The Secret of Dr. Kildare

by Max Brand

  "You could leave it that far behind," she agreed. "There's nothing that forces it back on you, Johnny."

  He thought it might be the best of all opportunities to put the crucial question to her at a moment like this, when the driving of the car took most of her mind.

  So he said: "What is it that forces the unhappiness on you, Nancy?"

  The car swerved a bit as her nerves jumped.

  "Don't ask me; never ask me!" she said.

  "I mean, it's not something that you can sleep away?"

  "Never!"

  "And it can come over you night or day?"

  "Oh, Johnny, only a thought of it and I'm ready to die! Don't let me talk about it."

  "Talking is the only thing that does us any good, isn't it?"

  "It helps you, but it never could help me for long." He was silent, trying to fit this last strange news in with the rest of his picture of her.

  She changed the subject at once, saying: "What have you done to father? Usually a man is under the microscope for a long time before he's accepted as you've been."

  "He has a good instinct. He sees that I'm harmless," said Kildare.

  "But his whole attitude is rather odd. It's almost as though he needed you!"

  He was glad when she let that topic drop, in turn, and went on to something else.

  They had left the thicker traffic, in the meanwhile, but he was blind to where they were going, lost in his problem. He was only aware of the summery warmth of the air, a strange Indian summer mildness that had melted the ice away and dried the pavements and left a soft languor in the blood. He was half aroused when she brought the car up to the kerb.

  "Here we are," she said. "Here's a place that I've heard about. No one that we know is apt to, be here, and we can talk, Johnny, and do a whole ocean of forgetting."

  There was an odd touch of familiarity about the scene, as though he had at least noticed a picture of it somewhere, but his mind was not clear at all until they walked down steps from the street under a sign that said "Cesare's Restaurant." He remembered well enough then. He had seen Cesare's scrawny little daughter, Francesca, through a bad attack of scarlet fever, and he had watched her with such care that Cesare and his wife felt he had given their girl back to them from the dead. The restaurant, in fact, was not six blocks from the hospital. They were in the very centre of Hell's Kitchen where anyone on the street might recognize him at any moment. He was "doc" to the whole district, and one single use of that nickname would expose him and identify him in the eyes of Nancy, who dreaded and hated all doctors. He would be revealed as a spy. The shock was so complete and unexpected that he could not bring to his lips a single word of protest before they were in the place and it was too late to turn the girl about.

  It was far, far too late, for a big form turned from the bar at this moment and he saw Weyman, the ambulance driver, wave a great arm of recognition above his head, shouting, "Hi..."

  Kildare, looking at him without a flicker of recognition, closed his left eye and kept it closed for an instant. Weyman dropped his arm. The joy melted from his face in separate chunks, leaving the features in an odd disarray.

  "Sorry. Took you for somebody else," said Weyman, turning abruptly away. "Another shot, bartender," he ordered.

  A waiter was taking Kildare and the girl to a corner table.

  "Poor fellow," said Nancy. "The man at the bar thought for a moment that you were an old friend, didn't he?"

  "Old friend" Weyman had at that moment stopped Cesare as he swept in to greet the new customers. On the Italian's face appeared first a momentary fog of bewilderment, then a grin of understanding so profound that it wrinkled the stiff red varnish of high health that covered his cheekbones. He turned, disappeared into the kitchen, and presently came magnificently into the dining-room again. Kildare could rest assured that the wife and the daughter had been well warned against recognising their doctor in that interval. In fact Cesare, as he bowed by the table and pointed out his recommendations for the evening, had eyes only for the "signorina"; he gave not so much as a trailing side glance to Kildare. Yonder was the tall, awkward bulk of Weyman taking another newcomer by the shoulder and dragging him up to the bar for a drink. A fine perspiration turned the face of Kildare cold as he recognised young Nick himself, who might have burned up Salt Creek had it not been for the "doc"; but neither Nick nor Weyman turned even for a fleeting instant toward the intern.

  There seemed no real hope that he could escape from the district without being hailed by some affectionate voice, maudlin with good feeling, but his heart was warmed by the tact of Weyman and the rest. He would not have dreamed of finding such a quick response from them.

