by H. F. Heard
“You can’t tell us anything more?” he questioned, almost sharply.
“No,” said the voice with equal sharpness, “and you’re a rude man to speak in that tone of voice.”
He was quick enough to salve the sensitive’s hypersensitive feelings: “Oh, but I was only so pleased, so excited. It’s all so wonderful the way you work. Oh, it must be lovely to see so much and to be able to help so much all us poor blind people.”
The slick sentiment worked. “I love being of use to all you poor people who can’t see. But you mustn’t be impatient, Mr. Impul,” the voice cackled with delight at its alliterative skill.
“I won’t be. You’ve been so good, so good and helpful. Yes, we’ll leave that last picture alone and just think it over. I only wish I could see it like you. It must be wonderful!”
“Oh, some day you will, if you’re good.”
Intil no more than I, perhaps less, wanted a talk on sugar-plum-fairy heaven.
“You’ve been so good to us,” he positively crooned. “We won’t tire you. But you said that there was something more you could see—just one more picture? Won’t you tell me a little more about those little numbers?”
I was sure the childish intelligence, under that suggestion, must see a car complete with license plate. But nothing was said for quite a minute. Then I noticed that the medium’s body had raised itself in its chair. The face with closed eyes—for the handkerchief had long been discarded—seemed to be staring at some object in the far distance. “Sea,” it said.
“Sea?” queried Intil.
“Don’t interrupt,” it snapped back, as a dog snarls at someone who tries to draw it from watching a distant cat. “Sea—oh, and it opens just like a whale coming up. But it isn’t a whale. Oh, he’s horrid! He’s all spotted, but his paws are all furry.”
I feared she was again going to put herself into one of her self-imagined terrors with all this fairy-monster stuff. But, as suddenly, and of herself, she sheered off, and said with her excessive self-composure that grated on me perhaps more than all her other poses, “But the horrid animal really doesn’t matter. It’s all because he’s got a number.”
The mind had evidently skidded back from its hectic delirium imagery to the numbers that had been mentioned to it. I felt it was time I took a hand and closed the sitting. Though I had to own Intil had done wonders, utterly unsuspected wonders, in keeping things going and in encouraging the wayward hunches of the ungeared mind, nothing had come through. Well, that was the way with this sort of questing. You had to draw a bow at a venture. Most of the arrows went into limbo but every now and then one struck a real object, an object well out of the range of any other kind of insight.
“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you; yes, we’ve already got the number.”
I thought this would close the sitting. But the little pet, instead of falling into lullaby inanities—which is the end of most sittings, good or bad—suddenly spurted up, “There you’re wrong, Mr. Sydney. You’re so smart in telling us what we’re seeing, when you can’t see a thing! That’s just it. That isn’t the number—the number is.…”
Intil had become quite credulous. I had, of course, often seen that—the solemn, priggish, hard-boiled skeptic attending one good sitting with a few undeniable telepathic “hits,” suddenly, his front of superiority crumples and there emerges the pathetic “it’s-all-true” believer. Intil sat forward in his chair hanging on her every word.
“Oh, I can’t see them clearly; you’ve made it hard.”
Intil, I saw in the firelight, shot quite a venomous look at me. I was highly amused. “They’re all little quiggles, one just like the other.”
“Yes, yes,” he encouraged. But it was quite time Miss Brown was let come back, or come together again, or whatever happens when a trance state clears off and normal consciousness is resumed.
“Thank you,” I said with quiet finality. “That’s all we’ll need, and thank you again. Good-bye.”
“Oh, it’s not,” came with a second flash. “You’re so silly. I was just seeing it come clear. Serve you right, slick Mr. Sydney, serve you right!” and the medium’s tongue was stuck out to express a small schoolgirl’s past-all-words contempt. I chuckled again as Miss Brown’s form settled back into its chair and the reverse process—of drowse, slumber, twitch, half-sleep, yawn—was run through.
