Wheels Within Part 2

"Certainly," Lima said. "But, first, let me explain about my cure.

There is some mental unpleasantness involved which you may consider worse than the ailment."

"I doubt that. I can't imagine anything worse than this agony."

"Your mind will be placed under my control and led through a dream sequence. I will follow a logical progression of events, using your actual past as background. While you are under my control, your experiences will be far from pleasant. I will allow your mind to follow its own antic.i.p.ated course of events, influencing your thoughts only slightly--directing them into as unpleasant channels as possible.

In fact, to make the cure certain, at least the culmination must be quite devastating. Do you agree to undergo such rigorous mental punishment?"

"But why do I have to?" Bennett asked, astonished and worried.

"That pattern will act in the manner of a counter-irritant. Your mind is like a spoiled child, rejecting antic.i.p.ated unpleasantness. Under my influence it is subjected to possible alternative experiences, which are so much worse than the one it originally feared that it will gratefully accept the lesser evil."

"That sounds reasonable," Bennett agreed. "When could we begin this treatment?"

"Immediately, if you are willing."

"I see no reason for waiting."

"Then, if you are ready," Lima told him, "lie on this couch. Keep your eyes on mine." She spoke slowly, evenly. "Remember that you are doing this of your own free will, that you trust me. I am your friend and would do you no harm."

Her voice droned on as Bennett looked into her eyes. They merged until they became one large, placid pool of restfulness, and he found himself drawn into them.

He sank peacefully, quietly--completely.

When the telephone rang, Bennett knew it was the district attorney returning his call, and that the die was cast. Until this ugly business was brought to a conclusion, his life would be in constant danger.

"Leroy Bennett speaking," he said. "I have had collected some information that I think will be of very great interest to your office."

"Information about what?" the voice at the other end asked briskly.

"I have proof that John Tournay is responsible for the death of two men, in an action involving criminal collusion."

"If what you say is true, I will be glad to see your evidence," the district attorney said. "Could you deliver it in person? There may be some questions I would like to ask you about it."

"Certainly," Bennett replied. "When would be the most convenient time?"

"Later in the day. I have a case going on. How would four-thirty this afternoon suit you?"

"That would be fine."

The rest of the day dragged slowly. At four o'clock Bennett left his office and took the elevator to the ground floor. Under his arm he clutched the briefcase which might spell death for him.

A moment after he left his office building, he knew he had made a mistake--a fatal one!

Idly, at first, his mind's eye watched the driver of a long gray sedan, parked at the curb, start up its motor as he approached. The car pulled away from the curb when he came alongside it.

Through an open rear window, Bennett saw a man with a dark, brooding face--with black eyebrows that joined over the bridge of the nose--glowering at him. At the same instant he saw the blunt nose of an automatic resting on the lowered gla.s.s of the window, just below the chin of the frowning man.

Incredibly, even as he realized that he was about to die, Bennett's first thought was not one of fear, but rather that this dark man was the other person he had seen in his hallucinations of the city of Thone!

Then, as one part of his mind drew back in terror at what it knew was about to happen, another part wondered at the mystery of Thone and the people in it. Where did that hallucination fit in this mist of life which was about to end?

He felt three hard, solid blows punch shockingly into his body. There was pain, but greater than that was the terror that whipped his panicked mind.

"Lima," Bennett whispered with his last stark thought as he dropped to his knees.

He groped for the sidewalk with one hand, to steady himself, and never reached it.

"It's over now," Bennett heard the mystic say. "Please try to relax."

He found himself fighting with awful exertion to raise himself from the sidewalk--which had turned into a couch. His clothes clung to him with a clammy wetness that chilled him.

He flung his arms out in a frantic gesture that knocked a lamp from an end-table and sent it cras.h.i.+ng to the floor.

Not until then did he feel the mystic's firmly gentle hands on his shoulders, urging him down, and know that he was not actually dying.

He lay back for a moment, gasping great gulps of welcome air into his lungs.

"I think you will be all right now," Lima said.

"You were right when you said the experience would not be pleasant,"

Bennett said, still battling for breath. "I hope the results will be worth it."

"I believe you will find that they are," Lima told him rea.s.suringly.

"Also, it can be of a.s.sistance to you in still another way. The sequence your dream followed--being a natural, perhaps even a probable, aftermath of your past decisions and movements--could actually happen. Therefore it would be wise to avoid such decisions in real life."

At the end of two weeks, Bennett had collected all the information he needed on Tournay's illegal activities. The investigator he hired was very thorough, and unearthed several other incriminating schemes in Tournay's past. With the evidence he had on hand, Bennett was certain that Tournay would be convicted in any court.

This time he intended to evade the fate he had suffered in the dream by acting differently. He hired a shrewd lawyer--the best obtainable--had him draw up the evidence in legal form, and presented it to the district attorney, with the demand for Tournay's immediate arrest. He knew that immediate action would be his best protection.

That evening, when he left his office building, he felt the peace of a man whose task has been well done.

It took almost a full second before the sight of the long gray car jerked his thoughts from their pleasant introspection and back to dread reality. Tournay's black-browed face leered at him as it had in the dream and he felt his body tense as it waited for the pistol slugs to strike.

His mind scurried in its trap within his head and, strangely, it turned to the mystic for help.

"Lima!" he called desperately.

Again Bennett felt himself struggling with that awful exertion to drag his body from the couch on which it lay.

"It's all over now," he heard Lima say.

He sat up. "What happened?"