The Shadow in the North (4 page)

He paused and sipped his whiskey. Either its true, thought Jim, or he's a better actor than I take him for, because Mackinnon was sweating with fear, and his eyes were haunted. But then, damn him, he was a performer—that was his profession. . . .

Mackinnon went on. "I came to myself after a few moments and found I was still holding the cigar case. Before I could put it down, the door of the music room opened and in came the very man I'd just seen. He was one of the guests—a big, powerful man, with smooth fair hair. He saw what I was holding and came up to take it from me, and our eyes met, and he knew what I'd seen. . . .

"He didn't speak to me, because at the same moment a servant came into the room. He turned to the servant and said, *Thank you, I've found it now,' and with a last look at me, he went out again. But he knew.

"I went through my performance that night, and everywhere I looked I seemed to see that sudden furious stabbing and the dark blood gushing out onto the snow. And his smooth, powerful face was looking at me all the time. Well, naturally, I didn't let my host down. The performance was a great success—I was generously applauded by everyone there; and several gentlemen were good enough to say that the great Maskelyne himself had never done better. When I'd finished, I gathered my materials and left at once instead of mingling politely with the guests, as I usually did. You see, I was beginning to be afraid of him.

"Ever since then I've lived in fear of meeting him again. And one day recently that wee man with the glasses—^Windlesham—came to me and said that his employer would like to meet me. I knew who he meant, though he wouldn't say his name. And this evening he came again, with a gang this time—^well, you saw them, Jim. He said that he was obliged to take me to his employer to settle a question of mutual interest—that was how he put it.

"They want to kill me. They're going to take me and kill me, I'm certain of it. What can I do, Mr. Garland? What can I do?"

Frederick scratched his head.

"You don't know the mans name?'* he said.

"There were a lot of guests that night. I may have been told his name, but I can't remember. And Windle-sham wouldn't say."

"What makes you think they want to kill you?"

"This evening he said if I didn't agree to come with them after the show, there would be extremely serious consequences. If I were an ordinary person, I'd go into hiding. Change my name, perhaps. But I'm an artist! I have to be visible to earn my living! How can I hide? Half of London knows my name!"

"That should make you safer, then," said Webster Garland. "Whoever he is, he'd hardly dare to harm you if you're in the full glare of public attention, siuely?"

"Not this man. I've never seen such ruthlessness on any human face. And besides, he's got powerfiil friends—he's wealthy and well connected. I'm just a lowly conjurer. Oh, what can I do?"

Suppressing the suggestion that came to his mind, Jim got up and left the room for a breath of fresh air. He was finding it more and more difficult to control his irritation with the man. It was hard to pin down why, but he'd seldom met anyone he disliked more.

He sat in the backyard and shied bits of gravel through the unglazed window of the new studio Webster was having built until he heard a cab being called to the front door. When he thought Mackinnon had gone, he went back inside, where he found Webster lighting

his pipe with a spill from the fire and Frederick winding the magnesium back into the pocket burner.

Frederick looked up and said, "Nice little mystery, Jim. Why'd you get up and leave?"

Jim flung himself down into the armchair. "He was getting on my nerves," he said. "And I don't know why, so don't ask. I wish I'd left him to it instead of risking me neck hauling him over the rooftops. / carina stand the heights! Oh, let me doon, let me doonlAnd his blooming snobbishness. Of course, Aim treated as quaite one of the guests. . . . Great shivering Tomnoddy. You ain't taken him on, have you, Fred? As a client, I mean?"

"He didn't want to be taken on—quite. It's prottc-tion he wants, not ^ilftection, and I told him we didn't deal in that. But I've got his address, and I said we'd keep our eyes open on his behalf I don't know what else we can do at this stage."

"Chuck him out for a start," said Jim. "Tell him to take a jump at himself"

"Whatever for? If he's telling the truth, it's interesting, and if he's lying, it's even more interesting. I take it you think he's lying."

"Course he is," said Jim. "I never heard such a package of whoppers in all me life."

"You mean the psychometry?" said Webster, settling back on the sofa. "What about his little demonstration? I was impressed, even if you weren't."

