The talkers

At the laboratory they were shown into the small reception room. There was nothing there except a wired crate marked “Cobra. Do not handle.”

“That’s amusing,” remarked Stuart. “What does Pockman want of a cobra?”

Miss Cross, in her neat uniform, came in. She remembered Sutton, gave him a quick look, clear, interested, but without conclusion concerning their appearance together for the second time within her personal experience.

She shook hands smilingly with Gilda, turned to Stuart, quizzical, amused:

“A more agreeable reunion than our first association, Mr. Sutton.”

“Yes,” he said. “I was pretty badly scared.”

“You were the most tragic young man I ever beheld. You wouldn’t smoke.”

“You were very nice to me,” he said, forcing a rather painful smile.

“I was sorry for you——” She looked at Gilda, “sorrier for you, dear. But it turned into a happy miracle.” She smiled, looking from one to the other, the invisible and delicate antennæ of feminine intuition exploring the situation without comprehension, until Gilda looked at Stuart, and the boy returned the fleeting glance.

Miss Cross knew, then. But that was all she knew.

Gilda inquired for a dressing room; Miss Cross took her away to hers. Stuart started to pace the narrow floor, but a door opened and Sadoul came in.

He was prepared to see Sutton; Gilda had averted him by telephone, tersely, hanging up as he began to demur.

“Come in, Sadoul,” said Stuart coolly. “I’m rather relieved at the opportunity to tell you that I spoke thoughtlessly the other day.”

“Oh, no,” said Sadoul, “you’d thought it all out.”

Sutton reddened. “Yes, I had. And I came here to say what I did say.”

“Have you changed your mind?”

“Yes; I shan’t ever kill you. It’s one solution, but not a satisfactory one.”

Sadoul laughed. “You mean not a respectable one. I’d die only once, but the Hudson River Suttons would die every day that they lived——” A fit of coughing interrupted him.

The colour in Stuart’s face deepened.

“Undoubtedly. That’s the only reason it’s no solution for our problem.”

“The problem’s yours,” remarked Sadoul, “not mine. As for Gilda, she belongs to me—whatever you and she choose to do about it. But I don’t worry. The Gods of the Mountain—the Holy Catskills—will hold you to respectability. As for Gilda, her chastity is—more—admirable——”

Another fit of convulsive coughing shook his bony frame. He wiped his face, looked sneeringly at Stuart:

“What a gift of God is a truly good young man,” he said. “But a respectable young man is a pearl without price——” Another access of coughing seized him. The crisis passed. He leered at Stuart, unable to speak.

The rushing, confused impulse to kill this man surged, ebbed, passed, leaving the boy dazed and pale.

“I thought you’d do it,” panted Sadoul; “it would have been worth it to me to make a clean sweep of all Suttons. You got rather white. But respectability is a sheet-anchor and the Highlands of the Hudson a firm fortress——”

The words choked in his throat: a thin stream of bright blood squirted from his mouth—gushed over his chin.

Moments of silence, terribly significant: Sadoul, eyes closed, sopping his mouth with crimsoned handkerchief, the boy staring.

Sadoul opened his eyes, red with hell. His shoulders sagged, his gaunt chest heaved, he leaned trembling against the wall like a horse, sinking by the withers.

“Can I do anything, Sadoul?” ventured the boy in a ghostly voice.

Sadoul nodded: “Yes, mind your business.”

“I don’t care what you say to me.”

“I don’t either.” Sadoul sat down, rested for a while, got up.

“Are you all right?” asked Stuart.

Their eyes met. Both knew now it was only a waiting game. And, with this astounding knowledge, the boy softened.

“You ought to go away,” he said. “I’ll play square.”

“Arizona and a clean shirt?” sneered Sadoul. He looked at his wet handkerchief, at his stained hands.

“Play square, eh?” he repeated. “Well, that’s a little more than being respectable. That’s emotional. Respectability doesn’t admit of any except prescribed and predigested emotions. Be prudent, Sutton, or your ancestors will squirm underground.”

Stuart said: “Well, whatever you do I’ll play square, Sadoul. I think I’d do it on my own account. But Gilda likes you——”

Sadoul, on his way out, paused at the door.

“You’re never going to have her,” he said. “So don’t lie awake on my account.”

