The First R. Austin Freeman Megapack: 27 Mystery Tales of Dr. Thorndyke & Others

by R. Austin Freeman

  “I beg your pardon, Lilith,” said Peggy. “I won’t call him a guffin any more. And thank you ever so much for letting me come.”

  The arrangements being thus settled, it is only fair to Peggy to say that she endeavoured, as far as possible, to treat the demonstration quite seriously. Even in our private conversations she made no further disparaging references to Mr. Quecks, though I did gather that her anxiety to be present at the séance was not unconnected with a desire to keep an eye on him to see that he did not impose on me.

  Mr. Quecks’ house was situated in a quiet street off Cromwell Road, Kensington, and the “demonstration” took place in a large room intermediate in character between a library and a drawing-room, lighted by three electric bulbs, all of which were encased in silk bags, so that the illumination was of a twilight dimness. The visitors were about a dozen in all, and while we were waiting for the late arrivals Mr. Quecks made a few observations on super normal phenomena in general.

  To me he required no disparagement from Peggy or anyone else, his own appearance doing all that was necessary in that respect. The first glance at him impressed me disagreeably; but then he was a manifestly uncomely man, with a large, bald face and long, greasy black hair, which was brushed straight back and accumulated in an untidy bush at the nape of his neck. He spoke unctuously, and his manner was confident, persuasive, didactic and authoritative, and he gave me the impression of a man who was accustomed to dealing chiefly with women—his present audience was composed of them exclusively.

  “In interpreting the results of the experiments which we are about to perform,” he observed, “we have to bear in mind that psychical and super-normal phenomena, inasmuch as they are not concerned with material things, are not directly appreciable by the senses. We cannot see or touch the subliminal self, either our own or that of others. But neither can we see the electric current or the Hertzian waves. We know of their existence and properties indirectly, through their effects. Electricity can be transformed into heat, light or sound, and these can be perceived by means of the radiator, the electric lamp or the telephone, which act directly on our senses. So it is with the hidden subconscious self. Invisible itself, it can be made to produce effects which are perceptible to the conscious mind through the senses, and through those effects its own existence is revealed.”

  This sounds reasonable enough; but the experiments themselves were rather disappointing on the whole. Perhaps I expected too much; or perhaps the preoccupied state of my mind did not allow me to bring to them sufficient interest or attention. Moreover, Mr. Quecks had an assistant (I had almost said “confederate”) whose appearance pleased me no more than his own; a wall-eyed, taciturn woman of about thirty-five, of the name of Morgan, who acted as the “percipient”—the word “medium,” I noticed, was not used—and helped to prejudice me against the experiments.

  We began with a demonstration of thought-transference, which I found dull, tiresome and unconvincing. Probably I was unreasonable; but the apparent triviality of the proceedings, which resembled a solemn and unspeakably dull drawing-room game, influenced my judgment. The percipient, Miss Morgan, being seated, blindfolded, in the middle of the room, a pack of playing cards and another pack of cards, each of which bore a single capital letter, were produced. A card was drawn out at random and held up behind the percipient and in view of everyone else, including Mr. Quecks, who held the percipient’s hand. Miss Morgan then guessed the card or the letter. Sometimes she guessed correctly, sometimes nearly correctly, some times quite incorrectly. The proportion of correct guesses, Mr. Quecks informed us, was vastly greater than could be accounted for on the law of probabilities. And I dare say it was. But the exhibition left me cold, as did those of table-tilting and planchette writing which followed. Even the “pendule explorateur,” which had so impressed me on a previous occasion, fell flat on this. For, since that rather startling experience, I had given some thought to the magic pendulum, and believed that I had found at least a partial explanation of its powers. Accordingly, when my turn came to try the “autoscope,” I took the string in my fingers and shut my eyes; and when Mr. Quecks objected to this, I gazed fixedly at the opposite wall, seeing neither the pendulum nor the clockwise alphabet. Under these conditions the pendulum was a complete failure; it would spell nothing. But when I looked steadily at the pendulum and the letters, the swinging ball spelled out clearly the word that I chose—Lilith.

