It started off like an old story. It happens every day or so in New York City. A man or woman, tired of living, becomes an amnesia victim and loses himself or herself in the crowd. A few stay lost. A few persist in not remembering as long as they can. Many are really amnesiacs.

I didn't know my name, or whether I had one. I didn't know how old I was, though I guessed about forty. I didn't remember the clothes I wore, or my face in the mirror. I had no memory of yesterday or any day, and even the events of just an hour ago slipped away from me. I knew that something was radically wrong.

How wrong it was and how long the condition had lasted I had no way of surmising. I just know I found myself in a dark room, being interrogated like a criminal, by a group of men in uniform. Later I learned that the room was somewhere on Centre Street, in downtown Manhattan. The policemen and men in plainclothes I had never seen before. I never did know their names.

A grizzled man with three yellow stripes on his sleeve struck me with the back of his hand, then the front.

"You deny that your name is Dean Hale? You deny that you killed Marian Slade, cut her body to pieces and pushed them into the sewer?"

"I deny nothing," I said dully, as if I were very tired. "I never heard of Marian Slade. I never heard of Dean Hale. I don't know who I am, or where I came from, or whether I ever cut anybody to pieces or not."

There was a concerted gasp from all present.

"Well, after all these hours, it develops you do have a tongue, and can use it. I thought we'd never hammer anything out of you."

So, for several hours, they had been working on me like this, "hammering" me, as the sergeant had just said—and though I now felt that I had been much abused, I didn't remember so much as one of the blows that had been dealt me. I recite this to indicate the utter depths of my "lostness." A man, even a victim of amnesia, should remember when he has been beaten half to death.

"I don't know anything about myself," I said.

"Now don't go a-trying that amnesia gag on us," said one of the men in plainclothes.

Just then another party entered the darkroom, which was dark everywhere but where I sat under blazing electrics.

"He's not Dean Hale, has no record here at all," said the newcomer. "His prints don't match with Hale's."

All I knew now was that I wasn't somebody named Dean Hale.

"He has to be somebody," said a plainclothes man, "Dean Hale or not—and when we find out who, the fact will also remain that he killed Marian Slade."

How unreal the whole thing was to me. I realized no danger in myself in these accusations. I forgot blows after they had been struck. I think I even forgot to feel the pain of them. Finally my inquisitors gave it up.

"We'll make a check in Missing Persons," someone said.

They didn't find me there, either, though they held me three days while they checked. I forgot the three days, each of them, until long after—until I had the pictures clearly enough in mind that I could set down the facts as I am now doing. The police finally decided I wasn't a murderer, but that I was "missing," actually and mentally, an amnesia victim who could not be aroused. That's where Jan Rober, one of the plainclothes men came in.

"A touch of shock treatment might help you," he told me, visiting me alone and somewhat mysteriously in my cell. "There is a laboratory near Westchester I'm interested in. Modern equipment, far in advance of science. Nobody knows about it. Sometimes I take missing persons there, to help them remember. The surgeons, doctors, scientists there, are my friends."

"They pay you to find people who are lost, for whom no one is likely to inquire, and take them there?" I asked, wondering from what deep well of verbal knowledge I dredged the words, and the fear that inspired them. Jan Rober's eyes narrowed.

"You're accusing me of something?" he said softly.

"I don't know," I said, "but it just occurred to me that medical and surgical science is often hampered because it can't work with human beings, though how this occurs to me I don't know. Assembling missing persons, orphans, people in whom nobody has the slightest interest, whose eternal disappearance would cause no questioning, would be a boon to such scientists, and a source of revenue to whoever provided them with human guinea pigs."

"For an amnesiac," he said, "your thinking is to the point."

"But I'd just as soon be dead and buried as to know nothing of myself," I went on. "I find I don't care overly much. But do you believe that I may somehow be shocked out of amnesia? Don't forget, a lot of heavy hands have been laid on me in the last few days—if what you've just told me is true—and the hands haven't shocked me into remembering."

