“What size did it appear?” asked Thorndyke.
Lumley reflected. “It was not quite life-size. I should say about two-thirds the size of an ordinary head.”
“Should you recognise the face if you saw it again?
“I can’t say,” replied Lumley. “You see, it was upside down. I haven’t a very clear picture of it—I mean as to what the face would have been like the right way up.”
“Was the room quite dark on both occasions?” Thorndyke asked.
“Yes, quite. The gas jet in the corridor is just above the door and does not let any light into the room.”
“And what is there opposite the door?”
“There is a small window, but that is usually kept shuttered nowadays. Under the window is a small folding dressing-table that belonged to Gilbert Lumley. He had it made when he came home from sea.”
Thus Lumley was quite lucid and coherent in his answers. His manner was perfectly sane; it was only the matter that was abnormal. Of the reality of the apparitions he had not the slightest doubt, and he never varied in the smallest degree in his description of their appearance. The fact that they had been invisible both to Mr. Price and his wife he explained by pointing out that the curse applied only to the direct descendants of Gilbert Lumley, and to those only in alternate generations.
After one of our conversations, Thorndyke expressed a wish to see the little manuscript book that had been the cause of all the trouble—or at least had been the forerunner; and Lumley promised to bring it to our rooms on the following afternoon. But then came an interruption to our holiday, not entirely unexpected; an urgent telegram from one of our solicitor friends asking consultation on an important and intricate case that had just been put into his hands, and making it necessary for us to go up to town by an early train on the following morning.
We sent a note to Brodribb, telling him that we should be away from St. David’s for perhaps a day or two, and on our way to the station he overtook us.
“I am sorry you have had to break your holiday,” he said; “but I hope you will be back before Thursday.”
“Why Thursday, in particular?” inquired Thorndyke.
“Because Thursday is the day on which that damned head is due to make its third appearance. It will be an anxious time. Frank hasn’t said anything, but I know his nerves are strung up to concert pitch.”
“You must watch him,” said Thorndyke. “Don’t let him out of your sight if you can help it.”
“That’s all very well,” said Brodribb, “but he isn’t a child, and I am not his keeper. He is the master of the house and I am just his guest. I can’t follow him about if he wants to be alone.”
“You mustn’t stand on politeness, Brodribb,” rejoined Thorndyke. “It will be a critical time and you must keep him in sight.”
“I shall do my best,” Brodribb said anxiously, “but I do hope you will be back by then.”
He accompanied us dejectedly to the platform and stayed with us until our train came in. Suddenly, just as we were entering our carriage, he thrust his hand into his pocket.
“God bless me!” he exclaimed, “I had nearly forgotten this book. Frank asked me to give it to you.” As he spoke, he drew out a little rusty calf-bound volume and handed it to Thorndyke. “You can look through it at your leisure,” said he, “and if you think it best to chuck the infernal thing out of the window, do so. I suspect poor Frank is none the better for conning it over perpetually as he does.”
I thought there was a good deal of reason in Brodribb’s opinion. If Lumley’s illusions were, as I suspected, the result of suggestion produced by reading the narrative, that suggestion would certainly tend to be reinforced by conning it over and over again. But the old lawyer’s proposal was hardly practicable.
As soon as the train had fairly started, Thorndyke proceeded to inspect the little volume; and his manner of doing so was highly characteristic. An ordinary person would have opened the book and looked through the contents, probably seeking out at once the sinister history of Gilbert Lumley.
Not so Thorndyke. His inspection began at the very beginning and proceeded systematically to deal with every fact that the book had to disclose. First he made an exhaustive examination of the cover; scrutinised the corners; inspected the bottom edges and compared them with the top edges; and compared the top and bottom head-caps. Then he brought out his lens and examined the tooling, which was simple in character and worked in “blind”—i.e. not gilt. He also inspected the head-bands through the glass, and then he turned his attention to the interior. He looked carefully at both end-papers, he opened the sections and examined the sewing-thread, he held the leaves up to the light and tested the paper by eye and by touch and he viewed the writing in several places through his lens. Finally he handed the book and the lens to me without remark.
