“Edmond,” said Vanny, watching him, “does that hold the way?”
“No, dear. This is the means of our farewell, to which we go at once.”
CHAPTER XXIV
NIGHT ON OLYMPUS
AFTER the farewell, which occurred in a human and quite traditional fashion, Edmond sent Vanny to Paul. “Go now,” he commanded, and she departed, a little unsteadily but with glowing eyes and an aftersense of ecstasy. She wondered dimly why she left Edmond with so little reluctance; he seemed to her already dead like a memory once poignant out of a distant and half-forgotten past. Yet for a moment her heart wrenched with pain and she kissed him, but his eyes caught hers, and the fire that was burning her died out. Of the happenings during her trance nothing remained in her conscious memory save a sort of vacuity, a feeling of lack or loss. She was unhappy, but not acutely so; if there were pangs, they were quite buried for the present under a sort of lethargy. She moved automatically to follow the course that had been graven very deeply on her mind; below at the curb she entered the gray car that waited there. Nor was she surprised to find Eblis curled on the seat; the great cat mewed and stretched in welcome as she sank wearily to her place at the wheel, and its ebon presence seemed evidence to her mind that she was indeed slipping back into the old life.
Edmond watched her departure with a regret less keen than it might have been had not his lassitude been sweeping back. His drug had been lessening steadily in its potency; the effect of his last dose was vanishing already, and he could feel nothing very passionately. There still remained, however, certain things to be done; he fingered the little vial of alkaloid, and poured the contents into his hand. Half a dozen white pellets rolled in his palm, and suddenly he raised his hand and swallowed them all. A few moments, and the stimulant functioned; he dragged himself erect and moved over to the desk.
He wrote. “I, Edmond Hall, being of sound mind, do hereby devise and bequeath—” He smiled his old ironic smile.
“To my dear friend Alfred Stein the entire contents of my laboratory, together with all designs, books, notes and equipment thereof—”
“The entire remainder and residue of my estate to be divided equally between my beloved wife Evanne and—” he grinned again—“my sister, Sarah Maddox.”
“I appoint as joint executors of my estate Alfred Stein of Northwestern University”—he paused for a moment, still with his Satanic smile—“and Paul Varney—”
He left the satiric document on the open desk, and proceeded to his laboratory. Here he removed the accumulators from the atom-blaster, dropping them into a jar of nitric acid. he heavy brown fumes set picked up another vial and him coughing, and he departed.
“Alfred would doubtless succeed in destroying himself with this terrific mechanism,” he reflected. “I have left him enough to study over, and enough hints of greater things to occupy his life-time.”
Back in his chair before the fire, he looked at the vial he held, shaking the tiny purple ovoids it contained.
“Eggs of nothingness,” he reflected, “out of which I am to hatch oblivion.” He spilled several into his palm, where they rolled with an obscene fungoid shining.
“A billion billion centuries, perhaps,” he reflected, “before Chance or the more obscure laws that govern it, shall re-assemble the particular molecules that I call Myself, yet this will seem no longer than from this night until tomorrow. Certainly obliteration is a wonderful thing, and the one conqueror of Time.” His other self responded, “Since in eternity all things that can happen must happen, I depart with assurance; all this will be again, and perhaps in happier fashion. I render my payment therefore without regret.”
He raised his hand to his lips, and at the moment he became aware of a presence before him. Sarah stood there, or her image made real to his senses. She was watching him with a little glint of regret in her eyes, and a touch of hopelessness about her mouth. He paused, returning her gaze coldly.
“Paul comes,” she said. “He comes to kill you.” Edmond’s lips twisted again into their thin smile.
“I had thought my accounts were balanced,” he said. “However, perhaps I still owe Paul that satisfaction.”
“You are a fool, Edmond. You have traded all glory and the very delights of the gods—for what?”
“For a philosophy and a dream, and a bright little gem of truth, Sarah. Not one of you has more.”
