The Adventures of Dick Maitland | Page 9

discovered that there was something in it, despite the disrepute cast upon it by the grotesque performances of certain so-called entertainers. There is no need for me to detail to you the successive steps by which I at length attained my present knowledge of the marvellous powers of the science. Let it suffice me to say that by diligent study of it I eventually acquired such a mastery of it that it has enabled me to-- well, to put it mildly--succeed where but for it I must have failed. And a large measure of this success is due to the fact that I have discovered an infallible method of instantly hypnotising a patient without that patient's knowledge. They are hypnotised, but they don't know it; haven't the remotest suspicion of it. Then I convey to them a powerful suggestion that my treatment of them is going to be absolutely successful, and--there you have the whole secret."
Humphreys paused for a moment, as if considering whether or not he should say more; then he gazed abstractedly at his carefully kept finger nails, and his right hand wandered to his waistcoat pocket. Then, looking up, he extended the hand toward Dick, saying:
"Just lend me your penknife a moment, will you?"
Dick produced the knife and held it out to Humphreys, who looked at it, then shrank back.
"Good heavens, man," he exclaimed, "I asked for a penknife, not for an adder! Where did you get that brute from?"
With an inarticulate cry, and an expression of unutterable disgust and loathing, Maitland dropped the penknife to the floor, and then stamped on it savagely, grinding the heel of his boot on it as though grinding the head of a snake into the ground.
"Why, Dick!" exclaimed Humphreys, looking his assistant square in the eye; "what are you doing? What has that good knife been doing to you that you should treat it in that barbarous manner?"
Maitland stared back blankly into the Doctor's smiling eyes for a moment, then looked long at the penknife on the floor, and finally stooped and cautiously took it between his forefinger and thumb, eyeing it doubtfully the while. Then he suddenly sat down, pulled out his pocket handkerchief, and mopped off the perspiration that freely bedewed his face.
"Well, I'll be shot!" he ejaculated. "What an extraordinary experience! Will you believe me, Doctor, when I tell you that as I drew this penknife out of my waistcoat pocket it actually seemed to change into an adder in my hand? There was the flat, wicked-looking head, the malevolent eyes, the characteristic markings of the body, and, above all, there was the feeling of it writhing strongly in my grasp, as though it were trying to get enough of its length clear to turn and strike me! Talk about Aaron's rod and those of the old Egyptian necromancers turning into serpents! Why, I could have sworn that this knife of mine did precisely the same thing! Now, there is a problem for you, Doctor: What sort of mental aberration was it that caused me to imagine such an extraordinary thing as that, eh?"
"Simply, my dear boy, that I hypnotised you `unbeknownst', so to speak, in illustration of what I have been telling you," answered the Doctor, laying his hand upon Dick's shoulder. "Hope I didn't scare you very severely, eh?"
"N-o," answered Dick slowly, "you did not actually scare me, Doctor; but you managed to give me such a thrill of horror and disgust as I have not experienced for many a long day. But, I say, do you really mean to tell me, in sober earnest, that that abominable experience was due to hypnotic suggestion on your part?"
"Yes, I do," answered Humphreys. "I wanted to bring home to you in a very convincing manner the power which the hypnotist exercises over his subject. I could have done it even more convincingly, perhaps, by commanding you to take that perfectly cold poker in your hand, and then suggesting to you that it was red hot, when--despite the fact of the poker being cold--your hand would have been most painfully blistered. But probably the `adder' experiment was convincing enough, eh?"
"It was indeed," assented Dick with a little reminiscent shudder. "But look here, Doctor, you say that you hypnotised me. When did you do it? I didn't see you do anything peculiar."
"No, my boy, of course you didn't, because I adopted my own especial method, which is instantaneous and undetectable, and which I will teach you if you care to learn it; for I seem to foresee that there may be occasions, by and by, when you get out to South Africa, when you may find the power extremely useful to you, particularly if you should get any medical or surgical work to do. In such a case just