Delphi Complete Works of Thorne Smith (Illustrated), page 196
“I’m just sufficiently civil to accept a drink from you, Little Arthur,” Peter told him, reaching for the bottle.
“Even though I am trying,” remarked the Bishop, resting a moment on his oar, “still I can’t quite forget that singular encounter of a few minutes ago.”
“Wouldn’t have been more surprised,” remarked Aspirin Liz, “if that boat had been chuck-full of bounding lions.”
“No doubt we’ll never learn the beginning or end of that story,” Josephine said. “This whole business has a dreamlike quality.”
“I don’t mind it,” replied Peter drowsily. Fatigue, grog, and fever were assaulting him with sleep. Soon he was well off, half drunk and half in dreams.
“It certainly wasn’t no way for American citizens to act,” put in Little Arthur with an air of one who had always done a little more than his duty to his country.
“Look! What’s that?” cried Aspirin Liz in a startled voice pointing to a white strip lying pallid beneath the filtered light of a moon swinging high above the fog.
“That’s dry land,” Josephine informed her. “Ever hear of it before?”
“It seems to have been connected with my far-distant past,” said Aspirin Liz, her eyes devouring the smooth beach. “That and beer.”
A few minutes later the rowboat scratched its nose on the sand, but Peter Van Dyck never knew it. He was unconscious of what lay behind him as well as of what lay ahead. Had he not been so, he might have put back to sea.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Naked Physician
PETER VAN DYCK awoke to find a naked figure standing by his bed. This hardly placed the figure in Peter’s mind. To him almost any naked figure would have been a considerable shock. This one was. In the course of his thirty-four years Peter had scarcely associated at all with naked figures. From what he saw of this one, he had no desire to take up the practice at this late date. Therefore it was with a feeling of mingled constraint and alarm that he swiftly cast his eyes over this unclad body before resolutely looking at something else. The man was carrying a small black bag. This added to the shock, this bag. Its owner was standing in an attitude of negligent but well-bred repose which struck Peter as being rather incongruous in view of his appalling condition.
Could this stranger be, by any remote chance, the telephone man gone a little mad, Peter wondered, or a skilled artisan subject to one of those embarrassing mental aberrations popularized by Freud? Could he possibly have called to do things to a typewriter or a drain pipe or to perform some other highly specialized operation involving the removal of his clothes? Far simpler it was to assume that the man had been on his way to take a bath when he had suddenly been seized by a desire to look on another human face. But why the black bag? Peter decided to ask rather than to wonder.
“Hello,” he said. “Who are you?”
The man smiled much more naturally than Peter had believed a naked man with a black bag could smile.
“I am the doctor,” he said in a well-dressed, cultured voice. “The doctor of the house.”
Peter gagged a little at this.
“What,” he began rather fearfully, “what sort of a house is it?”
“A delightful one, my dear sir,” said the doctor.
“In what sense?” asked Peter.
“In every sense,” the man assured him.
Suddenly Peter remembered. His arm. He must have grown worse during the night.
“Listen, Doctor,” he said anxiously, “I must be sick as hell, if you didn’t stop to put on your clothes.”
“Nonsense,” replied the doctor shortly. “Your arm is perfectly safe. I call on all my patients like this.”
Peter shrank back among the pillows.
“Oh,” he said faintly. “You do?”
“Why not?” snapped the doctor.
“Why not, indeed?” repeated Peter with a sick smile. “Being a doctor and being used to naked bodies and all, I suppose you don’t mind . . . much.”
“Much!” exclaimed the doctor, laughing scornfully. “Why, my dear chap, I don’t mind at all. Like it, in fact.”
“And your patients?” inquired Peter.
“They like it, too,” said the doctor complacently.
“They do?” asked the incredulous Peter.
“Certainly,” replied the doctor. “Why not?”
“I wish you would stop asking me why not,” Peter complained, once more running his eyes rapidly over the naked man. “From where I am I can see any number of reasons why not.”
