The Return of L
Inside were folded several thick sheets of paper, covered with a large and spidery, but very clear handwriting. Murchison glanced at the first few lines, and his expression altered.
"What is it?" asked Stone rather hoarsely. "Read it!"
"It's the solution," said Murchison, without lifting his eyes. "It's dated June 15th, 3.00 P.M., and it's addressed to me. You better all come here."
He spread out the sheets on the table in the middle of the room.
This account [ran the spidery handwriting] will serve both as an explanation to you and as the test 1 mean to apply to my friend Hogenauer. You are the sole witness to the failure or the success of this experiment, which I made solely to convince my friend of his folly. I have mentioned the matter to no one: I should not, as you can understand, care to have it known that a man of facts associated himself with any such "odyllic" quackery. It has been noticed that when a man of strongly scientific mind has passed his best physical age, and is threatened by arterio-sclerosis which may end in brain-apoplexy, he very often turns to studies which are exactly the reverse of scientific. From a host of minor ailments it leads to the hardening of the arteries of the brain: it is a fact of nature we need not discuss. You have met Mr. Hogenauer, and you have seen his appearance of illness. He has been under superficial medical care for some time; and, though he has obeyed minor rules drinking only mineral-water, when he was formerly fond of stimulants; and giving up smoking, even though he kept by him the collection of pipes out of which he used to get so much enjoyment-still he remains mentally active. In short, the former scientist is now obsessed with proving the truth of Clairvoyance. It has been remarked that poets do not go mad, but mathematicians do. The poet only wishes to get his head into the heavens. It is the scientist who wishes to get the heavens into his head: and it is his head which splits. These thoughts wake self-distrust; but let us be fair to Hogenauer. His belief in Clairvoyance (1 use the term loosely) has no connection with spiritism or an other world. It is a branch of that subject called Animal Magnetism which has been under so much dispute from Mesmer to Heidenhain. It presupposes that some sensitive subject, in a hypnotic trance, can accurately describe objects in a room at some distance removed-even a room of which the subject in his waking consciousness has no knowledge. There have been apparent instances of this. I do not deny it. But, unlike Hogenauer, I should explain it in the difference between Sensory Impressions and Memory. Memory depends on the direction of the attention to sensations. If the effort of attention be strong, the recollection will be vivid; and the converse is true. Sensory perceptions come and go, like shadows of clouds on a hill, without any attempt at fixing them, and consequently with no recollection of them. The sensory perceptions may have existed for so short a time as to leave no perception behind. It is generally admitted by physiologists that the cerebral hemispheres are the seat of the higher mental operations — such as attention — although the interdependence of these hemispheres with the lower sensory ganglia, which receive all sensory impressions in the first instance, and with motor-ganglia which are the starting points of motor-impulses, is not understood. One portion of the nervous system may work without the other.-Thus, during free cerebral activity we pay little attention to what we see or hear, and consequently remember nothing. As a practical example: Hogenauer has many times visited me at this hotel. His conscious mind may be convinced that he has seen no other room except my own. But a half-open door, as he passes along a corridor, may have made a sensory record which is not (and cannot be) released until cerebral activity is destroyed by the hypnotic state. Thus Braid's old term of ysvpov-vnv or "nerve-sleep," may be an exactly literal definition. Hogenauer's theory is as old as the Egyptian belief in the ka, or the German superstition of the doppelganger. That is to say, the projection of a sympathetic subject outside material bounds — exactly as a magic-lantern, picture is thrown on a wall. Hogenauer believes that he needs no operator to put him into a hypnotic state, or direct him. I do not, of course, quarrel with this. Any medical man will tell you that self-hypnosis is easily managed in a sympathetic subject. My friend's method is this: All devices for self-hypnotism depend on a beam of light meeting a broken, polished surface, preferably a moving surface, on which the subject's eyes are fixed. This broken surface should be placed from a foot to eighteen inches above the level of the eye. Thus, in a darkened room, a thin shaft of light is caused to fall across my friend's desk directly in line with the foot of a lamp-cord hanging above the desk. At the end of the lamp-cord, where the bulb ordinarily hangs, is suspended a cluster of small bright objects-silver is the best medium-which shall present the broken surface. The string itself is of twine which may be twisted in such fashion (you have seen a similar principle in child's toys) that it shall slowly revolve. The light, passing across it, strikes back a series of tiny dazzling refractions from the silver surface; and it is upon this that the subject, sitting in his chair, fixes his eyes. I suggested this method to him. 1 leave out technical details, though I have worked out the light equations for him. He recently tells me that in only one respect is it unsuccessful. The beam of light, passing beyond the revolving surface, encounters a bookshelf on which there are some volumes highly gilded. The refraction of light from this gilt, broken as the beam is by the first surface, creates another glow which tends to distract the eye. He has informed me that, on the occasion of this "experiment," he will remove the gilt-bound books…
Someone was speaking.
