4
The estate of the dead man was small and uncomplicated, and Dr. Laidlaw,as sole executor and residuary legatee, had no difficulty in settlingit up. A month after the funeral he was sitting alone in his upstairslibrary, the last sad duties completed, and his mind full of poignantmemories and regrets for the loss of a friend he had revered and loved,and to whom his debt was so incalculably great. The last two years,indeed, had been for him terrible. To watch the swift decay of thegreatest combination of heart and brain he had ever known, and torealize he was powerless to help, was a source of profound grief to himthat would remain to the end of his days.
At the same time an insatiable curiosity possessed him. The study ofdementia was, of course, outside his special province as a specialist,but he knew enough of it to understand how small a matter might be theactual cause of how great an illusion, and he had been devoured from thevery beginning by a ceaseless and increasing anxiety to know what theprofessor had found in the sands of "Chaldea," what these preciousTablets of the Gods might be, and particularly--for this was the realcause that had sapped the man's sanity and hope--what the inscriptionwas that he had believed to have deciphered thereon.
The curious feature of it all to his own mind was, that whereas hisfriend had dreamed of finding a message of glorious hope and comfort, hehad apparently found (so far as he had found anything intelligible atall, and not invented the whole thing in his dementia) that the secretof the world, and the meaning of life and death, was of so terrible anature that it robbed the heart of courage and the soul of hope. What,then, could be the contents of the little brown parcel the professor hadbequeathed to him with his pregnant dying sentences?
Actually his hand was trembling as he turned to the writing-table andbegan slowly to unfasten a small old-fashioned desk on which the smallgilt initials "M.E." stood forth as a melancholy memento. He put the keyinto the lock and half turned it. Then, suddenly, he stopped and lookedabout him. Was that a sound at the back of the room? It was just asthough someone had laughed and then tried to smother the laugh with acough. A slight shiver ran over him as he stood listening.
"This is absurd," he said aloud; "too absurd for belief--that I shouldbe so nervous! It's the effect of curiosity unduly prolonged." He smileda little sadly and his eyes wandered to the blue summer sky and theplane trees swaying in the wind below his window. "It's the reaction,"he continued. "The curiosity of two years to be quenched in a singlemoment! The nervous tension, of course, must be considerable."
He turned back to the brown desk and opened it without further delay.His hand was firm now, and he took out the paper parcel that lay insidewithout a tremor. It was heavy. A moment later there lay on the tablebefore him a couple of weather-worn plaques of grey stone--they lookedlike stone, although they felt like metal--on which he saw markings ofa curious character that might have been the mere tracings of naturalforces through the ages, or, equally well, the half-obliteratedhieroglyphics cut upon their surface in past centuries by the more orless untutored hand of a common scribe.
He lifted each stone in turn and examined it carefully. It seemed to himthat a faint glow of heat passed from the substance into his skin, andhe put them down again suddenly, as with a gesture of uneasiness.
"A very clever, or a very imaginative man," he said to himself, "whocould squeeze the secrets of life and death from such broken lines asthose!"
Then he turned to a yellow envelope lying beside them in the desk, withthe single word on the outside in the writing of the professor--the word_Translation_.
"Now," he thought, taking it up with a sudden violence to conceal hisnervousness, "now for the great solution. Now to learn the meaning ofthe worlds, and why mankind was made, and why discipline is worth while,and sacrifice and pain the true law of advancement."
There was the shadow of a sneer in his voice, and yet something in himshivered at the same time. He held the envelope as though weighing it inhis hand, his mind pondering many things. Then curiosity won the day,and he suddenly tore it open with the gesture of an actor who tears opena letter on the stage, knowing there is no real writing inside at all.
A page of finely written script in the late scientist's handwriting laybefore him. He read it through from beginning to end, missing no word,uttering each syllable distinctly under his breath as he read.
The pallor of his face grew ghastly as he neared the end. He began toshake all over as with ague. His breath came heavily in gasps. He stillgripped the sheet of paper, however, and deliberately, as by an intenseeffort of will, read it through a second time from beginning to end. Andthis time, as the last syllable dropped from his lips, the whole face ofthe man flamed with a sudden and terrible anger. His skin became deep,deep red, and he clenched his teeth. With all the strength of hisvigorous soul he was struggling to keep control of himself.
For perhaps five minutes he stood there beside the table withoutstirring a muscle. He might have been carved out of stone. His eyes wereshut, and only the heaving of the chest betrayed the fact that he was aliving being. Then, with a strange quietness, he lit a match and appliedit to the sheet of paper he held in his hand. The ashes fell slowlyabout him, piece by piece, and he blew them from the window-sill intothe air, his eyes following them as they floated away on the summer windthat breathed so warmly over the world.
He turned back slowly into the room. Although his actions and movementswere absolutely steady and controlled, it was clear that he was on theedge of violent action. A hurricane might burst upon the still room anymoment. His muscles were tense and rigid. Then, suddenly, he whitened,collapsed, and sank backwards into a chair, like a tumbled bundle ofinert matter. He had fainted.
In less than half an hour he recovered consciousness and sat up. Asbefore, he made no sound. Not a syllable passed his lips. He rosequietly and looked about the room.
Then he did a curious thing.
Taking a heavy stick from the rack in the corner he approached themantlepiece, and with a heavy shattering blow he smashed the clock topieces. The glass fell in shivering atoms.
"Cease your lying voice for ever," he said, in a curiously still, eventone. "There is no such thing as _time_!"
He took the watch from his pocket, swung it round several times by thelong gold chain, smashed it into smithereens against the wall with asingle blow, and then walked into his laboratory next door, and hung itsbroken body on the bones of the skeleton in the corner of the room.
"Let one damned mockery hang upon another," he said smiling oddly."Delusions, both of you, and cruel as false!"
He slowly moved back to the front room. He stopped opposite the bookcasewhere stood in a row the "Scriptures of the World," choicely bound andexquisitely printed, the late professor's most treasured possession, andnext to them several books signed "Pilgrim."
One by one he took them from the shelf and hurled them through the openwindow.
"A devil's dreams! A devil's foolish dreams!" he cried, with a viciouslaugh.
Presently he stopped from sheer exhaustion. He turned his eyes slowly tothe wall opposite, where hung a weird array of Eastern swords anddaggers, scimitars and spears, the collections of many journeys. Hecrossed the room and ran his finger along the edge. His mind seemed towaver.
"No," he muttered presently; "not that way. There are easier and betterways than that."
He took his hat and passed downstairs into the street.