The Darrow Enigma
M >>
Melvin L. Severy >> The Darrow Enigma
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 The originally strange paragraphing has been retained.
The Darrow Enigma
by Melvin L. Severy
CONTENTS
THE EPISODE OF THE DARKENED ROOM
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
THE EPISODE OF THE SEALED DOCUMENT
CHAPTER I
THE EPISODE OF RAMA RAGOBAH
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
THE EPISODE OF THE PARALLEL READERS
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
THE EPISODE OF THE TALETALE THUMB
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
THE EPISODE OF THE DARKENED ROOM
CHAPTER I
What shall we say when Dream-Pictures leave their frames
of night and push us from the waking world?
As the part I played in the events I am about to narrate was rather
that of a passive observer than of an active participant, I need say
little of myself. I am a graduate of a Western university and, by
profession, a physician. My practice is now extensive, owing to my
blundering into fame in a somewhat singular manner, but a year ago
I had, I assure you, little enough to do. Inasmuch as my practice
is now secure, I feel perfectly free to confess that the cure I
effected in the now celebrated case of Mrs. P-- was altogether the
result of chance, and not, as I was then only too glad to have
people believe, due to an almost supernatural power of diagnosis.
Mrs. P-- was not more surprised at the happy result than was I; the
only difference being that she showed her astonishment, while I
endeavoured to conceal mine, and affected to look upon the whole
thing as a matter of course.
My fame spread; the case got into the medical journals, where my
skill was much lauded, and my practice became enormous. There is
but one thing further I need mention regarding myself: that is,
that I am possessed of a memory which my friends are pleased to
consider phenomenal. I can repeat a lecture, sermon, or
conversation almost word for word after once hearing it, provided
always, that the subject commands my interest. My humble abilities
in this direction have never ceased to be a source of wonderment to
my acquaintance, though I confess, for my own part, when I compare
them with those of Blind Tom, or of the man who, after a single
reading, could correctly repeat the London Times, advertisements
and all, they seem modest indeed.
It was about the time when, owing to the blessed Mrs. P--, my
creditors were beginning to receive some attention, that I first met
George Maitland. He had need, he said, of my professional services;
he felt much under the weather; could I give him something which
would brace him up a bit; he had some important chemical work on
hand which he could not afford to put by; in fact, he didn't mind
saying that he was at work upon a table of atomical pitches to match
Dalton's atomic weights; if he succeeded in what he had undertaken
he would have solved the secret of the love and hatred of atoms,
and unions hitherto unknown could easily be effected.
I do not know how long he would have continued had not my interest
in the subject caused me to interrupt him. I was something of an
experimenter myself, and here was a man who could help me.
It was a dream of mine that the great majority of ailments could be
cured by analysing a patient's blood, and then injecting into his
veins such chemicals as were found wanting, or were necessary to
counteract the influence of any deleterious matter present. There
were, of course, difficulties in the way, but had they not already
at Cornell University done much the same for vegetable life? And
did not those plants which had been set in sea sand out of which
every particle of nutriment had been roasted, and which were then
artificially fed with a solution of the chemicals of which they were
known to be composed, grow twice as rank as those which had been set
in the soil ordinarily supposed to be best adapted to them? What
was the difference between a human cell and a plant cell? Yes, since
my patient was a chemist, I would cultivate his acquaintance.
He proceeded to tell me how he felt, but I could make nothing of it,
so I forthwith did the regulation thing; what should we doctors do
without it! I looked at his tongue, pulled down his eyelid, and
pronounced him bilious. Yes, there were the little brown spots under
his skin--freckles, perhaps--and probably he had an occasional
ringing in his ears. He was willing to admit that he was dizzy on
suddenly rising from a stooping posture, and that eggs, milk, and
coffee were poison to him; and he afterward told me he should have
said the same of any other three articles I might have mentioned, for
he looked so hale and vigorous, and felt so disgracefully well, that
he was ashamed of himself. We have had many a laugh over it since.
