CHAPTER I
THE AFFAIR OF THE TEA-GARDEN
The chief actor in the singular, perhaps unprecedented, incidents herein recorded now leads a sedate existence of British top-hatted respectability. Many reputable citizens of London and Edinburgh, not to mention cosmopolitan Paris and New York, to whom he is personally known, would be exceedingly surprised were they to recognize, through the thin disguise of places and people, the popular man of the world whose extraordinary career is now set forth for the first time.
Some few there are who dimly comprehend Karl Grier’s secret. They, for reasons that shall be obvious, will keep their amazed imaginings locked in their own hearts. Others, men of precise science for the most part, who have been approached in order that certain remarkable phenomena might be sanely investigated, refute with scorn the suggestion that such a person ever lived. That is to say, they cannot deny Karl Grier, with his giant frame and his hearty whole-souled laugh, but they do deny most emphatically that he ever possessed the unknown power which he exercised in a marvelous way during several eventful years.
If aught could make Karl angry, it is the stupid agnosticism of these learned critics, true children of the dull tribe which began, ages ago, to create its own unbending gods of stone and wood, and has been setting up barriers to knowledge ever since, building dogmatic walls the crossing of which is forbidden by bell, book, and candle.
Yet it is not within my province to rail against these infallibles, who smile at the density which imprisoned Galileo in the sixteen hundreds, but refuse to-day’s evidence of a new realm in man’s mental activity. Sometimes Karl has been tempted, with me, his biographer, as tempter, to place before an astounded world such an array of facts as must convert these scoffers into perfervid disciples. He has been deterred--and here I may claim some credit, too--by personal considerations, by dread of the fierce light of publicity being shed on those near and dear to him, and, in lesser degree, by the fact that a settled, happy existence has stifled the weird and subtle sense which was vouchsafed to him during the growth and plentitude of his bodily and spiritual powers. So, peace be to the critics. “Eppur si muove!” sighed the astronomer, recanting the truth to save his life.
For, without further preamble be it said, my friend Grier was endowed with, or permitted by Providence to use, a sixth sense, which he and I, seeking its correct classification in after years, named telegnomy, or far-knowing. That is the nearest the vocabulary of our times will approach to the description of his mysterious faculty. Strictly speaking, it was not a new sense, as one differentiates seeing from hearing, or taste from touch. Purists in words may even quarrel with me for using the term “sense” to denote a transcendental union of reason with physical attributes. But, in writing a quaint, almost sensational, narrative of actual occurrences, it is well to be content with the simple phraseology of every-day life, and, in that well-defined vehicle of plain thought, the faculty vouchsafed to Karl Grier was a sense.
Its stupendous range, its curiously rational limitations, will be grasped only by an intelligent reading of these memoirs. So a truce to the “Yea” and “Nay” of theorists. Let the story, or group of queer incidents, as it may be termed, speak for itself.
“I have always thought,” said Karl, musing once in analytical mood, “that my sixth sense owed its inception to the Babel-like jargon of languages which surrounded my youthful years. I remember distinctly being attired, on my fourth birthday, in a new sailor suit, which showed to an admiring family circle that I was rated as a first-class A.B. on His Majesty’s ship _Victorious_. We lived then in India, where my father grew tea on a Darjeeling plantation. I had a half-caste French nurse from Trichinopoly, a Mahomedan bearer, or male servant, a Scottish father and a German mother, and each member of our little republic spoke his or her own tongue when the heart was stirred. In my jubilation I endeavored to climb a creeper, and fell off the low veranda on to a path covered with sharp flints. Both I and the suit were damaged at all points of contact with the globe. My mother shrieked: ‘Ach, Himmel!’ but, being a woman of steady nerves, she soon perceived that little real mischief had resulted, and she went on: ‘Er ist zum seemann nicht geboren’ (He is not cut out for a sailor). My father said, with a laugh: ‘We should hae kepit the bairn in a cutty sark.’ The nurse flew to my assistance, crying: ‘Pauvre p’tit! Tu n’es pas assez adroit!’ whilst Abdul Khan, my bearer, tried to console my grief with his ‘Kuchparwani, batcha, mainne mitai lata!’ (Never mind, little one, I have some sweets for you.) Now, these varied exclamations, conveying many distinct ideas in four languages, of which the Eastern differed in every respect from the European, were instantly intelligible to me. Abdul Khan alone comforted me--the others hurt my pride. But the real point is that I understood them all to the finest shade of meaning. To put it plainly, sounds, and not words, conveyed clear ideas. It was the first unknown step along an uncharted road; the step a fox-terrier takes when he grasps the inflections of his master’s voice.”
