Three John Silence Stories | Page 6

you know
normally. If, on the other hand, the rapid portion sinks back to the usual
rate, you will lose these occasional increased perceptions you now
have."
"You amaze me!" exclaimed the author; "for your words exactly
describe what I have been feeling--"
"I mention this only in passing, and to give you confidence before you
approach the account of your real affliction," continued the doctor. "All
perception, as you know, is the result of vibrations; and clairvoyance
simply means becoming sensitive to an increased scale of vibrations.
The awakening of the inner senses we hear so much about means no
more than that. Your partial clairvoyance is easily explained. The only
thing that puzzles me is how you managed to procure the drug, for it is
not easy to get in pure form, and no adulterated tincture could have
given you the terrific impetus I see you have acquired. But, please
proceed now and tell me your story in your own way."
"This Cannabis indica," the author went on, "came into my possession
last autumn while my wife was away. I need not explain how I got it,
for that has no importance; but it was the genuine fluid extract, and I
could not resist the temptation to make an experiment. One of its
effects, as you know, is to induce torrential laughter--"
"Yes: sometimes."
"--I am a writer of humorous tales, and I wished to increase my own
sense of laughter--to see the ludicrous from an abnormal point of view.
I wished to study it a bit, if possible, and--"

"Tell me!"
"I took an experimental dose. I starved for six hours to hasten the effect,
locked myself into this room, and gave orders not to be disturbed. Then
I swallowed the stuff and waited."
"And the effect?"
"I waited one hour, two, three, four, five hours. Nothing happened. No
laughter came, but only a great weariness instead. Nothing in the room
or in my thoughts came within a hundred miles of a humorous aspect."
"Always a most uncertain drug," interrupted the doctor. "We make very
small use of it on that account."
"At two o'clock in the morning I felt so hungry and tired that I decided
to give up the experiment and wait no longer. I drank some milk and
went upstairs to bed. I felt flat and disappointed. I fell asleep at once
and must have slept for about an hour, when I awoke suddenly with a
great noise in my ears. It was the noise of my own laughter! I was
simply shaking with merriment. At first I was bewildered and thought I
had been laughing in dreams, but a moment later I remembered the
drug, and was delighted to think that after all I had got an effect. It had
been working all along, only I had miscalculated the time. The only
unpleasant thing then was an odd feeling that I had not waked naturally,
but had been wakened by some one else--deliberately. This came to me
as a certainty in the middle of my noisy laughter and distressed me."
"Any impression who it could have been?" asked the doctor, now
listening with close attention to every word, very much on the alert.
Pender hesitated and tried to smile. He brushed his hair from his
forehead with a nervous gesture.
"You must tell me all your impressions, even your fancies; they are
quite as important as your certainties."
"I had a vague idea that it was some one connected with my forgotten

dream, some one who had been at me in my sleep, some one of great
strength and great ability--of great force--quite an unusual
personality--and, I was certain, too--a woman."
"A good woman?" asked John Silence quietly.
Pender started a little at the question and his sallow face flushed; it
seemed to surprise him. But he shook his head quickly with an
indefinable look of horror.
"Evil," he answered briefly, "appallingly evil, and yet mingled with the
sheer wickedness of it was also a certain perverseness--the perversity of
the unbalanced mind."
He hesitated a moment and looked up sharply at his interlocutor. A
shade of suspicion showed itself in his eyes.
"No," laughed the doctor, "you need not fear that I'm merely
humouring you, or think you mad. Far from it. Your story interests me
exceedingly and you furnish me unconsciously with a number of clues
as you tell it. You see, I possess some knowledge of my own as to these
psychic byways."
"I was shaking with such violent laughter," continued the narrator,
reassured in a moment, "though with no clear idea what was amusing
me, that I had the greatest difficulty in getting up for the matches, and
was afraid I should frighten the servants overhead with my explosions.
When the gas