VIII
Haggard from a sleepless night and the experience of more mental agony than he had suspected himself capable of, young Merrick sank dejectedly into a club chair on an early train for Detroit.
In response to the long and excited telegram he had sent her from the railroad station while en route to Tony’s, the night before (he heartily wished, two hours afterward, he had not sent it), Nancy Ashford had wired she would be waiting for him at the Michigan Central depot.
It was the picture of her, radiant with anticipation and bubbling with questions, that he dreaded most. Nancy must not be hurt.
As for himself, he would get over it. Somehow he would be able to accommodate himself to the utter abandonment of his cherished illusions about Doctor Hudson, and the hero-worship that had held him up in his dull, monotonous grind at the Medical School; though, now that the bottom had fallen out of everything, he wondered how he could go back and tread the mill again.
But, however difficult that might be, it was simple enough compared to the pending job of sitting down beside Nancy Ashford and hunting for pleasant words with which to tell her that her sainted Wayne Hudson, to whom she had unrequitedly given her full devotion, was crazy.
He was not even an interesting lunatic. A lunatic, often as not, was a brilliant mind that had blown up under compression—blown up splendidly, with a loud report, the neighbours hurrying with straps and stretchers to collect the debris and lug it off to the madhouse.
No, this man Hudson had not been good enough to himself to explode so that everybody could hear it and know what the big bang meant. He was just a plain nut! … Can you feature it? … Grown-up man … of good standing professionally, respected and admired … toiling interminably over the detailed report of what some wild-eyed crank had told him of impossible experiences, and then going to the enormous bother of concealing that hodgepodge of delusions in a code—a performance worthy the mind of a seventh grade schoolboy playing sleuth with a toy pistol.
Returned from Tony’s, wide awake and exultant, he had resolved, late as it was, to decode a few pages of the journal. He had read patiently at first, with a broad smile of anticipation. Presently he found himself wishing the eccentric author would soon have done with his commonplace preliminaries and settle to business in the disclosure of his big secret—for it would have to be a big one to justify all this elaborate hocus-pocus of the code.
Surely nothing was discoverable, so far as he had gone, that required any thick wall of secrecy. It might be difficult to induce the general public to read it, were it printed in English for free circulation; but to pretend it was a deep mystery was idiotic.
After awhile he had come upon a paragraph that drew down the corners of his mouth and dragged a bitter “What t’ell!” from an oversmoked throat. He pushed the little book aside contemptuously; rose, paced the floor, lighted his pipe, tossed it clatteringly upon the table; undressed and went to bed—but not to sleep.
His disappointment was the most serious jolt of his life.
Never until three months ago had he ever taken any stock in “big moments,” “crucial decisions,” “great renunciations,” “consecrations,” and the like. If people suddenly left off doing one thing and went galloping away in another direction, it was because they had sighted something more to their advantage. As for the legends of Saul and Saint Francis and Joan—well, if there was any substratum of truth in them, the psychiatrists could explain it.
Nor had he ever had any patience with that sticky confectionery of sentimentalism, that daintily perfumed moonshine, which effeminate visionaries referred to as “ideals.” He had always been willing that all such blather should be left to the exploitation of preachers, poets, and the sob sisters.
Lately he had changed his mind about that. The coincidence of his having been saved from the lake at the same hour a valuable life had been lost in it, and at the price of that life, had stampeded him into a grand orgy of sentiment. He could understand Saul and Joan … Hudson had become his ideal, his star, his sun, his totem-pole! … Now it was all over! …
There had been an old story about an idol that had fallen down because it had clay feet. His had tumbled over with vertigo … sick in the head! To have grown to manhood without an “ideal” of any kind; to have espoused one, belatedly, with crusading zeal; to have discovered, after burning all his bridges behind him, that his hero was a sap! … It was a nasty wallop!
He had gouged his hot face into his pillow and decanted his wrath to its bitter lees … It wasn’t that he had any fault to find with Hudson’s penchant for poking a prehensile snout into other people’s affairs with a passionate urge to do his one good deed per day, like the Boy Scout his silly little journal proclaimed him … but … My God! … Hudson wasn’t the first man in all human history who had titillated his ego and busted the buttons off his weskit by doing alms! … What a pother about nothing!
At long last he had drifted off into an uneasy sleep, growling that he had a damned good notion to go on to New York in the morning and hop the first boat for Cherbourg … His passport was still alive … Grandpère would gladly send it to him … Then he wouldn’t have to stop and face Nancy … What a rotten trick that would be! … And Grandpère? … The dear old boy had taken a lot of pride in him lately …
He would be in Detroit now in five minutes. He must be careful not to offend Nancy. Why not hand her the journal and the code-key and make off hurriedly to keep some urgent engagement? He could say his grandfather needed him badly. It would be true enough if he said he himself was sick.
She was waiting for him at the gates, wide-eyed and smiling when he first sighted her from the tunnel; a bit perplexed as he drew nearer … So it was plastered all over his mug, then! … He tried to pull a smile—a sickly smirk he knew it was; slipped an arm through hers; inquired, without meeting her eyes, if she’d had anything to eat, which she hadn’t; told the porter to check his bags; and propelled Nancy to a quiet corner of the station restaurant where he made much ado about helping her with her coat—nervous as a caged fox.
“But I thought you had succeeded, dear.” She followed him with inquiring eyes as he multiplied his little attentions and made no end of trouble for himself trying to find a place for her umbrella. “You don’t resemble a conquering hero. You look more like the man who had set out after a beautiful butterfly, under the impression it was some kind of a bird; and found, after battering its wings to bits, that he had captured a worm.”
Bobby put down the menu, which he had begun to pore over assiduously, and emphasized his rejoinder by planting a long index finger close to her plate.
“Now you’ve said it! I went after a butterfly and came back with a worm!”
“And whose fault was that—the butterfly’s?”
“Take your base, Nancy,” he conceded with a chuckle.
“Take my base—indeed! … What about? … Your wild pitching? … I tell you it was a safe hit and a home run! … But—no matter about the butterfly. Wake up, stupid; and let me into the secret!”
