Sadoul, playing with his cobra--or rather tormenting it--said to
Pockman:
“Take the case mentioned by Chevreuil among scores of others. It is
certain that the ‘sensitive’ experiences terror and anguish when any
materialisation in which he or she has been concerned is subjected to
brutal handling.”
Pockman looked around from his microscope at Sadoul, then at the cobra
in its glass-faced double hutch. It was a black cobra, not a spectacled
one.
Sadoul ran his gaunt forefinger up and down the glass. Inside, the
snake, erect in its coils, followed every movement.
Sadoul said: “The sensitive seems to be physiologically anæmic. It is
her own substance of which the phantom is composed. There are other
cells, too, but the structural emanation is from the sensitive. And
when anything excites or shocks, the sensitive begins to recover her
own cells.
“What’s your deduction?” inquired Pockman.
“This: that any common identity of sensitive and phantom is largely
material; that this mutual sharing of substance accounts for bodily and
mental injury to the sensitive if the materialisation be injured.”
“Logically argued,” nodded Pockman. “If one knew how to sever the natal
cord between medium and phantom, the former would die, probably.”
Sadoul stood absently teasing the cobra. “Yes,” he said. “But in a case
of dual projection, what?”
“A case of Siamese twins, I suppose.”
“I wonder.”
“You have in mind the case of Gilda Greenway?” Pockman spoke, leering
into his microscope.
Sadoul no longer cared what Pockman thought--no longer took the trouble
to conceal motive or purpose. He said, coolly:
“I’ve concluded it would endanger her if I attempted to rid her of one
of these phantoms.”
“Rid yourself, you mean--don’t you?” tittered the other.
Sadoul’s silent glance, full of effrontery and contempt, measured
Pockman from head to foot.
“Yes, rid myself,” he said. “But I don’t know how.”
“Your cobra was a premature investment,” remarked Pockman, agitated
with a sort of whispering laughter which hunched his shoulders to his
ears.
“No,” said Sadoul, “I got the snake too late, I’m afraid.”
“What do you do with your hypodermics full of venom?”
“Try them on sputum.”
“Whose?”
“Mine.”
Pockman looked up incredulously. “That’s a new one, isn’t it?” he asked
with a ghastly smirk.
“Quite new.”
“Does it do the business?”
“Absolutely.”
“I see. You mean to attenuate it, gradually attempt to render yourself
immune. Then--what? Inject it?”
“That’s the idea,” said Sadoul tranquilly.
Pockman skeptical, disdainful of any amateur, yet intelligent enough to
be interested, stared at the other in silence.
Sadoul’s hand, moving rhythmically on the glass, seemed to hypnotise
the snake which, towering from its coils, hood dilated, swayed gently
with the moving hand.
Suddenly Sadoul made an abrupt pass; the cobra struck like lightning; a
stream of venom clouded the glass and ran down inside.
The cobra seemed to collapse like a punctured rubber tube, falling limp
in a flattened coil.
Sadoul took a bamboo rod, went to the rear of the hutch, opened a
small panel, and, with the rod, flung the snake into the adjoining
hutch and lowered the dividing screen of glass.
Then he opened the entire back of the hutch, stepped in and filled a
small syringe from the cloudy pool gathering in the cup-shaped glass
sill.
Pockman watched the proceedings with a sort of horrid, mocking
intentness. To play with death was part of his profession. To watch
an amateur do so approached the levity of a sport. Here was a man who
might easily have abrasions on his skin, handling without rubber gloves
the most deadly and rapid poison known to man--a poison for which no
known antidote exists.
“Keep the damn thing away from me,” he said as Sadoul came toward him
with his syringe. “If you get any of it in your skin it’s going to act
like lightning.”
Sadoul made no comment, and Pockman realised that perhaps he didn’t
care very much what happened. Which discovery did not particularly
affect Pockman, except that if Sadoul died he might as well die a
victim to research as die a jackass.
He said as much with a hunch and a shrug, but the other replied with
a sneer: “Quand même, on ne meurt pas; on s’addresse, tranquilment,
gentilement, au pays de l’ombre.”
“If you want to, you can stop that murderous cough,” said Pockman. “And
if you’re so fond of snakes there are plenty in Arizona and New Mexico.”
Sadoul laughed: “You think I’ll leave those two together?”
“Better than to leave them together permanently. You had another
hemorrhage this morning----”
“You lie, Pockman.”
“Why, you damned lunger,” shouted Pockman, “I saw you in the wash-room.
Don’t tell me I lie or I’ll fire you out of my place.”
“You’d better not try,” said Sadoul, his indifferent eyes on the angry
man.
He went away presently, to his own quarters, carrying the syringe
carelessly in one hand.
At the further end of the two rooms which Pockman had allotted to him
for his experiments, was a third and smaller room. This he had fitted
up as a combination of bedroom and study, and here he now did his
writing.
