invisible gloves off.” He paused, polished his glasses, cleared his throat and glanced oratorically at the ceiling. “First, what do the gloves represent? Nothing more than…”
For a solid hour, Dr. Departure probed, prodded and pronounced. He spoke eloquently on phobias, on fantasies, on fixations, and the little brass clock jumped when he pounded the table for emphasis. Flint watched and listened intently, then, at last, when Dr. Departure paused to wipe his forehead and glance significantly at his watch, he leaned forward.
“That’s all very well, Doctor,” he said. “But are you, or are you not, going to cast this spell?”
These things take time, Dr. Departure told himself wearily. Time and patience…
“Because, if you’re not,” Flint continued, half-rising from the chair. “I’m going someplace else. There’s another man down the hall here. A Dr. Schnapp…Schnappen…”
Hastily, Dr. Departure motioned the man back into the chair. Every time he’d lost a patient to Dr. Schnappenhocker, his brother-in-law, through some fantastic freak of luck, had been able to clear up the problem in practically no time. The crowing that went on afterwards was unbearable. The man had even written up one case for the American Journal.
Dr. Departure looked distastefully at the box of powder and studied the words on the slip of paper. Well, if he had to demonstrate the impotence of spell-casting, he had to…that was all.
“If I cast this…this spell,” he finally said, trying to get a deeper meaning into the words, “will you promise to really try to remove these imaginary gloves…shed them like you would so much dead skin…skin you no longer need?”
“Yes! Yes!” Flint agreed eagerly.
“EEDO! QUEEDO! SKIZZO LIBIDO!” Dr. Departure intoned, sprinkling powder over Flint’s outstretched hands and making a certain gesture with his own. Then he sat back and smiled indulgently.
“Thanks!” Flint breathed gratefully. Then, with a zip-snick-snap!, he deftly peeled a transparent rubbery glove from each hand quite as if he were shedding so much dead skin, and tossed them both on the desk. In amazement, Dr. Departure gazed at this tiny mound of sheer, limp rubber that had collapsed his psychological house of cards with such a nasty little plop.
“This should cover the fee,” Flint was saying happily, placing four twenties on the blotter. “And thanks again.” He went out, slamming the door.
Dr. Departure closed his eyes a moment and listened to the tick of the brass clock. Of course, the man could be perpetrating an elaborate practical joke. It was even possible that the loud-mouthed charlatan, that hand-holder of rich nymphomaniacs, that psychoanalytical Peeping Tom, Dr. Schnappenhocker, had put him up to it. No, on second thought, it couldn’t have been a practical joke. No one, not even Bert Schnappenhocker himself, would be willing to pay $75 an hour for that meager pleasure.
He picked up one glove and examined it. It was inside out now—peeling it off had done that—but both sides seemed practically the same. Never had he touched anything so wonderfully soft and delicate, so light and completely transparent! He turned it over and over. It had no more body than a cobweb, yet it was as resilient as a rubber girdle. He put his fingers into it tentatively. Remarkable how snug and comfortable it was! He pulled it completely on. Why, you scarcely knew it was there! He picked up the other glove, pulled it on, too…
* * * *
The reason I can’t get these gloves off, Dr. Departure told himself the next day, staring at his fingers, is that rubber sticks so close to the skin I can’t get a good grip on it. If only I had longer fingernails…
The door opened suddenly and through it popped the beaming face of Dr. Schnappenhocker.
“Morning, Manly!” he boomed. “Just out drumming up a little business and, right off, I thought of you.” He laughed heartily.
“Don’t you ever knock?” Dr. Departure growled.
“No offense, Doctor. Thought I’d leave you a program for next month’s Institute banquet. Did I tell you I was the guest speaker?” He dropped a folder on the chair and disappeared.
Dr. Departure turned his attention back to the gloves. It was odd. He couldn’t get them off. Very odd. Not that this bothered him particularly…they were so snug and light, you scarcely knew you had them on. Tonight, he’d get Emily to peel them off. It was a bit disconcerting, though, not to be able to do it yourself.
Of course, he’d had no impulse toward kleptomania—absolutely none at all. He smiled to himself. As a matter of fact, if you permitted yourself such a wild thought, it was just the other way around. Last night, he’d left a book on the bus and, this morning, he’d misplaced his favorite pipe in the coffee shop. Odd. Very odd.
His eyes drifted to the two sacks of stolen articles Flint had left. Have to return those, he told himself—not good to have them lying around. He scooped up the bags and, pawing through them, discovered from price tags that most of them came from Snow Brothers’ Department Store. It was lunch time; he’d drop them off right now.
A pre-inventory sale was raging in Snow Brothers’; it’s aisles throbbed with a squirming horde of women shoppers, and Dr. Departure, hugging two paper sacks, burrowed his way determinedly toward the accommodation desk.
It was in Women’s Purses that the whim suddenly seized him. He fought it off. It returned, more powerfully, more insistently, and, in a moment, it swelled into a wild, unreasoning, clamoring urge that made his fingers tingle and his whole body quiver.
He found himself edging over to a counter, reaching into the sack he carried. His breathing came faster as he removed the first article his fingers touched—a windshield wiper. Furtively, he looked about. No one was watching. With a quick, darting motion, he sneaked the wiper between two leather bags on the counter. Then, glancing nervously about once more, he hurried away with a pounding heart, feeling an odd, tingling triumph.
* * * *
“Opposite of kleptomania…that’s what you have!” Mrs. Departure was accusing her husband in a loud, hysterical voice two weeks later at dinner time. She was a large, resolute woman with steely eyes and sensible shoes. At the moment, however, she was considerably unstrung. “You’re an un-kleptomaniac, and you’ve got to do something about it!”
“And I tell you, it’s these damn gloves!” the doctor shouted, pacing back and forth. His dinner lay cold and untouched. His hair was rumpled. His eyes glittered with strange lights. His hands had a strange plucking motion, one against the other.
“You shoplifter! I mean…you shopdropper!” Her long, usually solid jaw quivered with anguish. “Sneaking into department stores, leaving trinkets all over the place. My blue vase! The pruning shears! Almost the entire silverware set! Even your little brass clock! All gone!”
“It’s the gloves, I tell you!” Vainly, he tugged, plucked and snatched at his fingertips. “I put them on backwards. Inside out! Damn! If I could only get a grip on them!”
“And today, the public library called again,” she cried shrilly. “Not a day passes but what you sneak three or four of your own books onto their shelves!”
“Well, if you’d helped me get these things off that first night, liked I asked you to, maybe I wouldn’t be in this fix!”
“But
