And now take this very latest development at Battle Creek recently
where he had gone trying to recuperate on the diet there. Hadn’t
Mersereau, implacable demon that he was, developed this latest trick of
making his food taste queer to him—unpalatable, or with an odd odor?
He, Davidson, knew it was Mersereau, for he felt him beside him
at the table whenever he sat down. Besides, he seemed to hear
something—clairaudience was what they called it, he understood—he
was beginning to develop that, too, now! It was Mersereau, of course,
saying in a voice which was more like a memory of a voice than anything
real—the voice of some one you could remember as having spoken in a
certain way, say, ten years or more ago:
* * * * *
“_I’ve fixed it so you can’t eat any more, you—_”
* * * * *
There followed a long list of vile expletives, enough in itself to
sicken one.
Thereafter, in spite of anything he could do to make himself think to
the contrary, knowing that the food was all right, really, Davidson
found it to have an odor or a taste which disgusted him, and which he
could not overcome, try as he would. The management assured him that it
was all right, as he knew it was—for others. He saw them eating it. But
he couldn’t—had to get up and leave, and the little he could get down
he couldn’t retain, or it wasn’t enough for him to live on. God, he
would die, this way! Starve, as he surely was doing by degrees now.
And Mersereau always seeming to be standing by. Why, if it weren’t for
fresh fruit on the stands at times, and just plain, fresh-baked bread
in bakers’ windows, which he could buy and eat quickly, he might not be
able to live at all. It was getting to that pass!