The Book of Susan Part 26

"Mr. Phar says Miss Blake's own father went mad--all of a sudden; cut some fancy woman's throat, and his own after! He thinks history's repeated itself, that's all. So do I. Only a crazy woman could 'a' done this--just this way. A strong man in his senses couldn't 'a' drove that paper-knife home like that! But when a person goes mad, sir, all rules are off. I seen too many cases. Things happen you can't account for.

Take the matter of that dog now--his broken leg, eh? What are you to make of that? And take this queer state she's in. There's no doubt in my mind, Mr. Hunt--the poor girl's gone crazy, somehow. You nor me can't tell how nor why. But it's back of all this--that's sure."

Throughout all this coa.r.s.e nightmare, this insane break in Nature, as I have called it and must always regard it, let me at least be honest. As Conlon spoke, for the tiniest fraction of a second a desolating fear darted through me, searing every nerve with white-hot pain. Was it true?

Might it not conceivably be true? But this single lightning-thrust of doubt pa.s.sed as it came. No, not as it came, for it blotted all clearness, all power of voluntary thought from my mind; but it left behind it a singular intensity of vision. Even as the lightning-pang vanished, and while time yet stood still, a moving picture that amounted to hallucination began to play itself out before me. It was like

_... that last Wild pageant of the acc.u.mulated past That clangs and flashes for a drowning man._

I saw Susan shutting the door of a delicately panelled Georgian room, and every detail of this room--a room I had never entered in the flesh--was distinct to me. Given time, I could have inventoried its every object. I saw Gertrude lying on--not a couch, as Conlon had called it--on a _chaise-longue_, a book with a vivid green cover in her left hand, a bronze paper knife with a thin, pointed blade in her right. She was holding it with the knuckles of her hand upward, her thumb along the handle, and the point of the blade turned to her left, across and a little in toward her body. She was wearing a very lovely _neglige_, a true creation, all in filmy tones of old gold. On a low-set tip-table at her elbow stood a reading-lamp, and a small coal-black French bull lay asleep on a superb Chinese rug--lay close in by the _chaise-longue_, just where a dropped hand might caress him. A light silky-looking coverlet of a peculiar dull blue, harmonizing with certain tones of the rug, was thrown across Gertrude's feet.

As Susan shut the door, the little bull p.r.i.c.ked up his bat-ears and started to uncurl, but Gertrude must have spoken to him, for he settled back again--not, however, to sleep. It was all a picture; I heard no sounds. Then I saw Gertrude put down her book on the table and swing her feet from the _chaise-longue_, meaning to rise and greet Susan. But, as she attempted to stand up, the light coverlet entangled her feet and tripped her; she lost her balance, tried with a violent, awkward lurch of her whole body to recover herself, and stamped rather than stepped full on the dog's forepaws. He writhed, springing up between her feet--the whole grotesque catastrophe was, in effect, a single, fatal gesture!--and Gertrude, throwing her hands instinctively before her face, fell heavily forward, the length of her body, p.r.o.ne. I saw Susan rush toward her---- And the psychic reel flickered out, blanked.... I needed to see no more.

"Don't you agree with me, Mr. Hunt?" Conlon was asking.

"No," I said bluntly. "No madwoman would have summoned a doctor. Miss Blake called it a terrible accident. It was. Her present state is due to the horror of it. When she wakes, it will all be explained. Now take me to her."

Conlon's gray-blue glance fixed me once more. "All right," he grunted, "I've no objections. But I'd 'a' thought your first wish would 'a' been to see your wife."

"No," I replied. "Mrs. Hunt separated from me years ago, for reasons of her own. I bore her no ill will; in a sense, I respected her, admired her. Understand me, Sergeant Conlon. There was nothing vulgar in her life, and her death in this stupid way--oh, it's indecent, d.a.m.nable! A cheap outrage! I could do nothing for her living, and can do nothing now. But I prefer to remember her as she was. _She_ would prefer it, too."

"Come on, then," said Conlon; pretty gruffly, I thought.

He unlocked the door.

