The Secrets of Dr. Taverner (2 page)

We used to take long walks over the moors together, but he
has absolutely refused to do this recently. Then, without any
warning, he wrote and told me he could not marry me and did
not wish to see me again, and he put a curious thing in his letter.
He said: "Even if I should come to you and ask you to see me, I
beg you not to do it.'

"My people thought he had got entangled with some other
girl, and were furious with him for jilting me, but I believe there
is something more in it than that. I wrote to him, but could get
no answer, and I had come to the conclusion that I must try and
put the whole thing out of my life, when he suddenly turned up
again. Now, this is where the queer part comes in.

"We heard the fowls shrieking one night, and thought a fox
was after them. My brothers turned out armed with golf clubs,
and I went too. When we got to the hen-house we found several
fowl with their throats torn as if a rat had been at them; but the
boys discovered that the hen-house door had been forced open, a
thing no rat could do. They said a gypsy must have been trying
to steal the birds, and told me to go back to the house. I was
returning by way of the shrubberies when someone suddenly
stepped out in front of me. It was quite light, for the moon was
nearly full, and I recognized Donald. He held out his arms and I
went to him, but, instead of kissing me, he suddenly bent his
head and--look!"

She drew her scarf from her neck and showed us a semicircle
of little blue marks on the skin just under the ear, the
unmistakable print of human teeth.

"He was after the jugular," said Taverner; "lucky for you he
did not break the skin."

"I said to him: `Donald, what are you doing?' My voice
seemed to bring him to himself, and he let me go and tore off
through the bushes. The boys chased him but did not catch him,
and we have never seen him since."

"You have informed the police, I suppose?" said Taverner.

"Father told them someone had tried to rob the hen-roost, but
they do not know who it was. You see, I did not tell them I had
seen Donald."

"And you walk about the moors by yourself, knowing that he
may be lurking in the neighbourhood?"

She nodded.

"I should advise you not to, Miss Wynter; the man is
probably exceedingly dangerous, especially to you. We will send
you back in the car."

"You think he has gone mad? That is exactly what I think. I
believe he knew he was going mad, and that was why he broke
off our engagement. Dr. Taverner, is there nothing that car. be
done for him? It seems to me that Donald is not mad in the
ordinary way. We had a housemaid once who went off her head,
and the whole of her seemed to be insane, if you can understand;
but with Donald it seems as if only a little bit of him were crazy,
as if his insanity were outside himself. Can you grasp what I
mean?"

"It seems to me you have given a very clear description of a
case of psychic interference--what was known in scriptural days
as `being possessed by a devil,'" said Taverner.

"Can you do anything for him?" the girl inquired eagerly.

"I may be able to do a good deal if you can get him to come
to me."

On our next day at the Harley Street consulting-room we
found that the butler had booked an appointment for a Captain
Donald Craigie. We discovered him to be a personality of
singular charm--one of those highly-strung, imaginative men
who have the makings of an artist in them. In his normal state he
must have been a delightful companion, but as he faced us
across the consulting-room desk he was a man under a cloud.

"I may as well make a clean breast of this matter," he said. "I
suppose Beryl told you about their chickens?"

"She told us that you tried to bite her."

"Did she tell you I bit the chickens?"

"No."

"Well, I did."

Silence fell for a moment. Then Taverner broke it.

"When did this trouble first start?"

"After I got shell shock. I was blown right out of a trench,
and it shook me up pretty badly. I thought I had got off lightly,
for I was only in hospital about ten days, but I suppose this is the
aftermath."

"Are you one of those people who have a horror of blood?"

"Not especially so. I didn't like it, but I could put up with it.
We had to get used to it in the trenches; someone was always
getting wounded, even in the quietest times."

"And killed," put in Taverner.

"Yes, and killed," said our patient.

"So you developed a blood hunger?"

"That's about it."

"Underdone meat and all the rest of it, I suppose?"

"No, that is no use to me. It seems a horrible thing to say, but
it is fresh blood that attracts me, blood as it comes from the
veins of my victim."

"Ah!" said Taverner. "That puts a different complexion on
the case."

"I shouldn't have thought it could have been much blacker."

"On the contrary, what you have just told me renders the
outlook much more hopeful. You have not so much a blood lust,
which might well be an effect of the subconscious mind, as a
vitality hunger which is quite a different matter."

Craigie looked up quickly. "That's exactly it. I have never
been able to put it into words before, but you have hit the nail on
the head."