He went out, leaving the door ajar. Sutton heard him in the wash-room.

A little later Gilda returned alone, noticed his expression, came to him, questioningly.

“It’s nothing. Sadoul was here. We always upset each other.”

“I know it. I hated to ask you to come.”

Pockman came in at his crazy gait, arms jerking and dangling and his face glistening with sweat.

“All ready,” he said. “Lyken is in there with an electrician and camera man. I hope we’ll get something. How do you feel, Miss Greenway?”

She smiled and said she felt very well indeed.

“Is Sutton expected to be present?” he asked with a smirk.

“Certainly,” she said, “——if I am.”

“Oh, sure!” He cast a stealthy glance at Stuart, then led the way out.

It was the same room in which she had last seen Sadoul. Except that the various machines were ready to go into action, and a lot of flowers about, the room was the same.

Dr. Lyken shook hands with her; the electrician and camera-man bowed.

Miss Cross came in with another young woman in uniform—a Miss Parry, who seated herself prepared to make stenographic records and fill in charts.

The electrician took up his station; to control and direct the delicate gradation of light was one of his jobs. The camera-man’s assistant entered. A few minutes later Sadoul appeared, went immediately to Gilda. She removed her hat. Miss Cross took it. They consulted in quiet voices for a while, then she went with Sadoul into the dark cabinet.

Almost immediately Sadoul came out alone and nodded to Pockman. Lyken and Stuart also followed. The interior of the cabinet was very dark. Pockman flashed an electric torch.

Gilda lay on a fur rug on the floor, partly resting on her right side, her legs a little drawn up. Both hands covered her face. She did not stir. Her breathing was regular and quiet. Temperature, pulse, heart action, blood-pressure, all proved normal.

“Nothing morbid in that trance,” said Pockman in a cautious tone.

They returned to their chairs near the table. Lights faded to a discreet twilight. Miss Parry withdrew to a corner where a shaded bulb hung low.

“Is that camera ready?” asked Sadoul.

Lyken whispered to Stuart: “He’s using a quartz lens. They’ll flood the room with violet rays when they shoot.”

Pockman, on the other side of him, said: “The only thing to do is to settle the question definitely one way or another: whether these forces that ‘sensitives’ possess, and which induce psychical phenomena, are merely forces of nature at present unknown to us, or forces exerted by living identities which have survived physical death.”

Sadoul, speaking in a natural voice, said to Lyken: “I’ve used a microscope on the body exudations from a highly sensitized medium. It disclosed living cells of a type not found in the human body.”

“Was there a nucleus to each cell?”

“Positively.”

Lyken seemed startled. “What are we to expect, now, from little Miss Greenway?” he inquired of Pockman.

“Dual projection, I believe.”

“Materialization?”

“Yes,” said Sadoul.

At that moment the vague dark draperies of the cabinet were flung aside and a young girl in white stepped out.

From somewhere a cool breeze stirred in the room, blowing the perfume of the cut flowers.

“Camera!” said Sadoul quietly. And, to the electrician: “Violet, please.”

The figure in white came forward tranquilly, unembarrassed. As she neared the table a book lying there caught her eye, and she paused, turned the pages curiously, as though interested.

“It’s Einstein’s book,” whispered Lyken. “If she can understand that she’s better than I am.”

The figure raised its head, smiling, as though she had overheard the remark.

She was a trifle shorter than Gilda, like her in a celestial way, with a more dazzling skin.

“Are you Gilda?” asked Sadoul.

“Yes,” she said quietly. Her voice was like Gilda’s, with another indefinable quality—something exquisitely lark-like, unsullied as pure song showered down from skies.

“Look at the Other!” exclaimed Lyken.

Sadoul called to the electrician: “Flood!” And to the camera-man, “Go on shooting. Get them both together!”

Stuart sat rigid in his chair, gripping it. He saw the Other One advancing, brilliant in white, exquisitely indolent, every movement gracefully sensuous, and her mouth a red flower in the demi-light.

She paused beside the table, leaned on it, bending her face to the flowers.

“Are you Gilda?” asked Sadoul unsteadily.

She looked up and laughed. Stuart saw her clearly for the first time, and trembled a little, so lovely she was.

