not bad as a doctor. I plugged hard at medicine, and soaked up about
as much as the next man--maybe a little more, because down there in
the Hoggar country, I did something no priest had ever been able to
do. They led me blindfolded to a place that had been sealed up for
generations--and I came back with Surama.
"Easy, James! I know what you want to say. How does he know all he
knows?--why does he speak English--or any other language, for that
matter--without an accent?--why did he come away with me?--and all
that. I can't tell you altogether, but I can say that he takes in ideas
and images and impressions with something besides his brain and senses.
He had a use for me and my science. He told me things, and opened up
vistas. He taught me to worship ancient, primordial, and unholy gods,
and mapped out a road to a terrible goal which I can't even hint to
you. Don't press me, James--it's for the sake of your sanity and the
world's sanity!
"The creature is beyond all bounds. He's in league with the stars and
all the forces of nature. Don't think I'm still crazy, James--I swear
to you I'm not! I've had too many glimpses to doubt. He gave me new
pleasures that were forms of his palesgean worship, and the greatest of
those was the black fever.
"God, James! Haven't you seen through the business by this time? Do you
still believe the black fever came out of Tibet, and that I learned
about it there? Use your brains, man! Look at Miller's article here!
He's found a basic antitoxin that will end all fever within half a
century, when other men learn how to modify it for the different forms.
He's cut the ground of my youth from under me--done what I'd have given
my life to do--taken the wind out of all the honest sails I ever flung
to the breeze of science! Do you wonder his article gave me a turn? Do
you wonder it shocks me out of my madness back to the old dreams of my
youth? Too late! Too late! But not too late to save others!
* * * * *
"I guess I'm rambling a bit now, old man. You know--the hypodermic. I
asked you why you didn't tumble to the facts about black fever. How
could you, though? Doesn't Miller say he's cured seven cases with his
serum? A matter of diagnosis, James. He only thinks it is black fever.
I can read between his lines. Here, old chap, on page 551, is the key
to the whole thing. Read it again.
"You see, don't you? The fever cases _from the Pacific Coast_ didn't
respond to his serum. They puzzled him. They didn't even seem like
any true fever he knew. Well, those were _my_ cases! Those were the
_real_ black fever cases. And there can't ever be an antitoxin on earth
that'll cure black fever!
"How do I know? _Because black fever isn't of this earth!_ It's from
_somewhere else_, James--and Surama alone knows where, because he
brought it here. _He brought it and I spread it!_ That's the secret,
James! That's all I wanted the appointment for--_that's all I ever
did--just spread the fever that I carried in this gold syringe and in
the deadlier finger-ring-pump-syringe you see on my index finger!_
Science? A blind! I wanted to kill, and kill, and kill! A single
pressure of my finger, and the black fever was inoculated. I wanted to
see living things writhe and squirm, scream and froth at the mouth.
A single pressure of the pump-syringe and I could watch them as they
died, and I couldn't live or think unless I had plenty to watch.
That's why I jabbed everything in sight with the accursed hollow
needle. Animals, criminals, children, servants--and the next would have
been----"
Clarendon's voice broke, and he crumpled up perceptibly in his chair.
"That--that, James--was--my life. Surama made it so--he taught me, and
kept me at it till I couldn't stop. Then--then it got too much _even
for him_. He tried to check me. Fancy--_he_ trying to check anybody in
that line! But now I've got my last specimen. This is my last test.
Good subject, James--I'm healthy--devilish healthy. Deuced ironic,
though--the madness has gone now, so there won't be any fun watching
the agony! Can't be--can't----"
A violent shiver of fever racked the doctor, and Dalton mourned amidst
his horror-stupefaction that he could give no grief. How much of
Alfred's story was sheer nonsense, and how much nightmare truth he
could not say; but in any case he felt that the man was a victim rather
than a criminal, and above all, he was a boyhood comrade and Georgina's
brother. Thought of the old days came back kaleidoscopically. "Little
Alf"--the yard at Phillips Exeter--the quadrangle at Columbia--the
fight with Tom Cortland when he saved Alf from a pommeling....
He helped Clarendon to the lounge and asked gently what he could
do. There was nothing. Alfred could only whisper now, but he asked
forgiveness for all his offenses, and commended his sister to the care
of his friend.
