THE MAN IN THE CELLAR.
The genial druggist was a changed man.
Without a smile he now listened when they talked of him for Congress.
He performed the duties of Mayor perfunctorily. The hours at the
office palled on him. He collected the fees with a cold, studied
indifference. The Chicago papers were unread. Whether it was the
“Cubs” or the “Tigers” made no impression on his preoccupation. Life
seemed to have lost its zest. Even the drug store was conducted
incidentally, as it were.
The attention of William K. Vanderhook was elsewhere. The episode of
the preceding chapter had hardened his heart and fixed his purpose.
It was now Bill’s turn to MEDITATE.
“There is,”--he would mutter to himself every little while--“there is
in nature an antidote for every poison. Though undiscovered, it still
exists. There is, there must be, yes, there _shall_ be some force in
nature to oust any astral popinjay ever projected into space. If there
are astral poisons (q.e.d.), then there must be antidotes after their
own kind. There is, I know, a way to trap every manner of wild beast,
every deadly serpent and hurtful insect; and so there is, if I can get
onto it, some principle or process by which I can reduce this astral
Fakir back into his original elements. And s’elp me jimmykayjones,
this Gay Gnani of Gingalee can and must and shall be swept off the
face of the--no, he shall be eliminated from the atmosphere he
infests.”
It will be remembered that Mr. Vanderhook was not only a skilled
pharmacist and practical chemist, but he was likewise an electrician
of great ability.
There came a day, a damp, cloudy day, when he left the drug store
early and hurriedly. He went home as fast as the auto could carry
him. He avoided the parlor. He struck for the cellar. He approached
the potato bins, empty now, as if to meet his requirements. Presently
he had them torn out, and there was a large space for whatever might
be needed.
The next day came masons and carpenters and plumbers. Inside of two
weeks the druggist had a laboratory in his cellar of which no man had
the key, to which no man had access save himself.
From this day forward every spare moment was spent in the seclusion of
this underground apartment. The Mayor let slip his official mantle,
and as far as possible leaned upon the city comptroller. He took only
thought enough to pocket the fees with a cold, sardonic smile. He gave
up his club, declined invitations to progressive euchre; the fall
races, and the dog show he passed by. The big ball game he even forgot
to attend.
His life centered in the cellar.
This was pre-eminently satisfactory to Mrs. V. and her ethereal
shadow. Bill’s absence furnished opportunity for unending discussions
on the Unity of Vibration, which had polarized them as a unit.
Absorbed as they were in the contemplation of themselves, they failed
to cognize the exact nature of Mr. Vanderhook’s occupation in the
cellar.
They only dreamed on, happy in the present, careless of the past and
hilarious in the hope of soon realizing a still closer relation--after
they had satisfied the requirements of the law as made and provided in
the Statutes of Illinois.
So self-absorbed were they that they gave no attention to the comings
and goings of the master of the house. The man in the cellar was
practically forgotten. Now and then, however, they would be
momentarily diverted by subterranean reports and faint odors of gases.
“Well, he’s got to get somewhere to make himself heard,” laughed the
“Lonnie Llama” one evening when Imogene shrieked at an unusually loud
report. The walls shook with the force of it, while the cruel couple
shook with laughter.
“He don’t complain of being lonesome any more does he?” added the
gentleman.
“Oh, no,” giggled Imogene. “He says he is wrapped up in Science now.”
“And so are we, my ownest; are not we also wrapped up in Science--the
Higher Science?”--and the Gay Gnani encircled his Affinity with his
very diaphanous arms.
The Lady laughed gaily, and then disengaging herself she daintily
lifted her silken dinner gown and, recalling the last matinee in
Chicago, she trippingly danced, singing as only Imogene could sing:
“O, O, my Hindoo Honey, Honey I love you.”
Such had come to be the atmosphere of the drawing room.
But what of him in the cellar? What of the husband discarded, and the
friend betrayed?
He was busy--tremendously BUSY. He did not even close Saturdays at
one o’clock. He was busy every daylight hour he could steal. He was
busy far into the hours when just men sleep, and bad ones go a
burgling.
