The Double Eye

by William Fryer Harvey

  I remember once on Bob’s ketch being overtaken by a sea fog. The current was running strong, and Bob was a stranger to the coast. ‘It’s all right; we shall worry through!’ he said, and had hardly finished speaking when we heard the wild, mad clanging of the bell-buoy. I did not soon forget the look of utter surprise on Bob’s face. ‘There’s some mistake,’ he said, with all his old lack of logic; ‘it’s no earthly business to be there.’

  That was how I felt on that September evening two years ago. What right had the church bell to be ringing? There would be no evening service on Saturday in a place the size of Chedsholme. It was too late in the day for a funeral. And yet what else could it be? For, as I passed down the village street, I noticed that the windows of the shops were shuttered. There were men, too, hanging about the green, dressed in their Sunday black.

  I found the police-station without difficulty, or rather the cottage where the constable lived. He was away, so his wife told me, but would be back in the morning, and as there seemed to be no way of communicating with the authorities, I was obliged for the time being to keep my secret to myself.

  The door of the Ship Inn was shut, and I had to knock twice before the landlady appeared. She recognised me at once. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘we can put you up, to be sure. You can have the same room as before, number three, to the right at the top of the stair. The girl’s out, so I’m afraid I can only give you a cold supper.’

  Ten minutes later I was standing before a cheerful fire in the parlour, while Mrs Shaftoe spread the cloth, dealing out to me in the meantime the gossip of the week. There were few visitors now; the season was too late, but she expected to have a houseful in a fortnight’s time, when Mr Somerset from Steelborough was coming back with a party for another week’s shooting. ‘It’s a pity we only get people in the spring and summer,’ she said. ‘A village like this is terrible poor, and every visitor makes a difference. I suppose they find it too lonely; but, bless my life, there’s nothing to be afraid of on these moors. You could walk all day without meeting anybody. There’s no one to harm you. Well, sir, there’s your supper ready. If you want anything, you’ve only got to touch the bell.’

  ‘How is it,’ I asked, as I sat down, ‘that the place is so quiet tonight? I always thought that Saturday evenings were your busiest times.’

  ‘So they are,’ said Mrs Shaftoe; ‘we do very little business on a Sunday. It’s only a six days’ licence, you see. If you’ll excuse me, sir, I think that’s one of the children calling; I’m only single-handed just at present, for the girl’s away at church.’

  She left the room, seeing nothing of the effect that her words had on me. ‘Sunday!’ I thought. ‘What can she mean? Surely she must be mistaken!’ Yet there in front of me was the calendar; Sunday, the 28th. Less than an hour before I had heard the church bell calling to evening prayer. The men whom I had seen lounging about the street were only the ordinary Sunday idlers. Somewhere in the last week I must have missed a day.

  But where? I pulled out my pocket diary. The space allotted to each day was filled with brief notes. ‘First,’ I said to myself, ‘let me make certain of a date from which to reckon.’ I was positive that I had started on my holiday on Monday, the 22nd. For further information there was the return half of my ticket stamped with the date. On Monday I slept at Dunsley; Tuesday at this same inn at Chedsholme, Wednesday at Rapmoor, Thursday at Frankstone Edge, and Friday at Gorton. Each day, as I looked back, seemed well filled; my recollection of each was clearly defined. And yet somewhere there was a gap of twenty-four hours about which I knew nothing.

  I have always been absent-minded—ludicrously so, my friends might say—it is, in fact, a trait in my character that has on more than one occasion put me into an embarrassing situation; but here was something of a nature completely different. In vain I groped about in my memory in search for even the shadow of an explanation. The week came back to me as no sequence of indistinguishable grey days, but the clearest of well-ordered processions. But was it really Sunday? Could the whole thing be a hoax, explicable as the result of some absurd wager? In default of a better the hypothesis was worth testing. I made a pretence of finishing the meal and, taking my hat from the stand, hurried out of the house. I walked in the direction of the church, but as I approached the building my heart sank within me. I passed half a dozen young fellows hanging about the churchyard gate, waiting to walk back home with their girls. ‘It’s been a dreary Sunday,’ I said, and one stopped in the act of lighting a cigarette to agree. I stood in the porch to listen. They were singing Bishop Ken’s evening hymn. Then came the thin piping voice of the priest, asking for defence against the perils and dangers of the night.