“What’s wrong with me?” demanded the doctor. “Tell me that.”
“Merely that you’re as naked as the palm of my hand,” Peter observed. “Apart from that small item you look perfectly natural.”
“My patients don’t seem to mind,” retorted the doctor.
“I can’t understand that,” said Peter. “I should think they’d all pass out from sheer panic.”
“My dear young man,” said the doctor, striding over to the window with his little black bag, “don’t be childish.”
“Come away from that window,” cried Peter. “Don’t make this a public scandal.”
“Why worry about that?” said the doctor carelessly.
“Somebody has to worry about it,” replied Peter. “I have no desire to have you seen in my room. It’s not at all nice, Doc. Wouldn’t be quite so degrading if you happened to be a woman, although that would be bad enough.”
“Naked women,” answered the doctor, flexing his limbs by squatting suddenly. “You’ll have more than you want of those in here.”
Peter was too alarmed by the man’s words to be revolted by his actions.
“What!” he exclaimed. “Naked women in here?”
“Why not?” asked the doctor, turning from the window.
“Let’s be reasonable,” said Peter. “You know why not without asking me. You’re a bit of a joker, aren’t you, Doc?”
“Not at all,” the doctor answered coolly. “Some of my favorite patients are women, if you’d like to know.”
“You mustn’t get much work done,” Peter remarked thoughtfully.
“Just what do you mean by that, young man?” asked the doctor.
“Everything,” said Peter. “All.”
“You’re vulgar,” replied the doctor severely. “Lots of my patients are ladies, and all of them are naked.”
“I know,” said Peter, “but at least they have bedclothes over them.”
“I pull those off,” snapped the doctor.
“Good God!” said Peter. “What a doctor!”
“As a matter of fact,” the doctor went on meditatively, “the ladies seem to take to it quicker than the men.”
“Take to what?” asked Peter fearfully.
“Being naked,” replied the doctor.
“Do you mean to your being naked or to their being naked?” Peter wanted to know.
“To our being naked together,” said the doctor, neatly dislodging with his left foot a spring fly from his right shin.
“Well, that seems natural, at least,” went on Peter, “although I rather boggle at the term ‘ladies.’ ”
“That’s what they are,” said the doctor. “Perfect ladies.”
“Perfect in what sense, may I ask?”
“In the right sense, of course.”
“You seem to have a rather distorted conception of just what is right,” observed Peter. “For example, I don’t think it’s at all right for you to call naked on equally naked ladies.”
“Why not?” demanded the doctor. “I cure them, don’t I?”
“I know,” went on Peter reasonably, “but curing them of one complaint might easily give rise to another.”
“There are never any such complications, I assure you,” said the doctor with great dignity.
“Then there must be something funny about the whole business,” muttered Peter, thinking of Josephine’s legs. “Or else you’re a little more than human or ‘way below par. I don’t understand it at all.”
“No,” replied the doctor. “You’re too much a creature of the flesh.”
Peter laughed sarcastically.
“You’re entirely a creature of the flesh,” he retorted. “I, at least, am part bed.”
At that moment, his troubled gaze straying through the door carelessly left open by this mad or abandoned doctor, Peter witnessed a little incident not given to every man to behold. A naked man, blithely carrying a ladder under one arm and swinging a pail of paint in his free hand, was footing it silently along the hall from one direction. From the other came a woman, equally innocent of clothing. She was bearing a breakfast tray. Peter’s natural assumption was that the woman upon seeing the man would drop her tray and run like hell while the man would do likewise. Instead, he was shocked to see them dexterously pass each other with an agreeable nod and continue calmly about their business. The man in the bed drew a deep breath, then his eyes sought the doctor’s.
“Do all the servants in this place go about like that?” he asked. “And for God’s sake don’t say ‘Why not?’ ”
“I feel like it,” said the doctor. “How else would you have them go about?”
Peter momentarily thought of the Bishop, then a small grin relieved the tenseness of his lips.
“Couldn’t you dig up a couple of towels for them?” he asked.
