Mr Marshall's Doppelganger

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Mister Marshall's Doppelganger by H. G. Wells. This is a
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Read by CHRISTA Zeleski. Mister Marshall's Doppelganger. Among the curious

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cases which I, as a once active member of the
Society for the Rehabilitation of Abnormal Phenomena, have been called
upon to investigate, that of mister Marshall's apparition to the
Reverend Philip Burwash of Sussexville and to the Reverend Philip
Wendover his curate, is certainly, by no means the least curious.
It was communicated to the Society by the Reverend George

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Burwash himself with a mass of authenticating evidence, quite an
excess of the ordinary case of this description. The Reverend
George Burwash is one of that little army of honest
and worthy amateur investigators scattered throughout the country, clergyman, retired officer, professors,
keeping holiday and ladies of every description, who, in spite

(01:04):
of certain inexperience in the handling of human evidence, are
doing such excellent work in reviving the earth's decadent belief
in spiritual entities. He was already favorably known to the
society by his experiments in thought transference. The apparition occurred
on Christmas Eve, eighteen ninety five, and his communication was
read before the Society in the subsequent January. My inquiries

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into Sussexville were prosecuted during the April and may following.
A doppelganger, I need scarcely remind the reader is the
Neo English for a double You are here, and yet
you appear suddenly to a friend or acquaintance elsewhere. In
other words, a doppelganger is a phantasm of a living person.
Such phanfasms are believed by many quite reputable people nowadays

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to be of frequent occurrence, and, as in the case
I had to examine, are often curiously purposeless. Here we
had mister Marshall appearing suddenly and with a disturbed countenance,
before mister Burwash and his curate uttering horrible imprecations, threatening him,
and then suddenly disappearing. He cursed and threatened without rhyme
or reason. His procedure was totally without symbolic value, but

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so vivid and so sonorous was the phantasm that at
the time it did not enter into the head of
mister Burwash to regard him as anything but a real person.
Albeit the figure moved with a curious gliding motion markedly
different from walking until it vanished. Indeed, the thought of
ghosts did not occur to him. The manner of disappearance

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and the subsequent silence, as the Reverend Gentlemen described them, were, however,
quite sufficiently ghost like for any reasonable person. My first
proceeding in eluciating this interesting case was, of course, to
visit the scene of the appearance, and courteously but exhaustively
to cross examine mister Burwash and mister Wendover on the
particulars of the incident. Mister Burwash occupies a house on

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the hill side above the church, and in consequence of
the growth of his family, he has, for the sake
of quiet, built himself a small but convenient study of
pine up the hill. A path crosses over the crest
of the hill and descends steeply from a little gate
near the study, between the vicarage hedge and the churchyard
wall to the lytch gate in the main road below.

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On Christmas Eve, mister Burwash had been writing late at
his Christmas sermon, having been delayed during the day by
a parcel of spookacle literature, and it was after midnight
that he finished his curate with whom he is for
a vicar on exceptionally friendly terms, came into the study
and sat smoking while the vicar alternately talked to him

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and punctuated his discourse for the morrow. It adds to
the interest of the case that this curate, mister Wendover,
was a declared skeptic. When the punctuation was completed, the
viker got up, stretched and opened his study door to
look out at the weather. He saw, by the glare
from the door that a few flakes of snow were falling,
and he was preparing to turn then remark upon this

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to the curate, when suddenly and abruptly, mister Marshall appeared
outside the gate and stood for a moment, swaying exactly
like a drunken man and apparently struggling with violent internal emotions.
Then finding his voice, he poured forth, with dramatic unexpectedness,
a volley of curses so gross and personal that I

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had the greatest difficulty in persuading mister Burwash in the
interests of science to repeat them. The Curate became aware
of mister Marshall's presence for the first time when he
heard this outbreak. He sprang to his feet and saw
Marshal distinctly over his superior's shoulder. Then, as abruptly, the
man staggered and vanished into the night. As he did so,
a gust of wind whirled the snowflakes about, and the

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study door behind mister Burwash slammed violently. Mister Burwash was
shut out, and the Curate in In his communication to
the society, mister Burwash laid great stress upon this fact
of the slamming door because he inclined to the belief
that it shows a quasi material nature in phantasms. For
as he very pertinently asks, how otherwise could the disappearance