"You--you'll--make her happy," he gasped. "She deserves
it. Martyr--to--a myth! Make it up to her, James.
Don't--let--her--know--more--than she has to!"
His voice trailed off in a mumble, and he fell into a stupor. Dalton
rang the bell, but Margarita had gone to bed, so he called up the
stairs for Georgina. She was firm of step, but very pale. Alfred's
scream had tried her sorely, but she had trusted James. She trusted him
still as he showed her the unconscious form on the lounge and asked her
to go back to her room and rest, no matter what sounds she might hear.
He did not wish her to witness the awful spectacle of delirium certain
to come, but bade her kiss her brother a final farewell as he lay there
calm and still, very like the delicate boy he had once been. So she
left him--the strange, moonstruck, star-reading genius she had mothered
so long--and the picture she carried away was a very merciful one.
Dalton must bear to his grave a sterner picture. His fears of delirium
were not vain, and all through the black midnight hours his giant
strength restrained the frenzied contortions of the mad sufferer. What
he heard from those swollen, blackening lips he will never repeat. He
has never been quite the same man since, and he knows that no one who
hears such things can ever be wholly as he was before. So, for the
world's good, he dares not speak, and he thanks God that his layman's
ignorance of certain subjects makes many of the revelations cryptic and
meaningless to him.
* * * * *
Toward morning Clarendon suddenly woke to a sane consciousness and
began to speak in a firm voice.
"James, I didn't tell you what must be done--about everything. Blot out
these entries in Greek and send my notebook to Dr. Miller. All my other
notes, too, you'll find in the files. He's the big authority today--his
article proves it. Your friend at the club was right.
"But everything in the clinic must go. _Everything without exception,
dead or alive or--otherwise._ All the plagues of hell are in those
bottles on the shelves. Burn them--burn it all--if one thing escapes,
Surama will spread black death throughout the world. _And above all
burn Surama!_ That--that _thing_--must not breathe the wholesome air
of heaven. You know now--what I told you--you know why such an entity
can't be allowed on earth. It won't be murder--Surama isn't human--if
you're as pious as you used to be, James, I shan't have to urge you.
Remember the old text--'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live'--or
something of the sort.
"_Burn him, James!_ Don't let him chuckle again over the torture of
mortal flesh! I say, _burn him_--the Nemesis of Flame--that's all that
can reach him, James, unless you can catch him asleep and drive a stake
through his heart.... _Kill him--extirpate him--cleanse the decent
universe of its primal taint--the taint I recalled from its age-long
sleep...._"
The doctor had risen on his elbow, and his voice was a piercing shriek
toward the last. The effort was too much, however, and he lapsed very
suddenly into a deep, tranquil coma. Dalton, himself fearless of fever
since he knew the dread germ to be non-contagious, composed Alfred's
arms and legs on the lounge and threw a light afghan over the fragile
form. After all, mightn't much of this horror be exaggeration and
delirium? Mightn't old Doc MacNeil pull him through on a long chance?
The governor strove to keep awake, and walked briskly up and down the
room, but his energies had been taxed too deeply for such measures. A
second's rest in the chair by the table took matters out of his hands,
and he was presently sleeping soundly despite his best intentions.
Dalton started up as a fierce light shone in his eyes, and for a moment
he thought the dawn had come. But it was not the dawn, and as he rubbed
his heavy lids he saw that it was the glare of the burning clinic in
the yard, whose stout planks flamed and roared and crackled heavenward
in the most stupendous holocaust he had ever seen. It was indeed the
"Nemesis of Flame" that Clarendon had wished, and Dalton felt that some
strange combustibles must be involved in a blaze so much wilder than
anything normal pine or redwood could afford. He glanced alarmedly at
the lounge, but Alfred was not there. Starting up, he went to call
Georgina, but met her in the hall, roused as he was by the mountain of
living fire.
"The clinic's burning down!" she cried. "How is Al now?"
"He's disappeared--disappeared while I dropped asleep!" replied Dalton,
reaching out a steadying arm to the form which faintness had begun to
sway.
Gently leading her upstairs toward her room, he promised to search at
once for Alfred, but Georgina slowly shook her head as the flames from
outside cast a weird glow through the window on the landing.
