The Thread of Flame

Chapter 12

It was not a new reflection, as you know; and of late it had been growing more insistent. The truth is that I needed to find work. My nearly one hundred dollars was melting away with unbelievable rapidity. Expenses being reduced to a rule of thumb, I could count the days after which I shouldn't have a cent. Winter was coming. Already there were mornings with the nip of frost in them. I should require boots, clothes, warm things of all sorts. Food and shelter I couldn't do without.

It was the incredible, the impossible. Nebuchadnezzar driven from men and eating grass like an ox couldn't have been more surprised to see himself in such a state of want. Somewhere, out of the memories that had not disappeared, I drew the recollection that to need boots and not be able to afford them had been my summary of an almost inhuman degree of poverty. I could remember trying to picture what it would be like to find myself in such a situation and not being able to do so. I had bought a new pair since coming to New York, and they were already wearing thin.

It came to me againit came to me constantly, of coursethat I could save myself by going to some sympathetic person and telling him my tale. I rejected now the idea of making Boyd Averill my confidant; but there were other possibilities. There were doctors, clergymen, policemen. As a matter of fact, people who suffered from amnesia, and who didn't know their names, generally applied to the police.

In the end I opted for a clergyman as being the most human of these agencies. Vaguely I was aware that vaguely I belonged to a certain church. I had tested myself along the line of religion as well as along other lines, with the discovery that the services of one church were familiar, while those of others were not.

From the press I learned that the Rev. Dr. Scattlethwaite, the head of a large and wealthy congregation, was perhaps the best known exponent in New York of modern scientific beneficence, and by attendance at one of his services I got the information that at fixed hours of every day he was in his office at his parish house for the purpose of meeting those in trouble. It was a simple matter, therefore, to present myself, and be met on the threshold of his waiting-room by the young lady who acted as his secretary.

She was a portly young lady, light on her feet, quick in her movements, dressed in black, with blond fluffy hair, and a great big welcoming smile. The reception was much the same as in any doctor's office, and I think she diagnosed my complaint as the drug habit. Asking me to take a seat she assured me that Doctor Scattlethwaite would see me as soon as he was disengaged. When she had returned to her desk, where she seemed to make endless notes, I had leisure to look about me.

Except for a large white wooden cross between two doors, it might have been a waiting-room in a hospital. Something in the atmosphere suggested people meeting agoniesor perhaps it was something in myself. As far as that went, there were no particular agonies in the long table strewn with illustrated papers and magazines, nor in the bookrack containing eight or ten well-thumbed novels. Neither were agonies suggested by the Arundel print of the Resurrection on one bit of wall-space, nor by the large framed photograph of the Arch of Constantine on another. All the same there was that in the air which told one that no human being in the world would ever come into this room otherwise than against his will.

And yet in that I may be wrong, considering how many people there are who enjoy the luxury of sorrow. I guessed, for example, that the well-dressed woman in mourning who sat diagonally opposite me was carrying her grief to every pastor in New York and refusing to be comforted by any. Another woman in mourning, rusty and cheap in her case, flanked by two vacant-eyed children, had evidently come to collect a portion of the huge financial bill she was able to present against fate. An extremely thin lady, with eyes preternaturally wide open, was perhaps a sufferer from insomnia, while the little old man with broken boots and a long red nose was plainly an ordinary "bum." These were my companions except that a beaming lady of fifty or so, dressed partly like a Salvation Army lassie and partly like a nun, and whom I took to be Doctor Scattlethwaite's deaconess en litre, bustled in and out for conferences with the fluffy-haired girl at the desk.

I beguiled the waiting, which was long and tedious, by co-ordinating my tale so as to get the main points into salience. It was about ten in the morning when I arrived, and around half past ten the lady who had first claim on Doctor Scattlethwaite came out from her audience. She was young and might have been pretty if she hadn't been so hollow-eyed and walked with her handkerchief pressed closely to her lips. I put her down as a case of nervous prostration.

The lady with the inconsolable sorrow was next summoned by the secretary, and so one after another those who had preceded me went in to take their turns. Mine came after the old "bum," when it was nearly twelve o'clock.

The room was a kind of library. I retain an impression of books lining the walls, a leather-covered lounge, one or two leather-covered easy-chairs, and a large flat-topped desk in the center of the floor-space. Behind the desk stood a short, square-shouldered man in a dark-gray clerical attire, with a squarish, benevolent, clean-shaven face, and sharp, small eyes which studied me as I crossed the floor. His aspect and attitude were business-like, and business-like was his manner of shaking hands as he asked me to sit down. An upright arm-chair stood at the corner of the desk, and as I took it he resumed his seat in his own revolving-chair which he tilted slightly backward. With his elbows on the arms and fitting the tips of his fingers together, he waited for me to state my errand, eying me all the while.

Relieved and yet slightly disconcerted by this non-committal bearing, I stumbled through my story less coherently than I had meant to tell it. Badly narrated, it was preposterous, especially as coming from a man in seemingly full possession of his faculties. All that enabled me to continue was that my hearer listened attentively, with no outward appearance of disbelieving me.

