The Dark Other by Stanley G. Weinbaum (new ebook reader .txt) 📕

said the Doctor ruminatively. “Mueller never caught up with him.”

“But what’ll we do?” she cried desperately.

“He can’t have gone far with no more preparation than this,” soothed Horker. “He’ll write you in a day or two.”

“He won’t! He said he wouldn’t. He doesn’t want me to know where he is!” She was on the verge of tears.

“Now, now,” said the Doctor still in his soothing tones. “It isn’t as bad as all that.”

“Take off your bedside manner!” she snapped, blinking to keep back the tears. “It’s worse! What ever can we do? Dr. Carl,” she changed to a pleading tone, “can’t you think of something?”

“Of course, Pat! I can think of several things to do if you’ll quiet down for a moment or so.”

“I’m sorry, Dr. Carl⁠—but what can we do?”

“First, perhaps Mueller can trace him. That’s his business, you know.”

“But suppose he can’t⁠—what then?”

“Well, I’d suggest you write him a letter.”

“But I don’t know where to write!” she wailed. “I don’t know his address!”

“Be still a moment, scatterbrain! Address it to his last residence; you know that, don’t you? Of course you do. Now, don’t you suppose he’ll leave a forwarding address? He must receive some sort of mail about his income, or estate, or whatever he lives on. Your letter’ll find him, Honey; don’t you doubt it.”

“Oh, do you think so?” she asked, suddenly hopeful. “Do you really think so?”

“I really think so. You would too if you didn’t fly into a panic every time some little difficulty confronts you. Sometimes even my psychiatry is puzzled to explain how you can be so clever and so stupid, so self-reliant and so dependent, so capable and so helpless⁠—all at one and the same time. Your Nick can’t be as much of a paradox as you are!”

“I wonder if a letter will reach him,” she said eagerly, ignoring the Doctor’s remarks. “I’ll try. I’ll try immediately.”

“I sort of had a feeling you would,” said Horker amiably. “I hope you succeed; and not only for your sake, Pat, because God knows how this thing will work out. But I’m anxious to examine this youngster of yours on my own account; he must be a remarkable specimen to account for all the perturbation he’s managed to cause you. And this Jekyll-and-Hyde angle sounds interesting, too.”

“Jekyll and Hyde!” echoed Pat. “Dr. Carl, is that possible?”

“Not literally,” chuckled the other, “though in a sense, Stevenson anticipated Freud in his thesis that liberating the evil serves also to release the good.”

“But⁠—It was a drug that caused that change in the story, wasn’t it?”

“Well? Do you suspect your friend of being addicted to some mysterious drug? Is that the latest hypothesis?”

“Is there such a drug? One that could change a person’s character?”

“All alkaloids do that, Honey. Some of them stimulate, some depress, some breed frenzies, and some give visions of delight⁠—but all of them influence one’s mental and emotional organization, which you call character. So for that matter, does a square meal, or a cup of coffee, or even a rainy day.”

“But isn’t there a drug that can separate good qualities from evil, like the story?”

“Emphatically not, Pat! That’s not the trouble with this pesky boy friend of yours.”

“Well,” said the girl doubtfully, “I only wish I had as much faith in your psychologies as you have. If you brain-doctors know it all, why do you switch theories every year?”

“We don’t know it all. On the other hand, there are a few things to be said in our favor.”

“What are they?”

“For one,” replied the Doctor, “we do cure people occasionally. You’ll admit that.”

“Sure,” said Pat. “So did the Salem witches⁠—occasionally.” She gave him a suddenly worried look. “Oh, Dr. Carl, don’t think I’m not grateful! You know how much I’m hoping from your help, but I’m miserably anxious over all this.”

“Never mind, Honey. You’re not the first one to point out the shortcomings of the medical profession. That’s a game played by plenty of physicians too.” He paused at the sound of footsteps on the porch, followed by the buzz of the doorbell. “Run along and write your letter, dear⁠—here comes that Tuesday hypochondriac of mine, and he’s rich enough for my careful attention.”

Pat flashed him a quick smile of farewell and slipped quietly into the hall. At the door she passed the Doctor’s patient⁠—a lean, elderly gentleman of woebegone visage⁠—and returned to her own home.

Her spirits, mercurial to a degree, had risen again. She was suddenly positive that the Doctor’s scheme would bring results, and she darted into the house almost buoyantly. Her mother had abandoned the desk, and she ensconced herself before it, finding paper and pen, and staring thoughtfully at the blank sheet.

Finally she wrote.

“Dear Nick⁠—

“Something has happened, favorable, I think, to us. I believe I have found the help we need.

“Will you come if you can, or if that’s not possible, break that self-given promise of yours, and communicate with me?

“I love you.”

She signed it simply “Pat,” placed it in an envelope, addressed it hastily, and hurried out to post it. On her return she spied the Doctor’s hypochondriac in the act of leaving. He walked past her with his lean, worry-smitten face like a study of Hogarth, and she heard him mumbling to himself. The elation went out of her; she mounted the steps very soberly, and went miserably inside.

XIX Man or Monster?

Pat suffered Wednesday through somehow, knowing that any such early response to her letter was impossible. Still, that impossibility did not deter her from starting at the sound of the telephone, and sorting through the mail with an eagerness that drew a casual attention from her mother.

“Good Heavens, Patricia! You’re like a child watching for an answer to his note to Santa Claus!”

“That’s what I am, I guess,” responded the girl ruefully. “Maybe I expect too much from Santa Claus.”

Late in the afternoon she drifted over to Dr. Horker’s residence, to be informed that he was out. For distraction, she went in anyway, and spent a while browsing