"Long miles above cloud-bank and blast,And many miles above the sea,I watch you rise majesticallyFeeling your chilly light at last—Cold beauty in the way you castSplit silver fragments on the waves,As if this planet's life were past,And all men peaceful in their graves."
"Long miles above cloud-bank and blast,And many miles above the sea,I watch you rise majesticallyFeeling your chilly light at last—Cold beauty in the way you castSplit silver fragments on the waves,As if this planet's life were past,And all men peaceful in their graves."
"Long miles above cloud-bank and blast,
And many miles above the sea,
I watch you rise majestically
Feeling your chilly light at last—
Cold beauty in the way you cast
Split silver fragments on the waves,
As if this planet's life were past,
And all men peaceful in their graves."
Pat was silent for a moment as he paused, then she murmured a low phrase. "Oh, I love you, Nick!" she said.
"And I you, dear," he responded. "Have we decided anything? Are we—going through with it?"
"I've not faltered," she said soberly. "I meant it, Nick. Without you, life would be as empty as that airless void you speak of. I'm not afraid. What's there to be afraid of?"
"Only the transition, Pat. That and the unknown—but no situation could possibly be more terrible than our present one. Itcouldn'tbe! Oblivion, annihilation—they're preferable, aren't they?"
"Oh, yes! Nothing I can imagine could be other than a change for the better."
"Then let's face it!" His voice took on a note of determination. "I've thought to face it a dozen times before this, and each time I've hesitated. The hesitation of a coward, Pat."
"You're no coward, dear. It was that illusion of hope; that always weakens one. No one's strong who hasn't given up hope."
"Then," he repeated, "let's face it!"
"How, Nick?"
"My father has left us the means. There in the cabinet are a hundred deaths—swift ones, lingering ones, painful, and easy! I don't know one from the other; our choice must be blind." He strode over to the case, sending slivers of glass from the shattered front glistening along the floor. "I'd choose an easy one, Dear, if I knew, for your sake. Euthanasia!"
He stared hesitantly at the files of mysterious drugs with their incomprehensible labels.
Suddenly the scene appeared humorous to the girl, queerly funny, in some unnatural horrible fashion. Her nerves, overstrained for hours, were on the verge of breaking; without realization of it, she had come to the border of hysteria.
"Shopping for death!" she choked, trying to suppress the wild laughter that beat in her throat. "Which one's most suitable? Which one's most becoming? Which one"—an hysterical laughing sob shook her—"will wear the longest?"
He turned, gazing at her with an illogical concern in his face.
"What's the difference?" she cried wildly. "I don't care—painful or pleasant, it all ends in the same grave! Close your eyes and choose!"
Suddenly he was holding her in his arms again, and she was sobbing, clinging to him frantically. She was miserably unstrung; her body shook under the impact of her gasping breath. Then gradually, she quieted, and was silent against him.
"We've been mad!" he murmured. "It's been an insane idea—for me to inflict this on you, Pat. Do you think I could consider the destruction of your beauty, Dear? I've been lying to myself, stifling my judgment with poetic imagery, when all the while it was just that I'm afraid to face the thing alone!"
"No," she murmured, burying her face against his shoulder. "I'm the coward, Nick. I'm the one that's frightened, and I'm the one that broke down! It's just been—too much, this evening; I'm all right now."
"But we'll not go through withthis, Pat!"
"But we will! It's better than life without you, Dear. We've argued and argued, and at last forgotten the one truth, the one thing I'll never retract: I can't face living without you, Nick! I can't!"
He brushed his hand wearily before his eyes. "Back at the starting point," he muttered. "All right, Honey. So be it!"
He strode again to the cabinet. "Corrosive sublimate," he murmured. "Cyanide of Potassium. They're both deadly, but I think the second is rapid, and therefore less painful. Cyanide let it be!"
He extracted two small beakers from the glassware on the shelf. He filled them with water from a carafe on the table, and, while the girl watched him with fascinated eyes, he deliberately tilted a spoonful or so of white crystals into each of them. The mixture swirled a moment, then settled clear and colorless, and the crystals began to shrink as they passed swiftly into solution.
"There it is," he announced grimly. "There's peace, oblivion, forgetfulness, and annihilation for you, for me, and—forhim! Beyond all doubt, the logical course for us, isn't it? Do we take it?"
"Please," she said faintly. "Kiss me first, Honey. Isn't that the proper course for lovers in this situation?" She felt a faint touch of astonishment at her own irony; the circumstances had ceased to have any reality to her, and had become merely a dramatic sequence like the happenings in a play.
He gathered her again into his arms and pressed his lips to hers. It was a long, tender, wistful kiss; when at last it ended, Pat found her eyes again filled with tears, but not this time the tears of hysteria.
"Nick!" she murmured. "Nick, darling!"
He gave her a deep, somber, but very tender smile, and reached for one of the deadly beakers, "To another meeting!" he said as his fingers closed on it.
Suddenly, amazingly, the strident ring of a doorbell sounded, the more surprising since they had all but forgotten the existence of a world about them. Interruption! It meant only the going through once more of all that they had just passed.
