The talkers

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.