  Under a feeling of almost unbearable depression, I made my way back to the inn and its empty parlour.

  ‘After all,’ I said to myself, ‘there’s nothing that I can do. Other men before now have lost their memory. I should be thankful for regaining it so quickly, and that no harm has been done. No good, at any rate, can result from my pondering over the thing.’ But in spite of my resolution I found it impossible to control my thoughts. Again and again I found myself returning to the subject, fascinated by this sudden break in the past and the possibilities that sprang from it. Where had I been? What had I done?

  I believe that it was the sight of an ordinary cottage hospital collecting-box on the mantelpiece that suggested to me a new way of approaching the problem. I have always kept accurate accounts, jotting down the expenses of each day, not in my diary, but in a separate pocket cash-book. This, I thought, might throw new light on the matter. I took it out and hastily turned over the pages. At first sight it told me nothing. There was the same list of villages and their inns; no new names appeared. Then I read it through again. This time I made a discovery. The amounts I had paid in bills for a night’s lodging, for supper, bed and breakfast, were much the same at all the inns, with the exception of the ‘Ship’ at Chedsholme. The bill there seemed to be just twice as much as what it should have been. I only remembered to have spent one night there, Tuesday. It might be that I had spent Wednesday night as well.

  I rang the bell and ordered what I wanted for breakfast; then, as Mrs Shaftoe was leaving the room, I asked when it was that I had slept at the inn.

  ‘Tuesday and Wednesday,’ she said. ‘You left us on Thursday morning for Rapmoor. Goodnight, sir! I’ll see that you are called at half-past seven.’

  So my supposition was right. The day had been lost at Chedsholme. I wished, as soon as she had gone, that I had asked the woman more. She might have told me something of what I had done. And yet how could I have asked such questions except in the most general terms, without arousing the suspicion that I was mad? From her behaviour it was evident that I had conducted myself in a normal fashion. Very likely I had been out all day walking, only to return to the inn at night dead tired. Why should I worry about this thing, so small compared to the tragedy that centred in my discovery of the afternoon?

  It was clear, however, that I should not find peace sitting by the fire in the parlour. The clock had struck half-past nine; I took my candle from the sideboard and went upstairs to bed.

  My room was much the same as other rooms in country inns, but there was a hanging bookshelf in the corner, holding half a dozen books: Dr Meiklejohn’s Sermons in Advent, Gulliver’s Travels, Yorkshire Anecdotes, The House by the Sea, and two bound volumes, one of the Boy’s Own Paper, and the other of some American magazine. The latter I took down and, turning over the pages, saw that the type was good and that the stories were illustrated by some fine half-tone engravings. I got into bed and, placing the candle on the chair by my side, began to read. The story dealt with a young Methodist minister in a New England town. The girl he loved had promised herself in marriage to a sailor, who had been washed ashore from a stranded brig, bound for Baltimore from Smyrna. Maddened by the girl’s love for the foreigner, he forged a letter arranging for a rendezvous on the sand dunes, met his rival there, and shot h
im through the heart. There was nothing remarkable about the story. I read it to the end unmoved. But on turning the last page over, I came across a full-page illustration, that held me fascinated.

  It showed the scene on the dunes; the minister in his suit of black gazing down on the dead body of the Syrian sailor, just as I had stood that afternoon, and underneath were the words, taken from the letterpress of the story:

  What would he not have given to blot out the sight from his memory?

  I suppose that up to the time of which I am writing, my life had been a very ordinary one, filled with ordinary weekday pleasures and cares, regulated by ordinary routine. Within the space of a few hours I had experienced two great emotional shocks, the sudden discovery of the body on the moor, and this inexplicable loss of memory. Each by itself had proved sufficiently disturbing, but I had at least looked upon them as unconnected. A mere chance had shown me that I might be mistaken. I had stood, as it were, on the watershed at the source of two rivers. I had assumed that they flowed into two oceans. The clouds lifted, and I saw that they joined each other to form a torrent of irresistible force that would inevitably overwhelm me.

