The Dream Doctor Part 1

The Dream Doctor.

by Arthur B. Reeve.

I

THE DREAM DOCTOR

"Jameson, I want you to get the real story about that friend of yours, Professor Kennedy," announced the managing editor of the Star, early one afternoon when I had been summoned into the sanctum.

From a batch of letters that had acc.u.mulated in the litter on the top of his desk, he selected one and glanced over it hurriedly.

"For instance," he went on reflectively, "here's a letter from a Constant Reader who asks, 'Is this Professor Craig Kennedy really all that you say he is, and, if so, how can I find out about his new scientific detective method?'"

He paused and tipped back his chair.

"Now, I don't want to file these letters in the waste basket. When people write letters to a newspaper, it means something. I might reply, in this case, that he is as real as science, as real as the fight of society against the criminal. But I want to do more than that."

The editor had risen, as if shaking himself momentarily loose from the ordinary routine of the office.

"You get me?" he went on, enthusiastically, "In other words, your a.s.signment, Jameson, for the next month is to do nothing except follow your friend Kennedy. Start in right now, on the first, and cross-section out of his life just one month, an average month. Take things just as they come, set them down just as they happen, and when you get through give me an intimate picture of the man and his work."

He picked up the schedule for the day and I knew that the interview was at an end. I was to "get" Kennedy.

Often I had written s.n.a.t.c.hes of Craig's adventures, but never before anything as ambitious as this a.s.signment, for a whole month. At first it staggered me. But the more I thought about it, the better I liked it.

I hastened uptown to the apartment on the Heights which Kennedy and I had occupied for some time. I say we occupied it. We did so during those hours when he was not at his laboratory at the Chemistry Building on the University campus, or working on one of those cases which fascinated him. Fortunately, he happened to be there as I burst in upon him.

"Well?" he queried absently, looking up from a book, one of the latest untranslated treatises on the new psychology from the pen of the eminent scientist, Dr. Freud of Vienna, "what brings you uptown so early?"

Briefly as I could, I explained to him what it was that I proposed to do. He listened without comment and I rattled on, determined not to allow him to negative it.

"And," I added, warming up to the subject, "I think I owe a debt of grat.i.tude to the managing editor. He has crystallised in my mind an idea that has long been latent. Why, Craig," I went on, "that is exactly what you want--to show people how they can never hope to beat the modern scientific detective, to show that the crime-hunters have gone ahead faster even than--"

The telephone tinkled insistently.

Without a word, Kennedy motioned to me to "listen in" on the extension on my desk, which he had placed there as a precaution so that I could corroborate any conversation that took place over our wire.

His action was quite enough to indicate to me that, at least, he had no objection to the plan.

"This is Dr. Leslie--the coroner. Can you come to the Munic.i.p.al Hospital--right away?"

"Right away, Doctor," answered Craig, hanging up the receiver. "Walter, you'll come, too?"

A quarter of an hour later we were in the courtyard of the city's largest hospital. In the balmy sunshine the convalescing patients were sitting on benches or slowly trying their strength, walking over the gra.s.s, clad in faded hospital bathrobes.

We entered the office and quickly were conducted by an orderly to a little laboratory in a distant wing.

"What's the matter?" asked Craig, as we hurried along.

"I don't know exactly," replied the man, "except that it seems that Price Maitland, the broker, you know, was picked up on the street and brought here dying. He died before the doctors could relieve him."

Dr. Leslie was waiting impatiently for us. "What do you make of that, Professor Kennedy?"

The coroner spread out on the table before us a folded half-sheet of typewriting and searched Craig's face eagerly to see what impression it made on him.

"We found it stuffed in Maitland's outside coat pocket," he explained.

It was dateless and brief:

Dearest Madeline:

May G.o.d in his mercy forgive me for what I am about to do. I have just seen Dr. Ross. He has told me the nature of your illness. I cannot bear to think that I am the cause, so I am going simply to drop out of your life. I cannot live with you, and I cannot live without you. Do not blame me. Always think the best you can of me, even if you could not give me all. Good-bye.

Your distracted husband,

PRICE.

At once the idea flashed over me that Maitland had found himself suffering from some incurable disease and had taken the quickest means of settling his dilemma.

Kennedy looked up suddenly from the note.

"Do you think it was a suicide?" asked the coroner.

"Suicide?" Craig repeated. "Suicides don't usually write on typewriters. A hasty note scrawled on a sheet of paper in trembling pen or pencil, that is what they usually leave. No, some one tried to escape the handwriting experts this way."

"Exactly my idea," agreed Dr. Leslie, with evident satisfaction. "Now listen. Maitland was conscious almost up to the last moment, and yet the hospital doctors tell me they could not get a syllable of an ante-mortem statement from him."

"You mean he refused to talk?" I asked.

"No," he replied; "it was more perplexing than that Even if the police had not made the usual blunder of arresting him for intoxication instead of sending him immediately to the hospital, it would have made no difference. The doctors simply could not have saved him, apparently.

For the truth is, Professor Kennedy, we don't even know what was the matter with him."

Dr. Leslie seemed much excited by the case, as well he might be.

"Maitland was found reeling and staggering on Broadway this morning,"

continued the coroner. "Perhaps the policeman was not really at fault at first for arresting him, but before the wagon came Maitland was speechless and absolutely unable to move a muscle."

Dr. Leslie paused as he recited the strange facts, then resumed: "His eyes reacted, all right. He seemed to want to speak, to write, but couldn't. A frothy saliva dribbled from his mouth, but he could not frame a word. He was paralysed, and his breathing was peculiar. They then hurried him to the hospital as soon as they could. But it was of no use."

Kennedy was regarding the doctor keenly as he proceeded. Dr. Leslie paused again to emphasise what he was about to say.

"Here is another strange thing. It may or may not be of importance, but it is strange, nevertheless. Before Maitland died they sent for his wife. He was still conscious when she reached the hospital, could recognise her, seemed to want to speak, but could neither talk nor move. It was pathetic. She was grief-stricken, of course. But she did not faint. She is not of the fainting kind. It was what she said that impressed everyone. 'I knew it--I knew it,' she cried. She had dropped on her knees by the side of the bed. 'I felt it. Only the other night I had the horrible dream. I saw him in a terrific struggle. I could not see what it was--it seemed to be an invisible thing. I ran to him--then the scene shifted. I saw a funeral procession, and in the casket I could see through the wood--his face--oh, it was a warning! It has come true. I feared it, even though I knew it was only a dream. Often I have had the dream of that funeral procession and always I saw the same face, his face. Oh, it is horrible--terrible!'"

It was evident that Dr. Leslie at least was impressed by the dream.

"What have you done since?" asked Craig.