by Cave, Hugh
To be sure, I had read of his accident and had imagined him to be even then in a hospital. Peter Maxon's life during the past year had not been easy. The papers had carried front-page accounts of the hideous train-wreck which had cut short his career and transformed him from a medical genius into a broken cripple; and I had read several editorials lamenting the fact that he had apparently gone into seclusion. Knowing Peter himself, however, I had taken those editorials with a grain of salt and had assured myself that, once cured, Peter would return to the profession in which he had won so many honors.
Now he was here, in a small clothing shop on Westhaven's main street, frowning at me as if he resented my intrusion!
"The name is Brown," he said again. "I'm not Maxon anymore. Haven't been for months. I'm sorry you found me, John. Wish I had more time, but—" He would have stepped past me to the door.
"For heaven's sake, wait a minute!" I cried. "Wait, Peter!" And I caught hold of him. "I want to talk to you!"
"About what?"
"About you. About us. Old times—everything. Good Lord, man, I've been wondering for months—"
He stood motionless, staring at me. His eyes seemed tired, his mouth thin and drawn. I realized that he was a sick man and that the torment of the past year had murdered something within him.
"I'm not well," he said curtly. "Can't you see that?"
"I'm not blind, Peter. And I'm no Good Samaritan, either. But we've been friends. I want to talk to you."
He hesitated, and his eyes seemed momentarily to be taking stock of me. Again he peered furtively around the shop, and then stepped closer. His hand darted into the pocket of his coat, reappearing with a battered bill-fold. Quickly he thrust a card into my palm.
"All right," he said. "All right. Come and see me. Come tonight. And remember, it's not Maxon. Don't be calling me Maxon."
He strode to the door and walked hurriedly across the threshold, leaving me to stare after him, hopelessly bewildered. For fully a minute I stood there, until the proprietor of the shop approached me and said in a womanish voice:
"Yes, sir. Can I do something for you?"
I shook my head and stared down at the card in my hand. It was a small white card, cheaply printed on poor stock. It said:
PETER BROWN, M.D.
17 Verndale Street
- Consultations by Appointment -
The hour was eight-fifteen when I strode along Verndale Street that evening. Number seventeen was the last house. Standing there gazing at the brass plate beside the door, I was humbly grateful to find the place at least no different from its neighbors, for I had frankly expected to find it some ancient, isolated hovel, in harmony with the change which had taken place in its proprietor.
The house squatted in a small yard strewn with October leaves and a short lane of cement led to the wooden steps. Ascending, I found the bell to be an old-fashioned pull-knob, and with some misgivings I made my presence known by pulling it timidly until a corresponding jangle echoed within. A moment later the door opened and Peter Maxon stood surveying me.
He said simply: "I'm glad you came, John."
He did not offer me his hand. Quietly he stood aside to let me enter, and when I had stepped past him he closed the door again behind me. "I'm alone," he said, and led me down a poorly lighted hall to a spacious but somewhat bare room containing a rather horrible array of antique New England furniture.
"You're in Westhaven on business?" he asked.
"If business is good."
"You're staying?"
"A day or two, anyway." I sat in one of the huge over-stuffed chairs, realizing that he did not consider me a guest in the formal sense of the word, and that I was expected to make myself comfortable.
He looked at me. Nervously he put one hand to his face, fingering his mouth. It was a thin hand and white—strangely so, for a man who three years ago had been more than an ordinarily athletic. I could not help noticing it and being shocked by the almost feminine delicacy of it.
"I've been thinking about you," he said. "Since this morning, I mean. I want you to stay here, John. Want you to live here while you're in town."
"Something is wrong?"
"Everything." He sat in a chair facing me, and relaxed with an exhalation of breath that seemed suspiciously like a sigh.
"Nevertheless," I said, "it can't be so very serious. After what the papers said about you—Good Lord, they had you dying! They had you—" I stopped, realizing abruptly that the topic of conversation was distasteful. My companion's lean body was tense again; his thin white hands gripped the arms of his chair rigidly. Softly I said:
"I'm sorry, old boy. And I'll stay. Of course I'll stay."
