The vampire nemesis and other weird stories of the China coast (6 page)

She was a girl of highly-strung, imaginative temperament, very different from myself, who, they declare, am possessed of a cool judgment and iron resolution that would do credit to a Wellington. It seemed to me that she was half under the influence, with the strength of an excitable imagination, ere Rawdon commenced operations.

I could not see his eyes, his back being towards me, as he seated himself opposite to her, but I noticed that the hair on the back of his head was standing on end. The man's whole frame seemed to dilate and grow larger, until there was a certain rugged grandeur, a bearing that was almost majestic, in his pose.

I watched the proceedings narrowly, and, it must be confessed, still somewhat sceptically. At the first sweep of his arms, the girl's eyes dilated as if with sudden horror. At the second the iris contracted again suddenly until the pupil was narrowed to little more than a pin-head. He threw his arms up a third time and let them sweep slowly down, and as his arms swept down for the sixth time a violent shuddering shook the frame. As his hands left her face, down which they had travelled with almost caressing touch after the seventh pass, the eyelids snapped open again, and she was looking straight in front of her with the sightless stare of those that look, seeing nothing.

Amid a breathless stillness Rawdon leaned forward and looked into her eyes for a moment, then he said quietly—

" She is under the influence."

There was a long-drawn breath, as though of relief, from the spectators.

Rawdon turned towards them.

" What would you like her to do ? "

A lady by my side beckoned to him, and he crossed the room and bent over her. She whispered—

" Make her smell that bunch of violets in that vase over there, and then destroy them."

The hypnotist glanced fiver to where, on a small table, stood a Sevres jar with a bunch of violets in it; then he straightened himself, and almost at the same instant the girl struggled up from her armchair and came hurriedly and unerringly across the room to where stood the vase.

Without a moment's hesitation she picked up the bunch of violets and inhaled their fragrance, then she suddenly dashed them on the carpet, and with a swift access of fury stamped her little foot on them and ground them to shreds with her heel. Then she walked back to her chair, and sat down as impassive as she had been before.

Rawdon now crossed to her side and laid his hand on her forehead, leaning over and saying something—what I could not hear—to her in a low voice. Another tremor passed over her, and her
eyes closed for a second or two, then opened again, this time with their natural expression, though a trifle bewildered. We crowded eagerly round her.

" Oh, everything seems so funny! " she exclaimed, gazing around.

" Did you know what you were doing ? " someone asked.

"Oh, yes! I knew perfectly well, only I could not help doing it." She turned and gazed ruefully at the crushed blossoms. "And I am so fond of violets, too!"

There was no mistaking the genuine regret in her voice at her palpable act of vandalism, and I for one was convinced.

Rawdon, meanwhile, was standing outside the circle, quietly turning over the leaves of an album, utterly unconcerned whether anyone disbelieved the evidence of their senses or not.

I
Took
my way home that evening in a very mixed frame of mind indeed. Here was something worthy of investigation. A thing, a power, that I had long ago thrown aside in disgust as a fraud and the device of charlatans, had been demonstrated before my astonished eyes, nay, more, upon my own person, in a manner that could not fail to bring conviction to the most sceptical.

I began already to regret having allowed my interest to abate just because a few dishonest spiritualists had pretended to make use of a power they did not possess. I had undoubtedly been too hasty in my condemnation of all for the fault of the few, and had thus wasted many valuable years that might have been devoted to research into this mystery of mysteries. Anyhow, I decided, as I reached my own door, what I had that night experienced and witnessed was convincing enough to determine me upon reverting to the subject once more.

I was fortunate—ought I to say fortunate or cursed ?—in meeting Rawdon again within the week at a friend's with whom I was dining. It was, with the exception of myself, a bachelor
party; and as we sat over our coffee and cigars the usual discussion was going forward as to what form of play the cards should take, while the evening slipped by in the arranging.

But I advocated no cards at all. The truth is I was burning with a desire to investigate this wonderful new force, with the power of which I had but lately become cognizant. So I deftly led the conversation round to occult matters in general, and gradually narrowed the field of discussion down to hypnotism. From there it was but a step to announce that Rawdon understood something about it, and to offer myself as a candidate to be experimented on.

