The talkers

Sadoul came into the laboratory where Pockman was taking a tray of frozen rats out of a refrigerator.

Sadoul looked thin and stooped; his clothes flapped on him. He glanced at the rows of frozen rats with a wizened sneer:

“I feel like one of those, sometimes.”

“Sometimes you look like one,” returned Pockman. He tittered and carried the tray to a porcelain table. First he sponged off the table with some pale yellow solution, then he placed three frozen rats on it. The vermin were rigidly congealed. They lay there stiff as bits of metal, discoloured teeth and naked feet exposed.

“Is Gilda Greenway here?” inquired Sadoul.

“Not yet. Why?”

“I wanted to see her after you had made your observations.”

“She’s late,” said Pockman, absently. He counted out three more rats, laid them on top of a wire-screened box, then returned the tray with the remainder of the rats to the refrigerator.

Sadoul looked into the box. On a bed of sand lay several rat-snakes coiled together for warmth. Pockman took a frozen rat by the tail, opened the lid of the box, and dropped the rodent. A slow head stirred in the composite snaky mass. There was no other movement.

“They won’t take it that way,” said Pockman. “The trouble is that I’ve got to be careful they don’t bite me.”

“They’re not poisonous snakes.”

“All ophidians are more or less poisonous.”

“You think so?” asked Sadoul.

“I’ve yet to find one from which I couldn’t extract venom of one sort or another. It’s not always poisonous to man.”

Pockman took the frozen rat by the tail and began to draw it across the sand. Like lightning the stroke came from the snaky mass—a rat-snake had the rodent by the head. The next instant Pockman jerked away the rat by the tail and tossed it onto the porcelain table.

“That’s all I wanted,” he snickered. “Now we’ll try to find out what a gland will do to that virus.”

He immersed the rat in a dark solution which was warming in a porcelain basin over a low-turned lamp.

“They can eat the others,” he said, taking the two remaining rats by the tails and dragging them across the sand.

Instantly a snake struck. After a few moments the snake’s jaws widened spasmodically and a gush of saliva wet the frozen fur. Pockman went back to his simmering rodent; Sadoul watched the revolting process in the box.

The other snake took more time—less hungry perhaps—and held the rat crossways as a pickerel holds a minnow before bolting it by the head.

Pockman, busy with his four rats, and using a gland macerated to pulp for grafting, heard Sadoul cough now and then.

“If I had that bark I’d take it to Arizona,” he said. “Why the hell don’t you get your sputum analyzed?”

Sadoul dropped the wire lid and came over to the table.

“Pockman,” he said, “did you ever tell anybody about those blueprints?”

“No. Why?”

“Sutton once said something to me.”

“I’ve never uttered a word. What did Sutton say?”

“Nothing definite. He asked me why I was standing behind those curtains at Derring’s that night.”

After a moment Pockman leered at him sideways:

“Were you?”

“Whether I were or were not,” returned Sadoul calmly, “he had no knowledge of it.”

Pockman worked on, using a syringe. Presently:

“I’ll tell you something, Sadoul. When little Miss Greenway lay dead on the chair where Sutton had propped her, with the misericordia imbedded in the nape of her neck, she—that is, her still living mind—saw you come out from behind those curtains.”

“She told you that?”

“She did. Probably she has told Sutton. Is that an explanation?”

Sadoul slowly nodded.

“How long,” he asked, “does consciousness persist in the brain after death?”

“For some appreciable time. It varies.”

“If I had been there could she have been conscious of it?”

“Certainly,” snickered Pockman.

“For how long?”

“I tell you the time varies. The process of death is, as you know, a slow and gradual detachment of the indestructible or etheric body from the corpse. There is resistance, sometimes. Some people die hard. There seems usually to be some difficulty.”

“What is the average length of time it takes to detach the etheric body from the cadaver?”

“I couldn’t tell you. I don’t think we’ve struck any average, yet. You are as familiar as I am with the process.

“In a quick and easy death the cold creeps upward from the extremities to the brain. You and I have observed the procedure of the etheric body as it detaches itself from the physically dying body.

