"physicalinvasion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Blackwood Algernon)A PSYCHICAL INVASIONAlgernon BlackwoodI"And what is it makes you think I could be of use in
this particular case?" asked Dr. John Silence, looking across somewhat
sceptically at the Swedish lady in the chair facing him. "Oh, please--that dreadful word!" he interrupted,
holding up a finger with a gesture of impatience. "Well, then," she laughed, "your wonderful
clairvoyant gift and your trained psychic knowledge of the processes by
which a personality may be disintegrated and destroyed--these strange
studies you've been experimenting with all these years----" "If it's only a case of multiple personality I must
really cry off," interrupted the doctor again hastily, a bored
expression in his eyes. "It's not that; now, please, be serious, for I want
your help," she said; "and if I choose my words poorly you must be
patient with my ignorance. The case I know will interest you, and no
one else could deal with it so well. In fact, no ordinary professional
man could deal with it at all, for I know of no treatment nor medicine
that can restore a lost sense of humour!" "You begin to interest me with your 'case,'" he
replied, and made himself comfortable to listen. Mrs. Sivendson drew a sigh of contentment as she
watched him go to the tube and heard him tell the servant he was not to
be disturbed. "I believe you have read my thoughts already," she
said; "your intuitive knowledge of what goes on in other people's minds
is positively uncanny." Her friend shook his head and smiled as he drew his
chair up to a convenient position and prepared to listen attentively to
what she had to say. He closed his eyes, as he always did when he
wished to absorb the real meaning of a recital that might be
inadequately expressed, for by this method he found it easier to set
himself in tune with the living thoughts that lay behind the broken
words. By his friends John Silence was regarded as an
eccentric, because he was rich by accident, and by choice--a doctor.
That a man of independent means should devote his time to doctoring,
chiefly doctoring folk who could not pay, passed their comprehension
entirely. The native nobility of a soul whose first desire was to help
those who could not help themselves, puzzled them. After that, it
irritated them, and, greatly to his own satisfaction, they left him to
his own devices. Dr. Silence was a free-lance, though, among doctors,
having neither consulting-room, bookkeeper, nor professional manner. He
took no fees, being at heart a genuine philanthropist, yet at the same
time did no harm to his fellow-practitioners, because he only accepted
unremunerative cases, and cases that interested him for some very
special reason. He argued that the rich could pay, and the very poor
could avail themselves of organised charity, but that a very large
class of ill-paid, self-respecting workers, often followers of the
arts, could not afford the price of a week's comforts merely to be told
to travel. And it was these he desired to help: cases often requiring
special and patient study-- things no doctor can give for a guinea, and
that no one would dream of expecting him to give. But there was another side to his personality and
practice, and one with which we are now more directly concerned; for
the cases that especially appealed to him were of no ordinary kind, but
rather of that intangible, elusive, and difficult nature best described
as psychical afflictions; and, though he would have been the last
person himself to approve of the title, it was beyond question that he
was known more or less generally as the "Psychic Doctor." In order to grapple with cases of this peculiar
kind, he had submitted himself to a long and severe training, at once
physical, mental, and spiritual. What precisely this training had been,
or where undergone, no one seemed to know,--for he never spoke of it,
as, indeed, he betrayed no single other characteristic of the
charlatan,--but the fact that it had involved a total disappearance
from the world for five years, and that after he returned and began his
singular practice no one ever dreamed of applying to him the so easily
acquired epithet of quack, spoke much for the seriousness of his
strange quest and also for the genuineness of his attainments. For the modern psychical researcher he felt the calm
tolerance of the "man who knows." There was a trace of pity in his
voice--contempt he never showed--when he spoke of their methods. "This classification of results is uninspired work at
best," he said once to me, when I had been his confidential assistant
for some years. "It leads nowhere, and after a hundred years will lead
nowhere. It is playing with the wrong end of a rather dangerous toy.
Far better, it would be, to examine the causes, and then the results
would so easily slip into place and explain themselves. For the sources
are accessible, and open to all who have the courage to lead the life
that alone makes practical investigation safe and possible." And towards the question of clairvoyance, too, his
attitude was significantly sane, for he knew how extremely rare the
genuine power was, and that what is commonly called clairvoyance is
nothing more than a keen power of visualising. "It connotes a slightly increased sensibility,
nothing more," he would say. "The true clairvoyant deplores his power,
recognising that it adds a new horror to life, and is in the nature of
an affliction. And you will find this always to be the real test." Thus it was that John Silence, this singularly
developed doctor, was able to select his cases with a clear
knowledge of the difference between mere hysterical delusion and the
kind of psychical affliction that claimed his special powers. It was
never necessary for him to resort to the cheap mysteries of divination;
for, as I have heard him observe, after the solution of some peculiarly
intricate problem-- "Systems of divination, from geomancy down to
reading by tea-leaves, are merely so many methods of obscuring the
outer vision, in order that the inner vision may become open. Once the
method is mastered, no system is necessary at all." And the words were significant of the methods of
this remarkable man, the keynote of whose power lay, perhaps, more than
anything else, in the knowledge, first, that thought can act at a
distance, and, secondly, that thought is dynamic and can accomplish
material results. "Learn how to think," he would have expressed
it, "and you have learned to tap power at its source." To look at--he was now past forty--he was sparely
built, with speaking brown eyes in which shone the light of knowledge
and self-confidence, while at the same time they made one think of that
wondrous gentleness seen most often in the eyes of animals. A close
beard concealed the mouth without disguising the grim determination of
lips and jaw, and the face somehow conveyed an impression of
transparency, almost of light, so delicately were the features refined
away. On the fine forehead was that indefinable touch of peace that
comes from identifying the mind with what is permanent in the soul, and
letting the impermanent slip by without power to wound or distress;
while, from his manner,--so gentle, quiet, sympathetic,--few could have
guessed the strength of purpose that burned within like a great flame. "But the symptoms first, please, my dear Svenska,"
he interrupted, with a strangely compelling seriousness of manner, "and
your deductions afterwards." She turned round sharply on the edge of her chair
and looked him in the face, lowering her voice to prevent her emotion
betraying itself too obviously. "In my opinion there's only one symptom," she half
whispered, as though telling something disagreeable--"fear--simply
fear." "I think not; though how can I say? I think it's a
horror in the psychical region. It's no ordinary delusion; the man is
quite sane; but he lives in mortal terror of something----" "I don't know what you mean by his 'psychical
region,'" said the doctor, with a smile; "though I suppose you wish me
to understand that his spiritual, and not his mental, processes are
affected. Anyhow, try and tell me briefly and pointedly what you know
about the man, his symptoms, his need for help, my peculiar help, that
is, and all that seems vital in the case. I promise to listen
devotedly." "I am trying," she continued earnestly, "but must do
so in my own words and trust to your intelligence to disentangle as I
go along. He is a young author, and lives in a tiny house off Putney
Heath somewhere. He writes humorous stories--quite a genre of his own:
Pender--you must have heard the name--Felix Pender? Oh, the man had a
great gift, and married on the strength of it; his future seemed
assured. I say 'had,' for quite suddenly his talent utterly failed him.
Worse, it became transformed into its opposite. He can no longer write
a line in the old way that was bringing him success----" "He still writes, then? The force has not gone?" he
asked briefly, and then closed his eyes again to listen. "He works like a fury," she went on, "but produces
nothing"--she hesitated a moment--"nothing that he can use or sell. His
earnings have practically ceased, and he makes a precarious living by
book-reviewing and odd jobs--very odd, some of them. Yet, I am certain
his talent has not really deserted him finally, but is merely----" "Obliterated," she went on, after a moment to weigh
the word, "merely obliterated by something else----" "I wish I knew. All I can say is that he is haunted,
and temporarily his sense of humour is shrouded--gone--replaced by
something dreadful that writes other things. Unless something competent
is done, he will simply starve to death. Yet he is afraid to go to a
doctor for fear of being pronounced insane; and, anyhow, a man can
hardly ask a doctor to take a guinea to restore a vanished sense
of humour, can he?" "Not doctors yet. He tried some clergymen and
religious people; but they know so little and have so little
intelligent sympathy. And most of them are so busy balancing on their
own little pedestals----" "Not in the least. She is devoted; a woman very well
educated, though without being really intelligent, and with so little
sense of humour herself that she always laughs at the wrong places. But
she has nothing to do with the cause of his distress; and, indeed, has
chiefly guessed it from observing him, rather than from what little he
has told her. And he, you know, is a really lovable fellow,
hard-working, patient--altogether worth saving." Dr. Silence opened his eyes and went over to ring
for tea. He did not know very much more about the case of the humorist
than when he first sat down to listen; but he realised that no amount
of words from his Swedish friend would help to reveal the real facts. A
personal interview with the author himself could alone do that. "All humorists are worth saving," he said with a
smile, as she poured out tea. "We can't afford to lose a single one in
these strenuous days. I will go and see your friend at the first
opportunity." She thanked him elaborately, effusively, with many
words, and he, with much difficulty, kept the conversation
thenceforward strictly to the teapot. And, as a result of this conversation, and a little
more he had gathered by means best known to himself and his secretary,
he was whizzing in his motor-car one afternoon a few days later up the
Putney Hill to have his first interview with Felix Pender, the humorous
writer who was the victim of some mysterious malady in his "psychical
region" that had obliterated his sense of the comic and threatened to
wreck his life and destroy his talent. And his desire to help was
probably of equal strength with his desire to know and to investigate. The motor stopped with a deep purring sound, as
though a great black panther lay concealed within its hood, and the
doctor--the "psychic doctor," as he was sometimes called--stepped out
through the gathering fog, and walked across the tiny garden that held
a blackened fir tree and a stunted laurel shrubbery. The house was very
small, and it was some time before any one answered the bell. Then,
suddenly, a light appeared in the hall, and he saw a pretty little
woman standing on the top step begging him to come in. She was dressed
in grey, and the gaslight fell on a mass of deliberately brushed light
hair. Stuffed, dusty birds, and a shabby array of African spears, hung
on the wall behind her. A hat-rack, with a bronze plate full of
very large cards, led his eye swiftly to a dark staircase beyond. Mrs.
Fender had round eyes like a child's, and she greeted him with an
effusiveness that barely concealed her emotion, yet strove to appear
naturally cordial. Evidently she had been looking out for his arrival,
and had outrun the servant girl. She was a little breathless. "I hope you've not been kept waiting--I think it's
most good of you to come----" she began, and then stopped sharp
when she saw his face in the gaslight. There was something in Dr.
Silence's look that did not encourage mere talk. He was in earnest now,
if ever man was. "Good evening, Mrs. Fender," he said, with a quiet
smile that won confidence, yet deprecated unnecessary words, "the fog
delayed me a little. I am glad to see you." They went into a dingy sitting-room at the back of
the house, neatly furnished but depressing. Books stood in a row upon
the mantelpiece. The fire had evidently just been lit. It smoked in
great puffs into the room. "Mrs. Sivendson said she thought you might be able
to come," ventured the little woman again, looking up engagingly into
his face and betraying anxiety and eagerness in every gesture. "But I
hardly dared to believe it. I think it is really too good of you. My
husband's easels so peculiar that--well, you know, I am quite sure any
ordinary doctor would say at once the asylum----" "He'll be back any minute now," she replied,
obviously relieved to see him laugh; "but the fact is, we didn't expect
you so early--I mean, my husband hardly thought you would come at all." "I am always delighted to come--when I am really
wanted, and can be of help," he said quickly; "and, perhaps, it's all
for the best that your husband is out, for now that we are alone you
can tell me something about his difficulties. So far, you know, I have
heard very little." Her voice trembled as she thanked him, and when he
came and took a chair close beside her she actually had difficulty in
finding words with which to begin. "In the first place," she began timidly, and then
continuing with a nervous incoherent rush of words, "he will be simply
delighted that you've really come, because he said you were the only
person he would consent to see at all--the only doctor, I mean. But, of
course, he doesn't know how frightened I am, or how much I have
noticed. He pretends with me that it's just a nervous breakdown, and
I'm sure he doesn't realise all the odd things I've noticed him doing.
But the main thing, I suppose----" 'Yes, the main thing, Mrs. Fender," he said,
encouragingly, noticing her hesitation. "----is that he thinks we are not alone in the
house. That's the chief thing." "It began last summer when I came back from Ireland;
he had been here alone for six weeks, and I thought him looking tired
and queer-ragged and scattered about the face, if you know what I mean,
and his manner worn out. He said he had been writing hard, but his
inspiration had somehow failed him, and he was dissatisfied with his
work. His sense of humour was leaving him, or changing into something
else, he said. There was something in the house, he declared,
that"--she emphasised the words--"prevented his feeling funny." "Something in the house that prevented his feeling
funny," repeated the doctor. "Ah, now we're getting to the heart of it!" "And what was it he did that you thought
strange?" he asked sympathetically. "Be brief, or he may be here before
you finish." "Very small things, but significant it seemed to me.
He changed his workroom from the library, as we call it, to the
sitting-room. He said all his characters became wrong and terrible in
the library; they altered, so that he felt like writing
tragedies--vile, debased tragedies, the tragedies of broken souls. But
now he says the same of the sitting-room, and he's gone back to the
library." "You see, there's so little I can tell you," she
went on, with increasing speed and countless gestures. "I mean it's
only very small things he does and says that are queer. What frightens
me is that he assumes there is some one else in the house all the
time--some one I never see. He does not actually say so, but on the
stairs I've seen him standing aside to let some one pass; I've seen him
open a door to let some one in or out; and often in our bedrooms he
puts chairs about as though for some one else to sit in. Oh--oh yes,
and once or twice," she cried--"once or twice----" "Once or twice," she resumed hurriedly, as though
she heard a sound that alarmed her, "I've heard him running--coming in
and out of the rooms breathless as if something were after him----" The door opened while she was still speaking,
cutting her words off in the middle, and a man came into the room. He
was dark and cleanshaven, sallow rather, with the eyes of imagination,
and dark hair growing scantily about the temples. He was dressed in a
shabby tweed suit, and wore an untidy flannel collar at the neck. The
dominant expression of his face was startled--hunted; an expression
that might any moment leap into the dreadful stare of terror and
announce a total loss of self-control. The moment he saw his visitor a smile spread over
his worn features, and he advanced to shake hands. "I hoped you would come; Mrs. Sivendson said you
might be able to find time," he said simply. His voice was thin and
needy. "I am very glad to see you, Dr. Silence. It is 'Doctor,' is it
not?" "Well, I am entitled to the description," laughed
the other, "but I rarely get it. You know, I do not practise as a
regular thing; that is, I only take cases that specially interest me,
or----" He did not finish the sentence, for the men
exchanged a glance of sympathy that rendered it unnecessary. "I trust you will still think so when you have heard
what I have to tell you," continued the author, a little wearily. He
led the way across the hall into the little smoking-room where they
could talk freely and undisturbed. In the smoking-room, the door shut and privacy about
them, Fender's attitude changed somewhat, and his manner became very
grave. The doctor sat opposite, where he could watch his face. Already,
he saw, it looked more haggard. Evidently it cost him much to refer to
his trouble at all. "What I have is, in my belief, a profound spiritual
affliction," he began quite bluntly, looking straight into the other's
eyes. 'Yes, you saw that, of course; my atmosphere must
convey that much to any one with psychic perceptions. Besides which, I
feel sure from all I've heard, that you are really a soul-doctor, are
you not, more than a healer merely of the body?" "I understand, yes. Well, I have experienced a
curious disturbance in-- not in my physical region primarily. I
mean my nerves are all right, and my body is all right. I have no
delusions exactly, but my spirit is tortured by a calamitous fear which
first came upon me in a strange manner." John Silence leaned forward a moment and took the
speaker's hand and held it in his own for a few brief seconds, closing
his eyes as he did so. He was not feeling his pulse, or doing any of
the things that doctors ordinarily do; he was merely absorbing into
himself the main note of the man's mental condition, so as to get
completely his own point of view, and thus be able to treat his case
with true sympathy. A very close observer might perhaps have noticed
that a slight tremor ran through his frame after he had held the hand
for a few seconds. "Tell me quite frankly, Mr. Fender," he said
soothingly, releasing the hand, and with deep attention in his manner,
"tell me all the steps that led to the beginning of this invasion. I
mean tell me what the particular drug was, and why you took it, and how
it affected you----" "Then you know it began with a drug!" cried the
author, with undisguised astonishment. "I only know from what I observe in you, and in its
effect upon myself. You are in a surprising psychical condition.
Certain portions of your atmosphere are vibrating at a far greater rate
than others. This is the effect of a drug, but of no ordinary drug.
Allow me to finish, please. If the higher rate of vibration spreads all
over, you will become, of course, permanently cognisant of a much
larger world than the one you know normally. If, on the other hand, the
rapid portion sinks back to the usual rate, you will lose these
occasional increased perceptions you now have." "You amaze me!" exclaimed the author; "for your
words exactly describe what I have been feeling----" "I mention this only in passing, and to give you
confidence before you approach the account of your real affliction,"
continued the doctor. "All perception, as you know, is the result of
vibrations; and clairvoyance simply means becoming sensitive to an
increased scale of vibrations. The awakening of the inner senses we
hear so much about means no more than that. Your partial clairvoyance
is easily explained. The only thing that puzzles me is how you managed
to procure the drug, for it is not easy to get in pure form, and no
adulterated tincture could have given you the terrific impetus I see
you have acquired. But, please proceed now and tell me your story in
your own way." "This Cannabis Mica," the author went on,
"came into my possession last autumn while my wife was away. I need not
explain how I got it, for that has no importance; but it was the
genuine fluid extract, and I could not resist the temptation to make an
experiment. One of its effects, as you know, is to induce torrential
laughter----" "----I am a writer of humorous tales, and I wished
to increase my own sense of laughter--to see the ludicrous from an
abnormal point of view. I wished to study it a bit, if possible,
and----" "I took an experimental dose. I starved for six
hours to hasten the effect, locked myself into this room, and gave
orders not to be disturbed. Then I swallowed the stuff and waited." "I waited one hour, two, three, four, five hours.
Nothing happened. No laughter came, but only a great weariness instead.
Nothing in the room or in my thoughts came within a hundred miles of a
humorous aspect." "Always a most uncertain drug," interrupted the
doctor. "We make very small use of it on that account." "At two o'clock in the morning I felt so hungry and
tired that I decided to give up the experiment and wait no longer. I
drank some milk and went upstairs to bed. I felt flat and disappointed.