"Oh, my eye," breathed Evelyn. "My own eye! Ken, is this true? Is that the way the room was arranged?"
I was thinking back on the first curious evidence I had beard in the case; the report that Sergeant Davis, who had crept up one night to look through a chink in the shutters of Hogenauer's parlour; had made to Charters: "He says that the room was dark, but that it seemed to be very full of small, moving darts of light flickering round a thing like a flower-pot turned upside down." So that, then, was how Hogenauer thought he was able to transfer himself through the air, unseen, like Albertus Magnus.
"It's just how the room was arranged," I admitted. "There was a loop in the end of that string, to hang it from the light."
"Move over," said Stone; "I can't see the foot of the page. Now turn it; next page! Yes, but what about the furniture being changed around? That — "
It will readily be understood that, in a man suffering from morbid idiopathic action, such experiments can be dangerous. Not only is my friend convinced if his own ability to project his own mind, but he is anxious to convince me that I can do the same. It is true that, both mentally and physically, we have a great deal in common; we are first cousins, and, like Hogenauer, I am a good hypnotic subject. So much, again, I have never denied. He contends that, if we were to throw ourselves into a hypnotic state at the same hour — he in his own home, I in mine — and if physical conditions were made the same for both of us, then I should be able to "pay a visit" to his rooms at the same time that he "paid a visit to mine." I replied that I had no doubt of my ability, by concentration, to attain a state of self-hypnosis. The sequel I denied, because there would be no means of proving it. While in the cataleptic state, influenced by thoughts already planted in my subconscious mind, it was possible I might receive a hallucination of having "visited" his study at Moreton Abbot. Having been there many times, I should have too vivid a memory of it. He told me-only this morning — that he would arrange a suitable test for this: viz., he would so alter the arrangement of furniture in his study that if, on waking, I could recall the position in which it stood, then there would be irrefutable proof that this could be no mere projection of memory….
"Have you got to the bottom of that page?" inquired Evelyn. "Because, if you have, let us take an interval out for groaning. There was undoubtedly method in the old boy's madness. Also, you can see the explanation of dear Mr. Hogenauer's jocular remarks to that servant what's his name-"
"Bowers?"
'M. Bowers, yes. about paying a visit to Keppel tonight. Grand sense of humour, I don't think. `I am going to Bristol to-night.' `Shall I pack a bag?' `No, I won't need a bag,' — ha, ha, ha. `Yes, I'll be at Dr. Keppel's, but I don't think Dr. Keppel will be there: in fact, I've got every hope that he'll be out.' And his final dig: `Yes, Harry, I think you may have a visitor to-night, but I doubt if you'll see him.' So," concluded Evelyn, tapping the papers, "this morning Keppel went to Hogenauer's house to arrange the details-,
… arrange the details [said the dead man's handwriting]. And so we come to the point of all these sheets, and the reason why I inflict on you such a detailed statement. This morning he made a further suggestion. He showed me a bottle which he said contained "bromide powders," suggesting that — since we should both be under some mental excitement at the time of the experiment, and might find difficulty in concentrating sufficiently to induce a quick state of hypnosis — we should both take a dose of the nerve sedative just fifteen minutes before the experiment began. He poured a dose of about a dram, or, roughly, a teaspoonful, into an envelope, and gave it to me. He further suggested that we should both swallow the sedative in mineral-water, so that conditions should be the same. I hope you do not smile at the spectacle of two elderly gentlemen playing nonsensical games. I agree to all this because I mean to save Paul Hogenauer's mental health; and I have done more absurd things to convince men of less important truths. But here I may say that I became suspicious. For the test I have imposed on him is this: I have said that I shall put a certain piece of writing into an envelope, seal it up, and place it in the upper left-hand pigeon-hole of my desk. If he can read what is written inside, and afterwards quote its contents correctly to me, I have promised to give more credit to his belief. Yet (you, being a practical man, will ask) why does he give me a bromide? 