I, who believe myself to have obtained some especial knowledge upon this point, not possessed by all my readers, and to be more free than many another to use such language, still retreat before the phrase, and content myself with saying, "I have never forgotten." Up to this time I have never been able to forget the smallest detail of that night whose history I am now to record. It seems to me impossible in any set of conditions that memory could blot that experience from my being; but of that what know I? No more than I know of the politics of a meteor.
Upon discovering my predicament I was, of course, greatly disturbed. I tried the door, and tried again; I urged the latch violently; I exerted myself till the mere moral sense of my helplessness overcame my strength. I called to the watchman, whose distant steps I heard, or fancied that I heard, pacing the corridors. There was a Safe Deposit in the basement, and the great building was heavily guarded. I shouted for my liberty, I pleaded for it, I demanded it; but I did not get it. No one answered me. I ran to the barred windows and shook the iron casement as prisoners and madmen do. Nobody heard me. I bethought me of the private telegraph which stood by Brake's desk, mute and mysterious, like a thing that waited an order to speak. I could not help wondering, with something like superstition, what would be the next words which would pass the lips of the silent metal. It occurred to me, of course, to telegraph for relief; but I did not know how, and a kind of respect for the intelligence and power of the instrument deterred me from meddling with it to no visible end. Suddenly I remembered the electric signal which so often communicates with watchman or police in places of this kind. This, after some search, I found in a corner, over the desk of Brake's assistant, and this I touched. My effort brought no reply. I pressed the button again with more force and more desperation; I might say, with more personality.
"Obey me!" I cried, setting my teeth, and addressing the electric influence as a man addresses a menial.
Instantly a thrill passed from the wire to the hand. A distant sound jarred upon the air. Steps shuffled somewhere beyond the massive walls. I even thought that I heard voices, as of the watchman and others in possible consultation. No one approached the broker's door. I urged the signal again and again. I became quite frantic, for I had now begun to think with dismay of the effect of all this upon my wife. I railed upon that signal like a delirious patient at the order of a physician. A commotion seemed to follow, in some distant part of the building. But no one came within hearing of my voice; the noise soon ceased, and my efforts at freedom with it.
It having now become evident that I must spend the night where I was, I proceeded to make the best of it; and a very bad best it was. I was exhausted, I was angry, and I was distressed.
The full force of the situation was beginning to fall upon me. The inspector had put a not unnatural interpretation upon my condition; he thought so little of a gentleman who had dined too freely; it was a perfectly normal incident in his experience. He had mistaken the character of the stupor caused by my accident, and left me in that office for a drunken man. The fact that he was not accustomed to view me in such a light in itself probably explained the originality of his method. We were on pleasant terms. Drayton was a good fellow. Who knew better than he what would be the professional significance of the circumstance that Dr. Thorne was seen intoxicated down town at midnight? The city would ring with it in twelve hours, and it would not be for me, though I had been the most popular doctor in town, to undo the deed of that slander, if once it so much as lifted its invisible hand against the proud and pure reputation in whose shelter I lived and laboured, and had been suffered to become what we call "eminent." It was possible, too, that the inspector had some human regard for my family in this matter, and reasoned that to spare them the knowledge of my supposed disgrace was the truest kindness wherewith it was in his power to serve me. He meant to leave me where I was and as I was to sleep it off till morning. He would return in good season and release me quietly, and nobody the wiser but the watchman; who could be feed. This was plainly the purpose and the programme.
But Helen—
I returned to the table near which I had been sitting, and took the office chair again, and tried, like a reasonable creature, to calm myself.
What would Helen think by this time? I looked about the office stupidly. At first the dreary scene presented few details to me; but after a time they took on the precision and permanence which trifles acquire in emergencies. The gas was not lighted, but I could see with considerable ease, owing to the overwrought brain condition. It occurred to me that I saw like a cat or a medium; I noted this, as indicative of a certain remedy; and then it further occurred to me that I might as well doctor myself, having nothing better to do; and plainly there was something wrong. I therefore put my hand in my pocket for my case. It was gone.
Now, a physician of my sort is as ill at ease without his case as he would be without his body; and this little circumstance added disproportionately to my discomfort. With some irritable exclamation on my lips I leaned back in the chair, and once more regarded my environment. It was a rather large room, dim now, and as solitary as a graveyard after twilight. Before me stood the table, an oblong table covered with brown felt. A blue blotter, of huge dimensions, was spread from end to end; it was a new blotter, not much blurred. Inkstand, pens, paper-weight, calendar, and other trifles of a strictly necessary nature stood upon the blotter. Letters on file, and brokers' memoranda neatly stabbed by the iron stiletto—I forget the name of the thing—for that purpose made and provided, attracted my sick attention. An advertisement from a Western mortgage firm had escaped the neat hand of the clerk who put the office in order for the night, and fell fluttering to my feet. It would be impossible to say how important this seemed to me. I picked it up conscientiously and filed it, to the best of my remembrance, with an invitation to the Merchant's Banquet, and a subscription list in behalf of the blind man who sold tissue-paper roses at the head of the street.