TEN MINUTE STORIES
TEN MINUTE
STORIES
BY ALGERNON BLACKWOOD
AUTHOR OF “JOHN SILENCE” ETC.
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
_FIRST EDITION_ _February 1914_
_Reprinted_ _February 1914_
_All rights reserved_
PREFATORY NOTE
The Author wishes to thank the Editors of the _Morning Post_, the
_Westminster Gazette_, and _Country Life_ for permission to reprint in
this volume stories originally published in their papers.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. ACCESSORY BEFORE THE FACT 1
II. THE DEFERRED APPOINTMENT 12
III. THE PRAYER 21
IV. STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE OF A BARONET 32
V. THE SECRET 43
VI. THE LEASE 51
VII. UP AND DOWN 59
VIII. FAITH CURE ON THE CHANNEL 69
IX. THE GOBLIN’S COLLECTION 76
X. IMAGINATION 88
XI. THE INVITATION 95
XII. THE IMPULSE 103
XIII. HER BIRTHDAY 111
XIV. TWO IN ONE 116
XV. ANCIENT LIGHTS 128
XVI. DREAM TRESPASS 139
XVII. LET NOT THE SUN---- 152
XVIII. ENTRANCE AND EXIT 162
XIX. YOU _MAY_ TELEPHONE FROM HERE 170
XX. THE WHISPERERS 179
XXI. VIOLENCE 189
XXII. THE HOUSE OF THE PAST 202
XXIII. JIMBO’S LONGEST DAY 211
XXIV. IF THE CAP FITS---- 219
XXV. NEWS _v._ NOURISHMENT 229
XXVI. WIND 238
XXVII. PINES 245
XXVIII. THE WINTER ALPS 252
XXIX. THE SECOND GENERATION 260
TEN MINUTE STORIES
I
ACCESSORY BEFORE THE FACT
At the moorland cross-roads Martin stood examining the sign-post for
several minutes in some bewilderment. The names on the four arms were
not what he expected, distances were not given, and his map, he
concluded with impatience, must be hopelessly out of date. Spreading it
against the post, he stooped to study it more closely. The wind blew the
corners flapping against his face. The small print was almost
indecipherable in the fading light. It appeared, however--as well as he
could make out--that two miles back he must have taken the wrong
turning.
He remembered that turning. The path had looked inviting; he had
hesitated a moment, then followed it, caught by the usual lure of
walkers that it “might prove a short cut.” The short-cut snare is old
as human nature. For some minutes he studied the sign-post and the map
alternately. Dusk was falling, and his knapsack had grown heavy. He
could not make the two guides tally, however, and a feeling of
uncertainty crept over his mind. He felt oddly baffled, frustrated. His
thought grew thick. Decision was most difficult. “I’m muddled,” he
thought; “I must be tired,” as at length he chose the most likely arm.
“Sooner or later it will bring me to an inn, though not the one I
intended.” He accepted his walker’s luck, and started briskly. The arm
read, “Over Litacy Hill” in small, fine letters that danced and shifted
every time he looked at them; but the name was not discoverable on the
map. It was, however, inviting like the short cut. A similar impulse
again directed his choice. Only this time it seemed more insistent,
almost urgent.
And he became aware, then, of the exceeding loneliness of the country
about him. The road for a hundred yards went straight, then curved like
a white river running into space; the deep blue-green of heather lined
the banks, spreading upwards through the twilight; and occasional small
pines stood solitary here and there, all unexplained. The curious
adjective, having made its appearance, haunted him. So many things that
afternoon were similarly--unexplained: the short cut, the darkened map,
the names on the sign-post, his own erratic impulses, and the growing
strange confusion that crept upon his spirit. The entire country-side
needed explanation, though perhaps “interpretation” was the truer word.
Those little lonely trees had made him see it. Why had he lost his way
so easily? Why did he suffer vague impressions to influence his
direction? Why was he here--exactly _here_? And why did he go now “over
Litacy Hill”?
Then, by a green field that shone like a thought of daylight amid the
darkness of the moor, he saw a figure lying in the grass. It was a blot
upon the landscape, a mere huddled patch of dirty rags, yet with a
certain horrid picturesqueness too; and his mind--though his German was
of the schoolroom order--at once picked out the German equivalents as
against the English. _Lump_ and _Lumpen_ flashed across his brain most
oddly. They seemed in that moment right, and so expressive, almost like
onomatopœic words, if that were possible of sight. Neither “rags” nor
“rascal” would have fitted what he saw. The adequate description was in
German.
Here was a clue tossed up by the part of him that did not reason. But it
seems he missed it. And the next minute the tramp rose to a sitting
posture and asked the time of evening. In German he asked it. And
Martin, answering without a second’s hesitation, gave it, also in
German, “_halb sieben_”--half-past six. The instinctive guess was
accurate. A glance at his watch when he looked a moment later proved
it. He heard the man say, with the covert insolence of tramps, “T’ank
you; much opliged.” For Martin had not shown his watch--another
intuition subconsciously obeyed.
