The Secrets of Dr. Taverner (8 page)

Our patient wriggled uneasily in his chair.

"I dunno," he said. "I feel more of a fool than anything else."

"That," said Taverner, "is often the beginning of wisdom."

Black half turned away from us. His painfully assumed
jauntiness fell from him. There was a long pause, and then he
blurted out:

"I feel as if I were in love."

"And you've been hard hit?" suggested Taverner.

"No, I've not," said the patient. "I'm not in love, I only feel
as if I were. There isn't a girl in the case--not that I know of,
anyway--and yet I'm in love--horribly in love-- with a woman
who doesn't exist. And it's not the tomcat side of me, but the
biggest and best that there is in me. If I can't get someone to
love me back in the same way that I am loving, then I'll go off
my head. All the time I feel that there must be someone
somewhere, and that she'll suddenly turn up. She must turn up."
His jaw set in a savage line. "That's why I drive so much,
because I feel that round the next bend I'll find her."

The man's face was quivering, and I saw that his hands were
wet with sweat.

"Have you any mental picture of the woman you are
seeking?" asked Taverner.

"Nothing definite," said Black. "I only get the feel of her. But
I shall know her when I see her; I am certain of that. Do you
think such a woman exists? Do you think it is possible I shall
ever meet her?" He appealed to us with a child's pathetic
eagerness.

"Whether she is in the flesh or not I cannot say at the present
moment," said Taverner, "but of her existence I have no doubt.
Now tell me, when did you first notice this sensation?"

"The very first twinge I had of it," explained Black, "was we
got into the nose dive that put me to bed. We went down, down,
down, faster and faster, and just as we were going to crash I felt
something. I can't say I saw anything, but I got the feel of a pair
of eyes. Can you realize what I mean? And when I came round
from my three days' down-and-out I was in love."

"What do you dream about?" asked Taverner.

"All sorts of things; nothing especially nightmary."

"Do you notice any kind of family likeness in your dreams?"

"Now you come to mention it, I do. They all take place in
brilliant sunshine. They aren't exactly Oriental, but that way
inclined."

Taverner laid before him a book of Egyptian travel illustrated
in water-colours.

"Anything like that?" he inquired.

"My hat!" exclaimed the man. "That's the very thing." He
gazed eagerly at the pictures, and then suddenly thrust the book
away from him. "I can't look at them," he said; "It makes me
feel--" he laid his hand on his solar plexus, hunting for a
simile--"as if my tummy had dropped out."

Taverner asked our patient a few more questions, and then
dismissed him with instructions to report himself if any further
developments took place, saying that it was impossible to treat
his trouble in its present phase. From my knowledge of
Taverner's ways I knew that this meant that he required time to
carry out a psychic examination of the case, which was his
peculiar art, for he used his trained intuition to explore the
minds of his patients as another man might use a microscope to
examine the tissues of their bodies.

As it was a Friday afternoon, and Black was our last patient, I
found myself free after his departure, and was walking down
Harley Street wondering how I should dispose of my weekend,
for an invitation I had counted upon had unexpectedly failed me.
As I took a short cut through a mews lying behind the house I
saw Black manoeuvring a car out of a garage. He saw me, too,
and hailed me as a friend.

"You wouldn't care for a joy ride, I suppose? I am off on the
trail again. Like to join me in running down the fair unknown?"

He spoke lightly, but I had had a glimpse of his soul, and
knew what lay beneath. I accepted his offer, to his evident
pleasure; he filled the gap left by the defection of my friends,
and, moreover, I should learn more by accompanying him on one
of his journeys than a dozen consulting-room examinations
would tell me.

Never shall I forget that drive. He behaved normally till we
got clear of the outlying suburbs, and then as dusk began to fall a
change came over the man. At a secluded spot in the road he
halted the car and stopped the engine. In the perfect stillness of
that spring evening we listened to the silence. Then Black rose
up in the driving-seat and uttered a peculiar cry; it was upon
three minor notes, like a birdcall.

"What did you do that for?" I asked him.

"I dunno," he said; "it might attract her attention. You never
know. It's not worth missing a chance, anyway."

He restarted the car, and I realized that the quest had begun
in good earnest. I watched the needle of the speedometer
creeping round the dial as we hurtled into the gathering dusk.
The hedges fell away on either side of us in a grey blur. Towns
and villages passed us with a roar, their inhabitants luckily
keeping out of our path. Gradients we took in our stride, and
dropped into valleys like a stone from a sling. Presently from the
top of a crest, we felt the Channel wind in our faces. Black
hurled the car down a hill like the side of a house and pulled up
dead, the bonnet nosing against promenade railings. Ahead lay
the sea. Nothing else, I am convinced, could have stopped our
career. Black stared at the surf for a few moments; then he shook
his head.

