At the far end of the big room from the window-wall, six comfortable chairs were arranged around a circular teak coffee table. Obviously, group therapy sessions were held in that corner. Hilary, Tony, Joshua, and the doctor sat down there.
Rudge was an affable man with the ability to make you feel as if you were the most interesting and charming individual he had encountered in ages. He was as bald as all the clichés (a billiard ball, a baby’s bottom, an eagle), but he had a neatly trimmed beard and mustache. He wore a three-piece suit with a tie and display handkerchief that matched, but there was nothing of the banker or of the dandy in his appearance. He looked distinguished, reliable, yet as relaxed as if he’d been wearing tennis whites.
Joshua summed up the evidence that the doctor had said he would need to hear, and he delivered a short lecture (which seemed to entertain Rudge) about a psychiatrist’s obligation to protect society from a patient who appeared to have homicidal tendencies. In a quarter of an hour, Rudge heard enough to be convinced that a claim of doctor-patient privilege was neither wise nor justified in this case. He was willing to open the Frye file to them.
“Although I must admit,” Rudge said, “if only one of you had come in here with this incredible story, I’d have put very little credence in it. I’d have thought you were in need of my professional services.”
“We’ve considered the possibility that all three of us are out of our minds,” Joshua said.
“And rejected it,” Tony said.
“Well, if you are unbalanced,” Rudge said, “then you’d better make it ‘the four of us’ because you’ve made a believer out of me, too.”
During the past eighteen months (Rudge explained), he had seen Frye eighteen times in private, fifty-minute sessions. After the first appointment, when he realized the patient was deeply disturbed about something, he encouraged Frye to come in at least once every week, for he believed that the problem was too serious to respond to once-a-month sessions. But Frye had resisted the idea of more frequent treatments.
“As I told you on the phone,” Rudge said, “Mr. Frye was torn between two desires. He wanted my help. He wanted to get to the root of his problem. But at the same time, he was afraid of revealing things to me–and afraid of what he might learn about himself.”
“What was his problem?” Tony asked.
“Well, of course, the problem itself–the psychological knot that was causing his anxiety and tension and stress–was hidden in his subconscious mind. That’s why he needed me. Eventually, we’d have been able to uncover that knot, and we might even have untied it, if the therapy had been successful. But we never got that far. So I can’t tell you what was wrong with him because I don’t really know. But I think what you’re actually asking me is–what brought Frye to me in the first place? What made him realize that he needed help?”
“Yes,” Hilary said. “At least that’s a place to start. What were his symptoms?”
“The most disturbing thing, at least from Mr. Frye’s point of view, was a recurring nightmare that terrified him.”
A tape recorder stood on the circular coffee table, and two piles of cassettes lay beside it, fourteen in one pile, four in the other. Rudge leaned forward in his chair and picked up one of the four.
“All of my consultations are recorded and stored in a safe,” the doctor said. “These are tapes of Mr. Frye’s sessions. Last night, after I spoke with Mr. Rhinehart on the phone, I listened to portions of these recordings to see if I could find a few representative selections. I had a hunch you might convince me to open the file, and I thought it might be better if you could hear Bruno Frye’s complaints in his own voice.”
“Excellent,” Joshua said.
“This first one is from the very first session,” Dr. Rudge said. “For the first forty minutes, Frye would say almost nothing at all. It was very strange. He seemed outwardly calm and self-possessed, but I saw that he was frightened and trying to conceal his true feelings. He was afraid to talk to me. He almost got up and left. But I kept working at him gently, very gently. In the last ten minutes, he told me what he’d come to see me about, but even then it was like pulling teeth to get it out of him. Here’s part of it.”