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of a ghost cause a gust of wind? That, however,
is a side issue. As soon as they had recovered
from their surprise, mister Burwash went to the gate, expecting
to find Marshall lying there, But up the hill and
down the pathway was deserted. That substantially was the story
of the vision of mister Burwash, and by itself it
would of course have had little or no interest. As

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I immediately pointed out, Marshal himself may have passed that
way in an intoxicated condition, and his sudden and gliding
disappearance may have been due to his feet slipping on
the frozen snow that veneered the pathway. That closing door, too,
by cutting off the light, may have aided the effect.
And the path is so steep that one can reasonably
imagine a man who has lost his footing going down

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the entire slope of the hill in a second or
so in the time that is that it took mister
Burwash to reopen his door. That indeed was the view
mister Burwash himself at first took of the matter, and
it is, I suppose, the explanation that would recommend itself
to any sane person. Mister went Over, of course agreed
with him, but having a scarcely explicable doubt about the

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business lurking in his mind, the Vikar took the very
first opportunity of taxing Marshall, who was usually a sober
and steady man, with the almost unpardonable insults he had
uttered overnight. In any case, and without the faintest suspicion
that anything psychic had happened, the Vikar would have done so,
though not perhaps so promptly. This opportunity of reproof he made.

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In the afternoon of Christmas Day, he found mister and
Missus Marshall drinking strong tea together, and it carried out
the common sense theory of the affair that Marshall should
have a headache still and have been quite unable to
participate in any enjoyment in their simple, but of course
extremely bilious Christmas meal. And he freely and contritely admitted
he had been drunk over night. But when mister Burwash

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proceeded with some heat to charge him with the filthy
blasphemies of the evening, Missus Marshall fired up indignantly. And
then it was that the extraordinary side of this incident
came to light. There was the clearest evidence, evidence strong
enough to hang a man. Indeed, if need had been
that Marshall had never been near the Viker's study at
all on Christmas Eve, that the thing was an absolute impossibility, that,

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in fact, about half past eleven, half an hour before
the apparition, that is, he had been picked up helplessly
drunk by some charitable neighbors about a couple of hundred
yards from the Seven Thorns, carried the whole mile and
a half to his own home, carried into his own kitchen,
and dumped down there at the very moment when his
almost equally inebriated doppelganger was insulting the viker three quarters

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of a mile away. I test every link in the
chain of evidence, as I thought, and not a link failed.
Missus Marshall told me how she had gone to bed
being tired, and how when the good Man failed to
appear after half past ten, she had grown anxious, and
at last, hearing voice outside, had shivered out of bed
and gone to the window. A mister ted Apse, two

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brothers named Durkin, one a blacksmith and the other a watchmaker,
and a mister Heatherington, a baker, were walking in a
leisurely and voluminous manner along the road, singing as they walked.
She knew mister Aps and opened the window and called
to him. She asked him whether he had seen mister Marshall.
At that the little party stopped and interrogated one another.
They all distinctly remembered Marshall being at the Seventh Thorns,

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and until she called their attention to the matter, had
had a vague impression that he was still convivaly with them,
her wifely anxiety being only too evident, and they full
of that feeling of mutual helpfulness that still, thank Heaven
distinguishes our homely country Christmas tide. It was natural they
should offer to return for him, all right, miss Marshall,
they cried after one another in a reassuring voice, and turned, and,

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making the night cheerful with Marshal's name, returned round the
long winding road toward the Seventh Thorns. All were seasonably inebriated,
and no doubt they were now scattered distantly and now
in an amiable knot together as they reeled along, calling
after Marshall, but all distinctly remember what was happening at
the time. I have elaborately verified the story from all

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four of them. Everything was as explicit as evidence could be.
To warn't art Houn yards off Saint Thorns, said the
blacksmith Jurgen, that us found him there. He was with
his head against the old fence and his blessed old
white legs. It was mister Marshall's weakness, invariably to wear
a peculiarly light variety of corduroy trousers, a sticken art

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just helpless. He was add to Gerry in every blessed
yard us did. It was bad? I tell ye. The
others corroborated exactly Martial's speech. They agreed was incoherent, shapeless.
In fact, had he been able to surmount one impossibility
and get up to the Viker's study, it would have
been equally impossible for him to have articulated a curse

