Meanwhile, I waited patiently--having no choice, since I started the publicity nightmare myself--for the earthquake to settle down. As his agent I was holding off all new commitments until he fulfilled the ones on hand.

Six months pa.s.sed, and Hillary was still wallowing in glory, too busy sopping up plaudits to bother turning a hand.

Finally I sent a goon squad after him and dragged him to my office. He arrived in a four-hundred dollar suit and a fifty-dollar tie. Each cuff was decorated by a diamond link and a Hollywood starlet. I shooed out the excess and came to the point.

"Recess is over," I said gently. "Now we settle down for a few months of patty-cake with your secretaries. They're here in my offices now where I can keep an eye on things. Okay?"

He grinned his old happy smile, and some of the dewey glaze seemed to peel from his eyes. "You're right, George," he said much to my surprise.

"I can't coast forever--and believe me, I never visualized what this would be like. It's wonderful. The world is at my feet, George. At my feet!"

I had pegged him right. But after all, who could resist the accolade he had received? For all his monomania on this business of mnemonics, he was a red-blooded boy with active glands and youthful corpuscles.

To my further delight he threw off his imported suit-coat and said, "I'm ready right now. Where do we start?"

I broached the file and studied my priority list. "First off, Oscar wants a play. That'll take a week or two, I suppose. Then I have an a.s.signment for a serial--"

I outlined about three months work for him, or what would have been three months work last summer.

I moved him into my own penthouse apartment upstairs and herded him to work the next morning. My squad of strong-arms guarded all entrances, and Hec Blankenship finally convinced the public that we meant business in getting a little privacy for our tame genius so he could hatch some more immortal works.

I had lunch sent in to him in the next office and didn't see him until five that first evening. I went in without knocking. One secretary was filing her nails, and the other three were putting on their coats. The covers were still on the typewriters and Hillary was asleep or in a coma over in the corner.

I kicked his feet off his desk, and he rocked forward. "Come on upstairs, I'll buy you a steak," I said.

He smiled weakly, "I need one. It didn't go so good." In the elevator he added, "In fact, it didn't go at all."

"Take it easy," I a.s.sured him. "You're a little rusty, that's all. What about the total recall? Is it still working?"

He nodded, but he didn't say any more about it.

Next day I stuck my head in before I went to lunch, and I congratulated myself on not pushing him too hard the first day. Hillary was off in his corner again, but his mouth was moving and all four girls were doing the things that secretaries do when they are about two hours behind in their work.

Eight days later the thing dropped on my desk. I wet a finger with keen antic.i.p.ation, but the spit wasn't dry before I was plowing into Hillary's office trailing loose sheets.

"Are you kidding?" I yelled.

He was out of his chair over by the window staring out. All he did was hunch up his shoulders. The girls were standing around trying to act invisible.

"Hillary," I said trying to laugh. "Don't be playing gags on old George.

Where is it? Where's Oscar's play?"

"I--I'm afraid that's it," he said without turning his head.

"This--this fluff? This pablum?"

"Well--I thought I'd try something light to begin with."

"Light? This is no play. This is Pollyanna. It's been done. Where's your conflict? Your problem? Your suspense? Dammit, where's your characters?"

"I'll get warmed up tomorrow," Hilliary said, but he didn't have much conviction in his voice.

He tried. He really did. I heard him thrashing around for a whole hour the next morning. By afternoon he was on his way to the hospital in an ambulance with two men holding him down.

All I could get out of the doctors was, "complete nervous breakdown." I finally found a hard-up intern and bribed him to spy for me. He reported that Hillary had the whole staff stumped. He was acting more like a dope addict with withdrawal symptoms or a drunk with the D.T.'s.

I got in touch with Hillary's sanitarium. The head psychiatrist was in Europe, so I cabled him and flew him back. He took over, and pretty soon I had the word I dreaded.

"Your wonder boy will recover," he told me, "but that's a wonder in itself. I presume he told you of his experiments to achieve total recall?"

I said yes.

"What he probably failed to tell you was that we all tried to dissuade him."

"That he didn't mention, but I worried about it."

"Yes, well you might have. When Hillary Hardy succeeded in stripping away the last remnant of protective insulation in his memory he exposed himself not only to its full factual content, but also he lay naked every past emotional upset, every pain, fear, dread and sorrow he had ever experienced. It is no longer possible for him to recall an experience and ponder it objectively. _He relives it._"

"Yes, I get that," I said, "but what's so--"

"Did you ever hit your thumb with a hammer?" the doctor with the traditional, gray goatee interrupted.

"Sure, a couple of times."

"Ever lose a sweetheart or have a loved one die?"

I nodded.

"Suppose that to even think about such experiences you had to endure all the actual physical or emotional pain of the original incident? The crushing blow of the hammer? The heartache and tears of your loss? And suppose further, that you were trying to write a play, and in order to bring genuine emotion to it you forced yourself to endure these pains and emotional stresses, minute after minute--"

"G.o.d!" I said. "But you said he'd recover?"

"In a few weeks, yes. Gradually we will reduce sedation until he can control his memories again, but never ask him to write another dramatic work. Another attack like this one could drive him irretrievably insane."

It wasn't too hard to understand. After all, what is creative writing but setting down little bits of yourself? And the demands of literature are for human problems, conflicts, struggles.

Young as he was, Hillary was no different from the rest of us. Sure, he was full of reading and second hand bits of business, but he dug deeply into his own private pot of pain for his genuine dramatic effects. And where others dig with a long-handled ladle, Hillary dipped with his bare soul--and he got scalded.

Getting him well and keeping him that way was a matter of putting the lid back on the pot, so to speak. n.o.body ever invited him to write another word. I saw to that. He's still with me, because after he went bankrupt on the sanitarium deal he had nowhere to turn. After taxes and the rooking the real estate boys gave him, his royalties were tied up for years to come.

He did get better, though. And he even works a little. Turns out scripts for mild little comic books, the Honey-Bunney type that are approved by parent-teacher censors. They don't sell very well. No conflict. No guts.