Chapter 23

Dr. Rutherford’s office was tastefully furnished, in the suburban medical manner, to suggest a Tudor tap-room. There was, of course, a spotless chrome and porcelain laboratory connecting, as well as an equally sanitary lavatory.

“Good of you to squeeze me in, Jerry,” I remarked to Rutherford. “Fact is I need your professional opinion.”

Rutherford stroked his little dab of a moustache. “I’ve sent in my application to the Army Medical Corps,” he told me. “I hoped you’d come to straighten out the money end.”

“That will be taken care of any time you need it,” I assured him. “Miss Briggs at my office will have full details. I’ll phone her and my lawyer to fix it up as soon as I get back to the house.”

“Well, what seems to be wrong with you, old man?” he inquired. “War getting too much for you? Got a hang-over? Need vitamins? Bowels regular? I must say you’re got a better color and have lost weight since the last time I saw you.”

“It’s nothing wrong with my body, and I have lost weight,” I explained. “It’s my mind. I’ve had a complete loss of memory as to what happened before April second. In Washington, I was lucky to avoid the booby-hatch. They couldn’t handle me at Hopkins, so they told me to consult my family physician. I guess that means that you are elected.”

“Family physician is good,” Rutherford remarked with a rather unprofessional grin. “But hell! I’m no psychiatrist. Of course, in practice around here I bump into a few psychopathic cases but I must say you’ve never struck me as the type.”

I assured him that I was in dead earnest about this matter, that I must somehow get myself certified as sane or I might be in trouble with the government.

“Rot, my dear fellow!” Rutherford assured me. “You’ve had some kind of psychic trauma or shock that’s resulted in temporary amnesia. That could happen to anybody. You’re as sane as I am.”

I asked him whether he’d be willing to sign a medical certificate to that effect.

“Well,” he replied slowly, “that’s another story. I’m not a specialist along psychiatric lines. Up here I get mostly baby-cases, indigestion, some alcoholism and now and then, thank God, a real honest broken leg. My name on a certificate wouldn’t mean much in sanity proceedings. I’d rather have you run over to Hartford and see Dr. Folsom at the Sanctuary. He has the stuff and the equipment to put you through the standard tests.”

“That’s okay by me, Jerry,” I agreed, “but I’d still like you to put me through a few paces so that your records will show that this is on the level. If some bright boy in Washington decides to throw me in the asylum for making nasty faces at the Big Brass, I want to have a clean medical record for use in a counter-suit for false arrest.”

Rutherford stood up and looked out the window. “I’m a hell of a poor choice for a man to look into your private life, after this business with Germaine and Virginia,” he observed.

“That’s why I want to keep it all in the family,” I told him. “Listen, Jerry, until she came out to Pook’s Hill the other day I have no recollection of ever setting eyes on Virginia. Under the circumstances, she’s as superfluous as a bridegroom’s pajamas. I faked as well as I could but the plain fact is that I have no memory of her, of you, of Jimmie or anybody around here before April 2nd. Now that’s not normal, to put it mildly.”

“You know, Winnie,” the doctor remarked professionally, “I think that your quote loss of memory unquote is nothing but a defense mechanism. I know a bit about your affairs and they seem to have got so complicated--with three or four women on a string, business problems, liquor and so forth--that you simply decided subconsciously not to remember anything about them. Your mind’s a blank as to everything you want to forget.”

I shook my head. “The trouble is, Jerry, that my mind’s not blank at all. I remember a hell of a lot but it’s all about another man.”

“How’s that again?”

So I told him the whole story, from beginning to end, skipping only the bits about the thorium bomb and Z-2 for reasons of security, and omitting the name of the carrier. He took notes and studied them for a while. Then he looked up at me and smiled.

“This beats anything in Freud,” he observed. “I still stick to my off-the-cuff diagnosis that you had something that gave you a shock--it needn’t have been anything big, you know; just a straw that broke the camel’s back--and then developed this loss of memory as a defense mechanism. And this transfer of personalities with Jacklin--metempsychosis is the fancy word for it--is not the usual type of schizophrenia, but it falls into a pattern of wish-fulfillment.

“You probably don’t remember it but ever since I’ve known you, you’ve been grousing about this fellow Jacklin, whom none of us have ever met. It’s been close to an obsession with you. I gather that you had some kind of a school-boy crush on him, which he ignored, and your feelings turned to hatred. You seem to have kept close track of him and his doings all these years. Subconsciously you must have identified yourself with him. I’m just guessing now--Folsom could make a scientific check--but I should say that you may have developed a split personality, based on envy and jealousy for this chap. Jacklin’s had to make his own way, while you’ve always had plenty of money and good business connections, especially since you got over the depression. He was in uniform, serving his country, and you were a civilian, enriching yourself. He had separated from his wife while you were tangled up with a lot of women...”

“But how did I know that Mrs. Jacklin had a mole on her left hip?” I asked.

“Nine women out of ten have at least one and often more moles on both their hips,” he said, “as you should know. In any case, I take it that you didn’t verify the statement. No, Winnie, at the Sanctuary they can deal with this sort of thing scientifically and tell you how to make the readjustment.”

“My wife doesn’t want me to readjust too much,” I told him. “She’d rather have me crazy and stick around with her than sane but off chasing a bunch of skirts.”

“Can’t say that I blame her, old man,” he agreed, controlling himself with a visible effort, “but that’s her affair and nothing to do with your case.”

“Quite!” I told him, “and let me say that you’ve been a hell of a good sport about this mess. Believe me, Jerry, I’m not trying to alibi myself so far as Virginia is involved, but I don’t remember anything about her and me that couldn’t be taught in a Methodist Sunday School. It’s--it’s almost as though I had been born again, given a last chance to relive my life. If that’s what trauma does for you, we ought to have more of it.”

“Listen, Winnie,” the doctor remarked. “This is between us, of course, but the sanest thing you ever did was to get shed of Virginia. She’s fun and all that, but after a few weeks it’s boring to live with a one-track mind with red hair. Germaine is worth a dozen of her. Perhaps when I get back from the Army, Virginia will have settled down enough to be a doctor’s wife. You’ll see that she gets the money, won’t you?”

“Sure,” I agreed, “and I’ll give you a tip I learned at Hopkins. The short-cut to medical riches. A loony psychiatrist there says he always advises middle-aged men to do a little heavy drinking and woman chasing, in order to get rid of their inhibitions. There ought to be a fortune in that kind of medical treatment, especially in Westchester.”