The Spectacles of Mr. Cagliostro Read online

  After another tray breakfast, followed his being shown down the corridor to a washroom and given a towel; with which he was despatched back to bed again. Lying here in bed had begun to be as monotonous a procedure as living in the detention station, and he began to wish devoutly that something might happen to relieve it. His wish was answered, for something did happen. But it relieved the tedium in a most unpleasant way.

  Two young men came in finally and stood at his bedside. At first he thought they were attendants, but their faces were slightly more intelligent, and their words very soon showed him that they were young doctors.

  “I think we may as well take this fellow now, don’t you, doctor?” asked one.

  Middleton pricked up his ears. He sat half up in bed. “Is either one of you gentlemen the examining physician here?”

  The young fellow who had spoken to the other shook his head, “Nope. Only internes. Well, my man, better get up and put on your pair of State slippers. Want to get a little of your blood and spinal fluid. Won’t hurt you.”

  “My blood?” Middleton sat straight up in bed. “My spinal fluid? I’ll give you no blood nor spinal fluid. Not — not by a damn sight.”

  “Come now, Doe. Don’t be foolish and raise a row. We’re not going to hurt you. It won’t pain a bit, and it’ll all be over in a few minutes. You’ll forget all about it inside of a half-hour. Good Lord, man, don’t you want to get cured and get out of here?” But the tone of his words implied that he had little hopes of his listener getting out.

  The implication was not lost to the man in bed. He now sat up on the edge of it. “I’ll give no blood or spinal fluid till I see the examining doctor, and then I won’t have to. Take that as final.”

  The first young man motioned to Middleton. “All right, Doe. Get your slippers on and come down the hall with us.”

  Middleton looked up calmly from his position on the edge of the bed. “Now, my enthusiastic young medicos,” he said heatedly, “let me tell you something. You’ll never get a drop off any part of me until you walk over my dead body. Did you grasp that? Don’t I get an opportunity to talk to somebody in authority around here?”

  The interne looked frowningly down. “Going to — er — protest, eh, Doe?”

  “Try it and see,” retorted Middleton meaningly.

  The interne shrugged his shoulders, and with a nod to his companion they both withdrew. Middleton settled back under the sheets, convinced that he had for this time successfully averted any operations even of this minor nature on his person. But he was destined to be deceived. For when the grating of his cage next opened there were four husky attendants and the same two internes back again. He rose up from the bed as quickly as he could. He was like a cat as, standing on top of the bed, he backed off into the farthest corner of it and gritted his teeth. “Come on — try it — come on. Try it — the first man of you.”

  Up and on the bed the four attendants sprang like cats themselves. He threw out one of his fists with a mighty impact and joyfully felt it collide with the nearest jaw; another blow and the man behind hopped off the bed and spat out a tooth and a mouthful of blood. But the third and fourth closed in on him. Their muscles tightened on him like human cords, he felt his arms and his legs locked in some strange way as they had never been before, and almost before he knew it he was being carried down the hall like a piece of wood. When next he was sat upright on something, his arms still pinioned, he was in a little room fitted up all in white — with gleaming enamelware and shining surgical instruments — and he was seated on a small operating table held utterly powerless in the grip of four pairs of sturdy arms.

  Quite impotent even to struggle, denouncing them vigorously, he saw a rubber cord tightened around his forearm, and at length, fascinated, he ceased to struggle. He saw his forearm swell to the strangling rubber band and the veins in it stand out like whipcords. He saw a man — still another embryo doctor — with a glass syringe in his hand, hold it steadily above one vein and press down twice, the vein rolling away each time like an elusive snake; but at the third trial the needle went in with a sharp “plop,” the rubber band was released so quickly it flew clear across the room, and slowly, as the piston of the syringe withdrew, he saw his own red blood drawn up past mark after mark of the series of graduations. Then the instrument was withdrawn, a piece of courtplaster was stuck on his arm after the pierced hole had been painted with iodine, and the arms that held him released their pressure just a bit.

