CHAPTER VII
IN HALF-MOON STREET
IT WAS Sir Provost Hope's custom to arrange his consulting day in two sessions. His last appointment in the first session was made for one o'clock, enabling him to lunch at half-past; his first in the second session was at three; and, to-day, the patient whose name stood against the time, three o'clock, was Madame Sabinov.
Sir Provost Hope had achieved his unique place as a consultant chiefly by sheer brilliancy. The popularity of that form of diagnosis vaguely labelled "Psycho-analysis" had afforded him his big opportunity, and he had seized it with an assurance characteristic of the man.
A member of an old and respected family, he had never neglected the professional asset afforded by his right of entry into good society. Nevertheless, his title had been well merited. In that strange domain of the mind and spirit which science has recently reopened, he had explored at least as deeply as any man of his generation. He had carried the art of "healing suggestion" certainly one step beyond his rivals, and had accomplished cures which had defied, alike, the nostrum of the physician and the knife of the surgeon.
The early death of his beautiful wife had done much to direct his studies into psychic channels, and outside the varied aspects of his life's work there was but one passion which claimed him: his love for his daughter, in whom he recognized an almost uncanny reproduction of her mother.
Time is kindly, though some count him an enemy, and Provost Hope had learned to love the little mannerisms, quaint humours, and odd flashes of intuition in Jasmine, which once must have wounded his heart, since they awoke deathless memories of the woman who had died in giving life to this dainty and elusive counterpart of herself.
That Jasmine loved Douglas Carey, Sir Provost had known for a long time. He had accordingly cultivated Carey's society and had not been slow to recognize a man of fine capacity and absolute integrity. Valuing Carey merely upon his achievements in the literary field, he had gone far. It had not diminished Sir Provost's esteem to learn that there was another aspect of his activities. Carey's scrupulous silence, prior to that fateful consultation, respecting his important government work, had raised him even higher in the estimation of the older man.
Apart from his interest in the patient, the case itself had been unique. Hypnotic interference was clearly indicated. That the interest of Carey's unknown enemy might be personal as well as criminal was a point which had not occurred to Sir Provost at the time. To Muir Torrington he owed the new clue; for in this mysterious parenthesis designed to separate Carey from Jasmine he recognized at once the personal motive, and the same, or a similar, type of intrusion. In other words, the Unknown Quantity interested in stealing from Carey's brain secrets which belonged to the British Government was also interested in Jasmine.
Sir Provost, as his professional record had shown, was far too clever to be old-fashioned. In his daughter he perceived a typical product of the day; and he had permitted her to develop more or less along certain lines because, in despite of habits which must have shocked an earlier generation, he knew her proud spirit and could trust it—or such was his philosophy.
To seek to link the two clues which had fallen into his hands was a task of extraordinary difficulty, for the reason that, so far as his observation had led him, Jasmine apparently knew everyone of note in London. Without in any way violating his passionate paternal love for the girl, he nevertheless regarded her as an item in a fascinating experiment; and his determination to isolate her was prompted by motives at once protective and scientific. At Low Ketley, his sister's place in Surrey, he could conveniently check Jasmine's visitors. Whilst she lived her butterfly life in London it was impossible for the specialist to scrutinize her many friends.
Having dropped his daughter in Conduit Street, Sir Provost lay back on the cushions of his car and closed his eyes, reflectively.
A potential link in the chain had come his way, uninvited—and he wondered. He had not seen Douglas Carey since the consultation, but he appreciated Carey's silence. Carey, as he had learned from Muir Torrington, had quarrelled with Jasmine: pride forbade him to see Jasmine's father, even professionally. Sir Provost understood and sympathized. Nevertheless, he would have liked to know in what degree his diagnosis had been correct; for he had traced the disturbance of which Carey complained to one of two unfamiliar objects on his writing table—the Korean bowl and the figure of the contemplative Buddha. The latter, Carey suspected, had been left in his room by Madame Sabinov. Sir Provost did not question the facts of the story. He had unusual means of judging a man's probity. Therefore, Madame Sabinov might possibly be a link between Carey and the Unknown Quantity. Sitting with closed eyes, he reviewed the few particulars which he had accumulated respecting this woman.
