Take the Reason Prisoner, John Joseph McGuire [ebook reader with highlight function txt] 📗

Mud-faces, or in a new use of the words from the Original World War, "doughboys".

Those two rooms were harder to get into than to leave. The security precautions of The Cage extended to the moment the prisoner was led to the door and started out of those rooms. But from there on....

No, Bennington decided, let's drop security for a moment. Something had happened in the rest of the processing he and the committee had watched and the meaning of that something had emerged only tonight at the party.

Not in the physical ... and that had been good, as complete as the most expensive clinic Bennington had ever seen, a thorough probing for a structural reason behind the crime or crimes....

But the second mental, that quick recheck of the completeness of the drugging or the hypnosis.... It had been there that both Giles and Culpepper had been very, very interested to learn if anything a prisoner said at this point was admissible in a court of law.

The general now understood their relief at Thornberry's explanation: Anything a man said while under the influence of psychological conditioning was considered as obtained under duress.

Bennington was still meditating on what Rooney could reveal as he walked around the mess hall in the center of the compound. Then he turned to consider again his prison's routine.

He leaned against the south wall of the mess hall and looked across at the four barrack buildings bulking against the darkness. They were the two-story type the Army erects for temporary purposes and uses permanently.

The smell from the overcrowded buildings hit his nose again as strongly as it had in the afternoon.

And sounds hit his ears, soft sounds that had been muffled by the long mess hall between him and their source, low sounds further kept from him by the light wind from the north.

The lights in the barracks had been off since 2100, except, of course, for the eerie-blue night lights, and the prisoners should be in their bunks, asleep or at least silent, immobile.

But why were all the lights off in the compound, and Bennington damned himself for not seeking the answer to the question before.

Thornberry would tell me there is no need for light; that the prisoners can't escape because their drugging has made them unable, or their conditioning has made them afraid, to leave the prison.

The sounds, the flickering like fireflies or carefully thumbed flashlights, didn't come from his near right, Number One, minor crimes, or Number Two, major crimes exclusive of murder.

They came from between Three and Four.

Number Three. Psychos, sex deviates and murderers, with a couple of padded cells and barred windows needed upstairs, even though the inmates were conditioned.

Number Four changed by the addition of an extra latrine for the second floor. Females on the first, juvenile delinquents on the second.

Bennington had learned to move like a ghost, move quietly or die, on the almost forgotten battlefields of a police action in Korea. He had had a post-graduate course in the South-East Asian jungles. On the Chilean desert he had added to his skills.

He moved now as he had then.

But there was little reason for caution. The guards were too busy collecting their fees, the juvenile delinquents were too busy acting as ushers, with even the sex deviates from Number Three busy.

The customers, of course, were far too interested in what they were buying.

And there was nothing to be done tonight. Bennington snarled to himself, as he carefully made his way back to the house.

But tomorrow morning....

A good breakfast inside of him, the early morning sun brightening the scene before him, not even combined could they dispel any of Bennington's bitter anger at the memory of last night's saturnalia.

He marched across the twenty-five feet separating his house from the Administration Building, a long, two-story structure on the western end of the compound.

The entire end nearest his house was taken up by Message Center, the one room which had had Bennington's full approval on his tour of inspection both times he had seen the prison. Internally, the separate parts of the prison were linked together by telephone, a P.A. system, and intercom. The outside world could be reached or could come to them by 'phone, radio, teletype, and facsimile reproduction.

Bennington opened the door, glanced up to check his wristwatch with the big clock on the wall.

0800.

He stepped inside, closed the door, looked around.

The man on night duty was sound asleep.

Bennington coughed once, loudly. The man raised his head and looked sleepily around.

"Are you the only one here?"

"The others come in around nine," the clerk said, yawning, bleary-eyed.

"I see. Did anything come in last night?"

"That stuff." A wave toward a roll of yellow teletype paper.

Bennington stared at the man, continued to stare until the clerk flushed a deep red. Finally the night man straightened in his chair, then stood up. He picked up the roll of paper and came around his desk.

"Sir," he said "this report came in last night. It is a list of the prisoners we can expect to receive today and the probable time of their arrival."

"Thank you," Bennington said, accepting the roll. "I will be in my office if anyone is looking for me."

"Sir...." The clerk gulped, hesitated, forced out the words. "That's the only copy."

