i must confess, in spite of my affection for carriston, i felt inclined to rebel against the course which matters were taking. i was a prosaic matter-of-fact[261] medical man; doing my work to the best of my ability and anxious when that work was done that my hours of leisure should be as free from worry and care as possible. with carriston’s advent several disturbing elements entered into my quiet life.
let ralph carriston be guilty or innocent of the extraordinary crime which his cousin laid at his door, i felt that he was anxious to obtain possession of the supposed lunatic’s person. it would suit his purposes for his cousin to be proved mad. i did not believe that even if the capture was legally effected carriston’s liberation would be a matter of great difficulty so long as he remained in his present state of mind; so long as i, a doctor of some standing, could go into the witness-box and swear to his sanity. but my old dread was always with me—the dread that any further shock would overturn the balance of his sensitive mind.
so it was that every hour that carriston was out of my sight was fraught with anxiety. if ralph carriston was really as unscrupulous as my friend supposed; if he had really, as seemed almost probable, suborned our agent; he might by some crafty trick obtain the needful certificate, and some day i should come home and find carriston had been removed. in such a case i foresaw great trouble and distress.
besides, after all that had occurred, it was as much as i could do to believe that carriston was not mad. any doctor who knew what i knew would have given the verdict against him.
after dismissing his visions and hallucinations with the contempt which they deserved, the fact of a man who was madly, passionately in love with a woman, and who believed that she had been entrapped and[262] was still kept in restraint, sitting down quietly, and letting day after day pass without making an effort toward finding her, was in itself prima facie evidence of insanity. a sane man would at once have set all the engines of detection at work.
i felt that if once ralph carriston obtained possession of him he could make out a strong case in his own favor. first of all, the proposed marriage out of the defendant’s own sphere of life; the passing under a false name; the ridiculous, or apparently ridiculous, accusation made against his kinsman; the murderous threats; the chastisement of his own paid agent who brought him a report which might not seem at all untrue to any one who knew not madeline rowan. leaving out the question what might be wrung from me in cross-examination, ralph carriston had a strong case, and i knew that, once in his power, my friend might possibly be doomed to pass years, if not his whole life, under restraint. so i was anxious—very anxious.
and i felt an anxiety, scarcely second to that which prevailed on carriston’s account, as to the fate of madeline. granting for sake of argument that carriston’s absurd conviction that no bodily harm had as yet been done her, was true, i felt sure that she with her scarcely less sensitive nature must feel the separation from her lover as much as he himself felt the separation from her. once or twice i tried to comfort myself with cynicism—tried to persuade myself that a young woman could not in our days be spirited away—that she had gone by her own free-will—that there was a man who had at the eleventh hour alienated her affections from carriston. but i could not bring myself[263] to believe this. so i was placed between the horns of a dilemma.
if madeline had not fled of her own free-will, some one must have taken her away, and if so our agent’s report was a coined one, and, if a coined one, issued at ralph’s instance; therefore ralph must be the prime actor in the mystery.
but in sober moments such a deduction seemed an utter absurdity.
although i have said that carriston was doing nothing toward clearing up the mystery, i wronged him in so saying. after his own erratic way he was at work. at such work too! i really lost all patience with him.
he shut himself up in his room, out of which he scarcely stirred for three days. by that time he had completed a large and beautiful drawing of his imaginary man. this he took to a well-known photographer’s, and ordered several hundred small photographs of it, to be prepared as soon as possible. the minute description which he had given me of his fanciful creation was printed at the foot of each copy. as soon as the first batch of these precious photographs was sent home, to my great joy he did what he should have done days ago; yielded to my wishes, and put the matter into the hands of the police.
i was glad to find that in giving details of what had happened he said nothing about the advisability of keeping a watch on ralph carriston’s proceedings. he did, indeed, offer an absurdly large reward for the discovery of the missing girl; and, moreover, gave the officer in charge of the case a packet of photographs of his phantom man, telling him in the gravest manner that he knew the original of that likeness had something to do with the disappearance of miss rowan. the officer, who thought the portrait was that of a natural being, took his instructions in good faith, although he seemed greatly surprised when he heard that carriston knew neither the name nor the occupation, in fact, knew nothing concerning the man who was to be sought for. however, as carriston assured him that finding this man would insure the reward as much as if he found madeline, the officer readily promised to combine the two tasks, little knowing what waste of time any attempt to perform the latter must be.
two days after this carriston came to me. “i shall leave you to-morrow,” he said.
“where are you going?” i asked. “why do you leave?”
“i am going to travel about. i have no intention of letting ralph get hold of me. so i mean to go from place to place until i find madeline.”
“be careful,” i urged.
“i shall be careful enough. i’ll take care that no doctors, surgeons, or even apothecaries get on my track. i shall go just as the fit seizes me. if i can’t say one day where i shall be the next, it will be impossible for that villain to know.”
this was not a bad argument. in fact, if he carried out his resolve of passing quickly from place to place i did not see how he could plan anything more likely to defeat the intentions with which we credited his cousin. as to his finding madeline by so doing, that was another matter.
his idea seemed to be that chance would sooner or[265] later bring him in contact with the man of his dream. however, now that the search had been intrusted to the proper persons his own action in the matter was not worth troubling about. i gave him many cautions. he was to be quiet and guarded in words and manner. he was not to converse with strangers. if he found himself dogged or watched by any one he was to communicate at once with me. but, above all, i begged him not to yield again to his mental infirmity. the folly of a man who could avoid it, throwing himself into such a state ought to be apparent to him.
“not oftener than i can help,” was all the promise i could get from him. “but see her i must sometimes, or i shall die.”
i had now given up as hopeless the combat with his peculiar idiosyncrasy. so, with many expressions of gratitude on his part, we bade each other farewell.
during his absence he wrote to me nearly every day, so that i might know his whereabouts in case i had any news to communicate. but i had none. the police failed to find the slightest clew. i had been called upon by them once or twice in order that they might have every grain of information i could give. i took the liberty of advising them not to waste their time in looking for the man, as his very existence was problematical. it was but a fancy of my friend’s, and not worth thinking seriously about. i am not sure but what after hearing this they did not think the whole affair was an imagined one, and so relaxed their efforts.
once or twice, carriston, happening to be in the neighborhood of london, came to see me, and slept the night at my house. he also had no news to report. still, he seemed hopeful as ever.
the weeks went by until christmas was over and the new year begun; but no sign, word, or trace of madeline rowan. “i have seen her,” wrote carriston, “several times. she is in the same place—unhappy, but not ill-treated.”
evidently his hallucinations were still in full force.
. . . . . . .
at first i intended that the whole of this tale should be told by myself; but upon getting so far it struck me that the evidence of another actor who played an important part in the drama would give certain occurrences to the reader at first instead of at second hand, so i wrote to my friend dick fenton, of frenchay, gloucestershire, and begged him, if he found himself capable of so doing, to put in simple narrative form his impressions of certain events which happened in january, 1866: events in which we two were concerned. he has been good enough to comply with my request. his communication follows.