  I was thus in a decidedly sceptical frame of mind when the next set of experiments began; and even these produced, at first, no effect on me other than a slight tendency to yawn. Their object was to demonstrate the existence of a “psychometric” power or faculty; that is to say, a power to detect in certain material objects a permanent impression left by contact with some particular person. Such a faculty, Mr. Quecks explained to us, was possessed by certain exceptionally sensitive persons. He had it to some extent himself, but in Miss Morgan it was developed in a really remarkable degree, as the experiments which were to follow would convince us.

  Hereupon Miss Morgan was once more blindfolded, all the lights but one were switched off, so that the room was almost in darkness, and the demonstration began. One of the visitors, at Mr. Quecks’ whispered request, slipped a ring from her finger and passed it to him. By him it was handed to Miss Morgan, who solemnly applied it to her forehead. Then followed an interval of expectant silence, in which I thought I heard a faint giggle from Peggy Finch, who sat in the row in front of me.

  At length Miss Morgan opened her mouth and spake. It seemed that she was seeing visions, and these she described in detail. Naturally I was unable to check them, nor could I judge whether they had any relation to the ring. The owner of that article stated, at the close of the experiment, that the visions, as described, corresponded closely to certain places and events which were known to her and to no one else. Which seemed conclusive enough; but yet it left me only with a feeling that the whole proceeding was ridiculous and trivial.

  The next experiment was performed with a glove from the hand of another visitor, and when this was concluded, Mr. Quecks whispered to a lady in the front row, who whispered to Peggy, who turned to me.

  “He wants your handkerchief, Sibyl,” she said in a low whisper.

  I took my handkerchief from my pocket and gave it to Peggy, who squeezed it up into a ball and passed it to the lady in front, who passed it to Mr. Quecks, who handed it to Miss Morgan; who, in her turn, applied it to her forehead as if it had been an ice-bag, and assumed an attitude of intense mental concentration. And again the sound of a suppressed giggle came from the neighbourhood of the Titmouse.

  Then Miss Morgan began to speak.

  “I seem to be passing through the country—swiftly—very swiftly; past great, wide fields and woods. They are strange-looking woods. The trees are all in lines—in straight lines…But wait! Are they trees? No, they can’t be; they are too small. No—they are plants growing up poles—they must be vines. It is a vineyard—and yet they don’t look quite like vines. No, no! Of course, I see now; they are hops. It is a hop-garden. And now I am passing another. Now I have come out on to a road on the top of a hill. There are hills all round, and in the hollow there seems to be a town…and I seem to see water in the town…yes, it is water. It is a river…But I don’t see any ships…only some red things…Oh, yes! I see; the red things are sails—red sails. I thought sails were always white.”

  She paused; and in the intense silence I leaned forward, listening eagerly. All my indifference and boredom had vanished. This was quite a different affair from the card-guessing and planchette-reading. She had described Maidstone vividly, accurately—or at least so it seemed to me; Maidstone as it would appear to one approaching the bridge from the west. Of course it might be mere guessing; but—

  “I seem,” Miss Morgan resumed, “to be descending a hill by a broad street…What is that in front of me? Is it—yes I see it is a bridge. Yes I see it plainly now. I am coming towards it. But what on earth is th
is thing on my left hand? It seems to be a mass of gold and yet…and yet it looks like an elephant. That’s ridiculous, of course. It can’t be…But it certainly looks like gold…and yet it…it really does look like an elephant! Well, I can make nothing of it. And now it is gone and I am on the bridge.” Again she paused, and I sat gazing at her in blank astonishment. There could now be no question as to the reality of the visions, unless the whole exhibition was a fraud. The idea of skilful guessing could not be entertained for a moment. The description did not merely fit Maidstone; the detail of the golden elephant on the brewery by the bridge fixed the identity of the place I beyond the possibility of doubt. It was either a genuine—and most amazing—psychical phenomenon or an outrageous imposture. But an imposture, to which Lilith must have been a party, was more incredible than the super-normal itself.

  As these thoughts passed swiftly through my mind, Miss Morgan resumed her description.