I fell asleep at once and must have slept for about an hour, when I
awoke suddenly with a great noise in my ears. It was the noise of my
own laughter! I was simply shaking with merriment. At first I was
bewildered and thought I had been laughing in dreams, but a moment
later I remembered the drug, and was delighted to think that after all
I had got an effect. It had been working all along, only I had
miscalculated the time. The only unpleasant thing then was an
odd feeling that I had not waked naturally, but had been wakened by
some one else--deliberately. This came to me as a certainty in the
middle of my noisy laughter and distressed me." "Any impression who it could have been?" asked the
doctor, now listening with close attention to every word, very much on
the alert. Fender hesitated and tried to smile. He brushed his
hair from his forehead with a nervous gesture. "You must tell me all your impressions, even your
fancies; they are quite as important as your certainties." "I had a vague idea that it was some one connected
with my forgotten dream, some one who had been at me in my sleep, some
one of great strength and great ability--of great force--quite an
unusual personality--and, I was certain, too--a woman." Fender started a little at the question and his
sallow face flushed; it seemed to surprise him. But he shook his head
quickly with an indefinable look of horror. "Evil," he answered briefly, "appallingly evil, and
yet mingled with the sheer wickedness of it was also a certain
perverseness--the perversity of the unbalanced mind." He hesitated a moment and looked up sharply at his
interlocutor. A shade of suspicion showed itself in his eyes. "No," laughed the doctor, "you need not fear that
I'm merely humouring you, or think you mad. Far from it. Your story
interests me exceedingly and you furnish me unconsciously with a number
of clues as you tell it. You see, I possess some knowledge of my own as
to these psychic byways." "I was shaking with such violent laughter,"
continued the narrator, reassured in a moment, "though with no clear
idea what was amusing me, that I had the greatest difficulty in getting
up for the matches, and was afraid I should frighten the servants
overhead with my explosions. When the gas was lit I found the room
empty, of course, and the door locked as usual. Then I half dressed and
went out on to the landing, my hilarity better under control, and
proceeded to go downstairs. I wished to record my sensations. I stuffed
a handkerchief into my mouth so as not to scream aloud and communicate
my hysterics to the entire household." "It was hanging about me all the time," said Fender,
"but for the moment it seemed to have withdrawn. Probably, too, my
laughter killed all other emotions." "I was just coming to that. I see you know all my
'symptoms' in advance, as it were; for, of course, I thought I should
never get to the bottom. Each step seemed to take five minutes, and
crossing the narrow hall at the foot of the stairs--well, I could have
sworn it was half an hour's journey had not my watch certified that it
was a few seconds. Yet I walked fast and tried to push on. It was no
good. I walked apparently without advancing, and at that rate it would
have taken me a week to get down Putney Hill." "An experimental dose radically alters the scale of
time and space sometimes----" "But, when at last I got into my study and lit the
gas, the change came horridly, and sudden as a flash of lightning. It
was like a douche of icy water, and in the middle of this storm of
laughter----" 'Yes; what?" asked the doctor, leaning forward and
peering into his eyes. "----I was overwhelmed with terror," said Fender,
lowering his reedy voice at the mere recollection of it. He paused a moment and mopped his forehead. The
scared, hunted look in his eyes now dominated the whole face. Yet, all
the time, the corners of his mouth hinted of possible laughter as
though the recollection of that merriment still amused him. The
combination of fear and laughter in his face was very curious, and lent
great conviction to his story; it also lent a bizarre expression of
horror to his gestures. 'Yes, terror; for, though the Thing that woke me
seemed to have gone, the memory of it still frightened me, and I
collapsed into a chair. Then I locked the door and tried to reason with
myself, but the drug made my movements so prolonged that it took me
five minutes to reach the door, and another five to get back to the
chair again. The laughter, top, kept bubbling up inside me--great
wholesome laughter that shook me like gusts of wind--so that even my
terror almost made me laugh. Oh, but I may tell you, Dr. Silence, it
was altogether vile, that mixture of fear and laughter, altogether vile! "Then, all at once, the things in the room again
presented their funny side to me and set me off laughing more furiously
than ever. The bookcase was ludicrous, the arm-chair a perfect clown,
the way the clock looked at me on the mantelpiece too comic for words;
the arrangement of papers and inkstand on the desk tickled me till I
roared and shook and held my sides and the tears streamed down my
cheeks. And that footstool! Oh, that absurd footstool!" He lay back in his chair, laughing to himself and
holding up his hands at the thought of it, and at the sight of him Dr.
Silence laughed, too. "Go on, please," he said, "I quite understand. I
know something myself of the hashish laughter." The author pulled himself together and resumed, his
face growing quickly grave again. "So, you see, side by side with this extravagant,
apparently causeless merriment, there was also an extravagant,
apparently causeless terror. The drug produced the laughter, I knew;
but what brought in the terror I could not imagine. Everywhere behind
the fun lay the fear. It was terror masked by cap and bells; and I
became the playground for two opposing emotions, armed and fighting to
the death. Gradually, then, the impression grew in me that this fear
was caused by the invasion-- so you called it just now--of the 'person'
who had wakened me: she was utterly evil; inimical to my soul, or at
least to all in me that wished for good. There I stood, sweating and
trembling, laughing at everything in the room, yet all the while with
this white terror mastering my heart. And this creature was
putting----putting her----" "----putting ideas into my mind," he went on
glancing nervously about the room. "Actually tapping my thought-stream
so as to switch off the usual current and inject her own. How mad that
sounds! I know it, but it's true. It's the only way I can express it.
Moreover, while the operation terrified me, the skill with which it was
accomplished filled me afresh with laughter at the clumsiness of men by
comparison. Our ignorant, bungling methods of teaching the minds of
others, of inculcating ideas, and so on, overwhelmed me with laughter
when I understood this superior and diabolical method. Yet my laughter
seemed hollow and ghastly, and ideas of evil and tragedy trod close
upon the heels of the comic. Oh, doctor, I tell you again, it was
unnerving!" John Silence sat with his head thrust forward to
catch every word of the story which the other continued to pour out in
nervous, jerky sentences and lowered voice. "Not with my eyes. There was no visual
hallucination. But in my mind there began to grow the vivid picture of
a woman--large, dark-skinned, with white teeth and masculine features,
and one eye--the left--so drooping as to appear almost closed. Oh, such
a face----!" "I wish I could forget it," he whispered, "I only
wish I could forget it!" Then he sat forward in his chair suddenly, and
grasped the doctor's hand with an emotional gesture. "I must tell you how grateful I am for your
patience and sympathy," he cried, with a tremor in his voice,
"and--that you do not think me mad. I have told no one else a quarter
of all this, and the mere freedom of speech--the relief of sharing my
affliction with another--has helped me already more than I can possibly
say." Dr. Silence pressed his hand and looked steadily
into the frightened eyes. His voice was very gentle when he replied. "Your case, you know, is very singular, but of
absorbing interest to me," he said, "for it threatens, not your
physical existence but the temple of your psychical existence--the
inner life. Your mind would not be permanently affected here and now,
in this world; but in the existence after the body is left behind, you
might wake up with your spirit so twisted, so distorted, so
befouled, that you would be spiritually insane--a far more
radical condition than merely being insane here." There came a strange hush over the room, and between
the two men sitting there facing one another. "Do you really mean--Good Lord!" stammered the
author as soon as he could find his tongue. "What I mean in detail will keep till a little
later, and I need only say now that I should not have spoken in this
way unless I were quite positive of being able to help you. Oh, there's
no doubt as to that, believe me. In the first place, I am very familiar
with the workings of this extraordinary drug, this drug which has had
the chance effect of opening you up to the forces of another region;
and, in the second, I have a firm belief in the reality of
supersensuous occurrences as well as considerable knowledge of psychic
processes acquired by long and painful experiment. The rest is, or
should be, merely sympathetic treatment and practical application. The
hashish has partially opened another world to you by increasing your
rate of psychical vibration, and thus rendering you abnormally
sensitive. Ancient forces attached to this house have attacked you. For
the moment I am only puzzled as to their precise nature; for were they
of an ordinary character, I should myself be psychic enough to feel
them. Yet I am conscious of feeling nothing as yet. But now, please
continue, Mr. Fender, and tell me the rest of your wonderful story; and
when you have finished, I will talk about the means of cure." Fender shifted his chair a little closer to the
friendly doctor and then went on in the same nervous voice with his
narrative. "After making some notes of my impressions I finally
got upstairs again to bed. It was four o'clock in the morning. I
laughed all the way up--at the grotesque banisters, the droll
physiognomy of the staircase window, the burlesque grouping of the
furniture, and the memory of that outrageous footstool in the room
below; but nothing more happened to alarm or disturb me, and I woke
late in the morning after a dreamless sleep, none the worse for my
experiment except for a slight headache and a coldness of the
extremities due to lowered circulation." "It was so distorted. The words, indeed, were mine
so far as I could remember, but the meanings seemed strange. It
frightened me. The sense was so altered. At the very places where my
characters were intended to tickle the ribs, only curious emotions of
sinister amusement resulted. Dreadful innuendoes had managed to creep
into the phrases. There was laughter of a kind, but it was bizarre,
horrible, distressing; and my attempt at analysis only increased my
dismay. The story, as it read then, made me shudder, for by virtue of
these slight changes it had come somehow to hold the soul of horror, of
horror disguised as merriment. The framework of humour was there, if
you understand me, but the characters had turned sinister, and their
laughter was evil." "I destroyed it," he whispered. "But, in the end,
though of course much perturbed about it, I persuaded myself that it
was due to some after-effect of the drug, a sort of reaction that gave
a twist to my mind and made me read macabre interpretations into words
and situations that did not properly hold them." "No; that stayed more or less. When my mind was
actively employed I forgot it, but when idle, dreaming, or doing
nothing in particular, there she was beside me, influencing my mind
horribly----" "Evil, scheming thoughts came to me, visions of
crime, hateful pictures of wickedness, and the kind of bad imagination
that so far has been foreign, indeed impossible, to my normal
nature----" "The pressure of the Dark Powers upon the
personality," murmured the doctor, making a quick note. "Pray, go on. I am merely making notes; you shall
know their purport fully later." "But, let me first finish the story of my
experimental dose, for I took it again the third night, and underwent a
very similar experience, delayed like the first in coming, and then
carrying me off my feet when it did come with a rush of this false
demon-laughter. This time, however, there was a reversal of the changed
scale of space and time; it shortened instead of lengthened, so that I
dressed and got downstairs in about twenty seconds, and the couple of
hours I stayed and worked in the study passed literally like a period
of ten minutes." "That is often true of an overdose," interjected the
doctor, "and you may go a mile in a few minutes, or a few yards in a
quarter of an hour. It is quite incomprehensible to those who have
never experienced it, and is a curious proof that time and space are
merely forms of thought." "This time," Fender went on, talking more and more
rapidly in his excitement, "another extraordinary effect came to me,
and I experienced a curious changing of the senses, so that I perceived
external things through one large main sense-channel instead of through
the five divisions known as sight, smell, touch, and so forth. You
will, I know, understand me when I tell you that I heard sights
and saw sounds. No language can make this comprehensible, of
course, and I can only say, for instance, that the striking of the
clock I saw as a visible picture in the air before me. I saw the sounds
of the tinkling bell. And in precisely the same way I heard the colours
in the room, especially the colours of those books in the shelf behind
you. Those red bindings I heard in deep sounds, and the yellow covers
of the French bindings next to them made a shrill, piercing note not
unlike the chattering of starlings. That brown bookcase muttered, and
those green curtains opposite kept up a constant sort of rippling sound
like the lower notes of a wood-horn. But I only was conscious of these
sounds when I looked steadily at the different objects, and thought
about them. The room, you understand, was not full of a chorus of
notes; but when I concentrated my mind upon a colour, I heard, as well
as saw, it." "That is a known, though rarely obtained, effect of
Cannabis indica," observed the doctor. "And it provoked laughter
again, did it?" "Only the muttering of the cupboard-bookcase made me
laugh. It was so like a great animal trying to get itself noticed, and
made me think of a performing bear--which is full of a kind of pathetic
humour, you know. But this mingling of the senses produced no confusion
in my brain. On the contrary, I was unusually clear-headed and
experienced an intensification of consciousness, and felt marvellously
alive and keen-minded. "Moreover, when I took up a pencil in obedience to
an impulse to sketch--a talent not normally mine--I found that I could
draw nothing but heads, nothing, in fact, but one head--always the
same--the head of a dark-skinned woman, with huge and terrible features
and a very drooping left eye; and so well drawn, too, that I was
amazed, as you may imagine----" Fender hesitated a moment for words, casting about
with his hands in the air and hunching his shoulders. A perceptible
shudder ran over him. "What I can only describe as--blackness," he
replied in a low tone; "the face of a dark and evil soul." "No; I have kept the drawings," he said, with a
laugh, and rose to get them from a drawer in the writing-desk behind
him. "Here is all that remains of the pictures, you see,"
he added, pushing a number of loose sheets under the doctor's eyes;
"nothing but a few scrawly lines. That's all I found the next morning.
I had really drawn no heads at all--nothing but those lines and blots
and wriggles. The pictures were entirely subjective, and existed only
in my mind which constructed them out of a few wild strokes of the pen.
Like the altered scale of space and time it was a complete delusion.
These all passed, of course, with the passing of the drug's effects.
But the other thing did not pass. I mean, the presence of that Dark
Soul remained with me. It is here still. It is real. I don't know how I
can escape from it." "It is attached to the house, not to you personally.
You must leave the house." "Yes. Only I cannot afford to leave the house, for
my work is my sole means of support, and--well, you see, since this
change I cannot even write. They are horrible, these mirthless tales I
now write, with their mockery of laughter, their diabolical suggestion.
Horrible? I shall go mad if this continues." He screwed his face up and looked about the room as
though he expected to see some haunting shape. "This influence in this house induced by my
experiment, has killed in a flash, in a sudden stroke, the sources of
my humour, and though I still go on writing funny tales--I have a
certain name you know--my inspiration has dried up, and much of what I
write I have to burn--yes, doctor, to burn, before any one sees it." "Ah!" "And shocking!" He passed his hand over his eyes a
moment and let the breath escape softly through his teeth. "Yet most
damnably clever in the consummate way the vile suggestions are
insinuated under cover of a kind of high drollery. My stenographer left
me of course--and I've been afraid to take another----" John Silence got up and began to walk about the room
leisurely without speaking; he appeared to be examining the pictures on
the wall and reading the names of the books lying about. Presently he
paused on the hearthrug, with his back to the fire, and turned to look
his patient quietly in the eyes. Fender's face was grey and drawn; the
hunted expression dominated it; the long recital had told upon him. "Thank you, Mr. Fender," he said, a curious glow
showing about his fine, quiet face; "thank you for the sincerity and
frankness of your account. But I think now there is nothing further I
need ask you." He indulged in a long scrutiny of the author's haggard
features drawing purposely the man's eyes to his own and then meeting
them with a look of power and confidence calculated to inspire even the
feeblest soul with courage. "And, to begin with," he added, smiling
pleasantly, "let me assure you without delay that you need have no
alarm, for you are no more insane or deluded than I myself am----" "----and this is simply a case, so far as I can
judge at present, of a very singular psychical invasion, and a very
sinister one, too, if you perhaps understand what I mean----" "It's an odd expression; you used it before, you
know," said the author wearily, yet eagerly listening to every word of
the diagnosis, and deeply touched by the intelligent sympathy which did
not at once indicate the lunatic asylum. "Possibly," returned the other, "and an odd
affliction, too, you'll allow, yet one not unknown to the nations of
antiquity, nor to those moderns, perhaps, who recognise the freedom of
action under certain pathogenic conditions between this world and
another." "And you think," asked Fender hastily, "that it is
all primarily due to the Cannabis? There is nothing radically
amiss with myself--nothing incurable, or----?" "Due entirely to the overdose," Dr. Silence replied
emphatically, "to the drug's direct action upon your psychical being.
It rendered you ultra-sensitive and made you respond to an increased
rate of vibration. And, let me tell you, Mr. Fender, that your
experiment might have had results far more dire. It has brought you
into touch with a somewhat singular class of Invisible, but of one, I
think, chiefly human in character. You might, however, just as easily
have been drawn out of human range altogether, and the results of such
a contingency would have been exceedingly terrible. Indeed, you would
not now be here to tell the tale. I need not alarm you on that score,
but mention it as a warning you will not misunderstand or underrate
after what you have been through. "You look puzzled. You do not quite gather what I am
driving at; and it is not to be expected that you should, for you, I
suppose, are the nominal Christian with the nominal Christian's lofty
standard of ethics, and his utter ignorance of spiritual possibilities.
Beyond a somewhat childish understanding of 'spiritual wickedness in
high places,' you probably have no conception of what is possible once
you break-down the slender gulf that is mercifully fixed between you
and that Outer World. But my studies and training have taken me far
outside these orthodox trips, and I have made experiments that I could
scarcely speak to you about in language that would be intelligible to
you." He paused a moment to note the breathless interest
of Fender's face and manner. Every word he uttered was calculated; he
knew exactly the value and effect of the emotions he desired to waken
in the heart of the afflicted being before him. "And from certain knowledge I have gained through
various experiences," he continued calmly, "I can diagnose your case as
I said before to be one of psychical invasion." "And the nature of this--er--invasion?" stammered
the bewildered writer of humorous tales. "There is no reason why I should not say at once
that I do not yet quite know," replied Dr. Silence. "I may first have
to make one or two experiments----" "Not exactly," the doctor said, with a grave smile,
"but with your assistance, perhaps. I shall want to test the conditions
of the house--to ascertain, if possible, the character of the forces,
of this strange personality that has been haunting you----" "At present you have no idea exactly
who--what--why----" asked the other in a wild flurry of interest, dread
and amazement. "Possibly not--but none the less dangerous on that
account, and more difficult to deal with. I cannot explain to you in a
few minutes the nature of such things, for you have not made the
studies that would enable you to follow me; but I have reason to
believe that on the dissolution at death of a human being, its forces
may still persist and continue to act in a blind, unconscious fashion.
As a rule they speedily dissipate themselves, but in the case of a very
powerful personality they may last a long time. And, in some cases--of
which I incline to think this is one--these forces may coalesce with
certain non-human entities who thus continue their life indefinitely
and increase their strength to an unbelievable degree. If the original
personality was evil, the beings attracted to the left-over forces will
also be evil. In this case, I think there has been an unusual and
dreadful aggrandisement of the thoughts and purposes left behind long
ago by a woman of consummate wickedness and great personal power of
character and intellect. Now, do you begin to see what I am driving at
a little?" Fender stared fixedly at his companion, plain horror
showing in his eyes. But he found nothing to say, and the doctor
continued-- "In your case, predisposed by the action of the
drug, you have experienced the rush of these forces in undiluted
strength. They wholly obliterate in you the sense of humour, fancy,
imagination,--all that makes for cheerfulness and hope. They seek,
though perhaps automatically only, to oust your own thoughts and
establish themselves in their place. You are the victim of a psychical
invasion. At the same time, you have become clairvoyant in the true
sense. You are also a clairvoyant victim." Fender mopped his face and sighed. He left his chair
and went over to the fireplace to warm himself. "There is no need to alarm your wife or to tell her
the details of our conversation," pursued the other quietly. "Let her
know that you will soon be in possession again of your sense of humour
and your health, and explain that I am lending you another house for
six months. Meanwhile I may have the right to use this house for a
night or two for my experiment. Is that understood between us?" "I can only thank you from the bottom of my heart,"
stammered Fender, unable to find words to express his gratitude. "Of the simplest character, my dear Mr. Fender.
Although I am myself an artificially trained psychic, and consequently
aware of the presence of discarnate entities as a rule, I have so far
felt nothing here at all. This makes me sure that the forces acting
here are of an unusual description. What I propose to do is to make an
experiment with a view of drawing out this evil, coaxing it from its
lair, so to speak, in order that it may exhaust itself through me
and become dissipated for ever. I have already been inoculated," he
added; "I consider myself to be immune." "Hell beneath! might be a more appropriate
exclamation," the doctor laughed. "But, seriously, Mr. Fender, this is
what I propose to do-- with your permission." "Of course, of course," cried the other, "you have
my permission and my best wishes for success. I can see no possible
objection, but----" "I pray to Heaven you will not undertake this
experiment alone, will you?" "You will take a companion with good nerves, and
reliable in case of disaster, won't you?" "Ah, that's better. I feel easier. I am sure you
must have among your acquaintances men who ---- " "Animals," explained the doctor, unable to prevent a
smile at his companion's expression of surprise--"two animals, a cat
and a dog." IIA few days later the humorist and his wife, with
minds greatly relieved, moved into a small furnished house placed at
their free disposal in another part of London; and John Silence, intent
upon his approaching experiment, made ready to spend a night in the
empty house on the top of Putney Hill. Only two rooms were prepared for
occupation: the study on the ground floor and the bedroom immediately
above it; all other doors were to be locked, and no servant was to be
left in the house. The motor had orders to call for him at nine o'clock
the following morning. And, meanwhile, his secretary had instructions to
look up the past history and associations of the place, and learn
everything he could concerning the character of former occupants,
recent or remote. The animals, by whose sensitiveness he intended to
test any unusual conditions in the atmosphere of the building, Dr.
