A Treasury of Doctor Stories Read online

  “Should I be putting it too strongly if I said you had ruined his career?” asked Dr. Audlin.

  “I don’t suppose you would.”

  “That is a very serious injury you’ve done him.”

  “He brought it on himself.”

  “Have you never felt any qualms about it?”

  “I think perhaps if I’d known that his father and mother were there I might have let him down a little more gently.”

  There was nothing further for Dr. Audlin to say, and he set about treating his patient in such a manner as he thought might avail. He sought by suggestion to make him forget his dreams when he awoke; he sought to make him sleep so deeply that he would not dream. He found Lord Mountdrago’s resistance impossible to break down. At the end of an hour he dismissed him.

  Since then he had seen Lord Mountdrago half a dozen times. He had done him no good. The frightful dreams continued very night to harass the unfortunate man, and it was clear that his general condition was growing rapidly worse. He was worn out. His irritability was uncontrollable. Lord Mountdrago was angry because he received no benefit from his treatment, and yet continued it, not only because it seemed his only hope, but because it was a relief to him to have someone with whom he could talk openly. Dr. Audlin came to the conclusion at last that there was only one way in which Lord Mountdrago could achieve deliverance, but he knew him well enough to be assured that of his own free will he would never, never take it. If Lord Mountdrago was to be saved from the breakdown that was threatening, he must be induced to take a step that must be abhorrent to his pride of birth and his self-complacency. Dr. Audlin was convinced that to delay was impossible. He was treating his patient by suggestion, and after several visits found him more susceptible to it. At length he managed to get him into a condition of somnolence. With his low, soft, monotonous voice he soothed his tortured nerves. He repeated the same words over and over again. Lord Mountdrago lay quite still, his eyes closed; his breathing Was regular, and his limbs were relaxed. Then Dr. Audlin in the same quiet tone spoke the words he had prepared.

  “You will go to Owen Griffiths and say that you are sorry that you caused him that great injury. You will say that you will do whatever lies in your power to undo the harm that you have done him.”

  The words acted on Lord Mountdrago like the blow of a whip across his face. He shook himself out of his hypnotic state and sprang to his feet. His eyes blazed with passion, and he poured forth upon Dr. Audlin a stream of angry vituperation such as even he had never heard. He swort at him. He cursed him. He used language of such obscenity that Dr. Audlin, who had heard every sort of foul word, sometimes from the lips of chaste and distinguished women, was surprised that he knew it.

  “Apologize to the filthy little Welshman? I’d rather kill myself.”

  “I believe it to be the only way in which you can regain your balance.”

  Dr. Audlin had not often seen a man presumably sane in such a condition of uncontrollable fury. Lord Mountdrago grew red in the face, and his eyes bulged out of his head. He did really foam at the mouth. Dr. Audlin watched him coolly, waiting for the storm to wear itself out, and presently he saw that Lord Mountdrago, weakened by the strain to which he had been subjected for so many weeks, was exhausted.

  “Sit down,” he said then, sharply.

  Lord Mountdrago crumpled up into a chair.

  “Christ, I feel all in. I must rest a minute and then I’ll go.”

  For five minutes perhaps they sat in complete silence. Lord Mountdrago was a gross, blustering bully, but he was also a gentleman. When he broke the silence he had recovered his self-control.

  “I’m afraid I’ve been very rude to you. I’m ashamed of the things I’ve said to you, and I can only say you’d be justified if you refused to have anything more to do with me. I hope you won’t do that. I feel that my visits to you do help me. I think you’re my only chance.”

  “You mustn’t give another thought to what you said. It was of no consequence.”

  “But there’s on thing you mustn’t ask me to do, and that is to make excuses to Griffiths.”

  “I’ve thought a great deal about your case. I don’t pretend to understand it, but I believe that your only chance of release is to do what I proposed. I have a notion that we’re none of us one self, but many, and one of the selves in you has risen up against the injury you did Griffiths and has taken on the form of Griffiths in your mind and is punishing you for what you cruelly did. If I were a priest I should tell you that it is your conscience that has adopted the shape and lineaments of this man to scourge you to repentance and persuade you to reparation.”

  “My conscience is clear. It’s not my fault if I smashed the man’s career. I crushed him like a slug in my garden. I regret nothing.”

  It was on these words that Lord Mountdrago had left him. Reading through his notes, while he waited, Dr. Audlin considered how best he could bring his patient to the state of mind that, now that his usual methods of treatment had failed, he thought alone could help him. He glanced at his clock. It was six. It was strange that Lord Mountdrago did not come. He knew he had intended to because a secretary had rung up that morning to say that he would be with him at the usual hour. He must have been detained by pressing work. This notion gave Dr. Audlin something else to think of: Lord Mountdrago was quite unfit to work and in no condition to deal with important matters of state. Dr. Audlin wondered whether it behooved him to get in touch with someone in authority, the Prime Minister or the Permanent Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and impart to him his conviction that Lord Mountdrago’s mind was so unbalanced that it was dangerous to leave affairs of moment in his hands. It was a ticklish thing to do. He might cause needless trouble and get roundly snubbed for his plans. He shrugged his shoulders.