I stood up, reaching for my hat.
"I'll be back," I promised, "as soon as I can get my luggage from the hotel." Quietly I paced to the door, and left him.
When I pulled the bell of that house the second time that night, there was no answer. Bewildered, I put down my bags and yanked the bell-knob viciously, then smiled wryly at the thought that my friend had undoubtedly fallen asleep while awaiting my return. After all, I had been gone nearly an hour.
The door was open. I let myself in and strode down the hall to the room into which Peter had first led me. Then my bewilderment increased, for Peter was not sleeping there.
He was, in fact, not anywhere on the lower floor of the house, as I presently discovered after walking timidly through several unlighted rooms and finding myself once again in the corridor. Thinking him to be upstairs, I stood at the foot of the carpeted staircase and called his name. And there was no answer.
I returned, then, to the living-room and seated myself to await his arrival. Where he could have gone to, I had no idea—unless the house contained an attic or cellar wherein he had been unable to hear my summons. Taking up a magazine, I prepared to make the best of a perplexing situation.
Ten minutes later my patience was rewarded. A door opened and closed somewhere in the direction of the kitchen. I heard slow footsteps in the hail. My host walked mechanically into the living-room and stood staring at me.
"Well," I said, rising, "you're a fine one!"
He said, "Oh!" and suddenly smiled. Advancing to the table, he calmly placed a number of queer implements on the cloth and rubbed his hands together briskly, as if to brush dirt from them. "You've come back," he said. "I'm glad. I've been downstairs."
"And I've been waiting here," I informed him, "for a good long while."
"I didn't hear you come in. I was busy."
"Well," I demanded, "what now?"
"Why," he said simply, and walked to the antique desk which loomed in the corner, "let's play chess."
And play chess we did—as casually as though I had come to visit him for no other purpose. Play chess we did, despite the fact that my gaze persisted in roving toward the strange array of implements which he brought with him from the cellar.
The array included a small, short-handled trowel, a claw-hammer, and four keen-edged knives of various sizes!
I did not sleep that night. My room, at the end of the upstairs corridor, was small and stuffy. Its ceiling sloped sharply to the foot of my bed, leaving scarcely an inch of space above the iron bedposts. The single window, cut narrowly in the aged wall, admitted hardly a breath of air. The room had unmistakably been closed for some time before being opened for my accommodation.
To be sure, my host apologized for its condition. He said queerly:
"There's another chamber, but it's near mine. You wouldn't want that. This one's safer."
I wondered about that. Wondering, I lay awake and stared at the gray ceiling above me. I heard him retire; then, some time later, I heard the door of his room open again at the far end of the corridor. Footsteps scraped along the passage.
The footsteps continued almost to the door of my room. Then they stopped. For perhaps five minutes there was no further sound. Then the steps began again, this time diminishing in volume. I heard the door of Peter's room
click shut.
In the morning I dressed slowly and after spending some ten minutes in the unattractive washroom which my friend had pointed out to me, I descended to the lower floor. The clock in the living-room said ten-twenty. Peter was sitting in one of the over-stuffed chairs, reading a newspaper.
"Good morning," he smiled. "You seem to be like me—get up any old time."
Something—some elusive, vague furtiveness—had come over him. When he asked me my plans for the day, his voice was peculiarly harsh. When I told him I might consider making the day a holiday, the better to renew our old friendship, he seemed not over-pleased.
"I'll make breakfast," he said. "Sit here and look at the paper."
"I prefer to help you."
"Well—" He studied me intently. "Well, all right. Come along."
We went into the kitchen. Presently I said: "Didn't you start to pay me a visit last night, after we'd retired?"
"Yes, I did."
"Changed your mind, eh?"
"I changed her mind," he said bluntly, turning to face me. "That's something I can't often do, but I succeeded last night."
