"There's a hextraordinary gentleman to see you, sir," said the new man.
"Why 'extraordinary'?" asked Dr. Silence, drawing the tips of his thin
fingers through his brown beard. His eyes twinkled pleasantly. "Why
'extraordinary,' Barker?" he repeated encouragingly, noticing the
perplexed expression in the man's eyes.
"He's so--so thin, sir. I could hardly see 'im at all--at first. He was
inside the house before I could ask the name," he added, remembering
strict orders.
"And who brought him here?"
"He come alone, sir, in a closed cab. He pushed by me before I could say
a word--making no noise not what I could hear. He seemed to move so soft
like--"
The man stopped short with obvious embarrassment, as though he had
already said enough to jeopardise his new situation, but trying hard to
show that he remembered the instructions and warnings he had received
with regard to the admission of strangers not properly accredited.
"And where is the gentleman now?" asked Dr. Silence, turning away to
conceal his amusement.
"I really couldn't exactly say, sir. I left him standing in the 'all--"
The doctor looked up sharply. "But why in the hall, Barker? Why not in
the waiting-room?" He fixed his piercing though kindly eyes on the man's
face. "Did he frighten you?" he asked quickly.
"I think he did, sir, if I may say so. I seemed to lose sight of him, as
it were--" The man stammered, evidently convinced by now that he had
earned his dismissal. "He come in so funny, just like a cold wind," he
added boldly, setting his heels at attention and looking his master full
in the face.
The doctor made an internal note of the man's halting description; he
was pleased that the slight signs of psychic intuition which had induced
him to engage Barker had not entirely failed at the first trial. Dr.
Silence sought for this qualification in all his assistants, from
secretary to serving man, and if it surrounded him with a somewhat
singular crew, the drawbacks were more than compensated for on the whole
by their occasional flashes of insight.
"So the gentleman made you feel queer, did he?"
"That was it, I think, sir," repeated the man stolidly.
"And he brings no kind of introduction to me--no letter or anything?"
asked the doctor, with feigned surprise, as though he knew what was
coming.
The man fumbled, both in mind and pockets, and finally produced an
envelope.
"I beg pardon, sir," he said, greatly flustered; "the gentleman handed
me this for you."
It was a note from a discerning friend, who had never yet sent him a
case that was not vitally interesting from one point or another.
"Please see the bearer of this note," the brief message ran, "though I
doubt if even you can do much to help him."
John Silence paused a moment, so as to gather from the mind of the
writer all that lay behind the brief words of the letter. Then he looked
up at his servant with a graver expression than he had yet worn.
"Go back and find this gentleman," he said, "and show him into the green
study. Do not reply to his question, or speak more than actually
necessary; but think kind, helpful, sympathetic thoughts as strongly as
you can, Barker. You remember what I told you about the importance of
_thinking_, when I engaged you. Put curiosity out of your mind, and
think gently, sympathetically, affectionately, if you can."
He smiled, and Barker, who had recovered his composure in the doctor's
presence, bowed silently and went out.
There were two different reception-rooms in Dr. Silence's house. One
(intended for persons who imagined they needed spiritual assistance when
really they were only candidates for the asylum) had padded walls, and
was well supplied with various concealed contrivances by means of which
sudden violence could be instantly met and overcome. It was, however,
rarely used. The other, intended for the reception of genuine cases of
spiritual distress and out-of-the-way afflictions of a psychic nature,
was entirely draped and furnished in a soothing deep green, calculated
to induce calmness and repose of mind. And this room was the one in
which Dr. Silence interviewed the majority of his "queer" cases, and the
one into which he had directed Barker to show his present caller.
To begin with, the arm-chair in which the patient was always directed to
sit, was nailed to the floor, since its immovability tended to impart
this same excellent characteristic to the occupant. Patients invariably
grew excited when talking about themselves, and their excitement tended
to confuse their thoughts and to exaggerate their language. The
inflexibility of the chair helped to counteract this. After repeated
endeavours to drag it forward, or push it back, they ended by resigning
themselves to sitting quietly. And with the futility of fidgeting there
followed a calmer state of mind.
Upon the floor, and at intervals in the wall immediately behind, were
certain tiny green buttons, practically unnoticeable, which on being
pressed permitted a soothing and persuasive narcotic to rise invisibly
about the occupant of the chair. The effect upon the excitable patient
was rapid, admirable, and harmless. The green study was further provided
with a secret spy-hole; for John Silence liked when possible to observe
his patient's face before it had assumed that mask the features of the
human countenance invariably wear in the presence of another person. A
man sitting alone wears a psychic expression; and this expression is the
man himself. It disappears the moment another person joins him. And Dr.