Silence selected with care and judgment. He believed (and had already
made curious experiments to prove it) that animals were more often, and
more truly, clairvoyant than human beings. Many of them, he felt
convinced, possessed powers of perception far superior to that mere
keenness of the senses common to all dwellers in the wilds where the
senses grow specially alert; they had what he termed "animal
clairvoyance," and from his experiments with horses, dogs, cats, and
even birds, he had drawn certain deductions, which, however, need not
be referred to in detail here. Cats, in particular, he believed, were almost
continuously conscious of a larger field of vision, too detailed even
for a photographic camera, and quite beyond the reach of normal human
organs. He had, further, observed that while dogs were usually
terrified in the presence of such phenomena, cats on the other hand
were soothed and satisfied. They welcomed manifestations as something
belonging peculiarly to their own region. He selected his animals, therefore, with wisdom so
that they might afford a differing test, each in its own way, and that
one should not merely communicate its own excitement to the other. He
took a dog and a cat. The cat he chose, now full grown, had lived with him
since kitten-hood, a kitten hood of perplexing sweetness and audacious
mischief. Wayward it was and fanciful, ever playing its own mysterious
games in the corners of the room, jumping at invisible nothings,
leaping sideways into the air and falling with tiny moccasined feet on
to another part of the carpet, yet with an air of dignified earnestness
which showed that the performance was necessary to its own well-being,
and not done merely to impress a stupid human audience. In the middle
of elaborate washing it would look up, startled, as though to stare at
the approach of some Invisible, cocking its little head sideways and
putting out a velvet pad to inspect cautiously. Then it would get
absent-minded, and stare with equal intentness in another direction
(just to confuse the onlookers), and suddenly go on furiously washing
its body again, but in quite a new place. Except for a white patch on
its breast it was coal black. And its name was--Smoke. "Smoke" described its temperament as well as its
appearance. Its movements, its individuality, its posing as a little
furry mass of concealed mysteries, its elfin-like elusiveness, all
combined to justify its name; and a subtle painter might have pictured
it as a wisp of floating smoke, the fire below betraying itself at two
points only--the glowing eyes, All its forces ran to intelligence--secret
intelligence, the wordless incalculable intuition of the Cat. It was,
indeed, the cat for the business in hand. The selection of the dog was not so simple, for the
doctor owned many; but after much deliberation he chose a collie,
called Flame from his yellow coat. True, it was a trifle old, and stiff
in the joints, and even beginning to grow deaf, but, on the other hand,
it was a very particular friend of Smoke's, and had fathered it from
kitten hood upwards so that a subtle understanding existed between
them. It was this that turned the balance in its favour, this and its
courage. Moreover, though good-tempered, it was a terrible fighter, and
its anger when provoked by a righteous cause was a fury of fire, and
irresistible. It had come to him quite young, straight from the
shepherd, with the air of the hills yet in its nostrils, and was then
little more than skin and bones and teeth. For a collie it was sturdily
built, its nose blunter than most, its yellow hair stiff rather than
silky, and it had full eyes, unlike the slit eyes of its breed. Only
its master could touch it, for it ignored strangers, and despised their
partings--when any dared to pat it. There was something patriarchal
about the old beast. He was in earnest, and went through life with
tremendous energy and big things in view, as though he had the
reputation of his whole race to uphold. And to watch him fighting
against odds was to understand why he was terrible. And these brief descriptions of their characters are
necessary for the proper understanding of what subsequently took place. With Smoke sleeping in the folds of his fur coat,
and the collie lying watchful on the seat opposite, John Silence went
down in his motor after dinner on the night of November 15th. And the fog was so dense that they were obliged to
travel at quarter speed the entire way. It was after ten o'clock when he dismissed the motor
and entered the dingy little house with the latchkey provided by
Fender. He found the hall gas turned low, and a fire in the study.
Books and food had also been placed ready by the servant according to
instructions. Coils of fog rushed in after him through the open door
and filled the hall and passage with its cold discomfort. The first thing Dr. Silence did was to lock up Smoke
in the study with a saucer of milk before the fire, and then make a
search of the house with Flame. The dog ran cheerfully behind him all
the way while he tried the doors of the other rooms to make sure they
were locked. He nosed about into corners and made little excursions on
his own account. His manner was expectant. He knew there must be
something unusual about the proceeding, because it was contrary to the
habits of his whole life not to be asleep at this hour on the mat in
front of the fire. He kept looking up into his master's face, as door
after door was tried, with an expression of intelligent sympathy, but
at the same time a certain air of disapproval. Yet everything his
master did was good in his eyes, and he betrayed as little impatience
as possible with all this unnecessary journeying to and fro. If the
doctor was pleased to play this sort of game at such an hour of the
night, it was surely not for him to object. So he played it, too; and
was very busy and earnest about it into the bargain. After an uneventful search they came down again to
the study, and here Dr. Silence discovered Smoke washing his face
calmly in front of the fire. The saucer of milk was licked dry and
clean; the preliminary examination that cats always make in new
surroundings had evidently been satisfactorily concluded. He drew an
arm-chair up to the fire, stirred the coals into a blaze, arranged the
table and lamp to his satisfaction for reading, and then prepared
surreptitiously to watch the animals. He wished to observe them
carefully without their being aware of it. Now, in spite of their respective ages, it was the
regular custom of these two to play together every night before sleep.
Smoke always made the advances, beginning with grave impudence to pat
the dog's tail, and Flame played cumbrously, with condescension. It was
his duty, rather than pleasure; he was glad when it was over, and
sometimes he was very determined and refused to play at all. The doctor, looking cautiously over the top of his
book, watched the cat begin the performance. It started by gazing with
an innocent expression at the dog where he lay with nose on paws and
eyes wide open in the middle of the floor. Then it got up and made as
though it meant to walk to the door, going deliberately and very
softly. Flame's eyes followed it until it was beyond the range of
sight, and then the cat turned sharply and began patting his tail
tentatively with one paw. The tail moved slightly in reply, and Smoke
changed paws and tapped it again. The dog, however, did not rise to
play as was his wont, and the cat fell to patting it briskly with both
paws. Flame still lay motionless. This puzzled and bored the cat, and it went round
and stared hard into its friend's face to see what was the matter.
Perhaps some inarticulate message flashed from the dog's eyes into its
own little brain, making it understand that the programme for the night
had better not begin with play. Perhaps it only realised that its
friend was immovable. But, whatever the reason, its usual persistence
thenceforward deserted it, and it made no further attempts at
persuasion. Smoke yielded at once to the dog's mood; it sat down where
it was and began to wash. But the washing, the doctor noted, was by no means
its real purpose; it only used it to mask something else; it stopped at
the most busy and furious moments and began to stare about the room.
Its thoughts wandered absurdly. It peered intently at the curtains; at
the shadowy corners; at empty space above; leaving its body in
curiously awkward positions for whole minutes together. Then it turned
sharply and stared with a sudden signal of intelligence at the dog, and
Flame at once rose somewhat stiffly to his feet and began to wander
aimlessly and restlessly to and fro about the floor. Smoke followed
him, padding quietly at his heels. Between them they made what seemed
to be a deliberate search of the room. And, here, as he watched them, noting carefully
every detail of the performance over the top of his book, yet making no
effort to interfere, it seemed to the doctor that the first beginnings
of a faint distress betrayed themselves in the collie, and in the cat
the stirrings of a vague excitement. He observed them closely. The fog was thick in the
air, and the tobacco smoke from his pipe added to its density; the
furniture at the far end stood mistily, and where the shadows
congregated in hanging clouds under the ceiling, it was difficult to
see clearly at all; the lamplight only reached to a level of five feet
from the floor, above which came layers of comparative darkness, so
that the room appeared twice as lofty as it actually was. By means of
the lamp and the fire, however, the carpet was everywhere clearly
visible. The animals made their silent tour of the floor,
sometimes the dog leading, sometimes the cat; occasionally they looked
at one another as though exchanging signals; and once or twice, in
spite of the limited space, he lost sight of one or other among the fog
and the shadows. Their curiosity, it appeared to him, was something
more than the excitement lurking in the unknown territory of a strange
room; yet, so far, it was impossible to test this, and he purposely
kept his mind quietly receptive lest the smallest mental excitement on
his part should communicate itself to the animals and thus destroy the
value of their independent behaviour. They made a very thorough journey, leaving no piece
of furniture unexamined, or unsmelt. Flame led the way, walking slowly
with lowered head, and Smoke followed demurely at his heels, making a
transparent pretence of not being interested, yet missing nothing. And,
at length, they returned, the old collie first, and came to rest on the
mat before the fire. Flame rested his muzzle on his master's knee,
smiling beatifically while he patted the yellow head and spoke his
name; and Smoke, coming a little later, pretending he came by chance,
looked from the empty saucer to his face, lapped up the milk when it
was given him to the last drop, and then sprang upon his knees and
curled round for the sleep it had fully earned and intended to enjoy. Silence descended upon the room. Only the breathing
of the dog upon the mat came through the deep stillness, like the pulse
of time marking the minutes; and the steady drip, drip of the fog
outside upon the window-ledges dismally testified to the inclemency of
the night beyond. And the soft crashings of the coals as the fire
settled down into the grate became less and less audible as the fire
sank and the flames resigned their fierceness. It was now well after eleven o'clock, and Dr. Silence
devoted himself again to his book. He read the words on the printed
page and took in their meaning superficially, yet without starting into
life the correlations of thought and suggestions that should accompany
interesting reading. Underneath, all the while, his mental energies
were absorbed in watching, listening, waiting for what might come. He
was not over-sanguine himself, yet he did not wish to be taken by
surprise. Moreover, the animals, his sensitive barometers, had
incontinently gone to sleep. After reading a dozen pages, however, he realised
that his mind was really occupied in reviewing the features of Fender's
extraordinary story, and that it was no longer necessary to steady his
imagination by studying the dull paragraphs detailed in the pages
before him. He laid down his book accordingly, and allowed his thoughts
to dwell upon the features of the Case. Speculations as to the meaning,
however, he rigorously suppressed, knowing that such thoughts would act
upon his imagination like wind upon the glowing embers of a fire. As the night wore on the silence grew deeper and
deeper, and only at rare intervals he heard the sound of wheels on the
main road a hundred yards away, where the horses went at a walking pace
owing to the density of the fog. The echo of pedestrian footsteps no
longer reached him, the clamour of occasional voices no longer came
down the side street. The night, muffled by fog, shrouded by veils of
ultimate mystery, hung about the haunted villa like a doom. Nothing in
the house stirred. Stillness, in a thick blanket, lay over the upper
storeys. Only the mist in the room grew more dense, he thought, and the
damp cold more penetrating. Certainly, from time to time, he shivered. The collie, now deep in slumber, moved
occasionally,--grunted, sighed, or twitched his legs in dreams. Smoke
lay on his knees, a pool of warm, black fur, only the closest
observation detecting the movement of his sleek sides. It was difficult
to distinguish exactly where his head and body joined in that circle of
glistening hair; only a black satin nose and a tiny tip of pink tongue
betrayed the secret. Accordingly, after a time, he did fall asleep as he
had expected, and the last thing he remembered, before oblivion slipped
up over his eyes like soft wool, was the picture of Flame stretching
all four legs at once, and sighing noisily as he sought a more
comfortable position for his paws and muzzle upon the mat. It was a good deal later when he became aware that a
weight lay upon his chest, and that something was pencilling over his
face and mouth. A soft touch on the cheek woke him. Something was
patting him. He sat up with a jerk, and found himself staring
straight into a pair of brilliant eyes, half green, half black. Smoke's
face lay level with his own; and the cat had climbed up with its front
paws upon his chest. The lamp had burned low and the fire was nearly out,
yet Dr. Silence saw in a moment that the cat was in an excited state.
It kneaded with its front paws into his chest, shifting from one to the
other. He felt them prodding against him. It lifted a leg very
carefully and patted his cheek gingerly. Its fur, he saw, was standing
ridgewise upon its back; the ears were flattened back somewhat; the
tail was switching sharply. The cat, of course, had wakened him with a
purpose, and the instant he realised this, he set it upon the arm of
the chair and sprang up with a quick turn to face the empty room behind
him. By some curious instinct, his arms of their own accord assumed an
attitude of defence in front of him, as though to ward off something
that threatened his safety. Yet nothing was visible. Only shapes of fog
hung about rather heavily in the air, moving slightly to and fro. His mind was now fully alert, and the last vestiges
of sleep gone. He turned the lamp higher and peered about him. Two
things he became aware of at once: one, that Smoke, while excited, was
pleasurably excited; the other, that the collie was no longer
visible upon the mat at his feet. He had crept away to the corner of
the wall farthest from the window, and lay watching the room with
wide-open eyes, in which lurked plainly something of alarm. Something in the dog's behaviour instantly struck Dr.
Silence as unusual, and, calling him by name, he moved across to pat
him. Flame got up, wagged his tail, and came over slowly to the rug,
uttering a low sound that was half growl, half whine. He was evidently
perturbed about something, and his master was proceeding to administer
comfort when his attention was suddenly drawn to the antics of his
other four-footed companion, the cat. Smoke had jumped down from the back of the arm-chair
and now occupied the middle of the carpet, where, with tail erect and
legs stiff as ramrods, it was steadily pacing backwards and forwards in
a narrow space, uttering, as it did so, those curious little guttural
sounds of pleasure that only an animal of the feline species knows how
to make expressive of supreme happiness. Its stiffened legs and arched
back made it appear larger than usual, and the black visage wore a
smile of beatific joy. Its eyes blazed magnificently; it was in an
ecstasy. At the end of every few paces it turned sharply and
stalked back again along the same line, padding softly, and purring
like a roll of little muffled drums. It behaved precisely as though it
were rubbing against the ankles of some one who remained invisible. A
thrill ran down the doctor's spine as he stood and stared. His
experiment was growing interesting at last. He called the collie's attention to his friend's
performance to see whether he too was aware of anything standing there
upon the carpet, and the dog's behaviour was significant and
corroborative. He came as far as his master's knees and then stopped
dead, refusing to investigate closely. In vain Dr. Silence urged him;
he wagged his tail, whined a little, and stood in a half-crouching
attitude, staring alternately at the cat and at his master's face. He
was, apparently, both puzzled and alarmed, and the whine went deeper
and deeper down into his throat till it changed into an ugly snarl of
awakening anger. Then the doctor called to him in a tone of command
he had never known to be disregarded; but still the dog, though
springing up in response, declined to move nearer. He made tentative
motions, pranced a little like a dog about to take to water, pretended
to bark, and ran to and fro on the carpet. So far there was no actual
fear in his manner, but he was uneasy and anxious, and nothing would
induce him to go within touching distance of the walking cat. Once he
made a complete circuit, but always carefully out of reach; and in the
end he returned to his master's legs and rubbed vigorously against him.
Flame did not like the performance at all: that much was quite clear. For several minutes John Silence watched the
performance of the cat with profound attention and without interfering.
Then he called to the animal by name. "Smoke, you mysterious beastie, what in the world
are you about?" he said, in a coaxing tone. He noted exactly what it did: it walked, he saw, the
same number of paces each time, some six or seven steps, and then it
turned sharply and retraced them. By the pattern of the great roses in
the carpet he measured it. It kept to the same direction and the same
line. It behaved precisely as though it were rubbing against something
solid. Undoubtedly, there was something standing there on that strip of
carpet, something invisible to the doctor, something that alarmed the
dog, yet caused the cat unspeakable pleasure. "Smokie!" he called again, "Smokie, you black
mystery, what is it excites you so?" Again the cat looked up at him for a brief second,
and then continued its sentry-walk, blissfully happy, intensely
preoccupied. And, for an instant, as he watched it, the doctor was
aware that a faint uneasiness stirred in the depths of his own being,
focusing itself for the moment upon this curious behaviour of the
uncanny creature before him. There rose in him quite a new realisation of the
mystery connected with the whole feline tribe, but especially with that
common member of it, the domestic cat--their hidden lives, their
strange aloofness, their incalculable subtlety. How utterly remote from
anything that human beings understood lay the sources of their elusive
activities. As he watched the indescribable bearing of the little
creature mincing along the strip of carpet under his eyes, coquetting
with the powers of darkness, welcoming, maybe, some fearsome visitor,
there stirred in his heart a feeling strangely akin to awe. Its
indifference to human kind, its serene superiority to the obvious,
struck him forcibly with fresh meaning; so remote, so inaccessible
seemed the secret purposes of its real life, so alien to the blundering
honesty of other animals. Its absolute poise of bearing brought into
his mind the opium-eater's words that "no dignity is perfect which does
not at some point ally itself with the mysterious"; and he became
suddenly aware that the presence of the dog in this foggy, haunted room
on the top of Putney Hill was uncommonly welcome to him. He was glad to
feel that Flame's dependable personality was with him. The savage
growling at his heels was a pleasant sound. He was glad to hear it.
That marching cat made him uneasy. He stepped quickly forward and placed himself upon
the exact strip of carpet where it walked. But no cat is ever taken by surprise! The moment he
occupied the space of the Intruder, setting his feet on the woven roses
midway in the line of travel, Smoke suddenly stopped purring and sat
down. If lifted up its face with the most innocent stare imaginable of
its green eyes. He could have sworn it laughed. It was a perfect child
again. In a single second it had resumed its simple, domestic manner;
and it gazed at him in such a way that he almost felt Smoke was the
normal being, and his was the eccentric behaviour that was being
watched. It was consummate, the manner in which it brought about this
change so easily and so quickly. "Superb little actor!" he laughed in spite of
himself, and stooped to stroke the shining black back. But, in a flash,
as he touched its fur, the cat turned and spat at him viciously,
striking at his hand with one paw. Then, with a hurried scutter of
feet, it shot like a shadow across the floor and a moment later was
calmly sitting over by the window-curtains washing its face as though
nothing interested it in the whole world but the cleanness of its
cheeks and whiskers. John Silence straightened himself up and drew a long
breath. He realised that the performance was temporarily at an end. The
collie, meanwhile, who had watched the whole proceeding with marked
disapproval, had now lain down again upon the mat by the fire, no
longer growling. It seemed to the doctor just as though something that
had entered the room while he slept, alarming the dog, yet bringing
happiness to the cat, had now gone out again, leaving all as it was
before. Whatever it was that excited its blissful attentions had
retreated for the moment. He realised this intuitively. Smoke evidently
realised it, too, for presently he deigned to march back to the
fireplace and jump upon his master's knees. Dr. Silence, patient and
determined, settled down once more to his book. The animals soon slept;
the fire blazed cheerfully; and the cold fog from outside poured into
the room through every available chink and crannie. For a long time silence and peace reigned in the
room and Dr. Silence availed himself of the quietness to make careful
notes of what had happened. He entered for future use in other cases an
exhaustive analysis of what he had observed, especially with regard to
the effect upon the two animals. It is impossible here, nor would it be
intelligible to the reader unversed in the knowledge of the region
known to a scientifically trained psychic like Dr. Silence, to detail
these observations. But to him it was clear, up to a certain point--for
the rest he must still wait and watch. So far, at least, he realised
that while he slept in the chair--that is, while his will was
dormant--the room had suffered intrusion from what he recognised as an
intensely active Force, and might later be forced to acknowledge as
something more than merely a blind force, namely, a distinct
personality. So far it had affected himself scarcely at all, but
had acted directly upon the simpler organisms of the animals. It
stimulated keenly the centres of the cat's psychic being, inducing a
state of instant happiness (intensifying its consciousness probably in
the same way a drug or stimulant intensifies that of a human being);
whereas it alarmed the less sensitive dog, causing it to feel a vague
apprehension and distress. His own sudden action and exhibition of energy had
served to disperse it temporarily, yet he felt convinced--the
indications were not lacking even while he sat there making notes--that
it still remained near to him, conditionally if not spatially, and was,
as it were, gathering force for a second attack. And, further, he intuitively understood that the
relations between the two animals had undergone a subtle change: that
the cat had become immeasurably superior, confident, sure of itself in
its own peculiar region, whereas Flame had been weakened by an attack
he could not comprehend and knew not how to reply to. Though not yet
afraid, he was defiant--ready to act against a fear that he felt to be
approaching. He was no longer fatherly and protective towards the cat.