At that he attempted to rally, cleared his throat, made pretence of rolling up his sleeves. He wasn’t going to let Nancy down. Maybe he himself could carry on without the guidance of the Hudson spectre; but Nancy couldn’t. He would save the honour of her precious ghost if he had to profess faith in voodooism, necromancy, and witchcraft!
“I’m tired; that’s all … Up nearly all night. Let’s talk to the waiter first.”
She was not reassured, but willing to be patient.
“It’s simple as addition!” he declared, when the waiter had trotted off. “That is—” pleating the tablecloth with restless fingers, “the mere mechanics of converting the script into readable sentences is easy enough. But—to understand what it’s about, once you’ve done that …”
He broke off suddenly and smiled … By the Lord Harry—he’d been handed his cue—at last! Now he could make his speech! He’d tell her the stuff was too deep for him! That would be infinitely better than to say it was childish piffle!
“Why—how very exciting!” exclaimed Nancy. “Out of one mystery into another!”
Bobby took the book from his pocket and opened it on the table before her, their heads close together. He was smiling now, quite pleased with his decision to let her explain it to him.
“Look! I’ll read you the first page … Easy enough, isn’t it?”
Nancy was ecstatic. She spread her hand over Bobby’s and gripped it hard. Almost too good to be true, wasn’t it? He nodded, adding mentally, “or even entertaining.”
“How far have you gone?” she inquired, leafing the unintelligible pages. “Aren’t you just thrilled to death?”
Bobby had no enthusiasm to match hers, try as he would.
“Over to here … about twenty pages. Thrilled? Well—no; not that, exactly … Just stupefied … It’s over my head, you see … I suppose I’m like your clumsy naturalist chasing a butterfly. I’ve been expecting so deuced much, and have worked so long to pry the lid off this thing that, now it’s off, maybe I’ve damaged it somehow, or perhaps I haven’t the mentality to—”
Nancy clutched his hand again—savagely.
“Look me straight in the eyes, Bobby Merrick! You’ve not been yourself for one instant since you arrived. You can’t put anything over on me! I’ve been all through you with a lantern! You’re trying to keep something back! I won’t have it! Come clean, now—and tell me all about it! What’s the trouble, boy?”
Bobby flushed and hung his head like a naughty child caught in the jam-pot.
“Aw—the stuff’s no good! … Bunk—if you ask me … If anybody else but Doctor Hudson had—I say, Nancy, are you quite sure he really did write this? It isn’t signed, you know.”
“Don’t talk nonsense! … What’s it about?”
“Well—it isn’t exactly religion, I guess; but it reads like those goofy tracts that shabby chaps with dirty whiskers toss into the open window of your car … slush you can have by the ton for a whole lot less than the asking! And why he should have gone to the pains of jiggling the words all out of shape, as if they spelled some precious secret, the good God only knows! If anybody else had written it, I’d say he was all unhooked!”
Nancy had been tapping the table with her fingertips, thoughtfully, impatiently, indignantly, and now explosively.
“How old are you, Bobby?” she snapped.
“Twenty-five-goin’-on-twenty-six,” he recited, in the tone of one six-goin’-on-seven—a pleasantry she failed to acknowledge.
“Well—when Doctor Hudson was just coming into national renown for having performed the first head operation of its kind in the history of surgery, you still had some of your milk teeth to cut and were galloping about the nursery on a stick-horse! When he wrote this ‘bunk,’ you hadn’t learned to wash your own ears! I don’t mean to be too rough with you, sonny; but you need a drubbing, and you’re jolly well going to get it from your Nancy Ashford this day!”
“Go ahead! … I’d rather you were sore at me than—than—”
“Hadn’t nerve enough to finish it, had you? You were trying to say you hoped I wouldn’t discover that Doctor Hudson was a fool … Don’t give yourself any concern about that. I won’t! … I presume you never had your attention called,” she went on, biting her words into bits, “to the psychology of the genius. Why should you, indeed? Freshman medics aren’t troubled much, I presume, with excursions into the rarer altitudes of psychiatry which deal with obsessions. They’re kept too busy peeling the pelts off cadavers; trying to remember which is incas and which is stapes; trying to distinguish carpal from tarsus! … Oh, I know! You needn’t hoity-toity me with your wisdom!”
She suddenly sighted the open-mouthed waiter.
“Here! … If you’re looking for something to amuse you, take this cold coffee away and bring a fresh pot … some that was made this morning—preferably.”
Bobby burst out with a peal of laughter as the fellow paddled away.
“Nancy—you’re a scream! … Do go on!”
“I mean to! … I’m going to give you your first information about the genius-type … The genius won’t pigeonhole! He won’t card-index! He won’t file … And because he won’t, the dull-eyed dolts who hadn’t needed any trimming to fit whatever pack they properly belonged to, think him crazy. They can’t understand him, so—he’s unhooked! He romps away where they can’t follow, so—he’s gone wild! … He bestrides an idea and rides it furiously across country, over ditches and fences, through people’s houses, trampling down fields and gardens, knocking even his best friends down, and never knowing it … never looking back … or caring a tinker’s damn … so long as he can retain his seat on that one tremendous idea!
“Now—our Doctor Hudson was that sort of a person, and he became obsessed with an idea. He conceived a notion … I’m sure I don’t know how he came by it; maybe this book tells; I have hoped it would … that his professional success depended upon certain eccentric philanthropies which had to be kept secret to be effective. That much I managed to guess, long ago … Then the thought occurred to him, apparently, that he would put his theory into such shape that his heirs or successors or admirers might have a go at it. But he wanted to be insured against the ridicule of some pinhead who, pouncing upon it by accident—”
Bobby raised a hand.
“You’re getting rather excited, aren’t you?”
“You find it ridiculous that he employed this silly cipher,” she continued, lowering her voice. “Well—suppose he’d written it in Latin, which he easily could have done without a lexicon; would that have caused you any less bother? … Or Greek! He could have done it in Greek! How much Greek do you know—beyond the letters on your fraternity badge? … He wanted to make somebody dig for it—I tell you—and that was all of a piece with his obsession! It was part of it!”
