The Complete Simon Iff (62 page)

Despite his conscious paralysis, something in his mind registered the fact that the girl's accents were not Caucasian or Semitic; it was the precise and pretty, soft and slurred English of a Mongol. The effect was to bewilder him completely. His subconscious good sense told him surreptitiously of a possible point to the farce in the office, but there was no rational connection to be traced in this and it led him back to the state of uncertanity as to whether his senses were not playing him tricks. He suddenly rememberred Simon Iff's reputation as a magician. As the girl led the way to the door of his study he felt rather like a character in an Arabian Night, doubtful as to what dreadful or horrible experience might be lurking behind the door.

Ushered into the study, he was immediately reassured. There was nothing in any way abnormal. He began to look for the big envelope which he was to deliver but Iff stopped him.

"I thought if you had the time, Mr. Hobbs, we might to down to the bank together. The bonds will be safer where they are. But I see you are a little out of breath. Will you take a cigarette and a cup of coffee with me? As you see, I am just finishing lunch."

He filled a cup for the cashier and a liqueur glass of old brandy. He lit a match for Hobbs' cigarette and the two men smoked in silence. Somehow or other the calm impersonal gaze of the magician had the effect of making Hobbs extremelly ill at ease. He felt himself--he had no idea why--in the presence of a god; very gentle, yet very terrible; one who saw through him without even seeing him. And there was born in his mind an almost overmastering impulse to lay open his soul. His instinct of self-preservation held him back and he satisfied the impulse by appealing to the magician for an explanation of the extraordinary events at the office.

Simon listened without surprise.

"This sort of thing is fairly common," he said, and went into a little technical sermon on hallucinations and their causes.

"It is only natural," he concluded, "that you should be mentally upset. You were quite all right before lunch, weren't you?"

"Quite," said Hobbs.

"Exactly," continued Simon. "Your hallucinations are simply due to what happened during the lunch hour."

"But nothing happened during the lunch hour," objected Hobbs.

"What! Didn't you see it?" cried Simon, with the utmost surprise.

"See what? I don't know what you mean!" stammered the cashier, thoroughly alarmed, he knew not why.

Iff struck a hand bell at his side, and the cashier almost jumped out of his chair.

The girl appeared at the door. Simon addressed her volubly in Japanese, and she answered briefly in that language, with a low bow and disappeared.

Hobbs could not contain himself. He told Iff how things looked to him.

"What, Togo in stripes?" cried Iff laughing, and then checked himself and looked at the trembling man before him with the most serious commiseration. "Strange, strange," he said in a meditative voice. "I could understand it if you had seen it."

"Seen what?" cried Hobbs, his voice rising to a scream. By his elbow was the girl in stripes. She was handing a copy of the Evening Mercury to her master.

Iff ran his finger down the columns. In the stop press was only one paragraph. It started loudly from the blank of the rest of the column.

SUICIDE in SING SING.

Stephen Adams, recently convicted for theft of bonds, hanged himself in the prison early this morning.

The finger with which Simon directed his attention to that bald statement, seemed to the guilty man like the finger of God. He was struck speechless. His face went blank as a sheet of paper. Iff took no notice.

"If you didn't see that," he said slowly, "I don't see what upset your mind so seriously as to make you see things. You don't drug?" he asked sharply.

Hobbs tried to frame the words 'never in my life' but his articulation refused its office.

"Can it be?" mused Simon Iff--and rose suddenly from his chair.

"Never mind the cause," he declared vigourously, "the cure is the thing. Business before pleasure. Attend to duty and never mind the tricks our eyes sometimes play us. Let's get down to the bank. Here, swallow this."

He poured the cashier a stiff drink of brandy which pulled him together physically but left his mind in a blank passive state. He was quite fit to do anything, but deprived of initiative, of the power to think, in all but the most superficial sense of that phrase.

He followed Iff out of the room and was not in the least surprised to find Togo looking like a quite ordinary Japanese servant. Simon asked him about it.

