Lowell said: “You are.”
I said: “As for what Charcot’s subjects told him—who knows what they had heard their grandmothers say? Stories passed down by the family—heard when children, treasured by the sub-consciousness. Built up, improvements suggested, by Charcot himself. Charcot finds two or three points true, naturally. There is none so credulous as he who seeks evidence to support his idee fixe, his pet theory. So these few points become all. Well, I am not so credulous as Charcot, Dr. de Keradel.”
He said: “I read your interviews in the newspaper. I seemed to detect a certain amount of credulity there, Dr. Caranac.”
So he had read the interviews. I felt Bill press my foot again. I said:
“I tried to make plain to the reporters that belief in the hokum was necessary to make the hokum effective. I admit that to the victim of his belief it doesn’t make much difference whether it was hokum or reality. But that doesn’t mean that the hokum is real or can affect anybody else. And I tried to make plain that the defense against the hokum is very simple. It is—don’t believe it.”
The veins on his forehead began to twitch again. He said: “By hokum you mean, I assume, nonsense.”
“More than that,” I said, cheerfully. “Bunk!”
Dr. Lowell looked pained. I drank my wine, and grinned at the Demoiselle.
Helen said: “Your manners aren’t so good tonight, darling.”
I said: “Manners—hell! What’re manners in a discussion of goblins, incarnation, ancestral memories and Isis, Set and the Black God of the Scyths who looked like a frog? Now I’m going to tell you something, Dr. de Keradel. I’ve been in a lot of out of the way corners of this globe. I went there hunting for goblins and demons. And in all my travels I’ve never seen one thing that couldn’t be explained on the basis of hypnotism, mass suggestion, or trickery. Get that. Not one thing. And I’ve seen a lot.”
That was a lie—but I wanted to see the effect on him. I saw it. The veins in his temples were twitching more than ever, his lips were white. I said:
“Years ago I had a brilliant idea which puts the whole problem in its simplest form. The brilliant idea was based on the fact that the hearing is probably the last sense to die; that after the heart stops the brain continues to function as long as it has enough oxygen; and that while the brain does function, although every sense is dead—it can have experiences that seem to last for days and weeks, although the actual dream lasts but a fraction of a second.
“‘Heaven and Hell, Inc.’ That was my idea. ‘Insure yourself an immortality of joy!’ ‘Give your enemy an immortality of torment!’ To be done by expert hypnotists, masters of suggestion, sitting at the bedside of the dying and whispering into his ear that which the brain was to dramatize, after hearing and every other sense was dead—”
The Demoiselle drew a sharp breath. De Keradel was staring at me with a strange intentness.
“Well, there it was,” I went on. “For a sufficient sum you could promise, and actually give, your client the immortality he desired. Any kind he wanted—from the houri-haunted Paradise of Mahomet to the angel choirs of Paradise. And if the sum were sufficient, and you could gain access, you could whisper into the ear of your employer’s enemy the Hell he was going into for aeon after aeon. And I’ll bet he’d go into it. That was my ‘Heaven and Hell, Inc.’”
“A sweet idea, darling,” murmured Helen.
“A sweet idea, yes,” I said, bitterly. “Let me tell you what it did for me. It happens that it’s entirely feasible. Very well—consider me, the inventor. If there is a delectable life after death, will I enjoy it? Not at all. I’ll be thinking—this is just a vision in the dying cells of my brain. It has no objective reality. Nothing that could happen to me in that future existence, assuming it to be real, could be real to me. I would think—Oh, yes, very ingenious of me to create such ideas, but after all, they’re only in the dying cells of my brain. Of course,” I said, grimly, “there is a compensation. If I happened to land in one of the traditional hells, I wouldn’t take it any more seriously. And all the miracles of magic, or sorcery, I’ve ever beheld were no more real than those dying visions would be.”
The Demoiselle whispered, so faintly that none but I could hear: “I could make them real to you, Alan de Caranac—either Heaven or Hell.”
I said: “In life or in death, your theories cannot be proven, Dr. de Keradel. At least, not to me.”
