Lieutenant-General Neville Dysone, R.E., V.C., was the first really
eminent person to consult the crime doctor by regular appointment in the
proper hours. Quite apart from the feat of arms which had earned him the
most coveted of all distinctions, the gigantic General, deep-chested and
erect, virile in every silver-woven hair of his upright head, filled the
tiny stage in Welbeck Street and dwarfed its antique properties, as no
being had done before. And yet his voice was tender and even tremulous
with the pathetic presage of a heartbreak under all.
"Doctor Dollar," he began at once, "I have come to see you about the
most tragic secret that a man can have. I would shoot myself for saying
what I have to say, did I not know that a patient's confidence is
sacred to any member of your profession--perhaps especially to an
alienist?"
"I hope we are all alike as to that," returned Dollar, gently. He was
used to these sad openings.
"I ought not to have said it; but it hardly is my secret, that's why I
feel such a cur!" exclaimed the General, taking his handkerchief to a
fine forehead and remarkably fresh complexion, as if to wipe away its
noble flush. "Your patient, I devoutly hope, will be my poor wife, who
really seems to me to be almost losing her reason"--but with that the
husband quite lost his voice.
"Perhaps we can find it for her," said Dollar, despising the pert
professional optimism that told almost like a shot "It is a thing more
often mislaid than really lost."
And the last of the other's weakness was finally overcome. A few weighty
questions, lightly asked and simply answered, and he was master of a
robust address, in which an occasional impediment only did further
credit to his delicacy.
"No. I should say it was entirely a development of the last few months,"
declared the General emphatically. "There was nothing of the kind in
our twenty-odd years of India, nor yet in the first year after I
retired. All this--this trouble has come since I bought my house in the
pine country. It's called Valsugana, as you see on my card; but it
wasn't before we went there. We gave it the name because it struck us as
extraordinarily like the Austrian Tyrol, where--well, of which we had
happy memories, Doctor Dollar."
His blue eyes winced as they flew through the open French window, up the
next precipice of bricks and mortar, to the beetling sky-line of other
roofs, all a little softened in the faint haze of approaching heat. It
cost him a palpable effort to bring them back to the little dark
consulting-room, with its cool slabs of aged oak and the summer fernery
that hid the hearth.
"It's good of you to let me take my time, doctor, but yours is too
valuable to waste. All I meant was to give you an idea of our
surroundings, as I know they are held to count in such cases. We are
embedded in pines and firs. Some people find trees depressing, but after
India they were just what we wanted, and even now my wife won't let me
cut down one of them. Yet depression is no name for her state of mind;
it's nearer melancholy madness, and latterly she has become subject
to--to delusions--which are influencing her whole character and actions
in the most alarming way. We are finding it difficult, for the first
time in our lives, to keep servants; even her own nephew, who has come
to live with us, only stands it for my sake, poor boy! As for my
nerves--well, thank God I used to think I hadn't got any when I was in
the service; but it's a little hard to be--to be as we are--at our time
of life!" His hot face flamed. "What am I saying? It's a thousand times
harder on _her_! She had been looking forward to these days for years."
Dollar wanted to wring one of the great brown, restless hands. Might he
ask the nature of the delusions?