The Legion of the Lost, стр. 12

‘Naturally,’ Palfrey said, forcing himself to sound genial.

‘So here we have developed a system of worsening the symptoms of the patients and then exploring the brain reactions to the worsening—finding cures sometimes, finding methods of treatment which include injections in the brain—but then, I am boring you, this is elementary.’ Oster laughed again. ‘We have one man here who is a master, Herr Doktor. He is difficult, yes, but a master! I have watched his struggle with much interest, it is pleasant to be able to regard others with complete detachment.’

Palfrey said: ‘Whose struggle?’

‘The master’s,’ said Oster with another light, cruel laugh. ‘Dr. Raffleck. You know, of course, that he is here?’

Palfrey looked startled. ‘I was told that he was at the Aalson Hospital. I had hoped to meet him.’

‘You will meet him,’ said Oster. ‘Whether you will be glad is a different matter. He remains hostile but is too precious a man to lose. Imagine his position,’ added the German quickly. ‘There are men whom he knows, patients he has treated for a long time. I work upon them—they get worse. Raffleck knows that I cause that. I then pass them to him for treatment. He is torn between refusing to co-operate with a man who will use such methods and the urge within him to find the causes and the treatments for the condition. However, he is a doctor first, a Norwegian afterwards. So he always yields.’

Oster stood by another white-painted door at the end of a long laboratory with the impedimenta of the profession on long benches on either side. Palfrey saw that everything was modern; it was as well equipped as any London hospital.

‘He is in this smaller room, now, considering the case of a patient for whom he has some regard,’ said Oster.

‘I see,’ said Palfrey. ‘It should be interesting.’

‘It will be,’ said Oster, and opened the door.

Dr. Harald Raffleck was standing over a white-topped table, peering at a chart held between his thick, hairy hands. That was the first thing Palfrey noticed about Raffleck – his hands were those of a navvy rather than of a doctor. The chart hid the lower half of his face, and as he was looking down at him the top half, with the high forehead, had a curiously foreshortened effect. He did not look up when the door opened but continued to peer at the thing in his hand.

The room was a miniature of the larger laboratory.

‘Good evening, Raffleck!’ said Oster softly. ‘A distinguished colleague has come to see you.’

Raffleck looked up sharply.

Palfrey caught a quick glimpse of his eyes; he did not forget that first impression, one of a man who was enduring an agony greater than any man could really bear. It showed mostly in his eyes, large, pale blue, narrowed at the corners. His fine forehead was wrinkled and graven with dark lines; his face showed the marks of much privation; there was an ugly burn scar on his right cheek. He looked a man of sixty but Palfrey knew that he was not forty years old.

His lips, full and badly shaped, parted for a moment; Palfrey saw that he had no teeth.

‘A colleague?’ He spoke in Norwegian.

‘From Berlin,’ said Oster.

Raffleck closed his lips, then sat down slowly. He looked very weary, and did not speak immediately. Then: ‘I have no colleagues in Berlin, Herr Doktor.’

‘Raffleck will joke,’ said Oster. There was no humour in his thin-lipped smile. ‘You will be good enough to remember, Raffleck, that Doktor Pretzel is a good friend of mine.’

Palfrey gave a smile as tight-lipped as Oster’s. Raffleck looked at him and through him, then dropped the card on to the table and said in a low-pitched voice which seemed to be as wracked with pain as his eyes: ‘I cannot go on, I just cannot go on. This card—it is a horrible thing. There was no need for Wegeland to reach so advanced a stage of dementia, it is wrong, quite wrong! I have treated him for many years. He would have been re covered now but for—’

‘You forget yourself, Raffleck!’ said Oster sharply. ‘You are able to work here, with all these advantages, only because you do what you are told to do. If you give Doktor Pretzel a wrong impression, you can imagine that he will report adversely when he returns. You will doubtless remember that there is ample room for another man in the huts at Dachau. Doktor Raffleck,’ added Oster with vicious sarcasm, ‘visited Dachau for a period of six months. There he had ample opportunity to study patients. Did you not, Raffleck?’

Raffleck compressed his lips; his hands clenched at his sides, and yet he was so obviously hopeless and impotent.

Palfrey began to talk, quietly, of mental diseases and not of Dachau. It was some time before Raffleck began to open up, but soon he seemed to forget what was keeping him here and what was so deeply on his mind. He became the specialist, not a victim of misrule. Palfrey, by no means a stranger to the subject, knew that Oster was right in one respect, and that the Marquis had not chosen badly; this man was a master who lost himself completely in his subject.

After a while, Raffleck said: ‘There is one patient you would perhaps like to see, Herr Doktor.’ He looked diffident, seemed grateful that Palfrey had shown a real interest. ‘I have especial concern for him. He is a German general with tendencies which—’ he went off into a welter of detail. ‘By normal standards he would have been dead a year ago, but I have kept him alive and he even shows some improvement. I can best show you what I mean by taking you to the patient.’ He gave Oster a gentle, even humble glance. ‘Is it permissible for Doktor Pretzel to come with me, please?’

‘To the case of His Excellency General von Tranter, yes,’ said Oster. ‘This way!’

He led them through the outer laboratory, which was