I am positive, now I look back upon that moment, that I saw a sudden gleam of triumph flicker for a moment in the eyes of Rawdon. Yet he seemed reluctant to go through with the test, and required some coaxing, with not a little chaff from the others, about his fears of failure, before he would consent to operate. I was so interested that I did not care what act of folly I committed if only I could learn more of this. Besides, there were only five men present besides ourselves, and one does not mind so much making a fool of oneself for five minutes when the fair sex is not represented.

I noted this time two or three points. One was that I sank under the influence of the force much sooner than I had done before. I explained this to myself on the hypothesis that I had surrendered
myself more readily to it than I had done before. Another was that when I came to, Rawdon seemed to be no more affected by what he called the " mental strain" than he had been after he had made the girl destroy her favourite blossoms. Possibly this was because he had not attempted to make me do anything so flagrantly opposed to my own inclinations as had been that paddle on the imaginary seashore.

But most remarkable of all was that after the mists had cleared—and, by the way, they swept down upon me with much greater rapidity and stayed but an instant—the faces of two gentlemen sitting opposite to me, to whom I had been introduced for the first time, seemed perfectly familiar. I thought I had known them for years and years, instead of two short hours. I remembered incidents in their lives that had occurred many years ago. I saw myself in their company in familiar surroundings, and I recalled, with peculiar vividness, scenes in the past of my own life with which hitherto I had been totally unacquainted. It was literally recalling with wonderful detail incidents that until now I never knew had happened to me.

All this puzzled me exceedingly, until some time afterwards I discovered that both men were old friends of Arnold Rawdon. Then a ray of light seemed to fall athwart my mind, and I think I understood.

I told my darling Ethel nothing of these interesting experiments at first, but the subject had such a deep fascination for me that, in order to be able to carry out some lesser investigations at home, I had to take her partially into my confidence. She understood but little of the matter, but what interested me interested her, and she did her best to understand the explanations I vouchsafed. For four nights running I tried, with remarkable success, Mesmer's experiment with the black spot on a white ground. I had my mosquito net lowered until the top was within two feet of my head. To this I affixed a small circle of black velvet, and having first asked Ethel to shake me at a given hour and try if she could wake me, I kept my eyes staring unblinkingly at the black spot.

" I shook you," she said afterwards, " I screamed into your ear, and rubbed your face with a rough towel. I even," with a mischievous twinkle, "pinched you horribly hard, but not the tiniest bit of notice would you take until early morning.

The next night, to my satisfaction, I went off in less than five minutes, and the two following ones almost instantaneously.

But the trances were mere spells of utter oblivion and not nearly so interesting as the experiments I had conducted with Rawdon. Fool! Blind fool that I was! Little did I dream that in thus tampering with my mind I was making the
hellish task of Arnold Rawdon easier of accomplishment ! And yet there came to me at times a dim, fleeting suspicion that I was not doing right. A thought woven on the fragile gossamer filaments of fancy that dissolved away ere it could shape itself into words, yet in its going left me filled with a vague disquiet.

VI.

It
was perhaps this disquietude that prompted me to call one evening after dinner on an old friend of mine—Fred Armstrong. It had been my custom, in my bachelor days, to drop in on him for a smoke and a game of chess, and to discuss the news of the day, touching sometimes on deeper topics. Armstrong belonged to the Idealistic school, and was an ardent follower of Berkley and Hume. He retained, however, sufficient belief in the reality of the existence of matter to be wishful of accumulating a pile of it in the form of gold, in which laudable endeavour he had been by no means unsuccessful. Withal Armstrong was a deeplyread man, and a man who never turned over the page before he had a thorough mastery of its contents. He received me with open avowals of delight.

"Just the man above all others I should have wished to see ! " he remarked gaily. " I am so glad the wife has consented to spare you for a few hours to lighten the dreary evening of a lone bachelor. I am fairly dying for a game of chess."

As he spoke he was busily pulling the pieces
from a neighbouring drawer and drawing up an inlaid table to the fire.

I expressed myself in no mood for chess just then; but he would hear of no denial, so we sat down to our game.

I think I played about the most idiotic game it has been my lot to play since first I learned the moves. I advanced my queen into the most absurdly unprotected positions, until Armstrong had frequently to caution me of her danger. I moved the king into the check fully a dozen times, and scattered my pieces over the board without method or reason. At last, on the first pretence of a serious attack, for the opportunity of which Armstrong had not long to wait, I resigned the game and pushed the board fretfully aside. I was in no fit mood for chess; I found it impossible to concentrate on the pieces the thoughts that were so busy elsewhere.

