The Counsellor

by J. J. Connington

  “I know,” interjected Sandra. “I noticed that in somebody—Albury, it was, wasn’t it?”

  “Albury, as you say,” confirmed The Counsellor, rather annoyed to have his thunder stolen in this way. “There was no mistaking him. So that was two of them spotted. But it ended there. I could make neither head nor tail of the rest.

  “A last arrival seemed to bring the company up to full strength. Everybody brisked up a bit, and I could see one or two of them glancing at their watches and turning their heads towards the table with the trays and glasses. Evidently the show was due to start; and from the charged glasses, I inferred that it was dope of some sort they were waiting for. Two kinds of dope, possibly, since they had glasses of two different tints. We’d have to go light on anything of that sort, Querrin and I, lest we got laid out.

  “Querrin, luckily, knew the Morse code. Picked it up, like me, from short wave wireless work. So I communicated with him. . . .”

  “How?” asked Standish. “Did you wag iddy-umpty with your heads? A bit apt to be noticed, that.”

  “This way.”

  The Counsellor rested his elbows on his chair-arms, clenched his left fist and brought his right hand over it, so that his right-hand fingers lay in the spaces between his left-hand knuckles.

  “Now, if you move your right finger up and down a fraction of an inch,” he pointed out, “it looks just as if you were a bit impatient and fidgety. And, properly done, it’s not visible to anyone except people sitting next you. That’s how. So I gave him the tip to go slow on the drinks and also to choose the colour of glass that I didn’t take myself, so that if there were two brands of dope, each of us would get his own and we could compare notes afterwards.

  “We’d just finished this by-play when the door opened and the man-servant came in. He walked over to the table, lifted one of the trays, and went round the nearest guests with it. I noticed that they took care to choose glasses of particular colours, so I was pretty certain the drinks weren’t all alike. When he came to us, I took a green glass and Querrin helped himself to a red one. I had a look round to see how one drank, but apparently you could sip it or gulp it as you fancied. So Querrin and I sipped once or twice, and then—taking care no one saw us—we got rid of the rest into the tubs beside us. Just as well we’d picked such convenient chairs. After a bit, the man-servant went to and fro, collecting the empty glasses. Then he left the room.

  “I didn’t feel anything amiss from the stuff I swallowed. Querrin told me afterwards that his throat went a bit dry and he felt thirsty. Also, I happened to notice, his pupils expanded a bit, so he’d evidently drawn some mydriatic stuff from the pool.”

  “Atropine? Belladonna? Something of that sort?” queried Standish.

  “Something of that sort,” The Counsellor concurred. “But to proceed. I’d taken particular note of one or two people who’d gone in for a red glass and a couple or so of the green glass lot. When the stuff began to act, the two effects were different. My job was easy enough. All I had to do was to sit still and stare at vacancy. But the crew that drank from the red glasses—most of the couples on the floor favoured that tipple, I’d noticed—had a livelier bit of work. The dancing got quicker and quicker, quite out of time with the music. Then some of the lot who’d been sitting around, got up and started pas seuls which looked like a can-can flavoured with a bit of invention. Even when they didn’t dance, some of them, didn’t seem able to sit still, but got up and wandered about the floor, paying no attention to their neighbours. The doctor seemed to be one of my gang, for he sat tight, looking cool and collected behind his mask and glancing about as if he were taking a professional interest in the show.

  “By and by, the effects of the dope took another turn. I noticed one chap sitting with clenched hands and elbows bent, making sawing motions as if he was playing pully-haul with the two ends of a rope running over a sheave. At the same time he was glaring in front of him intently. These antics beat me, for a bit; then I saw he thought he was driving a car. And with that tip to guide me, I spotted what was behind some other stunts that were going on. One fellow was practising putting—and with fair success, too, to judge by the number of times he took his imaginary ball out of the invisible hole. Another beggar was running up a gigantic break on a billiards-table that nobody could see but himself. And so on.

