Seeing is Believing shm-12

by John Dickson Carr

  But Dr. Rich forestalled him.

  "Mrs. Fane," Rich said gravely, "please remember that this is not a side-show or an exhibition of parlor magic. It is a serious scientific experiment. I'm not even sure that I can bring it off. I give you my word that you will be asked to do nothing which will embarrass you or hold you up to ridicule."

  "Come on, Vicky! Be a sport!" urged Ann Browning, in her soft, attractive voice.

  "You promise?" Vicky asked Rich.

  "I promise."

  "All right," said Vicky, lifting her shoulders and smiling not without wryness. "Let the dirty work begin. What do you want me to do?"

  There was a general expelling of breaths in the long room.

  Rich turned round to the mantelpiece. From the top of it, beside the clock, he took down a cardboard shoe-box which he had long ago placed there in preparation for this.

  "Now, Mrs. Fane! First of all, I must tell something to the others which it is necessary that you shall not hear. Would you mind going out into the hall for a moment, until I call you in?"

  "What is all this?" demanded Sharpless, after a pause. "Charades?"

  Rich swung round on him.

  "Captain Sharpless, if you will remain silent, and be content to watch an experiment which you yourself challenged me to perform, I think you'll understand what it is in a very few minutes."

  "Sorry. No offense intended. But—"

  "You don't mind, Mrs. Fane?"

  "No, not at all."

  Rich had removed the cover from the cardboard box. As Vicky rose to her feet and stepped past him, it was impossible that she should not have at least a brief glimpse inside. Rich replaced the cover on the box rather hastily. Putting it under his arm, he went to open the door for her.

  The door was in the same wall as the fireplace: that is, the long wall at right-angles to the windows, but far away from the windows towards the other end of the room.

  Rich opened the door for Vicky, stood aside as she went out, and closed it again. It was a good heavy door; but it closed imperfectly and the latch did not catch. As Rich turned back to the others, the door creaked an inch or two open.

  Sharpless was about to call his attention to this when the doctor's eye caught them again.

  "I have in this box," he said in his soft, heavy bass voice, "two exhibits. Exhibit A — a rubber dagger."

  "See here!" — began Arthur Fane.

  "Yes?" prompted Ann Browning.

  Rich held up the toy dagger. Its blade was painted silvery gray to represent a patchy and unconvincing-looking metal; its handle was black. Without any sense of incongruity, Rich bent the soft rubber back and forth.

  "Bought this morning at Woolworth's," he explained. "A sixpenny rubber dagger which can hardly be called dangerous. That's Exhibit A. But Exhibit B is different."

  He replaced the dagger in the box, and took out the second article. When they saw it, the breath from his audience was something like a mutter of consternation.

  "Exhibit B," said Rich. "A real revolver, loaded with real bullets."

  There was a silence.

  Over his audience the revolver seemed to exercise a kind of evil fascination. It was a Webley.38, of dark, polished metal except for the ivory grip. Rich broke it open, plucked one of the cartridges from the cylinder, tossed the cartridge into the air, and caught it.

  "Definitely not a toy," he pointed out, replacing the bullet and closing the magazine with a sharp click. "In fact, as deadly a weapon as we're likely to find. Therefore.. yes? Yes? What is it?"

  He broke off, frowning at Sharpless.

  The latter was going through a pantomime of extraordinary concentration. After screwing up his face and making gestures to attract Rich's attention, Sharpless was stabbing his finger in the direction of the partly open door.

  Rich, as though enlightened, uttered an exclamation. He hurried over and closed the door firmly.

  "She heard you!" said Sharpless in a whisper. "She couldn't have helped hearing you!"

  Rich smiled.

  "I sincerely hope she did," he answered with composure. "If she didn't, there is no point in this experiment."

  "What?"

  Rich tossed the pistol across to Sharpless, who automatically caught it.

  "Examine that revolver," Rich suggested. "Or, more properly, examine the bullets."

  The bullets were dummies.

  Each empty brass cartridge-case had been fitted with a little rounded cylinder of wood, painted gray to represent a bullet. Sharpless took out each one in turn, and examined it carefully before he fitted it back again.