Silence often learned more from a few moments' secret observation of a
face than from hours of conversation with its owner afterwards.
A very light, almost a dancing, step followed Barker's heavy tread
towards the green room, and a moment afterwards the man came in and
announced that the gentleman was waiting. He was still pale and his
manner nervous.
"Never mind, Barker" the doctor said kindly; "if you were not psychic
the man would have had no effect upon you at all. You only need training
and development. And when you have learned to interpret these feelings
and sensations better, you will feel no fear, but only a great
sympathy."
"Yes, sir; thank you, sir!" And Barker bowed and made his escape, while
Dr. Silence, an amused smile lurking about the corners of his mouth,
made his way noiselessly down the passage and put his eye to the
spy-hole in the door of the green study.
This spy-hole was so placed that it commanded a view of almost the
entire room, and, looking through it, the doctor saw a hat, gloves, and
umbrella lying on a chair by the table, but searched at first in vain
for their owner.
The windows were both closed and a brisk fire burned in the grate. There
were various signs--signs intelligible at least to a keenly intuitive
soul--that the room was occupied, yet so far as human beings were
concerned, it was empty, utterly empty. No one sat in the chairs; no one
stood on the mat before the fire; there was no sign even that a patient
was anywhere close against the wall, examining the Bocklin
reproductions--as patients so often did when they thought they were
alone--and therefore rather difficult to see from the spy-hole.
Ordinarily speaking, there was no one in the room. It was undeniable.
Yet Dr. Silence was quite well aware that a human being _was_ in the
room. His psychic apparatus never failed in letting him know the
proximity of an incarnate or discarnate being. Even in the dark he could
tell that. And he now knew positively that his patient--the patient who
had alarmed Barker, and had then tripped down the corridor with that
dancing footstep--was somewhere concealed within the four walls
commanded by his spy-hole. He also realised--and this was most
unusual--that this individual whom he desired to watch knew that he was
being watched. And, further, that the stranger himself was also
watching! In fact, that it was he, the doctor, who was being
observed--and by an observer as keen and trained as himself.
An inkling of the true state of the case began to dawn upon him, and he
was on the verge of entering--indeed, his hand already touched the
door-knob--when his eye, still glued to the spy-hole, detected a slight
movement. Directly opposite, between him and the fireplace, something
stirred. He watched very attentively and made certain that he was not
mistaken. An object on the mantelpiece--it was a blue vase--disappeared
from view. It passed out of sight together with the portion of the
marble mantelpiece on which it rested. Next, that part of the fire and
grate and brass fender immediately below it vanished entirely, as though
a slice had been taken clean out of them.
Dr. Silence then understood that something between him and these objects
was slowly coming into being, something that concealed them and
obstructed his vision by inserting itself in the line of sight between
them and himself.
He quietly awaited further results before going in.
First he saw a thin perpendicular line tracing itself from just above
the height of the clock and continuing downwards till it reached the
woolly fire-mat. This line grew wider, broadened, grew solid. It was no
shadow; it was something substantial. It defined itself more and more.
Then suddenly, at the top of the line, and about on a level with the
face of the clock, he saw a round luminous disc gazing steadily at him.
It was a human eye, looking straight into his own, pressed there against
the spy-hole. And it was bright with intelligence. Dr. Silence held his
breath for a moment--and stared back at it.
Then, like some one moving out of deep shadow into light, he saw the
figure of a man come sliding sideways into view, a whitish face
following the eye, and the perpendicular line he had first observed
broadening out and developing into the complete figure of a human being.
It was the patient. He had apparently been standing there in front of
the fire all the time. A second eye had followed the first, and both of
them stared steadily at the spy-hole, sharply concentrated, yet with a
sly twinkle of humour and amusement that made it impossible for the
doctor to maintain his position any longer.
He opened the door and went in quickly. As he did so he noticed for the
first time the sound of a German band coming in gaily through the open
ventilators. In some intuitive, unaccountable fashion the music
connected itself with the patient he was about to interview. This sort
of prevision was not unfamiliar to him. It always explained itself
later.
The man, he saw, was of middle age and of very ordinary appearance; so
ordinary, in fact, that he was difficult to describe--his only
peculiarity being his extreme thinness. Pleasant--that is,
good--vibrations issued from his atmosphere and met Dr. Silence as he
advanced to greet him, yet vibrations alive with currents and discharges
betraying the perturbed and disordered condition of his mind and brain.
