id="dolaro">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?

The interest of the case was emphasised and enlarged by an article in 'The Daily Telegraph,' in which was called to mind the singular story in its Paris correspondence a day or two before, of the young woman in the Hôtel-Dieu, which Lefevre had forgotten. The writer remarked on the points of similarity which the case in the Brighton train bore to that of the Paris pavement; insisted on the probable identity of the man in the fur coat with the man in the cloak; and appealed to Dr Lefevre to explain the mystery, and to the police to find the man "who has alarmed the civilised world by a new form of outrage."

Lefevre was piqued by that article, and he went to see his patient day after day, in the constant hope of finding a solution of the puzzle that perplexed him. The direction in which he looked for light will be best suggested by remarking what were his peculiar theory and practice. Lefevre was not a materialistic physician; indeed, in the opinion of many of his brethren, he erred on the other side, and was too much inclined to mysticism. It may at least be said that he had an open mind, and a modest estimate of the discoveries of modern medical science. He had perceived while still a young man (he was now about forty) that all medical practice—as distinct from surgical—is inexact and empirical, that, like English common law, it is based merely on custom, and a narrow range of experience; and he had therefore argued that a wider experience and research, especially among decaying nations, might lead to the discovery of a guiding principle in pathology. That conviction had taken him as medical officer to Egypt and India, where, amid the relics of civilisations half as old as time, he found traditions of a great scientific practice; and thence it had brought him back to study such foreign medical writers as Du Bois-Reymond, Nobili, Matteucci, and Müller, and to observe the method of the famous physicians of the Salpétrière. Like the great Charbon, he made nervous and hysterical disorders his specialty, in the treatment of which he was much given to the use of electricity. He had very pronounced "views," though he seldom troubled his brethren with them; for he was not of those who can hold a belief firmly only if it is also held by others.

More than a week had passed without discovery or promise of light, when one afternoon he went to the hospital resolved to compass some explanation.

He walked at once, on entering the ward, to the bedside of his puzzling patient, who still lay limp as a dish-clout and drowsy as a sloth. He tested—as he had done almost daily—his nervous and respiratory powers with the exact instruments adapted for the purpose, and then, still unenlightened, he questioned him closely about his sensations. The young officer answered him with tolerable intelligence.

"I feel," he ended with saying, "as if all my energy had evaporated,—and I used to have no end,—just as a spirit evaporates if it is left open to the air."

The saying struck Lefevre mightily. "Energy" stood then to Lefevre as an almost convertible term for "electricity," and his successful experiments with electricity had opened up to him a vast field of conjecture, into which, on the smallest inflaming hint, he was wont to make an excursion. Such a hint was the saying of the young officer now, and, as he walked away, he found himself, as it were, knocking at the door of a great discovery. But the door did not open on that summons, and he resolved straightway to discuss the subject with Julius Courtney, who, though an amateur, had about as complete a knowledge of it as himself, and who could bring to bear, he believed, a finer intelligence.

He first sought Julius at the Hyacinth Club, where he frequently spent the afternoon. Failing to find him there, he inquired for him at his chambers in the Albany. Hearing nothing of him there, and the ardour of his quest having cooled a little, he stepped out across the way to his own home in Savile Row.

There he found a note from his mother, with a touch of mystery in its wording. She said she wanted very much to have a serious conversation with him; she had been expecting for days to see him, and she begged him to go that evening to dinner