"You see," he said, "you're better already. But when they got to the outer entrance, instead of Iff's motor car he saw a prison van. However, it did not seem so apparently to Simon, who said:

"I think it'll do you good if we walk down to the bank this day. Nothing like fresh air to blow away the cobwebs."

Hobbs assented mechanically and Iff addressed the uniformed driver.

"I shan't want you this afternoon, Dobson," he said, "but be back for the theatre after dinner. Amuse yourself as you like till then."

"Yes, sir, thank you, sir," replied the man saluting; and even distressed as he was, Hobbs could not fail to observe that the man's accent was utterly remote from anything American. He began to analyse his perceptions. He tried to look at his experiences in perspective. It seemed in particular that his ears were somehow at war with his eyes. No, that didn't account for everything. He began to realize that almost all the inexplicable perceptions had something to do with Stephen and the police. Were they then phantasms created by his conscience? If not, was he suspected? Had a comedy been staged to firghten him into confession? Knowing himself safe, he brightened instantly at the thought. And yet, when he considered the matter, it seemed impossible. There would not have been time to prepare so elaborate a scheme, for Stephen had only hanged himself that very morning. And then he realized for the first time the import of that fact. It was he that was responsible for the boy's death. He had not thought of that before. He had hated Stephen as a coward and a prig and despised him as a crank. He had felt no remorse at his imprisonment. But that he should have kiled himself was another story. Why had he not foreseen that such an issue was inevitable, given the ultra-neurotic character of the boy?

Hobbs had never believed in the supernatural, but now it seemed to him as the only rational explanation of events to suppose that by some mysterious sympathy, a dead man was somehow able to revenge himself by throwing the mental machinery of his murderer out of gear. There were plenty of well-authenticated stories of the sort.

"I must pull myself together," he thought, "whatever I do, I mustn't give myself away. I must ask for a holiday and go to a safe place till I've got over these fancies."

And he began to make plans but they were always interfered with by a vision of his victim hanging from a bar of his cell window.

"Here, wake up!" said Simon Iff, who had not spoken all the way to the bank. "Here we are."

Hobbs took stock of his surroundings. Again his eyes were playing him false. An automobile was drawn up at the door of the bank and in it were two fashionable ladies, almost extravagantly dressed. There was a little crowd around the car, which the porter was trying to keep back. And the motive of the crowd was evident, for the chauffeur was the girl in stripes.

Then did other people share his hallucinations? Slight as the matter was in comparison with what had passed, its incongruity brought to the ground all his previous theories and left his mind more completely bewildered than ever. It could be hallucination if other people could see that accursed girl, and it couldn't be a comedy staged for his benefit, for that fact would knock the house of cards to pieces.

He followed Iff to the receiving teller's desk and pulled out the sealed envelope. The teller opened it. The man's face changed. "There's some mistake here, Mr. Hobbs," he said, "except these two, these bonds are forgeries."

The cashier found himself unable to utter a word. The teller gave a signal and two of the plain clothes men in the bank immediately slipped their arms through those of the terrified Hobbs. History had repeated itself. A glaring light broke in upon his mind.

"It's a conspiracy," he shouted, "and I know exactly how the trick was done."

"Yes, you might tell us about that," said Simon very gently.

Hobbs no longer knew what he was saying.

"I'm not guilty," he cried, "Adams can clear me."

"Isn't it rather for you to clear Adams?" suggested Simon Iff, and then the cashier remembered that Adams was lying dead in prison.

"I never meant to kill him," he went on. "I never thought he couldn't stand..." and once again he broke off short, appalled.

He saw that he had no chance to clear himself. He had sealed up the envelope and it had been in his possession till that moment. He knew too well that it had been changed by the girl in stripes while Mr. Lubeck was talking to him, but he couldn't tell that story to a jury, he couldn't tell it to his own attorney. they would only say that he was shamming mad to get off. He had been trapped and instinctively he turned to Simon Iff to save him.

"I didn't steal the bonds," he whined. "I want justice."

"Then you must do it yourself," answered Simon. "Come, let us go into the president's room and tell us the whole story."

