THE GREAT KEINPLATZ EXPERIMENT
And Other Tales of Twilight and the Unseen
by
A. CONAN DOYLE
New [Illustration] York
George H. Doran Company
Copyright, 1905, 1908, 1909, 1910, 1911, 1913, 1914, 1918, 1919,
by A. Conan Doyle
Copyright, 1910,
by Charles Scribner’s Sons
Copyright, 1911,
by Associated Sunday Magazines, Inc.
Copyright, 1908,
by the McClure Company
Copyright, 1900, 1902,
by the S. S. McClure Company
Copyright, 1894,
D. Appleton & Company
[Illustration]
THE GREAT KEINPLATZ EXPERIMENT
AND OTHER TALES OF THE UNSEEN
----Q----
Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS
PAGE
I THE BROWN HAND 9
II THE USHER OF LEA HOUSE SCHOOL 30
III B. 24 51
IV THE GREAT KEINPLATZ EXPERIMENT 72
V CYPRIAN OVERBECK WELLS 95
VI PLAYING WITH FIRE 120
VII THE RING OF THOTH 139
VIII THE LOS AMIGOS FIASCO 163
IX HOW IT HAPPENED 174
X LOT NO. 249 179
XI “DE PROFUNDIS” 225
XII THE LIFT 239
THE GREAT KEINPLATZ EXPERIMENT
_and Other Tales of Twilight and the Unseen_
I
THE BROWN HAND
Every one knows that Sir Dominick Holden, the famous Indian surgeon,
made me his heir, and that his death changed me in an hour from a
hard-working and impecunious medical man to a well-to-do landed
proprietor. Many know also that there were at least five people between
the inheritance and me, and that Sir Dominick’s selection appeared to be
altogether arbitrary and whimsical. I can assure them, however, that
they are quite mistaken, and that, although I only knew Sir Dominick in
the closing years of his life, there were none the less very real
reasons why he should show his goodwill towards me. As a matter of fact,
though I say it myself, no man ever did more for another than I did for
my Indian uncle. I cannot expect the story to be believed, but it is so
singular that I should feel that it was a breach of duty if I did not
put it upon record--so here it is, and your belief or incredulity is
your own affair.
Sir Dominick Holden, C.B., K.C.S.I., and I don’t know what besides, was
the most distinguished Indian surgeon of his day. In the Army
originally, he afterwards settled down into civil practice in Bombay,
and visited as a consultant every part of India. His name is best
remembered in connection with the Oriental Hospital, which he founded
and supported. The time came, however, when his iron constitution began
to show signs of the long strain to which he had subjected it, and his
brother practitioners (who were not, perhaps, entirely disinterested
upon the point) were unanimous in recommending him to return to England.
He held on so long as he could, but at last he developed nervous
symptoms of a very pronounced character, and so came back, a broken man,
to his native county of Wiltshire. He bought a considerable estate with
an ancient manor-house upon the edge of Salisbury Plain, and devoted his
old age to the study of Comparative Pathology, which had been his
learned hobby all his life, and in which he was a foremost authority.
We of the family were, as may be imagined, much excited by the news of
the return of this rich and childless uncle to England. On his part,
although by no means exuberant in his hospitality, he showed some sense
of his duty to his relations, and each of us in turn had an invitation
to visit him. From the accounts of my cousins it appeared to be a
melancholy business, and it was with mixed feelings that I at last
received my own summons to appear at Rodenhurst. My wife was so
carefully excluded in the invitation that my first impulse was to refuse
it, but the interests of the children had to be considered, and so, with
her consent, I set out one October afternoon upon my visit to Wiltshire,
with little thought of what that visit was to entail.
My uncle’s estate was situated where the arable land of the plains
begins to swell upwards into the rounded chalk hills which are
characteristic of the county. As I drove from Dinton Station in the
waning light of that autumn day, I was impressed by the weird nature of
the scenery. The few scattered cottages of the peasants were so dwarfed
by the huge evidences of prehistoric life, that the present appeared to
be a dream and the past to be the obtrusive and masterful reality. The
road wound through the valleys, formed by a succession of grassy hills,
and the summit of each was cut and carved into the most elaborate
fortifications, some circular, and some square, but all on a scale which
has defied the winds and the rains of many centuries. Some call them
Roman and some British, but their true origin and the reasons for this
particular tract of country being so interlaced with entrenchments have
never been finally made clear. Here and there on the long, smooth,
olive-coloured slopes there rose small rounded barrows or tumuli.
Beneath them lie the cremated ashes of the race which cut so deeply into
the hills, but their graves tell us nothing save that a jar full of dust
represents the man who once laboured under the sun.
It was through this weird country that I approached my uncle’s residence
of Rodenhurst, and the house was, as I found, in due keeping with its
surroundings. Two broken and weather-stained pillars, each surmounted by
a mutilated heraldic emblem, flanked the entrance to a neglected drive.
A cold wind whistled through the elms which lined it, and the air was
full of the drifting leaves. At the far end, under the gloomy arch of
trees, a single yellow lamp burned steadily. In the dim half-light of
the coming night I saw a long, low building stretching out two irregular
wings, with deep eaves, a sloping gambrel roof, and walls which were
criss-crossed with timber balks in the fashion of the Tudors. The cheery
light of a fire flickered in the broad, latticed window to the left of
the low-porched door, and this, as it proved, marked the study of my
uncle, for it was thither that I was led by his butler in order to make
my host’s acquaintance.
