The Spectacles of Mr. Cagliostro Read online

  He paused, co-ordinating in his mind the threads of that tangled chain of dream events. Then he went on. (The room was quite quiet). “Well, when I had made this gap in the forest I proceeded to walk through the gap, and I found myself suddenly on the keyboard of a great xylophone — I seemed to be in a sort of Brobdingnagian land where I was Gulliver and all the things in it were giantesque. Well, I tramped along the keyboard of this great xylophone, stepping from one of the musical bars to the next, and here and there I passed a figure about the size of myself who gazed at me through a single red eye in the middle of his forehead — miners, they might have been, going to work or coming from work. I don’t know exactly what they were, for it seemed to be night. And so I went along this xylophone, and suddenly I came to a point where a great slack wire was suspended in mid-air above it, and I heard my name called again and again: ‘Sidney, Sidney, Sidney.’ “

  “Sidney?” interrupted von Zero. “That was the name you heard called?”

  “Yes, Sidney.” Middleton paused and then went on. “Well, when I looked up I beheld in my dream a girl with brown eyes and dark hair beckoning to me from the slack wire. Somehow — I don’t know how — I climbed up on this slack wire, and I then noted that she had a two-seated bicycle. I got into the rear seat of the bicycle and she pedalled forward gently, and although I seemed to be in desperate fear that we would topple off the wire, we seemed to hold our equilibrium — and in this way we passed over hills and valleys far down below us. But as we continued along this wire,” Middleton went on, “it seemed to flatten out, then to get wider and wider. It first became a broad strip of metal — then it became a piece of ground — and it was suddenly terra firma.” He stopped.

  “Go ahead,” urged von Zero. “Your dream is a most interesting one.”

  “Well,” Middleton went on, “as we rode along, a great African lion suddenly reared up ahead of us, shaking his mane and roaring, yet we rode on toward it quite undismayed. And then I looked back. I saw hundreds of men like prison-keepers, but they were dressed in white flowing robes, and they seemed to be pursuing us. At this juncture the lion, who appeared to be subservient to the command of the girl, lay down flat in the roadway at a word from her, and we rode right over him. The minute we rode over him, however, he rose up in anger and the last I saw of him he was shaking his mane and roaring in the direction of our pursuers and they were being held back by him from following us.”

  Middleton paused a moment, and then went on.

  “We pedalled along slowly, but suddenly our wheels seemed no longer to exist, and I found that strangely enough one of her hands and one of mine appeared to be joined at the wrist — to be but one common hand, in fact, and it did not seem to be either a painful or unpleasant sort of condition at all, even limiting our movements as it did. And thus we proceeded along until we came to a giant mirror which prevented us from passing any further, and there in the mirror I saw my reflection — yet it was not exactly I. I cannot explain it any better than that. I looked about on the ground cautiously and carefully, and I found a stone that was like coal, black and jetty in colour, and I picked it up and hurled it — we seemed to use our common hand for this purpose — right at the mirror, and instantly the reflection and the mirror shivered into a thousand pieces and the sun that was back of it was now visibly shining all over the countryside. And then I woke up and heard the night-watch shouting “All Up!” He paused. “That’s all there was to it.”

  Von Zero turned around to the audience. “You have now heard this patient’s dream. Well, we will look into this and use discretion and deduction the best we can.” Von Zero paused. He tapped with the tip of his forefinger on the top of Middleton’s head as he went on speaking. “This man cannot have many suppressed desires. He is well fed, well clothed, he is happy, and satisfied, I am sure. Nor can he have any plans for the future, considering that he knows he is to stay here for an indefinite time. So let us simply assume dogmatically — but our dogma is based on the reasoning I have just given you — that he has simply re-enacted some experience of his lost identity. And if we can reconstruct this experience from his dream symbols, we shall perhaps find the patient’s lost self — discover who he is. Now let me tell all of you my interpretation of this dream.” He paused, thinking, and then commenced speaking in his precise English.

  “This man was at one time in a penitentiary, for the trees in this dense forest where his dream opened, thick and close together, cannot be anything else but the bars in a prison; and the sword-fish snout which he got hold of in the pool is — well — a file or a saw or something like that. A saw, let us say. For you will note that with this snout he touched each tree and it fell away. In other words he filed the bars and got to liberty. The gap in the forest was liberty.