Smoke held the key to the situation; and both he and the cat knew it. Thus, as the minutes passed, John Silence sat and
waited, keenly on the alert, wondering how soon the attack would be
renewed, and at what point it would be diverted from the animals and
directed upon himself. The book lay on the floor beside him, his notes were
complete. With one hand on the cat's fur, and the dog's front paws
resting against his feet, the three of them dozed comfortably before
the hot fire while the night wore on and the silence deepened towards
midnight. Dr. Silence was in the act of taking the matches to
re-light the lamp when an audible movement in the room behind him made
him pause. Smoke leaped down from his knee and moved forward a few
paces across the carpet. Then it stopped and stared fixedly; and the
doctor stood up on the rug to watch. As he rose the sound was repeated, and he discovered
that it was not in the room as he first thought, but outside, and that
it came from more directions than one. There was a rushing, sweeping
noise against the window-panes, and simultaneously a sound of something
brushing against the door--out in the hall. Smoke advanced sedately
across the carpet, twitching his tail, and sat down within a foot of
the door. The influence that had destroyed the harmonious conditions of
the room had apparently moved in advance of its cause. Clearly,
something was about to happen. For the first time that night John Silence
hesitated; the thought of that dark narrow hall-way, choked with fog,
and destitute of human comfort, was unpleasant. He became aware of a
faint creeping of his flesh. He knew, of course, that the actual
opening of the door was not necessary to the invasion of the room that
was about to take place, since neither doors nor windows, nor any other
solid barriers could interpose an obstacle to what was seeking
entrance. Yet the opening of the door would be significant and
symbolic, and he distinctly shrank from it. But for a moment only. Smoke, turning with a show of
impatience, recalled him to his purpose, and he moved past the sitting,
watching creature, and deliberately opened the door to its full width. What subsequently happened, happened in the feeble
and flickering light of the solitary candle on the mantlepiece. Through the opened door he saw the hall, dimly lit
and thick with fog. Nothing, of course, was visible--nothing but the
hat-stand, the African spears in dark lines upon the wall and the
high-backed wooden chair standing grotesquely underneath on the
oilcloth floor. For one instant the fog seemed to move and thicken
oddly; but he set that down to the score of the imagination. The door
had opened upon nothing. Yet Smoke apparently thought otherwise, and the deep
growling of the collie from the mat at the back of the room seemed to
confirm his judgment. Dr. Silence moved slowly backwards and took up his
position on the hearthrug, keying himself up to a condition of
concentrated attention. He noted that Flame stood beside him, facing the
room, with body motionless, and head moving swiftly from side to side
with a curious swaying movement. His eyes were wide open, his back
rigid, his neck and jaws thrust forward, his legs tense and ready to
leap. Savage, ready for attack or defence, yet dreadfully puzzled and
perhaps already a little cowed, he stood and stared, the hair on his
spine and sides positively bristling outwards as though a wind played
through it. In the dim firelight he looked like a great yellow-haired
wolf, silent, eyes shooting dark fire, exceedingly formidable. It was
Flame, the terrible. Smoke, meanwhile, advanced from the door towards the
middle of the room, adopting the very slow pace of an invisible
companion. A few feet away it stopped and began to smile and blink its
eyes. There was something deliberately coaxing in its attitude as it
stood there undecided on the carpet, clearly wishing to effect some
sort of introduction between the Intruder and its canine friend and
ally. It assumed its most winning manners, purring, smiling, looking
persuasively from one to the other, and making quick tentative steps
first in one direction and then in the other. There had always existed
such perfect understanding between them in everything. Surely Flame
would appreciate Smoke's intention now, and acquiesce. But the old collie made no advances. He bared his
teeth, lifting his lips till the gums showed, and stood stockstill with
fixed eyes and heaving sides. The doctor moved a little farther back,
watching intently the smallest movement, and it was just then he
divined suddenly from the cat's behaviour and attitude that it was not
only a single companion it had ushered into the room, but several.
It kept crossing over from one to the other, looking up at each in
turn. It sought to win over the dog to friendliness with them all. The
original Intruder had come back with reinforcements. And at the same
time he further realised that the Intruder was something more than a
blindly acting force, impersonal though destructive. It was a
Personality, and moreover a great personality. And it was accompanied
for the purposes of assistance by a host of other personalities, minor
in degree, but similar in kind. But it was all in vain. Flame stood riveted to one
spot, motionless as a figure carved in stone. Some minutes passed, during which only the cat
moved, and then there came a sharp change. Flame began to back towards
the wall. He moved his head from side to side as he went, sometimes
turning to snap at something almost behind him. They were
advancing upon him, trying to surround him. His distress became very
marked from now onwards, and it seemed to the doctor that his anger
merged into genuine terror and became overwhelmed by it. The savage
growl sounded perilously like a whine, and more than once he tried to
dive past his master's legs, as though hunting for a way of escape. He
was trying to avoid something that everywhere blocked the way. This terror of the indomitable fighter impressed the
doctor enormously; yet also painfully; stirring his impatience; for he
had never before seen the dog show signs of giving in, and it
distressed him to witness it. He knew, however, that he was not giving
in easily, and understood that it was really impossible for him to
gauge the animal's sensations properly at all. What Flame felt, and
saw, must be terrible indeed to turn him all at once into a coward. He
faced something that made him afraid of more than his life merely. The
doctor spoke a few quick words of encouragement to him, and stroked the
bristling hair. But without much success. The collie seemed already
beyond the reach of comfort such as that, and the collapse of the old
dog followed indeed very speedily after this. And Smoke, meanwhile, remained behind, watching the
advance, but not joining in it; sitting, pleased and expectant,
considering that all was going well and as it wished. It was kneading
on the carpet with its front paws--slowly, laboriously, as though its
feet were dipped in treacle. The sound its claws made as they caught in
the threads was distinctly audible. It was still smiling, blinking,
purring. But the cat, too, had heard that dreadful bark; and
it, too, had understood. This was more than it had bargained for.
Across the dim shadows of that haunted room there must have passed some
secret signal of distress between the animals. Smoke stood up and
looked swiftly about him. He uttered a piteous meow and trotted smartly
away into the greater darkness by the windows. What his object was only
those endowed with the spirit-like intelligence of cats might know.
But, at any rate, he had at last ranged himself on the side of his
friend. And the little beast meant business. At the same moment the collie managed to gain the
door. The doctor saw him rush through into the hall like a flash of
yellow light. He shot across the oilcloth, and tore up the stairs, but
in another second he appeared again, flying down the steps and landing
at the bottom in a tumbling heap, whining, cringing, terrified. The
doctor saw him slink back into the room again and crawl round by the
wall towards the cat. Was, then, even the staircase occupied? Did
They stand also in the hall? Was the whole house crowded from floor
to ceiling? The thought came to add to the keen distress he felt
at the sight of the collie's discomfiture. And, indeed, his own
personal distress had increased in a marked degree during the past
minutes, and continued to increase steadily to the climax. He
recognised that the drain on his own vitality grew steadily, and that
the attack was now directed against himself even more than against the
defeated dog, and the too much deceived cat. It all seemed so rapid and uncalculated after
that--the events that took place in this little modern room at the top
of Putney Hill between midnight and sunrise--that Dr. Silence was
hardly able to follow and remember it all. It came about with such
uncanny swiftness and terror; the light was so uncertain; the movements
of the black cat so difficult to follow on the dark carpet, and the
doctor himself so weary and taken by surprise--that he found it almost
impossible to observe accurately, or to recall afterwards precisely
what it was he had seen or in what order the incidents had taken place.
He never could understand what defect of vision on his part made it
seem as though the cat had duplicated itself at first, and then
increased indefinitely, so that there were at least a dozen of them
darting silently about the floor, leaping softly on to chairs and
tables, passing like shadows from the open door to the end of the room,
all black as sin, with brilliant green eyes flashing fire in all
directions. It was like the reflections from a score of mirrors placed
round the walls at different angles. Nor could he make out at the time
why the size of the room seemed to have altered, grown much larger, and
why it extended away behind him where ordinarily the wall should I have
been. The snarling of the enraged and terrified collie sounded !
sometimes so far away; the ceiling seemed to have raised itself so
much higher than before, and much of the furniture had changed in
appearance and shifted marvellously. It was all so confused and confusing, as though the
little room he knew had become merged and transformed into the
dimensions of quite another chamber, that came to him, with its host of
cats and its strange distances, in a sort of vision. But these changes came about a little later, and at
a time when his attention was so concentrated upon the proceedings of
Smoke and the collie, that he only observed them, as it were,
subconsciously. And the excitement, the flickering candlelight, the
distress he felt for the collie, and the distorting atmosphere of fog
were the poorest possible allies to careful observation. At first he was only aware that the dog was
repeating his short dangerous bark from time to time, snapping
viciously at the empty air, a foot or so from the ground. Once, indeed,
he sprang upwards and forwards, working furiously with teeth and paws,
and with a noise like wolves fighting, but only to dash back the next
minute against the wall behind him. Then, after lying still for a bit,
he rose to a crouching position as though to spring again, snarling
horribly and making short half-circles with lowered head. And Smoke all
the while meowed piteously by the window as though trying to draw the
attack upon himself. Then it was that the rush of the whole dreadful
business seemed to turn aside from the dog and direct itself upon his
own person. The collie had made another spring and fallen back with a
crash into the corner, where he made noise enough in his savage rage to
waken the dead before he fell to whining and then finally lay still.
And directly afterwards the doctor's own distress became intolerably
acute. He had made a half movement forward to come to the rescue when a
veil that was denser than mere fog seemed to drop down over the scene,
draping room, walls, animals and fire in a mist of darkness and folding
also about his own mind. Other forms moved silently across the field of
vision, forms that he recognised from previous experiments, and
welcorned not. Unholy thoughts began to crowd into his brain, sinister
suggestions of evil presented themselves seductively. Ice seemed to
settle about his heart, and his mind trembled. He began to lose
memory-memory of his identity, of where he was, of what he ought to do.
The very foundations of his strength were shaken. His will seemed
paralysed. And it was then that the room filled with this horde
of cats, all dark as the night, all silent, all with lamping eyes of
green fire. The dimensions of the place altered and shifted. He was in
a much larger space. The whining of the dog sounded far away, and all
about him the cats flew busily to and fro, silently playing their
tearing, rushing game of evil, weaving the pattern of their dark
purpose upon the floor. He strove hard to collect himself and remember
the words of power he had made use of before in similar dread positions
where his dangerous practice had sometimes led; but he could recall
nothing consecutively; a mist lay over his mind and memory; he felt
dazed and his forces scattered. The deeps within were too troubled for
healing power to come out of them. It was glamour, of course, he realised afterwards,
the strong glamour thrown upon his imagination by some powerful
personality behind the veil; but at the time he was not sufficiently
aware of this and, as with all true glamour, was unable to grasp where
the true ended and the false began. He was caught momentarily in the
same vortex that had sought to lure the cat to destruction through its
delight, and threatened utterly to overwhelm the dog through its terror. There came a sound in the chimney behind him like
wind booming and tearing its way down. The windows rattled. The candle
flickered and went out. The glacial atmosphere closed round him with
the cold of death, and a great rushing sound swept by overhead as
though the ceiling had lifted to a great height. He heard the door
shut. Far away it sounded. He felt lost, shelterless in the depths of
his soul. Yet still he held out and resisted while the climax of the
fight came nearer and nearer. ... He had stepped into the stream of
forces awakened by Fender and he knew that he must withstand them to
the end or come to a conclusion that it was not good for a man to come
to. Something from the region of utter cold was upon him. And then quite suddenly, through the confused mists
about him, there slowly rose up the Personality that had been all the
time directing the battle. Some force entered his being that shook him
as the tempest shakes a leaf, and close against his eyes--clean level
with his face--he found himself staring into the wreck of a vast dark
Countenance, a countenance that was terrible even in its ruin. For ruined it was, and terrible it was, and the mark
of spiritual evil was branded everywhere upon its broken features.
Eyes, face and hair rose level with his own, and for a space of time he
never could properly measure, or determine, these two, a man and a
woman, looked straight into each other's visages and down into each
other's hearts. And John Silence, the soul with the good, unselfish
motive, held his own against the dark discarnate woman whose motive was
pure evil, and whose soul was on the side of the Dark Powers. It was the climax that touched the depth of power
within him and began to restore him slowly to his own. He was
conscious, of course, of effort, and yet it seemed no superhuman one,
for he had recognised the character of his opponent's power, and he
called upon the good within him to meet and overcome it. The inner
forces stirred and trembled in response to his call. They did not at
first come readily as was their habit, for under the spell of glamour
they had already been diabolically lulled into inactivity, but come
they eventually did, rising out of the inner spiritual nature he had
learned with so much time and pain to awaken to life. And power and
confidence came with them. He began to breathe deeply and regularly,
and at the same time to absorb into himself the forces opposed to him,
and to turn them to his own account. By ceasing to resist, and
allowing the deadly stream to pour into him unopposed, he used the very
power supplied by his adversary and thus enormously increased his own. For this spiritual alchemy he had learned. He
understood that force ultimately is everywhere one and the same; it is
the motive behind that makes it good or evil; and his motive was
entirely unselfish. He knew-- provided he was not first robbed of
self-control--how vicariously to absorb these evil radiations into
himself and change them magically into his own good purposes. And,
since his motive was pure and his soul fearless, they could not work
him harm. Thus he stood in the main stream of evil unwittingly
attracted by Fender, deflecting its course upon himself; and after
passing through the purifying filter of his own unselfishness these
energies could only add to his store of experience, of knowledge, and
therefore of power. And, as his self-control returned to him, he
gradually accomplished this purpose, even though trembling while he did
so. Yet the struggle was severe, and in spite of the
freezing chill of the air, the perspiration poured down his face. Then,
by slow degrees, the dark and dreadful countenance faded, the glamour
passed from his soul, the normal proportions returned to walls and
ceiling, the forms melted back into the fog, and the whirl of rushing
shadow-cats disappeared whence they came. And with the return of the consciousness of his own
identity John Silence was restored to the full control of his own
will-power. In a deep, modulated voice he began to utter certain
rhythmical sounds that slowly rolled through the air like a rising sea,
filling the room with powerful vibratory activities that whelmed all
irregularities of lesser vibrations in its own swelling tone. He made
certain sigils, gestures and movements at the same time. For several
minutes he continued to utter these words, until at length the growing
volume dominated the whole room and mastered the manifestation of all
that opposed it. For just as he understood the spiritual alchemy that
can transmute evil forces by raising them into higher channels, so he
knew from long study the occult use of sound, and its direct effect
upon the plastic region wherein the powers of spiritual evil work their
fell purposes. Harmony was restored first of all to his own soul, and
thence to the room and all its occupants. And, after himself, the first to recognise it was
the old dog lying in his corner. Flame began suddenly uttering sounds
of pleasure, that "something" between a growl and a grunt that dogs
make upon being restored to their master's confidence. Dr. Silence
heard the thumping of the collie's tail against the floor. And the
grunt and the thumping touched the depth of affection in the man's
heart, and gave him some inkling of what agonies the dumb creature had
suffered. Next, from the shadows by the window, a somewhat
shrill purring announced the restoration of the cat to its normal
state. Smoke was advancing across the carpet. He seemed very pleased
with himself, and smiled with an expression of supreme innocence. He
was no shadow-cat, but real and full of his usual and perfect
self-possession. He marched along, picking his way delicately, but with
a stately dignity that suggested his ancestry with the majesty of
Egypt. His eyes no longer glared; they shone steadily before him, they
radiated, not excitement, but knowledge. Clearly he was anxious to make
amends for the mischief to which he had unwittingly lent himself owing
to his subtle and electric constitution. Still uttering his sharp high purrings he marched up
to his master and rubbed vigorously against his legs. Then he stood on
his hind feet and pawed his knees and stared beseechingly up into his
face. He turned his head towards the corner where the collie still lay,
thumping his tail feebly and pathetically. John Silence understood. He bent down and stroked
the creature's living fur, noting the line of bright blue sparks that
followed the motion of his hand down its back. And then they advanced
together towards the corner where the dog was. Smoke went first and put his nose gently against his
friend's muzzle, purring while he rubbed, and uttering little soft
sounds of affection in his throat. The doctor lit the candle and
brought it over. He saw the collie lying on its side against the wall;
it was utterly exhausted, and foam still hung about its jaws. Its tail
and eyes responded to the sound of its name, but it was evidently very
weak and overcome. Smoke continued to rub against its cheek and nose
and eyes, sometimes even standing on its body and kneading into the
thick yellow hair. Flame replied from time to time by little licks of
the tongue, most of them curiously misdirected. But Dr. Silence felt intuitively that something
disastrous had happened, and his heart was wrung. He stroked the dear
body, feeling it over for bruises or broken bones, but finding none. He
fed it with what remained of the sandwiches and milk, but the creature
clumsily upset the saucer and lost the sandwiches between its paws, so
that the doctor had to feed it with his own hand. And all the while
Smoke meowed piteously. Then John Silence began to understand. He went
across to the farther side of the room and called aloud to it. At any other time the dog would have been upon him
in an instant, barking and leaping to the shoulder. And even now he got
up, though heavily and awkwardly, to his feet. He started to run,
wagging his tail more briskly. He collided first with a chair, and then
ran straight into a table. Smoke trotted close at his side, trying his
very best to guide him. But it was useless. Dr. Silence had to lift him
up into his own arms and carry him like a baby. For he was blind. IIIIt was a week later when John Silence called to see
the author in his new house, and found him well on the way to recovery
and already busy again with his writing. The haunted look had left his
eyes, and he seemed cheerful and confident. "Humour restored?" laughed the doctor, as soon as
they were comfortably settled in the room overlooking the Park. "I've had no trouble since I left that dreadful
place," returned Pender gratefully; "and thanks to you----" He told the astonished author something of his
experiences in it with the animals. "I don't pretend to understand," Fender said, when
the account was finished, "but I and my wife are intensely relieved to
be free of it all. Only I must say I should like to know something of
the former history of the house. When we took it six months ago I heard
no word against it." "I can satisfy your curiosity to some extent," he
said, running his eye over the sheets, and then replacing them in his
coat; "for by my secretary's investigations I have been able to check
certain information obtained in the hypnotic trance by a 'sensitive'
who helps me in such cases. The former occupant who haunted you appears
to have been a woman of singularly atrocious life and character who
finally suffered death by hanging, after a series of crimes that
appalled the whole of England and only came to light by the merest
chance. She came to her end in the year 1798, for it was not this
particular house she lived in, but a much larger one that then stood
upon the site it now occupies, and was then, of course, not in London,
but in the country. She was a person of intellect, possessed of a
powerful, trained will, and of consummate audacity, and I am convinced
availed herself of the resources of the lower magic to attain her ends.
This goes far to explain the virulence of the attack upon yourself, and
why she is still able to carry on after death the evil practices that
formed her main purpose during life." "You think that after death a soul can still
consciously direct----" gasped the author. "I think, as I told you before, that the forces of a
powerful personality may still persist after death in the line of their
original momentum," replied the doctor; "and that strong thoughts and
purposes can still react upon suitably prepared brains long after their
originators have passed away. "If you knew anything of magic," he pursued, "you
would know that thought is dynamic, and that it may call into existence
forms and pictures that may well exist for hundreds of years. For, not
far removed from the region of our human life is another region where
float the waste and drift of all the centuries, the limbo of the shells
of the dead; a densely populated region crammed with horror and
abomination of all descriptions, and sometimes galvanised into active
life again by the will of a trained manipulator, a mind versed in the
practices of lower magic. That this woman understood its vile commerce,
I am persuaded, and the forces she set going during her life have
simply been accumulating ever since, and would have continued to do so
had they not been drawn down upon yourself, and afterwards discharged
and satisfied through me. "Anything might have brought down the attack, for,
besides drugs, there are certain violent emotions, certain moods of the
soul, certain spiritual fevers, if I may so call them, which directly
open the inner being to a cognisance of this astral region I have
mentioned. In your case it happened to be a peculiarly potent drug that
did it. "But now, tell me," he added, after a pause, handing
to the perplexed author a pencil drawing he had made of the dark
countenance that had appeared to him during the night on Putney
Hill--"tell me if you recognise this face?" Pender looked at the drawing closely, greatly
astonished. He shuddered a little as he looked. "Undoubtedly," he said, "it is the face I kept
trying to draw--dark, with the great mouth and jaw, and the drooping
eye. That is the woman." Dr. Silence then produced from his pocket-book an
old-fashioned woodcut of the same person which his secretary had
unearthed from the records of the Newgate Calendar. The woodcut and the
pencil drawing were two different aspects of the same dreadful visage.
