SECOND SIGHT
BECAUSE Mary Temple was afraid to ride over the narrow curving road
after dark, the four prospective adventurers remained at Jorny Springs
all night. Before going to bed Charmian, coached by the doctor, made
arrangements with Leach and Morley to go to San Francisco and sign
certain papers to show good faith, which papers would be drawn up by
the young widow’s attorney. When this matter had been settled, they
were to drive together to the Shinbone Country--wherever that was--and
make a thorough investigation of the properties.
Both Leach and Morley had protested against entering into a written
agreement. They offered to produce references which ought to satisfy
the most suspicious, but Dr. Shonto remained firm. Finally, seeing
no way around the obstacle, they consented, but declared that they
begrudged the time that would be taken up by the trip to San Francisco.
After the plain, old-fashioned dinner served by the owners of Jorny
Springs, Charmian took a walk through the twilight. Shortly after she
left the house Andy Jerome set off in the opposite direction, stating
that he too would like a stroll. But when the great trees hid him from
the house he made a swift circle back, and soon was on Charmian’s
trail. He found her leaning over a fence, watching a dozen fat and
shockingly muddy pigs in a stake-and-rider corral.
“I see you prefer to choose your own company,” he observed, as he
rested his arms on the fence beside her. “I hope one more won’t
constitute a crowd.”
“Aren’t they funny!” she laughed. “I love pigs and things like that.
Cows and chickens and horses and everything. Do you know that I, as the
head of the expedition to be, intend to make a hard-and-fast ruling at
the very outset? It’s this: No one in the party will be permitted to
kill any living thing.”
“Why, that’s a funny idea,” he laughed. “If a fellow can’t do a little
hunting to pass away dull hours, how’s he going to amuse himself? And
it may be that we’ll frequently find ourselves in need of fresh meat.”
“I don’t care,” she said. “I don’t approve of the slaughter of the
innocents. I used to hunt myself, but I gave it up. I can’t bear to
take a life. Man can’t create, yet in the winking of an eyelid he can
and will destroy a life that he can never reproduce. It’s the same with
a tree. One can cut down a tree in thirty minutes which nature has
spent hundreds of years in growing. And man can’t replace it. Whenever
I hear one of these giant redwoods fall groaning under the ax my heart
fairly bleeds.”
“But man must live,” Andy pointed out.
“I don’t know whether he must or not,” she said seriously. “He’s made
a complete botch of existence. Sometimes I wish the entire race were
wiped out, so nature could begin all over again. Man is as barbarous
to-day as he was a thousand years ago. The only difference is that he
has invented new machinery with which to practise his barbarism.”
“Why, you’re a regular little cynic!” Andy accused.
“Perhaps. I have little patience with mankind, if that’s what you mean.
The so-called lower animals have my love and sympathy. They haven’t
made a farce of their lives, as we have. And vivisection--that’s what
makes me wild! Man, by his own selfish indulgences, by his reckless
living, his complete disregard of the laws of nature, has succeeded
in shortening his life and depleting his physical vigour. So, in his
eagerness to continue the debauch, scared stiff at thought of the
yawning precipice just ahead of him, he turns in his cowardly way
to the so-called lower animals. He robs these helpless creatures of
their health and vitality in order to patch up his poor, miserable,
worthless body. Like the five foolish virgins, men say to these wise
virgins--these innocents of the earth who have conserved their oil of
life--‘Give us of your oil, for our lamps are gone out.’ Could anything
be more cowardly, Mr. Jerome?”
“But aren’t the lower animals placed on this earth for the benefit of
man?” asked Andy.
“Oh, yes--man imagines everything on earth is put here for him to
exploit and ruin! Where are the buffaloes? Where are the beavers? Where
are the elks? Where are the bighorns? Were they put here for man to
destroy--to wipe almost completely from the face of the earth? When man
has learned to step down from his papier-mâché throne of insufferable
conceit, he will find that he is only a part of nature’s scheme--that
every other atom in the universe is as important as he is. Then we can
begin to look for the dawn of civilization.”
“I’m afraid,” said Andy, “that you and Doctor Shonto are not destined
to get along very well together.”
“Why?”
“Well, it is his business to exploit nature for the rebuilding of man.”
“Yes--I know. I tried to draw him out this morning, but he refused to
be tempted into a discussion of his work. How long have you known him,
Mr. Jerome?”
“Why, almost all my life, it seems. He is an old friend of my father
and mother. I can’t remember when I didn’t know the doctor.”
“That seems strange. He is not so much older than you are. How old are
you?”
“Twenty-four,” Andy replied.