  “Now let us see what he did when he got to the outside. He says he found himself in his dream of last night walking on the keyboard of a giant xylophone. This means that in the actual experience which the dream is re-enacting, he made his way to a railroad, for these keys are nothing more nor less than what you call in America railroad ties, and, incidentally, the miners that he passed in his dream with their red lamps — or their single red eyes — were the shoulder-high switchlamps which he passed in the night in the real experience. By the fact that things were dark in his dream, we can infer with little trouble that his escape was made between sundown and dawn.”

  Von Zero paused only the shadow of a second, and then went rapidly on.

  “At length he came to a bridge marking a road crossing the railway — I can only interpret this high wire in his dream as a bridge — its height not only connoting something higher in the vertical plane than himself, but likewise signifying that if he should ascend to it, he would be in danger. This girl — she represents freedom or a confederate — I don’t know which. But it appears that he joined forces with her and that for a considerable time they were under tension, until they felt safer, as evidenced by the slack wire flattening out and bit by bit becoming a solid road. Her having called down to him ‘Sidney, Sidney,’ might be a thrust made into the dream of a desire of his present consciousness in which he devoutly wishes to be considered from Australia — I believe there is a city there called ‘Sydney’ — or it could be a complex connected with — say — a love affair with a girl of that name — American girls are occasionally given that name, I believe; or it may possibly be his own name — the first clue to his lost identity. It would be difficult at this juncture to say which of all these it was.” Von Zero paused.

  As for Jerry Middleton, he was listening to all this exposition with growing uneasiness. Von Zero thus far had pictured exactly the working out of the plans which he had drawn up with Anne Holliston.

  “Now the fact,” von Zero was saying, “that in his dream they — he and the girl — are pursued proves that they were not yet safe, and this African lion is nothing more or less than a pun of which dreams are full. Examine your own dreams. Consult our eminent brother, Freud. It is almost axiomatic that we will pun in our dreams. Well, I will so much as state absolutely that the ‘lion’ in this patient’s dream is nothing more nor less than a State or national ‘line’ — meaning safety of some sort; perhaps the dream is complicated by thoughts of his right here in this institution, that if he could get across some State line he might be safe. Probably, however, in the actual experience suffered in his lost identity, he did get across a State line — or a national boundary line. I call to your attention the peculiar symbolism displayed when the ‘lion’ — after they have ridden across him — rears up and holds off their pursuers. This proves my point, I think. I do not know what to make of the pursuers being garbed in white. H’m. White, eh? Not wholly intelligible to me, I fear.”

  At this juncture Joe Blake stepped inside the screens. His white attendant’s jacket gleamed against the dark material covering the folding panels. “Did somebody call me?” he asked, looking about him.

  “No,” said Stonecipher from his position in the cir
cle. And Blake, white jacket and all, disappeared.

  Von Zero was still reflecting. “No, I do not know what explanation to render as to the pursuers being dressed in white robes. So we will just put that aside.” He paused. “And now we come to a very interesting part of the dream. You note that he dreamed that he and this girl seemed to have one hand in common and it was a pleasurable sort of condition. Perhaps marriage, perhaps some clandestine sex relationship. The common hand, however, proves my point, I think.”

  He was lost in thought for a moment. Middleton’s own hands gripped the handles of his chair. He was cold from head to foot. This bearded pundit of psychiatry was leaving out no details whatsoever of the plans of that proposed escape for to-night.

  “And now,” von Zero went on, “we come to this mirror, and the reflection in that mirror. This man believes that he is a Mr. Jerome Middleton, and that the actual Middleton on the outside is usurping his place, and he now definitely and conclusively thrusts into his dream some of the ideas and complexes which he holds in his present identity. You note that he retains his reality — but that he makes the being who is similar to him, a reflection. In other words he brands him as a spurious self. He is now definitely embarked on a fanfare of complexes connected only with his present self: he has definitely left the previous track of events purloined from his lost identity. He has been side-tracked, derailed, as you might term it, by the intensity of his emotions with respect to this spurious self of his in the outside world. Indeed, you will note that he actually destroys the spurious self in the dream. And how does he do it? He picks up a dark black rock — and you will note, too, that he does it with the hand common to him and the girl — and together they succeed in smashing the mirror and destroying the reflection. That black rock, gentlemen — and ladies — is nothing more than Blackstone — the law! But he does, at least, live out in his dream his wishes — which so beautifully corroborates all of Freud’s teachings. Well — I think that is all. Do I hear any objections?”