  “By this time the dancing had become a bit—well, I spare your blushes, Sandra—a bit unseemly. They were talking incoherently at the top of their voices and laughing in a mad kind of way. Then one couple broke away from the rest, and the man hurried the girl out of the room. Another pair followed them, and another. I could hear the shrieks of laughter growing fainter and then the noises of doors being slammed on the floor above. Soon most of the dancers, and some of the others, had gone. Querrin had got up and was wandering about the floor, imitating the others who’d taken his brand of dope. By and by, when I looked for him, he’d vanished. That didn’t worry me. I knew he’d gone easy on the stuff and we’d arranged to operate independently if necessary. I simply sat tight with the more sober section of the mob and waited to see what would happen.

  “When it came, it was marvellous. That stuff is all the goods and nothing less. And I’d taken a very mild snort. What the full-dose crew experienced must have been a foretaste of heaven. First of all, a sort of care-free gladness seemed to ooze into me coupled with a mental acuteness and physical fitness. . . . No, it’s no good trying to describe it to you. . . . I can’t find the words for it. Then illusions started and simply flowed over me so quick that I couldn’t keep track of them. Colours! That was what the dazzle-painting was for, I suppose, to give the initial kick-off. But one soon got far beyond that. I never saw such tints as the ones that drifted up before me: brilliant, they were, and with a delicacy and variety that’s beyond description. It was like living in a kaleidoscope. The ordinary world, as one remembered it, was grey and dead by comparison. I saw spheres and cubes changing size and flowing with iridescent colours, networks of gold and silver, weird arabesque lacework in pure light, landscapes with sunsets and dawns, with trees and plants like nothing on earth. And fabulous monsters, too, painted like the rest, and fairly glowing with splendour. . . . And it affected my ears, too. I heard tinklings away in the distance, organ notes of a new sort, and plucked harp-strings. . . .”

  The Counsellor paused, evidently trying to find fitting words. Then abruptly he gave it up.

  “Like being landed on another planet where our rules don’t apply and where everything’s pleasant beyond describing. Not a shadow of fear anywhere, even when a griffin swoops down and lands at your feet. One just watches the play of iridescent colours on its wings and scales. . . . It’s no wonder these people call themselves the Children of Light. The other dope, the stuff in the red glasses, may be exciting enough, to judge by its results; but I wouldn’t have missed my experience for a good deal, I can tell you. Marvellous, wonderful, fascinating—lump all the adjectives you like together and still they wouldn’t come up to it. Perfumes, too, finer than any rose-garden. And new. Like nothing that ever entered your nostrils in this life.”

  He paused for a moment as if brooding over the recollection. Then a thought seemed to strike him.

  “By the way, Wolf, did you manage your share of the show all right?”

  Standish nodded complacently.

  “Oh, yes. I waited in my car for an hour or two. Then I got over the wall and poked about a bit till I found your two friends, still trussed up and pretty sick. It was a chilly evening. Of course I had a mask on, as you advised. Before cutting them loose, I gave ’em a few words according to plan. Told ’em someone’d played a practical joke on ’em and damned lucky for them, too. There’d been a police raid on the Manor, and the Children of Light were ‘for it’ most distinctly. Some very rummy things had been found, very funny indeed. It would be a nasty scandal when it came out. They got the wind up badly, I could see. What were they to do? Well, my advice was to cut their sticks across
country and not go near the lodge. Police patrol was down there, ready to lift anyone who appeared. One of them had some wits left. “But our car will be up at the door. They’ll get its number and trace us by that!” So I said: “I don’t know how you’re fitted out for lying, but one can always have one’s car stolen by somebody and taken to a place one knows nothing about, can’t one?” That fetched ’em. They were all for a clean pair of heels. So I cut ’em loose and showed ’em the easiest place to get over the wall. And then I wandered down to my own car and came home according to directions. Nothing further to report.”

  “Right!” said The Counsellor approvingly. “Now I’ll cut the rest of the illusions and continue the tale. Querrin came back into the room, after a while, but naturally we took no notice of each other. All the green drink crew were still sitting or lying about, evidently in Paradise. The one I was most afraid of was Trulock; but I could see he’d got his dose and wasn’t likely to bother about mere earthly affairs for a while. I was still a bit under the influence, but it was wearing off. Querrin seemed to be a bit queer, but fairly in control of himself. Since neither of us had swallowed anything like a full dose, we were bound to come right quicker than the whole-hoggers. The only question was how long would it be before we were fit to drive a car. There was nothing to do but wait.

