I wanted to tell Leonora about it that very night, but I had to go to the laboratory. Every moment was precious; with millions awaiting me, there could be no delay. Once in the workshop, I telephoned to her, whispering that I had real news and that I would see her soon. Was it foolish of me to end by saying that soon I would be able to give her all she had ever desired of life, everything she had ever dreamed of?
From the time I hung up the receiver, there was intense work. I worked and slept and ate and worked, and, as I watched the precious drops come out of the Berkfield filter into the sterilized beaker beneath, I knew that they were more than so many minims of devastating toxin. Far more! Each drop meant golden dollars, precious moments of happiness with Leonora.
At last, I was through. My agreement with the Russian representatives called for a first delivery of ten cubic centimeters of the drug. This was enough for experiments on ten men. If this experiment was satisfactory, I was to be given one million dollars, and was to start at once with the preparation of sufficient of the drug to paralyze the ambitions of great men all over the world. On the delivery of the final amount, there were to be nine million more handed me, and if it all worked as I said it would, perhaps ninety million more would be given me by the grateful mistress of the world.
I was to meet the men at twelve o'clock that night. At five, I had finished my task. The 10 c.c. was in a glass-stoppered bottle. I had it safe in my right hand vest pocket. In the left hand vest pocket was a similar bottle, filled with water. Held to the light, both bottles looked alike, one on one side and one on the other. I wanted to show them to Leonora. For that night, I was going to dine with her. Days of hard work and nights of tedious watching had separated us; now there was going to be an evening of pleasure and some pardonable boasting.
We ate in a semi-private alcove of a New York restaurant. I presume the food was good. All I can remember is how much like a wonder-woman the lady of my heart looked that night. She had always been inclined to tease me a little about my inability to succeed, but when I gave her the diamond pendant, she knew, she could not help but know, that I had struck my pace.
Then I told her all. Slowly, with microscopic exactness, I told her the entire story. I saw her shiver as I described the head of "Twenty-one," the nose of "Forty-seven," the blind face of the one-armed "Thirty-four." But when I spoke of the millions, she flushed and breathed deep, and I knew then that she was a woman with a price and I could at last buy her.
Very carefully, I explained what I intended to do. How, with the destruction of their tomorrows, the leaders of the universe would lie prostrate and helpless before the Great Bear. In words of one syllable, I described the centers of the brain, and told of my great discovery; and then I showed her the two bottles.
"Just like water, you see, my dear," I explained. "Think of it! A cook in our employ places a tea-spoonful of this liquid in a cup of coffee, and a great man drinks that cupful. From that time he becomes useless to his country. He simply lives in his todays. Imagine a hundred of the leaders of England all being similarly affected in one day. Before substitutions could be made for them, the British Isles could be overrun."
"And they will do that to France, and Italy, and our United States ?" asked the simple-minded beauty.
"Yes, to the whole world.''
"And you will be great, rich, and powerful?"
"I will be everything you want me to be. Think of it! Able to give you anything you want."
"And it is all in that bottle ?"
"Yes."
"Suppose we drink out of the one bottle. A toast to your success, and my happiness."
So I emptied the one bottle into our wine glasses, and we drank. And then I put the other bottle back into my vest pocket. It was past ten, and for a while, we just chatted. Then the woman started to laugh; at first a little chuckle, then low rippling peals like murmuring waterfalls. Of course, I wanted to know what she was amused at, and she did not hesitate to answer me.
"You have done something for me tonight, that I can never repay you for. And I have done something for you that you will never forget. All my life, I have worried about the tomorrows of my existence. I knew as a child that I would be beautiful, but I soon found that all beauty is ephemeral, and that perfection soon ripens to decay. No matter how earnestly I tried to avoid the unpleasant passages of life's poem, I knew that they were waiting for me just around the corners of tomorrow.