“And I should say the doctor is not much over thirty.”
“Thirty-four, I believe.”
“Then he was ten years old when you were born. Could you call him a
‘friend of your father and mother’ when he was ten years old? Did you
play with him when you were a boy?”
For a long time Andy Jerome was silent. Then he said slowly:
“I must tell you something about myself. I can recall almost nothing
of my childhood before my twelfth birthday. And my earliest
recollections are of Doctor Shonto. I remember him as about twenty-two
or twenty-three years old. And, to me, he never was younger than that.”
“Why, I can’t understand you at all!” exclaimed the girl.
“It’s very difficult to understand,” he said in low tones. “But when
I was about eight years old, they tell me, something happened to me.
It seems that I got a crack on the noodle while playing and lost my
memory. I remained in that condition from the age of eight until I was
perhaps between eleven and twelve. It was Doctor Shonto, who had just
been graduated from a medical college and was already making a big
name for himself, who treated me and brought me out of my coma. But,
strange to say, it left me with a weak heart. I have to take treatment
for it right along, and the doctor tells me that, if I neglect this
treatment, my old condition will come back, or I may suddenly drop
dead. For all that, I’m fit as a fiddle and strong as an ox. It seems
funny to think that I may bump off at any moment--hard to believe. But
nobody ever doubts Doctor Shonto. However, he has assured me again and
again that I have nothing whatever to worry about, so long as I take my
medicine diligently. I guess I haven’t missed a day since he began his
treatment.”
“Why, how strange!” was Charmian’s only comment.
“It is strange--mighty strange. Now and then I get a faint glimmering
of something that took place before I was eight years of age, but
it’s so hazy that it seems like it happened to some one else instead
of me. And it seemed that, when I gradually regained my memory, I was
being born all over again. I had the mind of a child of two or three,
though I was over twelve years old. I remembered nothing of what had
been taught me in the private school that they told me I had once
attended. I had to begin my schooling at the very bottom again. Lord,
how they made me cram! I studied night and day, and seemed eager enough
to learn. They tell me that I have caught up because of my perpetual
digging--that I now have the mentality of a normal man of my age. And
so for the past year I have studied very little, and have been catching
up on the physical end. I have lived in the open months at a time, and
frequently Doctor Shonto has been with me. He likes it himself, and he
likes to be with me. And I can tell you right here and now that I think
Doctor Inman Shonto the greatest man alive!”
“I’ll bet you do,” said Charmian warmly. “But it strikes me as rather
strange that you should never call him Doc, since you two are so close.”
“I guess I’d never think of calling him that,” said Andy reflectively.
“No, that wouldn’t seem the proper thing to do.”
“What do you do when you’re at home, Mr. Jerome?”
“Why, I hope to become a lawyer some day,” he replied. “You see, I’m
still a student. I’ve studied law a little and mean to take up a
regular course next year. But for the present my parents and Doctor
Shonto think it best for me to loaf around outdoors.”
“I suppose your folks are wealthy,” said Charmian in her frank way.
“Yes, they’re accounted so. Pop has retired. He was a candy and cracker
manufacturer. I’d like to have you meet my mother. She’s a peach. You’d
like her. She’d like you, too.”
“And so your hero is Doctor Inman Shonto,” mused Charmian. “I wonder if
it would be proper for me to ask you about his work, after he himself
has refused to tell me anything?”
“Precious little I can tell you,” laughed Andy. “But I’ll do my best.
If Doctor Shonto has any secrets, they’re safe with me because I
couldn’t explain them if I wanted to. Fire ahead. Doctor Shonto doesn’t
like to talk about himself. He’s entirely too modest.”
“I wanted to ask you,” said the girl, “if Doctor Shonto is in any way
responsible for the horrible things I have read about in the papers
lately. Rich men hiring thugs to waylay strong, healthy men, knock them
out, and take them to doctors, who operate on them and steal their
glands, which are substituted for the worn-out glands of the rich men?”
“Nothing doing!” loyally cried Andy. “Doctor Shonto says the most of
that news is nothing but hot air. No, he never uses human glands in
his work. He uses sheep glands exclusively. And the animals are killed
before he cuts the glands out of them.”
“Are you positive?”
“I have only his word for it. But he’s a very tender-hearted man--for
a surgeon. And he has a magnificent sense of justice. No, not in a
thousand years would Doctor Shonto countenance anything like that.”
“I’m glad to hear you say so,” she sighed. “I think that is simply
horrible--ghoulish! But why was it, then, that the doctor refused to
tell me anything about his work?”
“Well, he has accomplished wonders, they say. And, as I told you
before, he’s modest.”
