by Mike Ashley
“That will do,” he said presently, “that is all I want to know, thank you, Alice.”
“Well, if you’ve gained any information about the mystery from the story of that girl’s infernal carelessness you’re a marvel!” said Masterman as the door closed behind her. “It seems to me the most irrelevant nonsense—with all due respect to your superior knowledge, old man.”
“Her carelessness was the starting point,” answered the expert confidently, “but there were unusual accompanying factors at work as well . . . By the way, what is the date today?”
“The twelfth,” I answered.
“Ah!”—with an air of triumph—“then she lit the sacrificial fire on the ninth. Does that convey nothing to you, Wilton?”
“Nothing in the world. It wasn’t even rent-day!”
He treated my frivolity with the contempt it deserved, and turned to Masterman.
“Now you’re going to find my explanation difficult to believe,” he said warningly. “But you have admitted, yourself, that the fires were not, in your opinion, due to any human agency, haven’t you?”
“They weren’t; they couldn’t have been; my bed broke out into flames when only I was present.”
“Just so. The presiding deities of an ancient Greek or Roman household were manifesting their wrath in their own characteristic fashion on the person who had provoked it! They showed their resentment at the removal of their shrine from the land—probably from the very hearthstone, for anything you know—to which it had been attached for centuries, along the line of least resistance—that of fire! If you study the records of any tribal deities, Biblical or otherwise, you will find they always ‘brought down fire from heaven’ on those who had displeased them.”
Masterman gasped as the meaning of this amazing statement gradually dawned on him.
“But—but—household deities—do you mean the Lares and Penates? They are myths—fables—pagan gods that never had any existence,” he stammered feebly.
“How do you know they hadn’t?” countered Carwell. “For hundreds of years they lived in the daily thoughts of thousands, and if you knew anything about occult law you would know that thought is the greatest creative force in the world. What man thinks, he not only becomes, but he makes. A strong, clearly defined thought produces a corresponding image in the plastic medium that interpenetrates the denser stuff we call ‘matter.’ That is a fact that has been scientifically demonstrated, remember. Thought forms have been photographed under test conditions by men of the highest repute. You can understand, then, that the devotional thought of generations must result in the creation of something—we needn’t pin ourselves down to too precise a definition—an entity—an astral image—a tribal deity—that will manifest itself in various ways.”
“Bless my soul!” said Masterman in an awed voice. “It sounds like one of those mediaeval tales of black magic or witchcraft—things we all stopped believing in when steam engines came!”
“Black magic, which is only a name for the evil use of occult power, is just as prevalent today as it was before Stephenson was born—indeed, more so, I should say. Enormous bodies of people are being encouraged sedulously to cultivate hate, suspicion, greed of power and other ignoble sentiments. And this output of emotion is being stored up in the plane where thought takes form, and will filter down into the material world some day in an outburst of evil such as we have never seen . . . But we’re rather getting away from our original subject, aren’t we? That tripod was the focus of the stream of thought and devotion that gave vitality to the man-created gods of the ancient days. It has held many fires lit with ceremonial observances of considerable power. Offerings of fruit and flowers and bread have been placed in it, and oblations of wine poured out upon it. It’s not unreasonable to suppose, then, that the revival of some of these practices has roused into a semblance of life the astral images that were created round it long ago. That, at any rate, is what I feel sure has happened.
“All the same,” he continued thoughtfully, “I doubt if Alice’s action by itself would have been enough to produce so prompt and strong a result. As I intimated just now, an unusual combination of factors has been at work, and acting together they proved dynamic in their force. You noticed that I got her to show me how she had walked round the tripod. It was as I suspected. She walked ‘widder-shins’—from west to east.”
“And what under heaven is that?” our host demanded.
“It is to walk round an object in a direction opposed to the sun’s course, and is an occult way of rendering active any force that may be lurking at hand.”
“What had the date to do with it?” I asked, when I had digested this amazing bit of information.
“Oh, yes, the date. I’d forgotten that for the moment, but it was really one of the most important of the subsidiary details, if I may call them so. It was the ninth of July on Tuesday, and that—as you ought to know, Wilton, being an artist and presumably interested in Grecian history—was the date of the Vestalia, the feast of the vestal virgins in whose charge the sacred fires were. The household fires were specially lit by brands from the temple flames on that day, and exceptional offerings were made on every hearth. Add to all of these Alice’s psychic ‘make-up’—”
“I was just going to ask about that,” I broke in eagerly. “Her feeling that there was someone there, that she was going to be lashed by a whip—why, that is what happened to the vestals if they let the fire out!” I added, with a sudden flash of illumination.
“Don’t tell me that my simple—indeed, rather silly—little servant girl is a reincarnation of a vestal virgin!” implored Masterman pathetically. “I really can’t take in any more!”
“I’m not going to,” laughed Carwell. “I should never make such a positive statement as that on such slight evidence. The girl is undoubtedly mediumistic, and probably caught some impressions from the astral memories and entities she unconsciously evoked. That among them there might be the fear and apprehension of a long dead guardian of the flame is by no means impossible.”