While it was going on I turned to Intil. I thought I’d make a “sounding” half-apology, just enough to suggest that the sitting had been all that I knew it had been—quite empty wanderings. He was making some rapid notes but he looked up as I turned to him. The fire was still bright enough for me to be able to see unmistakably the expression on his face. But, though it was clear, it was such a mixture that I was at a loss to interpret it. He was clearly interested, interested profoundly, moved, one might almost say. But if he was moved, that was not to say that he was melted. On the contrary, he looked particularly set—satisfied and at the same time defiant, hostile even. Of course I had upset him by closing in when he had been making all the going. But, after all, he must trust an expert in a field in which he’d owned that till that day he had been, save for one previous occasion, an ignorant stranger.
“It was a sitting with a number of interesting points for an expert,” I began. He waited. Miss Brown snoozed on, taking her own time in coming back to the solid, adult world. “I shall be glad to work on them from my record here.” I tapped my writing pad in which I had taken an adequate record. “And when the clues are ordered, I’ll show you the results. I can well understand that you found it pretty confusing. But that is so often the way and why it is so important to have an expert with one.” I felt sure I could write up a number of suggestions out of this rigmarole we had listened to and the very extravagant senselessness of the dream imagery would quite possibly stimulate my mind to pick up a real clue.
His only reply was to ask me a question. “You’re sure it was a bad sitting? Nothing clear to you in it at all?”
“Well, nothing that does not need considerable decoding,” I said, feeling that I was surely on firm ground there.
His next remark puzzled me more—startled me, I might even say: “Are you a clever man?” It was said more to himself than to me—an unfinished sentence, the second part of which was, of course “—or a fool!” He was a bit mad and evidently indifferent as to what one thought of his manners; but I was determined, however disappointed I might be in him, he should remain outwardly compos mentis until the fees were paid. And as he pulled himself together I left the question as though he had never made the impertinently intended remark.
“Yes,” he went on as though he had said nothing else, “yes, that would be very helpful to a beginner. It is so puzzling, this method, these flashes. Don’t trouble too much about working on the report; I too have my record. And, if I find myself in a fix on a particular point, I’ll come round to you for elucidation.” He was obviously trying to be affable and Miss Brown, emerging into full ordinary consciousness at that moment, I just nodded affably myself, turning then to her to tell her how well things had gone, for certainly, as journalists say, copy hadn’t been lacking and the client was apparently far from unsatisfied.
Intil rose. “I’d like to settle my financial account now,” he said, and drew the notes from his wallet, counting them out on the table, as I had drawn back the drapes. He was evidently going to leave at once, and I felt that the interview should be closed with some kind of conventional courtesy.
“Thank you,” I said. “And may I congratulate you on your perfect sitter technique. Many sitters seem never to learn that particular and vital attitude—that stimulating interest. Miss Brown, your control found Mr. Intil far better company than her erstwhile friend Mr. Sydney.”
Miss Brown smiled, turning to Intil to say, “It does make such a difference if the sitter can keep the ‘control’ interested and amused without giving anything away.”
A flash of some sort of triumph appeared on the little man
’s face. He was evidently susceptible to praise from specialists. Indeed, he seemed disproportionately pleased—a sort of suppressed exultation, for which just knowing how to handle a medium in trance seemed hardly sufficient cause. Yet he evidently thought it was.
“You see, Mr. Silchester, that a prospector is more widely adaptable than perhaps you thought. He can tumble to a new trail and pick up a new way of tracking and stalking quicker than most.”
So that was it: under his meek phase he had resented my rather magisterial handling of him and now was pleased to be able to show off that at the very first time that he really took a hand he could make a better sitter than I. Stalking, I thought, rather a melodramatic word for just keeping amiable and expressing interest while an infantile part of one’s hostess’s personality gave “free-association” tests and suggestions. But he was particularly pleased with the term himself.