He quickened his pace along that lonely road, a curious jumble of
thoughts and feelings surging through him. He had somehow known the
question would come, and come in German. Yet it flustered and dismayed
him. Another thing had also flustered and dismayed him. He had expected
it in the same queer fashion: it was right. For when the ragged brown
thing rose to ask the question, a part of it remained lying on the
grass--another brown, dirty thing. There were two tramps. And he saw
both faces clearly. Behind the untidy beards, and below the old slouch
hats, he caught the look of unpleasant, clever faces that watched him
closely while he passed. The eyes followed him. For a second he looked
straight into those eyes, so that he could not fail to know them. And he
understood, quite horridly, that both faces were too sleek, refined, and
cunning for those of ordinary tramps. The men were not really tramps at
all. They were disguised.
“How covertly they watched me!” was his thought, as he hurried along the
darkening road, aware in dead earnestness now of the loneliness and
desolation of the moorland all about him.
Uneasy and distressed, he increased his pace. Midway in thinking what
an unnecessarily clanking noise his nailed boots made upon the hard
white road, there came upon him with a rush together the company of
these things that haunted him as “unexplained.” They brought a single
definite message: That all this business was not really meant for him at
all, and hence his confusion and bewilderment; that he had intruded into
someone else’s scenery, and was trespassing upon another’s map of life.
By some wrong _inner_ turning he had interpolated his person into a
group of foreign forces which operated in the little world of someone
else. Unwittingly, somewhere, he had crossed the threshold, and now was
fairly in--a trespasser, an eavesdropper, a Peeping Tom. He was
listening, peeping; overhearing things he had no right to know, because
they were intended for another. Like a ship at sea he was intercepting
wireless messages he could not properly interpret, because his Receiver
was not accurately tuned to their reception. And more--these messages
were warnings!
Then fear dropped upon him like the night. He was caught in a net of
delicate, deep forces he could not manage, knowing neither their origin
nor purpose. He had walked into some huge psychic trap elaborately
planned and baited, yet calculated for another than himself. Something
had lured him in, something in the landscape, the time of day, his mood.
Owing to some undiscovered weakness in himself he had been easily
caught. His fear slipped easily into terror.
What happened next happened with such speed and concentration that it
all seemed crammed into a moment. At once and in a heap it happened. It
was quite inevitable. Down the white road to meet him a man came swaying
from side to side in drunkenness quite obviously feigned--a tramp; and
while Martin made room for him to pass, the lurch changed in a second to
attack, and the fellow was upon him. The blow was sudden and terrific,
yet even while it fell Martin was aware that behind him rushed a second
man, who caught his legs from under him and bore him with a thud and
crash to the ground. Blows rained then; he saw a gleam of something
shining; a sudden deadly nausea plunged him into utter weakness where
resistance was impossible. Something of fire entered his throat, and
from his mouth poured a thick sweet thing that choked him. The world
sank far away into darkness.... Yet through all the horror and confusion
ran the trail of two clear thoughts: he realised that the first tramp
had sneaked at a fast double through the heather and so come down to
meet him; and that something heavy was torn from fastenings that clipped
it tight and close beneath his clothes against his body....
Abruptly then the darkness lifted, passed utterly away. He found himself
peering into the map against the sign-post. The wind was flapping the
corners against his cheek, and he was poring over names that now he saw
quite clear. Upon the arms of the sign-post above were those he had
expected to find, and the map recorded them quite faithfully. All was
accurate again and as it should be. He read the name of the village he
had meant to make--it was plainly visible in the dusk, two miles the
distance given. Bewildered, shaken, unable to think of anything, he
stuffed the map into his pocket unfolded, and hurried forward like a man
who has just wakened from an awful dream that had compressed into a
single second all the detailed misery of some prolonged, oppressive
nightmare.
He broke into a steady trot that soon became a run; the perspiration
poured from him; his legs felt weak, and his breath was difficult to
manage. He was only conscious of the overpowering desire to get away as
fast as possible from the sign-post at the cross-roads where the
dreadful vision had flashed upon him. For Martin, accountant on a
holiday, had never dreamed of any world of psychic possibilities. The
entire thing was torture. It was worse than a “cooked” balance of the
books that some conspiracy of clerks and directors proved at his
innocent door. He raced as though the country-side ran crying at his
heels. And always still ran with him the incredible conviction that none
of this was really meant for himself at all. He had overheard the
secrets of another. He had taken the warning for another into himself,
and so altered its direction. He had thereby prevented its right
delivery. It all shocked him beyond words. It dislocated the machinery
of his just and accurate soul. The warning was intended for another, who
could not--would not--now receive it.
The physical exertion, however, brought at length a more comfortable
reaction and some measure of composure. With the lights in sight, he
slowed down and entered the village at a reasonable pace. The inn was
reached, a bedroom inspected and engaged, and supper ordered with the
solid comfort of a large Bass to satisfy an unholy thirst and complete
the restoration of balance. The unusual sensations largely passed away,
and the odd feeling that anything in his simple, wholesome world
required explanation was no longer present. Still with a vague
uneasiness about him, though actual fear quite gone, he went into the
bar to smoke an after-supper pipe and chat with the natives, as his
pleasure was upon a holiday, and so saw two men leaning upon the counter
at the far end with their backs towards him. He saw their faces
instantly in the glass, and the pipe nearly slipped from between his
teeth. Clean-shaven, sleek, clever faces--and he caught a word or two
as they talked over their drinks--German words. Well dressed they were,
both men, with nothing about them calling for particular attention; they
might have been two tourists holiday-making like himself in tweeds and
walking-boots. And they presently paid for their drinks and went out. He
never saw them face to face at all; but the sweat broke out afresh all
over him, a feverish rush of heat and ice together ran about his body;
beyond question he recognised the two tramps, this time not
disguised--_not yet_ disguised.
