THE Novelist

Otago Witness, Issue 4085, 28 June 1932, Page 6

THE Novelist

THE DEATH DOCTOR

By

BERNARD CRONIN

Author of “ Timber Wolves,” “ White Gold,” “ Salvage,” “ Toad,” etc.

(Copyright. —Eoit the Otago Witness.)

CHAPTER XXI. Angus Al'Corkle sat facing-the rest' in van Drift’s library. Norma van Drift, who had joined the group, sat by her father. The air of tragedy, felt by them all, had subdued even her. She was silent and frightened. M'Corkle said: “What do you suppose has happened to John Garner, Air van Drift ? ” Van Drift had the grace to shudder. “ I take it the old man was burnt alive.” “Stop! ” Clarrie said. She lifted her white face from Bill Hugger’s shoulder. “T can’t bear to think of it ” “ You needn’t,” M'Corkle said gravely, “ for it’s not true. Your father was never actually there. I mean that. He was, shall we say, absent, before the flames gained hold. In any case, I can assure you that he would not have felt the slightest pain or distress of any kind.” The policeman said: “ What are you talking about? ” “ John Garner,” M'Corkle said, moistening his lips, “ died weeks ago. That is my belief. It may, or may not be, borne out by this diary in my hand, which I propose to read to you now. It is quite short. Sully was right. He discovered the truth, and the shock of it sent him mad.” Van Drift lifted his hand. His face had a grey tinge. “ Wait a moment, M'Corkle. How could Garner have been dead for weeks? We heard his voice, and. I, for one, caught a glimpse of his face.” “ John Garner,” M'Corkle said deliberately, “ was dead, as we understand death, the night he came to this house and this room. That is to say, his heart was not beating. If you had gone close enough to him you would have discovered that no breath came from his lips and that his flesh was cold as marble.”

“Good God! ” Cordery said. His grin seemed to writhe. “ Don’t you remember, Carl ? I said his touch was like a corpse ” Bill Hugger said, holding Clarrie tightly: “You’re all mad. What are you coming art?” “ We’re not children at play,” M'Corkle said sharply. He wiped the moisture from his forehead. “ It’s the truth. John Garner died that night he was so ill in his room. He died, and he knew he had died. He was a dead man walking and talking He’d done something to himself that held his soul to his body and his body from decay, as we know decay. What it was no one will ever know, unless he has told us here. I doubt it. But whatever it was it changed, after a time, the orbit of the electrons in his flesh and blood. They began to dissolve into gaseous ions, and he vanished piecemeal. I guessed that much when I heard that he was wearing gloves and that he seemed to be growing shorter. The extremities would dissolve first. And the process became more and more rapid as it advanced Before he became incapable of action he destroyed all his apparatus. I expected no less. That was the noise Clarrie heard yesterday. When we broke in his door to-night nothing was left of him but his head. It dematerialised under our eyes in a flash.” In a shocked, incredulous silence M'Corkle turned to the pages in his hand. He said, presently, in a low voice: “ Whatever revelation is here it was hinted at by the old. man on the night I first saw him. You remember, Duran ? ” Brenda said: “ But it might have so easily been burnt. How could he know that? ” “ He knew we were there,” M'Corkle said “ And he knew we would break down his door. He suspected—and with truth—that I was on the track of what had happened, even though I might never know by what means it was brought about. Unless the door was first broken open no fire was possible. It was the draught of air that followed that gave his red ray its chance to function.” Van Drift said hoarsely: “Read it, M'Corkle.” M'Corkle said: “ Yes. It is headed: ‘ The Last Record of John Garner.’ There are gaps in the writing, indicating progressive entries.” CHAPTER XXII. * I, John Garner, alive, yet dead, trusting still to the mercy and comfort of Almighty God, make record here, .• while I am able, of the unbelievable thing that has happened. To-day I noticed for the first time that my fingers

were dissolving. Unsuspected until now, it appears that one of the properties of the red’ray has been to change the orbit of the electrons of my body. They are turning into gaseous ions, and bit by bit my body will disappear. A living death —and yet, am I not dead already? “ Clarrie has just called to me through the door, and I have told her I do not want anything and that I must not be disturbed. My heart goes out to the child But what else can I do? I dare not terrify her with the truth. What is the truth? I have known it for some days, utterly incredible as it seems. My body is dead, but my soul —the Ka,. as the Egyptians named it—remains imprisoned. Yesterday I cut my wrist on a broken window, following an atteinpt on the part of some man to enter the laboratory. The wound did not bleed. I am conscious that I no longer breathe, that my heart no longer beats, that my voice comes not from the thorax, but is merely an effort of will, projected from that I that is within. I have tried to disguise it by moving my lips.