"You're an easy mark, you are," said Jim. "I pity you

if you ever come up against the three-card trick. He s a conjurer, ain't he? He knows more about cunning Httle bits o' machinery than even Fred here. He knew what that thing was, and he saw that photograph youre so proud of up there, and he put two and two together and had you gaping Uke a pair of yokels."

Webster looked up at the mantelpiece, where Frederick had pinned a print of one of their pictures from the opium den, and then laughed and flung a cushion at Jim, who fielded it neatly and tucked it behind his head.

"All right," said Frederick, "I give you that one. But the other story about the forest and the murder in the snow—^what d'you make of that?"

"You poor cod," said Jim. "You didnt believe that, did you? I despair, Fred. I thought you had a bit of milk in your coconut. Since you can't see what's obvious, I'll have to tell you. He's got something on this geezer, this guest at the dinner party. Blackmail, see. Naturally the bloke wants to get him out the way, and I don't blame him. And if you don't like that for an explanation, try this one: He's been playing goose and duck with the feller's wife, and he's been found out."

"That's what I like about Jim's mentality," said Frederick to Webster, "if that's what it is: it goes straight for the basic. No unnecessary frills, no higher motives—"

Jim jeered. "You did believe him! You're getting soft, mate, and no error. Sally wouldn't fall for a tale like that. But, then, she's got a head on her shoulders."

Fredericks face darkened. "Don't talk to me about that ranting jade," he said.

"Ranting jade! That's a good 'un. What was it you called her last time? A fanatical, narrow-minded calculating machine. And she called you a feckless, featherbrained fantasist, and you called her—"

"Enough, damn it! I want nothing more to do with her. Tell me about—"

"I bet you go and see her before the week's out!"

"Done. Haifa guinea I don't."

And they shook hands.

''Do you believe him, Fred?" said his uncle.

"I don't have to believe him to wonder about his case. As I said a moment ago—only Jim doesn't remember—if he's lying, it makes the whole business more interesting, not less. In any case, I've got spiritualism on my mind at the moment. When this kind of coincidence comes up, I always take it as a hint there's something going on."

"Poor old Fred," said Jim. "The decay of a fine mind. ..."

"What about spiritualism, then?" said Webster. "Is there anything in it?"

"Plenty," said Frederick, refilling his glass. "There's fraud, there's gullibility, there's fear—not so much fear of death as fear of there being nothing after it—there's loneliness, there's hope, there's vanity; and maybe in the middle of it all there's something real."

"Get away," said Jim. "It's all poppycock."

"Well, if you want to find out, tomorrow night there's a meeting of the Streatham and District Spiritualist League—"

"Load o' rubbish!"

"—^which might interest your broad, sympathetic, and ever-open mind. Especially as there's something odd going on. Care to come along and have a look?"

Qlelke ^JJ

Frederick wasn't the only person to be inter-ested in spiritualism, by a long way. It was one of the burning concerns of the time. Humble parlors, fashionable drawing rooms, and university laboratories alike all echoed to the sounds of rapping and knocking as spirits with nothing better to do tried to communicate with the living; and stories circulated of even stranger manifestations—ghostly voices, spirit trumpets, and mediums who could exude a mysterious substance called ectoplasm. . ..

It was a solemn business. Was there life after death? Were phantasms and apparitions really there? Was mankind on the verge of the greatest discovery in history? Many earnest people took it all very seriously, and no one was more earnest than the Streatham and District Spiritualist League, which was meeting in the house of Mrs. Jamieson Wilcox, widow of a most respectable grocer.

Frederick had been invited by one of the members, a city clerk who was perturbed by some things he'd heard in the course of a stance. The man insisted that

Frederick should disguise himself; he was embarrassed at spying on his friends, but he'd told Frederick that there were great issues involved, matters of enormous financial, implication, and he dared not ignore it. Frederick readily agreed. He became a scientist for the evening, and Jim went as his assistant.

"The only thing you have to do," Frederick told Jim, "is listen. Remember every word. Ignore the flying tambourines and the ghostly hands—they're two a penny at a do like this. Just concentrate on what the medium says."

His hair was slicked down, and a pair of owlish glasses sat oddly on his broken nose. Jim, interested despite himself, carried a small brass-bound box and a battery case, and grumbled all the way to Streatham about the weight.

