Relieved and yet slightly disconcerted by this non-committal bearing, I stumbled through my story less coherently than I had meant to tell it. Badly narrated, it was preposterous, especially as coming from a man in seemingly full possession of his faculties. All that enabled me to continue was that my hearer listened attentively, with no outward appearance of disbelieving me.
"And you’ve come to me for advice as to the wise thing for you to do," he said, not unsympathetically, when I had brought my lame story to a close.
"That’s about it," I agreed, though conscious of a regret at having come at all.
"Then the first thing I should suggest," he continued, never taking his penetrating eyes from my face, "is that you should see a doctor—a specialist—a neurologist. I’ll give you a line to Doctor Glegg—"
"What would he do?" I ventured to question.
"That would depend on whether or not you could pay for treatment. I presume, from what you’ve said of your funds giving out, that you couldn’t."
"Then he’d probably put you for observation into the free psychopathic ward at Mount Olivet—"
"We don’t have insane-asylums nowadays; but in any case it isn’t what you mean. It’s a sanitarium for brain diseases—"
"I shouldn’t want to go to a place like that."
"I thought—" But I was not sure as to what I had thought. Hazily I had imagined some Christian detective agency hunting up my family, restoring my name, and giving me back my check-book. It was probably on the last detail that unconsciously to myself I was laying the most emphasis. "I thought," I stammered, after a slight pause, "that—that you might be inclined to—to help me."
The question was so direct as to take me by surprise.
"An average of about fifteen people come to see me every day," he said, in his calm, business-like voice, "and of the fifteen about five are men. And of the five men an average of four come, with one plausible tale or other, to get money out of me under false pretenses."
I shot out of my seat. The anger choking me was hardly allayed by the raising of his hand and his suave, "Sit down again." He went on quietly, as I sank back into my chair: "I only want you to see that with all men who come telling me strange tales my first impulse must be suspicion."