Smith? Since Dr. Marriot Doughty was indisputably dead, logically I also must be dead. Here was just such a passing-over as I had heard described at spiritualist meetings.
Undoubtedly I was dead: this was the Beyond.
Dr. Marriot Doughty’s gaze held a deep compassion; but it was the compassion that belongs to greater knowledge.
“Mr. Kerrigan,” he said, “my part is not to enlighten you regarding your new circumstances; my part is to set you on your feet again. There are toxic elements in your system based upon a faultily-treated wound in your left shoulder and affecting the lung structure, but not gravely. You are a healthy, powerful man. This trouble will disperse; in fact, it shall be my business to disperse it. The blow on the occipital area has resulted in no haemorrhage: forget it. In short—I know what you are thinking, but you are not dead. You are very cogently alive.”
I swung out of bed and stood up. A slight dizziness wore off almost immediately.
“Good,” said Dr. Marriot Doughty. “See that the bath is no more than tepid. Your own clothes are all here—at least, those you were wearing. I believe you will find the cartridge belt missing, and the pistol. When you are dressed I will come back and prescribe your breakfast.”
He turned to go.
“Doctor!”
He pulled up.
“Where is Nayland Smith?”
“Mr. Kerrigan, I would gladly answer your question—if I knew the answer. I shall return in about twenty minutes.”
“One moment! How long—”
“Have you been unconscious? Roughly, four days . . . . ”
* * *
As Marriot Doughty signalled to me to precede him, I found myself in a long corridor in which were many white doors, numbered like those in a hotel. An hour had elapsed.
“Some of the staff occupy this annexe,” he said. “It is new, and the apartments, as you have seen, are pleasant. My own quarters are in the main building near the research laboratories.”
He spoke in the mariner of one conducting a visitor over a power station. Nothing in my memories of those grim days is more grotesque than the easy conversational style of this physician who had been dead for four years. I could think of no suitable remark.
“Our headquarters at one time were in the South of France,9’ he went on. “But there we were subject to too much interference. Here, in Haiti, we are ideally situated.”
We came out into a large quadrangle, its tiled paths bordered by palms. I saw that the place we had left resembled a row of bungalows joined together. Most of the windows were open, and there were vases of flowers to be seen on ledges, rows of books. A swim suit hung out of one. It might have been a holiday camp. On the other side of the quadrangle was an extensive range of buildings which I could only assume to be a modem factory, although I saw no smokestack. Several detached structures appeared further off; and in and out of the various buildings men, most of them Haitians and wearing blue overalls, moved in orderly industry. I heard the hum of machinery. Wherever I looked, beyond, forest-robed mountain slopes swept up to the bright morning sky. This was a valley entirely enclosed on all sides. I turned to my guide.
“Where am I? What place is this?”
He smiled.
“Officially, it is the works of the San Damien Sisal Corporation. Geologically, it is the crater of a huge volcano, fortunately extinct. The best sisal in the world is cultivated and treated here. Although the output is small, it is of the very highest quality. The enterprise had been in existence for a long time; but we acquired control less than six years ago.”
“It appears to be most inaccessible.”
“There is a small railway by which produce is sent out. The hemp is grown on the lower slopes behind you.Over a thousand workers are employed by the Corporation.”
So we chatted. There was nothing ominous, no trace of the sinister anywhere. The well-ordered path, flanked by palms, along which we were walking; the fresh mountain air; a cloudless sky; those waves of verdure embracing the valley: all these things spoke of a bountiful nature well and gratefully appreciated. But I looked askance at every figure moving about me, and I had conceived a horror of the proximity of Dr. Marriot Doughty which I found it hard to conceal. I was in the company of a living-dead man—a
Before the door of a house which looked older and which was of a character different from the others, my guide paused and pressed a bell.
“Here,” he said, “I hand you over to Companion Horton, with a clean bill of health.” The door was opened by a Haitian. “Tell the manager that Mr. Bart Kerrigan is here.”
As the man stood aside to allow me to enter. Dr. Marriot Doughty nodded cheerily and turned away. The profoundly commonplace character of everyone’s behaviour, that reference to “the manager,” and now, the businesslike office in which I found myself, began insidiously to frighten me. Companion Horton, a lean, slow-spoken American, rose from a workmanlike desk to greet me. Above his chair I noticed a large photograph of a hemp plantation.
‘“You are very welcome, Mr. Kerrigan. Please sit down and smoke.”
I sat down and accepted a cigarette which he proffered.
“Thanks—Mr. Horton, I presume?”
“James Ridgwell Horton. That’s my name, sir, and I was born in Boston, June first, 1853—”
“Eighteen-fifty-three!”
“Sure thing. I don’t look my age, but then none of us do here. I will admit that there was a time when the thought of going right on living did not appeal. But when I found out that all my faculties became, not dulled but keener; when I realized that I could assimilate new ideas and examine them in the light of old experience, why, I changed my mind.”
No doubt my expression made the remark unnecessary, but: “I don’t think,” I said, trying to speak very calmly, “that I follow.”
“No? Well thafs too bad. May I take it you know that this is the headquarters of the Order of the Si- Fan?”
I suppose I had known—for some time past; yet, bluntly stated, the fact made my heart wobble.
“Yes—I know.”
“Just so; and you feel about it the way I felt twenty years ago. To you the Si-Fan is plain and simple a Black Hand gang; an underworld ramp; a bunch of professional crooks. I thought just that way. But if you will consider the methods by which any Totalitarian State makes progress, you will find that the Ancient Order has merely perfected them. Because you have met some of the high officials—maybe one of The Council—in shady quarters, you have jumped to wrong conclusions.”
But now this man’s sophistries began to infuriate me.
“I regard the heads of such States as glorified gunmen, Mr. Horton. Their methods (I grant the parallel) are the methods of any other criminal.”
“But consider how different their ends are from ours.”
“However noble you believe these to be, I cannot agree that the end justifies the means.”
“Well, well—I am instructed to pass you over to someone who may adjust your standpoint, Mr. Kerrigan.” He stood up. “If you will please come this way.”
He opened a door and invited me to follow. I thought he seemed to be a little crestfallen, as if my obstinacy saddened him. Certainly, one less like a desperate criminal than James Ridgwell Horton it would have been difficult to find. And now, as I walked along an uncarpeted and dimly lighted corridor by his side, a ghastly explanation of his presence there occurred to me. He was dead!
I was in the company of a
