SOMEONE rapped loudly on the door of my bedroom. It was past midnight but I had been unable to sleep and I welcomed the disturbance.
“Who’s there?” I asked.
“A young man what insists on being admitted, sir,” replied the raucous voice of my housekeeper. “A young man — and very thin and pale he is, sir— what says he’s business what won’t wait. ‘He’s in bed,’ I says, but then he says as how you’re the only doctor what can help him now. He says as how he hasn’t slept or ate for a week, and he ain’t nothing but a boy, sir!”
“Tell him he can come in,” I replied as I slid into my dressing gown and reached for a cigar.
The door opened to admit a thin shaft of light and a young man so incredibly emaciated that I stared at him in horror. He was six feet tall and extremely broad-shouldered, but I don’t think he weighed one hundred pounds. As he approached me he staggered and leaned against the wall for support. His eyes fairly blazed. It was obvious that some tremendous idea swayed him. I gently indicated a chair and he collapsed into it.
For a moment he sat and surveyed me. When I offered him a cigar he brushed it aside with a gesture of contempt.
“Why should I poison my body with such things?” he snapped. “Tobacco is for weaklings and children.”
I studied him curiously. He was apparently an extraordinary young man. His forehead was high and broad, his nose was curved like a scimitar, and his lips were so tightly compressed that only a thin line indicated his mouth.
I waited for him to speak, but silence enveloped him like a rubber jacket. “I shall have to break the ice somehow.” I reflected; and then suddenly I heard myself asking: “You have something to tell me — some confession, perhaps, that you wish to make to me?”
My question aroused him. His shoulders jerked, and he leaned forward, gripping both arms of his chair. “I have been robbed of my birthright,” he said. “I am a man of genius, and once, for a brief moment, I had power— tremendous power. Once I projected my personality before vast multitudes of people, and every word that I uttered increased my fame and flattered my vanity.”
He was trembling and shaking so violently that I was obliged to rise and lay a restraining hand upon his shoulder. “Delusions of magnificence,” I murmured, “undoubtedly induced by a malignant inferiority-complex.”
“It is not that,” he snapped. “I am a poet, an artist, and I have within me a tremendous force that must be expanded. The world has denied me self- expression through legitimate channels and now I am justified in hating the world. Let society beware!”
He threw back his head and laughed. His hilarity seemed to increase the tension that had somehow crept into the room.
“Call me a madman if you will,” he exclaimed, “but I crave power. I can not rest until my name is on a million lips.”
“A conservative course of treatment—” I began.
“I want no treatment,” he shouted, and then, in a less agitated voice, “You would be surprised, perhaps, if I told you my name!”
“What is your name?” I asked.
“Arthur St. Amand,” he replied, and stood up.
I was so astonished that I dropped my cigar. I may even add that I was momentarily awed.
“Arthur St. Amand,” he repeated. “You are naturally amazed to discover that the pale, harassed and half- insane youth that you see before you was once called the peer of Newton and Leonardo Da Vinci. You are amazed to discover that the starving lad with an inferiority-complex was once feted, by kings and praised by men whose lightest words will go thundering down Time. It is all so amazing and so uproariously funny, but the tragedy remains. Like Dr. Faustus I once looked upon the face of God, and now I’m less than any schoolboy.”
“You are still very young,” I gasped. “You can’t be more than twenty-four.” “I am twenty-three,” he said. “It was precisely three years ago that I published my brochure on etheric vibrations. For six months I lived in a blaze of glory. I was the marvelous boy of the scientific world, and then that
Frenchman advanced his theory ”
“I suppose you mean Monsieur Paul Rondoli,” I interrupted. “I recall the sensation his startling refutation made at the time. He Completely eclipsed you in the popular mind, and later the scientific world declared you a fraud. Your star set very suddenly.”
“But it will rise again,” exclaimed my young visitor. “The world will discuss me again, and this time I shall not be forgotten. I shall prove my theory. I shall demonstrate that the effect of etheric vibration on single cells is to change'—to change—.” He hesitated and then suddenly shouted, “But no, I shall not tell you. I shall tell no one. I came here tonight to unburden my mind to you. At first I thought of going to a priest. It is necessary that I should confess to someone.
“When my thoughts are driven in upon themselves they become monstrous. I have an active and terrible brain, and I must speak out occasionally. I chose you because you are a man of intelligence and discrimination and you have heard many confessions. But I shall not discuss etheric vibrations with you. When you see it you will understand.”
He turned abruptly and walked out of the room and out of my house without once looking back. I never saw him again.
]uly 21. This is my fourth day at the beach. I’ve already gained three pounds, and I’m so sunbaked that I frightened a little girl when I went swimming this morning. She was building sand castles and when she saw me she dropped her shovel and ran shrieking t6 her mother. “Horrible black man!” she shouted. I’suppose she thought I was a genie out of the Arabian Nights. It’s pleasant here — I’ve almost got the evil taste of New York out of my mouth. Elsie’s coming down for the week-end.
July 22. The little girl I frightened yesterday has disappeared. The police are searching for her and it is generally believed that she has been kidnaped. The unfortunate occurrence has depressed everyone at the beach. All bathing parties have been abandoned, and even the children sit about sad-eyed and dejected. No footprints were found on the sands near the spot where the child was last seen…
July 23. Another child has disappeared, and this time the abductor left a clue. A young man’s walking stick and hat were found near the scene of a violent struggle. The sand for yards around was stained with blood. Several mothers left the New Beach Hotel this morning with their children.
July 24. Elsie came this morning. A new crime occurred at the very moment of her arrival, and I scarcely had the heart to explain the situation to her. My paleness evidently frightened her. “What is the matter?” she asked 'you look ill.’ “I am ill,” I replied. “I saw something dreadful on the beach this morning.” “Good heavens!” she exclaimed; “have they found one of the children?” It was a great relief to me that she had read about the children in the New York papers. “No,” I said. “They didn’t find the children, but they found the body of a man and he- didn’t have a drop of blood in him. He had been drained dry. And all about his body the investigators found curious little mounds of yellowish slime — of ooze. When the sunlight struck this substance it glittered.” “Has it been examined under a microscope?” asked Elsie. “They are examining it now,” I explained. “We shall know the results by this evening.” “God pity us all,” said Elsie, and she staggered and nearly fell. I was obliged to support her as we entered the hotel.
July 25. Two curious developments. The chemist who examined the jellyfish substance found near the body on the beach declares that it is living protoplasm, and he has sent it to the Department of Health for classification by one of their expert-biologists. And a deep pool some eight yards in diameter has been discovered in a rock fissure about a mile from the New Beach Hotel, which evidently harbors some queer denizens. The water in this pool is as black as ink and strongly saline. The pool is eight or ten feet from the ocean, but it is affected by the tides and descends a foot every night and morning. This morning one of the guests of the hotel, a young lady named Clara Phillips, had come upon the pool quite by accident, and being fascinated by its sinister appearance had decided to sketch it. She had seated herself on the rim of the rock fissure and was in the act of sketching in several large boulders and a strip of beach when something made a curious noise beneath her. “Gulp,” it said. “Gulp!” She gave a little cry and jumped up just in time to escape a long golden tentacle which slithered toward her over the rocks. The tentacle protruded from the very center of the pool, out of the black water, and it filled her