"What the devil are you talking about?"
"I'll tell you. I've got a lot to tell you. You see—"
I did not see. At that moment a bell jangled. Peter said quietly:
"It's the front door. The mailman."
I went to the door. On the stoop stood a short, plump man in uniform, holding a letter.
"Do you know if Mrs. Wilkes is comin' back?"
"Mrs. Wilkes?"
"She used to keep house for the feller that lives here. He told me last week she was gone. I got a letter for her."
"If you'll wait a moment—"
I turned. Peter was pacing along the passage toward me. He said curtly:
"What is it? What's wrong?"
The mailman told him and showed him the letter. Peter thrust the envelope into his shirt pocket.
"I'll see that she gets it," he nodded.
I followed him back to the kitchen. Staring at him, I said thoughtfully:
"You had a housekeeper?"
"Yes."
"That rather makes my visit an inconvenience, doesn't it? I mean, if you are used to having your cooking done for you, then my presence here—"
"It's a relief to be rid of her," he said bluntly.
I nodded and dropped the subject. Patiently I waited for him to renew the conversation where the jangle of the door-bell had cut it short. He had promised me an explanation.
But I waited in vain. He told me nothing.
I did, however, learn something that afternoon. Two o'clock had passed and we were sitting in the living-room. We had had no dinner. I was hungry and wondered whether my position as guest entitled me to say so. Then all at once I made up my mind and pushed myself erect.
"I believe I'll take myself for a short walk," I said.
Peter lowered his magazine and gazed at me.
"You'll come back?"
"Of course."
"I've things to tell you," he said. "I've been thinking, John. Perhaps you'll be able to help me."
"If you care to tell me now—"
"No. Go for your walk."
I went walking—but walking did not help my thoughts. My memory continually reverted, despite the aid of sunshine and crisp October air, to the inexplicable snatches of conversation he had flung at me. His reference to "her," for instance. Could he have meant his housekeeper?
I walked slowly, with Peter Maxon continually in my thoughts. Looking about me after I had gone more than a mile, I discovered that I had reached the edge of the town proper. Across the street stood a small restaurant and I remembered my original craving for food.
The place was empty. When I entered, a large moon-faced fellow came waddling along behind the counter and nodded to me. Finding his smile pleasant, I chose to sit at the counter itself, rather than seclude myself in one of the many narrow booths. And so, because of this fortunate choice on my part, I learned something more about Peter Maxon.
I had finished my meal and drawn my wallet from my pocket, intending to pay the man. He, at the moment, was standing directly in front of me. When a small white card fell from my wallet, he politely retrieved it for me. And the words PETER BROWN, M.D., stared him in the face in bold type.
"I say," he said. "Do you know Brown?"
I hesitated. "Well, I know him to speak to."
"He's a neighbor of mine," the moon-faced man declared.
"Really?"
"If I were you, I'd think twice before I took his say-so about being a doctor. Not that I can prove anything—but he's a queer one."
"How?" I frowned.
"Well, I don't know as there's any 'how' to it. He's just queer, that's all."
"You mean he's not quite right"—I put a finger to my forehead—"up here?" My companion leaned on the counter, resting his weight on a pair of fat forearms. He needed no prompting. He said with a slow up-and-down shaking of his head:
"When he moved into Verndale Street about five months ago, I thought he was kind of cracked. Then he seemed to get better after his wife came to live with him."
"His wife?" I gasped. "Don't you mean his housekeeper?"
"No. It was his wife came first. Then she died about a month later, and he got a housekeeper. I guess he's had a tough time of it."