He remained in his corner without moving, puffing violently at an
extinguished pipe, gripped helplessly by the return of that first vile
terror. It came again to him with an absolute clarity of certainty that
it was not with himself they had to do, these men, and, further, that he
had no right in the world to interfere. He had no _locus standi_ at all;
it would be immoral ... even if the opportunity came. And the
opportunity, he felt, would come. He had been an eavesdropper, and had
come upon private information of a secret kind that he had no right to
make use of, even that good might come--even to save life. He sat on in
his corner, terrified and silent, waiting for the thing that should
happen next.
But night came without explanation. Nothing happened. He slept soundly.
There was no other guest at the inn but an elderly man, apparently a
tourist like himself. He wore gold-rimmed glasses, and in the morning
Martin overheard him asking the landlord what direction he should take
for Litacy Hill. His teeth began then to chatter and a weakness came
into his knees. “You turn to the left at the cross-roads,” Martin broke
in before the landlord could reply; “you’ll see the sign-post about two
miles from here, and after that it’s a matter of four miles more.” How
in the world did he know, flashed horribly through him. “I’m going that
way myself,” he was saying next; “I’ll go with you for a bit--if you
don’t mind!” The words came out impulsively and ill-considered; of their
own accord they came. For his own direction was exactly opposite. _He
did not want the man to go alone._ The stranger, however, easily evaded
his offer of companionship. He thanked him with the remark that he was
starting later in the day.... They were standing, all three, beside the
horse-trough in front of the inn, when at that very moment a tramp,
slouching along the road, looked up and asked the time of day. And it
was the man with the gold-rimmed glasses who told him.
“T’ank you; much opliged,” the tramp replied, passing on with his slow,
slouching gait, while the landlord, a talkative fellow, proceeded to
remark upon the number of Germans that lived in England and were ready
to swell the Teutonic invasion which _he_, for his part, deemed
imminent.
But Martin heard it not. Before he had gone a mile upon his way he went
into the woods to fight his conscience all alone. His feebleness, his
cowardice, were surely criminal. Real anguish tortured him. A dozen
times he decided to go back upon his steps, and a dozen times the
singular authority that whispered he had no right to interfere prevented
him. How could he act upon knowledge gained by eavesdropping? How
interfere in the private business of another’s hidden life merely
because he had overheard, as at the telephone, its secret dangers? Some
inner confusion prevented straight thinking altogether. The stranger
would merely think him mad. He had no “fact” to go upon.... He smothered
a hundred impulses ... and finally went on his way with a shaking,
troubled heart.
The last two days of his holiday were ruined by doubts and questions and
alarms--all justified later when he read of the murder of a tourist upon
Litacy Hill. The man wore gold-rimmed glasses, and carried in a belt
about his person a large sum of money. His throat was cut. And the
police were hard upon the trail of a mysterious pair of tramps, said to
be--Germans.
II
THE DEFERRED APPOINTMENT
The little “Photographic Studio” in the side-street beyond Shepherd’s
Bush had done no business all day, for the light had been uninviting to
even the vainest sitter, and the murky sky that foreboded snow had hung
over London without a break since dawn. Pedestrians went hurrying and
shivering along the pavements, disappearing into the gloom of countless
ugly little houses the moment they passed beyond the glare of the big
electric standards that lit the thundering motor-buses in the main
street. The first flakes of snow, indeed, were already falling slowly,
as though they shrank from settling in the grime. The wind moaned and
sang dismally, catching the ears and lifting the shabby coat-tails of
Mr. Mortimer Jenkyn, “Photographic Artist,” as he stood outside and put
the shutters up with his own cold hands in despair of further trade. It
was five minutes to six.
With a lingering glance at the enlarged portrait of a fat man in masonic
regalia who was the pride and glory of his window-front, he fixed the
last hook of the shutter, and turned to go indoors. There was developing
and framing to be done upstairs, not very remunerative work, but better,
at any rate, than waiting in an empty studio for customers who did not
come--wasting the heat of two oil-stoves into the bargain. And it was
then, in the act of closing the street-door behind him, that he saw a
man standing in the shadows of the narrow passage, staring fixedly into
his face.
Mr. Jenkyn admits that he jumped. The man was so very close, yet he had
not seen him come in; and in the eyes was such a curiously sad and
appealing expression. He had already sent his assistant home, and there
was no other occupant of the little two-storey house. The man must have
slipped past him from the dark street while his back was turned. Who in
the world could he be, and what could he want? Was he beggar, customer,
or rogue?
“Good evening,” Mr. Jenkyn said, washing his hands, but using only half
the oily politeness of tone with which he favoured sitters. He was just
going to add “sir,” feeling it wiser to be on the safe side, when the
stranger shifted his position so that the light fell directly upon his
face, and Mr. Jenkyn was aware that he--recognised him. Unless he was
greatly mistaken, it was the second-hand bookseller in the main street.
“Ah, it’s you, Mr. Wilson!” he stammered, making half a question of it,
as though not quite convinced. “Pardon me; I did not quite catch your
face--er--I was just shutting up.” The other bowed his head in reply.
“Won’t you come in? Do, please.”
