Second Sight Read online

  “I’m sorry for you, Harry,” smiled Marjory. “The whole atmosphere is wrong. You’ve done your best to create a feeling of the unusual, and it has fallen flat.”

  “I know. Don’t you think I should wait to see if I can’t get the right atmosphere? It was a pretty dramatic happening—but quite short. Pity to waste it.”

  “I know. I sympathise.”

  “It’s the presence of an unsympathetic mind,” said Helen.

  Geoffrey chuckled. “The medium cannot get in touch with the unseen.”

  Then quite simply and directly, Harry said, “It was the unseen.”

  “Was it?” asked Helen.

  Harry nodded to her. “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “On the way in—with Alick.”

  “What happened?”

  Again reluctance got hold of Harry, and he looked with an uncertain smile at his hostess.

  “Is it worth spoiling the meat for?” she asked, and there was meaning in her quiet tones.

  Geoffrey gave a scoffing chuckle.

  “Mother!” exclaimed Helen.

  “Very well,” said Lady Marway.

  But Harry still hesitated.

  “Go on,” said Sir John, and instantly his quiet voice sanctioned the situation.

  Harry went on quietly: “Alick and I were coming along the path up there—-just as you round the fir wood and see the house.We had been walking for some little way in silence. There was nothing on my mind at all. I was certainly thinking of nothing. In fact I had that pleasant tired feeling that often follows a perfect day. You know—pleased with myself and everything. My mind felt free and happy. It sort of floated along with me, if you understand.”

  “Like the scent of a flower on the wind,” suggested Geoffrey solemnly.

  “Precisely,” said Harry. “I am trying to tell you that any thought of tragedy was utterly absent from my mind. Certainly I could not have suggested to Alick anything like what he saw. Now the next odd thing is that I feel sure that Alick had enjoyed his day, and certainly had no reason to begin imagining gloomy or deathly things. Quite the reverse. We had been friendly—in that pleasant way, without classconsciousness and what-not. And to prove that that is true, when Alick did see what he saw, he put his arm out across my chest, pushing me back off the path—like that. ‘Stand back,’ he said quietly but intensely. The moon was just up. A perfectly clear but black sky. It is really a lovely night outside. You can see a mile. Well, I thought he was seeing something coming out of the wood—some animal or bird or something—for he has an extraordinary knowledge of their queerer habits—but though I stared where he stared, I could see nothing. And his arm was still out. Then a cold shiver went up and down my spine.”

  “You saw nothing?” asked Marjory.

  “No, I saw nothing. But I could see that he was seeing something—and that it was no bird or beast or any natural thing. Whatever it was, I felt it—perhaps from him—coming towards us, passing us, and going on. It was a very vivid experience. For I don’t know how many seconds I was really held—like that.” Harry closed his right hand. “He edged me back a bit on to the heather as it passed, and his head slowly turned after it. He had gone quite stiff and once you looked at him you had to look where his eyes stared. I’ve never had any experience like it. You had no time to think. You were caught. And for a moment or two it was—anything but pleasant.”

  As Harry paused, Sir John said, “I did not know Alick was affected that way. A funeral procession, was it?”

  “Yes.”

  “You did not question him?” Though in the form of a question Sir John’s words held half a warning—if need be.

  “I did, of course,” said Harry, showing Sir John by his eyes that he understood him. “But he obviously did not like to be questioned, so I did not pursue it too far.”

  “But surely you asked him what he saw?” demanded Geoffrey.

  “Naturally. He saw some persons carrying a dead body.”

  “The phantom funeral,” explained Sir John. “It was not an uncommon experience in the old days in the Highlands, if we believe the old tales. But with the advance of science it is getting rare.”

  “Naturally,” agreed Geoffrey. “But it’s an interesting form of delusion or hallucination. And Harry was obviously impressed!” He looked at Harry. “Can we really take your word for it that you are not spoofing us?”

  “Geoffrey!” exclaimed Helen, shocked.

  “You can,” said Harry.

  “You mean you are satisfied that the man did actually imagine he was seeing something?”

  “It is not the sort of thing a man would make up, is it?”

  “I merely asked you a question.”

  “And I have answered.” Harry regarded Geoffrey drily. “This is not a court of law—with the dead body as exhibit number one—not yet”.

  “Now don’t get fantastic. That’s the worst of you romantic people. You see something—or at least someone else sees something—or imagines he sees something—and then you all promptly develop a situation. Good Lord! you don’t mean to say you are serious about this?” Into a chuckle Geoffrey could contrive to put a considerable amount of complacent sarcasm.

  “It isn’t a question of being serious or otherwise,” replied Harry, for he could not stop himself reacting to Geoffrey. “You flatter yourself you are the modern, unprejudiced, scientific mind, yet here you are, bung-full of prejudice before you have even approached—a certain definite experience which I have laid before you. That experience may be susceptible of a perfectly rational explanation. An effort at sarcastic laughter explains nothing.”

  “Touch!” said Marjory.

