Frank Richardson - The Mayfair Mystery - 2835 Mayfair

Harding was nonplussed at his levity.

‘Don’t you worry,’ he said, ‘you are not a ghost. If you were a ghost, it would be almost impossible to account for the disappearance of the steak which you are eating with such intense rapidity. A ghost never eats, or, indeed, does anything useful. Joking apart,’ he added, ‘was all this an hallucination of Reggie’s? Mind you, he swore to me that he had seen you lying dead on the floor in King Street. He told me that he had touched your face and it was cold. What are you going to do about it?’

‘Do about it? Why, nothing! What can one do about it? Is it worth while doing anything about it?’

‘Perhaps not, but what about Reggie? If he gets into the habit of making these statements, he will be a deuce of a nuisance, won’t he? Anyhow, if he is liable to see corpses on carpets, there must be something awfully wrong with him. You, a physician, an expert in nerve diseases, must grasp the fact that his is a very bad case.’

Slowly the great physician answered him.

‘Do you know that a man who is only insane on one subject is the exception? Most of us are mad on half a dozen subjects. Some of us are so devoid of all sense of proportion that we are mad about practically everything. Of course, Reggie’s brain is not normal. He has led a devil of a life, a much worse life than mine. I have been able to stand it. He has not. But mind you, I don’t think he will come to any evil owing to his trouble. It doesn’t matter what he says about me. I shan’t bring an action for slander against him. And on all other points he is completely sane. But with regard to me he can’t tell the truth; his vision is distorted; he sees everything wrong. When you meet him again, old chap, it will be better not to mention the matter, because he has probably forgotten all about it by now. Of course, he has forgotten all about it by now.’

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