Second Sight

by Neil M. Gunn

  “But that was neither a twig nor an errand boy, and you know it,” she challenged him.

  “Very well.” He nodded. “Let’s investigate. Do you mind,” he said to Lady Marway, “if I ring?” He rang.

  “But what actually happened?” Marjory asked, glancing from one to another.

  “Oh, just that someone knocked,” Geoffrey explained to her. “And we assumed it was at that door—simply because we were expecting it there. Isn’t that so, Sir John?”

  “Yes,” said Sir John, with reserve. He watched the door open and Mairi appear. “Is Maclean about, Mairi?”

  “No, sir. We haven’t seen him yet to-night.”

  “Did anyone call just now at the kitchen door?”

  “No, sir.”

  “We thought we heard someone knocking.”

  “No, sir. We had no one.” She was obviously quite sincere.

  “Is Alick about?” Geoffrey asked her suddenly.

  “No, sir.”

  They watched her face darken.

  “Thanks, Mairi,” said Sir John.

  As the door closed, Lady Marway spoke deliberately. “I really do think it is time I put my foot down. This is getting a bit too absurd. I feel that the peace of the house is deteriorating. And all over silly trifles like coffee cups and window curtains and so on. I do not mean to blame you, Harry, but there is at least one sense in which I think Geoffrey is right. Out of a vague uneasiness, we are working up a situation. Well, I think it is time we stopped it. If someone knocked at a door, then someone knocked. And I am now going to the kitchen to make sure there was no one knocking there—with whatever intention.”

  Her definite manner had a distinct effect on everyone except Joyce, who said, as if inspired: “What if it was the front door?”

  “Jove, yes!” said George. “Let’s get a torch and do some spoor hunting outside. Shall we?”

  “Right!” said Marjory; and with Joyce and George she followed Lady Marway from the room.

  “That’s an idea,” said Sir John thoughtfully. “If wet feet came in from outside they should have left a mark.”

  “Now we’re getting down to it,” observed Geoffrey confidently, as he followed Sir John into the gun-room.

  Helen came close to Harry. “What do you make of it, Harry?”

  “I don’t know. But I have the feeling that it’s a deliberate trick. I have the awful feeling that Geoffrey is playing a trick, the fool!”

  “That’s good enough anyway,” came Geoffrey’s voice. “Let’s ask Harry: he’s an authority on ghosts.”

  “I wonder if ghosts do leave wet footprints,” said Sir John, smiling, as he came in.

  “Footprints?” echoed Helen.

  “Quite clearly,” said Sir John. “Wet footprints from the outer door to the inner.”

  “As the Scotch say,” observed Geoffrey to Harry, “whaur’s yer ghost noo?”

  “Are the Scotch supposed to say that?” inquired Harry.

  “Well, anyhow, someone materially solid entered—knocked—and had time to get away.”

  Harry, still holding his eye, remarked: “So I supposed.”

  “Oh you did? Good. Merely to clear away all dubiety, then, will you tell us if, in your experience, ghosts leave wet footprints?”

  “It’s a matter I have still to investigate,” Harry replied. “As for wet footprints in there, I seem to remember”—to Sir John—“that you not only opened the outside door but went out on to the doorstep, which presumably would have been wet. You’re sure the wet footprints are not your own?”

  Involuntarily Sir John felt the sole of his right shoe. “I remember—yes—but——” He went back into the gunroom, followed by Helen.

  “Getting a kick out of it?” Harry challenged Geoffrey.

  “Kick?”

  “Don’t be a blasted fool. I warn you—stop!”

  “I seem to have got you properly going anyhow!” He laughed. “Another few days and you’d have been more neurotic than your stalker. Though I still doubt if he’s anything more than cunning.”

  “Trying to get your own back, flattering yourself you’re doing it in the interests of science and not to soothe your own hurt vanity. You think I don’t see through you?”

  “Steady!” said Geoffrey, his whole expression narrowing vindictively.

  “I’m sorry, Geoffrey.” Harry pulled himself together. “I really am concerned——”

  But Geoffrey interrupted him coldly: “I am only concerned about the difference between what is evidence and what is not, between reality and neurotic humbug. And if I could expose it by a child’s trick, I would. Indeed a child’s trick would be the most perfect medium.”

  “Evidence,” said Harry with a shrug. “You affect to be moved only by evidence. You think you can put that over on me?”

  “No,” said Geoffrey. “Even I could hardly hope to do that, for by your own admission you prefer to believe without investigation of any sort.”

  “At least I am honest,” replied Harry. “You know quite well that nine-tenths of what we implicitly believe no one of us has ever investigated. How many thousands of specialists are concentrating on different branches of knowledge? And their results we accept—because we must—without investigation.”

  “The mass may accept. Quite. But——”

  “No, all of us. You, for example. What are the two most important things in the world to you? Your body and your mind. Well, have you ever done anatomy? Have you ever done mental research? Have you?”

  “Where’s the point?”

