Three John Silence Stories | Page 3

to listen devotedly."
"I am trying," she continued earnestly, "but must do so in my own
words and trust to your intelligence to disentangle as I go along. He is a
young author, and lives in a tiny house off Putney Heath somewhere.
He writes humorous stories--quite a genre of his own: Pender--you

must have heard the name--Felix Pender? Oh, the man had a great gift,
and married on the strength of it; his future seemed assured. I say 'had,'
for quite suddenly his talent utterly failed him. Worse, it became
transformed into its opposite. He can no longer write a line in the old
way that was bringing him success--"
Dr. Silence opened his eyes for a second and looked at her.
"He still writes, then? The force has not gone?" he asked briefly, and
then closed his eyes again to listen.
"He works like a fury," she went on, "but produces nothing"--she
hesitated a moment--"nothing that he can use or sell. His earnings have
practically ceased, and he makes a precarious living by book-reviewing
and odd jobs--very odd, some of them. Yet, I am certain his talent has
not really deserted him finally, but is merely--"
Again Mrs. Sivendson hesitated for the appropriate word.
"In abeyance," he suggested, without opening his eyes.
"Obliterated," she went on, after a moment to weigh the word, "merely
obliterated by something else--"
"By some one else?"
"I wish I knew. All I can say is that he is haunted, and temporarily his
sense of humour is shrouded--gone--replaced by something dreadful
that writes other things. Unless something competent is done, he will
simply starve to death. Yet he is afraid to go to a doctor for fear of
being pronounced insane; and, anyhow, a man can hardly ask a doctor
to take a guinea to restore a vanished sense of humour, can he?"
"Has he tried any one at all--?"
"Not doctors yet. He tried some clergymen and religious people; but
they know so little and have so little intelligent sympathy. And most of
them are so busy balancing on their own little pedestals--"

John Silence stopped her tirade with a gesture.
"And how is it that you know so much about him?" he asked gently.
"I know Mrs. Pender well--I knew her before she married him--"
"And is she a cause, perhaps?"
"Not in the least. She is devoted; a woman very well educated, though
without being really intelligent, and with so little sense of humour
herself that she always laughs at the wrong places. But she has nothing
to do with the cause of his distress; and, indeed, has chiefly guessed it
from observing him, rather than from what little he has told her. And he,
you know, is a really lovable fellow, hard-working, patient--altogether
worth saving."
Dr. Silence opened his eyes and went over to ring for tea. He did not
know very much more about the case of the humorist than when he first
sat down to listen; but he realised that no amount of words from his
Swedish friend would help to reveal the real facts. A personal interview
with the author himself could alone do that.
"All humorists are worth saving," he said with a smile, as she poured
out tea. "We can't afford to lose a single one in these strenuous days. I
will go and see your friend at the first opportunity."
She thanked him elaborately, effusively, with many words, and he, with
much difficulty, kept the conversation thenceforward strictly to the
teapot.
And, as a result of this conversation, and a little more he had gathered
by means best known to himself and his secretary, he was whizzing in
his motor-car one afternoon a few days later up the Putney Hill to have
his first interview with Felix Pender, the humorous writer who was the
victim of some mysterious malady in his "psychical region" that had
obliterated his sense of the comic and threatened to wreck his life and
destroy his talent. And his desire to help was probably of equal strength
with his desire to know and to investigate.

The motor stopped with a deep purring sound, as though a great black
panther lay concealed within its hood, and the doctor--the "psychic
doctor," as he was sometimes called--stepped out through the gathering
fog, and walked across the tiny garden that held a blackened fir tree and
a stunted laurel shrubbery. The house was very small, and it was some
time before any one answered the bell. Then, suddenly, a light appeared
in the hall, and he saw a pretty little woman standing on the top step
begging him to come in. She was dressed in grey, and the gaslight fell
on a mass of deliberately brushed light hair. Stuffed, dusty birds, and a
shabby array of