It was a quaint little volume, with a curiously antique air, though it was but a century old. The cover was of rusty calf, a good deal rubbed, but not in bad condition; for the joints were perfectly sound; but then it had probably had comparatively little use. The paper—a laid paper with very distinct wire-lines but no watermark—had turned with age to a pale, creamy buff; the writing had faded to a warm brown, but was easily legible and very clearly and carefully written. Having noted these points, I turned over the leaves until I came to the story of Gilbert Lumley and the ill-fated Glynn, which I read through attentively, observing that Mr. Brodribb’s notes had given the whole substance of the narrative with singular completeness.
“This story,” I said, as I handed the book back to Thorndyke, “strikes me as rather unreal and unconvincing. One doesn’t see how Walter Lumley got his information.”
“No,” agreed Thorndyke. “It is on the plane of fiction. The narrator speaks in the manner of a novelist with complete knowledge of events and actions which were apparently known only to the actors.”
“Do you think it possible that Walter Lumley was simply romancing?”
“I think it quite possible, and in fact very probable that the whole narrative is fictitious,” he replied. “We shall have to go into that question later on. For the present, I suppose, we had better give our attention to the case that we have in hand at the moment.”
The little volume was accordingly put away, and for the rest of the journey our conversation was occupied with the matter of the consultation that formed our immediate business. As this, however, had no connection with the present history, I need make no further reference to it beyond stating that it kept us both busy for three days and that we finished with it on the evening of the third.
“Do you propose to go down to St. David’s tonight or tomorrow?” I asked, as we let ourselves into our chambers.
“Tonight,” replied Thorndyke. “This is Thursday, you know, and Brodribb was anxious that we should be back some time today. I have sent him a telegram saying that we shall go down by the train that arrives about ten o’clock. So if he wants us, he can meet us it the station or send a message.”
“I wonder,” said I, “if the apparition of Glynn’s head will make its expected visitation tonight.”
“It probably will if there is an opportunity,” Thorndyke replied. “But I hope that Brodribb will manage to prevent the opportunity from occurring. And, talking of Lumley, as we have an hour to spare, we may as well finish our inspection of his book. I snipped off a corner of one of the leaves and gave it to Polton to boil up in weak caustic soda. It will be ready for examination by now.”
“You don’t suspect that the book has been faked, do you?” said I.
“I view that book with the deepest suspicion,” he replied, opening a drawer and producing the little volume. “Just look at it, Jervis. Look at the cover, for instance.”
“Well,” I said, turning the book over in my hand, “the cover looks ancient enough to me; typical old, rusty calf with a century’s wear on it.”
“Oh, there’s no doubt that it is old calf,” said he; “just the sort of leather that
you could skin off the cover of an old quarto or folio. But don’t you see that the signs of wear are all in the wrong places? How does a book wear in use? Well, first there are the bottom edges, which rub on the shelf. Then the corners, which are the thinnest leather and the most exposed. Then the top head-cap, which the finger hooks into in pulling the book from the shelf. Then the joint or hinge, which wears through from frequent opening and shutting. The sides get the least wear of all. But in this book, the bottom edges, the corners, the top head-cap and the joints are perfectly sound. They are not more worn than the sides; and the tooling is modern in character. It looks quite fresh and the tool-marks are impressed on the marks of wear instead of being themselves worn. The appearances suggest to me a new binding with old leather.
“Then look at the paper. It professes to be discoloured by age. But the discoloration of the leaves of an old book occurs principally at the edges, where the paper has become oxidised by exposure to the air. The leaves of this book are equally discoloured all over. To me they suggest a bath of weak tea rather than old age.