“Stalking’s really the heart of the matter,” he informed us. “Getting within reach while the quarry plays about. Then you simply have to put out your hand, knock off the flies, and help yourself.” His curious tongue, of which I’d had more than a taste already, was evidently getting its head again. But to my relief he realized that of himself. He suddenly shut up, didn’t shake hands, hardly bowed, turned on his heel, and walked out of the house.
“Not quite so precipitate an exit as last time,” remarked Miss Brown as he disappeared down the street. “But he is certainly an abrupt type and how I wish I could question my own subconscious and ask it (or her) why I feel so oddly about him!”
“And I,” I exclaimed, “have lost the opportunity of questioning him as to his address. I can’t send him the edited script!”
“You didn’t want very much to do so, did you?” she smilingly questioned. “I don’t think you and Mr. Intil are meant to be client and professional adviser. It doesn’t need for me to call up the wise-woman side of me to know that you and he are ‘non simpático.’”
She was getting out the tea things while she spoke, and certainly, soon the atmosphere was so “sympathetic” that any undefined cloud which Intil might have left behind, dissipated itself. What he had definitely left, the very large fee, remained comfortably and firmly in our pockets. As we parted, I remember saying, “I feel quite balanced about this business. If he never turns up again we end with a substantial balance in our favor. If he does, we may learn more and make more.” As I went home I reflected that I had failed in my main purpose, to settle whether there was really anything to the code and, if possible, to beat Mr. Mycroft at his own game. But on second thought I concluded that I’d probably never again see either of these oddities. It was mere chance that had brought them across my tracks.
Yet in a fortnight I did hear an echo. The telephone rang. “Will you speak to Miss Brown?” said Miss Delamere’s demure voice from the outer office. Of course I would, and Miss Delamere knew it, but that was just part of her “doubling of parts,” as actors say. About an ordinary appointment with a complete stranger she would take all control, tell me what the applicant wanted, was like, was likely to pay, what time she had settled as best for the interview, even what I had best look up before. And it would all be done with her gazing at and turning over the letter and her notes—she always had notes which she made and consulted, but once or twice when I managed to find crumples of them in the wastepaper basket all that was on them were not unclever cartoons of the visitor and sometimes of myself. But when it came to a casual talk with Miss Brown, then the part of the hard-boiled secretary and adviser was dropped. The frontier between business and the greater unmapped territory of Private Lives had been crossed. The shadows of possible romance blurred all the hard outlines. Miss Delamere lost all decision; she was nothing but discretion. I knew her little game, but still it could vex me.
“Of course I will” I replied, not that the “of course” would make any difference next time. “Put her through.” It was a relief to hear the sensible voice of the so-called “sensitive” after my very valuable, very hard-boiled, but very film-fanned secretary’s.
“I thought I should ring you up,” she said, “as there’s a small point of professional etiquette. Intil has just asked for another sitting but, you see, he wants to come direct to me.”
“I shan’t object to that,” I answered quite sincerely. “I own that he vexes me, we certainly don’t suit each other, and, though I don’t want to spoil your muse’s inspiration, I own I could make nothing of what came through last time. Please have him and you’re welcome to the gift.”
“Very well,” she replied. “I agree I don’t think he is the kind of man you aboveboard—or above-the-threshold—decoders can help. I feel, for what my surface feelings are worth, that he hasn’t really an ordinary code to puzzle with.”
I wondered whether I’d tell her all I now knew but decided that it might only disturb her deep hunches. “You’re probably right,” I contented myself with answering. “If he’s got anything, you can get it, and if he hasn’t, well, as I’ve said, you’re welcome to him as a client. He seems now inclined to pay and I’m letting out no secrets of the confessional if I repeat that your ‘control’ and he seemed to like each other strangely.”
She laughed. “You mustn’t be jealous. I know you have really a low opinion of my poor little ‘familiar.’ I expect she likes people a shade less grown-up than you.”
“All right,” I said, “and good fishing.”
I was just going to hang up the receiver when Miss Brown cut in with, “Oh, by the way, you were sorry you didn’t get his address. I’ve got it now: it’s on a letterhead. He didn’t phone, he wrote.”