He was cowering over his fire, for the moist chill of an English autumn
had set him shivering. His lamp was unlit, and I only saw the red glow
of the embers beating upon a huge, craggy face, with a Red Indian nose
and cheek, and deep furrows and seams from eye to chin, the sinister
marks of hidden volcanic fires. He sprang up at my entrance with
something of an old-world courtesy and welcomed me warmly to Rodenhurst.
At the same time I was conscious, as the lamp was carried in, that it
was a very critical pair of light-blue eyes which looked out at me from
under shaggy eyebrows, like scouts beneath a bush, and that this
outlandish uncle of mine was carefully reading off my character with all
the ease of a practised observer and an experienced man of the world.
For my part I looked at him, and looked again, for I had never seen a
man whose appearance was more fitted to hold one’s attention. His figure
was the framework of a giant, but he had fallen away until his coat
dangled straight down in a shocking fashion from a pair of broad and
bony shoulders. All his limbs were huge and yet emaciated, and I could
not take my gaze from his knobby wrists, and long, gnarled hands. But
his eyes--those peering light-blue eyes--they were the most arrestive
of any of his peculiarities. It was not their colour alone, nor was it
the ambush of hair in which they lurked; but it was the expression which
I read in them. For the appearance and bearing of the man were
masterful, and one expected a certain corresponding arrogance in his
eyes, but instead of that I read the look which tells of a spirit cowed
and crushed, the furtive, expectant look of the dog whose master has
taken the whip from the rack. I formed my own medical diagnosis upon one
glance at those critical and yet appealing eyes. I believed that he was
stricken with some mortal ailment, that he knew himself to be exposed to
sudden death, and that he lived in terror of it. Such was my judgment--a
false one, as the event showed; but I mention it that it may help you to
realise the look which I read in his eyes.
My uncle’s welcome was, as I have said, a courteous one, and in an hour
or so I found myself seated between him and his wife at a comfortable
dinner, with curious pungent delicacies upon the table, and a stealthy,
quick-eyed Oriental waiter behind his chair. The old couple had come
round to that tragic imitation of the dawn of life when husband and
wife, having lost or scattered all those who were their intimates, find
themselves face to face and alone once more, their work done, and the
end nearing fast. Those who have reached that stage in sweetness and
love, who can change their winter into a gentle Indian summer, have come
as victors through the ordeal of life. Lady Holden was a small, alert
woman with a kindly eye, and her expression as she glanced at him was a
certificate of character to her husband. And yet, though I read a
mutual love in their glances, I read also mutual horror, and recognised
in her face some reflection of that stealthy fear which I had detected
in his. Their talk was sometimes merry and sometimes sad, but there was
a forced note in their merriment and a naturalness in their sadness
which told me that a heavy heart beat upon either side of me.
We were sitting over our first glass of wine, and the servants had left
the room, when the conversation took a turn which produced a remarkable
effect upon my host and hostess. I cannot recall what it was which
started the topic of the supernatural, but it ended in my showing them
that the abnormal in psychical experiences was a subject to which I had,
like many neurologists, devoted a great deal of attention. I concluded
by narrating my experiences when, as a member of the Psychical Research
Society, I had formed one of a committee of three who spent the night in
a haunted house. Our adventures were neither exciting nor convincing,
but, such as it was, the story appeared to interest my auditors in a
remarkable degree. They listened with an eager silence, and I caught a
look of intelligence between them which I could not understand. Lady
Holden immediately afterwards rose and left the room.
Sir Dominick pushed the cigar-box over to me, and we smoked for some
little time in silence. That huge bony hand of his was twitching as he
raised it with his cheroot to his lips, and I felt that the man’s nerves
were vibrating like fiddle-strings. My instincts told me that he was on
the verge of some intimate confidence, and I feared to speak lest I
should interrupt it. At last he turned towards me with a spasmodic
gesture like a man who throws his last scruple to the winds.
“From the little that I have seen of you it appears to me, Dr.
Hardacre,” said he, “that you are the very man I have wanted to meet.”
“I am delighted to hear it, sir.”
“Your head seems to be cool and steady. You will acquit me of any desire
to flatter you, for the circumstances are too serious to permit of
insincerities. You have some special knowledge upon these subjects, and
you evidently view them from that philosophical standpoint which robs
them of all vulgar terror. I presume that the sight of an apparition
would not seriously discompose you?”
“I think not, sir.”
“Would even interest you, perhaps?”
“Most intensely.”
“As a psychical observer, you would probably investigate it in as
impersonal a fashion as an astronomer investigates a wandering comet?”
“Precisely.”
He gave a heavy sigh.
“Believe me, Dr. Hardacre, there was a time when I could have spoken as
you do now. My nerve was a by-word in India. Even the Mutiny never shook
it for an instant. And yet you see what I am reduced to--the most
timorous man, perhaps, in all this county of Wiltshire. Do not speak too
bravely upon this subject, or you may find yourself subjected to as
long-drawn a test as I am--a test which can only end in the madhouse or
the grave.”
