_In which the Subliminal Consciousness gives
itself away._
The work of the Sunday had tired Professor Higginson. He did not know
that glory could weary man so much.
He rose very late upon the Monday morning: he rose certainly without
ambition, and almost without fear. He was dead beat. By the time he
had breakfasted it was noon. He had no class on Monday. In the early
afternoon he was due at the Council of the University. He remembered
the agenda, more or less. He had to talk particularly about those
Saturday lectures. He hated them—but first of all he must ring up his
colleague Garden, who was with him in the matter.
Garden had the telephone—sensible man! But Garden wouldn’t allow
his number in the book.... It was?... It was 37 something?... Wait
a minute! Professor Higginson remembered a scrap of paper with a
memorandum. _That_ had the number. He had put it down _last_ Monday on
a scrap of paper after the Senate meeting for just that occasion, to
ring up Garden before the Council.
He had a good memory. He prided himself on _that_. He clearly
remembered jotting the number down on a scrap of University paper in
the Senate room. It was the meeting before he went to Perkin’s—just
before his troubles began!
Professor Higginson felt for that scrap of paper intuitively in the
watch pocket of his waistcoat. He could carry such things there for
days. It was not in the watch pocket of his waistcoat.
He searched in all the pockets of the suit he was wearing. One puts
things which one is in the habit of carrying instinctively into a
pocket, and one often does not remember when one did it—especially if
one is given to lapses of The Primary Consciousness and Subliminal
Thingumbobs!
By a process only too familiar to the less fortunate members of the
professional classes, he fingered carefully every edge of the pocket
lining until he found a large hole, whereat he as carefully explored
all the vague emptiness of the lining beneath, and as he explored it
he began to worry, for there was nothing there. Then the Professor
of Subliminal Psychology suddenly remembered! He had taken it out
when he dressed that evening for Perkin’s. He had put it on to the
dressing table. He remembered the white paper on the white cloth, and
he remembered telling himself not to forget it. He had put it into the
pocket—the waistcoat pocket—of his one evening suit.
He went through that one suit very thoroughly. He found nothing. He
thought he might have dropped it when he last changed. He stretched
upon the floor and, lighting matches with infinite difficulty, he
peered under the bed and under the wardrobe, examining every inch of
the worn Brussels carpet. Not a scrap of paper appeared.
Then—suddenly—he got a touch of nausea. It was borne in upon him
more and more certainly that the last time he had carried that
memorandum—and worn that suit—was at Perkin’s party, _and the days that
followed and the nights_. That bit of paper must have dropped during
one of his struggles or one of his athletic feats in the Accursed
House! That gave the matter a very new importance. If that ill-omened
scrap were still in the empty house!... Worse still, supposing someone
had found it?... It was a clue.
Professor Higginson lost no time. He took the tram, and when he reached
the end of it, with infinite precautions of looking to right and left,
pretending to go down side lanes, lingering at gates, he managed at
last to comfort himself with the assurance that no one watched him—as
indeed no one did. Every inch was, for him, alive with spies, and he
exaggerated the importance of his movements, for he was a Don.
An hour or so after he had left the town he saw the neglected shrubs,
the rotting gate, the beweeded gravel path; and, standing up gaunt and
terrible before him, the Accursed House within its wasted grounds.
He went up stealthily to the door. It was locked. Still gazing over
his shoulder with nervous precaution, he made an effort to find some
postern, but the high wall was blind everywhere, and the courtyard at
the back was enclosed upon all sides.
With a confused but terrible recollection of some tag which tells us
that no man falls at once to the lowest depths of turpitude, and with
a sigh for the relic of his honour, he tried one of the great front
windows. It was fast.
Then Lucifer once again inspired that unhappy man with cunning beyond
his own. He whipped out a pocket-knife, opened the thin blade, inserted
it in the crack of the sash and began to tamper, yes, to tamper, with
the catch. He felt it giving, as he pushed gently and with infinite
care lest any sound should betray him, when his heart suddenly stopped
beating, and his blood ran dead cold, at the sound of a voice just
behind him delivering this summons—
“What yer at?”
He dropped the knife and leapt round. A sturdy fellow, short and
thick-set, clothed in old bargee trousers and a pea-jacket, and with
that face of labour which the police call “villainous” in their
reports, was watching him unmoved.
“What yer at?” repeated the badly-shaven lips.
“I—I was making an experiment,” said Professor Higginson at random.
“Yer was,” said the thick-set man, and spat. “And now yer’ll cut.”
Professor Higginson was dignified.
“My good man,” he said——
“None o’ that,” said the good man, advancing his face in an ugly
fashion; “I’ll let yer know I’m the caretaker. Ook it. If there was a
copper in this Sahary Desert I’d put him on yer for a twofer.”