1 am a practical man as well. I believe my friend to be an honest man; but I do not need to point out that even honest men have resorted to charlatanism — in the teeth of skeptics — in order to prove what they believe to be a truth. Hence some, I fear, of our "miracles." Suppose, then, that what he has given to me as a bromide is really a sleeping-draught? In order to demonstrate the accuracy of that which he cannot scientifically prove, he has conceived the idea of putting me to sleep for some hours while he comes here in the flesh to get at that envelope. It is only a suspicion, yet I have direct confirmation of it. I tasted the white powder, and found it bitter: unlike a bromide. But I know, therefore, what in all probability it is. It is veronal, a strong sleeping-draught. I mean to go through with this, and take the dose. But I have also taken precautions to see that this letter cannot be tampered with. By the time you read this, you will have helped me. In addition to making it impossible for any trickery to take place, I have instructed the hotel to allow nobody into my rooms until I "return." At fifteen minutes to nine to-night, I shall take the dose. For my own self-hypnosis, I have chosen the medium of a sheet of convex glass, actually the lens of a magic-lantern. The windows of my study, you may have noticed, face the west; I have calculated the angle of the sun, low at that hour. It should strike through the far window with just sufficient strength to draw a proper reflection from the crystal without attaining (in convex glass) the effect of a burning-glass; but, in order to prevent distortion, I must raise the window. God knows, I am giving his experiment a fair chance! Whether my friend intends fraud, or whether I am entirely mistaken — as is possible-in any case he must be roused out of these experiments. I should not care to see him certified. Even if he kept all mention of them to himself and to me, and worked secretly, it would be bad enough. But he has a passion for writing letters. Even in the old days of the war, when he chose to go back to our native country and ally himself with secret-service operations, this strange friend of mine must write a full account of his motives to the Chief of the British Counter — Espionage Service. He has never, I think, forgotten those days. Many friends remain to him in England, though he sees few of them. What he does is to write notes. Why' he should write mysterious notes, making dark hints about a subject on which he is working, but never mentioning its nature, I do not know: but doubtless a psychiatrist would. This is bad enough when it comes to writing to private individuals. But when he chooses to write to such people as the Chairman of the British Medical Association, and even to the Home Secretary, I must point out that the Home Secretary probably suspects the existence of some sinister political plot, and I should not be surprised to find us both being watched. This is ridiculous. I have, therefore, urged my friend to write and correct such impressions. I believe he did so, at last, this very morning — to a seat of authority. At least they will know he is honest, even if they suspect him of being mad. But I know, too, that he believes I suspect him of fraud in the managing of his "experiment" to-night. He showed me a copy of the letter, in which I noticed significant words. It went something like: "I have always denied that the soul, or spirit, or life-force, or what ever you wish to call it, is confined to hard-and-fast planes. I will make the attempt to-night, and I assure Your Excellency that I have every hope of success. The envelope is in the upper left-hand pigeon-hole of Keppel's desk at the Cabot Hotel, Bristol. Perhaps it would have been wiser, in view of Keppel's doubts, to have had two reliable men here, — as witnesses, without a doubt. Does he mean no trickery, then? In any case, the letter will be received to-morrow and will clear up whatever suspicions may exist. Tomfoolery! At least it has been sent to a man who will thoroughly understand: His Excellency the Chief of the Military Intelligence Department, Sir Henry Merrivale.
There were a few more words, but we did not look at them. Stone brought his hand down slowly on the table, and spoke in an awed, hollow, ecstatic tone.
"Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy," he said, in such a youthful-sounding voice that we turned to peer at him. "Right this way, ladies and gentlemen. Step right up. This way to the big tent. Only ten cents, one dime, the tenth part of a dollar, to see the Cheshire cat chase its tail. See it chase its tail all round the tent. See the Grand Walrus, the One and Original Lummox, in a grand race with two operatives to grab a letter that will be delivered to him by the mail-man to-morrow morning."
Evelyn turned on him, flaming.