III

It was a singular thing, but so convincing had my vision been to me that I felt no immediate desire to verify the details of its setting by an examination of Gertrude's boudoir. It had come to me bearing its own credentials, its own satisfying accent of truth. One question did, however, fasten upon me, as I followed Conlon's bulky form, down the hall to Lucette's bedroom. Whence had this vision, this psychic reel come to me? What was its source? How could the mere fact of it--clearing, as it did, at least, all perplexities from my own mind--have occurred? For the moment I could find no answer; the mystery had happened, had worked, but remained a mystery.

Like most men in this modern world I had taken a vague, mild interest in psychical research, reading more or less casually, and with customary suspension of judgment, anything of the sort that came in my way. I had a bowing acquaintance with its rapidly growing literature; little more; and until now I had had no striking psychical experiences of my own, and had never, as it happened, attended a seance of any kind, either popular or scientific. Nevertheless, I could--to put it so--speak that language.

I was familiar with the described phenomena, in a general way, and with the conflicting theories of its leading investigators; but I had--honestly speaking--no pet theories of my own, though always impatient of spiritistic explanations, and rather inclined to doubt, too, the persistent claim that thought transference had been incontrovertibly established. On the whole, I suppose I was inclined to favor common-sense mechanistic explanations of such phenomena, and to regard all others with alert suspicion or wearily amused contempt.

Now at last, in my life's most urgent crisis, I had had news from nowhere; now, furthermore, the being I loved and would protect, _must_ protect, had been thrown by psychic shock into that grim borderland, the Abnormal: that land of lost voices, of the fringe of consciousness, of dissociated personalities, of morbid obsession, and wild symbolic dreams. Following on Conlon's heels, then, I entered a softly illumined room--a restrained _Louis Seize_ room--a true Gertrude room, with its cool French-gray panelled walls; but entered there as into sinister darkness, as if groping for light. The comfortably accustomed, the predictable, I felt, lay all behind me; I must step warily henceforth among s.h.i.+fting shadows and phosphoric blurs. The issues were too terrifying, too vast, for even one little false move; Susan's future, the very health of her soul, might depend now upon the blundering clumsiness or the instinctive tact with which I attempted to pick and choose my way. It was with a secret shuddering of flesh and spirit that I entered that discreet, faultless room.

Susan was lying on the low single French bed, a coverlet drawn over her; they had removed her trim tailored hat, the jacket of her dark suit, and her walking-boots, leaving them on the couch by the silk-curtained windows, where they had perhaps first placed her. She had not dressed for the evening before coming up to Gertrude's; it was evidently to have been a businesslike call. Her black weblike hair--smoky, I always called it, to tease her; it never fell lank or separated into strings--had been disordered, and a floating weft of it had drifted across her forehead and hung there. Her face was moon-white, her lips pale, the lines of cheek and chin had sharpened, her eyes were closed. It was very like death. My throat tightened and ached....

Doctor Askew stood across the bed from us, looking down at her.

"Here's Mr. Hunt," said Conlon, without further introduction. "He wants to see you." Then he stepped back to the door and shut it, remaining over by it, at some distance from the bed. His silence was expressive.

"Now show me!" it seemed to say. "This may be a big case for me and it may not. If not, I'm satisfied; I'm ready for anything. Go on, show me!"

Doctor Askew was not, as I had expected to find him, old; nor even middle-aged; an expectation caught, I presume, from Conlon's laconic "One of the best--a big rep"; he was, I now estimated, a year or so younger than I. I had never heard of him and knew nothing about him, but I liked him at once when he glanced humorously up at Conlon's "He wants to see you," nodded to me, and said: "I've been hoping you'd come soon, Mr. Hunt. I've a mind to try something here--if you've no objection to an experiment?"

He was a short man, not fat, but thickset like Conlon; only, with a higher-strung vitality, carrying with it a sense of intellectual eagerness and edge. He had a sandy, freckled complexion, bronzy, crisp-looking hair with reddish gleams in it, and an unmistakably red, aggressive mustache, close-clipped but untamed. Green-blue eyes. A man, I decided, of many intensities; a willful man; but thoughtful, too, and seldom unkind.

"Why did you wait for my permission?" I asked.

