It being Saturday, and a half day down town, Stuart went to the
Fireside on pretense of lunching, but particularly to find Casimir
Sadoul.
From his office he had tried to get Gilda on the telephone, but she
was still asleep. Then he called up Sadoul at his apartment and at the
offices of one or two periodicals, without finding him.
Now, at the Fireside, he learned that Pockman and Sadoul, much the
worse for wear, had breakfasted there about noon and had gone away
together.
He had left word for Gilda to call him when she awoke. She had not
done so. After lunch he telephoned again. Freda informed him that her
mistress was still asleep.
Stuart had had no sleep, having arrived home only in time to bathe and
change for the office.
But it was the nerve-shattering experience with Gilda which so
disorganized him that he could scarcely hold a fork or lift a glass of
water to his lips.
“Where do you suppose I could find Sadoul?” he asked Dr. Lyken, later,
in the cloak-room.
“He’s usually at Pockman’s research laboratory in the afternoon. Have
you ever been there, Sutton?”
“No.”
“Some laboratory! You know what they’re up to, don’t you?”
“I know, vaguely, what Pockman is doing.”
“Glands. And Sadoul has taken the other end, now. He writes his
vitriolic stuff in the morning, and investigates psychic phenomena all
the afternoon. Pockman staked him.”
“Staked him?”
“Yes. Pockman has given Sadoul several rooms in the laboratory and has
fitted them up. He must believe in such things, or he wouldn’t have
spent all that money on quarters and apparatus for that clever fakir,
Sadoul. Why don’t you go over and take a slant at the place?”
“Where is it?”
“Over toward Fifty-seventh Street and the East River. Of course,
I can’t bring myself to subscribe to such theories and procedure,
although, like the majority of scientific men, I’m on the fence and
ready to be convinced.... I couldn’t tell you whether there is anything
in it or not. I don’t mean Pockman’s work: that’s sound; I mean
Sadoul’s psycho-physical research.... If you’re going over, I’m walking
that way as far as Third Avenue.”
They turned east at Fifty-seventh Street.
“It’s quite a laboratory, Sadoul’s,” continued Lyken. “He’s got one
machine there invented, I understand, by Sir Oliver Lodge. It’s an
amazingly delicate affair. It keeps a record of all muscular effort on
the part of a medium during tests. Any loss of weight, any addition,
is accurately noted. It gives a continuous chart of temperature,
pulse, breathing. It notes all mental activity; it even photographs
visualisation when concentration is sufficient----”
“That’s impossible!” ejaculated Stuart.
“No, it really isn’t,” said the other. “Sensitized plates wrapped in
opaque coverings have been tried out. When the subject concentrates on
any object there is a very good photograph of it on the plate. Which
seems to prove that thought-waves are really projected----”
“Have _you_ seen any?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Made by Sadoul?”
“Yes.”
After a silence, Lyken went on:
“Sadoul uses ultra-violet rays and quartz lenses when he takes a movie
of any psychic proceedings.
“He’s well equipped with x-ray apparatus, radium tubes--the latest and
most delicate instruments.... You know you can’t help respecting a man
who is so patiently trying out evidence.”
Sutton walked along in silence beside the garrulous Lyken,
understanding little of what the latter was saying.
“I’m on the fence,” repeated Lyken, “but I’m no bigot, and I’m quite in
favour of research experiments along those lines--if anybody has the
time and the courage.”
“I suppose experimenters are ridiculed.”
“Not so much, now. Too many great names are associated with the
investigations--Lodge, Wallace, Crookes, Edison, Imoda, Van Zeist,
Matla, Zaalberg--too many tremendous names to scoff at.”
“What do they want to do?”
“Here’s their programme: experiments in, and investigation of,
clairvoyance, materialization, dual projection, levitation, soul
photography, subconscious mind, human polarity----”
“I don’t know what those are,” interrupted Stuart bluntly.
“Nobody does. We don’t even know what the electric fluid is; we know
only that it’s there.”
“At least we can see it.”
“We can see one phase of it. The vast, overwhelming forces--energy
and its sources--are invisible. We know them only by their results.