  “You’re hedging. You see the point. You have never done anatomy—yet you accept what the anatomist tells you about your blood stream and your glands and your liver and all the rest of it. I have never done astronomy—yet I accept the astronomer’s tale about the dog star Sirius being so many billions of miles away. Well, this is my point. The folk here accepted the man with second sight as you accept the anatomist and I the astronomer—without investigation. They were satisfied with their results or evidence, as we are with ours.”

  Marjory, Helen, Joyce, George, and Sir John came in from the gun-room while Harry was talking. Their hunt for a revealing spoor on the wet gravelled surface having proved fruitless, their attention was now drawn by the intensity in the argument proceeding between the two men. Geoffrey, who was facing them, appeared actually not to see them and, immediately Harry had finished, replied:

  “But, good God, our anatomists and astronomers have left evidence which we can check if we want to. Your secondsight man left none. I can show you at this moment mathematically how to arrive at the distance to Sirius. Can you show me how a ghost walks or knocks on a door?”

  Lady Marway came in from the hall and paused a moment.

  “No,” Harry answered. “We have not yet got the appropriate technique. Meantime you are merely applying logic to something to which it cannot be applied. As if you took a yard-stick to measure colour or music.”

  “But you can measure colour or music.”

  “Yes, but not with a yard-stick. You measure it in what you call waves. Until you imagined these waves for yourselves, you couldn’t measure it. What these waves are, you don’t know. They are merely convenient for your purpose. All I am suggesting is that here in second sight is a manifestation of a certain power, for which you have not yet discovered the appropriate waves. That’s all.”

  “That’s absolutely hypothetical. One can postulate anything.”

  “But why was this amazing power not developed?” asked Sir John quietly.

  Harry looked at him for a moment in silence. “Would you like to have the gift of foreseeing the future?”

  “Well—I don’t know. Perhaps not. But we should be equal to our fate.”

  “As philosophers and mystics, yes. But as we are—could we face up to a known fate? Even one mere suspicion that something may happen—and we are disturbed and uncomfortable right to our roots. Where would our fun go, our creative effort? We should be haunted. We s
hould lose that feeling that life has a long time to go—an indefinite time.”

  “I’m not interested in philosophy,” said Geoffrey. “Let’s go back to facts——”

  “Oi!” It was a half-scream from Joyce, who with arms extended and head thrown back, looked like a maenad. “Will it never stop? I think we’re all going mad!”

  For a moment no one responded. Joyce gripped her hair. Then laughter broke out.

  “Well, what would you like to do, Joyce?” asked Sir John, brightly.

  “I’d like to play a game. Anything.”

  “Good idea. What sort of game?”

  “Something that would clear the atmosphere. And I know a thriller. George is frightfully good at it. Talk about fun and excitement! We must make sure first”—she looked around dramatically—“that there’s nothing breakable about, because in the dark you simply have to dash. Put away those glasses, and the decanter, George.”

  George acted the butler. “Very good, madam.”

  “Now”, said Joyce, “first we put the light out. No, first, someone goes outside. I suggest George—he’s such a snappy detective. Then we put out the light. Then one of us murders someone in the room.”

  There was a burst of laughter.

  “You have no idea how thrilling it is,” Joyce explained earnestly. “The murdered body——”

  The laughter increased.

  Joyce was piqued. “Of course I don’t mean it’s a real murder.”

  The laughter grew helpless to the point of hysteria. Geoffrey staggered, stopping a bellow with his handkerchief. The stagger got beyond him. It brought him to his knees, both hands pressing violently into the weak spot in his side. Their laughter fading out, they watched him with wild, anxious expressions.

  “Geoffrey!” said Marjory, approaching him tentatively.

  “Go ’way!” muttered Geoffrey. Slowly he doubled over the weak spot and fell heavily on the floor, his whole body writhing as if it had been fatally struck, then stretching out full length in a final rigor.

  “Geoffrey!” called Marjory sharply and got down on her knees.

  But Lady Marway was already beside him. “He’s fainted.”

  Sir John immediately unfastened Geoffrey’s collar. “Helen, some cold water. Keep back, please.” He warded off Marjory with an arm. “Just a faint. It’s all right. Some brandy.”

  The women went to the cabinet. Harry, watching Sir John who was feeling for the heart, asked quietly, “All right?”

  “Looks like a fit of some sort”, Sir John murmured. “I don’t like it.”

  The cold water had no effect.

  “The brandy,” said Lady Marway.

  But the jaws were rigidly clenched. The face looked like death. Breathing had to all appearances completely ceased. Harry saw that this was no pretence on Geoffrey’s part, for no man could act such ghastly rigidity. Certainly it was real. Was this, then, the fulfilment?…

  “We can’t”, said Sir John to his wife, “try to force it between his teeth. It might choke him. We’ve got to get him to bed.”

  She put the brandy decanter and glass on the floor behind her and felt Geoffrey’s forehead. “He’s quite cold.”

  “Yes. Hot bottles at once. And the doctor,” said Sir John.

  Lady Marway lifted one of Geoffrey’s eyelids, then got up without a word and followed Helen who had already gone to see about the bottles. Marjory took a step back from Geoffrey’s body, her bottom lip between her teeth, in a state of tense emotion. At that moment there came three knocks at the gun-room door, exactly as before. Marjory let out a thin scream. Harry instantly leapt for the door and pulled it open—and was confronted by Maclean.