"You shut your head!" she said fiercely. "How was he to know it? Wouldn't you have done just what he did? I admit he dropped a brick, but was it his fault? That letter "
Inspector Murchison was cautious. "That letter-hurrum, well, it explains a good deal, miss," he said, and you could a!most hear the echo of Humphrey Masters's voice.
"It explains the whole damn sheebang," Stone announced off-handedly. "Where are all your mysterious spy-plots now? It's just like what Keppel wrote here: it's two elderly gentlemen playing a nonsensical game. What do you say, Blake?"
"I say it's not as simple as that. What sort of explanation have we got after all?"
"What sort of explanation?"
"Yes. There's an explanation of a series of peculiar contradictions in the physical evidence, a string of queernesses like the string of cuff-links. The oddities are accounted for. We know why some books were missing from a shelf, why furniture was changed in a room, why lights flickered round a flower-pot turned upside down. Well? Where does it get us after all? Remember, there's still the fact that someone poisoned Hogenauer. Why? If all this is true — why? No L. No spy-plot. But why did Hogenauer mention L., and why did he want two thousand pounds for betraying his identity? What good would two thousand pounds be to him in forwarding an experiment like this? Then there's the question of the counterfeit money."
"What money?"
I explained, briefly. "Whereupon Serpos steals the money and does a bunk, on the same evening that Hogenauer is poisoned. But in a newspaper in Hogenauer's scullery is a counterfeit £100 note. Was Hogenauer tied up into the gang, somehow? Go on: swear at H.M. all you like. But I'd be willing to bet he's playing a much deeper game than any of us could guess."
Murchison drew a vast breath and shook himself.
"Well, that's neither here nor there. My job, right now-" He looked towards the door, scowling. "Mess! Ruddy mess, that's what it is! And I-well, I assisted, in a manner of speaking. There's only one consolation. The end of the business isn't here. The end of the business is back in Torquay. Someone there gave Hogenauer the poison, and Hogenauer gave it to Dr. Keppel. There can't be any investigation., from this end. All we've got to do is pick up the pieces. Point is, Mr. Blake, what do you intend to do?"
"Ring up H.M at Torquay and report: with feeling. Then our part of the business is finished. Afterwards-'
"Yes?"
I faced it. "That depends entirely on you. Officially, you've got us. In two places tonight I've been the first to discover a body! I must be wanted rather badly. On the other hand, H.M. promised protection. If we've walked into the frying pan with you, we're past hope. But, if you've talked to Stone, you must know that we're supposed to be in London to be married at eleven-thirty to-morrow morning."
Murchison regarded us with a heavy and sleepy smile.
"If what the governor says about you is true," he remarked, with a sudden come-down from his official manner when he nodded towards Stone, "you haven't had a decent bit of luck since you left Torquay. And you haven't officially `discovered this body," he jerked his head, "yet. But I want you to understand my position. I'm not the Chief Constable. I'm not even the superintendent. I'm a common-or-garden detective-inspector with none too brilliant a record at that. I can't turn you loose, officially, and let you get back to London, even if you could find a way back at this time in the morning. It's certain you can't stay in Bristol, for there'll be a big whoop when this news goes to headquarters. But there is one thing I can do: I can put you in a police-car and send you back to Torquay. Then it's their business. What they see fit to do I can't say. You're wanted as witnesses by the Chief Constable there, and that's all I know about it. Follow me?"
There was a pause.
"And from Mechlin church-steeple we heard the half-chime,"
recited Evelyn ecstatically.
"And Joris broke silence with, `Yet there is time!'"
"Ken, we may be going back in the other direction, but it's the only thing that can save us; and we'll be at that wedding yet! I say, thanks most awfully. You've pulled us through."
"Thank him, Miss Cheyne," grunted Murchison, and nodded towards Stone. "He seems to have taken a fancy to you. Is everything agreed? Right. I'll go down and discover the body now. You three had better stay here, and keep in the background as much as possible. No, wait; you'd better come along with me, Mr. Blake. You'll have to get through to Torquay before a crowd gathers, and there's a telephone in Dr. Keppel's rooms."
We went out into the dim corridor, closing the door behind us. Down by the cut-glass lamp at the stairs, a mysterious and furtive head first poked itself round and then dodged back in singularly ghostly fashion. Murchison first whistled. and then ran after it. It turned out to be the head of the night-porter, who was sheepish. From him Murchison procured the pass-key and opened the door of Keppel's sittingroom.