  He wanted to use this, which was probably his last moment with the girl, in some desperate effort to break through to her secret, that hidden cause of unhappiness from which, she seemed to think, escape was impossible; but she grew interested in the Neapolitan songs of that fat Caruso who sweated over his mandolin and sang for the pleasure of Cesare's customers, and between the music and the many courses there was no chance for continued conversation. The restaurant had filled every chair before they left. There were at least ten people whom he knew, but not an eye turned toward him as he took the girl out of the place at last.

  As they stepped to the automobile at the kerb, his sense of relief was like a fresh wind in his face, but Nancy was instantly pointing out a crowd which filled an adjoining block of the street near a settlement house. They had a blaring music of horns and drums and hundreds of people were dancing.

  "There! There we are!" said Nancy. "Come on, Johnny! Isn't it better than all the night clubs in the world?"

  "You'll wear out your shoes—you'll drag yourself to death trying to get over the pavement," protested Kildare.

  "Oh, I can pick up my feet and make them step," said Nancy, laughing, and Kildare went gloomily with her toward the excitement.

  He had escaped recognition in the restaurant owing to the providential foresight of Weyman, but he could not escape it in the happy, cheerful, milling crowd that filled the street. A hundred people would know him. Weyman and Nick, stepping long and large, went past them, Weyman giving his arm a hard nudge as he moved by. He noticed that with a dull eye of trouble, and then he came with Nancy to the roped-off area. Before him, vaguely, he saw Nick and Weyman separately accosting people, then lost in the mob as he stepped out in the dance with Nancy in his arms.

  He had not taken ten steps with her when a twelve-year-old lad pointed a sudden arm at him and cried: "Hey! Look at..."

  His partner, a freckle-faced, scrawny little girl, slapped him suddenly across the mouth; they whirled away into the crowd.

  "What in the world was the matter with that boy?" asked Nancy.

  "He didn't like my dancing steps," said Kildare. "And his partner thought he was being rude. Wasn't that it?"

  "No, I think they like the way you dance; or else they like you, Johnny," said the girl. "Every one of those children has a smile when we go past them."

  Half of them, in fact, were gaping and grinning at Kildare as he moved slowly on with Nancy, but not a word of greeting reached him, not a single voice hailed him by the nickname which they had learned to call him through the district. It came over him suddenly that the word of Nick and Weyman already had been passed from mouth to mouth through the entire throng—the "doc" wished to walk invisible tonight, and they were willing to play the game for him with all their might. The older lads and girls grew elaborately unaware of him as he came near; the very children managed to keep their voices still even if they could not turn their eyes away. Nancy had her own interpretation.

  "We amuse the children," she said, "but the grown-ups don't like us. They want to have their good time to themselves and to them we're intruders."

  "I think you're right, And we'd better go," said Kildare.

  "I wouldn't go for worlds," she answered. "There's something queer about the way they treat us, and I want to find out what it is. A
lot of them simply fail to see us, for instance. We might as well be two ghosts, Johnny. Do you notice?"

  "We don't belong. That may be it," agreed Kildare.

  But up and down that pavement he had to move with Nancy until a tag dance came. He was certain that no one would take Nancy from him but, after a moment, he saw Nick, with a set, rather desperate look on his handsome young face, come sidestepping through the crowd toward him, tapped Kildare, and instantly was gliding away with Nancy. Kildare drifted back toward the rope.

  The voice of Weyman growled behind him: "She looks like one of the ones, doc. But whatcha mean bringing her over here where everybody knows you?"

  "I didn't bring her. I was brought. Weyman—it means a good deal to me if I can get out of this without being spoken to. D'you think it's possible?"

  "It's as good as done, doc," said Weyman. "Don't turn your head or maybe she'll see us talking...Is she a nifty or is she a nifty?...But you can walk all the way through Hell's Kitchen, now, and nobody'll see you. There ain't a cop on a beat that'll know your face. There ain't a stevedore down on the docks that'll be able to see you. There ain't a lunch-wagon cook that ever laid eyes on you. Nobody ever heard of Doc Kildare before. We've put it on the underground wire and the whole damn district is wearing blinders. Here they come again with Nick steering her. Notice the dirty looks he's getting from some of the boys? They don't know that it's part of the game. Go ahead and get her, doc."