"In addition to that, I love this country of ours. Of course, I know its imperfections, its greed, racketeers, political scandals, marital failures, but it is a wonderful country, and I love it. I could not think of its being conquered by Russia, and when you showed me the bottles, I thought I saw my chance. You were looking at my pendant, the new plaything you had given me, and then I remembered your saying that the new medicine looked and tasted like water; so, while you were looking at the pendant on the woman you wanted to buy as you would a plaything, I shifted the bottles on the table, and—Oh! don't you see the humor in it all? You have the water in your pocket and we, each of us, have one half a bottle of the drug within us. I think it is working already, because for the first time in my life, I do not fear tomorrow; I have a peculiar sensation, a most startling, odd sensation, and that feeling seems to tell me that there will be no more tomorrows in my life."
"Nonsense!" I cried. "You just think you shifted the bottles. You wouldn't do a thing like that. You couldn't! You are just teasing me."
"Think so?" she jeered. "Then how about this? I'll marry you tomorrow,"
And before I realized it, I had said it. I tried to choke it back. Even went so far as to raise my hand to cover my mouth. But it was too late, I said it, and I knew that it was true.
"But we shall have no tomorrows," I gasped, and hated myself for the admitting of it.
Well, it was done, and could not be undone. Eleven in the evening, and the three men to meet at twelve! But twelve would be the beginning of a tomorrow; so, I could never meet them. I had a little money, a few thousand left out of the advance. What could I tell them? The truth? Would they believe it? How could I show them that even in my horrible condition, I was proving to them that my invention was a success?
No doubt as to what would happen! They would kill me! That in itself would not be so bad, but how about Leonora? Even in spite of her treachery to me, I still loved her, was still insanely in love with her. Well, there was only one thing to do and that was to discover a cure. It seemed that somewhere, in the realm of medical skill, there should be something that would bring me back my tomorrows.
First, I thought of psycho-analysis. Then of hypnotism. Perhaps a long period of anaesthesia would enable me to turn the trick. All this came to my mind as I sat silently across the table from Leonora; and then, despairingly, I left her. She laughed at me as I left the alcove.
"Goodbye," she jeered. "I will see you tomorrow."
I went back to my rooms. Fortunately, the Russians did not know where they were. No one did. I worked in the laboratory, and I had told "Twenty-one" where that was, but none of my assistants knew where I slept. So, in those rooms, I felt safe. Arriving there, sleep overcame me. Waking, there came the thought that it all had been a horrible dream, a fantasy, born of indigestion, a corrosive nightmare. Hastily, the bottle in my pocket was analyzed, and then came the certainty—it was water. For me there were no more tomorrows. I was simply in a perpetual today.
Nine that morning found me in the office of a great psycho-analyst, a healer of souls, a prober of the subconscious. I told him my problem. He smiled at me kindly, assured me that my fears were groundless, and suggested a course of treatment.
"I can begin on your case tomorrow," he said, with a smile.
"That statement in itself is sufficient to show me that I can expect no help from you," I cried in despair. "How can you start treating me tomorrow, when that day will never come?"
So, I paid him his bill, and left the office.
I telephoned to the laboratory. Ye
s, there had been visitors there, just as I knew there would be, and they were hunting for me. Well, let them hunt! They never would come upon me unless I wanted them to.
A few hours later found me in the office of a celebrated hypnotist. That time, I was not taking any chances on a specialist's misunderstanding me.
"I want you to give me a tomorrow," I began. "I am not hunting for a dozen or a thousand tomorrows; just one. If I can find myself in the dawn of just one tomorrow, I will know that I am cured of my disease." And after a great deal of talking on my part, I showed him just exactly what he could do for me.
"I am sure I can help," he assured me. "My plan is this: We will wait till nearly midnight, and then I will hypnotise you. I will suggest to you that you revive your former personalities, go back into the age of the dawn man, the Roman, the Englishman, the settler of America, the Revolutionary patriot, and finally, I will bring you back to today; but your mind will be flowing so fast that it cannot stop, and when I awaken you, your existence will already have gone forward into the future. When that happens, you will be cured.
