notwithstanding the doctor's continued taciturnity and his absolute
refusal to report on the dog's condition. Shadows of evil seemed
omnipresent and thickening, but for the moment there was a lull.
Georgina was relieved to get Dalton's message and learn that he
was close at hand, and sent back word that she would call him
when necessity arose. Amidst all the gathering tension some faint
compensating element seemed manifest, and Georgina finally decided that
it was the absence of the lean Tibetans, whose stealthy, sinuous ways
and disturbing exotic aspect had always annoyed her. They had vanished
all at once; and old Margarita, the sole visible servant left in the
house, told her they were helping their master and Surama at the clinic.
The following morning--the 28th of May--long to be remembered--was dark
and lowering, and Georgina felt the precarious calm wearing thin. She
did not see her brother at all, but knew he was in the clinic hard at
work at something despite the lack of specimens he had bewailed. She
wondered how poor Tsanpo was getting along, and whether he had really
been subjected to any serious inoculation, but it must be confessed
that she wondered more about Dick. She longed to know whether Surama
had done anything for the faithful dog amidst his master's oddly
callous indifference. Surama's apparent solicitude on the night of
Dick's seizure had impressed her greatly, giving her perhaps the
kindliest feeling she had ever had for the detested clinic-man. Now,
as the day advanced, she found herself thinking more and more of Dick;
till at last her harassed nerves, finding in this one detail a sort of
symbolic summation of the whole horror that lay upon the household,
could stand the suspense no longer.
Up to that time she had always respected Alfred's imperious wish that
he be never approached or disturbed at the clinic; but as this fateful
afternoon advanced, her resolution to break through the barrier grew
stronger and stronger. Finally she set out with determined face,
crossing the yard and entering the unlocked vestibule of the forbidden
structure with the fixed intention of discovering how the dog was or of
knowing the reason for her brother's secrecy.
The inner door, as usual, was locked; and behind it she heard voices
in heated conversation. When her knocking brought no response she
rattled the knob as loudly as possible, but still the voices argued on
unheeding. They belonged, of course, to Surama and her brother; and as
she stood there trying to attract attention she could not help catch
something of their drift. Fate had made her for the second time an
eavesdropper, and once more the matter she overheard seemed likely to
tax her mental poise and nervous endurance to their ultimate bounds.
Alfred and Surama were plainly quarreling with increasing violence, and
the purport of their speech was enough to arouse the wildest fears and
confirm the gravest apprehensions. Georgina shivered as her brother's
voice mounted shrilly to dangerous heights of fanatical tension.
"You, damn you--you're a fine one to talk defeat and moderation to me!
Who started all this, anyway? Did _I_ have any idea of your cursed
devil-gods and elder world? Did _I_ ever in my life think of your
damned spaces beyond the stars and your crawling chaos Nyarlathotep?
I was a normal scientific man, confound you, till I was fool enough
to drag you out of the vaults with your devilish Atlantean secrets.
You egged me on, and now you want to cut me off! You loaf around doing
nothing and telling me to go slow when you might just as well as not be
going out and getting material. You know damn well that I don't know
how to go about such things, whereas you must have been an old hand at
it before the earth was made. It's like you, you damned walking corpse,
to start something you won't or can't finish!"
Surama's evil chuckle came.
"You're insane, Clarendon. That's the only reason I let you rave on
when I could send you to hell in three minutes. Enough is enough, and
you've certainly had enough material for any novice at your stage.
You've had all I'm going to get you, anyhow! You're only a maniac on
the subject now--what a cheap, crazy thing to sacrifice even your poor
sister's pet dog, when you could have spared him as well as not! You
can't look at any living thing now without wanting to jab that gold
syringe into it. No--Dick had to go where the Mexican boy went--where
Tsanpo and the other seven went--where all the animals went! What a
pupil! You're no fun any more--you've lost your nerve. You set out to
control things, and they're controlling you. I'm about done with you,
Clarendon. I thought you had the stuff in you, but you haven't. It's
about time I tried somebody else. I'm afraid you'll have to go!"
In the doctor's shouted reply there was both fear and frenzy.
