Delphi Complete Works of H. P. Lovecraft(351)

“What, may I ask, is the cause of this intrusion? You might have stated your business to Surama.”

Clarendon was standing icily by the chair, the little gold syringe in one hand. He seemed very calm and rational, and Dalton fancied for a moment that Georgina must have exaggerated his condition. How, too, could a rusty scholar be absolutely sure about these Greek entries? The governor decided to be very cautious in his interview, and thanked the lucky chance which had placed a specious pretext in his coat pocket. He was very cool and assured as he rose to reply.

“I didn’t think you’d care to have things dragged before a subordinate, but I thought you ought to see this article at once.”

He drew forth the magazine given him by Dr. MacNeil and handed it to Clarendon.

On page 542 — you see the heading, ‘Black Fever Conquered by New Serum It’s by Dr. Miller of Philadelphia — and he thinks he’s got ahead of you with your cure. They were discussing it at the club, and MacNeil thought the exposition very convincing. I, as a layman, couldn’t pretend to judge; but at all events I thought you oughtn’t to miss a chance to digest the thing while it’s fresh. If you’re busy, of course, I won’t disturb you—”

Clarendon cut in sharply.

“I’m going to give my sister an hypodermic — she’s not quite well — but I’ll look at what that quack has to say when I get back. I know Miller — a damn sneak and incompetent — and I don’t believe he has the brains to steal my methods from the little he’s seen of them.”

Dalton suddenly felt a wave of intuition warning him that Georgina must not receive that intended dose. There was something sinister about it. From what she had said, Alfred must have been inordinately long preparing it, far longer than was needed for the dissolving of a morphine tablet. He decided to hold his host as long as possible, meanwhile testing his attitude in a more or less subtle way.

“I’m sorry Georgina isn’t well. Are you sure that the injection will do her good? That it won’t do her any harm?”

Clarendon’s spasmodic start shewed that something had been struck home.

“Do her harm?” he cried. “Don’t be absurd! You know Georgina must be in the best of health — the very best, I say — in order to serve science as a Clarendon should serve it. She, at least, appreciates the fact that she is my sister. She deems no sacrifice too great in my service. She is a priestess of truth and discovery, as I am a priest.”

He paused in his shrill tirade, wild-eyed, and somewhat out of breath. Dalton could see that his attention had been momentarily shifted.

“But let me see what this cursed quack has to say,” he continued. “If he thinks his pseudo-medical rhetoric can take a real doctor in, he is even simpler than I thought!”

Clarendon nervously found the right page and began reading as he stood there clutching his syringe. Dalton wondered what the real facts were. MacNeil had assured him that the author was a pathologist of the highest standing, and that whatever errors the article might have, the mind behind it was powerful, erudite, and absolutely honourable and sincere.

Watching the doctor as he read, Dalton saw the thin, bearded face grow pale. The great eyes blazed, and the pages crackled in the tenser grip of the long, lean fingers. A perspiration broke out on the high, ivory-white forehead where the hair was already thinning. and the reader sank gaspingly into the chair his visitor had vacated as he kept on with his devouring of the text. Then came a wild scream as from a haunted beast, and Clarendon lurched forward on the table, his outflung arms sweeping books and paper before them as consciousness went dark like a wind-quenched candle-flame.

Dalton, springing to help his stricken friend, raised the slim form and tilted it back in the chair. Seeing the carafe on the floor near the lounge, he dashed some water into the twisted face, and was rewarded by seeing the large eyes slowly open. They were sane eyes now — deep and sad and unmistakably sane — and Dalton felt awed in the presence of a tragedy whose ultimate depth he could never hope or dare to plumb.

The golden hypodermic was still clutched in the lean left hand, and as Clarendon drew a deep, shuddering breath he unclosed his fingers and studied the glittering thing that rolled about on his palm. Then he spoke — slowly, and with the ineffable sadness of utter, absolute despair.

“Thanks, Jimmy, I’m quite all right. But there’s much to be done. You asked me a while back if this shot of morphia would do Georgie any harm. I’m in a position now to tell you that it won’t.”

He turned a small screw in the syringe and laid a finger on the piston, at the same time pulling with his left hand at the skin of his own neck. Dalton cried out in alarm as a lightning motion of his right hand injected the contents of the cylinder into the ridge of distended flesh.