Bennington looked the man directly in the eyes. "You must have been very busy last night." He returned the roll of paper. "I'll be in my office."

"Yes, sir!"

Bennington started to walk away, but before he reached the door, the clerk, a man Bennington remembered as being on day duty on his first visit, began to sputter, "Sir, the quickest way to your office—"

The general glanced over his shoulder, then continued on his way.

Before he could get to the door he had chosen, he heard behind him the electrotyper chattering away like an automatic weapon with a weak sear spring.

Bennington could have left by a door leading into Dr. Thornberry's office and gone on through another door into his own big office. But he wanted to check on the availability of the rest of the staff.

The door he opened led into a long hallway. On the left was the long room where Thornberry's psych-med staff had their personal desks and permanent records. On the right, a door leading to Thornberry's office, but none into his own. His room was reached only through the office of a clerk-receptionist or Thornberry's.

Down the hall, past the wide main entrance with its glimpse of the flagpole outside and inside the stairs leading to the second floor, where a large part of the permanent staff were given rent-free quarters.

The armory, on his left just beyond the entrance, a room as long as the med-staff's, but unlike the other—and who had the brains to do this—locked.

Across from the armory, a big room for the rest of the administrative staff, but no one on duty.

The supply room, corresponding in size and location to the Message Center on the other end, unlocked and no one in it; with everything the prison received on open shelves, available to any reaching hand.

Bennington went back the hall, through his secretary's room into his own office.

One sleepy clerk and himself on duty—he looked at his watch—0815.

... There were going to be some changes made....

He spun his chair around and looked out the big window directly behind his desk. He noted the fact that about twenty feet away the land dropped into a very deep slant to the western arm of the moat, but the fact recorded itself only because he always made subconscious notes of the military aspects of terrain.

Consciously, he was wondering why the vast expanse of good, rich earth, north, west and south of the prison, acres of fine land that had been and still were a part of this former military post, had never been put to productive use.

How easily Duncannon could become more self-supporting—and even though Giles and Culpepper wanted to make a racket of the idea, there was much to be said for a trusty system.

Hold it, he told himself, those ideas and where we'll set up a laundry—it's utterly ridiculous that we have to send everything into Harrisburg!—can come later. Right now let's think about an appointment list ... and the first name is my good assistant warden's, Dr. Thornberry.

Still looking out the window, he leaned back in his chair and felt again the slow boil of anger.

A gentle rap on his office door, the one opening from his secretary's office.

Bennington swung around to face his desk again. "Come in."

The Message Center clerk, with a neat stack of papers. "Sir, this is your copy of the report received last night. The original is on file in Message Center and other copies are on the desks of the people who will need them."

"Thank you," Bennington said. "I am sure that this procedure will be followed in the future."

"Yes, sir!"

It will be in your case, Bennington decided, then turned his attention to the report.

The distribution list in the upper righthand corner was—h-m-m-m, good. Himself, Chief Psychologist, Chief Guard, Kitchen, Supply. Probably set up by the same man who had designed Message Center itself.

The report was not good.

The first paragraph was a summary and it was almost all bad news. Total: 35. No women, no juveniles, the only good reading. But they were coming from all six states and all but one of them Barracks Two and Three cases. Assembled at Philadelphia, by train to Harrisburg, by truck to here, but not arriving until 1530.

Two and Three were overcrowded now. With their communications so good, why couldn't they move the processed men out faster?

And this new group would arrive so late. Couldn't even begin processing them. Or could they?

Might have to.

Let's look at the details.

Connecticut: Musto, John, and his brothers, Ralph and Pietro. Murders. Following those names, five others of the gang that had terrorized the banks in that area for two years. Capturing all of them at once by putting a sleep-gas bomb in a basket of groceries delivered to their hideout, that had been a neat bit of police work. But till those boys were conditioned or drugged, they would need special guards.

Delaware: Clarens, Walter. Murders. The name was familiar—Oh yes, three killings, one of them a little girl with whose blood Clarens had written at the scene. "For God's sake, catch me before I kill again." Well, Thornberry would be happy.

Maryland: Major crimes, but no killers.

New Jersey: The usual list from the waterfronts and the usual wide variety of manslaughter and homicide.

New York: Dalton, Harry. Let's see, haven't I ... yes. "The Man No Jail Can Hold." Another special guard.

Pennsylvania:...

The name jumped out.