Sir Dabber turned to face the hospital administrator who sat to his right. “Ludicrous, Dr. Towlinson? To do that which the Petit-Parliament has itself been doing for the last one hundred years? If this body purports to have any legitimacy whatsoever, then let a written record document its proceedings.”
“Do you think our memories are going, Dabber,” retorted Towlinson, “that we should not be able to recall what is discussed at these meetings?”
“It is not simply what is discussed, Towlinson, but what is being planned and schemed and brought to fruition to the detriment of this institution and its inmates. I want the record to clearly shew who is responsible for every decision made here.” Dabber sat back in his chair and folded his arms across his ample belly.
“I am without words!” ejaculated Dr. Fibbetson in a sudden, horrified swoon.
“Notify the press,” riposted Dabber, “for that is something worthy of publication.”
There was a bit of laughter about the room that could not be helped. Even Chairman Feenix smiled at Fibbetson’s expense. Sir Dabber continued, “By the bye, Dr. Towlinson, Frederick Trimmers is an excellent stenographer — perhaps the best in the Dell.”
“Mr. Trimmers is also an agitator,” opined the head of Bedlam, bending his dark gaze full upon me.
“He is no more agitator than you or I,” countered my defender with an even more assiduous application of the handkerchief to his wet brow. “Moreover, gentlemen, I was once the chairman of this hospital board and can say that in my lengthy tenure there was much greater attendance given to institutional openness than I see now. The place is now become a castle keep of concealment and huggery-muggery. And as this is a publiclyfunded asylum, I, for one, will no longer brook the argument that what takes place here is not the business of every citizen in the Dell.”
“A rather stunning indictment, Sir Dabber, if I may say so,” pronounced the Lord Mayor, leaning back and locking and then unlocking the muscular fingers of his muscular paws in a thoughtfully amused manner. Several heads within the room nodded in staunch agreement — these heads belonging to the four other men present besides Dr. Towlinson and the medical mal-practitioner Egbert Fibbetson: three M.P.P.’s of inconsequential supernumerary status, and the eminently redoubtable Judge Fitz-Marshall. Those keeping their heads in dissenting abeyance were Sir Dabber, his exigently-enlisted amanuensis Frederick Trimmers, and the intrepid Ruth Wolf, who at this moment was about the business of sedulously avoiding my look, lest anyone in the room read complicity in our familiar glances.
Ruth feigned a casual air that only thinly mantled her true feelings of trepidation. For she knew as well as did I that there must be some dire reason for her summoned presence here, and the longer she was made to wait to hear what it was, the harder it would be to bear the suspense.
“Yet,” responded Sir Dabber to the Lord Mayor’s flyaway characterisation of his explanation, “there is too much that has taken place in this hospital as of late about which the public has been kept purposefully uninformed. I take up, first, the matter of the egregious relegation of some of our most needful inmates to deplorable quarters within the cellar.”
Dr. Towlinson scarcely gave Dabber time to finish his charge before putting forth his defence: “The refurbishing of the upstairs rooms obviously took longer than had been anticipated, but you should be glad to know that the renovation will soon be complete, and that all of the inmates who have been kept below-stairs in temporary quarters will, in fact, be removed to more suitable rooms shortly. And surely, Sir Dabber, you know that you need only have asked, and better transient accommodations would have been promptly arranged for your son. It was your choice and your choice alone not to pursue the matter, your having put the boy largely out of sight and out of mind for yea these ten years past.”
Upon this allegation of parental neglect (and the rather flippant and disrespectful manner in which it was tossed out), Sir Dabber leapt to his feet with both fists doubled up. “Mendacity!” he thundered.
I who was seated on the other side of him now rose to calm and quell his erupting anger. Others about the room got quickly to their own feet, desirous, apparently, of not being fixed to a chair should there be hurlings of fists and other things made rudely airborne. As Sir Dabber did not, in fine, do much more than simply repeat the word “mendacity” in a tone that would put it amongst the most insulting of epithets, it was easy for me to get him back into his seat and by extension the rest of the Board members to return to their own berths about the table. Ruth Wolf, for her part, did not rise but, instead, receded slightly into her chair as if wishing to disappear altogether.
“Take up your pen, Trimmers,” said Sir Dabber, “ and make note of the following items for discussion at this month’s Star Chamber.”
“Oh how he jests!” cawed Dr. Fibbetson.
“Just who is the current chairman of the board of this hospital, Dabber?” queried a suddenly no longer sunny Lord Mayor Feenix.
The question was left unanswered as Sir Dabber with restored equanimity and sober resolve launched himself into a rather remarkable list of everything that was the matter with present-day Bedlam, in the sense of both gross incompetence and deliberate malefaction. “Visiting days and hours are purposefully truncated to curtail time spent by inmates with their loved ones. Inmates are subjected to brutal, almost animal-like conditions — yes, both below and above stairs, for I have at last opened my ears to all the reports of those who do manage to see their friends and family members, only to discover for themselves the lengths to which this hospital will go to rob these men and women and children of their dignity.”
“Baseless calumny!” interjected Dr. Fibbetson, his mouth, thereafter, fixed into a permanent expression of outrage.
“I am not finished, Fibbetson. I have yet to mention the trickery and connivance that has latterly taken place between you, Judge Fitz-Marshall and the administrator of this hospital under the instigating direction of Montague Pupker — a travesty of justice that sets a dangerous precedent for future misapplication of the law within the Dell. I speak of the young woman, Pupker’s oldest daughter Hannah, who is no more mad than any man or woman in this room, with the possible exception of Fibbetson here, who has been known to parade about in the early hours of the morn drest only in his bedroom smalls.”
“I am a sleepwalker, you dolt!” exclaimed the offended Dr. Fibbetson.
“And have you been somnambulating through your many bungled surgeries, Fibbetson? You, sir, are the worst doctor with whom I have been professionally acquainted since the reign of the infamous Dr. Popsnap, whom I understand was your revered mentor. And you have the audacity to add your worthless opinion to the chorus of those who will put Miss Pupker into this dismal place for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with the fitness of her mind. Gentlemen, Miss Pupker has no business being an inmate of this hospital, and I demand that she be released at the close of this meeting.” Sir Dabber paused just long enough to give extra freight to the sentence that followed: “Along with my son, whom I wish returned to my own care.”
Lord Mayor Feenix exchanged an indecipherable look with Dr. Towlinson. In a sedate and measured tone he said, “Are you finished? Because if your rant has reached its terminus I should like to say that both Miss Pupker and your son Bevan were placed into our custody through a process of proper legal consignment, indicative of nothing but concern for the welfare of the patient.”
“That is rot!” snapped Sir Dabber. “And besides, hospital commitments, no matter how they have been effected, are not irreversible. They can be undone by this very board, in fact.”