P. C. Wren: Adventure Novels & Tales From the Foreign Legion. P. C. Wren
the Queen's African Rifles, had passed through his village three weeks earlier, and would again pass through, on his return, in a week's time. Having made a wide détour to see his friend, Strong was very disappointed to learn of his absence, and would return by the same devious route, in the hope of better luck....
Good! A few days of Strong's company would be worth a lot. A visit from any white man was something; from a man of one's own class and kind was a great thing; but from worldly-wise, widely-read, clever old Strong! ... Excellent! ...
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Captain Strong, of the Queen's African Rifles, passed from the strong sunlight into the dark coolness of Doctor John Williams' bungalow side by side with his host, who was still shaking him by the hand, in his joy and affection. Laying his riding-whip and helmet on a table he glanced round, stared, turned as white as a sunburnt man may, ejaculated "Oh, my God!" and seized the doctor's arm. His mouth hung open, his eyes were starting from his head, and it was with shaking hand that he pointed to where, in the doctor's living-room, sat the dumb and weak-witted foundling.
Doctor Williams was astounded and mightily interested.
"What's up, Strong?" he asked.
"B--b--b--but he's dead!" stammered Strong with a gasp.
"Not a bit of it, man," was the reply, "he's as alive as you or I. He's dumb, and he's dotty, but he's alive all right.... What's wrong with you? You've got a touch of the sun..." and then Captain Strong was himself again. If Captain Sir Montague Merline, late of the Queen's African Rifles, were alive, it should not be Jack Strong who would announce the fact....
Monty Merline? ... Was that vacant-looking person who was rising from a chair and bowing to him, his old pal Merline? ... Most undoubtedly it was. Besides--there on his wrist and forearm was the wonderfully-tattooed snake....
"How do you do?" he said. The other bowed again, smiled stupidly, and fumbled with the buttons of his coat.... Balmy! ...
Strong turned and dragged his host out of the room.
"Where's he come from?" he asked quickly. "Who is he?"
"Where he came from last," replied the doctor, "is a village called, I believe, Bwogo, about a hundred and twenty miles south-east of here. How he got there I can't tell you. The natives said he just walked up unaccompanied, unbounded, unpursued. He's got a bullet or something in the top of his head and I'm going to lug it out. And then, my boy, with any luck at all, he'll very soon be able to answer you any question you like to put him. Speech and memory will return at the moment the pressure on the brain ceases."
"Will he remember up to the time the bullet hit him, or since, or both?" asked Strong.
"All his life, up to the moment the bullet hit him, certainly," was the reply. "What happened since will, at first, be remembered as a dream, probably. If I had to prophesy I should say he'd take up his life from the second in which the bullet hit him, and think, for the moment, that he is still where it happened. By-and-by, he'll realise that there's a gap somewhere, and gradually he'll be able to fill it in with events which will seem half nightmare, half real."
"Anyhow, he'll be certain of his identity and personal history and so forth?" asked Strong.
"Absolutely," said the surgeon. "It will be precisely as though he awoke from an ordinary night's rest.... It'll be awfully interesting to hear him give an account of himself.... All this, of course, if he doesn't die under the operation."
"I hope he will," said Strong.
"What do you mean, my dear chap?"
"I hope he'll die under the operation."
"Why?"
"He'll be better dead.... And it will be better for three other people that he should be dead.... Is he likely to die?"
"I should say it's ten to one he'll pull through all right.... What's it all about, Strong?"
"Look here, old chap," was the earnest reply. "If it were anybody else but you I shouldn't know what to say or do. As it's you, my course is clear, for you're the last thing in discretion, wisdom and understanding.... But don't ask me his name.... I know him.... Look here, it's like this. His wife's married again.... There's a kid.... They're well known in Society.... Awful business.... Ghastly scandal.... Shockin' position." Captain Strong took Doctor John Williams by the arm. "Look here, old chap," he said once again. "Need you do this? It isn't as though he was 'conscious,' so to speak, and in pain."
"Yes, I must do it," replied the doctor without hesitation, as the other paused.
"But why?" urged Strong. "I'm absolutely certain that if M----, er--that is--this chap--could have his faculties for a minute he would tell you not to do it.... You'll take him from a sort of negative happiness to the most positive and acute unhappiness, and you'll simply blast the lives of his wife and the most excellent chap she's married.... She waited a year after this chap 'died' in--er--that last Polar expedition--as was supposed.... Think of the poor little kid too.... And there's estates and a ti---- so on...."
"No good, Strong. My duty in the matter is perfectly clear, and it is to the sick man, as such."
"Well, you'll do a damned cruel thing ... er--sorry, old chap, I mean do think it over a bit and look at it from the point of view of the unfortunate lady, the second husband, and the child.... And of the chap himself.... By God! He won't thank you."
"I look at it from the point of view of the doctor and I'm not out for thanks," was the reply.
"Is that your last word, Williams?"
"It is. I have here a man mentally maimed, mangled and suffering. My first and only duty is to heal him, and I shall do it."
"Right O!" replied Strong, who knew that further words would be useless. He knew that his friend's intelligence was clear as crystal and his will as firm, and that he accepted no other guide than his own conscience....
As the three men sat in the moonlight that night, after dinner, Captain Strong was an uncomfortable man. That tragedy must find a place in the human comedy he was well aware. It had its uses like the comic relief--but for human tragedy, undilute, black, harsh, and dreadful, he had no taste. He shivered. The pretty little comedy of Lord Huntingten and Sir Montague and Lady Merline, of two years ago, had greatly amused and deeply interested him. This tragedy of the same three people was unmitigated horror.... Poor Lady Merline! He conjured up her beautiful face with the wonderful eyes, the rose-leaf complexion, the glorious hair, the tender, lovely mouth--and saw the life and beauty wiped from it as she read, or heard, the ghastly news ... bigamy ... illegitimacy....
The doctor's "bearer" came to take the patient to bed. He was a remarkable man who had started life as a ward-boy in Madras. He it was who had cut the half-witted white man's hair, shaved his beard and dressed him in his master's spare clothes. When the patient was asleep that night, he was going to endeavour to shave the top of his head without waking him, for he was to be operated on, in the morning....
"Yes, I fully understand and I give you my solemn promise, Strong," said the doctor as the two men rose to go in, that night. "The moment the man is sane I will tell him that he is not to tell me his name, nor anything else until he has heard what I have to say. I will then break it to him--using my own discretion as to how and when--that he was reported dead, that his will was proved, that his widow wore mourning for a year and then married again, and had a son a year later.... I undertake that he shall not leave this house, knowing that, unless he is in the fullest possession of his faculties and able to realise with the utmost clearness all the bearings of the case and all the consequences following his resumption of identity. And I'll let him hide here for just as long as he cares to conceal himself--if he wishes to remain 'dead' for a time."
"Yes ... And as I can't possibly stay till he recovers, nor, in fact, over to-morrow without gross dereliction of duty, I will leave a letter for you to give him at the earliest safe moment.... I'll tell him that I am the only living soul who knows his name as well as his secret. He'll understand that no one else will know this--from me."
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