"That sounds good, and what time shall I be here?"
"About eleven tonight."
"Then I will stay right in your office."
It was there that he directed me to look at the revolving light. He whispered into my drowsy ear. And crashing backward into the dead past I went, just as he said I would; back to the dawn man and the saber-toothed tiger, back to the building of the first wall around Rome. I saw and took part in a sea battle between the fleets of Rome and Carthage, and even as my ship sank, I found myself with Columbus, sailing westward toward the fabled Indies. What was this new battle? Oh, yes! I was with Washington at Germantown, and later charged with Picket through the blood-stained wheat field of Gettysburg, and now I was in New York, in my laboratory, making devil's broth to sell to Russians, and then something snapped, and I awoke. There was the hypnotist gazing anxiously at me.
"How do you feel?" he said.
"How should I feel?" I almost shouted.
"How far did you get in the dream?"
"Only to the events of today."
"But you have been almost dead for hours. I never was so alarmed. For hours you have scarcely breathed."
"But is this tomorrow?"
"No. This is not tomorrow. That will not be here for eighteen hours. This is just today."
In spite of my anger, I started to sob. Just another failure; but, at the same time, another proof that my drug was doing all that it had claimed to do. I paid the man and slouched out of the office. Was I being followed on the street or was it just my jumpy nerves?
In a telephone pay-station, I listened to Leonora. She was having the time of her life.
"How can I thank you for what you did for your sweetheart? And where have vou been? I have been having a most wonderful time, one thrill after another, and never a care or a worry. Now that I am sure there will be no more tomorrows, I am getting an awful kick out of the todays of life. Why not join me? Come on! I know a new night-club, and we will simply kick the hours away to the latest jazz."
But somehow, I could not look at it the way she wanted me to.
I lived on. That was the pitiful part of it. I ate and hid and tried to think; at times, I slept from sheer exhaustion. But always I found myself in the todays of life. At last, I sought the aid of a physician. He told me that I was living on my reserve strength.
"Unless you stop and rest, you are liable to collapse, and perhaps die. You must take better care of yourself," he advised.
"Just when do you think I shall die?" I whispered.
"Anytime. Perhaps during the next week, and it may be tomorrow."
"Then I shall live on forever," I told him. "Doctor, tell me honestly. Did you ever know of a case like mine? Have you ever treated a man who has lost his tomorrows?"
It was interesting to see the way the man looked at me. He almost must have thought that I was insane. At least, he started to phone to the police, and that was a signal for me to rush out of the office.
Police meant newspapers, and reporters, and notoriety. None of that for me.
But outside the office, right on the street, men closed around me, and forced me into a waiting taxi. Once in there, I could easily tell what had happened. A large head, a blind face, and another face, all nose, easily helped me to identify my traveling companions.
Later on, they took me into a bare room in a third floor back tenement. Just a table and four chairs.
"You tried to goldbrick us!" accused "Twenty-one."
"Took our gold and then endeavored to escape!" whinnied "Forty-seven," and he almost sang a tune with those eight words, as he breathed them through his nose.
But "Thirty-four" simply started to take off his coat. He took off his coat and his vest, and then his shirt. Fascinated, I looked at him undressing with his one capable arm. At last, I saw the mystery of the blind man. The unusualness of it made me gasp. "Twenty-one," who had been watching me closely, started to laugh as he explained it to me.
"Odd? Decidedly! Of course, he is blind, but that doesn't make any difference, because we bring his prey to him. His one long arm is weak, so much so that he uses it only for the nicer things in life, like eating and dressing. But look at that hand growing out of his right shoulder! That hand is unusual. It has been pronounced a real anomaly by some of our greatest anatomists. It is a hand without an arm, but it has muscles, the pectorals in front and the powerful back muscles posteriorly. Once that hand closes on a throat, it never lets go. During the Revolution, dear old "Thirty-four" just sat in a chair, and we brought him the nobility and he did the rest—with their throats. Odd? But not so much so when you know his history. Before he was born, his mother had to stand by while her husband was literally being torn to pieces by one of the Russian Nobility, who thought they were Gods. So, poor old "Thirty-four" was born with only one arm; but as you will soon find out, he has two hands, and one of them is very—yes, wonderfully, capable."
