The Sound of His Horn by Sarban Read Free Book Online

Slav servant wearing.
    For all I felt so well, my knees, of course, were like water from lying so long in bed and I was glad of Day Nurse's arm. It was the first time I had been outside my room and I had something to do to control my eagerness to see what the place looked like. I had no more than a hurried glimpse of my surroundings, for the Doctor's office was close by, across a broad verandah. I saw, however, that my room was at the corner of a spacious, one-storey wooden building raised above the ground by a high brick base. The forest came very close; there was no garden, only the natural lawns of the woodland in the openings of the trees.
    The Doctor's room was more shaded by the trees than my own. The light that came in was leaf-green, yet the effect of the white-painted walls and the high polish on all the woodwork was such that the room looked light. It seemed half study, half surgery; bookcases and instrument cabinets alternated round the walls and a vast wooden desk stood in the middle. The Doctor invited me to sit in an easy chair beside the desk and swivelled his desk-chair round to face me, dismissing the nurse with a nod.
    I suppose I talked far more than a prisoner of war ought that morning. After the baffling 'humouring' to which I had been subjected by the nurses it was a great relief to talk to someone who appeared, at least, to treat me as a sane and normal person. It was naive of me, no doubt, but it did not occur to me that he was encouraging me to talk in order to study me; I believed that he just wanted the pleasure of a chat. He gave me the impression of not having enough work to do, of being bored and glad to see a stranger. I forgot how much he must have known about me already. I don't know how many canons of security I offended against, but, with his prompting, and under the stimulus of his interest, I told him the whole story of my escape, concealing only the fact that Jim Long had escaped with me. He drew with a pencil on a pad in front of him while was talking, but took no notes. When I had finished he gave me a long stare. It was only then, I think, when I looked back into his eyes that I became aware of some kind of calculation in his manner, something not so easy and trustworthy as I had thought at first.
    "Tell me this," I blurted out. "Why don't you hand me over to the police? I've admitted that I'm a British prisoner."
    "The police?" he repeated thoughtfully. "It is not necessary. The Master Forester has jurisdiction in the Reich forest."
    "But I'm a prisoner of war," I persisted. "I should be under military law."
    "Ja, ja,"
he said. "I understand. There is no hurry. We must get you well first."
    I realised, angrily, that this was the same vein of 'humouring' the lunatic that the nurses had practised.
    I said defiantly:
    "You think I'm mad, don't you?"
    "My dear fellow," he answered, and something jarred on me in the glib way he brought the phrase out in his German accent, "my dear fellow, I don't think you're insane at all. Not that I should care much if you were. Your case interested me physiologically. You were affected by Bohlen Rays. They are usually fatal, but you have responded to my treatment. I am pleased with you. From my point of view you are cured, you need only a little time and some exercise to recover the use of your muscles completely."
    "But you think I'm unbalanced," I insisted. "Even though you're not interested, you're a doctor; you know when a person's mad. Am I?" He looked out of the window and drew down the corners of his mouth, seeming to find my question irrelevant or impossible to answer. Then in a bored, offhand way, he said:
    "There's bound to be some cerebral disturbance. A temporary amnesia would be normal and some kind of delusions could be expected. In your case it seems to take the form of believing that you are living in a former period of history. I suppose you have read a good deal of history, about the War of German Rights and so forth, haven't