A Treasury of Doctor Stories Read online

  “Don’t thank me too early,” Sadao said coldly. He saw the flicker of terror again in the boy’s eyes—terror as unmistakable as an animal’s. The scars on his neck were crimson for a moment. Those scars! What were they? Sadao did not ask.

  In the afternoon the second thing happened. Hana, working hard on unaccustomed labor, saw a messenger come to the door in official uniform. Her hands went weak and she could not draw her breath. The servants must have told already. She ran to Sadao, gasping, unable to utter a word. But by then the messenger had simply followed her through the garden and there he stood. She pointed at him helplessly.

  Sadao looked up from his book. He was in his office, the outer partition of which was thrown open to the garden for the southern sunshine.

  “What is it?” he asked the messenger, and then he rose, seeing the man’s uniform.

  “You are to come to the palace,” the man said, “the old General is in pain again.”

  “Oh,” Hana breathed, “is that all?”

  “All!” the messenger exclaimed. “Is it not enough?”

  “Indeed it is,” she replied: “I am very sorry.”

  When Sadao came to say good-by she was in the kitchen, but doing nothing. The children were asleep and she sat merely resting for a moment, more exhausted from her fright than from work.

  “I thought they had come to arrest you,” she said.

  He gazed down into her anxious eyes. “I must get rid of this man for your sake,” he said in distress. “Somehow I must get rid of him.”

  “Of course,” the General said weakly, “I understand fully. But that is because I once took a degree in Princeton. So few Japanese have.”

  “I care nothing for the man, Excellency,” Sadao said, “but having operated on him with such success . ..”

  “Yes, yes,” the General said. “It only makes me feel you more indispensable to me. Evidently you can save anyone—you are so skilled. You say you think I can stand one more attack as I have had today?”

  “Not more than one,” Sadao said.

  “Then certainly I can allow nothing to happen to you,” the General said with anxiety. His long, pale, Japanese face became expressionless, which meant that he was in deep thought. “You cannot be arrested,” the General said, closing his eyes. “Suppose you were condemned to death and the next day I had to have my operation?”

  “There are other surgeons, Excellency,” Sadao suggested.

  “None I trust,” the General replied. “The best ones have been trained by Germans and would consider the operation successful even if I died. I do not care for their point of view.” He sighed. “It seems a pity that we cannot better combine the German ruthlessness with the American sentimentality. Then you could turn your prisoner over to execution and yet I could be sure you would not murder me while I was unconscious.” The General laughed. He had an unusual sense of humor. “As a Japanese, could you not combine these two foreign elements?” he asked.

  Sadao smiled. “I am not quite sure,” he said, “but for your sake I would be willing to try, Excellency.”

  The General shook his head. “I had rather not be the test case,” he said. He felt suddenly weak and overwhelmed with the cares of his life as an official in times such as these when repeated victory brought great responsibilities all over the south Pacific. “It is very unfortunate that this man should have washed up on your doorstep,” he said irritably.

  “I feel it so myself,” Sadao said gently.

  “It would be best if he could be quietly killed,” the General said. “Not by you, but by someone who does not know him. I have my own private assassins. Suppose I send two of them to your house tonight—or better, any night. You need know nothing about it. It is now warm—what would be more natural than that you should leave the outer partition of the white man’s room open to the garden while he sleeps?”

  “Certainly it would be very natural,” Sadao agreed. “In fact, it is so left every night.”

  “Good,” the General said, yawning. “They are very capable assassins—they make no noise and they know the trick of inward bleeding. If you like I can even have them remove the body.”

  Sadao considered. “That perhaps would be best, Excellency,” he agreed, thinking of Hana.

  He left the General’s presence then and went home, thinking over the plan. In this way the whole thing would be taken out of his hands. He would tell Hana nothing, since she would be timid at the idea of assassins in the house, and yet certainly such persons were essential in an absolute state such as Japan was. How else could rulers deal with those who opposed them?

  He refused to allow anything but reason to be the atmosphere of his mind as he went into the room where the American was in bed. But as he opened the door, to his surprise he found the young man out of bed, and preparing to go into the garden.