“You win, Nancy,” admitted Bobby quietly. “You and I think the same thing about Doctor Hudson. We just say it differently; that is all … I said he must be mentally unhooked, and you say he was a genius and that all geniuses are unhooked … Very good … Now we can read the little book together and understand each other—even if we can’t understand the book.”
“I’ll give you a brief digest of what I’ve read so far … Nancy—it isn’t that I begrudge him the time I’ve spent untangling this involved cipher. It’s only that there’s really nothing in it that calls for such mysterious handling. You’ll see!”
“I won’t be sure about that until we’ve read the book—all through.”
Bobby fingered his notes.
“The story begins about a year after the death of Joyce, his first wife. Her long illness had slowed him up; absorbed all the neural energy that should have gone into his professional training. On the edge of failure and in deep depression, he was half-minded to give up surgery and go into business … It occurred to him, one day, that Joyce’s grave should be marked …”
“Ah—there you are!” ejaculated Nancy, with suppressed excitement.
Bobby glanced up, inquiringly.
“That tombstone was a milestone!” she explained, with emotion. “How often, when he wanted to date some event in his experience, it would be ‘shortly after I had erected the little marker for Joyce.’ … Do go on!”
“He went to a concern dealing in memorial stones and selected an inexpensive monument. On the blank form he wrote his wife’s name and the vital dates. The manager asked if he wished a brief epitaph. It seems to have been customary, at that time. Unable, on the spur of the moment, to think of an appropriate sentiment, and eager to close the business at once, he was advised to stroll out into the production department and look about. Perhaps he might see something there that appealed to him.
“So—he went through the factory, where monuments were under construction, and there he accidentally came upon this man Randolph.”
“You speak of this man Randolph as if he figured somewhat in the tale. I never heard of him.”
“Yes, Randolph is by way of being the hero of the piece, as far as I have gone. I leave it to you to say, after you’ve made his acquaintance, whether Randolph is an apostle of light or as mad as the Hatter. Personally, I haven’t any use for him. He makes his début in the story as an exceptionally gifted hypnotist … Turns out to be a sort of—miracle-man.”
“Are you trying to tell me,” demanded Nancy, “that Wayne Hudson took an interest in a person of that sort?”
“Well—you shall see … This Randolph fellow was in a studio partitioned off from the main production room. He was not a mere stonecutter, but a sculptor—an uncommonly good one … Artist type. The piece he was doing, according to the journal, was a triumphant angelic figure, heroic size, gracefully poised on a marble pedestal, altar-shaped; an exquisitely modelled hand shading the eyes which gazed toward the far horizon, entranced by some distant radiance … It had all the combined delicacy and strength of a Canova—”
“Are you quoting?”
“Yes; it’s in the book—just that way.”
“But Doctor Hudson knew practically nothing about art!”
“He may have known more about it than you thought. He was heavily influenced by this crazy Randolph, as you shall see; and Randolph was a consummate artist.”
“Oh, I wonder—do you suppose it could have been Clive Randolph? You know—the sculptor who did that group of children in the Metropolitan. He has been dead for years. Why, Bobby, I do believe he used to live here in Detroit!”
“Likely as not.” He put his pencilled notes down on the table and sat for some time with half-closed eyes, absorbed. “Another genius,” he mumbled. “Nancy, geniuses do have a right to be batty, don’t they?”
“Certainly!” Nancy glowed. Bobby was seeing the light.
He took up his memorandum.
“Well, on the face of this altar-shaped pedestal was engraved, in high relief, in ecclesiastical letters, these words: ‘Thanks Be to God Who Giveth Us the Victory.’ ”
Nancy murmured that she thought it odd.
“How do you mean ‘odd’? It’s in the Bible somewhere, isn’t it?”
“Doubtless,” she conceded, with a nervous laugh. “It could be in the Bible, almost anywhere, and still be odd, couldn’t it? But what I mean is that it seems queer to find Doctor Hudson reciting a quotation from the Bible. He wasn’t the tiniest mite religious!”
“Don’t you be too sure about that!” he warned.
“Why, Bobby, he was not only unconcerned; he was almost contemptuous of religious organizations; hadn’t been inside a church, except at weddings, for twenty years. He was soured on churches as a small boy; told me once—it was when some quite dreadful evangelist was here and the papers were full of his cheap vulgarities—that the churches in his village were forever haranguing people to ‘come apart from the world,’ when they had nothing to offer in exchange for such renunciation but the vestigial remains of medieval superstitions!”
“But, couldn’t he have been interested in—in the supernatural without being a church adherent?”
“Well, would he? … It isn’t customary.”
“Oh, well! if you propose to analyze this thing in the light of what’s customary, let’s go to the football game and quit torturing ourselves … I ask you! … Is it customary for a man to conduct his ordinary charities by stealth; scampering, squirrel-fashion, into his hole and pulling the hole in after him, at the approach of anyone who might discover he had done somebody a good turn? Is it customary for a man to write the story of his madness in a kiddish cipher? I’ll tell you what he was! … one of these old-time mystics! … believed in fairies … had visions … played with the angels!”
“Bobby Merrick—you’re c‑r‑a‑z‑y!”
“No—not yet; but I’ve a queer feeling I’m going to be.”
Nancy pushed back her plate and impatiently waved the waiter away when he asked if everything wasn’t all right.
“No—” Bobby slowly shook his head, judicially. “It wasn’t really religion that he had; not what I think of as religion, anyway. I don’t pretend to know much about it, but isn’t religion just a more or less perfunctory acceptance of a lot of old myths abstracted from the folklore of the Jews; tries to make people say they believe this and that about God; imagines it knows what God wants humanity to do—sometimes waiting sadly for mankind to do it, and at other times pushing people about so that they’ve got to do it, willy-nilly; takes up subscriptions to send barkers to the so-called heathen, warning them they’ll seethe in hell if they don’t leave off calling their God whatever-it-is and call Him something else?”
