The Soul Scar: Detective Kennedy's Case. Arthur B. Reeve
up and down the floor of the laboratory.
"Honora Wilford," he said, slowly, at last, "is what the specialists would call a consciously frigid, unconsciously passionate woman."
He paused significantly, then went on: "I suppose there have been many cases where an intellectual woman has found herself attracted almost without reason toward a purely physical man. You find it in literature continually—in the caveman school of fiction, you know. As an intellectual woman, Honora may suppress her nature. But sometimes, we believe, Nature will and does assert herself."
Kennedy considered the laboratory impatiently.
"No package from Leslie yet. I hardly know what to do—unless—yes—that is the thing, now that I have had time to think this all out. I must see Mrs. Wilford again—and alone."
Chapter IV
The “Hesitation Complex”
Honora Wilford was still in the apartment where we had left her under the watchful care of one of Doyle's men.
Undoubtedly she felt no disposition to stir out, for if she went out it was certain that she would have gone under the most galling espionage. It must have been maddening to a woman of her temperament and station in life to find herself so hedged about by restriction. Doubtless it was just that that Doyle had intended, in the hope that the strain to which he subjected her by it would shake her poise.
Nevertheless, she received us with at least outward graciousness. Perhaps it was that she recognized some difference in the treatment which Kennedy accorded her over that from those whom Doyle had seen fit to place in charge of the apartment where once she had been mistress.
At any rate, I thought she acted a bit weary and I felt genuinely sorry for her as she received us and questioned us with her eyes.
"I've been very much interested in those dreams of yours," remarked Kennedy, endeavoring not to betray too much of the source of his information, for obvious reasons. "Doctor Leslie has told me of some of them—and I tried to get Doctor Lathrop to tell me of the others."
"Indeed?" she queried merely, her large eyes bent on Kennedy in doubt, although she did not betray any trepidation about the subject.
"I wonder whether you would mind writing them down for me?" Craig asked, quickly.
"I've already done so once for Doctor Lathrop," she answered, as though trying to avoid it.
"Yes," agreed Kennedy, quickly; "but I can hardly expect him to let me see them—professional ethics and all that sort of thing, you know, forbid."
"I suppose so," she replied, with a little nervous smile. "Oh, if you really want me to do so, I suppose I can write them out again, of course—write them the best I can recollect."
"It would be of great assistance indeed, I can assure you," encouraged Kennedy.
Honora, without another demur, walked over to a little writing-desk which seemed to be her own. Kennedy followed and placed a chair for her. Then he stepped back, though not so far but that he could watch her.
A moment she paused, toying with her fountain-pen, then began to write.
"My most frequent dream is a horrible one," she began, writing in a firm hand, although she knew that she was observed and was weighing every word and action. "I have dreamed ever so many times that I saw Vail in a terrific struggle. I could not make out who or what it was with which he struggled."
At this point she seemed to hesitate and pause. I saw that Kennedy was carefully noting it and every mood and action she exhibited. Then, after a moment, gathering herself together again, she wrote on:
"I tried to run to him. But something seemed to hold me back. I could not move."
Again she paused, then very slowly began to write on another line.
"Then the scene shifted like a motion picture. I saw a funeral procession and in the coffin I could see a face. In all my dreams it has been the face of Vail."
As she finished, she seemed now to be struggling with her emotions. The more I saw of Honora Wilford, the more I was unable to resist the fascination of studying her. She was a woman well worth study—a woman of baffling temperament, high-strung, of keen perception, yet always in the face of even such circumstances as these keeping herself under seemingly perfect control.
Always I found myself going back again to my original impression of her. Somehow, indefinably, I felt that there was something lacking in this woman's life. Was it, as I had believed at first, "heart"? I wondered whether, after all, there had been lacking in this woman's life some big experience, whether ever she had really loved. I knew well what would have been the answer one might have received if she had been questioned. She would have pointed immediately to her married life as proof that she had loved—at least once upon a time. And yet, was it proof? Had she loved Vail Wilford deeply?
The fact was that I did not, could not feel entirely unsympathetic toward her. Somehow, I felt, it could not have been entirely her fault, that she must have been the victim of circumstances or prejudices over which she had no control. At any rate, I determined that whatever lay at the bottom of it all was well worth our study and discovery. I hoped that the case would last. I wanted to see its development, and, if by any chance it was possible, the development of Honora herself, for I felt that once the gap, whatever it was and however it had arisen in her life, was closed she would be a most wonderful woman.
At times when I thought of the manner of Doyle and his men toward her, it made me boil over. As for Kennedy, it was different. I did not understand Craig in this matter. Yet I knew him better than perhaps any one else. Whatever lay back of Craig's actions, always I knew there was sympathy. Some may have thought him cold, but I knew better. Kennedy had always represented to me science with a heart. As for Doyle—he was neither.
Kennedy's voice recalled me to the matter of immediate importance before us.
"There was also that dream of Doctor Lathrop about which you told me, in which he appeared as a lion," suggested Kennedy, as she stopped writing and handed him what she had written. "This is very good—just what I want, as a matter of fact. Won't you write that other dream for me, also?"
With an air of resignation, as though she felt she was in our hands and had determined that her acts would be above criticism, she turned again to her desk, picked up the pen she had laid down, and wrote on a fresh sheet of paper:
"In the dream I seemed to be going along a rocky path. It was narrow, and as I turned a bend there was a bearded lion in the way. I was terribly frightened. I woke up."
She began a new line and added: "The lion seemed to have a human face. It seemed to resemble Doctor Lathrop."
I contrasted the writing of this dream with the other. At least there had been no hesitation in writing this, I observed, whatever that might mean. Already I was coming to have some respect for the dream theory which I would have ridiculed only a few hours before Kennedy began to convince me.
Honora laid down the pen and glanced up rather wearily as Kennedy ran his eye over what she had written. Much as it all aroused her curiosity, plainly the whole proceeding on the part of Craig was a sealed book to her.
"There's just another dream, or, rather, two dreams," he said, in a moment, "that interested me almost as much when I heard of them. Doctor Lathrop happened to mention them without telling them and I'd like to get them from you."
She glanced at him covertly, as much as to say, "So, then, you have been talking about me to him?" but she controlled whatever remark was on her tongue and said nothing.
Instead, obediently again, she picked up the pen and wrote, while we waited and the minutes passed. Only now it seemed that she was writing more carefully, both taking more time over the actual legibility and the choice of words.
"I