There was a sudden snort from the second row, "Rubbish! What's all this jabber got to do with me? I came here to be cured, not to be preached at!"
The colossus slowly poured a glass of ice-water.
"Sir, you must understand—if you possess sufficient intelligence—that I can do nothing for you without your help." The bulbous lips writhed in a half-smile. "You have been rude, my friend—should I decide to treat your carcinoma I will leave you the poorer man by half your fortune before you are cured. That prospect, at least, you can understand."
Mortimer Dunlop, his seamed face livid with rage, got hastily to his feet and strode to the center door. He jerked the door open, slammed it behind him as he stormed from the room.
Unperturbed, Dmitri continued, "Mind came before matter; mind is the great motivator. Mind can conceive matter; matter cannot conceive anything, even itself.
"It is evident to any person who carefully considers these conclusions that in each one of us exists a spark, part and parcel of that great intangible Will which created all things. But this reasoning invariably leads to a conclusion so tremen-
WEIRD TALES
dous that the human consciousness, except in tare instances, rejects it.
"The conclusion is plain. The unfettered Will, by and of itself, can work miracles, move mountains, create and destroy!
"Listen carefully, for Coue and Pavlov and your own J. B. Watson were closer to the truth than they knew. . . .
"I pick up this coin, and I place it upon my wrist, so. Now I suggest to myself that it is very hot. But my conscious knows that it is not hot, and so I merely appear, to myself and to you all, a trifle foolish.
"Nevertheless, any hypnotist can suggest to a pre-hypnotized subject that the coin is indeed hot, and the subject's flesh will blister if touched with this same cold coin! . . .
"Now I will call my servant "
Placing his two enormous, shapeless hands on the table, Dmitri heaved himself to his feet, and a tremendous bellow issued from his barrel-like chest. That summons, though the words were Jost in a gulf of sound, was unmistakable, and presently the door opened and the little man, prim and neat and wholly a colorless personality, entered.
"Yes, Master."
Dmitri stood beside the table, his right hand resting heavily on the polished oak.
"Sit down, little Stepan."
The small man, the ghost of a pleased smile on his peasant face, sat down primly in the oaken chair and looked about the room with child-like pleasure. Obviously he was enjoying to the uttermost his small moment.
"You would prefer the sleep, little one? It is not necessary; we have been through this experiment many times together, you and I."
"I would prefer the sleep, Master," the little man said, with a slight shudder.
"Despite myself, my eyes flinch from the flame "
"Very well." Dmitri's voice was casual and low. "Relax, little one, and sleep. Sleep soundly "
He turned from his servant and picked up the fifty-cent piece. Turning it over and over in the fingers of his left hand he began to speak, slowly.
"I have told this subject's subconscious that its body is invulnerable to physical injury. Watch!"
The little man was sitting erect in the massive chair. His eyes were closed, his face immobile. Dmitri stooped, lifted an arm, let it fall.
"You are not yet sleeping soundly, Stepan. Relax and sleep—sleep "
Slowly the muscles in the little man's face loosened, slowly his mouth drooped, half open. Small bubbles of mucus appeared at the corners of his lips.
Dmitri seemed satisfied. Quietly, soothingly, he spoke.-
"Can you hear me?"
The man's lips moved. "I can hear you."
"Who am I?"
The answer came slowly, without inflection. "You are the Voice that Speaks from Beyond the Darkness."
Dmitri loomed above the chair. "You remember the truths that I have taught you?"
"Master, I remember."
"You believe?"
"Master, I believe. You have told me that you are infallible."
Dmitri straightened triumphantly and surveyed his silent audience. Suddenly, then, a roaring streamer of bluish flame lanced across the room. Dmitri had set the gasoline torch alight.
A woman was babbling hysterically. But above the steady moan of the flame Dmitri said loudly, "There is no cause for alarm. Now, observe closely. I am
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285
going to go far beyond the ordinary hypnotist's procedure "
He carefully picked up, with the pliers, the fifty-cent piece. For a long moment he let the moaning flame play on the coin, until both coin and pher-tips glowed angrily.
