Free Field Study by Peter Philips Page A

and concentrated on one. "How do you know about my case? You've never seen me before."
    "My receptionist," said the man behind the desk, "has intuitive diagnostic ability."
    THAT settled it, Pake thought. A first-water quack. Heck, he'd never had a day's real sickness in his forty years. Mild post-nasal drip, maybe, but that was probably a penalty for over smoking. He felt the tickle of it at the back of his throat now. He blew his nose. It gave him a few seconds to think and observe.
    The "healer" was quite unremarkable except for an almost unnoticeable Asiatic tinge of skin. His features might have been the compounded norm of a thousand faces flittingly seen during a subway rush-hour. He'd be lost in a crowd. No, put him in a crowd and he would be the crowd — The fantastic thought touched Pake's consciousness and slid away before he could examine it.
    The office, rented furnished, was quite unimpressive. Old-fashioned wooden desk, cheap chairs, battered filing cabinet, empty, Pake was willing to bet.
    "Symptoms?" Trancore asked.
    "Seems you can tell me," Pake said with a trace of belligerence.
    "Let's say the recital is part of the treatment. I don't wish to guess."
    It should be an "interesting case." Pake had spent an hour boning up on it at a medical library. An obscure disease, a complexus of symptoms calculated to faze the most expert diagnostician for a while. It would certainly defeat the snap diagnoses and miraculously swift cures attributed to this phony. And no Doctor could confirm it without the most exhaustive physical examination, which this fellow didn't go in for, apparently.
    As Pake was talking, Trancore looked into a drawer of his desk. His face was without expression.
    He looked up only when Pake finished, and smiled. "Prognosis, death within eleven months, eh? But you won't die. Take this in water." He put a plastic capsule within Pake's reach.
    "But this is crazy! How do I know — "
    "You don't. I make no claims. What did you expect, a long, obscure rigmarole? You can take the capsule or leave it. How many tokens — pounds — do you have with you?"
    "But listen, Doctor — "
    "I'm not a Doctor. How much?"
    "Around fifty, I suppose."
    "Give me twenty-five for the capsule, which you take on faith. If you take it."
    "You say I'll die if I don't?"
    "I said nothing of the kind. I have no intention of running foul of your laws. Please make up your mind."
    Pake took it.
    "AS MUCH personality as a boiled duck," Pake reported to his chief. "But somehow I couldn't get around to asking questions."
    The chief tossed the capsule in his palm. "That doesn't matter. This is all we wanted."
    The laboratories took five hours to break it down, make tests and come up with the final, head-scratching nonsense line: just a mess of soluble protein with no discernible physiological reactions.
    "That was yours," the chief said. "These were brought in by the others, a plain-clothes man from Police H.Q., an employee of the National Medical Association, an official of the N.M.A., and a private investigator."
    Pake leafed through the reports. "The same?"
    "Yes. But here are three reports on capsules given to genuine patients and 'borrowed' for analysis afterward. The patients didn't miss a thing, even though the operative substituted similar capsules containing water and a vegetable dye. It took five minutes for the laboratory to discover that that's all the 'borrowed' capsules contained, also."
    Pake began to laugh. Then he remembered the leper. "Can't Trancore be booked for fraud?"
    "How? He makes no claims for the damned things. And in several instances, he's given them away. But don't you see the implication of these reports?"
    Pake nodded. "Patients get water. Investigators get something just as useless — except for giving laboratory men a headache. So he knows who is what. I don't get it."
    "You will. I'm turning the case over to you, Frankie."
    "I'm interested. But how come it's on our level?"
    "It's international. Come