The Secret of Dr. Kildare

by Max Brand

  A smile appeared on the face of Carew like the twisting grain of a knot in hard wood. "You take care of him, eh? Run his errands, take his beatings, and love him for the trouble he gives you?"

  Kildare said nothing.

  "If you'll do nothing about it, I'll try to borrow you myself from Gillespie," said Carew impatiently, and picked his telephone out of its cradle. He was saying presently: "There's a bit of work called for outside the hospital, a bit of work that may be important for the hospital's whole future, and the absurdity is that your young intern Kildare seems to be the only man for the job. I want to borrow him from you..."

  Made electrically thin and sharp, like a far-off rooster in a winter dawn, Kildare heard the voice of Gillespie answering: "The hospital's whole future is not the slightest damned importance to me. Men are what matter, not machines. You can't have Kildare. That's flat."

  His phone crashed up. Carew, after a sour moment of patience, called again. "A job well done, such as I have in mind, Leonard," he said, "might mean the modernisation of our whole laboratory facilities."

  "We haven't any laboratory facilities to modernise!" shouted Gillespie. "We've nothing but one tin sink and two Bunsen burners. Take Kildare and do what you can with him...But get him back here fast."

  Carew rang off in a sweat of relief. "I've got you for this evening, Kildare," he said, "and now I want you to make every instant count. Down on the street you'll find a limousine waiting; ask for Mr. Messenger's car; go where it takes you...Kildare, you know about Paul Messenger?"

  "No, sir. Only that he's a very rich man."

  "Rich man? There are thousands of rich men, Kildare, but there's only one Messenger. Why, he's the fellow who built the whole observatory at San Jacinto in New Mexico. Millions of dollars to observe the stars...to observe the infernal stars, mind you, when we're still fighting hand to hand with disease! And now Paul Messenger needs help. I'm not permitted to say one word to you about the case; I can only say that at the present moment Messenger thinks you may be the only man in the world capable of helping him. I say that I can't talk about the case, but I can talk about your manner of approach to it. Doctor Kildare, you are a fellow with an admirable character for honesty and patience and medical insight; but I beg you to remember that there are also qualities such as tact and gentleness of approach and a willingness to favour the other fellow's point of view...Hurry along now...Every minute may be important...But try to remember that out of this case the hospital might receive benefactions so important that its ability to serve the world may be doubled. And you yourself may be founding a rich practice for the future."

  He took Kildare as far as the door of his office, holding his arm in a nervous grip. But even when the door was open, he could not let him go for an instant, repeating: "Straightforward honesty is an admirable quality—but when in Rome, remember to do as the Romans—and diplomacy has moved mountains in the past, young man—a light touch may do more than a sledge-hammer stroke..."

  * * *

  CHAPTER FIVE

  KILDARE got away at last. He found the Messenger car, driven by a chauffeur with a disdainful manner and a sooty streak of moustache across the upper lip. He took the big automobile swiftly and smoothly through the cross-town traffic and turned up to a Fifth Avenue house. As Kildare got to the pavement, he saw Central Park South rising by lighted stages and towers into the smoke of the autumn evening; the Park itself was lost in a blue fume of twilight as the chauffeur took him to the front door and rang the bell. It was a great door of wrought iron and glass, draped with vaguely translucent curtains inside. A tall old servant opened to Kildare.

  "All right, Markham," said the chauffeur, and this watchword let Kildare enter a hall paved in large black and white marble squares.

  "Mr. Messenger expects you in the library, sir," said the butler, and led the way up a stairway flanked by potted, huge azaleas. The red carpet sponged up all the noise of footfalls except a whispering; a hushed expectancy began to grow in Kildare. Through the upper hall the butler brought him into the library, saying: "Mr. Messenger, your guest, sir," and then closed the door behind him.

