by Max Brand
The telephone rang. Messenger reached for it.
"I can't come just now," he said into the instrument. "Perhaps, in that case...Very well, I'll be right down."
He put the telephone back in its cradle and stood up. "Don't let anything stop us," said Kildare. "Let me have a chance to find out the facts."
"It's impossible for me to tell them to you briefly," said Messenger, "and I have a call from my office that I can't avoid answering."
Kildare followed him to the door of the room, saying rapidly: "Is it possible that whatever you can tell me would have had any effect on Nancy?"
"I think it might," said Messenger. "Possibly it might. But ten years have gone by without a sign..."
"What's been buried even for thirty years sometimes works all the mischief," said Kildare. "When can you come back, or where can I see you?"
"I ought to be through in two or three hours. I'll come straight back here."
"You can't make it faster than that?"
"I'll try to make it as brief as possible. Kildare—is Nancy very badly upset?"
"She's as badly upset as a human being can be," said Kildare. "Will you please stop asking me questions?"
The answer struck Messenger so hard that he went out of the room without another word. Kildare followed out into the hall. As he stood there, he heard the descending feet of Messenger stumble twice on the stairs. The front door closed and the echo of its closing lived for a moment beside him in the upper room. After that, he threw off his clothes, walked through a shower, shaved, and dressed again. Then he dropped face down on the bed and fell into an instant sleep.
* * *
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A NOISE picked at his brain like a woodpecker at a sensitive plant. After a while he was able to sit up and discover that the sound was a rapping at his door. He got to it and pulled it open on Nancy Messenger. She was dressed again for the street.
"I've had a call," she said, "and I have to go out. I wonder if you'll come, Johnny. Are you too dead?" He stared at her.
"You can't go out again, Nancy," he said. "Don't go out, please."
"I'm all right," she said.
"You look rotten. You look all in," said Kildare. "Nancy, I'm terribly fond of you. Don't go out again. Try to rest a little, will you?"
"I can't," she said, shaking her head, keeping her eyes hopelessly on him.
"Listen to me," he said, "you go and lie down on the library couch and I'll read aloud to you. I'm such a rotten reader that people always go to sleep in self-defence. You know?"
"Oh, Johnny, Johnny; it's no good," she said. "But where I'm going, maybe I'll find something that canhelp me."
There was a possibly double meaning in what she said that struck him cold.
"But I can't ask you to come along. You're too played out."
"Nothing in the world could keep me from going along," said Kildare.
He turned with her down the hall, down the stairs. "Are we going to leave any word? About when we're coming back?" he asked her.
"It's no good getting them into bad habits," she said, with a wan smile. "They mustn't start expecting to know where I am. Because in the end—" She did not finish the speech.
They were in the front hall when she said this and the door was opened in front of them by Charles Herron. He put the key back into his pocket and took off his hat, still silently looking at her. Then he spoke gravely to Kildare and said to Nancy: "You were hard to find last night, my dear."
Kildare stepped away across the hall and turned his back on them as he pretended to look out the window on the formal little patch of garden at the rear of the house. He heard Nancy explaining: "I was just following my nose and it led me to some unexpected places. That was all. Were you wanting me?"
Herron got his voice down a bit lower, but there was so much natural resonance that Kildare heard every word clearly.
"I telephoned to your friends. None of them had seen you. I dropped around to a dozen of the night spots which you seem to favour. You weren't around, and you hadn't been seen. I suppose you were with young Johnny Stevens?"
If the girl answered, Kildare could not hear the words. Herron was saying: "What is the mystery? Am I what makes you unhappy?"
"Don't go on," said the faint voice of Nancy. "Don't ask any more questions, Charles."
"I spent the night hunting—and worrying. You were out till the morning and I was in hell. I know how fine you are, but I also know how rotten the night world is. You can't like it. Can you?"
"No. I don't like it."
"Then what drives you to it? Is it because you want to get the thought of our marriage out of your mind?"
"No, Charles. No, please!" whispered the girl.
"Good God, Nancy, there's no use being pitiful about it. If you'll have me, I'm yours for the taking, and for ever. I feel as though I was taking my life in my hands forcing things like this. But I've got to know. Will you set up the day for our marriage, or will you not?"
"But I can't!" said the girl.
"Why not?"
"Because of things you can't understand."
"I'll do my stupid best to comprehend them if you'll try to tell me."
"But I can't. I can't...Charles, please wait...Don't judge me now...Think of it just for one day...You're in a passion...Charles, don't say it!"
"I won't say anything. I'm only waiting for you."
The voice of the girl came faintly to Kildare, like an agony of his own mind.
"I've known it would have to come to this," she murmured.
"It doesn't have to come to anything," declared Herron. "Ten clear words from you—that's all I want, Nancy." Then anger got into his voice. "But you wrong yourself and you wrong me when you trail me like a dog at your heels. Nancy, if it's not our marriage that's making the change in you, will you tell me what else it may be?"
She was silent. As the pause extended, Kildare found that he was holding his breath.
"Very well," said Herron. "I'd rather have silence than some lie with nothing but pity behind it. But if you want me to carry on—if you want me to be blind and hopeful—say the word and I'll swallow my pride and be that even."