To this place he had removed various articles from his apartment--some
books, clothing, photographs of Gilda taken abroad, small personal
possessions, letter-files, private papers, even the canary birds that
never sang, for some reason or other, and that hopped and hopped and
cracked seeds all day long in the tarnished tinsel cage.
As for the big, lonely apartment which he had taken nearly a year
ago, he went there rarely. The Japanese servant remained as guardian
of the furniture--all the dreary accumulations necessary to equip a
housekeeping apartment for married people--furnishings for living-room,
bedrooms, dining-room, kitchen--pictures, mirrors, curtains, linen,
carpets, silver, glass, china, batterie-de-cuisine--the whole appalling
outfit.
That apartment had become a horror to him; there were no recollections
connected with it except painful ones; no phantoms haunted those
dusky rooms to evoke in him even the wistful pleasures of sadness; no
memories clung to the unused, desolate place.
Except by a tuner the piano never had been touched; the brocaded chairs
had never known the caress of her slender body; no lovely ghost looked
out from the dim depths of gilded mirrors; there was nothing anywhere
of her for whom, because of whom, he had cabled to Pockman to lease a
home.
He might have sub-let it for the remainder of the year, but, sullenly
determined upon her return, he had hung on.
Now it was not worth while; storage charges would more than balance
any advantage of sub-letting. So he let it go with a final auction
vaguely in mind, and established himself here on the East River. It
was less lonely. He could sit, when feeling ill, and gaze out on the
grey stream; on barge, schooner, steamer; on the forbidding prison in
mid-stream; on the vast and dreary bridge overhead.
Here, when very tired--perhaps with a towel wetted crimson in his
clutch--he could lie in a morris-chair and follow the gulls in their
interminable flight; or mark the mile-long convolutions of smoke from
some lofty chimney, tinged with sombre sunset hues, or see the diamond
blaze of light flash out across the bridges as the red west smouldered
through thickening mists.
And, lying here, he could ponder the eternal problem--the only problem
that preoccupied him since he first laid eyes on Gilda Greenway.
Ways, means, methods, chances, how to win her, hold her, dominate,
possess--always the dull fierce searching in his fevered mind--always
the fixed idea, sleepless, burning, eternal.
All else was but an incident in the unaltered problem--the aborted
marriage, the domestic débâcle, the advent of Sutton--even the
girl’s death--all were merely incident to the main never-changing,
never-ending problem.
His own physical condition, so long and sullenly unrecognised and
unadmitted, merely enraged him with impatience. Yet, far in the sombre
depths of his mind he was conscious of an ominous mental stillness.
It was the stillness of fear, awakening to the advent of the
Future--trying to estimate its approaching speed--watching in a sort
of stunned apathy the swift coming of something which had not existed
yesterday.
* * * * *
Along with his daily free-lance work--always in demand, always
profitable and to be depended upon to give him competence--he carried
his psycho-hypnotic research. There was a road, that way, leading
toward something--recognition, perhaps, authority, fame, as much of
Fortune as the jade carries in her stuffed purse, perhaps.
Also, it was something to do--food to feed fever--possibly a key to
unlock the Problem--the only problem existing for him.
* * * * *
He filled a phial with his cobra venom, washed the syringe without
precaution, pocketed it, sealed his phial, stood for a while staring
absently about him; then, very tired, lay down by the window and
crossed his arms behind his dark head.
Presently his thoughts began to hover around death--but not his
own--like grey dusk-moths round a ghostly blossom.
Long since satisfied of the incidental unimportance of human
dissolution, he had left that conclusion as a starting point for
research; for speculation, too.
For the exploring mind, impatient of proof, wanders on out of bounds.
And Sadoul’s idler thoughts roamed at hazard among scenes peopled by
surviving identities--entered vast regions thickly inhabited, stirring
with colour and energy and life in its every and illimitable aspect.
And now, finally, he thought of himself. How would it be with him and
_her_? His passion must survive if he died.... Would her indifference
survive with her? Was the pursuit endless as a star’s course in
orbit--endless as the drift of the universe?
If it must be, it must be. Eternal or not, it was a part of the scheme
of things, irrevocable, inalienable, eternal.
* * * * *
A fog gathered on the river. Tall masts passed like shrouded spectres;
the deep vibrations of the fog-horns grew in the thickening stillness;
dock lights burned from every pier; long rows of windows glittered
dimly in Astoria; a melancholy bell tolled incessantly.
Sadoul closed his heavy-lidded eyes, then opened them with an effort.
River whistles were blowing; the hour struck on some phantom ship; one
by one the giant bridges festooned themselves with gems, veiled in the
cerements of the fog.
A chill sweat grew on Sadoul’s forehead, dampening his thick black
hair, but in his hollow cheeks dull fire burned.
* * * * *
He awoke in the dark, coughing, ensanguined, wet to the skin with icy
sweat.