  “What is this!” he exclaimed. “Who gave you permission to leave your room?”

  “I’m not used to waiting for permission,” Tom said gaily. “Gosh, I feel pretty good again! But will the muscles on this side always feel stiff?”

  “Is it so?” Sadao inquired, surprised. He forgot all else. “Now I thought I had provided against that,” he murmured. He lifted the edge of the man’s shirt and gazed at the healing scar. “Massage may do it,” he said, “if exercise does not.”

  “It won’t bother me much,” the young man said. His young face was gaunt under the stubby blond beard. “Say, Doctor, I’ve got something I want to say to you. If I hadn’t met a Jap like you—well, I wouldn’t be alive today. I know that.”

  Sadao bowed but he could not speak.

  “Sure, I know that,” Tom went on warmly. His big thin hands, gripping a chair, were white at the knuckles. “I guess if all the Japs were like you there wouldn’t have been a war.”

  “Perhaps,” Sadao said with difficulty. “And now I think you had better go back to bed.”

  He helped the boy back into bed and then bowed. “Good night,” he said.

  Sadao slept badly that night. Time and time again he woke, thinking he heard the rustling of footsteps, the sound of a twig broken or a stone displaced in the garden—a noise such as men might make who carried a burden.

  The next morning he made the excuse to go first into the guest room. If the American were gone he then could simply tell Hana that so the General had directed. But when he opened the door he saw at once that it was not last night. There on the pillow was the shaggy blond head. He could hear the peaceful breathing of sleep and he closed the door again quietly.

  “He is asleep,” he told Hana. “He is almost well to sleep like that.”

  “What shall we do with him?” Hana whispered her old refrain.

  Sadao shook his head. “I must decide in a day or two,” he promised.

  But certainly, he thought, the second night must be the night. There rose a wind that night, and he listened to the sounds of bending boughs and whistling partitions.

  Hana woke too. “Ought we not to go and close the sick man’s partition?” she asked.

  “No,” Sadao said. “He is able now to do it for himself.”

  But the next morning the American was still there.

  Then the third .night of course must be the night. The wind changed to quiet rain and the garden was full of the sound of dripping eaves and running springs. Sadao slept a little better, but he woke at the sound of a crash and leaped to his feet.”

  “What was that?” Hana cried. The baby woke at her voice and began to wail. “I must go and see.”

  But he held her and would not let her move.

  “Sadao,” she cried, “what is the matter with you?”

  “Don’t go,” he muttered, “don’t go!”

  His terror infected her and she stood breathless, waiting. There was only silence. Together they crept back into the bed, the baby between them.

  Yet when he opened the door of the guest room in the morning there was the young man. He was very gay and had already washed and was
now on his feet. He had asked for a razor yesterday and had shaved himself, and today there was a faint color in his cheeks.

  “I am well,” he said joyously.

  Sadao drew his kimono round his weary body. He could not, he decided suddenly, go through another night. It was not that he cared for this young man’s life. No, simply it was not worth the strain.

  “You are well,” Sadao agreed. He lowered his voice. “You are so well that I think if I put my boat on the shore tonight, with food and extra clothing in it, you might be able to row to that little island not far from the coast. It is so near the coast that it has not been worth fortifying. Nobody lives on it because in storm it is submerged. But this is not the season of storm. You could live there until you saw a Korean fishing boat pass by. They pass quite near the island because the water is many fathoms deep there.”

  The young man stared at him, slowly comprehending. “Do I have to?” he asked.

  “I think so,” Sadao said gently. “You understand—it is not hidden that you are here.”

  The young man nodded in perfect comprehension. “Okay,” he said simply.

  Sadao did not see him again until evening. As soon as it was dark he had dragged the stout boat down to the shore and in it he put food and bottled water that he had bought secretly during the day, as well as two quilts he had bought at a pawnshop. The boat he tied to a post in the water, for the tide was high. There was no moon and he worked without a flashlight.

