“Things of the same order as Shri?” the physician, with professional intolerance, got in.
Vulper sat back on his hobby.
“Totally different. I can understand, though, that you don’t believe in him. Yet I showed you his letter.”
“A letter—yes. One that any crank might have sent you. It mentioned some book or other and warned you of the author’s fate.”
Vulper raised a hand.
“This country is full of cranks. I doubt if one of them ever heard of the book, or of Delormel who wrote it. The book, entitled La Période Solaire—‘The Solar Period’—was published in France. There, the law requires that of every book published, two copies shall be deposited in the National Library. The arrangements in that institution were such that no book had ever been stolen from it. Two copies of this book were deposited there. In twenty-four hours, they had vanished. In twenty-four hours, not a copy of the book was obtainable anywhere, and the man who wrote it was killed.”
Dix sniffed.
“By Shri?”
“Or some other Brahman.”
“But why?”
“Because the book revealed secrets that the esoteric sections of the Upanishads contain and which only the Brahman hierarchy may approach.”
“And Delormel got at them?”
“If you want to put it in that way, yes. Only he did it in the same manner in which I secured the data for my manuscript—out of the fourth dimension.”
Dix, plucking at his beard, said, and severely enough:
“The fourth dimension is a mathematical dream.”
Serenely the old man nodded.
“To the mathematician, perhaps. But not to the occultist. To him it is an actual plane on which he functions at will. That is what Swedenborg did, what Delormel did, what I have done. In the fourth dimension, I saw the past and the future. My manuscript contains them both. I say, Dix! You’re thinking I ought to be locked up.”
So neat and sure was the thrust that before it the physician backed.
“No, not that exactly. But I was thinking that if any other man told me what you have, I’d stand ready to sign his commitment.”
“Which reminds me. It’s my will I want you to sign, or, rather, to witness. I told you Mike wouldn’t contest it. That’s because I took a look ahead today and I couldn’t see any contest. But then I couldn’t see any will either, and because of that, and of other things, I’m in a hurry to make one. What is it, Archibald?”
Noiselessly the withered servant had entered.
“Doctor Dix’s secretary has telephoned. Mrs. Gehm is dying.”
Dix picked up his hat. With one hand, the old man stayed him; the other he pressed to his head.
“Mrs. Gehm? I’ve got her. Her name belies her, though. She’s a fat woman in a wig. She’d die of a motor accident in a thunderstorm.” He dropped his hands and added: “This is November. Assuming that the lady remains in New York, she has still five or six months to the good.”
Dix laughed; he couldn’t help it. The portrait of his patient had been exact.
“All the same,” he said, “I’ll have to go. I’ll be back, though, shortly.”
“Thank you. Please do,” replied Vulper, who scribbled on the will and tore it in two.
Meanwhile, in the drawing room on the floor below, Camille Marcy, in breeches and boots, a man’s coat and a derby, was being talked at by Glendenning, Vulper’s nephew, a superior young man who did something in the insurance line and whose long face gave him the thoroughbred air of a horse.
Camille lacked that distinction. A nice, candid-looking girl of sweet-and-twenty, with good eyes, good features, a very good nose, and fair hair—which was docked—she had the appearance of having no nonsense, or at any rate very little of it, about her.
The room, comfortably and long since summarily furnished with articles selected haphazard by an occultist in a hurry, was ugly, but not depressing, for its ugliness was attenuated by this girl, whom Glendenning was asking to marry him.
Like getting up in the morning or having dinner, it was a habit of his. Camille had money of her own, enough for two—enough even in New York, where living costs everybody a little more than he has got—and Glendenning, who lived in a boarding house and had nothing except what he made, saw no reason why she should not honorably support him. He quite counted on it.
But Camille had no more idea of taking him than she had of jumping out of the window. Again and again she had told him so. Again and again he had whinnied and returned to the charge. Now, as he was prancing at her again, Mike Vulper looked in.
In the doorway, his figure showed straight and supple, but his face was sinister. It suggested a mask clapped there by nature in derision. Quasimodo must have had just such another. He was hideous.
Many are without suspecting it, but he had no illusions. Formerly felons were branded on the face; like their chains, it was part of the penalty. And it may be that, because of some forgotten sin committed in an unremembered life, this mask was his punishment. Otherwise he was free—apparently, that is, for actually he was chained. Hoops stronger than steel bound him to Camille. He loved her. Fancy a worm in love with a star! But fancy, too, common sense on the part of the worm, and the latter will know that the star is out of reach. Mike needed no one to tell him that. A mirror can be very instructive.
Now, as he entered the room, Glendenning turned, scowled, and, precisely as if he were eating ice, addressed him.
“And how is my cousin today?”
In the same voice, in the same tone, in the same manner, with a power of mimicry that was disconcerting, instantly Mike repeated the question. It was as if Glendenning had asked it twice.
Camille laughed and showed her teeth, which were well worth
