"Is it over now?" queried Pat tremulously as the Doctor finally
reappeared. The interminable waiting had left her even more worn, and
her pallid features bore the marks of strain.
"Twenty minutes ago," said Horker. His face too bore evidence of
tension; moreover, there was a puzzled, dubious expression in his eyes
that frightened Pat. She was too apprehensive to risk a question as to
the outcome, and simply stared at him with wide, fearful, questioning
eyes.
"I called up your home," he said irrelevantly. "I told them you left
with me early this morning. Your mother's still in bed, although it's
after ten." He paused. "Slip in without anyone seeing you, will you,
Honey? And rumple up your bed."
"If I haven't lost my key," she said, still with the question in her
eyes.
"It's in the mail-box. Magda found it on the porch this morning. I
talked to her."
She could bear the uncertainty no longer. "Tell me!" she demanded.
"It's all right, I think."
"You mean--he'll live?"
The Doctor nodded. "I think so." He turned his puzzled eyes on her.
"Oh!" breathed Pat. "Thank God!"
"You wanted him back, Honey, didn't you?" Horker's tone was gentle.
"Oh, yes!"
"Devil and all?"
"Yes--devil and all!" she echoed. Suddenly she sensed something strange
in the other's manner. She perceived the uncertainty in his visage, and
felt a rising trepidation. "What's the matter?" she queried anxiously.
"You're not telling me everything! Tell me, Dr. Carl!"
"There's something else," he said. "I'm not sure, Pat, but I think--I
hope--you've got him back without the devil!"
"He's cured?" Her voice was incredulous; she did not dare accept the
Doctor's meaning.
"I hope so. At least I located the cause."
"What was it?" she demanded, an unexpected vigor livening her tired
body. "What was that devil? Tell me! I want to know, Dr. Carl!"
"I think the best name for it is a tumor," he said slowly. "I told them
in there it was a tumor. I wish I knew myself."
"A tumor! I don't understand!"
"I don't either, Pat--not fully. It's something on or beyond the border
of medical knowledge. I don't think any living authority could classify
it definitely."
"But tell me!" she cried fiercely. "Tell me!"
"Well, Honey--I'll try." He paused thoughtfully. "Cancers and
tumors--sarcomas--are curious things, Dear. Doctors aren't at all
sure just what they are. And one of their peculiarities is that they
sometimes seem to be trying to develop into separate entities, trying
to become human by feeding like parasites on their hosts. Do you
understand?"
"No," said the girl. "I'm sorry, Dr. Carl, but I don't."
"I mean," he continued, "that sometimes these growths seem to be trying
to develop into--into organisms. I've seen them, for instance--every
surgeon has--with bones developing. I've seen one with a rather perfect
jaw-bone, and little teeth, and hair. As if," he added, "it were
making a sort of attempt to become human, in a primitive, disorganized
fashion. Now do you see what I mean?"
"Yes," said the girl, with a violent shudder. "Dr. Carl, that's
horrible!"
"Life sometimes is," he agreed. "Well," he continued slowly, "I opened
up our patient's skull at the point where the fluoroscope indicated the
bullet. I trephined it, and there, pierced by the shot, was this--" He
hesitated, "--this tumor."
"Did you--remove it?"
"Of course. But it wasn't a natural sort of brain tumor, Honey. It was
a little cerebrum, apparently joined to a Y-shaped branch of the spinal
cord. A little brain, Pat--no larger than your small fist, but deeply
convoluted, and with the pre-Rolandic area highly developed."
"What's pre-Rolandic, Dr. Carl?" asked Pat, shivering.
"The seat of the motor nerves. The home, you might say, of the will.
This brain was practically all will--and I wonder," he said musingly,
"if that explains the ungodly, evil fascination the creature could
command. A brain that was nothing but pure will-power, relieved by
its parasitic nature of all the distractions of a directing body! I
wonder--" He fell silent.
"Tell me the rest!" she said frantically.