  “I am standing on the bridge, but it is beginning to grow indistinct. By the riverside I can just see a great house, an old, old house, which seems to stand by the water’s edge, and beyond it trees and a church tower. Now it is gone and I can see nothing. Is this all?…No; I see, very, very faintly, a small crowd of people. They seem to be in a field. And I make out a number of white objects in the field. They look rather like sheep, but they are very still. Oh! they are not sheep at all; they are tombstones. And I see now that the people are all in black and that they are standing round an open grave. It must be a funeral…Yes; there is the clergyman in his surplice…But it is beginning to fade.

  “Now I can only just see the dark shapes of the people and now they are gone too. This must be all, I think.” She paused for a few moments and then exclaimed:

  “No it isn’t! Something else is coming. It is very dim, but it looks like a man sitting at a table. Yes! But I can’t see what he is doing. He is not writing. He has something in his right hand, and keeps moving it up and down. Oh, I see now: it is a hammer. He seems to be hammering some bright object—a piece of metal, I think…Yes, it is quite clear now. But it isn’t a man at all; it is a woman. I saw her distinctly for a moment, but she has grown dim again…Now she has gone and I can see nothing…I think that is all…Yes, that is all. Nothing else seems to come.”

  She removed the handkerchief from her forehead and held it out towards Mr. Quecks, who took it from her and tiptoed round to where I was sitting.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Otway,” he whispered. “It seemed a very successful experiment; but you can judge better than I can.”

  “It was, indeed, most successful,” I replied, as he gave me back my handkerchief. “I am positively amazed at the detailed accuracy of the description.”

  “You think the correspondence is closer than could be accounted for by coincidence or chance guessing?” he asked.

  “There can be no question of chance,” I replied. “The descriptions were much too detailed and circumstantial.”

  “That is most interesting,” said he. “For there can be no other explanation but that of genuine psychometric faculty. Miss Morgan is a stranger to you, and, moreover, she did not know whose handkerchief it was. The remarkable success of this experiment seems to support Miss Blake’s estimate of your unusual psychic gifts. You evidently have the power of imprinting your personality on inanimate objects in an exceptional degree. I should almost think it likely that you would be a successful scryer. Have you made any experiments with the crystal?”

  “Yes. But they are all complete failures. I could see nothing.”

  “That is not unusual in early experiments,” said he. “There is a difficulty in concentrating. I wonder if you would care to make a trial now under my guidance. I think I could help you to visualize some simple scene. Will you try?”

  The astonishing success of Miss Morgan’s experiment had revived all my former curiosity, and I assented readily, much to Mr. Quecks’ satisfaction. The nature of the new experiment was explained to the company, and the necessary preparations made. An easy chair was placed for me in the middle of the room, and the chairs for the others arranged behind it, so that I should not have my attention distracted by seeing them. As I passed Lilith on my way to the chair, I greeted her with a smile, and was a little surprised at the lack of response on her part. I thought she would be gratified to see me taking so active a part in the proceedings; but apparently she was not; indeed, I had never seen her look so ungenial.

  When I had taken my seat, Mr. Quecks directed me to lean back and adopt a position of complete physical rest. A black, velvet cushion was then placed in my lap and on the cushion was laid the crystal globe, itself almost black in the dim twilight save for a single spark where it reflected the light of the one electric lamp.

  “You will look fixedly at the bright spot of light,” said Mr. Quecks, who had seated himself beside me; “concentrate your attention on it and think of nothing else. Don’t let your mind wander, and don’t move your eyes. Think of the bright spot and look at it. Soon a mist will come before your eyes; then you will feel a sort of drowsiness. You will grow more and more drowsy, but your eyes will keep open and you will still see the mist. You are seeing it now—” (this was quite correct); “it grows denser; now you are beginning to feel drowsy—just a little drowsy—but your eyes are wide open; still you are getting drowsy—rather more drowsy—”

  He seemed to repeat these words over and over and over again like a sort of chant; and his voice, which had been at first soft and confidential, took on a peculiar sing-song quality, and at the same time began to grow more and more distant until it came to me thin and small like the voices that are borne from far-away ships on a calm day across the water of a quiet anchorage. And, meanwhile, a strange somnolence fell upon me. I felt as if I were in a dream. Yet my eyes were wide open, and before them floated the mist, out of which shone the single spark of light. And the little, thin voice went on chanting far away, but I could no longer make out what it said. Nor was I attending to it. I was gazing into the mist at the tiny spark—gazing fixedly, unwinkingly, without effort.

