The trouble with these doctors was that they really knew nothing of
anything save what was on the surface, the little they had learned at
a medical college or in practise—chiefly how certain drugs, tried by
their predecessors in certain cases, were known to act. They had no
imagination whatever, even when you tried to tell them.
Take that latest young person who was coming here now in his good
clothes and with his car, fairly bursting with his knowledge of what he
called psychiatrics, looking into Davidson’s eyes so hard and smoothing
his temples and throat—massage, he called it—saying that he had
incipient tuberculosis of the throat and stomach trouble, and utterly
disregarding the things which he, Davidson, could personally see and
hear! Imagine the fellow trying to persuade him, at this late date,
that all that was wrong with him was tuberculosis, that he didn’t see
Mersereau standing right beside him at times, bending over him, holding
up that hand and telling him how he intended to kill him yet—that it
was all an illusion!
Imagine saying that Mersereau couldn’t actually seize him by the
throat when he was asleep, or nearly so, when Davidson himself,
looking at his throat in the mirror, could see the actual finger
prints,—Mersereau’s,—for a moment or so afterward. At any rate, his
throat was red and sore from being clutched, as Mersereau of late was
able to clutch him! And that was the cause of these lumps. And to say,
as they had said at first, that he himself was making them by rubbing
and feeling his throat, and that it was tuberculosis!
Wasn’t it enough to make one want to quit the place? If it weren’t for
Miss Liggett and Miss Koehler, his private nurse, and their devoted
care, he would. That Miss Koehler was worth her weight in gold,
learning his ways as she had, being so uniformly kind, and bearing with
his difficulties so genially. He would leave her something in his will.
To leave this place and go elsewhere, though, unless he could take her
along, would be folly. And anyway, where else would he go? Here at
least were other people, patients like himself, who could understand
and could sympathize with him,—people who weren’t convinced as were
these doctors that all that he complained of was mere delusion.
Imagine! Old Rankin, the lawyer, for instance, who had suffered untold
persecution from one living person and another, mostly politicians, was
convinced that his, Davidson’s, troubles were genuine, and liked to
hear about them, just as did Miss Koehler. These two did not insist,
as the doctors did, that he had slow tuberculosis of the throat, and
could live a long time and overcome his troubles if he would. They were
merely companionable at such times as Mersereau would give him enough
peace to be sociable.
The only real trouble, though, was that he was growing so weak from
lack of sleep and food—his inability to eat the food which his enemy
bewitched and to sleep at night on account of the choking—that he
couldn’t last much longer. This new physician whom Dr. Major had called
into consultation in regard to his case was insisting that along with
his throat trouble he was suffering from acute anemia, due to long
undernourishment, and that only a solution of strychnin injected into
the veins would help him. But as to Mersereau poisoning his food—not
a word would he hear. Besides, now that he was practically bedridden,
not able to jump up as freely as before, he was subject to a veritable
storm of bedevilment at the hands of Mersereau. Not only could he
see—especially toward evening, and in the very early hours of the
morning—Mersereau hovering about him like a black shadow, a great,
bulky shadow—yet like him in outline, but he could feel his enemy’s
hand moving over him. Worse, behind or about him he often saw a
veritable cloud of evil creatures, companions or tools of Mersereau’s,
who were there to help him and who kept swimming about like fish in
dark waters, and seemed to eye the procedure with satisfaction.
When food was brought to him, early or late, and in whatever form,
Mersereau and they were there, close at hand, as thick as flies,
passing over and through it in an evident attempt to spoil it before
he could eat it. Just to see them doing it was enough to poison it for
him. Besides, he could hear their voices urging Mersereau to do it.
“_That’s right—poison it!_”
“_He can’t last much longer!_”
“_Soon he’ll be weak enough so that when you grip him he will really
die!_”
It was thus that they actually talked—he could hear them.
He also heard vile phrases addressed to him by Mersereau, the iterated
and reiterated words “murderer” and “swindler” and “cheat,” there in
the middle of the night. Often, although the light was still on, he saw
as many as seven dark figures, very much like Mersereau’s, although
different, gathered close about him,—like men in consultation—evil men.
Some of them sat upon his bed, and it seemed as if they were about to
help Mersereau to finish him, adding their hands to his.
Behind them again was a complete circle of all those evil, swimming
things with green and red eyes, always watching—helping, probably. He
had actually felt the pressure of the hand to grow stronger of late,
when they were all there. Only, just before he felt he was going to
faint, and because he could not spring up any more, he invariably
screamed or gasped a choking gasp and held his finger on the button
which would bring Miss Koehler. Then she would come, lift him up, and
fix his pillows. She also always assured him that it was only the
inflammation of his throat, and rubbed it with alcohol, and gave him a
few drops of something internally to ease it.
After all this time, and in spite of anything he could tell them, they
still believed, or pretended to believe, that he was suffering from
tuberculosis, and that all the rest of this was delusion, a phase of
insanity!
And Mersereau’s skeleton still out there on the Monte Orte!
And Mersereau’s plan, with the help of others, of course, was to choke
him to death, there was no doubt of that now; and yet they would
believe after he was gone that he had died of tuberculosis of the
throat. Think of that.