John Marsh's Millions Part 34

"But you don't understand," burst out Tod, with renewed energy. "There's a reason why this lady and I can't go back to New York. There are people there whom we're most anxious to avoid. We must get over to New Jersey without further delay. Can't you hail a pa.s.sing tug for us, or lower a boat? I'll make it worth your while--see!"

He drew from his pocket a roll of money. The man laughed and shook his head.

"Pair of runaways, eh? Goin' ter git spliced in Jersey?" With an impudent stare at Paula, he added, with a laugh: "I don't blame yer. The gal's pretty, all right. But there's nothin' doin'. I don't want to lose me job. I guess it's New York fer yours, all right. Here comes the tug now!"

He ran forward just as the rescuing tug, puffing and snorting, came alongside. A rope was thrown up and made fast, and the tow back to the city began.

"Confound the fellow's impudence!" said Tod savagely. "If I wasn't in such a fix I'd punch his head."

Paula, pale and anxious, laid her hand on his arm.

"Never mind him!" she said. "What are we going to do about the others?

That is more serious."

Tod, silent and thoughtful, was racking his brain to find some way out of this new dilemma. Yet there was nothing to be done. The accident had been noticed from the sh.o.r.e. Every one knew they must come back. They were trapped like two naughty children who had been caught playing truant from school. A nice laugh Cooley and Jimmy would have on him!

Suddenly he turned to Paula.

"We've only one chance left," he said quickly, "and it's a very slim one. Come down to the lower deck. We'll get into the machine. Directly the boat touches the dock and the bridge is lowered, I'll let her go for all she's worth. There's a chance that in the general excitement we may be able to get past them. Come!"

It was a forlorn hope at best, but a drowning man will clutch at a straw. Slowly, like a limping, living thing, the helpless ferryboat entered the New York slip, pushed and coaxed into its berth by the rescuing tug. A large crowd of curious sightseers, gathered on the dock, followed the manoeuvres with interest. As Tod sat at the wheel of his machine, his frightened companion by his side, ready to dash forward the moment the boat was made fast, he scanned eagerly the sea of faces turned toward them. There was no sign of the enemy. Apparently the coast was clear. There was a b.u.mp as the boat reached the dock and a rattle of chains as the deckhands made fast. The drawbridge came down. Tod pulled the starting lever, and the machine shot forward. At that instant several police officers and a number of men, among whom Tod recognized Mr. Cooley and Jimmy Marsh, ran into the middle of the road and barred the way. A policeman held up his hand to Tod to stop.

Paula gave a little scream, while Tod let loose a flow of unprintable profanity. Mr. Cooley ran up to the car, his fat, bloated face congested with a combination of anger and triumph.

"Stop that car," he roared, "or I'll send you up for contempt of court!"

Yielding to superior forces, Tod stopped the machine. Mr. Cooley came up with a police officer. Pointing at Paula, the lawyer cried:

"That's the young lady. She is attempting to evade an order of the Court." Producing a legal paper, he added: "Here is the order committing her to my custody."

Paula again screamed and clung to her companion. The policeman, puzzled, glanced at the Court order. A crowd began to gather. Finally the officer, addressing Paula, said respectfully:

"Do you acknowledge that you are Paula Marsh, the person named in this paper?"

White as a sheet, ready to swoon from terror, the girl nodded faintly:

"Yes."

"Then you must go with this man," said the officer, pointing to Mr.

Cooley.

"No, no! I won't-- I won't!" she cried, clinging to Tod's arm.

"You had better go with him," he whispered gently. "It's best to avoid a scene. It won't be for long. Leave it to me. We'll soon get you out again. I'll see Ricaby at once, and to-morrow we'll swear out a _habeas corpus_. You'd better go quietly with him."

With an un.o.bserved pressure of the hand, which he felt was returned, Tod silently said good-by. Paula slowly descended from the automobile.

Turning to Mr. Cooley, she said, in a deliberate, dignified manner:

"Very well, Mr. Cooley, I am ready to accompany you."

CHAPTER XVII.

Among the unspeakable crimes which man, in the name of humanity, has perpetrated against his fellow man, none has been more gruesome, more merciless, more fiendishly cruel than the abuse of the private sanitarium.

There is a hazy notion in the public mind that the private insane asylum, the horrors of which were so vividly depicted by Charles Reade, Edgar Allan Poe, and other writers, are things of the barbarous past, and that in our own enlightened, humane, practical twentieth century, when the liberty of the individual was never so jealously safe-guarded, it would be impossible for any unscrupulous person, actuated by interested motives of his own, to "railroad" a perfectly sane relative to an inst.i.tution, and retain him there indefinitely against his or her will. The startling truth, however, is that, under our present lunacy system, nothing is easier.

The infamous madhouses of half a century ago, with their secret dungeons, their living skeletons rattling in chains, their brutal keepers who tickled the soles of hapless inmates' feet to drive them into hysterics in antic.i.p.ation of the annual perfunctory visit of the State examiners in lunacy, have, it is true been driven out of business; the existing sanitariums are now more or less under rigid State control, yet this official supervision is not always adequate protection against misrepresentation and fraud. By the free expenditure of money and with the cooperation of unscrupulous physicians, foul wrongs are frequently inflicted on the most innocent and unoffensive people. At the present moment it is not only possible for scheming persons, interested in getting a relative safely out of the way, to accomplish their sinister purpose, but each year in the United States dozens of perfectly sane persons are actually incarcerated in private asylums scattered over the country.