“You are a fool, Edmond, and I wonder that your passing grieves me in the least, for all reason denies that it should.”
“The more fool reason, then,” said Edmond. But his cold eyes softened a moment. “I am sorry, Sarah. Believe me when I say I do not forget you.”
Sarah’s own eyes turned cold, her hopeless mouth became grim. “I leave you to your fool’s devices,” said she, and vanished.
Edmond thought silently of her warning of Paul. After a moment he rose, a little more weakly now, and proceeded again to his laboratory. He lifted a revolver from the table drawer, fitted thereto a silencer. Was it the same calibre as Paul’s? What matter, since there would be no inquest? Then he deliberately fired the weapon into a towel bundled in the comer; thereafter he removed the silencer and dropped the gun into his pocket. The towel and the bullet it contained he tossed into the jar of nitric acid, where it too disintegrated under the evil brown fumes. Edmond returned to his chair before the fire; he watched the low dying flames and occupied his minds with strange thoughts. He waited.
Then came the sound of a key in the lock—Paul’s key, given long ago, he knew, by Vanny. He smiled at the grim irony of the thing, for it amused him to perceive with what bitter humor his god Chance worked his will—that Vanny who loved him should give to Paul who hated him the means of his destruction. And now there moved a shadow in the hall.
Through the library door came Paul, a bleak and desolate figure with staring eyes. He moved into the dim fire-glow; there was a blue glint along the barrel of a revolver he held. He stood before Edmond, and the superman himself, accustomed as he had become to living in a white glare of hatred, was startled by the hate in Paul’s eyes.
“I am going to kill you,” said Paul in a strained and husky voice as he raised his weapon. Edmond stared at him with cold inhuman eyes, through which for a moment looked both minds. The superman was probably the belligerent opposing mind, building up a mastery, like a man staring down a wild beast. “Lion tamer,” jeered a part of his brain.
“I am going to kill you,” croaked Paul, and his eyes shifted. He could not look at the emaciated white demon before him, whose eyes now flamed with a fierce intentness. Paul’s face was pale and moist with the dread that once again he was about to be defeated. “Where’s Vanny?” he muttered. Edmond’s thin smile twisted his lips; his opponent’s wavering had given him victory, and he held Paul’s will.
“She waits for you at your apartment,” he replied.
“That’s a lie, you sneering devil!”
“I have never lied, finding no need,” said Edmond quietly. His lethargy was returning as the drug’s power waned, and he felt weakness growing within him. He probed the tortured eyes into which he gazed.
“This hysterical fool will drop his gun and run from the scene of his crime,” he reflected, “in the best tradition of the stage and the mystery novel. Two weapons here would be highly undesirable.” He thrust his glance into Paul’s eyes.
“Listen to me, Paul. When you leave here, drop your gun into your pocket. Drop your gun into your pocket, and return at once to Vanny. Say nothing to her; I seal your lips upon this night forever.”
Edmond read assent in the mad eyes he faced. Paul’s gyrating brain might never recall the words, but somewhere in his subconsciousness the command was registered, imperative and compelling.
Edmond drew that which he had prepared from his pocket, clasping his incredible fingers tightly about it. He held his helpless opponent a moment longer in his fiery gaze.
“For what evil I have done you, I render now full recompense,”
he said, and dropped his eyes.
Silence.
Edmond raised his eyes, and saw Paul’s pallid face with sickness and indecision written there, and he saw the weapon wavering and irresolute. He noted too that a familiar misty glory danced behind Paul, and that Homo’s expression seemed almost one of welcome. “So at my nadir as at the zenith I still follow my fancy,” he mused and smiled his old ironic smile. A command flamed in his eyes; and Paul’s hand steadied, as a rush of rage overpowered him. Still smiling, Edmond dropped his eyes again, and the gun crashed.
It was not until he saw the morning papers that Paul realized that Edmond had held in his hand a revolver with one empty cartridge.
The New Adam Page 18
