Karl turned away, and felt a sudden stab of shock as he found the way blocked by Lieutenant Kinderman.
"Perhaps we could talk now, Mr. Engstrom," he wheezed. Hands in the pockets of his coat.
Eyes sad. "Perhaps we could now have a talk..."
CHAPTER TWO
Karras threaded tape to an empty reel in the office of the rotund, silver-hair director of the Institute of Languages and Linguistics. Having carefully edited sections of his tapes onto separate reels, he was about to play the first. He started the tape recorder and stepped back from the table. They listened to the fever voice croaking its gibberish. Then he turned to the director. "What is that, Frank? Is it a language?"
The director was sitting on the edge of his desk. By the time the tape ended, he was frowning in puzzlement. "Pretty weird. Where'd you get that?"
Karras stopped the tape. "Oh, it's something that I've had for a number of years from when I worked on a case of dual personality. I'm doing a paper on it."
"I see."
"Well, what about it?"
The director pulled off his glasses and chewed at the tortoise frame. "No, it isn't any language that I've ever heard. However..." He frowned. And then looked up at Karras. "Want to play it again?"
Karras quickly rewound the tape and played it over. "Now what do you think?" he asked. "Well, it does have the cadence of speech."
Karras felt a quickening of hope. Fought it down. "Yes, that's what I thought," he agreed.
"But I certainly don't recognize it, Father. Is it ancient or modern? Or do you know?" "No, I don't."
"Well, why not leave it with me, Father? I'll check it with some of the boys."
"Could you make up a copy of it, Frank? I'd like to keep the original myself."
"Oh, yes, surely."
"In the meantime, I've got something else. Got the time?"
"Yes, of course. Go ahead. What's the problem?"
"Well, what if I gave you fragments of ordinary speech by what are apparently two different people. Could you tell by semantic analysis whether just one person might have been capable of both modes of speech?"
"Oh, I think so."
"How?"
"Well, a 'type-token' ratio, I suppose, is as good a way as any. In samples of a thousand words or more, you could just check the frequency of occurrence of the various parts of speech."
"And would you call that conclusive?"
"Oh, yes. Well, pretty much. You see, that sort of test would discount any change in the basis vocabulary. It's not words but expression of the words: the style. We call it 'index of diversity.'
Very baffling to the layman, which, of course, is what we want." The director smiled wryly.
Then he nodded at the tapes in Karras' hands. "You've got two different people on those, is that it?"
"No. The voice and the words came out of the mouth of just one person, Frank. As I said, it was a case of dual personality. The words and the voices seem totally different to me but both are from the mouth of just one person. Look, I need a big favor from you..."
"You'd like me to test them out? I'd be glad to. I'll give it to one of the instructors."
"No, Frank, that's the really big part of the favor: I'd like you to do it yourself and as fast as you can do it. It's terribly important."
The director read the urgency in his eyes. He nodded. "Okay. Okay. I'll get on it."
The director made copies of both the tapes, and Karras returned to the Jesuit residence hall with the originals. He found a message slip in his room. The records from the clinic had arrived.
He hurried to Reception and signed for the package. Back in his room, he began to read immediately; and was soon convinced that his trip to the Institute had been wasted.
"...indications of guilt obsession with ensuing hysterical-somnambulistic..."
Room for doubt. Always room. Interpretation. But Regan's stigmata... Karras buried his weary face in his hands. The skin stigmata that Chris had described had indeed been reported in Regan's fife. But it also had been noted that Regan had hyperreactive skin and could herself have produced the mysterious letters merely by tracing them on her flesh with a finger a short time prior to their appearance. Dermatographia.
She did it herself, brooded Karras. He was certain. For as soon as Regan's hands had been immobilized by restraining straps, the records noted, the mysterious phenomena had ceased and were never repeated.
Fraud. Conscious or unconscious. Still fraud.
He lifted his head and eyed the phone. Frank. Call him off? He picked up the receiver. There was no answer and he left word for him to call. Then, exhausted, he stood up and walked slowly to the bathroom. He splashed cold water an his face. "The exorcist will simply be careful that none of the patent's manifestations are left...." He looked up at himself in the mirror. Had he missed something? What? The sauerkraut odor. He turned and slipped a towel off the rack and wiped his face. Autosuggestion, he remembered. And the mentally ill, in certain instances, seemed able unconsciously to direct their bodies to emit a variety of odors.
Karras wiped his hands. The poundings... the opening and closing of the drawer.
Psychokinesis? Really? "You believe in that stuff?" He paused as he set back the towel; grew aware that he wasn't thinking clearly. Too tired. Yet he dared not give Regan up to guess; to opinion; to the savage betrayals of the mind.
He left the hall and went to the campus library. He searched through the Guide to Periodical Literature: Po... Pol... Polte... He found what he was looking for and sat down with a scientific journal to read an article on poltergeist-phehomena investigations by the German psychiatrist Dr. Hans Bender.