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of that, they were all convinced. And I imagine that
the process of carrying him home along the dark growed
must have been a pretty severe test of insensibility. Didn't
you drop him? I asked of the elger Durgan. Oh,
we dropped him, said Durgon, reassuringly. We dropped him right enough,
And Lord, what a job we did have a pickin

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of em up, to be sure. And he proceeded to
give me a detailed narrative, as he remembered it, of
the entire journey consequent upon mister Marshall's incapacity to walk,
Missus Marshall had to come down and open the door
in order that they might carry him in, But being
in a dissabelle that she considered unbecoming, she stipulated that
they should not enter until she had had time to

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retire upstairs again. As they came in, she held a
candle over the banisters and directed them where to deposit
their burden. Mister Apps, being in a festive mood, then
demanded drinks round, but the others, being soberer, overruled him,
and after they had retired, she descended and locked the
front door. Afterwards, it would seem that mister Apps returned,

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hammered at the door and demanded drinks again twice or
three times. She said she was alarmed in this way,
and then mister Apps apparently abandoned his quest. She laid
great stress on the aggressive behavior of mister Apps on
account of the trouble about the missing sausages and mince pie,
to which I shall presently allude. As Marshall rarely drank,
and as missus Marshall was a person of refined taste

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with a womanly horror of an intoxicated man, she did
not go down to him in the kitchen until the
early morning, and then she found him still in a
drink sodden sleep upon the hearth rug, with a pool
of melted snow about him. And there what one may
call the case of the alibi ends strong. That case,
indisputably is the reader must admit now here we have

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an extraordinary contradiction between two perfectly credible stories. On the
one hand, two clergymen and one a skeptic, and even
a scoffer at sech experts witnessed that Marshall was in
one place, and on the other, four indisputably honest villagers
and the man's own wife testify as emphatically that he
was in another place. I sifted and weighed every scrap

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of evidence, and could see no way to reconcile the two,
except by taking the view that mister Burwash took, and
admitting a belief in Dappelganger's. To that effect, I finally
reported to the society. Altogether, I gave the business a
clear seven days. Only one alternative to that acquiescence seemed
possible to me, and that was that the Vikar and

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his curate, in spite of almost vament assurance of mister Burwash,
had not seen Marshall at all. I spent three days
seeking a colorable substitute for Marshall, a person who seen
casually might have been mistaken for him, and not one
could I find. He had a noticeably long nose, a
fresh complexion, and a large mouth. Even in his dress.

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He was distinctive. In view of the fact that the
light of the Viker's study fell fully on the face
of the apparition. The mistaken identity notion failed hopelessly as
an explanation. It was doppelganger or another doppelganger took my mind.
Seemed the more credible climax in the whole course of
my career as a psychic inquirer, I had certainly never

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come upon any occult phenomena so absolutely a tried and
proven thing. I asked the reader to stop at this stage,
to recapitulate the case as I have stated it, and
to consider whether the proof does not seem to be
practically complete. No one at all familiar with modern psychical
research will find any discredit to the story. In the
absolute carelessness and purposelessness of the appearance, I need scarcely say,

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what a hearty welcome the society, which was naturally glad
to find its existence justified accorded to my personal conclusions.
People who have committed themselves to psychical research, who have
been called naves and fools for their curiosity, cannot be
expected to judge too skeptically such a well authenticated case
as mine. The case was, if I may use a

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vulgar but vivid expression, flapped vigorously in the faces of
our detractors all over the world, And my own appearance
at the May meeting of the Society was, in its
way an ovation, and every inducement was held out to
mister Marshall to Doppelgang again. Chapter two. Mention has already
been made of the Reverend Philip Wendover in connection with

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this story. Mister Wendover belonged to that large and I
fear I must write prejudiced class who will not have
psychic phenomena at any price. He was a fair athletic
young man, and he had formerly been an assistant master
at Dinchester. To that I must describe his extraordinary facility
with slang, which occasionally even affected his pulpit deliverances. From

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first to last, while I was unraveling this story, he
had nothing but derision for me. In spite of his
being my most important witness. Indeed, I quite sickened of
his pet phrase of Tommy Rot. What Tommy rots at
all is? He would say, in his riotous, amiable way,
a grown man, presumably sane and educated, spending days and

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days hunting the ghost of dead superstition for a lot
of piffling old fools in London. Why the deuce? Don't
you dig man, do something useful? You're strong enough. Well,
I would say, here are my facts? Oh, facts be jiggered?
He would say, facts that prove doppel Ganging are facts
I have no respect for. But I have. I would say, what,

