Account Rendered by W. F. Harvey

William Fryer Harvey (April 4, 1885 – June 4, 1937) was an English writer of short stories, namely those of a spooky or horrific nature. He is perhaps best known for his short story “The Beast with Five Fingers” as it was the basis for the 1946 Robert Florey film of the same name—starring Peter Lorre to boot. “Account Rendered” was originally published in the collection The Arms of Mrs. Egan & Other Stories (1951) and is part of his series “Twelve Strange Tale”. The series details the spooky and macabre events experienced by the narrator, identified in some stories as Nurse Wilkie, during the course of her career.

“Medical ethics,” said my uncle, “is a very curious subject. If my plate were four times its present size, or if the lettering were in scarlet instead of black, my conduct might be judged unethical. I remember once a distinguished surgeon getting hot and bothered over what he called the ethical principle involved if qualified chiropodists were permitted to treat bunions. Any condition, he maintained, involving any structure below the level of the true skin was outside their province. It was a deep, not a superficial question, and a question of principle.”

He took down the tobacco jar from the mantelpiece and, though it was eight o’clock in the evening, filled his first pipe of the day.

“Here’s a case in point,” he went on. “A man came to me this morning with a request, a very queer request. He seemed rather surprised that I did not immediately accede to it in view of the fee he offered. He wanted me to give him an anaesthetic the day after tomorrow at twelve o’clock at night.”

“They chose a most inconvenient hour for the operation,” I said.

“But there wasn't to be an operation. That was the curious thing. All he wanted was to be fully anaesthetised between 11:45 and 12:15. As soon as I had recovered from my natural astonishment I put as tactfully as I could some of the difficulties which my caller had overlooked. I reminded him that I know nothing whatever about him. For all I knew he might be contemplating suicide. At 11:30 he might swallow a dangerous drug and then when he expired half an hour later I should have been responsible for a death under anaesthetic.

“Mr. Tolson (I'm not guilty of unethical conduct in telling you his name because you, too, may be concerned in the matter) rather naturally took offence at this idea. He explained to me that he could produce unimpeachable references to his character, that his health was excellent, and that he was perfectly prepared to submit to a rigorous medical examination. The reason for his request, which he now admitted, might appear strange, was that he was engaged upon a piece of research, partly mathematical, partly psychological, into what might be called the relation of space-time and the unconscious.

“He went off the deep end and I soon gave up all attempts to follow him. The gist of the matter was that he wished to verify certain scientific conclusions he had come to by recording his impressions before and after being anaesthetised. That put a rather different light on things. I am not prepared to give an anaesthetic to any Tom, Dick, or Harry who thinks that all he has got to do is stop me and buy one. On the other hand, there is no reason why I should not co-operate in a piece of research. Tolson evidently saw that I was hesitating and produced from his pocket a telegram. He told me that he had previously arranged with the honorary anaesthetist to the County Hospital at Wilchester to do the job on the day and hour mentioned, but only that morning a wire had come to say that he was ill. He showed it to me. I have met Dr. Hancock once or twice. He is a shrewd man and I told myself that if he was satisfied with Tolson's bona fides there was no reason why I should not be. The matter finally ended like this. I told Tolson that I would give him a definite answer tomorrow. If I then decided to do his job of work, I should give him a thorough overhaul and I should bring my niece, a trained nurse, along with me. I explained to him that the after-effects of an anaesthetic are sometimes unpleasant, but I really wanted to have you there to safeguard my interests as much as his. He hummed and hawed a bit but finally agreed, and there the matter rests. That is our little problem in medical ethics. What are we going to do about it?”

I think my uncle had already made up his mind, but he is an old bachelor who likes to have the support of his womenfolk.

“I should certainly anaesthetise Mr. Tolson,” I said.

All this happened many years ago. I was young and inexperienced. It is hardly to be wondered at that I gave the wrong answer. I see now that my uncle would have been probably better advised to have nothing to do with Mr. Tolson, but his sense of curiosity was very strongly developed—that was partly what made him so good a doctor—and he liked his own way—that was partly what had kept him a bachelor.

At a quarter past eleven on 17th December, my uncle’s car stopped outside the door of Lebanon Lodge, a square, old-fashioned residence that stood out white behind the solitary cedar that had given to the house its name. We were not kept long waiting. Hardly had the bell ceased ringing when the door was opened by Mr. Tolson himself. He was a man of nearer fifty than forty, short and wiry in build, dark hair tinged with grey, and dark, restless-looking eyes. He was wearing a dressing gown.

“I’m glad to see you, doctor,” he said. “I was afraid you might be late. I have everything ready, so we can go straight upstairs. I told my old housekeeper to go off to bed an hour ago, so we shall be quite undisturbed.”

The room on the first floor into which he led us had almost as much the appearance of a study as of a bedroom. It was lined with books. At the opposite end from the bed a fire was burning brightly. Heavy crimson curtains were drawn across the bow windows that looked out on to the cedar, while a portière of the same colour screened the door.

My uncle wasted no time. He had overhauled his patient on the previous day and had instructed him as to what preparations he should make. By the time the hands of the clock on the mantelpiece pointed to a quarter to twelve Mr. Tolson was completely unconscious.