I don’t see why these tremendous psychic forces should be visible,
either. One thing is certain: they’re there, and we know it because of
their results. The thing to do is to find out what these forces really
are--physical or psychical--manifestations of the psychical ego, the
mental, or the spiritual.”
They paused at Third Avenue.
“I’m taking the Elevated,” remarked Lyken. “Are you going to swap yarns
with Sadoul?”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do with Sadoul,” returned Stuart
unsmilingly.
* * * * *
Pockman’s laboratory consisted of several shabby old houses converted
into a single rambling structure facing the river.
A young woman in nurse’s uniform admitted him and showed him to a dingy
waiting-room. Pockman presently appeared in white operating costume,
which became him as cerements become a corpse.
“Glad to see you,” he smirked. “What the hell put it into your blond
head to come over here?”
“I’m looking for Sadoul,” replied Stuart.
“He’s in his own section. I’ll send him in----”
“Pockman--just a second.... I want to ask you something--and I
don’t know how to put it.... Is there any actual--any scientific
basis--anything to be taken seriously in these psycho-hypnotic tricks
that Sadoul does?”
Pockman hunched his bony shoulders and began to walk about the room in
his jerky, cockroach way.
“I don’t know how he does the things he does,” he said. “Maybe he’s
faking; I can’t tell.... But there seem to be phenomena along those
lines worth investigating.... I’ve given him a place of his own in the
next house.... If you want to talk to him----”
“Yes, I mean to talk to him.... But you’re a graduate physician,
Pockman--a specialist in certain lines of research--and your standing
is high, according to all I hear about you.
“And so I desire to ask such a man as yourself about these disquieting
and somewhat unpleasant performances of Sadoul’s----”
“Which one in particular?”
“In particular I’m thinking of his meddling with little Miss Greenway.”
“I supposed you had her in mind.” Pockman cracked his knuckles,
resumed his pacing, arms dangling and jerking: “She’s a morbid
subject,” he said. “Otherwise he couldn’t have snapped her up over
there.... God knows what one human mind can do to another, Sutton. No
use asking me; I can’t tell you.... We don’t know anything yet. You
tell ’em! We don’t know the alphabet of life. We don’t know what life
is, how, where, when it originated.... But we’re going to know. You
tell ’em that, too!”
He burst into a harsh twitter and went racking on around the room like
some spavined thing, his arms jerking.
“I want to ask you,” said Stuart in a low voice, “do you think Sadoul
really has any psychic control over Miss Greenway?”
“Well, by God, I don’t know!” almost shouted Pockman, coming to a stop
in front of Sutton, his long arms flying about uncertainly:
“Here’s a theory: we all have dual personalities--many of us have
multiple. Personality is that indestructible identity which persists
after bodily death. Call it a soul. It’s a short word.
“Now, take little Miss Greenway’s case. That girl’s body died and
remained physically dead for hours. No doubt about it, Sutton.
“But what happened to her soul I don’t know of my own knowledge. That
indestructible identity which was Gilda Greenway certainly returned as
her body’s tenant; but whether it found another lodger in possession
and has had to put up a continual fight, as Miss Greenway says----”
“Did she tell _you_ that?”
“Yes, she told me.”
“When?”
“She speaks of it every time she comes here----”
“Here? Does Gilda come here?”
Pockman’s flat face was all glistening with sweat; he wiped it, but the
ghastly smirk remained.
“Say,” he said, “you and Sadoul and Derring and Harry Stayr do nothing
but camp on that kid’s trail.
“I’m trying to keep tabs on her, and she’s decent enough to see the
scientific importance of submitting to daily observation. But you’re
all chasing her and keeping her excited and nervous, and where the hell
do _I_ come in?”
