Free A Puzzle for fools by Patrick Quentin

If my half-brother left, it would set a bad example and in twenty-four hours all the others would have gone, too."
    "I see your point," I murmured, still marveling at my ability to collect confidences. "But as a moral adviser Tm pretty much of a broken reed right now."
    "Of course, Duluth. Yes." Stevens' pink face broke into a quick smile and settled once more into solemnity. "If Fogarty's death is connected with one of the patients," he said slowly, "I feel there's one perfectly simple way of clearing the matter up."
    "How do you mean?"
    "By psycho-analysis. I suggested it, but Lenz and Moreno don't approve and it'd be as good as my job's worth for me to butt in."
    He paused and glanced at me. For a moment I thought he was going to ask my assistance in some extra-official psychological experimentation. But he didn't. He shook his head and said briskly:
    "It's a pity Lenz wouldn't try that."
    "But how would you work it?" I asked.
    "By an elementary process of thought association. I happen to be very interested in that despised field of psychology." Stevens laid down the stethoscope with a faint clatter. "All one would have to do is to mention some word associated with the crime and watch the reaction on the patient."
    "Such as Fogarty's name, for example?" I asked, feeling suddenly interested.
    "In this case, no. It would be too dangerous. The patients will be wondering about Fogarty anyhow and a lot of damage might be done. One has to be extremely careful."
    "How about strait-jacket? " I inquired.
    "Emphatically, no." A slight smile moved across Stevens' lips. "In a sanitarium of this type, that word would receive a violent reaction from anyone. It would have to be some phrase which normally had no particular significance—something that struck you for example when you discovered the—er—body. But I'm just riding my hobby horse, Duluth." He rose and looked a little embarrassed as though he realized he had overstepped the bounds of discretion.       
    "I wish you'd forget all this," he murmured. "I guess I'm a little unstrung. But I'm worried, you know—my half-brother."
    As I left the surgery and started back to Wing Two, I found myself wondering about that half-brother. Which, I reflected, of my fellow patients had this unsuspected connection with the staff? Then I remembered Fenwick's little act in the central hall the night before. I remembered how Stevens had dashed forward, heard his voice crying:
    "David .. . David .. . !"
    The would-be psycho-analyst, I guessed, was the half-brother of the spiritualist.
    I was so absorbed in my reflections that I didn't at first notice the girl with a mop who was swabbing the floor in front of me. Or if I did, I dismissed her from my mind as one of those nondescript females who occasionally cleaned and polished about the building. I had stepped onto a damp, freshly mopped patch before I saw her properly. And then it didn't make sense.
    It was Iris Pattison with a white apron and a cute white cap on her dark hair. She was manipulating the mop with more than professional concentration.
    "Don't walk on the clean part," she said, and her expression, as she glanced up, was irritated rather than sad.
    But I hardly heard what she said. I was busy watching her. Maybe she was only pushing a mop around, but there was something about her—something that got the theatre in me all excited. The movement of her lips, the fragile profile half turned away, the slight droop of her mouth—-all perfect. Instinctively I was back at rehearsals again.
    "Superb!" I exclaimed. "Now turn and come this way. That's right ... no, not so quickly . . . head more to the left so's it gets the footlights . . . that's better . . ."
    She was staring at me now, half in alarm, half in disappointment as though she had hoped that I wasn't as nutty as the rest of them and had discovered her mistake. But I was too worked up to mind. I gripped her arm and said:       
    "Miss Pattison, have you ever been on