Now a “twofer” is an insignificant cigar, of which two are sold for a
penny; but though Professor Higginson did not know this, he understood
the general drift of the remark, and he slowly began to edge away.
“I’ve a mind,” said the pea-jacketed one, following him growling to the
gate, “to tell Mr. Kirby.”
“Mr. who?” said Professor Higginson eagerly.
“Mr. Kirby,” repeated the man, sullenly. “It’s his job this house is.”
Professor Higginson felt in his trouser pocket and produced a florin.
The caretaker took it, though it only confirmed his suspicions.
“Is that the name of the agent for this house? Could I get an order
from him? I want to look for—I mean I want to get inside!”
“Yus! Yer do!” said the man. Then: “That’s the name of Mr. Kirby, and
if yer’ve sense yer’ll get to his orfices afore me.”
It was a plain hint, but Professor Higginson was not grateful. He was
considering what advantage this information was to him, and as he
slowly considered it he at last clearly grasped that advantage. He
would be back at that house within three hours: back with the key and
an order to view. And it would go hard with him if he did not find that
dangerous scrap of paper. He had not wasted his florin.
“Thank you,” he said rapidly, and was gone.
He reached the tram again before it was mid-afternoon. Once in the town
he looked up a directory in a shop, found Kirby and Blake’s direction,
and made his way at once to that office.
Mr. Kirby had come in just an hour before. He had sat drawing
caricatures on blotting-paper with stubs of pencil, or gazing at
the ceiling. He had written private letters with his own hand, and
addressed to people who had no known connection with the firm, and he
seemed to have attached himself thus to his business premises, during
that one exceptional afternoon, for the advantage of seclusion and
of the telephone more than of anything else. Moreover, he had asked
peevishly once or twice whether such and such a one had rung him up or
called for him.
When, therefore, Professor Higginson came into the office and asked
whether he could see Mr. Kirby, said the clerk to him, “Certainly,
sir,” and showed him into a room where bound copies of _Punch_ and
a _Graphic_ three years old, also a list of bankrupts, beguiled the
leisure of clients as they waited their turn.
“Will you send up your card?” added the clerk innocently.
“No,” worried and feebled the Philosopher—he had no card—“say it
is Professor Higginson, and that he wants to see Mr. Kirby most
particularly.”
“Is Mr. Kirby expecting you?” continued the clerk.
“How should I know?” said Mr. Higginson half savagely. And the
mystified young man was more mystified still when, on giving the name
to his employer, that employer jumped up and beamed as though he had
been left a legacy, or had heard of a dear friend’s return from the
dead.
“Oh, show him up!” he said merrily. “Show him up! Show him up at once!”
and the chief of that great business went half-way to the door to meet
his visitor.
He took him warmly by both hands as he bade him be seated. He asked in
the most concerned way about his present state of health, after the
terrible adventure which was now the talk of thousands. He hoped that
the heat of the room with its blazing fire was not inimical to the
Professor’s convalescence.
Professor Higginson was rather curt for such a genial host.
“I won’t detain you, Mr. Kirby,” he said, “it is very good of you to
have given me a moment or two of your valuable time.” He thought a
moment. He was not good at plots, or rather he had had to construct too
many lately in too short a time. At last he began tentatively——
“Perhaps you know, Mr. Kirby—I am afraid it is widely known—in fact,
you _do_ know, for you have just told me as much—that I—that in fact I
have had an unfortunate—er—lapse.”
Mr. Kirby nodded sympathetically.
“Pray do not insist, my dear Professor,” he murmured; “most touching,
most interesting. Now with your expert knowledge of the phenomena of
consciousness——”
Professor Higginson interrupted.
“The point is, Mr. Kirby, that knowing you to be in touch with
the—what shall I say—the residence business——”
“Yes?” said Mr. Kirby, with a polite inflection.
“Well, the fact is,” blurted out the Philosopher, “my case presents a
point of the highest possible interest, the highest possible scientific
interest, in which you might help me. It is about a house.” And here
the Professor stopped dead.
Mr. Kirby watched him with crossed legs, joined finger-tips, and a very
hierarchical expression.
Professor Higginson continued—
“I have an instinct, purely subliminal, mind you” (Mr. Kirby nodded,
but never took his eyes off the Professor’s face, and the Professor’s
eyes on their side never left the floor), “purely subliminal, but a
strong instinct that during those days I was—I saw—no, I mean I was
spiritually present in a _House_—a sort of, well, _House_!” Mr. Kirby
nodded again. “I—I—I had a sort of dream——”
“Wait a moment, Professor,” said Mr. Kirby respectfully, “we must get
all this quite clear. At first I understood that your complete loss of
memory involved a breach in the continuity of consciousness—a blank as
it were. I read all the reports, of course” (his tone was profoundly
reverent), “and I will not trespass upon sacred things. But at _first_
there was a blank, was there not?”
