"Do you quite believe the story?" asked the house-physician.
"I don't disbelieve it."
"But what did the stranger do to put him in that condition, which seems something more than hypnotism?"
"Ah," said Lefevre, "I don't yet understand it; but there are forces in Nature which few can comprehend, and which only one here and there can control and use."
Chapter III.
"M. Dolaro."
Next day men talked, newspaper in hand, at the breakfast-table, in the early trains, omnibuses, and tramcars, of the singular railway outrage. It was clear its purpose was not robbery. What, then, did it mean? Some—probably most—declared it was very plain what it meant; while others,—the few,—after much argument, confessed themselves quite mystified.
The police, too, were not idle. They made inquiries and took notes here and there. They discovered that the five o'clock train made but two pauses on its journey to London—at Croydon and at Clapham Junction. At neither of those places could a man in a fur coat be heard of as having descended from the train; and yet it was manifest that he did not arrive at Grosvenor Road, where tickets were taken. After persistent and wider inquiries, however, at Clapham Junction (which was the most likely point of departure), a cabman was found who remembered having taken up a fare—a gentleman in a fur coat—about the hour indicated. He particularly remarked the gentleman, because he looked odd and foreign and half tipsy (that was how he seemed to him), because he was wrapped up "enough for Father Christmas," and because he asked to be driven such a long way—to a well-known hotel near the Crystal Palace, where "foreign gents" were fond of staying. Being asked what in particular had made him think the gentleman a foreigner, cabby could not exactly say; he believed, however, it was his coat and his eyes. Of his face he saw little or nothing, it was so muffled up; yet his tongue was English enough.
Inquiry was then pushed on to the hotel named by the cabman. A gentleman in a fur coat had certainly arrived there the evening before, but no one had seen anything of him after his arrival. He had taken dinner in his private sitting-room, and had then paid his bill, because, he said, he must be gone early in the morning. About half an hour after dinner, when a waiter cleared the things away, he had gone to his room, and next morning he had left the hotel soon after dawn. Boots, half asleep, had seen him walk away, bag in hand, wrapped in his greatcoat,—walk away, it would seem, and dissolve into the mist of the morning, for from that point no further trace could be got of him. No such figure as his had been seen on any of the roads leading from the hotel, either by the early milkman, or by the belated coffee-stall keeper, or night cabman. Being asked what name the gentleman had given at the hotel, the book-keeper showed her record, with the equivocal name of "M. Dolaro." The name might be Italian or Spanish,—or English or American for that matter,—and the initial "M" might be French or anything in the world.
In the meantime Dr Lefevre had been pondering the details of the affair, and noting the aspects of his patient's condition; but the more he noted and pondered, the more contorted and inexplicable did the mystery become. His understanding boggled at its very first notes. It was almost unheard of that a young man of his patient's strong and healthy constitution and temper should be hypnotised or mesmerised at all, much less hypnotised to the verge of dissolution; and it was unprecedented that even a weak, hysterical subject should, after being unhypnotised, remain so long in prostrate exhaustion. Then, suppose these circumstances of the case were ordinary, there arose this question, which refused to be solved: Since it was ridiculous to suppose that the hypnotisation was a wanton experiment, and since it had not been for the sake of robbery, what had been its object?