"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!