The Secrets of Dr. Taverner (16 page)

"Difficult to say; he does not seem to follow any fixed rule,
but usually after dusk. If I am out after sundown, I may look
over my shoulder and see him padding along behind me, or if I
am sitting in my room between daylight fading and lamp
lighting, I may see him crouching behind the furniture watching
his opportunity."

"His opportunity for what?"

"To spring at my throat."

"Why does he not take you unawares?"

"This is what I cannot make out. He seems to miss so many
chances, for he always waits to attack until I am aware of his
presence."

"What does he do then?"

"As soon as I turn and face him, he begins to close in on me!
If I am out walking, he quickens his pace so as to overtake me,
and if I am indoors he sets to work to stalk me round the
furniture. I tell you, he may only be a product of my
imagination, but he is an uncanny sight to watch."

The speaker paused and wiped away the sweat that had
gathered on his forehead during this recital.

Such a haunting is not a pleasant form of obsession for any
man to be afflicted with, but for one with a heart like our
patient's it was peculiarly dangerous.

"What defence do you offer to this creature?" asked
Taverner.

"I keep on saying to it "You're not real, you know, you are
only a beastly nightmare, and I'm not going to let myself be
taken in by you.'"

"As good a defence as any," said Taverner. "But I notice you
talk to it as if it were real."

"By Jove, so I do!" said our visitor thoughtfully; "that is
something new. I never used to do that. I took it for granted that
the beast wasn't real, was only a phantom of my own brain, but
recently a doubt has begun to creep in. Supposing the thing is
real after all? Supposing it really has power to attack me? I have
an underlying suspicion that my hound may not be altogether
harmless after all."

"He will certainly be exceedingly dangerous to you if you
lose your nerve and run away from him. So long as you keep
your head, I do not think he will do you any harm."

"Precisely. But there is a point beyond which one may not
keep one's head. Supposing, night after night, just as you were
going off to sleep, you wake up knowing the creature is in the
room, you see his snout coming round the corner of the curtain,
and you pull yourself together and get rid of him and settle down
again. Then just as you are getting drowsy, you take a last look
round to make sure that all is safe, and you see something dark
moving between you and the dying glow of the fire. You daren't
go to sleep, and you can't keep awake. You may know perfectly
well that it is all imagination, but that sort of thing wears you
down if it is kept up night after night."

"You get it regularly every night?"

"Pretty nearly. Its habits are not absolutely regular, however,
except that, now you come to mention it, it always gives me
Friday night off; if it weren't for that, I should have gone under
long ago. When Friday comes I say to it: `Now, you brute, this is
your beastly Sabbath,' and go to bed at eight and sleep the clock
round."

"If you care to come down to my nursing home at Hindhead,
we can probably keep the creature out of your room and ensure
you a decent night's sleep," said Taverner. "But what we really
want to know is--," he paused almost imperceptibly, "why your
imagination should haunt you with dogs, and not, shall we say,
with scarlet snakes in the time-honoured fashion."

"I wish it would," said our patient. "If it was snakes I could
`put more water with it' and drown them, but this slinking black
beast--" He shrugged his shoulders and followed the butler out
of the room.

"Well, Rhodes, what do you make of it?" asked my colleague
after the door closed.

"On the face of it," I said, "it looks like an ordinary example
of delusions, but I have seen enough of your queer cases not to
limit myself to the internal mechanism of the mind alone. Do
you consider it possible that we have another case of thought
transference?"

"You are coming along," said Taverner, nodding his head at
me approvingly. "When you first enjoined me, you would
unhesitatingly have recommended bromide for all the ills the
mind is heir to; now you recognize that there are more things in
heaven and earth than were taught you in the medical schools.

"So you think we have a case of thought transference? I am
inclined to think so too. When a patient tells you his delusions,
he stands up for them, and often explains to you that they are
psychic phenomena, but when a patient recounts psychic
phenomena, he generally apologizes for them, and explains that
they are delusions. But why doesn't the creature attack and be
done with it, and why does it take its regular half-holiday as if it
were under the Shop Hours Act?"

He suddenly slapped his hand down on the desk.

"Friday is the day the Black Lodges meet. We must be on
their trail again; they will get to know me before we have
finished. Someone who got his occult training in a Black Lodge
is responsible for that ghost hound. The reason that Martin gets
to sleep in peace on Friday night is that his would-be murderer
sits in Lodge that evening and cannot attend to his private
affairs."

"His would-be-murderer?" I questioned.

"Precisely. Anyone who sends a haunting like that to a man
with a heart like Martin's knows that it means his death sooner
or later. Supposing Martin got into a panic and took to his heels
when he found the dog behind him in a lonely place?"