"Be careful, you ----! There are powers against your powers--I didn't
go to China for nothing, and there are things in Alhazred's _Azif_
which weren't known in Atlantis! We've both meddled in dangerous
things, but you needn't think you know all my resources. How about the
Nemesis of Flame? I talked in Yemen with an old man who had come back
alive from the Crimson Desert--he had seen Irem, the City of Pillars,
and had worshiped at the underground shrines of Nug and Yeb--Ia!
Shub-Niggurath!"
Through Clarendon's shrieking falsetto cut the deep chuckle of the
clinic-man.
"Shut up, you fool! Do you suppose your grotesque nonsense has any
weight with me? Words and formulæ--words and formulæ--what do they all
mean to one who has the substance behind them? We're in a material
sphere now, and subject to material laws. You have your fever; I have
my revolver. You'll get no specimens, and I'll get no fever so long as
I have you in front of me with this gun between!"
That was all Georgina could hear. She felt her senses reeling, and
staggered out of the vestibule for a saving breath of the lowering
outside air. She saw that the crisis had come at last, and that help
must now arrive quickly if her brother was to be saved from unknown
gulfs of madness and mystery. Summoning up all her reserve energy, she
managed to reach the house and get to the library, where she scrawled a
hasty note for Margarita to take to James Dalton.
* * * * *
When the old woman had gone, Georgina had just strength enough to cross
to the lounge and sink weakly down into a sort of semi-stupor. There
she lay for what seemed like years, conscious only of the fantastic
creeping up of the twilight from the lower corners of the great, dismal
room, and plagued by a thousand shadowy shapes of terror which filed
with fantasmal, half-limned pageantry through her tortured and stifled
brain. Dusk deepened into darkness, and still the spell held. Then a
firm tread sounded in the hall, and she heard someone enter the room
and fumble at the match-safe. Her heart almost stopped beating as the
gas-jets of the chandelier flared up one by one, but then she saw that
the arrival was her brother. Relieved to the bottom of her heart that
he was still alive, she gave vent to an involuntary sigh, profound,
long-drawn, and tremulous, and lapsed at last into kindly oblivion.
At the sound of that sigh Clarendon turned in alarm toward the lounge,
and was inexpressibly shocked to see the pale and unconscious form of
his sister there. Her face had a deathlike quality that frightened his
inmost spirit, and he flung himself on his knees by her side, awake to
a realization of what her passing away would mean to him. Long unused
to private practise amidst his ceaseless quest for truth, he had lost
the physician's instinct of first aid, and could only call out her name
and chafe her wrists mechanically as fear and grief possessed him. Then
he thought of water, and ran to the dining-room for a carafe. Stumbling
about in a darkness which seemed to harbor vague terrors, he was some
time in finding what he sought; but at last he clutched it in shaking
hand and hastened back to dash the cold fluid in Georgina's face. The
method was crude but effective. She stirred, sighed a second time, and
finally opened her eyes.
"You are alive!" he cried, and put his cheek to hers as she stroked
his head maternally. She was almost glad she had fainted, for the
circumstance seemed to have dispelled the strange Alfred and brought
her own brother back to her. She sat up slowly and tried to reassure
him.
"I'm all right, Al. Just give me a glass of water. It's a sin to waste
it this way--to say nothing of spoiling my waist! Is that the way to
behave every time your sister drops off for a nap? You needn't think
I'm going to be sick, for I haven't time for such nonsense!"
Alfred's eyes showed that her cool, common-sense speech had had its
effect. His brotherly panic dissolved in an instant, and instead
there came into his face a vague, calculating expression, as if
some marvelous possibility had just dawned upon him. As she watched
the subtle waves of cunning and appraisal pass fleetingly over
his countenance she became less and less certain that her mode of
reassurance had been a wise one, and before he spoke she found herself
shivering at something she could not define. A keen medical instinct
almost told her that his moment of sanity had passed, and that he was
now once more the unrestrained fanatic for scientific research. There
was something morbid in the quick narrowing of his eyes at her casual
mention of good health. What was he thinking? To what unnatural extreme
was his passion for experiment about to be pushed? Wherein lay the
special significance of her pure blood and absolutely flawless organic
state? None of these misgivings, however, troubled Georgina for more
than a second, and she was quite natural and unsuspicious as she felt
her brother's steady fingers at her pulse.