Nancy laughed.
“It isn’t that bad, Bobby. It couldn’t possibly be that silly. People do get a lot of comfort out of their religion, or they wouldn’t stick to it.”
“Comfort!” he echoed. “I’m glad you used that word. I believe I can tell you now what I think was the difference between this stuff that Doctor Hudson had—and the conventional sort of religion. Ordinary religion is intended to bring comfort. Believe such-and-such, and have comfort, peace, assurance that all is well and a Great Somebody is looking after things. Well—this religion that Hudson had certainly brought him no comfort! … Rode him like the Old Man o’ the Sea … lashed him on … hounded him by day and haunted him by night … worked him like a slave … obsessed him!”
“He could have given it up, couldn’t he, if it annoyed him?”
“Ah—there you are! Now you’ve touched the vital spot! No! He couldn’t give it up because it furnished his motive power! It was what kept him going! … Says it made him—professionally!”
“I’m afraid you’ve let this book get horribly on your nerves, Bobby.” Nancy drew on her gloves. “Let us go out to Brightwood, where we’ll not be interrupted, and see what it’s all about.”
Bobby was slow to rise.
“Nancy, my whole attitude towards this matter is changing, since talking it over with you. I don’t mind telling you I was never so disgusted or disappointed in my life as last night when I tried to read this stuff. But that was because I expected it to be a normal account of a normal man’s experiences. And when I found it wasn’t normal, well—I committed the usual blunder of pronouncing it silly!”
Nancy was radiant.
“Exactly! … So long as he was saying the customary thing, the normal thing, the thing you understood, he was sane! When he got to the unusual, the thing you did not understand, he was crazy! … That’s the way the average mind operates; but you daren’t make snap judgment like that, for you’re to be dealing with queer heads all your life!”
Throughout the long taxi drive to the hospital, their conversation studiously avoided the mystery they had confronted. They talked of his medical course. What did he like best? She shuddered when he spoke of his delight in anatomy.
“One gets used to that,” he assured her. “And old Huber’s a prince! He handles those poor cadavers as if they were our relatives. I’ll bet if some of them had been given as much tender consideration while alive as Huber gives them in the lab, they might have lived longer … Buries their ashes, Huber does, at the end of the semester … conventional interment—bell, book and clergy … Contends that these paupers and idiots and criminals, however much they may have burdened their communities while they lived, have so completely discharged their obligation to society by their service in the lab, that they deserve honourable burial … A fine old boy is Huber, believe me!”
The talk shifted to Nancy’s affairs. She admitted she was worried. Rumour had it that Joyce Hudson was quite out of bounds; that Mrs. Hudson, apparently, could do nothing with her any more. She was being seen at the wrong places, with the wrong people.
“Do you suppose there is anything you could do about it, Bobby? Joyce is still your friend, isn’t she?”
“I presume.” His tone lacked interest. “I haven’t seen her for nearly a year, you know.”
“It may be just a notion of mine, but I always thought Joyce was a little in love with you, Bobby.”
His gesture denied it.
“She isn’t; but—suppose she was! … Would that be a good reason for my mixing in, over there? I’m not in love with her. No—I don’t believe my obligation to Doctor Hudson involves my serving in loco parentis to his daughter.”
“I’m not so sure it doesn’t,” reflected Nancy. “You’ve had an ambition to finish out his life for him, and part of his job was Joyce. There were times when all of his job was Joyce! You’ve no idea how much he gave up for her! Why, he even married—to keep her straight!”
“That shouldn’t have been much of a sacrifice.” Bobby grinned.
“Have you ever seen her—since?”
“Never tried to.”
“Still think about her sometimes?”
“Why do you want to know?” His tone hinted that he would like to close the door between them—not rudely, but—to close it, nevertheless; and, prompt to feel it, Nancy disclaimed her right to inquire.
“Forgive me, won’t you? I haven’t anything to do, you know, but amuse myself wondering about things like that.”
“Then I mustn’t do you out of your occupation.”
Nancy hung their coats in her closet, drew up a chair beside him, and together they faced the book again, agreeing that she should read the script, letter by letter, while Bobby arranged it into words.
“First, let me finish telling you the part I have already deciphered,” he said, putting down his pencil. “Randolph pointed to the epitaph and inquired, ‘How do you like this one?’
“ ‘Means nothing to me!’ replied Doctor Hudson. ‘If there is a God, He probably has no more interest in any man’s so-called victory, which can always be circumstantially explained, than in the victory of a cabbage that does well in a favourable soil.’
“ ‘Then you’re related to God same as a cabbage!’ chuckled Randolph. ‘That’s good!’
“He resumed his work, deftly tapping his chisel. ‘I used to think that,’ he went on, talking half to himself. ‘Made a little experiment, and changed my mind about it.’ He put down his mallet, leaned far forward, and, cupping his mouth with both hands, confided, in a mysterious tone, ‘I’ve been on the line!’ ”
“He must have been crazy!” Nancy muttered.
“Tut, tut! … What’s come of your genius theory? You’re willing Doctor Hudson should be one—why not Randolph?”
“Quite right! Go on! … But he does sound a little off, doesn’t he?”
“Decidedly! … And dangerously, I should say! … The most cold-blooded, calculating, sacrilegious lunatic you ever met! … I’ll show you. Here is the exact copy of my translation! Listen to this:
He did not have the tone or stance of a fanatic; spoke quietly; had none of the usual tricks by which aberrations are readily identified; talked well, with absolute self-containment. “Victory? Well—rather! I now have everything I want and can do anything I wish! … So can you! … So can anybody! All you have to do is follow the rules! There’s a formula, you know! I came upon it by accident!” He took up his chisel again.
He was a queer one. I felt shy and embarrassed. Clearly, he was cracked, but his manner denied it. I tried to remember he was an artist, with permission to be eccentric; but this was more than an eccentricity. He made me shivery. I wanted to get away. So—I was backing through his doorway when he called, “Doctor—do you have victory?”