"He might last for half-a-mile," I said, "but I doubt if he
would get any further."

"This is a clear case of mental assassination. Someone who is
a trained occultist has created a thought-form of a black hound,
and he is sufficiently in touch with Martin to be able to convey it
to his mind by means of thought transference, and Martin sees,
or thinks he sees, the image that the other man is visualizing.

"The actual thought-form itself is harmless except for the
fear it inspires, but should Martin lose his head and resort to
vigorous physical means of defence, the effort would precipitate
a heart attack, and he would drop dead without the slightest
evidence to show who caused his death. One of these days we
will raid those Black Lodges, Rhodes; they know too much.
Ring up Martin at the Hotel Cecil and tell him we will drive him
back with us tonight."

"How do you propose to handle the case?" I asked.

"The house is covered by a psychic bell jar, so the thing
cannot get at him while he is under its protection. We will then
find out who is the sender, and see if we can deal with him and
stop it once and for all. It is no good disintegrating the creature,
its master would only manufacture another; it is the man behind
the dog that we must get at.

"We shall have to be careful, however, not to let Martin think
we suspect he is in any danger, or he will lose his one defence
against the creature, a belief in its unreality. That adds to our
difficulties, because we daren't question him much, less we
rouse his suspicions. We shall have to get at the facts of the case
obliquely."

On the drive down to Hindhead, Taverner did a thing I had
never heard him do before, talk to a patient about his occult
theories. Sometimes, at the conclusion of a case, he would
explain the laws underlying the phenomena in order to rid the
unknown of its terrors and enable his patient to cope with them,
but at the outset, never.

I listened in astonishment, and then I saw what Taverner was
fishing for. He wanted to find out whether Martin had any
knowledge of occultism himself, and used his own interest to
waken the other's--if he had one.

My colleague's diplomacy bore instant fruit. Martin was also
interested in these subjects, though his actual knowledge was
nil--even I could see that.

"I wish you and Mortimer could meet," he said. "He is an
awfully interesting chap. We used to sit up half the night talking
of these things at one time."

"I should be delighted to meet your friend," said Taverner.
`Do you think he could be persuaded to run down one Sunday
and see us? I am always on the lookout for anyone I can learn
something from."

"I--I am afraid I could not get hold of him now," said our
companion, and lapsed into a preoccupied silence from which all
Taverner's conversational efforts failed to rouse him. We had
evidently struck some painful subject, and I saw my colleague
make a mental note of the fact.

As soon as we got in, Taverner went straight to his study,
opened the safe, and took out a card index file.

"Maffeo, Montague, Mortimer," he muttered, as he turned
the cards over. "Anthony William Mortimer. Initiated into the
Order of the Cowled Brethren, October, 1912; took office as
Armed Guard, May, 1915. Arrested on suspicion of espionage,
March, 1916. Prosecuted for exerting undue influence in the
making of his mother's will. (Everybody seems to go for him,
and no one seems to be able to catch him.) Became Grand
Master of the Lodge of Set the Destroyer. Knocks, two, three,
two, password, `Jackal.'

"So much for Mr. Mortimer. A good man to steer clear of, I
should imagine. Now I wonder what Martin has done to upset
him."

As we dared not question Martin, we observed him, and I
very soon noticed that he watched the incoming posts with the
greatest anxiety. He was always hanging about the hail when
they arrived, and seized his scanty mail with eagerness, only to
lapse immediately into despondency. Whatever letter it was that
he was looking for never came. He did not express any surprise
at this, however, and I concluded that he was rather hoping
against hope than expecting something that might happen.

Then one day he could stand it no longer, and as for the
twentieth time I unlocked the mailbag and informed him that
there was nothing for him, he blurted out: "Do you believe that
`absence makes the heart grow fonder,' Dr. Rhodes?"

"It depends on the nature," I said. "But I have usually
observed if you have fallen out with someone, you are more
ready to overlook his shortcomings when you have been away
from him for a time."

"But if you are fond of someone?" he continued,
half-anxiously, half-shamefacedly.

"It is my belief that love cools if it is not fed," I said. "The
human mind has great powers of adaptation, and one gets used,
sooner or later, to being without one's nearest and dearest."

"I think so, too," said Martin, and I saw him go off to seek
consolation from his pipe in a lonely corner.

"So there is a woman in the case," said Taverner when I
reported the incident. "I should rather like to have a look at her. I
think I shall set up as a rival to Mortimer; if he sends black
thought forms, let me see what I can do with a white one."

I guessed that Taverner meant to make use of the method of
silent suggestion, of which he was a past-master.