The Doctor Who Held Hands

2. This Mrs. Ensor was an unfortunate woman who believed that she had promptings to kill her husband. Hers was one of those obscure borderline cases; she was not mad, she only thought she was. Having tried everything else, she had come to New York to put herself in Mme. Storey's hands for psychological treatments. She already seemed better. She lived very quietly with her maid in a small hotel near our office and came in three mornings a week for treatments. Meanwhile, in order to save the feelings of her family, it had been given out at home that she was travelling in Europe. As all this was exactly what I needed, I took over her history, her character, and her symptoms entire. It saved a lot of invention. She very willingly gave her permission. Mme. Storey, a past mistress in the art of make-up, experimented in making me resemble her. Mrs. Ensor was in her early thirties but looked ten or twelve years older. She had a strange, dead-leaf complexion with circles almost black under her eyes. It was perfectly easy for me to assume her harassed and tormented air, because, goodness knows! I felt just like that at the prospect of bearding the terrible Dr. Touchon in his den. Mrs. Ensor, who was wealthy, dressed in a very smart, plain style that made an odd contrast with her haggard face. All in all, it was a rather conspicuous make-up, but Mme. Storey considered that there was safety in its very boldness. On the third day my clothes came home from the makers. I went to Mme. Storey's house to dress and make up. I had a smart tailored ensemble of black messaline with coat to match, and a close-fitting black hat that completely covered my red hair. In a mirror I was absolutely unrecognizable to myself. It made me shiver to see myself looking so exactly like what I was supposed to be: the smart woman of the world who had everything to live for, but who, poor soul, had lost her grip on life. It was just the thing to make a fake doctor's mouth water. Mme. Storey lent me her Grace to play the part of my maid. When our smart luggage was packed (it all bore the labels of expensive foreign hotels) we drove to the Vandermeer Hotel and engaged an expensive suite; registering as Mrs. Sylvanus Ensor and maid, Detroit. I called up Dr. Touchon's office and was given an appointment for the following morning. The Westmoreland was the first of the great apartment houses to be built on Gramercy Park. It is old now but has managed to maintain its supremacy amongst the new buildings. Its air of old-fashioned magnificence was well calculated to inspire confidence in those who sought the doctor's advice. He had the ground-floor apartment on the corner. It must have comprised twelve or fourteen rooms. His door was opened by a gentle old man with an innocent and disarming smile. Again the doctor showed his astuteness in choosing such a one for his servant. I was shown into a small reception room. I gather that there were several such waiting rooms, so that the patients need never meet. In due course the old servant returned to say that the doctor was ready to see me. I followed him with a fast-beating heart. The consultation room was an immense and lofty chamber with a row of tall windows looking out on the Park. It had dark crimson walls covered with fine paintings in elaborate frames, superb Oriental rugs, and a quantity of heavy carved furniture. The subtle psychological effect to be conveyed by this conservative splendour was that the doctor had been established at the head of his profession for a long time past. The instant I caught sight of the master of the room I recognized his unique power and my heart failed me. How was I to cope with such a man? There was nothing of the greasy and overeager charlatan about Jacmer Touchon. His professional manner was first class. He waited for me in cool dignity, bowed with assurance, and waved me to a seat. A handsome, stalwart, dark man in the prime of his vigour—if anything he was too handsome; there was a certain luscious Oriental quality in his fleshly features and full, beaming dark eye. I suppose many women like that. Perhaps it was not of the Orient so much as the Renaissance; cruel, clever, and sensual; one saw him in one's mind decked out superbly in doublet and hose at the court of Lorenzo the Magnificent. All the other doctors I have ever consulted took care to seat their patients facing the light, but Dr. Touchon's method was the reverse. The important thing was that you should see him, you understand. When he sat down with the light from the windows falling in his eyes, I received an impression of power that made me feel weak. I can scarcely describe those strange eyes. They seemed to burn with changing flames. They were so dark in colour one could scarcely tell where pupil ended and iris began. Suddenly I perceived that the pupil was widely distended, almost filling the iris. Was it that which gave him his look of insane power? At