  One of the internes spoke to him now and his voice was serious. “Now, Doe, I want you to listen to me. The best thing you can do is to take this quietly. You’ll have to go through it, you know. And if you kick up a row and struggle you may wind up with a needle broken off inside your spinal column. Now relax, please.”

  Middleton gave in, as he had before. The picture just painted for him was not a pleasant one. But his four captors still evidently did not wish to chance his tearing loose, for they now held him fast again with muscles of steel. He could not see what was going on behind him. He could hear the man who had done the blood-taking counting up the vertebrae of his naked back; he could feel the swab of a piece of cotton dipped in some cool liquid. It must be ether or alcohol. Then he heard from behind him a voice say: “Now, Doe, as the needle goes through the skin, it will hurt a bit — but once in, you won’t feel anything, as the muscles beneath have no sensation. Hold yourself quiet and relax. If you feel a peculiar twinge in a toe or a finger like a crazybone, don’t be alarmed. It’s just a nerve filament being pushed aside by the needle. All right.”

  A terrific pain that made him gasp — over almost as quickly as it was caused — over before he could even say anything. Then he felt nothing — nothing except a peculiar tingling sensation in one foot as though a “funny bone” located somewhere in his knee had been rapped sharply — then not even that. At length, after what seemed interminable counting on his part, the voice behind him said:

  “All right. We’ve got enough. Take him back. Bring in the next patient.”

  He followed one of the attendants — no longer was he accompanied by four! — back to his room. He felt very elated. The experience hadn’t been anything like he had thought it was going to be. Now to see the examining physician, and he would soon be out of here. There were plenty of people in the world who could identify Jerome Herbert Middleton, despite the childish game that Fortescue was playing with that weird double which he had procured from God knows where.

  But when, one hour later, he raised himself in bed to take a walk to the window and look out upon the green grounds of the Birkdale asylum, he felt a sudden bumping like that of a thousand hammers in his cranium, and he became so nauseated that he felt only as he had once felt on a sea journey passing through Cook’s Strait, New Zealand, when the sea was rough. He flung himself back on the bed, his hand on his forehead, not caring what happened to him nor to the rest of the world — and, lo! — the moment he had assumed a horizontal position, the whole thing disappeared — and he was himself again. So certain was he that he had been but the victim of a transitory disturbance, that he raised his head once more preparatory to climbing out of bed for the second time. But no — once the horizontal position of his body was altered — the nausea at the pit of his stomach and the hammering in his head became so intense that he found himself reassuming his former proneness with amazing alacrity.

  And thus he lived over three torturing days, flat on his back, chained down by the invisible fetters of nausea and cerebral steam hammers. Not a bar or a bolt now confined him; the door to his screen room swung free; neither rope nor strap held him to his bed. There, on his back, he was free to think, to dream, to plot revenge, to plan for the future; yet once up, even in a sitting position, he found himself the victim of a terrible malady to which death itself was preferable.

  All things come to an end, however, and when Thursday morning — the third since the afternoon on which he had been brought here — dawned, he found to his surprise that he co
uld not only sit upright in bed, but that he could stand erect as well and could make his way down the corridor to the wash-room without a symptom. Had he been a physiologist, he would have known that the human blood had at last restored the removed portion of that delicate serum which surrounds the spinal cord, and his body was now in exact adjustment once more.

  As he pit-patted his way in his felt slippers along the corridor from the washroom he passed an open door on which was stencilled the three words: “Examining physician’s office.” He stopped, curiously, and looked within. The room, at this hour at any rate, was empty, but there was something among its few characteristic articles of furniture that had seized his eye. It was a small open bookcase containing on its lower shelf an entire set of encyclopædias, as was evidenced by the multiplicity of the columns and their similarity one to the other. He stepped hastily within the room. Crossing the floor rapidly, he stooped down and from the open, glassless shelf, drew forth the volume bearing the letters “Paddock to Quebec.” Hastily he thrust the heavy volume under the jacket of his pyjamas. He was out of the room as expeditiously as he had entered it. Back along the corridor he pit-patted. He climbed into bed. With his knees propped up to conceal his occupation from the hallway without, he rapidly turned to the word “Paranoia” and proceeded with considerably more than casual interest to lose himself in the perusal of the definition of this condition which had been so easily and yet erroneously tagged to him by those six medical wiseacres back in Chicago.

