The Secrets of Dr. Taverner (7 page)

No one spoke on the journey to Hindhead.

We entered the sleeping house as quietly as might be, and as
Taverner turned on the office lights, I saw that Robson carried a
curious looking volume bound in vellum. We did not tarry in the
office, however, for Taverner led us through the sleeping house
to a door which I knew led down to the cellar stairs.

"Come too, Rhodes," said Taverner. "You have seen the
beginning of this matter, and you shall see the end, for you have
shared in the risk, and although you are not one of Us, I know
that I can rely on your discretion."

We passed down the spiral stone stairs and along a flagged
passage. Taverner unlocked a door, and admitted us to a wine
cellar. He crossed this, and unlocked a further door. A dim point
of flame illumined the darkness ahead of us, swaying uneasily in
the draught. Taverner turned on a light, and to my intense
surprise I found myself in a chapel. High carved stalls were built
into the walls on three sides, and on the fourth was an altar. The
flickering light I had seen in the darkness came from the floating
wick of a lamp hung above our heads as the centre point of a
great Symbol.

Taverner lit the incense in a bronze thurible, and set it
swinging. He handed Robson the black robe of an Inquisitor, and
he himself assumed another one; then these two cowled figures
faced one another across the floor of the empty chapel. Taverner
began what was evidently a prayer. I could not gather its
substance, for I am unable to follow spoken Latin. Then came a
Litany of question and response, Robson, the London clerk,
answering in the deep resonant voice of a man accustomed to
intone across great buildings. Then he rose to his feet, and with
the stately steps of a processional advanced to the altar, and laid
thereon the ragged and mildewed manuscript he held in his
hands. He knelt, and what absolution the sombre figure that
stood over him pronounced, I cannot tell, but he rose to his feet
like a man from whose shoulders a great burden has been rolled.

Then for the first time, Taverner spoke in his native tongue.
"In all moments of difficulty and danger" --the booming of his
deep voice filled the room with echoes--"make this Sign." And
I knew that the man who had betrayed his trust had made good
and been received back into his old Fraternity.

We returned to the upper world, and the man who was not
Robson bade us farewell. "It is necessary that I should go," he
said.

"It is indeed," said Taverner. "You had better be out of
England till this matter has blown over. Rhodes, will you
undertake to drive him down to Southampton? I have other work
to do."

As we dropped down the long slope that leads to Liphook, I
studied the man at my side. By some strange alchemy Taverner
had woken the long dead soul of Pierro della Costa and imposed
it upon the present day personality of Peter Robson. Power
radiated from him as light from a lamp; even the features seemed
changed. Deep lines about the corners of the mouth lent a
firmness to the hitherto indefinite chin, and the light blue eyes,
now sunken in the head, had taken on the glitter of steel and
were as steady as those of a swordsman.

It was just after six in the morning when we crossed the
floating bridge into Southampton. The place was already astir,
for, a dock town never sleeps, and we inquired our way to the
little-known inn where Taverner had directed us to go for
breakfast. We discovered it to be an unpretentious public house
near the dock gates, and the potman was just drawing the bright
curtains of turkey twill as we entered.

It was evident that strangers were not very welcome in the
little tavern, and no one offered to take our order. As we stood
there irresolute, heavy footsteps thundered down creaking
wooden stairs, and a strongly built man wearing the four lines of
gold braid denoting the rank of Captain entered the bar parlour.
He glanced at us as he came in, and indeed we were sufficiently
incongruous to be notable in such a place.

His eyes attracted my attention; he had the keen, out-looking
gaze so characteristic of a seaman, but in addition to this he had
a curious trick of looking at one without appearing to see one;
the focus of the eyes met about a yard behind one's back. It was
a thing I had often seen Taverner do when he wished to see the
colours of an aura, that curious emanation which, for those who
can see it, radiates from every living thing and is so clear an
indication of the condition within.

Grey eyes looked into blue as the newcomer took in my
companion, and then an almost imperceptible sign passed
between them, and the sailor joined us.

"I believe you know my mother," he remarked by way of
introduction. Robson admitted the acquaintanceship, though I
am prepared to swear he had never seen the man before, and we
all three adjourned to an inner room for breakfast, which
appeared in response to the bellowed orders of our new
acquaintance.

Without any preamble he inquired our business, and Robson
was equally ready to communicate it.

"I want to get out of the country as quietly as possible," he
said. Our new friend seemed to think that it was quite in the
ordinary course of events that a man without luggage should be
departing in this manner.

"I am sailing at nine this morning, going down the Gold
Coast as far as Loango. We aren't exactly the Cunard, but if you
care to come you will be welcome. You can't wear that rig,
however; you would only draw a crowd, which I take is what
you don't want to do."

