Chapter 16
In the summer of 1920, Alma Halsey returned to Arkham. She knocked on my door one Saturday afternoon. I was unprepared for her arrival and was surprised by the upspringing of joy I felt when I saw her. I lifted her off her feet and whirled her around several times before setting her down laughing.
“Such exuberance, Charles!” she said, kissing me on both cheeks. “Oh, I’m so glad to see you again! I hardly know what to ask you first.”
We spent the afternoon and evening talking. Alma was in Arkham for a short time only, staying with her parents. She intended to settle in Boston, where she would be writing a series of articles for the Post on various aspects of modern life as they pertained to women.
“It’s exactly what I wanted to do even before I knew it,” she said. “Those months of wandering around Europe showed me that.”
“So journalism’s gain is librarianship’s loss. And mine, too, it seems.”
“Now Charles, you have to own something – or someone – to lose it. And I’m going to be in Boston, for God’s sake. That’s a lot closer than I’ve been in five years. If you want me you’ll know where to find me. So what have you been doing all this time, besides cataloguing?”
“Reading about alchemy.”
“Why?”
“For the sake of the Quarrington collection, mainly. But I admit I find it fascinating. If I had lived hundreds of years ago, I might have tried to become a practical alchemist.”
“Is there any other kind? But somehow I can’t see you cooking and distilling all sorts of things, trying to turn them into gold. You’d probably set yourself on fire.” She laughed and drained her glass.
“Well, it is the spiritual side that appeals to me.” Her laughter had fallen harshly on my ears and I was happy to change the subject as I poured her another drink.
Eventually, our conversation turned to West.
“He’s doing quite well these days,” I said, “specializing in what he calls ‘reconstruction.’ You know, repairing serious wounds so as to minimize scarring. But there’s also… renovation, I guess you could call it. Some people – film stars, mainly – want to have their faces improved. Better noses and chins and so on.”
“You mean people come to Arkham to have Herbert West slice up their faces?” She was aghast.
“Boston. There aren’t enough good hotels in Arkham for the recovery period. West seems quite amused by the whole thing. He says he doesn’t care who he operates on as long as it’s technically interesting.”
“Hmm. I always thought he had more than a little of the ghoul about him. Well, he’s not getting anywhere near my face with that scalpel of his.”
“Your face doesn’t need improving, Alma.”
“Thank you. Speaking of West, I heard something rather odd. Mother told me that his mother died just a few months ago. But it seems that he hadn’t even known she was still alive. Is that true?”
I gave her an edited version of the story but could not conceal the fact that Anna Derby had been an inmate of Sefton Asylum for many years before her death.
“Hiram West for a father and a madwoman for a mother,” said Alma. “What a legacy. I suppose it explains a few things.”
She was getting uncomfortably close to a sore point. “I’m not certain what you’re suggesting, Alma. Well, perhaps I am, but I’ll choose to ignore it for now. I think he has come to terms with his mother’s… situation by now. And it’s been a few years since Hiram died.”
“But his older brothers are carrying on in their father’s footsteps, by all accounts, and with youthful gusto. I’ve heard that they’re getting into the liquor business, now that the Eighteenth Amendment has passed. Young Herbert would do well to stick to his last, or rather his blade.”
I was glad when we went on to other topics, glad also to find that Alma and I still had much to say to one another. I had feared that our past connection would create unease between us, or that after her travels I would seem dull and provincial. Quite late in the evening I walked her back to her parents’ house.
“Let’s not lose track of each other again, Charles,” she said in parting.
“Well, it wasn’t I who went away.”
“But I came back.”
After Alma’s amused reaction to the topic of alchemy, I had not told her how my interest in and knowledge of it had grown since my involvement with the Quarrington collection – that I sought out books about it at every opportunity, entering a world full of fantastic beasts and elaborate symbols, whose complicated literature hid more than it revealed, but was nevertheless nearly addictive. As I read the texts (which seemed often to contradict one another) and studied the illustrations (of winged dragons, self-devouring serpents, hermaphrodites, green lions and unicorns expiring in the laps of maidens), I had glimpses of a great secret – the reconciliation of good and evil in a mysterious duality. Light and darkness were contained in a single nature redeemed by the Great Work, by sacrifice and resurrection. The writings rarely mentioned gold. The Golden Flower, yes, but also the Blue Flower, the Emerald Tablet, a progression of colours from black to white to yellow to red. I was fascinated beyond reason and opened each book as though it was a door to a magical realm.
