by Unknown
“No, nothing of that sort. I’ll tell you about it. You’ve heard of my grandfather—who made the money?”
“Heard of him? Had him rubbed into me in my childhood. He’s in Smiles or one of those books, isn’t he? Started life as a navvy, educated himself, invented things, made a fortune, gave vast sums in charity.”
“That is the man. Well, he lived to be a fair age, but he was dead before I was born. What I know of him I know from my father, and some of it is not included in those improving books for the young. For instance, there is no mention in the printed biography of his curious belief in the four-fingered hand. His belief was that from time to time he saw a phantom hand. Sometimes it appeared to him in the daytime, and sometimes at night. It was a right hand with the second finger missing. He always regarded the appearance of the hand as a warning. It meant, he supposed, that he was to stop anything on which he was engaged; if he was about to let a house, buy a horse, go a journey, or whatever it was, he stopped if he saw the four-fingered hand.”
“Now, look here,” said Yarrow, “we’ll examine this thing rationally. Can you quote one special instance in which your grandfather saw this maimed hand, broke off a particular project, and found himself benefited?”
“No. In telling my father about it he spoke quite generally.”
“Oh, yes,” said Yarrow, drily. “The people who see these things do speak quite generally as a rule.”
“But wait a moment. This vision of the four-fingered hand appears to have been hereditary. My father also saw it from time to time. And here I can give you the special instances. Do you remember the Crewe disaster some years ago? Well, my father had intended to travel by the train that was wrecked. Just as he was getting into the carriage he saw the four-fingered hand. He at once got out and postponed his journey until later in the day. Another occasion was two months before the failure of Varings’. My father banked there. As a rule he kept a comparatively small balance at the bank, but on this occasion he had just realised an investment, and was about to place the result—six thousand pounds—in the bank, pending re-investment. He was on the point of sending off his confidential clerk with the money, when once more he saw the four-fingered hand. Now at that time Varings’ was considered to be as safe as a church. Possibly a few people with special means of information may have had some slight suspicion at the time, but my father certainly had none. He had always banked with Varings’, as his father had done before him. However, his faith in the warning hand was so great that instead of paying in the six thousand he withdrew his balance that day. Is that good enough for you?”
“Not entirely. Mind, I don’t dispute your facts, but I doubt if it requires the supernatural to explain them. You say that the vision appears to be hereditary. Does that mean that you yourself have ever seen it?”
“I have seen it once.”
“When?”
“I saw it to-night.” Brackley spoke like a man suppressing some strong excitement. “It was just as you got up from the card-table after losing on your fours. I was on the point of urging you and the other two men to go on playing. I saw the hand distinctly. It seemed to be floating in the air about a couple of yards away from me. It was a small white hand, like a lady’s hand, cut short off at the wrist. For a second it moved slowly towards me, and then vanished. Nothing would have induced me to go on playing poker to-night.”
“You are—excuse me for mentioning it—not in the least degree under the influence of drink. Further, you are by habit an almost absurdly temperate man. I mention these things because they have to be taken into consideration. They show that you were not at any rate the victim of a common and disreputable form of illusion. But what service has the hand done you? We play a regular point at the club. We are not the excited gamblers of fiction. We don’t increase the points, and we never play after one in the morning. At the moment when the hand appeared to you, how much had you won?”
“Twenty-five pounds—an exceptionally large amount.”
“Very well. You’re a careful player. You play best when your luck’s worst. We stopped play at half-past eleven. If we had gone on playing till one, and your luck had been of the worst possible description all the time, we will say that you might have lost that twenty-five and twenty-five more. To me it is inconceivable, but with the worst luck and the worst play it is perhaps possible. Now then, do you mean to tell me that the loss of twenty-five pounds is a matter of such importance to a man with your income as to require a supernatural intervention to prevent you from losing it?”
“Of course it isn’t.”
“Well, then, the four-fingered hand has not accomplished its mission. It has not saved you from anything. It might even have been inconvenient. If you had been playing with strangers and winning, and they had wished to go on playing, you could hardly have refused. Of course, it did not matter with us—we play with you constantly, and can have our revenge at any time. The four-fingered hand is proved in this instance to have been useless and inept. Therefore, I am inclined to believe that the appearances when it really did some good were coincidences. Doubtless your grandfather and father and yourself have seen the hand, but surely that may be due to some slight hereditary defect in the seeing apparatus, which, under certain conditions, say, of the light and of your own health creates the illusion. The four-fingered hand is natural and not supernatural, subjective and not objective.”
“It sounds plausible,” remarked Brackley. He got up, crossed the room, and began to open the card-table. “Practical tests are always the most satisfactory, and we can soon have a practical test.” As he put the candles on the table he started a little and nearly dropped one of them. He laughed drily. “I saw the four-fingered hand again just then,” he said. “But no matter—come—let us play.”
“Oh, the two game isn’t funny enough.”
