XXIV. — THE LIVING DEATH
As soon as the fresh air had revived us somewhat, we first of all examined Ariadne. She still lay unconscious, very pale, and alarmingly limp. I picked her up and carried her into the next room, where there was a sofa, while Jerome went for water and Charlotte brought smelling-salts.
Neither of these had any effect. Ariadne seemed to be scarcely breathing; her heart beat only faintly, and there was no response to such other methods as friction, slapping, or pinching of fingernails.
“We had better call a doctor,” decided Charlotte promptly, and went to the phone.
I picked up the card which the Rhamda had left. It contained simply his name, together with one other word—the name of a morning newspaper. Evidently he meant for us to insert an advertisement as soon as we were ready to capitulate.
“Not yet!” the three of us decided, after talking it over. And we waited as patiently as we could during the fifteen minutes that elapsed before the telephoning got results.
It brought Dr. Hansen, who, it may be remembered, was closely identified with the Chick Watson disappearance. He made a rapid but very careful examination.
“It has all the appearance of a mild electric shock. What caused it, Fenton?”
I told him. His eyes narrowed when I mentioned Avec, then widened in astonishment and incredulity as I related the man's inexplicable effect upon the girl, and his strange immunity to the poison gas. But the doctor asked nothing further about our situation, proceeding at once to apply several restoratives. All were without result. As a final resort, he even rigged up an electrical connection, making use of some coils which I had upstairs, and endeavoured to arouse the girl in that fashion. Still without result.
“Good Lord, Hansen!” I finally burst out, when he stood back, apparently baffled. “She's simply GOT to be revived! We can't allow her to succumb to that scoundrel's power, whatever it is!”
“Why not a blood transfusion?” I asked eagerly, as an idea came to me. “I'm in perfect condition. What about it? Go to it, doc!”
He slowly shook his head. And beyond a single searching glance into my eyes, wherein he must have read something more than I had said, he regretfully replied:
“This is a case for a specialist, Fenton. Everything considered, I should say that she is suffering from a purely mental condition; but whether it had a physical or a psychic origin, I can't say.”
In short, he did not feel safe about going ahead with any really heroic measures until a brain specialist was called in.
I had a good deal of confidence in Hansen. And what he said sounded reasonable. So we agreed to his calling in a Dr. Higgins—the same man, in fact, who was too late in reaching the house to save Chick on that memorable night a year before.
His examination was swift and convincingly competent. He went over the same ground that Hansen had covered, took the blood pressure and other instrumental data, and asked us several questions regarding Ariadne's mentality as we knew it. Scarcely stopping to think it over, Higgins decided:
“The young woman is suffering from a temporary dissociation of brain centres. Her cerebrum does not co-act with her cerebellum. In other words, her conscious mind, for lack of means to express itself, is for the time being dormant as in sleep.
“But it is not like ordinary sleep. Such is induced by fatigue of the nerve channels. This young woman's condition is produced by shock; and since there was no physical violence, we must conclude that the shock was psychic.
“In that case, the condition will last until one of two things occurs; either she must be similarly shocked back into sensibility—and I can't see how this can happen, Fenton, unless you can secure the co-operation of the man to whom you attribute the matter—or she must lie that way indefinitely.”
“Indefinitely!” I exclaimed, sensing something ominous. “You mean—”
“That there is no known method of reviving a patient in such a condition. It might be called psychic catalepsy. To speak plainly, Fenton, unless this man revives her, she will remain unconscious until her death.”
I shuddered. What horrible thing had come into our lives to afflict us with so dreadful a prospect?
“Is—is there no hope, Dr. Higgins?”
“Very little”—gently but decisively. “All I can assure you is that she will not die immediately. From the general state of her health, she will live at least seventy-two hours. After that—you must be prepared for the worst at any moment.”
I turned away quickly, so that he could not see my face. What an awful situation! Unless we could somehow lay hands on the Rhamda—
I hunted up Jerome. I said:
“Jerry, the thing is plainly up to you and me. Higgins gives us three days. Day after tomorrow morning, if we haven't got results by that time, we've got to give in and put that ad in the paper. But I don't mean to give in, Jerry! Not until I've exhausted every other possibility!”
