I tried to tell ’em, but they would not listen. Kk-Kk looked all white around the gills for a minute, an’ then she walked over to my side.
“We shall meet death together,” she said, dignified as a queen had ought to be. But I wasn’t goin’ to stand for it.
I tried to tell ’em about how I had the ants trained. I volunteered to show ’em, I tried to get ’em to feed me to the ants. But they wouldn’t listen to me. Kk-Kk was the only one they’d listen to, an’ she wouldn’t say a word. She wanted to die with me.
Then was when I knew I was sick. The whole ground started reelin’ around, an’ I felt so drowsy I could hardly hold my eyes open. My head was burnin’ an’ throbbin’ an’ it seemed as though the damp odors of the jungle was soaked all through my blood an’ was smotherin’ me under a blanket of jungle mist.
Their voices sounded farther an’ farther away.
I heard the goldsmith tellin’ me the sentence the chief was pronouncin’. He had to lean up against my ear an’ shout to make me understand.
It seemed they had a funny bread made out of some berries an’ roots. When a fellow ate it he lost his memory.
The old king had decided not to kill us, but to feed us this bread an’ banish us from the tribe.
Since we’d committed the crime against the tribe because we wanted to marry, it seemed like proper justice for the old boy to feed us king-kee, the bread of forgetfulness, so we wouldn’t ever remember about the other.
It was a horrible punishment. If I hadn’t been comin’ down sick I’d have made a break an’ forced ’em to kill me, or turned loose with the rifle an’ seen if I couldn’t have escaped with Kk-Kk.
But I was a sick man. I felt ’em stuffin’ somethin’ in my mouth, an’ I swallowed mechanically an’ cried for water.
Then I remember seein’ Kk-Kk’s eyes, all misty an’ floatin’ with tears, bendin’ over me. Then I sank into a sleep or stupor. Everything snuffed out like a candle goin’ out.
Lord knows how much later I began to come to. I was in Cape Coast Castle. They told me some natives had brought me on a stretcher, sat me down before the door of the buildin’ where they kept the medicines, an’ gone away. It had been done at night. They found me there the next mornin’ sick with the sleepin’ sickness.
When I woke up I couldn’t tell ’em who I was, where I’d been, or how I got there. I only knew I wanted somethin’ an’ couldn’t tell what it was.
A boat came in, an’ they shipped me on her. The surgeon aboard got interested in my case. Every time it rained I’d sleep. There was somethin’ in the smell of dampness in the air.
He treated me like I’d been a king, an’ took me to Boston. There was some German doctor there that had specialized on tropical fevers. They had me there for six months studyin’ my case.
The doctor told me I was victim of what he called autohypnosis. He said I went to sleep when it rained because I thought of sleep when it rained.
I told him it was the fever in my blood comin’ out when it got damp, but he just shook his head an’ said auto-hypnosis, whatever that might mean.
He tried for six months to get me over it, an’ then he gave it up as a bad job.
He said for me to come to California or Arizona an’ get out in the desert, where it only rained once or twice a year, an’ to always be in my tent when it rained.
I followed his advice. For fifty years now I’ve been livin’ out here in the desert.
Every time it rains an’ I smell the damp air, it acts on me like the jungle smells when I had the sleepin’ sickness, an’ I go to sleep. Sometimes I fall asleep and don’t waken for two weeks at a stretch.
But it’s funny about me. Now that I’m gettin’ old, my memory’s comin’ back to me. Particularly after I wake up, I can recall everything like I’ve just told it to you.
Of course I’m an old man now, nothin’ but a bum of a desert rat, out here scratchin’ around in the sand an’ sagebrush for a few colors of gold. I got me a placer staked out over there at the base of that hill.
Ain’t it funny that I have to spend my life lookin’ for gold, when it was grabbin’ the gold in big chunks that made all my troubles? Oh, well, it’s all in a lifetime.
Of course I’m too old to be thinkin’ of such things now. But I get awful lonesome for Kk-Kk. I can see her round, liquid eyes shinin’ at me whenever I wake up from one of these long sleeps. I wonder if she’s got her memory comin’ back, now that she’s gettin’ old — an’ I wonder if she ever thinks of me—
Yes, sir. Thankee, sir. Another cup of that coffee will go kinda good. When a man’s been asleep for eight or nine days he wakes up sorta slow. I’ll drink this coffee an’ then I’ll be headin’ over toward my placer claim.
I’m sorry I bothered you folks, but that rain came up mighty sudden, an’ the first thing I knew I was soakin’ wet an’ sleepy, smellin’ the damp smell of the earth an’ the desert stuff. I crawled in this bunch of Joshuay palms, an’ that’s the last I remember until you came along an’ poured the hot coffee down me.
No, thanks, I don’t believe I’ll stay any longer.
My tent’s fixed up mighty comfortable over there, an’ when I wake up this way it seems like I’ve been with Kk-Kk in a dream world. I like to think about my lost sweetheart.
So long, boys. Thanks for the coffee.
A Year in a Day
Chapter 1
The Invisible Death
Of the five men who sat in that palatial room, Carl Ramsay had the gift of dramatic expression. He thought in blurbs, talked in motion picture subtitles.
The hour of midnight chimed from the expensive clock on the mantelpiece. Somewhere a cuckoo clock sounded.
“A new day,” said Carl Ramsay.
Tolliver Hemingway, multimillionaire, stirred uneasily.
“The day I am to die,” he said, and forced a laugh.
Nick Searle of the Star scraped a match along the sole of his shoe and grunted.
“One chance in a thousand.”
Inspector Hunter glowered about him, and his eyes were a challenge.
“One chance in ten thousand. One chance in a million,” he said.
No one contradicted him, but Carl Ramsay of the Clarion uttered another subtitle.
“The Death Day Dawns,” he murmured.
Arthur Swift surveyed the men in the room with curious eyes. It was his first experience with men of this type. Inspector Harrison Hunter, forceful, driving, alert; Tolliver Hemingway, multimillionaire, suave, polished, dignified, yet somewhat nervous beneath the external polish; Nick Searle, veteran reporter of the Star; Carl Ramsay, of the Clarion, who had been aptly described as “the man with the tabloid mind”; and, himself, a young teacher of physics in the state university. It had been Searle who had called him in, to cover the case for the Star from a scientific angle.
Yet Swift could see nothing to cover.
The room was locked, guarded. The five men were to keep a constant vigil for twenty-four hours within that locked room. Every bit of food they were to eat during that time had been hermetically sealed in cans. It would be consumed immediately after the cans were opened. Every bit of liquid they were to drink was contained in bottles that had been sealed and certified.
The room was on a third story. The windows opened out upon magnificent grounds, landscaped, cared for, and guarded. The side of the house was perfectly blank, devoid of any projection up which a man might climb. Searchlights played about the grounds. Floodlights illuminated the side of the building. A hundred armed deputies patrolled the place.