Mr. Jenkyn led the way. He wondered what was the matter. The visitor was
not among his customers; indeed, he could hardly claim to know him,
having only seen him occasionally when calling at the shop for slight
purchases of paper and what not. The man, he now realised, looked
fearfully ill and wasted, his face pale and haggard. It upset him
rather, this sudden, abrupt call. He felt sorry, pained. He felt uneasy.
Into the studio they passed, the visitor going first as though he knew
the way, Mr. Jenkyn noticing through his flurry that he was in his
“Sunday best.” Evidently he had come with a definite purpose. It was
odd. Still without speaking, he moved straight across the room and posed
himself in front of the dingy background of painted trees, facing the
camera. The studio was brightly lit. He seated himself in the faded
arm-chair, crossed his legs, drew up the little round table with the
artificial roses upon it in a tall, thin vase, and struck an attitude.
He meant to be photographed. His eyes, staring straight into the lens,
draped as it was with the black velvet curtain, seemed, however, to take
no account of the Photographic Artist. But Mr. Jenkyn, standing still
beside the door, felt a cold air playing over his face that was not
merely the winter cold from the street. He felt his hair rise. A slight
shiver ran down his back. In that pale, drawn face, and in those staring
eyes across the room that gazed so fixedly into the draped camera, he
read the signature of illness that no longer knows hope. It was Death
that he saw.
In a flash the impression came and went--less than a second. The whole
business, indeed, had not occupied two minutes. Mr. Jenkyn pulled
himself together with a strong effort, dismissed his foolish obsession,
and came sharply to practical considerations. “Forgive me,” he said, a
trifle thickly, confusedly, “but I--er--did not quite realise. You
desire to sit for your portrait, of course. I’ve had such a busy day,
and--’ardly looked for a customer so late.” The clock, as he spoke,
struck six. But he did not notice the sound. Through his mind ran
another reflection: “A man shouldn’t ’ave his picture taken when he’s
ill and next door to dying. Lord! He’ll want a lot of touching-up and
finishin’, too!”
He began discussing the size, price, and length--the usual rigmarole of
his “profession,” and the other, sitting there, still vouchsafed no
comment or reply. He simply made the impression of a man in a great
hurry, who wished to finish a disagreeable business without unnecessary
talk. Many men, reflected the photographer, were the same; being
photographed was worse to them than going to the dentist. Mr. Jenkyn
filled the pauses with his professional running talk and patter, while
the sitter, fixed and motionless, kept his first position and stared at
the camera. The photographer rather prided himself upon his ability to
make sitters look bright and pleasant; but this man was hopeless. It was
only afterwards Mr. Jenkyn recalled the singular fact that he never once
touched him--that, in fact, something connected possibly with his frail
appearance of deadly illness had prevented his going close to arrange
the details of the hastily assumed pose.
“It must be a flashlight, of course, Mr. Wilson,” he said, fidgeting at
length with the camera-stand, shifting it slightly nearer; while the
other moved his head gently yet impatiently in agreement. Mr. Jenkyn
longed to suggest his coming another time when he looked better, to
speak with sympathy of his illness; to say something, in fact, that
might establish a personal relation. But his tongue in this respect
seemed utterly tied. It was just this personal relation which seemed
impossible of approach--absolutely and peremptorily impossible. There
seemed a barrier between the two. He could only chatter the usual
professional commonplaces. To tell the truth, Mr. Jenkyn thinks he felt
a little dazed the whole time--not quite his usual self. And, meanwhile,
his uneasiness oddly increased. He hurried. He, too, wanted the matter
done with and his visitor gone.
At length everything was ready, only the flashlight waiting to be turned
on, when, stooping, he covered his head with the velvet cloth and peered
through the lens--at no one! When he says “at no one,” however, he
qualifies it thus: “There was a quick flash of brilliant white light and
a face in the middle of it--my gracious Heaven! But such a face--_’im_,
yet not _’im_--like a sudden rushing glory of a face! It shot off like
lightning out of the camera’s field of vision. It left me blinded, I
assure you, ’alf blinded, and that’s a fac’. It was sheer dazzling!”
It seems Mr. Jenkyn remained entangled a moment in the cloth, eyes
closed, breath coming in gasps, for when he got clear and straightened
up again, staring once more at his customer over the top of the camera,
he stared for the second time at--no one. And the cap that he held in
his left hand he clapped feverishly over the uncovered lens. Mr. Jenkyn
staggered ... looked hurriedly round the empty studio, then ran,
knocking a chair over as he went, into the passage. The hall was
deserted, the front door closed. His visitor had disappeared “almost as
though he hadn’t never been there at all”--thus he described it to
himself in a terrified whisper. And again he felt the hair rise on his
scalp; his skin crawled a little, and something put back the ice against
his spine.
After a moment he returned to the studio and somewhat feverishly
examined it. There stood the chair against the dingy background of
trees; and there, close beside it, was the round table with the flower
vase. Less than a minute ago Mr. Thomas Wilson, looking like death, had
been sitting in that very chair. “It wasn’t _all_ a sort of dreamin’,
then,” ran through his disordered and frightened mind. “I did see
something ...!” He remembered vaguely stories he had read in the
newspapers, stories of queer warnings that saved people from disasters,
apparitions, faces seen in dream, and so forth. “Maybe,” he thought with
confusion, “something’s going to ’appen to _me_!” Further than that he
could not get for some little time, as he stood there staring about him,
almost expecting that Mr. Wilson might reappear as strangely as he had
disappeared. He went over the whole scene again and again,
reconstructing it in minutest detail. And only then, for the first time,
did he plainly realise two things which somehow or other he had not
thought strange before, but now thought very strange. For his visitor,
he remembered, had not uttered a single word, nor had he, Mr. Jenkyn,
once touched his person.... And, thereupon, without more ado, he put on
his hat and coat and went round to the little shop in the main street
to buy some ink and stationery which he did not in the least require.