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beastly rot, You've got a flaw somewhere, you know you have.
If facts prove arrant nonsense, it shows that there's something wrong.
Then I would begin to state my case. Show me
the flaw, I would say, and directly I begin to
marshal my evidence. He would lose his brief temper and
begin to shout me down. Did I think he had
the time to go over every leaky tin pot ghost's

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story in the country before he had a right to disbelieve?
And I would raise my voice to avoid be shouted down.
If Marshall has a Dappelganger. Let him bring him up
here in the daylight, he would say, and similar illogical nonsense,
offering to board and clothe the two of them for
a year out of his own meager income, shouting extra
ravagant promissory notes at the Doppelganger and so forth. And

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then suddenly, at the height of our shouting, he would
leave off, quite abruptly, stare savagely at his pipe, and
ask me for a match. Have you a match? He
used to say, as though that was the thing that
had driven him to revolt, that by tacit understanding suspended
the quarrel. I would hand him a match to relight
his pipe. He would make some indifferent remark at a tangent,

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and we would go on talking and smoking together like
a pair of brothers. The row, when it must have
seemed to an eavesdropper on the point of blows, would
vanish before one could snap one's fingers for his caleric
outbreaks like my own were as brief as they were violent,
like tropical thunderstorms, more than anything else in the world. Now,
after I had returned to my chambers in Museum Street,

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I was surprised one afternoon in May by a visit
from Wendover. I was collecting some new and interesting evidence
upon crystal gazing that had recently come to hand when
I heard him noisily ascend the stairs. He came in
with all the tumultuous violence of triumphant common sense, shouting
and blowing, flung his umbrella on a haunted sofa I

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had on loan under observation, slapped down his hat on
the plan chet and sat in an easy chair. Give
me some tea, my good man, he bawled. And then
I'll tell you an eye opener. You're a doppelganger. He's hoist.
I tried to be as cool and acrid as possible,
though this interruption was certainly something of a shock, and
I begged him to let me know how the hoisting
was accomplished. And waving his bread and butter at me

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to accentuate his story, and ever and anon, drinking his
tea noisily and eagerly, he told me the true story
of the Marshall Dappelganger. You know, there was a thundering
robe blowing up about missus Marshall's sausages and mince pie.
He said, libel actions and all that I remembered the
trouble quite distinctly, too distinctly, indeed, for it was a
side issue into which Missus Marshall was always running and

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which made apse suspicious and reluctant under examination. The disappearance
of the Dainties on Christmas Eve from her kitchen. I
had always regarded as a trouble some irrelevance. So far
as I had formed a judgment in that matter at all,
I had gone with the general sentiment of the village
and suspected Apps and his friends for clownish thieving of
that kind was just the sort of thing that would

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commend itself to the rustic mind as a very good
Christmas joke. Indeed, what has the mince pie got to
do with the story? I said, Everything, said Wendover, and
he drank, winking at me over his teacup. Old Franks,
said Wendover, putting his cup aside and leaning forward as
he spoke to touch my knee. What of Frank's I said,
for I had never suspected that elderly sinner had any

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connection with the case. Drunk, said Wendover. Drowsy, tipsy, and
the seven Thorns. A week ago discussion running high on
the great mince pie and sausage question. Did Apps take
him or didn't he? Friend of AB's indignant trying running
down Missus Marshall. Everybody knows Missus Marshall's mince pies are
worse than her sausages, not worth stealing. Wouldn't have em

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at a gift, ain't they? Says Old Franks, hickping and winking.
That's all you know? Said Old Franks. Went over, paused,
looked at me, and took up two slices of bread
and butter, laid them face to face, bit them enormously,
and looked at me again. My good man, I said,
have you come all the way from Sussexville to tell
me that? That? And some other things? Said Wendover, disposing

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of the bread and butter. How do you know? Said
UPS's friend. Never you mind, says Old Franks, appearing to
realize he's made a slip. And there, in spite of
a few leading questions to the old man, his criticisms
on Missus Marshall's mitsmeat came to an end. Well I
began wait a bit, said Wendover, when Old Frank's had
gone as he did rather quick after that, the peculiar

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way in which he had spoken was remarked upon. Could
it be that he had stolen the mince pie in question?
Occasionally he did of jobs for Marshal, as every one knew,
And it might be that some time on Christmas Eve
he had ventured, Really, this pod has gossip. You wait,
it wasn't long before this little suspicion came to my ears,
and I must confess I didn't think very much of

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it at the time, nor did I connect it with
your well authenticated case. Who would But going past Marshal's
who should I see, as I thought, but Marshal planting beams.
He was stooping down with his back to me, so
that his nether garments formed most of the view. I
went to the wall and shouted, intending to have a
quiet word with him about this missing pie and sausage.

