The Secrets of Dr. Taverner (26 page)

Taverner gave me a queer look. "I suppose you took the
preliminary precaution of making sure that it was Winnington
you had got hold of?"

"Good Lord, Taverner, is there a possibility--?"

"Come upstairs and let us have a look at him. I can soon tell
you."

Winnington was lying in a room lit only by a night-light, and
though he turned his head at our entrance, did not speak.
Taverner went over to the bed and switched on the reading lamp
standing on the bedside table. Winnington flinched at the sudden
brightness, and growled something, but Taverner threw the light
full into his eyes, watching them closely, and to my surprise, the
pupils did not contract.

"I was afraid so," said Taverner.

"Is anything wrong?" I enquired anxiously. "He seems all
right."

"Everything is wrong, my dear boy," answered Taverner. "I
am sure you did the best you knew, but you did not know
enough. Unless you thoroughly understand these things it is best
to leave them to nature."

"But--but--he is alive," I exclaimed, bewildered.

"It is alive," corrected Taverner. "That is not Winnington,
you know."

"Then who in the world is it? It looks like it to me."

"That we must try and find out. Who are you?" he continued,
raising his voice and addressing the man on the bed.

"You know damn well," came the husky whisper.

"I am afraid I don't," answered Taverner. "I must ask you to
tell me."

"Why, W--," I began, but Taverner clapped his hand over
my mouth.

"Be quiet, you fool, you have done enough damage, never let
it know the real name."

Then, turning back to the sick man again, he repeated his
question.

"John Bellamy," came the sulky answer.

Taverner nodded and drew me out of the room.

"Bellamy?" he asked. "That is the name of the man who took
the Hirschmanns' house. Has Winnington had anything to do
with him?"

"Look here, Taverner," I said, "I will tell you something I
had not meant to let you know. Winnington has got a fixation on
Bellamy's wife, and apparently he has brooded over it, and
phantasied over it, till in his unconscious imagination he has
substituted himself for Bellamy."

"That may quite well be, it may be an ordinary case of mental
trouble; we will investigate that end of the stick by and by; but,
for the present, why has Bellamy substituted himself for
Winnington?"

"A wish-fulfilment," I replied. "Winnington is in love with
Bellamy's wife; he wishes he were Bellamy in order to possess
her, therefore his delirium expresses the subconscious wish as an
actuality, the usual Freudian mechanism, you know--the dream
as the wish-fulfilment."

"I dare say," answered Taverner. "The Freudians explain a
lot of things they don't understand. But what about Bellamy, is
he in a trance condition?"

"He is apparently quite all right, or he was, about half an
hour ago. I saw him when he came down to the post with his
wife. He was quite all right, and uncommon civil, in fact."

"I dare say," said Taverner drily. "You and Winnington
always were chums. Now look here, Rhodes, you are not being
frank with me. I must get to the bottom of this business. Now tell
me all about it."

So I told him. Narrated in cold blood, it sounded the flimsiest
phantasy. When I had finished, Taverner laughed.

"You have done it this time, Rhodes," he said. "And you who
are so straight-laced, of all people!" and he laughed again.

"What is your explanation of the matter?" I enquired,
somewhat nettled by his laughter. "I can quite understand
Winnington's soul, or whatever may be the technical name for it,
getting out of its body and turning up in Mrs. Bellamy's room,
we have had several cases of that sort of thing; and I can quite
understand Winnington's Freudian wish-fulfillment, it is the
most understandable thing of the whole business; the only thing
that is not clear to me is the change in character of the two men;
Bellamy is certainly improved, for the moment, at any rate; and
Winnington is in a very bad temper and slightly delirious."

"And therein lies the crux of the whole problem. What do
you suppose has happened to those two men?"

"I haven't a notion," I answered.

"But I have," said Taverner. "Narcotics, if you take enough
of them, have the effect of putting you out of your body, but the
margin is a narrow one between enough and too much, and if
you take the latter, you go out and don't come back. Winnington
found out, through you, Bellamy's weakness, and, being able to
leave his body at will as a trained Initiate can, watched his
chance when Bellamy was out of his body in a pipe dream, and
then slipped in, obsessed him, in fact, leaving Bellamy to
wander houseless. Bellamy, craving for his drug, and cut off
from the physical means of gratification, scents from afar the
stock we have in the dispensary, and goes there; and when he
sees you with a hypodermic syringe--for an ensouled etheric
can see quite well--he instinctively follows you, and you,
meddling in matters of which you know nothing, put him into
Winnington's body."

As Taverner was speaking I realized that we had the true
explanation of the phenomena; point by point it fitted in with all
I had witnessed.

