THE CLEANING MACHINE
Dr. Edward Parker reached across his desk and flipped the power switch on his tape recorder to the "on" position.
"Listen if you like, Burke," he said. "But remember: She has classic paranoid symptoms; I wouldn't put much faith in anything she says."
Detective Ronald Burke, an old acquaintance on the city police force, sat across from the doctor.
"She's all we've got," he replied with ill-concealed exasperation. "Over a hundred people disappear from an apartment house and the only person who might be able to tell us anything is a nut."
Parker glanced at the recorder and noticed the glowing warm-up light. He pressed the button that started the tape.
"Listen."
* * * * *
…and I guess I'm the one who's responsible for it but it was really the people who lived there in my apartment who drove me to it—they were jealous of me.
The children were the worst. Every day as I'd walk to the store they'd spit at me behind my back and call me names. They even recruited other little brats from all over town and would wait for me on corners and doorsteps. They called me terrible names and said that I carried awful diseases. Their parents put them up to it, I know it! All those people in my apartment building laughed at me. They thought they could hide it but I heard it. They hated me because they were jealous of my poetry. They knew I was famous and they couldn't stand it.
Why, just the other night almost I caught three of them rummaging through my desk. They thought I was asleep and so they sneaked in and tried to steal some of my latest works, figuring they could palm them off as their own. But I was awake. I could hear them laughing at me as they searched. I grabbed the butcher knife that I always keep under my pillow and ran out into the study. I must have made some noise when I got out of bed because they ran out into the hall and closed the door just before I got there. I heard one of them on the other side say, "Boy, you sure can't fool that old lady!”
They were fiends, all of them! But the very worst was that John Hendricks fellow next door who was trying to kill me with an ultra-frequency sonicator. He used to turn it on me and try to boil my brains while I was writing. But I was too smart for him. I kept an ice pack on my head at all hours of the day. But even that didn't keep me from getting those awful headaches that plague me constantly. He was to blame.
But the thing I want to tell you about is the machine in the cellar. I found it when I went downstairs to the boiler room to see who was calling me filthy names through the ventilator system. I met the janitor on my way down and told him about it. He just laughed and said that there hadn't been anyone down in the boiler room for two years, not since we started getting our heat piped in from the building next door. But I knew someone was down there—hadn't I heard those voices through the vent? I simply turned and went my way.
Everything in the cellar was covered with at least half an inch of dust—everything, that is, except the machine. I didn't know it was a machine at that time because it hadn't done anything yet. It didn't have any lights or dials and it didn't make any noise. Just a metal box with sides that ran at all sorts of odd angles, some of which didn’t seem to meet properly.
It just sat there being clean.
I also noticed that the floor around it was immaculately clean for about five foot in all directions. Everywhere else was filth. It looked so strange, being clean. I ran and got George, the janitor.
He was angry at having to go downstairs but I kept pestering him until he did. He was mighty surprised.
"What is that thing?" he said, walking toward the machine.
Then he was gone! One moment he had been there, and then he was gone. No blinding flash or puff of smoke...just gone! And it happened just as he crossed into that circle of clean floor around the machine.
I immediately knew who was responsible: John Hendricks! So I went right upstairs and brought him down. I didn't bother to tell him what the machine had done to George since I was sure he knew all about it. But he surprised me by walking right into the circle and disappearing, just like George.
Well, at least I wouldn't be bothered by that ultra-frequency sonicator of his anymore. It was a good thing I had been too careful to go anywhere near that thing.
I began to get an idea about that machine—it was a cleaning machine! That's why the floor around it was so clean. Any dust or anything that came within the circle was either stored away somewhere or destroyed.
A thought struck me: Why not "clean out" all of my jealous neighbors this way? It was a wonderful idea!
I started with the children.
I went outside and, as usual, they started in with their name-calling. (They always made sure to do it very softly but I could read their lips.) About twenty of them were playing in the street. I called them together and told them I was forming a club in the cellar and they all followed me down in a group. I pointed to the machine and told them that there was a gallon of chocolate ice cream behind it and that the first one to reach it could have it all. Their greedy little faces lighted up and they scrambled away in a mob.
Three seconds later I was alone in the cellar.
I then went around to all the other apartments in the building and told all those hateful people that their sweet little darlings were playing in the old boiler room and that I thought it was dangerous. I waited for one to go downstairs before I went to the next door. Then I met the husbands as they came home from work and told them the same thing. And if anyone came looking for someone, I sent him down to the cellar. It was all so simple: In searching the cellar they had to cross into the circle sooner or later.
That night I was alone in the building. It was wonderful—no laughing, no name-calling, and no one sneaking into my study. Wonderful!
A policeman came the next day. He knocked on my door and looked very surprised when I opened it. He said he was investigating a number of missing-persons reports. I told him that everyone was down in the cellar. He gave me a strange look but went to check. I followed him.
The machine was gone! Nothing was left but the circle of clean floor. I told the officer all about it, about what horrible people they were and how they deserved to disappear. He just smiled and brought me down to the station where I had to tell my story again. Then they sent me here to see you.
They're still looking for my neighbors, aren't they? Won't listen when I tell them that they'll never find them. They don't believe there ever was a machine. But they can't find my neighbors, can they? Well, it serves them right! I told them I'm the one responsible for "cleaning out" my apartment building but they don't believe me. Serves them all right!
* * * * *
"See what I mean?" said Dr. Parker with the slightest trace of a smile as he turned the recorder off. "She's no help at all."
"Yeah, I know," Burke sighed. "As loony as they come. But how can you explain that circle of clean floor in the boiler room with all those footprints around it?"
"Well, I can't be sure, but the 'infernal machine' is not uncommon in the paranoid's delusional system. You found no trace of this 'ultra-frequency sonicator' in the Hendricks apartment, I trust?"
Burke shook his head. "No. From what we can gather, Hendricks knew nothing about electronics. He was a short-order cook in a greasy spoon downtown."
"I figured as much. She probably found everybody gone and went looking for them. She went down to the boiler room as a last resort and, finding it deserted, concluded that everybody had been 'cleaned out' of the building. She was glad but wanted to give herself the credit. She saw the circle of clean floor—probably left there by a round table top that had been recently moved—and started fabricating. By now she believes every word of her fantastic story. We'll never really know what happened until we find those missing tenants."
"I guess not," Burke said as he rose to go, "but I'd still like to know why we can find over a hundred sets of footprints approaching the circle but none leaving it."
Dr. Parker didn't have an answer for that one.