Page:Weird Tales v02 n01 (1923-07-08).djvu/82

Rh to find the hospital where he had been ill. But if he ever succeeded, no hospital admitted it. Possibly the right one had been enjoined to secrecy, through his mother's influence."

Craddock stopped, with the dejection of a man whose emotions weigh upon him. The others waited silently until he resumed:

"I must not go into all the details he confided. He had never disclosed his secret to anyone else, you see. When he did speak, he had forty years' silence to offset in one evening. But I can suggest this much to you, who knew him. You will agree with me that he had one of the great minds of his generation. Well, picture this man fighting desperately, with his back to the wall. Picture him in bed at night, after his day’s practice. His identity—the thing he had lost which all other men had—possessed tremendous value for him. He fought for forty years, trying to recover it; and all the while, as he told me, it seemed that the key he wanted was only just beyond his reach. He believed that it appeared to him, sometimes, in dreams. He would waken just as the dreams slipped away. The thing must have become an obsession, And yet—he did his work. And then—"

"Yes?" the artist interjected, involuntarily.

"Then came the incident of two months ago. You are fairly familiar with it. He was operating; I assisting. He fainted, and I finished the operation. That was the beginning of his illness. He was more or less unconscious for the first month, and then the humiliating ending came. You know what I mean: while he was convalescing in the hospital—under the very eyes of us all—he walked out of the front door and disappeared."

"We know all that," Jugrand stated.

"Not quite all. You do not know that I received a letter from him. It was a bewildered, incoherent sort of letter. He must have written it on the train, and mailed it, which gave him time for what he wished to do. I was able to recover his body because of what he wrote in that letter. But there was other information in it, too. I learned from it that he had fainted at the operation because there had burst suddenly into his mind the name of a little village in the Blue Ridge. As soon as he was able, he escaped from the hospital and took train to that village. Near it, lying across the threshold of a ruined, charred house, I found him."

"That village was the place?" Jugrand suggested.

"I think it was the place he had been trying to recollect through forty years."

"How much besides the mere name did he remember?" pursued the psychologist.

"That, I fear, we shall never know," the surgeon answered.

Having said this, Craddock, who had been talking with a sort of forced, unnatural coherence, abruptly crumpled in his chair. His head dropped forward, and it appeared that he was about to faint. But before the others could assist him, he straightened, as suddenly as he had given way. He rose, holding to the mantel with one hand.

"I am tired," he said, simply.

Ho walked to the glass doors; opened them, slowly; passed into the other room. They heard his footsteps crossing the floor, The steps ceased, and there was a slight creaking sound.

Jugrand and Marvin sprang to their feet and ran to the doors. They stared for a space, in silence. It was Jugrand, at last, who took the artist by the arm and led the way back to the chairs before the fire, His heavy voice shook with excitement.

"You could see them both, in spite of the poor light?" he demanded.

Marvin nodded.

"Did you observe anything?"

The artist searched Jugrand's face for a hint of his meaning.

"I thought they looked very much alike, lying there," he said, at length.

Jugrand softly clapped his hands.

"That is it. They are alike! They are the same type—that sensitive, yet cold type, from which great surgeons are made. I have often thought that. I am gratified that you noticed it."

"How Craddock could lie down there—" The artist broke off, shuddering.

Jugrand laughed.

"It seems to you the living beside the dead—therefore bizarre. In his normal moments, it would seem so to him. To-night, he is not normal. I am not so sure that he is even asleep—as we understand sleep. Perhaps he has been staring rather too steadily into the fire."

He went on, in a moment:

"I should like to have heard Craddock's theories. I, myself, have but one. Of course, I have suspected the truth for some time."

"What truth?" demanded Marvin.

"That this friend of ours—this dear and wonderful friend, who lies in his coffin—was suffering from loss of memory. My theory relates to the cause. That must have been an emotional catastrophe of the first order. There are only two such—love and death. Now, you will note that he never married; that he never seemed to consider the opposite sex, at all, except scientifically. That points to a subconscious inhibition—something in his original life which dried up the springs, so to speak. Maybe he had loved once, before memory left him—when he was, perhaps, eighteen or nineteen—and could not love again. There you have my theory."

Marvin was silent, staring moodily into the flames. Jugrand rose, and, walking to the glass doors, slowly pushed them open. He spoke, softly:

"The one breathes heavily, and mutters in his dreams. The other is still; he would react to no test at present available to science. Yet, if the brain cells die last of all—"

He paused to laugh—the mirthless, sardonic laugh of the enthusiast, who covers his inward fire, away from the eyes of men:

"So many 'ifs'—'if' Craddock be self-hypnotized, as I think—'if' telepathy exist, independently of our thoughts concerning it—'if' the brain cells die last—"

His voice trailed into silence. Presently, he turned to the artist.

"Come!" he commanded.

Together, the two of them passed through the doorway. They stood beside the dead man, looking down at him who slept.

Outside, the wind before the dawn was rising.

AWN.

Dr. . [sic] Craddock moaned in his sleep, struggled a little, opened his eyes. Jugrand and Marvin stood at the foot of the couch, as they had been standing, tensely, ever since they had come through the double doors. In that time, they had not spoken; but as words muttered by the sleeper had impinged upon their senses, they had looked at each other. There was that which was inexplicable in some of the words; that which Craddock, the surgeon, could not normally have dreamed.

The psychologist came forward. To do so, he had to pass between the couch and that place of more profound repose which was temporarily in the room. He laid his hand on the surgeon’s forehead.

"All right, Craddock?" he inquired, softly.

The awakening man trembled, slightly.

"Yes, yes—of course," he answered. "I fell asleep; and dreamed."

The artist was about to say something, but Jugrand held up a warning finger. Craddock went on, a petulant half-sob in his voice:

"I can't understand it. I wasn't here, at all, I wasn't myself. I was"