I waited patiently until he should see fit to go farther in his
confidence. His preamble had, I need not say, filled me with interest
and expectation.
“For some years, Dr. Hardacre,” he continued, “my life and that of my
wife have been made miserable by a cause which is so grotesque that it
borders upon the ludicrous. And yet familiarity has never made it more
easy to bear--on the contrary, as time passes my nerves become more worn
and shattered by the constant attrition. If you have no physical fears,
Dr. Hardacre, I should very much value your opinion upon this phenomenon
which troubles us so.”
“For what it is worth my opinion is entirely at your service. May I ask
the nature of the phenomenon?”
“I think that your experiences will have a higher evidential value if
you are not told in advance what you may expect to encounter. You are
yourself aware of the quibbles of unconscious cerebration and subjective
impressions with which a scientific sceptic may throw a doubt upon your
statement. It would be as well to guard against them in advance.”
“What shall I do, then?”
“I will tell you. Would you mind following me this way?” He led me out
of the dining-room and down a long passage until we came to a terminal
door. Inside there was a large bare room fitted as a laboratory, with
numerous scientific instruments and bottles. A shelf ran along one side,
upon which there stood a long line of glass jars containing pathological
and anatomical specimens.
“You see that I still dabble in some of my old studies,” said Sir
Dominick. “These jars are the remains of what was once a most excellent
collection, but unfortunately I lost the greater part of them when my
house was burned down in Bombay in ’92. It was a most unfortunate affair
for me--in more ways than one. I had examples of many rare conditions,
and my splenic collection was probably unique. These are the survivors.”
I glanced over them, and saw that they really were of a very great value
and rarity from a pathological point of view: bloated organs, gaping
cysts, distorted bones, odious parasites--a singular exhibition of the
products of India.
“There is, as you see, a small settee here,” said my host. “It was far
from our intention to offer a guest so meagre an accommodation, but
since affairs have taken this turn, it would be a great kindness upon
your part if you would consent to spend the night in this apartment. I
beg that you will not hesitate to let me know if the idea should be at
all repugnant to you.”
“On the contrary,” I said, “it is most acceptable.”
“My own room is the second on the left, so that if you should feel that
you are in need of company a call would always bring me to your side.”
“I trust that I shall not be compelled to disturb you.”
“It is unlikely that I shall be asleep. I do not sleep much. Do not
hesitate to summon me.”
And so with this agreement we joined Lady Holden in the drawing-room and
talked of lighter things.
It was no affectation upon my part to say that the prospect of my
night’s adventure was an agreeable one. I had no pretence to greater
physical courage than my neighbours, but familiarity with a subject robs
it of those vague and undefined terrors which are the most appalling to
the imaginative mind. The human brain is capable of only one strong
emotion at a time, and if it be filled with curiosity or scientific
enthusiasm, there is no room for fear. It is true that I had my uncle’s
assurance that he had himself originally taken this point of view, but I
reflected that the breakdown of his nervous system might be due to his
forty years in India as much as to any psychical experiences which had
befallen him. I at least was sound in nerve and brain, and it was with
something of the pleasurable thrill of anticipation with which the
sportsman takes his position beside the haunt of his game that I shut
the laboratory door behind me, and partially undressing, lay down upon
the rug-covered settee.
It was not an ideal atmosphere for a bedroom. The air was heavy with
many chemical odours, that of methylated spirit predominating. Nor were
the decorations of my chamber very sedative. The odious line of glass
jars with their relics of disease and suffering stretched in front of my
very eyes. There was no blind to the window, and a three-quarter moon
streamed its white light into the room, tracing a silver square with
filigree lattices upon the opposite wall. When I had extinguished my
candle this one bright patch in the midst of the general gloom had
certainly an eerie and discomposing aspect. A rigid and absolute silence
reigned throughout the old house, so that the low swish of the branches
in the garden came softly and smoothly to my ears. It may have been the
hypnotic lullaby of this gentle susurrus, or it may have been the result
of my tiring day, but after many dozings and many efforts to regain my
clearness of perception, I fell at last into a deep and dreamless
sleep.
I was awakened by some sound in the room, and I instantly raised myself
upon my elbow on the couch. Some hours had passed, for the square patch
upon the wall had slid downwards and sideways until it lay obliquely at
the end of my bed. The rest of the room was in deep shadow. At first I
could see nothing, presently, as my eyes became accustomed to the faint
light, I was aware, with a thrill which all my scientific absorption
could not entirely prevent, that something was moving slowly along the
line of the wall. A gentle, shuffling sound, as of soft slippers, came
to my ears, and I dimly discerned a human figure walking stealthily from
the direction of the door. As it emerged into the patch of moonlight I
saw very clearly what it was and how it was employed. It was a man,
short and squat, dressed in some sort of dark-grey gown, which hung
straight from his shoulders to his feet. The moon shone upon the side of
his face, and I saw that it was chocolate-brown in colour, with a ball
of black hair like a woman’s at the back of his head. He walked slowly,
and his eyes were cast upwards towards the line of bottles which
contained those gruesome remnants of humanity. He seemed to examine each
jar with attention, and then to pass on to the next. When he had come to
the end of the line, immediately opposite my bed, he stopped, faced me,
threw up his hands with a gesture of despair, and vanished from my
sight.