  Messenger rose from beside the fire. The glow of it extended over the panels of yellow pine but left under shadow the reds and blues of levant morocco bindings, the ivory of vellum, and the darkening golden brown of pigskin. Two floor lamps clipped out rounds of blue from the rug, yet the room on the whole was left to a restful dusk; and the white hair of Messenger, as he came toward Kildare, seemed to endow him with his own light. He had both a moustache and beard, but clipped as short as though they had to be worn inside a helmet. He was still a huge frame of a man and must have been at one time of tremendous vigour; the last flush of it was in his face, in the bigness of a vein upon his forehead; and the overwhelming boldness of his eyes. He continued to stare into Kildare as he took his hand.

  His first words were: "I want you to make a diagnosis without seeing the patient. Can you try that?"

  "I can try it," said Kildare.

  "Sit down over here then. Turn your chair a little so that the light gets at your face. When human beings talk they use more than words, and we mustn't be in the dark to one another...Will you drink?"

  "Not now," said Kildare.

  "Are you comfortable and at ease? Is there anything about me or this room that embarrasses you? If so, we'll talk about other things until you're at home."

  "There's no reason why we should waste time," replied Kildare.

  Messenger, watching his guest, nodded slowly.

  "I've heard that you're calm, alert, tenacious in your purposes, and absolutely independent. I begin to feel that all these things are true of you," he remarked. "But I also wish that you were ten years older. I've heard a good deal about your discretion, but I know that young tongues are hinged in the middle and wag very easily. I am going to ask for your promise to repeat nothing that you hear from me."

  "Very well," said Kildare.

  Messenger considered this answer for a moment and seemed to find it too casual; but presently he went on: "I'm going to describe two young women for you. They are my reason for calling you in."

  Kildare took out a small notebook and a pen.

  "No," said Messenger. "I want to watch your face. The details will remain in your mind. They are not obscure. The first girl I offer for your consideration is twenty years old. She is a type of modern young outdoor America. She can take her horse over the jumps like a professional. If you're no better than the average, she'll outwalk you, outswim you, and give you fifteen and a beating at tennis. Most of the time she wishes for bigger shoulders and narrower hips; as a matter of fact, she almost would prefer to be a man. But she gets on with the lads very well in every way. At a dance she's as popular as the next one. She knows how to take her liquor and how to leave it. She has a talent for friendship. The boys and the girls are constantly around her night and day. At the same time she manages a close and affectionate life with her family. As the poet says, she likes whatever she sees, and her looks go everywhere. Probably she would be called an extravert. Is the picture clear in your mind? I ought to add that she's engaged to as fine a fellow as you could find."

  "Yes," said Kildare. "The picture is clear."

  "Now I offer you a picture of the second girl. Outdoor sports are nothing to her. She wouldn't cross the street to see an international polo match or watch Vines fight it out with Budge. She doesn't like to be alone, and yet out of people she gets only a very vague and dreamy pleasure. She goes to all the night clubs; dancing seems to be the one absorbing passion in her life; neither friends nor family are of the slightest interest to her. A good many young girls grow too fond of night life, but this one uses the night places, not as though she were fond of the nonsense that goes on in them, but as though she needed them to kill time, as a person in pain needs a narcotic...Is that enough of a picture?"

  "No," said Kildare, "there are a great many things I'd like to know about the second girl."

&nbs
p; "Ask questions then," said the big man tersely.

  "Do you know about the early life of the second girl? Was it pleasant?"

  "Quite. Yes. Quite. But here I've thrown out a quantity of information, and what does the diagnostician's brain say to you about these two girls? Does anything come?"

  "It's very serious," said Kildare, frowning at his host. "That is to say, it seems serious at the first glance. You yourself have no idea of what may have caused the change?"

  "Change? I've said nothing about a change," said Messenger.

  "The change of the first girl into the second," said Kildare, making a small impatient gesture.

  "Ah," said Messenger.

  He exhaled a long breath and settled back into his chair. "If you guessed that at the very start," he declared, "I think before the end that you may go as far as my friends promise. It's true that I'm talking about only one person—who changed."

  "A daughter?" asked Kildare.

  "You might have learned this through other people. What do you know about me, Doctor Kildare?"