"Drink it!" exclaimed Pat impulsively, seizing the remaining beaker.
The glass was struck from Pat's hand, and the water-clear contents streamed into pools and darkening blots over the table and its litter of papers. She stared unseeingly at the mess, without realizing that it was Nick who had dashed the draught from her very lips. She felt neither anger nor relief, but only a numbness, and a sense of anti-climax. Somewhere below the bell was ringing again, and a door was resounding to violent blows, but she only continued her bewildered, questioning gaze.
"I can't let you, Pat!" he muttered, answering her unspoken query.
"But Nick—why?"
"There's somebody at the door, isn't there? Mustn't we find out who?"
"What difference can it make?" she asked wearily.
"I don't know. I want to find out."
"It's that illusion of hope again," she murmured. "That's all it is, Nick—and it means now that it's all to do over again! The whole thing, from the beginning—and we were so near—the end!"
"I know," he said miserably. "I know all that, but—" He paused as the insistent racket below was redoubled. "I'm going to answer that bell," he ended.
He moved away from her, vanishing through the room's single door. She watched his disappearance without moving, but no sooner had he passed from sight than a curious feeling of fear oppressed her. She cast off the numbness and languor, and darted after him into the darkness of the hall.
"Nick!" she called. Somewhere ahead a light flashed on; she saw the well of a stair-case, and heard his footsteps descending. She followed in frantic haste, gaining the top step just as the pounding below ceased. She heard the click of the door, and paused suddenly at the sound of a familiar voice.
"Where's Pat?" The words drifted up in low, rumbling, ominous tones.
"Dr. Carl!" she shrieked. She ran swiftly down the stairs to Nick's side, where he stood facing the great figure of the Doctor. "Dr. Carl! How'd you find me?"
The newcomer gave her a long, narrow-eyed, speculative survey. "I spent nearly the whole night doing it," he growled at last. "It took me hours to locate Mueller and get this address from him." He stepped forward, taking the girl's arm. "Come on!" he said gruffly, without a glance at Nick standing silently beside her. "I'm taking you home!"
She held back. "But why?"
"Why? Because I don't like the company you keep. Is that reason enough?"
She still resisted his insistent tug. "Nick hasn't done anything," she said defiantly, with a side glance at the youth's flushed, unhappy features.
"He hasn't? Look at yourself, girl! Look at your clothes, and your forehead! What's more, I saw enough from my window; I saw him bundle you into that car!" His eyes were flashing angrily, and his grip on her arm tightened, while his free hand clenched into an enormous fist.
"That wasn't Nick!"
"No. It was your devil, I suppose!" said Horker sarcastically. "Anyway, Pat, you're coming with me before I do violence to what remains of your devil!"
Nick spoke for the first time since the Doctor's entrance. "Please do, Pat," he said softly. "Please go with him."
"I won't!" she snapped. The sudden shifts of situation during the long hours of that terrible evening were irritating her. She had alternated so rapidly between horror and hope and despair that her frayed nerves had seized now at the same reality of anger.
Her mind, so long overstrained, was now deliberately forgetting her swing from the pit of terror to the verge of death. "You come up like a hero to the rescue!" she taunted the doctor. "Hairbreadth Horker!"
"You little fool!" growled the Doctor. "A fine reception, after losing a night's sleep! I'll drag you home, if I have to!" He moved ponderously toward the door; she gave a violent wrench and freed her arm from his grasp.
"If you can, you mean!" she jeered. She looked at his exasperated face, and suddenly, with one of her abrupt changes of mood, she softened. "Dr. Carl, Honey," she said in apologetic tones, "I'm sorry. You're very sweet, and I'm really grateful, but I can't leave Nick now." Her eyes turned troubled. "Not now."
"Why, Pat?" Mollified by the change in her mien, his voice rumbled in sympathetic notes.
"I can't," she repeated. "It's—it's getting worse."
"Bah!"
"So it's 'Bah'!" she flared. "Well, if you're so contemptuous of the thing, why don't you cure it? What good did your psychoanalysis do? You don't even know what it is!"
"What do you expect?" roared the Doctor. "Can I diagnose it by absent treatment? I haven't had a chance to see the condition active yet!"
"All right!" said Pat, her strained nerves driving her to impatience. "You're here and Nick's here! Go on with your diagnosis; get it over with, and let's see what you can do.Youought at least to be able to name the condition—the outstanding authority in the Middle West on neural and mental pathology!" Her tone was sardonic.
"Listen, Pat," said Horker with exaggerated patience, in the manner of one addressing a stupid child, "I've explained before that I can't get at the root of a mental aberration when the subject's as unstrung as your young man here seems to be. Psychoanalysis just won't work unless the subject is calm, composed, and not in a nervous state. Can you comprehend that?"
"Just dimly!" she snapped. "You ought to know another way—you, the outstanding authority—"
"Be still!" he interrupted gruffly. "Of course I know another way, if I wanted to drag all of us back to my office, where I have the equipment!—which I won't do tonight," he finished grimly.