“ I was sick unto death. Yet I remembered my years of preparation against this very thing. People, they tell me, are standing amazed at my discovery of Atmosoupe, a discovery that I revealed in a moment of weakness. I wonder what they would say if they knew that this discovery is nothing, nothing at all to the discovery revealed to me that night after years of tedious, heart-breaking research. “ I knew that I was going to die. I set the apparatus in order—slowly and gropingly, because of my great pain. Shall I set down what it was? A little, perhaps. I have promised . Angus M'Corkle that he shall learn something at least of what has happened. But not all—God Torbid. Let my blasphemy be hidden from all but His eyes. Is it not blasphemy to attempt to turn His natural decrees from their fulfilment? — may He pardon me, “ I put iny apparatus in order. I trained the red ray on the deathbed, where I should presently lie. Let me say only this: the red ray is evolved from crystals that have evolved in their turn from certain. preparations of oils and spices and the sap of trees, filtered and contained in a glass jar. Several times the jar exploded—l was in despair. But at last perseverance won. The small, reddish-brown crystals I subjected to careful heating, and obtained"a single large crystal of golden red. It scintillates from within, and has apparently radio-active properties. I have discovered that its rays will pass through lead, but not through wood. For five years this has been sealed in readiness for my testing of my theory. All that time it continued to radiate and to produce stony particles of different colours and shapes, the composition of which is not clear. I have .a strong feeling that I have stumbled upon the new organic force alleged to have been discovered, some years back, by a noted theosophist. Of that no matter

“ I lay on my bed and closed my eyes. I was dying. There ensued a period of complete unconsciousness. I became conscious again. The red ray was bathing me in its soft citalising light. The thought came to me that I had failed, that my recovery was natural. I felt well—entirely well. And then, all of a sudden, terror smote me. I was still on earth. But not as when I had laid my gasping body on its bed. I no longer knew pain, but—l no longer breathed. My body was dead. All I had done was to hold it for a time against its dissolution—as I was soon to discover — and imprison my real self within it. I belonged to two worlds, and was free .from neither. Can I hope to convey the anguish that seized me?

Now, indeed, I longed for death — real death. I could move my limbs, could walk and talk, but in what hideous travesty of real life. I felt I was doomed to an existence which had no counterpart anywhere within the bounds of God’s creation. No hell could be more terrifying—l was poisonous to others! “ In my extremity it occurred to me that I might restore my dead flesh by use of Atmosoupe. I had a quantity already manufactured, and I swallowed it from time to time. I say, “ swallowed,” but in reality I merely poured it down my throat, as down a sink. My bodily functions had ceased. I moved and spoke only by the exercise of my will within. Mind triumphing over matter. Until then I had never fully understood the phrase. “Thus, gradually, was brought about the amazing dissolution which is now

