XIII
The girl with the pink hair, languorous lashes gummy with an overdose of mascara, and ugly black muffins over her ears, was informing Mr. Brent that a Doctor Merrick was in the lobby and wished to see him … No, he hadn’t said.
“Mr. Brent is dressing for dinner and can’t come down,” she said coyly, with one hand over the mouthpiece. “He says can you tell him on the phone what you want. Just step into booth number two, please.”
“Tell him I’ll be right up.”
She relayed the message, while the tall young man with the shoulders of a discus-thrower and the tapering waist of a fencer tapped the high counter in front of the switchboard with slender, impatient fingers.
“He says it won’t be convenient,” she reported, visibly reluctant to transmit the blunt discourtesy.
“What’s his room number?” inquired Doctor Merrick, unruffled.
“Three hundred and seventy-eight; but—he said he couldn’t see you, you know.”
“Here, boy,” to the bellhop at his elbow, “put those bags in check, and then show me up to three hundred and seventy-eight.”
Mr. Brent was not dressing for dinner. He was packing a trunk; and chairs, bed and table were littered with clothing, papers, books, toilet articles and mussy linen. The room was in great disorder. It was with a very surly scowl that he opened the door to inspect his visitor.
“Merrick—you say? Never heard of you. What’s wanted?” He planted his short, stocky bulk defiantly in the doorway, hands on hips.
“Ask me in and I’ll tell you,” said Merrick quietly.
Brent reluctantly stepped back.
“Oh, very well,” he snapped, peevishly. “But make it peppy. I’m busy—as you see … Thought I’d sent word down that I didn’t care to be bothered.”
The loud-checked coat that matched the trousers he had on was lifted from the back of a chair and tossed on the bed.
“Sit down—if you want to.”
Young Merrick ignored the sour invitation and proceeded to state his errand.
“I live in Detroit where I am associated with Brightwood Hospital.”
Brent’s face, pallid, and bristly with two days’ beard, went a shade paler.
“Yeah?”
“You may recall that Brightwood Hospital was brought into prominence by your cousin’s late husband—Doctor Hudson.”
“Well—and then what?” growled Brent, insolently.
“It came to our attention, about thirty days ago, that Mrs. Hudson—now in Italy, as you know—was obliged to dispose of her interest in the hospital.”
“And how’s that any of your damn business?” demanded Brent, stepping toward Merrick belligerently. “You’re just a doctor, aren’t you? Couldn’t she sell her hospital stock, if she wanted to, without consulting you?”
“Quite true,” replied Merrick, determined not to lose his temper. “She had no occasion to confide in me, and didn’t. But if we are interested in her welfare, I should think that might meet with your approval. You’ve been managing her affairs, haven’t you?”
“Yeah! And I don’t need any help!”
“I happen to know that you do. That’s what I came here to talk about.”
“And what makes you so powerfully interested in my cousin?” Brent sneered. “Trying to get your fingers on her money?”
The fingers were restless.
“I advise you not to presume too far on my patience, Brent.”
“When you get too impatient, you can leave! … You want to marry my cousin, I suppose—but have to make sure, first, that she has plenty to keep you!”
“Just for the moment,” cautioned Merrick, “we’ll not be talking about Mrs. Hudson. We’re going to talk about you! … And that Northwestern Copper stock!”
“What do you mean, you low-down, sneaking spy?”
“I mean that in the last twelve months you’ve lost upwards of one hundred thousand dollars on the ticker and the ponies … That last big flyer in oil—along in May, wasn’t it?—wiped out the Northwestern Copper completely! … I’m here, as Mrs. Hudson’s friend, to find out exactly what you propose to do about it.”
Brent’s face was livid. He stamped to the door and threw it open.
“Now—out you go, damn you!—or I’ll call the house detective!”
Merrick turned to the untidy desk and took up the telephone.
“I’ll save you the trouble,” he said quietly, lifting the receiver.
“Put that down!” screamed Brent, slamming the door.
Merrick smiled and obeyed.
“You’re not anxious to talk to a detective, Brent. But you’re going to talk to me! Do you want to come clean on all this, now, and tell me about it—or do I have to break you in two over that table? I can do it, you know; and I’d like to!”