  A rapid rat-a-tat-tat of questions followed. One doctor hesitated not to interrupt another, so great was the discussion aroused by von Zero’s analysis.

  “That interpretation of his yearnings toward a legal victory is magnificent,” said one young doctor. “That was masterful, Herr Doctor?”

  “Yes, yes, Herr Doctor,” added another. “That was genius, if I may term it so.”

  “Well, we have done all we can do along that line,” von Zero was saying. “We will now apply the word test.”

  The word test! Jerry Middleton stiffened up in his chair. Another attempt to reconnoitre in the terrain of his innermost thoughts. Well, he would be cautious now, mighty cautious.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  THE MIND SEARCHER

  THE Austrian doctor, with the help of a half-dozen self-appointed assistants who sprung to his aid, was now wheeling the big blackboard directly to the back of his subject. He came around from behind Middleton and stopped in front of him. From his vest pocket he abstracted what, from Jerry Middleton’s sprinting experiences in college athletics, he recognised as a stop-watch.

  “Now, my man,” he said “I wish you to answer any word I call out with the very first word which comes into your mind — no matter how nonsensical it sounds. Do you comprehend?”

  “Perfectly, I believe,” was Middleton’s reply.

  The doctor now disappeared behind him again. A moment later his voice called sharply:

  “Man.”

  “Woman,” answered Middleton.

  The sound of chalk scratching on the board was audible. Then:

  “Fate.”

  “Kismet,” came immediately to Middleton’s mind and lips.

  “Black,” was the next.

  “White,” was the answer.

  “Box.”

  “Glove.”

  “Saw,” was the next.

  The word gave Middleton a start. He ran wildly around in his brain to find a substitute for the word “Hack” that trembled on his lips.

  “Blueberry,” he said.

  He was conscious that an enormous interval had elapsed between von Zero’s keyword and his answer to it. Now he began to understand that the great science of psycho-analysis was after him.

  And thus the word test went on, Middleton answering quickly and spontaneously to certain harmless words, but balking at others which seemed too dangerously close to the secret of his plans. And at last when the blackboard was wheeled around to where all could see it, including himself, he studied it with considerable uneasiness.

  “You will note,” said von Zero, who had followed the board, “that between each word given to the subject and the word he mentally associates with it, the number of seconds which elapsed in his mind is recorded as given to us by the stop-watch. The normal time of association should be about from seven to eleven seconds.” He stood aside so that all could see. The column on the board read:

  “I will now call your attention,” von Zero resumed after his brief pause, “to the fact that the following associations of words are quite normal, and I may say that they have occurred and re-occurred in my tests on insane people and transferred personalities so often as to make them almost standard associations in that field: Here they are.” He wrote them down separately to the right of the data comprising his entire test. “You will find, too, that the association-time of each pair of words ranges from about seven seconds to about eleven seconds — that is to say, it falls within the normal range with which normal associations take place.” He paused. “So we will discard that set from further consideration.” He scrutinised the taller column in silence for a moment, and then, turning his back to his audience, spoke again. “I perceive, however, a number of peculiar associations — associations that are normal in reaction time, but are not at all normal in response. Here they are.” He wrote out a third set to the right of the second. It read:

  “Now let us study these just a bit,” von Zero proceeded, laying down his chalk and taking up a pointer with which he directed his audience’s eyes at those words which he discussed. “For instance, what strange incident of his past life causes him to associate the concept FIDDLE with the concept BOTTLE?”

  Stonecipher cleared his throat embarrassedly. “Well, Herr Doctor, I perhaps ought to explain that there is a patient in this ward who has a violin, and who always attaches a bottle to it to catch certain evil tones, as he so believes.”