  “‘Experience which I have laid before you’ is good.” Geoffrey was tickled by it. “You have laid nothing before us except a sort of vague situation. This sort of situation: a man sees something—which isn’t there. You were there. You saw nothing. Yet you are now prepared to create a situation about it. Don’t you know anything about delusional psychology?”

  “Not much,” said Harry.

  “And you wondered why I laughed!”

  “I still do,” said Helen.

  So Geoffrey laughed again, and the others smiled.

  “I’m afraid I cannot help you,” said Geoffrey.

  Helen raised her eyebrows. “But that’s nothing to be superior over.”

  “Now, Helen, child, it’s time——”

  “But, Mother, I’m not a child. I’m twenty-one and fit to be the ‘father’ of a family. What I object to is this. Geoffrey uses a big word as if it were a stick. That stick may beat me—but it will never make me believe. He thinks it will. The materialist is always a bully.”

  “Oh, bravo, Helen!” cried Marjory.

  “You mix up two things, my child: reason and belief,” Geoffrey explained. “You emotionally want to believe in something. My reason is not impressed.”

  “My lamb, neither is my belief impressed by your reason,” retorted Helen.

  Sir John chuckled, as he nearly always did when his daughter spoke in this way, for he was fond of her. Lady Marway smiled and was just about to order Harry off, when Geoffrey replied:

  “That may be. But again it proves nothing. Let us agree that this man Alick did have his delusion, that he genuinely imagined he saw things. Well, we all know about that. Our asylums are full of people who see queerer things than funerals. The things they see never take place—except inside their own heads.”

  “Yes—but—but that’s not the same.” Helen was rather stumped, until she had the bright idea: “Do you mean that Alick should be in an asylum?”

  Geoffrey just laughed.

  “I think Geoffrey is probably pretty near the truth of the matter,” said Sir John, pleased, with his wife, to leave the matter there.

  But Harry could hardly leave it there. “I merely notice that Geoffrey has explained nothing—in his usual adroit way. The people inside asylums, as far as I know, have delusions about themselves. They do not h
ave delusions about specific happenings in the future divorced from themselves. People in asylums are obsessed. Alick is not obsessed. The delusion, as you call it, was quite involuntary. He has had it very seldom. Only once or twice in his life. He dislikes it. Hates it. I was sorry for him.”

  “Well?” Helen challenged Geoffrey.

  “How, for example, do you know he dislikes it, hates it?”

  “From the evidence he led,” replied Harry.

  “You mean,” said Geoffrey ironically, “he told you he hates it?”

  “Oh no; he never told me he hated it.”

  “The evidence, then?”

  Harry hesitated. “He began to tremble—when they had passed.”

  “Nothing more?”

  “Then—he was sick.”

  “Sick?”

  “He vomited—in the heather.”

  There was a very distinct pause.

  “You asked him what he saw?”

  “I asked him what was wrong with him. He muttered that he had seen something. I asked him what it was. He would not speak. I could see a tremendous reluctance upon him. But I begged him to tell me. I was friendly. I wanted to help him. He said at last: ‘Four men carrying a dead body.’”

  “Did you ask him”, probed Geoffrey, “if he recognised the dead body?”

  “I did.” Harry’s eyes were coldly on Geoffrey. They all waited for his next words. Tonelessly they came. “He said: ‘No’.”

  Lady Marway drew in a full breath, but Geoffrey was in pursuit at once. “There you are! Why is it that he did not see the one fact, the one piece of evidence, by which his so-called vision could be checked?”

  “I can’t tell you, I’m sure,” replied Harry. “Possibly it is rather a good thing he doesn’t.”

  “There you go! Anything, so long as it is beside the point! Here’s what is reputed to be a vision of the future. Yet the one most important thing in the vision itself—and the only thing by which the vision could be checked—is not recognised. In any detective story, whether the author plays honest or dishonest, at least you are always told who the dead man is.”

  “There’s something in that,” Sir John nodded. “In all these phantom funerals, the person who sees it never seems to know the dead body, now that you mention it. He sees the procession winding along a path——”

  “And afterwards,” interrupted Geoffrey triumphantly, “when a funeral procession does wind along that same path—as funeral processions must at some time wander over every human path there is—the people shake their heads. Ah, three days ago—or three years ago—or three centuries ago—Alick Macdonald, the stalker at Corbreac, foresaw this death. Ah—mysterious!… Now, I mean to say, isn’t it absurd? All joking apart.”

  “I think so, Geoffrey,” agreed Lady Marway. “I think you have made it perfectly clear. And now——”

  “But, Mother, he hasn’t!”

  “No?” Geoffrey raised amused eyebrows.

  “Has he?” And Helen turned to Harry.

  They were all amused, including Harry, who said to her, pleasantly: “I agree, Helen. He hasn’t. Let us assume that when you go back home you go bang into a funeral and pull your car up to let it pass. You are presently alarmed to find a great number of your friends there. You wonder who can have died. But you cannot tell. Why? Because you cannot see through the coffin.”

  “Phew!” breathed Marjory. “We are getting gruesome, aren’t we?”

  “What have you to say to that?” Helen asked Geoffrey.

  “May I inquire of your counsel if the medium in this particular case recognised the four men who carried the dead body?”