Blind with fury, Brent lunged savagely with his fist. Stepping aside to let it go by, Merrick caught the shaking wrist in a vice-like grip of his left hand. With the other, he gathered up a large handful of Brent’s throat, pushed him to the table, and bent him over it—back—back farther, until the purple neck was corded with distended veins, and his laboured breathing signed it was a good time to ease up.
“Like to talk business now?”
Brent raised heavily to one elbow, and his hand fumbled in the desk drawer.
“Drop that gun!” Merrick closed down on the wrist until Brent’s fingers released their hold on the automatic. It fell to the floor. “That shooting project costs you extra.” Once more Brent’s Adam’s apple and environs were compressed until his breath came in agonizing little whistles.
Merrick stooped and picked up the gun, emptied it, pocketed the cartridges, and waited for his host to recover.
After some minutes he sat up, rubbed his bloodshot eyes clumsily with his fists, and felt gingerly of his neck.
“Well,” he croaked, “now you’ve proved you’re bigger than I am, what do you want?”
“I’m no bigger than you are, Brent. Your trouble was that you rushed me with your eyes shut. Just took a long chance that maybe, somehow, your blow would land. That’s probably what ails you, all along the line. You close your eyes and whang away, hoping you’ll strike something by accident … That afterthought of yours about the gun … you’d be in a nice mess by now if I had let you shoot me … Some little gambler, you are!”
“I’d rather take a chance on the chair than the pen!”
“That proves what I’m saying … And—speaking of chairs and pens, crawl over there to your desk and sit down. I’m going to have you write something for me.”
“If you think you’re going to extort a confession from me, Merrick, you’ve another think coming.”
“Confession? Nonsense! I’ve enough evidence in my pocket to send you up for twenty years … I want you to write a letter to your cousin. I’ll dictate it. Don’t make any mistakes in it, for I’m going to mail it myself.”
Brent slumped off the table and sweeping the desk clear of its litter took up a pen.
“Begin with her address and your customary salutation. Continue as follows: In view of the uncertainty of your income from your Northwestern Copper stock, I have disposed of it—”
Flinging the pen down, Brent shouted, “Do you realize you’re forcing me to write this letter?”
“Oh, rather! That’s why you’re writing it! Proceed, please.”
“Do you know what that is? … compelling me to write this?”
“What is it?”
“Why—it’s—it’s—”
“You think up the name for it after I’m gone … Pick up that pen! … You’ve got that about your disposal of her Northwestern Copper? Now—go on … I have taken its equivalent for you in Axion Motor Corporation, preferred—”
Brent hesitated and glanced up mystifiedly.
“I don’t understand!”
“That’s unimportant,” said Merrick crisply. “It’s none of your business, in fact. You’re just acting as my clerk for the moment. You have nothing further to do in your cousin’s business affairs after writing this note:—‘Axion Motor Corporation, preferred; five hundred shares listed today at two hundred and twenty-six. This stock is held by the Trust Department of the Fourth National Bank of Detroit from where your dividends will hereafter be remitted to you regularly.’ ”
“How do I know that’s true?” growled Brent.
“You don’t; but—as I said—it’s no affair of yours. Have you written it? Now—one more paragraph:—I find that an important business errand requires me to go immediately to Buenos Aires—”
“But—I’m not going to Buenos Aires!”
“Oh, yes, you are! … Sailing on Saturday … You’re just packing up, now, to leave for Washington to get the passport I’ve arranged for you. From there you go to New York where you sail on the Vigo … Get on now with your correspondence:—‘I do not know how long I shall be away; so I am transferring my entire responsibility for your business to the Trust Department of the Fourth National Bank of Detroit. Mr. T. P. Randall will verify this and give you a clear statement of your affairs in a short time …’ Now add whatever pleasant amenities you may have the crust to write to a woman you have robbed, and sign your name to it … and address an envelope.”
While he wrote, Merrick took out his wallet, extracted a steamship ticket, and counted two thousand dollars in bills of large denomination.
“There.” He pointed to it, as Brent finished. “That is for you. Take it—and be off! And if you’re in the market for any advice, I’d suggest that you quit trying to be a sport, which you most certainly aren’t; make some new connections; find a few honest friends; get yourself a respectable job; buck up—and be a man!”