Completely broken down, the cashier complied. Iff had accurately divined the method employed to scare Sterilized Stephen. Hobbs had led up to the critical moment by teasing Stephen about his fears and threatening that one day he would bring down a culture of virulent bacilli and shedding them over him. He had, in fact; squirted a little dirty water on Stephen's person and taken advantage of his distraction to change the bonds. Hobbs ended his confession with an appeal for mercy.

"It shall be granted," answered Simon, and sent for a copy of the Evening Mercury. It was the same edition as the copy in Iff's apartment, but the top press column contained no reference to Stephen Adams.

VII

Simon Iff had been absent from New York for some weeks attending to the matter (elsewhere recorded) of Col. Van Schuyler. On his return he found a letter from Mr. Lubeck who concluded his congratulations by inviting the magician to dinner to meet Stephen Adams and his sister Violet. The boy had been released immediately on the confession of Hobbs and the dinner party was intended, not only to celebrate the victory, but to plan future campaigns. The stockbroker's original interest in his aseptic employee had been revivified by the sympathy he felt for his tribulations. The good man blamed himself quite unjustly for his reluctant contribution to the catastrophe. But Simon Iff was in the most cantankerous mood. He would not admit that any castastrophe had taken place. He blamed Lubeck, not for prosecuting his clerk, but for having encouraged him in his iniquity. He had no kind word for Stephen that night. All through dinner, in defiance of every rule of politeness, he treated the boy with savage contempt. He lost no opportunity of sneering at everything he said; he criticized his personal appearance in absolutely unpardonable terms. There was never such a bear at any dinner party that New York had ever seen. Only with Violet did he preserve the commonest form of politeness.

Not until dinner was over did Simon unmask his really heavy artillery. He attacked Sterilized Stephen with callous brutality so that Mr. Lubeck, seeing how acutely his guest was suffering, unable to defend himself because his enemy was also his saviour, ventured a word of protest.

"My dear man," retorted Iff, "have you no common sense? Can't you see that this rag of humanity is on the way to getting worse torn than ever? What's his whole attitude? That of a deeply injured man, who has been justified. His punishment begins now.

"You had Dr. Braithwaite examine you three days ago?"

"Yes," stammered Stephen, "and he told me I was perfectly healthy."

"That's what he told you," sneered Iff. "But here's his private report of the scraping he took from your throat."

He took a paper from his pocket book and passed it to Stephen. The gesture was as if he had stabbed him. The boy read the slip. It appeared that his throat harboured the germs of influenza, diphtheria, and typhoid, and some half dozen lesser diseases.

It was necessary to apply restoratives. At last, he mastered himself sufficiently to stammer something about his death warrant.

"Now look here, my boy," said Simon. "That's all nonsense. All our throats are full of those germs all the time. But none of us get any of those diseases except under special conditions, the chief of which is a lowered vitality. Now, nothing lowers vitality so much as fear. Look at yourself. The doctor declares you in perfect health and yet you nearly faint when I pass you a scrap of paper. I've travelled a bit in the tropics and seen plague and cholera sweeping away who townships as a storm scatters the leaves from trees in autumn. I thought even in America every one knew that the one sure way to get an epidemic disease was to funk it."

"That's right," put in Lubeck. "I was in Panama in the old days and the people who got yellow jack were not the people who took the big risks but the people who brooded on the danger."

"There's another point too," pursued Simon. "When fear, which is a definite pathological condition, a disease far more deadly than tuberculosis, attains a certain degree of intensity, it deprives a man of the use of his five senses. Did you ever read that essay of Sullivan's on Human Testimony?"

It appeared that nobody had.

"Well, you should," proceeded Simon. "However, I'll quote you, as nearly as memory serves me, one remark.

"During the war it was noticed that the evidence of soldiers freshly wounded was often of the most fantastic description. They would testify to the details of catastrophes which had never occurred; they would assert that so-and-so had been decapitated in front of their eyes, and so-and-so buried by an explosion, when, as a matter of fact, nothing remotely resembling these events had taken place."