"Then do it here."
"I haven't what I need."
"There's everything upstairs," said Pat. "It's all there, all Nick's father's equipment."
"Not tonight! That's final."
The girl's manner changed again. She turned troubled, imploring eyes on Horker. "Dr. Carl," she said plaintively, "I can't leave Nick now." She seized the arm of the silent, dejected youth, who had been standing passively by. "I can't leave him, really. I'd not be sure of seeing him again, ever. Please, Dr. Carl!"
"If these frenzies of yours," rumbled Horker, "are so violent and malicious, you ought to be confined. Do you know that, young man?"
"Yes, sir," mumbled Nick wretchedly.
"And I've thought of it," continued the Doctor. "I've thought of it!"
"Please!" cried Pat imploringly. "Won't you try, Dr. Carl?"
"The devil!" he growled. "All right, then."
He followed the girl up the stairs, while Nick trailed disconsolately behind. She led him back into the chamber they had quitted, where a curious odor of peach pits seemed to scent the air. Horker sniffed suspiciously, then seized the remaining beaker, raising it cautiously to his nostrils.
"Damnation!" he exploded. "Prussic acid—or cyanide! What in—" He caught sight of Pat's tragic eyes, and suddenly replaced the container. "Pat!" he groaned. "Pat, Honey!" He drew her into the circle of his great arm. "I'll help you, dear! All I can, with all my heart, since it means that much to you!" He groaned again under his breath. "Oh, my God!"
He held her a moment, patting her tousled black head with his massive, delicate fingered hand. Then he released her, turning to Nick.
"This the stuff?" he asked, brusquely, indicating the cabinet of bottles, with its splintered front.
Nick nodded. Pat sank to the chair beside the table and watched Horker as he scanned the array of containers. He pulled out a tiny wooden case and snapped it open to reveal a number of steel needles that glinted brightly in the yellow light. He grunted in satisfaction and continued his inspection.
"Atropine," he muttered, reading the labeled boxes. "Cocaine, daturine, hyoscine, hyoscyamine—won't do!"
"What do you need?" the girl queried faintly.
"A mild hypnotic," said the Doctor abstractedly, still searching. "Pretty good substitutes for psychoanalysis—certain drugs. Dulls the conscious mind, but not to complete unconsciousness. Good means of getting at the subconscious. See?"
"Sort of," said Pat. "If it only works!"
"Oh, it'll work if we can find—ah!" He seized a tiny cardboard box. "Scopolamine! This'll do the work."
He extracted a tiny glassy something from one or other of the boxes he held, and frowned down at it. He seized the carafe of water, plunged something pointed and shiny into it.
"Antiseptic," he muttered thoughtfully. He seized a brown bottle from the case, held it toward the light, and shook it. "Peroxide's gone flat," he growled. "Nothing but water."
He pulled a silver cigar-lighter from his pocket and snapped a yellow flame to it. He passed the point of the hypodermic rapidly back and forth through the little spear of fire. Finally he turned to Nick.
"Take off your coat," he ordered. "Roll up your shirt sleeve—the left one. And sit over there." He indicated the couch along the wall.
The youth obeyed without a word. The only indication of emotion was a long, miserable, wistful look at Pat as he seated himself impassively on the spot that the girl had so recently occupied.
"Now!" said the Doctor briskly, approaching the youth. "This will make you drowsy, sleepy. That's all it'll do. Don't fight the effect. Just relax, let the thing take its course, and I'll see what I can get out of you."
Pat gasped and Nick winced as he drove the needle into the bared arm.
"So!" he said. "Now relax. Lean back and close your eyes."
He stepped to the door, dragged in a battered chair from the hall, and occupied it. He sat beside Pat, watching the pale features of the youth, who sat quietly with closed eyes, breathing slowly, heavily.
"Long enough," muttered Horker. He raised his voice. "Can you hear me?" he called to the motionless figure on the couch. There was no response, but Pat fancied she saw a slight change in Nick's expression.
"Can you hear me?" repeated Horker in louder tones.
"Yes, I can hear you," came in icy tones from the figure on the couch. Pat started violently as the voice sounded. The eyes opened, and she saw in sudden terror the ruddy orbs of the demon!
Pat emitted a small, startled shriek, and heard it echoed by a surprised grunt from Dr. Horker.
"Queer!" he muttered. "The stuff must be mislabeled. Scopolamine doesn't act like this; it's a narcotic."
"He's—the other!" gasped Pat, while the being on the couch grinned sardonically.
"Eh? An attack? Can't be!" The Doctor shook his head emphatically.
"It's not Nick!" cried the girl in panic. "You're not, are you?" she appealed to the grim entity.
"Not your sweetheart?" queried the creature, still with his mocking leer. "A few hours ago you were lying here all but naked, confessing you were mine. Have you forgotten?"
She shuddered at the reference, and shrank back in her chair. She heard the Doctor's ominous, angry rumble, and the evil tittering chuckle of the other.
"Pathological or not," snapped Horker, "I can resent your remarks! I've considered several times varying my treatment with another solid cut to the jaw!" He rose from his chair, stamping viciously toward the other.
