'This afternoon he rang me up and asked me if I could come over here. That was about four o'clock. When I got here he said he wanted `expert advice.' I said, on what? Then he showed this envelope. The flap was gummed down, but there was no red seal on it. Then he said, `I want to put this envelope in such a position that nobody who came in here secretly could possibly get at its contents.' '
'Yes?' I prompted, as he paused.
'Naturally, I said, `why don't you lock it up in the hotel safe? Are you afraid of burglars?' He said I didn't understand. He's got a very patient air, though his English gets mixed up when he's excited. He said something to the effect that this was a kind of trap. He said he wanted to make certain nobody could put over any hanky-panky on him: move the letter: read it: touch it. He said he'd got some lamp-black to spread in such a position that if the letter were moved at all there'd be traces. I showed him another trick. See this?'
He held out the envelope and pointed to the seal. We all crowded round. Evelyn had ducked into her own room, to put on her shoes and tidy herself up; but at this she emerged like a cuckoo out of a clock.
'What about it?' Stone asked suspiciously. 'I don't see anything. It looks like a blob of plain wax to me. Hold on! It's a finger-print.'
'It's Keppel's finger-print,' Murchison told him with dour complacency. 'There are ways of forging seals, but you can't do any bread-crumb trick that will imitate this. It's too delicate. Well, I put the envelope into the pigeon- hole and arranged it for him. Then I asked what the game was. He said if I would come round the next morning he would tell me. That was all.'
'But the strychnine?'
Murchison swore under his breath. 'There's the worst of it. I said, `Are you going to wait up to catch somebody at that envelope?' He said that he'd probably be asleep. I said, `asleep?' Then he got out a yellowish envelope with a dose of white powder in it, and showed it to me. I remember his exact words, because he was so precise about 'em. He said:
`My friend Mr. Hogenauer gave me this, and assured me it was ordinary bromide. I do not believe him. I think he has tried to give me a sleeping-powder and insisted that I take it. I have tasted the powder, and it is bitter. That means it is veronal'.'
I whistled.
'Veronal! And that's why he took it as meek as a lamb!'
Stone was exasperated. 'You say this and that. You say it might be this or that, but still you're not making much sense that I can see — Why don't you settle it? Why the devil don't you open the envelope?'
Murchison nodded.
'Yes. He told me to come her; to-morrow morning and open the envelope to `see fair play.' That's what I'm worried about-'
With a quick gesture he tore open the envelope.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
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…
