The Seven Secrets Part 35

"Yes, sir."

Then, thanking him, we re-entered the cab and drove to an address in a street off Shaftesbury Avenue.

"Slade! Slade!" repeated Ambler Jevons to himself as we drove along.

"That's the name I've been in search of for weeks. If I am successful I believe the Seven Secrets will resolve themselves into one of the most remarkable conspiracies of modern times. I must, however, make this call alone, Ralph. The presence of a second person may possibly prevent the man I'm going to see from making a full and straightforward statement. We must not risk failure in this inquiry, for I antic.i.p.ate that it may give us the key to the whole situation.

There's a bar opposite the Palace Theatre. I'll set you down there, and you can wait for me. You don't mind, do you?"

"Not at all, if you'll promise to explain the result of your investigations afterwards."

"You shall know everything later," he a.s.sured me, and a few minutes afterwards I alighted at the saloon bar he had indicated, a long lounge patronised a good deal by theatrical people.

He was absent nearly half-an-hour, and when he returned I saw from his face that he had obtained some information that was eminently satisfactory.

"I hope to learn something further this afternoon," he said before we parted. "If I do I shall be with you at four." Then he jumped into a hansom and disappeared. Jevons was a strange fellow. He rushed hither and thither, telling no one his business or his motives.

About the hour he had named he was ushered into my room. He had made a complete change in his appearance, wearing a tall hat and frock coat, with a black fancy waistcoat whereon white flowers were embroidered.

By a few artistic touches he had altered the expression of his features too--adding nearly twenty years to his age. His countenance was one of those round, flexible ones that are so easily altered by a few dark lines.

"Well, Ambler?" I said anxiously, when we were alone. "What have you discovered?"

"Several rather remarkable facts," was his philosophic response. "If you care to accompany me I can show you to-night something very interesting."

"Care to accompany you?" I echoed. "I'm only too anxious."

He glanced at his watch, then flinging himself into the chair opposite me, said, "We've an hour yet. Have you got a drop of brandy handy?"

Then for the first time I noticed that the fresh colour of his cheeks was artificial, and that in reality he was exhausted and white as death. The difficulty in speaking that I had attributed to excitement was really due to exhaustion.

Quickly I produced the brandy, and gave him a stiff peg, which he swallowed at a single gulp. His eyes were no longer sleepy-looking, but there was a quick fire in them which showed me that, although suppressed, there burned within his heart a fierce desire to get at the truth. Evidently he had learned something since I left him, but what it was I could not gather.

I looked at the clock, and saw it was twenty minutes past six. He noticed my action, and said:

"If we start in an hour we shall have sufficient time."

Ambler Jevons was never communicative. But as he sat before me his brows were knit in deep thought, his hands chafed with suppressed agitation, and he took a second brandy-and-soda, an unusual indulgence, which betrayed an absent mind.

At length he rose, carefully brushed his silk hat, settled the hang of his frock-coat before the gla.s.s, tugged at his cravat, and then, putting on his light overcoat, announced his readiness to set out.

About half-an-hour later our cab set us down in Upper Street, Islington, close to the Agricultural Hall, and, proceeding on foot a short distance, we turned up a kind of court, over the entrance of which a lamp was burning, revealing the words "Lecture Hall."

Jevons produced two tickets, whereupon we were admitted into a long, low room filled by a mixed audience consisting of men. Upon the platform at the further end was a man of middle age, with short fair beard, grey eyes, and an alert, resolute manner--a foreigner by his dress--and beside him an Englishman of spruce professional appearance--much older, slightly bent, with grey countenance and white hair.

We arrived just at the moment of the opening of the proceedings. The Englishman, whom I set down to be a medical man, rose, and in introducing the lecturer beside him, said:

"I have the honour, ladies and gentlemen, to introduce to you Doctor Paul Deboutin--who, as most of you know, is one of the most celebrated medical men in Paris, professor at the Salpetriere, and author of many works upon nervous disorders. The study of the latter is not, unfortunately, sufficiently taken up in this country, and it is in order to demonstrate the necessity of such study that my friends and myself have invited Doctor Deboutin to give this lecture before an audience of both medical men and the laity. The doctor asks me to apologise to you for his inability to express himself well in English, but personally I have no fear that you will misunderstand him."

Then he turned, introduced the lecturer, and re-seated himself.

I was quite unprepared for such a treat. Deboutin, as every medical man is aware, is the first authority on nervous disorders, and his lectures have won for him a world-wide reputation. I had read all his books, and being especially struck with "Nevroses et Idees Fixes," a most convincing work, had longed to be present at one of his demonstrations. Therefore, forgetful that I was there for some unknown reason, I settled myself to listen.

Rapidly and clearly he spoke in fairly good English, with a decision that showed him to be perfect master at once of his subject and of the phrases with which he intended to clothe his thoughts. He briefly outlined the progress of his experiments at the Salpetriere, and at the hospitals of Lyons and Ma.r.s.eilles, then without long preliminary, proceeded to demonstrate a most interesting case.

A girl of about twenty-five, with a countenance only relieved from ugliness by a fine pair of bright dark eyes, was led in by an a.s.sistant and seated in a chair. She was of the usual type seen in the streets of Islington, poorly dressed with some attempt at faded finery--probably a workgirl in some city factory. She cast an uneasy glance upon the audience, and then turned towards the doctor, who drew his chair towards the patient so that her knees nearly touched his.

It was a case of nervous "Hemianopsie," or one-eyed vision, he explained.

Now the existence of this has always been denied, therefore the experiment was of the most intense interest to every medical man present.