Calmly, without warning, he dropped the burning coin on his servant's naked wrist!
A woman screamed. But, then, gasps of relief eddied from the tense audience. For, although the glowing whiteness of the coin had scarcely begun to fade into cherry-red, the man Stepan had shown no sign that he felt pain! There was no stench of burning flesh in the room. Even the fine hairs on the back of the servant's wrist, hairs that touched and curled delicately above the burning coin, showed not the slightest sign of singeing!
Dmitri's face was an obese smirk.
"In order that you may be convinced that this is neither illusion nor trickery," he grunted, "watch!" Carefully he tapped the coin with the pliers, knocking it from the man's wrist to the floor.
Around the coin's glowing rim smoke began to rise. ...
Still smirking, Dmitri poured a half-glass of ice-water on the red-hot coin, and the water hissed and fumed as it struck the incandescent metal. There was a little puff of thick smoke from the burning wood, and now the coin was cold —cold and black and seared.
No scar marked the servant's white wrist!
Dmitri rubbed his great; shapeless hands together. And, shuddering, Mary Roberts watched him, for she knew instinctively that this was, indeed, no trickery. . . .
Abruptly Dmitri lifted the roaring torch, thrust its fierce blast full in his
servant's face, held it there for a moment that seemed an eternity. Then he turned a valve, and the hot flame died.
Though the man Stepan* s face was streaked with carbon soot, the flesh was smooth and unharmed as though the blue flame had never been!
Dmitri looked at his guests, and chuckled!
"One more test," he boomed, tKen,, "and we will turn to more pleasant things. Believe me when I tell you that these horrors are necessary if you would have faith in me." He picked up the small automatic pistol. "Will someone examine this weapon, assure you all that it is fully-loaded ?"
No one offered to touch the gun. Dmitri shrugged. "Do not doubt me; the weapon is loaded, and with lethal ammunition." He wheeled, and for an instant the gun hammered rapidly, and on the breast of his servant's shirt, over the heart, there appeared suddenly a little cluster of black-edged holes, beneath which the white flesh gleamed unmarked. . . .
Dmitri put down the gun and rubbed his hands together affably.
"Should anyone care to examine the back of that chair, he will find all the bullets I have just fired, together with a great many others fired in previous experiments." He stooped over his still, pallid-faced servant. "You may awaken now, little one." Then, to the horror-ridden group before him, "There will be refreshments and music immediately, downstairs. I will mingle among you, and you may ask me any cjuestions you wish."
Stepan, the slight, wholly undistinguished-appearing servant, had risen from the chair and was holding wide the door. Slowly, regally, his master walked from the room. . . .
WEIRD TALES
3. The Hypnotic tamp
**7" ou *eally must meet him, Mar}'.
X He's—he's such an overwhelming personality, and it would be rude, really, to avoid him now. See, he's looking toward us "
Casually Mary Roberts turned her head. Across the long expanse of this almost flamboyantly oriental downstairs room in which
Dmitri's guests had assembled she saw the man. He was seated in a massive, ivory-armed, dragon-footed chair, and he was talking to a group of three or four women. But he was looking beyond them, speculatively, at Mary.
"Helen, I'm afraid of him. He's—he's evil—blasphemous!"
Helen Stacey-Forbes only laughed. "Blasphemous?" she echoed. "Nonsense! He's only years ahead of his time. Never fear—his interest in you will vanish as soon as he learns that you can't pay his outrageous fees." She was already— Mary's arm linked in her own—threading her way through the chatting throng, . . .
The colossus, as they approached, abruptly cut short his conversation with the group of admiring ladies and turned his flabby bulk toward them.
"They are thrill-seekers, Miss Stacey-Forbes," he exclaimed petulantly. "Still —I have made appointments with two of them. . . . But how is your brother, Ronald? And who is your friend?"
"Dmitri—Mary Roberts," Helen Stacey-Forbes said formally. "Miss Roberts is the daughter of the Honorable James Roberts. . . . Ronald is well; he is very careful not to endanger himself."
