They had gone to the laboratory as they were, not delaying to dine,
Gilda in her black dinner-gown, Stuart wearing his dinner jacket. For
Pockman had advised haste.
They both were a little dazed--even Sutton, who knew what Gilda had not
known. But he had looked for nothing like this--nothing swift--even
nothing deadly, perhaps.
“Why does he want me,” he said, partly to himself. “I can understand
that he would desire to see _you_.”
Her ungloved hand crept into his but she remained silent.
The June night was cool and spangled with big stars. It was deliciously
cool near the river where a breeze was blowing from the Sound.
As they descended, Stuart said to the driver: “We will be here for some
time. Don’t go.”
Miss Cross met them in the hall. She took Gilda’s hand and caressed it;
spoke pleasantly to Stuart.
“He’s in his own room. The doctor is there, expecting you.”
They followed her. Pockman rose and came forward in the subdued
lamplight.
Sadoul, lying on his bed near the open window, did not open his eyes.
Pockman said to Gilda: “I’ve called up your house every day for a week.”
“When did this happen?” she asked.
At the sound of her voice Sadoul’s eyes unclosed.
“Is that you, Gilda?”
“Yes.” She went forward, slowly; laid one slender hand on the
bed-clothes over his chest.
They looked at each other for a little while in silence.
“If you don’t come back to me, I’ll have to go after you,” he murmured.
He closed his sunken eyes, opened them presently, looked up at her.
“Gilda, _t’en souviens tu_?----
‘--_Et quand, dernier témoin de ces scènes funèbres,
Entouré du chaos, de la mort, des ténèbres,
Seul, je serais debout; seul malgré mon effroi,
Etre infaillible et bon, j’espérerais en toi,
Et, certain du retour de l’éternelle aurore,
Sur les mondes détruits je t’attendrais--encore--_’”
His breath came harsh, laboriously, obstructing the voice.
“Gilda, Gilda,” he sighed.
She said nothing. He stared at her out of burning eyes, then, as his
gaze wandered, he caught sight of Sutton.
“You damned liar,” he said in a stronger voice.
“Is that what you wished to say to me, Sadoul?”
“It’s one of the things. You told me you’d remain away only a week or
ten days. You’ve been gone long enough to find me dying.”
“I’m sorry.... I expected nothing like this. Business detained me
longer than I expected.”
“The business of making love to another man’s wife,” said Sadoul.
And, to Gilda: “Well, what do you think of my marksmanship with an
automatic, Gilda?”
“What?”
“My endeavours to--shoot up--your young man,” he gasped, suddenly husky
and shaken by his laboured breathing.
“What?” she repeated, bewildered.
“Do you mean to say he didn’t tell you?”
“I don’t know what you mean, Sadoul.”
Sadoul looked at Sutton: “Didn’t you tell her?” he barked.
“No.”
The sick man lay gasping and fumbling at the covers, his fevered eyes
roving from Gilda to Sutton.
“I guess you didn’t mean to lie about coming back,” he panted. “Sit
down. I once showed you something. Do you remember?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll show you something better than that. You’ll be surprised.” To
Gilda: “Sit down. Are you in a hurry?”
“No.”
“Have you a little time?”
“Yes.”
“All right. I want to show Sutton something. But you’ll have to make
him see it.”
“What is it you wish him to see?” she asked gently.
“I’m going to die,” he panted, “and I want him to see me do it.”
Pockman approached and looked down at him with a reassuring smirk:
“While there’s life there’s----”
“Tell it to Sweeny,” whispered Sadoul with a pallid sneer. “You know
damned well I’m dying.”
Pockman laughed: “You’ve plenty of vitality yet, I notice----”
“You tell ’em,” barked Sadoul. And, to Gilda, with an effort: “I’m
going after you when the time comes, if you don’t come back of your own
accord.” To Sutton: “I want you to see what you’ll be up against--some
day----”
A terrible spasm of coughing overwhelmed him. Pockman and Miss Cross,
beside him, supported his head. The nurse, presently, carried basin and
towels away.
Pockman seated himself and placed his hand on Sadoul’s pulse.
For a long while the room was very quiet. A river breeze blew the
curtains. Stars looked in.
“Gilda,” whispered the dying man.
“I am here, Sadoul.”
“Is _he_ here, too?”
“Yes.”
“I want him to see. Will you let him?”
“See--what?” she faltered.
Sadoul’s voice burst from him with startling violence: “I want you to
let him see what you are going to see.... What you’ll both have to
reckon with some day.... The indestructible I! The surviving identity
which is _I_ myself!... And always will be--eternal, deathless----”
He struggled to sit up, his eyes glittering with fever: “Will you do
that last thing for me, Gilda?”
“I don’t know,” she answered, deathly pale. And to her lover: “He asks
me to let you see his soul, when it leaves him.”
“Sutton! Are you afraid to look!” gasped Sadoul.
“Not if you wish it.”
Sadoul’s glazing eyes were fixed on him: “I--want you to see--for
yourself--what you’ll be up against--some day--” ...The hemorrhage was
strangling him.... “On ne--meurt--pas--” he whispered.... “Je ne fais
que--mon début----”
His voice failed; Miss Cross eased him back to the stained pillow.
After a silence, Pockman turned partly around, his hand still on
Sadoul’s wrist.
“He’s going,” he said in a low voice.
After ten minutes: “He’s nearly gone.... It isn’t his lungs, either.
It’s that cobra serum.... I told him so. Hell! Cobra virus will kill
Koch’s bacilli. So will dynamite. So will jumping off the Woolworth
building.”