By seven o'clock Mrs. Jamieson Wilcox's front parlor was crowded: twelve people packed in like dates, hardly able to move. All the smaller items of furniture had been moved out for the occasion, but that still left a substantial table, a piano, three armchairs, a laden whatnot, and a sideboard on which a black-draped portrait of the late Mr. Jamieson Wilcox was kept company by a solemn pineapple.

The room was warm, not to say hot. The gaslights in the ornamental brackets were turned up high, and a coal fire burned in the grate. The assembled spiritualists put out a good deal of fleshly heat themselves, fortified by the meat tea they had consumed earlier, and the

odors of tinned salmon, cold tongue, potted shrimp, beetroot, and blancmange lingered heavily in the air. There was a good deal of brow-mopping and fanning, but no one would have considered for a moment removing a jacket or loosening a tie.

The meeting proper was due to start at half past seven, and as the time drew near, a stout and commanding gentleman opened his watch and coughed loudly to attract everyone's attention. This was Mr. Freeman Humphries, retired draper and chairman of the league.

"Ladies and gentlemen!'' he began. "Friends and comrades in the search for truth! Let me begin on your behalf by proposing a vote of thanks to Mrs. Jamieson Wilcox for the substantial and delicious repast we have just enjoyed." There were murmurs of assent. "Next, may I welcome Mrs. Budd, the well-known medium and clairvoyant, whose messages so impressed and consoled us on her last visit." He turned and bowed slightly to a plump, dark woman with a roguish eye, who smiled back at him saucily. He coughed again and shuffled his notes. "And finally I am sure you would all like to make the acquaintance of Dr. Herbert Semple and his associate, of the Royal Institution. I call upon Dr. Semple, then, to explain the purpose of this meeting tonight and to say something about his research."

This was Frederick's cue. He stood up and looked around the crowded room at the shopkeepers and clerks and their wives, at the pallid young man with the sniff

and the pallid young woman with the jet necklace, at Mrs. Budd the medium (whose eyes traveled admiringly down his frock-coated form), at Mrs. Jamieson Wilcox, at the pineapple.

"Thank you, Mr. Humphries,*' he began. "Capital tea, Mrs. Wilcox. First rate. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I'm very grateful to you for inviting me. My assistant and I have been interested for some time in the investigation of the trance state, particularly in relation to the electrical conductivity of the skin. This box"—Jim lifted it onto the table, and Frederick opened it to disclose a copper coil, a mass of twisted wire, brass terminals, and a large glass dial—"is an improved version of the electrodermograph, invented by Professor Schneider of Boston."

He passed a length of wire to Jim to connect to the batteries, and then uncoiled four more lengths, each ending in a little brass disc. They were all connected to the copper coil.

"These wires are attached to the medium's ankles and wrists," he explained, "and the resistance is shown on the dial. Mrs. Budd, may we connect you up?"

"You can connect me to your apparatus anytime, dear," she said brightly.

Frederick coughed. "Ahem . . . good. Could one of the ladies perhaps oblige by fastening the wires to Mrs. Budd's ankles? It's a delicate matter, I know ..."

But Mrs. Budd was having nothing to do with delicacy.

"Oh, no," she said, "you do it, love, sos I dont get electrified. Besides, you ve got the gift, haven't you? I knew it as soon as I saw you, dear. You ve got spirituality shining out of you."

"Oh," said Frederick, aware that Jim was grinning widely at him. "Well, in that case ..."

Trailing wires, he plunged beneath the tablecloth while the ladies and gendemen of the Spiritualist League, caught between the impropriety of a young man s actually touching a pair of female ankles and the evident spirituality of both parties, coughed and talked and looked genteelly elsewhere. After a minute Frederick emerged and pronounced the wires attached.

"And very gende you done it, too," said Mrs. Budd. "I hardly knew you was touching me. Such artistic fin-gets!

"Well," said Frederick, delivering a sharp kick to Jims ankle. "Shall we try the apparatus?"

He threw a switch, and the needle sprang away from the stop and trembled at the center of the dial.

"Fancy that," said Mrs. Budd. "It doesnt even tingle."

"Oh, theres no danger, Mrs. Budd; the current is very mild. Now, ladies and gentlemen, shall we take our places at the table?"