The fact of the matter is the only affliction from which he was
suffering was an inordinate desire to make my acquaintance. Not for
my own sake--oh, dear, no!--but because I was John Darrow's family
physician, and would be reasonably sure to know Gwen Darrow, that
gentleman's daughter. He had first met her, he told me after we had
become intimate, at an exhibition of paintings by William T. Richards,
--but, as you will soon be wondering if it were, on his part, a case
of love at first sight, I had best relate the incident to you in his
own words as he told it to me. This will relieve me of passing any
judgment upon the matter, for you will then know as much about it as
I, and, doubtless, be quite as capable of answering the question, for
candour compels me to own that my knowledge of the human heart is
entirely professional. Think of searching for Cupid's darts with a
stethoscope!
"I was standing," Maitland said, "before a masterpiece of sea and
rock, such as only Richards can paint. It was a view of Land's End,
Cornwall, and in the artist's very best vein. My admiration made
me totally unmindful of my surroundings, so much so, indeed, that,
although the gallery was crowded, I caught myself expressing my
delight in a perfectly audible undertone. My enthusiasm, since it
was addressed to no one, soon began to attract attention, and people
stopped looking at the pictures to look at me. I was conscious of
this in a vague, far-off way, much as one is conscious of a
conversation which seems to have followed him across the borderland
of sleep, and I even thought that I ought to be embarrassed. How
long I remained thus transported I do not know. The first thing I
remember is hearing someone close beside me take a quick, deep
breath, one of those full inhalations natural to all sensitive
natures when they come suddenly upon something sublime. I turned
and looked. I have said I was transported by that canvas of sea
and rocks, and have, therefore, no word left to describe the emotion
with which I gazed upon the exquisite, living, palpitating picture
beside me. A composite photograph of all the Madonnas ever painted,
from the Sistine to Bodenhausen's, could not have been more lovely,
more ineffably womanly than that young girl, radiant with the divine
glow of artistic delight--at least, that is my opinion, which, by
the bye, I should, perhaps, have stated a little more gingerly,
inasmuch as you are yourself acquainted with the young lady. Now,
don't look incredulous [noticing my surprise]. Black hair--not
brown, black; clear pink and white complexion; large, deep violet
eyes with a remarkable poise to them."--Here I continued the
description for him: "Slight of figure; a full, honest waist,
without a suggestion of that execrable death-trap, Dame Fashion's
hideous cuirass; a little above middle height; deliberate, and
therefore graceful, in all her movements; carries herself in a way
to impress one with the idea that she is innocent, without that
time-honoured concomitant, ignorance; half girl, half woman; shy,
yet strong; and in a word, very beautiful--that's Gwen Darrow."
I paused here, and Maitland went on somewhat dubiously: "Yes, it's
not hard to locate such a woman. She makes her presence as clearly
felt among a million of her sex as does a grain of fuchsine in a
hogshead of water. If, with a few ounces of this, Tyndall could
colour Lake Geneva, so with Gwen Darrow one might, such is the power
of the ideal, change the ethical status of a continent."
He then told me how he had made a study of Miss Darrow's movements,
and had met her many times since; in fact, so often that he fancied,
from something in her manner, that she had begun to wonder if his
frequent appearance were not something more than a coincidence. The
fear that she might think him dogging her footsteps worried him, and
he began as sedulously to avoid the places he knew she frequented,
as he previously had sought them. This, he confessed, made him
utterly miserable. He had, to be sure, never spoken to her, but it
was everything to be able to see her. When he could endure it no
longer he had come to me under pretence of feeling ill, that he
might, when he had made my acquaintance, get me to introduce him to
the Darrows.
You will understand, of course, that I did not learn all this at our
first interview. Maitland did not take me into his confidence until
we had had a conference at his laboratory devoted entirely to
scientific speculations. On this occasion he surprised me not a
little by turning to me suddenly and saying: "Some of the grandest
sacrifices the world has ever known, if one may judge by the
fortitude they require, and the pain they cause, have occurred in
the laboratory." I looked at him inquiringly, and he continued:
"When a man, simply for the great love of truth that is in him, has
given his life to the solution of some problem, and has at last
arrived, after years of closest application, at some magnificent
generalisation--when he has, perhaps, published his conclusions,
and received the grateful homage of all lovers of truth, his life
has, indeed, borne fruit. Of him may it then be justly said that
his
"'. . . life hath blossomed downward like
The purple bell-flower.'
