Master of His Fate Part 4

Don't you see how foolish that is?"

The young officer admitted that it was very foolish and very true; and they talked on thus, the elder exercising a charm over the younger such as he had never known before in the society of any man. In a quarter of an hour the young man felt as if he had known and trusted and loved his neighbour all his life; he felt, he confessed, so strongly attracted that he could have hugged him. He told him about his family, and showed him the innermost secrets of his heart; and all the while he smoked the delicious "Joy of Spain," and felt more and more enthralled and fascinated by the stranger's eyes, which, as he talked, lightened and glowed more and more as their glance played caressingly about him. He was beginning to wonder at that, when with some emphatic phrase the stranger laid his fingers on his knee, upon which a thrill shot through him as if a woman had touched him. He looked in the stranger's face, and the wonderful eyes seemed to search to the root of his being, and to draw the soul out of him. He had a flying thought--"Can it be a woman, after all, in this strange shape?" and he knew no more ... till he woke in the hospital bed.

That was the patient's story.

"Just look over your property here," said the doctor. "Have you lost anything?"

The young man turned over his watch and the contents of his purse, and answered that he had lost nothing.

"Strange--strange!" said Lefevre--"very strange! And the card--of course the stranger must have put it in your pocket."

"Which would seem to imply," said the young man, "that _he_ knows something of the hospital."

"Well," said Lefevre, "we must see what can be done to clear the mystery up."

"Some of those newspaper-men have been here," said the house-physician, when they had left the ward, "and they will be sure to call again before the day is out. Shall I tell them anything of this?"

"Certainly," said Lefevre. "Publicity may help us to discover this amazing stranger."

"Do you quite believe the story?" asked the house-physician.

"I don't disbelieve it."

"But what did the stranger do to put him in that condition, which seems something more than hypnotism?"

"Ah," said Lefevre, "I don't yet understand it; but there are forces in Nature which few can comprehend, and which only one here and there can control and use."

Chapter III.

"M. Dolaro."

Next day men talked, newspaper in hand, at the breakfast-table, in the early trains, omnibuses, and tramcars, of the singular railway outrage.

It was clear its purpose was not robbery. What, then, did it mean?

Some--probably most--declared it was very plain what it meant; while others,--the few,--after much argument, confessed themselves quite mystified.

The police, too, were not idle. They made inquiries and took notes here and there. They discovered that the five o'clock train made but two pauses on its journey to London--at Croydon and at Clapham Junction. At neither of those places could a man in a fur coat be heard of as having descended from the train; and yet it was manifest that he did not arrive at Grosvenor Road, where tickets were taken. After persistent and wider inquiries, however, at Clapham Junction (which was the most likely point of departure), a cabman was found who remembered having taken up a fare--a gentleman in a fur coat--about the hour indicated. He particularly remarked the gentleman, because he looked odd and foreign and half tipsy (that was how he seemed to him), because he was wrapped up "enough for Father Christmas," and because he asked to be driven such a long way--to a well-known hotel near the Crystal Palace, where "foreign gents" were fond of staying. Being asked what in particular had made him think the gentleman a foreigner, cabby could not exactly say; he believed, however, it was his coat and his eyes. Of his face he saw little or nothing, it was so m.u.f.fled up; yet his tongue was English enough.

Inquiry was then pushed on to the hotel named by the cabman. A gentleman in a fur coat had certainly arrived there the evening before, but no one had seen anything of him after his arrival. He had taken dinner in his private sitting-room, and had then paid his bill, because, he said, he must be gone early in the morning. About half an hour after dinner, when a waiter cleared the things away, he had gone to his room, and next morning he had left the hotel soon after dawn. Boots, half asleep, had seen him walk away, bag in hand, wrapped in his greatcoat,--walk away, it would seem, and dissolve into the mist of the morning, for from that point no further trace could be got of him. No such figure as his had been seen on any of the roads leading from the hotel, either by the early milkman, or by the belated coffee-stall keeper, or night cabman.

