"It seems to me that I ought to know what's wrong with Summer," he told me, very puzzled about it. "I mean, it seems I ought to remember. But I don't. I've gone so far as to talk it over with her."
"What did she say?" I asked.
"She said she wasn't going to tell me now. She said she'd tell me one of these days, but that when she did, I'd leave her. She smiled all the time she was saying it, in the strangest way."
Well, we had Summer examined. Old Doctor Lodge is no psychiatrist, but a man isn't a general practitioner for as long as he's been at it without learning something about the way a person's mind ticks. He said there was nothing wrong with Summer, mentally.
"She acts like she's still suffering a little from some sort of shock," he said. "If she was right next to a lightning bolt when it struck, I'm not surprised. It's lasting a little longer than such things usually do, but it'll clear up."
It didn't clear up, but Wyn and I got used to it.
Amateurs, they say, shouldn't fool around with hypnosis, and I suppose there's a sound reason behind that admonition. But I'm a little better than the average amateur hypnotist. I've not only done a good deal of it at club benefits and what not, but I've read pretty heavily in psychology. I decided to see if hypnotizing Wyn would give me any clue to his past and Summer's.
Summer sat beside me that night at their home, as I went through the familiar motions and Wyn sank into hypnotic trance.
Under hypnosis, Wyn recalled easily everything that had happened since that night in the park. But attempts to regress him past that night brought only a death-like silence, in which he sat pale and immobile. I tried several times, and at last succeeded in getting him in an extremely deep hypnotic state.
Suddenly, Summer interrupted with an exclamation.