"A moment," said Nicholas Devine. "Do you know what you've done? Have you any idea what you've done?" He turned cool, mocking, red-glinting eyes on the Doctor.
"Huh?" Horker paused as if puzzled. "WhatI'vedone? What do you mean?"
"You don't know, then." The other gave a satyric smile. "You're stupid; I gave you the clue, yet you hadn't the intelligence to follow it. Do you know what I am?" He leaned forward, his eyes leering evilly into the Doctor's. "I'll tell you. I'm a question of synapses. That's all—merely a question of synapses!" He tittered again, horribly. "It still means nothing to you, doesn't it, Doctor?"
"I'll show you what it means!" Horker clenched a massive fist and strode toward the figure, whose eyes stared, steadily, unwinkingly into his own.
"Back!" the being snapped as the great form bent over him. The Doctor paused as if struck rigid, his arm and heavy fist drawn back like the conventional fighting pose of a boxer. "Go back!" repeated the other, rising. Pat whimpered in abject terror as she heard Horker's surprised grunt, and saw him recede slowly, and finally sink into his chair. His bewildered eyes were still fixed on those of Nicholas Devine.
"I'll tell you what you've done!" said the strange being. "You've freed me! There was nothing wrong with your scopolamine. It worked!" He chuckled. "You druggedhimand freed me!"
Horker managed a questioning grunt.
"I'm free!" exulted the other. "For the first time I haven'thimto fight! He's here, but helpless to oppose me—he's feeble—feeble!" He gave again the horrible tittering chuckle. "See how weak the two of you are against my unopposed powers!" he jeered. "Weaklings—food for my pleasures!"
He turned his eyes, luminous and avid, on Pat. "This time," he said, "there'll be no interruptions. A witness to our experiment will add a delicate touch of pleasure—"
He broke off at the Doctor's sudden movement. Horker had snatched a glistening blue revolver from his pocket, held it leveled at the lust-filled eyes.
"Huh!" growled the Doctor triumphantly. "Do you think I come trailing a maniac without some protection? Especially a vicious one like you?"
Nicholas Devine turned his eyes on his opponent. He stared long and intently.
"Drop it!" he commanded at length. Pat felt a surge of chaotic terror as the weapon clattered to the floor. She turned a frightened glance on Horker's face, and her fright redoubled at the sight of his straining jaw, the perspiration-beaded forehead, and his bewildered eyes. The demon kicked the gun carelessly aside.
"Puerile!" he said contemptuously. He backed away from them, re-seating himself on the couch whence he had risen. He surveyed the pair in sardonic mirth.
"Pat!" muttered the Doctor huskily. "Get out of here, Honey! He's got some hellish trick of fascination that's paralyzed me. Get out and get help!"
The girl moved as if to rise. Nicholas Devine shifted his eyes for the barest instant to her face; she felt the strength drain out of her body, and she sank weakly to her chair.
"It's useless," she murmured hopelessly to the Doctor. "He's—he's just what I told you—a devil!"
"I guess you were right," mumbled Horker dazedly.
There was a burst of demonic mirth from the being on the couch. "Merely a matter of synapses," he rasped, chuckling. His face changed, took on the familiar coldness, the stony expression Pat had observed there before. "This palls!" he snapped. "I've better amusement—after we've rendered your friend merely an interested on-looker." He narrowed his red eyes as if in thought. "Take off a stocking," he ordered. "Tie his hands to the back of the chair."
"I won't!" said the girl. The eyes shifted to her face. "I won't!" she repeated tremulously as she kicked off a diminutive pump. She shuddered at the gleam in the evil eyes as she stripped the long silken sheath from a white, rounded limb. She slipped a bare foot into the pump and moved reluctantly behind the chair that held the groaning Horker. She took one of the clenched, straining hands, and drew it back, fumbling with shaking fingers as she twisted the strip of thin chiffon. The demon moved closer, standing over her.
"Loose knots!" he snarled abruptly. He knocked her violently away with a stinging slap across her cheek, and seized the strip in his own hands. He drew the binding tight, twisting it about the lowest rung of the chair's ladder back. Horker was forced to lean awkwardly to the rear; in this unbalanced position it was quite impossible to rise.
Nicholas Devine turned away from the straining, perspiring Doctor, and advanced toward Pat, who cowered against the shattered cabinet.
"Now!" he muttered. "The experiment!" He chuckled raspingly. "What delicacy of degradation! Your lover and your guardian angel—both helpless watchers! Excellent! Oh, very excellent!"
He grasped her wrist, drawing her after him to the center of the room, into the full view of the horrified, staring eyes of Horker.
"Always before," continued her tormentor, "these hands have prepared you for the rites—the ceremony that failed on two other occasions to transpire. Would it add a poignancy to the torture if I made you strip this body of yours with your own hands? Or will they suffer more watching me? Which do you think?"
Pat closed her eyes in helpless resignation to her fate. "Nick!" she moaned. "Oh, Nick dearest!"