At that, I looked at the hand closely. It was beginning to open and close as if practicing for the sonata that it was soon to play. For a minute, I was sure that this was the end. In spite of myself, I trembled, and a cold chill swept over me. I knew that I had lost Leonora forever. Then the big-nosed "Forty-seven" blurted out triumphantly:
"We are going to wait till tomorrow, and then—you will die of air hunger."
At that I laughed. They looked at me in astonishment:
"Oh! This is too much," I gasped in my mirth. "Why, if you are going to wait till tomorrow, you will never be able to kill me. Don't you understand? The toxin was really a success. I tried it on myself! It worked. YOU CAN NOT KILL ME TOMORROW, FOR I HAVE NO TOMORROWS!"
THE THING IN THE CELLAR
IT WAS a large cellar, entirely out of proportion to the house above it. The owner admitted that it was probably built for a distinctly different kind of structure from the one which rose above it. Probably the first house had been burned, and poverty had caused a diminution of the dwelling erected to take its place.
A winding stone stairway connected the cellar with the kitchen. Around the base of this series of steps, successive owners of the house had placed their firewood, winter vegetables, and junk. The junk had been pushed back till it rose, head high, in a barricade of uselessness. What was back of that barricade no one knew and no one cared. For some hundreds of years, no one had crossed it to penetrate to the black reaches of the cellar behind it.
At the top of the steps, separating the kitchen from the cellar, was a stout oaken door. This door was, in a way, as peculiar and out of relation to the rest of the house as the cellar. It was a strange kind of door to find in a modern house, and certainly a most unusual door to find in the inside of the house—thick, stoutly built, dexterously rabbeted together, with huge wrought-iron hinges, and a lock that looked as though it came from Castle Despair. Separating a house from the outside world, such a door would be excusable; swinging between kitchen and cell
ar, it seemed peculiarly inappropriate.
From the earliest months of his life, Tommy Tucker seemed unhappy in the kitchen. In the front parlor, in the formal dining-room, and especially on the second floor of the house, he acted like a normal, healthy child; but carry him to the kitchen, he at once began to cry. His parents, being plain people, ate in the kitchen, save when they had company. Being poor, Mrs. Tucker did most of her work, though occasionally she had a charwoman in to do the extra Saturday cleaning, and thus much of her time was spent in the kitchen. And Tommy stayed with her, at least as long as he was unable to walk. Much of the time he was decidedly unhappy.
When Tommy learned to creep, he lost no time in leaving the kitchen. No sooner was his mother's back turned, than the little fellow crawled as fast as he could for the doorway opening into the front of the house—the dining-room, and the front parlor. Once away from the kitchen, he seemed happy; at least, he ceased to cry. On being returned to the kitchen, his howls so thoroughly convinced the neighbors that he had colic, that more than one bowl of catnip and sage tea were brought to his assistance.
It was not until the boy learned to talk, that the Tuckers had any idea as to what made the boy cry so hard when he was in the kitchen. In other words, the baby had to suffer for many months till he obtained at least a little relief, and even when he told his parents what was the matter, they were absolutely unable to comprehend. This is not to be wondered at, because they were both hard-working, rather simple-minded persons.
What they finally learned from their little son was this: That if the cellar door was shut and securely fastened with the heavy iron lock, Tommy could, at least, eat a meal in peace; if the door was simply closed and not locked, he shivered with fear, but kept quiet; but if the door was open, if even the slightest streak of black showed that it was not tightly shut, then the little three-year-old would scream himself to the point of exhaustion, especially if his tired father would refuse him permission to leave the kitchen.
Life Everlasting and Other Tales of Science, Fantasy, and Horror Page 17