He did not answer, staring at me, fingers tapping the table.
I went on: “Suppose, for example, you desired to know what it was that they worshiped among the stones of Carnac. You might reproduce every rite. Might have your descendant of priestess with the ancient ghost wide-awake in her brain. But how could you know that what came to the great cairn within the circle of monoliths—the Gatherer within the Cairn, the Visitor to the Alkar-Az—was real?”
De Keradel asked, incredulously, in a curiously still voice, as though exercising some strong restraint: “What can you know of the Alkar-Az—or of the Gatherer within the Cairn?”
I was wondering about that, too. I couldn’t remember ever having heard those names. Yet they had sprung to my lips as though long known. I looked at the Demoiselle. She dropped her eyes, but not before I had seen in them that same half-amused triumph as when, under the touch of her hand, I had beheld ancient Carnac. I answered de Keradel:
“Ask your daughter.”
His eyes were no longer blue, they had no color at all. They were like little spheres of pale fire. He did not speak—but his eyes demanded answer from her. The Demoiselle met them indifferently. She shrugged a white shoulder. She said: “I did not tell him.” She added, with a distinct touch of malice: “Perhaps, my father—he remembered.”
I leaned to her, and touched her glass with mine; I was feeling pretty good again. I said: “I remember—I remember—”
Helen said, tartly: “If you drink much more of that wine, you’re going to remember a swell headache, darling.”
The Demoiselle Dahut murmured: “What do you remember, Alain de Carnac?”
I sang the old Breton song—to the English words:
Fisher! Fisher! Have you seen
White Dahut the Shadows’ Queen?
Riding on her stallion black.
At her heels her shadow pack—
Have you seen Dahut ride by.
Swift as cloudy shadows fly
O’er the moon in stormy sky.
On her stallion black as night—
Shadows’ Queen—Dahut the White?
There was a queer silence. Then I noticed that de Keradel was sitting up oddly rigid and looking at me with that same expression he had worn when I had spoken of the Alkar-Az—and the Gatherer in the Cairn. Also that Bill’s face had bleached. I looked at the Demoiselle and there were little dancing orchid sparks in her eyes. I hadn’t the slightest idea why the old song should have had such an effect.
Helen said: “That’s a weird melody, Alan. Who was Dahut the White?”
“A witch, angel,” I told her. “A wicked, beautiful witch. Not a torched-tressed witch like you, but a blonde one. She lived twenty centuries or more ago in a city named Ys. Nobody knows quite where Ys was, but probably its towers rose where now the sea flows between Quiberon and Belle Isle. Certainly, it was once land there. Ys was a wicked city, filled with witches and sorcerers, but wickedest of all was Dahut the White, the daughter of the King. She picked her lovers where she would. They pleased her for a night, two nights—seldom three. Then she cast them from her…into the sea, some say. Or, say others, she gave them to her shadows—”
Bill interrupted: “What do you mean by that?”
His face was whiter than before. De Keradel was looking sharply at him. I said:
“I mean—shadows. Didn’t I sing to you that she was Queen of Shadows? She was a witch—and could make shadows do her bidding. All sorts of shadows—shadows of the lovers she’d killed, demon shadows, Incubi and Succubi nightmares—a specialist in shadow
s was the White Dahut, according to the legend.
“At last the Gods determined to take a hand. Don’t ask me what Gods. Pagan, if all this was before the introduction of Christianity—Christian if after. Whichever they were, they must have believed that who lives by the sword must die by the sword and all of that, because they sent to Ys a youthful hero with whom Dahut fell instantly, completely, and madly in love.
“He was the first man she had ever loved, despite her former affairs. But he was coy—aloof. He could forgive her previous philandering, but before he would accept her favors he must be convinced she truly loved him. How could she convince him? Quite easily. Ys, it appears was below sea-level and protected by walls which kept out the tides. There was one gate which would let in the sea. Why was there such a gate? I don’t know. Probably for use in case of invasion, revolution, or something of the sort. At any rate, the legend says, there was such a gate. The key to it hung always about the neck of the King of Ys, Dahut’s father.
