Dearest

Dearest, by Henry Beam Piper

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Title: Dearest
Author: Henry Beam Piper
Illustrator: Vincent Napoli
Release Date: August 22, 2006 [EBook #19102]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Weird Tales March 1951. Extensive research did not
uncover any evidence that the copyright on this publication was renewed.

[Illustration: "Get him to tell you about this invisible playmate of his."]
Heading by Vincent Napoli

DEAREST
BY

H. BEAM PIPER
Colonel Ashley Hampton chewed his cigar and forced himself to relax, his glance slowly
traversing the room, lingering on the mosaic of book-spines in the tall cases, the sunlight
splashed on the faded pastel colors of the carpet, the soft-tinted autumn landscape outside
the French windows, the trophies of Indian and Filipino and German weapons on the
walls. He could easily feign relaxation here in the library of "Greyrock," as long as he
looked only at these familiar inanimate things and avoided the five people gathered in the
room with him, for all of them were enemies.
There was his nephew, Stephen Hampton, greying at the temples but youthfully dressed
in sports-clothes, leaning with obvious if slightly premature proprietorship against the
fireplace, a whiskey-and-soda in his hand. There was Myra, Stephen's smart,
sophisticated-looking blonde wife, reclining in a chair beside the desk. For these two, he
felt an implacable hatred. The others were no less enemies, perhaps more dangerous
enemies, but they were only the tools of Stephen and Myra. For instance, T. Barnwell
Powell, prim and self-satisfied, sitting on the edge of his chair and clutching the briefcase
on his lap as though it were a restless pet which might attempt to escape. He was an
honest man, as lawyers went; painfully ethical. No doubt he had convinced himself that
his clients were acting from the noblest and most disinterested motives. And Doctor
Alexis Vehrner, with his Vandyke beard and his Viennese accent as phony as a
Soviet-controlled election, who had preempted the chair at Colonel Hampton's desk. That
rankled the old soldier, but Doctor Vehrner would want to assume the position which
would give him appearance of commanding the situation, and he probably felt that
Colonel Hampton was no longer the master of "Greyrock." The fifth, a Neanderthal type
in a white jacket, was Doctor Vehrner's attendant and bodyguard; he could be ignored,
like an enlisted man unthinkingly obeying the orders of a superior.
"But you are not cooperating, Colonel Hampton," the psychiatrist complained. "How can
I help you if you do not cooperate?"
Colonel Hampton took the cigar from his mouth. His white mustache, tinged a faint
yellow by habitual smoking, twitched angrily.
"Oh; you call it helping me, do you?" he asked acidly.
"But why else am I here?" the doctor parried.
"You're here because my loving nephew and his charming wife can't wait to see me
buried in the family cemetery; they want to bury me alive in that private Bedlam of
yours," Colonel Hampton replied.
"See!" Myra Hampton turned to the psychiatrist. "We are persecuting him! We are all
envious of him! We are plotting against him!"
"Of course; this sullen and suspicious silence is a common paranoid symptom; one often
finds such symptoms in cases of senile dementia," Doctor Vehrner agreed.

Colonel Hampton snorted contemptuously. Senile dementia! Well, he must have been
senile and demented, to bring this pair of snakes into his home, because he felt an
obligation to his dead brother's memory. And he'd willed "Greyrock," and his money, and
everything, to Stephen. Only Myra couldn't wait till he died; she'd Lady-Macbethed her
husband into this insanity accusation.
"... however, I must fully satisfy myself, before I can sign the commitment," the
psychiatrist was saying. "After all, the patient is a man of advanced age. Seventy-eight, to
be exact."
Seventy-eight; almost eighty. Colonel Hampton could hardly realize that he had been
around so long. He had been a little boy, playing soldiers. He had been a young man,
breaking the family tradition of Harvard and wangling an appointment to West Point. He
had been a new second lieutenant at a little post in Wyoming, in the last dying flicker of
the Indian Wars. He had been a first lieutenant, trying to make soldiers of militiamen and
hoping for orders to Cuba before the Spaniards gave up. He