"Rog Phillips - The Yelllow Pill" - читать интересную книгу автора (Phillips Rog)

The Yellow Pill

By Rog Phillips
Dr. Cedric Elton slipped into his office by the back entrance, shucked off his topcoat and hid it in the
small, narrow-doored closet, then picked up the neatly piled patient cards his receptionist, Helena
Fitzroy, had placed on the corner of his desk. There were only four, but there could have been a hundred
if he accepted everyone who asked to be his patient, because his successes had more than once been
spectacular and his reputation as a psychiatrist had become so great because of this that his name had
become synonymous with psychiatry in the public mind.

His eyes flicked over the top card. He frowned, then went to the small square of one-way glass in the
reception-room door and looked through it. There were four police officers and a man in a straitjacket.

The card said the man's name was Gerald Bocek and that he had shot and killed five people in a
supermarket, and had killed one officer and wounded two others before being captured.

Except for the straitjacket, Gerald Bocek did not have the appearance of being dangerous. He was
about twenty-five, with brown hair and blue eyes. There were faint wrinkles of habitual good nature
about his eyes. Right now he was smiling, relaxed, and idly watching Helena, who was pretending to
study various cards in her desk file but was obviously conscious of her audience.

Cedric returned to his desk and sat down. The card for Jerry Bocek said more about the killings. When
captured, Bocek insisted that the people he had killed were not people at all, but blue-scaled Venusian
lizards who had boarded his spaceship, and that he had only been defending himself.

Dr. Cedric Elton shook his head in disapproval. Fantasy fiction was all right in its place, but too many
people took it seriously. Of course, it was not the fault of the fiction. The same type of person took other
types of fantasy seriously in earlier days, burning women as witches, stoning men as devilsтАФ

Abruptly Cedric deflected the control on the intercom and spoke into it. "Send Gerald Bocek in, please,"
he said.

A moment later the door to the reception room opened. Helena flashed Cedric a scared smile and got
out of the way quickly. One police officer led the way, followed by Gerald Bocek, closely flanked by
two officers, with the fourth one in the rear, who carefully closed the door. It was impressive, Cedric
decided. He nodded toward a chair in front of his desk, and the police officers sat the straitjacketed man
in it, then hovered nearby, ready for anything.

"You're Jerry Bocek?" Cedric asked.

The straitjacketed man nodded cheerfully.

"I'm Dr. Cedric Elton, a psychiatrist," Cedric said. "Do you have any idea at all why you have been
brought to me?"
"Brought to you?" Jerry echoed, chuckling. "Don't kid me. You're my old pal, Gar Castle. Brought to
you? How could I get away from you in this stinking tub?"

"Stinking tub?" Cedric said.

"Spaceship," Jerry said. "Look, Gar. Untie me, will you? This nonsense has gone far enough."