  “Did he?” asked Helen.

  “He did,” said Harry.

  “He mentioned them to you by name?” challenged Geoffrey.

  Harry took a moment, then said, “He did.”

  They all looked at him. No one asked for the names. At last he continued, “There is no reason why I should not give you the names. It has nothing to do with—uh—anyone in particular.” (They felt that he was deliberately reserving at least part of the truth). “In Alick’s interest, I don’t want to be more definite. He felt the experience so much that I shouldn’t like him to run into any gossip about it. I hope you see what I mean. I had an unusual experience and I was full of it, I admit. But”—he began to smile in his entertaining way—“it’s gone far enough. And now——”

  “One minute,” said Geoffrey. “Are you prepared to write down the names?”

  “Yes,” said Harry, now smiling cheerfully, “and sign, seal, and deliver them to your banker.”

  “And you didn’t see—or hear—anything yourself?” Helen asked.

  “Not a thing! Though—now you mention it,” and he laughed, “I did hear something. It was just as the procession had passed. I heard the deep ringing of a ship’s bell in my ears.”

  At that moment, the dinner-bell, a rather slow deep-noted one, began ringing. By the way Harry’s head jerked up and his eyes opened—obviously involuntarily—they all saw at once that that was the bell he had heard. But he let the smile come on his face very cunningly. “Of course, as Geoffrey knows,”he said, “a bell ringing in one’s ears is quite a common experience. Usually something to do with the liver, hasn’t it? But it was my conscience—for being late.” He bowed to his hostess. “I do most abjectly apologise. Please don’t wait for me.”

  “They must have heard you come in and assumed you would be dressed and in your right mind.” She smiled. “I shall try to forgive you.”

  “It would take more than a ghost”, said Helen, “to stop Cook having the bell rung when she is ready.”

  “And now I feel like a school boy!” Harry rushed out.

  They had all got up, and, as they went towards the door, Lady Marway said: “At any rate, he does contrive to keep us alive.”

  “Barely,” answered Marjory. “I’m famished. But he stood up to you, Geoffrey.”

  “Yes, didn’t he?” Half-closing her mouth, Helen could coo in her throat like a pigeon.

  “He did his best,” said Geoffrey. “But you haven’t heard the end of all this yet. You wait!”

  “Don’t you think you should let it rest?” suggested Lady Marway.

  “Let it rest! Now that I have him and can document the case? We’ll have some fun out of this. I see it coming. Harry’s ghost!”

  Helen turned in the door of the dining-room and in a deep, slow voice said, “What if it’s your ghost?”

  She said it very well, and there was just a second before Geoffrey laughed.

  Chapter Two

  While they were at dinner, Mairi, the parlour-maid, came into the empty sitting-room with a duster in her hand. As she faced the room, listening, she closed the door behind her very softly. The air of tension in her attitude heightened the colour in her cheeks. She was dark, with brown eyes. “A dark, pretty country girl,” was how a visitor remembered her in London. She was twenty-one, the same age as Helen. But where Helen might fly, Mairi would dive. She now listened naturally, every instinct alert, and not for one thing but for everything.

  Opposite her, across the room, was the gun-room door, with the fireplace to the right of it. The wall on her left hand was to the back of the house, and through its window, which faced north, could be seen in daylight the green-painted larder where the stags were hung up, a corner of the garage, and the “back road” that gave on pony tracks into the forest. A brown curtain, hanging to just below the sill, covered the window at the moment. Mairi’s eyes rested on it, then she began gathering the glasses and cleaning up the ash-trays.

  The room was furnished simply and in good taste, with some comfortable armchairs, a writing-desk, and a mahogany bookcase—the bottom half with doors. A bracket lamp in the wall by the bookcase was usually turned low—until required in that part of the room for reading or writing. It was of the same kind as the standard lamp, which with its incandescent mantle and bulbous opaque white globe stood over towards the fireplace. The ant
lers above the gun-room door and the spotted cannibal trout in its glass case above the hall door somehow did not obtrude. A spray of red autumn berries in a brown earthenware jar suitably suggested the time of year.

  Mairi moved about deftly, but she still kept listening, and at last, hearing a sound in the gun-room, she stood still so suddenly that her very nostrils seemed to scent the sound, like a hind’s. It came nearer. She glanced away from it towards the hall door, then, going to the gun-room door, calmly opened it.

  “Oh, it’s you,” she said coolly.

  “Yes,” said Alick.

  As he approached her, she stepped back. “What do you want?”

  He came into the doorway, a rifle and an oiled rag in his hand, glanced round the room and then looked at Mairi.

  “Anything wrong?” he asked.

  The dry searching satire came out of an expressionless face, except for the eyes, and they were, for so big a man, rather small. He was as tall as Geoffrey, but with the powerful shoulders and lean flanks of the “heavy”athlete. He walked lightly and could probably be as quick on his feet as a cat. His face was full, without being fleshy, and his eyes, of a greeny blue, could be penetratingly steadfast, as indeed they were now. This still waiting quality in him defeated Mairi, and despite herself concern crept into her voice when she repeated, “What do you want?”