There was evidently something wholly out of the usual in the state of
his thoughts. Yet, though strange, it was not altogether distressing; it
was not the impression that the broken and violent atmosphere of the
insane produces upon the mind. Dr. Silence realised in a flash that here
was a case of absorbing interest that might require all his powers to
handle properly.
"I was watching you through my little peep-hole--as you saw," he began,
with a pleasant smile, advancing to shake hands. "I find it of the
greatest assistance sometimes--"
But the patient interrupted him at once. His voice was hurried and had
odd, shrill changes in it, breaking from high to low in unexpected
fashion. One moment it thundered, the next it almost squeaked.
"I understand without explanation," he broke in rapidly. "You get the
true note of a man in this way--when he thinks himself unobserved. I
quite agree. Only, in my case, I fear, you saw very little. My case, as
you of course grasp, Dr. Silence, is extremely peculiar, uncomfortably
peculiar. Indeed, unless Sir William had positively assured me--"
"My friend has sent you to me," the doctor interrupted gravely, with a
gentle note of authority, "and that is quite sufficient. Pray, be
seated, Mr.--"
"Mudge--Racine Mudge," returned the other.
"Take this comfortable one, Mr. Mudge," leading him to the fixed chair,
"and tell me your condition in your own way and at your own pace. My
whole day is at your service if you require it."
Mr. Mudge moved towards the chair in question and then hesitated.
"You will promise me not to use the narcotic buttons," he said, before
sitting down. "I do not need them. Also I ought to mention that anything
you think of vividly will reach my mind. That is apparently part of my
peculiar case." He sat down with a sigh and arranged his thin legs and
body into a position of comfort. Evidently he was very sensitive to the
thoughts of others, for the picture of the green buttons had only
entered the doctor's mind for a second, yet the other had instantly
snapped it up. Dr. Silence noticed, too, that Mr. Mudge held on tightly
with both hands to the arms of the chair.
"I'm rather glad the chair is nailed to the floor," he remarked, as he
settled himself more comfortably. "It suits me admirably. The fact
is--and this is my case in a nutshell--which is all that a doctor of
your marvellous development requires--the fact is, Dr. Silence, I am a
victim of Higher Space. That's what's the matter with me--Higher Space!"
The two looked at each other for a space in silence, the little patient
holding tightly to the arms of the chair which "suited him admirably,"
and looking up with staring eyes, his atmosphere positively trembling
with the waves of some unknown activity; while the doctor smiled kindly
and sympathetically, and put his whole person as far as possible into
the mental condition of the other.
"Higher Space," repeated Mr. Mudge, "that's what it is. Now, do you
think you can help me with _that_?"
There was a pause during which the men's eyes steadily searched down
below the surface of their respective personalities. Then Dr. Silence
spoke.
"I am quite sure I can help," he answered quietly; "sympathy must always
help, and suffering always owns my sympathy. I see you have suffered
cruelly. You must tell me all about your case, and when I hear the
gradual steps by which you reached this strange condition, I have no
doubt I can be of assistance to you."
He drew a chair up beside his interlocutor and laid a hand on his
shoulder for a moment. His whole being radiated kindness, intelligence,
desire to help.
"For instance," he went on, "I feel sure it was the result of no mere
chance that you became familiar with the terrors of what you term Higher
Space; for Higher Space is no mere external measurement. It is, of
course, a spiritual state, a spiritual condition, an inner development,
and one that we must recognise as abnormal, since it is beyond the reach
of the world at the present stage of evolution. Higher Space is a
mythical state."
"Oh!" cried the other, rubbing his birdlike hands with pleasure, "the
relief it is to be able to talk to some one who can understand! Of
course what you say is the utter truth. And you are right that no mere
chance led me to my present condition, but, on the other hand, prolonged
and deliberate study. Yet chance in a sense now governs it. I mean, my
entering the condition of Higher Space seems to depend upon the chance
of this and that circumstance. For instance, the mere sound of that
German band sent me off. Not that all music will do so, but certain
sounds, certain vibrations, at once key me up to the requisite pitch,
and off I go. Wagner's music always does it, and that band must have
been playing a stray bit of Wagner. But I'll come to all that later.
Only first, I must ask you to send away your man from the spy-hole."
John Silence looked up with a start, for Mr. Mudge's back was to the
door, and there was no mirror. He saw the brown eye of Barker glued to
the little circle of glass, and he crossed the room without a word and
snapped down the black shutter provided for the purpose, and then heard
Barker snuffle away along the passage.