"There are shocks, and shocks," he said. "Ever hear of the atom bomb? Know anything about electrons? Ever hear of a cyclotron? Part of the work of my friends is in the field of nuclear fission, which means less to me than it does to you; though just between us, if you aren't a surgeon—from your fingers—I never saw one. Besides, the gent who cut up Marian Slade knew his surgery."

That gave me a little chill. Was I a surgeon? Had I slain some woman named Marian Slade? Was I innately capable of cutting a human body to bits and pushing the pieces into the sewer? I didn't know!

"If I did anything like that, Rober," I said, "then if your friends cut me into little pieces, I have merely paid off for Marian Slade."

"And escaped the electric chair!" said Rober drily. "Also, your memory is better than it was: you remember my name, and I told it to you once, when I came in. Well, you're going to be released in my custody in an hour or so. If you care to trust me, we'll visit The Lab."

The Lab! That's all it was ever called, if memory serves me, and memory does serve me now. The Lab! Nobody, once having experienced a little segment of it, could possibly ever again have forgotten it.

It wasn't much to look at, from the outside; just a squatty, large, square building of gray granite, in the midst of a clearing in Westchester's wooded area. It was wired like a prison, and there were signs warning people away. There were also people standing guard. The Lab was either a prison or a sanitarium—but not once while I was there did I see anybody in the place who could conceivably have been a convict or a patient. I saw only the doctors, the surgeons, if such they were, the scientists, and Marian Slade!

Yes, Marian Slade was the name of the nurse, and she was about the prettiest young woman—too young for me, in fact—I had ever seen. When I was introduced to her, I said:

"Oh, yes, Dean Hale murdered you, cut you into small pieces, and thrust you into a sewer."

Her face was impassive, her eyes did not flicker or show alarm. She only said, quite calmly,

"Yes, Mr. Hale, I remember every detail. Now, be good enough to follow me."

I was being treated like a maniac who might become violent. This nurse, with the name of a murdered woman, was coddling me, treating me gently, so I wouldn't erupt! Jan Rober left me with her and was gone, and in my imagination I could hear the rustling of bills of large denomination. I never expected to get out alive. I didn't much care.

Marian Slade took me to a room, told me what to do with the roomy garments she gave me. I found myself, shortly, in a kind of nightshirt, standing on the threshold of a room of gadgets. Yes, I must be a doctor, or some sort of scientist, for I recognized many of the gadgets there. This room was an up-to-date surgery. It had everything.

It had everything including the pygmy cyclotron, set in the mathematical center of the room. Marian Slade didn't introduce the men in white to me. I was never to know their names. She told them I was Dean Hale though Jan Rober must have told her I wasn't. She needed a handle by which to identify me, and the police had called me that for days.

I wondered idly how Jan Rober would explain my "escape" to his colleagues, unless all of them were in league with The Lab to produce "willful missin's."

In the room were great oxygen tanks, trays behind glass filled with surgical instruments, operating tables, X-Ray machines, a fluoroscope, pale screens against a far wall—screens against which, well, just what sort of strange pictures might not be shown?

My eyes kept returning to the cyclotron. It fascinated me. If it worked it was a masterly thing. Cyclotrons took up a building in themselves. How did I know that? The question flashed through my mind, and the answer, if any had been hovering on the verge of my consciousness, vanished into the general blur of all my yesterdays, my passing hours.

Near the cyclotron, if that's what it was, were twelve chairs, above which were metal globes, or hoods, like hair dryers, the chairs set in a kind of semi-circle around three sides of the cyclotron. Each chair was just the right size to hold a human body.

I glanced past the chairs—nobody had yet asked me to sit down, and Marian Slade had disappeared somewhere behind me—and spotted the electric panel for the first time. But another minute passed, a minute during which the profound scrutiny of the "scientists" became deeper, more profound, before I connected the electric panel with the chairs.

Those seats arranged around the cyclotron were electric chairs! Each chair would be filled with a human being, and all could be electrocuted at one time, and if all were "vanishers," who would care?

"Gentlemen," I said, "you might ask me to be seated! Just which of the electric chairs has been assigned to me?"

