his own identity JohnSilence was restored to the full control of his own will-power. In adeep, modulated voice he began to utter certain rhythmical sounds thatslowly rolled through the air like a rising sea, filling the room withpowerful vibratory activities that whelmed all irregularities of lesservibrations in its own swelling tone. He made certain sigils, gesturesand movements at the same time. For several minutes he continued toutter these words, until at length the growing volume dominated thewhole room and mastered the manifestation of all that opposed it. Forjust as he understood the spiritual alchemy that can transmute evilforces by raising them into higher channels, so he knew from long studythe occult use of sound, and its direct effect upon the plastic regionwherein the powers of spiritual evil work their fell purposes. Harmonywas restored first of all to his own soul, and thence to the room andall its occupants.
And, after himself, the first to recognise it was the old dog lying inhis corner. Flame began suddenly uttering sounds of pleasure, that"something" between a growl and a grunt that dogs make upon beingrestored to their master's confidence. Dr. Silence heard the thumping ofthe collie's tail against the floor. And the grunt and the thumpingtouched the depth of affection in the man's heart, and gave him someinkling of what agonies the dumb creature had suffered.
Next, from the shadows by the window, a somewhat shrill purringannounced the restoration of the cat to its normal state. Smoke wasadvancing across the carpet. He seemed very pleased with himself, andsmiled with an expression of supreme innocence. He was no shadow-cat,but real and full of his usual and perfect self-possession. He marchedalong, picking his way delicately, but with a stately dignity thatsuggested his ancestry with the majesty of Egypt. His eyes no longerglared; they shone steadily before him, they radiated, not excitement,but knowledge. Clearly he was anxious to make amends for the mischief towhich he had unwittingly lent himself owing to his subtle and electricconstitution.
Still uttering his sharp high purrings he marched up to his master andrubbed vigorously against his legs. Then he stood on his hind feet andpawed his knees and stared beseechingly up into his face. He turned hishead towards the corner where the collie still lay, thumping his tailfeebly and pathetically.
John Silence understood. He bent down and stroked the creature's livingfur, noting the line of bright blue sparks that followed the motion ofhis hand down its back. And then they advanced together towards thecorner where the dog was.
Smoke went first and put his nose gently against his friend's muzzle,purring while he rubbed, and uttering little soft sounds of affection inhis throat. The doctor lit the candle and brought it over. He saw thecollie lying on its side against the wall; it was utterly exhausted, andfoam still hung about its jaws. Its tail and eyes responded to the soundof its name, but it was evidently very weak and overcome. Smokecontinued to rub against its cheek and nose and eyes, sometimes evenstanding on its body and kneading into the thick yellow hair. Flamereplied from time to time by little licks of the tongue, most of themcuriously misdirected.
But Dr. Silence felt intuitively that something disastrous had happened,and his heart was wrung. He stroked the dear body, feeling it over forbruises or broken bones, but finding none. He fed it with what remainedof the sandwiches and milk, but the creature clumsily upset the saucerand lost the sandwiches between its paws, so that the doctor had to feedit with his own hand. And all the while Smoke meowed piteously.
Then John Silence began to understand. He went across to the fartherside of the room and called aloud to it.
"Flame, old man! come!"
At any other time the dog would have been upon him in an instant,barking and leaping to the shoulder. And even now he got up, thoughheavily and awkwardly, to his feet. He started to run, wagging his tailmore briskly. He collided first with a chair, and then ran straight intoa table. Smoke trotted close at his side, trying his very best to guidehim. But it was useless. Dr. Silence had to lift him up into his ownarms and carry him like a baby. For he was blind.
III
It was a week later when John Silence called to see the author in hisnew house, and found him well on the way to recovery and already busyagain with his writing. The haunted look had left his eyes, and heseemed cheerful and confident.
"Humour restored?" laughed the doctor, as soon as they were comfortablysettled in the room overlooking the Park.
"I've had no trouble since I left that dreadful place," returned Pendergratefully; "and thanks to you--"
The doctor stopped him with a gesture.
"Never mind that," he said, "we'll discuss your new plans afterwards,and my scheme for relieving you of the house and helping you settleelsewhere. Of course it must be pulled down, for it's not fit for anysensitive person to live in, and any other tenant might be afflicted inthe same way you were. Although, personally, I think the evil hasexhausted itself by now."
He told the astonished author something of his experiences in it withthe animals.
"I don't pretend to understand," Pender said, when the account wasfinished, "but I and my wife are intensely relieved to be free of itall. Only I must say I should like to know something of the formerhistory of the house. When we took it six months ago I heard no wordagainst it."
Dr. Silence drew a typewritten paper from his pocket.
"I can satisfy your curiosity to some extent," he said, running his eyeover the sheets, and then replacing them in his coat; "for by mysecretary's investigations I have been able to check certain informationobtained in the hypnotic trance by a 'sensitive' who helps me in suchcases. The former occupant who haunted you appears to have been a womanof singularly atrocious life and character who finally suffered death byhanging, after a series of crimes that appalled the whole of England andonly came to light by the merest chance. She came to her end in the year1798, for it was not this particular house she lived in, but a muchlarger one that then stood upon the site it now occupies, and was then,of course, not in London, but in the country. She was a person ofintellect, possessed of a powerful, trained will, and of consummateaudacity, and I am convinced availed herself of the resources of thelower magic to attain her ends. This goes far to explain the virulenceof the attack upon yourself, and why she is still able to carry on afterdeath the evil practices that formed her main purpose during life."
"You think that after death a soul can still consciously direct--"gasped the author.
"I think, as I told you before, that the forces of a powerfulpersonality may still persist after death in the line of their originalmomentum," replied the doctor; "and that strong thoughts and purposescan still react upon suitably prepared brains long after theiroriginators have passed away.
"If you knew anything of magic," he pursued, "you would know thatthought is dynamic, and that it may call into existence forms andpictures that may well exist for hundreds of years. For, not far removedfrom the region of our human life is another region where float thewaste and drift of all the centuries, the limbo of the shells of thedead; a densely populated region crammed with horror and abomination ofall descriptions, and sometimes galvanised into active life again by thewill of a trained manipulator, a mind versed in the practices of lowermagic. That this woman understood its vile commerce, I am persuaded,and the forces she set going during her life have simply beenaccumulating ever since, and would have continued to do so had they notbeen drawn down upon yourself, and afterwards discharged and satisfiedthrough me.
"Anything might have brought down the attack, for, besides drugs, thereare certain violent emotions, certain moods of the soul, certainspiritual fevers, if I may so call them, which directly open the innerbeing to a cognisance of this astral region I have mentioned. In yourcase it happened to be a peculiarly potent drug that did it.
"But now, tell me," he added, after a pause, handing to the perplexedauthor a pencil drawing he had made of the dark countenance that hadappeared to him during the night on Putney Hill--"tell me if yourecognise this face?"
Pender looked at the drawing closely, greatly astonished. He shudde
red alittle as he looked.
"Undoubtedly," he said, "it is the face I kept trying to draw--dark,with the great mouth and jaw, and the drooping eye. That is the woman."
Dr. Silence then produced from his pocket-book an old-fashioned woodcutof the same person which his secretary had unearthed from the records ofthe Newgate Calendar. The woodcut and the pencil drawing were twodifferent aspects of the same dreadful visage. The men compared them forsome moments in silence.
"It makes me thank God for the limitations of our senses," said Penderquietly, with a sigh; "continuous clairvoyance must be a soreaffliction."
"It is indeed," returned John Silence significantly, "and if all thepeople nowadays who claim to be clairvoyant were really so, thestatistics of suicide and lunacy would be considerably higher