"Now," continued the little man in the chair, "I can begin. You have
managed to put me completely at my ease, and I feel I may tell you my
whole case without shame or reserve. You will understand. But you must
be patient with me if I go into details that are already familiar to
you--details of Higher Space, I mean--and if I seem stupid when I have
to describe things that transcend the power of language and are really
therefore indescribable."
"My dear friend," put in the other calmly, "that goes without saying. To
know Higher Space is an experience that defies description, and one is
obliged to make use of more or less intelligible symbols. But, pray,
proceed. Your vivid thoughts will tell me more than your halting words."
An immense sigh of relief proceeded from the little figure half lost in
the depths of the chair. Such intelligent sympathy meeting him half-way
was a new experience to him, and it touched his heart at once. He leaned
back, relaxing his tight hold of the arms, and began in his thin,
scale-like voice.
"My mother was a Frenchwoman, and my father an Essex bargeman," he said
abruptly. "Hence my name--Racine and Mudge. My father died before I ever
saw him. My mother inherited money from her Bordeaux relations, and when
she died soon after, I was left alone with wealth and a strange freedom.
I had no guardian, trustees, sisters, brothers, or any connection in the
world to look after me. I grew up, therefore, utterly without education.
This much was to my advantage; I learned none of that deceitful rubbish
taught in schools, and so had nothing to unlearn when I awakened to my
true love--mathematics, higher mathematics and higher geometry. These,
however, I seemed to know instinctively. It was like the memory of what
I had deeply studied before; the principles were in my blood, and I
simply raced through the ordinary stages, and beyond, and then did the
same with geometry. Afterwards, when I read the books on these subjects,
I understood how swift and undeviating the knowledge had come back to
me. It was simply memory. It was simply _re-collecting_ the memories of
what I had known before in a previous existence and required no books to
teach me."
In his growing excitement, Mr. Mudge attempted to drag the chair forward
a little nearer to his listener, and then smiled faintly as he resigned
himself instantly again to its immovability, and plunged anew into the
recital of his singular "disease."
"The audacious speculations of Bolyai, the amazing theories of
Gauss--that through a point more than one line could be drawn parallel
to a given line; the possibility that the angles of a triangle are
together _greater_ than two right angles, if drawn upon immense
curvatures--the breathless intuitions of Beltrami and Lobatchewsky--all
these I hurried through, and emerged, panting but unsatisfied, upon the
verge of my--my new world, my Higher Space possibilities--in a word, my
disease!
"How I got there," he resumed after a brief pause, during which he
appeared to be listening intently for an approaching sound, "is more
than I can put intelligibly into words. I can only hope to leave your
mind with an intuitive comprehension of the possibility of what I say.
"Here, however, came a change. At this point I was no longer absorbing
the fruits of studies I had made before; it was the beginning of new
efforts to learn for the first time, and I had to go slowly and
laboriously through terrible work. Here I sought for the theories and
speculations of others. But books were few and far between, and with the
exception of one man--a 'dreamer,' the world called him--whose audacity
and piercing intuition amazed and delighted me beyond description, I
found no one to guide or help.
"You, of course, Dr. Silence, understand something of what I am driving
at with these stammering words, though you cannot perhaps yet guess what
depths of pain my new knowledge brought me to, nor why an acquaintance
with a new development of space should prove a source of misery and
terror."
Mr. Racine Mudge, remembering that the chair would not move, did the
next best thing he could in his desire to draw nearer to the attentive
man facing him, and sat forward upon the very edge of the cushions,
crossing his legs and gesticulating with both hands as though he saw
into this region of new space he was attempting to describe, and might
any moment tumble into it bodily from the edge of the chair and
disappear from view. John Silence, separated from him by three paces,
sat with his eyes fixed upon the thin white face opposite, noting
every word and every gesture with deep attention.
"This room we now sit in, Dr. Silence, has one side open to space--to
Higher Space. A closed box only _seems_ closed. There is a way in and
out of a soap bubble without breaking the skin."
"You tell me no new thing," the doctor interposed gently.
"Hence, if Higher Space exists and our world borders upon it and lies
partially in it, it follows necessarily that we see only portions of all
objects. We never see their true and complete shape. We see their three
measurements, but not their fourth. The new direction is concealed from
us, and when I hold this book and move my hand all round it I have not
really made a complete circuit. We only perceive those portions of any
object which exist in our three dimensions; the rest escapes us. But,
once we learn to see in Higher Space, objects will appear as they
actually are. Only they will thus be hardly recognisable!