“There’s this at least to be said,” remarked my uncle, “the man knows how to take an anaesthetic.”

Outside the night was still. The only sound in the room was the deep, regular breathing of the man in the bed and the ticking of the clock. It struck twelve. And then, about five minutes past the hour a curious thing happened. Without any warning the door opened and an old man looked into the room. I could only see his head and shoulders. He wore a little black skull-cap, and as he stood there, his lean scraggy neck peering forward, his toothless mouth half open, he gave me the impression of a timid but inquisitive tortoise slowly intruding itself into a hostile world.

“Ah, you are busy, Charles,” he said. “You can’t see me now. But there is no hurry, no need for hurry at all. Another time will do.” Then he closed the door as quietly as he had opened it and disappeared.

“Who the devil was that?” said my uncle. “There, hold his legs; he’s not so deeply under as I thought he was. Steady now, my hearties. That’s better,” as the deep, regular breathing began again. “Who was that, Margaret? I wasn’t watching. The housekeeper?”

“It may have been the housekeeper’s husband,” I said. “He seemed quite at home. We'll ask Mr. Tolson when he comes round.”

At a quarter past twelve my uncle stopped the anaesthetic and began to put his things together. And then in the hall below we heard the telephone ring. No one seemed to answer the bell; the housekeeper, or whoever it was who had looked into the room a quarter of an hour before, must either have been very deaf or have gone to bed.

“I’ll go,” said my uncle. “It’s probably a emergency call for me. My luck’s out tonight.”

He was back again in a few minutes.

“Yes,” he said. “that young ass Jerry Polegate has collided with a lamp-post again and will probably need a couple of stitches. He’s round at the surgery. The only comfort is that the motor-bicycle is a complete wreck. What are we to do with you, my dear? Do you mind being left alone here for an hour or so? Of course Tolson is all right, but I should be easier in my mind if there was someone with him. I’ll call for you as soon as I have finished branding that young road-hog.”

Naturally, I agreed. Tolson was sleeping quietly, the fire was burning brightly. I drew up a chair and settled down to read. The book I took down from the shelf was a beautifully bound copy of John Buncle. The fly-leaf was inscribed “Ex-libris Jarvis Effington.” The name had a slightly familiar ring and I tried in vain to place it, until I remembered that I had once gathered primroses at a place called Effington in Kent. The book itself, however, was as unfamiliar as it was delightful and I read on, regardless of the time.

As the clock struck one Mr. Tolson stirred uneasily and began to mutter to himself. A little later he opened his eyes.

“Where am I?” he asked. “Where has he gone to?”

“Dr. Parkinson has been called out to a case,” I replied. “He will be back very soon.”

“It’s all over then,” he said. “it’s all safely over,” and he closed his eyes with a weary sigh of satisfaction, only to open them a few minutes later.

“Tell me,” he said, “did anything happen when I was under?”

“You took the anaesthetic splendidly. The only thing that surprised us was when an old man came up the stairs a little after twelve and looked into the room without knocking. I think he, too, was surprised to see us and said something about seeing you another time.”

Mr. Tolson glanced at me in a curious way. I saw fear, dismay, and a suggestion of something else, of wily satisfaction that gave one the impression that he was well pleased to have escaped from a tiresome visitor.

“That would be my old uncle,” he said at last. “He ought to have been in bed hours ago.”

“That’s where my uncle ought to have been,” I thought to myself, but I had not very long to wait before I heard his steps again on the stairs.

“Sorry to run off and leave you like that, Mr. Tolson,” he said as he came into the room. “You see, there is no end to a doctor’s day. You will be going off to sleep now, I expect. Is there anything I can do for you before we go?”

Apparently there was nothing. Tolson thanked him for his services and handed him an envelope from the table by his bedside.

“I won’t keep you waiting,” he said, with a rather attractive smile, “not even for your fee. I think you will find it is right. Again many thanks, and to you, too, nurse.”

As we got into the car we could see that the lights were still burning in Mr. Tolson’s room in Lebanon Lodge.

“A rum sort of cove,” my uncle remarked. “He is probably going to write up his notes on what I hope will have proved a satisfactory experiment.”

Some three years later I was nursing a doctor in the midlands. Clergymen and doctors are, in my experience, far the most unsatisfactory patients to deal with, but Dr. Gilkes was an exception. He was an excellent talker — his fractured thigh was no impediment — and he had knocked about all over the world. Something or other had made me tell him about the strange case of the man who wanted to be anaesthetised. He listened with, I thought, unusual interest and then he burst out laughing.

