I had got thus far in my reflections, when I recollected that which put a different complexion on the business. Suddenly I remembered the circumstances in which I had made Medina’s acquaintance. From him Tom Greenslade had heard the three facts which fitted in with the jingle which was the key to the mystery that I was sworn to unravel. Hitherto I had never thought of this dazzling figure except as an ally. Was it possible that he might be an enemy? The turn-about was too violent for my mind to achieve it in one movement. I swore to myself that Medina was straight, that it was sheer mania to believe that a gentleman and a sportsman could ever come within hailing distance of the hideous underworld which Macgillivray had revealed to me… But Sandy had not quite taken to him. I thanked my stars that anyhow I had said nothing to him about my job. I did not really believe that there was any doubt about him, but I realised that I must walk very carefully.
And then another idea came to me. Hypnotism had been tried on me, and it had failed. But those who tried it must believe from my behaviour that it had succeeded. If so, somehow arid somewhere they would act on that belief. It was my business to encourage it. I was sure enough of myself to think that, now I was rewarned, no further hypnotic experiments could seriously affect me. But let them show their game, let me pretend to be helpless wax in their hands. Who ‘they’ were I had still to find out.
I had a great desire to get hold of Sandy and talk it over, but though I rang up several of his lairs I could not find him. Then I decided to see Dr Newhover, for I was certain that that name had come to me out of the medley of last night. So I telephoned and made an appointment with him for that afternoon, and four o’clock saw me starting out to walk to Wimpole Street.
1. Literal Translation: He who tries to interpret or seeks to dominate men should not drink wine.
VI.
THE HOUSE IN GOSPEL OAK
It was a dry March afternoon, with one of those fantastic winds which seem to change their direction hourly, and contrive to be in a man’s face at every street corner. The dust was swirling in the gutters, and the scent of hyacinth and narcissus from the flower-shops was mingled with that bleak sandy smell which is London’s foretaste of spring. As I crossed Oxford Street I remember thinking what an odd pointless business I had drifted into. I saw nothing for it but to continue drifting and see what happened. I was on my way to visit a doctor of whom I knew nothing, about some ailment which I was not conscious of possessing. I didn’t even trouble to make a plan, being content to let chance have the guiding of me.
The house was one of those solid dreary erections which have usually the names of half a dozen doctors on their front doors. But in this case there was only one—Dr M. Newhover. The parlour maid took me into the usual drab waiting-room furnished with Royal Academy engravings, fumed oak, and an assortment of belated picture-papers, and almost at once she returned and ushered me into the consulting-room. This again was of the most ordinary, kind—glazed bookcases, wash-hand basin in a corner, roll-top desk, a table with a medical journal or two and some leather cases. And Dr Newhover at first sight seemed nothing out of the common. He was a youngish man, with high cheek-bones, a high forehead, and a quantity of blond hair brushed straight back from it. He wore a pince-nez, and when he removed it showed pale prominent blue eyes. From his look I should have said that his father had called himself Neuhofer.
He greeted me with a manner which seemed to me to be at once patronising and dictatorial. I wondered if he was some tremendous swell in his profession, of whom I ought to have heard. ‘Well, Mr Hannay, what can I do for you?’ he said. I noticed that he called me ‘Mr,’ though I had given ‘Sir Richard’ both on the telephone and to the parlour maid. It occurred to me that someone had already been speaking of me to him, and that he had got the name wrong in his memory.
I thought I had better expound the alarming symptoms with which I had awakened that morning.
‘I don’t know what’s gone wrong with me,’ I said. ‘I’ve a pain behind my eyeballs, and my whole head seems muddled up. I feel drowsy and slack, and I’ve got a weakness in my eggs and back like a man who has just had flu.’
He made me sit down and proceeded to catechise me about my health. I said it had been good enough, but I mentioned my old malaria and several concussions, and I pretended to be pretty nervous about my condition. Then he went through the whole bag of tricks—sounding me with a stethoscope, testing my blood’ pressure, and hitting me hard below the knee to see if I reacted. I had to play up to my part, but upon my soul I came near reacting too vigorously to some of his questions and boxing his ears. Always he kept up that odd, intimate, domineering, rather offensive manner.
He made me lie down on a couch while he fingered the muscles of my neck and shoulder and seemed to be shampooing my head with his long chilly hands. I was by this time feeling rather extra well, but I managed to invent little tendernesses here and there and a lot of alarming mental aberrations. I wondered if he were not getting suspicious, for he asked abruptly: ‘Have you had symptoms long? so I thought it better to return to the truth, and told him ‘only since this morning.’
At last he bade me get up, took off the tortoise-shell spectacles he had been wearing and resumed his pince-nez, and while I was buttoning my collar seemed to be sun, in reflection. He made me sit in the patient’s chair, and stood up and looked down on me with a magisterial air that made me want to laugh.
‘You are suffering,’ be said, ‘from a somewhat abnormal form of a common enough complaint. Just as the effects Of a concussion are often manifest only some days after the blow, so the results of nervous strain may take a long time to develop. I have no doubt that in spite of your good health you have during recent years been working your mind and body at an undue, pressure and now this morning quite suddenly you reap the fruits. I don’t want to frighten you, Mr Hannay, but neurosis is so mysterious a disease in its working that we must take it seriously, especially at its first manifestations. There are one or two points in your case… which I am not happy about. There is, for example, a certain congestion—or what seems to me a congestion in the nerve centres of the neck and head. That may be induced by the accidents concussion and the like which you have told, me of, or it may not. The true cure must, of course, take time, and rest and change of scene are obligatory. You are fond of sport? A fisherman?’
I told him I was.
‘Well, a little later I may prescribe a salmon river in Norway. The remoteness of the life from ordinary existence and the contemplation of swift running water have had wonderful results, with some of my patients. But Norway is not possible till May, and in the meantime I am going to order you specific treatment.
Yes, I mean massage, but by no means ordinary massage. That science is still in its infancy, and its practitioners are only fumbling at the doorway. But now and then we find a person, man or woman, with a kind of extra sense for disentangling and smoothing out muscular arid nervous abnormalities. I am going to send you to such an one. The address may surprise you, but you are man of the world enough to know that medical skill is not confined to the area between Oxford Street and the Marylebone Road.’ He took off his glasses, and smiled.
Then he wrote something on a slip of paper and handed it to me. I read ‘Madame Breda, 4 Palmyra Square, N.W.’
‘Right!’ I said. ‘Much obliged to you. I hope Madam’s Breda will cure this infernal headache. When can I see her?’
‘I can promise you she