The men compared them for some moments in silence. "It makes me thank God for the limitations of our
senses," said Pender quietly, with a sigh; "continuous clairvoyance
must be a sore affliction." "It is indeed," returned John Silence significantly,
"and if all the people nowadays who claim to be clairvoyant were really
so, the statistics of suicide and lunacy would be considerably higher
than they are. It is little wonder," he added, "that your sense of
humour was clouded, with the mind-forces of that dead monster trying to
use your brain for their dissemination. You have had an interesting
adventure, Mr. Felix Pender, and, let me add, a fortunate escape." The author was about to renew his thanks when there
came a sound of scratching at the door, and the doctor sprang up
quickly. Before he had time to open the door, it had yielded
to the pressure behind it and flew wide open to admit a great
yellow-haired collie. The dog, wagging his tail and contorting his
whole body with delight, tore across the floor and tried to leap up
upon his owner's breast. And there was laughter and happiness in the
old eyes; for they were clear again as the day. A PSYCHICAL INVASIONAlgernon BlackwoodI"And what is it makes you think I could be of use in
this particular case?" asked Dr. John Silence, looking across somewhat
sceptically at the Swedish lady in the chair facing him. "Oh, please--that dreadful word!" he interrupted,
holding up a finger with a gesture of impatience. "Well, then," she laughed, "your wonderful
clairvoyant gift and your trained psychic knowledge of the processes by
which a personality may be disintegrated and destroyed--these strange
studies you've been experimenting with all these years----" "If it's only a case of multiple personality I must
really cry off," interrupted the doctor again hastily, a bored
expression in his eyes. "It's not that; now, please, be serious, for I want
your help," she said; "and if I choose my words poorly you must be
patient with my ignorance. The case I know will interest you, and no
one else could deal with it so well. In fact, no ordinary professional
man could deal with it at all, for I know of no treatment nor medicine
that can restore a lost sense of humour!" "You begin to interest me with your 'case,'" he
replied, and made himself comfortable to listen. Mrs. Sivendson drew a sigh of contentment as she
watched him go to the tube and heard him tell the servant he was not to
be disturbed. "I believe you have read my thoughts already," she
said; "your intuitive knowledge of what goes on in other people's minds
is positively uncanny." Her friend shook his head and smiled as he drew his
chair up to a convenient position and prepared to listen attentively to
what she had to say. He closed his eyes, as he always did when he
wished to absorb the real meaning of a recital that might be
inadequately expressed, for by this method he found it easier to set
himself in tune with the living thoughts that lay behind the broken
words. By his friends John Silence was regarded as an
eccentric, because he was rich by accident, and by choice--a doctor.
That a man of independent means should devote his time to doctoring,
chiefly doctoring folk who could not pay, passed their comprehension
entirely. The native nobility of a soul whose first desire was to help
those who could not help themselves, puzzled them. After that, it
irritated them, and, greatly to his own satisfaction, they left him to
his own devices. Dr. Silence was a free-lance, though, among doctors,
having neither consulting-room, bookkeeper, nor professional manner. He
took no fees, being at heart a genuine philanthropist, yet at the same
time did no harm to his fellow-practitioners, because he only accepted
unremunerative cases, and cases that interested him for some very
special reason. He argued that the rich could pay, and the very poor
could avail themselves of organised charity, but that a very large
class of ill-paid, self-respecting workers, often followers of the
arts, could not afford the price of a week's comforts merely to be told
to travel. And it was these he desired to help: cases often requiring
special and patient study-- things no doctor can give for a guinea, and
that no one would dream of expecting him to give. But there was another side to his personality and
practice, and one with which we are now more directly concerned; for
the cases that especially appealed to him were of no ordinary kind, but
rather of that intangible, elusive, and difficult nature best described
as psychical afflictions; and, though he would have been the last
person himself to approve of the title, it was beyond question that he
was known more or less generally as the "Psychic Doctor." In order to grapple with cases of this peculiar
kind, he had submitted himself to a long and severe training, at once
physical, mental, and spiritual. What precisely this training had been,
or where undergone, no one seemed to know,--for he never spoke of it,
as, indeed, he betrayed no single other characteristic of the
charlatan,--but the fact that it had involved a total disappearance
from the world for five years, and that after he returned and began his
singular practice no one ever dreamed of applying to him the so easily
acquired epithet of quack, spoke much for the seriousness of his
strange quest and also for the genuineness of his attainments. For the modern psychical researcher he felt the calm
tolerance of the "man who knows." There was a trace of pity in his
voice--contempt he never showed--when he spoke of their methods. "This classification of results is uninspired work at
best," he said once to me, when I had been his confidential assistant
for some years. "It leads nowhere, and after a hundred years will lead
nowhere. It is playing with the wrong end of a rather dangerous toy.
Far better, it would be, to examine the causes, and then the results
would so easily slip into place and explain themselves. For the sources
are accessible, and open to all who have the courage to lead the life
that alone makes practical investigation safe and possible." And towards the question of clairvoyance, too, his
attitude was significantly sane, for he knew how extremely rare the
genuine power was, and that what is commonly called clairvoyance is
nothing more than a keen power of visualising. "It connotes a slightly increased sensibility,
nothing more," he would say. "The true clairvoyant deplores his power,
recognising that it adds a new horror to life, and is in the nature of
an affliction. And you will find this always to be the real test." Thus it was that John Silence, this singularly
developed doctor, was able to select his cases with a clear
knowledge of the difference between mere hysterical delusion and the
kind of psychical affliction that claimed his special powers. It was
never necessary for him to resort to the cheap mysteries of divination;
for, as I have heard him observe, after the solution of some peculiarly
intricate problem-- "Systems of divination, from geomancy down to
reading by tea-leaves, are merely so many methods of obscuring the
outer vision, in order that the inner vision may become open. Once the
method is mastered, no system is necessary at all." And the words were significant of the methods of
this remarkable man, the keynote of whose power lay, perhaps, more than
anything else, in the knowledge, first, that thought can act at a
distance, and, secondly, that thought is dynamic and can accomplish
material results. "Learn how to think," he would have expressed
it, "and you have learned to tap power at its source." To look at--he was now past forty--he was sparely
built, with speaking brown eyes in which shone the light of knowledge
and self-confidence, while at the same time they made one think of that
wondrous gentleness seen most often in the eyes of animals. A close
beard concealed the mouth without disguising the grim determination of
lips and jaw, and the face somehow conveyed an impression of
transparency, almost of light, so delicately were the features refined
away. On the fine forehead was that indefinable touch of peace that
comes from identifying the mind with what is permanent in the soul, and
letting the impermanent slip by without power to wound or distress;
while, from his manner,--so gentle, quiet, sympathetic,--few could have
guessed the strength of purpose that burned within like a great flame. "But the symptoms first, please, my dear Svenska,"
he interrupted, with a strangely compelling seriousness of manner, "and
your deductions afterwards." She turned round sharply on the edge of her chair
and looked him in the face, lowering her voice to prevent her emotion
betraying itself too obviously. "In my opinion there's only one symptom," she half
whispered, as though telling something disagreeable--"fear--simply
fear." "I think not; though how can I say? I think it's a
horror in the psychical region. It's no ordinary delusion; the man is
quite sane; but he lives in mortal terror of something----" "I don't know what you mean by his 'psychical
region,'" said the doctor, with a smile; "though I suppose you wish me
to understand that his spiritual, and not his mental, processes are
affected. Anyhow, try and tell me briefly and pointedly what you know
about the man, his symptoms, his need for help, my peculiar help, that
is, and all that seems vital in the case. I promise to listen
devotedly." "I am trying," she continued earnestly, "but must do
so in my own words and trust to your intelligence to disentangle as I
go along. He is a young author, and lives in a tiny house off Putney
Heath somewhere. He writes humorous stories--quite a genre of his own:
Pender--you must have heard the name--Felix Pender? Oh, the man had a
great gift, and married on the strength of it; his future seemed
assured. I say 'had,' for quite suddenly his talent utterly failed him.
Worse, it became transformed into its opposite. He can no longer write
a line in the old way that was bringing him success----" "He still writes, then? The force has not gone?" he
asked briefly, and then closed his eyes again to listen. "He works like a fury," she went on, "but produces
nothing"--she hesitated a moment--"nothing that he can use or sell. His
earnings have practically ceased, and he makes a precarious living by
book-reviewing and odd jobs--very odd, some of them. Yet, I am certain
his talent has not really deserted him finally, but is merely----" "Obliterated," she went on, after a moment to weigh
the word, "merely obliterated by something else----" "I wish I knew. All I can say is that he is haunted,
and temporarily his sense of humour is shrouded--gone--replaced by
something dreadful that writes other things. Unless something competent
is done, he will simply starve to death. Yet he is afraid to go to a
doctor for fear of being pronounced insane; and, anyhow, a man can
hardly ask a doctor to take a guinea to restore a vanished sense
of humour, can he?" "Not doctors yet. He tried some clergymen and
religious people; but they know so little and have so little
intelligent sympathy. And most of them are so busy balancing on their
own little pedestals----" "Not in the least. She is devoted; a woman very well
educated, though without being really intelligent, and with so little
sense of humour herself that she always laughs at the wrong places. But
she has nothing to do with the cause of his distress; and, indeed, has
chiefly guessed it from observing him, rather than from what little he
has told her. And he, you know, is a really lovable fellow,
hard-working, patient--altogether worth saving." Dr. Silence opened his eyes and went over to ring
for tea. He did not know very much more about the case of the humorist
than when he first sat down to listen; but he realised that no amount
of words from his Swedish friend would help to reveal the real facts. A
personal interview with the author himself could alone do that. "All humorists are worth saving," he said with a
smile, as she poured out tea. "We can't afford to lose a single one in
these strenuous days. I will go and see your friend at the first
opportunity." She thanked him elaborately, effusively, with many
words, and he, with much difficulty, kept the conversation
thenceforward strictly to the teapot. And, as a result of this conversation, and a little
more he had gathered by means best known to himself and his secretary,
he was whizzing in his motor-car one afternoon a few days later up the
Putney Hill to have his first interview with Felix Pender, the humorous
writer who was the victim of some mysterious malady in his "psychical
region" that had obliterated his sense of the comic and threatened to
wreck his life and destroy his talent. And his desire to help was
probably of equal strength with his desire to know and to investigate. The motor stopped with a deep purring sound, as
though a great black panther lay concealed within its hood, and the
doctor--the "psychic doctor," as he was sometimes called--stepped out
through the gathering fog, and walked across the tiny garden that held
a blackened fir tree and a stunted laurel shrubbery. The house was very
small, and it was some time before any one answered the bell. Then,
suddenly, a light appeared in the hall, and he saw a pretty little
woman standing on the top step begging him to come in. She was dressed
in grey, and the gaslight fell on a mass of deliberately brushed light
hair. Stuffed, dusty birds, and a shabby array of African spears, hung
on the wall behind her. A hat-rack, with a bronze plate full of
very large cards, led his eye swiftly to a dark staircase beyond. Mrs.
Fender had round eyes like a child's, and she greeted him with an
effusiveness that barely concealed her emotion, yet strove to appear
naturally cordial. Evidently she had been looking out for his arrival,
and had outrun the servant girl. She was a little breathless. "I hope you've not been kept waiting--I think it's
most good of you to come----" she began, and then stopped sharp
when she saw his face in the gaslight. There was something in Dr.
Silence's look that did not encourage mere talk. He was in earnest now,
if ever man was. "Good evening, Mrs. Fender," he said, with a quiet
smile that won confidence, yet deprecated unnecessary words, "the fog
delayed me a little. I am glad to see you." They went into a dingy sitting-room at the back of
the house, neatly furnished but depressing. Books stood in a row upon
the mantelpiece. The fire had evidently just been lit. It smoked in
great puffs into the room. "Mrs. Sivendson said she thought you might be able
to come," ventured the little woman again, looking up engagingly into
his face and betraying anxiety and eagerness in every gesture. "But I
hardly dared to believe it. I think it is really too good of you. My
husband's easels so peculiar that--well, you know, I am quite sure any
ordinary doctor would say at once the asylum----" "He'll be back any minute now," she replied,
obviously relieved to see him laugh; "but the fact is, we didn't expect
you so early--I mean, my husband hardly thought you would come at all." "I am always delighted to come--when I am really
wanted, and can be of help," he said quickly; "and, perhaps, it's all
for the best that your husband is out, for now that we are alone you
can tell me something about his difficulties. So far, you know, I have
heard very little." Her voice trembled as she thanked him, and when he
came and took a chair close beside her she actually had difficulty in
finding words with which to begin. "In the first place," she began timidly, and then
continuing with a nervous incoherent rush of words, "he will be simply
delighted that you've really come, because he said you were the only
person he would consent to see at all--the only doctor, I mean. But, of
course, he doesn't know how frightened I am, or how much I have
noticed. He pretends with me that it's just a nervous breakdown, and
I'm sure he doesn't realise all the odd things I've noticed him doing.
But the main thing, I suppose----" 'Yes, the main thing, Mrs. Fender," he said,
encouragingly, noticing her hesitation. "----is that he thinks we are not alone in the
house. That's the chief thing." "It began last summer when I came back from Ireland;
he had been here alone for six weeks, and I thought him looking tired
and queer-ragged and scattered about the face, if you know what I mean,
and his manner worn out. He said he had been writing hard, but his
inspiration had somehow failed him, and he was dissatisfied with his
work. His sense of humour was leaving him, or changing into something
else, he said. There was something in the house, he declared,
that"--she emphasised the words--"prevented his feeling funny." "Something in the house that prevented his feeling
funny," repeated the doctor. "Ah, now we're getting to the heart of it!" "And what was it he did that you thought
strange?" he asked sympathetically. "Be brief, or he may be here before
you finish." "Very small things, but significant it seemed to me.
He changed his workroom from the library, as we call it, to the
sitting-room. He said all his characters became wrong and terrible in
the library; they altered, so that he felt like writing
tragedies--vile, debased tragedies, the tragedies of broken souls. But
now he says the same of the sitting-room, and he's gone back to the
library." "You see, there's so little I can tell you," she
went on, with increasing speed and countless gestures. "I mean it's
only very small things he does and says that are queer. What frightens
me is that he assumes there is some one else in the house all the
time--some one I never see. He does not actually say so, but on the
stairs I've seen him standing aside to let some one pass; I've seen him
open a door to let some one in or out; and often in our bedrooms he
puts chairs about as though for some one else to sit in. Oh--oh yes,
and once or twice," she cried--"once or twice----" "Once or twice," she resumed hurriedly, as though
she heard a sound that alarmed her, "I've heard him running--coming in
and out of the rooms breathless as if something were after him----" The door opened while she was still speaking,
cutting her words off in the middle, and a man came into the room. He
was dark and cleanshaven, sallow rather, with the eyes of imagination,
and dark hair growing scantily about the temples. He was dressed in a
shabby tweed suit, and wore an untidy flannel collar at the neck. The
dominant expression of his face was startled--hunted; an expression
that might any moment leap into the dreadful stare of terror and
announce a total loss of self-control. The moment he saw his visitor a smile spread over
his worn features, and he advanced to shake hands. "I hoped you would come; Mrs. Sivendson said you
might be able to find time," he said simply. His voice was thin and
needy. "I am very glad to see you, Dr. Silence. It is 'Doctor,' is it
not?" "Well, I am entitled to the description," laughed
the other, "but I rarely get it. You know, I do not practise as a
regular thing; that is, I only take cases that specially interest me,
or----" He did not finish the sentence, for the men
exchanged a glance of sympathy that rendered it unnecessary. "I trust you will still think so when you have heard
what I have to tell you," continued the author, a little wearily. He
led the way across the hall into the little smoking-room where they
could talk freely and undisturbed. In the smoking-room, the door shut and privacy about
them, Fender's attitude changed somewhat, and his manner became very
grave. The doctor sat opposite, where he could watch his face. Already,
he saw, it looked more haggard. Evidently it cost him much to refer to
his trouble at all. "What I have is, in my belief, a profound spiritual
affliction," he began quite bluntly, looking straight into the other's
eyes. 'Yes, you saw that, of course; my atmosphere must
convey that much to any one with psychic perceptions. Besides which, I
feel sure from all I've heard, that you are really a soul-doctor, are
you not, more than a healer merely of the body?" "I understand, yes. Well, I have experienced a
curious disturbance in-- not in my physical region primarily. I
mean my nerves are all right, and my body is all right. I have no
delusions exactly, but my spirit is tortured by a calamitous fear which
first came upon me in a strange manner." John Silence leaned forward a moment and took the
speaker's hand and held it in his own for a few brief seconds, closing
his eyes as he did so. He was not feeling his pulse, or doing any of
the things that doctors ordinarily do; he was merely absorbing into
himself the main note of the man's mental condition, so as to get
completely his own point of view, and thus be able to treat his case
with true sympathy. A very close observer might perhaps have noticed
that a slight tremor ran through his frame after he had held the hand
for a few seconds. "Tell me quite frankly, Mr. Fender," he said
soothingly, releasing the hand, and with deep attention in his manner,
"tell me all the steps that led to the beginning of this invasion. I
mean tell me what the particular drug was, and why you took it, and how
it affected you----" "Then you know it began with a drug!" cried the
author, with undisguised astonishment. "I only know from what I observe in you, and in its
effect upon myself. You are in a surprising psychical condition.
Certain portions of your atmosphere are vibrating at a far greater rate
than others. This is the effect of a drug, but of no ordinary drug.
Allow me to finish, please. If the higher rate of vibration spreads all
over, you will become, of course, permanently cognisant of a much
larger world than the one you know normally. If, on the other hand, the
rapid portion sinks back to the usual rate, you will lose these
occasional increased perceptions you now have." "You amaze me!" exclaimed the author; "for your
words exactly describe what I have been feeling----" "I mention this only in passing, and to give you
confidence before you approach the account of your real affliction,"
continued the doctor. "All perception, as you know, is the result of
vibrations; and clairvoyance simply means becoming sensitive to an
increased scale of vibrations. The awakening of the inner senses we
hear so much about means no more than that. Your partial clairvoyance
is easily explained. The only thing that puzzles me is how you managed
to procure the drug, for it is not easy to get in pure form, and no
adulterated tincture could have given you the terrific impetus I see
you have acquired. But, please proceed now and tell me your story in
your own way." "This Cannabis Mica," the author went on,
"came into my possession last autumn while my wife was away. I need not
explain how I got it, for that has no importance; but it was the
genuine fluid extract, and I could not resist the temptation to make an
experiment. One of its effects, as you know, is to induce torrential
laughter----" "----I am a writer of humorous tales, and I wished
to increase my own sense of laughter--to see the ludicrous from an
abnormal point of view. I wished to study it a bit, if possible,
and----" "I took an experimental dose. I starved for six
hours to hasten the effect, locked myself into this room, and gave
orders not to be disturbed. Then I swallowed the stuff and waited." "I waited one hour, two, three, four, five hours.
Nothing happened. No laughter came, but only a great weariness instead.
Nothing in the room or in my thoughts came within a hundred miles of a
humorous aspect." "Always a most uncertain drug," interrupted the
doctor. "We make very small use of it on that account." "At two o'clock in the morning I felt so hungry and
tired that I decided to give up the experiment and wait no longer. I
drank some milk and went upstairs to bed. I felt flat and disappointed.
