Here are the facts in the case as they were known in the beginning to
Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, scientist and logician. After
hearing a statement of the problem from the lips of its principal he
declared it to be one of the most engaging that had ever come to his
attention, and----
But let me begin at the beginning:
* * * * *
The Thinking Machine was in the small laboratory of his modest
apartments at two o'clock in the afternoon. Martha, the scientist's
only servant, appeared at the door with a puzzled expression on her
wrinkled face.
"A gentleman to see you, sir," she said.
"Name?" inquired The Thinking Machine, without turning.
"He--he didn't give it, sir," she stammered.
"I have told you always, Martha, to ask names of callers."
"I did ask his name, sir, and--and he said he didn't know it."
The Thinking Machine was never surprised, yet now he turned on Martha
in perplexity and squinted at her fiercely through his thick glasses.
"Don't know his own name?" he repeated. "Dear me! How careless! Show
the gentleman into the reception room immediately."
With no more introduction to the problem than this, therefore, The
Thinking Machine passed into the other room. A stranger arose and came
forward. He was tall, of apparently thirty-five years, clean-shaven
and had the keen, alert face of a man of affairs. He would have been
handsome had it not been for dark rings under the eyes and the unusual
white of his face. He was immaculately dressed from top to toe;
altogether a man who would attract attention.
For a moment he regarded the scientist curiously; perhaps there was a
trace of well-bred astonishment in his manner. He gazed curiously at
the enormous head, with its shock of yellow hair, and noted, too, the
droop in the thin shoulders. Thus for a moment they stood, face to
face, the tall stranger making The Thinking Machine dwarf-like by
comparison.
"Well?" asked the scientist.
The stranger turned as if to pace back and forth across the room, then
instead dropped into a chair which the scientist indicated.
"I have heard a great deal about you, Professor," he began, in a
well-modulated voice, "and at last it occurred to me to come to you
for advice. I am in a most remarkable position--and I'm not insane.
Don't think that, please. But unless I see some way out of this
amazing predicament I shall be. As it is now, my nerves have gone; I
am not myself."
"Your story? What is it? How can I help you?"
"I am lost, hopelessly lost," the stranger resumed. "I know neither my
home, my business, nor even my name. I know nothing whatever of myself
or my life; what it was or what it might have been previous to four
weeks ago. I am seeking light on my identity. Now, if there is any
fee----"
"Never mind that," the scientist put in, and he squinted steadily into
the eyes of the visitor. "What _do_ you know? From the time you
remember things tell me all of it."
He sank back into his chair, squinting steadily upward. The stranger
arose, paced back and forth across the room several times and then
dropped into his chair again.
"It's perfectly incomprehensible," he said. "It's precisely as if I,
full grown, had been born into a world of which I knew nothing except
its language. The ordinary things, chairs, tables and such things, are
perfectly familiar, but who I am, where I came from, why I came--of
these I have no idea. I will tell you just as my impressions came to
me when I awoke one morning, four weeks ago.
"It was eight or nine o'clock, I suppose. I was in a room. I knew
instantly it was a hotel, but had not the faintest idea of how I got
there, or of ever having seen the room before. I didn't even know my
own clothing when I started to dress. I glanced out of my window; the
scene was wholly strange to me.
"For half an hour or so I remained in my room, dressing and wondering
what it meant. Then, suddenly, in the midst of my other worries, it
came home to me that I didn't know my own name, the place where I
lived nor anything about myself. I didn't know what hotel I was in. In
terror I looked into a mirror. The face reflected at me was not one I
knew. It didn't seem to be the face of a stranger; it was merely not a
face that I knew.
"The thing was unbelievable. Then I began a search of my clothing for
some trace of my identity. I found nothing whatever that would
enlighten me--not a scrap of paper of any kind, no personal or
business card."
"Have a watch?" asked The Thinking Machine.
"Any money?"
"Yes, money," said the stranger. "There was a bundle of more than ten
thousand dollars in my pocket, in one-hundred-dollar bills. Whose it
is or where it came from I don't know. I have been living on it since,
and shall continue to do so, but I don't know if it is mine. I knew it
was money when I saw it, but did not recollect ever having seen any
previously."
"Any jewelry?"
"These cuff buttons," and the stranger exhibited a pair which he drew
from his pocket.
