The talkers

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?——

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.