I fell asleep at once and must have slept for about an hour, when I
awoke suddenly with a great noise in my ears. It was the noise of my
own laughter! I was simply shaking with merriment. At first I was
bewildered and thought I had been laughing in dreams, but a moment
later I remembered the drug, and was delighted to think that after all
I had got an effect. It had been working all along, only I had
miscalculated the time. The only unpleasant thing then was an
odd feeling that I had not waked naturally, but had been wakened by
some one else--deliberately. This came to me as a certainty in the
middle of my noisy laughter and distressed me." "Any impression who it could have been?" asked the
doctor, now listening with close attention to every word, very much on
the alert. Fender hesitated and tried to smile. He brushed his
hair from his forehead with a nervous gesture. "You must tell me all your impressions, even your
fancies; they are quite as important as your certainties." "I had a vague idea that it was some one connected
with my forgotten dream, some one who had been at me in my sleep, some
one of great strength and great ability--of great force--quite an
unusual personality--and, I was certain, too--a woman." Fender started a little at the question and his
sallow face flushed; it seemed to surprise him. But he shook his head
quickly with an indefinable look of horror. "Evil," he answered briefly, "appallingly evil, and
yet mingled with the sheer wickedness of it was also a certain
perverseness--the perversity of the unbalanced mind." He hesitated a moment and looked up sharply at his
interlocutor. A shade of suspicion showed itself in his eyes. "No," laughed the doctor, "you need not fear that
I'm merely humouring you, or think you mad. Far from it. Your story
interests me exceedingly and you furnish me unconsciously with a number
of clues as you tell it. You see, I possess some knowledge of my own as
to these psychic byways." "I was shaking with such violent laughter,"
continued the narrator, reassured in a moment, "though with no clear
idea what was amusing me, that I had the greatest difficulty in getting
up for the matches, and was afraid I should frighten the servants
overhead with my explosions. When the gas was lit I found the room
empty, of course, and the door locked as usual. Then I half dressed and
went out on to the landing, my hilarity better under control, and
proceeded to go downstairs. I wished to record my sensations. I stuffed
a handkerchief into my mouth so as not to scream aloud and communicate
my hysterics to the entire household." "It was hanging about me all the time," said Fender,
"but for the moment it seemed to have withdrawn. Probably, too, my
laughter killed all other emotions." "I was just coming to that. I see you know all my
'symptoms' in advance, as it were; for, of course, I thought I should
never get to the bottom. Each step seemed to take five minutes, and
crossing the narrow hall at the foot of the stairs--well, I could have
sworn it was half an hour's journey had not my watch certified that it
was a few seconds. Yet I walked fast and tried to push on. It was no
good. I walked apparently without advancing, and at that rate it would
have taken me a week to get down Putney Hill." "An experimental dose radically alters the scale of
time and space sometimes----" "But, when at last I got into my study and lit the
gas, the change came horridly, and sudden as a flash of lightning. It
was like a douche of icy water, and in the middle of this storm of
laughter----" 'Yes; what?" asked the doctor, leaning forward and
peering into his eyes. "----I was overwhelmed with terror," said Fender,
lowering his reedy voice at the mere recollection of it. He paused a moment and mopped his forehead. The
scared, hunted look in his eyes now dominated the whole face. Yet, all
the time, the corners of his mouth hinted of possible laughter as
though the recollection of that merriment still amused him. The
combination of fear and laughter in his face was very curious, and lent
great conviction to his story; it also lent a bizarre expression of
horror to his gestures. 'Yes, terror; for, though the Thing that woke me
seemed to have gone, the memory of it still frightened me, and I
collapsed into a chair. Then I locked the door and tried to reason with
myself, but the drug made my movements so prolonged that it took me
five minutes to reach the door, and another five to get back to the
chair again. The laughter, top, kept bubbling up inside me--great
wholesome laughter that shook me like gusts of wind--so that even my
terror almost made me laugh. Oh, but I may tell you, Dr. Silence, it
was altogether vile, that mixture of fear and laughter, altogether vile! "Then, all at once, the things in the room again
presented their funny side to me and set me off laughing more furiously
than ever. The bookcase was ludicrous, the arm-chair a perfect clown,
the way the clock looked at me on the mantelpiece too comic for words;
the arrangement of papers and inkstand on the desk tickled me till I
roared and shook and held my sides and the tears streamed down my
cheeks. And that footstool! Oh, that absurd footstool!" He lay back in his chair, laughing to himself and
holding up his hands at the thought of it, and at the sight of him Dr.
Silence laughed, too. "Go on, please," he said, "I quite understand. I
know something myself of the hashish laughter." The author pulled himself together and resumed, his
face growing quickly grave again. "So, you see, side by side with this extravagant,
apparently causeless merriment, there was also an extravagant,
apparently causeless terror. The drug produced the laughter, I knew;
but what brought in the terror I could not imagine. Everywhere behind
the fun lay the fear. It was terror masked by cap and bells; and I
became the playground for two opposing emotions, armed and fighting to
the death. Gradually, then, the impression grew in me that this fear
was caused by the invasion-- so you called it just now--of the 'person'
who had wakened me: she was utterly evil; inimical to my soul, or at
least to all in me that wished for good. There I stood, sweating and
trembling, laughing at everything in the room, yet all the while with
this white terror mastering my heart. And this creature was
putting----putting her----" "----putting ideas into my mind," he went on
glancing nervously about the room. "Actually tapping my thought-stream
so as to switch off the usual current and inject her own. How mad that
sounds! I know it, but it's true. It's the only way I can express it.
Moreover, while the operation terrified me, the skill with which it was
accomplished filled me afresh with laughter at the clumsiness of men by
comparison. Our ignorant, bungling methods of teaching the minds of
others, of inculcating ideas, and so on, overwhelmed me with laughter
when I understood this superior and diabolical method. Yet my laughter
seemed hollow and ghastly, and ideas of evil and tragedy trod close
upon the heels of the comic. Oh, doctor, I tell you again, it was
unnerving!" John Silence sat with his head thrust forward to
catch every word of the story which the other continued to pour out in
nervous, jerky sentences and lowered voice. "Not with my eyes. There was no visual
hallucination. But in my mind there began to grow the vivid picture of
a woman--large, dark-skinned, with white teeth and masculine features,
and one eye--the left--so drooping as to appear almost closed. Oh, such
a face----!" "I wish I could forget it," he whispered, "I only
wish I could forget it!" Then he sat forward in his chair suddenly, and
grasped the doctor's hand with an emotional gesture. "I must tell you how grateful I am for your
patience and sympathy," he cried, with a tremor in his voice,
"and--that you do not think me mad. I have told no one else a quarter
of all this, and the mere freedom of speech--the relief of sharing my
affliction with another--has helped me already more than I can possibly
say." Dr. Silence pressed his hand and looked steadily
into the frightened eyes. His voice was very gentle when he replied. "Your case, you know, is very singular, but of
absorbing interest to me," he said, "for it threatens, not your
physical existence but the temple of your psychical existence--the
inner life. Your mind would not be permanently affected here and now,
in this world; but in the existence after the body is left behind, you
might wake up with your spirit so twisted, so distorted, so
befouled, that you would be spiritually insane--a far more
radical condition than merely being insane here." There came a strange hush over the room, and between
the two men sitting there facing one another. "Do you really mean--Good Lord!" stammered the
author as soon as he could find his tongue. "What I mean in detail will keep till a little
later, and I need only say now that I should not have spoken in this
way unless I were quite positive of being able to help you. Oh, there's
no doubt as to that, believe me. In the first place, I am very familiar
with the workings of this extraordinary drug, this drug which has had
the chance effect of opening you up to the forces of another region;
and, in the second, I have a firm belief in the reality of
supersensuous occurrences as well as considerable knowledge of psychic
processes acquired by long and painful experiment. The rest is, or
should be, merely sympathetic treatment and practical application. The
hashish has partially opened another world to you by increasing your
rate of psychical vibration, and thus rendering you abnormally
sensitive. Ancient forces attached to this house have attacked you. For
the moment I am only puzzled as to their precise nature; for were they
of an ordinary character, I should myself be psychic enough to feel
them. Yet I am conscious of feeling nothing as yet. But now, please
continue, Mr. Fender, and tell me the rest of your wonderful story; and
when you have finished, I will talk about the means of cure." Fender shifted his chair a little closer to the
friendly doctor and then went on in the same nervous voice with his
narrative. "After making some notes of my impressions I finally
got upstairs again to bed. It was four o'clock in the morning. I
laughed all the way up--at the grotesque banisters, the droll
physiognomy of the staircase window, the burlesque grouping of the
furniture, and the memory of that outrageous footstool in the room
below; but nothing more happened to alarm or disturb me, and I woke
late in the morning after a dreamless sleep, none the worse for my
experiment except for a slight headache and a coldness of the
extremities due to lowered circulation." "It was so distorted. The words, indeed, were mine
so far as I could remember, but the meanings seemed strange. It
frightened me. The sense was so altered. At the very places where my
characters were intended to tickle the ribs, only curious emotions of
sinister amusement resulted. Dreadful innuendoes had managed to creep
into the phrases. There was laughter of a kind, but it was bizarre,
horrible, distressing; and my attempt at analysis only increased my
dismay. The story, as it read then, made me shudder, for by virtue of
these slight changes it had come somehow to hold the soul of horror, of
horror disguised as merriment. The framework of humour was there, if
you understand me, but the characters had turned sinister, and their
laughter was evil." "I destroyed it," he whispered. "But, in the end,
though of course much perturbed about it, I persuaded myself that it
was due to some after-effect of the drug, a sort of reaction that gave
a twist to my mind and made me read macabre interpretations into words
and situations that did not properly hold them." "No; that stayed more or less. When my mind was
actively employed I forgot it, but when idle, dreaming, or doing
nothing in particular, there she was beside me, influencing my mind
horribly----" "Evil, scheming thoughts came to me, visions of
crime, hateful pictures of wickedness, and the kind of bad imagination
that so far has been foreign, indeed impossible, to my normal
nature----" "The pressure of the Dark Powers upon the
personality," murmured the doctor, making a quick note. "Pray, go on. I am merely making notes; you shall
know their purport fully later." "But, let me first finish the story of my
experimental dose, for I took it again the third night, and underwent a
very similar experience, delayed like the first in coming, and then
carrying me off my feet when it did come with a rush of this false
demon-laughter. This time, however, there was a reversal of the changed
scale of space and time; it shortened instead of lengthened, so that I
dressed and got downstairs in about twenty seconds, and the couple of
hours I stayed and worked in the study passed literally like a period
of ten minutes." "That is often true of an overdose," interjected the
doctor, "and you may go a mile in a few minutes, or a few yards in a
quarter of an hour. It is quite incomprehensible to those who have
never experienced it, and is a curious proof that time and space are
merely forms of thought." "This time," Fender went on, talking more and more
rapidly in his excitement, "another extraordinary effect came to me,
and I experienced a curious changing of the senses, so that I perceived
external things through one large main sense-channel instead of through
the five divisions known as sight, smell, touch, and so forth. You
will, I know, understand me when I tell you that I heard sights
and saw sounds. No language can make this comprehensible, of
course, and I can only say, for instance, that the striking of the
clock I saw as a visible picture in the air before me. I saw the sounds
of the tinkling bell. And in precisely the same way I heard the colours
in the room, especially the colours of those books in the shelf behind
you. Those red bindings I heard in deep sounds, and the yellow covers
of the French bindings next to them made a shrill, piercing note not
unlike the chattering of starlings. That brown bookcase muttered, and
those green curtains opposite kept up a constant sort of rippling sound
like the lower notes of a wood-horn. But I only was conscious of these
sounds when I looked steadily at the different objects, and thought
about them. The room, you understand, was not full of a chorus of
notes; but when I concentrated my mind upon a colour, I heard, as well
as saw, it." "That is a known, though rarely obtained, effect of
Cannabis indica," observed the doctor. "And it provoked laughter
again, did it?" "Only the muttering of the cupboard-bookcase made me
laugh. It was so like a great animal trying to get itself noticed, and
made me think of a performing bear--which is full of a kind of pathetic
humour, you know. But this mingling of the senses produced no confusion
in my brain. On the contrary, I was unusually clear-headed and
experienced an intensification of consciousness, and felt marvellously
alive and keen-minded. "Moreover, when I took up a pencil in obedience to
an impulse to sketch--a talent not normally mine--I found that I could
draw nothing but heads, nothing, in fact, but one head--always the
same--the head of a dark-skinned woman, with huge and terrible features
and a very drooping left eye; and so well drawn, too, that I was
amazed, as you may imagine----" Fender hesitated a moment for words, casting about
with his hands in the air and hunching his shoulders. A perceptible
shudder ran over him. "What I can only describe as--blackness," he
replied in a low tone; "the face of a dark and evil soul." "No; I have kept the drawings," he said, with a
laugh, and rose to get them from a drawer in the writing-desk behind
him. "Here is all that remains of the pictures, you see,"
he added, pushing a number of loose sheets under the doctor's eyes;
"nothing but a few scrawly lines. That's all I found the next morning.
I had really drawn no heads at all--nothing but those lines and blots
and wriggles. The pictures were entirely subjective, and existed only
in my mind which constructed them out of a few wild strokes of the pen.
Like the altered scale of space and time it was a complete delusion.
These all passed, of course, with the passing of the drug's effects.
But the other thing did not pass. I mean, the presence of that Dark
Soul remained with me. It is here still. It is real. I don't know how I
can escape from it." "It is attached to the house, not to you personally.
You must leave the house." "Yes. Only I cannot afford to leave the house, for
my work is my sole means of support, and--well, you see, since this
change I cannot even write. They are horrible, these mirthless tales I
now write, with their mockery of laughter, their diabolical suggestion.
Horrible? I shall go mad if this continues." He screwed his face up and looked about the room as
though he expected to see some haunting shape. "This influence in this house induced by my
experiment, has killed in a flash, in a sudden stroke, the sources of
my humour, and though I still go on writing funny tales--I have a
certain name you know--my inspiration has dried up, and much of what I
write I have to burn--yes, doctor, to burn, before any one sees it." "And shocking!" He passed his hand over his eyes a
moment and let the breath escape softly through his teeth. "Yet most
damnably clever in the consummate way the vile suggestions are
insinuated under cover of a kind of high drollery. My stenographer left
me of course--and I've been afraid to take another----" John Silence got up and began to walk about the room
leisurely without speaking; he appeared to be examining the pictures on
the wall and reading the names of the books lying about. Presently he
paused on the hearthrug, with his back to the fire, and turned to look
his patient quietly in the eyes. Fender's face was grey and drawn; the
hunted expression dominated it; the long recital had told upon him. "Thank you, Mr. Fender," he said, a curious glow
showing about his fine, quiet face; "thank you for the sincerity and
frankness of your account. But I think now there is nothing further I
need ask you." He indulged in a long scrutiny of the author's haggard
features drawing purposely the man's eyes to his own and then meeting
them with a look of power and confidence calculated to inspire even the
feeblest soul with courage. "And, to begin with," he added, smiling
pleasantly, "let me assure you without delay that you need have no
alarm, for you are no more insane or deluded than I myself am----" "----and this is simply a case, so far as I can
judge at present, of a very singular psychical invasion, and a very
sinister one, too, if you perhaps understand what I mean----" "It's an odd expression; you used it before, you
know," said the author wearily, yet eagerly listening to every word of
the diagnosis, and deeply touched by the intelligent sympathy which did
not at once indicate the lunatic asylum. "Possibly," returned the other, "and an odd
affliction, too, you'll allow, yet one not unknown to the nations of
antiquity, nor to those moderns, perhaps, who recognise the freedom of
action under certain pathogenic conditions between this world and
another." "And you think," asked Fender hastily, "that it is
all primarily due to the Cannabis? There is nothing radically
amiss with myself--nothing incurable, or----?" "Due entirely to the overdose," Dr. Silence replied
emphatically, "to the drug's direct action upon your psychical being.
It rendered you ultra-sensitive and made you respond to an increased
rate of vibration. And, let me tell you, Mr. Fender, that your
experiment might have had results far more dire. It has brought you
into touch with a somewhat singular class of Invisible, but of one, I
think, chiefly human in character. You might, however, just as easily
have been drawn out of human range altogether, and the results of such
a contingency would have been exceedingly terrible. Indeed, you would
not now be here to tell the tale. I need not alarm you on that score,
but mention it as a warning you will not misunderstand or underrate
after what you have been through. "You look puzzled. You do not quite gather what I am
driving at; and it is not to be expected that you should, for you, I
suppose, are the nominal Christian with the nominal Christian's lofty
standard of ethics, and his utter ignorance of spiritual possibilities.
Beyond a somewhat childish understanding of 'spiritual wickedness in
high places,' you probably have no conception of what is possible once
you break-down the slender gulf that is mercifully fixed between you
and that Outer World. But my studies and training have taken me far
outside these orthodox trips, and I have made experiments that I could
scarcely speak to you about in language that would be intelligible to
you." He paused a moment to note the breathless interest
of Fender's face and manner. Every word he uttered was calculated; he
knew exactly the value and effect of the emotions he desired to waken
in the heart of the afflicted being before him. "And from certain knowledge I have gained through
various experiences," he continued calmly, "I can diagnose your case as
I said before to be one of psychical invasion." "And the nature of this--er--invasion?" stammered
the bewildered writer of humorous tales. "There is no reason why I should not say at once
that I do not yet quite know," replied Dr. Silence. "I may first have
to make one or two experiments----" "Not exactly," the doctor said, with a grave smile,
"but with your assistance, perhaps. I shall want to test the conditions
of the house--to ascertain, if possible, the character of the forces,
of this strange personality that has been haunting you----" "At present you have no idea exactly
who--what--why----" asked the other in a wild flurry of interest, dread
and amazement. "Possibly not--but none the less dangerous on that
account, and more difficult to deal with. I cannot explain to you in a
few minutes the nature of such things, for you have not made the
studies that would enable you to follow me; but I have reason to
believe that on the dissolution at death of a human being, its forces
may still persist and continue to act in a blind, unconscious fashion.
As a rule they speedily dissipate themselves, but in the case of a very
powerful personality they may last a long time. And, in some cases--of
which I incline to think this is one--these forces may coalesce with
certain non-human entities who thus continue their life indefinitely
and increase their strength to an unbelievable degree. If the original
personality was evil, the beings attracted to the left-over forces will
also be evil. In this case, I think there has been an unusual and
dreadful aggrandisement of the thoughts and purposes left behind long
ago by a woman of consummate wickedness and great personal power of
character and intellect. Now, do you begin to see what I am driving at
a little?" Fender stared fixedly at his companion, plain horror
showing in his eyes. But he found nothing to say, and the doctor
continued-- "In your case, predisposed by the action of the
drug, you have experienced the rush of these forces in undiluted
strength. They wholly obliterate in you the sense of humour, fancy,
imagination,--all that makes for cheerfulness and hope. They seek,
though perhaps automatically only, to oust your own thoughts and
establish themselves in their place. You are the victim of a psychical
invasion. At the same time, you have become clairvoyant in the true
sense. You are also a clairvoyant victim." Fender mopped his face and sighed. He left his chair
and went over to the fireplace to warm himself. "There is no need to alarm your wife or to tell her
the details of our conversation," pursued the other quietly. "Let her
know that you will soon be in possession again of your sense of humour
and your health, and explain that I am lending you another house for
six months. Meanwhile I may have the right to use this house for a
night or two for my experiment. Is that understood between us?" "I can only thank you from the bottom of my heart,"
stammered Fender, unable to find words to express his gratitude. "Of the simplest character, my dear Mr. Fender.
Although I am myself an artificially trained psychic, and consequently
aware of the presence of discarnate entities as a rule, I have so far
felt nothing here at all. This makes me sure that the forces acting
here are of an unusual description. What I propose to do is to make an
experiment with a view of drawing out this evil, coaxing it from its
lair, so to speak, in order that it may exhaust itself through me
and become dissipated for ever. I have already been inoculated," he
added; "I consider myself to be immune." "Hell beneath! might be a more appropriate
exclamation," the doctor laughed. "But, seriously, Mr. Fender, this is
what I propose to do-- with your permission." "Of course, of course," cried the other, "you have
my permission and my best wishes for success. I can see no possible
objection, but----" "I pray to Heaven you will not undertake this
experiment alone, will you?" "You will take a companion with good nerves, and
reliable in case of disaster, won't you?" "Ah, that's better. I feel easier. I am sure you
must have among your acquaintances men who ---- " "Animals," explained the doctor, unable to prevent a
smile at his companion's expression of surprise--"two animals, a cat
and a dog." IIA few days later the humorist and his wife, with
minds greatly relieved, moved into a small furnished house placed at
their free disposal in another part of London; and John Silence, intent
upon his approaching experiment, made ready to spend a night in the
empty house on the top of Putney Hill. Only two rooms were prepared for
occupation: the study on the ground floor and the bedroom immediately
above it; all other doors were to be locked, and no servant was to be
left in the house. The motor had orders to call for him at nine o'clock
the following morning. And, meanwhile, his secretary had instructions to
look up the past history and associations of the place, and learn
everything he could concerning the character of former occupants,
recent or remote. The animals, by whose sensitiveness he intended to
test any unusual conditions in the atmosphere of the building, Dr.