  Presently the mist seemed to clear a little, and the spot of light began to grow larger. Now it looked like a hole in the shutter of a dark room; and now it was as though I were looking through an opera glass or a telescope; but I could make out nothing save a confused blur of light, in the middle of which was a vague, dark shape. But still the area of light grew larger, and now I could see that there were other shapes, all dim, vague and shadowy. Then in an instant it cleared up, as a magic-lantern picture sharpens when the lens is focussed. The dark shape was Mr. Otway. He stood, stooping forward, gazing at something on the floor—something that lay by the fireplace, motionless, with upturned waxen face. It was horribly distinct. I could see my father’s face settling into the rigidity of death; I could see the crimson streak on his temple; I could even see the sparkle of the silver knob on the stick that Mr. Otway grasped.

  The vision lasted, as it seemed, but for a few seconds. Then it grew dim and confused and quickly faded away into blank darkness; and I found myself sitting up in the chair, wide awake, but bewildered and a little frightened. The lights were full on, and the visitors were all gathered around my chair gazing at me with a very odd intentness.

  “Did you see anything in the crystal?” Mr. Quecks asked, suavely.

  “Yes,” I answered, not quite so suavely. “How long have I been asleep?”

  Mr. Quecks looked at his watch. “Just five and twenty minutes,” he replied.

  I got up from the chair, and, addressing Peggy, who was looking at me a little anxiously, asked: “What has been happening, Peggy? Have I been talking nonsense?”

  “No,” she answered. “You’ve been asleep, and you’ve been guessing cards and doing most extraordinary sums—multiplying and dividing fractions and all sorts of things. That’s all. But,” she added in a lower tone, “he’d no business to hypnotize you without your permission. You didn’t give him permission, did you?”

  “
No, I didn’t,” I replied.

  At this moment Lilith came up to us and put the same question.

  “No,” I answered. “I didn’t understand that I was to be hypnotised.”

  “I thought not,” said she in a tone of evident vexation. “It doesn’t happen to matter as things have turned out, but it was quite improper. I shall speak to Mr. Quecks about it when you are gone.”

  “Aren’t you coming with us, then?” asked Peggy.

  “No,” replied Lilith. “I have some matters to talk over with him, so I must stay a little while; but I shall follow you in about half an hour.”

  Shortly after this the meeting broke up, and Peggy and I took our departure. As we sat in the train, I tried to extract from my companion some details of what had happened, but I found her curiously unwilling to pursue the topic. I gathered, however, that, as soon as the hypnotic trance was completely established, Mr. Quecks suggested to me that I should have a distinct vision of some scene that I had witnessed “in the old town that Miss Morgan had seen and shortly before the funeral that she had described.” Then, after an interval, he had put a number of problems in multiplication and division of large numbers and fractions, which I had solved with extraordinary ease and rapidity. As to the nature of my vision, Peggy displayed no interest, but turned the conversation on to subjects quite unconnected with Mr. Quecks or psychical science.

  When we arrived home she followed me to my room and suggested that we should wait there for Lilith, which was what I had intended to do. And here again she showed a marked tendency to avoid the subject of Mr. Quecks and his experiments. But, as she sat in my chair gossiping, I caught her eye, from time to time, travelling almost furtively towards the clock on the mantelpiece, and I wondered if she was feeling anxious about Lilith, who had to make her way alone through the rather unsavoury neighbourhood of Ratcliff. Whatever she was feeling, however, she kept up a flow of conversation—which was, itself, a rather unusual phenomenon—and presently grew quite confidential about herself—which was more unusual still. It was clear that her friendship with Mr. Hawkesley was now quite firmly established, and they evidently saw a good deal of one another—but this I knew already. And it was clear that their sympathy in tastes was running parallel to a very strong liking of a more personal kind.