“Again, there is the writing. Its appearance is that of faded writing done with the old-fashioned writing ink—made with iron sulphate and oak-galls. But it doesn’t look quite the right colour. However, we can easily test that. If it is old iron-gall ink, a drop of ammonium sulphide will turn it black. Let us take the book up to the laboratory and try it—and we had better have a “control” to compare it with.”
He ran his eye along the book-shelves and took down a rusty-looking volume of Humphry Clinker, the end-paper of which bore several brown and faded signatures.
Here is a signature dated 1803,” said he. “That will be near enough,” and with the two books in his hand he led the way upstairs to the laboratory. Here he took down the ammonium sulphide bottle, and dipping up a little of the liquid in a fine glass tube, opened the cover of Humphry Clinker and carefully deposited a tiny drop on the figure 3 in the date. Almost immediately the ghostly brown began to darken until it at length became jet black. Then, in the same way, he opened Walter Lumley’s manuscript book and on the 9 of the date, 1819, he deposited a drop of the solution. But this time there was no darkening of the pale brown writing; on the contrary, it faded rapidly to a faint and muddy violet.
“It is not an iron ink,” said Thorndyke, and it looks suspiciously like an aniline brown. But let us see what the paper is made of. Have you boiled up that fragment, Polton?”
“Yes, sir,” answered our laboratory assistant, “and I’ve washed the soda out of it, so it’s all ready.”
He produced a labelled test-tube containing a tiny corner of paper floating in water, which he carefully emptied into a large watch-glass. From this Thorndyke transferred the little pulpy fragment to a microscope slide and, with a pair of mounted needles, broke it up into its constituent fibres. Then he dropped on it a drop of aniline stain, removed the surplus with blotting-paper, added a drop of glycerine and put on it a large cover-slip.
“There, Jervis,” said he, handing me the slide, “let us have your opinion on Walter Lumley’s paper.”
I placed the slide on the stage of the microscope and proceeded to inspect the specimen. But no exhaustive examination was necessary. The first glance settled the matter.
“It is nearly all wood,” I said. “Mechanical wood fibre, with some esparto, a little cotton and a few linen fibres.”
“Then,” said Thorndyke, “it is a modern paper. Mechanical wood-pulp—prepared by Keller’s process—was first used in paper-making in 1840. ‘Chemical wood-pulp’ came in later; and esparto was not used until 1860. So we can say with confidence that this paper was not made until more than twenty years after the date that is written on it. Probably it is of quite recent manufacture.”
“In that case,” said I, “this book is a counterfeit—presumably fraudulent.”
“Yes. In effect it is a forgery.”
“But that seems to suggest a conspiracy.”
It does,” Thorndyke agreed; “especially if it is considered in conjunction with the apparitions. The suggestion is that this book was prepared for the purpose of inducing a state of mind favourable to the acceptance of supernatural appearances. The obvious inference is that the apparitions themselves were an imposture produced for fraudulent purposes. But it is time for us to go.”
We shook hands with Polton, and, having collected our suitcases from the sitting-room, set forth for the station.
During the journey down I reflected on the new turn that Frank Lumley’s affairs had taken. Apparently, Brodribb had done his client an injustice. Lumley was not so mad as the old lawyer had supposed. He was merely credulous and highly suggestible. The “hallucinations” were real phenomena which he had simply misinterpreted. But who was behind these sham illusions? And what was it all about? I tried to open the question with Thorndyke; but though he was willing to discuss the sham manuscript book and the technique of its production, he would commit himself to nothing further.
On our arrival at St. David’s, Thorndyke looked up and down the platform and again up the station approach. “No sign of Brodribb or any messenger,” he remark ‘so we may assume that all is well at Burling Court up to the present. Let us hope that Brodribb’s presence has had an inhibitory effect on the apparitions.”
Nevertheless, it was evident that he was not quite easy in his mind. During supper he appeared watchful and preoccupied, and when, after the meal, he proposed a stroll down to the beach, he left word with our landlady as to where he was to be found if he should be wanted.
