Page:Ghost Stories v02n02 (1927-02).djvu/66

64 And once, in a loud, cracked voice, he shouted:

“I shall get it! I tell you I shall convince you and your sceptics!”

“But my dear Kane,” I replied quietly, as I tried to soothe him, “—why kill yourself for us sceptics? Are we worth it?”

His eyes went vacant, and he did not answer. What he saw, I cannot tell. It must have been something which we could not see.

Emma too, now, I was sure, feared for his sanity.

“Please come home with us now, Howard,” she pleaded. “You need a rest. You'll work better when you get back.”

He shook off her hand.

“No, thanks. I'll keep at it. Do me this favor. Come tomorrow afternoon. I believe my book may be complete then.”

“So soon?” Emma asked.

“It may be. Will you come? I'll want you to see it, at once. And you too, Dufrey. You may be convinced.”

He was in such a deplorable condition, that I promised.

But the next afternoon, when Emma, ready to go, knocked at my laboratory door, I was in the midst of a difficult piece of work that I could not, without losing my cultures, put aside.

“Go alone, dear,” I said. “I'll be busy for hours. Tell Kane I’m sorry. Perhaps if he has finished his book, he'll come back with you and read it to me tonight.”

HE was lovely in her dark furs, with her small, pale, oval face and the dark, violet eyes. She kissed me. For a moment or two she held me tight and I felt a shudder run through her.

“What's the matter?” I asked. “What is it, dear?”

“Nothing. I'm all right. Good-bye, Jimmie.”

It was not until the door had closed on her, not, perhaps, until I heard her drive away in her car, that it struck me there had been something strange and sad in her good-bye.

“By George!” I muttered to myself, “they’ve nearly banged up my nerves—those two!”

It all seemed so foolish. With a feeling of irritation I bent over my microscope and soon I had lost all sense of time.

Scarcely aware, at dark I turned on the electric light. The house was silent. The maid had gone to the city for the day. The night looked in at the black windows. The snowy hills were as specters in the distance. I glanced at last at my watch. It was eight o'clock. Emma should have returned long before.

Downstairs, I fidgeted about. I went back to my work, to overcome my feeling of restlessness. I meant, if Emma was not back by nine, to walk to Kane’s place and fetch her.

Then I heard the front door open and close. Instantly a weird sense hit into my heart. I had not heard the car come to a stop, though the old rattletrap always made an insufferable noise. However, I realized I had been deep over the test-tubes and retorts, and I told myself I had not been listening.

I became sure of that when I heard Emma's feet on the stairs, and I laughed at myself when Emma came in through my door. Her face was white in the dark furs. Her small hand held a sheaf of manuscript.

“So, The Irrefutable is really finished!” I said, smiling.

She sat down and held out the pages to me.

“Will you read it, Jimmie?”

An odd compulsion was in her voice.

“Have you read it?” I asked.

She nodded.

“Well—did the message come across? Will the sceptics bow to this?”

“Read,” she said, in the same compelling voice.

For an hour I read, while Emma, motionless, | watched my face. There was a quality in her gaze that made me, from time to time, look quickly up at her. I could not define that quality.

“So,” I said inwardly, “this is what the hereafter is like. Grass and meadows and flowers, and ineffable peace and complete understanding. And the soul, when it arrives, for a few moments is dazed, and then the new life begins and——”

I looked at Emma.

“But dear, isn't this very like what Kane has written before? Some details differ, but in the main——”

“Perhaps the details make the difference,” Emma replied.

“I can’t see it. I mean—— You must please permit us—the sceptics—still to doubt. You see——”

“Jimmie,” she said, softly, “there can be no doubt of it. It is authentic—that account there, you have.”

Her tone arrested me. I looked at her. Again that strange-quality in the gaze she returned.

“Hear what happened, Jimmie. When I came to Howard Kane's cottage, Howard was not there. On his desk, under a weight, lay this manuscript. But, as I say, Howard was not there. Then I found a note from him. It read:

To find my Irrefutable I have crossed voluntarily to the other life. You will discover my body at the bottom of the gully, beyond the den. I returned from the dead to complete my book. Tell the sceptics I must indeed have known what write. Now, surely, there is the light of verity behind my words. This note, too, was written after my return——

“Here is the note, Jimmie. And here is the manuscript. I went to the gully and down on the rocks I saw him——" She covered her face with her hands.

“Do you believe now, dear? I do so want you to believe! He went out to meet death so he could tell you and others of that which cannot die.”

ER words shook me like a gust of cold wind. Then, with sudden anger, I cried:

“What a hoax! What a madman's hoax! Don’t you see it, Emma? Don't you see it? His insanity drove him to suicide. Yes! But the shreds of sanity that remained to him were astute enough to make him write this this outrageous lie. He wrote it before he died. Don’t you see that?”

She shook her head sadly.

“No,” she said, “he wrote it after he died.”

“Emma! Emma, dear—”

“He wrote it after he died,” she repeated solemnly.

“How do you know? How do you know he did not write it before he——”

“Because, dear—well, as I stared down at him where he lay on the sharp rocks, I was so horrified something happened. You see, dear, I too am dead.”

After one unearthly moment, I screamed.

“Emma! Emma!”

Then I took a step toward her. No one was there.

I fell to the floor, and it was long after midnight when I regained consciousness. I stumbled out of that tomb-silent house, into the whistling wind, and I roused a neighbor. The rest can be briefly told.

By the light of lanterns, we found them, both of them, on the rocks at the bottom of the gully.

WAS very ill, thereafter, for months. In the blackest hours I understood the bond that had existed between those two. I wanted to go to Emma, to tell her that now such a tie bound her to me also?

Yet then, I thought, I have my work here to do. The body suffers here, before the spirit is released to the hereafter.

Emma comes to me often while I work, and I am the better for her presence. I know she is waiting for me, and that she knows my feelings.

“To the dead all things are clear.”

the greatest respect for her good sense, and I believed she could help me get to the bottom of the mystery if any one could. I went to see her the same evening.

Helen is a plump brunette, with a sweet, childish mouth. But she has a sane, strong will and the courage of a man.

I took her in my arms and kissed her. Then, while her face was still resting against my shoulder, I plunged into a rapid recital of what I had heard the night before, winding up with a description of the condition. of the vault.