  "I think I begin to see," he muttered, "what sort of dirty trick you've got in mind. This gun isn't dangerous at all. But—"

  "Exactly," agreed Rich. "It is no more a deadly weapon than the dagger. But Mrs. Fane thinks it is."

  Uncle Hubert Fane, whose apprehension at first sight of the revolver had now merged into relief, was taking such fast, furious puffs at his cigar that his head appeared to be enveloped in smoke.

  "You follow me?" inquired Rich. "Here are two articles. One of them, the dagger, Mrs. Fane's inner mind knows to be harmless. The other, that revolver, she believes to be real. Very well. I shall put Mrs. Fane into a state of hypnosis. Then I shall order her to.. "

  "To kill somebody," breathed Ann Browning.

  "Exactly," said Rich.

  It was now altogether dark, except for the white light of the parchment-shaded bridge lamp beside the sofa. A faint cooler breeze stirred the curtains at the windows.

  "Mind!" added Rich, rubbing a hand vigorously across his bald skull, "I don't say I shall be able to manage this. I may not be able to establish the proper degree of influence. But if I do—"

  "If you do?" prompted Ann.

  "If I do," smiled Rich, "then I can tell you exactly what will happen. Under hypnosis, you understand, the patient has no mind or will of her own. She is a machine. A zombie. A walking corpse, under my direction. But—"

  "Yes?"

  "When she is ordered to pick up that revolver and shoot someone she loves, then she will balk. Even in anguish she won't be able to do it. Powerful as my influence is, it can't get past the barrier in her subconscious mind. But when I order her to take the dagger and stab someone, she will strike without the least hesitation. Because her subconscious mind knows that it's all a game."

  Again there was a silence.

  "Well, Captain Sharpless?" said Rich. "If I succeed in doing that, will you own yourself convinced?"

  "I don't like it!" said that young man abruptly, and jumped to his feet.

  "You don't like it, Captain Sharpless? But you were the one who suggested it."

  "Yes, but I didn't know what you were going to do. I didn't know you were going to do this.”

  "I think it's the most thrilling thing I've ever heard of," declared Ann Browning.

  "Who," asked Sharpless, "who are you going to order her to kill?"

  Rich looked surprised.

  "Her husband, of course. Who else?"

  Frank Sharpless craned his neck round. But if he expected any support from Fane, he did not get it.

  From whatever cause, Arthur appeared to have changed his mind. He sat very still in an easy chair, his middle-sized, thick-set figure balanced on die edge of it, staring down at his well-polished shoes. The dead cigar was between his fingers. He moved his heels outwards, a queer gesture, and brought them together again with a click. He glanced up, his dark face impassive.

  "I don't hold with this. Still… it won't hurt my wife in any way?"

  "Oh, no. She may feel tired afterwards. But, if Mrs. Fane is the healthy, uncomplex person I am sure she is, it won't affect her at all."

  "Will she know what's happening at the time?" "No."

  "Or remember it afterwards?" "No."

  'Is that so, now?" mused Arthur. He scratched the side of his nose with a fingernail of the game hand that held his cigar. He studied Rich. Again the rare.smile gleamed. "Suppose (just suppose,
now!) that my wife did have it in her inmost mind to — hurt me?"

  Rich was taken aback.

  "My dear sir," he began, with the color rising in his face, "I never thought… that is, it seemed so obvious!.. Mr. Hubert Fane assured me…"

  "Oh, we're only supposing!" Arthur reassured him. He was really smiling now. The thick complacency of his tone would have been felt anywhere, even at his club. "I'm not one to talk about my marriage, as you'll agree. But I don't mind saying that to find a happier couple than Victoria and I you'd have to go far. Very far indeed."

  He paused.

  "Some people," he added, "might call my life humdrum—"

  "Dear boy," interposed Uncle Hubert, with his eye on a corner of the lamp-shade, "I feel sure they would do you no such injustice, if they knew you as I do."

  "But I don't call it humdrum," concluded Arthur, after giving him a brief look. "Carry on with the experiment."