  “After all,” he reflected, “the politicians have made such a mess of the world during the last five-and-twenty years, I don’t suppose it makes much odds if they’re mad or sane.”

  He rang the bell.

  “If Lord Mountdrago comes now, will you tell him that I have another appointment at six-fifteen and so I’m afraid I can’t see him.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  “Has the evening paper come yet?”

  “I’ll go and see.”

  In a moment the servant brought it in. A huge headline ran across the front page: Tragic Death of Foreign Minister.

  “My God!” cried Dr. Audlin.

  For once he was wrenched out of his wonted calm. He was shocked, horribly shocked, and yet he was not altogether surprised. The possibility that Lord Mountdrago might commit suicide had occurred to him several times, for that it was suicide he could not doubt. The, paper said that Lord Mountdrago had been waiting in a tube station, standing on the edge of the platform, and as the train came in was seen to fall on the rail. It was supposed that he had had a sudden attack of faintness. The paper went on to say that Lord Mountdrago had been suffering for some weeks from the effects of overwork, but had felt it impossible to absent himself while the foreign situation demanded his unremitting attention. Lord Mountdrago was another victim of the strain that modem politics placed upon those who played the more important parts in it. There was a neat little piece about the talents and industry, the patriotism and vision, of the deceased statesman, followed by various surmises upon the Prime Minister’s choice of his successor. Dr. Audlin read all this. He had not liked Lord Mountdrago. The chief emotion that his death caused in him was dissatisfaction with himself because he had been able to do nothing for him.

  Perhaps he had done wrong in not getting into touch with Lord Mountdrago’s doctor. He was discouraged, as always when failure frustrated his conscientious efforts, and repulsion seized him for the theory and practice of this empiric doctrine by which he earned his living, He was dealing with dark and mysterious forces that it was perhaps beyond the powers of the human mind to understand. He was like a man blindfold trying to feel his way to he knew not whither. Listlessly he turned
the pages of the paper. Suddenly he gave a great start, and an exclamation once more was forced from his lips. His eyes had fallen on a small paragraph near the bottom of a column. Sudden Death of an M.P., he read. Mr. Owen Griffiths, member for so-and-so, had been taken ill in Fleet Street that afternoon and when he was brought to Charing Cross Hospital life was found to be extinct. It was supposed that death was due to natural causes, but an inquest would be held. Dr. Audlin could hardly believe his eyes. Was it possible that the night before Lord Mountdrago had at last in his dream found himself possessed of the weapon, knife or gun, that he had wanted, and had killed his tormentor, and had that ghostly murder, in the same way as the blow with the bottle had given him a racking headache on the following day, taken effect a certain number of hours later on the waking man? Or was it, more mysterious and more frightful, that when Lord Mountdrago sought relief in death, the enemy he had so cruelly wronged, unappeased, escaping from his own mortality, had pursued him to some other sphere, there to torment him still? It was strange. The sensible thing was to look upon it merely as an odd coincidence. Dr. Audlin rang the bell.

  “Tell Mrs. Milton that I’m sorry I can’t see her this evening, I’m not well.”

  It was true; he shivered as though of an ague. With some kind of spiritual sense he seemed to envisage a bleak, a horrible void. The dark night of the soul engulfed him, and he felt a strange, primeval terror of he knew not what.

  Zone of Quiet

  RING W. LARDNER

  “WELL,” said the Doctor briskly, “how do you feel?”

  “Oh, I guess I’m all right,” replied the man in bed. “I’m still kind of drowsy, that’s all.”

  “You were under the anesthetic an hour and a half. It’s no wonder you aren’t wide awake yet. But you’ll be better after a good night’s rest, and I’ve left something with Miss Lyons that’ll make you sleep. I’m going along now. Miss Lyons will take good care of you.”

  “I’m off at seven O’clock,” said Miss Lyons. “I’m going to a show with my G. F. But Miss Halsey’s all right. She’s the night floor nurse. Anything you want, she’ll get it for you. What can I give him to eat, Doctor?”

  “Nothing at all; not till after I’ve been here tomorrow. He’ll be better off without anything. Just see that he’s kept quiet. Don’t let him talk, and don’t talk to him; that is, if you can help it.”

  “Help it!” said Miss Lyons. “Say, I can be old lady Sphinx herself when I want to! Sometimes I sit for hours—not alone, neither—and never say a word. Just think and think. And dream.

  “I had a G. F. in Baltimore, where I took my training; she used to call me Dummy. Not because I’m dumb like some people—you know—but because I’d sit there and not say nothing. She’d say, ‘A penny for your thoughts, Eleanor.’ That’s my first name—Eleanor.”

  “Well, I must run along. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Good-by, Doctor,” said the man in bed, as he went out.

  “Good-by, Doctor Cox,” said Miss Lyons as the door closed.

  “He seems like an awful nice fella,” said Miss Lyons. “And a good doctor, too. This is the first time I’ve been on a case with him. He gives a girl credit for having some sense. Most of these doctors treat us like they thought we were Mormons or something. Like Doctor Holland. I was on a case with him last week. He treated me like I was a Mormon or something. Finally, I told him, I said, ‘I’m not as dumb as I look.’ She died Friday night.”