  “It was hours, as I found afterwards from my watch. But I didn’t regret it. I was so interested in seeing that world of illusion getting thinner and thinner, and the real world getting solider and solider about me again as the effects died down. I forgot to tell you that when Querrin came back, he seemed to me like an angel of light as he walked across the room: all flowing colours, with a many-tinted aura round about him; and all the time I knew he was just a man in a short coat and black tie. It was damnably confusing, in some ways.

  “It was getting on towards dawn before the crew about me gave any signs of waking up. What happened to the couples upstairs I’ve no idea. None of them showed up again before we left. We watched the symptoms of our neighbours and copied them when we decided it was time to wake up. One couldn’t see their faces, but when they got to their feet they looked damned tired. We let two or three of them leave the room before us. Luckily Trulock must have stood himself a stiffish dose. He was still under the influence when I got up to go. Albury I didn’t see.

  “We found our appropriated car where we’d parked it and drove off. There were no formalities at the gate. The lodge-keeper didn’t even show up. Then we came to my car, standing by the roadside and I shifted over into it, leaving Querrin to drive the one we’d snatched. We thought it best to drive it to the address on the Insurance Certificate that we found in the door-pocket. No use leaving the car by the road-side and raising trouble. We left it a few doors away from its proper home, Up West somewhere. Then I took Querrin aboard and buzzed off to my abode.

  “It wasn’t breakfast time, but we didn’t feel eager for breakfast anyhow. What I wanted was Querrin’s tale. I’d difficulty in getting it out of him. His memory was muzzy, more than a bit, and I could only get fragments of his doings. You’ll see the point of that in a minute.

  “Remember, none of us has seen Helen Treverton. So we might have passed her in the street, if she had her face turned away, since that snapshot’s all we know of her looks. But Querrin knew her well enough. Now here’s what he told me. He took a few sips of the stuff in the red glasses, and after a short time he began to feel rummy. Some impulse to get up and move about the room came over him. He couldn’t sit still. So he got up and began to wander round. Like me, he’d given the company the once-over when he came into the place and he’d seen no one he recognised, not even Trulock or Albury. Which shows he’s not a very keen observer; note that. Now he began to take a bit more interest. And suddenly, amongst the girls dancing, he noticed one that struck him. He couldn’t see her face for the mask, of course; but she had the same build and figure as Helen Treverton; and the more he stared at her, the surer he grew that it was Helen. She was at the far end of the room, near the door, when he noticed her; and before he could go up to her, she and her partner cleared out. He pushed his way to the door and followed them; but by that time they must have run upstairs, for he heard a door slam on the floor above. He bolted upstairs after them, three at a time, and found himself in a long corridor with doors on each side, some open, some shut. And each door had a Yale lock on it, which isn’t so very usual. He tried the first closed door he came to, but the Yale was on. Inside he heard a girl laughing fit to split. But there was a good deal of laughing going on, in other rooms as well, and he didn’t see what to do next. So he sat down on the floor—evidently he was quite bemused by then—and he got so interested in a lot of fish that swam past him in shoals that he clean forgot everything else. So he sat there, so he says, trying to count the fish as they went by, and losing count, and getting more and more depressed because it was most important to get the total right. . . . And that’s all he seems to remember for quite a while. By and by, he sobered up a bit and, having forgotten all about the Treverton girl at the moment, he wandered downstairs again and came back into the reception room. Nobody bothered about him. Grendon Manor, it seems, has Liberty Hall for its other name on these nights. But that’s all I could get out of him, try as I would. He remembered his fish illusion better than anything else, so far as I could see. Real events had got washed out of his memory except in scraps.”

  “Was it Helen Treverton, do you think?” interjected Sandra.

  “I don’t know, but I can find out,” retorted The Counsellor with a headachy smile. “But I’ve a strong suspicion it wasn’t. My point is that he didn’t recognise her till he was well under the drug and fit to see fish and all the rest of it. That girl’s picture’s in his mind all the time, since he’s in love with her. Once the drug sapped his normal control, he might see her in the first girl that came along. No, I don’t believe Helen Treverton was in that show last night. But now that my brain’s growing a shade clearer, one or two things do strike me.”

