Eventually the wizard was placated by a promise, and Martha departed, bearing with her a charm, engrossed upon parchment, which her mistress was to read and thereafter hang about her neck in a white silk bag.
Considered as a magical formula, the document was perhaps a little unimpressive in its language, but its meaning was such as a child could understand. It was in English, and ran:
'You have been ill and in trouble, but your friends are ready to cure you and help you. Don't be afraid, but do whatever Martha tells you, and you will soon be quite well and happy again.'
'And even if she can't understand it,' said the wizard to his man, 'it can't possibly do any harm.'
The events of that terrible night have become legend in the village. They tell by the fireside with bated breath how Martha brought the strange, foreign lady to the wizard's house, that she might be finally and for ever freed from the power of the Evil One. It was a dark night and a stormy, with the wind howling terribly through the mountains.
The lady had become much better and brighter through the wizard's magic--though this, perhaps, was only a fresh glamour and delusion--and she had followed Martha like a little child on that strange and secret journey. They had crept out very quietly to elude the vigilance of old Tomaso, who had strict orders from the doctor never to let the lady stir one step from the house. As for that, Tomaso swore that he had been cast into an enchanted sleep--but who knows? There may have been no more to it than over-much wine. Martha was a cunning woman, and, some said, little better than a witch herself.
Be that as it might, Martha and the lady had come to the cottage, and there the wizard had spoken likewise. Yes--she who for so long had only grunted like a beast, had talked with the wizard and answered him. Then the wizard had drawn strange signs upon the floor round about the lady and himself. And when the lamp was extinguished, the signs glowed awfully, with a pale light of their own. The wizard also drew a circle about Martha herself, and warned her to keep inside it. Presently they heard a rushing noise, like great wings beating, and all the familiars leaped about, and the little white man with the black face ran up the curtain and swung from the pole. Then a voice cried out: 'He comes! He comes!' and the wizard opened the door of the tall cabinet with gold images upon it, that stood in the centre of the circle, and he and the lady stepped inside it and shut the doors after them.
The rushing sound grew louder and the familiar spirits screamed and chattered--and then, all of a sudden, there was a thunder-clap and a great flash of light and the cabinet was shivered into pieces and fell down. And lo and behold! the wizard and the lady had vanished clean away and were never more seen or heard of.
This was Martha's story, told the next day to her neighbours. How she had escaped from the terrible house she could not remember. But when, some time after, a group of villagers summoned up courage to visit the place again, they found it bare and empty. Lady, wizard, servant, familiars, furniture, bags and baggage--all were gone, leaving not a trace behind them, except a few mysterious lines and figures traced on the floor of the cottage.
This was a wonder indeed. More awful still was the disappearance of Martha herself, which took place three nights afterwards.
Next day, the American doctor returned, to find an empty hearth and a legend.
'Yacht ahoy!'
Langley peered anxiously over the rail of the Abracadabra as the boat loomed out of the blackness. When the first passenger came aboard, he ran hastily to greet him.
'Is it all right, Wimsey?'
'Absolutely all right. She's a bit bewildered, of course--but you needn't be afraid. She's like a child, but she's getting better every day. Bear up, old man--there's nothing to shock you about her.'
Langley moved hesitatingly forward as a muffled female figure was hoisted gently on board.
'Speak to her,' said Wimsey. 'She may or may not recognise you. I can't say.'
Langley summoned up his courage. 'Good evening, Mrs Wetherall,' he said, and held out his hand.
The woman pushed the cloak from her face. Her blue eyes gazed shyly at him in the lamplight--then a smile broke out upon her lips.
'Why, I know you--of course I know you. You're Mr Langley. I'm so glad to see you.'
She clasped his hand in hers.
'Well, Langley,' said Lord Peter, as he manipulated the syphon, 'a more abominable crime it has never been my fortune to discover. My religious beliefs are a little ill-defined, but I hope something really beastly happens to Wetherall in the next world. Say when!
'You know, there were one or two very queer points about that story you told me. They gave me a line on the thing from the start.
'To begin with, there was this extraordinary kind of decay or imbecility settlin' in on a girl in her twenties--so conveniently, too, just after you'd been hangin' round the Wetherall home and showin' perhaps a trifle too much sensibility, don't you see? And then there was this tale of the conditions clearin' up regularly once a year or so--not like any ordinary brain-trouble. Looked as if it was being controlled by somebody.
'Then there was the fact that Mrs Wetherall had been under her husband's medical eye from the beginning, with no family or friends who knew anything about her to keep a check on the fellow. Then there was the determined isolation of her in a place where no doctor could see her and where, even if she had a lucid interval, there wasn't a soul who could understand or be understood by her. Queer, too, that it should be a part of the world where you, with your interests, might reasonably be expected to turn up some day and be treated to a sight of what she had turned into. Then there were Wetherall's well-known researches, and the fact that he kept in touch with a chemist in London.
'All that gave me a theory, but I had to test it before I could be sure I was right. Wetherall was going to America, and that gave me a chance; but of course he left strict orders that nobody should get into or out of his house during his absence. I had, somehow, to establish an authority greater than his over old Martha, who is a faithful soul, God bless her! Hence, exit Lord Peter Wimsey and enter the magician. The treatment was tried and proved successful--hence the elopement and the rescue.
'Well, now, listen--and don't go off the deep end. It's all over now. Alice Wetherall is one of those unfortunate people who suffer from congenital thyroid deficiency. You know the thyroid gland in your throat--the one that stokes the engine and keeps the old brain going. In some people the thing doesn't work properly, and they turn out cretinous imbeciles. Their bodies don't grow and their minds don't work. But feed 'em the stuff, and they come absolutely all right--cheery and handsome and intelligent and lively as crickets. Only, don't you see, you have to keep feeding it to 'em, otherwise they just go back to an imbecile condition.
'Wetherall found this girl when he was a bright young student just learning about the thyroid. Twenty years ago, very few experiments had been made in this kind of treatment, but he was a bit of a pioneer. He gets hold of the kid, works a miraculous cure, and, bein' naturally bucked with himself, adopts her, gets her educated, likes the look of her, and finally marries her. You understand, don't you, that there's nothing fundamentally unsound about those thyroid deficients. Keep 'em going on the little daily dose, and they're normal in every way, fit to live an ordinary life and have ordinary healthy children.
'Nobody, naturally, knew anything about this thyroid business except the girl herself and her husband. All goes well till you come along. Then Wetherall gets jealous--'
'He had no cause.'
Wimsey shrugged his shoulders.
'Possibly, my lad, the lady displayed a preference--we needn't go into that. Anyhow, Wetherall did get jealous and saw a perfectly marvellous revenge in his power. He carried his wife off to the Pyrenees, isolated her from all help, and then simply sat back and starved her of her thyroid extract. No doubt he told her what he was going to do, and why. It would please him to hear her desperate appeals--to let her feel herself slipping back day by day, hour by hour, into something less than a beast--'
'Oh, God!'
'As you say. Of course, after a time, a few months, she would cease to know what was happening to her.