“Victory over what?” I demanded, impatiently … I had not told him I was discouraged; hadn’t mentioned I was a doctor … I never did find out how he guessed that—the question being eclipsed by more important mysteries.
“Oh—over anything—everything! Listen!” He climbed swiftly down from his scaffolding, and gliding stealthily toward me as if he had some great secret to impart he whispered into my ear—his hand firmly gripping my coat-lapel, somewhat to my own anxiety—“Would you like to be the best doctor in this town?”
So—then I knew he was crazy, and I began tugging myself loose.
“Come to my house, tonight, about nine o’clock,” he said, handing me his card, “and I’ll tell you what you want to know!”
I must have looked dazed, for he laughed hilariously, as he climbed up again. I laughed too as I reached the street—the epitaph matter having completely left my mind for the time. I had never heard so much nonsense in my life. “Like hell,” I growled, as I started my car, “will I waste an evening with that fool!”
“This writing is authentic, Bobby.”
At nine o’clock, I was at Randolph’s door … When these words are read I shall be unable to answer any queries as to my motive in going there that night. And that will be fortunate; for I have no explanation further than to say (and this will unquestionably be regarded with distrust and disappointment) that I was propelled there against my wishes. I had no thought of going; went in response to some urge over which I had no control. … I was down town to dinner, that evening; returned home at eight; went immediately to bed—quite contrary to my custom, for I never retired before midnight—and began reading a book, unable to concentrate on a line of it. I could not keep my eyes off the clock. It ticked louder and louder and my heart beat faster and faster until the two of them seemed synchronized. At length, becoming so nervous I could no longer contain myself, I rose, dressed hastily, dashed out for my car, and drove to Randolph’s address without regard to boulevard stops or angry traffic officers. My mouth was dry, my heart thumping.
“How do you like it—far as we’ve gone?” he asked.
Nancy’s elbows rested heavily on the desk, her clenched fists digging deeply into her cheeks.
“Why, Bobby—isn’t this just awful?” she whispered. “It’s tragic!”
“You’ll think so—presently. It hasn’t begun to get awful yet!”
His eyes travelled back to his copy.
“You had not intended to come, had you?” inquired Randolph, taking my hat.
“No!” I replied, sourly.
“That’s what I feared,” he said, gently, “but I felt so sure you needed to have a talk with me that I—”
“That is what I want to know!” I demanded. “What did you do?”
He grinned slyly, rubbed his hands together softly, satisfiedly, and said, “Well—I earnestly wanted you here; and, as I told you, this morning, whatever I earnestly want—it comes! I wanted you here! You came!”
He motioned me to a seat—I was glad enough to accept it for my knees were wobbly—in a living-room furnished in exquisite taste. His daughter, whom he had gracefully presented, promptly excused herself, and left us alone. Offering me a cigar, he leisurely filled a long-stemmed churchwarden pipe for himself, and drew his chair closer. In his velvet jacket, at his ease, he was all artist; quite grizzled, wore a short Van Dyke beard; had a clear, clean, grey eye that came at you a bit shyly and tentatively, but left you no way of escape.
He lost no time in preliminary manoeuvres. Reaching to a small book-table, at his elbow, he took up a limp-leather Bible. I knew then that I was in for it. Impetuously, I resolved upon an immediate, if inglorious, exit. Savagely, I put up a protesting hand and said firmly, “Now—if it’s that, I don’t care to hear about it!”
“See?” shouted Nancy. “What did I tell you?”
To my surprise, he put the book back on the table, and calmly puffed at his pipe, thoughtfully, for a while; then replied, “Well—neither am I—except as it’s really an important history of a great religious system. Quite useful, I presume; but I’m not specially interested in it—except one page—” he blew a few smoke rings, his head tilted far back against his tall chair “—and I have cut that page out … I just wanted you to see this particular copy of the Bible. I was about to say—when you plunged in with your impatient remark—that this copy of the Bible lacks the secret formula for power. I keep that one page elsewhere!”
“What’s on it?” I inquired, annoyed at my own confession of interest.
“Oh—” he replied casually, “it’s just the rules for getting whatever you want, and doing whatever you wish to do, and being whatever you would like to be. But—you’re not interested in that; so we’ll talk about something else.”
“What is on that page?” I demanded—my voice sounding rather shrill.
“Do you really want to know?” he challenged, leaning forward and fixing me intently with his gaze.
“Yes!” I barked.
His next words came slowly, incisively, single-file.
“More-than-you-have-ever-wanted-to-know-anything-before?”
“Yes!” I admitted—and meant it.
“Say it!” he commanded.
I repeated it: “More-than-I-have-ever-wanted-to-know-anything-before!”
His manner changed instantly.
“Good! Now we can talk!”
He went down into an inside pocket and produced a morocco wallet. From the wallet, he extracted a folded page. I read it, and he carefully interpreted its meaning.
Nancy’s eyes were a study, when Bobby stopped reading to search her face.
“Are you prepared now for a complete knockout?” he inquired. “If so—I’ll give you the next paragraph.”
I did not leave Randolph’s house until four o’clock, and when I finally went out into the dark, considerably shaken, I was aware that my life would never be the same again. Whatever of success has come to me in my profession dates from that hour and can be explained in terms of the mysterious potentiality which Randolph communicated to me that night.
There was a long silence between them.
“That’s almost as far as I’ve gone,” said Bobby.
“Far enough—I should say!” Nancy’s deep sigh was ominous of dejection.
“Then let’s call it a day.” He rose, and glanced at his watch. “You and I can’t help knowing that this is something Doctor Hudson must have written when he was under very heavy pressure of work; half dead on his feet; seeing things; hearing voices. Perhaps we shouldn’t be reading it at all. Maybe it isn’t fair to his memory. How about giving it up—and forgetting we ever went this far into it?”
Nancy tapped the table, thoughtfully, with her fingertips.
“I wonder what was on that page!”
He laughed.
