“But how can you get at something that has happened so far back and is so completely forgotten?”
The Doctor smiled broadly. “That, in a way, is right up your alley. The answer is: detective work and black magic. Detective work of a high order, too, if I do say so. You have to probe about through the human mind in a jungle of deviously intertangled and snarled complexities. You have to follow an old trail, using clues — a fifteen-year-old dream, for example — that may prove to be only a symbol for another clue. The labyrinth of false trails and blind alleys makes child’s play out of criminal detection. A study may last several years and provide an index of fifteen or twenty thousand recall items that have to be properly classified, co-ordinated, analyzed, and jigsawed together.”
“And the black magic?”
“Insanity used to be explained on the demoniac-possession theory. It’s a good theory, too, except that the demon is imaginary rather than real. Strangely enough, the technique that has been evolved for exorcising that demon is made up of some things most people think of as magical. It is necessary somehow to induce the subconscious or marginal mind to express itself freely and the methods of doing that—”
Merlini grunted. “Uh-huh. Methods which concern inverted drinking glasses hanging in mid-air. I see now. A dim light just behind the head, half-raised eyes, attention focused on the glass — in short, crystal gazing! Ross, Inspector Gavigan isn’t going to like this at all.”
“Neither do I,” I said doubtfully. “Do you have a turban, Doctor, and a robe with the zodiacal signs on it?”
“You see, Merlini?” He spread his hands helplessly. “No, Harte, sorry, nor any stuffed alligators. The phony sciences have been almost too thoroughly debunked. With all that smoke you don’t realize there is a little fire. You can look into a crystal and see visions, visions you’d swear were really there. I can prove that to you. Actually, of course the vision is not in the crystal, but in your head. It’s a self-induced, visual hallucination. The crystal gazer who thinks the vision is an external reality is only a magician playing tricks on himself.”
“I still don’t see where the psychoanalysis comes in,” I complained.
“Hallucinations are of subconscious origin. And that makes crystal gazing a method of tapping the subconscious memory, a method of getting at the long-past things the conscious mind has forgotten, but which the subconscious mind still holds.”
Merlini, somewhat fearfully I thought, asked, “And the other methods, Doctor?”
“Your Inspector won’t like those either. The complete list is: automatic writing, automatic speech, shell hearing — like crystal gazing, except that the hallucination is auditory rather than visual — twilight sleep, hypnosis, trances, and catalepsy. Since Linda Skelton paid me for services rendered, I fully expect that the Inspector will jug me for obtaining money through fraudulent mediumistic practices.”
Merlini almost shouted at him. “Did you say hypnosis?”
“Yes, but you don’t need to jump to the conclusion that Linda was hypnotized into going out of bounds. That’s out. She had a phobic resistance to any unconscious form of trance state. My clinical notes will prove that. We tried it. And she tried hard to co-operate, but with no success. There might be several reasons for that. She was operated on at one time as a child; it may be a persisting fear of anesthesia or it might be her peculiarly assertive personality or even the phobia’s own self-protective blockage.”
“But what did you use?”
“Crystal gazing and automatic writing were the most successful.”
Merlini frowned. “What effect has Madame Rappourt had on Linda?”
“Bad. That woman should be—” The Doctor stopped, shrugged his shoulders, and went on. “Linda wouldn’t believe the hallucinations were not real. She persisted in assigning spiritualistic causes. Pleased because she thought she had mediumistic powers. Rappourt and I have been at loggerheads, naturally.”
“And yet you let Linda take part in these séances?”
“Let her?” Gail grinned. “You didn’t know Linda. I’ve just mentioned her assertive personality. That was my innate politeness. Linda did what she damned well pleased, and if her doctor didn’t like it he could go climb a tree. Handling her was a problem, and mostly she didn’t handle. I continued with her case only because the phobia is rare and offered study possibilities.”
“What effect did the séances have?”
“They were definitely harmful. She had been hyper-excited and her interest had been so absorbed that my treatments had for the moment practically ceased. That happened once before. Last year she had a Hindu mystic on the place. He spouted reincarnation, Yogi breath control, mystic world cycles, and all the rest of it. His engagement terminated when the silverware in the house began to dematerialize.”
“Silverware.” Merlini sat up in his chair. “I knew I’d forgotten something. Ross, show him those coins of yours.”
I took the little box out and rolled the six gold guineas across the table. I saw the Doctor’s eyes grow round, and he looked at me as if he were seeing me for the first time.
“Where did you get those?”
“You might spin that story now, Ross,” Merlini said. “I’ve waited long enough.”
I settled back and gave it to them, from the phone booth to the crack on the head. I’ve never had a more attentive audience. Merlini lay back with his eyes closed, but I knew that his ears were wide open. Doctor Gail examined the coins, one at a time, his calm professional confidence fading as he listened, to be replaced by a frankly bewildered air.
When I had finished, Merlini sat up, and, without commenting on my yarn, produced the slates he had taken from the safe. Our previous examination, after seeing the Doctor’s light, had been hasty. He looked at them again, now, and passed them across one at a time to Gail.
“You’ve seen those guineas and heard Harte’s story,” he said. “I want you to look at these and tell me something.”
The Doctor raised an eyebrow but said nothing. He looked at the slates. I moved around where I could see. On the first, the one bearing the map, I now noticed something I had missed before, an X-mark on the water just within the projecting arm of the island and about equally distant from either shore.
The complete message on the second slate read: Bow at 108 beam 112-four-feet silt two tar, superstructure projects slightly astern position lies 20 points off north by northeast. Pole. The handwriting had an odd, uneven, hesitant quality about it, and in several places some of the words overlapped each other. It looked very much as if it had been written by a disembodied spirit, or — by someone writing in the dark.
But the third message was the honey. Doctor Gail read it slowly aloud: “September 13, 1780, £380,000 transferred from H. M. S. Mercury and 14 cartloads specie from paymaster’s office in Cherry Street. This added to the large sum shipped at Dover made total in my care £960,000. Capt. Charles M. Pole.”