  Kildare went ahead and got her.

  As Weyman had promised, Hell's Kitchen was blind to them, and before the night ended they had explored most of it. They went down by the docks where ships were being loaded by night crews and the lifts groaned and the pulleys rattled; they passed in and out of the little night clubs which fed beer and music to the young people of the district; they sat in all-night lunch wagons. Midnight had fallen well behind them and they had reached that hour of four in the morning when even New York grows quiet before Kildare saw commencing in the girl that fear which followed her in the night. Once more with empty eyes she began to consider some huge despair. That burden which invisibly crushed her was the weight which he had to find and transfer to his own hands. One vastly important surety was growing in him constantly: That which she feared was in herself, not in the outside world. Something like the sharp wound of conscience was consuming her.

  After four in the morning she once or twice touched him and said: "You're not too tired, Johnny? You still can keep going?"

  "I was going to ask you the same thing," he would answer, and then her smile came as a reward and a comfort: but he began to doubt his ability to continue in his own role of a man hounded by inward fear. One careless, unguarded moment of indifference might let her guess the truth and then he would be cast into outer darkness and all of his work with her would be undone. For in a case like this there was no real accomplishment except the final one. There was no question of coming by slow degrees to the ultimate answer. He had to wait for the revelation which might come at any instant. A single word, perhaps, would tell him everything. Such a great compassion grew in Kildare as he watched her that sometimes he almost forgot Gillespie and that wreckage of his hopes that lay behind him.

  After six o'clock another idea came to Nancy Messenger.

  She said: "Johnny, when you're in a pinch, is it best to go find out the whole truth, no matter how bad it may be, or is it better to keep guessing—and hoping?"

  "I'd rather find out the whole truth and look it in the eye," said Kildare.

  "Do you think you would?" she asked with a faint smile. "Well—I'm going to try now. If there's an answer for me, it lies nearly two hours away in the country. Will you drive out with me? I'll take you to an old-fashioned breakfast; really golden biscuits and the only good coffee in the world."

  "Coffee!" said Kildare. "That's what we want! And two hours right now are what we need to use up."

  In the car she gave up all pretence of cheerfulness. She slumped low in the seat with her head thrown back. She talked, as her habit often was, with her eyes closed and as they slid out over the great, gentle arc of the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge with Manhattan like shadowy, lifted hands behind them, she was saying: "Was there something queer about tonight? Was it the people?"

  "They were a good lot," said Kildare. "Beer is a bit easier to handle than champagne, you know."

  "Yes," she agreed. "They were cheerful and good-natured. But they made me feel like a ghost. Why was that?"

  "They didn't look at you because you weren't their kind."

  "Oh, but there was that party in the second little night club—you remember?—those people who obviously were slumming? Everybody stared at them. They all were conscious of it. They made fools of themselves patronising and surprising, the waiters with their orders. The crowd didn't like them and showed it."

  She considered this. Then he was aware that she was shaking her head slowly, dismissing this suggestion.

  "They didn't look at us face to face, but they were terribly interested. Johnny, I never felt such a weight of eyes—from behind. There was something in the hiss of their whispering that was about me. A woman can always tell that sort of thing. I think they would have given a good deal to find out about us; and still they wouldn't look me in the face. The more I think about it, the stranger it was!"

  "I didn't feel that way," said Kildare.

  After a moment she said: "Did you ever see some important person travelling incognito?"

  "No. Just what do you mean?"

  "Well, I mean a prince or a king or the prime minister. If they're trying to be inconspicuous, well-bred people make the most desperate effort not to see them, and their eyes fairly ache with the effort of keeping them away from the prince. But all the time, of course, they're seeing nothing else. Well, it was like that tonight...Johnny!"

  "Yes?"

  "Are you somebody's double? I mean, do you look like some famous moving picture star or prize fighter or something like that?"

  "I? Not that I know of."

  "You've never found that a crowd of people suddenly become awfully aware of you?"

  "No. Never. Just the opposite. I'm the average man," said Kildare. "I'm the average height and the average mug and the average weight. I disappear into a crowd like sand in the sea."