“And what, pray, would they do with the towels?”
“Hang them about themselves somewhere,” said Peter. “Even you should see a little sense in that, Doc.”
“ ’Fraid I’m a trifle dense,” remarked the doctor, now busy with Peter’s arm. “Can’t see it at all. Exactly where you would want them to hang the towels is beyond my comprehension. However — —”
“You are sadly lacking in imagination,” said Peter, a little bitterly.
He said no more for the reason that he had suddenly disappeared beneath the bedclothing. A naked woman, bearing bandages and a basin of warm water, had come briskly into the room.
“Here you are, Doctor,” he heard her say. “Sorry I was a little late. There’s a gentleman in Seventeen who refuses to give me his drawers.”
“Sit it down, sit it down,” replied the doctor testily, and Peter wondered under the blankets how a naked man was able to talk like that to a naked woman.
The doctor was struggling with the coverings. He was trying to pull them off.
“No, you don’t,” grunted Peter. “You didn’t give me any pajamas.”
“Have we any pajamas on?” cried the doctor, panting a little from exertion.
“No,” replied Peter. “You have not. You’re both naked as hell and you’re trying to make me like you.”
He heard the girl laugh horridly, then fresh hands were laid on the coverings. It was an unequal struggle. What with Peter’s wounded arm there were four hands against one.
“How far are you going to pull those coverings down?” he gasped.
“All the way,” gritted the doctor. “Clean off.”
And he did.
Peter, wild-eyed, gazed helplessly up at the two bodies bending over his. The girl’s eyes were merry while those of the doctor were mad.
“No more of this larking,” the man snapped, skillfully bathing Peter’s arm.
“Larking,” said Peter, amazed. “Did you think I was doing that?”
“Either that or making a lot of fuss over nothing.”
“Nothing!” cried Peter in a frenzied voice as he ran his eyes down over his body. “Oh, God, he calls it nothing.”
“Stop trying to attract attention to yourself,” rasped the doctor. “You’re not so hot.”
Peter was almost speechless with indignation.
“Call attention to myself?” he repeated. “I ask you — could I be any more conspicuous than I am?”
“Certainly,” replied the girl, her blue eyes dancing with unholy merriment. “In evening clothes you might pique my curiosity. Even in a pair of drawers you might give me a little thrill.”
“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” he asked her in a wounded and wondering voice.
“Not a bit,” she replied. “It’s all in the day’s work.”
“Then God knows what you must do at night,” he answered. “There’s no use for me to try to look somewhere else, because wherever my eyes turn one of your naked bodies manages to get in the way.”
“Why not look at yourself?” suggested the doctor.
“That sight is even harder to bear,” said Peter.
“Funny,” remarked the girl. “I don’t seem to mind you at all.”
“Why don’t you both crawl in bed with me and make it a clean sweep while you’re at it?” Peter asked sarcastically. “You don’t seem to mind anything.”
“I’d hate to do that,” said the doctor fastidiously.
“Is that so?” said Peter. “May I ask what is wrong with me?”
“I believe you’re a thoroughly evil-minded man,” replied the doctor. “You’ll have to watch your p’s and q’s round here.”
“Strikes me I’ll have to watch a damn sight more than that,” muttered Peter.
“Don’t fret,” put in the girl soothingly. “We’ll keep an eye on you.”
“That’s just what I’m worrying about,” said Peter. “There’ll be too many eyes on me.”
“You’ll have quite a lot to do with your own eyes,” said the girl. “Don’t forget that.”
“Not for a minute,” Peter answered.
There was a scuffling sound at the door as Little Arthur, armed with a mop and pail, scrambled nakedly into the room.
“Boss!” he cried wildly, running up to the bed. “They’ve taken away all my clothes and I’m as naked as a babe.”
“Naked as a what?” asked Peter.
“A babe,” replied Little Arthur, a strange and awful sight. “A small child.”
“You impress me as being much nakeder than even the smallest child,” said Peter. “You’re simply epic.”