"He must be dead, James--he could never live, sane and knowing what he
did. I heard him quarreling with Surama, and knew that awful things
were going on. He is my brother, but--it is best as it is."
Her voice had sunk to a whisper.
Suddenly through the open window came the sound of a deep, hideous
chuckle, and the flames of the burning clinic took fresh contours till
they half resembled some nameless, cyclopean creatures of nightmare.
James and Georgina paused hesitant, and peered out breathlessly through
the landing window. Then from the sky came a quick, thunderous peal,
as a forked bolt of lightning shot down with terrible directness into
the very midst of the blazing ruin. The deep chuckle ceased, and in
its place came a frantic, ululant yelp as of a thousand ghouls and
werewolves in torment. It died away with long reverberant echoes, and
slowly the flames resumed their normal shape.
[Illustration: "The deep chuckle ceased, and in its place came a
frantic, ululant yelp as of a thousand ghouls in torment."]
The watchers did not move, but waited till the pillar of fire had
shrunk to a smoldering glow. They were glad of a half-rusticity which
had kept the firemen from trooping out, and of the wall which excluded
the curious. What had happened was not for vulgar eyes--it involved too
much of the universe's inner secrets for that.
In the pale dawn, James spoke softly to Georgina, who could do no more
than put her head on his breast and sob.
"Sweetheart, I think he has atoned. He must have set the fire, you
know, while I was asleep. He told me it ought to be burned--the clinic,
and everything in it, Surama, too. It was the only way to save the
world from the unknown horrors he had loosed upon it. He knew, and he
did what was best.
"He was a great man, Georgie. Let's never forget that. We must always
be proud of him, for he started out to help mankind, and was titanic
even in his sins. I'll tell you more sometime. What he did, be it good
or evil, was what no man ever did before. He was the first and last to
break through certain veils, and even Apollonius of Tyana takes second
place beside him. But we mustn't talk about that. We must remember
him only as the Little Alf we knew--as the boy who wanted to master
medicine and conquer fever."
* * * * *
In the afternoon the leisurely firemen overhauled the ruins and found
two skeletons with bits of blackened flesh adhering--only two, thanks
to the undisturbed lime pits. One was of a man; the other is still a
subject of debate among the biologists of the coast. It was not exactly
an ape's or a saurian's skeleton, but it had disturbing suggestions of
lines of evolution of which paleontology has revealed no trace. The
charred skull, oddly enough, was very human, and reminded people of
Surama; but the rest of the bones were beyond conjecture. Only well-cut
clothing could have made such a body look like a man.
But the human bones were Clarendon's. No one disputed this, and the
world at large still mourns the untimely death of the greatest doctor
of his age; the bacteriologist whose universal fever serum would have
far eclipsed Dr. Miller's kindred antitoxin had he lived to bring it to
perfection. Much of Miller's late success, indeed, is credited to the
notes bequeathed him by the hapless victim of the flames. Of the old
rivalry and hatred almost none survived, and even Dr. Wilfred Jones has
been known to boast of his association with the vanished leader.
James Dalton and his wife Georgina have always preserved a reticence
which modesty and family grief might well account for. They published
certain notes as a tribute to the great man's memory, but have never
confirmed or contradicted either the popular estimate or the rare hints
of marvels that a very few keen thinkers have been known to whisper.
It is very subtly and slowly that the facts have filtered out. Dalton
probably gave Dr. MacNeil an inkling of the truth, and that good soul
had not many secrets from his son.
The Daltons have led, on the whole, a very happy life; for their cloud
of terror lies far in the background, and a strong mutual love has
kept the world fresh for them. But there are things which disturb
them oddly--little things, of which one would scarcely ever think of
complaining. They can not bear persons who are lean or deep-voiced
beyond certain limits, and Georgina turns pale at the sound of any
guttural chuckling. Senator Dalton has a mixed horror of occultism,
travel, hypodermics, and strange alphabets which most find hard to
unify, and there are still those who blame him for the vast proportion
of the doctor's library that he destroyed with such painstaking
completeness.
MacNeil, though, seemed to realize. He was a simple man, and he said
a prayer as the last of Alfred Clarendon's strange books crumbled to
ashes. Nor would anyone who had peered understandingly within those
books wish a word of that prayer unsaid.