Professor Higginson put on his lecturing tone. “We are using technical
terms, my dear sir,” he said in a somewhat superior manner, “indeed,
highly technical terms. Primary consciousness I certainly lost. I think
I may go so far as to say that I am unaware of any action of secondary
consciousness.” Mr. Kirby still nodded gravely, following every word.
“But _subliminal consciousness_ is a very different matter! That, my
dear sir,” continued the Professor, smiling awkwardly, “is my own
department as it were. Now the subliminal consciousness is peculiarly
active in dreams, and I certainly did have a very vivid dream.”
“But if your memory was wrong,” said Mr. Kirby with a calculatedly
puzzled look, “I mean if your memory failed about it——”
The Professor shook his head impatiently.
“You don’t understand,” he said. “Please let us be clear. There’s no
question of memory at all.”
“Not at all, not at all,” said Mr. Kirby politely, “only a dream.”
“It was a vision—a high vision,” said the Philosopher. “I recollect
some things clearly. A sort of studio roof. A big sort of skylight
window. I remember that. Now of course I never can have been in such
a house,” continued Professor Higginson. “It’s one of the first laws
of subliminal consciousness that impressions are conveyed from one
centre to another, transversely as it were, and not either directly or
in the ordinary line from a superior to an inferior plane. To put it
conversationally, not from above to below, nor from below to above.
Hum!”
“Of course!” said Mr. Kirby. “Naturally. Quite clear.”
“The whole theory of telepathy depends upon that,” went on Professor
Higginson, glancing up cautiously at the lawyer and dropping his eyes
again.
“It could depend on nothing else,” said Mr. Kirby gracefully.
“Well, you see,” said the Psychologist, “I wasn’t in the house, that’s
quite certain; I had and have no _objective_ knowledge of the house.
Every psychologist of repute will bear evidence to that. It’s the mere
A B C of the science.”
“Your reputation,” said Mr. Kirby, “would weigh more than that of any
colleague,” and the Professor was gratified.
“You understand clearly,” went on Mr. Higginson. “I never was in that
house—yet I am certain such a house exists, and—well—for reasons that
are very private—it is really of interest to me to discover where it
may be, for though my science assures me that I had no sort of physical
connection with it during that extraordinary experience, yet I am
confident that its connections, inhabitants or owners, will give me
a clue to what is now the chief interest of my life—and I may add, I
hope without boasting, now one of the chief subjects before scientific
Europe. In the interest of Science I should _see_ that house. I should
visit it.... Soon. Indeed, to-day.... I wonder if you can help me?...
The house looked north,” he continued abruptly, shutting his eyes and
groping with his hands to add a wizard effect to the jerky sentences.
“There was a drive up to it with laurel bushes, a rather weedy drive.
There were four stone steps to the door, I remember those steps well,
and—oh! there was a lower ground-floor room with one window looking on
to a backyard.... If I can find that house and have an order from its
owner to visit it I shall be profoundly grateful—I thought you might
help me.”
“I’ve got it all down,” said Mr. Kirby, scribbling hurriedly, “and
I will certainly find it for you. The cause of Science, Professor
Higginson, is a sacred cause.”
“If you _can_!—oh! if you _can_ get me an order _now_, _to-day_!”
burst out the Professor, opening his eyes suddenly and cutting short
in his desperation. “I—I—well, I should like to look over that house.
It would be of the highest possible scientific interest. Can you,” he
added nervously, and as though he was in a hurry to catch a train or
something of that sort, “can you let me have the keys—now?”
“My dear sir,” said Mr. Kirby, looking up gently, “my dear sir, I
really cannot yet be certain what house it may be, nor whether our firm
are the agents for it, nor even whether it’s to let, though I think it
may be one I have in my mind.”
He glanced at his notes again.
“Oh, yes, your firm are the agents,” said the Professor eagerly, and
then added, suddenly appreciating that he was giving himself away, “I
remember receiving with extraordinary vividness during that curious
vision the spiritual impress that your firm were the agents.”
[Illustration: “_I remember receiving, with extraordinary vividness,
that spiritual impress._”]
Mr. Kirby said nothing and looked nothing, and the Professor eagerly
went on to cover his tracks—
“You must know that in these purely subliminal phenomena, there is a
marvellous sense of the _atmosphere_, of the—er—_connotations_ of the
locality—the dream locality.”
“Well,” began Mr. Kirby slowly, “of course, we could not refuse you,
Professor Higginson, in a matter of such high scientific importance....
