The Secrets of Dr. Taverner (30 page)

"Hindhead?" she asked. "What sort of a place is that?"

"It is moorland," I replied. "Heather and pine, you know,
very bracing."

"Oh, if it could only be the sea!" she exclaimed wistfully. "A
rocky coast, miles from anywhere, where the Atlantic rollers
come in and the seabirds are flying and calling. If it could only
be the sea I should get right! The moors are not my place, it is
the sea I need, it is life to me."

She paused abruptly, as if she feared to have said too much,
and then she added: "Please don't think that I am ungrateful, a
rest and change would be a great help. Yes, I should be very
thankful for a letter for the nursing home--" Her voice trailed
into silence and her eyes, looking more like deep-sea water than
ever, gazed unseeing into a distance where I have no doubt the
gulls were flying and calling and the Atlantic rollers coming in
from the West.

"She has gone off again," said my host. "It is apparently her
regular time for going into a state of coma."

As we watched her, she took a deep inspiration, and then all
breathing ceased. It ceased for so long, although the pulse
continued vigorously, that I was just on the point of suggesting
artificial respiration, when with a profound exhalation, the lungs
took up their work with deep rhythmical gasps. Now if you
observe a person's respiration closely, you will invariably find
that you yourself begin to breathe with the same rhythm. It was a
very peculiar rhythm which I found myself assuming, and yet it
was not unfamiliar. I had breathed with that rhythm before, and I
searched my subconscious mind for the due. Suddenly I found it.
It was the respiration of breathing in rough water. No doubt the
cessation of breathing represented the dive. The girl was
dreaming of her sea.

So absorbed was I in the problem that I would have sat up all
night in the hope of finding some evidence of the mysterious
assailant, but my host touched my sleeve.

"We had better be moving," he said. "Matron, you know."
And I followed him out of the darkened ward.

"What do you make of it?" he enquired eagerly as soon as we
were out in the corridor.

"I think as you do," I answered; "that we are dealing with a
case of stigmata, but it will require more plumbing than I could
give it this evening, and I should like to keep in touch with her if
you are willing."

He was only too willing, seeing himself in print in the Lancet
and possessed of that dubious type of glory which comes to the
owners of curios. It was a blessed break in the monotony of his
routine, and he naturally welcomed it.

Now that which is to follow will doubtless be set down as the
grossest kind of coincidence, and as several such coincidences
have been reported in these chronicles, I do not suppose I have
much reputation for veracity anyway. But Taverner always held
that some coincidences, especially those which might be
conceived to serve the purpose of an intelligent Providence,
were not as fortuitous as they appeared to be, but were due to
causes which operated invisibly upon the subtler planes of
existence, and whose effects alone were seen in our material
world; and that those of us who are in touch with the unseen, as
he was, and as I, to a lesser degree on account of my association
with him in his work, had also come to be, might get ourselves
into the hidden currents of that realm, and thereby be brought in
touch with those engaged in similar pursuits. I had too often
watched Taverner picking up people apparently at random and
arriving at the psychological moment apparently by chance, to
doubt the operation of some such laws as he described, though I
neither understand their workings nor recognize them at the
time; it is only in perspective that one sees the Unseen Hand.

Therefore it was that when, on my return to Hindhead,
Taverner requested me to undertake a certain task, I concluded
that my plans with regard to the study of the stigmata case must
be set aside, and banished the matter from my mind.

"Rhodes," he said, "I want you to undertake a piece of work
for me. I would go myself, but it is extremely difficult for me to
get away, and you know enough of my methods by now,
combined with your native common sense (in which I have
much more faith than in many people's psychism) to be able to
report the matter, and possibly deal with it under my
instruction."

He handed me a letter. It was inscribed, "Care G.H. Frater,"
and began without any further preamble: "That of which you
warned me has occurred. I have indeed got in out of my depth,
and unless you can pull me out I shall be a drowned man,
literally as well as metaphorically. I cannot get away from here
and come to you; can you possibly come to me?" And a
quotation from Virgil, which seemed to have little bearing on the
subject, closed the appeal.

Scenting adventure, I readily acceded to Taverner's request.
It was a long journey I had to undertake, and when the train
came to rest at its terminus in the grey twilight of a winter
afternoon, I could smell the keen salt tang of the wind that drove
straight in from the West. To me there is always something
thrilling in arriving at a seaside place and getting the first
glimpse of the sea, and my mind reverted to that other solitary
soul who had loved blue water, the girl with the Rossetti face,
who lay in the rough infirmary bed in the dreary desert of South
London.