"Now, you may begin to grasp something of what I am coming to."
"I am beginning to understand something of what you must have suffered,"
observed the doctor soothingly, "for I have made similar experiments
myself, and only stopped just in time--"
"You are the one man in all the world who can hear and understand, _and_
sympathise," exclaimed Mr. Mudge, grasping his hand and holding it
tightly while he spoke. The nailed chair prevented further excitability.
"Well," he resumed, after a moment's pause, "I procured the implements
and the coloured blocks for practical experiment, and I followed the
instructions carefully till I had arrived at a working conception of
four-dimensional space. The tessaract, the figure whose boundaries are
cubes, I knew by heart. That is to say, I knew it and saw it mentally,
for my eye, of course, could never take in a new measurement, or my
hands and feet handle it.
"So, at least, I thought," he added, making a wry face. "I had reached
the stage, you see, when I could imagine in a new dimension. I was able
to conceive the shape of that new figure which is intrinsically
different to all we know--the shape of the tessaract. I could perceive
in four dimensions. When, therefore, I looked at a cube I could see all
its sides at once. Its top was not foreshortened, nor its farther side
and base invisible. I saw the whole thing out flat, so to speak. And
this tessaract was bounded by cubes! Moreover, I also saw its
content--its insides."
"You were not yourself able to enter this new world," interrupted Dr.
Silence.
"Not then. I was only able to conceive intuitively what it was like and
how exactly it must look. Later, when I slipped in there and saw objects
in their entirety, unlimited by the paucity of our poor three
measurements, I very nearly lost my life. For, you see, space does not
stop at a single new dimension, a fourth. It extends in all possible new
ones, and we must conceive it as containing any number of new
dimensions. In other words, there is no space at all, but only a
spiritual condition. But, meanwhile, I had come to grasp the strange
fact that the objects in our normal world appear to us only partially."
Mr. Mudge moved farther forward till he was balanced dangerously on the
very edge of the chair. "From this starting point," he resumed, "I began
my studies and experiments, and continued them for years. I had money,
and I was without friends. I lived in solitude and experimented. My
intellect, of course, had little part in the work, for intellectually it
was all unthinkable. Never was the limitation of mere reason more
plainly demonstrated. It was mystically, intuitively, spiritually that I
began to advance. And what I learnt, and knew, and did is all impossible
to put into language, since it all describes experiences transcending
the experiences of men. It is only some of the results--what you would
call the symptoms of my disease--that I can give you, and even these
must often appear absurd contradictions and impossible paradoxes.
"I can only tell you, Dr. Silence"--his manner became exceedingly
impressive--"that I reached sometimes a point of view whence all the
great puzzle of the world became plain to me, and I understood what they
call in the Yoga books 'The Great Heresy of Separateness'; why all great
teachers have urged the necessity of man loving his neighbour as
himself; how men are all really one; and why the utter loss of self is
necessary to salvation and the discovery of the true life of the soul."
He paused a moment and drew breath.
"Your speculations have been my own long ago," the doctor said quietly.
"I fully realise the force of your words. Men are doubtless not separate
at all--in the sense they imagine--"
"All this about the very much Higher Space I only dimly, very dimly,
conceived, of course," the other went on, raising his voice again by
jerks; "but what did happen to me was the humbler accident of--the
simpler disaster--oh, dear, how shall I put it--?"
He stammered and showed visible signs of distress.
"It was simply this," he resumed with a sudden rush of words, "that,
accidentally, as the result of my years of experiment, I one day slipped
bodily into the next world, the world of four dimensions, yet without
knowing precisely how I got there, or how I could get back again. I
discovered, that is, that my ordinary three-dimensional body was but an
expression--a projection--of my higher four-dimensional body!
"Now you understand what I meant much earlier in our talk when I spoke
of chance. I cannot control my entrance or exit. Certain people, certain
human atmospheres, certain wandering forces, thoughts, desires even--the
radiations of certain combinations of colour, and above all, the
vibrations of certain kinds of music, will suddenly throw me into a
state of what I can only describe as an intense and terrific inner
vibration--and behold I am off! Off in the direction at right angles to
all our known directions! Off in the direction the cube takes when it
begins to trace the outlines of the new figure! Off into my breathless
and semi-divine Higher Space! Off, _inside myself_, into the world of
four dimensions!"
He gasped and dropped back into the depths of the immovable chair.
"And there," he whispered, his voice issuing from among the cushions,
"there I have to stay until these vibrations subside, or until they do
something which I cannot find words to describe properly or intelligibly
to you--and then, behold, I am back again. First, that is, I disappear.