There was only the silence again. There was such a tension in Kildare that he felt himself breaking. Every instant of the pause was more incredible to him, for he knew that they loved one another with a rare and deep passion; he could not believe that they were parting. But now he heard Herron saying:
"Losing you is going to be hell, but I'll never come begging for a word and a kind look. You can be sure that you'll never see me again; no matter what happens, you'll never lay eyes on me again."
Even then she did not utter a word of answer.
When Kildare turned, he saw that Nancy had slipped down into a chair. Herron was taking the house key from his pocket and putting it on the table; then he opened the door and went out. Kildare, hurrying after him, found him lingering an instant on the top step, like someone surveying the weather before venturing out into the city.
Kildare said: "You're wrong, Herron. She loves you. You're as wrong as the devil. She's not well. She's sick and you're making her desperate."
It seemed hard for Herron to turn his head so that he could see Kildare. His contempt and disgust he managed to keep unexpressed except by his eyes; then he passed down the steps to his car. Kildare went back to the girl. Her head had fallen back. She was utterly exhausted. She pulled blindly to get on her gloves.
"You're taking it too hard," said Kildare. "That's the way a man is apt to talk to a woman—if he loves her. He'll get over it. He'll come back to you if you say a word."
She shook her head.
"You don't know him," she answered. "He makes up his mind only once about everything."
"It's not too late, Nancy. You can hurry a message to him. Tell him that you will marry him; it's only the setting of the date that's hard on you, just now."
"Marry him?" she echoed. "I'll never marry anyone. Will you take
me away now? Back to the old house and Nora, Johnny?"
He took her back in the coupé on another silent ride. That word of hers about never marrying had staggered him. He felt that he was being presented not with too little but with too much evidence, only it needed some word, some key for the sorting of it. He wanted time, and apparently there was to be no time, for the action was heaping up before him.
That stunned, unhappy silence continued in her for mile after mile, except that she murmured once or twice: "I'll never see him again; I'll never lay eyes on him again. Did you hear him say that?"
When they came into the open country, she had recovered a little. She said:
"Johnny, I know what you think about doctors."
"They're a silly lot," he said.
"I know. But it isn't their silliness. When I see one of them, it makes me think of death; it's like having death breathe in my face to have one of them near me. Can you understand that?"
"That's a little thick, but I know that a lot of people feel that way about them," he agreed. He listened hungrily. There seemed to be many roads toward the solution of the mystery, and this was a promising one. He wanted time, time, time—a month, even a week might do, but the girl, he felt sure, was going now straight to her destiny. This day, perhaps, would end everything.
"But Nora," said the girl, "knows someone who is either quite miraculous or else a frightful quack. He hasn't a licence to practise. He can't even charge prices for his services. You just give him what you please. Do you think I'd be crazy if I went to him?"
He had struck on the idea of the fear of disease before this as the reason for her state of mind; now her words confirmed him.
"Doesn't it depend?" he asked. "I mean, don't you have to consider what seems to be wrong with you? What is it, Nancy?"
"Don't ask me. Promise not to ask me about it?"
"Why, of course."
"It's something that the usual doctors couldn't help. But this man, Nora says, looks in your eyes and knows what's wrong with you. He was away today, but she's located him. After all, it wouldn't be possible for him to do any harm, would it? Not if he simply looked at me and guessed what might be wrong?"
A man practising without a licence, accepting "gifts" for his services, diagnosing cases by a look into the eyes of the patient exactly fulfilled the definition of a quack, and association with such a fellow or the encouragement or assistance of him in any way by a licensed physician simply removed the doctor from the class of honest practitioners and made a quack out of him in turn. The rules of medical associations and state boards of health were precise on this matter, so precise that Kildare hesitated for an instant as he listened to the girl. He remembered the case of Loder, who had twenty-five years of honourable practice behind him; but when the state board discovered that for three months after receiving his licence he had hung out his shingle with a faker, he was drummed out of the ranks. They called Loder a quack because he once had given countenance to a sham doctor; they revoked his licence and ruined his life for the sake of those three months which had been used carelessly if not criminally so long before. With that memory in his mind, it was no wonder that Kildare paused for a moment and the girl had to ask again: "Would I be a fool if I went to such a fellow, Johnny?"
"They're a little ratty, aren't they—fakes like that?"
"I suppose they are."
"Whereas a licensed physician would at least..."
"Physicians—physicians—I know what they do!" she said, a shudder in both voice and body. "They fill up the house with the thought of death long before death comes. They turn our rooms into coffins. They bury us alive...Don't let me talk about them!"
"Forget about them then. And go to this fellow who reads your troubles in your eyes."
"Shall I, after all?"
"Of course."
As he made the answer, it seemed to Kildare that all the faces of his old teachers looked in upon him with horror; he heard their voices; he heard the uproar of the great Gillespie sounding above all. A quack is the lowest form of humanity; the very lowest of all. "Anyone who shall aid, abet, or countenance unsound medical practice, shall not be considered worthy to retain his licence." That was what the book said, and the law stood by to take a corrective hand when need might be.
