'An additional sense. A sixth sense.' There was a slightly disappointed pause.
'Well, I don't know that there's much in that,' said the Lancashire man. 'Means knowing things as nobody told you, and you 'aven't read. There's a word for it—oh, aye, intuition, that's it. Young lady I once knew 'ad it. She went into the fortune reading business. Didn't do so bad, either.'
'That's not what I mean,' the tall man told him a trifle shortly. 'I'm not talking about a mixture of guesswork, humbug and adding two and two. I mean a real sense, with organs of perception as real as your eyes and your ears and your nose and your tongue.'
'I don't see as you need any more. They're enough, aren't they?'
The rest ignored him.
'Organs for the perception of what?' asked the elder American curiously.
The tall man did not reply at once. He turned up the end of his cigarette and regarded it for a moment.
'All right,' he said. 'I'll tell you about it. But I warn you that all the names and places will be faked. If there is any chance of following the business up, I want to do it myself.'
Chapter Two
THE STRANGE CASE OF TED FILLER
The tall man paused again as though seeking an opening.
'It's an odd little story, and to explain to you how I come to know so much about it, I shall have to reveal that I practise medicine. That's a thing I keep quiet as a rule when I am away from home. It alters people's attitude if they know it and shuts one off from them almost as much as if one were a clergyman.
'However, that is my profession and for twenty years, until, in fact, two years ago when I moved south, I practised in Irkwell in Derbyshire. It's a place which is typical of the kind of semi-industrialised village you find round there. Most of the men are employed in the quarries or the mills, a few work lead in the pits where there's any left to work. The women work in the mills, too, until they marry and start having more children than they want. The place is partly cottages of local stone but mostly rows of shoddy cottages put up in the last century when the mills came. In general, it's a kind of semi-rural slum. Not the kind of place you'd expect to produce any advance on modern humanity—and yet there's no doubt in my mind that young Ted Filler was something more than an ordinary freak.
'His mother, Ada, regarded his arrival more as an act of God than a personal achievement until she found out that he was a boy. It was a discovery which had the result of infusing more interest into the family life. Her three previous contributions had all been girls, and this, and the deaths of the two younger in infancy, had helped to give her an attitude of discouraged fatalism about the whole business. But with Ted's birth she seemed to make a fresh start and he began his independent existence enviably protected by first child devotion and fourth child experience.
'Not that he appeared to be in the least in need of special treatment. He was a healthy, well-formed child whose yells when he was washed were encouragingly lusty. I did not detect the least sign of abnormality in him, nor do I think would anyone else have done so. I was able with complete honesty to assure his father and mother that they had a remarkably fine son—and that wasn't too common in my Irkwell practice.
'Nevertheless, when I called on Mrs. Filler again I found satisfaction somewhat diluted.
'" 'E worries us, 'e does," she said. "Not but what 'e ain't a dear little chap and me proud of 'im," she added, in the manner of one anxious not to appear ungrateful. "But 'e ain't like the others was. 'E's that difficult to get to sleep, you'd never believe. And then sometimes when you've got 'im to sleep 'e'll wake up all of a sudden and look at you just like 'e's 'ad the fright of 'is little life, then 'e'll begin to 'owl. Ee, an' 'e does 'owl. Fair frightened me and Jim first time 'e done it. We thought 'e wasn't never going to stop. An 'e didn't, not till 'e was fair wore out—and so was we. I'd like you to 'ave a look at 'im, Doctor, if you will. I don't feel easy about him, an' that's a fact."
'I gave the child a careful examination; From what I knew of Ada Filler I was fairly certain she wasn't one to get worked up unnecessarily, though of course you can never be sure. The baby was lying in its cot, blue eyes wide open, but quite quiet and peaceful. There didn't seem to be a thing as it shouldn't be and I said so.
' "I'm glad to 'ear that," said his mother. "Still—I don't know. 'E'll lie quiet that way for hours when you'd think 'e'd be asleep, then all of a sudden, for no reason, off 'e'll go like a 'ooter. An' nowt as I can do'll stop 'im."
'Well, there wasn't anything really to worry about. Some children are like that; they take one look at the world and hate it on sight and you can't blame them much in a place like Irkwell, but in the end they learn to put up with it, like the rest of us. Nevertheless, young Ted Filler seemed to be taking his time about settling down. Whenever I looked in during the next few weeks it was the same tale. Once or twice I heard him howling. It was a remarkable achievement. I didn't wonder that his parents were looking worn and that the rest of the street was behaving pretty offensively to them.
'" 'E don't sleep enough, not near enough," his father assured me. " 'T'ain't natural. 'T'ain't fair on a man as 'as to work, either."'
All I could tell them was that I'd stake my reputation there was nothing wrong with the child and that he would soon outgrow it.
'It was two months later that something occurred which might have given me an early clue to the whole thing had I had the wit to perceive it as a clue.
'I had called at the Fillers' cottage about something to do with their daughter, Doreen, I think, and naturally inquired after the baby.
' "Oh, I found out what to do with 'im," his mother said.
'She showed me. The heir of the Fillers was sleeping peacefully and with an expression of blissful satisfaction. His bed was made up in an ordinary galvanised iron bath with a handle each end. He could have passed for an Italian cherub or a patent food advertisement.
' "Sleeps pretty near all the time now. Makin' up for it, like," she said.
' "How did you do it?" I asked.
'She explained that it had happened by accident a week or two before. She had been ironing when Ted started one of his howls. She had fetched him down to the kitchen because, even if you couldn't stop him. you could keep an eye on him, but no sooner had she got him downstairs than the insurance man had called.
The baby had to be put somewhere while she got the money and paid the man and the handiest place for the moment was on top of the clean linen stacked in one of the tin baths. When she came back from the door he had not only stopped crying but was fast asleep, so she left him there as long as possible. The next time he yelled she did the same again, and with the same result. It seemed to work every time.
' "So now I makes 'is bed in there regular," she added. "Seems queer, but it suits 'im. Good as gold, 'e is, in there. Won't sleep nowhere else."
'I didn't take much notice at the time. A preference for sleeping in a tin bath just seemed one of those odd infantile idiosyncrasies which the wise accept and use gratefully.
'Well, time went on. I used to look in at the Fillers' occasionally, so I saw young Ted from time to time. I didn't take a great interest in him for he was a healthy enough baby. I gathered that he persisted in his odd preference for sleeping in a tin bath, but beyond that he seemed undistinguished. And yet, when I came to think it over afterwards, there was another incident which might have given me a hint.
'On that occasion he was lying in a dilapidated perambulator outside the back door. He did not show that he noticed me. His eyes were wide open, gazing far away, but he was not quite silent; he seemed to be humming a little tune. As I bent over him I could swear I caught that theme from the New World Symphony. You know how it goes.'