But there was no one with whom I could discuss this interest, neither my librarian colleagues nor my friends. Alma dismissed it as a medieval curiosity and West thought it frivolous and irrational. I perforce kept this secret to myself, even as it permeated my thoughts.
I never admitted the possibility of magic.
In the years after his mother’s death, Herbert West reached the pinnacle of his career. The specialty he had created nearly single-handed was now taught in several medical schools, which meant that he was in demand as a lecturer as well as a practitioner. His patients ran the gamut from factory workers to the luminaries of stage and screen. I found out about the latter mainly from Sarah, since West was uncompromisingly professional when it came to revealing confidential details about his patients. On the few occasions that he related some of the particulars of a case it was the technical aspects that interested him, not the notoriety of the patient.
He had not emerged entirely unscathed from the events surrounding his mother’s death. Those who knew him knew better than to refer flippantly to asylums or madness in his presence or, for that matter, to mothers. Anyone who transgressed, whether through malice, clumsiness or ignorance, was treated to a glacial stare and instantly rebuffed.
I detected an increase in his reserve, a lessening of that devil-may-care insouciance that formed a good part of his charm. He was quicker to take offence and to express anger.
One day in the early fall of 1922, I was reading the newspapers over my morning coffee, when a small item in the Arkham Advertiser caught my eye.
A Strange Wanderer on the Aylesbury Pike
Travellers on the Aylesbury Pike early Tuesday morning were surprised to see a strange, apparently human being shambling along. It seemed to be disoriented, since it changed direction several times, once crossing directly into the path of an oncoming automobile. Arkham Police were notified and picked up the individual, who was in a poor state of health.
Doctors at St. Mary’s Hospital said that the main problems were exposure and mental confusion, but evidence of recent surgical procedures was noted as well. Staff at St. Mary’s said that no patients had been reported missing.
The individual expired later that day, without giving a statement. Investigations continue.
This snippet induced in me an intense disquiet. The reference to recent surgery and the fact that the individual could not be accounted for by the hospital pointed to West, with his secret laboratory, his surgical adventurousness, flexible ethics and love of experimentation. What had been the nature of the surgery, I wondered, and why was no gender used in reference to the unfortunate creature?
West had stated categorically on his return from the War that he had finished with revivification, due to the limited success of the
procedure and the expansion of his interests into other areas. With his practice, his teaching and other commitments, as well as the research he carried out openly at the Medical School, he would have little time for clandestine pursuits. But this shambling figure – I could visualize it now, lurching from one side to the other of the busy Aylesbury Pike, a vacant stare on its face, a face that had been altered from its original lineaments, perhaps? I reread the story, but it gave no details as to which parts of the body had been operated upon. I wondered if Sarah had heard anything.
This local story was overshadowed by a spectacular incident from New York City. The previous night a celebrated diva of the Metropolitan Opera, a silvery-voiced French soprano named Eleonora Desanges, had been nearly killed in a savage attack by her former lover, an artist called Alexander DeGrassi. A knife had been involved, with the result that both the singer’s throat and face had been slashed. ‘She Will Never Sing Again,’ mourned one headline; and ‘Diva’s Beauty Ruined,’ proclaimed another. The major city papers wallowed in the story, dredging up every detail they could find about Desanges’ career and stormy private life. Cheated of the spectacle of a celebrity’s death and funeral, they made the most of her disfigurement and the ruin of her career.
Both of these events, the local and the international one, were on my mind when I joined West for lunch at the Miskatonic University Faculty Club later that day. He preferred this venue for dining to the even more exclusive Doctor’s Lounge at the hospital. “Too insular,” he said of the latter. “I get tired of shop talk, and for some reason physicians in a group tend to be rather coarse. I prefer the company of mixed academics. The cooking is better here too.”
He was in an ebullient mood. “It’s lucky we decided on lunch rather than dinner today, Charles. Andre and I are leaving for New York City this afternoon.”
“What, on the 2:30? That’s a late start. Why not tomorrow morning, on the 8 a.m.?”
“It’s too urgent for the train. I’m driving to Boston, meeting a pilot there and being flown the rest of the way. We should arrive before dark.”
“Flown to New York? Why?”