Dmitri chuckled. "Ronald is being very careful, eh? Well, well—but accidents sometimes happen—and then there is only Dimitri." He stared fixedly at Mary. "You are very beautiful, my child; our Police Commissioner Ethredge is a fortunate man—indeed he is."
Mary Roberts flushed. "I was impressed by your — demonstration," she said hastily. "It was—spectacular."
He lifted a monstrous, shapeless paw.
"Histrionics," he said flatly. "My real work does not deal with such fireworks. Would you be convinced? Are you in every respect sound and well?"
Mary tried to repress the shudder of aversion that crept through her as she looked at the man.
"I am in perfect health," she said firmly.
Dmitri looked down at his great soft hands. Then he spoke, as it were casually, to Helen Stacey-Forbes.
"I have wanted—since your brother came to me a year ago—to examine you, as well. You come from an old family; should you marry it is possible that you would transmit to your children the hemophilia from which he suffers. Today is a propitious day; your friend can accompany us while I interrogate you; then, should she need me at some future time she would not fear me — as she does now."
Helen Stacey-Forbes' face was grave. "I had thought—of coming to you," she admitted. "Perhaps—if Miss Roberts is willing ?"
Mary objected only faintly. She was wondering if perhaps Helen had not really brought her here because she feared to be alone with this man. . . .
"The—guests?"
Dmitri glanced about the room, heaved himself ponderously to his feet.
"The guests!" he exclaimed. "We will be but a few minutes. Those in need of me will wait; the others are better gone. Come."
THE chamber into which Dmitri ushered the two young women was a small room, almost monastically furnished. There was a large table and
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287
Dmitri's usual massive chair; several other, smaller chairs were scattered haphazardly about. A faded strip of carpeting ran diagonally from the door toward the table. There were no pictures, no bookcases or books, no filing-cabinet or desk. A telephone rested at one end of the table, close beside an ambiguity that —save for its grotesquely large bulb, full of an uncommon multiplicity of filaments and several oddly shaped and curiously perforated metal vanes—looked like an unshaded desk-lamp.
Dmitri lowered himself into his tremendous chair. "Sit down," he directed abruptly. "Compose yourselves. You, Miss Roberts, may watch this experiment; it is in no way new, yet it is always fascinating. Notice this lamp; it is so designed that it emits whorls of multicolored light, which move according to a recurrent pattern, somewhat in the manner of a pin-wheel."
His hands, hidden beneath the table, touched a concealed switch, and the odd-looking lamp began to glow in all its many filaments, while simultaneously the complexity of tiny vanes began to revolve, slowly at first and then faster and faster, until they had attained a maximum velocity beyond which there was no further acceleration. And as the filaments within the lamp gradually warmed, Mary realized that they gave off light of many colors, as varied and as beautiful as the spectrum seen in rainbows, colors which moved and changed in a weirdly hypnotic sequence of patterns. . . .
"Observe the lamp, Miss Stacey-Forbes," Dmitri said, in a calm, conversational tone. "Do not trouble to think— merely observe the lamp—see how the colors melt and run together and repeat themselves again "
Abruptly the ceiling light was extinguished. And Mary Roberts gasped at the unearthly beauty of the whirling
lights; even beneath the cold glow of the Mazda lamp they had been a strange symphony, but now, glowing and whirling like a mighty nebula of spinning
suns ! Her eyes were riveted upon
them; the)' seemed to draw her toward
them, to suck her into themselves. . . .
"Observe the lights, Miss Stacey-
Forbes " Mary knew that it was
Dmitri's voice, yet it sounded billions of miles away. And, curiously, she believed for a fleeting instant that there was a new note in that slumbrous whisper—a hint of exultation. But the thought vanished in its second of birth, lost amid the maze of spinning lights—the lights that were too, too beautiful. . . .