His face distorted, Brent fumbled with the money, and blindly groped out with his hand. Merrick ignored the gesture. He was not fond of the movies.
“You can get out of the country, can’t you? … I’ve fixed things for you so you’ll have no trouble about the passport, unless you’re wanted for some other crime … Sure you’ll not be stopped? … Haven’t been robbing anybody else besides your little cousin, have you?”
“No! No! … God—but I’ve been a rotter!” Collapsing in his chair, Monty buried his tousled head in his arms.
“You don’t have to remain a rotter, Brent … Start fresh! … Go straight! … You can do it! … I’m going now. If you have any trouble getting off, wire me. There’s my card. And I presume I needn’t tell you that Mrs. Hudson is never to know anything about this little transaction of ours.”
“You mean,” said Brent, looking up perplexed, “that she’s not going to know you’ve given her all this money? What do you expect to get out of it?”
“That’s my business! … No—I think I’ll tell you … just to clear your mind of any nasty suspicion that my obligation to her may be somehow to her discredit … Do you recall the story of her husband’s death?”
Brent nodded.
“Do you remember that a young man was resuscitated, while Doctor Hudson was drowning?”
“Yeah—I remember … some rich guy … By God—it was you?”
“Yes! My life was saved, that day, by a machine which might have brought Doctor Hudson around, if he’d had a chance at it … Had Hudson lived, you would not have squandered Mrs. Hudson’s money … Do you understand now?”
“Was that why you became a doctor too?” inquired Brent, wide-eyed.
“That would be a good enough reason … but—no matter about that … I just wanted you to know the nature of my interest in your cousin … I don’t give a damn what you think about me, but I’d prefer you’d think straight about her!”
“So—you figured he had handed your life back to you—sort of—and you had to make good with it; is that it?”
“Something like that.”
For a long time Brent sat staring up glassily, and when he spoke his voice came from a distance.
“God!—I never heard of such a thing! … And here you’ve just handed my life back to me! … If I were the kind of a person you are, I suppose I’d have to do something about it, wouldn’t I?”
“Oh—not necessarily … I was a good while debating whether to do anything about my affair … I was a pretty rummy lot, Brent … I’d have ducked it if I could.”
“How do you mean—rummy? … Hadn’t stolen anything, had you?”
“Never needed to steal anything … Had everything … Had too much! … Corrupted a lot of people with it! … You’ve had too little. I suppose that’s the main difference between us.”
“D’you think there’s anything I could do—to square up for what you’ve done for me?”
“Perhaps—if that sort of thing interests you?”
“What—for instance?”
Merrick rose and took up his coat.
“You’ll have to figure that out for yourself.”
“I’d like to, you know,” said Brent earnestly.
“You mean that?” challenged Merrick, putting both hands on Monty’s shoulders and looking him squarely in the eyes.
“Yes—more than I ever meant anything in my life!”
It seemed to Monty that his athletic young benefactor would never emerge from the brown study into which his words had driven him. He stood, leaning against the table, hands deep in his pockets, oblivious to his surroundings.
“In that case,” he said slowly, “I presume I’ll have to help you. I don’t want to! But—there’s just a slim chance that … See here! You shave and dress for dinner. I’ll be in the lobby when you come down. We’ll eat—and I’ll tell you all I know about it. After that—it will be up to you! … Better put some iodine on those scratches … Sorry I hurt you.”
They went in a taxi to a down town restaurant. It was somewhat after the dinner hour and their table in the corner permitted them to talk undisturbed. Counselled to forget the experience of the past two hours, Monty had regained his self-confidence and listened with rapt attention to his host. If it was not good soil for the reception of a new idea, it was for no lack of sufficient plowing and harrowing.
“I am going to tell you a strange story, Brent, about a sculptor named Randolph. If it seems incredible to you, I shall not be surprised. It was to me when I first heard it.”
It was a long story. Dinner courses came and went. In the hour, Monty had spoken but once.
“He’d quite lost his mind, hadn’t he?”
Dessert glasses had now been pushed aside and cigars lighted.
