"Might I see them?"
Lathrop shook his head emphatically.
"By no means. I consider that they are privileged, confidential communications between patient and physician—not only illegal, but absolutely unethical to divulge. There's one strange thing, though, that I may be at liberty to add, since you know something already. Always, she says, these animals in the dreams seemed to be endowed with a sort of human personality. Both the bull and the serpent seemed to have human faces."
Kennedy nodded at the surprising information. If I had expected him to refer to the dream of Doctor Lathrop which she herself had told, I was mistaken.
"What do you think is the trouble?" asked Kennedy, at length, quite as though he had no idea what to make of it.
"Trouble? Nervousness, of course. I readily surmised that not the dreams were the cause of her nervousness, but that her nervousness was the cause of her dreams. As for the dreams, they are perfectly simple, I think you will agree. Her nervousness brought back into her recollection something that had once worried her. By careful questioning I think I discovered what was back of her dreams, at least in part. It's nothing you won't discover soon, if you haven't already discovered it. It was an engagement broken before her marriage to Wilford."
"I see," nodded Kennedy.
"In the dreams, you remember, she saw a half-human face on the animals. It was the face of Vance Shattuck."
"I gathered as much," prompted Kennedy.
"It seems that she was once engaged to him—that she broke the engagement because of reports she heard about his escapades. I do not say this to disparage Mr. Shattuck. Far from that. He is a fine fellow—an intimate friend of mine, fellow-clubmate, and all that sort of thing. That was all before he made his trips abroad—hunting, mostly, everywhere from the Arctic to Africa. The fact of the matter is, as I happen to know, that since he traveled abroad he has greatly settled down in his habits. And then, who of us has not sown his wild oats?"
The doctor smiled indulgently at the easy-going doctrine that is now so rapidly passing, especially among medical men.
"Well," he concluded, "that is the story. Make the most of it you can."
"Very strange—very," remarked Kennedy, then, changing the angle of the subject, asked, "You are acquainted with the recent work and the rather remarkable dream theories of Doctor Freud?"
Doctor Lathrop nodded. "Yes," he replied, slowly, "I am acquainted with them—and I dissent vigorously from most of Freud's conclusions."
Kennedy was about to reply to this rather sweeping categorical manner of settling the question, when, as we talked, it became evident that there was some one just outside the partly open doors of the inner office. I had seen a woman anxiously hovering about, but had said nothing.
"Is that you, Vina?" called Doctor Lathrop, also catching sight of her in the hall.
"Yes," she replied, parting the portières and nodding to us. "I beg pardon for interrupting. I was waiting for you to get through, Irvin, but I've an appointment down-town. I'm sure you won't mind?"
Vina Lathrop was indeed a striking woman; dark of hair, perhaps a bit artificial, but of the sort which is the more fascinating to study just because of that artificiality; perhaps not the type of woman most men might think of marrying, but one whom few would fail to be interested in. She seemed to be more of a man's woman than a woman's woman.
"You will excuse me a moment?" begged the doctor, rising. "So, you see," he finished with us, "when you asked me whether she was friendly with Shattuck, it is quite the opposite, I should—"
"You're talking of Honora?" interrupted the doctor's wife.
Doctor Lathrop introduced us, as there seemed to be nothing else to do, but I do not think he was quite at ease.
"I don't think I would have said that," she hastened, almost ignoring, except by an inclination of the head, the introduction in the eagerness to express an idea his words had suggested. "I don't think Honora is capable of either deep love or even deep hate."
"A sort of marble woman?" suggested the doctor, at first biting his lips at having her in the conversation, then affecting to be amused, as though at one woman's spontaneous estimate of another.
Vina shrugged her prettily rounded shoulders, but said no more on the subject.
"I sha'n't be gone long," she nodded back. "Just a bit of business."
She was gone before the doctor could say a word. Had the remark in some way been a shot at the doctor? All did not appear to be as serene between this couple as they might outwardly have us believe.
I saw that the interruption had not been lost on Kennedy. Had it been really an interest in our visit that had prompted it? Somehow, I wondered whether it might not have been this woman who had called up Shattuck while we were there. But why?
We left the doctor a few minutes later, more than ever convinced that the mystery in the strange death of Vail Wilford was not so simple as it seemed.
Chapter III
The Freud Theory
"Until I receive those materials from Doctor Leslie to make the poison tests," considered Kennedy, as we walked slowly the few blocks to the laboratory, "I can't see that there is much I can do but wait."
In his laboratory, he paused before his well-stocked shelves with their miscellaneous collection of books on almost every conceivable subject.
Absently he selected a volume. I could see that it was one of the latest translated treatises on this new psychology from the pen of the eminent scientist, Dr. Sigmund Freud, and that it bore the significant title, The Interpretation of Dreams.
Craig glanced through it mechanically, then laid it aside. For a few moments he sat at his desk, hunched forward, staring straight ahead and drumming his fingers thoughtfully. I leaned over and my eye happened to fall on the following paragraphs:
"To him who is tortured by physical and mental sufferings the dream accords what has been denied him by reality, to wit, physical well-being and happiness; so the insane, too, see the bright pictures of happiness, greatness, sublimity, and riches. The supposed possession of estates and the imaginary fulfilment of wishes, the denial or destruction of which has just served as the psychic cause of the insanity, often form the main content of the delirium. The woman who has lost a dearly beloved child, in her delirium experiences maternal joys; the man who has suffered reverses of fortune sees himself immensely wealthy, and the jilted girl pictures herself in the bliss of tender love."
The above passage from Radestock reveals with the greatest clearness the wish-fulfilment as a characteristic of the imagination, common to the dream and the psychosis.
It is easy to show that the character of wish-fulfilment in dreams is often undisguised and recognizable, so that one may wonder why the language of dreams has not long since been understood.
I read this and more, but, as I merely skimmed it, I could not say that I understood it. I turned to Kennedy, still abstracted.
"Then you really regard the dreams as important?" I asked, all thought of finishing my own article on art abandoned for the present in the fascination of the mysterious possibilities opened up by the Wilford case.
"Important?" he repeated. "Immensely so—indispensable, as a matter of fact."
I could only stare at him. The mere thought that anything so freakish, so uncontrollable as a dream might have a serious importance in a murder case had never entered my mind.
"If I can get at the truth of the case," he explained, "it must be through these dreams."
"But how are you going to do that?" I asked, voicing the thought that had been forming.