“Then I’ll fetch up Blake from downstairs; you know him. He never goes to bed, and he plays the game.”
Blake, who was a youngish man, had chambers downstairs. Brackley easily persuaded him to join the party. It was decided that they should play for exactly an hour. It was a poor game; the cards ran low, and there was very little betting. At the end of the hour Brackley had lost a sovereign, and Yarrow had lost five pounds.
“I don’t like to get up a winner, like this,” said Blake. “Let’s go on.”
But Yarrow was not to be persuaded. He said that he was going off to bed. No allusion to the four-fingered hand was made in speaking in the presence of Blake, but Yarrow’s smile of conscious superiority had its meaning for Brackley. It meant that Yarrow had overthrown a superstition, and was consequently pleased with himself. After a few minutes’ chat Yarrow and Blake said good-night to Brackley, and went downstairs together.
Just as they reached the ground-floor they heard, from far up the staircase, a short cry, followed a moment afterwards by the sound of a heavy fall.
“What’s that?” Blake exclaimed.
“I’m just going to see,” said Yarrow, quietly. “It seemed to me to come from Brackley’s rooms. Let’s go up again.”
They hurried up the staircase and knocked at Brackley’s door. There was no answer. The whole place was absolutely silent. The door was ajar; Yarrow pushed it open, and the two men went in.
The candles on the card-table were still burning. At some distance from them, in a dark corner of the room, lay Brackley, face downwards, with one arm folded under him and the other stretched wide.
Blake stood in the doorway. Yarrow went quickly over to Brackley, and turned the body partially over.
“What is it?” asked Blake, excitedly. “Is the man ill? Has he fainted?”
“Run downstairs,” said Yarrow, curtly. “Rouse the porter and get a doctor at once.”
The moment Blake had gone, Yarrow took a candle from the card-ta
ble, and by the light of it examined once more the body of the dead man. On the throat there was the imprint of a hand—a right hand with the second finger missing. The marks, which were crimson at first, grew gradually fainter.
* * *
Some years afterwards, in Yarrow’s presence, a man happened to tell some story of a warning apparition that he himself had investigated.
“And do you believe that?” Yarrow asked.
“The evidence that the apparition was seen—and seen by more than one person—seems to me fairly conclusive in this case.”
“That is all very well. I will grant you the apparition if you like. But why speak of it as a warning? If such appearances take place, it still seems to me absurd and disproportionate to suppose that they do so in order to warn us, or help us, or hinder us, or anything of the kind. They appear for their own unfathomable reasons only. If they seem to forbid one thing or command another, that also is for their own purpose. I have an experience of my own which would tend to show that.”
Smeath
I
PERCY BELLOWES was not actually idle, had a good deal of ability, and wished to make money. But at the age of thirty-five he had not made it. He had been articled to a solicitor, and, in his own phrase, had turned it down. He had neglected the regular channels of education which were open to him. He could give a conjuring entertainment for an hour, and though his tricks were stock tricks, they were done in the neat professional manner.
He could play the cornet and the violin, neither of them very well. He could dance a breakdown. He had made himself useful in a touring theatrical company. But he could not spell correctly, and his grammar was not always beyond reproach. He disliked regularity. He could not go to the same office at the same time every morning. He was thriftless, and he had been, but was no longer, intemperate. He was a big man, with smooth black hair, and a heavy moustache, and he had the manners of a bully.
At the age of thirty-five he considered his position. He was at that time travelling the country as a hypnotic entertainer, under the name of Dr Sanders-Bell. At each of his entertainments he issued a Ten Thousand Pound Challenge, not having at the time ten thousand pence in the world.
He employed confederates, and he had to pay them. It was not a good business at all. His gains in one town were always being swallowed up by his losses in another. His confederates gave him constant trouble.
But though he turned things over for long in his mind, he could see nothing else to take up. There is no money nowadays for a conjurer without originality, an indifferent musician, or passable actor. His hypnotic entertainment would have been no good in London, but it did earn just enough to keep him going in the provinces.
Also, Percy Bellowes had an ordinary human weakness; he liked to be regarded with awe as a man of mystery. Even off the stage he acted his part. He had talked delirious science to agitated landladies in cheap lodgings in many towns.
Teston was a small place, and Percy Bellowes thought that he had done very well, after a one-night show, to cover his expenses and put four pounds in his pocket. He remained in the town on the following day, because he wished to see a man who had answered his advertisement for a confederate, “Assistant to a Hypnotic Entertainer” was the phrase Mr Bellowes had used for it.
He was stopping at the Victoria Hotel. It was the only hotel in the place, and it was quite bad. But Percy Bellowes was used to that. A long course of touring had habituated him to doubtful eggs and indistinguishable coffee. This morning he faced a singularly repulsive breakfast without quailing. He was even cheerful and conversational with a slatternly maid who waited on him.
“So you saw the show last night,” he said.