a later moment I noticed that the pupil had contracted until it was not much larger than a pinhead. It struck a feeling of dread into me. I struggled hard against my feeling of weakness. "You wish to consult me?" he asked in a velvety voice. It had a hypnotic quality that went with the eyes. I nodded silently. "It is only fair to tell you," he said, "that my fee for the first consultation is five hundred dollars; one hundred for subsequent treatments." "I am prepared to pay it," I murmured. "Did your physician send you to me?" he asked. (What superb effrontery!) "No," I said, "a friend recommended you to me; a Mrs. Wilkinson of Detroit." "I don't seem to remember the name," he said with cold courtesy. I shivered internally under his look of suspicion. "She was not a patient of yours," I said hurriedly; "it was a friend of hers who was benefited by your treatments. I don't know the friend's name." Apparently he was satisfied. "How much have you been told about my methods?" he asked. "Scarcely anything," I said; "only that it was a sort of improved psychoanalysis." He raised his hand with a look of pretended horror. What an actor the man was! Though I knew he was acting, he was able to prevail upon me. "Oh, no, no!" he said. "There is no relation between psychoanalysis and psycho-synthesis; they are the exact opposites of one another. Psychoanalysis, with its emphasis upon the basest impulses of human nature, destroys the soul! Fortunately it is rapidly becoming discredited." Here he quoted a lot of impressive-sounding authorities. "Whereas psycho-synthesis" (his voice became tender when he spoke the word) "builds the soul and makes it strong! Do not be misled by the similarity of terms, my dear lady; there is the same difference between the two methods as there is between the words 'destructive' and 'constructive'!" When I write it down it sounds hollow enough. I can give you no idea of how convincingly it came out in his mellow and velvety voice. He was so utterly sure of his power over women! "You are giving me hope," I murmured. "What is your particular trouble?" he asked sympathetically. "I am going mad!" I said in Mrs. Ensor's husky, despairing tones. "At least I think I am. That is worse than actually going mad. For mad people, they say, are happy!" He nodded understandingly. "What makes you think you are not normal?" "Half the time I don't know what I'm doing!" I cried in seeming despair. I had rehearsed this over and over. "I suddenly come to and find myself in a place without the least recollection of how I got there." "What is it that fills your mind to the exclusion of your surroundings?" "Terrible, terrible things," I murmured, hanging my head. "Look at me, Mrs. Ensor," he purred. "Lose yourself in my eyes. Yield yourself freely. Let everything come out!" Plain terror filled me. How could I lose myself in him and at the same time keep my wits about me? For the first time I realized the full difficulty of the part I had to play. And I had to look forward to playing it over and over. I had to lead him on through psycho-synthesis to blackmail. "I can't! I can't!" I murmured. "How else can I cure you?" he said gently. And then in a soft, peremptory tone: "Look at me!" It had to be done. Slowly I raised my eyes to his. It was a dreadful experience. Dark lightnings seemed to shoot through and through me, blotting everything out, striking down my personality. Secretly, while I allowed my eyes to submit to his, I was resisting him with all my might. It was like a creeping paralysis. I could feel the fine drops of sweat springing out on my face. The advantage was all with him. Eyes, when you probe into them as deeply as that, cannot lie. He knew I was resisting him still. "Relax! ... Relax! ... Relax!" he purred. I sighed deeply to persuade him that I was obeying. In order to help resist the terrible desire to let everything go at the command of those eyes, I fixed my mind on nursery rhymes, repeating them over and over. "How can I go through with this for twenty visits?" I thought in despair. "What are these terrible things that torment you?" he asked softly. I used the question as an excuse to cover my face with my hands. "Something urges me to kill my husband," I murmured, as I had heard Mrs. Ensor do. "Yet I love him, too. This temptation is always with me. I have no peace!" Now I can read eyes, too, and astute as he was, I saw between my fingers a certain complacency appear in his eyes when I said this. He thought he was going to find an easy victim in me. "Poor lady! Poor lady!" he murmured sympathetically; then, very casually: "Have you any reason to make away with him?" "None whatever!" I wailed. "He is the best of husbands!" "You are not being quite frank with me now," he said reproachfully. "You must have some reason, or think that you have." "No reason except that he is so good to me," I said. I had got this from Mrs. Ensor also. I was very thankful I had this