“‘Bring me that key—and I’ll know you love me,’ said the hero. Dahut stole down to her sleeping father, and stole the key from his neck. She gave it to her lover. He opened the sea-gates. The sea poured in. Finish—for wicked Ys. Finish—for wicked Dahut the White.”
“She was drowned?” asked Helen.
“That’s the curious detail of the legend. The story is that Dahut had a rush of filial devotion to the heart, rushed away, awakened the father she had betrayed, took her big black stallion, mounted it, drew the King up behind her and tried to beat the waves to higher ground. There must have been something good in her after all. But—another extraordinary detail—her shadows rebelled, got behind the waves and pushed them on higher and faster. So the waves overtook the stallion and Dahut and her papa—and that was indeed their finish. But still they ride along the shores of Quiberon ‘on her stallion black, at her heels her shadow pack—’” I stopped, abruptly.
My left arm had been raised, the glass of wine within it. By a freak of the light, the candles threw its shadow sharply upon the white tablecloth, directly in front of the Demoiselle.
And the Demoiselle’s white hands were busy with the shadow of my wrist, as though measuring it, as though passing something under and around it.
I dropped my hand and caught hers. Swiftly she slipped them under the edge of the table. As swiftly I dropped my right hand and took from her fingers what they held. It was a long hair, and as I raised it, I saw that it was one of her own.
I thrust it into the candle flame and held it there while it writhed and shriveled.
The Demoiselle laughed—sweet, mocking laughter. I heard de Keradel’s chuckle echo hers. The disconcerting thing was that his amusement seemed not only frank but friendly. The Demoiselle said:
“First he compares me to the sea—the treacherous sea. Then darkly, by inference, to wicked Dahut, the Shadow Queen. And then he thinks me a witch—and burns my hair. And yet—he says he is not credulous—that he does not believe!”
Again she laughed—and again De Keradel echoed her.
I felt foolish, damned foolish. It was touche for the Demoiselle, beyond any doubt. I glared at Bill. Why the devil had he led me into such a trap. But Bill was not laughing. He was looking at the Demoiselle with a face peculiarly stony. Nor was Helen smiling. She was looking at the Demoiselle too. With that expression which women wear when they desire to call another by one of those beautifully descriptive Old English words which the Oxford Dictionary says are “not now in decent use.”
I grinned, and said to her: “It appears that another lady has put me on a hornet’s nest.”
Helen gave me a long comforting look. It said: “I can do that, but God help any other woman who tries it.”
There was a short and awkward silence. De Keradel broke it.
“I do not quite know why, but I am reminded of a question I wished to ask you, Dr. Bennett. I was much interested in the account of the suicide of Mr. Ralston, who, I gathered from your interview in the newspapers, was not only a patient of yours but a close friend.”
I saw Bill blink in the old way when he had come to some unshakeable conviction. He answered, smoothly, in his best professional manner.
“Yes, indeed, Dr. de Keradel, as friend and patient I probably knew him as well as anyone.”
De Keradel said: “It is not so much his death that interests me. It is that in the account of it three other men were mentioned. His death linked to theirs, in fact, as though the same cause were behind all.”
Bill said: “Quite so.”
I had the idea that the Demoiselle was watching Bill intently from the corners of her lovely eyes. De Keradel took up his glass, twirled it slowly, and said:
“I am really much interested, Dr. Bennett. We are all of us physicians, here. Your sister…my daughter…are of course in our confidence. They will not talk. Do you think that these four deaths had anything in common?”
“Without doubt,” answered Bill.
“What?” asked de Keradel.
“Shadows!” said Bill.
CHAPTER V
THE WHISPERING SHADOW
I stared at Bill, incredulously. I remembered his anxiety over my mention of shadows to the reporters, and his tenseness when I had told of the Shadows of Dahut the White. And here we were, back to shadows again. There must be some link, but what was it?
De Keradel exclaimed: “Shadows! Do you mean all suffered from identical hallucinations?”
“Shadows—yes,” said Bill. “Hallucinations—I’m not sure.”
