Forbis pondered this gloomily for a few moments, then brightened slightly. ‘Well, I seem to have the suggestion beaten. Whatever happens, I can’t actually reach the roof, so I must have enough strength to fight it.’

Vansittart shook his head. ‘As a matter of fact, you haven’t. It’s not you who’s keeping yourself off the roof, it’s me.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I implanted another hypnotic suggestion, holding you on the 99th floor. When I uncovered the first suggestion I tried to erase it, found I wasn’t even scratching the surface, so just as a precaution I inserted a second of my own. "Get off at the 99th floor." How long it will hold you there I don’t know, but already it’s fading. Today it took you over seven hours to call me. Next time you may get up enough steam to hit the roof. That’s why I think we should take a new line, really get to the bottom of this obsession, or rather’ — he smiled ruefully — ‘to the top.’

Forbis sat up slowly, massaging his face. ‘What do you suggest?’

‘We’ll let you reach the roof. I’ll erase my secondary command and we’ll see what happens when you step out on to the top deck. Don’t worry, I’ll be with you if anything goes wrong. It may seem pretty thin consolation, but frankly, Forbis, it would be so easy to kill you and get away with it that I can’t understand anyone bothering to go to all this trouble. Obviously there’s some deeper motive, something connected, perhaps, with the 100th floor.’ Vansittart paused, watching Forbis carefully, then asked in a casual voice: ‘Tell me, have you ever heard of anyone called Fowler?’

He said nothing when Forbis shook his head, but privately noted the reflex pause of unconscious recognition.

‘All right?’ Vansittart asked as they reached the bottom of the final stairway.

‘Fine,’ Forbis said quietly, catching his breath. He looked up at the rectangular opening above them, wondering how he would feel when he finally reached the roof-top. They had sneaked into the building by one of the service entrances at the rear, and then taken a freight elevator to the 80th floor.

‘Let’s go, then,’ Vansittart walked on ahead, beckoning Forbis after him. Together they climbed up to the final doorway, and stepped out into the bright sunlight.

‘Doctor…!’ Forbis exclaimed happily. He felt fresh and exhilarated, his mind clear and unburdened at last. He gazed around the small flat roof, a thousand ideas tumbling past each other in his mind like the crystal fragments of a mountain stream. Somewhere below, however, a deeper current tugged at him.

Go up to the 100th floor and…

Around him lay the roof-tops of the city, and half a mile away, hidden by the haze, was the spire of the building he had tried to scale the previous day. He strolled about the roof, letting the cool air clear the sweat from his face. There were no suicide grilles around the balcony, but their absence caused him no anxiety.

Vansittart was watching him carefully, black valise in one hand. He nodded encouragingly, then gestured Forbis toward the balcony, eager to rest the valise on the ledge.

‘Feel anything?’

‘Nothing.’ Forbis laughed, a brittle chuckle. ‘It must have been one of those impractical jokes — "Now let’s see you get down." Can I look into the street?’

‘Of course,’ Vansittart agreed, bracing himself to seize Forbis if the little man attempted to jump. Beyond the balcony was a thousand-foot drop into a busy shopping thoroughfare.

Forbis clasped the near edge of the balcony in his palms and peered down at the lunch crowds below. Cars edged and shunted like coloured fleas, and people milled about aimlessly on the pavements. Nothing of any interest seemed to be happening.

Beside him, Vansittart frowned and glanced at his watch, wondering whether something had misfired. ‘It’s 12.30,’ he said. ‘We’ll give up—’ He broke off as footsteps creaked on the stairway below. He swung around and watched the doorway, gesturing to Forbis to keep quiet.

As he turned his back the small man suddenly reached up and cut him sharply across the neck with the edge of his right hand, stunning him momentarily. When Vansittart staggered back he expertly chopped him on both sides of the throat, then sat him down and kicked him senseless with his knees.

Working swiftly, he ignored the broad shadow which reached across the roof to him from the doorway. He carefully fastened Vansittart’s three jacket buttons, and then levered him up by the lapels on to his shoulder.

Backing against the balcony, he slid him on to the ledge, straightening his legs one after the other. Vansittart stirred helplessly, head lolling from side to side.

And… and…

Behind Forbis the shadow drew nearer, reaching up the side of the balcony, a broad neckless head between heavy shoulders.

Cutting off his pumping breath, Forbis reached out with both hands and pushed.

Ten seconds later, as horns sounded up dimly from the street below, he turned around.

‘Good boy, Forbis.’

The big man’s voice was flat but relaxed. Ten feet from Forbis, he watched him amiably. His face was plump and sallow, a callous mouth half-hidden by a brush moustache. He wore a bulky black overcoat, and one hand rested confidently in a deep pocket.

‘Fowler!’ Involuntarily, Forbis tried to move forward, for a moment attempting to reassemble his perspectives, but his feet had locked into the white surface of the roof.

Three hundred feet above, an airliner roared over. In a lucid interval provided by the noise, Forbis recognized Fowler, Vansittart’s rival for the psychology professorship, remembered the long sessions of hypnosis after Fowler had picked him up in a bar three months earlier, offering to cure his chronic depression before it slid into alcoholism.

With a grasp, he remembered too the rest of the buried command.

So Vansittart had been the real target, not himself! Go up to the 100th floor and… His first attempt at Vansittart had been a month earlier, when Fowler had left him on the roof and then pretended to be the janitor, but Vansittart had brought two others with him. The mysterious hidden command had been the bait to lure Vansittart to the roof again. Cunningly, Fowler had known that sooner or later Vansittart would yield to the temptation.

‘And…’ he said aloud.

Looking for Vansittart, in the absurd hope that he might have survived the thousand-foot fall, he started for the balcony, then tried to hold himself back as the current caught him.

‘And—?’ Fowler repeated pleasantly. His eyes, two festering points of light, made Forbis sway. ‘There’s still some more to come, isn’t there, Forbis? You’re beginning to remember it now.’

Mind draining, Forbis turned to the balcony, dry mouth sucking at the air.

‘And—?’ Fowler snapped, his voice harder.

…And… and…

Numbly, Forbis jumped up on to the balcony, and poised on the narrow ledge like a diver, the streets swaying before his eyes. Below, the horns were silent again and the traffic had resumed its flow, a knot of vehicles drawn up in the centre of a small crowd by the edge of the pavement. For a few moments he managed to resist, and then the current caught him, toppling him like a drifting spar.

Fowler stepped quietly through the doorway. Ten seconds later, the horns sounded again.

The Subliminal Man

‘The signs, Doctor! Have you seen the signs?’

Frowning with annoyance, Dr Franklin quickened his pace and hurried down the hospital steps towards the line of parked cars. Over his shoulder he caught a glimpse of a young man in ragged sandals and paint-stained jeans waving to him from the far side of the drive.

‘Dr Franklin! The signs!’

Head down, Franklin swerved around an elderly couple approaching the out-patients department. His car was over a hundred yards away. Too tired to start running himself, he waited for the young man to catch him up.