ready-made case to draw on, for I was sure I would never have been able to make anything up that would have withstood the scrutiny of those terrible eyes. "It is his very goodness which drives me wild," I added. "That feeling is perfectly understandable to a psychologist," he said with a judicial air. "To use a slang phrase, you have got yourself in wrong, Mrs. Ensor. It is this wrongness in you that is outraged by your husband's rightness. With your coöperation I will remove the wrongness, and you will be as happy as ever you were." "Oh, if you could!" I said, clasping my hands. "You might ask me anything! ... anything!" "But mind, I said with your coöperation," he warned me. "I am a surgeon of souls. You must bare your soul to me before I can operate." This was exactly in line with what we had been told respecting his methods; everything was going well so far. I even had a little feeling of triumph that, clever as he was, I was fooling him successfully. I started telling him the wicked thoughts I had so carefully rehearsed, and he listened attentively. On my right hand as I sat with my back to the windows there was an arched opening closed with handsome tapestry portières. Behind those portières I made no doubt there was a clerk taking down everything I said. But though things seemed to be going all right, I was still terrified. Dr. Touchon leaned toward me across the corner of his desk, his dark eyes mantling with flame and growing dull again. It was like making friends with a boa constrictor. Repeated shudders went through me. It was well that I was supposed to be half crazy. He asked me innumerable questions dealing with the relations between my supposed husband and myself. I had to think fast in order to answer them readily. Finally he asked carelessly: "What sort of razor does your husband shave with, Mrs. Ensor?" I gaped at him. "A—a safety razor," I stammered. "That is very important," he said oracularly. "How often does he shave?" A horrible suspicion occurred to me that this ridiculous question was a trap, and I seemed to fall through space. "What has that got to do——" I started to say. He shut me off with a peremptory wag of his hand. "Please answer the question," he said. "If I stopped to explain my reasons for everything we should never get anywhere." The absurd question stumped me. Never having had any brothers, I am not familiar with the domestic habits of men. "I—I never noticed," I stammered. He passed right on to something else and I could not be sure if any damage had been done. I still had that horrible sinking feeling. I would not give up. I went on confessing to the most outrageous thoughts. I wept and raved and accused myself, just as I had heard Mrs. Ensor do. He listened with every outward appearance of sympathy, but deep in his eyes I imagined that I saw a flicker of cold, amused contempt. It suggested that he was enjoying the spectacle of the genuine terror that was lending so much effect to my pretended ravings. But I could not be sure. I felt as helpless as a wave flinging itself against a cliff. Finally, with a glance at his little desk clock, he remarked deprecatingly: "I am sorry, but there is another patient waiting." "When shall I come again?" I faltered. "It will not be necessary for you to come again," he said in a voice of perfect courtesy—but now he no longer troubled to hide the amused contempt in his eyes. "There is nothing the matter with you, Mrs. Ensor. Go home to your husband and tell him you feel like killing him. It will clear the air!" He was jeering at me! I had failed! Tears of bitter mortification sprang to my eyes. It was such a little thing to have tripped one up! And after all the mental agony I had been through in order to bring myself up to the sticking point! I fumbled blindly with my pocketbook, supposing that I should have to pay him, anyhow. "Put up your purse," he said with a wave of his hand. "I only accept pay from those whom I am able to aid." He bowed me out with indescribable courteous insolence. "So nice to have seen you, Mrs. Ensor. We've had a nice talk, anyhow. Be sure to look me up when you are next in town. Good-morning. Good-morning." I became aware of the fact that the old servant had entered and was shepherding me out of the room. Jacmer Touchon's final smile and wave of the hand was truly devilish. Ah! I could have shot him for it. My eyes were overflowing now with tears of bitter, bitter chagrin. I had failed! What was I to say to my employer? The old man observed my distress. "Don't grieve, miss," he murmured. "All is bound to come right if your case is in the doctor's hands." I stared at him in an astonishment that checked my tears. But his sympathy was perfectly genuine. The old man actually believed in the scoundrel for whom he worked. Well, the world is full of innocent souls! I perceived that this was exactly the sort of person Jacmer Touchon would choose to have about him. It would be good for business!