"And you've come to me for advice as to the wise thing for you to do," he said, not unsympathetically, when I had brought my lame story to a close.

"That's about it," I agreed, though conscious of a regret at having come at all.

"Then the first thing I should suggest," he continued, never taking his penetrating eyes from my face, "is that you should see a doctora specialista neurologist. I'll give you a line to Doctor Glegg"

"What would he do?" I ventured to question.

"That would depend on whether or not you could pay for treatment. I presume, from what you've said of your funds giving out, that you couldn't."

"No, I couldn't," I assented, reddening.

"Then he'd probably put you for observation into the free psychopathic ward at Mount Olivet"

"Is that an insane-asylum?"

"We don't have insane-asylums nowadays; but in any case it isn't what you mean. It's a sanitarium for brain diseases"

"I shouldn't want to go to a place like that."

"Then what would you suggest doing?"

"I thought" But I was not sure as to what I had thought. Hazily I had imagined some Christian detective agency hunting up my family, restoring my name, and giving me back my check-book. It was probably on the last detail that unconsciously to myself I was laying the most emphasis. "I thought," I stammered, after a slight pause, "thatthat you might be inclined toto help me."

"With money?"

The question was so direct as to take me by surprise.

"I didn't know exactly how"

"An average of about fifteen people come to see me every day," he said, in his calm, business-like voice, "and of the fifteen about five are men. And of the five men an average of four come, with one plausible tale or other, to get money out of me under false pretenses."

I shot out of my seat. The anger choking me was hardly allayed by the raising of his hand and his suave, "Sit down again." He went on quietly, as I sank back into my chair: "I only want you to see that with all men who come telling me strange tales my first impulse must be suspicion."

Indignation almost strangled me. "Andandam I to understand thatthat it's suspicionnow?"

"So long as money is a factor in the case it must betill everything is explained."

"But everything is explained."

"To your satisfactionpossibly; but hardly to mine."

"Then what explanation would be satisfactory to you?"

"Oh, any of two or three. Since you decline to put yourself under Doctor Glegg, you might be able to offer some corroboration.

"But I can't. I've kept my secret so closely that no one has heard it but myself. The few people I know would be as incredulous as you are."

"I don't say that I'm incredulous; I'm only on my guard. Don't you see? I have to be."

"But surely when a man is speaking the truth his manner must carry some conviction."

"I wish I could think so; but I've believed so many false yarns on the strength of a man's manner, and disbelieved so many true ones on the same evidence, that I no longer trust my own judgment. But please don't be annoyed. If your mental condition is such as you describe, I'm proposing the most scientific treatment you can get in New York. In addition to that, I know that Doctor Glegg has had a number of such cases and has cured them."

"You know that?"

"Perhaps I ought to say that they've been cured while under his care. I think I've heard him say that as a matter of fact they've cured themselves. Without knowing much of the malady, I rather think it's one of those in which time restores the ruptured tissues, with the aid of mental rest."

"If that's all"

"Oh, I don't say that it's all; but as far as I understand it's a large part of it. But then I don't understand very much. That's why I'm suggesting"

"I could get mental rest of my own accord if"

"Yes? Ifwhat?"

"If I could find out whowho I am."

"And you've no clues at all?"

I shook my head.

"Have you heard no names that were familiar to you?"

"Scores of them; but none with which I could connect myself."

"And did you think I could find out for you what you yourself have not been able to discover?"

"I didn't know but what you might have means."

"What means could I have? As far as I've ever heard, the only way of tracing a lost man is through the policewith detectivesand publicitydescriptions in the papersphotographs thrown on screensthat sort of thing. I don't think there's any other way."

I took perhaps two minutes, perhaps three, to ponder these possibilities. In the end they seemed to magnify my misfortune.

"Then, sir, that's all you can do for me?"

"Remember that I should be doing a great deal if I got you to put yourself under Doctor Glegg."

"In the free psychopathic ward of a sanitarium for diseases of the brainto be watched."

"To be under observation. There's a difference."

"All the observation in the world wouldn't tell Doctor Glegg more than I'm telling you now."

"Oh yes, it would. It would tell himit would tell meyou must excuse me, you knowbut the situation obliges me to speak franklyit would tell himit would tell mewhether or not your story is a true one."

"So you don't believe me?"

"How can I believe you on the strength of this one interview?"

"But how could I convince you in a dozen interviews?"

"You couldn't. Nothing would convince me but something in the way of outside proofor Doctor Glegg's report."

I rose, not as I did before, but slowly, and I hoped with dignity.

"Then I see no reason, sir, for taking your time any longer"

He too rose, business-like, imperturbable.

"My dear young man, I must leave that to you. My time is entirely at your disposal and all my good-will."

"Thanks."

"And I'll go as far as to say this, that I think the probabilities are in your favor. I will even add that if I hadn't thought so in a hundred other cases, in which men whom I pitiedtrustedand aidedwere making me a dupe You see, I've been at this thing a good many years"

Managing somehow to bow myself out, I got into the air again. I attributed my wrath to the circumstances of not being taken at my word; but the real pang lay in the thought of being watched, as a type of mild lunatic and a pauper.