CHAPTER X WAYS THAT ARE DARK

My preliminary investigations along the Diavolo trail extended over considerable time, and were intertwined with various other matters of more or less interest, but I shall condense the account here, so as to get on to the more intricate affairs that followed.

To begin with, I wrote to the theatrical manager of each and every town that had been listed in Barker's note-book, asking if "Diavolo" had appeared there, under what management he had come, what his real name was, how he could be reached, and whether they had any letter, contract, or other writing of his. Then I wrote to the metropolitan agencies, and to various Bureaux of Information in the larger cities, and to all the public and private societies and persons whom I knew to have an interest in the occult, asking, in a word, if they knew who "Diavolo" was, and how and where one might come into communication with him. I threw out these baited lines in every direction that I could think of.

Very soon the first answers came in. After I had received three or four I began to make bets with myself on the contents of the next one, though it soon became obviously unsportsmanlike to wager on what was so near a certainty. They were all alike. The man who had been placarded as "Diavolo" had never been seen anywhere until he had come to the theatre in the evening for the performance. All business matters had been handled by his agent, Alfred Barker. Barker had made the arrangements beforehand, sometimes by letter, sometimes in person, and he had always accompanied Diavolo at the time of the performance and looked after everything.

"Barker looked out for Diavolo as carefully as though he were a prima donna with a $10,000 throat," wrote one imaginative manager. "Shouldn't wonder but what he was a woman, come to think of it. He had a squeaky kind of voice on the stage, and he kept himself to himself in a very noticeable way. He wore a beard, but it may have grown in a store. I know his hair came out of a shop all right."

Most of the answers were less imaginative, but equally unsatisfactory. Barker had stood in front of Diavolo and shielded him from observation so effectively that no one but Barker really knew what he looked like. And Barker could not now be consulted!

Before long I began to receive answers to the inquiries I had flung farther afield as to the reputation of Diavolo among those who might be supposed to know all professional hypnotists. These replies were also of a surprising and disappointing uniformity. No one working under that name was known. Most of my correspondents contented themselves with this bald assertion, but some of them made suggestions which led me on to further inquiry. One man suggested that "Diavolo" might possibly be one Jacob Hahnen, who had disappeared from the professional field some two years before, following his arrest on account of the death on the stage of one of his hypnotized victims, while in a state of trance. That looked like a plausible suggestion, and I at once engaged a detective to trace Jacob Hahnen. I may say here, (not to mislead you as far as I was misled,) that Hahnen established a perfect alibi, so that pursuit went for nothing. I did not waste time or money on another suggestion, which was to the effect that a famous hypnotist who was supposed to have died in California some years ago, might have gone into retirement for reasons of his own, and have come out of it temporarily under an alias. It might of course be possible, but there was nothing tangible to work upon.

One thing became clear to me in the course of this investigation. There were more professional hypnotists in the country than I had had any idea of, and their ways were dark and devious. They were accustomed to work under assumed names, and more or less to cover their tracks and hide in burrows. I came across some quite amazing literature on the subject,--circulars issued by Schools of Hypnotism, offering to teach, in a course of so many lessons, for so much money, the art of controlling people by occult power.

"A knowledge of this wonderful faculty," one announcement claimed, "will enable you to control the will of the person to whom you are talking, without his consent or even his knowledge. Think of the advantage this will give you in your business! All taught in twenty lessons, mailed in plain cover."

"Lies and nonsense," I said to myself. But something within me bristled uneasily, as at the approach of an evil spirit. It had not been nonsense to poor old William Jordan.

I took to reading scientific books on hypnotism, to discover what powers or disabilities were actually admitted or claimed for this abnormal state. It was not quite so bad as the commercial exploitation of the subject, but it was disquieting enough. In general it seemed to be assumed that a normal person could not be hypnotized without his consent the first time, but that if he once yielded to the will of the hypnotizer, his own will would be so weakened thereby that afterwards he might find it quite impossible to resist. It was a moot question whether a person could be compelled to commit a crime while in a hypnotized state. Some writers insisted that a person's moral principles would guide him, even though his mind and will were paralyzed. I confess it looked to me to be open to question. Morality is generally more of a surface matter than mind, and would therefore be more easily bent.

