The Secrets of Dr. Taverner (25 page)

He slept peacefully till Mrs. Bellamy, who had brewed tea,
produced a box of biscuits, and then he woke up and demanded
his share; first he came to me, and received a contribution, and
then he walked quietly up to an empty arm chair and stood
gazing at it in anxious expectancy. We stared at him in
amazement. The dog, serenely confident of his reception, pawed
the chair to attract its attention. Mrs. Bellamy and I looked at
each other.

"I had always heard," she said, "that it was only cats who
liked ghosts, and that dogs were afraid of them."

"So had I," I answered. "But Jack seems to be on friendly
terms with this one."

And then the explanation flashed into my mind. If the
invisible presence were Winnington, whom Mrs. Bellamy had
already seen twice in that very room, then the dog's behaviour
was accounted for, for Winnington and he were close friends,
and the presence which to us was so uncanny, would, to him, be
friendly and familiar.

I rose to my feet. "If you don't mind," I said, "I will just go
round to the nursing home and attend to one or two things, and
then we will see this affair through together."

I raced back through the shrubberies to the nursing home,
mounted the stairs three at a time, and burst into Winnington's
bedroom. As I expected, he was in deep trance.

"Oh you devil!" I said to the unconscious form on the bed,
"what games are you up to now? I wish to Heaven that Taverner
were back to deal with you."

I hastened back to Mrs. Bellamy, and to my surprise, as I
re-entered her room I heard voices, and there was Bellamy, fully
conscious, and sitting up in bed and drinking tea. He looked
dazed, and was shivering with cold, but had apparently thrown
off all effects of his drug. I was nonplussed, for I had counted on
slipping away before he had recovered consciousness, for I had
in mind his last reception of me which had been anything but
cordial, but it was impossible to draw back.

"I am glad to see you are better, Mr. Bellamy," I said. "We
have been rather anxious about you."

"Don't you worry about me, Rhodes," was the reply. "Go
back to bed, old chap; I'll be as right as a trivet as soon as I get
warm."

I withdrew; there was no further excuse for my presence, and
back I went to the nursing home again to have another look at
Winnington. He was still in a state of coma, so I settled down to
watch beside him, but hour after hour went by while I dozed in
my chair, and finally the grey light of dawn came and found his
condition still unchanged. I had never known Taverner to be out
of his body for such a length of time, and Winnington's condi-
tion worried me considerably. He might be all right; on the other
hand, he might not; I did not know enough about these trances to
be sure, and I could not fetch Taverner back from his holiday on
a wild goose chase.

The day wore itself away, and when night found Winnington
still in the same state I decided that the time had come for some
action to be taken, and went to the dispensary to get the
strychnine, intending to give him an injection of that and see if it
would do any good.

The minute I opened the dispensary door I knew there was
someone there, but when I switched on the light the room stood
empty before me. All the same, a presence positively jostled my
elbow as I searched among the shelves for what I required, and I
felt its breath on my neck as I bent over the instrument drawer
for the hypodermic syringe.

"Oh Lord!" I said aloud. "I wish Taverner would come back
and look after his own spooks. Here, you, whoever you are, go
on, clear out, go home; we don't want you here!" And hastily
gathering up my impedimenta, I beat a retreat and left it in
possession of the dispensary.

My evil genius prompted me to look over my shoulder as I
went down the passage, and there, behind me, was a
spindle-shaped drift of grey mist some seven feet high. I am
ashamed to admit it, but I ran. I am not easily scared by anything
I can see, but these half-seen things that drift to us out of another
existence, whose presence one can detect but not locate, fill me
with cold horror.

I slammed and locked Winnington's door behind me and
paused to recover my breath; but even as I did so, I saw a pool of
mist gathering on the floor, and there was the creature, oozing
through the crack under the door and reforming itself in the
shadow of the wardrobe.

What would I not have given for Taverner's presence as I
stood there, helplessly watching it, syringe in hand, sweating
like a frightened horse. Then illumination suddenly burst upon
me; what a fool I was, of course it was Winnington coming back
to his body!

"Oh Lord!" I said. "What a fright you gave me! For goodness
sake get back into your body and stop there, and we'll let
bygones be bygones."

But it did not heed my adjuration; it seemed as if it were the
hypodermic syringe that attracted it, and instead of returning to
its physical vehicle, it hung round me.

"Oh," I said. "So it is the strychnine you are after? Well then,
get back into your body and you shall have some. Look, I am
going to give your body an injection. Get back inside it if you
want any strychnine."

The grey wraith hung for a moment over the unconscious
form on the bed, and then, to my unspeakable relief, slowly
merged into it, and I felt the heart take up its beat and breathing
recommence.