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He looked up, and then I saw the mistake had
made at once. It wasn't Marshal at all, but the
excellent Franks doing a bit of a job in a
pair of Marshal's cast off breeks. Ah, Now you sit up.
No men could be less alike about the hid and
face and complexion. I'll admit, but seen that way, well,
there was really an astonishing resemblance, easily be mistaken. But

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the vicar you, both of you said you saw his face,
so we did and heard his voice. But the other
gents in the case drunk dark night. That staggered me
for a moment. I'd never thought of a mistake in
the identity creeping into the case. On that side, I
could quite imagine four drunken men making such a mistake.

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But the point was that even if missus Marshall didn't
see her husband's face over night, she did the next morning.
Now don't you think that I've come up here with
a story half told, said Wendover, replying to this objection.
Because I haven't. I've simply settled the whole blessed question.
It's a concession to your weakness, I know. But directly
the possible resemblance of old Franks to Marshall dawned on me.

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I determined I would clear up the muddle from end
to end. I went to Frank's and began to talk
parochialism to him, and suddenly I hit him on the knee.
I know all about it. Frank's my man, I said,
own up he knew me pretty well, and he looked
at me for half a minute over those old glasses
of his. I won't tell a soul in Sussexville, I said,
I promise on my honor. But how the deuce did

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you get out of the Marshal's kitchen and him in?
I suppose he saw the twinkle in my eye. He
was in the little tool shed, hard by the water butt,
mister Wendover, he said, and his boots took off and
put under the currant bush as tidy as could be.
Couldn't wake him, nohow, and the snow of fallen. It
wasn't common charity not to leave her there, you see,
said Wendover. I saw only too plainly. They carried home

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old Franks, thinking it was Marshal, while Marshall was swearing
and cursing his way home by the footpath over the hill.
And when Marshall did get home, Missus Marshall, firm in
her faith that he was already safely if swinishly deposited
in the kitchen, let him hammer and swear at his
own sweet will, putting it down to aps and pulling
the clothes over her head to deaden the sound. Unhappy, Marshal,

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I said, still more unhappy, Investigator said the curate, tauntingly. Franks.
When he came to in the small hours, he added,
thought at first that he was in heaven. It shows
what a conscious void of offense will do for you.
His last thought before losing consciousness having been that he
was dying, such being the effect of the cheaper spirits
at the Seventh Thorns, and his first unresuming consciousness was

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that he was dead. The moonlight was shining in through
the frosty window, and it was cold and spacious and clean,
as he'd been led to expect heaven would be, and
close to hand as he fumbled about, were sausages and
immense pie. Old Franks showed the usual Sussex literalness. My
favors as of many mansion, says I, and I'm damned

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if I ain't in a darn good un says I,
was the way Old Franks expressed it. It was only
when he'd felt about and got the back door open
with the idea of finding the rest of him and
came upon Marshall that his muddled brain began to grasp
the realities of the case. He recognized the outside of
the house, of course, better than the inn. The rest
you infer humph, I said, trying to find a flaw

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in his explanation. It was atrociously exasperating after I'd published
that report, and when the society was just making so
much of me. He sat watching my conflict, so far
as my face revealed it Doppelganger's, he remarked, unendurably. I
rose from my seat, I caught his hat and flung
it violently across the room among the spear at photographs.

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Possibly I said this, and that I pitched the planchet
board into the fireplace, and then I attacked the available
sheets of the report on crystal gazing that lay upon
my desk. When I had torn and crumpled several very violently,
I was abruptly calmed. I turned and found the curate
had his pipe out. Have you a match, old chap,
he said, with the utmost tranquility. I felt in my pockets,

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and then handed him the matches from the mantel. Then,
sitting down in the arm chair by the fire, I
took a pipe from the rack and followed his example
and of mister Marshall's Doppelganger