  "I know that you're rich, and that you built an observatory at San Jacinto."

  "Nothing else?"

  "Half an hour ago, Doctor Carew was telling me these things. I've never spoken of you before."

  Messenger stood up and made through the room some long and slow measured strides. When he turned in the more distant shadow he looked younger, more formidable, and the swollen vein in his forehead was like a sign of wrath. He was very excited as he said: "So far you've seen through everything. Don't stop your guesswork now. Go on and tell me more about Nancy."

  "I'll have to see her," said Kildare, "and then I'll do what I can, but what you need is not I, but a sound psychiatrist twice my age."

  "I don't think so," answered Messenger. "The Chanlers told me what you did for their daughter when older men in the medical profession would have written her off as a mental case. Kildare, I don't want Nancy written off in that way."

  He waited for a comment. Kildare said nothing, but looked down at a bright circle of blue which a floor lamp cut out of the rug. Then the voice of Messenger sounded just above him. He had come swiftly and soundlessly across the room.

  "Barbara Chanler disappeared from her home. At that moment she was rich; she had every prospect before her of a happy and well-filled life; her family was devoted to her and she to them; she was about to be married to a man she loved. Then she was picked up as a nameless waif who had tried to commit suicide in a cheap rooming house. A young intern from the hospital answered the emergency call and refused to give her up for dead even when the sheet was pulled over her face. He brought her back to life. In the hospital she tried to take her life a second time. The young intern refused to believe that her mind was gone in spite of these two attempts, and he held on like a bulldog until he'd prove to her that she was wrong about herself and so was the rest of the world."

  Messenger ended his pacing and sat down abruptly in the chair opposite Kildare. His lowered voice said: "Older minds perhaps would be better for my daughter's case. On the other hand, young people ought to understand other youth by instinct. And above all, I feel that there is a close relationship between the case of Barbara Chanler and that of Nancy."

  "You mean that there was a sudden change in each instance?" asked Kildare. "Or do you mean that you're afraid your daughter may take her own life?"

  The blunt question was by no means an instance of that smooth diplomacy for which Carew had begged when he sent the intern out on this case. Messenger absorbed the shock for a moment before he said: "This change in my daughter is more than normal. How far beyond normal must I consider it? Is she a mental case requiring isolation? Those are some of the questions I want you to answer."

  "That's impossible until I've had a chance to see her and study her reactions in detail," answered Kildare.

  "We can't manage that," said Messenger. "She's been afraid of doctors for years; it's a real phobia in her. If she's in a critical mental state and finds out that I'm using a doctor to spy on her, she may be driven frantic and then I keep Barbara Chanler in mind."

  A murmur of voices from the lower part of the house got Messenger hastily out of his chair again. "That's Nancy now," he said.

  "Why not introduce me as a friend, not as a doctor?" asked Kildare.

  "And then have the truth come out to bite us?"

  "No one in New York knows me except the Chanlers, and they're not in town now. Give me another name. I'm John Stevens—from the West somewhere. You knew my father in the old days."

  "It's melodrama. It's absurd," murmured Messenger. He pulled open the door a trifle so that the voices entered, small but clear. The girl was saying: "But I don't want you to, Charles. I don't want to drag you around. You go home and get your sleep."

  Messenger, listening, turned his head sharply, and Kildare saw the vein in his forehead again, like a sign of wrath which did not go with the glistening fear in the eyes. He came back toward the fire again.

  "Are you busy, father? May we come in?" asked Nancy at the door.

  Messenger looked fixedly at Kildare.

  "Come in, come in!" he called, and as Kildare stood up, Nancy Messenger entered, throwing open a kolinsky coat and smiling back over her shoulder at her companion. Every feature of her appearance had to have meaning to Kildare, as though he were a portrait painter. She had on a dress of brown velvet with a knee-length tunic and a halo-shaped turban increasing the pile of her hair; a chain of wrought gold was looped around her neck in clumsy, heavy links. But of course her face took most of Kildare's attention. He remembered a picture of that great lover and termagant, Sarah, the first Duchess of Marlborough, for the girl had somewhat the same look of resolute and forward pride and the same soft fullness of lips which somehow suggested wilful determination rather than feminine gentleness. She had something of her father, in miniature, and as she grew older the resemblance would be greater; she even had the vein in the forehead, though in her it was merely a pale stroke of blue.