I went to my room dead beat, for I had had no sleep and
much anxiety during the past forty-eight hours, so I left a note on
my mat to say that I was not to be disturbed in the morning; I felt
I had fairly earned my rest, I had pulled two tricky cases
through, and put my small knowledge of occultism to a
satisfactory test.

But in spite of my instructions I was not left undisturbed. At
seven o'clock the matron routed me out.

"I wish you would come and look at Mr. Winnington,
Doctor; I think he has gone out of his mind."

I wearily put on my clothes and dipped my heavy head in the
basin and went to inspect Winnington. Instead of his usual
cheery smile, he greeted me a malign scowl.

"I should be very glad," he said, "if you would kindly tell me
where I am."

"You are in your own room, old chap," I said. "You have had
a bad turn, but are all right again now."

"Indeed," he said. "This is the first I have heard of it. And
who may you be?"

"I'm Rhodes," I replied. "Don't you know me?"

"I know you right enough. You are Dr. Taverner's
understrapper at that nursing home place. I suppose my kind
friends have put me here to get me out of the way. Well, I can
tell you this, they can't make me stop here. Where are my
clothes? I want to get up."

"Your clothes are wherever you put them," I replied. "We
have not taken them away; but as for getting up, you are not fit
to do so. We have no wish to keep you here against your will,
and if you want to be moved we will arrange it for you, but you
will have to have an ambulance, you have been pretty bad you
know." It was my intention to play for time till this sick mood
should have passed, but he saw through my manoeuvre.

"Ambulance be damned," he said. "I will go on my own
feet." And forthwith he sat up in bed and swung his legs over the
edge. But even this effort was too much for him, and he would
have slid to the floor if I had not caught him. I called the nurse,
and we put him to bed, incapable of giving any further trouble
for the moment.

I was rather surprised at this ebullition as coming from
Winnington, who had always shown himself a very
sweet-tempered, gentle personality, though liable to fits of
depression, which, however, were hardly to be wondered at in
his condition. He had not much to make him cheerful, poor chap,
and but for Taverner's intervention he would probably have
ended his days in an infirmary.

When I went down to the pillar box that evening, there was
Mrs. Bellamy, and to my surprise, her husband was with her.
She greeted me with constraint, watching her husband to see
how he would take it, but his greeting lacked nothing in the way
of cordiality; one would have thought that I was an old friend of
the family. He thanked me for my care of him, and for my
kindness to his wife, whom, he said, he was afraid had been
going through rather a bad time lately.

"I am going to take her away for a change, however, a second
honeymoon, you know; but when we get back I want to see
something of you, and also of Dr. Taverner. I am very anxious to
keep in touch with Taverner."

I thanked him, marvelling at his change of mood, and only
hoping for his wife's sake that it would last; but drug takers are
broken reeds to lean upon and I feared that she would have to
drain her cup to the dregs.

When I got back to the nursing home I was amazed to find
Taverner there.

"Why, what in the world has brought you back from your
holiday?" I demanded.

"You did," he replied. "You kept on telepathing S.O.S.
messages, so I thought I had better come and see what was the
matter."

"I am most awfully sorry," 1 said. "We had a little difficulty,
but got over it all right."

"What happened?" he enquired, watching me closely, and I
felt myself getting red like a guilty schoolboy, for I did not
particularly want to tell him of Mrs. Bellamy and Winnington's
infatuation for her.

"I fancy that Winnington tried your stunt of going
subconscious," I said at length. "He went very deep, and was
away a long time, and I got rather worried. You see, I don't
understand these things properly. And then, as he was coming
back, I saw him, and took him for a ghost, and got the wind up."

"You saw him?" exclaimed Taverner. "How did you manage
to do that? You are not clairvoyant."

"I saw a grey, spindle-shaped drift of mist, the same as we
saw the time Black, the airman, nearly died."

"You saw that?" said Taverner in surprise. "Do you mean to
say that Winnington took the etheric double out? How long was
he subconscious?"

"About twenty-four hours."

"Good God!" cried Taverner. "The man's probably dead!"

"He's nothing of the sort," I replied. "He is alive and kicking.
Kicking vigorously, in fact." I added, remembering the scene of
the morning.

"I cannot conceive," said Taverner, "how the etheric double,
the vehicle of the life forces, could be withdrawn for so long a
time without the disintegration of the physical form
commencing. Where was he, and what was he up to? Perhaps,
however, he was immediately over the bed, and merely
withdrew from his physical body to escape its discomfort"

"He was in the dispensary when I first saw him," I answered,
devoutly hoping that Taverner would not need any further
information as to Winnington's whereabouts. "He followed me
back to his room and I coaxed him into his body."