“I have not seen him,” was the reply. “The man’s mind was charged to
the brim when he wrote that; full of vivid mental pictures. Notice the
restraint of it. For the main character of his case psychometry could
be depended upon, and the scrap of paper his hand has touched is
sufficient to give to another mind—a sensitive and sympathetic
mind—clear mental pictures of what is going on. I think I have a very
sound general idea of his problem.”

“So there may be excitement, after all?”

John Silence waited a moment before he replied. “Something very serious is amiss there,” he said gravely, at length. “Some one—not himself, I gather,—has been meddling with a rather
dangerous kind of gunpowder. So—yes, there may be excitement, as you
put it.”

“And my duties?” I asked, with a decidedly growing interest. “Remember,
I am your ‘assistant.’”

“Behave like an intelligent confidential secretary. Observe everything,
without seeming to. Say nothing—nothing that means anything. Be present
at all interviews. I may ask a good deal of you, for if my impressions
are correct this is—”

He broke off suddenly. “But I won’t tell you my impressions yet,” he resumed after a moment’s
thought. “Just watch and listen as the case proceeds. Form your own
impressions and cultivate your intuitions. We come as ordinary
visitors, of course,” he added, a twinkle showing for an instant in his
eye; “hence, the guns.”

Though disappointed not to hear more, I recognised the wisdom of his
words and knew how valueless my impressions would be once the powerful
suggestion of having heard his own lay behind them. I likewise
reflected that intuition joined to a sense of humour was of more use to
a man than double the quantity of mere “brains,” as such. Before putting the letter away, however, he handed it back, telling me
to place it against my forehead for a few moments and then describe any
pictures that came spontaneously into my mind. “Don’t deliberately look for anything. Just imagine you see the inside
of the eyelid, and wait for pictures that rise against its dark
screen.”

I followed his instructions, making my mind as nearly blank as
possible. But no visions came. I saw nothing but the lines of light
that pass to and fro like the changes of a kaleidoscope across the
blackness. A momentary sensation of warmth came and went curiously. “You see—what?” he asked presently. “Nothing,” I was obliged to admit disappointedly; “nothing but the
usual flashes of light one always sees. Only, perhaps, they are more
vivid than usual.”

He said nothing by way of comment or reply. “And they group themselves now and then,” I continued, with painful
candour, for I longed to see the pictures he had spoken of, “group
themselves into globes and round balls of fire, and the lines that
flash about sometimes look like triangles and crosses—almost like
geometrical figures. Nothing more.”

I opened my eyes again, and gave him back the letter. “It makes my head hot,” I said, feeling somehow unworthy for not seeing
anything of interest. But the look in his eyes arrested my attention at
once. “That sensation of heat is important,” he said significantly. “It was certainly real, and rather uncomfortable,” I replied, hoping he
would expand and explain. “There was a distinct feeling of
warmth—internal warmth somewhere—oppressive in a sense.”

“That is interesting,” he remarked, putting the letter back in his
pocket, and settling himself in the corner with newspapers and books. He vouchsafed nothing more, and I knew the uselessness of trying to
make him talk. Following his example I settled likewise with magazines
into my corner. But when I closed my eyes again to look for the
flashing lights and the sensation of heat, I found nothing but the
usual phantasmagoria of the day’s events—faces, scenes, memories,—and
in due course I fell asleep and then saw nothing at all of any kind. When we left the train, after six hours’ travelling, at a little
wayside station standing without trees in a world of sand and heather,
the late October shadows had already dropped their sombre veil upon the
landscape, and the sun dipped almost out of sight behind the moorland
hills. In a high dogcart, behind a fast horse, we were soon rattling
across the undulating stretches of an open and bleak country, the keen
air stinging our cheeks and the scents of pine and bracken strong about
us. Bare hills were faintly visible against the horizon, and the
coachman pointed to a bank of distant shadows on our left where he told
us the sea lay. Occasional stone farmhouses, standing back from the
road among straggling fir trees, and large black barns that seemed to
shift past us with a movement of their own in the gloom, were the only
signs of humanity and civilisation that we saw, until at the end of a
bracing five miles the lights of the lodge gates flared before us and
we plunged into a thick grove of pine trees that concealed the Manor
House up to the moment of actual arrival. Colonel Wragge himself met us in the hall. He was the typical army
officer who had seen service, real service, and found himself in the
process. He was tall and well built, broad in the shoulders, but lean
as a greyhound, with grave eyes, rather stern, and a moustache turning
grey. I judged him to be about sixty years of age, but his movements
showed a suppleness of strength and agility that contradicted the
years. The face was full of character and resolution, the face of a man
to be depended upon, and the straight grey eyes, it seemed to me, wore
a veil of perplexed anxiety that he made no attempt to disguise. The
whole appearance of the man at once clothed the adventure with gravity
and importance. A matter that gave such a man cause for serious alarm,
I felt, must be something real and of genuine moment. His speech and manner, as he welcomed us, were like his letter, simple
and sincere. He had a nature as direct and undeviating as a bullet. Thus, he showed plainly his surprise that Dr. Silence had not come
alone. “My confidential secretary, Mr. Hubbard,” the doctor said, introducing
me, and the steady gaze and powerful shake of the hand I then received
were well calculated, I remember thinking, to drive home the impression
that here was a man who was not to be trifled with, and whose
perplexity must spring from some very real and tangible cause. And,
quite obviously, he was relieved that we had come. His welcome was
unmistakably genuine. He led us at once into a room, half library, half smoking-room, that
opened out of the low-ceilinged hall. The Manor House gave the
impression of a rambling and glorified farmhouse, solid, ancient,
comfortable, and wholly unpretentious. And so it was. Only the heat of
the place struck me as unnatural.