“That sounds like Doctor Hudson! That was what he wanted to know. Now it’s your question! I’m bound to confess I’d like to know too.” He gripped her arm in strong fingers. “And—no matter how stiffly we revolt against this thing, we’re sure to be sneaking back to it, one at a time, to investigate; so—perhaps we should be honest with each other, and look into it now! Are you willing?”
She nodded, without looking up.
“Take warning! It’s likely to make us as nutty as he was!”
Lighting a cigarette, Bobby strolled to the window, hands in pockets. He turned, and leaning on the windowsill, faced her studiously.
“Not me! I’m not going to do it. I can’t afford to dabble in such stuff. It isn’t good for me. I had no idea I could be so impressionable toward this sort of thing. You can go into it, if you want to … I’m out!” He dismissed it peremptorily, with widespread fingers.
Nancy’s voice was husky.
“You’ll not be able to get away from it! You’re too far in! … And you know it! … It’s got you! … I know it’s got me! I understand now why he went to the Randolph house, that night! There’s something—something sort of inevitable about it! … A form of insanity, maybe; but—once it beckons to you, it’s got you! You may as well come along—first as last! … It has curious, invisible tentacles that reach out and wrap their feelers about you … and draw you up … and into … and drag you along …”
“Stop it, Nancy! … That’s ridiculous!”
Young Watson could hardly have chosen a less opportune moment to put his head in. Mrs. Ashford had a caller, and it was clear that both hostess and guest were labouring under an unusual mental tension … having something of a storm, indeed! Realizing he was de trop, he was for making a hasty retreat, when Nancy recalled him.
“Come on in! You remember Mr. Merrick.”
“Quite!” extending his hand. “I shall always remember you as putting up the gamest fight with pneumonia that I ever watched! And now, I hear, you’re having a battle with old man Gray.”
Turning to Mrs. Ashford, he stated his errand:
“Your Mr. Folsom is rapidly slipping out. In an hour or two he will be quite unconscious. He inquired for you a few minutes ago. Perhaps you will want to run in and see him. There seems to be none of his people in town.”
Murmuring regret, Nancy rose to go.
“Will you wait for me?”
Merrick nodded.
“I’ll go on with this. Take your time. You’ll find me here when you come back.”
The door closed softly behind them.
I reached out my hand greedily for the page Randolph had unfolded, but he shook his head.
“Not just yet,” he said, smiling at my eagerness. “I mean to let you see it; but I must tell you something about it, first. This page contains the rules for generating that mysterious power I mentioned. By following these instructions to the letter, you can have anything you want, do anything you wish to do, be whatever you would like to be. I have tried it. It works. It worked for me. It will work for you!”
Combined impatience and incredulity brought a chuckle from me which he did not resent.
“You saw that piece I was working on when you came in, this morning?”
“Beautiful!” I exclaimed—sincerely.
“You liked it that much?” He was pleased with my enthusiasm.
“Nothing short of a masterpiece!”
“Perhaps I should be more grateful for that compliment, doctor; but I really have had very little to do with it … You may be interested to learn that I was an ordinary stonecutter until about three years ago, hacking out stamped letters with a compression chisel. From my youth, I had cherished an ambition to do something important in stone. But there was never any money for training; never any time for experiment. Such crude and hasty attempts as I had made, from time to time, had netted nothing but discouragement.
“One day, I went to the church my little girl attended, and heard a preacher read what is on this page. It evidently meant nothing to him, for he read it in a dull, monotonous chant. And the congregation sat glassy-eyed, the words apparently making no impression. As for me, I was profoundly stirred. The remainder of the hour was torture, for I wanted to get out where I could think.
“Hurrying home to our bare little house, I found—with considerable difficulty, for I was not familiar with the Bible—that page from which the minister had read. There it was—in black and white—the exact process for achieving power to do, be, and have what you want! I experimented.”
Nancy’s face, sober and troubled, appeared at the door.
“Bobby,” she said softly, “I don’t like to leave you alone so long, but my patient seems to want a hand to hold. I’m afraid I must stay with him a little while.”
“Quite proper,” he agreed, with more than a glance at her. “Stay with him and don’t worry about me. I may have something very important to tell you when you come back. It looks as if the big mystery may be cleared up now at any minute.”
She hesitated, and was about to ask a question; but, seeing how complete was his absorption, withdrew and quietly closed the door.
With that, Randolph handed me the magic page. Some twenty lines of it were heavily underscored in red ink. In silence he puffed his pipe while my eye traversed the cryptic paragraphs, and when I looked up, inquiringly, he said:
“Of course, you will not realize the full importance of all this, instantly. It seems simple because it was spoken dispassionately, with no oratorical bombast or prefatory warning that the formula he was about to state was the key to power!”
Edging his chair closer to mine, he laid a long hand on my knee and looked me squarely in the eyes.
“Doctor Hudson—if you had a small, inadequate brick house, and decided to give yourself more room, what would you need for your building? … More brick … If you had a small, inadequate steam-engine, you would want more steel to construct larger cylinders—not a different kind of steel to house a different kind of steam, but merely more room for expansion … Now—if you had a small, inadequate personality, and wanted to give it a chance to be something more important, where would you find the building materials?”
He seemed waiting for a reply, so I humoured him.
“Well—according to the drift of your argument, I presume I would have to build it out of other personalities. Is that what you’re driving at?”
“Pre‑cisely!” he shouted. “But—not ‘out of!’ … Into! … Glad you said that, though; for it gives me a chance to show you the exact difference between the right and wrong methods of making use of other people’s personalities in improving one’s own … Everybody is aware, instinctively, that his personality is modified by others. Most people go about imitating various scraps and phases of the personalities that have attracted them—copying one man’s walk, another’s accent, another’s laugh, another’s trick of gesture—making mere monkeys of themselves … This theory I am talking about doesn’t ask you to build your personality out of other personalities, but into them!”
“I’m afraid all that’s too deep for me,” I admitted befuddledly.
He rose and stamped back and forth in front of the grate, shaking his shaggy mop of grizzled hair, and waving his long-stemmed pipe as if trying to conjure a better explanation.
