“I welcome you here, Mr. Brandon, for several reasons,” he said. “Apart from the fact that you pay John’s bills every quarter, and that he always speaks of you in the most affectionate terms, I am hoping that you will be able to add to our knowledge of the dear fellow himself.”
Somehow Brandon was a little startled by the epithet. It had an odd sound on official lips. He would have expected it to fall almost as soon from the governor of a jail. The doctor met Brandon’s look of surprise with a smile. “It’s the only way to describe him,” he said. “But he is a great puzzle to us all. And if in any way you can help us to solve him we shall be much in your debt.”
“There is little I can tell you,” said Brandon, “that you don’t already know. And that little I’ll preface with a simple statement which I hope will not annoy you too much. It’s my unshakable belief that John Smith ought not to be here.”
A perceptible shadow crossed the alert face of Dr. Thorp. “It is my province to disagree with you,” he said very gravely. “Not for a moment could I allow myself to hold anyone here against his will if I thought him entirely sane, normal, rational.”
“I readily understand that,” said Brandon with his air of charming courtesy. “But may I ask what means are open to you in an institution of this kind of forming an impartial judgment?”
Dr. Thorp answered the question with a frankness which greatly prepossessed Brandon in his favor. “I readily admit that for us here an impartial judgment is hardly possible. John Smith has been certified insane in the particular way that the law requires, and we are only able to approach his case in the light of that knowledge.”
“Yes, that I quite understand. But may I ask this question? Had John Smith not been certified as a lunatic when he came here, had he, let us assume, come here on probation, could you conscientiously certify him by the light of your present knowledge?”
“You have asked a most difficult question, but I will answer it as well as I can. As a private individual, although he shows certain symptoms which sooner or later are bound, in my judgment, to lead to serious mental derangement, he is not likely at present to do actual harm; in fact he is capable of doing positive good; but of course, in a time like this he has to be considered as a political entity, and it is on these grounds I understand that he is here to be taken care of until the war is over.”
“Prima facie, that is true,” said Brandon. “In other words, a man of pure and noble genius is the victim of a shallow, sectarian ignorance which deserves to be the laughing-stock of the universe.”
The words were extravagant, and a certain violence of gesture accompanied them, but the reaction of Dr. Thorp was serious, even troubled. “You are bent on involving me in the most difficult problem of my experience,” he said, after a pause.