He released the pulse; laid his hand on Sadoul’s heart. Miss Cross
handed him a mirror and turned up the lights.
“He’s gone,” said Pockman.
Gilda, very pale, rose, walked to the bedside, sank to her knees.
After a while she averted her head, covered both eyes with her
handkerchief, held out one hand, blindly, to her lover.
He lifted her, drew her back to their seats by the wall, retaining her
hand.
Pockman drew the sheet over the dead man’s face, nodded dismissal to
Miss Cross, turned out all lights, teetered over to an arm-chair and
sat down.
“Do you want a couch?” he asked Gilda.
“No.”
“All right. Can you include me in this affair?”
“Yes.”
“Very well.... Whenever you are ready.”
The girl turned, rested her right hand on her lover’s shoulder, palm
upward; laid her cheek in the hollowed hand.
Sutton gazed at the bed. Over Sadoul’s shadowy, sheeted face a faint
light shone--starlight, he supposed.
After a few minutes he realised it was not starlight.
He gazed at the bony outline of Sadoul’s face beneath the sheet,
remembering what this dead man had said concerning the post-mortem
persistence of consciousness.
Was Sadoul lying there dead, still conscious? The brain died last
of all. Was Sadoul’s brain still alive? What was that pale light,
imperceptibly increasing above the shrouded head?
The girl resting on his shoulder was now breathing softly, regularly as
a sleeping child.
He dared not stir; his eyes were fixed upon the outlined figure on the
bed.
Suddenly the covered head became visible in silhouette, as though an
electric bulb had been turned on under the bed sheet.
Steadily the glow spread to a radio-activity so intense that Sadoul’s
head itself seemed translucent, revealing the shadowy cerebrum and
cerebellum slowly expanding within the skull.
The Senate of the body was preparing to adjourn _sine die_.
Now, the preparations for the spirit’s departure from its worn out
tenement were fully completed. The intense brilliancy of the head began
to fade. A softly luminous atmosphere grew above the covered head,
slowly assuming the contours of another head.
This new head developed more and more distinctly, more compactly,
indescribably brilliant.
All around it spread a luminous atmosphere, seemingly in great
commotion. This agitated pool of light penetrated like the white fire
of an aurora; but, as the new head became more perfect, it waned,
faded, disappeared.
Steadily, harmoniously, the neck, shoulders, chest, were developed in
their natural progressive order.
The etheric body was slowly rising over the head and at right angles to
the deserted body.
Now, about the feet of the etheric shape, a blinding vital light played
like electricity, linking it with the sheeted head. For a few minutes
this lasted, then the natal cord grew thin, fine as a luminous thread,
parted.
All light died out on the dark bed. In the starlight a tall, greyish
shape stood beside the dead--a figure like Sadoul, not quite as
tall, with no mark of sickness on body or face; younger, tranquil of
carriage, with vague, untroubled eyes that rested on the living without
emotion, without surprise.
Leisurely, without effort, the figure moved to the open window and
stood there gazing out into the starlight for a while. Then, turning,
it passed Pockman, noticing him; passed before Gilda, sleeping on
Sutton’s shoulder, quietly observant, moved on to the open door, into
the corridor beyond, where lights were burning on the whitewashed wall.
Here it became perfectly distinct, differing in no way from a living
being.
The street door was open; the aged door-keeper sat in his box reading
an evening paper.
Sadoul looked at him as he passed, smiled, and went out into the street.
In the death chamber Pockman got up on his rickety legs, pulled out his
watch.
“Two hours, thirty-three minutes, nine and a fraction seconds,” he
said; smirked, wiped his sweating features, picked up a pencil and
wrote down his observation on the chart.
On Stuart’s shoulder Gilda was stirring. Presently she sighed lightly,
opened her eyes, drew a deeper breath, sat upright.
For a few moments she sat gazing at the bed, her left hand still
resting on her lover’s shoulder.
Pockman came teetering across the room, holding out something that
glittered in the dim radiance of the stars.
“He wanted me to give you this,” he said with a sort of ghostly snigger.
She took the shining object. It was the gold-hilted misericordia.
The girl slowly stood up. There was a white rose at her sash. She drew
it out, walked to the bed and placed it on Sadoul’s breast. Beside it
she laid the misericordia.
“Bury these with him,” she said to Pockman. And to the still figure
under the sheet: “Good-bye, Sadoul.”
Pockman accompanied them to the street door, his arms twitching and
jerking, the vague, habitual grin stamped on his flat and pallid face.
“He could have euchred old man Death in New Mexico or Arizona,” he said
with a mechanical snicker. “He preferred to take a chance with that
snake. Hell!”
Sutton guided Gilda down the battered steps.
“I think,” he said in a low voice, “that we’d better drive to the house
and see my father and mother. I think we ought to set matters straight
without delay.”
“If you think it best.... What time is it?”
“A quarter to ten.”
She stood for a moment close against him. He could feel her whole body
trembling. Then she slowly moved forward, leaning on his arm.
He gave the driver directions, stepped into the taxi behind her and
drew her icy hands into his.
The girl’s eyes were glimmering with unshed tears.
* * * * *
Pockman, in his own lamplit study, touched the bell on his desk.
To an orderly who appeared, he said: “Send that damned snake to the
Bronx tomorrow.”
After the orderly had retired he sat thinking, mopping up the
perspiration that drenched his hair. Then he opened a locked drawer in
his desk, drew out a packet of blue-prints, examined them one by one,
and, one by one, tore each into minute pieces.
There was a handful of these. He sat sifting them from one hand to the
other for a long while. Finally he rose, went to the open window and
scattered them in the pale lustre of the stars.