“Yes, indeed, my dear sir,” said Sir William, drawing the nose-end of his eyebrows up in an agony of kindness. “But it will comfort you to hear that nowadays we nearly always—I may say always—manage, sooner or later”—he was spinning out his words as he fumbled again in the drawer of the little table, and brought out yet another book—it was in German, of course, but its peculiarity was an appendix in which were brightly-colored pictures after the German fashion, all of them attaching to childish tales; and the colors especially were German.
“Now, my dear sir,” said Sir William, pulling his chair a little nearer to his victim, “pray glance at this—the more casually the better—and see whether a stab of memory....”
Mr. Petre saw on the front page some words in German script and then, in our type, the word “Perrault.” He made nothing of that. He opened the book.
Mr. Petre rapidly turned over the score of pages. There was a huntsman in a red hat with a feather in it, a very large muzzle-loading gun under his arm, holding a dead fox up by the tail, while his companion blew a horn; there was a lion with a human-looking face holding up his paw to a young man with gooseberry eyes who was pulling a thorn out; there was an old gentleman in a gray tunic pointing towards a star, his gaze followed by a young gentleman in a blue tunic whose face was fatuous beyond the dreams of avarice; there was a fairy with a star-tipped wand touching a grand coach and six for the benefit of a pasty-faced wench, over-dressed and with flaxen, plaited hair; there was another Gretchen asleep on a bed, cobwebbed, and with sleeping guards around her, and a Junker not much her senior, prepared to press a Junker’s salute upon her lips, and so on. It meant nothing to Mr. Petre—nothing at all.
“None of these simple nursery tales,” said the Specialist, wagging his head slightly from side to side with an infinite compassion, and gazing steadily upon the sufferer. Mr. Petre shut the ridiculous book smartly.
“It’s no good answering questions. What am I to do?”
To his surprise, he was begged very courteously to take off his coat and waistcoat, tie, shirt and vest; which done, instruments were used upon him, of measurements and of percussion, and he was touched by wires, which his host had drawn like thin serpents from a corner, and which oddly registered mysteries upon dials. He was struck four or five times: harder than he liked. An ugly piece of machinery was clamped upon his arm below the elbow; he was made to sit down and cross his legs, and he was unpleasantly cut with the edge of the hand below the knee, with the result that his foot kicked upwards. In fact, all manner of things were done to him, which, in an ignorant age, would have made him suspect a charlatan. But we live in better times.
When he was allowed to dress himself and become human again (for it is human to be clothed) he was aware that the Master was pacing his little round body up and down the room, with his hands crossed behind his back, and was reciting to himself cabalistic sounds; words of no meaning to the profane. Then he stopped suddenly, looked Mr. Petre in the face, and said:
“My dear sir, yours is a very curious case. A very strange case! You have told me nothing of yourself—because as my colleague has warned me, you will not give any details of yourself since ... since ... since the sad....”
“No,” interrupted Mr. Petre doggedly, “that is the strict condition of my presence here to-day. Upon terms,” he added, though it hurt him to allude so coarsely to the fee, “which I think you know.”