“And what’s going to happen now? Am I likely to get any more of it?” asked Masterman, as we rose to go.
“I hardly think so, but if you do it will be a very feeble manifestation. The attacks have been decreasing in intensity, you say, and the force is probably exhausted by now, but as a precautionary measure I should shut this room up for a few days. The impetus that Alice gave was only just a flash in the pan, and the astral images will slowly dissolve again into quiescent etherial particles. No life-giving current of thought has been going out to them for centuries. Their worship is a thing of the past, and gods, like men, die when they are forgotten.”
“Well, that’s a comfort,” said Masterman heartily, giving Carwell’s hand a grateful grip. “I’m no end obliged to you, you know, old man, and I daresay when I’ve thought it over a bit I shall see that your explanation is the right one. But—Lares and Penates—in Hampstead—in these days of motors and aeroplanes—it does seem a bit staggering, what? To a plain business man—”
“Ah!” said the Expert with a sudden change of manner, “talking of business, what do you think of—?”
I had a gorgeous gloat over Masterman’s treasures while they discussed the latest fluctuations in the price of something they called “green Souchong.”
DR. TAVERNER IN
THE SUBLETTING OF THE MANSION
DION FORTUNE
So far the authors in this volume have been mostly writers by profession with little, if any, psychic abilities. But with Dion Fortune, real name Violet Mary Firth (1890–1946), we have a genuine ritual magician. Early in her childhood she believed she could tap into inherited memories, possibly from Atlantis, and she became fascinated with the operations of the mind, studying psychology and, at the start of the Great War, working as a counselor and psychotherapist. It was while working at the clinic that she met the Irish occultist Theodore Moriarty (1873–1923) who introduced her to the tenets of theosophy and
freemasonry and helped prepare her for her initiation into the London Temple of Alpha and Omega, an offshoot of the original Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1919. She soon transferred to the Stella Matutina Lodge of the Golden Dawn and developed her skills as a medium. She subsequently founded her own Community of the Inner Light (now the Society of the Inner Light) in 1924. She wrote many books on occultism and psychic power starting with The Machinery of the Mind (1922) as well as several occult novels, including The Demon Lover (1927), The Winged Bull (1935), and The Goat-Foot God (1936). But her earliest foray into writing fiction was her series featuring Dr. John Taverner, which was serialized in The Royal Magazine in 1922 before appearing in book form as The Secrets of Dr. Taverner in 1926. At the start of the series Taverner runs, in addition to his own clinic, a nursing home specializing in nervous disorders and diseases of the mind, not too far from the original interests of both Samuel Warren and Martin Hesselius. With Taverner, though, his investigations take him far deeper.
“Build thou more stately mansions, O my soul”
THE POST BAG OF THE NURSING HOME WAS ALWAYS SENT TO THE village when the gardeners departed at six, so if any belated letter-writer desired to communicate with the outer world at a later hour, he had to walk to the pillar box at the cross roads with his own missives. As I had little time for my private letter-writing during the day, the dusk usually saw me with a cigar and a handful of letters taking my after-dinner stroll in that direction.
It was not my custom to encourage the patients to accompany me on these strolls, for I felt that I did my duty towards them during working hours, and so was entitled to my leisure, but Winnington was not quite in the position of an ordinary patient, for he was a personal friend of Taverner’s, and also, I gathered, a member of one of the lesser degrees of that great fraternity of whose work I had had some curious glimpses; and so the fascination which this fraternity always had for me, although I have never aspired to its membership, together with the amusing and bizarre personality of the man, made me meet halfway his attempt to turn our professional relationship into a personal one.
Therefore it was that he fell into step with me down the long path that ran through the shrubbery to the little gate, at the far end of the nursing home garden, which gave upon the cross roads where the pillar box stood.
Having posted our letters, we were lounging back across the road when the sound of a motor horn made us start aside, for a car swung round the corner almost on top of us. Within it I caught a glimpse of a man and a woman, and on top was a considerable quantity of luggage.
The car turned in at the gates of a large house whose front drive ran out at the cross roads, and I remarked to my companion that I supposed Mr. Hirschmann, the owner of the house, had got over his internment and come back to live there again, for the house had stood empty, though furnished, since a trustful country had decided that its confidence might be abused, and that the wily Teuton would bear watching.
Meeting Taverner on the terrace as we returned to the house, I told him that Hirschmann was back again, but he shook his head.
“That was not the Hirschmanns you saw,” he said, “but the people they have let the house to. Bellamy, I think their name is, they have taken the place furnished; either one or other of them is an invalid, I believe.”
A week later I was again strolling down to the pillar box when Taverner joined me, and smoking vigorously to discourage the midges, we wandered down to the cross roads together. As we reached the pillar box a faint creak attracted our attention, and looking round, we saw that the large iron gates barring the entrance to Hirschmann’s drive had been pushed ajar and a woman was slipping softly through the narrow opening they afforded. She was obviously coming to the post, but, seeing us, hesitated; we stood back, making way for her, and she slipped across the intervening gravel on tip-toe, posted her letter, half bowed to us in acknowledgement of our courtesy, and vanished as silently as she had come.
“There is a tragedy being worked out in that house,” remarked Taverner.