“Something—some occult energy—seems to shake the etheric body, or soul—loosen it, so to speak. When this lateral movement ceases, millions of gentle vibrations begin, from the soles of the feet, upward. The indestructible soul-principle begins to withdraw from the extremities, upward, toward the head. Life slowly fades at the knees, the thighs, the hips, the chest.... You and I have seen that faint brilliancy gathering around the head. That, I fancy, is where the delay usually occurs.”

“I think the brain dies hard,” said Sadoul.... “I wonder how long it takes.”

Pockman shrugged and continued to wrap up his rats in sterilised cheese-cloth and deposit each one in a sort of incubator.

Sadoul roamed about the place; Pockman had finished washing and drying his hands when the door opened and Gilda Greenway came in.

The cold had made her pink; her furs accented the exquisite colour. Under her toque the gold-red hair edged her cheeks with burnished flame.

“How do you do, Dr. Pockman?” she said cheerfully. “——I’m sorry I am so late——” She caught sight of Sadoul. “Oh, I didn’t know you were here!”

Her face altered, yet still remained smiling—an odd little smile, slightly humorous, slightly guarded, faintly sarcastic, and entirely devoid of fear.

He offered to shake hands with her, and she accepted with the hint of a shrug.

To Pockman she said: “Aren’t you nearly finished investigating me? You must have volumes already on the history of my case.”

Pockman tittered, smirked, hitched his shoulders, started jerkily for his private office. The girl turned, nodded to Sadoul, her gloved hand on the door.

“Could I see you when you’ve finished with Pockman?” asked Sadoul.

“If you like.”

“I’ll be in my end of the place.”

“Very well.”

She went out; Pockman teetered after her. Sadoul’s shadowy visage still remained red from the encounter. He had joined his bony hands and was twisting them as though to subdue physical pain. His sunken eyes seemed filmy, unseeing, as he turned his head with the curious, nosing motion of a blind thing caged, striving to realise its limits.

After a patient examination, Miss Cross being present to record all observations, Gilda drew a quick breath of relief, smiled whimsically at Miss Cross, picked up her muff.

“You’re destined to be a very celebrated young lady,” said Miss Cross, smiling, “——if you permit Dr. Pockman to use your name in this report.”

Gilda laughed. “He has agreed to mention me as Miss X. I don’t wish to be celebrated as a pathological prodigy.”

“You’re a prodigy all right,” snickered Pockman. “I am given to understand that you’re even a more amazing girl than you appear to be to me.”

“What do you mean, Dr. Pockman?”

“Psychically. I understand that you have an extraordinary potentiality. It’s rather a pity you don’t like Sadoul.”

“I don’t dislike him,” she said quietly.

“I thought you did.”

“I do not like some things about him. Otherwise, I have always been rather fascinated by his cleverness and intelligence. He can be an extraordinarily agreeable companion.”

Pockman said in a low voice: “I never supposed you had any use for Sadoul except to torment him—even,” he added, “when you let him take you to parties.”

The girl flushed and glanced at Miss Cross. The latter, however, was beyond earshot; and left the room the next moment.

“That’s what I hate about Sadoul,” said Gilda, quickly, “——the material side of him. It angers me. It arouses cruelty. I have a contempt for that side of him, and he knows it!”

Pockman held no brief for Sadoul, but the girl’s scorn seemed to pepper his sex generally.

“After all,” he remarked, “he’s only in love with you.”

“Physically,” she retorted, reddening.

“Well—my God——” began Pockman, thinking in terms of glands, but the girl interrupted:

“That’s part of it, I suppose. In fact, I know it, now. And I don’t wish to know any more about it—not from him—not from anybody.... What has he to say to me? Do you know, Dr. Pockman?”

“Well, I rather suspect it’s something concerning your unusual psychic possibilities.”

“Do you mean his?”

“I mean yours, Gilda.”

“I didn’t know I had any—independent of Sadoul’s.”

“His amount to little compared to yours,” said Pockman.

She gazed at him incredulously; he smirked at her. “Tehee,” he tittered, “how do you suppose you’ve fought him off?”

“With mind and will.”

“I mean in subconscious conditions—in successive periods of hypnosis—even in phases of obsession—how do you suppose you have held him off?”

“My soul is captain of my mind—whatever else invades my body to betray it!”

“How did you know that?”

“I don’t know. My soul seems to know.”

“And so you fight it out, between soul and body?”

“At times.”

