The Treasure-Train Part 10

"Oh yes," she resumed, dreamily; "I am thinking about once, when I left him, I wandered through the country. I remember little except that it was the country through which we had pa.s.sed on an automobile trip on our honeymoon. Once I thought I saw him, and I tried to get to him. I longed for him, but each time, when I almost reached him, he would disappear. I seemed to be so deserted and alone. I tried to call him, but my tongue refused to say his name. It must have been hours that I wandered about, for I recall nothing after that until I was found, disheveled and exhausted."

She paused and closed her eyes, while I could see that Kennedy considered this gap very important.

"Don't stop," persisted Kennedy. "Once we quarreled over one of his clients who was suing for a divorce. I thought he was devoting too much time and attention to her. While there might not have been anything wrong, still I was afraid. In my anger and anxiety I accused him. He retorted by slamming the door, and I did not see him for two or three days. I realized my nervous condition, and one day a mutual friend of ours introduced me to Doctor Burr and advised me to take a rest-cure at his sanatorium. By this time Roger and I were on speaking-terms again.

But the death of the baby and the quarrel left me still as nervous as before. He seemed anxious to have me do something, and so I came here."

"Do you remember anything that happened after that?" asked Craig, for the first time asking a mildly leading question.

"Yes; I recall everything that happened when I came here," she went on.

"Roger came up with me to complete the necessary arrangements. We were met at the station by Doctor Burr and this woman who has since been my nurse and companion. On the way up from the station to the sanatorium Doctor Burr was very considerate of me, and I noticed that my husband seemed interested in Miss Giles and the care she was to take of me."

Kennedy flashed a glance at me from a note-book in which he was apparently busily engaged in jotting down her answers. I did not know just what interpretation to put on it, but surmised that it meant that he had struck what the new psychologists call a "complex," in the entrance of Miss Giles into the case.

Before we realized it there came a sudden outburst of feeling.

"And now--they are keeping me here by force!" she cried.

Doctor Burr looked at us significantly, as much as to say, "Just what might be expected, you see." Kennedy nodded, but made no effort to stop Mrs. Cranston.

"They have told Roger that I am insane, and I know he must believe it or he would not leave me here. But their real motive, I can guess, is mercenary. I can't complain about my treatment here--it costs enough."

By this time she was sitting bolt upright, staring straight ahead as though amazed at her own boldness in speaking so frankly before them.

"I feel all right at times--then--it is as though I had a paralysis of the body, but not of the mind--not of the mind," she repeated, tensely.

There was a frightened look on her face, and her voice was now wildly appealing.

What would have followed I cannot guess, for at that instant there came a noise outside from another of the rooms as though pandemonium had broken loose. By the shouting and confusion, one might easily have wondered whether keepers and lunatics might not have exchanged places.

"It is just one of the patients who has escaped from his room,"

explained Doctor Burr; "nothing to be alarmed about. We'll soon have him quieted."

Doctor Burr hurried out into the corridor while Miss Giles was looking out of the door.

Quickly Kennedy reached over and abstracted several drops from a bottle of tonic on the table, pouring it into his handkerchief, which he rolled up tightly and stuffed into his pocket. Mrs. Cranston watched him pleadingly, and clasped her hands in mute appeal, with a hasty glance at Miss Giles.

Kennedy said nothing, either, but rapidly folded up a page of the note-book on which he had been writing and shoved it into Mrs.

Cranston's hand, together with something he had taken from his pocket.

She understood, and quickly placed it in her corsage.

"Read it--when you are absolutely alone," he whispered, just as Miss Giles shut the door and turned to us.

The excitement subsided almost as quickly as it had arisen, but it had been sufficient to put a stop to any further study of the case along those lines. Miss Giles's keen eyes missed no action or movement of her patient.

Doctor Burr returned shortly. It was evident from his manner that he wished to have the visit terminated, and Kennedy seemed quite willing to take the hint. He thanked Mrs. Cranston, and we withdrew quietly, after bidding her good-by in a manner as rea.s.suring as we could make it under the circ.u.mstances.

"You see," remarked Doctor Burr, as we walked down the hall, "she is quite unstrung still. Mr. Cranston comes up here once in a while, and we notice that after these visits she is, if anything, worse."

Down the hall a door had been left open, and we could catch a glimpse of a patient rolled in a blanket, while two nurses forced something down his throat. Doctor Burr hastily closed the door as we pa.s.sed.

"That is the condition Mrs. Cranston might have got into if she had not come to us when she did," he said. "As it is, she is never violent and is one of the most tractable patients we have."

We left shortly, without finding out whether Doctor Burr suspected us of anything or not. As we made our way back to the city, I could not help the feeling of depression such as Poe mentioned at seeing the private madhouse in France.

"That glimpse we had into the other room almost makes one recall the soothing system of Doctor Maillard. Is Doctor Burr's system better?" I asked.