  Harry could not speak. Maclean said, “Good evening, sir. Sir John asked me——”

  Sir John had got up. “Uh, Maclean——” He looked into the gun-room and saw Alick and Angus. “Ah, you’re all there. Mr. Smith has had a bad turn. We must carry him upstairs to bed. Would two of you——”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, sir,” said Maclean, beckoning to his men behind, as he entered the room and went towards Geoffrey. Angus followed quickly.

  “Just a faint,” said Sir John. “But we must get him to bed at once. Well, now. Perhaps you, Maclean, and Angus will take his feet. George, if you give me a hand——”

  “No!” said Harry involuntarily. “I’ll carry with George.”

  “We’ll manage. It’s all right.”

  “Please,” said Harry, firmly displacing Sir John.

  “Carefully, then. Now.”

  Joyce dashed for the door. When the four men carrying Geoffrey and directed by Sir John had passed out and were about to negotiate the stairs, Joyce, looking back into the sitting-room, saw Alick staring straight across at her. Her eyes widened. He wasn’t staring at her: he was staring through her, beyond her. Her skin ran cold. “Oh God!” she cried harshly, and departed, leaving the door open. Marjory followed her.

  Alick’s eyes slowly concentrated in an ironic expression, then began to rove about the room. They saw the brandy bottle and the glass on the floor where Lady Marway had left them. It was a silly place to leave a brandy bottle and a glass. He went and picked them up and placed them on the cabinet, then turned his head slowly to Mairi in the doorway.

  “Alick!” she said in an appalled whisper.

  He regarded her steadily, the irony burning in his eyes. Her glance leapt from his face to the brandy bottle and back to his face.

  “You’re wrong this time,” he said, “What are you staring at? Never seen me before?”

  “Oh, Alick!”

  “Well, I’m not to blame.” His tone went savage, but not loud. “Dammit, cannot they manage their own little affairs? What have I got to do with them? It’s nothing to me.”

  “Hsh!”

  “Hsh! be damned. What’s the good of talking like that to me? I’m not fate or God. I can’t stop them playing their little tricks. If they think they’re cuter than fate or God, why not? Good luck to them. It’s nothing to do with me. I am merely the damned fool who gave myself away.”

  “Alick!” Horror crept into her desperate appeal.

  His irony grew harsher. “You don’t like me mentioning God?”

  She had come within three paces of him. Her eyes had never left him; did not even leave him when she choked back a sob.

  His smile softened and he said gently, “Mairi!”

  She turned round and went out hurriedly.

  Maclean and Angus came in and Alick asked them in a normal concerned voice, “How is he?”

  “Very bad,” said Maclean, quietly and decently.

  “So long as he is alive,” Alick murmured.

  “Sir John was going to try for his breath on a glass,” said Maclean, not looking at Alick.

  “Is there anything else we can do?” Angus asked.

  “I was just wondering,” replied Maclean. “But I don’t think so in the meantime. They won’t want to come down and be finding us in this room whatever.”

  They heard George’s voice: “I could slip along for the doctor in record time,” and Sir John’s reply: “No. Wait first until I ’phone. If he’s not at home, you could pick him up somewhere.”

  “Let us go,” said Maclean and the three went out.

  Joyce, after a look around, came into the room and George followed her backwards, listening to Sir John. “Hallo? Hallo? Is that the doctor?… Oh, good! Could you come at once to Corbreac Lodge? One of my guests has had a fit or seizure of some kind. His body is very rigid, his heart very faint.… No, not epileptic, I think.… No.… I see. You can’t say.… Well, is there anything we can do here, except keep him.…”

  “Thank God he’s at home anyway,” said George to Joyce. “Pretty sudden, wasn’t it?”

  “Oh, awful. Must be his heart. Hsh!” She wanted to listen to the telephone. She was striving to appear calm.

  “When we lifted him his body was rigid as a board,” said George in low tones. “I didn’t like it, I mu
st say. Poor old Geoff.”

  “Must have been coming on this afternoon,” said Joyce.

  “Yes. Don’t you think I should run along in the Bentley and pick the doctor up. He’ll just crawl.”

  “No, you won’t!” said Joyce.

  “But—it’s rotten when you can do nothing. I hate standing around.”

  “Do you think I do? And that fellow—with his eyes—oh God!” said Joyce.

  “Steady, old thing!” said George. “Here comes Helen. How is he now?”

  Helen was quiet and abstracted like one moving in a dream. “Much the same,” she said.

  Sir John and Harry came in. Sir John explained that nothing more could be done except wait for the doctor. He went to the bookcase and ran his eyes over the backs of the books.

  George turned to Harry. “I was half-wondering whether I shouldn’t shove along and meet the doctor, because——”

  “Don’t you think that’s absurd?” interrupted Joyce, her effort at suppressing her voice merely pitching it high.

  “I do,” said Harry. “Ever seen a Highland doctor driving on his own roads?”

  “No,” said George.