The Breaking Point - Page 125/275

"Suppose," Bassett said after a moment, "suppose you let that go just

now, and tell me more about this--this gap. You're a medical man. You've

probably gone into your own case pretty thoroughly. I'm accepting your

statement, you see. As a matter of fact it must be true, or you wouldn't

be here. But I've got to know what I'm doing before I lay my cards

on the table. Make it simple, if you can. I don't know your medical

jargon."

Dick did his best. The mind closed down now and then, mainly from a

shock. No, there was no injury required. He didn't think he had had an

injury. A mental shock would do it, if it were strong enough. And fear.

It was generally fear. He had never considered himself braver than the

other fellow, but no man liked to think that he had a cowardly mind.

Even if things hadn't broken as they had, he'd have come back before

he went to the length of marriage, to find out what it was he had been

afraid of. He paused then, to give Bassett a chance to tell him, but the

reporter only said: "Go on, you put your cards on the table, and then

I'll lay mine out."

Dick went on. He didn't blame Bassett. If there was something that was

in his line of work, he understood. At the same time he wanted to save

David anything unpleasant. (The word "unpleasant" startled Bassett, by

its very inadequacy.) He knew now that David had built up for him an

identity that probably did not exist, but he wanted Bassett to know that

there could never be doubt of David's high purpose and his essential

fineness.

"Whatever I was before." he finished simply, "and I'll get that from you

now, if I am any sort of a man at all it is his work."

He stood up and braced himself. It had been clear to Bassett for ten

minutes that Dick was talking against time, against the period of

revelation. He would have it, but he was mentally bracing himself

against it.

"I think," he said, "I'll have that whisky now."

Bassett poured him a small drink, and took a turn about the room while

he drank it. He was perplexed and apprehensive. Strange as the story

was, he was convinced that he had heard the truth. He had, now and then,

run across men who came back after a brief disappearance, with a cock

and bull story of forgetting who they were, and because nearly always

these men vanished at the peak of some crisis they had always been open

to suspicion. Perhaps, poor devils, they had been telling the truth

after all. So the mind shut down, eh? Closed like a grave over the

unbearable!