“What're you going to do?” he asked thoughtfully.
“Work on that ring. I was a fool not to get busy sooner. As for the rest, that's up to you! You've got to get yourself on the Rhamda's trail as soon as you can, and camp there! The first chance you get, ransack his room and belongings, and bring me every bit of data you find. Between him and the ring, the truth ought to come out.”
“All right. But don't forget that—” pointing to the unexplained spot on the wood of the doorway. “You've got a mighty important clue there, waiting for you to analyse it.”
And he went and got his hat, and left the house. His final remark was that we wouldn't see him back until he had something to report about our man.
Five o'clock the next morning found my sister and me out of our beds and desperately busy. She spent a good deal of time, of course in caring for Ariadne. The poor girl showed no improvement at all; and we got scant encouragement from the fact that she looked no worse.
Not a sound escaped her lips; her eyes remained closed; she gave no sign of life, save her barely perceptible breathing. It made me sick at heart just to look at her; so near, and yet so fearfully far away.
But when Charlotte could spare any time she gave me considerable help in what I was trying to do. One great service she was rendering has already been made clear: she wore the ring constantly, thus relieving me of the anxiety of caring for it. I was very cautious not to have it in my possession for more than a few minutes at a time.
My first move was to set down, in orderly fashion, the list of the gem's attributes. I grouped together the fluctuating nature of its pale blue colour, its power of reproducing those who had gone into the Blind Spot, its combination of perfect solidity with extreme lightness; its quality of coldness to the touch of a male, and warmth to that of a female; and finally its ability to induct—I think this is the right term—to induct sounds out of the unknown. This last quality might be called spasmodic or accidental, whereas the others were permanent and constant.
Now, to this list I presently was able to add that the gem possessed no radioactive properties that I could detect with the usual means. It was only when I began dabbling in chemistry that I learned things.
By placing the gem inside a glass bell, and exhausting as much air as possible from around it, the way was cleared for introducing other forms of gases. Whereupon I discovered this:
The stone will absorb any given quantity of hydrogen gas.
In this respect it behaves analogously to that curious place on the door-frame. Only, it absorbs gas, no liquid; and not any gas, either—none but hydrogen.
Now, obviously this gem cannot truly absorb so much material, in the sense of retaining it as well. The simple test of weighing it afterwards proves this; for its weight remains the same in any circumstances.
Moreover, unlike the liquids which I poured into the wood and saw afterwards in the basement, the gas does not escape back into the air. I kept it under the Dell long enough to be sure of that. No; that hydrogen is, manifestly, translated into the Blind Spot.
Learning nothing further about the gem at that time, I proceeded to investigate the trim of the door. I began by trying to find out the precise thickness of that liquid-absorbing layer.
To do this I scraped off the “skin” of the air-darkened wood. This layer was .02 of an inch thick. And—that was the total amount of the active material!
I put these scrapings through a long list of experiments. They told me nothing valuable. I learned only one detail worth mentioning; if a fragment of the scrapings be brought near to the Holcomb gem—say, to within two inches—the scrapings will burst into flame. It is merely a bright, pinkish flare, like that made by smokeless rifle-powder. No ashes remain. After that we took care not to bring the ring near the remaining material on the board.
All this occurred on the first day after Ariadne was stricken. Jerome phoned to say that he had engaged the services of a dozen private detectives, and expected to get wind of the Rhamda any hour. Both Dr. Hansen and Dr. Higgins called twice, without being able to detect any change for the better or otherwise in their patient.
That evening Charlotte and I concluded that we could not hold out any longer. We must give in to the Rhamda. I phoned for a messenger, and sent an advertisement to the newspaper which Avec had indicated.
The thing was done. We had capitulated.
The next development would be another and triumphant call from the Rhamda, and this time we would have to give up the gem to him if we were to save Ariadne.
The game was up.
But instead of taking the matter philosophically, I worried about it all night. I told myself again and again that I was foolish to think about something that couldn't be helped. Why not forget it, and go to sleep?
