The Secrets of Dr. Taverner (33 page)

Even as I watched, the woman rose to depart, and I saw that
she was swathed in a loose, burnous-like garment that had no
relation to fashion, and upon her feet were sandals. The man
also rose, but she checked him with a gesture, and her voice
came to us across the room.

"You promised you would not try to follow me, Pat," she
said.

The man who was between her and the door paused ir-
resolutely, and then he flashed out with pent-up vehemence:
"He's ruining you," he cried. "Body and soul, he's ruining you.
Let me get at him and I'll break his neck if I hang for it."

"It is useless," was the reply, "You can do nothing. Let me
pass. Nothing you can do will make any difference."

The man lifted both arms above his head, and though his
back was to us, we could see his whole body shaking with
passion.

"Curse him!" he cried. "Curse him! May the Black Curse of
Michael be upon him!"

The Irish brogue, unleashed by emotion, rolled from his lips,
and seemed to add pungency to his curses, if that were possible.
The startled waitresses, in their gaudy cretonne overalls, huddled
in a corner, staring, and an obese manageress waddled from
some sanctum behind a bead curtain, but before she could
intervene, the woman in the burnous, with a quick lithe
movement, had slipped round the little table and out of the door
into the dusk, and the man turning hastily to follow her, fell right
over Taverner's legs and came all asprawl on to our tea table.

He dropped into the nearest chair, white and shaken from his
passion, while we gazed ruefully at smashed crockery and
streaming milk.

He was the first to recover himself, and passing his hand
across his forehead in a dazed way, seemed to awaken from his
nightmare.

"I beg your pardon," he said, the Irish brogue vanished from
his speech. "A thousand apologies. Here, waitress, clear up these
gentlemen's table and bring them another tea."

The manageress waddled up, glaring at him, and he turned to
her.

"I cannot apologize sufficiently," he said. "I was greatly
upset by--by domestic trouble, and I fear my feelings got the
better of me."

He lay back in his chair as if completely exhausted. "It's lost
she is, body and soul," he muttered, more to himself than to us.
"`Pray to the Blessed Virgin,' said Father O'Hara, and so I
have--for her, but it's to the Holy Michael I'll pray for
Josephus, may the Black Curse be upon him!"

Taverner leaned forward and laid his hand gently on the
man's arm.

"It seems as if your prayers have been heard," he said, "for
not half an hour ago we saw Josephus taken off to hospital with
a nasty scalp wound. I don't know what your complaint against
him may be," he continued, "but I know Josephus, and I should
imagine it is amply justified."

"You know Josephus?" said the man, staring at us dazedly.

"I do," said Taverner, "and I may as well tell you that I am
`after' him myself on one or two little accounts, and I think I
have the means of bringing him to book, so may I suggest that
we make common cause against him?" And he laid his card on
the little table before the shaken, grey-faced man in front of us.

"Taverner, Dr. Taverner," said the stranger thoughtfully as he
fingered the card. "I have heard that name somewhere. Did you
not once meet a man called Coates in a curious affair over a
stolen manuscript?"

"I did," said Taverner.

"They always said there was more in that matter than met the
eye," said our new acquaintance. "But I never believed in such
things till I saw what Josephus could do."

He looked at Taverner keenly out of deep-set eyes.

"I believe you are the one man in London who would be of
any use in the matter," he said.

"If I can, I shall be glad to assist you," replied Taverner, "for,
as I said before, I know Josephus."

"My name's McDermot," said our new acquaintance, "and
that lady you saw with me was my wife. I say `was my wife,'"
he added, the flame of passion lighting up again in his dark eyes,
"for she is gone from me now. Josephus has taken her. No, not
in the ordinary sense," he added hastily lest our thought should
smirch her, "but into that extraordinary group of his that he does
his seances with, and she is as much lost to me as if she had
entered a nunnery. Do you wonder that I curse the man who has
broken up my home? If he had taken her because he loved her I
could have pardoned him more easily, but there is no question of
love in this; he has taken her because he wants to use her for
some purpose of his own, just as he has taken lots of other
women, and whatever it is she will lose her soul. This thing is
evil, I tell you," he continued, with renewed excitement. "I don't
know what it is, but I know it's evil. You have only to look at
the man to see that he is evil right through, and she thinks he's a
saint, an inspired teacher, an adept, whatever you call it," he
added bitterly. "But I tell you, men don't grow faces like that on
clean living and high thinking."

"Can you give me any information as to his doings? I have
lost touch with Josephus since the last time he had to leave the
country, but I imagine he is doing much the same sort of thing he
used to do."