“That's a funny thing,” he said. “I’ve met Mr. Tolson. At least, I think I have, though Drewit was the name he went by. How long ago would it be? Five years, perhaps. At any rate, I hadn’t started in general practice. I was ship’s surgeon in the Valumeria, a venerable survivor of pre-war days that used to make the trip to Australia by way of the Cape. Four days out from Hobart something went wrong with the propeller, and though things were patched up — the weather, thank goodness, was fine — it meant our proceeding in whatever was the nautical equivalent of bottom gear and we were three days behind our schedule. We all put as cheerful a face on things as we could with the exception of this Drewit fellow, who seemed to think that the fates had personally insulted him. He had, it appeared, a most important engagement in Hobart. We did our best to console him, partly because a man with a most important engagement in sleepy Tas (that’s Tasmania, you know) is a rare bird, but I never knew its actual nature until the day before we were due in port. No, it wasn’t time-space and its relation to the psychology of the unconscious. The dope he dealt out to me had to do with telepathy. Drewit, it seemed, was writing a treatise on telepathy which was to include the results of some entirely new experiments. He and a friend in England had arranged to be put under an anaesthetic at the same hour. A third friend — what curious friends some people do seem to have! — was then to broadcast on the appropriate brain wave-length and the other two, on coming round, would record their impressions. You see the idea? Telepathy and the unconscious mind. Unmitigated nonsense!

“Well, Drewit had fixed everything up with a doctor he knew in Hobart, when this unforeseen delay occurred. He was most anxious that I should do the job. Anxious, indeed, is hardly the word to describe his dithering importunity. I didn’t know what to do, but when he produced a letter from his friend in England to convince me of his bona fides and mentioned a twenty-guinea fee without turning a hair, I hesitated no longer. I was human and I was stony broke.

“The time Drewit had chosen for his experiment, between 11:45 and 12:15 at night, suited me well, since it was unlikely that we should be disturbed. Some of the bright young sparks among the passengers had fixed up a fancy-dress ball. I slipped away soon after eleven and got my things ready. I had rather expected that Drewit would have been nervous. Not a bit of it. When I examined his heart he took it as a matter of ordinary routine, and when I started to anaesthetise him he made not the slightest effort to resist, but went on breathing away as if he enjoyed it. It was the easiest twenty guineas that I had ever earned or was likely to earn. I could feel myself in Harley Street. The only thing that happened was that when I was half-way through, the door of the cabin opened and someone popped in his head. Then, seeing what was going on he apologised, said something about looking in again later, and withdrew. I thought at the time it was Dow, the third engineer, dressed up as one of our ancestors. I taxed him with it next day, but he said the only time he had worn fancy dress was at his sister’s wedding, when he had a gardenia in his buttonhole. He had, moreover, an alibi. At the time I mentioned it, it appeared that he was endeavouring to point out the glories of the Southern Cross — they need a lot of searching — to a girl from Dulwich.

“Of course I never heard of Drewit again. You are the first person I’ve met who ever came across him, because obviously it must be the same man masquerading under another name. I suppose you don’t remember the date?”

“It was the seventeenth of December,” I said, “the day before my uncle’s birthday.”

Dr. Gilkes asked me to hand him his diary.

“I’ll make a note of that,’ he said. “It would be about the middle of December that we got to Hobart. I can’t be sure of the actual day, but I’ll look it up as soon as I’m on my pins again. I should dearly like to know what has happened to Drewit, if he still indulges in this annual stunt and why he does it. It makes a good story, but we want the closing chapter. There’s one thing that’s certain. The man’s medical attendants are pretty certain to remember him; it is the sort of case, too, about which they might easily talk. If I hear anything that will throw light on our mysterious patient, I will let you know, and I expect you to do the same to me.”

Dr. Gilkes, I am glad to say, made an excellent recovery from his accident. I did not expect to hear from him again, and the letter I received two years later came as a surprise.

“I haven’t forgotten my promise,” he wrote, “to let you know if anything more turned up about our friend Tolson-Drewit. Three weeks ago I was staying with a doctor, an old University College man, who told me a story almost precisely similar to the one we could tell. It happened on the same date in December, and the patient was evidently the same, though on this occasion he passed under the name of Royce. He persuaded my friend into giving him an anaesthetic by propounding an ingenious theory about the nature of memory. Soon after twelve there was the usual interruption, but Handysides had kept his patient only very lightly under, and when the door opened and the old fellow poked his head in, it was all he could do to hold Drewit down. When he came round he was extremely indignant and declared that he had been conscious half the time, and poor old Handysides had to be content with only ten guineas. As he is a Scotsman he naturally remembers the incident very well. That’s the story in brief; the same in all the principal features as ours. If I ever hear more, I’ll let you know.”

Then there was silence for four years, but I was to hear once more from Dr. Gilkes.

“I have just come across this extract,” he wrote, “from a three months’ old copy of a local paper. I wonder if it is the sort of explanation that satisfies you. If you care to do so, you will be able to look up the case in greater detail by consulting the newspaper files. To me it seems that Drewitt was for once speaking the truth when he told my friend on the last occasion on which we heard of him that he was investigating the nature of memory. Reading between the lines I can guess who and what it was he wanted to forget.”

And this was the cutting:

Dr. Gilkes had cut out the two portraits. Tolson’s face I recognized at once. The other, though I had seen it for only a moment on a night more years ago than I cared to remember, I recognised too. There were the dark eyes, the long scraggy neck, the thin lips, mocking and cruel. I can well believe that to one man at least it would be a face to forget.