“The Desanges case. I’m going to reconstruct the beautiful Eleonora and her voice. Naturally, there’s a certain urgency to get on with it.”
“But the papers say it can’t be done. She’ll never sing again, they say.”
“Oh, she’ll sing again. Maybe not exactly the same way. The silvery voice may become a velvety voice, or a honeyed one, but she’ll grace the Met’s stage again, I guarantee it.”
I was a little taken aback by his aggressively optimistic attitude and wondered whether his record of successes had caused him to abandon scientific caution.
“How can you be so sure? Have you ever done an operation like this before? The papers said her throat’s been slashed. Wouldn’t that have destroyed the vocal cords?”
“I think I have more accurate information on the state of Mlle. Desanges’ vocal cords than the fellows who wrote those newspaper stories. And as for doing such operations, in France I patched up slashed throats, faces and body parts of all kinds, most of them successfully.”
“Oh, I believe that. But how many of those fellows were opera singers? Scars are one thing on a soldier, quite another on someone who makes her living on the stage.”
“This is my specialty, Charles. I assure you I have repaired injuries much worse than these. And not in any crude, scarred way either, as you seem to think. It’s true that there were no divas in combat in the Great War, although I did work on a couple of nurses who were cut by flying glass when the Germans bombed the hospital at Etaples. The exact techniques will depend on the precise nature of the injuries, of course. But based on what her doctors have told me, it’s entirely reasonable to expect a full vocal recovery.
“And the face should be routine. Mlle. Desanges may emerge from this ordeal more beautiful than ever, in fact. There has been no loss of tissue, merely injury. Loss would have made it a rather more interesting procedure. Now specifically…”
He launched into a description I soon lost track of, which was just as well, because it involved references to skinning, flaps, retraction, excision, swelling and other grisly matters which were not a happy accompaniment to a meal.
Over dessert, I ventured to mention the Aylesbury Pike incident.
“Yes, I did notice something in the Advertiser,” West said, addressing himself to a piece of apple pie. “The story reminds you of John Hocks, doesn’t it? You needn’t worry. According to my informant at Sefton, Hocks is the same as ever.” He looked at me, smiling, with such a guileless expression in his grey eyes that I felt ashamed of my suspicions.
“You don’t know anything more about it, then? I thought you might, being.. connected with the hospital and all.”
“Not a thing. I wasn’t there yesterday, for one thing. Better ask your pal Sarah. This is excellent pie, by the way. You should have some.”
“I wonder where that person could have come from,” I persisted, “if not from the hospital. And did you notice the article didn’t say whether it was a man or a woman? Why would that be?”
“Well, the Advertiser doesn’t exactly hire the best reporters, you know. Most of those go to the big cities, like your friend Alma. As to where the thing might have come from, my guess would be Sefton Asylum. They’re not terribly vigilant when it comes to escapees, as we have reason to know. It’s a wonder they’ve managed to hold onto Hocks all these years. And it’s a sad thing, but the inmates of such institutions eventually begin to look like one another, men and women alike.”
“But the evidence of surgery?”
“Even lunatics need surgery on occasion. You know that as well as I do. Again, the details were mostly absent. That little story has certainly taken your fancy.”
“Well, but it just sounded so – ”
“So much like something I’d be mixed up in, is that it? You’re getting suspicious in your old age, Charles. I have enough surgery to do without making a hobby of it. And now I must be off.”
That night I went to West’s house. Brooding over our conversation for the remainder of the afternoon had convinced me that I had to investigate further. This would be my only chance.
To enter the house uninvited in his absence was not only illegal but possibly dangerous. Had I not already seen that Hiram West’s son or not, he had a ruthlessness equal to Hiram’s when it came to protecting his interests? And with his peculiar ethical make-up, the borders of friendship were closer to home than one might imagine. But I had accepted my undeclared role as guardian and conscience, and could not elude it.
It was with a good deal of unease that I approached the house on Boundary Street late that night, armed with a couple of flashlights. For the first time I noticed how peculiarly well situated the place was for one who valued, indeed required, secrecy. The grounds were extensive, the rear consisting of shrubberies, while the part close to the house and street was conventionally landscaped. West cared nothing for gardening, but employed a man to keep the grass cut and the shrubs pruned. Beyond this buffer zone the neighbouring houses were comfortably distant.