Silence selected with care and judgment. He believed (and had already
made curious experiments to prove it) that animals were more often, and
more truly, clairvoyant than human beings. Many of them, he felt
convinced, possessed powers of perception far superior to that mere
keenness of the senses common to all dwellers in the wilds where the
senses grow specially alert; they had what he termed "animal
clairvoyance," and from his experiments with horses, dogs, cats, and
even birds, he had drawn certain deductions, which, however, need not
be referred to in detail here. Cats, in particular, he believed, were almost
continuously conscious of a larger field of vision, too detailed even
for a photographic camera, and quite beyond the reach of normal human
organs. He had, further, observed that while dogs were usually
terrified in the presence of such phenomena, cats on the other hand
were soothed and satisfied. They welcomed manifestations as something
belonging peculiarly to their own region. He selected his animals, therefore, with wisdom so
that they might afford a differing test, each in its own way, and that
one should not merely communicate its own excitement to the other. He
took a dog and a cat. The cat he chose, now full grown, had lived with him
since kitten-hood, a kitten hood of perplexing sweetness and audacious
mischief. Wayward it was and fanciful, ever playing its own mysterious
games in the corners of the room, jumping at invisible nothings,
leaping sideways into the air and falling with tiny moccasined feet on
to another part of the carpet, yet with an air of dignified earnestness
which showed that the performance was necessary to its own well-being,
and not done merely to impress a stupid human audience. In the middle
of elaborate washing it would look up, startled, as though to stare at
the approach of some Invisible, cocking its little head sideways and
putting out a velvet pad to inspect cautiously. Then it would get
absent-minded, and stare with equal intentness in another direction
(just to confuse the onlookers), and suddenly go on furiously washing
its body again, but in quite a new place. Except for a white patch on
its breast it was coal black. And its name was--Smoke. "Smoke" described its temperament as well as its
appearance. Its movements, its individuality, its posing as a little
furry mass of concealed mysteries, its elfin-like elusiveness, all
combined to justify its name; and a subtle painter might have pictured
it as a wisp of floating smoke, the fire below betraying itself at two
points only--the glowing eyes, All its forces ran to intelligence--secret
intelligence, the wordless incalculable intuition of the Cat. It was,
indeed, the cat for the business in hand. The selection of the dog was not so simple, for the
doctor owned many; but after much deliberation he chose a collie,
called Flame from his yellow coat. True, it was a trifle old, and stiff
in the joints, and even beginning to grow deaf, but, on the other hand,
it was a very particular friend of Smoke's, and had fathered it from
kitten hood upwards so that a subtle understanding existed between
them. It was this that turned the balance in its favour, this and its
courage. Moreover, though good-tempered, it was a terrible fighter, and
its anger when provoked by a righteous cause was a fury of fire, and
irresistible. It had come to him quite young, straight from the
shepherd, with the air of the hills yet in its nostrils, and was then
little more than skin and bones and teeth. For a collie it was sturdily
built, its nose blunter than most, its yellow hair stiff rather than
silky, and it had full eyes, unlike the slit eyes of its breed. Only
its master could touch it, for it ignored strangers, and despised their
partings--when any dared to pat it. There was something patriarchal
about the old beast. He was in earnest, and went through life with
tremendous energy and big things in view, as though he had the
reputation of his whole race to uphold. And to watch him fighting
against odds was to understand why he was terrible. And these brief descriptions of their characters are
necessary for the proper understanding of what subsequently took place. With Smoke sleeping in the folds of his fur coat,
and the collie lying watchful on the seat opposite, John Silence went
down in his motor after dinner on the night of November 15th. And the fog was so dense that they were obliged to
travel at quarter speed the entire way. It was after ten o'clock when he dismissed the motor
and entered the dingy little house with the latchkey provided by
Fender. He found the hall gas turned low, and a fire in the study.
Books and food had also been placed ready by the servant according to
instructions. Coils of fog rushed in after him through the open door
and filled the hall and passage with its cold discomfort. The first thing Dr. Silence did was to lock up Smoke
in the study with a saucer of milk before the fire, and then make a
search of the house with Flame. The dog ran cheerfully behind him all
the way while he tried the doors of the other rooms to make sure they
were locked. He nosed about into corners and made little excursions on
his own account. His manner was expectant. He knew there must be
something unusual about the proceeding, because it was contrary to the
habits of his whole life not to be asleep at this hour on the mat in
front of the fire. He kept looking up into his master's face, as door
after door was tried, with an expression of intelligent sympathy, but
at the same time a certain air of disapproval. Yet everything his
master did was good in his eyes, and he betrayed as little impatience
as possible with all this unnecessary journeying to and fro. If the
doctor was pleased to play this sort of game at such an hour of the
night, it was surely not for him to object. So he played it, too; and
was very busy and earnest about it into the bargain. After an uneventful search they came down again to
the study, and here Dr. Silence discovered Smoke washing his face
calmly in front of the fire. The saucer of milk was licked dry and
clean; the preliminary examination that cats always make in new
surroundings had evidently been satisfactorily concluded. He drew an
arm-chair up to the fire, stirred the coals into a blaze, arranged the
table and lamp to his satisfaction for reading, and then prepared
surreptitiously to watch the animals. He wished to observe them
carefully without their being aware of it. Now, in spite of their respective ages, it was the
regular custom of these two to play together every night before sleep.
Smoke always made the advances, beginning with grave impudence to pat
the dog's tail, and Flame played cumbrously, with condescension. It was
his duty, rather than pleasure; he was glad when it was over, and
sometimes he was very determined and refused to play at all. The doctor, looking cautiously over the top of his
book, watched the cat begin the performance. It started by gazing with
an innocent expression at the dog where he lay with nose on paws and
eyes wide open in the middle of the floor. Then it got up and made as
though it meant to walk to the door, going deliberately and very
softly. Flame's eyes followed it until it was beyond the range of
sight, and then the cat turned sharply and began patting his tail
tentatively with one paw. The tail moved slightly in reply, and Smoke
changed paws and tapped it again. The dog, however, did not rise to
play as was his wont, and the cat fell to patting it briskly with both
paws. Flame still lay motionless. This puzzled and bored the cat, and it went round
and stared hard into its friend's face to see what was the matter.
Perhaps some inarticulate message flashed from the dog's eyes into its
own little brain, making it understand that the programme for the night
had better not begin with play. Perhaps it only realised that its
friend was immovable. But, whatever the reason, its usual persistence
thenceforward deserted it, and it made no further attempts at
persuasion. Smoke yielded at once to the dog's mood; it sat down where
it was and began to wash. But the washing, the doctor noted, was by no means
its real purpose; it only used it to mask something else; it stopped at
the most busy and furious moments and began to stare about the room.
Its thoughts wandered absurdly. It peered intently at the curtains; at
the shadowy corners; at empty space above; leaving its body in
curiously awkward positions for whole minutes together. Then it turned
sharply and stared with a sudden signal of intelligence at the dog, and
Flame at once rose somewhat stiffly to his feet and began to wander
aimlessly and restlessly to and fro about the floor. Smoke followed
him, padding quietly at his heels. Between them they made what seemed
to be a deliberate search of the room. And, here, as he watched them, noting carefully
every detail of the performance over the top of his book, yet making no
effort to interfere, it seemed to the doctor that the first beginnings
of a faint distress betrayed themselves in the collie, and in the cat
the stirrings of a vague excitement. He observed them closely. The fog was thick in the
air, and the tobacco smoke from his pipe added to its density; the
furniture at the far end stood mistily, and where the shadows
congregated in hanging clouds under the ceiling, it was difficult to
see clearly at all; the lamplight only reached to a level of five feet
from the floor, above which came layers of comparative darkness, so
that the room appeared twice as lofty as it actually was. By means of
the lamp and the fire, however, the carpet was everywhere clearly
visible. The animals made their silent tour of the floor,
sometimes the dog leading, sometimes the cat; occasionally they looked
at one another as though exchanging signals; and once or twice, in
spite of the limited space, he lost sight of one or other among the fog
and the shadows. Their curiosity, it appeared to him, was something
more than the excitement lurking in the unknown territory of a strange
room; yet, so far, it was impossible to test this, and he purposely
kept his mind quietly receptive lest the smallest mental excitement on
his part should communicate itself to the animals and thus destroy the
value of their independent behaviour. They made a very thorough journey, leaving no piece
of furniture unexamined, or unsmelt. Flame led the way, walking slowly
with lowered head, and Smoke followed demurely at his heels, making a
transparent pretence of not being interested, yet missing nothing. And,
at length, they returned, the old collie first, and came to rest on the
mat before the fire. Flame rested his muzzle on his master's knee,
smiling beatifically while he patted the yellow head and spoke his
name; and Smoke, coming a little later, pretending he came by chance,
looked from the empty saucer to his face, lapped up the milk when it
was given him to the last drop, and then sprang upon his knees and
curled round for the sleep it had fully earned and intended to enjoy. Silence descended upon the room. Only the breathing
of the dog upon the mat came through the deep stillness, like the pulse
of time marking the minutes; and the steady drip, drip of the fog
outside upon the window-ledges dismally testified to the inclemency of
the night beyond. And the soft crashings of the coals as the fire
settled down into the grate became less and less audible as the fire
sank and the flames resigned their fierceness. It was now well after eleven o'clock, and Dr. Silence
devoted himself again to his book. He read the words on the printed
page and took in their meaning superficially, yet without starting into
life the correlations of thought and suggestions that should accompany
interesting reading. Underneath, all the while, his mental energies
were absorbed in watching, listening, waiting for what might come. He
was not over-sanguine himself, yet he did not wish to be taken by
surprise. Moreover, the animals, his sensitive barometers, had
incontinently gone to sleep. After reading a dozen pages, however, he realised
that his mind was really occupied in reviewing the features of Fender's
extraordinary story, and that it was no longer necessary to steady his
imagination by studying the dull paragraphs detailed in the pages
before him. He laid down his book accordingly, and allowed his thoughts
to dwell upon the features of the Case. Speculations as to the meaning,
however, he rigorously suppressed, knowing that such thoughts would act
upon his imagination like wind upon the glowing embers of a fire. As the night wore on the silence grew deeper and
deeper, and only at rare intervals he heard the sound of wheels on the
main road a hundred yards away, where the horses went at a walking pace
owing to the density of the fog. The echo of pedestrian footsteps no
longer reached him, the clamour of occasional voices no longer came
down the side street. The night, muffled by fog, shrouded by veils of
ultimate mystery, hung about the haunted villa like a doom. Nothing in
the house stirred. Stillness, in a thick blanket, lay over the upper
storeys. Only the mist in the room grew more dense, he thought, and the
damp cold more penetrating. Certainly, from time to time, he shivered. The collie, now deep in slumber, moved
occasionally,--grunted, sighed, or twitched his legs in dreams. Smoke
lay on his knees, a pool of warm, black fur, only the closest
observation detecting the movement of his sleek sides. It was difficult
to distinguish exactly where his head and body joined in that circle of
glistening hair; only a black satin nose and a tiny tip of pink tongue
betrayed the secret. Accordingly, after a time, he did fall asleep as he
had expected, and the last thing he remembered, before oblivion slipped
up over his eyes like soft wool, was the picture of Flame stretching
all four legs at once, and sighing noisily as he sought a more
comfortable position for his paws and muzzle upon the mat. It was a good deal later when he became aware that a
weight lay upon his chest, and that something was pencilling over his
face and mouth. A soft touch on the cheek woke him. Something was
patting him. He sat up with a jerk, and found himself staring
straight into a pair of brilliant eyes, half green, half black. Smoke's
face lay level with his own; and the cat had climbed up with its front
paws upon his chest. The lamp had burned low and the fire was nearly out,
yet Dr. Silence saw in a moment that the cat was in an excited state.
It kneaded with its front paws into his chest, shifting from one to the
other. He felt them prodding against him. It lifted a leg very
carefully and patted his cheek gingerly. Its fur, he saw, was standing
ridgewise upon its back; the ears were flattened back somewhat; the
tail was switching sharply. The cat, of course, had wakened him with a
purpose, and the instant he realised this, he set it upon the arm of
the chair and sprang up with a quick turn to face the empty room behind
him. By some curious instinct, his arms of their own accord assumed an
attitude of defence in front of him, as though to ward off something
that threatened his safety. Yet nothing was visible. Only shapes of fog
hung about rather heavily in the air, moving slightly to and fro. His mind was now fully alert, and the last vestiges
of sleep gone. He turned the lamp higher and peered about him. Two
things he became aware of at once: one, that Smoke, while excited, was
pleasurably excited; the other, that the collie was no longer
visible upon the mat at his feet. He had crept away to the corner of
the wall farthest from the window, and lay watching the room with
wide-open eyes, in which lurked plainly something of alarm. Something in the dog's behaviour instantly struck Dr.
Silence as unusual, and, calling him by name, he moved across to pat
him. Flame got up, wagged his tail, and came over slowly to the rug,
uttering a low sound that was half growl, half whine. He was evidently
perturbed about something, and his master was proceeding to administer
comfort when his attention was suddenly drawn to the antics of his
other four-footed companion, the cat. Smoke had jumped down from the back of the arm-chair
and now occupied the middle of the carpet, where, with tail erect and
legs stiff as ramrods, it was steadily pacing backwards and forwards in
a narrow space, uttering, as it did so, those curious little guttural
sounds of pleasure that only an animal of the feline species knows how
to make expressive of supreme happiness. Its stiffened legs and arched
back made it appear larger than usual, and the black visage wore a
smile of beatific joy. Its eyes blazed magnificently; it was in an
ecstasy. At the end of every few paces it turned sharply and
stalked back again along the same line, padding softly, and purring
like a roll of little muffled drums. It behaved precisely as though it
were rubbing against the ankles of some one who remained invisible. A
thrill ran down the doctor's spine as he stood and stared. His
experiment was growing interesting at last. He called the collie's attention to his friend's
performance to see whether he too was aware of anything standing there
upon the carpet, and the dog's behaviour was significant and
corroborative. He came as far as his master's knees and then stopped
dead, refusing to investigate closely. In vain Dr. Silence urged him;
he wagged his tail, whined a little, and stood in a half-crouching
attitude, staring alternately at the cat and at his master's face. He
was, apparently, both puzzled and alarmed, and the whine went deeper
and deeper down into his throat till it changed into an ugly snarl of
awakening anger. Then the doctor called to him in a tone of command
he had never known to be disregarded; but still the dog, though
springing up in response, declined to move nearer. He made tentative
motions, pranced a little like a dog about to take to water, pretended
to bark, and ran to and fro on the carpet. So far there was no actual
fear in his manner, but he was uneasy and anxious, and nothing would
induce him to go within touching distance of the walking cat. Once he
made a complete circuit, but always carefully out of reach; and in the
end he returned to his master's legs and rubbed vigorously against him.
Flame did not like the performance at all: that much was quite clear. For several minutes John Silence watched the
performance of the cat with profound attention and without interfering.
Then he called to the animal by name. "Smoke, you mysterious beastie, what in the world
are you about?" he said, in a coaxing tone. He noted exactly what it did: it walked, he saw, the
same number of paces each time, some six or seven steps, and then it
turned sharply and retraced them. By the pattern of the great roses in
the carpet he measured it. It kept to the same direction and the same
line. It behaved precisely as though it were rubbing against something
solid. Undoubtedly, there was something standing there on that strip of
carpet, something invisible to the doctor, something that alarmed the
dog, yet caused the cat unspeakable pleasure. "Smokie!" he called again, "Smokie, you black
mystery, what is it excites you so?" Again the cat looked up at him for a brief second,
and then continued its sentry-walk, blissfully happy, intensely
preoccupied. And, for an instant, as he watched it, the doctor was
aware that a faint uneasiness stirred in the depths of his own being,
focusing itself for the moment upon this curious behaviour of the
uncanny creature before him. There rose in him quite a new realisation of the
mystery connected with the whole feline tribe, but especially with that
common member of it, the domestic cat--their hidden lives, their
strange aloofness, their incalculable subtlety. How utterly remote from
anything that human beings understood lay the sources of their elusive
activities. As he watched the indescribable bearing of the little
creature mincing along the strip of carpet under his eyes, coquetting
with the powers of darkness, welcoming, maybe, some fearsome visitor,
there stirred in his heart a feeling strangely akin to awe. Its
indifference to human kind, its serene superiority to the obvious,
struck him forcibly with fresh meaning; so remote, so inaccessible
seemed the secret purposes of its real life, so alien to the blundering
honesty of other animals. Its absolute poise of bearing brought into
his mind the opium-eater's words that "no dignity is perfect which does
not at some point ally itself with the mysterious"; and he became
suddenly aware that the presence of the dog in this foggy, haunted room
on the top of Putney Hill was uncommonly welcome to him. He was glad to
feel that Flame's dependable personality was with him. The savage
growling at his heels was a pleasant sound. He was glad to hear it.
That marching cat made him uneasy. He stepped quickly forward and placed himself upon
the exact strip of carpet where it walked. But no cat is ever taken by surprise! The moment he
occupied the space of the Intruder, setting his feet on the woven roses
midway in the line of travel, Smoke suddenly stopped purring and sat
down. If lifted up its face with the most innocent stare imaginable of
its green eyes. He could have sworn it laughed. It was a perfect child
again. In a single second it had resumed its simple, domestic manner;
and it gazed at him in such a way that he almost felt Smoke was the
normal being, and his was the eccentric behaviour that was being
watched. It was consummate, the manner in which it brought about this
change so easily and so quickly. "Superb little actor!" he laughed in spite of
himself, and stooped to stroke the shining black back. But, in a flash,
as he touched its fur, the cat turned and spat at him viciously,
striking at his hand with one paw. Then, with a hurried scutter of
feet, it shot like a shadow across the floor and a moment later was
calmly sitting over by the window-curtains washing its face as though
nothing interested it in the whole world but the cleanness of its
cheeks and whiskers. John Silence straightened himself up and drew a long
breath. He realised that the performance was temporarily at an end. The
collie, meanwhile, who had watched the whole proceeding with marked
disapproval, had now lain down again upon the mat by the fire, no
longer growling. It seemed to the doctor just as though something that
had entered the room while he slept, alarming the dog, yet bringing
happiness to the cat, had now gone out again, leaving all as it was
before. Whatever it was that excited its blissful attentions had
retreated for the moment. He realised this intuitively. Smoke evidently
realised it, too, for presently he deigned to march back to the
fireplace and jump upon his master's knees. Dr. Silence, patient and
determined, settled down once more to his book. The animals soon slept;
the fire blazed cheerfully; and the cold fog from outside poured into
the room through every available chink and crannie. For a long time silence and peace reigned in the
room and Dr. Silence availed himself of the quietness to make careful
notes of what had happened. He entered for future use in other cases an
exhaustive analysis of what he had observed, especially with regard to
the effect upon the two animals. It is impossible here, nor would it be
intelligible to the reader unversed in the knowledge of the region
known to a scientifically trained psychic like Dr. Silence, to detail
these observations. But to him it was clear, up to a certain point--for
the rest he must still wait and watch. So far, at least, he realised
that while he slept in the chair--that is, while his will was
dormant--the room had suffered intrusion from what he recognised as an
intensely active Force, and might later be forced to acknowledge as
something more than merely a blind force, namely, a distinct
personality. So far it had affected himself scarcely at all, but
had acted directly upon the simpler organisms of the animals. It
stimulated keenly the centres of the cat's psychic being, inducing a
state of instant happiness (intensifying its consciousness probably in
the same way a drug or stimulant intensifies that of a human being);
whereas it alarmed the less sensitive dog, causing it to feel a vague
apprehension and distress. His own sudden action and exhibition of energy had
served to disperse it temporarily, yet he felt convinced--the
indications were not lacking even while he sat there making notes--that
it still remained near to him, conditionally if not spatially, and was,
as it were, gathering force for a second attack. And, further, he intuitively understood that the
relations between the two animals had undergone a subtle change: that
the cat had become immeasurably superior, confident, sure of itself in
its own peculiar region, whereas Flame had been weakened by an attack
he could not comprehend and knew not how to reply to. Though not yet
afraid, he was defiant--ready to act against a fear that he felt to be
approaching. He was no longer fatherly and protective towards the cat.