"I shouldn't have--much longer," he replied, his eyes returning to Susan's unchanging face. "But I've read one or two of your essays, so I know something of the feel of your mind. It occurred to me you might be useful. And besides, I badly need some information about this"--he paused briefly--"this very lovely child." Again he paused a moment, adding: "This is a singular case, Mr. Hunt--and likely to prove more singular as we see it through. I acted too impulsively in sending for Conlon; I apologize. It's not a police matter, as I at first supposed.

However, I hope there's no harm done. Conlon is holding his horses and trying to be discreet. Aren't you, Conlon?"

"What's the idea?" muttered Conlon, from the doorway; Conlon was not used to being treated thus, _de haut en bas_. "Even if that poor little girl's crazy, we'll have to swear out a warrant for her. It's a police matter all right."

"I think _not_," said Doctor Askew, dismissing Conlon from the conversation. "Have you ever," he then asked me, "seen Miss Blake like this before?"

I was about to say "No!" with emphasis, when a sudden memory returned to me--the memory of a queer, crumpled little figure lying on the concrete incline of the Eureka Garage; curled up there, like an unearthed cutworm, round a s.h.i.+ning dinner-pail. "Yes," I replied instead; "once--I think."

"You think?"

I sketched the occasion for him and explained all its implications as clearly and briefly as I could; and while I talked thus across her bed Susan's eyes did not open; she did not stir. Doctor Askew heard me out, as I felt, intently, but kept his eye meanwhile--except for a keen glance or two in my direction--on Susan's face.

"All right," he said, when I had concluded; "that throws more or less light. There's nothing to worry us, at least, in Miss Blake's condition.

Under psychical trauma--shock--she has a tendency to pa.s.s into a trance state--amounting practically to one of the deeper stages of hypnosis.

She'll come out of it sooner or later--simply wake up--if we leave her alone. Perhaps, after all, that's the wisest thing for us to do."

On this conclusion he walked away from the bed, as if it ended the matter, and lit a cigarette.

"Well, Conlon," he grinned, "we're making a night of it, eh? Come, let's all sit down and talk things over." He seated himself on the end of the couch as he spoke, lounging back on one elbow and crossing his knees. "I ought to tell you, Mr. Hunt," he added, "that nervous disorders are my specialty; more than that, indeed--my life! I studied under Janet in Paris, and later put in a couple of years as a.s.sistant physician in the Clinic of Psychiatry, Zurich. Did some work, too, at Vienna--with Stekel and Freud. So I needn't say a problem of this kind is simply meat and drink to me. I wouldn't have missed it for anything in the world!"

I was a little chilled by his words, by an att.i.tude that seemed to me cold-bloodedly professional; nevertheless, I joined him, drawing up a chair, and Conlon gradually worked his way toward us, though he remained standing.

"What I want to know, doc," demanded Conlon, "is why you've changed your mind?"

"I haven't," Doctor Askew responded. "I can't have, because I haven't yet formed an opinion. I'm just beginning to--and even that may take me some time." He turned to me. "What's your theory, Mr. Hunt?"

I was prepared for this question; my mind had been busying itself foresightedly with every possible turn our conversation was likely to take. All my faculties were sharpened by strain, by my pressing sense that Susan's future, for good or evil, might somehow be linked to my lightest word. I had determined, then, in advance, not to speak in Conlon's presence of my inexplicable vision, not to mention it at all to anyone unless some unexpected turn of the wheel might make it seem expedient. I could use it to Susan's advantage, I believed, more effectively by indirection; I endeavored to do so now.

"My theory?" I queried.

"As to how Mrs. Hunt met her death. However painful, we've got to face that out, sooner or later."

"Naturally. But I have no theory," I replied; "I have an unshakable conviction."

"Ah! Which is----"

"That the whole thing was accidental, of course; just as Miss Blake affirmed it to be over the telephone."

"You believe that _because_ she affirmed it?"

"Exactly."

"That won't go down with the coroner," struck in Conlon. "How could it?

I'd like to think it, well enough--but it don't with me!"

"Wait, Conlon!" suggested Doctor Askew, sharply. "I'll conduct this inquiry just now, if you don't mind--and if Mr. Hunt will be good enough to answer."

"Why not?" I replied.

"Thank you. Conlon's point is a good one, all the same. Have you been able to form any reasonable notion of how such an accident could have occurred?"

"Yes."