The Secrets of Dr. Taverner by Dion Fortune Read Free Book Online Page B

that the mysterious Fellowship had made so hospitable to us, we took our way to the docks, and passing through the wilderness of railway lines, cranes, and yawning gulfs that constitute their scenery, we arrived at our companion's ship, a rusty-side tramp, her upper works painted a dirty white.
     
    We accompanied her captain to his cabin, a striking contrast to the raffle outside: a solid desk bearing a student's shaded lamp, a copy of Albrercht Durer's study of the Praying Hands, a considerable shelf of books, and, perceptible beneath the all-pervading odour of strong tobacco, the faint spicy smell that clings to a place where incense is regularly burnt. I studied the titles of the books, for they tell one more of a man than anything else; Isis Unveiled stood cheek by jowl with Creative Evolution and two fat tomes of Eliphas Levi's History of Magic.
     
    On the drive back to Hindhead I thought much of the strange side of life with which I had come in contact.
     
    Yet another example was afforded me of the widespread ramifications of the Society. At Taverner's request I looked up the sea captain on his return from the voyage and asked him for news of Robson. This he was unable to give me, however; he had put the lad ashore at some mudhole on the West Coast. Standing on the quay stewing in the sunshine he had made the Sign. A half-caste Portuguese had touched him on the shoulder, and the two had vanished in the crowd. I expressed some anxiety as to the fate of an inexperienced lad in a strange land.
     
    "You needn't worry," said the sailor. "That Sign would take him right across Africa and back again."
     
    When I was talking the matter over with Taverner, I said to him: `What made you and the captain claim relationship with Robson? It seemed to me a perfectly gratuitous lie."
     
    "It was no lie, but the truth," said Taverner. `Who is my Mother, and who are my Brethren but the Lodge and the initiates thereof?"
     
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    The Man Who Sought
     
    One of Taverner's cases will always stand out in my mind--the case of Black, the airman. The ordinary doctor would have bromided Black into an asylum, but Taverner staked the sanity of two people upon a theory, and saved them both.
     
    Early in May I was sitting with him in his Harley Street consulting-room, taking down case notes while he examined his patients. We had dispatched various hysterics and neurotics to other specialists for treatment, when a man of an entirely different type was ushered in by the butler. He looked absolutely healthy, his face was tanned with the open air and had no sign of nervous tension; but when I met his eyes I noticed something unusual about them. The expression was peculiar. They did not hold the haunting fear one so often sees in the eyes of the mentally sick; he reminded me of nothing in the world but a running hound that has sighted its prey.
     
    "I think I am going off my head," announced our visitor. "What form does your trouble take?" inquired Taverner. "Can't do my work. Can't sit still. Can't do a thing except tear all over the country in my car as hard as ever I can lick. Look at my endorsements." He held out a driving license filled with writing. "Next time they'll quod me, and that will finish me off altogether. If they shut me up inside four walls I'll buzz around like a cockchafer in a bottle till I knock myself to pieces. I'd go clean mad if I couldn't move about. The only relief I get is speed, to feel that I am going somewhere. I drive and drive and drive till I'm clean tuckered out, and then I roll into the nearest wayside pub and sleep; but it doesn't do me any good, because I only dream, and that seems to make things more real, and I wake up madder than ever and go on driving again."
     
    "What is your work?" said Taverner.
     
    "Motor-racing and flying."
     
    "Are you Arnold Black, by any chance?" asked Taverner.
     
    "That's me," said our patient. "Praise the Lord I haven't lost my nerve yet."
     
    "You