But somehow I couldn't. I lay wide awake till long past midnight, finding myself growing more and more nervous. At last, such was the tension of it all, I got up and dressed. It was then about one-thirty, and I stepped out on the street for a walk.
Half an hour later I returned, my lungs full of fresh air, hoping that I could now sleep. It was only a hope. Never have I felt wider awake than I did then.
Once more—about three—I took another stroll outside. I seemed absolutely tireless.
Each time that I had turned back home I seemed to feel stronger than ever, more wakeful. Finally I dropped the idea altogether, went to the house, and left a note for Charlotte, then walked down to the waterfront and watched some ships taking advantage of the tide. Anything to pass the time.
And thus it happened, that, about eight o'clock—breakfast time at 288 Chatterton Place—I returned to the house, and sat down at the table with Charlotte. First, however, I opened the morning paper to read our little ad.
It was not there. It had not been printed.
XXV. — AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR
I dropped the paper in dismay. Charlotte looked up, startled, gave me a single look, and turned pale,
“What—what's the matter?” she stammered fearfully.
I showed her. Then I ran to the phone. In a few seconds I was talking to the very man who had taken the note from the messenger the day before.
“Yes, I handed it in along with the rest,” he replied to my excited query. Then—“Wait a minute,” said he; and a moment later added: “Say, Mr. Fenton, I've made a mistake! Here's the darned ad on the counter; it must have slipped under the blotter.”
I went back and told Charlotte. We stared at one another blankly. Why in the name of all that was baffling had our ad “slipped” under that blotter? And what were we to do?
This was the second day!
Well, we did what we could. We arranged for the insertion of the same notice in each of the three afternoon papers. There would still be time for the Rhamda to act, if he saw it.
The hours dragged by. Never did time pass more slowly; and yet, I begrudged every one. So much for being absolutely helpless.
About ten o'clock the next morning—that is to say, today; I am writing this the same evening—the front door bell rang. Charlotte answered and in a moment came back with a card. It read:
SIR HENRY HODGES
I nearly upset the table in my excitement. I ran into the hall. Who wouldn't? Sir Henry Hodges! The English scientist about whom the whole world was talking! The most gifted investigator of the day; the most widely informed; of all men on the face of the globe, the best equipped, mentally, to explore the unknown! Without the slightest formality I grabbed his hand and shook it until he smiled at my enthusiasm.
“My dear Sir Henry,” I told him, “I'm immensely glad to see you! The truth is, I've been hoping you'd be interested in our case; but I didn't have the nerve to bother you with it!”
“And I,” he admitted in his quiet way, “have been longing to take a hand in it, ever since I first heard of Professor Holcomb's disappearance. Didn't like to offer myself; understood that the matter had been hushed up and—”
“For the very simple reason,” I explained, “that there was nothing to be gained by publicity. If we had given the public the facts, we would have been swamped with volunteers to help us. I didn't know whom to confide in, Sir Henry; couldn't make up my mind. I only knew that one such man as yourself was just what I needed.”
He overlooked the compliment, and pulled out the newspaper from his pocket. “Bought this a few minutes ago. Saw your ad, and jumped to the conclusion that matters had reached an acute stage. Let me have the whole story, my boy, as briefly as you can.”
He already knew the published details. Also, he seemed to be acquainted—in some manner which puzzled me—with much that had not been printed. I sketched the affair as quickly as I could, making it clear that we were face to face with a crisis. When I wound up by saying that it was Dr. Higgins who gave Ariadne three days, ending about midnight, in which she might recover if we could secure Rhamda Avec, he said kindly:
“I'm afraid you made a mistake, my boy, in not seeking some help. The game has reached a point where you cannot have too many brains on your side. Time is short for reinforcements!”
He heartily approved of my course in enlisting the aid of Miss Clarke and her colleagues. “That is the sort of thing you need! People with mentality; plenty of intellectual force!” And he went on to make suggestions.
As a result, within an hour and a half our house was sheltering five more persons.