“Yes, sir, I did. And very wonderful it was. There has never been anything like it in Teston, not in my memory.”
“Ah, my dear. Well, you watch this.”
He picked up the two boiled eggs which had been placed before him. He hurled one into the air, where it vanished. He swallowed the other one whole. He then produced them both from a vase on the mantelpiece.
“Well, I never!” said the maid. “I wonder if there’s anything you can’t do, sir?”
“Just one or two things,” said Mr Bellowes, sardonically. “By the way, my dear, if a man comes here this morning and asks for me, I want to see him.” He consulted a soiled letter which he had taken from his pocket. “The name’s Smeath.”
Mr Smeath arrived, in fact, before Bellowes had finished his breakfast, and was told he could come in. He was a man of extraordinary appearance.
He was a dwarf, with a slightly hunched back. His hands were a size too large for him, and were always restless. His expression was one of snarling subservience. At first Bellowes was inclined to reject him, for a confederate should not be a man of unusual appearance and easily recognizable. Then it struck him that, after all, this would be a very weird and impressive figure on the stage.
“Ever do anything of this kind before?” he asked.
“No, sir,” said Smeath. “But I’ve seen it done and can pick it up. I think I could give you satisfaction. You see, it’s not very easy for a man like me to find work.”
All the time that he was speaking, his hands were busy.
“When you’ve finished tearing up my newspaper,” said Bellowes.
“Sorry, sir,” said the man. He pushed the newspaper away from him, but caught up a corner of the tablecloth. It was frayed, and he began to pull threads out of it, quickly and eagerly.
“Ever been hypnotized?” Bellowes asked.
“No, sir,” said Smeath, with a cunning smile. “But that doesn’t matter, does it? I can act the part all right.”
“It matters a devilish lot, as it happens. And you can’t act the part all right, either. My assistants are always genuinely hypnotized. I employ them to save time on the stage. After I have hypnotized you a few times, I shall be able to put you into the hypnotic state in a minute or less, and to do it with certainty. I can’t depend on chance people from the audience. Many of them cannot be hypnotized at all, and with most of the others it takes far too long. There are exceptional cases—I had one at my show only last night—but I don’t often come across them. Come on up with me to my room.”
“You want to see if you can hypnotize me?”
“No, I don’t. I know I can. I simply want to do it.”
Upstairs in the dingy bedroom Bellowes made Smeath sit down. He held the bright lid of a cigarette-tin between Smeath’s eyes and slightly above the level of them.
“Look at that,” he said. “Keep on looking at it. Keep on!”
In a few minutes Bellowes put the tin down, put his fingers on Smeath’s eyes, and closed them. The eyes remained closed. The little hunchback sat tense and rigid.
An hour later, in the coffee-room downstairs, Bellowes made his definite agreement with Smeath.
“You understand?” said Bellowes. “You’ll be at the town-hall at Warlow to-morrow night at seven. When I invite people to come up on the platform, you will come up. That’s all you’ve got to do. Got any money?”
“Enough for the present.” Smeath began to pull matches from a box on the table. He broke each match into four pieces. “But suppose that tomorrow night you can’t do it?”
“There’ll never be a day or night I can’t do it with you now. That’s definite. Now, then, leave those matches alone. I might be wanting one of them directly.”
After Smeath’s departure, Percy Bellowes sat for a few minutes deep in thought. In that dingy room upstairs he had seen something which he had never seen in his life before, something of which he thought that various uses might be made. He picked up the newspaper, and was pleased to find that Smeath’s busy fingers had spared
the racing intelligence. Then he sought out the landlord.
“I say,” he said, “I’ve got a fancy to put a few shillings on a horse. Do you know anybody here it would be safe to do it with?”
“Well,” said the landlord, “as a matter of fact you can do it with me, if you like. I do a little in that way on the quiet.”
“The police don’t bother you?”
“No; they’re not a very bright lot, the police here. Besides, they’re pretty busy just now. We had a murder in Teston the day before you came.”
“Who was that?”
“A Miss Samuel, daughter of some very well-to-do people here. They think it was a tramp. See that plantation up on the hill there? That was where they found her—her head all beaten to pulp and her money gone.”
“Nice set of blackguards you’ve got in Teston, I don’t think. Well now, about this race to-day.”
When Percy Bellowes left the Victoria Hotel on the following morning he was not required to pay a bill. On the contrary, he had a small balance to receive from the landlord.
“Bless you, I don’t mind,” said the landlord, as he paid him. “Pretty well all my crowd were on the favourite. Queer thing that horse should have fallen.”
II
At Warlow the entertainment went very well. When it was over, Bellowes asked Smeath to come round to the hotel. They had the little smoking-room to themselves.
“You remember when I hypnotized you yesterday?”
“Yes, sir. Yes, Mr Bellowes.”
“Do you remember what you did, or said?”
Smeath shook his head.
“I went to sleep, the same as I did to-night. That was all.”