Part 3 (2/2)

”I will arrange the terms to suit you,” he exclaimed. ”Your case interests me. Do you See this mirage only at sea?”

”In any open place,” Ford a.s.sured him. ”In a park or public square, but of course most frequently at sea.”

The quack waved his great hands as though brus.h.i.+ng aside a curtain.

”I will remove the illusion,” he said, ”and give you others more pretty.” He smiled meaningfully--an evil, leering smile. ”When will you come?” he asked. Ford glanced about him nervously.

”I shall stay now,” he said. ”I confess, in the streets and in my lodgings I am frightened. You give me confidence. I want to stay near you. I feel safe with you. If you will give me writing-paper, I will send for my things.”

For a moment the Jew hesitated, and then motioned to a desk. As Ford wrote, Prothero stood near him, and the reporter knew that over his shoulder the Jew was reading what he wrote. Ford gave him the note, unsealed, and asked that it be forwarded at once to his lodgings.

”To-morrow,” he said, ”I will call up our Emba.s.sy, and give my address to our Naval Attache.

”I will attend to that,” said Prothero.

”From now you are in my hands, and you can communicate with the outside only through me. You are to have absolute rest--no books, no letters, no papers. And you will be fed from a spoon. I will explain my treatment later. You will now go to your room, and you will remain there until you are a well man.”

Ford had no wish to be at once shut off from the rest of the house. The odor of cooking came through the hall, and seemed to offer an excuse for delay.

”I smell food,” he laughed. ”And I'm terrifically hungry. Can't I have a farewell dinner before you begin feeding me from a spoon?”

The Jew was about to refuse, but, with his guilty knowledge of what was going forward in the house, he could not be too sure of those he allowed to enter it. He wanted more time to spend in studying this new patient, and the dinner-table seemed to offer a place where he could do so without the other suspecting he was under observation.

”My a.s.sociate and I were just about to dine,” he said. ”You will wait here until I have another place laid, and you can join us.”

He departed, walking heavily down the hall, but almost at once Ford, whose ears were alert for any sound, heard him returning, approaching stealthily on tiptoe. If by this maneuver the Jew had hoped to discover his patient in some indiscretion, he was unsuccessful, for he found Ford standing just where he had left him, with his back turned to the door, and gazing with apparent interest at a picture on the wall. The significance of the incident was not lost upon the intruder. It taught him he was still under surveillance, and that he must bear himself warily. Murmuring some excuse for having returned, the Jew again departed, and in a few minutes Ford heard his voice, and that of another man, engaged in low tones in what was apparently an eager argument.

Only once was the voice of the other man raised sufficiently for Ford to distinguish his words. ”He is an American,” protested the voice; ”that makes it worse.”

Ford guessed that the speaker was Pearsall, and that against his admittance to the house he was making earnest protest. A door, closing with a bang, shut off the argument, but within a few minutes it was evident the Jew had carried his point, for he reappeared to announce that dinner was waiting. It was served in a room at the farther end of the hall, and at the table, which was laid for three, Ford found a man already seated. Prothero introduced him as ”my a.s.sociate,” but from his presence in the house, and from the fact that he was an American, Ford knew that he was Pearsall.

Pearsall was a man of fifty. He was tall, spare, with closely shaven face and gray hair, worn rather long. He spoke with the accent of a Southerner, and although to Ford he was studiously polite, he was obviously greatly ill at ease. He had the abrupt, inattentive manners, the trembling fingers and quivering lips, of one who had long been a slave to the drug habit, and who now, with difficulty, was holding himself in hand.

Throughout the dinner, speaking to him as though, interested only as his medical advisers, the Jew, and occasionally the American, sharply examined and cross-examined their visitor. But they were unable to trip him in his story, or to suggest that he was not just what he claimed to be.

When the dinner was finished, the three men, for different reasons, were each more at his ease. Both Pearsall and Prothero believed from the new patient they had nothing to fear, and Ford was congratulating himself that his presence at the house was firmly secure.

”I think,” said Pearsall, ”we should warn Mr. Grant that there are in the house other patients who, like himself, are suffering from nervous disorders. At times some silly neurotic woman becomes hysterical, and may make an outcry or scream. He must not think ----”

”That's all right!” Ford rea.s.sured him cheerfully. ”I expect that. In a sanatorium it must be unavoidable.”

As he spoke, as though by a signal prearranged, there came from the upper portion of the house a scream, long, insistent.

It was the voice of a woman, raised in appeal, in protest, shaken with fear. Without for an instant regarding it, the two men fastened their eyes upon the visitor. The hand of the Jew dropped quickly from his beard, and slid to the inside pocket of his coat. With eyes apparently unseeing, Ford noted the movement.

”He carries a gun,” was his mental comment, ”and he seems perfectly willing to use it.” Aloud, he said: ”That, I suppose is one of them?”

Prothero nodded gravely, and turned to Pearsall. ”Will you attend her?”

he asked.

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