Nancy had been tapping the table with her fingertips, thoughtfully, impatiently, indignantly, and now explosively.
“How old are you, Bobby?” she snapped.
“Twenty-five-goin’-on-twenty-six,” he recited, in the tone of one six-goin’-on-seven—a pleasantry she failed to acknowledge.
“Well—when Doctor Hudson was just coming into national renown for having performed the first head operation of its kind in the history of surgery, you still had some of your milk teeth to cut and were galloping about the nursery on a stick-horse! When he wrote this ‘bunk,’ you hadn’t learned to wash your own ears! I don’t mean to be too rough with you, sonny; but you need a drubbing, and you’re jolly well going to get it from your Nancy Ashford this day!”
“Go ahead! … I’d rather you were sore at me than—than—”
“Hadn’t nerve enough to finish it, had you? You were trying to say you hoped I wouldn’t discover that Doctor Hudson was a fool … Don’t give yourself any concern about that. I won’t! … I presume you never had your attention called,” she went on, biting her words into bits, “to the psychology of the genius. Why should you, indeed? Freshman medics aren’t troubled much, I presume, with excursions into the rarer altitudes of psychiatry which deal with obsessions. They’re kept too busy peeling the pelts off cadavers; trying to remember which is incas and which is stapes; trying to distinguish carpal from tarsus! … Oh, I know! You needn’t hoity-toity me with your wisdom!”
She suddenly sighted the open-mouthed waiter.
“Here! … If you’re looking for something to amuse you, take this cold coffee away and bring a fresh pot … some that was made this morning—preferably.”
Bobby burst out with a peal of laughter as the fellow paddled away.
“Nancy—you’re a scream! … Do go on!”
“I mean to! … I’m going to give you your first information about the genius-type … The genius won’t pigeonhole! He won’t card-index! He won’t file … And because he won’t, the dull-eyed dolts who hadn’t needed any trimming to fit whatever pack they properly belonged to, think him crazy. They can’t understand him, so—he’s unhooked! He romps away where they can’t follow, so—he’s gone wild! … He bestrides an idea and rides it furiously across country, over ditches and fences, through people’s houses, trampling down fields and gardens, knocking even his best friends down, and never knowing it … never looking back … or caring a tinker’s damn … so long as he can retain his seat on that one tremendous idea!
“Now—our Doctor Hudson was that sort of a person, and he became obsessed with an idea. He conceived a notion … I’m sure I don’t know how he came by it; maybe this book tells; I have hoped it would … that his professional success depended upon certain eccentric philanthropies which had to be kept secret to be effective. That much I managed to guess, long ago … Then the thought occurred to him, apparently, that he would put his theory into such shape that his heirs or successors or admirers might have a go at it. But he wanted to be insured against the ridicule of some pinhead who, pouncing upon it by accident—”
Bobby raised a hand.
“You’re getting rather excited, aren’t you?”
“You find it ridiculous that he employed this silly cipher,” she continued, lowering her voice. “Well—suppose he’d written it in Latin, which he easily could have done without a lexicon; would that have caused you any less bother? … Or Greek! He could have done it in Greek! How much Greek do you know—beyond the letters on your fraternity badge? … He wanted to make somebody dig for it—I tell you—and that was all of a piece with his obsession! It was part of it!”
“You win, Nancy,” admitted Bobby quietly. “You and I think the same thing about Doctor Hudson. We just say it differently; that is all … I said he must be mentally unhooked, and you say he was a genius and that all geniuses are unhooked … Very good … Now we can read the little book together and understand each other—even if we can’t understand the book.”
“I’ll give you a brief digest of what I’ve read so far … Nancy—it isn’t that I begrudge him the time I’ve spent untangling this involved cipher. It’s only that there’s really nothing in it that calls for such mysterious handling. You’ll see!”
“I won’t be sure about that until we’ve read the book—all through.”
Bobby fingered his notes.
“The story begins about a year after the death of Joyce, his first wife. Her long illness had slowed him up; absorbed all the neural energy that should have gone into his professional training. On the edge of failure and in deep depression, he was half-minded to give up surgery and go into business … It occurred to him, one day, that Joyce’s grave should be marked …”
“Ah—there you are!” ejaculated Nancy, with suppressed excitement.
Bobby glanced up, inquiringly.
“That tombstone was a milestone!” she explained, with emotion. “How often, when he wanted to date some event in his experience, it would be ‘shortly after I had erected the little marker for Joyce.’ … Do go on!”
“He went to a concern dealing in memorial stones and selected an inexpensive monument. On the blank form he wrote his wife’s name and the vital dates. The manager asked if he wished a brief epitaph. It seems to have been customary, at that time. Unable, on the spur of the moment, to think of an appropriate sentiment, and eager to close the business at once, he was advised to stroll out into the production department and look about. Perhaps he might see something there that appealed to him.
“So—he went through the factory, where monuments were under construction,