He stopped then, letting his words soak in.
I glared at the pin-points.
“Who the heck are you?” I asked, and my tone must have showed irritation.
“Emilio Bender,” he said, and put out his hand.
For a second or two I thought I wouldn’t take that hand, but I couldn’t keep from looking at those strange eyes of his, and finally I put out my hand and shook.
“Now,” he said, “we’ll have a drink,” and led the way to the bar. We drank.
That was a hot afternoon. Flies droned about the place, or circled over the damp spots on the sticky bar. A perspiring bartender dished out the drinks as they were ordered. Half a dozen Mexicans lounged about. There were a couple of drab girls who got checks for promoting drinks. There was little tourist trade. Mostly the tourists went to the fancier places.
Bender waited until I had finished with my glass and had half turned toward him. I knew that his pin-point eyes were staring fixedly at me, trying to catch mine.
It irritated me, and I kept looking away. Finally the silence became awkward. I glanced up and his eyes locked with my gaze and held it.
“Shoot your story,” I said, and knew my irritation was showing in my tone.
He lowered his voice.
“I’m a hypnotist.”
“Don’t try it on me,” I told him. “If you want some one to practice on, go hire a Mex.”
He shook his head, that single swift shake of negation again.
“Listen,” he said, and led me over to a dark corner of the bar. “You’ve had an education. You’re not a fool like some of these people. I’ve got something that bothers me and I want you to look at it.”
He waited for me to say something. I didn’t say a word.
“Hypnotism,” he went on, “is something they don’t know anything about; and medical science is afraid to try to learn anything about it. From the time when poor Mesmer sat his patients around a washtub, their feet in water and an iron ring for their hands, up to the time when science proclaimed that hynotism is nothing but suggestion, science hasn’t learned one thing about it.”
He waited again.
After another interval of silence he said abruptly, “Do you know anything about multiple personalities?”
I’d read a little something, but I shook my head.
“They’re encountered once in a while in dealing with a hypnotic subject. A woman will suddenly become some other personality. There’ll be times when one personality dominates, then times when the other personality is in control.”
I nodded and let it go at that.
As a matter of fact I’d heard of cases like that. Hypnotism would seem to bring out some hidden personality from the dark places of the mind. Science has recorded half a dozen instances.
“I want you to come,” he said.
I kept staring into those pin-point eyes.
“Where?” I asked.
“With me,” he said and started for the door.
I waited a minute, and then curiosity or the effect of suggestion or something got the best of me, and I followed him.
By that time the afternoon crowd of tourists was flowing in a stream across the United States border. The A.B.W. Club was doing a rushing business. You could hear the whir of roulette wheels, the click of chips, the clink of glasses.
I rather expected we’d turn toward the border, but we didn’t. We headed down the side street which runs into the native part of old Mexicali.
It was a ’dobe house he stopped at, and it wasn’t much different from the other ’dobe houses around it.
There were some dirty, half-naked children playing around in the yard. They all had drooling noses and black, questioning eyes. Their mouths were sticky from eating, and more dirt had gathered at the sticky places than on the rest of their faces.
They looked at the man with pin-point eyes, and then turned and ran, just like a bunch of quail scurrying for cover when the shadow of a hawk flits across the ground.
The house was just a square, boxlike affair with small windows and some green stuff growing in the front yard. There was a pool of surface water that smelled sour, some peppers hanging on the wall, and a door that was half open.
Bender and I walked into the house.
There were three people: an old, old woman who had a nose that looked like a withered potato, a fat woman who looked hostile, and a Mexican of the cholo or half-breed class. He had a low forehead, black eyes, thick lips and looked surly.
The man with pin-point eyes walked in just as if he owned the place.
“Sit down,” he said to me in Mexican.
I sat down. It was a funny adventure and I wanted to see how it ended.
The fat woman snapped a shrill comment in the language of her race.
“Again!” she said. “Why don’t you leave us alone?”
“Shut up,” said the man with her, in a surly voice. “He is a friend.”
The old woman chattered a curse.
I caught the eye of the fat woman. “Señora,” I said to her, “if I intrude I will go. I beg of you a thousand pardons.” I spoke to her in Mexican Spanish, letting her know I was a friend.
She smiled at me, after the manner of her race, one of the most friendly races on earth — when you take ’em right.
“You are welcome,” she said. “It is the other. He has come from the Evil One.”
“Shut up,” said the surly man again.
The woman turned to me and shrugged her shoulders.
“You see how it is, señor. He has sold his soul to the devil!”
I said nothing. The man with pin-point eyes said nothing.
It was warm there in the ’dobe house, close with the closeness which comes from many people sharing the same room on a hot day. Yet it was hotter outside, and the sun tortured the eyes. In the ’dobe it was dark and soothing.
Chapter 2
The Past Breathes
I sat and waited. Every one seemed to be waiting for something. One of the children came in the door. I motioned him over and gave him half a dollar. His eyes grew wide, and he thanked me in an undertone, then scampered out.
One by one, the other children came in and got half a dollar each. They muttered thanks. They didn’t ever look toward Emilio Bender, with the aluminium eyes.
The splotch of bright sunlight from the west window moved slowly across the floor. No one said anything. They all sat and waited. I sat and waited. It was a queer sensation, like being plunged into the middle of a dream. It was all unreal.
They seemed to be watching the Mexican.
He sat in a chair, stolid, indifferent, after the manner of his race. He rolled a cigarette and smoked it, flipped the stub to the floor, looked around him with eyes that were black and inscrutable in their stolid, stupidity, then rolled another cigarette.
The splotch of sunlight slid halfway across the floor.
There was a rustle. The old woman was muttering something and making the sign of the Cross. The fat woman rocked back and forth. “He comes,” she said, and crossed herself again.
The man with pin-point eyes was looking at the Mexican.
I watched him, too.
I could see something was happening. The Mexican began to sit a little more erect in his chair. His head came back, and the chest was thrust out. There was something military in his bearing. The surly air of stupidity slipped from him. The dark eyes flashed with spirit. The lines of his entire face became more sensitive, more intelligent. His nostrils dilated and he got to his feet.
When he spoke his words were in a Spanish tongue, but different from the slurring idiom of the Mexican. I had to listen closely to follow what he said.