  Frank Sharpless took a few steps up and down the bare hardwood floor, with its few bright rugs. His black mess jacket with scarlet lapels, and close-fitting black trousers with scarlet stripe down the side, gave him a lean and Mephistophelian appearance which was contradicted by the naive youthfulness of the face. His booted footsteps rattled on the floor. Though he made a gesture of protest, he did not speak again.

  "Then we are all agreed?" inquired Rich. "Good!"

  He put the lid on the cardboard box containing the revolver and the rubber dagger. This box he handed to Arthur.

  "Keep our two exhibits, Mr. Fane, until I tell you what to do with them." Then Rich went over and opened the door. "Come in, Mrs. Fane," he invited.

  Four

  Vicky hesitated in the doorway.

  It was as though this were only some guessing-game in which she hesitated about what question to ask first. Her manner indicated this. Yet her tanned, clean-skinned face, the blue eyes more vivid against it, was softened by another underlying emotion. It was fear, and Sharpless knew it.

  "Yes?" she said doubtfully.

  Rich took her hand. "Come over here, Mrs. Fane, and sit down on the sofa. Make yourself comfortable."

  Vicky stopped short.

  "I'd rather not sit on the sofa," she said.

  Again a brief, vague touch of uneasiness brushed the room.

  "Very well, then," agreed Rich, after a slight pause. "We'll try to make you comfortable somewhere else."

  He surveyed the room. He walked towards the windows, but there the sharp-squeaking wood of the floor appeared to irritate him. After treading on it experimentally, he turned round and looked at the extreme opposite end of the room. There Arthur Fane was sitting, with the cardboard box on his knees.

  "May we have your chair, Mr. Fane?"

  Arthur got up.

  The bridge lamp had a very long cord. Rich picked it up from beside the sofa, which was pushed back against the long wall opposite the fireplace. He carried the lamp across to the white easy chair where Arthur had been sitting, and tilted its shade to shine down on the chair. He pushed the chair back flat against the

  "Will this suit you, Mrs. Fane?"

  "Yes, that's all right," said Vicky. She followed him over and sat down.

  "That's it. Just relax. The others of you I should like to sit fairly close, but not too close. Draw up your chairs sideways to her, where she can't see you. That's it."

  The center of the room was now a cleared space, with Vicky sitting with her back to one wall and facing the windows from some twenty-five feet away. Rich drew the curtains on these windows. In one corner he found a telephone table, round and of polished mahogany. Removing from it the telephone, an address pad, and a cigarette box, he carried this table to the middle of the room, where he set it down.

  "Now!" said Rich — and walked back to Vicky.

  "Mrs. Fane," he went on, "I want you to put yourself in my hands. I want you to trust me. You do trust me, don't you?"

  "Yes, I think I do."

  "Very well."

  The man's voice was already compelling. It had a musical vibration in its soft bass. Again Rich tilted the shade of the lamp, so that its light shone on his own face. From his pocket he took a coin, a new and polished which shone with bright silver.

  "Mrs. Fane, I'm going to hold this a little above the level of your eyes. I just want you to look at it. Look at it steadily. That's all. It will be easy. Do you understand?"

  "Yes."

  "The rest of you, please be quiet. It is very quiet."

  Afterwards, Frank Sharpless was never quite sure how the thing happened.

  The room seemed to be full of a soft voice, almost whispering. It went on interminably. It seemed to be leading them past a barrier, into another world. Sharpless could never recall what it said, except that it dealt with sleep, drugging sleep, sleep within dreams, sleep muffled beyond life. It affected even those who were not looking past that bright-shining coin into Rich's eyes.

  The clock did not tick; no breath of air stirred in the trees outside; no sense of time existed.

  ''Sleep now," murmured the voice. "Sleep softly. Sleep deep. Sleep."

  And Rich stepped back.

  Frank Sharpless felt a chill as though he had been touched with ice.

  Vicky Fane lay back quietly, every limb at rest, in the white easy chair. As Rich shifted the light on her, they saw that her eyes were closed. She did not move except for the slow rise and fall of her breast, where the light made a hollow in the smooth flesh above the bodice of the violet-colored gown.

  The face, framed in brown bobbed hair, was serene and untroubled, the eyelids waxy, the mouth faintly wistful.