I have said that he threw up his hands, but I should have said his arms,
for as he assumed that attitude of despair I observed a singular
peculiarity about his appearance. He had only one hand! As the sleeves
drooped down from the upflung arms I saw the left plainly, but the right
ended in a knobby and unsightly stump. In every other way his appearance
was so natural, and I had both seen and heard him so clearly, that I
could easily have believed that he was an Indian servant of Sir
Dominick’s who had come into my room in search of something. It was only
his sudden disappearance which suggested anything more sinister to me.
As it was I sprang from my couch, lit a candle, and examined the whole
room carefully. There were no signs of my visitor, and I was forced to
conclude that there had really been something outside the normal laws of
Nature in his appearance. I lay awake for the remainder of the night,
but nothing else occurred to disturb me.
I am an early riser, but my uncle was an even earlier one, for I found
him pacing up and down the lawn at the side of the house. He ran towards
me in his eagerness when he saw me come out from the door.
“Well, well!” he cried. “Did you see him?”
“An Indian with one hand?”
“Precisely.”
“Yes, I saw him”--and I told him all that occurred. When I had finished,
he led the way into his study. “We have a little time before breakfast,”
said he. “It will suffice to give you an explanation of this
extraordinary affair--so far as I can explain that which is essentially
inexplicable. In the first place, when I tell you that for four years I
have never passed one single night, either in Bombay, aboard ship, or
here in England without my sleep being broken by this fellow, you will
understand why it is that I am a wreck of my former self. His programme
is always the same. He appears by my bedside, shakes me roughly by the
shoulder, passes from my room into the laboratory, walks slowly along
the line of my bottles, and then vanishes. For more than a thousand
times he has gone through the same routine.”
“What does he want?”
“He wants his hand.”
“His hand?”
“Yes, it came about in this way. I was summoned to Peshawur for a
consultation some ten years ago, and while there I was asked to look at
the hand of a native who was passing through with an Afghan caravan. The
fellow came from some mountain tribe living away at the back of beyond
somewhere on the other side of Kaffiristan. He talked a bastard Pushtoo,
and it was all I could do to understand him. He was suffering from a
soft sarcomatous swelling of one of the metacarpal joints, and I made
him realise that it was only by losing his hand that he could hope to
save his life. After much persuasion he consented to the operation, and
he asked me, when it was over, what fee I demanded. The poor fellow was
almost a beggar, so that the idea of a fee was absurd, but I answered in
jest that my fee should be his hand, and that I proposed to add it to my
pathological collection.
“To my surprise he demurred very much to the suggestion, and he
explained that according to his religion it was an all-important matter
that the body should be reunited after death, and so make a perfect
dwelling for the spirit. The belief is, of course, an old one, and the
mummies of the Egyptians arose from an analogous superstition. I
answered him that his hand was already off, and asked him how he
intended to preserve it. He replied that he would pickle it in salt and
carry it about with him. I suggested that it might be safer in my
keeping than his, and that I had better means than salt for preserving
it. On realising that I really intended to carefully keep it, his
opposition vanished instantly. ‘But remember, sahib,’ said he, ‘I shall
want it back when I am dead.’ I laughed at the remark, and so the matter
ended. I returned to my practice, and he no doubt in the course of time
was able to continue his journey to Afghanistan.
“Well, as I told you last night, I had a bad fire in my house at Bombay.
Half of it was burned down, and, among other things, my pathological
collection was largely destroyed. What you see are the poor remains of
it. The hand of the hillman went with the rest, but I gave the matter no
particular thought at the time. That was six years ago.
“Four years ago--two years after the fire--I was awakened one night by a
furious tugging at my sleeve. I sat up under the impression that my
favourite mastiff was trying to arouse me. Instead of this, I saw my
Indian patient of long ago, dressed in the long grey gown which was the
badge of his people. He was holding up his stump and looking
reproachfully at me. He then went over to my bottles, which at that time
I kept in my room, and he examined them carefully, after which he gave a
gesture of anger and vanished. I realised that he had just died, and
that he had come to claim my promise that I should keep his limb in
safety for him.
“Well, there you have it all, Dr. Hardacre. Every night at the same
hour for four years this performance has been repeated. It is a simple
thing in itself, but it has worn me out like water dropping on a stone.
It has brought a vile insomnia with it, for I cannot sleep now for the
expectation of his coming. It has poisoned my old age and that of my
wife, who has been the sharer in this great trouble. But there is the
breakfast gong, and she will be waiting impatiently to know how it fared
with you last night. We are both much indebted to you for your
gallantry, for it takes something from the weight of our misfortune when
we share it, even for a single night, with a friend, and it reassures us
as to our sanity, which we are sometimes driven to question.”
This was the curious narrative which Sir Dominick confided to me--a
story which to many would have appeared to be a grotesque impossibility,
but which, after my experience of the night before, and my previous
knowledge of such things, I was prepared to accept as an absolute fact.
I thought deeply over the matter, and brought the whole range of my
reading and experience to bear upon it. After breakfast, I surprised my
host and hostess by announcing that I was returning to London by the
next train.
