to massage his fingers as though smoothing out invisible wrinkles. “I steal only from other kleptomaniacs,” he said earnestly.
Dr. Departure’s chuckle dribbled away.
“If I understand you,” Dr. Departure began very slowly, “you have a pathological impulse to steal. But, instead of stealing from department stores, as does the normal klepto…rather, the usual kleptomaniac, you feel impelled to steal the things other kleptomaniacs have already stolen?”
“That’s right,” the man answered. “I sneak into their rooms when they’re out. They’re getting harder and harder to find, too. Of course, it’s all stuff I have no particular use for. Look!”
He reached down, hauled up a bulky paper sack and handed it across the desk.
Dr. Departure opened it and extracted, among other things, an egg beater, a plastic thimble, a pencil sharpener, a bottle of permanent wave lotion and an ocarina.
“I just…just can’t help myself, Doctor.” Flint flexed his long, lean fingers, frowned at them, then looked up once more at the doctor. “This urge I get…it’s irresistible. And getting worse all the time. You’ve got to help me.”
Dr. Departure laid the bag down and began running his finger over the small brass clock his wife had given him for Christmas; it always steadied him to focus his attention a moment or so on the little instrument ticking off the dollars like a taxi meter. Presently, he lifted his eyes and studied the man: thin, pallid face, a shaving cut over the Adam’s apple, conservative dresser. Nothing remarkable except his preoccupation with those very long fingers.
“Just a few routine questions first,” Dr. Departure said, picking up a pencil.
Flint, it turned out, was thirty-seven, graduated from high school, employed as an insurance clerk, unmarried. All very usual.
At the end of the hour, the doctor arose and smiled reassuringly.
“Shall we say Tuesday at ten?” he said, seeing Flint to the door.
* * * *
Shortly before ten the following Tuesday, as Dr. Departure stepped out of the elevator to keep his appointment with Flint, he bumped into his brother-in-law, Dr. Bert Schnappenhocker, a tall, assertive psychiatrist with aggressive front teeth and iron gray hair, who specialized in rich divorcees, and whose very presence in the office adjoining his own, caused Dr. Departure a kind of permanent, bristling hostility. If it weren’t for the fact he was Emily’s brother…
“Glad to see you back, Manly,” Schnappenhocker boomed in that loathsome, hearty voice. “How’d they treat you at the asylum?”
“It was a rest home,” Dr. Departure replied coldly, moving down the hall toward his own office.
“Well, if you begin to feel shaky again, feel free to drop in. Professional discount, of course.” He laughed raucously and pounded Departure on the shoulder. “By the way, did I tell you I’m speaking before the Institute of Psychiatry banquet next month? I hope you can make it.”
Quack! Dr. Departure thought angrily, closing the door against Schnappenhocker’s imbecilic and tuneless whistle outside. Then, shaking off his irritation, he called Flint in from the waiting room.
“Now!” he began brightly, after Flint seated himself and placed another bulky paper sack down beside the desk. “Now, about this…this kleptomania.” He refused to utter that ridiculous word, “klepto-kleptomania.” Since Flint’s first visit, he’d been unable to find anything in the literature to cover the problem but, at length, he reassured himself the thing wasn’t as weird as it first appeared; after all, kleptomania was kleptomania, no matter who it was you stole from—possibly this man’s case might be a little more complicated, that was all.
“I’d like you to start at the beginning, if you will, Mr. Flint, and tell me how this problem got started.”
Flint looked troubled and poked the trinket-filled bag with his foot.
“It’s the gloves,” he said. “Never had any trouble until I started wearing the gloves. Then I began having this urge to snatch things off department store counters. Didn’t take two weeks, though, until I couldn’t get any kicks out of that any more. Then I started on the kleptos…”
Dr. Departure smiled and felt the problem begin to unravel right then and there. So typical, this childish process of blaming inanimate objects for our own defects. Just last night, his little niece had accused her rag doll of shattering the vase.
“Where are these gloves?” he inquired kindly.
Flint lifted his hands above the desk.
“I have them on,” he said.
Dr. Departure blinked, leaned forward and gazed at the long, pink hands with the wrinkled knuckles, tapering fingers and well cared-for fingernails. They were as naked as billiard balls.
“I don’t see any gloves,” the doctor said in a moment.
“I know,” Flint replied evenly. “They’re invisible.”
Ah, the pieces are beginning to fall into place, Dr. Departure thought. A case of guilt projection, complicated by delusionary ideas. Ten to one there will be some flights of fantasy involving sorcery showing up soon.
“Where did you get these…these gloves?” he asked in a soft, persuasive voice.
“I bought them from a gypsy who bought them from a three-fingered Brazilian witch doctor named Bessie.”
“And where did the witch doctor get them?”
“She brewed them out of a stunted guayule bush that had been struck twice by lightning and injected three times with the blood of an insane virgin.”
“And what was the…the purpose of these gloves?”
“To make it easier for the witch doctor’s son to steal pigeon eggs.” Flint looked away with troubled eyes. “The gloves are defective, though. They’re too strong.”
This could go on forever, Dr. Departure thought sadly. If I ask him why he simply doesn’t take the gloves off, he’ll say he can’t get them off.
“The worst of it is, Doctor…I can’t get them off. See?” Flint raised one hand, plucked futilely at the pink skin with the thumb and forefinger of the other. Suddenly, he leaned across the desk confidentially. “There’s only one way that they’ll come off, Doctor.”
“And what’s that?”
“First, I have to find a witch doctor who ranks as high in his community as Bessie does in hers. That’s you.”
“Now, just a moment!” Dr. Departure protesting huffily.
From his pocket, Flint whipped a piece of paper and a small box of white powder, which he laid before the doctor.
“Then I have to get you to sprinkle this powder over the gloves while saying these words and making a gesture like this. After that, I can peel them right off.”
“Please!” Dr. Departure said firmly,
