by R. W. Heilig
David, however, had closeted himself that day in his studio busily
writing. Only the clatter of his typewriter announced his presence in
the house. There was no chance for conversation or for obtaining the
precious manuscript of "Leontina."
Meanwhile Chance was looking over his papers and preparing everything
for a quick departure. Glancing over old letters and notes, he became
readily interested and hardly noticed the passage of the hours.
When the night came he only partly undressed and threw himself upon the
bed. It was now ten. At twelve he had promised Kelly to speak to her
over the telephone. He was determined not to sleep at all that night. At
last he would discover whether or not on the previous and other nights
David had secretly entered his room.
When one hour had passed without incident, his attention relaxed a
little. His eyes were gradually closing when suddenly something seemed
to stir at the door. The Chinese vase came rattling to the floor.
At once Chance sprang up. His face had blanched with terror. It was
whiter than the linen in which they wrap the dead. But his soul was
resolute.
He touched a button and the electric light illuminated the whole
chamber. There was no nook for even a shadow to hide. Yet there was no
one to be seen. From without the door came no sound. Suddenly something
soft touched his foot. He gathered all his will power so as not to
break out into a frenzied shriek. Then he laughed, not a hearty laugh,
to be sure. A tiny nose and a tail gracefully curled were brushing
against him. The source of the disturbance was a little Maltese cat, his
favourite, that by some chance had remained in his room. After its essay
at midnight gymnastics the animal quieted down and lay purring at the
foot of his bed.
The presence of a living thing was a certain comfort, and the reservoir
of his strength was well nigh exhausted.
He dimly remembered his promise to Kelly, but his lids drooped with
sheer weariness. Perhaps an hour passed in this way, when suddenly his
blood congealed with dread.
He felt the presence of the hand of David
Gardner--unmistakably--groping in his brain as if searching for something
that had still escaped him.
He tried to move, to cry out, but his limbs were paralysed. When, by a
superhuman effort, he at last succeeded in shaking off the numbness that
held him enchained, he awoke just in time to see a figure, that of a
man, disappearing in the wall that separated David's apartments from
his room....
This time it was no delusion of the senses. He heard something like a
secret door softly closing behind retreating steps. A sudden fierce
anger seized him. He was oblivious of the danger of the terrible power
of the older man, oblivious of the love he had once borne him, oblivious
of everything save the sense of outraged humanity and outraged right.
The law permits us to shoot a burglar who goes through our pockets at
night. Must he tolerate the ravages of this a thousand times more
dastardly and dangerous spiritual thief? Was David to enjoy the fruit
of other men's labour unpunished? Was he to continue growing into the
mightiest literary factor of the century by preying upon his betters?
Abel, Walkham, Kelly, he, Jack, were they all to be victims of this
insatiable monster?
Was this force resistless as it was relentless?
No, a thousand times, no!
He dashed himself against the wall at the place where the shadow of
David Gardner had disappeared. In doing so he touched upon a secret
spring. The wall gave way noiselessly. Speechless with rage he crossed
the next room and the one adjoining it, and stood in David's studio.
The room was brilliantly lighted, and David, still dressed, was
seated at his writing-table scribbling notes upon little scraps of paper
in his accustomed manner.
At Chance's approach he looked up without evincing the least sign of
terror or surprise. Calmly, almost majestically, he folded his arms over
his breast, but there was a menacing glitter in his eyes as he
confronted his victim.
XXX
Silently the two men faced each other. Then Chance hissed:
"Thief!"
David shrugged his shoulders.
"Vampire!"
"So Kelly has infected you with her absurd fancies! Poor boy! I am
afraid.... I have been wanting to tell you for some time.... But I
think... We have reached the parting of our road!"
"And that you dare to tell me!"
The more he raged, the calmer David seemed to become.
"Really," he said, "I fail to understand.... I must ask you to leave my
room!"
"You fail to understand? You cad!" Chance cried. He stepped to the
writing-table and opened the secret drawer with a blow. A bundle of
manuscripts fell on the floor with a strange rustling noise. Then,
seizing his own story, he hurled it upon the table. And behold--the last
pages bore corrections in ink that could have been made only a few
minutes ago!
David smiled. "Have you come to play havoc with my manuscripts?" he
remarked.
"Your manuscripts? David Gardner, you are an impudent impostor! You
have written no word that is your own. You are an embezzler of the mind,
strutting through life in borrowed and stolen plumes!"
And at once the mask fell from David's face.
"Why stolen?" he coolly said, with a slight touch of irritation. "I
absorb. I appropriate. That is the most any artist can say for himself.
God creates; man moulds. He gives us the colours; we mix them."
"That is not the question. I charge you with having wilfully and
criminally interfered in my life; I charge you with having robbed me of
what was mine; I charge you with being utterly vile and rapacious, a
hypocrite and a parasite!"
"Foolish boy," David rejoined austerely. "It is through me that the
best in you shall survive, even as the obscure Elizabethans live in him
of Avon. Shakespeare absorbed what was great in little men--a greatness
that otherwise would have perished--and gave it a setting, a life."
"A thief may plead the same. I understand you better. It is your
inordinate vanity that prompts you to abuse your monstrous power."
