EPIGRAPH
By Charles Wayne, M.D.
Thereader who has persisted so far in the present volume will doubtless recall the fact that the first portion is heralded by a short foreword from one Edward Cayley, who therein expresses his full belief in the narrative he publishes. In this preface also he makes allusion to the traveller Sir W—— Y——, the original finder and owner of the manuscript. For the sake of convenience and explanation therefore I shall state here that the Editor of Part I. is the late Mr Edward Cayley, F.S.A., an official employed in the British Museum, whose book was issued in the early months of 1913. How this obscure work came into my possession I shall explain in due course, but I should like to add here that the book in question evoked no public interest whatsoever, and that such scanty notices of it as appeared were invariably unfavourable or contemptuous. Such a fate seems natural enough to me, for I have long observed how in all publications concerning the occult, nine out of ten readers are to be found scoffers and unbelievers, whilst the tenth is over-credulous.
But a few weeks after the appearance of thevolume, its editor himself was far beyond the range of hostile jest or criticism, for one March evening he was found dead of heart disease in the railway carriage wherein he was returning to his home at Harrow. Of "the exquisitely prepared roll of vellum covered with close crabbed writing," as also of its containing cylinder of some exotic white metal, I have been assured by Mr Cayley's executor that of neither can a trace be found—"suddenly, as rare things will, they vanished," though I am inclined to think that these gentlemen in common with a good many others of Mr Cayley's friends have never credited their existence save in the brain of their late owner. Indeed, I am told not a few persons openly denounced the ill-fated volume as an indiscreetjeu d'espritof which Cayley himself was both author and editor. As to Sir W—— Y—— I see no reason to withhold the full name of Sir Wardour Yockney, head of an ancient Kentish house which received its baronetcy so long ago as the reign of Charles the Martyr. Sir Wardour was a fine shot, an ardent mountaineer and no mean scholar—alas! that I must use the aorist here in so speaking of him, for Sir Wardour, who started for Flanders with a motor car soon after the outbreak of the War, was described as "missing" so long ago as last October, nor have any further tidings reached his household concerning his fate.
These two principal witnesses therefore being no longer available, there remains none to whom I canapply for information, none with whom it would prove worth my while to communicate. It lies therefore with myself alone to deal as I may think fit with the manuscript, which is practically a continuation or sequel of the extraordinary story already accepted and published as solid truth by Mr Cayley. This second manuscript was found by me under circumstances I shall presently relate in the bedroom of a sea-side inn in South Wales. With the narrative was also a letter addressed to me wherein the writer thanked me in warm and sincere language for the small amount of assistance and sympathy it had been my privilege to vouchsafe to him during our past twelve weeks of companionship on Earth, but the contents of the letter shed no further light on the subject-matter of the manuscript. In addition to these there was a copy of Mr Cayley's book, which is already become so scarce as to be almost unattainable. The contents of this little volume I have therefore placed at the beginning of the present publication, so that the reader can follow in due sequence all the amazing adventures of the writer from the date of his first departure from the Earth to the stars until the very moment when he voluntarily chose a second time to quit this planet in order to resume a state of sovereignty whose tragical interruption he has already described with his own pen.
I have always reckoned myself with perfectcontentment as a private person of no importance;de me igitur nefas omninò loqui. Nevertheless, I have been propelled willy-nilly into obtruding some portion of my personal affairs before the public and in what I conceive to be the public's true interest. For I myself have been requisitioned, so to speak, for the solution of some gigantic problem which is of deep import to our race, and my realisation of this unsought attention on my part must serve as my excuse for the short biographical details that follow.
I was born in the year 1853, one of a respectable family of dalesmen in Cumberland, and after a boyhood wherein the passionate love of solitary wandering over the wild north country fells seems the only trait I think worth recording, I was sent to study medicine at Edinburgh. Here I had a successful if not a distinguished career, and after taking the required degrees I departed to the East to practise my profession and to amass the conventional fortune. In the former object I trust I have performed my duty satisfactorily; and as to the second, I have at any rate acquired a sufficient pension for the needs of my evening of life. I have also found alleviation and no small degree of pleasure in my chosen science, especially in the study of certain tropical diseases, though my natural inclination for privacy has hitherto prevented my publishing some interesting notes and observations covering many years' research in this particular section of medicine. In my domesticlife however I have been less fortunate, for having married an estimable woman with every prospect of a joint happy existence before us, we were both deeply wounded in the deaths at rapid intervals of our four children, a series of blows that I myself, thanks to my profession and other interests in life, was able to bear with tolerable courage. Not so my poor partner; from the date of her last boy's loss at Singapore she could support this prolonged visitation of malign fortune no longer, and after a short but terrible attack of violent dementia she relapsed into a permanent condition of apathetic melancholy, from which she either could not or would not be diverted. I hope and trust I did all that was possible by patience and calmness to soften her hard lot; but, needless to say, it was a cheerless home wherein I moved, until after many years my suffering wife was at last called to rejoin her lost children.