West had never asked me to return the keys he had given me when he left for the War. I tried one of them in the outer door, almost hoping that he had changed the locks since his return. But it turned easily and soon I was standing in the hall where Robert Leavitt had died.
The house felt occupied. I told myself that this was only because I remembered my previous solitary visit, just before West’s return from Europe. On that occasion, empty for four years, the place had been lifeless and sterile; now it was inhabited, a home. But already nervous, I could not ignore the feeling that someone was there. Perhaps Andre had stayed behind after all? To dispel my unease, I called out, “Hello! Is anyone here?” There was no answer, only a thick silence followed by the non-sound of my own blood circulating.
Whatever I was looking for would be in the laboratory. Lighting my way with a flashlight,
I descended to the cellar and moved the hinged section of shelves that concealed the door. My second key fitted its lock and I entered the room, closed the door and turned on the electric lights.
The last time I had been in this room was more than two years before, when I had helped West with the revivification of his mother. On that occasion I had an impression that West had re-equipped the place, but now there was no doubt of it. New apparatus had been added, most of it for purposes unknown to me. The most striking objects were a fully-equipped operating table under powerful lights, and a kind of vat with a constellation of glass vessels connected to it by tubes and rubber hoses.
On shelves at one end of the room stood a dozen large vessels full of an iridescent, violet-coloured liquid. Looking more closely, I saw that several of the jars contained cloudy shapes, as if the stuff were coalescing to form distinct entities. There was something disturbing about these shapes, to the extent that I was happy to look away from them, but not before I was reminded of the homunculi that Paracelsus and other alchemists had claimed to have coaxed from the prima materia by their arts.
Sitting down on a stool, I tried to think. During the War, West had written to me about the beginnings of his work in what he called reconstruction and renovation, saying that it involved the revivifying fluid in some way. He would need large amounts of the stuff for his normal practice, even if he no longer did revivifications.
I could explain what I saw, but was this innocent explanation the correct one? I had known West long enough that logic produced another explanation, one which I could no longer ignore. Why did he revivify corpses? Because he wanted to. Because he was able to. It was a way of exercising his will to a degree impossible for others. He had never published anything about revivification, whatever his original intentions, and never would. Why would he give away to the world the secret of his unique power? For him, it was no longer research.
But what about the operating table? Even I recognized that this was no longer the simple slab that we had used for Leavitt and his predecessors. Its presence seemed to negate West’s recent declaration that he did not engage in surgery as a hobby. But no doubt he would not regard it so; he would call it research. All right, but why was he doing research here in the cellar, when he had a fully-equipped facility at the Medical School at his disposal? Inevitably, I was led back to something hidden and secret.
I poked about, opening cupboards and drawers. For the most part, their contents told me nothing, but in one drawer I found a pistol, surely a non-standard piece of lab equipment if ever there was one. Target practice? On what? Florence flasks that had somehow offended him? I looked at it for a long time before I closed the drawer.
I was about to leave when I remembered the annexe, the other room to which I had never been admitted, even when I was West’s collaborator and accomplice. It was still locked, and I had no key. Frustrated, I thumped my fist against the door.
I nearly screamed when a deep groan sounded from beyond the solid wood. My heart seemed to stop beating, then started again with a heavy thudding that filled my ears with a rushing sound. My nerves twitched with a futile impulse to run. When it lessened I pressed my ear to the door. Nothing. I struck the door again. This time I heard a cracked voice raving, “O God, o God, o God,” repeated many times, then fading away. I stood frozen, ear to door, for long moments during which my brain contained only one phrase, echoing the words of the unknown occupant of the locked room: No, not this. No, not this. No, not this.
A sentence from the Rosarium philosophorum swam into my mind: “For our stone, namely the living western quicksilver which has placed itself above the gold and vanquished it, is that which kills and quickens.”
Finally, thought returned. What could I do? Obviously, I could not break down the door alone. Should I summon the police? I crept back into the main laboratory and tried to analyze the situation.
Clearly, it was alive, and human, and suffering. But who was it, and why was it here? Did West have an actual patient here in this cellar? Could there be a legitimate reason for someone to be alone in that room, in pain or suffering? I thought of the little West had told me of his ‘renovation’ work – surgery performed solely to alter someone’s facial appearance. I supposed it was possible that an individual who wished to have such a procedure done in secret was being accommodated in this hidden room. But West expected to be away for a week. Surely he would not leave someone unattended for that long a time? Whatever else he might be, West was conscientious when it came to his living patients. His perfectionism would allow no less.