  “Who?” asked the man in bed.

  “The woman; the case I was on,” said Miss Lyons.

  “And what did the doctor say when you told him you weren’t as dumb as you look?”

  “I don’t remember,” said Miss Lyons. “He said, ‘I hope not,’ or something. What could he say? Gee! It’s quarter to seven. I hadn’t no idear it was so late. I must get busy and fix you up for the night. And I’ll tell Miss Halsey to take good care of you. We’re going to see ‘What Price Glory?’ I’m going with my G. F. Her B. F. gave her the tickets and he’s going to meet us after the show and take us to supper.

  “Marian—that’s my G. F.—she’s crazy wild about him. And he’s crazy about her, to heartier tell it. But I said to her this noon—she called me up on the phone—I said to her, ‘If he’s so crazy about you, why don’t he propose? He’s got plenty of money and no strings tied to him, and as far as I can see there’s no reason why he shouldn’t marry you if he wants you as bad as you say he does.’ So she said maybe he was going to ask her tonight. I told her, ’Don’t be silly! Would he drag me along if he was going to ask you?’

  “That about him having plenty of money, though, that’s a joke. He told her he had and she believes him. I haven’t met him yet, but he looks in his picture like he’s lucky if he’s getting twenty-five dollars a week. She thinks he must be rich because he’s in Wall Street. I told her, I said, ‘That being in Wall Street don’t mean nothing. What does he do there? is the question. You know they have to have janitors in those buildings just the same like anywhere else.’ But she thinks he’s God or somebody.

  “She keeps asking me if I don’t think he’s the best looking thing I ever saw. I tell her yes, sure, but between you and I, I don’t believe anybody’d ever mistake him for Richard Barthelmess.

  “Oh, say! I saw him the other day, coming out of the Algonquin! He’s the best looking thing! Even better looking than on the screen. Roy Stewart.”

  “What about Roy Stewart?” asked the man in bed.

  “Oh, he’s the fella I was telling you about,” said Miss Lyons. “He’s my G. F.’s B. F.”

  “Maybe I’m a D. F. not to know, but would you tell me what a B. F. and G. F. are?”

  “Well, you are dumb, aren’t you!” said Miss Lyons. “A G. F., that’s a girl friend, and a B. F. is a boy friend. I thought everybody knew that.

  “I’m going out now and find Miss Halsey and tell her to be nice to you. But maybe I better not.”

  “Why not?” asked the man in bed.

  “Oh, nothing. I was just thinking of something funny that happened last time I was on a case in this hospital. It was the day the man had been operated on and he was the best looking somebody you ever saw. So when I went off duty I told Miss Halsey to be nice to him, like I was going to tell her about you. And when I came back in the morning he was dead. Isn’t that funny?”

  “Very!”

  “Well,” said Miss Lyons, “did you have a good night? You look a lot better, anyway. How’d you like Miss Halsey? Did you notice her ankles? She’s got pretty near the smallest ankles I ever saw. Cute. I remember one day Tyler—that’s one of the internes—he said if he could just see our ankles, mine and Miss Halsey’s, he wouldn’t know which was which. Of course we don’t look anything alike other ways. She’s pretty close to thirty and—well, nobody’d ever take her for Julia Hoyt. Helen.”

  “Who’s Helen?” asked the man in bed.

  “Helen Halsey. Helen; that’s her first name. She was engaged to a man in Boston. He was going to Tufts College. He was going to be a doctor. But he died. She still carries his picture with her. I tell her she’s silly to mope about a man that’s been dead four years. And besides a girl’s a fool to marry a doctor. They’ve got too many alibis.

  “When I marry somebody, he’s got to be a somebody that has regular office hours like he’s in Wall Street or somewhere. Then when he don’t come home, he’ll have to think up something better than being ‘on a case.’ I used to use that on my sister when we were living together. When I happened to be out late, I’d tell her I was on a case. She never knew the difference. Poor sis! She married a terrible oil can! But she didn’t have the looks to get a real somebody. I’m making this for her. It’s a bridge table cover for her birthday. She’ll be twenty-nine. Don’t that seem old?”

  “Maybe to you; not to me,” said the man in bed.

  “You’re about forty, aren’t you?” said Miss Lyons.

  “Just about.”

  “And how old would you
say I am?”

  “Twenty-three.”

  “I’m twenty-five,” said Miss Lyons. “Twenty-five and forty. That’s fifteen years’ difference. But I know a married couple that the husband is forty-five and she’s only twenty-four, and they get along fine.”

  “I’m married myself,” said the man in bed.

  “You would be!” said Miss Lyons. “The last four cases I’ve been on was all married men. But at that, I’d rather have any kind of a man than a woman. I hate women! I mean sick ones. They treat a nurse like a dog, especially a pretty nurse. What’s that you’re reading?”

  “ ‘Vanity Fair,’ ” replied the man in bed.

  “ ‘Vanity Fair.’ I thought that was a magazine.”

  “Well, there’s a magazine and a book. This is the book.”

  “Is it about a girl?”