"That's all, Honey. I removed it, and I guess I'm the only surgeon in
the world who ever removed a brain from a human skull without killing
the patient! Luckily, he had two of them!"
"Oh God!" murmured the girl faintly. She turned to Horker. "But he will
live?"
"I think so. Your shot killed the devil, it seems." He frowned. "I said
it was a tumor; I told them it was a tumor, but I'm not sure. Perhaps,
just as some people are born with six fingers or toes on each member,
he was born with two brains. It's possible; one developed normally,
humanly, and the other--into that creature we faced last night. I don't
know!"
"It's what I said," asserted Pat. "It's a devil, and what you've just
told me about tumors proves it. They're devils, that's all, and some
day some student is going to cut one loose and raise it to maturity
outside a human body, and you'll see what a devil is really like! And
go ahead and laugh!"
"I'm not laughing, Pat. I'd be the last one to laugh at your theory,
after facing that thing last night. It had satanic powers, all
right--that paralyzing fascination! You felt it too; it wasn't just a
mental lapse on my part, was it?"
"I felt it, Dr. Carl! I'd felt it before that; I was always helpless in
the presence of it."
"Could it," he asked, "have imposed its will actively on yours? I mean,
could it have made you actually do what it asked there at the end, just
before I recovered enough sense to let out that bellow?"
"To take off--my dress?" She shivered. "I don't know, Dr. Carl.--I'm
afraid so." She looked at him appealingly. "Why did I yield to it so?"
she cried. "What made me find such a fierce pleasure in its kisses--in
its blows and scratches, and the pain it inflicted on me? Why was that,
Dr. Carl?"
"Why," he countered, "do gangsters' girls and apache women enjoy the
cruelties perpetrated on them by their men? There's a little masochism
in most women, and that--creature was sadistic, perverted, abnormal,
and somehow dominating. It took an unfair advantage of you, Pat; don't
blame yourself."
"It was--utterly evil!" she muttered. "It was the ultimate in
everything unholy."
"It was an aberrant brain," said Horker. "You can't judge it by human
standards, since it wasn't actually human. It was, I suppose, just
what you said--a devil. I didn't even keep it," he added grimly. "I
destroyed it."
"Do you know what it meant by saying it was a question of synapses?"
she asked.
"That was queer!" The Doctor's voice was puzzled. "That remark implies
that the thing itself knew what it was. How? It must have possessed
knowledge that the normal brain lacked."
"Was it a question of synapses?"
"In a sense it was. The nerves from the two rival brains must have met
in a synaptic juncture. The oftener the aberrant brain gained control,
the easier it became for it to repeat the process, as the synapse, so
to speak, wore thin. That's why the attacks intensified so horribly
toward the end; the habit was being formed."
"Last night was the very worst!"
"Of course. As the thing itself pointed out, I made the mistake of
drugging the normal brain and giving the other complete control of
the body. At other times, there'd always been the rivalry to weaken
whichever was dominant."
"Does that mean," asked Pat anxiously, "that Nick's character will be
changed now?"
"I think so. I think you'll find him less meek, less gentle, than
heretofore. More spirited, perhaps, since his energies won't be drained
so constantly by the struggle."
"I don't care!" she said. "I'd like that, and anyway, it doesn't make a
bit of difference to me as long as he's just--_my_ Nick."
The Doctor gave her a tender smile. "Let's go home," he said, pinching
her cheek in his great hand.
"Can you leave him?"
"I'll run back after a while, Honey. I think he'll do." He took her
hand, drawing her after him. "Don't forget to slip in unseen, Pat, and
rumple up your bed."
"Rumple it!" She gave him a weary smile. "I'll be _in_ it!"
"Good idea. You look a bit worn out, Honey, and we can't have you
getting sick now, or even pull a temporary faint like that one last
night."
"I didn't faint!"
"Maybe not," grinned Horker. "Perhaps the proceedings grew a little
boring, and you just lay down on the couch for a nap. It _was_ a dull
evening."