"I have missed her again," he said, and backed the car off the
pavement. "I got nearer to her tonight than I have ever done,
though."

We put up for the night at an hotel, and next day Black drove
me back again. I stipulated that we should get in before dusk. I
had no wish to accompany him in pursuit of his dream again.

On my return I reported my experience to Taverner.

"It is an interesting case," he said, "and I think it will furnish
a remarkably good instance of my reincarnation theory."

I knew Taverner's belief that the soul has lived many lives
before the present one, and that the experiences of those lives go
to make up the character of today. When confronted by a mental
state for which he could find no adequate cause in the present, it
was his custom to investigate the past, getting the record of the
previous lives of his patient by those secret means of which he
was master. During the early days of my association with
Taverner I considered these records imaginary, but when I saw
how Taverner, working upon this idea, was able to foretell not
only what a person would do, but in what circumstances he
would find himself, I began to see that in this curious old theory
of the East we might find the key to much of the baffling
mystery of human life.

"You think that Black is feeling the effect of some
experience in a past life?" I asked.

"Something like that," said Taverner. "I think that the
spinning nose-dive had the effect of hypnotizing him, and he got
into that particular part of his memory where the pictures of
previous lives are stored."

"I suppose he is living over again some vivid past
experience," I remarked.

"I don't think it is quite that," said Taverner. "If two people
feel a strong emotion, either of love or hate, for each other, it
tends to link them together. If this link is renewed life after life,
it becomes very strong. Black has evidently formed some such
link, and is feeling the drag of

it. Usually these memories lie quiet, and are only roused by
the appearance of the second person. Then we see those
extraordinary loves and hates which disturb the ordered state of
things. Black has recovered his memories owing to being
hypnotized by the nose-dive. It now remains to see how he will
work out his problem."

"Supposing the woman is not upon the earth?"

"Then we shall have a singularly nasty mess," said Taverner.

"And supposing she is upon the earth?"

"We may have an equally nasty mess. These attractions that
come through from the past know no barriers. Black would drive
that car of his through the Ten Commandments and the British
Constitution to get at her. He will go till he drops."

"Our night drive only ended at the sea wall," I said.

"Precisely. And one night it won't end there. The trouble is
that Black, while he was able to feel the presence of this woman
in his abnormal state, was not able to locate her. To him she
seemed to come from all points of the compass at once. We shall
have to move with great caution, Rhodes. First we must find out
whether this woman is on earth or not; then we must find out
what her status is. She may be a scullery-maid or a princess; old
enough to be his grandmother or not yet short-coated; it won't
make any difference to Black. Moreover, she may not be free,
and we can hardly launch him into the bosom of a respectable
family."

Next morning Taverner informed me that his occult methods
had enabled him to locate the woman, that she was on earth, and
about twenty-three years of age.

"Now we must wait," he said. "Sooner or later that
tremendous desire of Black's will bring them together. I wonder
whether she is conscious yet of the attraction."

A few weeks later a Mrs. Tyndall brought her daughter
Elaine to consult my colleague. It seemed that the girl was
developing delusions. Several times she had roused the
household with the announcement that there was a man in her
room. She imagined that she heard someone calling her, and
used to wander about at night, taking long walks after dark, and
often finding herself tired out and miles from home, reduced to
finding what conveyance she could for her return.

"You do not have lapses of memory?" asked Taverner.
"Never," said the girl. "I know exactly where I am and what I am
doing. I feel as if I had lost something, and couldn't rest till I had
found it. I go out to look for--I don't know what. I know it is
ridiculous to behave in the way I do, but the impulse is so strong
I yield to it in spite of myself."

"Do you feel any fear of the presence you are conscious of in
your room?"

"I did at first, it seemed so strange and uncanny, but now I
feel more tantalized than anything else. It is like trying to
remember a name that has slipped your memory. Do you know
that feeling?"

"I should like to have your daughter under observation in my
nursing home," said Taverner to the mother, and I saw by this
that he did not regard the case as the commonplace type of
insanity it appeared to be.

Miss Tyndall was shortly installed at the Hindhead nursing
home, which was Taverner's headquarters, although he used his
Harley Street room for consulting purposes. I liked the girl. She
had no pretensions to striking beauty, but she had character.

For some time our patient led the life of a normal girl; then
one evening she came to me.

"Dr. Rhodes," she said, "I want to take one of my night
walks. Will you mind very much if I do? I shall come to no
harm; I know what I am doing, but I am so restless I feel that I
must move about and get out into open spaces."