I saw that my colleague's perspicuity had given him great
confidence.

"I should like you to come down to my nursing home for a
time and be under my personal observation," said Taverner.

"I should like to very much, but I think there is something
further you ought to know before I do so. This thing has begun
to affect my character. At first it seemed something outside
myself, but now I am responding to it, almost helping, and trying
to find out ways of gratifying it without getting myself into
trouble. That is why I went for the hens when I came down to
the Wynters' house. I was afraid I should lose my self-control
and go for Beryl. I did in the end, as it happened, so it was not
much use. In fact I think it did more harm than good, for I
seemed to get into I much closer touch with `It' after I had
yielded to the impulse. I know that the best thing I could do
would be to do away with myself, but I daren't. I feel that after I
am dead I should have to meet--whatever it is--face to face."

"You need not be afraid to come down to the nursing home,"
said Taverner. "We will look after you."

After he had gone Taverner said to me: "Have you ever heard
of vampires, Rhodes?"

"Yes, rather," I said. "I used to read myself to sleep with.
Dracula once when I had a spell of insomnia."

"That," nodding his head in the direction of the departing
man, "is a singularly good specimen."

"Do you mean to say you are going to take a revolting case
like that down to Hindhead?"

"Not revolting, Rhodes, a soul in a dungeon. The soul may
not be very savoury, but it is a fellow creature. Let it out and it
will soon clean itself."

I often used to marvel at the wonderful tolerance and
compassion Taverner had for erring humanity.

"The more you see of human nature," he said to me once,
"the less you feel inclined to condemn it, for you realize how
hard it has struggled. No one does wrong because he likes it, but
because it is the lesser of the two evils."

III
A couple of days later I was called out of the nursing home
office to receive a new patient. It was Craigie. He had got as far
as the doormat, and there he had stuck. He seemed so thoroughly
ashamed of himself that I had not the heart to administer the
judicious bullying which is usual under such circumstances.

"I feel as if I were driving a baulking horse," he said. "I want
to come in, but I can't."

I called Taverner and the sight of him seemed to relieve our
patient.

"Ah," he said, "you give me confidence. I feel that I can defy
`It,'" and he squared his shoulders and crossed the threshold.
Once inside, a weight seemed lifted from his mind, and he
settled down quite happily to the routine of the place. Beryl
Wynter used to walk over almost every afternoon, unknown to
her family, and cheer him up; in fact he seemed on the high road
to recovery.

One morning I was strolling round the grounds with the head
gardener, planning certain small improvements, when he made a
remark to me which I had reason to remember later.

"You would think all the German prisoners should have been
returned by now, wouldn't you, sir? But they haven't. I passed
one the other night in the lane outside the back door. I never
thought that I should see their filthy field-grey again."

I sympathized with his antipathy; he had been a prisoner in
their hands, and the memory was not one to fade.

I thought no more of his remark, but a few days later I was
reminded of it when one of our patients came to me and said:

"Dr. Rhodes, I think you are exceedingly unpatriotic to
employ German prisoners in the garden when so many
discharged soldiers cannot get work."

I assured her that we did not do so, no German being likely to
survive a day's work under the superintendence of our
ex-prisoner head gardener.

"But I distinctly saw the man going round the greenhouses at
shutting-up time last night," she declared. "I recognized him by
his flat cap and grey uniform."

I mentioned this to Taverner.

"Tell Craigie he is on no account to go out after sundown,"
he said, "and tell Miss Wynter she had better keep away for the
present."

A night or two later, as I was strolling round the grounds
smoking an after-dinner cigarette, I met Craigie hurrying through
the shrubbery.

"You will have Dr. Taverner on your trail," I called after
him.

"I missed the post-bag," he replied, "and I am going down to
the pillar-box."

Next evening I again found Craigie in the grounds after dark.
I bore down on him.

"Look here, Craigie," I said, "if you come to this place you
must keep the rules, and Dr. Taverner wants you to stay indoors
after sundown."

Craigie bared his teeth and snarled at me like a dog. I took
him by the arm and marched him into the house and reported the
incident to Taverner.

"The creature has re-established its influence over him," he
said. `We cannot evidently starve it out of existence by keeping
it away from him; we shall have to use other methods. Where is
Craigie at the present moment?"

"Playing the piano in the drawing-room," I replied. "Then we
will go up to his room and unseal it." As I followed Taverner
upstairs he said to me: "Did it ever occur to you to wonder why
Craigie jibbed on the doorstep?"