But suddenly, in the privacy of his laboratory, a single fact arises
from the test-tube in his trembling hand and confronts him! His
brain reels; the glass torment falls upon the floor, and shatters
into countless pieces, but he is not conscious of it, for he feels
it thrust through his heart. When he recovers from the first shock,
he can only ejaculate: 'Is it possible?' After a little he is able
to reason. 'I was fatigued,' he says; 'perhaps my senses erred. I
can repeat the experiment again, and be sure. But if it overthrow
those conclusions for which I have given my life?' he gasps. 'My
generalisation is firmly established in the minds of all--all but
myself--no one will ever chance upon this particular experiment,
and it may not disprove my theory after all; better, much better,
that the floor there keep the secret of it all both from me and from
others!' But even as he says this to himself he has taken a new
tube from the rack and crawled--ten years older for that last ten
minutes--to his chemical case. The life-long habit of truth is so
strong in him that self-interest cannot submerge it. He repeats the
experiment, and confirms his fears. The battle between his life and
a few drops of liquid in a test-tube has been mercilessly fought,
and he has lost! The elasticity of the man is gone forever, and the
only indication the world ever receives of this terrible conflict
between a human soul and its destiny is some half a dozen lines in
Nature, giving the experiment and stating that it utterly refutes
its author's previous conclusions. Half a dozen lines--the epitaph
of a dead, though unburied, life!"
My companion paused there, but I found myself unable to reply. He
had spoken with such intensity, such dramatic fervour, that I was
completely swept away by his eloquence; so much so, indeed, that it
did not even occur to me to ask myself why he should have burst out
in this peculiar strain. I have given you the incident in order
that you may see the strange moods into which Maitland occasionally
relapsed--at least, at that time. After a quick glance at me he
continued, in a quieter vein: "All of us men of science have felt
something, however little, of this, and I believe, as a class,
scientists transcend all other men in their respect for absolute
truth." He cast another one of his searching glances at me, and
said quickly: "This is precisely why I am going to confide in you
and rely upon your assistance in a matter, the successful termination
of which would please me as much as the discovery of an absolute
standard of measurement."
He then made the confession which I have already given you, and
ended by asking me to secure him an introduction to Miss Darrow.
I cheerfully promised to bring this about at the first opportunity.
He asked me if I thought, on account of his having met her so
frequently, she would be likely to think it was all a "put up job."
"I do not know," I replied. "Miss Darrow is a singularly close
observer. On the whole I think you had better reach her through
her father. Do you play croquet?" He replied that he was considered
something of an expert in that line. That, then, was surely the best
way. John Darrow was known in the neighbourhood as a "crank" on the
subject of croquet. He had spent many hundreds of dollars on his
grounds. His wickets were fastened to hard pine planks, and these
were then carefully buried two feet deep. The surface of the ground,
he was wont to descant, must be of a particular sort of gravel,
sifted just so, and rolled to a nicety. The balls must be of hard
rubber, and have just one-eighth inch clearance in passing through
the wickets, with the exception of the two wires forming the "cage,"
where it was imperative that this clearance should be reduced to
one-sixteenth of an inch--but I need not state more to show how he
came to be considered a "crank" upon the subject.
It was easy enough to bring Maitland and Darrow together. "My
friend is himself much interested in the game; he heard of your
superb ground; may he be permitted to examine it closely?" Darrow
was all attention. He would be delighted to show it. Suppose they
make a practical test of it by playing a game. This they did and
Maitland played superbly, but he was hardly a match for the old
gentleman, who sought to palliate his defeat by saying: "You play
an excellent game, sir; but I am a trifle too much for you on my own
ground. Now, if you can spare the time, I should like to witness a
game between you and my daughter; I think you will be pretty evenly
matched."
If he could spare the time! I laughed outright at the idea. Why,
with the prospect of meeting Gwen Darrow before him, an absolute
unit of measure, with a snail's pace, would have made good its
escape from him. As it is a trick of poor humanity to refuse when
offered the very thing one has been madly scheming to obtain, I
hastened to accept Darrow's invitation for my friend, and to assure
him on my own responsibility, that time was just then hanging heavily
on Maitland's hands. Well, the game was played, but Maitland was so
unnerved by the girl's presence that he played execrably, so poorly,
indeed, that the always polite Darrow remarked: "You must charge
your easy victory, Gwen, to your opponent's gallantry, not to his
lack of skill, for I assure you he gave me a much harder rub." The
young lady cast a quick glance at Maitland, which said so plainly
that she preferred a fair field and no favour that he hastened to
say: "Your father puts too high an estimate upon my play. I did my
best to win, but--but I was a little nervous; I see, however, that
you would have defeated me though I had been in my best form." Gwen
gave him one of those short, searching looks, so peculiarly her own,
which seem to read, with mathematical certainty, one's innermost
thoughts,--and the poor fellow blushed to the tips of his ears.