  The whole thing seemed impossible; but I had a sickening feeling that the impossible was true, that I was the instrument, the unwilling tool, in this ghastly tragedy.

  It was useless to lie in bed. I got up and paced the room. Again and again I tried to shut in the horrible thought behind a high wall of argument, built so carefully that there seemed to be no loop-hole for its escape. My best efforts were of no avail. I was seized with an overmastering fear of myself and the deed I might have done. I could think of only one thing to do, to report the whole matter to the police, to inform them of my inability to account for my doings on the Wednesday, and to welcome every investigation. ‘Anything,’ I told myself, ‘is better than this intolerable uncertainty.’

  And yet it seemed a momentous step to take. Supposing that I had nothing to do with this man’s death, but at the same time had been the last person seen with him, I might run the risk of being punished for another’s crime. I owed something to the position I held, to my future career; and so at last, dazed and weary, I lay down to wait for sleep. I did so with the firm determination that on the morrow I would retrace the path I had followed that afternoon. I might discover some fresh clue to the tragedy. I might find that the whole thing was but the fancy of an over-wrought brain.

  Slowly I became aware of a narrowing of the field of consciousness. A warm soft mist surrounded me and enfolded me. I heard the church clock strike the hour, but was too weary to count the strokes. The bell seemed to be tolling, tolling; every note grew fainter and I fell asleep.

  When I awoke it was nine o’clock. The sun was shining in through the window and, pulling up the blind, I saw a sky of cloudless blue. Sleep had brought hope. I dressed quickly, laughing at the night’s fears. In certain moods nothing is so strong as the force of unexpected coincidence. I told myself that I had been in a morbidly sensitive mood on the preceding evening; and in the clear light of day I took up the bound volume which had been the source of so much uneasiness. Really there was nothing in the story of the Methodist minister and the sailor, and as to the illustration, I turned the last page over and found that the illustration did not exist. Evidently I had imagined the whole thing.

  ‘Another lovely day!’ said Mrs Shaftoe, as she brought in the breakfast. ‘Will you be out walking again, sir? If you like, I could put up some sandwiches for you.’ I thought the idea a good one, and telling her I should not be back until four or five, set out soon after eleven.

  For the first few miles I had no difficulty in retracing my steps, but after I crossed the mineral line there were no landmarks to guide me. More than once I asked myself why I went on. I could give no satisfactory reply. I think now it must have been the desire to be brought face to face with facts that impelled me. I had had enough of the unbridled fancies of the preceding evening, and longed to discover some clue to the mystery, however faint.

  At last I found myself among the old ironstone workings. There was the long line of mounds, thrown up like ramparts, and there was the one standing alone in advance of the rest, beside which the body lay. Slowly I walked towards it. It seemed smaller in the light of a cloudless noon than in Sunday’s mists. What was I to find? With beating heart I scrambled up the slope of shale. I stood on the top and looked around. There was nothing, only the wide expanse of moor and sky.

  My first thought was that I had mistaken the place. Eagerly I scanned the ground for footprints. I found them almost immediately. They corresponded exactly to my nailed walking-boots. Evidently the place was the same.

  Then what had happened? There was but one explanation possible—that I had imagined the whole thing.

  And strange as it may seem, I accepted the explanation gladly, for it was the cold reality that I dreaded, linked as it had been with the awful idea that I had done the deed myself in a fit of unconscious frenzy; and in my thankfulness I knelt down on the heather and praised the God of the blue sky and sunlight for having saved me from the terrors of the night.

  With a mind at peace with itself I walked back across the moor. I determined to end my holiday on the morrow, to consult some nerve specialist and, if need be, to go abroad for a month or two. I dined that night at the Ship Inn with a talkative old gentleman, who succeeded in keeping me from thinking of my own affairs, and, feeling sure of sleep, went early to bed.

