“I saw that at once,” Dr. Silence said. “Yes, you saw that, of course; my atmosphere must convey that much to
any one with psychic perceptions. Besides which, I feel sure from all
I’ve heard, that you are really a soul-doctor, are you not, more than a
healer merely of the body?”

“You think of me too highly,” returned the other; “though I prefer
cases, as you know, in which the spirit is disturbed first, the body
afterwards.”

“I understand, yes. Well, I have experienced a curious disturbance
in--_not_ in my physical region primarily. I mean my nerves are all
right, and my body is all right I have no delusions exactly, but my
spirit is tortured by a calamitous fear which first came upon me in a
strange manner.”

John Silence leaned forward a moment and took the speaker’s hand and
held it in his own for a few brief seconds, closing his eyes as he
did so. He was not feeling his pulse, or doing any of the things that
doctors ordinarily do; he was merely absorbing into himself the main
note of the man’s mental condition, so as to get completely his own
point of view, and thus be able to treat his case with true sympathy. A
very close observer might perhaps have noticed that a slight tremor ran
through his frame after he had held the hand for a few seconds. “Tell me quite frankly, Mr. Pender,” he said soothingly, releasing the
hand, and with deep attention in his manner, “tell me all the steps
that led to the beginning of this invasion. I mean tell me what the
particular drug was, and why you took it, and how it affected you----”

“Then you know it began with a drug!” cried the author, with
undisguised astonishment. “I only know from what I observe in you, and in its effect upon myself. You are in a surprising psychical condition. Certain portions of your
atmosphere are vibrating at a far greater rate than others. This is the
effect of a drug, but of no ordinary drug. Allow me to finish, please. If the higher rate of vibration spreads all over, you will become, of
course, permanently cognisant of a much larger world than the one 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 was lit I found the room empty, of course, and the door
locked as usual. Then I half dressed and went out on to the landing,
my hilarity better under control, and proceeded to go downstairs. I
wished to record my sensations.