“My dear doctor,” cried Sir Dominick in great distress, “you make me
feel that I have been guilty of a gross breach of hospitality in
intruding this unfortunate matter upon you. I should have borne my own
burden.”
“It is, indeed, that matter which is taking me to London,” I answered;
“but you are mistaken, I assure you, if you think that my experience of
last night was an unpleasant one to me. On the contrary, I am about to
ask your permission to return in the evening and spend one more night in
your laboratory. I am very eager to see this visitor once again.”
My uncle was exceedingly anxious to know what I was about to do, but my
fears of raising false hopes prevented me from telling him. I was back
in my own consulting-room a little after luncheon, and was confirming my
memory of a passage in a recent book upon occultism which had arrested
my attention when I had read it.
“In the case of earth-bound spirits,” said my authority, “some one
dominant idea obsessing them at the hour of death is sufficient to hold
them in this material world. They are the amphibia of this life and of
the next, capable of passing from one to the other as the turtle passes
from land to water. The causes which may bind a soul so strongly to a
life which its body has abandoned are any violent emotion. Avarice,
revenge, anxiety, love, and pity have all been known to have this
effect. As a rule it springs from some unfulfilled wish, and when the
wish has been fulfilled the material bond relaxes. There are many cases
upon record which show the singular persistence of these visitors, and
also their disappearance when their wishes have been fulfilled, or in
some cases when a reasonable compromise has been effected.”
“_A reasonable compromise effected_”--those were the words which I had
brooded over all the morning, and which I now verified in the original.
No actual atonement could be made here--but a reasonable compromise! I
made my way as fast as a train could take me to the Shadwell Seamen’s
Hospital, where my old friend Jack Hewett was house-surgeon. Without
explaining the situation I made him understand what it was that I
wanted.
“A brown man’s hand!” said he, in amazement. “What in the world do you
want that for?”
“Never mind. I’ll tell you some day. I know that your wards are full of
Indians.”
“I should think so. But a hand----” He thought a little and then struck
a bell.
“Travers,” said he to a student-dresser, “what became of the hands of
the Lascar which we took off yesterday? I mean the fellow from the East
India Dock who got caught in the steam winch.”
“They are in the _post-mortem_ room, sir.”
“Just pack one of them in antiseptics and give it to Dr. Hardacre.”
And so I found myself back at Rodenhurst before dinner with this curious
outcome of my day in town. I still said nothing to Sir Dominick, but I
slept that night in the laboratory, and I placed the Lascar’s hand in
one of the glass jars at the end of my couch.
So interested was I in the result of my experiment that sleep was out of
the question. I sat with a shaded lamp beside me and waited patiently
for my visitor. This time I saw him clearly from the first. He appeared
beside the door, nebulous for an instant, and then hardening into as
distinct an outline as any living man. The slippers beneath his grey
gown were red and heelless, which accounted for the low, shuffling sound
which he made as he walked. As on the previous night he passed slowly
along the line of bottles until he paused before that which contained
the hand. He reached up to it, his whole figure quivering with
expectation, took it down, examined it eagerly, and then, with a face
which was convulsed with disappointment, he hurled it down on the floor.
There was a crash which resounded through the house, and when I looked
up the mutilated Indian had disappeared. A moment later my door flew
open and Sir Dominick rushed in.
“You are not hurt?” he cried.
“No--but deeply disappointed.”
He looked in astonishment at the splinters of glass, and the brown hand
lying upon the floor.
“Good God!” he cried. “What is this?”
I told him my idea and its wretched sequel. He listened intently, but
shook his head.
“It was well thought of,” said he, “but I fear that there is no such
easy end to my sufferings. But one thing I now insist upon. It is that
you shall never again upon any pretext occupy this room. My fears that
something might have happened to you--when I heard that crash--have been
the most acute of all the agonies which I have undergone. I will not
expose myself to a repetition of it.”
He allowed me, however, to spend the remainder of the night where I was,
and I lay there worrying over the problem and lamenting my own failure.
With the first light of morning there was the Lascar’s hand still lying
upon the floor to remind me of my fiasco. I lay looking at it--and as I
lay suddenly an idea flew like a bullet through my head and brought me
quivering with excitement out of my couch. I raised the grim relic from
where it had fallen. Yes, it was indeed so. The hand was the _left_ hand
of the Lascar.
By the first train I was on my way to town, and hurried at once to the
Seamen’s Hospital. I remembered that both hands of the Lascar had been
amputated, but I was terrified lest the precious organ which I was in
search of might have been already consumed in the crematory. My suspense
was soon ended. It had still been preserved in the _post-mortem_ room.
And so I returned to Rodenhurst in the evening with my mission
accomplished and the material for a fresh experiment.
But Sir Dominick Holden would not hear of my occupying the laboratory
again. To all my entreaties he turned a deaf ear. It offended his sense
of hospitality, and he could no longer permit it. I left the hand,
therefore, as I had done its fellow the night before, and I occupied a
comfortable bedroom in another portion of the house, some distance from
the scene of my adventures.