During the comparatively short time that she had been in London, she had contrived to make herself notorious. "Of course, one has heard of Madame Sabinov." A world of significance had lain in the words. Sir Provost recalled two cases in which his method of diagnosis had discovered Madame as the disturbing influence. He had never seen her, but already he had classified her as one of those strange beings whose worldly mission would seem to be to sow unhappiness and to reap disaster. She was a dangerous exotic, with whose name great names were scandalously linked, justly or unjustly. But he thought he knew the type, and he was gravely doubtful of the motive which had prompted Madame Sabinov to seek a professional interview. If she must be counted unfriendly, it looked like a false step. Sir Provost wondered. At any rate, he was well armed if the presence of this woman meant a move on the part of the enemy—the mysterious enemy of Carey and of Jasmine.
As he stepped out of his car, Ford opened the door, and:
"Madame Sabinov is waiting, sir," he announced.
Sir Provost nodded and crossed the hall. Glancing at the clock, he noticed that the hour was exactly three. He removed his hat and topcoat and went into his consulting room. He scanned a long list of patients for the afternoon, then:
"I am ready, Ford," he said; and a moment later Madame Sabinov came in.
He had heard many tales concerning the fabulous luxury of her life, but he had noted no car at the door, and now as she entered he observed that she wore a well-tailored but simple walking suit. She was tall and elegant, a fashionable but unobtrusive figure; and for this simplicity he had not been prepared. Nor was her beauty quite of the type he had anticipated. Her remarkable hair was confined beneath a closely fitting hat, depriving her of a curious Delphic quality which belonged to the hidden whiteness. In her eyes he read a startling story of love and hate.
She had lived every hour of her life, this woman, perhaps too eagerly, but, he determined, once, at least, she had tasted the sweeter wine of self-sacrifice. Certainly, Madame Sabinov did not conform to the type which he had conjured up. Vanity was not her only god. She had made many offerings upon that altar, yes, but also upon others, and not always had her prayers been for gratifications of the body. She was more pitiful than he had thought to find her, and infinitely more dangerous.
As their glances met, the idea leapt to his mind: Was this the Unknown Quantity?
Something tauntingly familiar, yet wholly strange—in the dull ivory of her skin, the hint of gold in her long, slumbrous eyes—sent Sir Provost upon a mental instantaneous tour of the world, in quest of the real nationality of the woman who called herself Poppæa Sabinov. His memory lingered for a moment in a district of the Caucasus which he had once visited. But it yielded no definite clue. All this, the consultant, armed with his uncanny knowledge of humanity, had read from the physical appearance or defined from the aura of Madame Sabinov during the few seconds which elapsed whilst she crossed from the door to a chair which he had placed for her. Then:
"Will you please sit here," he said quietly, "and explain why you wish to consult me?"
Madame Sabinov slightly inclined her head, and sank into the chair with a graceful languor which again excited the doctor's interest. For some indefinable reason it struck him as being un-European. He seated himself beside his writing table, fixing a keen gaze upon his visitor.
"I have come to you," she replied, "because I am suffering from a sickness of the mind or the spirit rather than one of the body."
Sir Provost nodded. "So much I had gathered," he said gravely. "But tell me more particularly what distresses you."
She bent forward, her elbow on the arm of the chair, resting her chin in the palm of her hand, and watching him with strange, sombre eyes.
"I am a woman," she continued, "who in my youth knew what it was to submit to brute force—to have no will of my own. I have been a chattel; my mother was a slave."
"Do you mean this literally?" interrupted Sir Provost's gentle voice.
"I mean it literally, yes. So that when freedom came and I realized that at last I was at liberty to live my own life, I formed a resolution."
And now, carefully noting the modelling of her lips and chin, the doctor determined that what this woman willed to do she would carry out in the face of almost any odds. In other words, the life she had lived had been of her own choosing, and not, as is more often the case, the outcome of beauty allied to frailty.
"My resolution," she went on, "was this: I would never again suffer the domination of any man."
She shrugged her shoulders and smiled sadly.
"I had forgotten love," she added. "My training had taught me to believe it a myth. Yet it came to me, and for the two happiest years of my life I lost myself in someone else, gladly, utterly. It came to an end—that happiness." She hesitated. "And from the hour that it ended my resolution remained unbroken; until—in Paris I began to wonder; in London, I have definitely felt a change."