The other figure leaned there beside her, too, near-smiling, fresh, exquisite, unsullied.

“Sadoul,” said the Other One, “why do you try to create dissension between us?” She encircled the other’s waist. The latter looked seriously at Sadoul: “We are in harmony. Why do you try to separate us? Why try to distinguish between us? If you separate us you make us self-conscious. You offer us violence, Sadoul.”

Sadoul got up from his chair. Both figures laid their hands on his. He drew them a little way aside.

“God,” said Pockman, sweating, “that’s going some! For Christ’s sake keep on grinding that camera, you——”

Sadoul held the two white figures by their right hands resting between his own.

He said: “Is that why there is no hope for me? I didn’t understand.”

The Other One said: “You sow dissension between us who are twins. Didn’t you understand that we really are one?”

“No.... That is the reason, then.”

They nodded: “That is the reason, Sadoul.”

He stood for a little while with dark head lowered, retaining their hands. The Other One seemed impatient; her companion drew a stem of frisia from the vase on the table and laid it in Sadoul’s hand where her own had been lying.

Then she leisurely crossed the room, passing so close to Sutton that her white garment touched him, and he felt the breathing warmth of her body.

“Gilda,” he whispered.

She paused, looked down at him.

“That’s no ghost,” said Lyken, nervously. “Ask her if she’ll let you take her in your arms.”

The figure looked uncertainly at Sutton as he rose.

“I won’t hurt you,” he whispered.

“Be very gentle,” she said. “She is asleep in the cabinet and you could easily hurt her.”

She came into his arms, rested against him, a warm young creature, a living, breathing shape.

“Is she real?” demanded Lyken.

“Absolutely.”

“Then somebody had better look into that cabinet,” he said, almost violently. “Reason is reason and a joke’s a joke, God da——”

The Other One, passing near, closed his mouth with her slim hand, and Lyken nearly fainted on his chair.

“Get out if you can’t control yourself,” said Sadoul coldly. And, to Pockman: “Take their pulse and temperature.”

The slender figure in Sutton’s embrace released herself, rested one hand on his arm and leaned down to re-open the book. The page that interested her was printed solid with mathematics.

“Do you understand that?” whispered Sutton.

“Yes. How simple and interesting.”

Pockman came with a clinical thermometer and Sutton stepped back.

He watched nervously the procedure—the tests made with this radiant being—the weighing, the stethoscope, the vial for saliva, a microscopic paring from a finger-nail, a few red-gold hairs, a tear duct excited and the secretion caught and bottled while the lovely creature laughed.

Pockman and Sadoul, camera-man and electrician, and the stenographer, Miss Parry, were busy for hours, it seemed to Sutton.

Gradually the lights had been increased to an intensity where photography required nothing else to aid it.

Lyken, inert on his chair, slack-jawed and pop-eyed, merely stared and stared, utterly valueless as any assistance.

The Other One, who had come curiously to look at Sutton once or twice, and who did not seem very friendly toward him, now smiled at him for the first time, rather shyly.

“I am glad you did not touch me,” she said. “Some day, perhaps. We are going now. Good-bye.”

Sadoul turned from the camera: “Have you got to go?”

They nodded smilingly.

“I want to ask one more thing of you,” he said, following the two figures toward the cabinet. “I beg you to let us see you both, with Gilda lying asleep at your feet. Will you do this?”

They seemed uncertain, whispered together for a moment. Then the Other One nodded.

Pockman and Sutton joined them; Lyken lurched up from his chair and stumbled toward the cabinet.

It was very dark inside.

Sadoul reached up and turned on a flood of light.

Gilda lay as they had left her, her face in her hands. Beside her the two white figures looked down at her, gravely.

“Camera!” said Sadoul, with an effort. “Pull that curtain wide, Sutton!”

In the silence they heard behind them the grinding of the machine.

“Turn off the light,” said the Other One to Sadoul.

“Must I?”

“Yes.”

He closed and bolted the door, lifted a bony arm and plunged the cabinet into darkness. Nobody moved for a few minutes except Lyken, swaying on legs that scarce supported him. Then Sadoul turned on the light. Both white figures were gone.

On the rug at their feet Gilda sighed and stirred and opened her eyes.