“See here! You know all about blood transfusion. That’s in your line. Superb! … One man puts his life into another man … Doctor—how do you accomplish a blood transfusion? Tell me in detail!”
Merrick glanced up as the door opened.
“Is he gone?”
Nancy nodded, soberly.
“What has been happening since I left?” she asked, drawing up a chair beside him.
He pushed his notes toward her and watched her face as she read.
“Just what is the best process of blood transfusion? Let’s see how much you know!”
“Well—it’s simple enough, except for one obstacle. The blood must be kept from coagulation as it passes from the donor to the recipient. Even when the artery and the vein are attached by a little cannula, the blood soon clogs the glass; so, to avoid that stoppage, the vein of the recipient is passed through the cannula and cuffed back over the end of it. Then the cannula, carrying the vein, is inserted into the artery of the donor. The point is, you see, to insure against any outside contact.”
“Bobby—what was on that page?”
“I haven’t learned yet.”
“Do you think he is ever going to tell us?”
“He’s got to, sooner or later. Let’s read on. I imagine we’re close to it now.”
Nancy took the pencil and began to copy from his rapid dictation.
I explained the principles of transfusion, briefly, and Randolph seemed mightily pleased, especially with that feature of it which concerned the problem of coagulation.
“Bright boy—Bobby!” cried Nancy. “You did know, didn’t you?”
He acknowledged her sally with a grimace and continued dictating.
“You will notice there,” pointing to the page in my hand, “that this first step toward the achievement of power is an expansion—a projection of one’s self into other personalities. You will see that it has to be done with such absolute secrecy that if, by any chance, the contact is not immediate and direct—if, by any chance, there is a leak along the line of transfer—the whole effect of it is wasted! You have to do it so stealthily that even your own left hand—”
Nancy tossed her pencil down on the desk, and relaxed in her chair.
“Bobby! I’ve got it! I can find the page!”
“Is there a Bible handy?”
“I’m afraid I haven’t one, dear.”
“Well—that can come later, then. Continue!”
Randolph returned to his chair, and went on, in a lowered voice:
“Hudson—the first time I tried it—I can tell you the incident freely because nothing ever came of it, although it had cost me more than I could afford, at the time, to do it—the chap was so grateful he told a neighbour of mine, in spite of my swearing him in. He had been out of work and there had been a long run of sickness in the family, and he was too shabby and down at heel to make a presentable appearance in asking for a job. I outfitted him. He told it. A neighbour felicitated me, next day. So there was more than sixty dollars of my hard-earned cash squandered!”
“Squandered!” I shouted, in amazement. “How squandered? Didn’t he get the job?”
Randolph sighed.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “He found a job. I was glad enough for that, of course. But—that didn’t do me any good! You’d better believe—the next time I made an outlay I informed the fellow that if I ever heard of his telling anybody, I would break his neck.”
“Did you ever hear of anything more diabolical?” broke in Nancy, indignantly. “Can you imagine such fiendish selfishness? … Just doing it to benefit himself! Not even willing the other fellow should be grateful! … And yet he thought he was getting himself connected with God, that way! … It gives you the creeps!”
“Well—keep it in mind he’s obsessed with a delusion.”
“Possessed of a devil—I’d rather believe!”
“Maybe Doctor Hudson will explain it … Let’s proceed.”
He laughed merrily at the remembrance of the incident.
“The man thought I was crazy!” he added, wiping his eyes.
“And you weren’t?” I inquired in a tone that sobered him.
“Really—it does sound foolish, doesn’t it? I mean—when you first hear of it. I don’t wonder you’re perplexed.”
“I am worse than perplexed,” I admitted, bluntly. “I’m disgusted!”
“You and me—both!” interpolated Bobby, under his breath.
“You might well be,” admitted Randolph, “if I were trying to get power, that way, to stack up a lot of money for my own pleasure. All I wanted was the effective release of my latent ability to do something fine! … And, as for being disgusted because I requested the man not to tell anybody what I had done for him, if that offends you, you wouldn’t like the Lord himself! … For he often said that to people he had helped.”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” I said … “Not very well acquainted with what he said … Go ahead with your story.”
“Thanks … But, first let me lead you just a little farther into the general philosophy of this … On the night of the day I made my first successful projection of my personality—I cannot tell you what that was—I dare not—I went literally into a closet in my house, and shut the door. That’s the next step in the programme, as you have read there on that page. You see—I was very much in earnest about this matter; and, having already bungled one attempt, I was resolved to obey the rules to the letter … Later, I discovered that the principle will work elsewhere than in a closet. Just so you’re insulated.”
“Oh—Randolph—for God’s sake!” I exploded. “What manner of wild talk is this?”
“Good!” interrupted Nancy. “It was high time he called him!”
“I confess I can’t understand,” said Randolph, impatiently, “why you find this so hard to accept! Why—it’s in line with our experience of every other energy we use! Either we meet its terms, or we don’t get the power. What did Volta’s battery or Faraday’s dynamo amount to, practically, until Du Fay discovered an insulation that would protect the current from being dissipated through contacts with other things than the object to be energized? … Most personalities are just grounded! That’s all that ails them!
“So, I went into a closet; shut the door; closed my eyes; quietly put myself into a spiritually receptive mood; and said, confidently, addressing the Major Personality—I have fulfilled all the conditions required of me for receiving power! I am ready to have it! I want it! I want the capacity to do just one creditable work of statuary!
“Now—you may be inclined to believe that I experienced only a queer delusion, at that moment. As a scientific man, you may think that my mental state can easily be accounted for by principles well-known to psychology. If you think that, I have no objection. The fact that a process of achieving power by the expansion of the human personality admits of an explanation, in scientific terms, does not damage its value at all, in my opinion. I dare say the time will come when this matter is made a subject of scientific inquiry.
“But—whether it is explicable or not, I can truthfully assure you that upon finishing my experiment in that closet, I received—as definitely as one receives a shock from an electrode, or a sudden glare of light by opening a tightly-shuttered room—a strange inner illumination!