"You're a bit feverish, Georgie," he said in a precise, elaborately
restrained voice as he looked professionally into her eyes.
"Why, nonsense, I'm all right," she replied. "One would think you were
on the watch for fever patients just for the sake of showing off your
discovery! It _would_ be poetic, though, if you could make your final
proof and demonstration by curing your own sister!"
Clarendon started violently and guiltily. Had she suspected his wish?
Had he muttered anything aloud? He looked at her closely, and saw that
she had no inkling of the truth. She smiled up sweetly into his face
and patted his hand as he stood by the side of the lounge. Then he
took a small oblong leather case from his vest pocket, and taking out
a little gold syringe, he began fingering it thoughtfully, pushing the
piston speculatively in and out of the empty cylinder.
"I wonder," he began with suave sententiousness, "whether you would
really be willing to help science in--something like that way--if the
need arose? Whether you would have the devotion to offer yourself to
the cause of medicine as a sort of Jephthah's daughter if you knew it
meant the absolute perfection and completion of my work?"
Georgina, catching the odd and unmistakable glitter in her brother's
eyes, knew at last that her worst fears were true. There was nothing to
do now but keep him quiet at all hazards and to pray that Margarita had
found James Dalton at his club.
"You look tired, Al dear," she said gently. "Why not take a little
morphia and get some of the sleep you need so badly?"
He replied with a kind of crafty deliberation.
"Yes, you're right. I'm worn out, and so are you. Each of us needs a
good sleep. Morphine is just the thing--wait till I go and fill the
syringe and we'll both take a proper dose."
Still fingering the empty syringe, he walked softly out of the room.
Georgina looked about her with the aimlessness of desperation, ears
alert for any sign of possible help. She thought she heard Margarita
again in the basement kitchen, and rose to ring the bell, in an effort
to learn of the fate of her message. The old servant answered her
summons at once, and declared she had given the message at the club
hours ago. Governor Dalton had been out, but the clerk had promised to
deliver the note at the very moment of his arrival.
Margarita waddled below stairs again, but still Clarendon did not
reappear. What was he doing? What was he planning? She had heard the
outer door slam, so knew he must be at the clinic. Had he forgotten his
original intention with the vacillating mind of madness? The suspense
grew almost unbearable, and Georgina had to keep her teeth clenched
tightly to avoid screaming.
* * * * *
It was the gate bell, which rang simultaneously in house and clinic,
that broke the tension at last. She heard the catlike tread of Surama
on the walk as he left the clinic to answer it; and then, with an
almost hysterical sigh of relief, she caught the firm, familiar accents
of Dalton in conversation with the sinister attendant. Rising, she
almost tottered to meet him as he loomed up in the library doorway;
and for a moment no word was spoken while he kissed her hand in his
courtly, old-school fashion. Then Georgina burst forth into a torrent
of hurried explanation, telling all that had happened, all she had
glimpsed and overheard, and all she feared and suspected.
Dalton listened gravely and comprehendingly, his first bewilderment
gradually giving place to astonishment, sympathy, and resolution. The
message, held by a careless clerk, had been slightly delayed, and had
found him appropriately enough in the midst of a warm lounging-room
discussion about Clarendon. A fellow-member, Dr. MacNeil, had brought
in a medical journal with an article well calculated to disturb the
devoted scientist, and Dalton had just asked to keep the paper for
future reference when the message was handed him at last. Abandoning
his half-formed plan to take Dr. MacNeil into his confidence regarding
Alfred, he called at once for his hat and stick, and lost not a moment
in getting a cab for the Clarendon home.
Surama, he thought, appeared alarmed at recognizing him; though he had
chuckled as usual when striding off again toward the clinic. Dalton
always recalled Surama's stride and chuckle on this ominous night,
for he was never to see the unearthly creature again. As the chuckler
entered the clinic vestibule his deep, guttural gurgles seemed to blend
with some low mutterings of thunder which troubled the far horizon.