Being asked what name the gentleman had given at the hotel, the book-keeper showed her record, with the equivocal name of "M. Dolaro."

The name might be Italian or Spanish,--or English or American for that matter,--and the initial "M" might be French or anything in the world.

In the meantime Dr Lefevre had been pondering the details of the affair, and noting the aspects of his patient's condition; but the more he noted and pondered, the more contorted and inexplicable did the mystery become. His understanding boggled at its very first notes. It was almost unheard of that a young man of his patient's strong and healthy const.i.tution and temper should be hypnotised or mesmerised at all, much less hypnotised to the verge of dissolution; and it was unprecedented that even a weak, hysterical subject should, after being unhypnotised, remain so long in prostrate exhaustion. Then, suppose these circ.u.mstances of the case were ordinary, there arose this question, which refused to be solved: Since it was ridiculous to suppose that the hypnotisation was a wanton experiment, and since it had not been for the sake of robbery, what had been its object?

The interest of the case was emphasised and enlarged by an article in 'The Daily Telegraph,' in which was called to mind the singular story in its Paris correspondence a day or two before, of the young woman in the Hotel-Dieu, which Lefevre had forgotten. The writer remarked on the points of similarity which the case in the Brighton train bore to that of the Paris pavement; insisted on the probable ident.i.ty of the man in the fur coat with the man in the cloak; and appealed to Dr Lefevre to explain the mystery, and to the police to find the man "who has alarmed the civilised world by a new form of outrage."

Lefevre was piqued by that article, and he went to see his patient day after day, in the constant hope of finding a solution of the puzzle that perplexed him. The direction in which he looked for light will be best suggested by remarking what were his peculiar theory and practice.

Lefevre was not a materialistic physician; indeed, in the opinion of many of his brethren, he erred on the other side, and was too much inclined to mysticism. It may at least be said that he had an open mind, and a modest estimate of the discoveries of modern medical science. He had perceived while still a young man (he was now about forty) that all medical practice--as distinct from surgical--is inexact and empirical, that, like English common law, it is based merely on custom, and a narrow range of experience; and he had therefore argued that a wider experience and research, especially among decaying nations, might lead to the discovery of a guiding principle in pathology. That conviction had taken him as medical officer to Egypt and India, where, amid the relics of civilisations half as old as time, he found traditions of a great scientific practice; and thence it had brought him back to study such foreign medical writers as Du Bois-Reymond, n.o.bili, Matteucci, and Muller, and to observe the method of the famous physicians of the Salpetriere. Like the great Charbon, he made nervous and hysterical disorders his specialty, in the treatment of which he was much given to the use of electricity. He had very p.r.o.nounced "views," though he seldom troubled his brethren with them; for he was not of those who can hold a belief firmly only if it is also held by others.

More than a week had pa.s.sed without discovery or promise of light, when one afternoon he went to the hospital resolved to compa.s.s some explanation.

He walked at once, on entering the ward, to the bedside of his puzzling patient, who still lay limp as a dish-clout and drowsy as a sloth. He tested--as he had done almost daily--his nervous and respiratory powers with the exact instruments adapted for the purpose, and then, still unenlightened, he questioned him closely about his sensations. The young officer answered him with tolerable intelligence.

"I feel," he ended with saying, "as if all my energy had evaporated,--and I used to have no end,--just as a spirit evaporates if it is left open to the air."

The saying struck Lefevre mightily. "Energy" stood then to Lefevre as an almost convertible term for "electricity," and his successful experiments with electricity had opened up to him a vast field of conjecture, into which, on the smallest inflaming hint, he was wont to make an excursion. Such a hint was the saying of the young officer now, and, as he walked away, he found himself, as it were, knocking at the door of a great discovery. But the door did not open on that summons, and he resolved straightway to discuss the subject with Julius Courtney, who, though an amateur, had about as complete a knowledge of it as himself, and who could bring to bear, he believed, a finer intelligence.