"Go on."
"I finally finished dressing and went down to the office. It was my
purpose to find out the name of the hotel and who I was. I knew I
could learn some of this from the hotel register without attracting
any attention or making anyone think I was insane. I had noted the
number of my room. It was twenty-seven.
"I looked over the hotel register casually. I saw I was at the Hotel
Yarmouth in Boston. I looked carefully down the pages until I came to
the number of my room. Opposite this number was a name--John Doane,
but where the name of the city should have been there was only a
dash."
"You realize that it is perfectly possible that John Doane is your
name?" asked The Thinking Machine.
"Certainly," was the reply. "But I have no recollection of ever having
heard it before. This register showed that I had arrived at the hotel
the night before--or rather that John Doane had arrived and been
assigned to Room 27, and I was the John Doane, presumably. From that
moment to this the hotel people have known me as John Doane, as have
other people whom I have met during the four weeks since I awoke."
"Did the handwriting recall nothing?"
"Nothing whatever."
"Is it anything like the handwriting you write now?"
"Identical, so far as I can see."
"Did you have any baggage or checks for baggage?"
"No. All I had was the money and this clothing I stand in. Of course,
since then I have bought necessities."
Both were silent for a long time and finally the
stranger--Doane--arose and began pacing nervously again.
"That a tailor-made suit?" asked the scientist.
"Yes," said Doane, quickly. "I know what you mean. Tailor-made
garments have linen strips sewed inside the pockets on which are the
names of the manufacturers and the name of the man for whom the
clothes were made, together with the date. I looked for those. They
had been removed, cut out."
"Ah!" exclaimed The Thinking Machine suddenly. "No laundry marks on
your linen either, I suppose?"
"No. It was all perfectly new."
"Name of the maker on it?"
"No. That had been cut out, too."
Doane was pacing back and forth across the reception room; the
scientist lay back in his chair.
"Do you know the circumstances of your arrival at the hotel?" he asked
at last.
"Yes. I asked, guardedly enough, you may be sure, hinting to the clerk
that I had been drunk so as not to make him think I was insane. He
said I came in about eleven o'clock at night, without any baggage,
paid for my room with a one-hundred-dollar bill, which he changed,
registered and went upstairs. I said nothing that he recalls beyond
making a request for a room."
"The name Doane is not familiar to you?"
"No."
"You can't recall a wife or children?"
"Do you speak any foreign language?"
"Is your mind clear now? Do you remember things?"
"I remember perfectly every incident since I awoke in the hotel," said
Doane. "I seem to remember with remarkable clearness, and somehow I
attach the gravest importance to the most trivial incidents."
The Thinking Machine arose and motioned to Doane to sit down. He
dropped back into a seat wearily. Then the scientist's long, slender
fingers ran lightly, deftly through the abundant black hair of his
visitor. Finally they passed down from the hair and along the firm
jaws; thence they went to the arms, where they pressed upon good,
substantial muscles. At last the hands, well shaped and white,
were examined minutely. A magnifying glass was used to facilitate
this examination. Finally The Thinking Machine stared into the
quick-moving, nervous eyes of the stranger.
"Any marks at all on your body?" he asked at last.
"No," Doane responded. "I had thought of that and sought for an hour
for some sort of mark. There's nothing--nothing." The eyes glittered
a little and finally, in a burst of nervousness, he struggled to his
feet. "My God!" he exclaimed. "Is there nothing you can do? What is it
all, anyway?"
"Seems to be a remarkable form of aphasia," replied The Thinking
Machine. "That's not an uncommon disease among people whose minds and
nerves are overwrought. You've simply lost yourself--lost your
identity. If it is aphasia, you will recover in time. When, I don't
know."
"And meantime?"
"Let me see the money you found."
With trembling hands Doane produced a large roll of bills, principally
hundreds, many of them perfectly new. The Thinking Machine examined
them minutely, and finally made some memoranda on a slip of paper. The
money was then returned to Doane.
"Now, what shall I do?" asked the latter.
"Don't worry," advised the scientist. "I'll do what I can."
"And--tell me who and what I am?"
"Oh, I can find that out all right," remarked The Thinking Machine.
"But there's a possibility that you wouldn't recall even if I told you
all about yourself."