Once the method is mastered, no
system is necessary at all.”

And the words were significant of the methods of this remarkable man,
the keynote of whose power lay, perhaps, more than anything else,
in the knowledge, first, that thought can act at a distance, and,
secondly, that thought is dynamic and can accomplish material results. “Learn how to _think_,” he would have expressed it, “and you have
learned to tap power at its source.”

To look at--he was now past forty--he was sparely built, with speaking
brown eyes in which shone the light of knowledge and self-confidence,
while at the same time they made one think of that wondrous gentleness
seen most often in the eyes of animals. A close beard concealed the
mouth without disguising the grim determination of lips and jaw,
and the face somehow conveyed an impression of transparency, almost
of light, so delicately were the features refined away. On the
fine forehead was that indefinable touch of peace that comes from
identifying the mind with what is permanent in the soul, and letting
the impermanent slip by without power to wound or distress; while, from
his manner,--so gentle, quiet, sympathetic,--few could have guessed the
strength of purpose that burned within like a great flame. “I think I should describe it as a psychical case,” continued the
Swedish lady, obviously trying to explain herself very intelligently,
“and just the kind you like. I mean a case where the cause is hidden
deep down in some spiritual distress, and----”

“But the symptoms first, please, my dear Svenska,” he interrupted, with
a strangely compelling seriousness of manner, “and your deductions
afterwards.”

She turned round sharply on the edge of her chair and looked him in the
face, lowering her voice to prevent her emotion betraying itself too
obviously. “In my opinion there’s only one symptom,” she half whispered, as though
telling something disagreeable--“fear--simply fear.”

“Physical fear?”

“I think not; though how can I say? I think it’s a horror in the
psychical region. It’s no ordinary delusion; the man is quite sane; but
he lives in mortal terror of something----”

“I don’t know what you mean by his ‘psychical region,’” said the
doctor, with a smile; “though I suppose you wish me to understand that
his spiritual, and not his mental, processes are affected. Anyhow, try
and tell me briefly and pointedly what you know about the man, his
symptoms, his need for help, _my_ peculiar help, that is, and all that
seems vital in the case. I promise 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.