The shop seemed all as usual, though Mr. Wilson himself was not visible
behind the littered desk. A tall gentleman was talking in low tones to
the partner. Mr. Jenkyn bowed as he went in, then stood examining a case
of cheap stylographic pens, waiting for the others to finish. It was
impossible to avoid overhearing. Besides, the little shop had
distinguished customers sometimes, he had heard, and this evidently was
one of them. He only understood part of the conversation, but he
remembers all of it. “Singular, yes, these last words of dying men,” the
tall man was saying, “very singular. You remember Newman’s: ‘More
light,’ wasn’t it?” The bookseller nodded. “Fine,” he said, “fine,
that!” There was a pause. Mr. Jenkyn stooped lower over the pens. “This,
too, was fine in its way,” the gentleman added, straightening up to go;
“the old promise, you see, unfulfilled but not forgotten. Cropped up
suddenly out of the delirium. Curious, very curious! A good,
conscientious man to the last. In all the twenty years I’ve known him he
never broke his word....”
A motor-bus drowned a sentence, and then was heard in the bookseller’s
voice, as he moved towards the door: “...You see, he was half-way down
the stairs before they found him, always repeating the same thing, ‘I
promised the wife, I promised the wife.’ And it was a job, I’m told,
getting him back again ... he struggled so. That’s what finished him so
quick, I suppose. Fifteen minutes later he was gone, and his last words
were always the same, ‘I promised the wife’....”
The tall man was gone, and Mr. Jenkyn forgot about his purchases. “When
did it ’appen?” he heard himself asking in a voice he hardly recognised
as his own. And the reply roared and thundered in his ears as he went
down the street a minute later to his house: “Close on six o’clock--a
few minutes before the hour. Been ill for weeks, yes. Caught him out of
bed with high fever on his way to your place, Mr. Jenkyn, calling at the
top of his voice that he’d forgotten to see you about his picture being
taken. Yes, very sad, very sad indeed.”
But Mr. Jenkyn did not return to his studio. He left the light burning
there all night. He went to the little room where he slept out, and next
day gave the plate to be developed by his assistant. “Defective plate,
sir,” was the report in due course; “shows nothing but a flash of
light--uncommonly brilliant.” “Make a print of it all the same,” was the
reply. Six months later, when he examined the plate and print, Mr.
Jenkyn found that the singular streaks of light had disappeared from
both. The uncommon brilliance had faded out completely as though it had
never been there.
III
THE PRAYER
There was a glitter in the eye of O’Malley when they met. “I’ve got it!”
he said under his breath, holding out a tiny phial with the ominous red
label.
“Got what?” asked Jones, as though he didn’t know. Both were medical
students; both of a speculative and adventurous turn of mind as well;
the Irishman, however, ever the leader in mischief.
“The stuff!” was the reply. “The recipe the Hindu gave me. Your night’s
free, isn’t it? Mine, too. We’ll try it. Eh?”
They eyed the little bottle with its shouting label--Poison. Jones took
it up, fingered it, drew the cork, sniffed it. “Ugh!” he exclaimed,
“it’s got an awful smell. Don’t think I could swallow that!”
“You don’t swallow it,” answered O’Malley impatiently. “You sniff it up
through the nose--just a drop. It goes down the throat that way.”
“Irish swallowing, eh?” laughed Jones uneasily. “It looks wicked to
me.” He played with the bottle, till the other snatched it away.
“Look out, man! Begad, there’s enough there to kill a Cabinet Minister,
or a horse. It’s the real stuff, I tell you. I told him it was for a
psychical experiment. You remember the talk we had that night----”
“Oh, I remember well enough. But it’s not worth while in my opinion. It
will only make us sick.” He said it almost angrily. “Besides, we’ve got
enough hallucinations in life already without inducing others----”
O’Malley glanced up quickly. “Nothing of the sort,” he snapped. “You’re
backing out. You swore you’d try it with me if I got it. The effect----”
“Well, what is the effect?”
The Irishman looked keenly at him. He answered very low. Evidently he
said something he really believed. There was gravity, almost solemnity,
in his voice and manner.
“Opens the inner sight,” he whispered darkly. “Makes you sensitive to
thoughts and thoughtforces.” He paused a moment, staring hard into the
other’s eyes. “For instance,” he added slowly, earnestly, “if somebody’s
thinking hard about _you_, I should twig it. See? I should _see_ the
thought-stream getting at you--influencing you--making you do this and
that. The air is full of loose and wandering thoughts from other minds.
I should see these thoughts hovering about your mind like flies trying
to settle. Understand? The cause of a sudden change of mood in a man, an
inspiration, a helping thought--a temptation----!”
“Bosh!”
“Are you afraid?”
“No. But it’s a poisonous doctrine--that such experiments are worth
while even if--if----”
But O’Malley knew his pal.... They took the prescribed dose together,
laughing, scoffing, hoping. Then they went out to dine. “We must eat
very little,” explained the Irishman. “The stomach must be comparatively
empty. And drink nothing at all.”