“Of course,” Merrick was saying, “if you should decide to experiment with this projection of yourself through investments in other people, you must be prepared for all manner of failures, disillusionments, disgusts. You will frequently go to no end of trouble and expense for somebody who turns out to be a pest and a piker. You will be imposed upon, lied to, lied about! You will run into cases of ingratitude so rank that it will sicken you! But—now and again, you will manage to put the thing over … and when you do you will discover it has squared for all the failures you’ve had!”
He paused, and his mood seemed reminiscent.
“I expect you’re wondering,” risked Monty, “whether you’ve been wasting your time and money on me.”
“So far as the money’s concerned, I’m afraid that wasn’t an investment in you. I just wanted to be rid of you. But—you’re quite right about my wondering whether it’s really been worth while to confide to you this theory of personality projection.”
“Do you mind if I inquire whether you think it would give you additional personal power in your undertakings, if I managed to make good?”
“Oh, unquestionably!”
“And—if it ever got out—that you had started me on the way up—then this whole investment of yours in my behalf would be a total loss to you?”
Merrick smiled and toyed preoccupiedly with his ashtray.
“Well—no! … Randolph was a bit obsessed, you know. He was for breaking people’s necks if they told of his investments in them. That was going it rather stronger than necessary … Hudson was careful to caution his beneficiaries against telling, and threw every possible safeguard around his investments to protect them from discovery; but I don’t believe he felt they hadn’t been worth doing if the facts leaked out … The really important feature of it is here: if you succeed in expanding your personality, I shall come in on the reward by just as much as I’ve been responsible for it … In the process of expanding yourself, you are almost sure to help somebody else make himself bigger. He, in turn, energizes other people … If you know anything about chemistry, you will be helped by considering this as a process of catalysis … Personality projection is like any other investment. The thing goes on! It earns compound interest. If you were the agent that set it going, the credit’s yours … Some of it will be going at full blast long after you have been declared dead. In actual fact, the real you may be more alive, as to personality energy, fifty years after you’re gone, than when you seem to be at the top of your power!”
“But—if your beneficiary does not succeed in making good on your investment? …”
Merrick shrugged.
“In that case, you can see for yourself that nothing comes of it.”
“But—you tried! Isn’t there any satisfaction to be had of that?”
“Oh, it’s good practice, I suppose … But—if you had spent twenty thousand dollars and six months’ time sinking an oil-shaft, and got nothing but a dry hole, would you have much satisfaction in reflecting that—at all events—you’d tried?”
When they parted at the kerb, Brent said, “May I write to you, sometimes, and report?”
“Glad to have you … But you needn’t try to tell me what you’re doing for anybody else. That’s your affair. Write and tell me if it works—but not what you did to make it work. Do you get me? … Good luck! … Goodbye!”
Bobby went to the Ritz-Carlton for the night, stood for a long time at the counter of the Western Union office in the lobby trying to compose a cable to Vienna, gave it up, bought a few magazines and took the elevator.
Having made himself comfortable in a dressing-gown, he drew up to his desk and wrote:
“Dear Marion: I’ve been racking my brain for a solution to your problem, but nothing comes. You have lost a friend and I see no way for you to regain her at present. I learned tonight that she is in Nice. But I don’t want you to go there seeking a reconciliation, for you wouldn’t do it without making things bad all around. You would be obliged to say that you went to Bellagio as my agent to discover what had happened to her money. I’ve arranged—guided by your report—for the complete untangling of her affairs. She has recovered in full. But the machinery devised to effect this restoration of her property without offence to her is frail enough. I believe and hope it will go, but it won’t stand any wrenches being tossed into it.
“The postscript to your letter broke me all up. She left Bellagio about four, you said … drenching rain … heartsick and betrayed … by you and me—who would have laid down and died for her! … Stuffy little steamer to Como … Probably spent the night there—or maybe caught a train over to Milan … wondering where to go … what to do next! My dear—was there ever a more pitiful state of things? … Consult Jack about this. Ask him if he sees any other way out. If neither you nor he can think of a plan by which you can communicate with her without jeopardizing everything we have tried to do for her, better keep away! I’m devastated over the situation, but—there you are!”