Despite my confusion, one thing seemed clear. I had to try to communicate with whoever was behind that door. I went back to it and rapped on the wood. “Who is there?” I called. “Are you all right?”
Silence. And silence. And silence. There was no response to my rappings and calls.
At length I gave up and went upstairs. I went to West’s study, hoping to find something there to explain the presence of someone in the locked annexe. His desk was, as usual, awash in books and papers, but they seemed to be exclusively of a professional nature and told me nothing. The filing cabinets were locked, as were the desk drawers.
The other rooms were orderly, as always. Except for his study, West managed to occupy a place without leaving much evidence of his presence. I wandered aimlessly around, trying to extract from the familiar surroundings indications as to the thoughts and motivations of their absent owner. I looked in the sitting room mirror, but all I could see in its tarnished and wavy glass was my own anxious face. And over my shoulder the opposite wall, on which hung the three paintings by Walter Dixon Taylor.
I went over and studied the pictures once more. I had grown no fonder of them with the years and now found them more disturbing than ever. West had been evasive when I had invited him to speculate as to what might have inspired the artist to paint these images, and why it was West to whom he had given them. Now, with the evidence of his secret doings fresh in my mind I could not help but wonder again. Had Taylor known of West’s private research? Or had he been inspired by something less tangible? I could find no answers to these questions, not in this room, nor in any of the others I had visited.
That left only West’s bedroom and the small adjoining room where he kept his wardrobe. Only here did I have a sense of his presence. A bathrobe was draped over the foot of the bed and a shirt and tie hung on the back of the single chair. A couple of books lay on the bedside table. I went over to see what he had been reading. Hugo’s Les Miserables, in French, I noticed, and an English translation of the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.
Suddenly I felt exceedingly uncomfortable. Why was I prying into my friend’s personal things? Whatever he might be doing in his laboratory, surely he was entitled to privacy in the place where he slept. I left immediately.
By the time I reached my own home I had come to a decision. I would return to the laboratory each night and try to speak to the occupant of the locked room. The nature of any response I would elicit might tell me what to do next.
And I would meet with Sarah Enright and carefully question her about anything she might know about West’s recent professional activities. She might not have much direct knowledge, but she would certainly have heard gossip. Finally, I would have to have a serious talk with West at the earliest opportunity.
Sarah and I met at our usual cafeteria the next day. I had given much thought as to how I should pose my questions to her. She knew, of course, that West and I were friends of long standing, and therefore would think it peculiar if I started asking about things that she would expect me to know already. Thus I began by chatting about the strange incident on the Aylesbury Pike. Had she actually seen the afflicted individual?
“No, but I talked with someone who did. She said it was very peculiar. No hair, for one thing. And there were these partially-healed incisions all around the face. Nicely done, too, she said.”
“Was it a man or a woman? The paper didn’t say.”
“It was a woman. But you couldn’t tell right away.”
“Because the face had been altered?”
“That, yes. But the breasts had been removed.”
I felt sick. This was much worse than I had expected. I forced myself to maintain a light tone of voice.
“I heard a rumour that it might have been someone who had run away from Sefton.”
“Who knows? I imagine the police checked there. But you want to know an odd thing? There’s a body missing from the morgue.”
I looked up quickly. Too quickly, perhaps. “Oh really? There couldn’t be a connection, surely. Unless it’s possible for someone to be put in the morgue before they’re really dead.”
“I doubt it. Anyway, I wasn’t suggesting there is a connection, only that it’s another strange thing that’s happened this week.”
“Yes, it surely is that. Sarah, don’t you think it’s wonderful that Dr. West has been called to New York to operate on that opera singer?”
“It certainly is. This should really put Arkham on the map.”
“Tell me, what’s it like to work with him?”
“Well, he’s very quick, very demanding, but fair. He expects us nurses to know our stuff and do it without being told. And he’s polite. He doesn’t yell at us or call us names when we make mistakes. But he isn’t what you’d call friendly. He’s pleasant enough, but that’s just on the surface. Underneath there’s ice. I’ve only noticed that in the last year or two. He wasn’t like that before.”
“What’s he like with patients?”