  My story does not end there. I wish that it did; but, Canon Eldred said in yesterday’s sermon, it is often our duty to accept things as they are, not to waste the limited amount of energy that is given for the day’s work in vain regret or morbid anticipation.

  For, as I was sitting at breakfast on the morrow, I heard a man in the bar ask Mrs Shaftoe for the morning’s paper. She told him that the gentleman in the parlour was reading it, but that Tuesday’s was in the kitchen.

  ‘Tuesday’s?’ I said to myself. ‘Monday’s, she means. Today is Tuesday’; and I looked at the calendar on the mantelpiece. The calendar said Wednesday. I looked at the newspaper and saw on every page, ‘Wednesday, 1st October.’ I got up half-dazed and walked into the bar. I suppose Mrs Shaftoe must have seen that there was something wrong, for, before I spoke, she offered me a glass of brandy.

  ‘I’m losing my memory,’ I said. ‘I think I can’t be quite well. I can’t remember anything I did yesterday.’

  ‘Why, bless you, sir!’ she said, ‘you were out on the moors all day. I made you some sandwiches, and in the evening you were talking to the old gentleman who left this morning on Free Trade and Protection.’

  ‘Then what did I do on Monday? I thought that was Monday.’

  ‘Oh! Monday!’ said Mrs Shaftoe. ‘You were out on the moors all that day too. Don’t you recollect borrowing my trowel? There was something you wanted to bury, a green parrot, I think you said it was. I remember, because it seemed so strange. You came in quite late in the evening, and looked regular knocked up, just the same as last week. It’s my belief, sir, that you’ve been walking too far.’

  I asked for my account and, while she was making it out, I went upstairs to my bedroom. I took down the bound volume from the shelf and turned to the story of the Methodist minister. The illustration at the end was certainly not there, but on close inspection I found that a page was missing. For some reason it had been carefully removed. I turned to the index of illustrations, and saw that the picture, with the words beneath that had so strangely affected me, should have been found on the missing page.

  I walked to the nearest station and took the train to Steelborough, where I told my story to an inspector of police, who evidently disbelieved it. But in the course of a day or two they made discoveries. The body of an unknown sailor, a foreigner, with curiously distinctive tattooings on the breast, was found in the place I described. For some time there was nothing to connect me with the crime. Then a gamekeeper came forward, who said that on Wednesday, the 24th, he h
ad seen two men, one of whom seemed to be a clergyman, the other a tramp, walking across the moor. He had called to them, but they had not stopped. I stood my trial. I was examined, of course, by alienists, and here I am. No, Canon Eldred, the world is a little more complicated than you think. I agree with you as to the necessity for cheerfulness, but I want better reasons than yours. These are mine—they may be only a poor lunatic’s, but they are none the worse for that.

  The world, I consider, is governed by God through a hierarchy of spirits. Little Charlie Lovel, by the way, says that he saw the Archangel Gabriel yesterday evening, as he was coming from the bathroom, and for all I know he may be right. It is governed by a hierarchy of spirits, some greater and more wise than others, and to each is given its appointed task. I suppose that for some reason, which I may never know, it was necessary for his salvation that he should die in a certain way, that his soul at the last might be purged by sudden terror. I cannot say, for I was only the tool. The great and powerful (but not all-powerful) spirit did his work as far as concerned the sailor, and then, with a workman’s love for his tool, he thought of me. It was not needful that I should remember what I had done—I had been lent by God, as Job was lent to Satan—but, my work finished, this spirit in his pity took from me all memory of my deed. But, as I said before, he was not omnipotent, and I suppose the longing of the brute in me to see again his handiwork guided me unconsciously to the bank of shale on the moor, though even at the last minute I had felt something urging me not to go on. That and the chance reading of an idle magazine story had been my undoing; and, when for the second time I lost my memory, and some power outside myself took control in order to cover up the traces before I revisited the scene, the issue of events had passed into other hands.