“A strange case,” he murmured. “Pulse normal; not a trace of fever. Not
sick, you say--” Hobart pointed to his head. “Ah, I see! I would suggest
home and a bed.”
Just here Watson opened his eyes again. They rested first upon the
doctor, then upon myself, and finally upon the brandy. He took it up and
drank it with eagerness. It was his third one; it gave him a bit more
life.
“Didn't I tell you, boys, that there is not a doctor on earth that
can save me? Excuse me, doc. I am not sick. I told them. I am far past
physic; I have gone beyond medicine. All I ask is stimulant and life
enough to tell my story.”
“My boy,” asked the doctor kindly, “what ails you?”
Watson smiled. He touched himself on the forehead.
“Up here, doc. There are things in the world with which we may not
tamper. I tried it. Somebody had to do it and somebody has to do it yet.
You remember Dr. Holcomb; he was a great man; he was after the secret of
life. He began it.”
Dr. Hansen started.
“Lord!” he exclaimed, looking at us all; “you don't mean this man is
mixed up in the Blind Spot?”
We nodded. Watson smiled; again he dropped back into inertia; the speech
he had made was his longest yet; the brandy was coming into effect.
“Give him brandy,” the doctor said; “it's as good as anything. It will
hold him together and give him life for a while. Here.” He reached into
his pocket and flicked something into the glass. “That will help him.
Gentlemen, do you know what it means? I had always thought! I knew Dr.
Holcomb! Crossing over the border! It may not be done! The secret of
life is impossible. Yet--”
Watson opened his eyes again; his spirit seemed suddenly to flicker into
defiance.
“Who said it was impossible? Who said it? Gentlemen, it IS possible. Dr.
Holcomb--pardon me. I do not wish to appear a sot; but this brandy is
about the only thing to hold me together. I have only a few hours left.”
He took the glass, and at one gulp downed the contents. I do not know
what the doctor had dropped into it. Chick revived suddenly, and a
strange light blazed up in his eyes, like life rekindled.
“Ah, now I am better. So?”
He turned to us all; then to the doctor.
“So you say the secret of life is impossible?”
“I--”
Chick smiled wanly. “May I ask you: what it is that has just flared up
within me? I am weak, anaemic, fallen to pieces; my muscles have lost
the power to function, my blood runs cold, I have been more than two
feet over the border. And yet--a few drinks of brandy, of stimulants,
and you have drawn me back, my heart beats strongly, for an hour. By
means of drugs you have infused a new life--which of course is the
old--and driven the material components of my body into correlation. You
are successful for a time; so long as nature is with you; but all the
while you are held aghast by the knowledge that the least flaw, the
least disarrangement, and you are beaten.
“It is your business to hold this life or what you may. When it has
gone your structures, your anatomy, your wonderful human machine is
worthless. Where has it come from? Where has it gone? I have drunk four
glasses of brandy; I have a lease of four short hours. Ordinarily it
would bring reaction; it is poison, to be sure; but it is driving back
my spirit, giving me life and strength enough to tell my story--in the
morning I shall be no more. By sequence I am a dead man already. Four
glasses of brandy; they are speaking. Whence comes this affinity of
substance and of shadow?”
We all of us listened, the doctor most of all. “Go on,” he said.
“Can't you see?” repeated Watson. “There is affinity between substance
and shadow; and therefore your spirit or shadow or what you will is
concrete, is in itself a substance. It is material just as much as you
are. Because you do not see it is no proof that it is not substance.
That pot palm yonder does not see you; it is not blessed with eyes.”
The doctor looked at Watson; he spoke gently.
“This is very old stuff, my boy, out of your abstract philosophy. No man
knows the secret of life. Not even yourself.”
The light in Watson's eyes grew brighter, he straightened; he began
slipping the ring from his finger.
“No,” he answered. “I don't. I have tried and it was like playing with
lightning. I sought for life and it is giving me death. But there is one
man living who has found it.”
“And this man?”
“Is Dr. Holcomb!”
We all of us started. We had every one given the doctor up as dead. The
very presence of Watson was tragedy. We did not doubt that he had been
through some terrible experience. There are things in the world that may
not be unriddled. Some power, some sinister thing was reaching for his
vitality. What did he know about the professor? Dr. Holcomb had been a
long time dead.
“Gentlemen. You must hear my story; I haven't long to tell it. However,
before I start here is a proof for a beginning.”
He tossed the ring upon the table.
It was Hobart who picked it up. A beautiful stone, like a sapphire; blue
but uncut and of a strange pellucid transparency--a jewel undoubtedly;
but of a kind we have never seen. We all of us examined it, and were
all, I am afraid, a bit disappointed. It was a stone and nothing else.
Watson watched us. The waiter had brought more brandy, and Watson was
sipping it, not because he liked it, he said, but just to keep himself
at the proper lift.
“You don't understand it, eh? You see nothing? Hobart, have you a match?
There, that's it; now give me the ring. See--” He struck the match and
held the flame against the jewel. “Gentlemen, there is no need for me
to speak. The stone will give you a volume. It's not trickery, I assure
you, but fact. There, now, perfect. Doctor, you are the sceptic. Take a
look at the stone.”
The doctor picked it up casually and held it up before his eyes. At
first he frowned; then came a look of incredulity; his chin dropped and
he rose in his chair.
“My God,” he exclaimed, “the man's living! It--he--”
But Hobart and I had crowded over. The doctor held the ring so we could
see it. Inside the stone was Dr. Holcomb!
It was a strenuous moment, and the most incredible. We all of us
knew the doctor. It was not a photograph, nor a likeness; but the man
himself. It was beyond all reason that he could be in the jewel; indeed
there was only the head visible; one could catch the expression of life,
the movements of the eyelids. Yet how could it be? What was it? It was
Hobart who spoke first.
“Chick,” he asked, “what's the meaning? Were it not for my own eyes I
would call it impossible. It's absurd on the face. The doctor! Yet I can
see him--living. Where is he?”
Chick nodded.
“That's the whole question. Where is he? I know and yet I know nothing.
You are now looking into the Blind Spot. The doctor sought the secret of
life--and found it. He was trapped by his own wisdom!”