"Not this time!" sneered the other. "Your friend and protector, the Doctor, has thoughtfully eliminated your sweetheart as a factor. He struggles too feebly for me to feel."
"Nick!" she murmured again. "Dr. Carl!"
But the Doctor, now pulling painfully at his bonds, could only groan in distraction, and curse the unsuspected strength of sheer chiffon. He writhed miserably at the chafing of his wrists; his strange paralysis had departed, but he was quite helpless to assist Pat.
"I think," said the cold tones of Nicholas Devine, "that the more delicate torture lies in your willingness. Let us see."
He drew her into his arms. He twisted a hand in her hair, jerked her head violently backward, and pressed avid lips to hers. She struggled a little, but hopelessly, automatically. At last she lay quite passive, quite motionless, supported by his arms, and making not the slightest response to his kiss.
"Are you mine?" he queried fiercely, releasing her lips. "Are you mine now?"
She shook her head without opening her eyes. "No," she said dully. "Not now, or ever."
Again he crushed her, while the Doctor looked on in helpless, bewildered, voiceless anger. This time his kiss was painful, burning, searing. Again that unholy fascination and unnatural delight in her own pain stirred her, and it took what little effort she was able to make to keep from responding. After a long interval, his lips again withdrew.
"Are you mine?" he repeated. She made no answer; she was gasping, and tears glistened under her closed eye-lids, from the pain of her crushed lips. Again he kissed her, and again the wild abandonment to evil suffused her. She was suddenly responding to his agonizing caress; she was clinging fiercely to his torturing lips, feeling an unholy exaltation in the pain of his tearing fingers in the flesh of her back.
"Yours!" she murmured in response to his query. She heard her voice repeat madly, "Yours! Yours! Yours!"
"Do you yield willingly?" came the icy tones of the demon.
"Yes—yes—yes! Willingly!"
"Take off your clothes!" sounded the terrible, overpowering voice. He thrust her from him, so that she staggered dizzily backward. She stood swaying; the voice repeated its command.
The girl's eyes widened wildly; she had the appearance of one in an ecstasy, a religious fervor. She raised her hand with a jerky impulsive gesture to the neck of her frock, still pinned together in the makeshift repairs of the evening.
There came a strange interruption. The Doctor, helpless on-looker, had at length evolved an idea out of the bewilderment in his mind. He opened his mouth and emitted a tremendous, deep, ear-shattering bellow!
Nicholas Devine sent the girl spinning to the floor with a vicious shove, and turned his blazing eyes on Horker, who was drawing in his breath for a repetition of his roar. "Quiet!" he rasped, his red orbs boring down at the other. "Quiet, or I'll muffle you!" Closing his eyes, the Doctor repeated his mighty shout.
The demon snatched the blanket from the couch, tossing it over the figure of the Doctor, where it became a billowing, writhing heap of brown wool. He turned his gaze on Pat, who was just struggling to her feet, and moved as if to advance toward her.
He paused. She had retrieved the Doctor's revolver from the floor, and now faced him with the madness gone out of her eyes, supporting the weapon with both hands, the muzzle wavering toward his face.
"Drop it!" he commanded. She felt a recurrence of fascination, and an impulse to obey. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the Doctor's head emerging from the blanket as he shook it off.
"Drop it!" repeated Nicholas Devine.
She closed her eyes, shutting out the vision of his dominant visage. With a surge of terror, she squeezed the trigger, staggering back to the couch at the roar and the recoil.
She opened her eyes. Nicholas Devine lay in the center of the room on his face; a crimson spot was matting the hair on the back of his head. She saw the Doctor raise a free hand; he was working clear of his bonds.
"Pat!" he said softly. He looked at her pale, sickened features. "Honey," he said, "sit down till I get free. Sit down, Pat; you look faint."
"Never faint!" murmured the girl, and pitched backward to the couch, with one clad and one bare leg hanging in curious limpness over the edge.
Pat opened weary eyes and gazed at a blank, uninformative ceiling. It was some moments before she realized that she was lying on the couch in the room of Nicholas Devine. Somebody had placed her there, presumably, since she was quite unaware of the circumstances of her awakening. Then recollection began to form—Dr. Carl, theother, the roar of a shot. After that, nothing save a turmoil ending in blankness.
A sound of movement beside her drew her attention. She turned her head and perceived Dr. Horker kneeling over a form on the floor, fingering a white bandage about the head of the figure. Her recollections took instant form; she remembered the catastrophes of the evening—last night, rather, since dawn glowed dully in the window. She had shot Nick! She gave a little moan and pushed herself to a sitting position.
The Doctor glanced at her with a sick, shaky smile. "Hello," he said. "Come to, have you? Sorry I couldn't give you any attention." He gave the bandage a final touch. "Here's a job I had no heart for," he muttered. "Better for everyone to let things happen without interference."
The girl, returning to full awareness, noticed now that the bandage consisted of strips of the Doctor's shirt. She glanced fearfully at the still features of Nicholas Devine; she saw pale cheeks and closed eyes, but indubitably not the grim mien of the demon.