But in spite of that my sleep was not destined to be uninterrupted. In
the dead of night my host burst into my room, a lamp in his hand. His
huge gaunt figure was enveloped in a loose dressing-gown, and his whole
appearance might certainly have seemed more formidable to a weak-nerved
man than that of the Indian of the night before. But it was not his
entrance so much as his expression which amazed me. He had turned
suddenly younger by twenty years at the least. His eyes were shining,
his features radiant, and he waved one hand in triumph over his head. I
sat up astounded, staring sleepily at this extraordinary visitor. But
his words soon drove the sleep from my eyes.
“We have done it! We have succeeded!” he shouted. “My dear Hardacre, how
can I ever in this world repay you?”
“You don’t mean to say that it is all right?”
“Indeed I do. I was sure that you would not mind being awakened to hear
such blessed news.”
“Mind! I should think not indeed. But is it really certain?”
“I have no doubt whatever upon the point. I owe you such a debt, my dear
nephew, as I have never owed a man before, and never expected to. What
can I possibly do for you that is commensurate? Providence must have
sent you to my rescue. You have saved both my reason and my life, for
another six months of this must have seen me either in a cell or a
coffin. And my wife--it was wearing her out before my eyes. Never could
I have believed that any human being could have lifted this burden off
me.” He seized my hand and wrung it in his bony grip.
“It was only an experiment--a forlorn hope--but I am delighted from my
heart that it has succeeded. But how do you know that it is all right?
Have you seen something?”
He seated himself at the foot of my bed.
“I have seen enough,” said he. “It satisfies me that I shall be troubled
no more. What has passed is easily told. You know that at a certain hour
this creature always comes to me. To-night he arrived at the usual time,
and aroused me with even more violence than is his custom. I can only
surmise that his disappointment of last night increased the bitterness
of his anger against me. He looked angrily at me, and then went on his
usual round. But in a few minutes I saw him, for the first time since
this persecution began, return to my chamber. He was smiling. I saw the
gleam of his white teeth through the dim light. He stood facing me at
the end of my bed, and three times he made the low Eastern salaam which
is their solemn leave-taking. And the third time that he bowed he raised
his arms over his head, and I saw his _two_ hands outstretched in the
air. So he vanished, and, as I believe, for ever.”
* * * * *
So that is the curious experience which won me the affection and the
gratitude of my celebrated uncle, the famous Indian surgeon. His
anticipations were realised, and never again was he disturbed by the
visits of the restless hillman in search of his lost member. Sir
Dominick and Lady Holden spent a very happy old age, unclouded, so far
as I know, by any trouble, and they finally died during the great
influenza epidemic within a few weeks of each other. In his lifetime he
always turned to me for advice in everything which concerned that
English life of which he knew so little; and I aided him also in the
purchase and development of his estates. It was no great surprise to me,
therefore, that I found myself eventually promoted over the heads of
five exasperated cousins, and changed in a single day from a
hard-working country doctor into the head of an important Wiltshire
family. I at least have reason to bless the memory of the man with the
brown hand, and the day when I was fortunate enough to relieve
Rodenhurst of his unwelcome presence.
II
THE USHER OF LEA HOUSE SCHOOL
Mr. Lumsden, the senior partner of Lumsden and Westmacott, the
well-known scholastic and clerical agents, was a small, dapper man, with
a sharp, abrupt manner, a critical eye, and an incisive way of speaking.
“Your name, sir?” said he, sitting pen in hand with his long, red-lined
folio in front of him.
“Harold Weld.”
“Oxford or Cambridge?”
“Cambridge.”
“Honours?”
“No, sir.”
“Athlete?”
“Nothing remarkable, I am afraid.”
“Not a Blue?”
“Oh no.”
Mr. Lumsden shook his head despondently and shrugged his shoulders in a
way which sent my hopes down to zero. “There is a very keen competition
for masterships, Mr. Weld,” said he. “The vacancies are few and the
applicants innumerable. A first-class athlete, oar, or cricketer, or a
man who has passed very high in his examinations, can usually find a
vacancy--I might say always in the case of the cricketer. But the
average man--if you will excuse the description, Mr. Weld--has a very
great difficulty, almost an insurmountable difficulty. We have already
more than a hundred such names upon our lists, and if you think it
worth while our adding yours, I dare say that in the course of some
years we may possibly be able to find you some opening which----”
He paused on account of a knock at the door. It was a clerk with a note.
Mr. Lumsden broke the seal and read it.
“Why, Mr. Weld,” said he, “this is really rather an interesting
coincidence. I understand you to say that Latin and English are your
subjects, and that you would prefer for a time to accept a place in an
elementary establishment, where you would have time for private study?”
“Quite so.”
“This note contains a request from an old client of ours, Dr. Phelps
McCarthy, of Willow Lea House Academy, West Hampstead, that I should at
once send him a young man who should be qualified to teach Latin and
English to a small class of boys under fourteen years of age. His
vacancy appears to be the very one which you are looking for. The terms
are not munificent--sixty pounds, board, lodging, and washing--but the
work is not onerous, and you would have the evenings to yourself.”
“That would do,” I cried, with all the eagerness of the man who sees
work at last after weary months of seeking.
“I don’t know that it is quite fair to these gentlemen whose names have
been so long upon our list,” said Mr. Lumsden, glancing down at his open
ledger. “But the coincidence is so striking that I feel we must really
give you the refusal of it.”