Miss Clarke has already been introduced. She was easily one of the ten most advanced practitioners in her line. And she had the advantage of a curiosity that was interested in everything odd, even though she labelled it “non-existent.” She said it helped her faith in the real truths to be conversant with the unreal.
Dr. Malloy was from the university, an out-and-out materialist, a psychologist who made life interesting for those who agreed with William James. His investigations of abnormal psychology are world-acknowledged.
Mme. Le Fabre, we afterwards learned, had come from Versailles especially to investigate the matter that was bothering us. She possessed no mediumistic properties of her own but was a staunch proponent of spiritualism, believing firmly in immortality and the omnipotence of “translated” souls.
Professor Herold is most widely known as the inventor of certain apparatus connected with wireless. But he is also considered the West's most advanced student of electrical and radio-active subjects.
I was enormously glad to have this man's expert, high-tension knowledge right on tap.
The remaining member of the quintet which Sir Henry advised me to summon requires a little explanation. Also, I am obliged to give him a name not his own; for it is not often that brigadier-generals of the United States army can openly lend their names to anything so far removed apparently from militarism as the searching of the occult.
Yet we knew that this man possessed a power that few scientists have developed; the power of co-ordination, of handling and balancing great facts and forces, and of deciding promptly how best to meet any given situation. Not that we looked for anything militaristic out of the Blind Spot; far from it. We merely knew not what to expect, which was exactly why we wanted to have him with us; his type of mind is, perhaps, the most solidly comforting sort that any mystery-bound person can have at his side.
By the time these five had gathered, Jerome had neither returned nor telephoned. There was not the slightest trace of Rhamda Avec; no guessing as to whether he had seen the ad. It was then one o'clock in the afternoon. Only six hours ago! It doesn't seem possible.
So there were eight of us—three women and five men—who went upstairs and quietly inspected the all but lifeless form of Ariadne and afterwards gathered in the library below.
All were thoroughly familiar with the situation. Miss Clarke calmly commented to the effect that the entire Blind Spot affair was due wholly and simply to the cumulative effects of so many, many subjects; the result, in other words, of error.
Dr. Malloy was equally outspoken in his announcement that he proposed to deal with the matter from the standpoint of psychic aberration. He mentioned dissociated personalities, group hypnosis, and so on. But he declared that he was open to conviction, and anxious to get any and all facts.
Sir Henry had a good deal of difficulty in getting Mme. Le Fabre to commit herself. Probably she felt that, since Sir Henry had gone on record as being doubtful of the spiritistic explanation of psychic phenomena, she might get into a controversy with him. But in the end she stated that she expected to find our little mystery simply a novel variation on what was so familiar to her.
As might be supposed, General Hume had no opinion. He merely expressed himself as being prepared to accept any sound theory, or portions of such theories as might be advanced, and arrive at a workable conclusion therefrom. Which was exactly what we wanted of him.
Of them all, Professor Herold showed the most enthusiasm. Perhaps this was because, despite his attainments, he is still young. At any rate, he made it clear that he was fully prepared to learn something entirely new in science. And he was almost eager to adjust his previous notions and facts to the new discoveries.
When all these various viewpoints had been cleared up, and we felt that we understood each other, it was inevitable that we should look to Sir Henry to state his position. This one man combined a large amount of the various, specialised abilities for which the others were noted, and they all knew and respected him accordingly. Had he stood and theorised half the afternoon, they would willingly have sat and listened. But instead he glanced at his watch, and observed:
“To me, the most important development of all was hearing the sound of a dog's bark coming from the ring. As I recall the details, the sound was emitted just after the gem had been submitted to considerable handling, from Miss Fenton's fingers to her brother's and back again. In other words, it was subjected to a mixture of opposing animal magnetisms. Suppose we experiment further with it now.”
Charlotte slipped the gem from her finger and passed it around. Each of us held it for a second or two; after which Charlotte clasped the ring tightly in her palm, while we all joined hands.
It was, as I have said, broad daylight; the hour, shortly after one. Scarcely had our hands completed the circuit than something happened.