He put his head through a half-door which separated the
parlour from the back premises, and in response to his
vociferations a little fat man with white chin whiskers appeared.
A consultation took place between the two, the newcomer being
equally ready to lend his assistance. Very shortly a suit of cheap
serge reach-me-downs and a peaked cap were forthcoming, these
being, the sailor assured us, the correct costume for a steward, in
which capacity it was designed that Peter Robson should go to
sea.

Leaving the inn that the mysterious Fellowship had made so
hospitable to us, we took our way to the docks, and passing
through the wilderness of railway lines, cranes, and yawning
gulfs that constitute their scenery, we arrived at our companion's
ship, a rusty-side tramp, her upper works painted a dirty white.

We accompanied her captain to his cabin, a striking contrast
to the raffle outside: a solid desk bearing a student's shaded
lamp, a copy of Albrercht Durer's study of the Praying Hands, a
considerable shelf of books, and, perceptible beneath the
all-pervading odour of strong tobacco, the faint spicy smell that
clings to a place where incense is regularly burnt. I studied the
titles of the books, for they tell one more of a man than anything
else; Isis Unveiled stood cheek by jowl with Creative Evolution
and two fat tomes of Eliphas Levi's History of Magic.

On the drive back to Hindhead I thought much of the strange
side of life with which I had come in contact.

Yet another example was afforded me of the widespread
ramifications of the Society. At Taverner's request I looked up
the sea captain on his return from the voyage and asked him for
news of Robson. This he was unable to give me, however; he
had put the lad ashore at some mudhole on the West Coast.
Standing on the quay stewing in the sunshine he had made the
Sign. A half-caste Portuguese had touched him on the shoulder,
and the two had vanished in the crowd. I expressed some anxiety
as to the fate of an inexperienced lad in a strange land.

"You needn't worry," said the sailor. "That Sign would take
him right across Africa and back again."

When I was talking the matter over with Taverner, I said to
him: `What made you and the captain claim relationship with
Robson? It seemed to me a perfectly gratuitous lie."

"It was no lie, but the truth," said Taverner. `Who is my
Mother, and who are my Brethren but the Lodge and the initiates
thereof?"

**********************

The Man Who Sought

One of Taverner's cases will always stand out in my
mind--the case of Black, the airman. The ordinary doctor would
have bromided Black into an asylum, but Taverner staked the
sanity of two people upon a theory, and saved them both.

Early in May I was sitting with him in his Harley Street
consulting-room, taking down case notes while he examined his
patients. We had dispatched various hysterics and neurotics to
other specialists for treatment, when a man of an entirely
different type was ushered in by the butler. He looked absolutely
healthy, his face was tanned with the open air and had no sign of
nervous tension; but when I met his eyes I noticed something
unusual about them. The expression was peculiar. They did not
hold the haunting fear one so often sees in the eyes of the
mentally sick; he reminded me of nothing in the world but a
running hound that has sighted its prey.

"I think I am going off my head," announced our visitor.
"What form does your trouble take?" inquired Taverner. "Can't
do my work. Can't sit still. Can't do a thing except tear all over
the country in my car as hard as ever I can lick. Look at my
endorsements." He held out a driving license filled with writing.
"Next time they'll quod me, and that will finish me off
altogether. If they shut me up inside four walls I'll buzz around
like a cockchafer in a bottle till I knock myself to pieces. I'd go
clean mad if I couldn't move about. The only relief I get is
speed, to feel that I am going somewhere. I drive and drive and
drive till I'm clean tuckered out, and then I roll into the nearest
wayside pub and sleep; but it doesn't do me any good, because I
only dream, and that seems to make things more real, and I wake
up madder than ever and go on driving again."

"What is your work?" said Taverner.

"Motor-racing and flying."

"Are you Arnold Black, by any chance?" asked Taverner.

"That's me," said our patient. "Praise the Lord I haven't lost
my nerve yet."

"You had a crash a little while ago, did you not?" inquired
my colleague.

"That was what started the trouble," said Black. "I was all
right till then. Banged my head, I suppose. I was unconscious
three days, and when I came round I was seedy, and have been
so ever since."

I thought Taverner would refuse the case, for an ordinary
head injury could have little interest for him, but instead he
asked: "What made you come to me?"

"I was on my beam ends," said Black. "I'd been to two or
three old ducks, but could get no sense out of them; in fact I've
just come on from the blankest geyser of the lot." He named a
name of eminence. "Told me to stop in bed a month and feed up.
I wandered down the road and liked the look of your brass plate,
so I came in. Why? Aren't I in your line? What do you go in for?
Babies or senile decay?"

"If a chance like that brought you to me, you probably are in
my line," said Taverner. "Now tell me the physical side of your
case. What do you feel like in yourself?"