  When he came to the house he entered as though he were just back from his work, and so Hana knew nothing. “Yumi was here today,” she said as she served his supper. Though she was so modern, still she did not eat with him. “Yumi cried over the baby,” she went on with a sigh. “She misses him so.”

  “The servants will come back as soon as the foreigner is gone,” Sadao said.

  He went into the guest room that night before he went to bed and himself checked carefully the American’s temperature, the state of the wound, and his heart and pulse. The pulse was irregular, but that was perhaps because of excitement. The young man’s pale lips were pressed together and his eyes burned. Only the scars on his neck were red.

  “I realize you are saving my life again,” he told Sadao.

  “Not at all,” Sadao said. “It is only inconvenient to have you here any longer.”

  He had hesitated a good deal about giving the man a flashlight. But he had decided to give it to him after all. It was a small one, his own, which he used at night when he was called.

  “If your food runs out before you catch a boat,” he said, “signal me two flashes at the same instant the sun drops over the horizon. Do not signal in darkness, for it will be seen. If you are all right but still there, signal me once. You will find fish easy to catch but you must eat them raw. A fire would be seen.”

  “Okay,” the young man breathed.

  He was dressed now in the Japanese clothes which Sadao had given him, and at the last moment Sadao wrapped a black cloth about his blond head.

  “Now,” Sado said.

  The young American without a word shook Sadao’s hand warmly and then walked quite well across the floor and down the step into the darkness of the garden. Once—twice—Sadao saw his light flash to find his way. But that would not be suspected. He waited until from the shore there was one more flash. Then he closed the partition. That night he slept.

  “You say the man escaped?” the General asked faintly. He had been operated upon a week before, an emergency operation to which Sadao had been called in the night. For twelve hours Sadao had not been sure the General would live. The gall bladder was much involved. Then the old man had begun to breathe deeply again and to demand food. Sadao had not been able to ask about the assassins. So far as he knew they had never come. The servants had returned and Yumi had cleaned the guest room thoroughly and had burned sulphur in it to get the white man’s smell out of it. Nobody said anything. Only the gardener was cross because he had got behind with his chrysanthemums.

  But after a week Sadao felt the General was well enough to be spoken to about the prisoner.

  “Yes, Excellency, he escaped,” Sadao now said. He coughed, signifying that he had not said all he might have said but was unwilling to disturb the General further. But the old man opened his eyes suddenly.

  “That prisoner,” he said with some energy, “did I not promise you I would kill him for you?”

  “You did, Excellency,” Sadao said.

  “Well, well!” the old man said in a tone of amazement, “so I did! But you see, I was suffering a good deal. The truth is, I thought of nothing but myself. In short, I forgot my promise to you.”

  “I wondered, Your Excellency,” Sadao murmured.

  “It was certainly very careless of me,” the General said. “But you understand it was not lack of patriotism or dereliction of duty.” He looked anxiously at his doctor. “If the matter should come out you would understand that, wouldn’t you?”

  “Certainly, Your Excellency,” Sadao said. He suddenly comprehended that the General was in the palm of his hand and that as a consequence he himself was perfectly safe. “I can swear to your loyalty, Excellency,” he said to the old General, “and to your zeal against the enemy.”

  “You are a good man,” the General murmured, and closed his eyes. “You will be rewarded.”

  But Sadao, searching the spot of black in the twilighted sea that night, had his reward. There was no speck of light in the dusk. No one was on the island. His prisoner was gone—safe, doubtless, for he had warned him to wait only for a Korean fishing boat.

  He stood for a moment on the veranda, gazing out to the sea from whence the young man had come that other night. And into his mind, although without reason, there came other white faces he had known—the professor at whose house he had met Hana, a dull man, and his wife had been a silly, talkative woman, in spite of her wish to be kind. He remembered his old teacher of anatomy, who had been so insistent on mercy with the knife, and then he remembered the face of his fat and slatternly landlady. He had had great difficulty in finding a place to live in America because he was a Japanese. The Americans were full of prejudice and it had been bitter to live in it, knowing himself their superior. How he had despised the ignorant and dirty old woman who had at last consented to house him in her miserable home! He had once tried to be grateful to her because she had in his last year nursed him through influenza, but it was difficult, for she was no less repulsive to him in her kindness. But then, white people were repulsive of course. It was a relief to be openly at war with them at last. Now he remembered the youthful, haggard face of his prisoner—white and repulsive.