We _might_ have to get the leave of the owner, but in the normal course
of things we could let you look over it, only, you see,” he went on
with a puzzled expression, “you really haven’t told me enough to fix
me yet as to what house it can be.... We have so many to remember,” he
mused.... “It is a peculiar sort of a house. Unfurnished, I think you
said?” he continued, looking at his notes, “except on the top floor,
where there was a studio. Now, Professor,” and here he looked suddenly
at his visitor, “can’t you recollect any other detail, some sort of
faint impression?”
“N—no,” said Professor Higginson timidly. “You must remember the
circumstances were extraordinarily——”
“For instance,” said Mr. Kirby imperturbably, “have you any
recollection of where the bed was? Was it in a sort of little dark room
beyond the studio? It is an extraordinary thing,” he continued, pulling
up his sock as he said it, “that one cannot keep one’s sock up on one’s
leg without those horrible little garters, which I for one will _not_
wear.”
“Now you suggest it,” said Professor Higginson slowly and with
something of the feeling that a mule may have when it feels the drag
on the rope, “now you suggest it I _have_ a recollection of something
of the sort.... And by the way, I seem also to remember a delicious
heavenly music.”
“Ah!” said Mr. Kirby, and he gazed at a point on the carpet about
eleven feet away, “wonderful thing music, only seven notes, and see
what a lot you can get out of ’em! I will smoke a cigar if you don’t
mind,” and he lit one. “Now, were there three chairs in the room, and
do you remember anything of a rope?” said Mr. Kirby.
“I’m not—quite—sure—about—the rope,” lied Professor Higginson, pausing
between every word, “but the chairs? Ye—es! I think I _did_ see
chairs—wooden chairs.”
“And was the skylight broken?”
“No—yes—possibly—very probably,” floundered the Philosopher.
“Then I’ve got it,” said Mr. Kirby briskly, “I’ve spotted it! You were
_quite_ right when you said you’d never been there in the flesh. At
least, I don’t think you ever can have been there. It isn’t in this
town at all. It isn’t in England. It’s a place my firm looks after in
the Hebrides—wonderful old place, you know—deserted. A Manse it was.
Now the history of that house——” he was continuing volubly, when the
Professor checked him.
“Not at all! Not at all!” he said angrily, “I tell you it is somewhere
close by here! In Ormeston!”
“My dear sir!” said Mr. Kirby, opening wide eyes, “how can you know
that a duplicate of the house I am thinking of——?”
“I’ve told you already,” snapped Higginson. “In these visions one has
connotations of atmosphere, and so on.”
“Well,” said Mr. Kirby, after that outburst, shaking his head slowly
from side to side, “then I’m of no use, none at all. I do know by
chance that place in the Hebrides, saw it only last year. Doing it to
oblige a cousin. Would have been most interesting, most interesting, if
it had been _that_. Don’t you think it _could_ be that? They’re full of
second sight in those parts.”
“No,” said Professor Higginson, rising with determination and in some
anger, “no, I do not think it could be that.”
“Well, then,” said Mr. Kirby hopelessly, “I don’t see how I can help
you. Don’t you think two connotations may have got mixed up?”
“No, I don’t,” said the Professor shortly, more and more possessed of
the feeling that things were going wrong with him. “I _don’t_ think so.
It’s impossible. These things have their laws, sir, just as nature has,
I mean ordinary nature, common nature, what we—er—call Natural Laws.”
Mr. Kirby nodded agreeably.
“I don’t think,” went on Professor Higginson, “that I ought to take up
any more of your time.”
“Oh, but I should particularly like to hear more,” said Mr. Kirby with
enthusiasm.
“I’m afraid it’s no use,” said Professor Higginson, and he made to go
out.
He was actually at the door, when Mr. Kirby added—
“Professor Higginson, I’ve half promised some friends to ask you to
dine in London after your lecture. It was a great liberty—but they knew
I lived in Ormeston. I wonder whether I might presume? Shall I drop you
a line? It’s the Rockingham. I might tell you something then. I might
find out.”
“Yes,” said Professor Higginson with no enthusiasm, but he badly wanted
to see that house and search it for that haunting scrap of paper, and
he didn’t want to lose touch with the Order to View, “yes, by all
means.”
“You see,” added Mr. Kirby apologetically, “by the time you come to
dine with me in London on Wednesday I might be able to suggest a lot of
things—an almost unfurnished downstairs room with a big deal table in
it, and oaken stairs, uncarpeted, and, oh! all the sort of things that
you would expect in a house of that kind.”
“Yes,” said Professor Higginson, flabbergasted.
“Well, well,” said Mr. Kirby more cheerfully, and shaking him cordially
by the hand, “I won’t keep you; next Wednesday in town! I’ll write!”
and he sauntered back into his room.
The great Psychologist slowly paced the street outside, then despair
gave him relief, and he went home to bed.