"Explain what you mean by a change."
"I mean that I am no longer entirely mistress of my own actions."
"Do you refer to some new interest, some affection which has come into your life?"
"Not at all." She spoke emphatically. "No such thing has come or will ever come again. No." She shook her head. "I mean that some influence outside myself, outside my life, at times controls me."
"You speak of a mental control?"
"Of a mental control, yes."
"Have you no idea of its source?"
"None whatever," she declared. "My ignorance is perhaps due to vanity. Many men"—again she shrugged her shoulders—"flatter me. I have resources, and I suppose I am notorious." She raised her eyes naïvely. "Am I not?"
"Well"—Sir Provost tapped his tortoise-shell-rimmed glasses on the blotting-pad—"one has heard of you, Madame Sabinov."
She nodded and glanced aside.
"All you have heard is not true," she said, "but some of it is. Yes, I have lived my life. But what I have done I have chosen to do, and when I was tired"—she opened her hands in an odd little gesture—"I finished. But now"
"Yes?" Sir Provost prompted.
"I feel"—the opened hands now became tightly clenched—"that I am being used!"
"Do you mean that you are being controlled by a will more powerful than your own?"
"Yes, and more than that. I believe there are times during the day and night when I perform actions not dictated by my own brain."
"Ah!" Sir Provost fixed his gaze keenly upon her again. "Do I understand you to refer to hypnotism?"
Madame Sabinov laughed incredulously, but, running as a black thread through the silver, one might have detected a faint note of fear. She threw her head back, meeting the gaze of the strange blue eyes which watched her so intently, and:
"Is there such a thing?" she demanded.
"There is," Sir Provost answered simply.
"I suppose there is," murmured Madame Sabinov, Exerting a visible effort of will, she withdrew her glance from his and stared down at the point of her shoe with which she was restlessly tapping the carpet. "If I had not thought so I should not be here, of course."
Followed some moments of silence upon which Sir Provost did not intrude. Then:
"If someone has obtained such a control over me," she continued, speaking in a very low voice, "if, at times"—she laughed again, but not scornfully-"I have been 'possessed,' in the mediæval sense, there would be a record of my actions during such times upon my subconscious mind, would there not?"
"There would," Sir Provost replied.
"Although the conscious or positive brain, or whatever you call it, retained no memory of them?"
She looked up at him, and her expression had changed to one of appeal.
"I am afraid!" she said, and bent forward, clasping her hands tightly together. "If this thing is true, it means that there can be life—force—intelligence—separate from the body, independent of the senses. It surely means that part of us is not material—and therefore may not die when our bodies die. Oh! If I thought so, I should go mad. The way of my life, the pleasures I have schemed for, the liberties I have taken with conventions I despised! All of it—all of it—because of my blind belief that death ended everything. If it does not!" She raised her eyes to the ceiling, but seemed to contemplate some far-distant planet. "If it does not!"
A man less clever than Sir Provost Hope must have supposed Madame Sabinov to be the victim of a sudden, overwhelming dread of Divine punishment. Sir Provost, watching her, knew that this was not so; and his last doubt of her sincerity vanished. The motive—and always he sought the motive—which had driven this self-centred but passionate woman to consult him, was one which the psychologist understood. And presently her lips moved again and she spoke, in a mere whisper:
"What has he thought of me!"
When again Madame Sabinov sought his glance, her lashes were wet.
"I understand," he said gently. "You have realized that the will is the spirit. Because the will of another has commanded your obedience, when none other was present, you have realized that there are forces linked to the human body which, nevertheless, are untrammelled by it and which may outlive it."
Madame Sabinov bowed her head.
"I begin," she said, speaking in a strange, stifled voice, "to realize that there are laws of which I know nothing; and so—Oh! do you understand?—I dare not allow any one to gain such power over me! Never, never again! I must know who it is. Can you tell me who it is?"
"Possibly," Sir Provost replied. "But have you no hesitation in submitting to hypnotic treatment?"
"None."
"You realize that you are throwing open the book of your life to my scrutiny?"
"I came prepared to do so."
"Very well. It shall be as you wish."