  “Strange,” he thought, “I wonder why I could not kill him?”

  Lord Mountdrago

  W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

  DR. AUDLIN looked at the clock on his desk. It was twenty minutes to six. He was surprised that his patient was late, for Lord Mountdrago prided himself on his punctuality; he had a sententious way of expressing himself which gave the air of an epigram to a commonplace remark, and he was in the habit of saying that punctuality is a compliment you pay to the intelligent and a rebuke you administer to the stupid. Lord Mountdrago’s appointment was for five-thirty.

  There was in Dr. Audlin’s appearance nothing to attract attention. He was tall and spare, with narrow shoulders and something of a stoop; his hair was grey and thin; his long, sallow face deeply lined. He was not more than fifty, but he looked older. His eyes, pale blue and rather large, were weary. When you had been with him for a while you noticed that they moved very little; they remained fixed on your face, but so empty of expression were they that it was no discomfort. They seldom lit up. They gave no clue to his thoughts nor changed with the words he spoke. If you were of an observant turn it might have struck you that he blinked much less often than most of us. His hands were on the large side, with long, tapering fingers; they were soft but firm, cool but not clammy. You could never have said what Dr. Audlin wore unless yo
u had made a point of looking. His clothes were dark. His tie was black. His dress made his sallow lined face paler and his pale eyes more wan. He gave you the impression of a very sick man.

  Dr. Audlin was a psychoanalyst. He had adopted the profession by accident and practised it with misgiving. When the war broke out he had not been long qualified and was getting experience at various hospitals; he offered his services to the authorities, and after a time was sent out to France. It was then that he discovered his singular gift. He could allay certain pains by the touch of his cool, firm hands, and by talking to them often induce sleep in men who were suffering from sleeplessness. He spoke slowly. His voice had no particular colour, and its tone did not alter with the words he uttered, but it was musical, soft and lulling. He told the men that they must rest, that they mustn’t worry, that they must sleep; and rest stole into their jaded bones, tranquillity pushed their anxieties away, like a man finding a place for himself on a crowded bench, and slumber fell on their tired eyelids like the light rain of spring upon the fresh-turned earth. Dr. Audlin found that by speaking to men with that low, monotonous voice of his, by looking at them with his pale, quiet eyes, by stroking their weary foreheads with his long firm hands, he could soothe their perturbations, resolve the conflicts that distracted them and banish the phobias that made their lives a torment. Sometimes he effected cures that seemed miraculous. He restored speech to a man who, after being buried under the earth by a bursting shell, had been struck dumb, and he gave back the use of his limbs to another who had been paralyzed after a crash in a plane. He could not understand his powers; he was of a sceptical turn, and though they say that in circumstances of this kind the first thing is to believe in yourself, he never quite succeeded in doing that; and it was only the outcome of his activities, patent to the most incredulous observer, that obliged him to admit that he had some faculty, coming from he knew not where, obscure and uncertain, that enabled him to do things for which he could offer no explanation. When the war was over he went to Vienna and studied there, and afterwards to Zurich; and then settled down in London to practise the art he had so strongly acquired. He had been practising now for fifteen years, and had attained, in the specialty he followed, a distinquished reputation. People told one another of the amazing things he had done, and though his fees were high, he had as many patients as he had time to see. Dr. Audlin knew that he had achieved some very extraordinary results; he had saved men from suicide, others from the lunatic asylum, he had assuaged griefs that embittered useful lives, he had turned unhappy marriages into happy ones, he had eradicated abnormal instincts and thus delivered not a few from a hateful bondage, he had given health to the sick in spirit; he had done all this, and yet at the back of his mind remained the suspicion that he was little more than a quack.