"So far as I know," said McDermot, "he appeared on the
scene about a year ago from no one knows where, and advertised
classes in psychic development. That brought him in touch with
various people who are interested in that sort of thing--I'm not,
my Church doesn't allow it, and I don't wonder--Mary, that's
my wife, used to belong to a sort of occult club that Coates ran
in St. John's Wood; Coates being a fool, took up Josephus, burnt
his fingers with him, and dropped him, but not before he had got
hold of two or three women out of that set, my wife among
them. Then Josephus seemed to find his feet and thrive
amazingly. (He had been a pretty seedy-looking adventurer when
he first turned up.) And now he has got a house somewhere,
though nobody except those who are in the secret knows where,
and he has got, so my wife says, a group of women who help
him in his work. Exactly what it is that they do, I don't know,
but he seems to have got a tremendous hold on them. They all
seem to be in love with him, and yet they live peaceably in the
same house. It is an amazing affair altogether. It is not money he
is after in his inner circle though he gets plenty of that from the
rest of his devotees, but, so far as I can make out, a particular
type of physique, and it appears to me that, as he thrives, they go
down hill. At any rate, he has to introduce fresh blood into his
group periodically, and sometimes there is a desperate hunt for a
new recruit while Josephus slowly wilts, and then, having got a
fresh favourite, he seems suddenly to take on a new lease of life.
The whole thing is queer, and uncanny, and unsavoury, and even
before it broke up my home I couldn't bear it."

Taverner nodded. "He has done much the same sort of thing
several times already. It may interest you to know that I assisted
in thrashing Josephus and ducking him in a horse trough in my
student days after we had had a succession of his victims in our
wards. There was a society working on his system then; but I
believe it was stamped out as an organization. However, he
seems to be restarting it, so the sooner we take him in hand the
better, lest he get a foothold in the subconscious mind of the
nation. Such a thing is possible you know."

"You can count on me," said McDermot, holding out a
sinewy hand, his eyes sparkling with the light of battle. "The
first thing we have to do is to find out where his house is, and
the next to get into it, and then-- `Once aboard the lugger and
the maid is mine,' as the song says."

"With regard to the first, that is already accomplished," said
Taverner. "The second is the problem that immediately
confronts us, but I believe it to be capable of solution; but as to
the third, I am not so sure; Josephus will hold those women in
the unseen world in a way which you do not understand, and it
will be very difficult to free them without their co-operation, and
almost impossible to obtain their co-operation. I have often dealt
with these cases before, and know their difficulties. An
infatuated woman at any time is difficult to deal with, but when
they have been initiated into a fraternity with ritual they are
almost impossible. The first thing to do, however, is to gain a
foothold in that house by some means or other."

"I think I can help you there," I said, "I can call and offer to
give evidence as to the accident, and then worm myself in as a
convert."

"That is an idea with possibilities," said Taverner, "though I
am not sure that Josephus will look upon additional Adams as an
asset to his Eden, but a doctor always has his value, especially
when you are doing risky things you want kept quiet. There is a
whole nest of hospitals round here that he might have been taken
to; phone them up till you find out where he went, represent
yourself as a member of the family to the hospitals, and a
member of the hospital to the family, and chance your luck. This
is a hunt after my own heart. A slimier villain never wanted
exterminating, and Josephus is no lightweight. He will put up a
fight worth seeing."

The early diners were arriving at the little tea-room, and our
party broke up with mutual expressions of good will, Taverner
to return to Hindhead, and McDermot and I to the telephone. My
first guess proved to be the right one. Josephus had been taken to
the Middlesex, had his head sewn up, and been sent home. So,
sending McDermot off to wait for me in the oyster dive in
Tottenham Court Road, I went round to a square not fifty yards
away, and there rang the bell of an imposing looking house
whose lower windows were shuttered in an inhospitable fashion.

The door was opened by a girl in a loose blue burnous, and to
her I stated my business. She seemed quite unsuspicious and
conducted me into an ordinary enough dining-room where in a
few minutes an older woman came to me. She was a tall woman,
and at some time must have been handsome, but her face was
drawn, haggard and strained, to the last degree, and I thought of
McDermot's remark that Josephus' pupils wilted as their master
throve.

I could see that she was on her guard, though anxious for my
assistance, but my tale was a perfectly straightforward one and
had the additional advantage of being true so far as it went. I was
standing on the island when Josephus was knocked down. I
rendered first aid, but did not stop to give my name and address
to the policeman because I was in a hurry, but took this, the first
opportunity of repairing the omission. There was no flaw in my
statement, and she accepted it, but when I backed it with my
card bearing the Harley Street address I saw her suddenly
become abstracted.

"Excuse me a moment," she said, and hastily left the room.

She was gone more than a moment, and I began to wonder
whether my scheme had miscarried and what my chances were
of getting out of the house without unpleasantness, when she
reappeared.