“What a bore!” said Jones, who was always hungry, and usually thirsty.
The prescribed hour passed between the taking of the dose and dinner.
They felt nothing more than what Jones described as a “beastly
uncomfortable sort of inner heat.”
* * * * *
Opposite them, at a table alone, sat a small man, over-dressed according
to their standards, and wearing diamond rings. His face had a curious
mixture of refinement and wickedness--like a man naturally sensitive
whom circumstances, indulgence, or some special temptation had led
astray. He did not notice their somewhat close attention because, in his
turn, he was closely watching--somebody else. He ate and drank soberly,
but drew his dinner out. The “somebody else” he watched, obviously
enough, was a country couple, up probably for the festivities due to the
presence of a foreign Potentate in town. They were bewildered by big
London. They carried hand-bags. From time to time the old man fingered
his breast-pocket. He looked about him nervously. The be-ringed man was
kind to them, lent them his newspaper, passed the salt, gave them scraps
of favoured, kind, and sympathetic conversation. He was very gentle with
them.
“Feel anything yet?” asked O’Malley for the tenth time, noticing a
curious, passing look on his companion’s face. “I don’t feel a blessed
thing meself! I believe that chemist fooled me, gave me diluted stuff or
something----” He stopped short, caught by the other’s eye. They had
been dining very sparingly, much to the disgust of the waiter, who
wanted their table for more remunerative customers.
“I do feel something, yes,” was the quiet reply. “Or, rather, I _see_
something. It’s odd; but I really do----”
“What? Out with it! Tell me!”
“A sort of wavy line of gold,” said Jones calmly, “gold and shining. And
sometimes it’s white. It flits about that fellow’s head--that fellow
over there.” He indicated the man with the rings. “Almost as if--it were
trying to get into him----”
“Bosh!” said O’Malley, who was ever the last to believe in the success
of his own experiments. “You swear it?”
The other’s face convinced him, and a thrill went down his Irish spine.
“Hush,” said Jones in a lower tone, “don’t shout. I see it right enough.
It’s like a little wavy stream of light. It’s going all about his head
and eyes. By gad, it’s lovely, though--it’s like a flower now, a
floating blossom--and now a strip of thin soft gold. It’s got him! By
George, I tell you, it’s got him----!”
“Got him?” echoed the Irishman, genuinely impressed.
“Got _into_ him, I meant. It’s disappeared--gone clean into his head.
Look!”
O’Malley looked hard, but saw nothing. “Me boy!” he cried, “the stuff
_was_ real. It’s working. Watch it. I do believe you’ve seen a
thought--a thought from somebody else--a wandering thought. It’s got
into his mind. It may affect his actions, movements, decisions. Good
Lord! The stuff was not diluted, after all. You’ve seen a
thought-force!” He was tremendously excited. Jones, however, was too
absorbed in what he saw to feel excitement. Whether it was due to the
drug or not, he knew he saw a real thing.
“Wonder if it’s a good one or a bad one!” whispered the Irishman.
“Wonder what sort of mind it comes from! Where? How far away?” He
wondered a number of things. He chattered below his breath like a dying
gramophone. But his companion just sat, staring in rapt silence.
“What are _you_ doing here?” said a voice from the table behind them
quietly. And O’Malley, turning--Jones was too preoccupied--recognised a
plain-clothes detective whom he chanced to know from having been
associated with him in a recent poisoning case.
“Nothing particular; just having dinner,” he answered. “And you?”
The detective made no secret of his object. “Watching the crowds for
their own safety,” he said, “that’s all. London’s full of prey just
now--all up from the country, with their bags in their hands, their
money in their breast-pockets, and good-natured folks ready everywhere
to help ’em, and help themselves at the same time.” He laughed, nodding
towards the man with the rings. “All the crooks are on the job,” he
added significantly. “There’s an old friend of ours. He doesn’t know
_me_, but I know him right enough. He’s usually made up as a clergyman;
and to-night he’s after that old couple at the nex’ table, or my name
ain’t Joe Leary! Don’t stare, or he’ll notice.” He turned his head the
other way.
O’Malley, however, was far too interested in hoping for a psychical
experience of his own, and in watching the “alleged phenomena” of his
companion, to feel much interest in a mere detective’s hunt for
pickpockets. He turned towards his friend again. “What’s up now?” he
asked, with his back to the detective; “see anything more?”
“It’s perfectly wonderful,” whispered Jones softly. “It’s out again. I
can see the gold thread, all shining and alive, clean down in the man’s
mind and heart, then out, then in again. It’s making him different--I
swear it is. By George, it’s like a blessed chemical experiment. I can’t
explain it as I see it, but he’s getting sort of bright within--golden
like the thread.” Jones was wrought up, excited, moved. It was
impossible to doubt his earnestness. He described a thing he really saw.
O’Malley listened with envy and resentment.
“Blast it all!” he exclaimed. “I see nothing. I didn’t take enough!” And
he drew the little phial out of his pocket.
“Look! He’s _changed_!” exclaimed Jones, interrupting the movement so
suddenly that O’Malley dropped the phial and it smashed to atoms against
the iron edge of the umbrella-stand. “His thought’s altered. He’s going
out. The gold has spread all through him----!”