From the date of her death I devoted myself with increased ardour to my duties, whilst I occupied my many spare hours in studying with care and intelligence such literature as deals with the cult of the supernatural, which has always possessed a singular fascination for my mind, and has, I feel sure, helped me to sustain with equanimity hitherto so many slings and arrows of outrageous fortune on this Earth. The years rolled by, so that in due course I became eligible for my retiring pension, yet even then I was in no haste to turn my back onthe East, where I had passed practically the whole of my life since adolescence, for during thirty-seven years of service I had only twice returned home on short leave. And now, when in professional decency and according to the custom of my caste I was expected to resign, I felt small inclination to revisit my native land, where the only contemporary relative I owned was a married sister living at Aberdeen. Of my various nephews and nieces I knew nothing, and I felt a not unnatural dread of being exploited or patronised by a coterie of self-satisfied young persons of the present generation. At times I thought of migrating to some sparsely peopled British colony, such as Western Australia or Tasmania, where the advent of an elderly widower might possibly be welcome, if only as tending to swell the meagre tale of the approaching census. I was still hesitating and pondering, when in July 1914 the tedious question was solved for me rather arbitrarily in the following manner.
A friend of mine about to revisit England had already engaged and paid for his passage from Rangoon, and was eagerly looking forward to his intended holiday, when almost at the last moment the poor fellow met with a shocking accident, whereby he was so unfortunate as to break both his legs. Visiting the patient at his house in the capacity of friend and not as physician, I found Mr —— in a pitiable state of lamentation over the money spent on his passage home, which he regardedas practically lost; indeed, this particular matter seemed to oppress the invalid even more heavily than his other far more serious disaster. I reflected a while on the situation, and then deeming it a special opportunity for me to break from my thraldom of indecision and simultaneously to perform a real kindness to a brother in distress, I offered to relieve my sick friend of his ticket and to have his cabin transferred to myself. As a result of this suggestion I had at least the satisfaction of the injured man's warm gratitude, though I confess the homing instinct within me had grown so faint that I could summon up little or no enthusiasm at this new prospect of a speedy return to the land of my birth. One external ray of consolation however I was able to draw from this new arrangement, which was that theOrissaof the Pheon Line, the boat selected by my friend, was timed to sail on the seventeenth day of the seventh month of the year. I have long held a secret veneration for the figure seven, and in this case the circumstance of the benign figures was combined with certain stellar conjunctions in the heavens on which I need not dwell here.
Be that as it may, this tardy decision to sail on theOrissaat least put an end to my trials of irresolution, of which I could not help feeling heartily ashamed; and as the very brief intervening time was fully employed in packing my effects and in making other preparations for departure, I wasspared the usual cycle of farewell visits of ceremony which I greatly dreaded. On the day appointed therefore I found myself settled on theOrissa, a comfortable boat, and we proceeded on our homeward voyage, which proved wholly uneventful until we reached the Suez Canal. Here for the first time we received ominous reports of a colossal upheaval amongst the Great Powers of Europe, whilst our natural alarm was increased tenfold on learning at Port Said of the impending declaration of war between England and the German Empire. I shall not linger over the seething excitement on board our ship as we hurried at full speed through the Mediterranean in hourly fear of being sighted by theGoebenor some other German cruiser. It was therefore with an immense sense of relief that we found ourselves under lee of the guns of Gibraltar before we emerged thence into the waters of the Atlantic. We were about a day's sail from the Straits, with the weather still very hot and enervating, although we were north of the tropics, when at my usual hour for retiring I sought my cabin. I am generally a light but restful sleeper, and have rarely experienced even in its most transient form the curse of insomnia; but on this particular night, which was the seventh of August, I found myself a prey to a perfect demon of unrest. It was not the effect of the heat, to which I am thoroughly accustomed; nor was it the strain and stress of the late intelligence of war, for my extensivereading in the domain of the supernatural has long divested my mind of all sublunary foreboding; no, it was, I am convinced, the close approach of some event of the first magnitude in which I was marked out to play a considerable part. (But perhaps I am describing my predominant sensations by the light of subsequent happenings; still I can at least faithfully aver I was conscious of some imminent crisis that demanded my fullest energies.)