"Dr. Carl!" she whispered. "He isn't—he isn't—"
"Not yet."
"But will he—?"
"I don't know. That's a bad spot, a wound in the base of the brain. You'd best know it now, Pat, but also realize that nothing can happen to you. I'll see to that!"
"To me!" she said dully. "What difference does that make? It's Nick I want saved."
"I'll do my best for you, Honey," said Horker with almost a hint of reluctance. "I've phoned Briggs General for an ambulance. Your faint lasted a full quarter hour," he added.
"What can we tell them?" asked the girl. "What can we say?"
"Don't you say anything, Pat. I'm not on the board for nothing." He rose from his knees, glancing out of the window into the cool dawn. "Queer neighborhood!" he said. "All that yelling and a shot, and still no sign of interest from the neighbors. That's Chicago, though," he mused. "Lucky for us, Pat; we can handle the thing quietly now."
But the girl was staring dully at the still figure on the floor. "Oh God!" she said huskily. "Help him, Dr. Carl!"
"I'll do my best," responded Horker gloomily. "I was a good surgeon before I specialized in psychiatry. Brain surgery, too; it led right into my present field."
Pat said nothing, but dropped her head on her hands and stared vacantly before her.
"Better for you, and for him too, if I fail," muttered the Doctor.
His words brought a reply. "You won't fail," she said tensely. "You won't!"
"Not voluntarily, I'm afraid," he growled morosely. "I've still a little respect for medical ethics, but if ever a case—" His voice trailed into silence as from somewhere in the dawn sounded the wail of a siren. "There's the ambulance," he finished.
Pat sat unmoving as the sounds from outdoors detailed the stopping of the vehicle before the house. She heard the Doctor descending the steps, and the creak of the door. Though it took place before her eyes, she scarcely saw the white-coated youths as they lifted the form of Nicholas Devine and bore it from the room on a stretcher, treading with carefully broken steps to prevent the swaying of the support. Dr. Horker's order to follow made no impression on her; she sat dully on the couch as the chamber emptied.
Why, she wondered, had the thought of Nick's death disturbed her so? Wasn't it but a short time since they had both contemplated it? What had occurred to alter that determination? Nick was dying, she thought mournfully; all that remained was for her to follow. There on the floor lay the revolver, and on the table, glistening in the wan light, reposed the untouched lethal draft. That was the preferable way, she mused, staring fixedly at its glowing contour.
But suppose Nick weren't to die—she'd have abandoned him to his terrible doom, left him to face a situation far more ominous than any unknown terrors beyond death. She shook her head distractedly, and looked up to meet the eyes of Dr. Horker, who was watching her gravely in the doorway.
"Come on, Pat," he said gently.
She rose, followed him down the stairs and out into the morning light. The driver of the ambulance stared curiously at her dishevelled, bedraggled figure, but she was so weary and forlorn that even the effort of brushing away the black strands of hair that clouded her smoke-dark eyes was beyond her. She slumped into the seat of the Doctor's car and sighed in utter exhaustion.
"Rush it!" Horker called to the driver ahead. "I'll follow you."
The car swept into motion, and the swift cool morning air beating against her face from the open window restored some clarity to her mind. She fixed her eyes on the rear of the speeding vehicle they followed.
"Is there any hope at all?" she queried despondently.
"I don't know, Pat. I can't tell yet. When you closed your eyes, he half turned, dodged; the bullet entered his skull near the base, near the cerebellum. If it had pierced the cerebellum, his heart and breathing must have stopped instantly. They didn't, however, and that's a mildly hopeful sign. Very mildly hopeful, though."
"Do you know now what that devil—what the attack was?"
"No, Pat," Horker admitted. "I don't. Call it a devil if you like; I can't name it any better." His voice changed to a tone of wonder. "Pat, I can't understand that paralyzing fascination the thing exerted. I—any medical man—would say that mental dominance of that sort doesn't exist."
"Hypnotism," the girl suggested.
"Bah! Every psychiatrist uses hypnotism in his business; it's part of some treatments. There's nothing of fascination about it; no dominance of one will over another, despite the popular view. That's natural and understandable; this was like—well, like the exploded claims of Mesmerism. I tell you, it's not humanly possible—and yet I felt it!"
"Nothumanlypossible," murmured Pat. "That's the answer, then, Dr. Carl. Maybe now you'll believe in my devil."
"I'm tempted to."
"You'll have to! Can't you see it, Dr. Carl? Even his name, Nick—that's a colloquialism for the devil, isn't it?"
"And Devine, I suppose," said Horker, "refers to his angelic ancestry. Devils are only fallen angels, aren't they?"
"All right," said Pat wearily. "Make fun of it. You'll see!"
"I'm not making fun of your theory, Honey. I can't offer a better one myself. I never saw nor heard of anything similar, and I'm not in position to ridicule any theory."
"But you don't believe me."
"Of course I don't, Pat. You're weaving an intricate fairy tale about a pathological condition and a fortuitous suggestiveness in names. Whatever the condition is—and I confess I don't understand it—it's something rational, and those things can be treated."