We lit our pipes and smoked for awhile in silence; then, " Armstrong, do you believe in hypnotism ? " I asked.

He looked at me in silence. I repeated my question.

" Why, of course I do. It is one of the forces of nature, just as much as gravity or electricity."

" And yet," I remonstrated, " science takes no cognisance of it."

" Science," quoted Armstrong sententiously, "like the law, is an ass. She takes cognisance of nothing
until it is literally forced upon her attention. Two hundred years ago science took no heed of gravity until Isaac Newton infallibly demonstrated its existence. Then it was all eager investigation, after they had first had their laugh at the so-called ' mad philosopher.' There is no deadlier enemy to true research than this precious science."

" You believe, then," I asked breathlessly, " that it is a potential or possibly actual force ?"

" Years hence," Armstrong replied, " the laws of hypnotism, for like every natural force it is subject to fixed laws, will be rescued from empiricism and tabulated as are to-day those of gravity and heat. I concede," he added slowly, " that as yet we know but little of them. All we see now are results, and the cause is hidden in mystery."

" Do you think then that it is possible for one will to subjugate another? "

Armstrong smiled deprecatingly.

" Subjugate is hardly the word," he said at length. " That is a vulgar error that the stronger will dominates the weaker, and compels it to do its bidding as one dictates to a child."

" What is it then ? " I inquired.

" The thing is to have the power of projecting your own will into other persons and of making it supersede their own. Mind, you do not overcome it, you only supersede it—shoulder it aside. Thus what we call a strong-minded man may find his will-power superseded by a man of comparatively
weak intellect, who has the power of detaching his own will from himself and of projecting it into another individual. It is a pure fallacy that it is merely a question of the relative strength of will."

" I am afraid," I hazarded, unwilling to be duped a second time by idle shibboleths, " I do not follow you. Will you explain ? "

Armstrong, seeing my evident interest, warmed to his favourite topic.

" We know," he said in his didactic way, " that certain nerves do not pass beyond the great nervecentres or ganglia, and are but remotely connected with the brain. The muscles are worked entirely from the ganglia—such, for instance, as the one that causes the descent of the diaphragm—and they perform their functions unremittingly without the slightest effort of volition on our part. Yet the reflex action of these great bunches of nerve fibre can, by a conscious effort, be brought under the sway of the will, and their power over the muscles be for the time suspended. We can hold our breath, or stop the blinking of an eyelid, examples of purely reflex actions, by the exercise of our wills. Conversely, movements that we dreamed were entirely under the control of our volitions, such as the motion of a hand or foot, can be taken from the dominion of the will and be governed by the reflex action of the ganglia, as when a gun is fired in the vicinity of a nervous person he starts involuntarily, though perhaps but
a moment before he had schooled himself to withstand the shock."

His pipe, during this long speech, had gone out; mine, in the absorption of what he said, was equally cold. Now we both relit and smoked for awhile in silence.

"That," I mused, "belongs almost as much to my branch of science as yours."

" It is possible," Armstrong continued, unheeding, " that in this manner all the movements of the newly-born infant are purely reflex, that the sensations travel no farther than the ganglia or the cerebellum at most, and are there translated into action without the will-power having any hand whatsoever in their control. Later, the cerebrum may take command of certain movements and direct when a message shall be sent along the nerves ordering the muscles to act; but even then we have seen that certain actions still remain under the peculiar control of the ganglia, and it requires a special exercise of will to wrest from them their power and alter for the moment their course."

" Yes! yes I" I interrupted impatiently, for I thought he was straying wide of the subject about which I was so eager to learn more; " but how does that affect hypnotism ? "

" The obvious inference, my dear Keith, would seem that the hypnotist, by some telepathic disturbance set up in the mind of the subject,
interposes his own will between the volitions and the nerve-centres, cutting the lines of communication, until every movement, however intricate, is, so far as the will of the subject is concerned, as much a reflex action as was that of breathing or digestion. And now, as the telegraphist who has cut a telegraph wire can affix to the severed end his own instrument and send what message he will to its destination, while the messages from the station at the other end can no longer pass through, the hypnotist gains entire control of the wires leading to the muscles, and can transmit to them what order he pleases
and be obeyed!
He has thus the complete mastery of the human machine, while the brain of the subject, thinking and willing as coherently as ever, finds its messages along the nerves intercepted and lost before they can be translated into motion. What else is somnambulism ? "