At the end of about ten minutes, it became apparent that Mr. Wotton did not think so. His head was still bowed over his papers and consequently did not study directly the figure before him. If he had he might have been moved to some suspicion by Dr. Hendry’s remarkably shabby clothes. As it was, he only heard Dr. Hendry’s remarkably cultivated voice.
“I don’t think we need go into all that,” he said at last, after his visitor had gone into a good deal of it, and seemed alarmingly capable of going into a good deal more. “If you’re sure it’s a case of that sort, a case of really dangerous mania, I suppose it’s all right.”
“In all my experience,” said Dr. Hendry solemnly, and with a full sense of responsibility, “I have never known a clearer one. This optical question is becoming grave, sir. It is becoming menacing. Even at this moment, while I speak, persons unquestionably mad are wandering about the world, and even delivering authoritative opinions on scientific subjects. Only the other day–.”
At this moment his melodious and persuasive voice was drowned for an instant in very remarkable sounds from the next room. The noise resembled that of some huge and heavy body being hurled against the door; and in the silence that followed something like guttural imprecations, as if hoarse and faint with fury, could be heard through the thick partition.
“Good heavens!” cried Mr. Wotton, awakening with a start and looking up for the first time. “What on earth was that?”
Dr. Hendry wagged his head with a beautiful sadness, but he continued to smile.
“Ours is a melancholy occupation,” he said. “Dealing with the weaker and the wilder aspects of our fallen nature . . . the body of our humiliation, I think it is in the Greek Testament . . . the body of our humiliation. It sounds only too like the struggle of some unfortunate whom society finds it a sad necessity to restrain.”
At this moment the body of our humiliation was again thrown crashing against the door; and it seemed to be a body of some weight and momentum and even nobility. The magistrate was not altogether satisfied. Patients or prisoners (or whatever the new social victims ought to be called) were indeed frequently taken into the adjoining room to await examination; but generally under the guardianship of attendants who would prevent them indicating their impatience in so lively a style. The only other hypothesis was that the lunatic next door was so exceedingly lively as to have killed his keeper.
Whatever else the old army surgeon was, he was a man of courage. He got up from his desk and went across to the door that was still shaking and vibrating with the shocks from within. He looked at it for a moment with his head on one side; and then deliberately unlocked it. Though he showed no fear, he had to show a good deal of agility, in leaping back and not being flung flat on the floor by the thing that came out of the room. At that moment he would have called it a thing rather than a man. It had goggle eyes that stood out of its head like horns; and Mr. Wotton had a confused feeling confirming the doctor’s theory that the unfortunate creature must have something the matter with its eyes. It had long tawny tufts of moustache and hair standing out in all directions; for it had been ineffectually brushing its hair against the wall for some time past. It was only when it had fallen into the full daylight of the room that the magistrate saw that it was wearing a white waistcoat and a grey pair of trousers, such as are seldom worn by a walrus or even a wild man of the woods.
“Well, anyhow,” he muttered, “he is clothed, if not exactly in his right mind.”
The huge man who had fallen through the doorway straightened himself and stood up with a rather wild stare; his tawny tusks more aggressive than ever. But it soon became apparent at least that he possessed the power of speech. His first remarks, being curses in a Continental language, might indeed have been mistaken for inarticulate cries; but the two scientific characters who were listening to him were soon able to recognise the sound of scientific language disentangling itself from other foreign languages. In fact, the official doctor was making his official report; but it did not sound like that.
The situation was rather hard on him; and the trick from which he had suffered will not be seriously defended, but only silently enjoyed, by the wise and good. He also had a very complete theory of the causes of mental breakdown among his fellow citizens. He also could trace to physiological and organic causes the mental condition of his captive. He could explain the nature of Spinal Repulsion quite as sanely and serenely as Hendry could that of Colour-Blindness. But somehow he had not had the stage set for him so satisfactorily for its exposition. At the very moment when he should have sailed into the magistrate’s room to make his report, and Hendry should have been locked up in the waiting room to wait for the result of it, the unscrupulous Mr. Murrel had rapidly reversed the positions of the two men of science, with the deplorable results that we have already seen. The official, finding himself trapped, had behaved as very full-blooded and confident people often behave when something happens to them which they never believe to be possible. For it is the man whose life goes with a smooth and swift motion, who is normally self-satisfied and smiling, who has never been made to turn aside for anything, who comes with a crash into a real obstacle. On the other hand, the history of poor Hendry had been exactly the opposite. He had clung pathetically to his polite manners, as the only relic of his social status, through a hundred humiliations; and he was used to explaining things elegantly to creditors and assuming a cultivated and slightly pedantic tone in talking to policemen. The consequence was that while the official doctor gasped and snorted and swore in unintelligible manner, the certified lunatic stood with his head gracefully on one side, making a soft clucking noise in his throat to indicate sorrow over the downfall of the human mind. The Army surgeon looked from one to the other for a moment, and then fixed his eyes upon the cursing foreigner; as he had fixed them on many homicidal maniacs before. So did these three distinguished medical men meet at last; in a rather informal consultation.
Outside, in the street that struggled crazily to the sea-cliff, Douglas Murrel sat on the top of his cab, with his face upturned to heaven like one whose work has been well and worthily done. He was wearing an exceedingly battered and shabby black top hat, which was not his own; for he had bought the hat along with the cab; though it was the sort of hat which a man might well have been paid to wear, rather than pay for wearing it. It served his particular purpose, however, with great simplicity and success. The hat dominates and defines a figure in inconspicuous and colourless clothes; and so long as he wore it he passed well enough for the driver of such an ancient vehicle. When he took it off and slipped among the officials, with his well-brushed hair and gentlemanly manner, they had no reason to doubt his claims to a different position. On the top of the cab, however, he had resumed the hat; not without pomp, as a conqueror might crown himself with laurel.
He thought he knew what would probably happen and he decided to wait for it. The end of the immediate drama of the captured government expert he did not expect to see at that stage; he promised himself that if it went too far, he would be able to communicate with the authorities later. As it was, he left it almost reverently as a rounded and perfected thing, a poem. But if all went well, one consequence was likely enough to follow; and when he had waited for about ten minutes, he was gratified to find his calculation correct.