There was a stir among the twelve men who had ranged themselves around the great room to await my coming. One of them, the eldest, now that I had discovered they were not dummies, but living men, bowed to me gravely and said:

"Welcome to the Lab, Mr. Hale, if that is your name. Allow me to introduce you to my colleagues. You will understand, later on, our reasons for failing to furnish correct names. I am Doctor A."

Then he gave me the initials of the others, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K and L. I never knew them by anything else. They varied in appearance as men usually do, and their ages ran from perhaps twenty-five to seventy-five, Doctor A being obviously the eldest and the dean of the Lab.

Even the fact that all were men in white did not serve to hide their differences. Their eyes were unusual, all of them. I think they held a coldness, a searching hard coldness, in common. They were men of science, by their appearance, and they were ruled by science.

Each would have given his life for science, if by so doing he did not slow the progress of science instead of advancing it. That is, he would have given his life if he had not realized that his death would be a great loss to his chosen field. By the same token, not one of them regarded the life of any individual as being important enough to fuss much about. Understand this is only my personal opinion, the personal opinion of a man lost in the utter depths of amnesia.

Those twelve men, however, struck me forcibly, short men, thin, fat, tall, so that the urge was on me to make sketches of them. Just why, I did not know, never having made a sketch of anyone I could remember, never before having desired to sketch any one. Perhaps I should have told some of them of this urge. Maybe it would have helped in backtracking, identifying me. But perhaps they did not wish me to be further identified.

"You have lost your memory," said Doctor A. "You have been brought here to recall your yesterdays. There is some danger to you in this shock treatment though we take every precaution known to science. Do you wish to know yourself strongly enough to take the risk, and to absolve us therefrom? To take your place in a chair by your own free will?"

"If I do not, Doctor A," I said, "isn't it true that I will placed in the selected chair forcibly?"

"Mr. Hale," said Doctor A, "you are at liberty to leave. Nurse Slade will escort you to the door of the Lab, and you may go where you wish. You may even return to your home and report everything that has happened to you here."

Dr. A's words aroused my resentment. Here I was, lost, and he talked of home!

"My home!" I said, bitterly. "And just where is my home? Look, Doc, the ordinary ways of restoring the amnesiac have been tried on me without success. This seems my only out. I've been doubtful, because there have been so many strange things connected with it. I was accused, for example, of murdering Marian Slade, cutting her to pieces and thrusting the pieces into a sewer. Yet when I arrive at The Lab I am met by none other than Nurse Marian Slade. You must admit that this could be disturbing."

The doctors let out a concerted sigh. I moved forward as Doctor A bent slightly, his eyes indicating the chairs. As I moved he came to meet and escort me, while the other eleven "scientists" closed in, with something akin to threat in their advance. If a man were not mentally ill when he came to these people, he soon might well be ill. Naturally, I doubted my own sanity. Maybe none of this actually existed save in my addled, lost brain.

I climbed into the central chair. To my amazement the eleven scientists took the other chairs, while Doctor A stood between me and the cyclotron to conduct the experiment, or whatever was to be conducted. The other doctors began to strap themselves into their chairs, as I was being strapped into mine by Doctor A. I realized that, through the use of the atom-smasher, the cyclotron, eleven scientists were somehow going to share whatever was due to happen to me.

Just before Doctor A lowered and adjusted the metal hood over my head, I saw eleven pairs of hands raise up, as women lift their hands to adjust their hats, and pull down eleven hoods to hide their varied faces.

Doctor A fumbled with me, attaching electrodes exactly as if I were going to be electrocuted. Whether the other men there were so wired I did not know, but why else would they have stepped under the hoods, sat in the eleven chairs?

The soft voice of Doctor A came to me as from a great distance, with eerie tones in it caused by the natural amplifier over my head.

"Are you ready, gentlemen?"

There was a chorus of "ayes" from the eleven.

"Mr. Hale?" continued the soft voice.

"Yes, Doctor, I am as ready as I ever expect to be."