  "Just the same, those people were terribly aware of you tonight. It's strange, isn't it? If they thought you were a celebrity, wouldn't they have come along and asked you to sign cards for them and all that embarrassing business?"

  "What an idea!" said Kildare.

  "Almost the strangest thing of all is that you didn't notice it because you have eyes that see everything."

  "I have? Aren't you imagining a few things tonight, Nancy?"

  "Perhaps I am. I don't know...Left, Johnny!"

  Left he swung. They hit more open country at a higher speed. And as they rolled on among the fields, the sky gradually brightened around the horizon with the beginning of the day. But it seemed to give Nancy none of the pleasure and the reassurance which she had found in it the morning before. She grew more and more silent.

  "Are you still thinking about the people in Hell's Kitchen?" he asked her at last.

  "Thinking about them? No, no; I'd forgotten them a thousand years ago."

  What held her was the thing that lay ahead, then. Kildare tried to prepare himself for it. The daylight grew from a hint to a colour and then to a brilliance that made the road lights dull. The sun was almost up when Nancy asked him to stop the car. He paused on the top of a low hill which looked down on a vague chequering of Long Island estates, their boundaries obscured by the trees. A narrow inlet from the sea wound back among the lowlands and joined a mere silver hint of a creek in the distance.

  "That's what I used to know when I was a youngster," said Nancy, sitting up. "I mean, I used to be a part of all that. It was inside my skin and I was inside it. You know the way children can be?"

  "I know," said Kildare. "When they're happy, you mean?"

/>   "I was the happiest girl in the world until I was—Well, it doesn't matter. But down in that inlet I learned to swim and sail and paddle a canoe and all that. The centre of life was an old boathouse that's never used any more, I think. And we used to ride cross-country across those fields. And that white scar on the hill—you see?—every morning when I woke up, I looked at that through my window, over the tips of the trees on the edge of our place. From my window I saw this road also. It was the one that led toward the outside; it was the road to the city, where everything would be wonderful and life would be frightfully crowded and happy some day. You know?"

  "Wouldn't you like to go back to those days?"

  "And fall into this same trap? No, no, no!" said Nancy. And he felt her shuddering. "I wouldn't want to live through a single day of it all if I knew what was coming in the end. Let's drive on. Nora will be awake by this time."

  He felt once more that he had come to the very verge of the mystery and again the door had been shut in his face, but a hope was quickening in him now. He was as guilty as a spy, but he guessed that he was on the verge of the great discovery.

  Considering the almost fantastic wealth of Paul Messenger, the country place was extremely modest. It was high-shouldered, square-faced, and probably had plenty of room inside, but there was no show of elegance about it whatever. A profusion of the naked branches of climbing vines sprayed up its sides, and it needed freshening with white paint. In the near distance, an old red barn attended it. In fact, it looked more like a Southern farm than a suburban residence.

  "There's smoke from the kitchen stove," said Nancy, pointing, as the car rolled up the drive. "Nora's up. John, for a while she was mother and father to me. She's ignorant and bad-tempered and positive and complacent, but she's also a dear. Will you try to remember that when we go in?"

  It was hardly necessary for him to remember a thing, however, for no attention came to him, not even a glance. After Nora had seen her girl, she was too blinded by that vision to pay any heed to lesser things. She would not even let the guests stay in the living-room, but carried Nancy straight out into the kitchen while she prepared breakfast. Kildare dawdled in the background with a smile of assumed sympathy but every sense on the alert to discover what he could. It was a foreign language of old association that the two women exchanged, but out of it he had to try to find some significant thread. If there were a secret in the air, he had high hopes that Nora never could conceal it. She was a big woman with a young, rosy face and white hair pulled back from her forehead so snugly that the horizontal wrinkles arched up into a constant query. She kept about her person, as about her kitchen, an atmosphere of hearty good nature. The danger signal was in her pale blue eyes, which flashed every moment with variable lights. Perhaps she was fifty, but all her strength still was with her. When Kildare tried to help her carry into the kitchen a more comfortable chair for Nancy, she brushed him vigorously aside, using the chair for the gesture.