For several hours I lay thus in my berth, my brain active and alert and prepared to detect the smallest sound or motion that was suspicious amid the ordinary routine of ship life during the night watches. But no such occasion arose, nor was there any conceivable excuse for my nervous tension and distressing wakefulness, which grew so unbearable that the first luminous flush of early dawn forced me to leave my bed. With a deep sigh of relief I vaulted to the floor, donned my overcoat and slippers, seized my pipe and tobacco pouch, and thus lightly equipped sought the open air.
Day was breaking with more than the usual riot of variegated colour over a calm, glassy sea when I reached the boat deck, which I set to pace hurriedly in order to quieten the throbbings of my unrested brain. Scarcely had I thrice tramped the planks before I heard a sharp shrill call from the bridge, and casting my eyes in the direction of the sound, I observed the officer on watch staring intently at something high in the air on the port side of thevessel. Leaning over the taffrail I quickly espied an object in the sky at no great distance from theOrissa—an object which I can best compare in shape to a huge carp and of a silvery hue in the encroaching sunlight. Even as I gazed intently, I perceived the thing fall swiftly in a wavering course till it touched the sea, its actual collapse synchronising with the blast of the officer's whistle and the tinkle of two bells, for it was just five o'clock in the morning. All was now bustle, though without confusion; the steamer's reversed engines echoed with resounding thuds; the boat deck was peopled by bare-footed seamen who were disengaging one of the boats from its davits; there were calls for this person and that, including the ship's doctor, who I knew to be heavily sleeping off the potations of the previous night. All the hands required were quickly on the spot with the sole exception of the dissipated surgeon, whom a steward had hurried below to awaken. But the captain was too impatient to brook the least delay, and suddenly turning to myself, begged me to enter the waiting boat instead of the laggard absentee, a proposal I willingly accepted. Our boat was now lowered to the water; our swift strokes brought us closer and closer to the scene of the late mishap; we duly reached the spot. Not a sign of any wreckage, not a ripple on the surface, only the figure of a solitary survivor swimming or floating in the tepid crystalline sea.
We steered straight towards the supposed aeronaut and soon pulled him aboard without difficulty. He was certainly a remarkable man; slender but of immense height and clothed in a strange outlandish attire such as I had never seen before; yet he appeared to be of English or possibly of Scandinavian nationality from the extreme whiteness of his skin and the flaxen yellow of his hair, which was of a prodigious length. His eyes were tightly closed and the face was pallid, but I quickly reassured myself on testing the action of the heart and pulse that our derelict was practically uninjured by his recent fall. During our passage back to theOrissa, I placed the rescued man in as comfortable a pose as I could contrive, keeping his head with its dripping golden mane on my knees. I tried to pour brandy down his throat, but failed to open the clenched white teeth that resisted stoutly, and I saw no special reason to persist in my endeavour. Once during our transit my patient for an instant opened a pair of great sapphire-blue eyes and smiled faintly up to my face; and the strangeness of that fleeting glance increased the compassion and curiosity and interest which had already, naturally enough, been awakened in me.
Conveyed to my cabin, the strange man had to be stripped of his soaked garments consisting of a tunic and under-vest of fine texture; a small bag depending by a chain from his neck he fiercely defended, but otherwise was tractable enough, andseemed grateful for our attentions though he never uttered a word. With no small difficulty I managed to dismiss inquisitive stewards and fellow-passengers and ministered myself to the needs of my unexpected guest, who finally fell into a deep refreshing sleep.
Towards evening he awoke, smiled on me graciously, and then extended his right hand towards me with a gesture that was at once half-wistful, half-imperious; but when I grasped it according to wont, he seemed manifestly surprised. This puzzled me, but since that time I have grown to learn and understand many matters, great and small, which I failed to comprehend in these early days of our acquaintance. At first, I confess, I harboured some doubts as to the sanity of my mysterious stranger, but I soon perceived that though he spoke English in somewhat halting fashion and his brain worked with some degree of deliberation, yet of the acuteness of his reasoning powers there could be no question. In certain appeals of mine he deferred eventually to my arguments and acknowledged their justice, submitting amongst other things to have his thick chevelure clipped to a more conventional length, in order to avoid vulgar comment. After some reflection too he ultimately agreed with me as to the desirability of his adopting some name in consonance with the regulations for landing at Liverpool. Nevertheless, he utterly refused to declare his identity, but merely kept repeating with a smiling face, "Call me King!"to which pseudonym of his choice I ventured to add the Christian name of Theodore, promptly recalling the case of the impoverished King of Corsica on whom "Fate bestowed a kingdom yet denied him bread," for (quite erroneously) I then deemed him fully as destitute as that historic royal pauper.