--But he was no boy, this Maitland, and betrayed no other sign of
the tempest that was raging within him. His utterance remained as
usual, deliberate and incisive, and I thought this perplexed the
young lady. Before leaving, both Maitland and I were invited to
become parties to a six-handed game to be played the following week,
after the grounds had been redressed with gravel.
Maitland looked forward to this second meeting with Miss Darrow
with an eagerness which made every hour seem interminably long, and
he was in such a flutter of expectancy that I was sure if
"We live . . . in thoughts, not breaths;
In feelings, not in figures on a dial
We should count time by heart-throbs,"
he must have passed through a period as long as that separating the
Siege of Troy from the "late unpleasantness." The afternoon came at
last, however. The party consisted, besides Darrow and his daughter,
Maitland and myself, of two young gentlemen with whom personally I
had but a slight acquaintance, although I knew them somewhat by
reputation. The younger one, Clinton Browne, is a young artist whose
landscapes were beginning to attract wide attention in Boston, and
the elder, Charles Herne, a Western gentleman of some literary
attainments, but comparatively unknown here in the East. There is
nothing about Mr. Herne that would challenge more than passing
attention. If you had said of him, "He is well-fleshed, well-groomed,
and intellectually well-thatched," you would have voiced the opinion
of most of his acquaintances.
This somewhat elaborately upholstered old world has a deal of mere
filling of one kind and another, and Mr. Herne is a part of it. To
be sure, he leaves the category of excelsior very far behind and
approaches very nearly to the best grade of curled hair, but, in
spite of all this, he is simply a sort of social filling.
Mr. Browne, on the other hand, is a very different personage. Of
medium height, closely knit, with the latent activity and grace of
the cat flowing through every movement and even stagnating in his
pose, he is a man that the first casual gaze instantly returns to
with sharpened focus. You have seen gymnasts whose normal movements
were slowly performed springs, just as rust is a slow combustion and
fire the same thing in less time. Well, Clinton Browne strongly
suggested that sort of athlete. Add to this a regularly formed,
clearly cut, and all-but-beautiful face, with a pair of wonderfully
piercing, albeit somewhat shifty, black eyes, and one need not marvel
that men as well as women stared at him. I have spoken of his gaze
as "somewhat shifty," yet am not altogether sure that in that term
I accurately describe it. What first fastened my attention was this
vague, unfocussed, roving, quasi-introspective vision flashing with
panther-like suddenness into a directness that seemed to burn and
pierce one like the thrust of a hot stiletto, His face was
clean-shaven, save for a mere thumb-mark of black hair directly
under the centre of his lower lip. This Iago-like tab and the
almost fierce brilliancy of his concentrated gaze gave to his
countenance at times a sinister, Machiavellian expression that was
irresistible and which, to my thinking, seriously marred an otherwise
fine face. Of course due allowance must be made for the strong
prejudice I have against any form of beard. However, I'd wager a
box of my best liver-pills against any landscape Browne ever painted,
--I don't care if it's as big as a cyclorama,--that if he had known
how completely Gwen shared my views,--how she disliked the
appearance of bewhiskered men,--that delicately nurtured little
imperial would soon have been reduced to a tender memory,--that is
to say, if a physician can diagnose a case of love from such symptoms
as devouring glances and an attentiveness so marked that it quite
disgusted Maitland, who repeatedly measured his rival with the
apparent cold precision of a mathematician, albeit there was warmth
enough underneath.
This singular self-poise is one of Maitland's most noticeable
characteristics and is, I think, rather remarkable in a man of such
strong emotional tendencies and lightning-like rapidity of thought.
No doubt some small portion of it is the result of acquirement, for
life can hardly fail to teach us all something of this sort; still
I cannot but think that the larger part of it is native to him.