When Dalton had heard all Georgina had to say, and learned that Alfred
was expected back at any moment with an hypodermic dose of morphine,
he decided he had better talk with the doctor alone. Advising Georgina
to retire to her room and await developments, he walked about the
gloomy library, scanning the shelves and listening for Clarendon's
nervous footstep on the clinic path outside. The vast room's corners
were dismal despite the chandelier, and the closer Dalton looked at
his friend's choice of books the less he liked them. It was not the
balanced collection of a normal physician, biologist, or man of general
culture. There were too many volumes on doubtful borderland themes;
dark speculations and forbidden rituals of the Middle Ages, and strange
exotic mysteries in alien alphabets both known and unknown.
The great notebook of observations on the table was unwholesome, too.
The handwriting had a neurotic cast, and the spirit of the entries was
far from reassuring. Long passages were inscribed in crabbed Greek
characters, and as Dalton marshaled his linguistic memory for their
translation he gave a sudden start, and wished his college struggles
with Xenophon and Homer had been more conscientious. There was
something wrong--something hideously wrong--here, and the governor sank
limply into the chair by the table as he pored more and more closely
over the doctor's barbarous Greek. Then a sound came, startlingly near,
and he jumped nervously at a hand laid sharply on his shoulder.
"What, may I ask, is the cause of this intrusion? You might have stated
your business to Surama."
Clarendon was standing icily by the chair, the little gold syringe in
one hand. He seemed very calm and rational, and Dalton fancied for a
moment that Georgina must have exaggerated his condition. How, too,
could a rusty scholar be absolutely sure about these Greek entries? The
governor decided to be very cautious in his interview, and thanked the
lucky chance which had placed a specious pretext in his coat pocket. He
was very cool and assured as he rose to reply.
"I didn't think you'd care to have things dragged before a subordinate,
but I thought you ought to see this article at once."
He drew forth the magazine given him by Dr. MacNeil and handed it to
Clarendon.
"On page 542--you see the heading, 'Black Fever Conquered by New
Serum.' It's by Dr. Miller of Philadelphia--and he thinks he's got
ahead of you with your cure. They were discussing it at the club,
and MacNeil thought the exposition very convincing. I, as a layman,
couldn't pretend to judge; but at all events I thought you oughtn't to
miss a chance to digest the thing while it's fresh. If you're busy, of
course, I won't disturb you----"
Clarendon cut in sharply.
"I'm going to give my sister an hypodermic--she's not quite well--but
I'll look at what that quack has to say when I get back. I know
Miller--a damn sneak and incompetent--and I don't believe he has the
brains to steal my methods from the little he's seen of them."
Dalton suddenly felt a wave of intuition warning him that Georgina must
not receive that intended dose. There was something sinister about it.
From what she had said, Alfred must have been an inordinately long
time preparing it, far longer than was needed for the dissolving of
a morphine tablet. He decided to hold his host as long as possible,
meanwhile testing his attitude in a more or less subtle way.
"I'm sorry Georgina isn't well. Are you sure that the injection will do
her good? That it won't do her any harm?"
Clarendon's spasmodic start showed that something had been struck home.
"Do her harm?" he cried. "Don't be absurd! You know Georgina must be in
the best of health--the very best, I say--in order to serve science as
a Clarendon should serve it. She, at least, appreciates the fact that
she is my sister. She deems no sacrifice too great in my service. She
is a priestess of truth and discovery, as I am a priest."
He paused in his shrill tirade, wild-eyed, and somewhat out of breath.
Dalton could see that his attention had been momentarily shifted.
"But let me see what this cursed quack has to say," he continued. "If
he thinks his pseudo-medical rhetoric can take a real doctor in, he is
even simpler than I thought!"
Clarendon nervously found the right page and began reading as he stood
there clutching his syringe. Dalton wondered what the real facts were.
MacNeil had assured him that the author was a pathologist of the
highest standing, and that whatever errors the article might have, the
mind behind it was powerful, erudite, and absolutely honorable and
sincere.
* * * * *
Watching the doctor as he read, Dalton saw the thin, bearded face
suddenly grow pale. The great eyes blazed, and the pages crackled in
the tenser grip of the long, lean fingers. A perspiration broke out on
the high, ivory-white forehead where the hair was already thinning, and
the reader sank gaspingly into the chair his visitor had vacated as
he kept on with his devouring of the text. Then came a wild scream as
from a hunted beast, and Clarendon lurched forward on the table, his
outflung arms sweeping books and papers before them as consciousness
went dark like a wind-quenched candle-flame.