Then he wrote a letter to Helen which he had no intention of mailing, tore it into small bits, undressed, went to bed, tried to read, turned out the light, relaxed.
For a long time it had been his custom, just before dropping off, to attempt an inward look. His corridor—as he called it—was, of course, a mere hallucination developed and encouraged by his own quest of it. He had long since decided that the corridor was but an eccentric property of his own imagination, located somewhere in that No-Man’s-Land between fading consciousness and sleep.
It amused him to search for it, and, by practice, he had been able to arrest the clouding of his consciousness at the exact phase where his curious phantom resided.
The clearness of it depended upon his mood; and his mood—in respect to the corridor—was determined by the projects he happened to be working on in the field of personality projection.
Usually a very thin, faint pencil of promising yellow light streaked down the middle of the corridor’s rough flagging—the flagging was always rough as if paved with cobblestones. There would be but an instant of it. The big doors would part, and the light would shine through … just enough to nourish a great hope.
Tonight—perhaps because of the investment he had made, his intense concentration upon the subject he had endeavoured to make clear to Brent, and the emotional strain incident to both—his mood, he found, was unusually conducive to a materialization of the corridor.
As he neared that grey twilight of consciousness, it came sharply into focus. The doors, instead of parting a little, slowly, tentatively, were opening! The corridor was flooded with a shimmering radiance.
After that, events moved with bewildering swiftness. The corridor suddenly seemed objectified—a thing apart from himself—and he walked into it! A terrific roar deafened him … Finding the blinding glare at the big doors too painful to face, he turned his attention to the objects against the wall, blinking in his effort to accommodate his eyes to the dazzling light.
All endeavours to recall, afterwards, exactly what he saw there were futile. They belonged to a narrowly restricted phase of half-consciousness, and were not to be reconstructed elsewhere. He was left only with a very hazy impression that he had seen his own laboratory—the oven, the black switchboard, the little vice screwed to the table. His diminutive blast-furnace was at top heat. White flames jutted out about the hinges. Doubtless that accounted for the roar. There was also a nebulous recollection left that the door of the five-foot cabinet, containing all the apparatus he had been at such pains to manufacture over a period of many months, stood wide open … He had almost decided, a few days earlier, to dismantle it and have it carted off before some inquisitive colleague in the hospital discovered what an audacious thing he had had in mind, and chaffed him about …
Well—be he waking or sleeping, sane or crazy—there it was!
In the lowest compartment there was a box containing the vacuum tubes; but they were not arranged in the order of the tubes in his cabinet!
He had summoned all his efforts to concentrate on that illusory tube-box, and the exertion aroused him to full consciousness.
Tossing aside the bedclothes, he leaped out drenched with perspiration and trembling so he could barely stand. For an hour he sat at his desk, drawing diagrams of another experimental hookup of his tubes. He was unable to shake off the impression that he was on the edge of discovery. A strange sensation of exultancy possessed him.
Mechanically putting on his street clothes, he went down into the deserted lobby and sought the outer air. For miles and miles he walked, neither knowing nor caring where he went; walked with long strides, seeing nothing; utterly absorbed by the curious experience that still clung to him like a garment … When dawn broke, he found himself down at the ferry-docks.
Returning to the hotel, he bathed, breakfasted, and drove to the station. Securing a compartment, he went to bed and slept dreamlessly all day. When he awoke it was dark, and for a moment he was unable to recall where he was. Then remembrance came, and he smiled broadly. A strange sense of mastery exalted him. He laughed, and recalled Randolph. Randolph had laughed. Randolph had found the grass greener; everything tuned up to a higher key; every sensation more intense. He laughed as Randolph had laughed!
“And once I thought him crazy!”
He sat on the edge of his berth and stared hard at the shiny mahogany walls of his compartment, his eyes wide with the interest of his pleasurable self-analysis. He laughed.
“And once I thought Hudson was crazy!”
The jolting of the trucks over the rail-ends, the clank of chains, and the wail of flanges tortured by a sharp curve, stirred him out of his rhapsody. The sound of his own laughter still echoed in his brain. He rubbed his forehead roughly with the back of his wrist, and swallowed with a dry throat.
“My God!” he groaned. “I wonder if I’m going mad!”