“Chilly. He’s a great technician. If I had to have an operation, I’d want Dr. West to do it. His patients get fewer infections and recover faster than anybody’s. But if I had a disease that couldn’t be fixed with surgery, he’s the last doctor I’d choose. He has no interest in explaining things to patients. You see, it’s not enough to tell someone they have a tumor and they have three months to live; no I can’t do anything; good afternoon. Next patient. People who are getting that kind of bad news need time to talk and ask a lot of questions, and hear the same answers in different ways. Dr. West – it’s more than just not taking the time. It doesn’t even occur to him that it needs to be done at all. So it’s a good thing he’s a surgeon. But I’d hate to be the person he tells that he can’t do something for them. ‘Well, Mrs. Smith, I can’t eliminate that squint of yours without cutting an important nerve to your brain. So resign yourself to it.’”
She sounded so much like West that I laughed in spite of myself. Sarah started to laugh too, and it was at least a minute before we could stop.
“What about the other doctors? How does he get along with them?”
“Well enough, on the surface. Most of them recognize his competence but don’t feel close to him. Others hate him, but I think that’s mostly jealousy. One thing I’ve heard is that he uses too many new techniques on patients before they’ve been fully tested. So far he’s been able to get away with it, but one day he’ll slip up. That’s what some of them say, and I think they can hardly wait for it to happen.”
“That sounds pretty drastic.”
“Oh, it’s only one or two. Mostly Dr. James Hobson. He’s a friend of Dr. Halsey’s.”
I remembered my encounter with Hobson at the Halseys’ reception ten years ago, and diverted our conversation into other channels. Although I was almost sure that the wanderer on the Aylesbury Pike was West’s handiwork, no one else had as yet made the connection. He must have once more taken a corpse from the morgue, with the objective this time not revivification, but surgery. A kind of vivisection on the recently dead? Or would that be revivisection?
I returned to West’s cellar three more times during his absence and forced myself to hammer on the locked door. Each time I heard only silence. Was the person I had heard still alive? Had I even heard anyone in the first place? Without any evidence to support this I hesitated to call the police. I began to wish I had not bothered to pry into West’s doings. All I had accomplished was to acquire some disturbing and inconclusive information about which I did not know what to do.
Eleonora Desanges made a spectacular recovery. Fewer than six months after surgery she was on the stage again. Critics filled their reviews with words such as ‘rich,’ ‘warm’ and ‘velvety.’ Her tone was likened to amber, honey and a fine old wine. As for her face, there certainly were no scars apparent. Some said that she was more beautiful than before, her face more distinguished and finely sculpted. West was referred to frequently as a magician. Newspaper reporters and magazine writers appeared on his doorstep, demanding interviews.
“It’s ridiculous, Charles,” he said. “There was some fairly complex surgery here, but nothing out of the ordinary. Why, if those people wanted to hear about something truly amazing, I could tell them about a fellow I worked on in France in 1918. His name was West, like mine, that’s why I remember it. Peter West, that was it. Part of his face had been blown away. It was not merely slashed, Charles, it was gone. Luckily the bones were more or less intact. I managed to make a new face for him. It took three months and a large amount of a certain substance I believe I’ve told you about. But when he finally left for home, he had a face. A decent-looking one too. Now that was surgery worth making a fuss about. But no one wants to hear about Peter West from some place called Manitoba, and everyone wants me to tell them for the fiftieth time about Eleonora Desanges.”
I made the right sounds in response to this, but I was thinking about a shambling form on the Aylesbury Pike. And about sounds from behind a locked door.
The storm of celebrity reached its zenith when West received word that the President of France had awarded him the Legion d’Honneur for, as the letter put it, ‘saving a national treasure of France.’ Reporters from several French publications, and some British ones as well, descended on Arkham. It was months before West was left in peace.
I still have the clippings and articles. Looking at them a few days ago, I was impressed by the sheer volume of material. An article from a British magazine included a photograph of West. I had forgotten how young he was then, only thirty-five. His pictured face seemed to gaze out beyond me, the clear eyes looking into some unguessable distance.
Here was a man, I thought, who had made the dead come to life, who had snatched the dying from the brink of death, who had made a new face for a man, who had restored the voice of Eleonora Desanges. Was it right to judge him by the rules that applied to me, to Sarah, to the rest of us ordinary plodders? Was it so surprising that he would rewrite some of them to suit himself?
The Friendship of Mortals Page 28