The War Terror Read online

  CHAPTER XXIV

  THE SERPENT'S TOOTH

  I had scarcely returned to the ward when, suddenly, an unnaturalstrength seemed to be infused into Veda.

  She had risen in bed.

  "It shall not catch me!" she cried in a new paroxysm of namelessterror. "No--no--it is pursuing me. I am never out of its grasp. I havebeen thought six feet underground--I know it. There it is again--stilldriving me--still driving me!

  "Will it never stop? Will no one stop it? Save me! It--is the deaththought!"

  She had risen convulsively and had drawn back in abject, coweringterror. What was it she saw? Evidently it was very real and very awful.It pursued her relentlessly.

  As she lay there, rolling her eyes about, she caught sight of us andrecognized us for the first time, although she had been calling for us.

  "They had the thought on you, too, Professor Kennedy," she almostscreamed. "Hour after hour, Rapport and the rest repeated over and overagain, 'Why does not some one kill him? Why does he not die?' They knewyou--even when I brought you to the Red Lodge. They thought you were aspy."

  I turned to Kennedy. He had advanced and was leaning over to catchevery word. Blair was standing behind me and she had not seen herhusband yet. A quick glance showed me that he was trembling from headto foot like a leaf, as though he, too, were pursued by the namelessterror.

  "What did they do?" Kennedy asked in a low tone.

  Fearfully, gripping the bars of the iron bed, as though they were sometangible support for her mind, she answered: "They would get together.'Now, all of you,' they said, 'unite yourselves in thought against ourenemy, against Kennedy, that he must leave off persecuting us. He isripe for destruction!'"

  Kennedy glanced sidewise at me, with a significant look.

  "God grant," she implored, "that none haunt me for what I have done inmy ignorance!"

  Just then the door opened and my messenger entered, accompanied by Dr.Vaughn.

  I had turned to catch the expression on Blair's face just in time. Itwas a look of abject appeal.

  Before Dr. Vaughn could ask a question, or fairly take in thesituation, Kennedy had faced him.

  "What was the purpose of all that elaborate mummery out at the RedLodge?" asked Kennedy pointblank.

  I think I looked at Craig in no less amazement than Vaughn. In spite ofthe dramatic scenes through which we had passed, the spell of theoccult had not fallen on him for an instant.

  "Mummery?" repeated Dr. Vaughn, bending his penetrating eyes onKennedy, as if he would force him to betray himself first.

  "Yes," reiterated Craig. "You know as well as I do that it has beensaid that it is a well-established fact that the world wants to bedeceived and is willing to pay for the privilege."

  Dr. Vaughn still gazed from one to the other of us defiantly.

  "You know what I mean," persisted Kennedy, "the mumbo-jumbo--just asthe Haitian obi man sticks pins in a doll or melts a wax figure of hisenemy. That is supposed to be an outward sign. But back of thisterrible power that people believe moves in darkness and mystery issomething tangible--something real."

  Dr. Vaughn looked up sharply at him, I think mistaking Kennedy'smeaning. If he did, all doubt that Kennedy attributed anything to thesupernatural was removed as he went on: "At first I had no explanationof the curious events I have just witnessed, and the more I thoughtabout them, the more obscure did they seem.

  "I have tried to reason the thing out," he continued thoughtfully. "Didauto-suggestion, self-hypnotism explain what I have seen? Has VedaBlair been driven almost to death by her own fears only?"

  No one interrupted and he answered his own question. "Somehow the ideathat it was purely fear that had driven her on did not satisfy me. As Isaid, I wanted something more tangible. I could not help thinking thatit was not merely subjective. There was something objective, some forceat work, something more than psychic in the result achieved by thiscriminal mental marauder, whoever it is."

  I was following Kennedy's reasoning now closely. As he proceeded, thepoint that he was making seemed more clear to me.