4. The Stolen Jewels
MRS. Gregory luce stood surveying herself with pardonable satisfaction in the almost-complete circle of full-length, chromium-framed mirrors that glittered their utilitarian splendor in a corner of her bedroom. It was well, she was reflecting, that the electric-blue gown fitted her with wrinkleless perfection, that her hair was a miracle even Francois had seldom achieved; today was her tenth wedding anniversary, and tonight Gregory was taking her to hear Tristan and Isolde.
With sophisticated grace she returned to her dressing-table and seated herself. In her walk, languid and self-appreciative though it had been, there was nevertheless a vague essence reminiscent of Mary Roberts; Prisdlla Luce might almost have been a prophetic vision of Mary as she would some day be—their mothers were sisters. Only Priscilla was a little more the cautious type than was Mary: Priscilla had selected her husband with an eye to the future; she did not wholly approve of Charles Ethredge. Otherwise the two young women were very much alike. . . ,
:ss
WEIRD TALES
Slowly, then, Priscilla Luce smiled. Surprizingly, her marriage had turned out an emotional as well as a financial success; she was truly grateful to and in love with Gregory, now. There had been an unsuspected tinge of romanticism in him, after all; on their wedding day he had given her his grandmother's emerald brooch, set with its great, flawless, square-cut stone—and the ruby and emerald tiara. And today he had brought her a Cartier bracelet, also of cool green emeralds. . . .
Languidly she arose and walked to the south wall. Here, between the two windows, hung a single, exquisite little etching. Priscilla Luce reached up, swung the etching back on cleverly concealed hinges, twirled the combination of the blued-steel wall-safe. . . .
In the moment that she reached inside the tiny safe Priscilla Luce knew that someone other than herself had handled the little leather-bound jewel-cases within.
For a moment she stood stock-still. Then, carefully, she began to remove the jewel-cases, opening and examining each one.
When she had finished she walked to the dressing-table and sat down. She knew that she would not tell Gregory tonight; she would wear the Cartier bracelet, and he would not know; his evening would not be spoiled. But she would have to tell him, tomorrow, and they would have to decide what to do. . . .
The emerald brooch and the priceless old tiara were gone!
And very clearly Priscilla Luce realized that the thief was someone they knew
someone they trusted. . . .
She stared at herself in the mirror.
She was beginning to feel frightened,
beginning to feci a sick, anticip
atory dread. . . .
5. Ethredge Hears Startling News
When Police Commissioner Charles B. Ethredge received Priscilla Luce's enigmatic and disturbingly urgent telephone call he lost no time in getting to the Vermont marble and Bethlehem steel palace the Luce millions had built, ten years before, for Gregory Luce's young bride. "It concerns Mary, terribly," his fiancee's cousin had said, her voice taut and strange, "but do not, under any circumstances, tell her that I have called you."
Priscilla Luce met him in the library. She greeted him with grave gratitude; as soon as they were seated she began almost bruskly to speak.
"I called you, Charles, because you are both influential and discreet, and because you are vitally concerned in what I have to say. Charles, do you know anything of a psychiatrist who came to town about fourteen months ago—a man who calls himself Dmitri?"
Ethredge nodded.
"Why, yes, I have heard of him; Mary attended one of his Thursday evenings a week or two ago with Helen Stacey-Forbes. Helen is enthusiastic about what he seems to have done for Ronald."
Priscilla Luce smiled thinly. "It seems strange that Ronald was never ill until after he met this Dmitri. Do you know anything more about the man?"
"Yes," Ethredge grunted, "I do. Dmitri is a sensationalist. The more conservative psychiatrists have tried to convict him of extortion, of making Messianic and un-fulfillable promises, of other unethical and even criminal practises. As he is still practising, their attempts, needless to say, have all failed."
Priscilla Luce nodded.
"What did Mary say about him?"
Ethredge grinned.
"Very little. Said that she was amused W. T.—2
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289
■—that perhaps, beneath all his stage trappings, the man might even be competent. That's all."
Nervously Priscilla Luce leaned forward.
Weird Tales volume 31 number 03 Page 5