  CHAPTER XIII

  STONECIPHER THE IMMOBILE

  THE article on Paranoia in the encyclopædia was succinct, but more than explanatory. It ran:

  “PARANOIA: An incurable form of mental aberration in which the intellect of the patient invariably remains unimpaired, but is dominated entirely by a single delusion or set of delusions. It occurs as a rule in early adult life, starting with one certain delusion which in time evolves into an entire system of false beliefs. It embraces about 30 per cent. of asylum inmates throughout the civilised world.

  “There is, in paranoia, no marked mental deterioration nor clouding of consciousness as appears in other forms of mental derangement; the only disorder of thought and conduct is that which is conditioned by the delusion itself. Nor do paranoiacs ever present the degenerative physical signs that are so frequently found in other lunatics, such as non-symmetrical skull, badly developed teeth, atrophy of one side or the other of the body, or differences in size of hands and feet.

  “As to the delusion itself of paranoia, it may be one of many types, ranging from religious to regal. So unchangeable is it, however, that it is called in all languages the ‘fixed idea’; and the diagnosis can generally be established absolutely by the unchangeability of the fixed idea over a course of years in an institution. The ‘fixed idea’ of the paranoiac, regardless of its type, is always one of personal persecution combined in some manner with the idea of personal greatness. These two factors must be present in order that a case may be classified as paranoia.

  “But with this intensely deep disturbance of the mentality is found in sharp contrast to it the preservation of all the other essential factors of mental well-being. The memory of paranoiacs is remarkable; and the logic of their reasoning is perfect. Apart from their fixed idea, as we term it here, they may be discreet, cultured, artistic, even learned. It is madness, at least, of distinction, for it includes in its archives illustrious names and even canonised saints. Mohammed was a paranoiac; likewise Hector Berlioz. That the slayer of President Garfield, although executed for his crime, was a paranoiac, is the concession of all leading psychiatrists to-day.

  “It is usual to observe in paranoiacs a curious phenomenon that receives the name of retrospective falsification or pseudo-reminiscence. It is a disturbance of the memory, although in reality, judgment, imagination, and association of ideas all take part in it. Patients tell long stories of their lives and adventures, believing them in good faith, with the appearance of truth, while the stories are in fact completely false. Among enlightened and educated paranoiacs, the result of reading and hearsay is curiously blended with the recollection of facts, all distorted into a false memory, but the false memory corresponding perfectly to the false identity assumed.

  “The order of hallucinations to which paranoiacs are subject is, first, those of vision; next, those of hearing; and lastly those of taste and smell.

  “The extreme singularity of the paranoiac’s position in life causes him, so it seems to the psychiatrist, to sharpen his logic to such a point that he is often able to overcome the logic of people unfamiliar with his condition. Even when confronted with facts that contradict his false beliefs, he makes lightning explanations and rationalisations of those facts which to him are quite logical.

  “Because paranoiacs have no insight into their own condition, and because they are in nine cases out of ten homicidal, due to their hallucinations or because of the persecutory nature of their delusions, the regularity of life in asylums, with its discipline, recreations and ward employment is the only solution of their adjustment to life at all.

  “Von Zero, a well-known and celebrated psychiatrist of Austria, has recently subdivided the old subject of paranoia into a new division which he has termed Auto-Hypnotic Pseudo-Paranoia, which division is based on his theory that many paranoiacs he has observed in the asylums of Austria and Germany markedly resemble in face and feature those exalted persons whom they falsely claim to be. Von Zero’s views are given in a published monograph on this subject.”