Smoke held the key to the situation; and both he and the cat knew it. Thus, as the minutes passed, John Silence sat and
waited, keenly on the alert, wondering how soon the attack would be
renewed, and at what point it would be diverted from the animals and
directed upon himself. The book lay on the floor beside him, his notes were
complete. With one hand on the cat's fur, and the dog's front paws
resting against his feet, the three of them dozed comfortably before
the hot fire while the night wore on and the silence deepened towards
midnight. Dr. Silence was in the act of taking the matches to
re-light the lamp when an audible movement in the room behind him made
him pause. Smoke leaped down from his knee and moved forward a few
paces across the carpet. Then it stopped and stared fixedly; and the
doctor stood up on the rug to watch. As he rose the sound was repeated, and he discovered
that it was not in the room as he first thought, but outside, and that
it came from more directions than one. There was a rushing, sweeping
noise against the window-panes, and simultaneously a sound of something
brushing against the door--out in the hall. Smoke advanced sedately
across the carpet, twitching his tail, and sat down within a foot of
the door. The influence that had destroyed the harmonious conditions of
the room had apparently moved in advance of its cause. Clearly,
something was about to happen. For the first time that night John Silence
hesitated; the thought of that dark narrow hall-way, choked with fog,
and destitute of human comfort, was unpleasant. He became aware of a
faint creeping of his flesh. He knew, of course, that the actual
opening of the door was not necessary to the invasion of the room that
was about to take place, since neither doors nor windows, nor any other
solid barriers could interpose an obstacle to what was seeking
entrance. Yet the opening of the door would be significant and
symbolic, and he distinctly shrank from it. But for a moment only. Smoke, turning with a show of
impatience, recalled him to his purpose, and he moved past the sitting,
watching creature, and deliberately opened the door to its full width. What subsequently happened, happened in the feeble
and flickering light of the solitary candle on the mantlepiece. Through the opened door he saw the hall, dimly lit
and thick with fog. Nothing, of course, was visible--nothing but the
hat-stand, the African spears in dark lines upon the wall and the
high-backed wooden chair standing grotesquely underneath on the
oilcloth floor. For one instant the fog seemed to move and thicken
oddly; but he set that down to the score of the imagination. The door
had opened upon nothing. Yet Smoke apparently thought otherwise, and the deep
growling of the collie from the mat at the back of the room seemed to
confirm his judgment. Dr. Silence moved slowly backwards and took up his
position on the hearthrug, keying himself up to a condition of
concentrated attention. He noted that Flame stood beside him, facing the
room, with body motionless, and head moving swiftly from side to side
with a curious swaying movement. His eyes were wide open, his back
rigid, his neck and jaws thrust forward, his legs tense and ready to
leap. Savage, ready for attack or defence, yet dreadfully puzzled and
perhaps already a little cowed, he stood and stared, the hair on his
spine and sides positively bristling outwards as though a wind played
through it. In the dim firelight he looked like a great yellow-haired
wolf, silent, eyes shooting dark fire, exceedingly formidable. It was
Flame, the terrible. Smoke, meanwhile, advanced from the door towards the
middle of the room, adopting the very slow pace of an invisible
companion. A few feet away it stopped and began to smile and blink its
eyes. There was something deliberately coaxing in its attitude as it
stood there undecided on the carpet, clearly wishing to effect some
sort of introduction between the Intruder and its canine friend and
ally. It assumed its most winning manners, purring, smiling, looking
persuasively from one to the other, and making quick tentative steps
first in one direction and then in the other. There had always existed
such perfect understanding between them in everything. Surely Flame
would appreciate Smoke's intention now, and acquiesce. But the old collie made no advances. He bared his
teeth, lifting his lips till the gums showed, and stood stockstill with
fixed eyes and heaving sides. The doctor moved a little farther back,
watching intently the smallest movement, and it was just then he
divined suddenly from the cat's behaviour and attitude that it was not
only a single companion it had ushered into the room, but several.
It kept crossing over from one to the other, looking up at each in
turn. It sought to win over the dog to friendliness with them all. The
original Intruder had come back with reinforcements. And at the same
time he further realised that the Intruder was something more than a
blindly acting force, impersonal though destructive. It was a
Personality, and moreover a great personality. And it was accompanied
for the purposes of assistance by a host of other personalities, minor
in degree, but similar in kind. But it was all in vain. Flame stood riveted to one
spot, motionless as a figure carved in stone. Some minutes passed, during which only the cat
moved, and then there came a sharp change. Flame began to back towards
the wall. He moved his head from side to side as he went, sometimes
turning to snap at something almost behind him. They were
advancing upon him, trying to surround him. His distress became very
marked from now onwards, and it seemed to the doctor that his anger
merged into genuine terror and became overwhelmed by it. The savage
growl sounded perilously like a whine, and more than once he tried to
dive past his master's legs, as though hunting for a way of escape. He
was trying to avoid something that everywhere blocked the way. This terror of the indomitable fighter impressed the
doctor enormously; yet also painfully; stirring his impatience; for he
had never before seen the dog show signs of giving in, and it
distressed him to witness it. He knew, however, that he was not giving
in easily, and understood that it was really impossible for him to
gauge the animal's sensations properly at all. What Flame felt, and
saw, must be terrible indeed to turn him all at once into a coward. He
faced something that made him afraid of more than his life merely. The
doctor spoke a few quick words of encouragement to him, and stroked the
bristling hair. But without much success. The collie seemed already
beyond the reach of comfort such as that, and the collapse of the old
dog followed indeed very speedily after this. And Smoke, meanwhile, remained behind, watching the
advance, but not joining in it; sitting, pleased and expectant,
considering that all was going well and as it wished. It was kneading
on the carpet with its front paws--slowly, laboriously, as though its
feet were dipped in treacle. The sound its claws made as they caught in
the threads was distinctly audible. It was still smiling, blinking,
purring. But the cat, too, had heard that dreadful bark; and
it, too, had understood. This was more than it had bargained for.
Across the dim shadows of that haunted room there must have passed some
secret signal of distress between the animals. Smoke stood up and
looked swiftly about him. He uttered a piteous meow and trotted smartly
away into the greater darkness by the windows. What his object was only
those endowed with the spirit-like intelligence of cats might know.
But, at any rate, he had at last ranged himself on the side of his
friend. And the little beast meant business. At the same moment the collie managed to gain the
door. The doctor saw him rush through into the hall like a flash of
yellow light. He shot across the oilcloth, and tore up the stairs, but
in another second he appeared again, flying down the steps and landing
at the bottom in a tumbling heap, whining, cringing, terrified. The
doctor saw him slink back into the room again and crawl round by the
wall towards the cat. Was, then, even the staircase occupied? Did
They stand also in the hall? Was the whole house crowded from floor
to ceiling? The thought came to add to the keen distress he felt
at the sight of the collie's discomfiture. And, indeed, his own
personal distress had increased in a marked degree during the past
minutes, and continued to increase steadily to the climax. He
recognised that the drain on his own vitality grew steadily, and that
the attack was now directed against himself even more than against the
defeated dog, and the too much deceived cat. It all seemed so rapid and uncalculated after
that--the events that took place in this little modern room at the top
of Putney Hill between midnight and sunrise--that Dr. Silence was
hardly able to follow and remember it all. It came about with such
uncanny swiftness and terror; the light was so uncertain; the movements
of the black cat so difficult to follow on the dark carpet, and the
doctor himself so weary and taken by surprise--that he found it almost
impossible to observe accurately, or to recall afterwards precisely
what it was he had seen or in what order the incidents had taken place.
He never could understand what defect of vision on his part made it
seem as though the cat had duplicated itself at first, and then
increased indefinitely, so that there were at least a dozen of them
darting silently about the floor, leaping softly on to chairs and
tables, passing like shadows from the open door to the end of the room,
all black as sin, with brilliant green eyes flashing fire in all
directions. It was like the reflections from a score of mirrors placed
round the walls at different angles. Nor could he make out at the time
why the size of the room seemed to have altered, grown much larger, and
why it extended away behind him where ordinarily the wall should I have
been. The snarling of the enraged and terrified collie sounded !
sometimes so far away; the ceiling seemed to have raised itself so
much higher than before, and much of the furniture had changed in
appearance and shifted marvellously. It was all so confused and confusing, as though the
little room he knew had become merged and transformed into the
dimensions of quite another chamber, that came to him, with its host of
cats and its strange distances, in a sort of vision. But these changes came about a little later, and at
a time when his attention was so concentrated upon the proceedings of
Smoke and the collie, that he only observed them, as it were,
subconsciously. And the excitement, the flickering candlelight, the
distress he felt for the collie, and the distorting atmosphere of fog
were the poorest possible allies to careful observation. At first he was only aware that the dog was
repeating his short dangerous bark from time to time, snapping
viciously at the empty air, a foot or so from the ground. Once, indeed,
he sprang upwards and forwards, working furiously with teeth and paws,
and with a noise like wolves fighting, but only to dash back the next
minute against the wall behind him. Then, after lying still for a bit,
he rose to a crouching position as though to spring again, snarling
horribly and making short half-circles with lowered head. And Smoke all
the while meowed piteously by the window as though trying to draw the
attack upon himself. Then it was that the rush of the whole dreadful
business seemed to turn aside from the dog and direct itself upon his
own person. The collie had made another spring and fallen back with a
crash into the corner, where he made noise enough in his savage rage to
waken the dead before he fell to whining and then finally lay still.
And directly afterwards the doctor's own distress became intolerably
acute. He had made a half movement forward to come to the rescue when a
veil that was denser than mere fog seemed to drop down over the scene,
draping room, walls, animals and fire in a mist of darkness and folding
also about his own mind. Other forms moved silently across the field of
vision, forms that he recognised from previous experiments, and
welcorned not. Unholy thoughts began to crowd into his brain, sinister
suggestions of evil presented themselves seductively. Ice seemed to
settle about his heart, and his mind trembled. He began to lose
memory-memory of his identity, of where he was, of what he ought to do.
The very foundations of his strength were shaken. His will seemed
paralysed. And it was then that the room filled with this horde
of cats, all dark as the night, all silent, all with lamping eyes of
green fire. The dimensions of the place altered and shifted. He was in
a much larger space. The whining of the dog sounded far away, and all
about him the cats flew busily to and fro, silently playing their
tearing, rushing game of evil, weaving the pattern of their dark
purpose upon the floor. He strove hard to collect himself and remember
the words of power he had made use of before in similar dread positions
where his dangerous practice had sometimes led; but he could recall
nothing consecutively; a mist lay over his mind and memory; he felt
dazed and his forces scattered. The deeps within were too troubled for
healing power to come out of them. It was glamour, of course, he realised afterwards,
the strong glamour thrown upon his imagination by some powerful
personality behind the veil; but at the time he was not sufficiently
aware of this and, as with all true glamour, was unable to grasp where
the true ended and the false began. He was caught momentarily in the
same vortex that had sought to lure the cat to destruction through its
delight, and threatened utterly to overwhelm the dog through its terror. There came a sound in the chimney behind him like
wind booming and tearing its way down. The windows rattled. The candle
flickered and went out. The glacial atmosphere closed round him with
the cold of death, and a great rushing sound swept by overhead as
though the ceiling had lifted to a great height. He heard the door
shut. Far away it sounded. He felt lost, shelterless in the depths of
his soul. Yet still he held out and resisted while the climax of the
fight came nearer and nearer. ... He had stepped into the stream of
forces awakened by Fender and he knew that he must withstand them to
the end or come to a conclusion that it was not good for a man to come
to. Something from the region of utter cold was upon him. And then quite suddenly, through the confused mists
about him, there slowly rose up the Personality that had been all the
time directing the battle. Some force entered his being that shook him
as the tempest shakes a leaf, and close against his eyes--clean level
with his face--he found himself staring into the wreck of a vast dark
Countenance, a countenance that was terrible even in its ruin. For ruined it was, and terrible it was, and the mark
of spiritual evil was branded everywhere upon its broken features.
Eyes, face and hair rose level with his own, and for a space of time he
never could properly measure, or determine, these two, a man and a
woman, looked straight into each other's visages and down into each
other's hearts. And John Silence, the soul with the good, unselfish
motive, held his own against the dark discarnate woman whose motive was
pure evil, and whose soul was on the side of the Dark Powers. It was the climax that touched the depth of power
within him and began to restore him slowly to his own. He was
conscious, of course, of effort, and yet it seemed no superhuman one,
for he had recognised the character of his opponent's power, and he
called upon the good within him to meet and overcome it. The inner
forces stirred and trembled in response to his call. They did not at
first come readily as was their habit, for under the spell of glamour
they had already been diabolically lulled into inactivity, but come
they eventually did, rising out of the inner spiritual nature he had
learned with so much time and pain to awaken to life. And power and
confidence came with them. He began to breathe deeply and regularly,
and at the same time to absorb into himself the forces opposed to him,
and to turn them to his own account. By ceasing to resist, and
allowing the deadly stream to pour into him unopposed, he used the very
power supplied by his adversary and thus enormously increased his own. For this spiritual alchemy he had learned. He
understood that force ultimately is everywhere one and the same; it is
the motive behind that makes it good or evil; and his motive was
entirely unselfish. He knew-- provided he was not first robbed of
self-control--how vicariously to absorb these evil radiations into
himself and change them magically into his own good purposes. And,
since his motive was pure and his soul fearless, they could not work
him harm. Thus he stood in the main stream of evil unwittingly
attracted by Fender, deflecting its course upon himself; and after
passing through the purifying filter of his own unselfishness these
energies could only add to his store of experience, of knowledge, and
therefore of power. And, as his self-control returned to him, he
gradually accomplished this purpose, even though trembling while he did
so. Yet the struggle was severe, and in spite of the
freezing chill of the air, the perspiration poured down his face. Then,
by slow degrees, the dark and dreadful countenance faded, the glamour
passed from his soul, the normal proportions returned to walls and
ceiling, the forms melted back into the fog, and the whirl of rushing
shadow-cats disappeared whence they came. And with the return of the consciousness of his own
identity John Silence was restored to the full control of his own
will-power. In a deep, modulated voice he began to utter certain
rhythmical sounds that slowly rolled through the air like a rising sea,
filling the room with powerful vibratory activities that whelmed all
irregularities of lesser vibrations in its own swelling tone. He made
certain sigils, gestures and movements at the same time. For several
minutes he continued to utter these words, until at length the growing
volume dominated the whole room and mastered the manifestation of all
that opposed it. For just as he understood the spiritual alchemy that
can transmute evil forces by raising them into higher channels, so he
knew from long study the occult use of sound, and its direct effect
upon the plastic region wherein the powers of spiritual evil work their
fell purposes. Harmony was restored first of all to his own soul, and
thence to the room and all its occupants. And, after himself, the first to recognise it was
the old dog lying in his corner. Flame began suddenly uttering sounds
of pleasure, that "something" between a growl and a grunt that dogs
make upon being restored to their master's confidence. Dr. Silence
heard the thumping of the collie's tail against the floor. And the
grunt and the thumping touched the depth of affection in the man's
heart, and gave him some inkling of what agonies the dumb creature had
suffered. Next, from the shadows by the window, a somewhat
shrill purring announced the restoration of the cat to its normal
state. Smoke was advancing across the carpet. He seemed very pleased
with himself, and smiled with an expression of supreme innocence. He
was no shadow-cat, but real and full of his usual and perfect
self-possession. He marched along, picking his way delicately, but with
a stately dignity that suggested his ancestry with the majesty of
Egypt. His eyes no longer glared; they shone steadily before him, they
radiated, not excitement, but knowledge. Clearly he was anxious to make
amends for the mischief to which he had unwittingly lent himself owing
to his subtle and electric constitution. Still uttering his sharp high purrings he marched up
to his master and rubbed vigorously against his legs. Then he stood on
his hind feet and pawed his knees and stared beseechingly up into his
face. He turned his head towards the corner where the collie still lay,
thumping his tail feebly and pathetically. John Silence understood. He bent down and stroked
the creature's living fur, noting the line of bright blue sparks that
followed the motion of his hand down its back. And then they advanced
together towards the corner where the dog was. Smoke went first and put his nose gently against his
friend's muzzle, purring while he rubbed, and uttering little soft
sounds of affection in his throat. The doctor lit the candle and
brought it over. He saw the collie lying on its side against the wall;
it was utterly exhausted, and foam still hung about its jaws. Its tail
and eyes responded to the sound of its name, but it was evidently very
weak and overcome. Smoke continued to rub against its cheek and nose
and eyes, sometimes even standing on its body and kneading into the
thick yellow hair. Flame replied from time to time by little licks of
the tongue, most of them curiously misdirected. But Dr. Silence felt intuitively that something
disastrous had happened, and his heart was wrung. He stroked the dear
body, feeling it over for bruises or broken bones, but finding none. He
fed it with what remained of the sandwiches and milk, but the creature
clumsily upset the saucer and lost the sandwiches between its paws, so
that the doctor had to feed it with his own hand. And all the while
Smoke meowed piteously. Then John Silence began to understand. He went
across to the farther side of the room and called aloud to it. At any other time the dog would have been upon him
in an instant, barking and leaping to the shoulder. And even now he got
up, though heavily and awkwardly, to his feet. He started to run,
wagging his tail more briskly. He collided first with a chair, and then
ran straight into a table. Smoke trotted close at his side, trying his
very best to guide him. But it was useless. Dr. Silence had to lift him
up into his own arms and carry him like a baby. For he was blind. IIIIt was a week later when John Silence called to see
the author in his new house, and found him well on the way to recovery
and already busy again with his writing. The haunted look had left his
eyes, and he seemed cheerful and confident. "Humour restored?" laughed the doctor, as soon as
they were comfortably settled in the room overlooking the Park. "I've had no trouble since I left that dreadful
place," returned Pender gratefully; "and thanks to you----" He told the astonished author something of his
experiences in it with the animals. "I don't pretend to understand," Fender said, when
the account was finished, "but I and my wife are intensely relieved to
be free of it all. Only I must say I should like to know something of
the former history of the house. When we took it six months ago I heard
no word against it." "I can satisfy your curiosity to some extent," he
said, running his eye over the sheets, and then replacing them in his
coat; "for by my secretary's investigations I have been able to check
certain information obtained in the hypnotic trance by a 'sensitive'
who helps me in such cases. The former occupant who haunted you appears
to have been a woman of singularly atrocious life and character who
finally suffered death by hanging, after a series of crimes that
appalled the whole of England and only came to light by the merest
chance. She came to her end in the year 1798, for it was not this
particular house she lived in, but a much larger one that then stood
upon the site it now occupies, and was then, of course, not in London,
but in the country. She was a person of intellect, possessed of a
powerful, trained will, and of consummate audacity, and I am convinced
availed herself of the resources of the lower magic to attain her ends.
This goes far to explain the virulence of the attack upon yourself, and
why she is still able to carry on after death the evil practices that
formed her main purpose during life." "You think that after death a soul can still
consciously direct----" gasped the author. "I think, as I told you before, that the forces of a
powerful personality may still persist after death in the line of their
original momentum," replied the doctor; "and that strong thoughts and
purposes can still react upon suitably prepared brains long after their
originators have passed away. "If you knew anything of magic," he pursued, "you
would know that thought is dynamic, and that it may call into existence
forms and pictures that may well exist for hundreds of years. For, not
far removed from the region of our human life is another region where
float the waste and drift of all the centuries, the limbo of the shells
of the dead; a densely populated region crammed with horror and
abomination of all descriptions, and sometimes galvanised into active
life again by the will of a trained manipulator, a mind versed in the
practices of lower magic. That this woman understood its vile commerce,
I am persuaded, and the forces she set going during her life have
simply been accumulating ever since, and would have continued to do so
had they not been drawn down upon yourself, and afterwards discharged
and satisfied through me. "Anything might have brought down the attack, for,
besides drugs, there are certain violent emotions, certain moods of the
soul, certain spiritual fevers, if I may so call them, which directly
open the inner being to a cognisance of this astral region I have
mentioned. In your case it happened to be a peculiarly potent drug that
did it. "But now, tell me," he added, after a pause, handing
to the perplexed author a pencil drawing he had made of the dark
countenance that had appeared to him during the night on Putney
Hill--"tell me if you recognise this face?" Pender looked at the drawing closely, greatly
astonished. He shuddered a little as he looked. "Undoubtedly," he said, "it is the face I kept
trying to draw--dark, with the great mouth and jaw, and the drooping
eye. That is the woman." Dr. Silence then produced from his pocket-book an
old-fashioned woodcut of the same person which his secretary had
unearthed from the records of the Newgate Calendar. The woodcut and the
pencil drawing were two different aspects of the same dreadful visage.
The men compared them for some moments in silence. "It makes me thank God for the limitations of our
senses," said Pender quietly, with a sigh; "continuous clairvoyance
must be a sore affliction." "It is indeed," returned John Silence significantly,
"and if all the people nowadays who claim to be clairvoyant were really
so, the statistics of suicide and lunacy would be considerably higher
than they are. It is little wonder," he added, "that your sense of
humour was clouded, with the mind-forces of that dead monster trying to
use your brain for their dissemination. You have had an interesting
adventure, Mr. Felix Pender, and, let me add, a fortunate escape." The author was about to renew his thanks when there
came a sound of scratching at the door, and the doctor sprang up
quickly. Before he had time to open the door, it had yielded
to the pressure behind it and flew wide open to admit a great
yellow-haired collie. The dog, wagging his tail and contorting his
whole body with delight, tore across the floor and tried to leap up
upon his owner's breast. And there was laughter and happiness in the
old eyes; for they were clear again as the day. |
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