“Why, in your study, of course. That’s where I asked them to wait.” The second voice most certainly belonging to Mr. Howler. It lacked composure and confidence.
“Have you suddenly reverted to the age of two? Since when have I allowed anybody to enter that room in my absence?”
“I’m sorry, sir. I wasn’t thinking. Yet the door was open. I assumed that you’d be returning in only a brief moment.”
“You assumed incorrectly, my dear Howler. And I should have locked that damned door when I left upon my errand. Yet, nonetheless, due to your negligence of duty I must now contend with—” With a great interruptive sigh of impatience: “Who is seeing to the other visitors? Go along. Quickly now, Howler, or we shall have the entire populace of the Dell prowling our halls and performing acts of scattered mischief.”
“Yes, sir.”
As we unwelcome guests listened to the corridor voices, we exchanged uneasy looks. Yet it was young Charity’s face that gave evidence of the greatest discomfiture. In fact, in the briefest instant that worrisome countenance suddenly contorted itself into a display of true horror, striking commensurate fear within the hearts of all of the rest of us.
“Good God, Charity, what is it?” I put to her from across the room in a poorly elevated stage whisper.
“The machine! The little calculating machine! It’s still—!”
The time for explanation having expired, Charity leapt from her seat and flung herself at the desk where she fumbled with all of her fingers to take up the computational device and find upon its face that button which returned it to its former dormant state, the button being in both my estimation and fortunately hers as well, “Off.” That button having now been pressed and the permanent occupant of the room having now appeared in the doorway of his premises (his head turned to make certain that his employee was moving with all expedition in the direction of his downstairs post), the girl promptly placed herself at the window and assumed the posture of one lost in her meditations, which her mother now disturbed to abet the conspiracy. “Charity, dear, come away from that window and sit yourself down. Dr. Towlinson has arrived.”
With a deliberately effected (and quite convincing) carefree air, Mrs. Pilkins’ oldest daughter acceded to her mother’s wishes and wordlessly repaired to the couch, sitting herself, it should be noted, upon both of her hands, each in need of having its discernible tremor withheld from the view of Dr. Towlinson, lest they betray to him the pretense behind her otherwise commendable performance.
“Good afternoon, Sir Dabber,” said the doctor, who to my knowledge was fast approaching his sixtieth year, though he was a specimen in apparently prime and robust health. Dr. Towlinson wore horn-rimmed spectacles, which he now adjusted upon his nose as if the better to identify each member of that impertinent quintet that had stoutly stormed his office.
“And Mr. Trimmers. And good afternoon to you, my dear Mrs. Pilkins and the Misses Pilkins.”
Having clasped hands with each of us (excepting Charity) in the quick and prosy manner of a farmer shaking the last drop of milk from his dairycow’s teat, the doctor moved to his desk to take his place behind it, doctors, like any member of the more exalted professions, being well aware that placement behind one’s desk offers the best advantage for commanding a room with authority. In this respect Towlinson resembled nothing so much as a judge upon his bench or perhaps a butcher before his block, cleaver in hand.
“We beg pardon for the intrusion, Dr. Towlinson,” said I, “but it’s doubtful that Howler would have allowed us to see you without some application of assertiveness on our part.”
“Do you really mean Howler?” posed the doctor with a grin, “or me? For I left strict orders with my registrar that I would be entertaining no visitors this afternoon.”
“Unless there rose a matter of some importance,” Mrs. Pilkins corrected our host, “which this visit most certainly concerns.”
It was at this moment that Towlinson made a discovery that raised his brows and set his mouth aslant. He noticed the calculating device that had been left upon his desk. It was obvious from the unsettled expression upon his face that it had not been his intent to leave the thing in full view of anybody who might approach his office. Perhaps it lived always and without exception within that very drawer into which he now deposited it and quickly locked it away. Having put the thing out of sight, he scanned each of our faces for some indication that its presence had registered with us. Each visitor made his or her face as blank as could be possible, Mercy even feigning to wipe something from her sister’s eyelid, as if to use this bit of business to demonstrate a lack of awareness of anything of an extraordinary nature within the room, including a most miraculous calculating machine that could not have been believed had we not all clearly seen it in its full and glorious function.
Each of us had made a decision upon that very instant not to enquire about the device, for what would it profit our present cause and how easily could it prove to over-complicate our efforts here? Yet I, for one, would not soon forget it, for its existence begged a number of questions I should like to have answered. Here, however, was neither the time nor place to ask them.
Dr. Towlinson seemed to relax, having apparently decided for himself that we had not trespassed upon his desk and in all likelihood had not seen the computator (let alone used it to divide 66,666,666 by 12,345,678 to gain a quotient that placed a “three” seven full spaces behind the decimal, producing the requisite result in less time than it took me to blink even once in utter disbelief!).
“If you refer, Mrs. Pilkins, to the hospital’s decision to keep your brother Walter Skewton in a continued state of isolation, there is nothing to be said. The quarantine remains in place and you will not be given leave to violate it.”
“Yet it is my belief, Dr. Towlinson, that he has been incorrectly diagnosed, for as I told Mr. Howler downstairs, nobody who sat with Walter on the evening of his return has been taken ill. Not a single one of us!”
“The disease may be in a state of hibernation or incubation, my dear lady, and if it were up to me, I would place each of you into quarantine yourselves given your close proximity to Walter on that night. But it just isn’t possible for us to go about putting large groups of people into observation cells at the expense of the general ratepayer. And so we will count our blessings that, so far, nobody within your household seems to have contracted this terrible disease. And let us leave it at that.”
“Before we ‘leave it at that,’” I interposed, “may I ask if you will permit Mrs. Pilkins to, at the very least, view her brother at a safe distance?” I prided myself on this attempt to bridge the chasm between the two positions. “Perhaps Mr. Skewton may be brought to a window and engaged from some vantage point on the grounds below.”
Towlinson dismissed the idea with a resolute shake of the head. “That would be out of the question. The young man is asleep.”
“Then wake him.”
“I cannot. Mr. Skewton is presently under the influence of one of our strongest soporifics and cannot be roused for love or money.”
“Why?” I asked, sliding forward in my chair with impatience.
“Why what?”
“Why has he been so heavily sedated?”
“Because — forgive my bluntness, sir — he is mad. Because he spends most of his waking hours attempting to remove himself from this place with such violence and such calculated expenditure of energy that he can scarcely be subdued. I eschew that dreadful three-letter term, ‘mad,’ madam—” now having returned his sombre gaze to Mrs. Pilkins, “but in the case of your brother I shall make exception: Walter Skewton is a veritable madman. He will not improve. Nay, he worsens with each week. His is a most grievous case, a fact that I did not wish to convey to you for fear that the disclosure would have a devastating effect upon your sensibilities and upon the sensibilities of your fragile daughters. But since you must have it, the truth is this: that the man whom we hold in strait-waistcoat is no longer the same man you knew as your brother. That man, I regret to inform you, is as good as dead.”