“Don’t know what that is, but how about yourself?” asked Little Arthur. “And look at that brazen hussy.”
“At least I’ve a bandage on,” replied Peter. “And don’t ask me to look at anything. Never thought I’d see so much in all my life.”
“What the hell good is a pickpocket in a nudist colony, I ask you?” the little man tragically demanded.
“That is something to ponder on,” observed Peter. “I should imagine you’d have to be far cleverer with your hands than you’ve ever been before.”
“Might just as well have no hands at all,” Little Arthur answered bleakly.
“So far as pockets are concerned,” added Peter. “However, I should imagine that many men in a nudist colony would find one pair of hands hardly enough. By the way, are we in a nudist colony?”
“Either that or among the white-slavers,” breathed the little crook. “It all comes to the same thing.”
“Which is?” inquired Peter.
Little Arthur blushed.
“Don’t ask that,” he stammered, “in front of this here woman.”
“Oh,” said Peter. “Have you met these nudes already?”
“If not them, I’ve met a dozen just as bare,” Little Arthur lamented. “Can’t keep my eyes in one place long enough to tell one of ’em from the other. Don’t know which way to turn.”
“Why not crawl into your pail?” asked Peter.
“Wish I could,” the naked felon replied. “If it wasn’t full of water I’d stick my head in it.”
“Do it anyway,” snapped the doctor, speaking for the first time since Arthur’s arrival, “and hold it there awhile.”
“Nice way for a doctor to talk,” said Little Arthur, offended. “It’s a murder house, that’s what it is, and worse.”
“I was speaking personally rather than professionally,” the doctor told him. “Speaking professionally, I’ll have to ask you to get about your business, whatever it may be.”
“They want me to swab up the bathroom,” the undernourished snatch-purse complained with a sob in his voice. “Think of it. Me swabbing up a bathroom the way I am.”
“I should think the way you are would be ideal for bathroom swabbing,” allowed Peter.
“You’re almost as bad as they are, boss,” the little man replied. “Don’t you feel sort of funny lying there naked and all?”
“Sure,” said Peter. “I feel so funny I think I’m going to cry.”
“Hurry,” commanded the doctor. “If you don’t want to get into any trouble, do exactly as you’re told. Otherwise, things will go hard with you, let me assure you of that. We stand for no nonsense.”
“If you ask me, that’s all it is,” said Little Arthur, moving slowly towards the door. “Too damn much nonsense. Running around naked and carrying on. I suppose you think that’s sensible? Well, it isn’t. It’s just plain childish, I calls it. It’s worse than that — it’s nasty, that’s what it is. It ain’t even human.”
The doctor pointed a sharp instrument at the scolding crook.
“Want me to operate on you?” he asked.
Little Arthur instinctively glanced at himself.
“Oh, no,” he breathed. “No indeed.”
Peter chuckled in spite of his own unprotected state. He had never seen this mite of a man so utterly sincere.
“Then be gone!” thundered the doctor.
“See here,” protested Peter. “You can’t talk to my man like that.”
The doctor looked darkly at Peter, then suddenly snipped the gleaming blade at him.
“How would you like that?” he asked in a gloating voice. “Or this?” Here the doctor made an even more excruciating snip at Peter as if visualizing the horrid deed.
Peter shrank visibly in every fibre of his body.
“There’s no need to be so vivid about it,” he muttered. “So garishly dramatic. I’d do exactly as he says, Little Arthur, if you want to remain intact. This man is sort of crazy.”
“Can’t I stay here with him?” pleaded the little man. “Naked as he is, I can at least recognize his voice.”
“Go,” said the doctor, and Little Arthur, mop and pail, disappeared from the room.
“Listen, Doctor,” began Peter when his valet had gone nakedly to whatever lay ahead. “I’ve been hesitating over this question for some time. Tell me honestly — am I in a madhouse or a socially prominent brothel, or in the shrine of some fanatical cult, or just where am I?”