Sutton, astonished and troubled, said nothing; Pockman flourished his
flail-like arms:
“I’m trying to keep a record of the only case on record. My God, can’t
you fellows show some decency and self-control--you, taking her about
town at all hours and driving Sadoul insane with jealousy--Gilda
claiming that Sadoul is having her shadowed by a disincarnate, homeless
and malicious soul that has no morals and wants to drive out her own
soul and get in--Sadoul, licking his chops as though it were true, and
hopeful that there might be something for him with a new tenant in
possession of Gilda’s pretty body--and all those other johnnies chasing
about, sending her flowers and fruit from Florida and ducks from----”
He went rocking and teetering around the room again, shaking his bony
hands above his head:
“How am I going to observe the results of transplanting a nymphalic
gland into a corpse with all this feverish hullabaloo going on in
that child’s life? What do you suppose it does to her?--all this
excitement----”
“Wait a moment!” said Stuart, detaining him as he rambled past,
and holding him by one flapping arm: “All I want you to tell me is
whether, in your opinion, it is scientifically possible for Sadoul
to meddle spiritually--or in any occult way--with what you call that
indestructible identity which is Gilda Greenway’s soul?”
“I’m telling you I don’t know!” shouted Pockman. “He seems to be able
to do things to identities. He materializes them, weighs them, takes
their pulses, temperatures, blood-pressure--he photographs them,
measures them, listens to their lung action---- There seems to be no
end to what we are learning about those disincarnate personalities
vulgarly known as ‘spirits’ and so long exploited by psychic crooks and
fake ‘mejums.’”
He wiped his unhealthy skin with the sleeve of his operating robe.
“That’s all very fine,” he said. “Let others go to it. The nymphalic
gland is my job----”
“You haven’t answered my question, Pockman.”
“Which one? Oh! Do I think it possible for Sadoul to encourage some
homeless but more sensual spirit to enter little Miss Greenway and
ultimately drive out her real identity?”
“That’s what I asked you.”
“Sutton, I don’t know. I know he has always tried to arouse in the girl
some response to his own morbid, lovesick importunities. Normally the
girl always seems to have been fascinated by his brilliant intellectual
equipment--seems, in a way, to have fallen a victim to it--probably
aided by hypnosis.
“But for the rest--I guess not. No--I’ve studied her. She isn’t that
kind. The girl is, when let alone, perfectly normal in everything.
“The new nymphalic has put her in superb physical condition--a
magnificent young animal!--that’s what the girl is.... And as far as
I can see she has, normally, a vigourous, healthy mind to control her
every emotion.... And yet, she does break loose--like the other night
at Fantozzi’s.... But that’s exuberance--letting off steam----”
“Do you call that normal, Pockman?”
“Well, no, I don’t.... And she tells me--with some very wild and
breathless tears--that it isn’t natural for her to kick over the traces
and raise the devil in that fashion.”
“It would almost look, then, as though----” Stuart hesitated, his
haunted eyes fixed on Pockman.
The latter said:
“Well, she claims it’s what she calls the _Other One_ that creeps
in when she’s asleep, or off her guard--at some psychological moment
when her subconscious self is off duty.... _I_ don’t know. We’ve read
‘Jekyll and Hyde,’ and ‘Peter Ibbetson,’ and ‘The Brushwood Boy’--and
a score of other clever tales. This business of Gilda Greenway sounds
like another volume of the same series.... And then, again”--he
shrugged his bony shoulders--“the story of Gilda Greenway may be as
true as anything in the world.... The world itself being only a big
lie told to amuse a lot of gods--somewhere yonder--beyond the outer
stars--and all laughing like hell----”
He stood rocking on heels and toes with the irresponsible movement of
something inanimate swept by tempests.
“No,” he muttered, wiping his clammy visage, “we don’t know anything,
so far.... My God, no.... Are you going in to talk to Sadoul?”
“Another time.”
“Oh! From your face I thought you were looking for him to kill him.”
“I’m not the killing sort, Pockman.”
“Oh! Well, _he_ is. It’s a tip--if you ever mean to mix it with Casimir
Sadoul.”
Stuart looked neither interested nor surprised.
“I haven’t yet decided what I want of Sadoul,” he said without a trace
of threat, yet with a simplicity that seemed to make no question of
getting whatever he might wish for.
Pockman looked at him long out of fishy eyes. Then he snickered.
“Some day,” he said, “if you and little Miss Greenway are good to me
and let me observe her in peace, I’ll tell you both something about
Sadoul that will make it easier for you to put a crimp in him.”
“No, thanks,” said Stuart coldly.
“As you choose, Sutton.... Drop in again and look over my assortment of
glands--all alive and guaranteed to start any corpse two-stepping....”