“I suppose that is what people mean when they say that you can never really speak a language well until you learn to think in that language?” said I.
Karl laughed gently, and a dreamy look came into his eyes. At one time this would have been the certain prelude to a condition which, for want of a more accurate term, we called a “trance,” though it was far removed from the muscular or mental subjection induced by mesmerism or clairvoyance. Now he simply dropped his eyelids, took a whiff or two of his pipe, and, when he glanced at me again, there was quiet humor, not fantasy, in his big blue orbs.
“No,” he answered, “the states may be kin, but they differ, as the visual powers of a daisy, which can see the sun, differ from those of man. Education, by its necessary artificiality, tends to destroy natural gifts. The daily growth of a living language supplies adequate proof of this truism. The first sounds uttered by man, quite apart from signs and symbols, implied a want or an emotion. Those primary words run in unbroken gamut through all variations of speech or dialect. Of course, they vary, but not greatly, no more than the bark of the Indian dog, the grunt of the Indian pig, the caw of the Indian crow--I could recite hundreds of examples--vary from the typical cries of their European congeners. To my childish intelligence, sounds were all sufficing. I knew the voices of nature. The whinney of a horse told me whether he was hungry or thirsty, afraid or angered. I heard the kites whistling their fellow-ghouls to the feast. I could actually distinguish the answering bleat of a kid to the hoarse summons of its dam amidst a flock of goats. Good heavens! if only my baby mind could have uttered its knowledge, and found a scientific recorder, what undeciphered mysteries of human development might I not have solved!”
Although this train of reminiscence was somewhat removed from the far more curious and complex sense he developed afterwards, it was interesting as showing a tendency towards the abnormal.
“Have you any reason to believe that animals ever knew you possessed the key to their utterances?” I asked.
“Not in a convincing degree. Oddly enough, my intelligence was more receptive than creative. Certainly my dogs, ponies, birds, and other so-called dumb creatures with which I was brought in contact were in extraordinary sympathy with me. But such human and animal collusions are far from rare. And I could not speak to them with effect. Our physical appliances are fashioned by use, remember. If the nasal sounds of French will change the shape of the roof of a Frenchman’s mouth, or singing develop the singer’s throat in a single lifetime, how much more profoundly must untold generations of ordered language have modified the vocal organs. So my four-footed friends could not understand my harsh imitations. They were too far down the scale. I could plumb _their_ depths, but _they_ could only gaze at me wistfully, as men look at the stars.”
He went on to tell how he startled his father, one day, by the information that a colony of minahs (the Indian starling) had found a snake in a flower-bed, which was true, though none could guess how the child knew it; and he made me shake with merriment as he described the antics of a monkey, whose chattering rage he did succeed in burlesquing with some degree of realism. But these are not serious contributions to science, and I am truly endeavoring to help forward my fellow-men along the path which Morse, Edison, Marconi, and many another earnest worker, each in a separate sphere, yet each striving for the same goal, have indicated to a world not yet ready to advance. I pass, therefore, to the first recorded use of his sixth sense. In all probability there were minor instances, which were unnoticed either by his parents or by the child himself. This one could not be gainsaid. It verified itself most dramatically.
Karl’s peculiar gift of understanding the crude languages of nomads--he lost the hidden key long before any one thought of testing him with Homeric verse or the polished periods of Cicero--enabled him to converse with the unkempt Nepalese and wilder Tibetans who occasionally visited the station in the guise of petty traders. He was six years old when the famous Hutchinson Raid took place. Already he had learnt to read, but, luckily, his parents, being wise folk, determined that such a precocious child must not be encouraged in his studies, else the growth of method in that wondrous little brain must already have dimmed his comprehension of primeval speech.