De Keradel repeated, thoughtfully: “You are not sure.” Then asked: “Were these shadows—what your friend and patient desired you to regard as objective rather than subjective? I read the newspaper reports with great interest, Dr. Bennett.”
“I’m sure you did, Dr. de Keradel,” said Bill, and there was an edge of irony to his voice. “Yes—it was the shadow which he desired me to regard as real, not imaginary. The shadow—not shadows. There was only one—” He paused, then added with a faint but plainly deliberate emphasis—“only one shadow for each…you know.”
I thought I understood Bill’s plan of battle. He was playing a hunch; bluffing; pretending to have knowledge of this shadowy decoy of death, whatever the thing might be, exactly as he had pretended to have knowledge of a common cause for the four suicides. He had used that bait to lure his fish within range of the hook. Now that he thought he had them there, he was using the same bait to make them take it. I didn’t believe he knew any more than when he had talked to me at the Club. And I thought he was dangerously underestimating the de Keradels. That last thrust had been a bit obvious.
De Keradel was saying, placidly: “One shadow or many, what difference, Dr. Bennett? Hallucinatory shapes may appear singly—as tradition says the shade of Julius Caesar appeared to the remorseful Brutus. Or be multiplied by the thousands which the dying brain of Tiberius pictured thronging about his death bed, menacing him who had slain them. There are organic disturbances which create such hallucinations. Ocular irregularities produce them. Drugs and alcohol spawn them. They are born of abnormalities of brain and nerves. They are children of auto-intoxication. Progeny of fever, and of high blood pressure. They are also born of conscience. Am I to understand that you reject all these rational explanations?”
Bill said, stolidly: “No. Say, rather, that I do not yet accept any of them.”
Dr. Lowell said, abruptly: “There is still another explanation. Suggestion. Post-hypnotic suggestion. If Ralston and the others had come under the influence of someone who knew how to control minds by such methods…then I can well understand how they might have been driven to kill themselves. I, myself—”
His fingers clenched around the stem of the wine glass. The stem snapped, cutting him. He wrapped a napkin around the bleeding hand. He said: “It is no matter. I wish the memory that caused it went no deeper.”
The Demoiselle’s eyes were on him, and there was a tiny smile at the corners of her mouth. I was sur
e de Keradel had missed nothing. He asked:
“Do you accept Dr. Lowell’s explanation?”
Bill answered, hesitantly: “No—not entirely—I don’t know.”
The Breton paused, studying him with a curious intentness. He said, “Orthodox science tells us that a shadow is only a diminution of light within a certain area caused by the interposition of a material body between a source of light and some surface. It is insubstantial, an airy nothing. So orthodox science tells us. What and where was the material body that cast this shadow upon the four—if it was no hallucination?”
Dr. Lowell said: “A thought placed cunningly in a man’s mind might cast such shadow.”
De Keradel replied, blandly: “But Dr. Bennett does not accept that theory.”
Bill said nothing. De Keradel went on: “If Dr. Bennett believes that a shadow caused the deaths, and if he will not admit it hallucination, nor that it was cast and directed by a material body—then inevitably the conclusion must be that he admits a shadow may have the attributes of a material body. This shadow came necessarily from somewhere; it attaches itself to someone, follows, and finally compels that someone to kill himself. All this implies volition, cognition, purpose and emotion. These shadows? They are attributes of material things only—phenomena of the consciousness housed in the brain. The brain is material and lives in an indubitably material skull. But a shadow is not material, and therefore can have no skull to house a brain; and therefore can have no brain, and therefore no consciousness. And, still again, therefore, can have no volition, cognition, will, or emotion. And, lastly therefore, could not possibly urge, lure, drive, frighten, or coerce a material living being to self-destruction. And if you do not agree with that, my dear Dr. Bennett, what you are admitting is—witchcraft.”
Bill answered, quietly: “If so, why do you laugh at me? What are those theories of ritual you have been expounding to us but witchcraft? Perhaps you have converted me, Dr. de Keradel.”
The A. Merritt Megapack Page 181