He turned his eyes
slowly to the wall opposite, where hung a weird array of Eastern swords
and daggers, scimitars and spears, the collections of many journeys. He
crossed the room and ran his finger along the edge. His mind seemed to
waver.
“No,” he muttered presently; “not that way. There are easier and
better ways than that.”
He took his hat and passed downstairs into the street.
It was five o’clock, and the June sun lay hot upon the pavement. He
felt the metal door-knob burn the palm of his hand.
“Ah, Laidlaw, this is well met,” cried a voice at his elbow; “I was
in the act of coming to see you. I’ve a case that will interest you,
and besides, I remembered that you flavoured your tea with orange
leaves!—and I admit—”
It was Alexis Stephen, the great hypnotic doctor.
“I’ve had no tea to-day,” Laidlaw said, in a dazed manner, after
staring for a moment as though the other had struck him in the face. A
new idea had entered his mind.
“What’s the matter?” asked Dr. Stephen quickly. “Something’s wrong
with you. It’s this sudden heat, or overwork. Come, man, let’s go
inside.”
A sudden light broke upon the face of the younger man, the light of
a heavensent inspiration. He looked into his friend’s face, and told a
direct lie.
“Odd,” he said, “I myself was just coming to see you. I have
something of great importance to test your confidence with. But in
your house, please,” as Stephen urged him towards his own door—“in
your house. It’s only round the corner, and I—I cannot go back
there—to my rooms—till I have told you.
“I’m your patient—for the moment,” he added stammeringly as soon as
they were seated in the privacy of the hypnotist’s sanctum, “and I
want—er—”
“My dear Laidlaw,” interrupted the other, in that soothing voice of
command which had suggested to many a suffering soul that the cure for
its pain lay in the powers of its own reawakened will, “I am always at
your service, as you know. You have only to tell me what I can do for
you, and I will do it.” He showed every desire to help him out. His
manner was indescribably tactful and direct.
Dr. Laidlaw looked up into his face.
“I surrender my will to you,” he said, already calmed by the other’s
healing presence, “and I want you to treat me hypnotically—and at
once. I want you to suggest to me”—his voice became very tense—“that
I shall forget—forget till I die—everything that has occurred to me
during the last two hours; till I die, mind,” he added, with solemn
emphasis, “till I die.”
He floundered and stammered like a frightened boy. Alexis Stephen
looked at him fixedly without speaking.
“And further,” Laidlaw continued, “I want you to ask me no
questions. I wish to forget for ever something I have recently
discovered—something so terrible and yet so obvious that I can hardly
understand why it is not patent to every mind in the world—for I have
had a moment of absolute clear vision—of merciless
clairvoyance. But I want no one else in the whole world to know what it
is—least of all, old friend, yourself.”
He talked in utter confusion, and hardly knew what he was saying.
But the pain on his face and the anguish in his voice were an instant
passport to the other’s heart.
“Nothing is easier,” replied Dr. Stephen, after a hesitation so
slight that the other probably did not even notice it. “Come into my
other room where we shall not be disturbed. I can heal you. Your memory
of the last two hours shall be wiped out as though it had never been.
You can trust me absolutely.”
“I know I can,” Laidlaw said simply, as he followed him in.
An hour later they passed back into the front room again. The sun
was already behind the houses opposite, and the shadows began to
gather.
“I went off easily?” Laidlaw asked.
“You were a little obstinate at first. But though you came in like a
lion, you went out like a lamb. I let you sleep a bit afterwards.”
Dr. Stephen kept his eyes rather steadily upon his friend’s face.
“What were you doing by the fire before you came here?” he asked,
pausing, in a casual tone, as he lit a cigarette and handed the case to
his patient.
“I? Let me see.
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