Over and again he might have been heard to say in terribly tense
tones,--“He’s no illusion. He’s no spook. He’s a fact,--a cold,
scientific fact. He lives by natural law as much as I do. Therefore
he’s controlled by natural laws. He’s therefore susceptible to
chemical changes by the proper application of those laws. If so, he’s
subject to these changes whenever and wherever scientific processes
are brought to bear against him. Since an astral man is
a--Something,--why, something can get at him. Something, somewhere in
nature’s laboratory, must have the potency to seize him, to paralyze
him.”
And Bill would continue his monologue,--“Though neither brickbat nor
billiard cue is efficacious in the matter of astral substance, it
doesn’t follow that the proper projectile may not be found and
successfully administered. Now,” he would reason, “an astral body,
like a physical one, must have certain natural, specific modes of
growth, development, rejuvenation, resistance, persistence,
disintegration, and dissolution; and I,--ha, ha,--I shall find this
secret. Nature must and shall disclose its secret of the reduction of
the astral to its original essence.”
Then the Honorable William K. would laugh a high, weird laugh that
echoed in hollow cadences among the jars and bottles of his
laboratory.
Then, perchance, for the moment elate, he would whistle a few bars of
“I’m a lookin’ for dat niggah an’ he mus’ be foun’.”
And the awful merriment of the Mayor was more suggestive than his
unpleasant language.
Over the great iatro-chemist, Paracelsus, the old German chemists, and
over the discoveries and formulas of Basil Valentine, the druggist of
Kankakee continually pored. Deep into the mysteries of chemical
philosophy he delved. Not to his wife, but to Tyndall, Maxwell and
Daniel he turned for society; not, however, until he had absorbed the
“Genesis of the Elements,” by Crooks, did he show the excitement and
enthusiasm of the man who gets what he goes after.
There came a day, or rather an evening, when the discarded husband
rose up and called himself a “Cracker-Jack.” He shook himself with the
abandon of one who finds himself master of a situation.
For days after this Bill Vanderhook was singularly jocular. He was
polite to Imogene. He even indulged himself in a bit of joshing with
the Mystic.
* * * * *
“Good-bye, Mrs. V. S’long, Leff,”--said the Mayor one morning as he
appeared equipped for traveling.
“Going east for stock,”--he said briefly, when languidly interrogated
by Imogene as to the whys and whences of this sudden trip. “You and
Leff can run things a few days without me,”--he said satirically.
“I should remark,”--responded Imogene in her own pretty way.
There was a peculiar grin on Mr. Vanderhook’s face as he put on his
hat. He commended his wife to the care of the Mystic with these
portentous words,--“Enjoy yourself while you can, for none of us knows
what may happen next.”
In a fortnight he had returned, was again in the cellar busier than
ever. Presently there came by express a fresh consignment for the
laboratory. A heavily wrapped and curiously crated package, not larger
than a small tub, which required several men to convey it from the
wagon to the underground workshop.
And the guilty pair asked no questions. Chemical experiments, as such,
had no interest for them.
“Bet you it’s a music box,”--said Imogene, who had noted its arrival
from the parlor window.
“Or a picture machine,”--suggested Lonnie, without taking the trouble
to remove his eyes from the face of the “lady-bird.” “And do you
know,” he continued listlessly, “that these ordinary humans are doing
some very clever work nowadays?”
Mr. Vanderhook vouchsafed no explanation. Next day an extra lock was
put on his laboratory door.
Days rolled on, making up the weeks. The weeks expanded into months.
The months rounded up a year, and yet there was no change in the
Vanderhook home. No change, merely an accentuation of the old
condition. No change, merely a closer absorption of the lady and her
Llama. Only an increased activity on the part of the man in the
cellar.
Mrs. and Mr. V. seldom met, except at meals. From these their guest
usually absented himself. Having neither the need nor the desire for
food, it wearied him to observe the processes involved. To see his
idol feeding grated upon his super-refined senses. This process of
reinforcing the fires of physical life is not attractive to astral
vision. Even a lady looks rather like an animated hopper than an
Intelligent Being.
Between meals, however, the Llama and the Lady-Bird lost no time.
Nor Bill.