"Is there anything that can be done to put matters right?" I
asked, now thoroughly chastened.

"There are several things that can be done, but it is a question
as to what you would consider to be right."
"Surely there can be no doubt upon that point? --get the men
sorted back into their proper bodies."

"You think that would be right?" said Taverner. "I am not so
certain. In that case you would have three unhappy people; in the
present case, you have two who are very happy, and one who is
very angry, the world on the whole, being richer."

"But how about Mrs. Bellamy?" I said. "She is living with a
man she is not married to?"

"The law would consider her to be married to him," answered
Taverner. "Our marriage laws only separate for sins of the body,
they do not recognize adultery of the soul; so long as the body
has been faithful, they would think no evil. A change of
disposition for the worse, whether under the influence of drugs,
drink, or insanity, does not constitute grounds for a divorce
under our exalted code, therefore a change of personality for the
better under a psychic influence does not constitute one either.
The mandarins cannot have it both ways."

"Any way," I replied, "it does not seem to me moral."

"How do you define morality?" said Taverner.

"The law of the land--," I began.

"In that case a man's admission to Heaven would be decided
by Act of Parliament. If you go through a form of marriage with
a woman a day before a new marriage law takes effect, you will
go to prison, and subsequently to hell, for bigamy; whereas, if
you go through the same ceremony with the same woman the
day after, you will live in the odour of sanctity and finally go to
heaven. No, Rhodes, we will have to seek deeper than that for
our standards."

"Then," said I, "how would you define immorality?"

"As that," said Taverner, "which retards the evolution of the
group soul of the society to which one belongs. There are times
when lawbreaking is the highest ethical act; we can all think of
such occasions in history, the many acts of conformity, both
Catholic and Protestant, for example. Martyrs are lawbreakers,
and most of them were legally convicted at the time of their
execution; it has remained for subsequent ages to canonize
them."

"But to return to practical politics, Taverner, what are you
going to do with Winnington?"

"Certify him," said Taverner, "and ship him off to the county
asylum as soon as we can get the ambulance."

"You must do as you see fit," I replied, "but I am damned if I
will put my name on that certificate."

"You lack the courage of your convictions, but may I take it
that you will not protest?"

"How the hell can I? I should only get certified myself."

"You must expect your good to be evil spoken of in this
wicked world," rejoined my partner, and the discussion was
likely to have developed into the first quarrel we had ever had
when the door suddenly opened and the nurse stood there.

"Doctor," she said, "Mr. Winnington has passed away."

"Thank God!" said I.

"Good Lord!" said Taverner.

We went upstairs and stood beside that which lay upon the
bed. Never before had I so clearly realized that the physical form
is not the man. Here was a house that had been tenanted by two
distinct entities, that had stood vacant for thirty-six hours, and
that now was permanently empty. Soon the walls would crumble
and the roof fall in. How could I ever have thought that this was
my friend? A quarter of a mile away, the soul that had built this
habitation was laughing in its sleeve, and somewhere, probably
in the dispensary, a furious entity that had recently been
imprisoned behind its bars was raging impotently, nosing at the
stoppers of the poison bottles for the stimulants it no longer had
the stomach to hold. My knees gave under me, and I dropped
into a chair, nearer to fainting than I have ever been since my
first operation.

"Well, that is settled, anyway," I said in a voice that sounded
strange in my own ears.

"You think so? Now, I consider the trouble is just beginning"
said Taverner. "Has it struck you that so long as Bellamy was
imprisoned in a body, we knew where he was and could keep
him under control? But now he is loose in the unseen world, and
will take a considerable amount of catching."

"Then you think he will try to interfere with his wife
and--and her husband?"

"What would you do if you were in his shoes?" said
Taverner.

"And yet you don't consider the transaction as immoral?"

"I do not. It has done no harm to the group spirit, or the
social morale, if you prefer the term. On the other hand,
Winnington is running an enormous risk. Can he keep Bellamy
at bay now he is out of the body? and if he cannot, what will
happen? Remember Bellamy's time to die had not come, and
therefore he will hang about, an earthbound ghost, like that of a
suicide; and if tuberculosis is a disease of the vital forces, as I
believe it to be, how long will it be before the infected life that
now ensouls it will cause the old trouble to break out in
Bellamy's body? And when Bellamy the second is out on the
astral plane--dead, as you call it--what will Bellamy the first
have to say to him? And what will they do to Mrs. Bellamy
between them, making her neighbourhood their battleground?

"No, Rhodes, there is no special hell for those who dabble in
forbidden things; it would be superfluous."

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