  Persons of a certain type of mind could be really mentally unbalancedby such methods which we had heard outlined, where the mere fact ofanother trying to exert power over them became known to them. Theywould, as a matter of fact, unbalance themselves, thinking about andfighting off imaginary terrors.

  Such people, I could readily see, might be quickly controlled, and inthe wake of such control would follow stifled love, wrecked homes,ruined fortunes, suicide and even death.

  Dr. Vaughn leaned forward critically. "What did you conclude, then, wasthe explanation of what you saw last night?" he asked sharply.

  Kennedy met his question squarely, without flinching. "It looks to me,"he replied quietly, "like a sort of hystero-epilepsy. It is well known,I believe, to demonologists--those who have studied this sort of thing.They have recognized the contortions, the screams, the wild,blasphemous talk, the cataleptic rigidity. They are epileptiform."

  Vaughn said nothing, but continued to weigh Kennedy as if in a balance.I, who knew him, knew that it would take a greater than Vaughn to findhim wanting, once Kennedy chose to speak. As for Vaughn, was he tryingto hide behind some technicality in medical ethics?

  "Dr. Vaughn," continued Craig, as if goading him to the point ofbreaking down his calm silence, "you are specialist enough to knowthese things as well, better than I do. You must know that epilepsy isone of the most peculiar diseases.

  "The victim may be in good physical condition, apparently. In fact,some hardly know that they have it. But it is something more thanmerely the fits. Always there is something wrong mentally. It is notthe motor disturbance so much as the disturbance of consciousness."

  Kennedy was talking slowly, deliberately, so that none could drop alink in the reasoning.

  "Perhaps one in ten epileptics has insane periods, more or less," hewent on, "and there is no more dangerous form of insanity.Self-consciousness is lost, and in this state of automatism the worstof crimes have been committed without the subsequent knowledge of thepatient. In that state they are no more responsible than are the actorsin one's dreams."

  The hospital physician entered, accompanied by Craig's messenger,breathless. Craig almost seized the package from his hands and brokethe seal.

  "Ah--this is what I wanted," he exclaimed, with an air of relief,forgetting for the time the exposition of the case that he was engagedin. "Here I have some anti-crotalus venine, of Drs. Flexner andNoguchi. Fortunately, in the city it is within easy reach."

  Quickly, with the aid of the physician he injected it into Veda's arm.

  "Of all substances in nature," he remarked, still at work over theunfortunate woman, "none is so little known as the venom of serpents."

  It was a startling idea which the sentence had raised in my mind. Allat once I recalled the first remark of Seward Blair, in which he hadrepeated the password that had admitted us into the Red Lodge--"theSerpent's Tooth." Could it have been that she had really been bitten atsome of the orgies by the serpent which they worshiped hideouslyhissing in its cage? I was sure that, at least until they werecompelled, none would say anything about it. Was that theinterpretation of the almost hypnotized look on Blair's face?

  "We know next to nothing of the composition of the protein bodies inthe venoms which have such terrific, quick physiological effects,"Kennedy was saying. "They have been studied, it is true, but we cannotreally say that they are understood--or even that there are anyadequate tests by which they can be recognized. The fact is, that snakevenoms are about the safest of poisons for the criminal."

  Kennedy had scarcely propounded this startling idea when a car washeard outside. The Rapports had arrived, with the officer I had sentafter them, protesting and threatening.

  They quieted down a bit as they entered, and after a quick glancearound saw who was present.

  Professor Rapport gave one glance at the victim lying exhausted on thebed, then drew back, melodramatically, and cried
, "The Serpent--themark of the serpent!"

  For a moment Kennedy gazed full in the eyes of them all.

  "WAS it a snake bite?" he asked slowly, then, turning to Mrs. Blair,after a quick glance, he went on rapidly, "The first thing to ascertainis whether the mark consists of two isolated punctures, from thepoison-conducting teeth or fangs of the snake, which are constructedlike a hypodermic needle."

  The hospital physician had bent over her at the words, and beforeKennedy could go on interrupted: "This was not a snake bite; it wasmore likely from an all-glass hypodermic syringe with aplatinum-iridium needle."