  Messenger was saying: "Nancy, this is John Stevens, a son of an old friend of mine...and this is Charles Herron."

  Herron was one of those broad-beamed man-mountains who are useful at tackle in the football line to spill the whole charge of a backfield. He was a bit past thirty, and he was somewhat overweighted by the inevitable extra poundage that is bound to accumulate on a very strong man. His width made his height un-apparent until he came up close to shake hands.

  Nancy, after a brief smile of greeting, had found nothing in Kildare and obviously dismissed him from her thoughts.

  "Now I'm safely home, Charles, and you can go get your sleep," she said. She added to her father: "There's so much of him that when he's tired it's a tremendous ache."

  "I'm too heavy for this long-distance running," remarked Herron. "Three nights and three afternoons, and she's still full of go. I suppose you'll be out again tonight, Nancy?"

  "Oh, no. I don't think so."

  "You will, though...She thinks that if she keeps going where the lights are the brightest she'll see something worth while."

  He tried to maintain a certain lightness of touch, but it was plain that he was deeply troubled. He kept looking from the girl to her father as though he might find an explanation by making a detailed comparison.

  "Blame her for being young. That includes being silly," suggested Messenger.

  "I want you to promise me something, Nancy. Will you?" asked Herron.

  "He's a lawyer, and he makes a living out of broken promises," said the girl, laughing. "Don't be that way, Charles, please!"

  "It's not a great thing, but I'm curious. Can you stay home for a single evening, Nancy?"

  He was bearing down on his point much too heavily, particularly with a stranger in the room, but he was too disturbed to be diplomatic. Messenger could not hide the concern with which he watched the two of them. Nancy went up to Herron and shone her eyes at him exactly as though they had been a thousand miles from ob
servation. It was clear that she wanted this man and did not care if the whole world knew about her choice.

  "Of course I can stay home if you want me to," she said. "But don't be such an old, old man, Charles. There's a lot of living to do."

  "Not in these night spots," said Herron, "getting sticky with cocktails and dizzy with champagne and listening to the crooners wail and swing it. Why don't you quit it, Nancy?"

  "I'm going to pretty soon," she said. "You run along home while you're still nice and sour, and I'll telephone to you in half an hour when you're in bed. I'll talk you to sleep, Charles."

  She led him across the room.

  "It's a go then," he said. "I'm going to be able to think of you spending one quiet evening at home?"

  "Of course you can think of me that way."

  "You won't let something steal you?"

  "I won't be kidnapped."

  He made an odd gesture that Kildare never forgot, extending his hand a little past her, as though he were trying to keep some danger away. When he spoke, it was only for her, but the natural bigness of his voice carried the words in a murmur across the room.

  "I don't know," he said. "Every time I'm with you lately I feel that I'll never see you again."

  "Charles! Don't say such a thing!" whispered the girl.

  "I shouldn't say it. Forgive me, Nancy," said the murmuring, deep voice.

  Kildare turned his head sharply and looked out the window. It was true that he was in the house as a physician to make inquiry into the state of a patient, but now he felt like an eavesdropper. It was as though he had peeped through a keyhole and seen big Charles Herron weeping, unmanned.

  Herron went out hastily. The girl, starting to go down with him, changed her mind. She stood for a moment at the open door hesitant, fighting out a quick, earnest battle in her mind. It was as though she were tempted to hurry after Herron and say something more. Kildare felt the eyes of big Messenger fixed upon him, urging him, in the silence, to consider this moment as a piece of important psychological evidence. As a matter of fact he could add up a number of interesting items, but the chief of all was that Nancy Messenger loved Herron no matter how she allowed her way of living to displease him.