Pockman snickered, but his pale eyes were intent on her:

“Soul always comes out top dog, I suppose,” he said. “There are no drawn battles, Gilda——”

“Yes, there are,” she said, crimsoning at her own honesty.

“No drawn battles in which Sadoul figures? Hey?”

“No.”

“Another man?”

“Yes.”

“And the other man has only to chip in to turn the tide of war one way or the other?”

“Yes.”

“Does he know this?”

“Yes. He stands as ally to my real self. Our minds are comrades.”

“You’re at his mercy then?”

“When the dark change comes, I am.”

“Thin ice,” tittered Pockman. “A man’s a man. He’s likely to change his battle-hymn to a Cytherean rag.” Again judgment, conclusion were arrived at in terms of glands. Why not? The world’s work is done through them. The world’s Talk continues for lack of them.

“Cats and kittens,” snickered Pockman. “It all filters out finally to these. You needn’t fear Sadoul. You know it.... Of course, I don’t see why you need fear anything. But folk-ways rule the world of folk. Taboo remains tyrant. Always will. However, there’ll always be kittens.”

Gilda turned aside and looked out of the window.

“Nice girl,” said Pockman. “Morals are fashions. Always keep up with the latest creations. Smartness wins.”

“Are you on Sadoul’s side?” she asked, her face still averted.

“On the contrary. The biggest lie ever hatched is that all the world loves a lover. Half the world is masculine. The only lovers they love are themselves.... No; I’m not on Sadoul’s side. I’m not on any man’s side.”

Gilda continued to gaze out of the window. What she looked at was rusty chimney pots against a heavenly blue sky. What the girl saw is another thing—for her eyes were as remote as the skies.

After a little while: “Is there anything abnormal about me, Dr. Pockman?” she asked, turning her head.

“No, Gilda.... No, not in a morbid sense, anyway.”

At that she slowly faced around:

“You speak with reserve.”

He hesitated; an unhealthy colour came into his flat face.

“It is possible,” he said, “that, transplanting a brand new and very vigorous young nymphalic gland may have—have over-stimulated you a little—added powerfully, perhaps, to a naturally ardent physique.”

Under his twitching smirk the girl lowered her eyes. She stood looking at her muff, pinching the fur with white-gloved fingers, smoothing it out.

“There is nothing to distress you in what I said,” insisted Pockman. “You’ve doubled your natural vitality, that’s all. You’ve doubled your years of youth, probably. You’re to be envied, Gilda.”

“I don’t know. I may find life too long.... I was thinking that, the other day.”

He looked at her keenly: “I suppose you can’t get rid of Sadoul,” he said in a lower voice. “He won’t stand for it, will he?”

She shook her head.

“Can’t have you himself and won’t let any other man,” commented Pockman with a subdued snigger. “Well, that’s man—except in novels.... Or among the glandless. A Talker will talk himself into anything. Words are all he lives. If you’d been married to a Talker, now, he’d have done a lot of fine phrasing—talked himself into a thousand attitudes—but he’d have let you go.... Sadoul won’t. He’ll follow. He’ll fight. I don’t know what else he might do.”

“Nor I,” she said absently. “I think he is capable of killing me.”

Pockman stole a look at the door.

“You obsessed him from the first. I think his mental balance isn’t what it once was. I’m always noticing. He’s suspicious—difficult to observe. I’d walk pussy-foot for the time being. After all, you’ve got time. You’ve more time coming to you than he has. He was handicapped anyway before I gave you a new gland. That man has no chance. Play the lady Fabian. That’s where he loses. He can’t wait. He can’t stand the pace of Time. It’s your make as the cards lie. Take your time.”

She said in a low voice: “It’s a ghastly game. It’s cruel, revolting.... And he is so clever, so interesting—fascinating intellectually.... And has winning qualities. To subdue me, bend me to his will—dominate and direct my inclination—this is a tragic madness with him. All else is sane, likable, attractive. I ask no more amusing comrade, no more stimulating companion.... Only—underlying everything is the pitiable tragedy of a man sane on all subjects excepting one. And on that, ruthless, brutal, inexorable.”

“Idée fixe,” muttered Pockman. “You may expect anything from that egg.... Are you going in to see him?”

She nodded; he opened the door for her.