"A good deal of what we used to think and practise is out of date now,"

returned Kennedy. "I think you are already familiar with the theory of dreams that has been developed by Dr. Sigmund Freud, of Vienna. But perhaps you are not aware of the fact that Freud's contribution to the study of insanity is of even greater scientific value than his dream theories taken by themselves.

"Hers, I feel sure now, is what is known as one of the so-called 'border-line cases,'" he continued. "It is clearly a case of hysteria--not the hysteria one hears spoken of commonly, but the condition which scientists know as such. We trace the impulses from which hysterical conditions arise, penetrate the disguises which these repressed impulses or wishes must a.s.sume in order to appear in the consciousness. Such transformed impulses are found in normal people, too, sometimes. The hysteric suffers mostly from reminiscences which, paradoxically, may be completely forgotten.

"Obsessions and phobias have their origin, according to Freud, in s.e.xual life. The obsession represents a compensation or subst.i.tute for an unbearable s.e.xual idea and takes its place in consciousness. In normal s.e.xual life, no neurosis is possible, say the Freudists. s.e.x is the strongest impulse, yet subject to the greatest repression, and hence the weakest point of our cultural development. Hysteria arises through the conflict between libido and s.e.x-repression. Often s.e.x-wishes may be consciously rejected but unconsciously accepted. So when they are understood every insane utterance has a reason. There is really method in madness.

"When hysteria in a wife gains her the attention of an otherwise inattentive husband it fills, from the standpoint of her deeper longing, an important place, and, in a sense, may be said to be desirable. The great point about the psycha.n.a.lytic method, as discovered by Breuer and Freud, is that certain symptoms of hysteria disappear when the hidden causes are brought to light and the repressed desires are gratified."

"How does that apply to Mrs. Cranston?" I queried.

"Mrs. Cranston," he replied, "is suffering from what the psycha.n.a.lysts call a psychic trauma--a soul-wound, as it were. It is the neglect, in this case, of her husband, whom she deeply loves. That, in itself, is sufficient to explain her experience wandering through the country. It was the region which she a.s.sociated with her first love-affair, as she told us. The wave of recollection that swept over her engulfed her mind. In other words, reason could no longer dominate the cravings for a love so long suppressed. Then, when she saw, or imagined she saw, one who looked like her lover the strain was too great."

It was the middle of the afternoon when we reached the laboratory.

Kennedy at once set to work studying the drops of tonic which had been absorbed in the handkerchief. As Kennedy worked, I began thinking over again of what we had seen at the Belleclaire Sanatorium. Somehow or other, I could not get out of my mind the recollection of the man rolled in the blanket and trussed up as helpless as a mummy. I wondered whether that alone was sufficient to account for the quickness with which he had been pacified. Then I recalled Mrs. Cranston's remark about her mental alertness and physical weakness. Had it anything to do with the "tonic"?

"Suppose, while I am waiting," I finally suggested to Craig, "I try to find out what Cranston does with his time since his wife has been shut off from the world."

"That's a very good idea," acquiesced Kennedy. "Don't take too long, however, for I may strike something important here any minute."

After several inquiries over the telephone, I found that since his wife had been in Montrose Cranston had closed his apartment and was living at one of his clubs. Having two or three friends who were members, I did not hesitate to drop around.

Unfortunately, none of my friends happened to be there, and I was forced, finally, to ask for Cranston himself, although all that I really wanted to know was whether he was there or not. One of the clerks told me that he had been in, but had left in a taxicab only a short time before.

As there was a cab-stand outside the club, I determined to make an inquiry and perhaps discover the driver who had had him. The starter knew him, and when I said that it was very important business on which I wanted to see him he motioned to a driver who had just pulled up.

A chance for another fare and a generous tip were all that was necessary to induce him to drive me to the Trocadero, a fas.h.i.+onable restaurant and cabaret, where he had taken Cranston a short time before. It was crowded when I entered, and, avoiding the headwaiter, I stood by the door a few minutes and looked over the brilliant and gay throng. Finally, I managed to catch a glimpse of Cranston's head at a table in a far corner. As I made my way down the line of tables, I was genuinely amazed to see that he was with a woman. It was Julia Giles!

She must have come down on the next train after we did, but, at any rate, it looked as though she had lost no time in seeking out Cranston after our visit. I took a seat at a table next them.

They were talking about Kennedy, and, during a lull in the music, I overheard him asking her just what Craig had done.

"It was certainly very clever in him to play both you and Doctor Burr the way he did. He told Doctor Burr that you had sent him, and told you that Doctor Burr had sent him. By whom do you suppose he really was sent?"

"Could it have been my wife?"

"It must have been, but how she did it is more than I can imagine."

"How is she, anyway?" he asked.

"Sometimes she seems to be getting along finely, and then, other days, I feel quite discouraged about her. Her case is very obstinate."

"Perhaps I had better go out and see Burr," he considered. "It is early in the evening. I'll drive you out in my car. I'll stay at the sanatorium tonight, and then, perhaps, I'll know a little better what we can do."