"Treated by exorcism," said the girl. "That's the only way anyone ever succeeded in casting out a devil."
The Doctor made no answer. The wailing vehicle ahead of them swung rapidly out of sight into an alley, and Horker halted his car before the gray facade of Briggs General.
"Come in here," he said, helping Pat to alight. "You'll want to wait, won't you?"
"How long," she queried listlessly, "before—before you'll know?"
"Perhaps immediately. The only chance is to get that bullet out at once—if there's still time for it."
She followed him into the building, past a desk where a white-clad girl regarded her curiously, and up an elevator. He led her into a small office.
"Sit here," he said gently, and disappeared.
She sat dully in the chair he had indicated, and minutes passed. She made no attempt to think; the long, cataclysmic night had exhausted her powers. She simply sat and suffered; the deep scratches of fingernails burned in the flesh of her back, her cheek pained from the violent slap, and her head and jaw ached from that first blow, the one that had knocked her unconscious last evening. But these twinges were minor; they were merely physical, and the hurts of the demon had struck far deeper than any physical injury. The damage to her spirit was by all odds the more painful; it numbed her mind and dulled her thoughts, and she simply sat idle and stared at the blank wall.
She had no conception of the interval before Dr. Horker returned. He entered quietly, and began rinsing his hands at a basin in the corner.
"Is it over?" she asked listlessly.
"Not even begun," he responded. "However, it isn't too late. He'll be ready in a moment or so."
"I wish it were over," she murmured. "One way or the other."
"I too!" said the Doctor. "With all my heart, I wish it were over! If there were anyone within call who could handle it, I'd turn it to him gladly. But there isn't!"
He moved again toward the door, leaning out and glancing down the hall.
"You stay here," he admonished her. "Don't try to find us; I want no interruptions, no matter what enters that mind of yours!"
"You needn't worry," she said soberly. "I'm not fool enough for that." She leaned wearily back in the chair, closing her eyes. A long interval passed; she was vaguely surprised to see the Doctor still standing in the doorway when she opened her eyes. She had fancied him already in the midst of his labor.
"What will you do?" she asked.
"About what?"
"I mean what sort of operation will it need? Probing or what?"
"Oh," he said. "I'll have to trephine him. Must get that bullet."
"What's that—trephine?"
He glanced down the hall. "They're ready," he said, and turned to go. At the door he paused. "Trephining is to open a little door in the skull. If your devil is in his head, we'll have it out along with the bullet."
His footsteps receded down the hall.
"Is it over now?" queried Pat tremulously as the Doctor finally reappeared. The interminable waiting had left her even more worn, and her pallid features bore the marks of strain.
"Twenty minutes ago," said Horker. His face too bore evidence of tension; moreover, there was a puzzled, dubious expression in his eyes that frightened Pat. She was too apprehensive to risk a question as to the outcome, and simply stared at him with wide, fearful, questioning eyes.
"I called up your home," he said irrelevantly. "I told them you left with me early this morning. Your mother's still in bed, although it's after ten." He paused. "Slip in without anyone seeing you, will you, Honey? And rumple up your bed."
"If I haven't lost my key," she said, still with the question in her eyes.
"It's in the mail-box. Magda found it on the porch this morning. I talked to her."
She could bear the uncertainty no longer. "Tell me!" she demanded.
"It's all right, I think."
"You mean—he'll live?"
The Doctor nodded. "I think so." He turned his puzzled eyes on her.
"Oh!" breathed Pat. "Thank God!"
"You wanted him back, Honey, didn't you?" Horker's tone was gentle.
"Oh, yes!"
"Devil and all?"
"Yes—devil and all!" she echoed. Suddenly she sensed something strange in the other's manner. She perceived the uncertainty in his visage, and felt a rising trepidation. "What's the matter?" she queried anxiously. "You're not telling me everything! Tell me, Dr. Carl!"
"There's something else," he said. "I'm not sure, Pat, but I think—I hope—you've got him back without the devil!"
"He's cured?" Her voice was incredulous; she did not dare accept the Doctor's meaning.
"I hope so. At least I located the cause."
"What was it?" she demanded, an unexpected vigor livening her tired body. "What was that devil? Tell me! I want to know, Dr. Carl!"
"I think the best name for it is a tumor," he said slowly. "I told them in there it was a tumor. I wish I knew myself."
"A tumor! I don't understand!"
"I don't either, Pat—not fully. It's something on or beyond the border of medical knowledge. I don't think any living authority could classify it definitely."
"But tell me!" she cried fiercely. "Tell me!"
"Well, Honey—I'll try." He paused thoughtfully. "Cancers and tumors—sarcomas—are curious things, Dear. Doctors aren't at all sure just what they are. And one of their peculiarities is that they sometimes seem to be trying to develop into separate entities, trying to become human by feeding like parasites on their hosts. Do you understand?"
"No," said the girl. "I'm sorry, Dr. Carl, but I don't."