“By gosh!” put in O’Malley, so loud that people stared, “it’s helped
him--made him a better man--turned him from evil. It’s that blessed
wandering thought! Follow it, follow it! Quick!” And in the general
confusion that came with the paying of bills, cleaning up the broken
glass, and the rest, the “crook” slipped out into the crowd and was
lost, the detective murmured something about “wonder what made him leave
so good a trail!” and the Irishman filled in the pauses with hurried,
nervous sentences--“Keep your eye on the line of gold! We’ll follow it!
We’ll trace it to its source. Never mind the tip! Hurry, hurry! Don’t
lose it!”
But Jones was already out, drawn by the power of his obvious conviction.
They went into the street. Regardless of the blaze of lights and blur of
shadows, the noise of traffic and the rush of the crowds, they followed
what Jones described as the “line of wavy gold.”
“Don’t lose it! For Heaven’s sake, don’t lose it!” O’Malley cried,
dodging with difficulty after the disappearing figure. “It’s a genuine
thought-force from another mind. Follow it! Trace it! We’ll track it to
its source--some noble thinker somewhere--some gracious woman--some
exalted, golden source, at any rate!” He was wholly caught away now by
the splendour of the experiment’s success. A thought that could make a
criminal change his mind must issue from a radiant well of rare and
purest thinking. He remembered the Hindu’s words: “You will see thoughts
in colour--bad ones, lurid and streaked--good ones, sweet and shining,
like a line of golden light--and if you follow, you may trace them to
the mind that sent them out.”
“It goes so fast!” Jones called back, “I can hardly keep up. It’s in the
air, just over the heads of the crowd. It leaves a trail like a meteor.
Come on, come on!”
“Take a taxi,” shouted the Irishman. “It’ll escape us!” They laughed,
and panted, dodged past the stream of people, crossed the street.
“Shut up!” answered Jones. “Don’t talk so much. I lose it when you talk.
It’s in my mind. I really see it, but your chatter blurs it. Come on,
come on!”
* * * * *
And so they came at last to the region of mean streets, where the
traffic was less, the shadows deeper, the lights dim, streets that
visiting Emperors do not change. No match-sellers, bootlace venders, or
“dreadful shadows proffering toys,” blocked their way on the pavement
edge, because here were none to buy.
“It’s changed from gold to white,” Jones whispered breathlessly. “It
shines now--by gad, it shines--like a bit of escaped sunrise. And others
have joined it. Can’t you see ’em? Why, they’re like a network. They’re
rays--rays of glory. And--hullo!--I see where they come from now! It’s
that house over there. Look, man, look! They’re streaming like a river
of light out of that high window, that little attic window up there”--he
pointed to a dingy house standing black against the murk of the sky.
“They come out in a big stream, and then separate in all directions.
It’s simply wonderful!”
O’Malley gasped and panted. He said nothing. Jones, the phlegmatic,
heavy Jones, had got a real vision, whereas he who always imagined
“visions” got nothing. He followed the lead. Jones, he understood, was
taking his instinct where it led him. He would not interfere.
And the instinct led him to the door. They stopped dead, hesitating for
the first time. “Better not go in, you know,” said O’Malley, breaking
the decision he had just made. Jones looked up at him, slightly
bewildered. “I’ve lost it,” he whispered, “lost the line----” A taxi-cab
drew up with a rattling thunder just in front and a man got out, came up
to the door and stood beside them. It was the crook.
For a second or two the three men eyed each other. Clearly the new
arrival did not recognise them. “Pardon, gentlemen,” he said, pushing
past to pull the bell. They saw his rings. The taxi boomed away down the
little dark street that knew more of coal-carts than of motors. “You’re
coming in?” the man asked, as the door opened and he stepped inside.
O’Malley, usually so quick-witted, found no word to say, but Jones had a
question ready. The Irishman never understood how he asked it, and got
the answer, too, without giving offence. The instinct guided him in
choice of words and tone and gesture--somehow or other. He asked who
lived upstairs in the front attic room, and the man, as he quietly
closed the door upon them, gave the information--“My father.”
And, for the rest, all they ever learnt--by a little diligent inquiry up
and down the street, engineered by Jones--was that the old man,
bedridden for a dozen years, was never seen, and that an occasional
district-visitor, or such like, were his only callers. But they all
agreed that he was good. “They do say he lies there praying day and
night--jest praying for the world.” It was the grocer at the corner who
told them that.
IV
STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE OF A BARONET
His intrinsic value before the Eternities was exceedingly small, but he
possessed most things the world sets store by--presence, name,
wealth--and, above all, that high opinion of himself which saves it the
bother of a separate and troublesome valuation. Outside these
possessions he owned nothing of permanent value, or that could decently
claim to be worthy of immortality. The fact was he had never even
experienced that expansion of self commonly known as generosity. No
apology, however, is necessary for his amazing adventure, for these same
Eternities who judged him have made their affidavit that it was They who
stripped him bare and showed himself--to himself.
It all began with the receipt of that shattering letter from his
solicitors. He read and re-read it in his comfortable first-class
compartment as the express hurried him to town, exceedingly comfortable
among his rugs and furs, exceedingly distressed and ill at ease in his
mind. And in his private sitting-room of the big hotel that same
evening Mr. Smirles, more odious even than his letter, informed him
plainly that this new and unexpected claimant to his title and estates
was likely to be exceedingly troublesome--“even dangerous, Sir Timothy!
I am bound to say, since you ask me, that it might be wise to regard the
future--er--with a different scale of vision than the one you have been
accustomed to.”
