Madmen die alone

The whole asylum seemed to be listening … listening … not, this time, for a maniac’s scream, but for the terror-filled cry of an escaped madman’s victim! Somewhere in the distance—in a wing or on another floor—a woman began to laugh, an inane laugh that hung like an echo on the air. That was all, except for a murmur in the halls and the querulous excitement of patients. In a mental institution, a scream is not unusual. Why, then, wondered Captain Prescott of the Zenith police, was Exeter Hospital so frighteningly quiet, as though waiting for something? And then it came, a girl’s voice—like a hurt child’s—ringing through the corridors, crying a man’s name. For the twisted figure of Dr. Sylvester, brilliant young psychiatrist, had been found, knees drawn up, hands clenched in death. A homicidal maniac like Joseph Parisi, loose in the city, was hell for the police. But murder meant a field-day for the papers, false leads, frightened women, panic.… Was this a madman’s crime? Had someone purposely turned a lunatic loose? Before Prescott could answer, something else happened to make his case even more like a fight alone in the dark.