From out of Charlotte's closed hand there issued an entirely new sound. At first it was so faint and fragmentary that only two of us heard it. Then it became stronger and more continuous, and presently we were all gazing at each other in wonderment.
For the sound was that of footsteps.
XXVI. — DIRECT FROM PARADISE
The sound was not like that of the walking of the human. Nor was it such as an animal would make. It was neither a thud nor a pattering, but more like a scratching shuffle, such as reminded me of nothing that I had ever heard before.
Next moment, however, there came another sort of sound, plainly audible above the footsteps. This was a thin, musical chuckle which ended in a deep, but faint, organ-like throb. It happened only once.
Immediately it was followed by a steady clicking, such as might be made by gently striking a stick against the pavement; only sharper. This lasted a minute, during which the other sounds ceased.
Once more the footsteps. They were not very loud, but in the stillness of that room they all but resounded.
Presently Charlotte could stand it no longer. She placed the ring on the table, where it continued to emit those unplaceable sounds.
“Well! Do—do you people,” stammered Dr. Malloy, “do you people all hear THAT?”
Miss Clarke's face was rather pale. But her mouth was firm. “It is nothing,” said she, with theosophical positiveness. “You must not believe it—it is not the truth of—”
“Pardon me,” interrupted Sir Henry, “but this isn't something to argue about! It is a reality; and the sooner we all admit it, the better. There is a living creature of some kind making that sound!”
“It is the spirit of some two-footed creature,” asserted Mme. Le Fabre, plainly at her ease. She was on familiar ground now. “If only we had a medium!”
Abruptly the sounds left the vicinity of the ring. At first we could not locate their new position. Then Herold declared that they came from under the table; and presently we were all gathered on the floor, listening to those odd little sounds, while the ring remained thirty inches above, on the top of the table!
It may be that the thing, whatever it was, did not care for such a crowd. For shortly the shuffling ceased. And for a while we stared and listened, scarcely breathing, trying to locate the new position.
Finally we went back to our chairs. We had heard nothing further. Nevertheless, we continued to keep silence, with our ears alert for anything more.
“Hush!” whispered Charlotte all of a sudden. “Did you hear that?” And she looked up toward the ceiling.
In a moment I caught the sound. It was exceedingly faint, like the distant thrumming of a zither. Only it was a single note, which did not rise and fall, although there seemed a continual variation in its volume.
Unexpectedly the other sounds came again, down under the table. This time we remained in our seats and simply listened. And presently Sir Henry, referring to the ring, made this suggestion:
“Suppose we seal it up, and see whether it inducts the sound then as well as when exposed.”
This appealed to Herold very strongly; the others were agreeable; so I ran upstairs to my room and secured a small screw-top metal canister, which I knew to be airtight. It was necessary to remove the stone from the ring, in order to get it into the opening in the can. Presently this was done; and while our invisible visitor continued his scratchy little walking as before, I screwed the top of the can down as tightly as I could.
Instantly the footsteps halted.
I unscrewed the top a trifle. As instantly the stepping was resumed.
“Ah!” cried Herold. “It's a question of radioactivity, then! Remember Le Bon's experiments, Sir Henry?”
But Miss Clarke was sorely mystified by this simple matter, and herself repeated the experiments. Equally puzzled was Mme. Le Fabre. According to her theory, a spirit wouldn't mind a little thing like a metal box. Of them all, Dr. Malloy was the least disturbed; so decidedly so that General Hume eyed him quizzically.
“Fine bunch of hallucinations, doctor.”
“Almost commonplace,” retorted Malloy.
Presently I mentioned that the Rhamda had come from the basement on the night that Ariadne had materialised; and I showed that the only possible route into the cellar was through the locked door in the breakfast room, since the windows were all too small, and there was no other door. Query: How had the Rhamda got there? Immediately they all became alert. As Herold said:
“One thing or the other is true; either there is something downstairs which has escaped you, Fenton, or else Avec is able to materialise in any place he chooses. Let's look!”
We all went down except Charlotte, who went upstairs to stay with Ariadne. By turns, each of us held the ring. And as we unlocked the basement door we noted that the invisible, walking creature had reached there before us.