“Modesty reaps its reward only in fiction.”
“I imagine the doctor is keener after results than rewards,” Andy
mused. “I’ll tell you the little that I have gleaned--mostly about the
thyroid gland, which, you know, is in our throats.
“It seems that, if a fellow is shy on thyroid, he’s up against it in
many ways. He may be slow to learn, clumsy, and may have an unbalanced
sense of right and wrong. If he is fed the extract of the thyroid
glands of sheep, this can be corrected.
“It is the same with the other glands in our system. Some control one
thing, some another. And, according to Doctor Shonto’s theory, the
time is close at hand when deficient people can be entirely remade
by injecting into them, or feeding them, the extract of the gland
secretion that they’re shy on. This will revolutionize our social
system, according to Doctor Shonto. We will know then that mental
defectives, criminals, people who are petulant and hard to get along
with--in fact, everybody who is in any way not up to normal--are so
because of the absence, or the over-supply, of the secretions of
certain glands. This science can correct, and the time may come when
we will be able to do away with prisons and corrective institutions,
and treat our fellowmen instead of mistreating them.”
“Heaven speed the day!” said Charmian fervently. “But why, tell me, did
Doctor Shonto hesitate about telling me that?”
Andy shrugged his broad shoulders. “_Quien sabe_,” he said, “unless his
modesty made him reticent. I think he’s afraid of being ridiculed as a
visionary theorist.”
“Doctor Shonto doesn’t strike me as a man who would shrink from
ridicule, if he thought he was in the right,” Charmian declared.
* * * * *
Two days later the six who were interested in the opal project and the
Valley of Arcana arrived in San Francisco late in the evening. It was
after business hours, so nothing could be done toward drawing up the
papers until the following morning. Charmian called up her attorney,
briefly outlined the situation, and arranged for a conference at ten
the following day. Then she went to her apartments with Mary Temple,
while Andy and Dr. Shonto took rooms in the Palace Hotel. Smith Morley
sent a telegram to his wife in Los Angeles, after which he and his
partner sought a cheap rooming house on Kearny Street. They were to
meet the others in the offices of Charmian’s lawyer at eleven o’clock
next morning.
Charmian Reemy was tired from the long automobile ride from the
wilderness, and went early to bed. Shortly after her retirement Mary
Temple stepped softly to her bedroom door and listened until convinced
that her young charge was sound asleep. Then she put on her ancient fur
coat and her surprisingly old-fashioned hat, and noiselessly left the
apartment.
The elevator was still running, and she rode in it to the ground floor,
where she slipped out into a cold, foggy night. At the corner she took
a streetcar and rode to a point in the city directly opposite Golden
Gate Park. Here she left the car, walked three blocks, and rang the
bell of a three-story flat.
Presently the door automatically swung open, and she entered a warm,
carpeted hall. She briskly ascended a long flight of stairs, at the top
of which a large woman in a blue-silk kimono awaited her.
“Oh, it’s you, is it, dearie?” greeted the woman. “I thought you were
in the country.”
“We came back this evening, Madame Destrehan,” said Mary, reaching the
large woman’s side and extending her hand. “And I came direct to you.
I’m in trouble again. That little minx has a new wild scheme in her
head. I can’t talk her out of it. But I’m afraid. I just know there’s
something wrong.”
“Come in and tell me all about it,” offered Madame Destrehan. “I know I
can help you. I--I--” She placed a fat, white, bejewelled hand to her
forehead and brushed across it. “I see something now.”
They entered the medium’s apartment. Both seated themselves, and Mary
Temple poured out the story of the two strangers who had invaded El
Trono de Tolerancia, and of the opal claims and the Valley of Arcana.
Madame Destrehan listened with both eyes closed. She sat immovable
after Mary’s cracked voice ceased, her eyelids still lowered.
Then she began waving her plump hands slowly this way and that. She
did not open her eyes, but she mumbled something which Mary could not
interpret. Then suddenly she began speaking in a low, awed tone.
“I see that valley,” said the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter.
“It’s beautiful, but death stalks across it from end to end. And I
see-- Oh, horrors! I see an ugly face. The face of a man. It is bluish,
and the eyes are popping from the head. The eyes are glazed, and his
thick, blue tongue hangs out like the tongue of a tired dog. The man’s
hair is dishevelled and long. A matted beard covers his face. His eyes
stare, then gleam with ferocity. His skin is withered and yellow,
and his finger nails are long. He grits his teeth and babbles like
a madman. And--oh, horrors! He is leaning over Mrs. Reemy, and his
crooked fingers are drawing nearer and nearer to her white throat!”