The Silent Bullet Part 13

Kennedy nodded. "Have you the pill-box and the prescription?"

"I have," replied Dr. Hanson, placing them on the table.

Kennedy scrutinised them sharply. "I shall need these," he said. "Of course you understand I will take very good care of them. Is there anything else of importance?"

"Really, I don't know," said the physician dubiously. "It's rather out of my province, but perhaps you would think it important. It's mighty uncanny anyhow. Henry Vandam, as you doubtless know, was much more deeply interested in the work of this medium than was his wife. Perhaps Mrs. Vandam was a bit jealous--I don't know. But she, too, had an interest in spiritualism, though he was much more deeply influenced by Mrs. Popper than she.

"Here's the strange part of it. The old man believes so thoroughly in rappings and materialisations that he constantly keeps a notebook in his pocket in which he records all the materialisations he thinks he sees and the rappings he hears, along with the time and place. Now it so happened that on the night Mrs. Vandam was taken ill, he had retired--I believe in another part of the house, where he has a regular seance-room. According to his story, he was awakened from a profound sleep by a series of rappings. As was his custom, he noted the time at which they occurred. Something made him uneasy, and he said to his 'control'--at least this is his story:

"'John, is it about Mary?'

"Three raps answered 'yes,' the usual code.

"'What is the matter? Is she ill?'

"The three answering raps were so vigorous that he sprang out of bed and called for his wife's maid. The maid replied that Mrs. Vandam had not gone to bed yet, but that there was a light in the library and she would go to her mistress immediately. The next moment the house was awakened by the screams of the maid calling for help, that Mrs. Vandam was dying.

"That was three nights ago. On each of the two succeeding nights Henry Vandam says he has been awakened at precisely the same hour by a rapping, and on each night his 'control' has given him a message from his dead wife. As a man of science, I attribute the whole thing to an overwrought imagination. The original rappings may have been a mere coincidence with the fact of the condition of Mrs. Vandam. However, I give this to you for what it is worth."

Craig said nothing, but, as was his habit, shaded his eyes with the tips of his fingers, resting his elbows on the arms of his chair: "I suppose," he said, "you can give me the necessary authority to enter the Vandam house and look at the scene of these happenings?"

"Certainly," a.s.sented the physician, "but you will find it a queer place. There are spirit paintings and spirit photographs in every room, and Vandam's own part of the house--well, it's creepy, that's all I can say."

"And also I suppose you have performed an autopsy on the body and will allow me to drop into your laboratory to-morrow morning and satisfy myself on this morphine point?"

"Certainly," replied the coroner's physician, "at any time you say."

"At ten sharp, then, to-morrow I shall be there," said Craig. "It is now eight-thirty. Do you think I can see Vandam to-night? What time do these rappings occur?"

"Why, yes, you surely will be able to see him to-night. He hasn't stirred from the house since his wife died. He told me he momentarily expected messages from her direct when she had got strong enough in her new world. I believe they had some kind of a compact to that effect. The rappings come at twelve-thirty."

"Ah, then I shall have plenty of time to run over to my laboratory before seeing Mr. Vandam and get some apparatus I have in mind. No, Doctor, you needn't bother to go with me. Just give me a card of introduction. I'll see you to-morrow at ten. Good-night--oh, by the way, don't give out any of the facts you have told me."

"Jameson," said Craig, when we were walking rapidly over toward the university, "this promises to be an uncommonly difficult case."

"As I view it now," I said, "I have suspicions of everybody concerned in it. Even the view of the Star, that it is a case of suicide due to overwrought nerves, may explain it."

"It might even be a natural death," Craig added. "And that would make it a greater mystery than ever--a case for psychical research. One thing that I am going to do to-night will tell me much, however."

At the laboratory he unlocked a gla.s.s case and took out a little instrument which looked like two horizontal pendulums suspended by fine wires. There was a large magnet near each pendulum, and the end of each pendulum bore a needle which touched a circular drum driven by clock-work. Craig fussed with and adjusted the apparatus, while I said nothing, for I had long ago learned that in applying a new apparatus to doing old things Craig was as dumb as an oyster, until his work was crowned with success.

We had no trouble in getting in to see Mr. Vandam in his seance-room.

His face was familiar to me, for I had seen him in public a number of times, but it looked strangely altered. He was nervous, and showed his age very perceptibly.

It was as the coroner's physician had said. The house was littered with reminders of the cult, books, papers, curious daubs of paintings handsomely framed, and photographs; hazy overexposures, I should have called them, but Mr. Vandam took great pride in them, and Kennedy quite won him over by his admiration for them.

They talked about the rappings, and the old man explained where and when they occurred. They proceeded from a little cabinet or closet at one end of the room. It was evident that he was a thorough believer in them and in the messages they conveyed.

Craig carefully noted everything about the room and then fell to admiring the spirit photographs, if such they might be called.

"The best of all I do not display, they are too precious," said the old man. "Would you like to see them?"

Craig a.s.sented eagerly, and Vandam left us for a moment to get them. In an instant Craig had entered the cabinet, and in a dark corner on the floor he deposited the mechanism he had brought from the laboratory.

Then he resumed his seat, shutting the box in which he had brought the mechanism, so that it would not appear that he had left anything about the room.

Artfully he led the conversation along lines that interested the old man until he seemed to forget the hour. Not so, Craig. He knew it was nearing half-past twelve. The more they talked the more uncanny did this house and room of spirits seem to me. In fact, I was rapidly reaching the point where I could have sworn that once or twice something incorporeal brushed by me. I know now that it was purely imagination, but it shows what tricks the imagination can play on us.

Rap! rap! rap! rap! rap!

Five times came a curiously hollow noise from the cabinet. If it had been possible I should certainly have fled, it was so sudden and unexpected. The hall clock downstairs struck the half-hour in those chimes written by Handel for St. Paul's.

Craig leaned over to me and whispered hoa.r.s.ely, "Keep perfectly still--don't move a hand or foot."

The old man seemed utterly to have forgotten us. "Is that you, John?" he asked expectantly.

Rap! rap! rap! came the reply.

"Is Mary strong enough to speak to me to-night?"

Rap! rap!

"Is she happy?"

Rap! rap!

"What makes her unhappy? What does she want? Will you spell it out?"

Rap! rap! rap!

Then, after a pause, the rapping started slowly, and distinctly to spell out words. It was so weird and uncanny that I scarcely breathed. Letter after letter the message came, nineteen raps for "s," eight for "h,"

five for "e," according to the place in the alphabet, numerically, of the required letter. At last it was complete.

"She thinks you are not well. She asks you to have that prescription filled again."

"Tell her I will do it to-morrow morning. Is there anything else?"

Rap! rap! came back faintly:

"John, John, don't go yet," pleaded the old man earnestly. It was easy to see how thoroughly he believed in "John," as perhaps well he might after the warning of his wife's death three nights before. "Won't you answer one other question?"

Fainter, almost imperceptibly, came a rap! rap!

For several minutes the old man sat absorbed in thought, trance-like.

Then, gradually, he seemed to realise that we were in the room with him. With difficulty he took up the thread of the conversation where the rappings had broken it.

"We were talking about the photographs," he said slowly. "I hope soon to get one of my wife as she is now that she is transfigured. John has promised me one soon."

He was gathering up his treasures preparatory to putting them back in their places of safekeeping. The moment he was out of the room Craig darted into the cabinet and replaced his mechanism in the box. Then he began softly to tap the walls. At last he found the side that gave a noise similar to that which we had heard, and he seemed pleased to have found it, for he hastily sketched on an old envelope a plan of that part of the house, noting on it the location of the side of the cabinet.