The Griers’ tea-garden, with its fine bungalow and spacious coolie quarters, was an old estate. It stood on the outskirts of the scattered houses which comprised the station. In a neighboring valley, two miles away, a London company had established a huge garden, employing nearly three thousand coolies, and the manager was a Mr. Frank Hutchinson. One day, at the beginning of the hot weather, Hutchinson drove to the local bank, and obtained a very considerable sum of money, some twenty odd thousand rupees, to pay the monthly wages. Being a “brither Scot,” he called on the Griers, left his wife there for a gossip, and his little daughter, Maggie, for a romp with Karl. The three set out towards home in time for dinner, and Karl was, naturally, very reluctant to part from his little playmate.
She, too, nearly wept, so he consoled her by saying:--
“Don’t cwy, Maggie”--for he had a slight lisp--“Mamsie says we are coming to see you soon, and _I’ll think of you until Nanna_ (the French nurse) _puts me to bed_.”
Maggie evidently found consolation in this limited promise of fidelity. It can only be assumed that the boy kept his vow. In his mind he followed the child and her parents down into the valley, across the river, and up the hill-side to the spacious compound which held the house and offices. Arrived there, in fancy, his active brain roamed about the place, which he knew well. Then his wits wandered. His father, quitting the monthly accounts in time for dinner, found the nurse sitting in the veranda, sewing, in a dim light. Near her was Karl, unusually quiet, curled up in a big peg-chair. Grier spoke, but the boy did not answer. Stooping, he noticed a tiny stream of blood issuing from a nostril.
Though not a nervous man, he lifted Karl into his arms with quick anxiety, and the youngster appeared to wake from a light sleep.
“What is the matter, sonny?” he asked, somewhat puzzled. “Why is your nose bleeding?”
“I don’t know, Daddy, but I have been a long way, and maybe I hurted myself.”
“Been a long way! Has Master Karl been out, Mathilde?” he inquired.
“Mais non, m’sieur. He play some time, then he sit himself in the chair.”
“But I have, Daddy,” persisted the child. “I went with Maggie. I heard Mr. Hutchinson tell Mrs. Hutchinson that their tea crop was not a good one, as the soil was too light, and he thought the Company had not chosen a good pitch.”
This was sufficiently bewildering from a boy of six, being an opinion which Hutchinson would not utter even to Grier himself. But Karl, whose lisp need not be reproduced, was brimful of news.
“Oh, it is quite, quite true,” he cried in response to his father’s laughing protest. “Maggie went in, and was a naughty girl because she could not sit up for dinner. Then I went around the house, and I saw some hill men in a wood. They said they were going to kill Mr. Hutchinson to-night, and steal his money. One of them will give the _chowkidars_ (watchmen) something to make them sleep. They will put the bags of money on some ponies, and go by a hill path into Sikkim. There are eight brown ponies and one white one. I counted them.”
Some inkling of a tremendous fact stayed the remonstrance on Mr. Grier’s lips. He was Scottish, you see, a Highlander bred and born, and he _almost_ believed in second sight. So he encouraged Karl to talk, obtained additional and more convincing details, for the child gave him the exact phrases of the Shillong patois used by the bandits, and finally handed over the youthful visionary to Mathilde, telling her to ask Mrs. Grier to keep some dinner for him--he was called away on urgent business.
He rode to the house of the District Superintendent of Police. As a favor, for Grier was a popular man, Captain Melville gathered a few mounted constables, and they all cantered off to the Hutchinsons’ garden. In the compound they found a stranger fraternizing with the servants, and in his possession was a quantity of sweetmeats, which subsequent examination proved to be rank with _dhatura_, an Indian drug which can induce sleep or death.
A raid on the wood secured a dozen rascals armed to the teeth, and the nine ponies, exactly as Karl had described them. There was a small fight, in which a sepoy’s head was cut open, but the surprise was too effectual for any serious resistance to be offered. “Conspiracy” was the root word of the legal indictment which sent the gang to the Andamans convict settlement.
The affair was known as the “Hutchinson Raid.” Such things happen in India. But Karl’s share in the adventure was kept quiet by the authorities. It would have discredited the otherwise conclusive evidence, they thought.