There was a light-switch at the left of the door. Once the chandelier was illuminated in that large white-papered room with the etchings on the walls, it had lost most of its terror. It was still bleak. The little corpse in the chair was still grotesque enough. But we had learned the explanation and dug the core out of the mystery: there could now be room for pity. Murchison closed the door and stood with his back against it.
"H'm," he said.
"Poor devil," he added, after a pause.
"Yes. It's the unnecessary thing. The superfluous murder "
Murchison weighed something in his hand. He nodded towards a door in the left-hand wall, beside the white-marble mantelpiece.
"That goes to the bedroom," he said. "The telephone's in there. But about this ‘unnecessary'- I dunno. Yes, I dare say it was. But there's something I can't quite get through my head. A lot of us have heard of Sir Henry Merrivale; I know I have. And I can't help feeling he's got a whole lot more up his sleeve than the governor," he nodded vaguely back in a direction which represented Stone's presence, "seems to think. You've said it yourself. A lot of ordinary details are explained, like cuff-links and missing books and moved furniture; and they turn out to be the easiest of the lot to explain. It's Hogenauer's other behaviour that's hardest to explain. If he was a harmless old dodderer doing nothing more than a spot of crystal-gazing, why should anybody want to murder him?"
"The Punch and Judy murders," I said. "All the alarms and excursions, all the high hocus-pocus of spy-doings, have turned out to be no more real than a child's Punch and Judy puppet show. There is no `L.' There is no — "
Sharply and stridently in those quiet rooms, a telephone rang.
You could almost imagine that a ghostly tingling and echo came from the glass and bottle on the little round table. Murchison went over quickly and threw back the portiere on the door to the bedroom. He did not even bother to turn on a light. The telephone stood on a little stand just inside, to the left of the door.
"Yes," he said, more as a statement than as a question.
It was so still that I could hear a soft voice murmuring in the receiver, although I could distinguish no words. Murchison stood half in shadow and half in light, one shoulder humped; his big, rather bovine face was turned to the sitting-room, and his eyes were blank.
Then he spoke. "Who is this speaking?… Yes, he's dead. Yes, he was poisoned…. Who is this speaking?" Without altering his dull tone, he put his hand over the mouthpiece and spoke softly to me. "Get hold of that porter. Tell him to go downstairs like hell and get the clerk on the switchboard and find out where this call's coming from. I'll try to hold him until-"
The night-porter was not far away from the door; he almost tumbled through when I opened it. Fortunately he had caught no glimpse of the figure in the chair inside. But he seemed to understand, did slow-moving Frank; Frank made remarkable time to the lift, and I heard it humming downstairs as I went back into Keppel's rooms. Murchison was still speaking softly to the telephone. He had the air of one who, gently and with gloved hands, is trying to draw out a nest of wasps.
"If this is a joke, I haven't got any more time to talk with you…. Don't gobble. Who are you? Who is this, then?"
By one of those curious gear-changes or volcanic disturbances along the telephone system, there was in the receiver a violent sort of plop which seems to split your ear-drum. Murchison moved the receiver away from his ear. I was close to him. I could distinctly hear the soft voice which crept out of the receiver.
"This is L. speaking," it said. "Would you like to know the truth about the money?"
There was a whispering, soft, very unpleasant laughing on the wire.
Then the line went dead.
For a couple of seconds Murchison automatically jiggled the hook. Then he got through to the switchboard downstairs. "Are you after that call? Right. Get it. Get it or I'll have your hide. Keep at it. Ring me here the minute-yes." He put down the receiver slowly, and looked up. "It was an assumed voice, of course. Mr. Blake, I've got an idea I've been talking to the murderer. And I've got an idea he's a rather more ugly customer than a puppet."
He lumbered out slowly into the room, his hands in his pockets.
"L.," he said.
I didn't know what to say. The case was turning upside down again.
"You also," Murchison went on, in the same heavy voice, "told me something about a window fixed up like a miniature guillotine?'
The 'phone rang again, and he went after it. Afterwards he turned round with an air that was something between satisfaction and doubt.
"No difficulty about that," he informed me. "It was a trunk call, and easy to trace. The number was Torquay 0066. It appears to be the house of Dr. Lawrence Antrim."