“Then I accept it, sir, and I am much obliged to you.”
“There is one small provision in Dr. McCarthy’s letter. He stipulates
that the applicant must be a man with an imperturbable good temper.”
“I am the very man,” said I, with conviction.
“Well,” said Mr. Lumsden, with some hesitation, “I hope that your temper
is really as good as you say, for I rather fancy that you may need it.”
“I presume that every elementary school-master does.”
“Yes, sir, but it is only fair to you to warn you that there may be some
especially trying circumstances in this particular situation. Dr. Phelps
McCarthy does not make such a condition without some very good and
pressing reason.”
There was a certain solemnity in his speech which struck a chill in the
delight with which I had welcomed this providential vacancy.
“May I ask the nature of these circumstances?” I asked.
“We endeavour to hold the balance equally between our clients, and to be
perfectly frank with all of them. If I knew of objections to you I
should certainly communicate them to Dr. McCarthy, and so I have no
hesitation in doing as much for you. I find,” he continued, glancing
over the pages of his ledger, “that within the last twelve months we
have supplied no fewer than seven Latin masters to Willow Lea House
Academy, four of them having left so abruptly as to forfeit their
month’s salary, and none of them having stayed more than eight weeks.”
“And the other masters? Have they stayed?”
“There is only one other residential master, and he appears to be
unchanged. You can understand, Mr. Weld,” continued the agent, closing
both the ledger and the interview, “that such rapid changes are not
desirable from a master’s point of view, whatever may be said for them
by an agent working on commission. I have no idea why these gentlemen
have resigned their situations so early. I can only give you the facts,
and advise you to see Dr. McCarthy at once and to form your own
conclusions.”
Great is the power of the man who has nothing to lose, and it was
therefore with perfect serenity, but with a good deal of curiosity, that
I rang early that afternoon the heavy wrought-iron bell of the Willow
Lea House Academy. The building was a massive pile, square and ugly,
standing in its own extensive grounds, with a broad carriage-sweep
curving up to it from the road. It stood high, and commanded a view on
the one side of the grey roofs and bristling spires of Northern London,
and on the other of the well-wooded and beautiful country which fringes
the great city. The door was opened by a boy in buttons, and I was shown
into a well-appointed study, where the principal of the academy
presently joined me.
The warnings and insinuations of the agent had prepared me to meet a
choleric and overbearing person--one whose manner was an insupportable
provocation to those who worked under him. Anything further from the
reality cannot be imagined. He was a frail, gentle creature,
clean-shaven and round-shouldered, with a bearing which was so courteous
that it became almost deprecating. His bushy hair was thickly shot with
grey, and his age I should imagine to verge upon sixty. His voice was
low and suave, and he walked with a certain mincing delicacy of manner.
His whole appearance was that of a kindly scholar, who was more at home
among his books than in the practical affairs of the world.
“I am sure that we shall be very happy to have your assistance, Mr.
Weld,” said he, after a few professional questions. “Mr. Percival
Manners left me yesterday, and I should be glad if you could take over
his duties to-morrow.”
“May I ask if that is Mr. Percival Manners of Selwyn?” I asked.
“Precisely. Did you know him?”
“Yes; he is a friend of mine.”
“An excellent teacher, but a little hasty in his disposition. It was his
only fault. Now, in your case, Mr. Weld, is your own temper under good
control? Supposing for argument’s sake that I were to so far forget
myself as to be rude to you or to speak roughly or to jar your feelings
in any way, could you rely upon yourself to control your emotions?”
I smiled at the idea of this courteous, little, mincing creature
ruffling my nerves.
“I think that I could answer for it, sir,” said I.
“Quarrels are very painful to me,” said he. “I wish every one to live in
harmony under my roof. I will not deny Mr. Percival Manners had
provocation, but I wish to find a man who can raise himself above
provocation, and sacrifice his own feelings for the sake of peace and
concord.”
“I will do my best, sir.”
“You cannot say more, Mr. Weld. In that case I shall expect you
to-night, if you can get your things ready so soon.”
I not only succeeded in getting my things ready, but I found time to
call at the Benedict Club in Piccadilly, where I knew that I should find
Manners if he were still in town. There he was sure enough in the
smoking-room, and I questioned him, over a cigarette, as to his reasons
for throwing up his recent situation.
“You don’t tell me that you are going to Dr. Phelps McCarthy’s Academy?”
he cried, staring at me in surprise. “My dear chap, it’s no use. You
can’t possibly remain there.”
“But I saw him, and he seemed the most courtly, inoffensive fellow. I
never met a man with more gentle manners.”
“He! oh, he’s all right. There’s no vice in him. Have you seen
Theophilus St. James?”
“I have never heard the name. Who is he?”
“Your colleague. The other master.”
“No, I have not seen him.”
“_He’s_ the terror. If you can stand him, you have either the spirit of
a perfect Christian or else you have no spirit at all. A more perfect
bounder never bounded.”
“But why does McCarthy stand it?”
My friend looked at me significantly through his cigarette smoke, and
shrugged his shoulders.
“You will form your own conclusions about that. Mine were formed very
soon, and I never found occasion to alter them.”
“It would help me very much if you would tell me them.”
