Dr. Arbuthnot nodded.
“I have treated cases not unlike yours,” he said. “There is no cause for alarm. You are probably overworking. Drop everything and play for a while. Golf. Or long tramps in the country.”
“No use. I should count the apples on the trees, and if I laid down to rest I should hear the grass grow and the earthworms burrowing far beneath. I can stand it daytimes, but of late my mind retains its activity until I sink into a sort of stupor toward dawn. I am sixty-three, and I’ve never used drugs of any sort. Now I want something to make me sleep, at least every other night.”
The alienist made the customary examination, with stethoscope and opthalmoscope; tested his reflexes, and questioned him upon his family history.
John Slade’s father had been of a type not uncommon in rural New England, although dying out. Self-taught, save for what the village academy could impart, he knew a little about many things. He was a naturalist, of sorts. Was always pointing out glacial scratches on the rocks in the neighborhood, and finding Indian arrowheads. Had a fine collection of butterflies, and knew them all by their Latin names. Botanized a great deal by day, and read the stars by night through a rusty old telescope. Understood the ways of
fishes and wood creatures. Could enjoy his New Testament in both Greek and Latin. With his hands he was able to repair sewing machines, pumps, typewriters, or clocks, and could design and build a modest house unaided. Knew surveying, and served as the local undertaker. With two or three simple tools he could do things that would have baffled a master mechanic, — yet could not have passed an examination as plumber’s assistant. A gentle, visionary man, the only resident of his county to whom Spinoza and Descartes and Einstein meant anything at all, he lived and died as poor as a church mouse.
Slade’s mother was a French-Canadian, unable to read or write. She had the illiterate peasant’s extraordinary powers of minute observation, was a neat housewife, a mixture of cunning and credulity, and a devout Christian.
John Slade himself cared nothing for money. When he needed any, he invented something. His education, begun by tramping the countrywide with his father and absorbing all sorts of ill-assorted facts, had been pursued in many lands. At one time he buried himself in Johns Hopkins, engrossed in biology and embryology. Next he was heard of at Oxford, steeped in mediævalism. Physics at Leipsic and Prague. Chemistry at Bonn. Back again to the States, he flitted from Massachusetts ’Tech to the Edison laboratories. Always learning. Never producing — save when lack of funds drove him to some hack work: a course of lectures before the Lowell Institute, the invention of a crankless ice-cream freezer, an article for some technical publication.
“I know too much,” he repeated after answering all of Arbuthnot’s questions. “That is the trouble. And now I cannot sleep!”
The physician gave him some advice as to exercise and diet, to which he listened abstractedly. Then he handed him a little vial of the lethal tablets which would, for a time at least, permit his distracted brain to forget.
Usually he was able to dismiss his patients from his mind after he had done what he could for them, and filed their cards away. He did not find it so easy to forget Slade.
For one thing, he came upon articles written by him from time to time, in the journals to which he subscribed. His fellow practitioners mentioned him occasionally. Slade was a sort of mystery, and it was admitted that he knew more about embryology and chemistry than they did themselves. Nobody could tell just how much the fellow did know! Whatever he said or wrote was uttered with authority and was hard to refute. He had a laboratory which none of them had ever seen, and where it was rumored that he carried on extraordinary experiments, the nature of which was unknown.
Nevertheless, Arbuthnot had very nearly forgotten him when, six months after his call, he received a brief note requesting the alienist to visit him the following afternoon, upon a matter of life and death.
II
Promptly upon the departure of his last patient at a little after four next day, Arbuthnot stepped into the taxicab he had already summoned, and fifteen minutes later was admitted by John Slade himself to his quarters on the top floor of a wholesale storage house well downtown. There was nobody about except the janitor, who took him up in a rickety freight elevator and indicated the door bearing Slade’s card.
He had become much thinner, more haggard, the physician’s swiftly appraising glance told him, as he took his dry, skinny hand in greeting. The eyes seemed to have retreated deep into their bony sockets, and were now magnified by thick tone lenses. The man’s bare feet were thrust into sandals, and he wore a light, loosely belted linen robe falling to his knees. He took Arbuthnot’s hat and indicated an easy chair.
The room was evidently Slade’s general living quarters. It was large, square, lighted on two sides by windows. Its utter lack of the atmosphere of the conventional bachelor’s “den” struck Arbuthnot at once: There were no hospitable glasses, or tea-things, nor so much as a pipe rack or ash tray. The place was as ascetic as a monk’s cell; an effect heightened by Slade’s girdled robe and the sandals. Books — ranks and columns of them — in built-in cases along three sides of the wall. A great flat table, with reading lamp and precise stacks of papers, a rack of sharpened pencils, an open volume with fresh marginal annotations. A wide couch bed at one end, its blankets neatly folded. Filing cases at its head and foot. Through a half-open door Arbuthnot glimpsed the famous laboratory — mostly a gleam of white enamel, against which glimmered the blue-green of retorts and the glitter of polished brass.
Slade seated himself.
“Do you believe that suicide is ever justifiable, Arbuthnot?”
The physician started.
“Certainly not!”
Slade laughed.
“Old inhibitions, doctor! First, your Hippocratian oath — which was never composed by Hippocrates, and is a jumble of pompous platitudes. Then, your religion. We mustn’t take life — because that power is the only one we hold in common with God. Therefore — God is jealous!”
Arbuthnot scanned the face before him, scored deeply with the lines of insomnia, strangely illuminated with the vast mental energy going on within. Everything at top speed, — he thought without replying. Blood pressure too high, of course. Pulse rapid and wiry — you could catch its flutter over the hollow temples. Breathing short — and stirring only the upper chest. Burn out pretty fast, at this rate...
“I told you what my trouble was,” Slade continued in his tired voice. “I know too much. And I know more now than on that day when I consulted you. Oh, very much more!”
Still the alienist uttered no comment. Let the poor devil talk. It was a relief — sort of safety-valve.
“The fact is, I know so much that I am a menace to God Almighty! One of us — so it seems to me — must go. And you sit there, smugly, and tell me that suicide is wrong. As one would tell a naughty child not to bite its nails.”
Slade closed his eyes for a moment and inhaled a deep breath. Then he pulled open a drawer in his table and held out a little oblong glass slide.