Dr. Rumsey's Patient Part 19

The doctor turned off the electric light, and returned to his own bright part of the room. The bed in which Awdrey lay was now in complete shadow. Dr. Rumsey opened a medical treatise, but he did not read. On the contrary, the book lay unnoticed on his knee, while he himself stared into the blaze of the fire--his brows were contracted in anxious thought. He was thinking of the sleeper and his story--of the tragedy which all this meant to Margaret. Then, by a queer chain of connection, his memory reverted to Mrs. Everett--her pa.s.sionate life quest--her determination to consider her son innocent. The queer scene she had described as taking place between Hetty and herself returned vividly once more to the doctor's retentive memory.

"Is it possible that Awdrey can in any way be connected with that tragedy?" he thought. "It looks almost like it. According to his own showing, and according to his wife's showing, the strange symptoms which have brought him to his present pa.s.s began about the date of that somewhat mysterious murder. I have thought it best to make light of that lapse of memory which worries the poor fellow so much in connection with his walking-stick, but is there not something in it after all? Can he possibly have witnessed the murder? Would it be possible for him to throw any light upon it and save Everett? If I really thought so? But no, the hypothesis is too wild."

Dr. Rumsey turned again to his book. He was preparing a lecture of some importance. As he read he made many notes. The sleeper in the distant part of the room slept on calmly--the night gradually wore itself away--the fire smouldered in the grate.

"If this night pa.s.ses without any peculiar manifestation on Awdrey's part, I shall begin to feel a.s.sured that the wife has overstated the case," thought the doctor. He bent forward as this thought came to him to replenish the fire. In the act of doing so he made a slight noise.

Whether this noise disturbed the sleeper or not no one can say--Awdrey abruptly turned in bed, opened his eyes, uttered a heavy groan, and then sat up.

"There it is again," he cried. "Margaret, are you there?--Margaret, come here."

Dr. Rumsey immediately approached the bed.

"Your wife is not in the room, Awdrey," he said--"you remember, don't you, that you are pa.s.sing the night with me."

Awdrey rubbed his eyes--he took no notice of Dr. Rumsey's words. He stared straight before him in the direction of one of the windows.

"There it is," he said, "the usual thing--the globe of light and the picture in the middle. There lies the murdered man on his back. Yes, that is the bit of the Plain that I know so well--the moon drifts behind the clouds--now it shines out, and I see the face of the murdered man--but the murderer, who is he? Why will he keep his back to me? Good G.o.d! why can't I see his face? Look, can't you see for yourself?

Margaret, can't you see?--do you notice the stick in his hand?--it is my stick--and--the scoundrel, he wears my clothes. Yes, those clothes are mine. My G.o.d, what does this mean?"

CHAPTER XIII.

"Come, Awdrey, wake up, you don't know what you are talking about," said the doctor. He grasped his patient firmly by one arm, and shook him slightly. The dazed and stricken man gazed at the doctor in astonishment.

"Where am I, and what is the matter?" he asked.

"You are spending the night in my house, and have just had a bad dream,"

said Dr. Rumsey. "Don't go back to bed just yet. Come and sit by the fire for a few minutes."

As the doctor spoke, he put a warm padded dressing-gown of his own over his shivering and cowed-looking patient.

Awdrey wrapped himself in it, and approached the fire. Dr. Rumsey drew a chair forward. He noticed the shaking hands, thin almost to emaciation, the sunken cheeks, the glazed expression of the eyes, the look of age and mental irritation which characterized the face.

"Poor fellow? no wonder that he should be simply slipping out of life if this kind of thing continues night after night," thought the doctor.

"What is to be done with him? His is one of the cases which baffle Science. Well, at least, he wants heaps of nourishment to enable him to bear up. I'll go downstairs and prepare a meal for him."

He spoke aloud.

"You shiver, Awdrey, are you cold?"

"Not very," replied Awdrey, trying to smile, although his lips chattered. He looked into the fire, and held out one hand to the grateful blaze.

"You'll feel much better after you have taken a prescription which I mean to make up for you. I'll go and prepare it now. Do you mind being left alone?"

"Certainly not. Why should I?"

"He has already forgotten his terrors," thought Dr. Rumsey. "Queer case, incomprehensible. I never met one like it before. In these days, it is true, one comes across all forms of psychological distress. Nothing now ought to be new or startling to medical science, but this certainly is marvellous."

The doctor speedily returned with a plate of cold meat, some bread and b.u.t.ter, and a bottle of champagne.

"As we are both spending the night other than it should be spent," he said, "we must have nourishment. I am going to eat, will you join me?"

"I feel hungry," answered Awdrey. "I should be glad of something."

The doctor fed him as though he were an infant. He drank off two gla.s.ses of champagne, and then the color returned to his cheeks, and some animation to his sunken eyes.

"You look better," said the doctor. "Now, you will get back to bed, won't you? After that champagne a good sleep will put some mettle into you. It is not yet four o'clock. You have several hours to devote to slumber."

The moment Rumsey began to speak, Awdrey's eyes dilated.

"I remember something," he said.

"I dare say you do--many things--what are you specially alluding to?"

"I saw something a short time ago in this room. The memory of it comes dimly back to me. I struggle to grasp it fully. Is your house said to be haunted, Dr. Rumsey?"

Dr. Rumsey laughed.

"Not that I am aware of," he replied.

"Well, haunted or not, I saw something." Awdrey rose slowly as he spoke--he pointed in the direction of the farthest window.

"I was sleeping soundly but suddenly found myself broad awake," he began--"I saw over there"--he pointed with his hand to the farthest window, "what looked like a perfect sphere or globe of light--in the centre of this light was a picture. I see the whole thing now in imagination, but the picture is dim--it worries me, I want to see it better. No, I will not get back to bed."

"You had a bad dream and are beginning to remember it," said Rumsey.

"It was not a dream at all. I was wide awake. Stay--don't question me--my memory becomes more vivid instant by instant. I was wide awake as I said--I got up--I approached the thing. It never swerved from the one position--it was there by the window--a sphere of light and the picture in the middle. There were two men in the picture."

"A nightmare, a nightmare," said the doctor. "What did you eat for dinner last night?"

"It was not an ordinary nightmare--my memory is now quite vivid. I recall the whole vision. I saw a picture of something that happened.

Years ago, Dr. Rumsey--over five years ago now--there was a murder committed on the Plain near my place. Two men, undergraduates of Oxford, were staying at our village inn--they fought about a girl with whom they were both in love. One man killed the other. The murder was committed in a moment of strong provocation and the murderer only got penal servitude. He is serving his time now. It seems strange, does it not, that I should have seen a complete picture of the murder! The whole thing was very vivid and distinct--it has, in short, burnt itself into my brain."

Awdrey raised his hand as he spoke and pressed it to his forehead. "My pulse is bounding just here," he said--he touched his temple. "I have only to shut my eyes to see in imagination what I saw in reality half an hour ago. Why should I be worried with a picture of a murder committed five years ago?"

"It probably made a deep impression on you at the time," said Dr.

Rumsey. "You are now weak and your nerves much out of order--your brain has simply reverted back to it. If I were you I would only think of it as an ordinary nightmare. Pray let me persuade you to go back to bed."

"I could not--I am stricken by the most indescribable terror."

"Nonsense! You a man!"

"You may heap what opprobrium you like on me, but I cannot deny the fact. I am full of cowardly terror. I cannot account for my sensations.

The essence of my torture lies in the fact that I am unable to see the face of the man who committed the murder."