  Professor Rapport, priest of the Devil, advanced a step menacinglytoward Kennedy. "Remember," he said in a low, angry tone,"remember--you are pledged to keep the secrets of the Red Lodge!"

  Craig brushed aside the sophistry with a sentence. "I do not recognizeany secrets that I have to keep about the meeting this afternoon towhich you summoned the Blairs and Mrs. Langhorne, according to reportsfrom the shadows I had placed on Mrs. Langhorne and Dr. Vaughn."

  If there is such a thing as the evil eye, Rapport's must have been apair of them, as he realized that Kennedy had resorted to the simpledevices of shadowing the devotees.

  A cry, almost a shriek, startled us. Kennedy's encounter with Rapporthad had an effect which none of us had considered. The step or two inadvance which the prophet had taken had brought him into the line ofvision of the still half-stupefied Veda lying back of Kennedy on thehospital cot.

  The mere sight of him, the sound of his voice and the mention of theRed Lodge had been sufficient to penetrate that stupor. She was sittingbolt upright, a ghastly, trembling specter. Slowly a smile seemed tocreep over the cruel face of the mystic. Was it not a recognition ofhis hypnotic power?

  Kennedy turned and laid a gentle hand on the quaking convulsed figureof the woman. One could feel the electric tension in the air, thebattle of two powers for good or evil. Which would win--the oldfascination of the occult or the new power of science?

  It was a dramatic moment. Yet not so dramatic as the outcome. To mysurprise, neither won.

  Suddenly she caught sight of her husband. Her face changed. All theprehistoric jealousy of which woman is capable seemed to blaze forth.

  "I will defend myself!" she cried. "I will fight back! She shall notwin--she shall not have you--no--she shall not--never!"

  I recalled the strained feeling between the two women that I hadnoticed in the cab. Was it Mrs. Langhorne who had been the disturbinginfluence, whose power she feared, over herself and over her husband?

  Rapport had fallen back a step, but not from the mind of Kennedy.

  "Here," challenged Craig, facing the group and drawing from his pocketthe glass ampoule, "I picked this up at the Red Lodge last night."

  He held it out in his hand before the Rapports so that they could nothelp but see it. Were they merely good actors? They betrayed nothing,at least by face or action.

  "It is crotalin," he announced, "the venom of the rattlesnake--crotalushorridus. It has been noticed that persons suffering from certaindiseases of which epilepsy is one, after having been bitten by arattlesnake, if they recover from the snake bite, are cured of thedisease."

  Kennedy was forging straight ahead now in his exposure. "Crotalin," hecontinued, "is one of the new drugs used in the treatment of epilepsy.But it is a powerful two-edged instrument. Some one who knew the drug,who perhaps had used it, has tried an artificial bite of a rattler onVeda Blair, not for epilepsy, but for another, diabolical purpose,thinking to cover up the crime, either as the result of the so-calleddeath thought of the Lodge or as the bite of the real rattler at theLodge."

  Kennedy had at last got under Dr. Vaughn's guard. All his reticence wasgone.

  "I joined the cult," he confessed. "I did it in order to observe andtreat one of my patients for epilepsy. I justified myself. I said, 'Iwill be the exposer, not the accomplice, of this modern Satanism.' Ijoined it and--"

  "There is no use trying to shield anyone, Vaughn," rapped out Kennedy,scarcely taking time to listen. "An epileptic of the most dangerouscriminal type has arranged this whole elaborate setting as a plot toget rid of the wife who brought him his fortune and now stands in theway of his unholy love of Mrs. Langhorne. He used you to get the poisonwith which you treated him. He used the Rapports with money to play onher mysticism by their so-called death thought, while he watched hisopportunity to inject the fatal crotalin."

  Craig faced the criminal, whose eyes now showed more plainly than wordshis deranged mental condition, and in a low tone added, "The Devil isin you, Seward Blair!"