It was about a quarter to eleven when we arrived at the shore, and the tide was beginning to run out. The beach was deserted with the exception of a couple of fishermen who had apparently come in with the tide and who were making their boat secure for the before going home. Thorndyke approached them, addressing the older fisherman, remarked: “That is a big, powerful boat. Pretty fast, too, isn’t she?”
“Ay, sir,” was the reply; “fast and weatherly, she is. What we calls a galley-punt. Built at Deal for the hovelling trade—salvage, you know, sir—but there ain’t no hovelling nowadays, not to speak of.”
“Are you going out tomorrow?” asked Thorndyke.
“Not as I knows of, sir. Was you thinking of a bit of fishing?”
“If you are free,” said Thorndyke, “I should like to charter the boat for tomorrow. I don’t know what time I shall be able to start, but if you will stand by ready to put off at once when I come down we can count the waiting as sailing.”
“Very well, sir,” said the fisherman; “the boat’s yours for the day tomorrow. Any time after six, or earlier, if you like, if you come down here you’ll find me and my mate standing by with a stock of bait and the boat ready to push off.”
“That will do admirably,” said Thorndyke; and the morrow’s programme being thus settled, we wished the fishermen good-night and walked slowly back to our lodgings, where, after a final pipe, we turned in.
On the following morning, just as we were finishing a rather leisurely breakfast, we saw from our window our friend Mr. Brodribb hurrying down the street towards our house. I ran out and opened the door, and as he entered I conducted him into our sitting-room. From his anxious and flustered manner it was obvious that something had gone wrong, and his first words con firmed the sinister impression.
“I’m afraid we’re in for trouble, Thorndyke,” said he. “Frank is missing.”
“Since when?” asked Thorndyke.
“Since about eight o’clock this morning. He is nowhere about the house and he hasn’t had any breakfast.”
“When was he last seen?” Thorndyke asked. “And where?”
“About eight o’clock, in the breakfast-room. Apparently he went in there to say “good-bye” to the Prices—they have gone on a visit for the day to Folkestone and were having an early breakfast so as to catch the eight-thirty train. But he didn’t have breakfast with them. He just went in and wished them a pleasant journey and then it appe
ars that he went out for a stroll in the grounds. When I came down to breakfast at half-past eight, the Prices had gone and Frank hadn’t come in. The maid sounded the gong, and as Frank still did not appear, she went out into the grounds to look for him; and presently I went out myself. But he wasn’t there and he wasn’t anywhere in the house. I don’t like the look of it at all. He is usually very regular and punctual at meals. What do you think we had better do, Thorndyke?”
My colleague looked at his watch and rang the bell.
I think, Brodribb,” said he, “that we must act on the obvious probabilities and provide against the one great danger that is known to us. Mrs. Robinson,” he added, addressing the landlady, who, had answered the bell in person, “can you let us have a jug of strong coffee at once?”
Mrs. Robinson could, and bustled away to prepare it, while Thorndyke produced from a cupboard a large vacuum flask.
I don’t quite follow you, Thorndyke,” said Mr. Brodribb. “What probabilities and what danger do you mean?”
“I mean that, up to the present, Frank Lumley has exactly reproduced in his experiences and his actions the experiences and actions of Gilbert Lumley as set forth in Walter Lumley’s narrative. The overwhelming probability is that he will continue to reproduce the story of Gilbert to the end. He probably saw the apparition for the third time last night, and is even now preparing for the final act.”
“Good God!” gasped Brodribb. “What a fool I am! You mean the cave? But we can never get there now. It will be high water in an hour and the beach at St. David’s Head will be covered already. Unless we can get a boat,” he added despairingly.
“We have got a boat,” said Thorndyke. “I chartered one last night.”
“Thank the Lord!” exclaimed Brodribb. “But you always think of everything—though I don’t know what you want that coffee for.”
The Second R. Austin Freeman Megapack Page 117