"You err. Self-love has never entered into my actions. I am careless of
personal fame. Look at me, boy! As I stand before you I am Homer, I am
Shakespeare ... I am every cosmic manifestation in art. Men have doubted
in each incarnation my individual existence. Historians have more to
tell of the meanest Athenian scribbler or Elizabethan poetaster than of
me. The radiance of my work obscured my very self. I care not. I have a
mission. I am a servant of the Lord. I am the vessel that bears the
Host!"
He stood up at full length, the personification of grandeur and power. A
tremendous force trembled in his very finger tips. He was like a
gigantic dynamo, charged with the might of ten thousand magnetic storms
that shake the earth in its orbit and lash myriads of planets through
infinities of sp
ace....
Under ordinary circumstances Chance or any other man would have quailed
before him. But the boy in that epic moment had grown out of his
stature. He felt the sword of vengeance in his hands; to him was
intrusted the cause of Abel and of Walkham, of Kelly and of Jack. His
was the struggle of the individual soul against the same blind and cruel
fate that in the past had fashioned the ichthyosaurus and the mastodon.
"By what right," he cried, "do you assume that you are the literary
Messiah? Who appointed you? What divine power has made you the steward
of my mite and of theirs whom you have robbed?"
"I am a light-bearer. I tread the high hills of mankind.... I point the
way to the future. I light up the abysses of the past. Were not my
stature gigantic, how could I hold the torch in all men's sight? The
very souls that I tread underfoot realise, as their dying gaze follows
me, the possibilities with which the future is big.... Eternally secure,
I carry the essence of what is cosmic ... of what is divine.... I am
Homer ... Goethe ... Shakespeare.... I am an embodiment of the same
force of which Alexander, Cæsar, Confucius and the Christos were also
embodiments.... None so strong as to resist me."
A sudden madness overcame Chance at this boast. He must strike now or
never. He must rid humanity of this dangerous maniac--this demon of
strength. With a power ten times intensified, he raised a heavy chair so
as to hurl it at David's head and crush it.
David stood there calmly, a smile upon his lips.... Primal cruelties
rose from the depth of his nature.... Still he smiled, turning his
luminous gaze upon the boy ... and, behold ... Chance's hand began to
shake ... the chair fell from his grasp.... He tried to call for help,
but no sound issued from his lips.... Utterly paralysed he
confronted ... the Force....
Minutes--eternities passed.
And still those eyes were fixed upon him.
But this was no longer David!
It was all brain ... only brain ... a tremendous brain-machine ...
infinitely complex ... infinitely strong. Not more than a mile away
Kelly endeavoured to call to him through the night. The telephone rang,
once, twice, thrice, insistingly. But Chance heard it not. Something
dragged him ... dragged the nerves from his body dragged, dragged,
dragged.... It was an irresistible suction ... pitiless ... passionless
... immense.
Sparks, blue, crimson and violet, seemed to play around the living
battery. It reached the finest fibres of his mind.... Slowly ... every
trace of mentality disappeared.... First the will ... then feeling ...
judgment ... memory ... fear even.... All that was stored in his
brain-cells came forth to be absorbed by that mighty engine....
The Princess With the Yellow Veil appeared ... flitted across the room
and melted away. She was followed by childhood memories ... girls'
heads, boys' faces.... He saw his dead mother waving her arms to him....
An expression of death-agony distorted the placid features.... Then,
throwing a kiss to him, she, too, disappeared. Picture on picture
followed.... Words of love that he had spoken ... sins, virtues,
magnanimities, meannesses, terrors ... mathematical formulas even, and
snatches of songs. Leontina came and was swallowed up.... No, it was
Kelly who was trying to speak to him ... trying to warn.... She waved
her hands in frantic despair.... She was gone.... A pale face ... dark,
dishevelled hair.... Jack.... How he had changed! He was in the circle
of the vampire's transforming might. "Jack," he cried. Surely Jack had
something to explain ... something to tell him ... some word that if
spoken would bring rest to his soul. He saw the words rise to the boy's
lips, but before he had time to utter them his image also had vanished.
And David ... David, too, was gone.... There was only the mighty
brain ... panting ... whirling.... Then there was nothing.... The
annihilation of Chance Gavin was complete.
Vacantly he stared at the walls, at the room and at his master. The
latter was wiping the sweat from his forehead. He breathed deeply....
The flush of youth spread over his features.... His eyes sparkled with a
new and dangerous brilliancy.... He took the thing that had once been
Chance Gavin by the hand and led it to its room.
XXXI
With the first flush of the morning Kelly appeared at the door of the
house on Riverside Drive. She had not heard from Chance, and had been
unable to obtain connection with him at the telephone. Anxiety had
hastened her steps. She brushed against Jack, who was also directing his
steps to the abode of David Gardner.
At the same time something that resembled Chance Gavin passed from
the vampire house. It was a dull and brutish thing, hideously
transformed, without a vestige of mind.
"Mr. Gavins," cried Kelly, beside herself with fear as she saw him
descending.
"Chance!" Jack gasped, no less startled at the change in his friend's
appearance.
Chance's head followed the source of the sound, but no spark of
recognition illumined the deadness of his eyes. Without a present and
without a past ... blindly ... a gibbering idiot ... he stumbled down
the stairs.