Then I reappear."
"Just so," exclaimed Dr. Silence, "and that is why a few--"
"Why a few moments ago," interrupted Mr. Mudge, taking the words out of
his mouth, "you found me gone, and then saw me return. The music of that
wretched German band sent me off. Your intense thinking about me brought
me back--when the band had stopped its Wagner. I saw you approach the
peep-hole and I saw Barker's intention of doing so later. For me no
interiors are hidden. I see inside. When in that state the content of
your mind, as of your body, is open to me as the day. Oh, dear, oh,
dear, oh, dear!"
Mr. Mudge stopped and again mopped his brow. A light trembling ran over
the surface of his small body like wind over grass. He still held
tightly to the arms of the chair.
"At first," he presently resumed, "my new experiences were so vividly
interesting that I felt no alarm. There was no room for it. The alarm
came a little later."
"Then you actually penetrated far enough into that state to experience
yourself as a normal portion of it?" asked the doctor, leaning forward,
deeply interested.
Mr. Mudge nodded a perspiring face in reply.
"I did," he whispered, "undoubtedly I did. I am coming to all that. It
began first at night, when I realised that sleep brought no loss of
consciousness--"
"The spirit, of course, can never sleep. Only the body becomes
unconscious," interposed John Silence.
"Yes, we know that--theoretically. At night, of course, the spirit is
active elsewhere, and we have no memory of where and how, simply
because the brain stays behind and receives no record. But I found
that, while remaining conscious, I also retained memory. I had attained
to the state of continuous consciousness, for at night I regularly, with
the first approaches of drowsiness, entered _nolens volens_ the
four-dimensional world.
"For a time this happened regularly, and I could not control it; though
later I found a way to regulate it better. Apparently sleep is
unnecessary in the higher--the four-dimensional--body. Yes, perhaps. But
I should infinitely have preferred dull sleep to the knowledge. For,
unable to control my movements, I wandered to and fro, attracted, owing
to my partial development and premature arrival, to parts of this new
world that alarmed me more and more. It was the awful waste and drift of
a monstrous world, so utterly different to all we know and see that I
cannot even hint at the nature of the sights and objects and beings in
it. More than that, I cannot even remember them. I cannot now picture
them to myself even, but can recall only the _memory of the impression_
they made upon me, the horror and devastating terror of it all. To be in
several places at once, for instance--"
"Perfectly," interrupted John Silence, noticing the increase of the
other's excitement, "I understand exactly. But now, please, tell me a
little more of this alarm you experienced, and how it affected you."
"It's not the disappearing and reappearing _per se_ that I mind,"
continued Mr. Mudge, "so much as certain other things. It's seeing
people and objects in their weird entirety, in their true and complete
shapes, that is so distressing. It introduces me to a world of monsters.
Horses, dogs, cats, all of which I loved; people, trees, children; all
that I have considered beautiful in life--everything, from a human face
to a cathedral--appear to me in a different shape and aspect to all I
have known before. I cannot perhaps convince you why this should be
terrible, but I assure you that it is so. To hear the human voice
proceeding from this novel appearance which I scarcely recognise as a
human body is ghastly, simply ghastly. To see inside everything and
everybody is a form of insight peculiarly distressing. To be so confused
in geography as to find myself one moment at the North Pole, and the
next at Clapham Junction--or possibly at both places simultaneously--is
absurdly terrifying. Your imagination will readily furnish other details
without my multiplying my experiences now. But you have no idea what it
all means, and how I suffer."
Mr. Mudge paused in his panting account and lay back in his chair. He
still held tightly to the arms as though they could keep him in the
world of sanity and three measurements, and only now and again released
his left hand in order to mop his face. He looked very thin and white
and oddly unsubstantial, and he stared about him as though he saw into
this other space he had been talking about.
John Silence, too, felt warm. He had listened to every word and had made
many notes. The presence of this man had an exhilarating effect upon
him. It seemed as if Mr. Racine Mudge still carried about with him
something of that breathless Higher-Space condition he had been
describing. At any rate, Dr. Silence had himself advanced sufficiently
far along the legitimate paths of spiritual and psychic transformations
to realise that the visions of this extraordinary little person had a
basis of truth for their origin.
After a pause that prolonged itself into minutes, he crossed the room
and unlocked a drawer in a bookcase, taking out a small book with a red
cover. It had a lock to it, and he produced a key out of his pocket and
proceeded to open the covers. The bright eyes of Mr. Mudge never left
him for a single second.
