Chapter 1

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Title: The Doctor Who Held Hands. A Madame Storey Novel.
Author: Footner, Hulbert (1879-1944)
Date of first publication: 1929
Edition used as base for this ebook:
Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1929 (first edition)
[“Published for The Crime Club, Inc.”]
Date first posted: 12 June 2010
Date last updated: October 12, 2014
Faded Page ebook#20141049

This ebook was produced by: Al Haines

THE DOCTOR

WHO HELD HANDS

_A Madame Storey Novel_

BY HULBERT FOOTNER

Madame Storey
challenges a great
criminal and great
lover to a duel to
the death!

PUBLISHED FOR

THE CRIME CLUB, INC.

BY DOUBLEDAY, DORAN & COMPANY, INC.

GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK, 1929

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS
GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

THE DOCTOR WHO HELD HANDS

_1._

The long envelope inclosed something crisp and firm that immediately
suggested bank notes. Madame Storey has taught me to notice such
things. The messenger who brought it required a receipt in her own
hand. After I had handed him his receipt and returned to my employer’s
room, I saw the bills scattered on her desk: five smooth, fresh,
orange-backed engravings direct from the Federal Reserve Bank, the
prettiest pictures on earth. They were thousand-dollar bills, the
first I had ever seen. Those five scraps of paper were equivalent to a
trip around the world, a high-powered car, or any delightful folly that
one might dream about. To me it was a lot of money.

Mme. Storey was reading the letter which had accompanied it. Seeing me
goggle at the money, she said airily: “That’s only our retaining fee,
Bella. There is ten times as much in this case, if we can pull it off.
Besides an unlimited expense account.”

I waited in no little eagerness to hear more. When she had finished
the letter she handed it over without comment, and taking a cigarette,
leaned back in her chair and puffed a cloud of smoke thoughtfully
toward the ceiling. From this I gathered that we were likely to take
the case. I read:

DEAR MADAME STOREY:

I am sending you $5,000 in the hope of enlisting your services in a
cause which is not only very near my heart but would, if prosecuted to
a successful conclusion, confer a benefit on the entire community. I
wish, for reasons which will be apparent to you as you read, to remain
anonymous in the affair. Therefore I send the money in cash. The
truth is, I cannot bear to expose my wounds to the public gaze. In
brief, here is my proposition. I will pay you $50,000 if you can put
Dr. Jacmer Touchon behind prison bars. In addition, you may draw on me
without reserve for all legitimate expenses in connection with the
case. The Duane National Bank will act as my disbursing agent. This
scoundrel calls himself a “psycho-synthetist” or “soul-builder” and
seeks his victims among well-to-do women. Psycho-synthesis, examined
coldly, appears to be a blend of all the fakes one ever heard of, but
the doctor is an extraordinarily plausible and persuasive practitioner.
He appears to possess a really superior mind, which renders him, of
course, all the more dangerous.

I can describe to you his _modus operandi_ in one case, but can furnish
no proof without exposing my identity. It is up to you to get the
proof. One who was dear to me consulted Dr. Touchon in respect to an
unfortunate mental condition. He told her that her trouble arose from
harbouring evil thoughts, and that if she would relieve herself of such
thoughts he could undertake a cure. Well, I suppose everyone harbours
some evil thoughts. If one keeps them to one’s self they can do no
harm. But none would like to see them broadcasted. This person told
her thoughts, believing that she was confiding them solely to the
doctor’s private ear.

For several weeks she regularly visited his office for consultations.
His fee was $100 for half an hour’s treatment. This figures out rather
handsomely for a day’s work, you will agree, but still the greedy
doctor was not satisfied. His patient finally began to suspect he was
a fraud, and she ceased going to his office. Some little time
afterward he sent for her to come to him and told her in seeming
distress that a part of his records had been stolen from him, including
the record of her case. This was the first she knew there was a record
of it. He excused himself by saying it was necessary for him to have a
record to study, and confessed that while she was confiding her
thoughts to him, there had been a clerk concealed within hearing who
had taken it all down. Observe the man’s fiendish cleverness. He told
her that he felt it his duty to let her know that the record had been
stolen, but that she need not be under the slightest apprehension
concerning it because there was nothing on the card to identify it as
her case to anybody but himself.

This was all bunkum, of course. Within a short time the unfortunate
woman received a communication ostensibly from another quarter,
demanding a large sum of money if she wished to keep her confessions
out of print. She paid. She went on paying until she died. Before
she died she told me the whole story and the wicked thoughts were not
so wicked after all. That is the pity of it. The scoundrel had worked
on a nervous woman’s fears. There is no doubt but that worry over this
affair hastened her end.

There, my dear Madame Storey, is your case. I have restrained myself
as far as possible, because I don’t want to inflict my private feelings
on you. I wish that I might come out into the open, so that we could
work together, but I could not bear it, if even so much as a hint of
what I have been through should become public property. You may
acknowledge this letter through the bank. You will learn there that
your financial support is assured. If you don’t want the case you will
hand them back the money, but I trust that will not happen. For if you
won’t take it, I fear there will be nothing for me to do but to go out
and shoot the scoundrel.

Pray accept my felicitations for the good work you have done in other
directions. I always find you on the side of the right.

Yours sincerely,
AN ADMIRER.