"I mean," he continued, "that sometimes these growths seem to be trying to develop into—into organisms. I've seen them, for instance—every surgeon has—with bones developing. I've seen one with a rather perfect jaw-bone, and little teeth, and hair. As if," he added, "it were making a sort of attempt to become human, in a primitive, disorganized fashion. Now do you see what I mean?"
"Yes," said the girl, with a violent shudder. "Dr. Carl, that's horrible!"
"Life sometimes is," he agreed. "Well," he continued slowly, "I opened up our patient's skull at the point where the fluoroscope indicated the bullet. I trephined it, and there, pierced by the shot, was this—" He hesitated, "—this tumor."
"Did you—remove it?"
"Of course. But it wasn't a natural sort of brain tumor, Honey. It was a little cerebrum, apparently joined to a Y-shaped branch of the spinal cord. A little brain, Pat—no larger than your small fist, but deeply convoluted, and with the pre-Rolandic area highly developed."
"What's pre-Rolandic, Dr. Carl?" asked Pat, shivering.
"The seat of the motor nerves. The home, you might say, of the will. This brain was practically all will—and I wonder," he said musingly, "if that explains the ungodly, evil fascination the creature could command. A brain that was nothing but pure will-power, relieved by its parasitic nature of all the distractions of a directing body! I wonder—" He fell silent.
"Tell me the rest!" she said frantically.
"That's all, Honey. I removed it, and I guess I'm the only surgeon in the world who ever removed a brain from a human skull without killing the patient! Luckily, he had two of them!"
"Oh God!" murmured the girl faintly. She turned to Horker. "But he will live?"
"I think so. Your shot killed the devil, it seems." He frowned. "I said it was a tumor; I told them it was a tumor, but I'm not sure. Perhaps, just as some people are born with six fingers or toes on each member, he was born with two brains. It's possible; one developed normally, humanly, and the other—into that creature we faced last night. I don't know!"
"It's what I said," asserted Pat. "It's a devil, and what you've just told me about tumors proves it. They're devils, that's all, and some day some student is going to cut one loose and raise it to maturity outside a human body, and you'll see what a devil is really like! And go ahead and laugh!"
"I'm not laughing, Pat. I'd be the last one to laugh at your theory, after facing that thing last night. It had satanic powers, all right—that paralyzing fascination! You felt it too; it wasn't just a mental lapse on my part, was it?"
"I felt it, Dr. Carl! I'd felt it before that; I was always helpless in the presence of it."
"Could it," he asked, "have imposed its will actively on yours? I mean, could it have made you actually do what it asked there at the end, just before I recovered enough sense to let out that bellow?"
"To take off—my dress?" She shivered. "I don't know, Dr. Carl.—I'm afraid so." She looked at him appealingly. "Why did I yield to it so?" she cried. "What made me find such a fierce pleasure in its kisses—in its blows and scratches, and the pain it inflicted on me? Why was that, Dr. Carl?"
"Why," he countered, "do gangsters' girls and apache women enjoy the cruelties perpetrated on them by their men? There's a little masochism in most women, and that—creature was sadistic, perverted, abnormal, and somehow dominating. It took an unfair advantage of you, Pat; don't blame yourself."
"It was—utterly evil!" she muttered. "It was the ultimate in everything unholy."
"It was an aberrant brain," said Horker. "You can't judge it by human standards, since it wasn't actually human. It was, I suppose, just what you said—a devil. I didn't even keep it," he added grimly. "I destroyed it."
"Do you know what it meant by saying it was a question of synapses?" she asked.
"That was queer!" The Doctor's voice was puzzled. "That remark implies that the thing itself knew what it was. How? It must have possessed knowledge that the normal brain lacked."
"Was it a question of synapses?"
"In a sense it was. The nerves from the two rival brains must have met in a synaptic juncture. The oftener the aberrant brain gained control, the easier it became for it to repeat the process, as the synapse, so to speak, wore thin. That's why the attacks intensified so horribly toward the end; the habit was being formed."
"Last night was the very worst!"
"Of course. As the thing itself pointed out, I made the mistake of drugging the normal brain and giving the other complete control of the body. At other times, there'd always been the rivalry to weaken whichever was dominant."
"Does that mean," asked Pat anxiously, "that Nick's character will be changed now?"
"I think so. I think you'll find him less meek, less gentle, than heretofore. More spirited, perhaps, since his energies won't be drained so constantly by the struggle."
"I don't care!" she said. "I'd like that, and anyway, it doesn't make a bit of difference to me as long as he's just—myNick."
The Doctor gave her a tender smile. "Let's go home," he said, pinching her cheek in his great hand.
"Can you leave him?"
"I'll run back after a while, Honey. I think he'll do." He took her hand, drawing her after him. "Don't forget to slip in unseen, Pat, and rumple up your bed."
"Rumple it!" She gave him a weary smile. "I'll beinit!"
"Good idea. You look a bit worn out, Honey, and we can't have you getting sick now, or even pull a temporary faint like that one last night."
"I didn't faint!"
"Maybe not," grinned Horker. "Perhaps the proceedings grew a little boring, and you just lay down on the couch for a nap. Itwasa dull evening."