I do not think I need dwell on our subsequent adventures in London and in Wales, for they have all been amply and faithfully set forth in the narrative of "Theodore King" himself. In his manuscript he mentions my name on many occasions in kindly but perhaps not always in highly flattering terms. Not that I rebel, for I am now well aware how often my petty scruples and my lack of perception must have irritated the Superior Being whom I was thus privileged to assist during his brief sojourn on our Earth. Nor shall I attempt here to analyse the causes that operated to attach me so closely to the service of one who drew first my interest, then my devotion, and lastly my whole fund of loyalty. Imagine me then at an early stage of our strange alliance as placing myself wholly at the disposal of this stranger, whose semi-divine attributes I was quick to perceive and acknowledge; and merely venturing at certain times to proffer such humble aid in mundane details and trifles as would naturally fall beneath the notice of a King of Meleager, transported to Earth and torn with celestial anguish as to his future duties towards his relinquished realm. And in this blind mentalservitude I refuse to see anything dishonourable; on the contrary, my feeling is that of a man who has for a few moments been permitted of grace so to clutch at the fringe of the robe of the Superhuman; as a child of Earth who has succeeded in tracking the rainbow to its hidden source and bathed his hands in its fabled shower of golden dew.
Whither our strange alliance was tending or what would eventuate with regard to my companion, I purposely refrained from debating even with myself. I merely stood aside and awaited all developments with perfect calm. I never sought to pry into the nature of the visits of the outlandish wanderers who pursued our steps both in London and at our quiet Welsh retreat. Yet I was fully aware of the gradual unravelling of some wondrous skein of Fate, wherewith I had only an indirect and subsidiary interest. For "Theodore King" was usually silent, and it was only during his last days prior to his final disappearance that he ever exhibited the smallest desire to take me into his confidence, and even then his statements to me were vague, and rather hinted at services to be rendered by me in the future than at an elucidation of the past. At the same time I was not overtaken by surprise when the final event supervened, and I awoke one morning to find my Superior Being flown from this Earth whereon he felt so little inclination to linger.
In the manuscript the reader will observe the writer describes his feelings and movements till thesupreme moment of leaving his abode in order to sail back to Meleager. Up till that point therefore I shall not presume to interpose my own account, and there is little further to report after that climax to my unique adventure. It was my daily custom to enter "Theodore King's" bed-chamber at about eight o'clock, and on fulfilling my normal visit on the morning of 27th October I saw at once the bed had never been slept in, whilst a large package addressed to myself lay in a prominent place on the table. It contained the manuscript, the copy of Edward Cayley's book, a private letter to myself and the bag of gems. At the same time I found in another place an envelope containing a short but perfectly drafted will signed by Theodore King and witnessed by two persons at Pen Maelgwyn farm, bequeathing everything he possessed to "his excellent friend and physician, Charles Wayne, late of Rangoon." Nor had I later on the least difficulty in obtaining probate. Apparently there was nothing of value to leave, for I did not think it necessary to mention the existence of the Meleagrian jewels to any outsider, whilst I was touched and flattered by the kind thought. I have my own intentions with regard to applying the considerable sum of money represented by those splendid gems; and if God in His mercy be pleased to bring back our unhappy land into the old paths of peace and prosperity I hope to carry out my plan. But this lies altogether outside the pale of my present task.
Having mastered the contents of the letter and the concluding portion of the manuscript I duly aroused the household, affecting an anxiety I did not feel, for of course I thoroughly understood what had occurred. An excited crowd, we searched hither and thither for traces of the missing stranger, and it was not long before Deio, the old ostler, had made a discovery which did not in the least astonish me. This was the finding of some clothing held down with heavy stones at the edge of the promontory only a quarter of a mile from the inn. Here the demented man, long recognised as an eccentric by the neighbourhood, must obviously have committed the act of self-destruction by throwing himself over the cliff into the cold grey surge below. Although it was wet and stormy, boatmen attempted to find further evidences of the suicide at the base of the crags, but needless to add their search was fruitless. There followed the usual tale of police inquiries ending in nothing; of long columns in the local journals, and of short paragraphs in the bigger organs of the Press, concerning the mysterious affair at Glanymôr; but all this excitement died down with a rapidity that might only have been expected in that period of tense anxiety which marked the furious campaign on the Belgian frontier towards the close of October. Interest in the strange occurrence soon flickered out before such engrossing themes of comment and speculation, even in so remote a spot as Glanymôr. Certainly a farm-handat Pen Maelgwyn affirmed he had heard the buzzing noise of an aeroplane that very night above the Glanymôr cliffs, despite its being too dark for him to distinguish any object; and though everybody belittled or disbelieved this statement, its author stoutly maintained to the last that he was positive he had not been mistaken in his surmise.
I know John Lewis, the cow-man, was right; and I also know it was the call of the craft wherein my late companion, the King of Meleager, went up into a world of light and left me alone and sorrowing here.
THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED, EDINBURGH
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