Sir Timothy practically collapsed. Instinctively he perceived that the
lawyer’s manner already held less respect: the reflection was a shock to
his vain and fatuous personality. “After all, then, it wasn’t _me_ he
worshipped, but my position, and so forth ...!” If this nonsense
continued he would be no longer “Sir Timothy,” but simply “Mister”
Puffe, poor, a nobody. He seemed to shrink in size as he gazed at
himself in the mirror of the gorgeous, flamboyantly decorated room.
“It’s too preposterous and absurd! There’s nothing in it! Why, the whole
County would go to pieces without me!” He even thought of making his
secretary draft a letter to the _Times_--a letter of violent, indignant
protest.
He was a handsome, portly man, with a full-blown vanity justified by no
single item of soul or mind; not unkind, so much as empty; created and
kept alive by the small conventions and the ceaseless contemplation of
himself, the withdrawal of which might be expected to leave him flat as
a popped balloon.... Such a mass of pompous conceit obscured his vision
that he only slowly took in the fact that his very existence was at
stake. His thoughts rumbled on without direction, the sense of loss,
however, dreadfully sharp and painful all the time, till at length he
sought relief in something he could _really_ understand. He changed for
dinner! He would dine in his sitting-room alone. And, meanwhile, he rang
for the remainder of his voluminous luggage. But it was vastly annoying
to his diminishing pride to discover that the gorgeous Head Porter (he
remembered now having vaguely recognised him in the hall) was the same
poor relation to whom he had denied help a year ago. The vicissitudes of
life were indeed preposterous. He ought to have been protected from so
ridiculous an encounter. For the moment, of course, he merely pretended
not to see him--certainly he did not commend the excellently quick
delivery of the luggage. And to praise the young fellow’s pluck never
occurred to him for one single instant.
“The house valet, please,” he asked of the waiter who answered the bell
soon afterwards--and then directed somewhat helplessly the unpacking of
his emporium of exquisite clothes. “Yes, take everything
out--everything,” he said in reply to the man’s question--rather an
extraordinary, almost insolent question when he came to reflect upon
it, surely: “Is it worth while, perhaps, sir ...?” It flashed across his
dazed mind that the Head Porter had made the very same remark to his
subordinate in the passage when he asked if “everything” was to come in.
With a shrug of his gold-braided shoulders that poor relation had
replied, “Seems hardly worth while, but they may as well all go in,
yes.”
And, with the double rejoinder perplexingly in his mind, Sir Timothy
turned sharply upon the valet.
But the thing he was going to say faded on his lips. The man, holding
out in his arms a heap of clothes, suits and what not, seemed so much
taller than before. Sir Timothy had looked down upon him a moment ago,
whereas now their eyes stared level. It was passing strange.
“Will you want these, sir?”
“Not to-night, of course.”
“Want them at all, I meant, sir?”
Sir Timothy gasped. “Want them at all? Of course! What in the world are
you talking about?”
“Beg pardon, sir. Didn’t know if it was worth while now,” the man said,
with a quick flush. And, before the pompous and amazed baronet could get
any words between his quivering lips, the man was gone. The waiter, Head
Waiter it was, answered the bell almost immediately, and Sir Timothy
found consolation for his injured feelings in discussing food and wine.
He ordered an absurdly sumptuous meal for a man dining alone. He did so
with a vague feeling that it would spite somebody, perhaps; he hardly
knew whom. “The Pol Roger well iced, mind,” he added with a false
importance as the clever servant withdrew. But at the door the man
paused and turned, as though he had not heard. “_Large_ bottle, I said,”
repeated the other. The Head Waiter made an extraordinary gesture of
indifference. “As you wish, Sir Timothy, as you wish!” And he was gone
in his turn. But it was only the man’s adroitness that had chosen the
words instead of those others: “Is it really worth while?”
And at that very moment, while Sir Timothy stood there fuming inwardly
over the extraordinary words and ways of these people--veiled insolence,
_he_ called it--the door opened, and a tall young woman poked her head
inside, then followed it with her person. She was dignified, smart even
for a hotel like this, and uncommonly pretty. It was the upper
housemaid. Full in the eye she looked at him. In her face was a kind of
swift sympathy and kindness; but her whole presentment betrayed more
than anything else--terror.
“Make an effort, make an effort!” she whispered earnestly. “Before it’s
too late, make an effort!” And _she_ was gone. Sir Timothy, hardly
knowing what he meant to do, opened the door to dash after her and make
her explain this latest insolence. But the passage was dark, and he
heard the swish of skirts far away--too far away to overtake; while
running along the walls, as in a whispering gallery, came the words,
“Make an effort, make an effort!”
“Confound it all, then, I will!” he exclaimed to himself, as he stumbled
back into the room, feeling horribly bewildered. “I will make an
effort.” And he dressed to go downstairs and show himself in the halls
and drawing-rooms, give a few pompous orders, assert himself, and fuss
about generally. But that process of dressing without his valet was
chiefly and weirdly distressing because he had so amazingly--dwindled.
His sight was, of course, awry; disordered nerves had played tricks with
vision, proportion, perspective; something of the sort must explain why
he seemed so small to himself in the reflection. The pier-glass, which
showed him full length, he turned to the wall. But, none the less, to
complete his toilet, he had to stand upon a footstool before the other
mirror above the mantelpiece.