in common, as though we knew each other years ago." She laughed softly. "Perhaps," she said, "the Theosophists are right after all and you and I were friends more than ten thousand years ago."
I had no time to answer, for Gordon Harris came and claimed her attention and I cannot say that I was sorry, for under the circumstances, to such a speech, what was there for me to say?
As we walked home another complication arose. Visrain confessed to me that he loved her. "She is the most adorably perfect girl I have ever known," he told me. "And I am the most miserable of men. No doubt as long as my personality is in your body, I could go in and win her. But I hate deception and I wouldn't want to do anything that was unfair to you, for already, I think, I have caused you trouble enough."
But despite his words to the contrary, Visrain did make love to Vera Gray and she seemed to be far more attracted to him then she had ever been to me.
"I am never unhappy when I am with you," she told him frankly, "and no matter how trivial is the subject we discuss I am always interested. You used to bore me sometimes, but now all that is passed."
Visrain placed his arm about her. "Something stronger than life, stronger than death is drawing us together," he breathed tensely. "There is no use in either of us fighting against it. It is destiny. Allah wills that we should live united." He drew her unresisting to him. "Promise me," he said, "that you will marry me before summer comes." And in a fit of recklessness she promised.
Late that night Visrain made known his perfidy to me. In all fairness to "him, I must admit that he confessed everything quite openly.
"There is no use fighting against love," he cried. "It is the most subtle poison known. Do you think I am happy? I am the most miserable man in all the world. First, I robbed you of your body. Now I have robbed you of your love. Nowhere on earth is there so vile a thief as I. But I am poisoned by love. I cannot, I will not live without Vera Gray. Yet I am unworthy of her."
He stormed and raged up and down the room like a caged beast. I said no word because I realized that none was needed. His own conscience was scourging his soul far worse than anything I could have said. I just sat as though carved of stone, watching the torment which he was suffering. His eyes glistened as though he were almost mad. He tore up and down the room as though he wished to escape from himself. But that is not strictly true, he was unhappy because he wished to escape from myself. It was my body which had caused; him all his sorrow.
Finally I rose from, my chair. "I think I will go to bed," I told him simply. He made no answer and I left the room and walked back to the house next door.
In five minutes I was in bed but I could not sleep. I lay and tossed upon my pillow as though I were a victim of acute insomnia. And yet somehow although I feigned weariness I knew that I was really far from sleep. There seemed to be an ominous silence in the air, a calm such as might precede a deadly tropical storm. It seemed to me as though some dreadful calamity was imminent, but what that calamity was I had not the faintest idea. My room was as dark as the inside of a coffin. I could not distinguish a thing because of the heavy curtains which were carefully drawn across the windows. The blackness was so intense that it seemed peopled with all sorts of wild wraiths and distorted forms. I knew the hallucinations were but the imaginings of my overwrought nerves. Yet the great bulk of blackness seemed to bear down upon me as though it were a solid thing. I felt as though I were suffocating, as though I were engulfed alive in a pit of blackness. My forehead was cold with a dank sweat and my hands shook, as though I were a hundred years old.
I switched on the electric lights and looked at my face or rather I should say Visrain's face, in the mirror. It was ashen gray. Hastily I dressed. I seemed impelled onward by some great hidden force. When I had finished dressing I crept cautiously down the stairs. I was careful to make no sound that would awaken Koto who slept in a little room off the lower hall. Silently I crept from the house and stole to the house next door. I unlocked the front door and entered like a thief. I had no trouble in effecting an entrance because Visrain and I carried keys to both houses. We believed it would more readily facilitate matters if we did so.
Inside I found the light in the living room still burning. I walked to the threshold and there I stopped as though frozen to ice, and well I might, for the sight which I beheld was the most awful man ever gazed upon. In the chair was my own body. Blood was trickling sluggishly from a bullet wound in the right temple. By the side of the table lay a revolver. Facing a problem which he could not solve, Visrain had blown out his brains. For one brief moment, I gazed at the ghastly sight, then my overwrought nerves broke and I slipped to the floor unconscious.
How long I remained so I do not know for when I opened my eyes it was broad daylight. In the chair the body still sat and I imagined an eerie smile hovered over the rigid lips as though it were grinning at me. I rose to my feet. My head ached dully and I walked like a man who had been ill for ages. I could scarcely drag one foot after the other. I seated myself in a chair opposite the lifeless body and stared at it as though my very gaze could rekindle it with life again. Now my predicament was worse than ever. My body was dead, sitting grotesquely before me on a great chair. I was surprised that the expression on its face could ever be so frightful. Lost to me also was my friend. What had happened to his soul I did not know. Perhaps it also was in the room with me. I shuddered as I thought that now Visrain would try to reclaim his body.
The days that immediately followed
I can only look back upon as on a
nightmare. I did not employ an undertaker
to embalm the body, nor did I
make any attempt to see that it was
decently buried. Under the circumstances
I doubt if anyone else would
have done so either. Despite the ghastly,
blood-clotted, repulsive face, the body
was mine. And I was still alive. I
could not make myself believe that my
body was really dead. As the days
dragged by, I found myself more and
more often creeping into the house next
door to gaze into that face which was
turning a sickly blue. Sometimes I used
to frantically shake the loathsome
corpse as, though it were only sleeping
and that if I tried hard enough I could
awaken it. It drew me to it like a magnet.
Many a night I remained with the
hideous thing till dawn. I think at the
time I must have been slightly insane,
yet as I have written, three alienists have
recently examined me and they pronounce
my mind to be in excellent condition.
Still my actions then were no;
those of a sane person. I used to sit and
talk to the corpse by the hour, I argued
and expostulated with it. Sometimes I
attempted to make it eat and drink. Once
I even succeeded in pouring a bit of
liquor through the set lips. A thing
which gave me hope was the fact that
the beard on the face continued to grow.
How could the corpse be dead, I argued,
and the beard still grow? I have since
learned that this is a perfectly natural
phenomenon, that it is quite usual for a
man's hair to grow after he has ceased to
live.
