The Sound of His Horn by Sarban Read Free Book Online Page A

you?"
    "History?" I said, bewildered. "Yes...."
    He interrupted me airily.
    "I should not worry. It will pass." He looked at me with very much the same indolent appreciation in his eyes as when he had surveyed Day Nurse, interested in nothing but my physical state. "What does it matter if it doesn't?" he asked. "You have the use of your body again. I don't know that you'll find anyone particularly interested in your mind here."
    Even though I had by now seen through the sham geniality of his first manner, the brutality of this remark astonished me. Puzzled and alarmed though I was at what he said about my delusion, I was convinced in my own mind that I was sane and I determined to meet his brutality with composure.
    "I'm not so conceited, Doctor, as to imagine that my mind is of much interest to anybody but myself," I said. "But I should like to thank you for taking such very good care of my body; it feels quite well now and I think my only worry is what you intend to do with it now you've repaired it. Am I to be treated as a prisoner of war, or not?"
    He put his elbows on the desk, propped his chin on his folded hands and arched his brows, looking at me with a certain disquieting relish.
    "You know, I like you," he said. "I find your conversation refreshing. Besides, I think you are probably a good listener and it will be excellent for me to practice my English a little. I have no idea what the Graf intends to do with you, but in my own little hospital here I am Der Fuehrer--and in case your period doesn't come as far up to modern times as that, that means God--and as I like your company I shall keep you here as long as possible. You have no idea how depressing it is for a solitary intellectual surrounded entirely by sportsmen and slaves. I am sure you will stimulate me to make a great many observations about this establishment, and luckily your--er--infirmity will enable me to express them with comparative safety. You may keep your room until I need it for another casualty, but I beg that you will honour my own table. I shall try to show you something of the estate as opportunity offers, but I must warn you against going out by yourself, particularly at night. It would grieve me very much to have my first real success with the anti-Bohlen Ray treatment un-professionally dissected by the Graf's hounds or those other creatures that he keeps."
    He rose, and coming swiftly round clapped me on the shoulder, grinning down at me.
    "So, Herr Lieutenant, accept the fortune of war like a soldier of those old heroic times you live in, and share a piece of venison and a bottle of Bordeaux with your enemy at half-past twelve precisely. Ach, though!" he exclaimed. "I must get you something to wear. Your own clothes have gone to the incinerator, I believe."
    He bent and spoke softly into a small apparatus on his desk. While he was occupied I got up and looked at the fine electric clock on the bookcase to which he had pointed when he invited me to lunch. It was a handsome instrument, comprising not only a clock but a thermometer and barometer, and it exhibited certain additional figures in small illuminated apertures which I did not at once understand. Then, I saw that one combination must give the day of the month. It was evidently the twenty-seventh of July. But under this was the isolated figure '102.'
    The Doctor came across while I was peering at this.
    "So," he said. "You admire my chronometer? As an officer of the old-time Navy that should interest you. But what puzzles you about it?"
    I pointed to the small figure '102.'
    "Ach, ja,"
he said. "The year also. Hardly necessary, one would have thought."
    "The year?" I repeated, staring at him.
    He threw back his head and laughed aloud, then apologised with exaggerated courtliness.
    "Alas, it is so difficult to be consistent when two people are living in different centuries at the same time. Forgive me, I should explain that I--solely for purposes of practical convenience, of