I was all interest, as I always am, at any manifestation of my chief’s psychic powers, but he merely laughed.
“Not clairvoyance this time, Rhodes, but merely common sense. If a woman’s face is younger than her figure, then she is happily married; if the reverse, then she is working out a tragedy.”
“I did not see her face,” I said, “but her figure was that of a young woman.”
“I saw her face,” said Taverner, “and it was that of an old one.”
His strictures upon her were not entirely justified, however, for a few nights later Winnington and I saw her go to the post again, and although her face was heavily lined and colourless, it was a very striking one, and the mass of auburn hair that surrounded it seemed all the richer for its pallor. I am afraid I stared at her somewhat hard, trying to see the signs from which Taverner had deduced her history. She slipped out through the scarcely opened gate, moving swiftly but stealthily, as one accustomed to need concealment, gave us a sidelong glance under long dark lashes, and retreated as she had come.
It was the complete immobility of the man at my side which drew my attention to him. He stood rooted to the ground, staring up the shadowed drive where she had disappeared as if he would send his very soul to illuminate the darkness. I touched his arm. He turned to speak, but caught his breath, and the words were lost in the bubbling cough that means haemorrhage. He threw one arm round my shoulders to support himself, for he was a taller man than I, and I held him while he coughed up the scarlet arterial blood which told its own story.
I got him back to the house and put him to bed, for he was very shaky after his attack, and reported what had happened to Taverner.
“I don’t think he is going to last long,” I said.
My colleague looked surprised. “There is a lot of life in him,” he said.
“There is not much left of his lungs,” I answered, “and you cannot run a car without an engine.”
Winnington was not laid up long, however, and the first day we let him out of bed he proposed to go to the post with me. I demurred, for it was some little distance there and back, but he took me by the arm and said: “Look here, Rhodes, I’ve got to go.”
I asked the reason for so much urgency. He hesitated, and then he burst out, “I want to see that woman again.”
“That’s Mrs. Bellamy,” I said. “You had better let her alone; she is not good for you. There are plenty of nice girls on the premises you can flirt with it you want to. Let the married women alone, the husbands only come round and kick up a row, and it is bad for the nursing home’s reputation.”
But Winnington was not to be headed off.
“I don’t care whose wife she is; she’s the woman I—I—never thought I should see,” he finished lamely. “Hang it all, man, I am not going to speak to her or make an ass of myself, I only want to have a look at her. Any way, I don’t count, I have pretty nearly finished with this sinful flesh, what’s left of it.”
He swayed before me in the dusk; tall, gaunt as a skeleton, with colour in his cheeks we should have rejoiced to see in any other patient’s, but which was a danger signal in his.
I knew he would go, whether I consented or not, so I judged it best we should go together; and thereafter it became an established thing that we should walk to the cross roads at post time whether there were letters or not. Sometimes we saw Mrs. Bellamy slip silently out to the post, and sometimes we did not. If we missed her for more than two days, Winnington was in a fever, and when for five consecutive days she did not appear, he excited himself into another haemorrhage and we put him to bed, too weak to protest.
It was while telling Taverner of this latest development that the telephone bell rang. I, being nearest the instrument, picked it up and took the message.
“Is that Dr. Taverner?” said a woman’s voice.
“This is Dr. Taverner’s nursing home,” I replied.
“It is Mrs. Bellamy of Headington House who is spea
king. I should be very grateful if Dr. Taverner would come and see my husband, he has been taken suddenly ill.”
I turned to give the message to Taverner, but he had left the room. A sudden impulse seized me.
“Dr. Taverner is not here at the moment,” I said; “but I will come over if you like. I am his assistant; my name is Rhodes, Dr. Rhodes.”
“I should be very grateful,” replied the voice. “Can you come soon? I am anxious!”
I picked up my cap and went down the path I had so often followed with Winnington. Poor chap, he would not stroll with me again for some time, if ever. At the cross roads I paused for a moment, marvelling that the invisible barrier of convention was at last lowered and that I was free to go up the drive and speak with the woman I had so often watched in Winnington’s company. I pushed the heavy gates ajar just as she had done, walked up the deeply shaded avenue, and rang the bell.
I was shown into a sort of morning-room where Mrs. Bellamy came to me almost immediately.
“I want to explain matters to you before you see my husband,” she said. “The housekeeper is helping me with him, and I do not want her to know; you see the trouble—I am afraid—is drugs.”
So Taverner had been right as usual, she was working out a tragedy.
“He has been in a stupor all day, and I am afraid he has taken an overdose; he has done so before, and I know the symptoms. I felt that I could not get through the night without sending for someone.”
She took me to see the patient and I examined him. His pulse was feeble, breathing difficult, and colour bad, but a man who is as inured to the drug as he seemed to be is very hard to kill, more’s the pity.
I told her what measures to take; said I did not anticipate any danger, but she could phone me again if a change took place.
As she wished me goodbye she smiled, and said: “I know you quite well by sight, Dr. Rhodes; I have often seen you at the pillar box.”
“It is my usual evening walk,” I replied. “I always take the letters that have missed the post bag.”