"It almost seems a pity," he said at length, "to cure you, Mr. Mudge.
You are on the way to discovery of great things. Though you may lose
your life in the process--that is, your life here in the world of three
dimensions--you would lose thereby nothing of great value--you will
pardon my apparent rudeness, I know--and you might gain what is
infinitely greater. Your suffering, of course, lies in the fact that you
alternate between the two worlds and are never wholly in one or the
other. Also, I rather imagine, though I cannot be certain of this from
any personal experiments, that you have here and there penetrated even
into space of more than four dimensions, and have hence experienced the
terror you speak of."
The perspiring son of the Essex bargeman and the woman of Normandy bent
his head several times in assent, but uttered no word in reply.
"Some strange psychic predisposition, dating no doubt from one of your
former lives, has favoured the development of your 'disease'; and the
fact that you had no normal training at school or college, no leading by
the poor intellect into the culs-de-sac falsely called knowledge, has
further caused your exceedingly rapid movement along the lines of direct
inner experience. None of the knowledge you have foreshadowed has come
to you through the senses, of course."
Mr. Mudge, sitting in his immovable chair, began to tremble slightly. A
wind again seemed to pass over his surface and again to set it curiously
in motion like a field of grass.
"You are merely talking to gain time," he said hurriedly, in a shaking
voice. "This thinking aloud delays us. I see ahead what you are coming
to, only please be quick, for something is going to happen. A band is
again coming down the street, and if it plays--if it plays Wagner--I
shall be off in a twinkling."
"Precisely. I will be quick. I was leading up to the point of how to
effect your cure. The way is this: You must simply learn to _block the
entrances_."
"True, true, utterly true!" exclaimed the little man, dodging about
nervously in the depths of the chair. "But how, in the name of space, is
that to be done?"
"By concentration. They are all within you, these entrances, although
outer cases such as colour, music and other things lead you towards
them. These external things you cannot hope to destroy, but once the
entrances are blocked, they will lead you only to bricked walls and
closed channels. You will no longer be able to find the way."
"Quick, quick!" cried the bobbing figure in the chair. "How is this
concentration to be effected?"
"This little book," continued Dr. Silence calmly, "will explain to you
the way." He tapped the cover. "Let me now read out to you certain
simple instructions, composed, as I see you divine, entirely from my own
personal experiences in the same direction. Follow these instructions
and you will no longer enter the state of Higher Space. The entrances
will be blocked effectively."
Mr. Mudge sat bolt upright in his chair to listen, and John Silence
cleared his throat and began to read slowly in a very distinct voice.
But before he had uttered a dozen words, something happened. A sound of
street music entered the room through the open ventilators, for a band
had begun to play in the stable mews at the back of the house--the March
from _Tannhäuser_. Odd as it may seem that a German band should twice
within the space of an hour enter the same mews and play Wagner, it was
nevertheless the fact.
Mr. Racine Mudge heard it. He uttered a sharp, squeaking cry and twisted
his arms with nervous energy round the chair. A piteous look that was
not far from tears spread over his white face. Grey shadows followed
it--the grey of fear. He began to struggle convulsively.
"Hold me fast! Catch me! For God's sake, keep me here! I'm on the rush
already. Oh, it's frightful!" he cried in tones of anguish, his voice as
thin as a reed.
Dr. Silence made a plunge forward to seize him, but in a flash, before
he could cover the space between them, Mr. Racine Mudge, screaming and
struggling, seemed to shoot past him into invisibility. He disappeared
like an arrow from a bow propelled at infinite speed, and his voice no
longer sounded in the external air, but seemed in some curious way to
make itself heard somewhere within the depths of the doctor's own being.
It was almost like a faint singing cry in his head, like a voice of
dream, a voice of vision and unreality.
"Alcohol, alcohol!" it cried, "give me alcohol! It's the quickest way.
Alcohol, before I'm out of reach!"
The doctor, accustomed to rapid decisions and even more rapid action,
remembered that a brandy flask stood upon the mantelpiece, and in less
than a second he had seized it and was holding it out towards the space
above the chair recently occupied by the visible Mudge. Then, before his
very eyes, and long ere he could unscrew the metal stopper, he saw the
contents of the closed glass phial sink and lessen as though some one
were drinking violently and greedily of the liquor within.
"Thanks! Enough! It deadens the vibrations!" cried the faint voice in
his interior, as he withdrew the flask and set it back upon the
mantelpiece. He understood that in Mudge's present condition one side of
the flask was open to space and he could drink without removing the
stopper. He could hardly have had a more interesting proof of what he
had been hearing described at such length.