I said nothing. I could only sit and stare into the man's round face, while he talked on. Peter Brown's housekeeper, he said, had threatened time and again to leave her employer's house, and had remained only because of her great sympathy for Peter. She had finally left on the spur of the moment, not less than a week ago. At least, that was the neighborhood talk. He, himself, was not so sure. He was inclined to be suspicious—and Brown had been acting queerly of late—"
I hardly heard what he was saying. My thoughts were still struggling with that other statement he had made. Peter Brown's wife! Peter had told me nothing about a wife. Good God, no wonder he was not himself! No wonder he was blue and morbid and "strange." If he had lost his wife only a few months ago—
I wondered vaguely if his wife had been the girl who had, more than three years ago, worshipped him. Helen, her name had been. More than once he had spoken of her to me. Had he finally wed her, only to lose her again?
I felt suddenly ashamed of myself for listening to the moon-faced man's gossip. Hurriedly I stood up and nodded good-day. Then I walked slowly and moodily back to Peter's house on Verndale Street.
"I want to talk to you, John," Peter Maxon said to me that night.
"About—you?" I frowned.
"About me."
We had been playing chess. Quietly he stood up, walked to the desk and returned with a leather-bound book which I judged to be a diary. Seating himself again, he folded his hands on the book and stared into my face.
"In the beginning," he said, in a strangely methodical voice, "there was an accident. You know that, of course."
"Yes. The papers—"
"The papers were not accurate. When you have read this book, you will realize how wrong they were."
"You wish me to read that?"
"I do. From beginning to end. When you have finished, you will probably despise me. All I ask is a promise of secrecy."
He held the book toward me, and I could not help noticing again how thin and white his hands were. Bewildered and somehow uneasy, I accepted the volume.
"You are sure you want me to read this?"
"I do."
"Very well," I said. "If you have no objections, I'll take it to my room and read it there."
I stood up and paced slowly to the door. Silently he followed me, and as I turned to say good-night, his hand found my arm.
"Lock your door, John," he said simply.
"Lock it? For heaven's sake, why?"
"I want you to."
My answer might have been a laugh, but it was not. Something in the deadly earnestness of his voice warned me not to laugh. Scowling, I made my way up
the narrow staircase. And when I had turned on the light in my room I obeyed his suggestion and locked the door. Then I undressed and got into bed, and after making myself comfortable by propping the pillow between my back and the bedpost, I opened the leather-bound book.
My guess had been correct. The book was a diary.
The first page was dated April 29. The handwriting was so illegible that I thought at first a child had done it. Then I learned better, for the words were these:
They have released me from the hospital and I have rented a small house on Verndale Street, in Westhaven. My name is Brown, now. What is the use of remaining Peter Maxon, when Maxon is dead? I have no wish for more publicity or more pity. It is enough for me to have to look down at these hideous stumps of mine which are supposed to be arms. They say there is a God, but if so, he has a strange sense of humor. Two horrible mockeries of arms he has left me, after leading me on to believe that I might one day be of some real use to humanity. Yes, indeed, there is a God. He has just murdered me. Shall I kneel down and pray, perhaps, and thank him for the horrible thing he has done to me?
I closed my eyes and pitied my friend from the depths of my heart. True, he had been mistaken; those arms which he had called "horrible stumps" were now nearly as good as ever. Certainly they were no longer stumps, and perhaps never had been, in the true sense of the word. Yet I could appreciate the despair which had gripped him at the time the first page of the diary had been written.
I read on. The second entry was dated May 9. It said:
Helen has found me. I should be happy, but I am not. It has been lonely, living here alone in this small town, under an assumed name. But I saw the look in Helen's eyes when she first embraced me, and I saw the horror in her face when she first stared down at these claws of mine. And what I saw haunts me. She loves me, or she would not have come. But how can a woman love deformity?
What am I to do? She swears she will not leave me. I cannot do the proper thing and marry her, nor does she expect it. Yet she is here and intends to stay.
May 19. I wonder if I am happy. Theoretically, I suppose, I am living a lie. The neighbors have taken it for granted that Helen is my wife, and the store people call her Mrs. Brown. And she is content to be with me. "We are not living a lie," she said this evening, "so long as our love for each other is true. No truth can be a lie."