The medical superintendent of a prominent State hospital, in a paper read recently before the Bar a.s.sociation practically admitted the truth of this. At the same time, reviewing the laws bearing upon the commitment and discharge of the criminally insane, he proposed certain changes suggested by the actual operation of the present laws. He also drew attention to a statement made by the _Medical Record_ to the effect that, only a short time since, no fewer than fourteen persons were committed to one small inst.i.tution by juries in a single year and every one of them was found later to be sane, and had to be discharged. The superintendent very properly insisted that there should be some modification of the present law whereby lunatics, accused of serious crimes against the person and especially those committing murder, should be dealt with by a tribunal having fixed, continuous responsibility, and that a jury of laymen should not be allowed to decide regarding the mental condition of any person with a view to his commitment to an asylum for the insane or to his discharge therefrom.

The abuses possible under the present loose system are only too obvious, the opportunity offered to fraud and crime only too apparent. Putting troublesome relatives in lunatic asylums might be considered an easy way of getting rid of them by those who are too tender-hearted or too cowardly to murder them outright. It is scarcely more merciful.

Frequently the request for incarceration is not brought before a court or jury at all. A commission of insanity experts is summoned by the alleged lunatic's relatives, and if they are satisfied that the patient is of unsound mind they sign a paper committing him or her to some inst.i.tution. Sometimes the signature of one physician only is sufficient, and in fraudulent cases, where the persons calling in the physicians are keenly interested in the result, everything is done to make out a _bona-fide_ case, and prove the patient out of his or her mind. Harried, nervous, fearful of everybody and everything, the slightest lapse from control or commonplace speech is used for the patient's undoing.

The mental anguish and actual suffering that a sane person must necessarily undergo when suddenly deprived of his liberty and brutally incarcerated in some lugubrious, lonely sanitarium can better be imagined than described. To know that one is in perfect health and yet compelled to a.s.sociate with poor creatures whose minds are really shattered, forced to listen to their senseless chatter all day and to hear their blood-curdling screams all night, to be under constant surveillance, an object of distrust and pity, subject to a severe and humiliating discipline, punished by the dreaded cold-water douche when refractory--all this is enough to make a madman of the sanest person.

And when, added to these horrors, the unfortunate victim sees himself deserted by all, deprived of means to employ a lawyer, knowing that the enemies responsible for his misfortune are squandering his money and profiting by his misery, is it a wonder that in a moment of discouragement and desperation he abandons hope and does away with himself? Then the indifferent world sagely wags its head and accepts without questioning the coroner's verdict: "Killed by his own hand in a fit of suicidal mania."

Among the larger private insane asylums in New York State, the inst.i.tution "Sea Rest" at Tocquencke, bore a fairly good reputation.

That is to say, the skirts of the management had been kept relatively free from scandal, and suicides were of comparatively rare occurrence.

The inst.i.tution, under the direction of Superintendent Spencer, was pleasantly situated on Long Island, overlooking the Sound, and catered almost exclusively to a wealthy cla.s.s of patients who, for one reason or another, found themselves compelled to take the "rest cure."

One morning, about three weeks after Mr. Cooley's spectacular arrest of the runaways at the Jersey ferry, Superintendent Spencer was seated at his desk in the general reception room at "Sea Rest," dictating reports to a young woman stenographer. There was little about the surroundings to suggest the sinister character of the place. Only the heavily barred windows, overlooking the grounds enclosed by high walls, and the ma.s.sive doors fitted with ponderous bolts and locks suggested that padded cells with wild-eyed inmates might be found in some other part of the establishment. Otherwise it was an ordinary, everyday business office.

The large desk near the window was covered with ledgers and papers, while close at hand was a telephone and clicking typewriter. To the left of the desk a small, narrow door led to the wards. On the right a heavy door opened on the vestibule and grounds.

The superintendent himself was a clean-shaven man of about thirty-five.

Alert-looking and well groomed, he had the energetic manner of the successful business man. Mechanically, as if it were a matter of tiresome routine, to be hurried through as speedily as possible, he went on dictating in a monotonous tone:

"Report on Miss Manderson's case. Attendant, Miss Hadley; physician, Dr.

Bently. Patient's demand for stimulants decreasing, but she calls constantly for bridge-playing companions. Patient generally cheerful--will not retire till 3 A. M. Six packages of cigarettes in her room----"

Buzz! buzz! A disc fell down on the indicator on the wall, disclosing a number.

The superintendent turned quickly and, glancing at the indicator, pressed a b.u.t.ton in his desk. This released a bolt in the door leading to the outer hall, a safeguard necessary to prevent reckless patients from wandering outside to help themselves without permission to the fresh air. The big door swung open and an old man, bent with age, entered.

"Ah, Collins--I wanted to see you!" said the superintendent sharply.

Seized with an attack of coughing, the old man could not reply at once.

For thirty years he had been an inmate. When a man is going on eighty, he is not as vigorous as he once was. Formerly a waiter at Delmonico's, he found the pace too swift. His mind gave way, and a rich patron, pitying his condition, sent him to "Sea Rest." For a long time now he had been cured, but, broken in spirit, he found he could not return to the old life, so he had remained at the asylum in the capacity of attendant.

"Yes--sir," he gasped, between spasms of coughing.

The superintendent looked at him severely:

"Collins, did you buy six packets of cigarettes for Miss Manderson?"

The old man cowered. He was afraid of the superintendent. He had reason to dread those cold douches.