Spy & Mystery Collection: Major-General Hannay Novels, Dickson McCunn Trilogy & Sir Edward Leithen Series (Complete Edition). Buchan John

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СКАЧАТЬ put you in such a bad humour last night?’ I asked.

      He looked very solemn. ‘Lord knows. No, that’s not true. I know well enough. I didn’t take to Medina.’

      ‘Now I wonder why?’

      ‘I wonder too. But I’m just like a dog: I take a dislike to certain people at first sight, and the queer thing is that my instinct isn’t often wrong.’

      ‘Well you’re pretty well alone in your opinion. What sets you against him? He is well-mannered, modest, a good sportsman, and you can see he’s as clever as they make.’

      ‘Maybe. But I’ve got a notion that the man is one vast lie. However, let’s put it that I reserve my opinion. I have various inquiries to make.’

      We found the little back smoking-room on the first floor empty, and when I had lit my pipe and got well into an armchair, Sandy drew up another at my elbow. ‘Now, Dick,’ he said.

      ‘First,’ I said, ‘it may interest you to learn that Medina dabbles in hypnotism.’

      ‘I knew that,’ he said, ‘from his talk last night.’

      ‘How on earth—?’

      ‘Oh, from a casual quotation he used. It’s a longish story, which I’ll tell you later. Go on.’

      I began from the break-up of the Thursday Club dinner and told him all I could remember of my hours in Medina’s house. As a story it met with an immense success. Sandy was so interested that he couldn’t sit in his chair, but must get up and stand on the hearthrug before me. I told him that I had wakened up feeling uncommonly ill, with a blank mind except for the address of a doctor man in Wimpole Street, and how during the day recollection had gradually come back to me. He questioned me like a cross-examining counsel.

      ‘Bright light—ordinary hypnotic property. Face, which seemed detached—that’s a common enough thing in Indian magic. You say you must have been asleep, but were also in a sense awake and could hear and answer questions, and that you felt a kind of antagonism all the time which kept your will alive. You’re probably about the toughest hypnotic proposition in the world, Dick, and you can thank God for that. Now, what were the questions? A summons to forget your past and begin as a new creature, subject to the authority of a master. You assented, making private reservations of which the hypnotist knew nothing. If you had not kept your head and made those reservations, you would have remembered nothing at all of last night but there would have been a subconscious bond over your will. As it is, you’re perfectly free: only the man who tried to monkey with you doesn’t know that. Therefore you begin by being one up on the game. You know where you are and he doesn’t know where he is.’

      ‘What do you suppose Medina meant by it? It was infernal impertinence anyhow. But was it Medina? I seem to remember another man in the room before I left.’

      ‘Describe him.’

      ‘I’ve only a vague picture—a sad grey-faced fellow.’

      ‘Well, assume for the present that the experimenter was Medina. There’s such a thing, remember, as spiriting away a man’s recollection of his past, and starting him out as a waif in a new world. I’ve heard in the East of such performances, and of course it means that the memory-less being is at the mercy of the man who has stolen his memory. That is probably not the intention in your case. They wanted only to establish a subconscious control. But it couldn’t be done at once with a fellow of your antecedents, so they organised a process. They suggested to you in your trance a doctor’s name, and the next stage was his business. You woke feeling very seedy and remembering a doctor’s address, and they argued that you would think that you had been advised about the fellow and make a bee-line for him. Remember, they would assume that you had no recollection of anything else from the night’s doings. Now go ahead and tell me about the chirurgeon. Did you go to see him?’

      I continued my story, and at the Wimpole Street episode Sandy laughed long and loud.

      ‘Another point up in the game. You say you think the leech had been advised of your coming and not by you? By the way, he seems to have talked fairly good sense, but I’d as soon set a hippopotamus for nerves as you.’ He wrote down Dr Newhover’s address in his pocket book. ‘Continuez. You then proceeded, I take it, to 4 Palmyra Square.’

      At the next stage of my narrative he did not laugh. I dare say I told it better than I have written it down here, for I was fresh from the experience, and I could see that he was a good deal impressed.

      ‘A Swedish masseuse and an odd-looking little girl. She puts you to sleep, or thinks she has, and then, when your eyes are bandaged, someone else nearly charms the soul out of you. That sounds big magic. I see the general lines of it, but it is big magic, and I didn’t know that it was practised on these shores. Dick, this is getting horribly interesting. You kept wide awake—you are an old buffalo, you know—but you gave the impression of absolute surrender. Good for you—you are now three points ahead in the game.’

      ‘Well, but what is the game? I’m hopelessly puzzled.’

      ‘So am I, but we must work on assumptions. Let us suppose Medina is responsible. He may only be trying to find out the extent of his powers, and selects you as the most difficult subject to be found. You may be sure he knows all about your record. He may be only a vain man experimenting.’

      ‘In which case,’ I said, ‘I propose to punch his head.’

      ‘In which case, as you justly observe, you will give yourself the pleasure of punching his head. But suppose that he has got a far deeper purpose, something really dark and damnable. If by his hypnotic power he could make a tool of you, consider what an asset he would have found. A man of your ability and force. I have always said, you remember, that you had a fine natural talent for crime.’

      ‘I tell you, Sandy, that’s nonsense. It’s impossible. that there’s anything wrong—badly wrong—with Medina.’

      ‘Improbable, but not impossible. We’re. taking no chances. And if he were a scoundrel, think what a power he might be with all his talents and charm and popularity.’

      Sandy flung himself into a chair and appeared to be meditating. Once or twice he broke silence.

      ‘I wonder what Dr Newhover meant by talking of a salmon river in Norway. Why not golf at North Berwick?’

      And again:

      ‘You say there was a scent like peat in the room? Peat! You are certain?’

      Finally he got up. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said, ‘I think I will have a look round the house in Gospel Oak. Gospel Oak, by the way, is a funny name, isn’t it? You say it has electric light. I will visit it as a man from the corporation to see about the meter. Oh, that can easily be managed. Macgillivray will pass the word for me.’

      The mention of Macgillivray brought me to attention. ‘Look here,’ I said, ‘I’m simply wasting my time. I got in touch with Medina in order to ask his help, and now I’ve been landed in a set of preposterous experiences which have nothing to do with my job. I must see Macgillivray tomorrow about getting alongside his Shropshire squire. For the present there can be nothing doing with Medina.’

      ‘Shropshire squire be hanged! You’re an old ass, Dick. For the present there’s everything doing with Medina. You wanted his help. Why? Because СКАЧАТЬ