But the next moment--the very same moment it almost seemed--the German
band stopped midway in its tune--and there was Mr. Mudge back in his
chair again, gasping and panting!
"Quick!" he shrieked, "stop that band! Send it away! Catch hold of me!
Block the entrances! Block the entrances! Give me the red book! Oh, oh,
oh-h-h-h!!!"
The music had begun again. It was merely a temporary interruption. The
_Tannhäuser_ March started again, this time at a tremendous pace that
made it sound like a rapid two-step as though the instruments played
against time.
But the brief interruption gave Dr. Silence a moment in which to collect
his scattering thoughts, and before the band had got through half a bar,
he had flung forward upon the chair and held Mr. Racine Mudge, the
struggling little victim of Higher Space, in a grip of iron. His arms
went all round his diminutive person, taking in a good part of the chair
at the same time. He was not a big man, yet he seemed to smother Mudge
completely.
Yet, even as he did so, and felt the wriggling form underneath him, it
began to melt and slip away like air or water. The wood of the arm-chair
somehow disentangled itself from between his own arms and those of
Mudge. The phenomenon known as the passage of matter through matter took
place. The little man seemed actually to get mixed up in his own being.
Dr. Silence could just see his face beneath him. It puckered and grew
dark as though from some great internal effort. He heard the thin, reedy
voice cry in his ear to "Block the entrances, block the entrances!" and
then--but how in the world describe what is indescribable?
John Silence half rose up to watch. Racine Mudge, his face distorted
beyond all recognition, was making a marvellous inward movement, as
though doubling back upon himself. He turned funnel-wise like water in a
whirling vortex, and then appeared to break up somewhat as a reflection
breaks up and divides in a distorting convex mirror. He went neither
forward nor backwards, neither to the right nor the left, neither up nor
down. But he went. He went utterly. He simply flashed away out of sight
like a vanishing projectile.
All but one leg! Dr. Silence just had the time and the presence of mind
to seize upon the left ankle and boot as it disappeared, and to this he
held on for several seconds like grim death. Yet all the time he knew it
was a foolish and useless thing to do.
The foot was in his grasp one moment, and the next it seemed--this was
the only way he could describe it--inside his own skin and bones, and at
the same time outside his hand and all round it. It seemed mixed up in
some amazing way with his own flesh and blood. Then it was gone, and he
was tightly grasping a draught of heated air.
"Gone! gone! gone!" cried a thick, whispering voice, somewhere deep
within his own consciousness. "Lost! lost! lost!" it repeated, growing
fainter and fainter till at length it vanished into nothing and the last
signs of Mr. Racine Mudge vanished with it.
John Silence locked his red book and replaced it in the cabinet, which
he fastened with a click, and when Barker answered the bell he inquired
if Mr. Mudge had left a card upon the table. It appeared that he had,
and when the servant returned with it, Dr. Silence read the address and
made a note of it. It was in North London.
"Mr. Mudge has gone," he said quietly to Barker, noticing his expression
of alarm.
"He's not taken his 'at with him, sir."
"Mr. Mudge requires no hat where he is now," continued the doctor,
stooping to poke the fire. "But he may return for it--"
"And the humbrella, sir."
"And the umbrella."
"He didn't go out _my_ way, sir, if you please," stuttered the amazed
servant, his curiosity overcoming his nervousness.
"Mr. Mudge has his own way of coming and going, and prefers it. If he
returns by the door at any time remember to bring him instantly to me,
and be kind and gentle with him and ask no questions. Also, remember,
Barker, to think pleasantly, sympathetically, affectionately of him
while he is away. Mr. Mudge is a very suffering gentleman."
Barker bowed and went out of the room backwards, gasping and feeling
round the inside of his collar with three very hot fingers of one hand.
It was two days later when he brought in a telegram to the study. Dr.
Silence opened it, and read as follows:
"Bombay. Just slipped out again. All safe. Have blocked
entrances. Thousand thanks. Address Cooks, London.--MUDGE."
Dr. Silence looked up and saw Barker staring at him bewilderingly. It
occurred to him that somehow he knew the contents of the telegram.
"Make a parcel of Mr. Mudge's things," he said briefly, "and address
them Thomas Cook & Sons, Ludgate Circus. And send them there exactly a
month from to-day and marked 'To be called for.'"
"Yes, sir," said Barker, leaving the room with a deep sigh and a hurried
glance at the waste-paper basket where his master had dropped the pink
paper.