She gave me the name of a small hotel somewhere in the city. I didn’t take it down because I didn’t want to see Intil again; he was an irritating of-no-interest, and I can never carry in my head those four-figure numbers ending with a street named only by its number and a point of the compass. It’s as bad as trying to recall longitude and latitude directions on a sea chart. So the reference was out of my mind as soon as it went in.
But Miss Brown rang up once again; again it was about Intil. I was busy. I didn’t very much want to hear. It was a week after her last call. Miss Delamere made the usual courtesy-delay. When we were in contact, “Yes,” I said, a little hastily I fear, “yes.”
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” she began, “I only wanted to say that Mr. Intil sent a second note to say he was suddenly called away and was sorry he’d have to postpone our appointment.”
“I’m sorry,” I replied, for I was sorry that my tone at the beginning had been sharp.
“I’m not,” she replied. “He does interest me, but the last two days I’ve felt as though I had influenza coming on and my hunch collapses the moment my temperature rises.”
She didn’t sound too low, so with “Well, it’s an ill wind … and I hope you’ll be all right soon,” and a small joke about Sleuths being linked sometimes with Bromo Quinine for all colds, I hung up.
Chapter VII
The next development—well, it gave Miss Delamere a part she felt made for her. Perhaps it was a week, perhaps even less; we had gone through the mail and settled our answers. I was sitting back getting ready actually to dictate the first. Her cigarette held off at the correct angle by the raised fingers of her left hand, her pencil poised in her right, her legs crossed to balance on her knee her shorthand pad, Miss Delamere was poised in the precise display-angle which she had long studied, at last perfected and strictly preserved. It was as detailedly stylized as the “caress-the-child-and-bless-the-worshiper” carriage of a Byzantine Madonna or the fan-flourish and hip-twist of a Bali dancer. It was the high point of finish, detachment, hard-boiled elegance, I realized. And so, I suppose, I ought to have realized that it was the precise and chosen moment when, with an easy air of just filling in an odd instant before we were well under way, Miss Delamere would be likely to give me a surprise. Nevertheless, I gave her a far more satisfactory reaction than I should when she remarked with delib
erately slurred casualness, “Oh, by the way, poor little Miss Brown’s dead.”
I was swung back in my desk chair, my hands behind my head—it helps dictation, that stretch. I came forward with something almost of a crash. Of course Miss Delamere’s drooped and curled eyelashes kept their slant of semi-bored, almost drowsy indifference. Had I dictated, “Brown, may my body lie by thy cold corse,” she would have flicked down the line with a neat pencil flourish, perhaps asking if I liked “corse” with or without an “e.” As it was, she flicked off a neat little cast of cigarette ash into the small lacquered tray which always stood on my desk’s outer corner to serve her need of occasional gesture.
“Dead,” I said with that silly mental echo which the shocked mind will give. It was most highly improbable that Miss Delamere would ever spoil an effect by a false climax. No, Miss Brown was dead, never a doubt of it—the source was unimpeachable, “How?” I said, almost as stupidly as I’d said “dead.”
“She wasn’t well last week, y’know. Good deal of flu about. Reckon she’d a rocky heart.”
Well, I shouldn’t get any further by simply gasping like a landed fish. I swallowed the words, “Why, only last week.… She did say she was a little off color.… The last thing I said was a joke about taking chills seriously.…”
I knew my shock was meat and drink to Miss Delamere. I was doing the sentimental Britisher—that dear, mellow nineteenth-century spontaneous, gentlemanly stuff, with which Aubrey Smith has made the whole screen world familiar. She was just waiting for me to cough and blow my nose and pull myself together with a fine assembly pull at the old school tie—while she, in the hard-boiled good taste of the New Yorker, might go so far as to allow, with another neat contribution to the ash tray, that it was a queer deal for the old girl. Well, I wouldn’t play my part in her little “two-period” piece.