“It was late in the night. I came out of that dark, stifling little closet with a curious sense of mastery. It put me erect, flexed the muscles of my jaw, made my step resilient. I wanted to laugh! I tried to sleep; and, failing of it, walked the streets until dawn. At eight-thirty, I approached the manager of the factory and asked for six months’ leave. When he inquired my reason, I told him I had it in mind to attempt a piece of statuary.
“Something we might use, perhaps?” he asked.
“I am confident of it,” I said, surprised at my own audacity. It was enough that I had determined to survive somehow, without wages, for six months; but now I had made an extravagant promise to the manager. He was thoughtful for a while and then said:
“ ‘I’ll give you a chance to try it. For the present, you are to have your usual pay, and a studio to yourself. If you produce something we can place, you will share in the sale. Your hours will be your own business. I should be glad if you succeeded.’
“I began work at once in a flutter of excitement. The clay seemed alive in my hands! That first day was a revelation. It was as if I had never really lived before! All colours were more vivid. I want you to remember that, Hudson. See if you have the same reaction. Grass is greener; the sky is bluer; you hear the birds more distinctly. It sharpens the senses—like cocaine.
“That night, I went into my closet again, and was immediately conscious of a peculiar intimacy between myself and That Other; but it was not so dynamic as on the previous night. I decided that if I was to get any more power that way, I would have to make some further adjustments of my own spiritual equipment.
“That was on a Friday, the tenth of June. On the first day of September, I invited the manager in to see the cast I had made. He looked at it for a long time without any remark. Then he said, quietly, ‘I have some people who may be interested in this.’
“It was the figure of a child, a chubby little fellow about four years old. The boy was posed on one knee. He had just raised up from his play with a little dog that stood tensely alert, in front of him, with a ball in his mouth, waiting for the child to notice him. The boy’s shirt was open at the throat. His tight little knickers were buttoned to broad suspenders. The legs were bare to the knee. He was looking straight aloft, his little face all squinted up with baffled amazement, wonderment, curiosity. His small square hand shaded his eyes against a light almost too bright for him, the head tilted at an angle indicating that he had heard something he could not quite understand and was listening for it to be repeated.
“The next afternoon, the manager’s clients came in—a man and his wife. She was in black. They had recently lost their little boy. She cried at first, heart-breakingly. But, after a while, she smiled. It made me very happy when she smiled. I knew then that I had been able to express my thought.
“I was told to go on with my project and put it into white marble … Quite incidentally, the people adopted the boy I had used for a model.”
It was about four o’clock when I left Randolph’s house that night. I was in a grand state of mystification. I went home resolved that I would make an experiment similar to his. Before I went to bed, I tried to project my thoughts to some remote spiritual source, but was conscious of no reaction whatsoever. In the morning I decided that I had been most outrageously imposed upon by an eccentric and scowled at my own reflection in my shaving-mirror. Nobody but a visionary could do these things with any hope of success, and I was, by training and temperament, a materialist and a very cold-blooded one, at that. All that day, however, I was aware of being on a quiet, unrelenting search for some suitable clinical material to be used for an experiment in the dynamics of personality-projection … The strangest feature of my mood, however, was the fact that the power I had begun, rather vaguely, to grope for—under Randolph’s urging—was not the mere satisfaction of an ambition to make myself important or minister to my own vanity … For the first time, my profession seemed to me not as a weapon of self-defence but a means of releasing myself!
The last thing Randolph said to me, at the door, was this caution: “Be careful how you go into this, my friend! I do not know the penalties this energy exacts when misused … I’ve no notion what dreadful thing might have happened to the Galilean if he had turned those stones into bread! … But, I warn you! … If you’re thinking of going into this to feather your own nest, you’d better never give it another thought … I’m not sure—but I think it’s terribly dangerous stuff to fool with!”
My own experiences are hereinafter set forth as possible aids to whomever has had the curiosity to translate this journal. I trust I have made it quite clear why I have chosen this peculiar method of passing it along. Had I ventured to report my experiments, it would have been at the expense of my reputation for sanity. I do not know of a single friend to whom I could have told these things without putting an unpleasant constraint between us. It has been a hard secret to keep. It is equally hard, I am discovering, to confide—even with the realization that these words are unlikely to be read during my lifetime. I dislike the idea of being thought a fool—dead or alive.
You—whoever you are—may be inclined to read on—perhaps personally interested in making an experiment; perhaps just curious. I wonder—would it be asking an unreasonable favour—if you would not consent to stop, at this point, if you are smiling? … You see, some of these experiences of mine have meant a great deal to me, emotionally. I don’t believe I should want them laughed at … If the thing hasn’t gripped you a little by now, put it down, please, and think no more about it … If, however, you seriously wish to proceed, let me counsel you, as Randolph counselled me, that you are taking hold of high tension! Once you have touched it, you will never be able to let go … If you are of the temperament that demands self-indulgence to keep you happy and confident enough to do your work—and many inestimably valuable people are so built and cannot help it any more than tall men can help being tall—leave all this alone, and go your way! … For if you make an excursion into this, you’re bound! It will plaster a mortgage on everything you think you own, and commandeer your time when you might prefer to be using it for yourself … It is very expensive … It took the man who discovered it to a cross at the age of thirty-three!
Young Merrick pushed back the papers and turned slowly to face Nancy but their eyes did not meet. They felt strangely embarrassed in each other’s presence, and sat for many minutes in silence … Bobby spoke.
“ ‘Bound,’ he said. ‘Once you go into it, you’re bound.’ Hudson has had me bound ever since he died! … He should have been content with that.”
Nancy rose and rested her capable hands on his shoulders.
“It’s a good place to stop, wouldn’t you say?”
He agreed. Perhaps they might have an hour or two together tomorrow. He had half promised his grandfather he would be out for dinner. Tom Masterson had talked of going, too.
“Are you meaning to take the book along?”
“I’ll match you for it!”
“Heads!”
He slapped a coin on his wrist.
“Sorry, Nancy … I’ll bring it back tomorrow.”