  “Ah, I see,” replied von Zero. “Well, that disposes of that, then. Now, how about LOVE — ANNE? This refers to some love affair all right, and inasmuch as the patient’s appearance physically, from the time he fell a victim to his psychosis up to the time of his arrival here, was sufficiently repugnant as to preclude any possibility of any love affair between himself and any member of the feminine sex, we have for a surety in the reaction LOVE — ANNE a glimpse of a love affair of his lost identity. All right. Now how about FATHER — UNJUST? This appears to be a complex connected with his stolen or assumed identity, namely that of J. H. Middleton, in which he considers that J. H. Middleton’s father was unjust in the terms of the will which this eminent Chicagoan left. Well, so much for that. How about ILLINOIS — THE STATES? Since only we foreigners term your United States ‘The States,’ and since this man speaks perfect English, we know two things: that he comes from without the United States but from an English-speaking country. All right for that. How about STORY — UNBELIEVED? I call your attention to this because it is typical of his case. It is the expression of an emotion engendered by a complex belonging again to the assumed identity: a protest, if you would like to term it thus, against the fact that we will not accept his quite unacceptable story. Very well. Now how about WALL — STREET?”

  Von Zero paused, while Middleton looked up at him curiously. Only that morning Keane, the pseudo-Napoleon, had facetiously compared Charlie Wall, the mad poet, to the American magazine writer, Julian Street. And the comparison persisted in remaining in Middleton’s memory. From which, no doubt, had co
me the reaction WALL — STREET. But von Zero was speaking again.

  “Wall — street is so purely an American association that we may well consider that the patient, whom we have assumed to be a Canadian, has been a native of this country for several years at least, to have absorbed it in his list of normal reactions. And I have therefore included it in this list of abnormal responses, because it is abnormal when considered in the light of ILLINOIS — THE STATES, which marks him as one originally from an outside country — Canada, we have decided. Very well. How about IRON — BARS? Looks very much as though we have touched on his old experience wherein he effected an escape from prison, does it not? The dream analysis and our word analysis connect up beautifully at this point.” He paused. “And POUCH — MARSUPIAL?” He looked down at Middleton and spoke frowningly.

  “My man, have you no idea whatsoever as to where you got such a mental connection as that, POUCH — MARSUPIAL? Most patients connect POUCH with POCKET-BOOK or, perhaps, CURRENCY?”

  “Are not all the pouched animals of Australia called marsupials?” Middleton responded naïvely.

  “I see,” said von Zero. “Well, this disposes of that rather bizarre reaction then. Well, how about TEETH — HACKSAW? This is an unusual response, and one which is beyond us, with our present knowledge, to interpret. A complex of some sort — a lost experience — but that is as far as we can go. We may now consider the next reaction, CHILD — LONELY. He was, I take it, a lonely child, when young, and the intensity of his emotion with respect to that loneliness bursts into his present personality which he has assumed upon himself. Now how about MIDNIGHT — AUTOCAR? Aha! — we dip into that lost experience of his now, and learn for the first time what the bicycle, which the girl had in his dream last night, represents. Again the dream analysis and the word analysis re-enforce one another. We pass now to EYES — BROWN. We have there the egoistic trend which must of necessity mark any searching analysis of any ego. The patient’s eyes are brown, quite regardless of which personality is being revealed; hence any touching upon the word EYES will bring out as a reaction the colour and characteristics of his own eyes. We will pass on to the next reaction: INSANE — NOT. I have put INSANE — NOT down here in the list of abnormal responses only so that I might focus your attention upon it. So normal a response is it for a lunatic that I have never yet, in thirty years, issued the word INSANE in a word test in an asylum, in any language, but that it was followed immediately by the word NOT or the word meaning NOT in whatever tongue was being employed — and with a speed like the crack of a whip. Next: YOU — CONSPIRACY. This is likewise a very common one in asylum tests, and I have included it here only for discussion and observation. I have never failed to see it show up promptly in paranoia, and its presence in a word test is almost clinical proof of that disorder. Please understand me, on this, however. It can also appear in my pseudo-paranoia, as well.”