Born of well-to-do parents, he had never had the splendid tuition
of early poverty. As soon as he had left college he had studied law,
and had been admitted to the bar. This he had done more to gratify
the wishes of his father than to further any desires of his own, but
he had soon found the profession, so distasteful to him that he
practically abandoned it in favour of scientific research. True,
he still occasionally took a legal case when it turned upon
scientific points which interested him, but, as he once confessed
to me, he swallowed, at such times, the bitter pill of the law
for the sugar coating of science which enshrouded it. This legal
training could, therefore, it seems to me, have made no deep or
radical change in his character, which leads me to think that the
self-control he exhibited, despite the angry disgust with which I
know Browne's so apparent attentions to Gwen inspired him, must,
for the most part, have been native to him rather than acquired.
Nothing worthy of record occurred until evening; at least nothing
which at the time impressed me as of import, though I afterward
remembered that Darrow's behaviour was somewhat strange. He
appeared singularly preoccupied, and on one occasion started
nervously when I coughed behind him. He explained that a
disagreeable dream had deprived him of his sleep the previous night
and left his nerves somewhat unstrung, and I thought no more of it.
When the light failed we were all invited into the parlour to
listen to a song by Miss Darrow. The house, as you are perhaps
aware, overlooks Dorchester Bay. The afternoon had been very hot,
but at dusk a cold east wind had sprung up, which, as it was still
early in the season, was not altogether agreeable to our host,
sitting as he was, back to, though fully eight feet from, an open
window looking to the east. Maitland, with his usual quick
observation, noticed his discomfort and asked if he should not
close the window. The old gentleman did not seem to hear the
question until it was repeated, when, starting as if from a reverie,
he said: "If it will not be too warm for the rest of you, I would
like to have it partly closed, say to within six inches, for the
wind is cold"; and he seemed to relapse again into his reverie.
Maitland was obliged to use considerable strength to force the
window down, as it stuck in the casing, and when it finally gave
way it closed with a loud shrieking sound ending in the bang of
the counterweights. At the noise Darrow sprang to his feet,
exclaiming: "Again! The same sound! I knew I could not mistake
it!" but by this time Gwen was at his side, pressing him gently back
into his seat, as she said to him in an undertone audible to all of
us: "What is it, father?" The old gentleman only pressed her
closer by way of reply, while he said to us apologetically: "You
must excuse me, gentlemen. I have a certain dream which haunts
me,--the dream of someone striking me out of the darkness. Last
night I had the same dream for the seventh time and awoke to hear
that window opened. There is no mistaking the sound I heard just
now; it is identical with that I heard last night. I sprang out
of bed, took a light, and rushed down here, for I am not afraid
to meet anything I can see, but the window was closed and locked,
as I had left it! What do you think, Doctor," he said, turning to
me, "are dreams ever prophetic?"
"I have never," I replied, anxious to quiet him, "had any
personal experience justifying such a conclusion." I did not tell
him of certain things which had happened to friends of mine, and
so my reply reassured him.
Maitland, who had been startled by the old gentleman's conduct,
now returned to the window and opened it about six inches. There
was no other window open in the room, and yet so fresh was the air
that we were not uncomfortable. Darrow, with ill-concealed pride,
then asked his daughter to sing, and she left him and went to the
piano. "Shall I not light the lamp?" I asked. "I think we shall
not need it," the old gentleman replied, "music is always better
in the gloaming."
In order that you may understand what follows, it will be necessary
for me to describe to you our several positions in the room. The
apartment is large, nearly square, and occupies the southeast corner
of the house. The eastern side of the room has one window, that
which had been left open about six inches, and on the southern side
of the room there were two windows, both of which were securely
fastened and the blinds of which had been closed by the painters who,
that morning, had primed the eastern and southern sides of the house,
preparatory to giving it a thorough repainting. On the north side of
the room, but much nearer to the western than the eastern end, are
folding doors. These on this occasion were closed and fastened. On
the western side of the room is the piano, and to the left of it,
near the southwest corner, is a door leading to the hallway. This
door was closed. As I have already told you, Darrow sat in a
high-backed easy-chair facing the piano and almost in the centre of
the room. The partly opened window on the east side was directly
behind him and fully eight feet away. Herne and Browne sat upon
Darrow's right and a little in front of him against the folding
doors, while Maitland and I were upon his left, between him and the
hall door. Gwen was at the piano. There are no closets, draperies,
or niches in the room. I think you will now be able to understand
the situation fully.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16