The Dark Door | Page 3

receiver from the hook.
"Harry! Is that you?"
His throat was like sandpaper and the words came out in a rasp. "What
is it?"
"Harry, this is George--George Webber."
His eyes were glued to the door. "All right. What do you want?"
"You've got to come talk to us, Harry. We've been waiting for weeks
now. You promised us. We've got to talk to you."
Harry still watched the door, but his breath came easier. The footsteps
moved with ridiculous slowness up the stairs, down the hall toward the
room.
"What do you want me to do? They've come to kill me."
There was a long pause. "Harry, are you sure?"
"Dead sure."
"Can you make a break for it?"

Harry blinked. "I could try. But it won't do any good."
"Well, at least try, Harry. Get here to the Hoffman Center. We'll help
you all we can."
"I'll try." Harry's words were hardly audible as he set the receiver down
with a trembling hand.
The room was silent. The footsteps had stopped. A wave of panic
passed up Harry's spine; he crossed the room, threw open the door,
stared up and down the hall, unbelieving.
The hall was empty. He started down toward the stairs at a dead run,
and then, too late, saw the faint golden glow of a Parkinson Field
across the dingy corridor. He gasped in fear, and screamed out once as
he struck it.
And then, for seconds stretching into hours, he heard his scream
echoing and re-echoing down long, bitter miles of hollow corridor.

2
George Webber leaned back in the soft chair, turning a quizzical glance
toward the younger man across the room. He lit a long black cigar.
"Well?" His heavy voice boomed out in the small room. "Now that
we've got him here, what do you think?"
The younger man glanced uncomfortably through the glass wall panel
into the small dark room beyond. In the dimness, he could barely make
out the still form on the bed, grotesque with the electrode-vernier
apparatus already in place at its temples. Dr. Manelli looked away
sharply, and leafed through the thick sheaf of chart papers in his hand.
"I don't know," he said dully. "I just don't know what to think."
The other man's laugh seemed to rise from the depths of his huge chest.

His heavy face creased into a thousand wrinkles. Dr. Webber was a
large man, his broad shoulders carrying a suggestion of immense power
that matched the intensity of his dark, wide-set eyes. He watched Dr.
Manelli's discomfort grow, saw the younger doctor's ears grow red, and
the almost cruel lines in his face were masked as he laughed still
louder.
"Trouble with you, Frank, you just don't have the courage of your
convictions."
"Well, I don't see anything so funny about it!" Manelli's eyes were
angry. "The man has a suspicious syndrome--so you've followed him,
and spied on him for weeks on end, which isn't exactly highest ethical
practice in collecting a history. I still can't see how you're justified."
Dr. Webber snorted, tossing his cigar down on the desk with disgust.
"The man is insane. That's my justification. He's out of touch with
reality. He's wandered into a wild, impossible, fantastic dream world.
And we've got to get him out of it, because what he knows, what he's
trying to hide from us, is so incredibly dangerous that we don't dare let
him go."
The big man stared at Manelli, his dark eyes flashing. "Can't you see
that? Or would you rather sit back and let Harry Scott go the way that
Paulus and Wineberg and the others went?"
"But to use the Parkinson Field on him--" Dr. Manelli shook his head
hopelessly. "He'd offered to come over, George. We didn't need to use
it."
"Sure, he offered to come--fine, fine. But supposing he changed his
mind on the way? For all we know, he had us figured into his paranoia,
too, and never would have come near the Hoffman Center."
Dr. Webber shook his head. "We're not playing a game any more,
Frank. Get that straight. I thought it was a game a couple of years ago,
when we first started. But it ceased to be a game when men like Paulus
and Wineberg walked in sane, healthy men, and came out blubbering

idiots. That's no game any more. We're onto something big. And, if
Harry Scott can lead us to the core of it, then I can't care too much what
happens to Harry Scott."
Dr. Manelli stood up sharply, walked to the window, and looked down
over the bright, clean buildings of the Hoffman Medical Center. Out
across the terraced park that surrounded the glassed towers and shining
metal of the Center rose the New City, tier