“Mrs. Malton, I want you to go to the nearest telephone, and say that you are speaking for a man who will give any fee that may be asked to visit the greatest specialist upon this,” and he wrote down upon a piece of paper—“‘severe nervous trouble involving confusion and loss of continuity of thought.’ Say that the conditions are,” here he wrote down again—“‘The name will not be given. Any appointment will be kept.’ Use those very words, Mrs. Malton, and use no other. And as you value your salvation, breathe not a word of this to any one.”
Mrs. Malton was away longer than he liked; but when she got back she was clear enough, and very sensible.
Dr. Wittrington was dead. A name had been given her. It was the name of Sir Henry Brail, with an address in Harley Street. She had written it down in her large, irregular, childish letters, and off she was sent again to give that exact message to Sir Henry Brail. She came back more quickly this time, and with a very business-like message to convey. Four o’clock the next day. A hundred guineas. And of course complete privacy. No question of asking a name.
So far so good. Mr. Petre had what he wanted, and he would try it as a last poor chance before cutting himself off and getting clean away. What he had learned of the name he bore—if it were his name—was no more than the bare facts which recalled in him nothing. Maybe his soul would be healed. He might return (would it be to the States? More than one had seemed to recognize him, and John K. Petre he certainly was for all the world) to a home that knew him and that he knew; but if the worst came to the worst, and that brazen wall proved impassable, why, then there was nothing for it but to get him clean away.
CHAPTER IX
Mr. petre approached the door in Harley Street with some little fear in his heart.
It was the first time he had broken the wall of his isolation with any human being. It had been a human being, humble, poor and loyal; to be trusted, if any one could be. But the doctor was another matter. Mr. Petre—he knew not why, some impression perhaps received in the old days of which he knew nothing and which yet remained with him—Mr. Petre distrusted all professions, all corporations; for he feared that their members would always be more loyal to their Guild than to the private citizen with whom they dealt. He stopped in the street a moment to count the twenty-one fivers in their envelope (a risk, but he had not learnt the precautions of the rich), and found them accurate. He went up to the door, rang, and was admitted by an impressive mute.
He was shown into a room where he had to wait for some time, after the ritual of medicine, and in which his spirits sank lower and lower as he turned over the pages of a dead weekly. When he was at last admitted into the Presence what he saw did nothing to raise his spirits.
Not that there were any instruments of torture furnishing the Great Specialist’s inner room, not even one of those chairs with strange joints which threaten abominable things; no, it was the spirit of the room, consonant to the figure which inhabited it and had made it. For the walls were covered with a dark brown composition embossed to imitate leather, and too thickly covered with some varnish. In the fire-place was an imitation fire of imitation logs, through which no gas flames murmured now. On the walls were four large steel engravings, all after Landseer; upon the mantelpiece one large clock, of stone, funereal black and with the ghastly white face of operated men.
At the table, whereon were ranged four or five books of reference and, exactly ordered, blank paper, a pen, ink and a blotter, sat the Great Specialist himself. He did not rise at Mr. Petre’s entrance, but very courteously motioned him to a chair, on which that financier sat down uncertainly, awaiting inquisition. The Great Specialist looked at him for a moment, and he at the Great Specialist. He felt sure that the Great Specialist was searching the very inwards of his soul, while as for himself, he could not even search, but only very generally receive the most external, the most superficial impression of that eminent man before him. Yet of the two names—had the Scientist but known it—that of John K. Petre was more renowned than that of Henry Brail; for it meant more money.