“When you see a man in his own house allowing his business to be ruined,
his comfort destroyed, and his authority defied by another man in a
subordinate position, and calmly submitting to it without so much as a
word of protest, what conclusion do you come to?”
“That the one has a hold over the other.”
Percival Manners nodded his head.
“There you are! You’ve hit it first barrel. It seems to me that there’s
no other explanation which will cover the facts. At some period in his
life the little Doctor has gone astray. _Humanum est errare._ I have
even done it myself. But this was something serious, and the other man
got a hold of it and has never let go. That’s the truth. Blackmail is at
the bottom of it. But he had no hold over me, and there was no reason
why _I_ should stand his insolence, so I came away--and I very much
expect to see you do the same.”
For some time he talked over the matter, but he always came to the same
conclusion--that I should not retain my new situation very long.
It was with no very pleasant feelings after this preparation that I
found myself face to face with the very man of whom I had received so
evil an account. Dr. McCarthy introduced us to each other in his study
on the evening of that same day immediately after my arrival at the
school.
“This is your new colleague, Mr. St. James,” said he, in his genial,
courteous fashion. “I trust that you will mutually agree, and that I
shall find nothing but good feeling and sympathy beneath this roof.”
I shared the good Doctor’s hope, but my expectations of it were not
increased by the appearance of my _confrère_. He was a young,
bull-necked fellow about thirty years of age, dark-eyed and
black-haired, with an exceedingly vigorous physique. I have never seen
a more strongly built man, though he tended to run to fat in a way which
showed that he was in the worst of training. His face was coarse,
swollen, and brutal, with a pair of small black eyes deeply sunken in
his head. His heavy jowl, his projecting ears, and his thick bandy legs
all went to make up a personality which was as formidable as it was
repellent.
“I hear you’ve never been out before,” said he, in a rude, brusque
fashion. “Well, it’s a poor life: hard work and starvation pay, as
you’ll find out for yourself.”
“But it has some compensations,” said the principal. “Surely you will
allow that, Mr. St. James?”
“Has it? I never could find them. What do you call compensations?”
“Even to be in the continual presence of youth is a privilege. It has
the effect of keeping youth in one’s own soul, for one reflects
something of their high spirits and their keen enjoyment of life.”
“Little beasts!” cried my colleague.
“Come, come, Mr. St. James, you are too hard upon them.”
“I hate the sight of them! If I could put them and their blessed
copybooks and lexicons and slates into one bonfire I’d do it to-night.”
“This is Mr. St. James’s way of talking,” said the principal, smiling
nervously as he glanced at me. “You must not take him too seriously.
Now, Mr. Weld, you know where your room is, and no doubt you have your
own little arrangements to make. The sooner you make them the sooner you
will feel yourself at home.”
It seemed to me that he was only too anxious to remove me at once from
the influence of this extraordinary colleague, and I was glad to go, for
the conversation had become embarrassing.
And so began an epoch which always seems to me as I look back to it to
be the most singular in all my experience. The school was in many ways
an excellent one. Dr. Phelps McCarthy was an ideal principal. His
methods were modern and rational. The management was all that could be
desired. And yet in the middle of this well-ordered machine there
intruded the incongruous and impossible Mr. St. James, throwing
everything into confusion. His duties were to teach English and
mathematics, and how he acquitted himself of them I do not know, as our
classes were held in separate rooms. I can answer for it, however, that
the boys feared him and loathed him, and I know that they had good
reason to do so, for frequently my own teaching was interrupted by his
bellowing of anger, and even by the sound of his blows. Dr. McCarthy
spent most of his time in his class, but it was, I suspect, to watch
over the master rather than the boys, and to try to moderate his
ferocious temper when it threatened to become dangerous.
It was in his bearing to the head master, however, that my colleague’s
conduct was most outrageous. The first conversation which I have
recorded proved to be typical of their intercourse. He domineered over
him openly and brutally. I have heard him contradict him roughly before
the whole school. At no time would he show him any mark of respect, and
my temper often rose within me when I saw the quiet acquiescence of the
old Doctor, and his patient tolerance of this monstrous treatment. And
yet the sight of it surrounded the principal also with a certain vague
horror in my mind, for supposing my friend’s theory to be correct--and I
could devise no better one--how black must have been the story which
could be held over his head by this man and, by fear of its publicity,
force him to undergo such humiliations. This quiet, gentle Doctor might
be a profound hypocrite, a criminal, a forger possibly, or a poisoner.
Only such a secret as this could account for the complete power which
the younger man held over him. Why else should he admit so hateful a
presence into his house and so harmful an influence into his school? Why
should he submit to degradations which could not be witnessed, far less
endured, without indignation?
And yet, if it were so, I was forced to confess that my principal
carried it off with extraordinary duplicity. Never by word or sign did
he show that the young man’s presence was distasteful to him. I have
seen him look pained, it is true, after some peculiarly outrageous
exhibition, but he gave me the impression that it was always on account
of the scholars or of me, never on account of himself. He spoke to and
of St. James in an indulgent fashion, smiling gently at what made my
blood boil within me. In his way of looking at him and addressing him,
one could see no trace of resentment, but rather a sort of timid and
deprecating good will. His company he certainly courted, and they spent
many hours together in the study and the garden.