Dalton, springing to help his stricken friend, raised the slim form and
tilted it back in the chair. Seeing the carafe on the floor near the
lounge, he dashed some water into the twisted face, and was rewarded by
seeing the large eyes slowly open. They were sane eyes now--deep and
sad and unmistakably sane--and Dalton felt awed in the presence of a
tragedy whose ultimate depth he could never hope or dare to plumb.
The golden hypodermic was still clutched in the lean left hand, and as
Clarendon drew a deep, shuddering breath he unclosed his fingers and
studied the glittering thing that rolled about on his palm. Then he
spoke--slowly and with the ineffable sadness of utter, absolute despair.
"Thanks, Jimmy, I'm quite all right. But there's much to be done. You
asked me a while back if this shot of morphia would do Georgie any
harm. I'm in a position now to tell you that it won't."
He turned a small screw in the syringe and laid a finger on the piston,
at the same time pulling with his left hand at the skin of his own
neck. Dalton tried out in alarm as a lightning motion of his right hand
injected the contents of the cylinder into the ridge of distended flesh.
"Good Lord, Al, what have you done?"
Clarendon smiled gently--a smile almost of peace and resignation,
different indeed from the sardonic sneer of the past few weeks.
"You ought to know, Jimmy, if you've still the judgment that made you a
governor. You must have pieced together enough from my notes to realize
that there's nothing else to do. With your marks in Greek back at
Columbia I guess you couldn't have missed much. All I can say is that
it's true.
"James, I don't like to pass blame along, but it's only right to tell
you that Surama got me into this. I can't tell you who or what he is,
for I don't fully know myself, and what I do know is stuff that no sane
person ought to know; but I will say that I don't consider him a human
being in the fullest sense, and that I'm not sure whether or not he's
alive as we know life.
"You think I'm talking nonsense. I wish I were, but the whole hideous
mess is damnably real. I started out in life with a clean mind and
purpose. I wanted to rid the world of fever. I tried and failed--and I
wish to God I had been honest enough to say that I'd failed. Don't let
my old talk of science deceive you, James--_I found no antitoxin and
was never even half on the track of one!_
"Don't look so shaken up, old fellow! A veteran politician-fighter like
you must have seen plenty of unmaskings before. I tell you, I never had
even the start of a fever cure. But my studies had taken me into some
quiet places, and it was just my damned luck to listen to the stories
of some still queerer people. James, if you ever wish any man well,
tell him to keep clear of the ancient, hidden places of the earth.
Old backwaters are dangerous--things are handed down there that don't
do healthy people any good. I talked too much with old priests and
mystics, and got to hoping I might achieve things in dark ways that I
couldn't achieve in lawful ways.
"I shan't tell you just what I mean, for if I did I'd be as bad as the
old priests that were the ruin of me. All I need say is that after what
I've learned I shudder at the thought of the world and what it's been
through. The world is cursed old, James, and there have been whole
chapters lived and closed before the dawn of our organic life and the
geologic eras connected with it. It's an awful thought--whole forgotten
cycles of evolution with beings and races and wisdom and diseases--all
lived through and gone before the first amoeba ever stirred in the
tropic seas geology tells us about.
"I said gone, but I didn't quite mean that. It would have been better
that way, but it wasn't quite so. In places traditions have kept on--I
can't tell you how--and certain archaic life-forms have managed to
struggle thinly down the eons in hidden spots. There were cults, you
know--bands of evil priests in lands now buried under the sea. Atlantis
was the hotbed. That was a terrible place. If heaven is merciful, no
one will ever drag up that horror from the deep.
"It had a colony, though, that didn't sink; and when you get too
confidential with one of the Tuareg priests in Africa, he's likely
to tell you wild tales about it--tales that connect up with whispers
you'll hear among the mad lamas and flighty yak-drivers on the secret
table-lands of Asia. I'd heard all the common tales and whispers when I
came on the big one. What that was, you'll never know--but it pertained
to somebody or something that had come down from a blasphemously long
time ago, and could be made to live again--or seem alive again--through
certain processes that weren't very clear to the man who told me.