taking place. Some property of ' the red ray or of Atmosoupe—perhaps of the combination —is at work. I am dying bodily by steadily increasing stages. Aly fingers and toes, presently my arms and legs, my trunk, and all the rest will vapourise and disappear. Little by little I am vanishing, thrown off—as I now believe —in the form oft) gaseous ions. The soul, that which is I, retreats to its human fastness. Where? In the solar plexus, as was believed by Pliny? Soon I shall know, Or in the pituitary gland, that blind eye of the brain, as held by other of the ancients? Yes, I shall soon know. If my body vanishes and I have still earthly habitation and perceptions, then I shall have proved the point. I shall have retreated tn some region of the brain, like the pituitary—my soul like protoplasm in its cell “ I have written all that matters.. I can no longer grasp the pen—only with difficulty I trace these concluding words. Aly fingers are stumps only. The dissolution is increasing with every passing minute. I have tampered with a radiation hitherto unknown from matter in the natural state, and the penalty is yet to face. What will it be? “ I shall destroy the whole of my apparatus, while I am yet able. I shall turn the red ray on to a heap of papers, and when the door is opened the red ray will light my funeral pyre, and in so doing will destroy all trace of itself. I shall have then become one with the intra-elemental energy that is destroying me—my body—perhaps even my mind—that which we call mind .... “What fools! . . . With Atmosoupe men would destroy the world. They shall not have it. If you, Angus Al'Corkle, should read these words, sooner perish than that you blaspheme , the hidden knowledge. Let my fate warn . . . what awaits me? I, that am neither wholly alive nor wholly dead. But soon, God help me, shall be on e or the other. Was there ever so strange a journey into the beyond! Farewell! Nisi dominus frustra ...” Al'Corkle, setting the record aside, translated huskily: “ ‘ Unless God be with you all your toil is in vain.’ Poor old man! How inconceivably appalling!” Van Drift stretched out his hand. “ Give me that diary, Al'Corkle.” Al'Corkle obeyed without hesitation. Something in the old man’s face moved him abruptly. Van Drift, he thought, for the first time was aware of the immense realities of life and death. Something like a miracle was taking place in the big man’s brain and heart. Without a word van Drift set the papers in the fireplace and put a match to them. H e said, in a shaking voice, “ I am going to ask you all to swear to keep what you have heard to yourselves. There are some things —are some things —I did not know ...” Each in turn gave him the required assurance. Even Cordery was sincere. Duran, his hand in Brenda’s, put up the blinds. Faint daylight streamed into the room.

“ And now,” van Drift said, “ we can only wait. Our share in to-night’s events may have escaped attention. I pray it may be so. The papers will tell us.” Al'Corkle held out his hand, and van Drift gripped it. The big man said simply, “ I am fortunate. I want to be your friend —the friend of all of you. We must meet again.” In parting, Duran met Norma’s eyes. Liking was not there, but there was no hostility. That phase of their lives, he told himself, was closed. She had drawn closer to Cordery. Duran felt that there was, somehow, a better, saner understanding between them all. They were to enter a new phase of life. CHAPTER XXIII. Air Hugger, returning from his work, said, from the doorway of their little sitting room, “ Bless my heart and soul, if she hasn’t got on to the Great Alurphy again. Where did you get it, Lovely?” “ Found it on a second-hand book-" stall,” Clarrie said. “ I did so want to finish about ‘ The Ultramarine Death,’ and when it was burned I could have screamed.” She sighed and added, “Poor father!” “ If he’d been your real father it would have been worse,” Air Hugger comforted. “ If he had been, he couldn’t have done more for me,” Clarrie said. “ It’s his money that bought us this house and let you leave the police and buy a little business of your own.” “S’fact!” Air Hugger agreed. “If I’d kept on there’s no knowing but I’d have made a fine C I.D. man. I had it in me. I saw Air Al'Corkle to-day. He’s been staying with Duran and Brenda. They want us to go down.” Clarrie yawned. “ I’d be glad. Nothing ever happens lately.” “Mr van Drift has given Al'Corkle and him a good job,” Mr Hugger said. “ Funny, the way that man’s changed. Sort of got more human. Are you listening?” “ No,” his wife said. “ I just vant to finish this chapter, Bill, and then I’ll get your tea.” Air Hugger sat silent a moment, then went to the bookcase and took therefrom a newspaper. It was well worn from frequent reading. It bore the date of the day following the burning of John Garner’s house. He began to read the big headlines for the hundredth time. It was a subject that never failed to interest him.

(The End.)

Had he not, all unknown, played a leading part in it? “ Scientist’s Terrible Death. Burns With his Secrets. Lucky Escape of Adopted Daughter.” ..." Aladman’s Suicide.” Clarrie turned a page of “ The Ultramarine Death. ’ Her expression was wrapt. “ So,” Count Odo Otto, Baron Scharnschloss, “we meet at last. Alurphy, fool! You thought me dead, and here you see me walking before you.” The Great Alurphy had never been in a tighter corner. But his courage did not falter. “ Lots of things thtit walk are dead, count, ’ he taunted. “ I mean from the chin up . . . !” What a life!” Clarrie murmured ecstatically.