Down the steps went those unseen little feet, jumping from one step to the next just ahead of us all the way. When within three or four steps of the bottom, the creature made one leap do for them all.
I had previously run an extension cord down into the basement, and both compartments could now be lighted by powerful electric lamps. We gave the place a quick examination.
“What's all this newly turned earth mean?” inquired Sir Henry, pointing to the result of Jerome's efforts a few months before. And I explained how he and Harry, on the chance the basement might contain some clue as to the localisation of the Blind Spot, had dug without result in the bluish clay.
Sir Henry picked up the spade, which had never been moved from where Jerome had dropped it. And while I went on to tell about the pool of liquids, which for some unknown reason had not seeped into the soil since forming there, the Englishman proceeded to dig vigorously into the heap I had mentioned.
The rest of us watched him thoughtfully. We remembered that Jerome's digging had been done after Queen's disappearance. And the dog had vanished in the rear room, the one in which Chick and Dr. Holcomb had last been seen. Now, when Jerome had dug the clay from the basement under this, the dining-room, he had thrown it through the once concealed opening in the partition; had thrown the clay, that is, in a small heap under the library. And—after Jerome had done this the phenomena had occurred in the library, not in the dining-room.
“By Jove!” ejaculated General Hume, as I pointed this out. “This may be something more, you know, that mere coincidence!”
Sir Henry said nothing, but continued his spading. He paid attention to nothing save the heap that Jerome had formed. And with each spadeful he bent over and examined the clay very carefully.
Miss Clarke and Mme. Le Fabre both remained very calm about it all. Each from her own viewpoint regarded the work as more or less a waste of time. But I noticed that they did not take their eyes from the spade.
Sir Henry stopped to rest. “Let me,” offered Herold; and went on as the Englishman had done, holding up each spadeful for inspection. And it was thus that we made a strange discovery.
We all saw it at the same time. Embedded in the bluish earth was a small, egg-shaped piece of light-coloured stone. And protruding from its upper surface was a tiny, blood-red pebble, no bigger than a good-sized shot.
Herold thrust the point of his spade under the stone, to lift it up. Whereupon he gave a queer exclamation.
“Well, that's funny!” holding the stone up in front of us. “That little thing's as heavy as—as—it's HEAVIER than lead!”
Sir Henry picked the stone off the spade. Immediately the material crumbled in his hands, as though rotting, so that it left only the small, red pebble intact. Sir Henry weighed this thoughtfully in his palm, then without a word handed it around.
We all wondered at the pebble. It was most astonishingly heavy. As I say, it was no bigger than a fair-sized shot, yet it was vastly heavier.
Afterward we weighed it, upstairs, and found that the trifle weighed over half a pound. Considering its very small bulk, this worked out to be a specific gravity of 192.6 or almost ten times as heavy as the same bulk of pure gold. And gold is heavy.
Inevitably we saw that there must be some connection between this unprecedentedly heavy speck of material and that lighter-than-air gem of mystery. For the time being we were careful to keep the two apart. As for the unexplained footsteps, they were still slightly audible, as the invisible creatures moved around the cellar.
At last we turned to go. I let the others lead the way. Thus I was the last to approach the steps; and it was at that moment that I felt something brush against my foot.
I stooped down. My hands collided with the thing that had touched me. And I found myself clutching—
Something invisible—something which, in that brilliant light, showed absolutely nothing to my eyes. But my hands told me I was grasping a very real thing, as real as my fingers themselves.
I made some sort of incoherent exclamation. The others turned and peered at me.
“What is it?” came Herold's excited voice.
“I don't know!” I gasped. “Come here.”
But Sir Henry was the first to reach me. Next instant he, too, was fingering the tiny, unseen object. And such was his iron nerve and superior self-control, he identified it almost at once.
“By the lord!”—softly. “Why, it's a small bird! Come here.”
Another second and they were all there. I was glad enough of it; for, like a flash, with an unexpectedness that startles me even now as I think of it—
The thing became visible. Right in my grasp, a little fluttering bird came to life.
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