First the doctor, after ordering the patient to look him straight in the face, held a pencil on the left side of her head, and found that, in common with most of us, she was conscious of its presence without moving her eyes, even when it was almost at the level of her ear. Then he tried the same experiment on the right side of the face, when it was at once plain that the power of lateral vision had broken down--for she answered, "No, sir. No, no," as he moved the pencil to and fro with the inquiry whether she could see it. Nevertheless he demonstrated that the power of seeing straight was quite unimpaired, and presently he gave to his a.s.sistant a kind of gla.s.s hemisphere, which he placed over the girl's head, and by which he measured the exact point on its scale where the power of lateral vision ceased.

This being found and noted, Professor Deboutin placed his hand upon the patient's eyes, and with a brief "You may sleep now, my girl," in broken English, she was asleep in a few seconds.

Then came the lecture. He verbally dissected her, giving a full and lucid explanation of the nervous system, from the spinal marrow and its termination in the coccyx, up to the cortex of the brain, in which he was of opinion that there was in that case a lesion--probably curable--amply accounting for the phenomenon present. So clear, indeed, were his remarks that even a layman could follow them.

At last the doctor awoke the patient, and was about to proceed with another experiment when his quick eye noticed a hardly-perceptible flutter of the eyelids. "Ah, you are tired," he said. "It is enough."

And he conducted her to the little side door that gave exit from the platform.

The next case was one of the kind which is always the despair of doctors--hysteria. A girl, accompanied by her mother, a neatly-dressed, respectable-looking body, was led forward, but her hands were trembling, and her face working so nervously that the doctor had to rea.s.sure her. With a true c.o.c.kney accent she said that she lived in Mile End, and worked at a pickle factory. Her symptoms were constant headache, sudden falls, and complete absence of sensation in her left hand, which greatly interfered with her work.

Some of the questions were inconvenient--until, in answer to one regarding her father, she gave a cry that "Poor father died last year," and broke into an agony of weeping. In a moment the doctor took up an anthropometric instrument from the table, and made a movement as though to touch her presumably insensible hand.

"Ah, you'll hurt me!" she said. Presently, while her attention was attracted in another direction, he touched the hand with the instrument, when she drew it back with a yell of pain, showing that the belief that her hand was insensible was entirely due to hysteria.

He a.n.a.lysed her case just as he had done the first, and declared that by a certain method of treatment, too technical to be here explained, a complete cure could be effected.

Another case of hysteria followed, and then a terrible exhibition of a wild-haired woman suffering from what the lecturer described as a "crise des nerfs," which caused her at will to execute all manner of horrible contortions as though she were possessed. She threw herself on the floor on her back, with her body arched so that it rested only on her head and heels, while she delivered kicks at those in front of her, not with her toes, but with her heels. Meanwhile her face was so congested as to appear almost black.

The audience were, I think, relieved when the poor unfortunate woman, calmed by Deboutin's method of suggestion, was led quietly away, and her place taken by a slim, red-haired girl of more refined appearance than the others, but with a strange stony stare as though unconscious of her surroundings. She was accompanied by a short, wizened-faced old lady, her grandmother.

At this juncture the chairman rose and said:

"This case is of great interest, inasmuch as it is a discovery made by my respected colleague, whom we all know by repute, Sir Bernard Eyton."

The mention of my chief's name was startling. I had no idea he had taken any interest in the French methods. Indeed, he had always declared to me that Charcot and his followers were a set of charlatans.

"We have the pleasure of welcoming Sir Bernard here this evening,"

continued the chairman; "and I shall ask him to kindly explain the case."

With apparent reluctance the well-known physician rose, after being cordially welcomed to the platform by the French savant, adjusted his old-fashioned gla.s.ses, and commenced to introduce the subject. His appearance there was certainly quite unexpected, but as I glanced at Ambler I saw a look of triumph in his face. We were sitting at the back of the hall, and I knew that Sir Bernard, being short-sighted, could not recognise us at the distance.

"I am here at Doctor Fulton's invitation to meet our great master, Professor Deboutin, of whom for many years I have been a follower."

Then he went on to express the pleasure it gave him to demonstrate before them a case which he declared was not at all uncommon, although hitherto unsuspected by medical men.

Behind the chair of the new-comer stood the strange-looking old lady--who answered for her grand-daughter, the latter being mute. Her case was one, Sir Bernard explained, of absence of will. With a few quick questions he placed the history of the case before his hearers.

There was a bad family history--a father who drank, and a mother who suffered from epilepsy. At thirteen the girl had received a sudden fright owing to a practical joke, and from that moment she gradually came under the influence of some hidden unknown terror so that she even refused to eat altogether. The strangest fact, however, was that she could still eat and speak in secret, although in public she was entirely dumb, and no amount of pleasure or pain would induce her to utter a sound.

"This," explained Sir Bernard, "is one of the many cases of absence of will, partial or entire, which has recently come beneath my notice. My medical friends, and also Professor Deboutin, will agree that at the age the patient received her fright many girls are apt to tend towards what the Charcot School term 'aboulie,' or, in plain English, absence of will. Now one of the most extraordinary symptoms of this is terror.

Terror," he said, "of performing the simplest functions of nature; terror of movement, terror of eating--though sane in every other respect. Some there are, too, in whom this terror is developed upon one point only, and in such the inequality of mental balance can, as a rule, only be detected by one who has made deep research in this particular branch of nervous disorders."

The French professor followed with a lengthy discourse, in which he bestowed the highest praise upon Sir Bernard for his long and patient experiments, which, he said, had up to the present been conducted in secret, because he feared that if it were known he had taken up that branch of medical science he might lose his reputation as a lady's doctor.