryce, yes. In Ward C."
Chuck said to Teddy, "Gryce was the one... ?"
Teddy nodded. "Killed all his relatives, scalped them, made himself hats."
Chuck was nodding fast. "And wore them into town, right?"
"According to the papers."
They had stopped outside a set of double doors. A brass plate affixed in the center of the ight door read CHIEF OF STAFF, DR. J.
CAWLEY.
McPherson turned to them, one hand on the knob, and looked at them with an unreadable intensity.
McPherson said, "In a less enlightened age, a patient like Gryce would have been put to death. But here they can study him, define a pathology, maybe isolate the abnormality in his brain that caused him to disengage so completely from acceptable patterns of behavior. If they can do that, maybe we can reach a day where that kind of disengagement can be rooted out of society entirely."
He seemed to be waiting for a response, his hand stiff against the doorknob.
"It's good to have dreams," Chuck said. "Don't you think?" DR. CAWLEY WAS thin to the point of emaciation. Not quite te swimming bones and cartilage Teddy had seen at Dachau, but definitely in need of several good meals. His small dark eyes sat far back in their sockets, and the shadows that leaked from them bled across the rest of his face. His cheeks were so sunken they appeared collapsed, and the flesh around them was pitted with aged acne. His lips and nose were as thin as the rest of him, and his chin appeared squared off to the point of nonexistence. What remained of his hair was as dark as his eyes and the shadows underneath.
He had an explosive smile, however, bright and bulging with a confidence that lightened his irises, and he used it now as he came around the desk to greet them, his hand outstretched.
"Marshal Daniels and Marshal Aule," he said, "glad you could come so quickly."
His hand was dry and statue smooth in Teddy's, and his grip was a shocker, squeezing the bones in Teddy's hand until Teddy could feel the press of it straight up his forearm. Cawley's eyes glittered for a moment, as if to say, Didn't expect that, did you? and then he moved on to Chuck. He shook Chuck's hand with a "Pleased to meet you, sir," and