He first sought Julius at the Hyacinth Club, where he frequently spent the afternoon. Failing to find him there, he inquired for him at his chambers in the Albany. Hearing nothing of him there, and the ardour of his quest having cooled a little, he stepped out across the way to his own home in Savile Row.

There he found a note from his mother, with a touch of mystery in its wording. She said she wanted very much to have a serious conversation with him; she had been expecting for days to see him, and she begged him to go that evening to dinner if he could. "Julius," said she, "will be here, and one or two others."

The mention of Julius as a visitor at his mother's house reminded him of his promise to that lady to find out how the young man was connected: engrossed as he had been with his strange case, he had almost forgotten the promise, and he had done nothing to fulfil it but tap ineffectually for admission to his friend's confidence. He therefore considered with some anxiety what he should do, for Lady Lefevre could on occasion be exacting and severe with her son. He concluded nothing could be done before dinner, but he went prepared to be questioned and perhaps rated.

He was pleased to find that his mother seemed to have forgotten his promise as much as he had, and to see her in the best of spirits with a tableful of company.

"Oh, you have come," said she, presenting her cheek to her son; "I thought that after all you might be detained by that mysterious case you have at the hospital. Here's Dr. Rippon--and Julius too--dying to hear all about it;" but she gave no hint of the serious conversation which she said in her note she desired.

"Not I, Lady Lefevre," Julius protested. "I don't like medical revelations; they make me feel as if I were sitting at the confessional of mankind."

Noting by the way that Julius and his sister seemed much taken up with each other, and that Julius, while as fascinating as ever, and as ready and apt and intelligent of speech, seemed somewhat more chastened in manner and less effervescent in health,--like a fire of coal that has spent its gas and settled into a steady glow of heat,--he turned to Dr Rippon, a tall, thin old gentleman of over seventy, but who yet had a keen tongue, and a shrewd, critical eye. He had been an intimate friend of the elder Lefevre, and the son greeted him with respect and affection.

"Who is the gentleman?" said Dr Rippon, aside, when their greeting was over. "It does an old man's heart good to see and hear him," and the old doctor straightened himself. "But he'll get old too; that's the sad thing, from my point of view, that such beauty of person and swift intelligence of mind _must_ grow old and withered, and slow and dull.

What did you say his name is, John?"

"His name is Courtney--Julius Courtney," said Lefevre.

"Courtney," mused the old man, stroking his eyebrow; "I once knew a man of that name, or, rather, who took that name. I wonder if this friend of yours is of the same family; he is not unlike the man I knew."

"Oh," said Lefevre, immediately interested, "he may be of the same family, but I don't know anything of his relations. Who was the man, may I ask, that you knew?"

"Well," said the old gentleman, settling down to a story, which Lefevre was sure would be full of interest and contemporary allusion, for the old physician had in his time seen many men and many things--"it is a romantic story in its way."

He was on the point of beginning it when dinner was announced.

"I should like to hear the story when we return to the drawing-room,"

said Lefevre.

Over dinner, Lefevre was beset with inquiries about his mysterious case:--Was the young man better? Had he been very ill? Was he handsome?

What had the foreign-looking stranger done to him? and for what purpose had he done it? These questions were mostly ignorant and thoughtless, and Lefevre either parried them or answered them with great reserve.

When the ladies retired from table, however, more particular and curious queries were pressed upon him as to the real character of the outrage upon the young man. He replied that he had not yet discovered, though he believed he was getting "warm."

"Is it fair," said Julius, "to ask you in what direction you are looking for an explanation or revelation?"

"Oh, quite fair," said Lefevre, welcoming the question. "To put it in a word, I look to _electricity_,--animal electricity. I have been for some time working round, and I hope gradually getting nearer, a scientific secret of enormous--of transcendent value. Can you conceive, Julius, of a universal principle in Nature being got so under control as to form a universal basis of cure?"

"Can I conceive?" said Julius. "And is that electricity too?"