However, he left his recommendation unchanged as they reached the old country place again. Nora had seen them coming, and she issued from the front door, pulling a coat on to her high shoulders as they drew up before the house. Nancy took the middle place on the seat as her nurse climbed in.
"We'll go right into town," said Nora. "Right to the middle of the village, and there you and me can get out, Nancy."
"Johnny knows where we're going," said Nancy. "It's all right."
"Ah, you told the doctor, did you?" said Nora, persisting in her fancy. She turned her bold eye on Kildare, with as much leer as smile. "Or maybe he's only a vet."
Kildare uttered a faint exclamation. Nancy said: "Nora, Nora, nobody has time for your jokes just now."
"Ah, but Mr. Archbold is no joke, darling," answered Nora, giving a characteristic switch to the subject. "There's a man that's a man, and a man's eye in a man's head on his shoulders too. He gives you a look that drops into you like a stone into a pool and scares all the little fish inside you. The doctors said Mrs. Winters had stone and wanted to cut her to pieces, bad luck to them, but dear Mr. Archbold laid eyes and hands on her and now she's a well woman. And Tad Givens was a failing man for years, with his back bending over and a blink in one of his eyes like too much whisky; but in three treatments didn't Mr. Archbold have him fit to climb trees? He was jailed for breaking the peace only the Sunday after. I tell you, there's things that never was in books, and Mr. Archbold has most of them. I've talked to him about you darling, and he says..."
"I told you not to speak to him about me! I told you not to, Nora. We may as well turn back if you've talked to him about my case beforehand."
"I spoke only the one word to him," said Nora, indignant, "and what harm could there be in that? He knows no more of you than the side of that hill. But in one look he'll see farther than all the rest, you can be sure."
They came through the little town as a thunderhead rolled up over it and with a downpour of rain covered the hills in a greenish murk of twilight. Nora had the car stopped near the entrance of a building.
"Will you come up with me, Johnny?" asked the girl in a whisper. "I'm a bit afraid; and I'm almost sure that I'm being a fool."
He went with her behind Nora up a flight of linoleum-covered stairs and down a dark hallway to the rear of the office building where the single word "Archbold" appeared on a glass door and under it the legend: "Personal Advice." They walked into a small waiting room that was brightened by a window box of late-blooming flowers, and Archbold himself appeared at once from his inner office. The only sign of age about him was the flow of his long white hair. He was a big man, straight as a bolt and with a step like a yearling colt. His bare feet were in sandals; his shirt was open at a hairy throat; and in spite of the sixty years which he must have carried, his eyes were as bright and bold as those of a young lad.
"Ah, Miss Messenger," he said, and taking her hand he drew himself close to her and lowered the brush of his white eyebrows, inspecting her. "Your trouble is here—above the eyes—here, I think," said Archbold, clasping his hand across his own forehead. "Will you come inside with me?"
That first remark struck Nancy hard. Her lips parted, her eyes aghast, she held back a moment to give one frightened, reproachful glance to Nora. The old nurse said: "It's all what he sees for himself and nothing that I ever told him. Oh, he's going to blow your troubles away like smoke. Go on in with him, darling."
So Nancy disappeared through the door, which the hand of the great Archbold closed behind them.
"Now why should you look so scared?" Nora asked, staring at Kildare.
"I hope that he's not a rascal," said Kildare.
"Trust me for that,"
answered Nora. "I had a terrible pain in my left shoulder and all the tonics wouldn't rub it away, but a touch from dear Mr. Archbold turned the trick and I can lie on the left side all night long now and laugh at the doctors in the morning. You wouldn't take me wrong because I've laughed a little in my own way, calling you a doctor, Mr. Stevens, would you? Not when my dear girl is like a sister to Johnny; and the kind eye that she lays on you too! But you wouldn't be offended with me, would you, Mr. Stevens? The Irish has to come out one way or the other, and God help it!"
* * *
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A SLIGHT hubbub of voices in the street called Nora to the window at this moment; she had her nose flat against the glass when the door of the inner office opened again and Nancy came out with the doctor standing huge and bland on the threshold behind her, rubbing his hands together as though to get rid of the excess of good which had just flowed from them. Nancy seemed both bewildered and delighted.
"Not in a moment and not in a touch," said Archbold, "but by degrees and little by little we'll do away with it altogether. Remember the order of the three: hope, then faith, then victory. Cleave to that, dear Miss Messenger, and you will see that all will be well."
In the middle of this speech a trampling approached them down the hall; now the door was pushed open and half a dozen people entered, carrying a lad of twelve or so with a stony face of agony and a rough bandage wrapped around the right leg beneath the knee. Blood dripped from the bandage. Last of the crowd to enter were a frightened man and woman. He was saying: "Stepped right out from the sidewalk with his head turned back—and the string of fish in his hand—I couldn't dodge him—there wasn't time to get on the brakes..."
An elderly man of the village answered in a loud voice: "I seen you tearing along like a bat out of hell. You took that corner like a wildcat coming off the top of a hot stove, and you know it. There weren't any chance for Billy here to get clear of you. I seen it, and others alongside of me seen it, or ought to have. Mr. Speeder, this is gunna cost you a whole pot of money!"