It was a tremendous relief to get away from this commerce with the powers of darkness to talk with Jean Benbow,--though my part in the conversation was not conspicuous. I was rather like the wooden trellis upon which she could train her flowers of fancy! William Jordan grew stronger under the care of the hospital, but he was not a young man, and he had had a heartbreaking experience. It was some time before he was equal to the return to Eden Valley, and in the meantime I saw as much of him as I could, encouraging him to talk about Diavolo whenever he was in the mood, in the hope that something might develop which would serve me as a clue. Several times I took him out driving, and whenever possible I got Jean to go with us. This was partly because the old man had taken a fancy to her, and she put him at his talkative ease, and partly because she was a delightful little companion on her own account.

One day, when we were out toward the suburbs, she said suddenly, "Oh, let's go down that street."

We went accordingly, and came presently to a quaint old church, covered with ivy.

"That is where I am to be married," said Jean with quiet seriousness. She leaned forward as we drew nearer to watch it intently.

"Really!" I exclaimed. "May I ask if the day is set?"

"Oh, no," she said simply. "I only mean that when I am married I shall be married in that church."

"Why, pray?"

"My mother was married there," she said gently, and a look of moonbeams came into her eyes.

"Oh! That makes it seem more reasonable. But aren't you taking a good deal for granted in assuming that you are going to be married? Maybe you will grow up to be a nice little old maid, with a tabby cat and a teapot. What then?"

She did not answer my foolish gibe for a minute, and I feared I had offended her. But after a moment she said, with that quaint seriousness of hers:

"Do you know, that is a very hard question to decide. I have thought about it so often. It would be very splendid, of course, to fall in love with some great hero, and go through all sorts of awful tragedies, and then have it come out happily in the end, and of course one would have to be married if it came out happily, though it is kind of hard to think of what could happen next that would be interesting enough to make a proper climax, don't you think so? Just to live happy ever after seems sort of tame. So I have wondered whether, on the whole, it would not be more romantic to cherish a secret passion and grow old like withered rose leaves and have faded letters tied with a worn ribbon to be found in your desk when you were dead."

I considered the situation with proper seriousness. "Who would write the letters?" I asked.

"Oh,--"

"Some young man who was desperately in love with you, of course?"

"Why, yes," she admitted.

"Well, what would you do with him? I don't believe any young man with proper feelings on the subject would be willing to efface himself in order to let you cherish his memory. He'd rather you would cherish him. I'm sure I should, if it were I."

"Oh!" she murmured with a startled dismay that was delicious.

"Did you happen to have any young man in particular in mind," I asked, "or is the position vacant?"

She looked up at me from under thick eyelashes in a rather bewildering way. "Quite vacant," she said.

"I'm supposed to be rather a good letter-writer," I suggested.

"I should have to be particular, if they are going to last a long time and be read over and over again," she said demurely. "Have you had any experience in writing that special kind of a letter?" (The sly puss!)

"No experience at all. But you would find me willing to learn and industrious."

"I'll consider your application," she said, with dignity. "But I haven't yet decided that on the whole I should not prefer a wedding to a package of yellow letters. I don't know. I can just see myself sitting by a window in the fading twilight, with those letters in my lap, and it looks awfully interesting. But it would be disconcerting--isn't that the right word?--if no one else saw how romantic and beautiful it was. Of course I should know myself, and that counts for a good deal, but it does seem more lonesome than a wedding, when you come to think of it, doesn't it?"

"It certainly does. Whatever you may have to say against weddings, they are not lonesome."

"Oh, well, I don't have to decide just yet," she said, with an air of relief. "It is a long way off. Only, if I ever do get married, it will be in that little church, no matter if I am off at the North Pole when I am engaged and intend to go back there to set up housekeeping the next day. I made a vow about it, so as to be quite sure that I should have the strength of mind to insist on it. When you have made a vow, you just have to carry it out, you know, in spite of torrents or floods or anything."

I agreed heartily. And the time came when the memory of that foolish chatter just about saved my reason.