  “Well, what are they? Quick!” said Sandra, whose interest was almost entirely concentrated on Helen Treverton’s fate.

  “First,” said The Counsellor, laboriously ticking off his points on his fingers, “you remember I looked up Trulock in the Medical Directory and found he’d spent some years in South America before he settled down at Fairlawns? Note that, then. Second, some girl personated Helen Treverton on that trip to Stranraer. She wouldn’t need to be her double, since she hadn’t to pass the test of meeting anyone who actually knew Helen Treverton. But she must have been near enough in looks so that the people we interviewed would give us a description of her which would fit the real girl. That’s sound, isn’t it? Third, Querrin, when sober, didn’t identify his fiancée in any of the girls who were there last night. But when he got a bit doped, he saw someone whom he mistook for Helen Treverton. Chances are, it’s the same girl, and she does look a bit like Helen Treverton. Fourth, when I was at Fairlawns, I saw a girl who reminded me of somebody, but I couldn’t think who it was she resembled. Now I’ve got the key, I see it. She was a bit like Helen Treverton, and her attitude when she stooped down to one of the kids was much the same as Helen Treverton’s attitude in that snapshot I’d seen showing her bending over her dog and looking up at the camera. It’s no cert., but I’d bet fair odds that Trulock’s nannie was the girl who drove EZ 1113 up to Gretna Green. Fifth—making a straight flush—that nannie was reported to be on holiday at the time Helen Treverton vanished. So Pagnell told me. So she was off the local map just at the time that impersonation occurred. Sixth, Trulock was the philanthropist who financed that orphan treat and stood the bus-driver a seat at the circus. And that made it possible to get the bus away, as you remember. Seventh, it was the Trulocks who asked Helen Treverton over that afternoon to their tennis party, which ensured that she and her car would be on the road just where and when they were wanted. That’s enough to go on with, I think. Things are narrowing down a bit. In fact, they’r
e coming to a point.”

  Standish had apparently kept The Counsellor’s items in his memory.

  “Trulock was in South America,” he commented. “And you and Querrin got doped with some rummy drugs last night. South America teems with them; and I think I can put a name to the one you drew in the gamble: peyotl. I read about it, once, somewhere.”

  “Peyotl it was,” confirmed The Counsellor. “I rang up a specialist in drugs after breakfast this morning, and he sent me round a book about them. It comes from a cactus, anhalonium lewinii. It’s got as many names as a Royalty or a criminal. Mescal’s one of them.”

  “What was the other drug, the one Mr. Querrin took?” asked Sandra.

  “Ah! That’s a rank bad ’un,” said The Counsellor gravely, picking up a book which lay on his desk. “I’ll read you a bit about it.”

  He opened the volume at a mark and began to read:

  “‘If only a small quantity of the plant is given to a person, his mind is depraved and deluded to such a degree that anything can be done in his presence without fear of his remembering it on the following day. . . . You can do what you like with him, he notices nothing, understands nothing, and knows nothing about it on the next day. . . . By means of this drug one can do as one pleases with women and obtain anything from them. That is why I believe there is no more noxious plant in the world, and none whereby such evil things can be accomplished in a natural manner.’ That’s an indictment of it, isn’t it? Ugh! Makes one feel sickish to think about it.”

  He put the book down on his desk again.

  “So that’s why Querrin was a bit mixed in his souvenirs this morning,” said Standish. “And he got only a fraction of a full dose. You seem to have identified it all right. And it’s pretty plain that Trulock is running a dope club of sorts at the Manor. Probably he brought a supply of the peyotl stuff with him from South America when he came back. I begin to see things clearer. You say there were about forty people present at last night’s binge; and they meet once a week. Ten quid would be a cheap price to some people for a jag of that sort. Call it ten quid per skull per meeting. It comes to £20,000 a year; and Trulock must be doing pretty well out of it. Naturally, in a stunt of that sort, the less the members know about each other, the better. Hence the masks, I suppose. Just in case of blackmail amongst themselves, eh?”