  Thereupon followed a long series of scientific references to German, French, English and Russian works on psychiatry. Jerry Middleton closed the heavy volume and lay back in bed. pondering. So this was paranoia — a disease in which the victim believed indubitably that he was somebody else and created an entire series of logical explanations to account for why he was not in the shoes of that other person.

  He returned the book to the same bookcase from which he had abstracted it, by making another pit-patting trip to the wash-room. And for the rest of that day he was lost in deep thought, almost omitting to eat his evening boiled egg and wheat gruel when it arrived on its usual tray. It was clear to him now, that allusion to Von Zero and the Von Zero psychosis made by the little bearded medico who was on the professional jury who had sent him here, and he told himself that the moment he should be freed from this place, which could be but a day or two longer now, he would give himself the satisfaction of calling on that little doctor and telling him that he alone, of the entire six men, had displayed a quality approaching that of human intelligence.

  Jerry Middleton had an inkling, somehow, that the next day surely would see him taken before the examining physician. But it was not until noontime next day that any news of this nature materialised. Then the attendant who lugged in his scant lunch brought the welcome information.

  “Well, Doe, old man,” he said, setting down the tray, “you’re to go before the examining doctor at one o’clock to-day. Then you get assigned to your ward and you can get up.’

  Middleton laughed a frank, free, open laugh. “You’ll be jolly well surprised, old top, when you see me conducted to the front gates and allowed to depart. That’s all I’ve got to say.”

  At one o’clock the other was back. Middleton was ordered to get on his bathrobe and slippers and to follow the man in the white jacket. He complied with alacrity. And now, to-day, in that little room which once already he had surreptitiously entered, he found an occupant, as well as a mahogany desk covered with a number of odd articles such as a clock, several stop-watches, test-tubes, stoppered bottles, glass rods, all of which somehow suggested devices for measuring the acuity of the five physical senses. A card index was now open, and writing instruments and papers were in evidence. The lone occupant of the room was a little man of about fifty years of age with glasses that were stuck on the end of his nose, and hair that was very thin on the top of his head. Around his neck hung a stethoscope. He wore a white waistcoat. Ther
e were baglike pouches beneath each of his eyes, and when he spoke he proclaimed a little man who was extremely testy.

  “This is Dr. Stonecipher,” said the attendant. He motioned Middleton to a chair. “Shall I stay, doctor?”

  The little medical man shook his head impatiently. “Not necessary at all, Starks. Go back to your duties.” The attendant departed, but swung the door of the room wide open before leaving. The doctor pointed at the chair to which Middleton had already been motioned. “Your name, my man, is what?”

  But Middleton remained standing. His face flushed to a beet red. “You people here know my name well enough. And, for the ten thousandth time since this farce began, it is Jerome Herbert Middleton. Doctor, I have no reason to be angry with you, personally, but in the name of God, how much longer is this damn fool travesty going to go on? Over three days — three entire days — I spent in the detention station back in Chicago; and now three more days here. But now, as sure as I’m a white man instead of a Maori, you people have got to listen to me. You’ve got to listen to me, I tell you. I’m not insane. I’m not — not — not a paranoiac. This whole thing is a plot against me, I tell you. There’s a plot, a beastly rotten infantile plot against me. People on the outside, for some unaccountable reason, have wanted me put away for a week. Well, the week’s nearly gone and here I am. I — ” He stopped for breath, and suddenly he realised that he was talking exactly as would a theoretical paranoiac about which he had read but yesterday.

  The doctor was busy writing on a set of papers. He did not even look up at this fiery denunciation of things. “Well, my man, I’m certainly here to be talked to — and if you think you can wait a few minutes, we’ll go over this whole thing together, you and I, and get at the truth of it.”

  “Well, I don’t intend to wait any longer,” said Middleton, his fury rising to the surface at last. “We’ll talk about it now — not later. For I’ve still got a chance to get an afternoon train back to the city. So put aside your papers. We’ll talk this thing over right now. Now.”