She was vividly present to my mind as I entered the musty
four-wheeler, which was all that the station could produce in the
off-season, and drove through deserted and wind-swept streets
on to the sea-front. The line of breakers showed grey through the
gathering darkness as we left the asphalt and boarding houses
behind us and followed the coast road out into the alluvial flats
beyond the town. Presently the road began to wind upwards
towards the cliffs, and I could hear the horse wheezing with the
ascent, till a hail from the darkness put a stop to our progress; a
figure clad in an Inverness cape appeared in the light of the
carriage lamps, and a voice, which had that indefinable
something which Oxford always gives a man, greeted me by
name and invited me to alight.

Although I could see no sign of a habitation, I did as I was
bidden, and the cabman, manoeuvring his vehicle, departed into
the windy darkness and left me alone with my invisible host. He
possessed himself of my bag, and we set off straight for the edge
of the cliff, so far as I could make out, leaning up against the
force of the gale. An invisible surf crashed and roared below us,
and it seemed to me that drowning was the order of the day for
both of us.

Presently, however, I felt a path under my feet.

"Keep close to the rock," shouted my guide. (Next day I
knew why). And we dipped over the edge of the cliff and began
to descend its face. We continued in this way for what seemed to
me an immense distance-- I learnt later it was about a quarter of
a mile--and then, to my amazement, I heard the click of a latch.
It was too dark to see anything, but warm air smote my face, and
I knew that I was under cover. I heard my host fumbling with a
box of matches, and as the light flared, I saw that I was in a
good-sized room, apparently hewn out of the cliff face, and a
most comfortable apartment. Book-lined, warmly curtained,
Persian rugs on the smooth stone of the floor, and a fire of
driftwood burning on the open hearth, which the toe of my
companion's boot soon stirred to a blaze. The amazing contrast
to my gloomy and perilous arrival took my breath away.

My host smiled. "I am afraid," he said, "that you were
making up your mind to be murdered. I ought to have explained
to you the nature of my habitation. I am so used to it myself, that
it does not seem to me that it may appear strange to others. It is
an old smuggler's lair that I have adapted to my use, and being
made of the living rock, it has peculiar advantages for the work
on which I am engage"

We sat down to the meal that was already upon the table, and
I had an opportunity to study the appearance of my host.
Whether he was an elderly man who had preserved his youth, or
a young man prematurely aged, I could not tell, but the maturity
of his mind was such that I inclined to the former hypothesis, for
a wide experience of men and things must have gone to the
ripening of such a nature as his.

His face had something of the lawyer about it, but his hands
were those of an artist. It was a combination I had often seen
before in Taverner's friends, for the intellectual who has a touch
of the mystic generally ends in occultism. His hair was nearly
white, in strange contrast to his wind-tanned face and dark
sparkling eyes. His figure was spare and athletic, and well above
middle height, but his movements had not the ease of youth, but
rather the measured dignity of a man who is accustomed to
public appearances. It was an interesting and impressive
personality, but he showed none of the signs of distress that his
letter had led me to expect.

After-dinner pipes soon led to confidences, and after sitting
for a while in the warm fire-lit silence, my host seemed to gather
his resolution together, and after crossing and uncrossing his
legs several times uneasily, finally said:

"Well, doctor, this visit is on business, not pleasure, so we
may as well `Cut the cackle and come to the `osse's'. I suppose I
appear to you to be sane enough at the present moment?"

I bowed my assent.

"At eleven o'clock you will have the pleasure of seeing me
go off my head."

"Will you tell me what you are experiencing?" I said.

"You are not one of us," he replied (I had probably failed to
acknowledge some sign) "but you must be in Taverner's
confidence or he would not have sent you. I am going to speak
freely to you. You are willing to admit, I presume, that there is
more in heaven and earth than you are taught in the medical
schools?"

"No one can look life honestly in the face without admitting
that," I replied. "I have respect for the unseen, though I don't
pretend to understand it."

"Good man" was the reply. "You will be more use to me than
a brother occultist who might encourage me in my delusions. I
want facts, not phantasies. Once I am certain that I am deluded, I
can pull myself together; it is the uncertainty that is baffling
me."

He looked at his watch; paused, and then with an effort
plunged in medias res.

"I have been studying the elemental forces: I suppose you
know what that means? The semi-intelligent entities behind the
potencies of nature. We divide them into four classes--earth,
air, fire and water. Now I am of the earth, earthy."

I raised my eyebrows in query, for his appearance belied the
description he gave of himself.

He smiled. "I did not say of the flesh, fleshly. That is quite a
different matter. But in my horoscope I have five planets in earth
signs, and consequently my nature is bound up with the formal
side of things. Now in order to counteract this state of affairs I
set myself to get in touch with the fluidic side of nature,
elemental water. I have succeeded in doing so." He paused and
packed the tobacco in his pipe with a nervous gesture. "But not
only have I got in touch with the water elementals, but they have
got in touch with me. One in particular." The pipe again required
attention.