  Sharpless, Arthur, Hubert, Ann Browning were all still trying to shake themselves loose from the spell, as from clinging veils on a threshold. Ann spoke, instinctively, in a whisper.

  "Can she hear us?"

  "No," said Rich, in his normal voice. The change sounded startling. He mopped his moist forehead with a handkerchief.

  "Is she really-"

  "Oh, yes. She's gone."

  "Now, Mr. Fane. Will you take the revolver and the dagger, and place them on that round table I put in the middle of the room?"

  Arthur hesitated. For the first time he seemed uneasy. Removing the articles from the cardboard box, he examined them. He bent the rubber dagger back and forth. Suddenly he broke open the magazine of the revolver, drew out and scrutinized each dummy bullet before shutting up the magazine again.

  Then, as though sneering at himself, he walked across and put the revolver and dagger on the little table.

  He was returning to the group by the easy chair, his footfalls clacking loudly, when they suffered an interruption. The door to the hall opened. Daisy the maid, put her head in.

  "Please, sir—" she began.

  Arthur turned on her.

  "What the devil do you mean by coining in here?" he demanded. His normal voice sounded loud, hard, and harsh against the still-clinging quiet. "I told you—"

  Daisy shied back, but stuck it out. "I couldn't help it, sir! There's a man outside, asking for Mr. Hubert, and he won't go away. He says his name's Donald Mac-Donald. He says—"

  Arthur turned to Hubert.

  "Is that…" Arthur swallowed, but was compelled to complete the sentence. "Is that your bookmaker again?"

  "I regret, my dear boy," Hubert conceded, "that such appears to be the fact. Doubtless Mr. MacDonald will be forgiven his sins in a better world (including, let us hope, his avarice), but at the moment I fear he is vulgar enough to want money. A slight miscalculation on my part, despite information straight from the stable-"

  "Then go and pay him off. I won't have such people seen at my house, do you hear?"

  "Unfortunately, my boy, I have just remembered that I failed to go to the bank today. The sum is trifling: five pounds. If you would be kind enough to advance it to me until tomorrow morning?"

  Arthur breathed through his nostrils, heavily. After a pause he reached into his pocket, drew out a notecase, counted out fi
ve pound notes, and handed them to Hubert.

  "Until tomorrow, my boy," promised Hubert. "I shall be back in a moment. Pray continue the experiment."

  The door closed after him.

  The spell, which should have been broken, was not broken at all. It may be doubted whether anybody except Arthur had even noticed this byplay. Sharpless, Ann Browning, even Rich himself were gathered round Vicky, regarding her with emotions which need not be described. Arthur Fane spoke quietly.

  "And now what?"

  "Now," said Rich, mopping his forehead again before putting away the handkerchief, "comes the most difficult part. You have had your breather. Now sit down again, and don't move or speak again until I give you leave. It may be dangerous. Is that clear?"

  "But-"

  "Please do as I ask."

  Two chairs were drawn up on either side of Vicky, ahead and a little in front of her. Sharpless and Ann Browning sat at one side. Arthur sat at the other side, near the empty chair which had been Hubert's. Dr. Rich stood in the midst of this semi-circle, facing Vicky. He allowed the silence to lengthen again before he spoke.

  "Victoria Fane," he said softly. The same eerie voice froze them again. "You hear me. You hear me, but you will not yet awake." He paused.

  "Victoria Fane, I am your master. My will is your law. Now speak. Repeat after me: 'You are my master, and your will is my law.' "

  It was as though the voice had. to travel a long way. After perhaps three seconds, the dummy figure in the chair stirred. A shiver went through Vicky's body. Her head rolled a little to one side. Her lips moved.

  " 'You are—' " Everyone jumped when she spoke. It was a whisper; it was not even Vicky's voice; it was like a grotesque echo of the voice which had begun to cut away her soul. " 'You are my master,' " it whispered, " 'and your will is my law.' "

  " 'Whatever I am asked to do, that I will do without question. For this is for my own good.' "

  The figure in the chair struggled, and became limp.

  " 'Whatever I am asked to do,' " it replied colorlessly, " 'that I will do. For this is for my own good.' "

  " 'Without question!' "

  " 'Without-question.' "