IX—October, 1908
Having accomplished so much, Mersereau would by no means be content to let him go. Davidson knew that! He could talk to him occasionally now, or at least could hear him and answer back, if he chose, when he was alone and quite certain that no one was listening.
Mersereau was always saying, when Davidson would listen to him at all—which he wouldn’t often—that he would get him yet, that he would make him pay, or charging him with fraud and murder.
“I’ll choke you yet!” The words seemed to float in from somewhere, as if he were remembering that at some time Mersereau had said just that in his angry, savage tone—not as if he heard it; and yet he was hearing it of course.
“I’ll choke you yet! You can’t escape! You may think you’ll die a natural death, but you won’t, and that’s why I’m poisoning your food to weaken you. You can’t escape! I’ll get you, sick or well, when you can’t help yourself, when you’re sleeping. I’ll choke you, just as you hit me with that club. That’s why you’re always seeing and feeling this hand of mine! I’m not alone. I’ve nearly had you many a time already, only you have managed to wriggle out so far, jumping up, but some day you won’t be able to—see? Then—”
The voice seemed to die away at times, even in the middle of a sentence, but at the other times—often, often—he could hear it completing the full thought. Sometimes he would turn on the thing and exclaim:
“Oh, go to the devil!” or, “Let me alone!” or, “Shut up!” Even in a closed room and all alone, such remarks seemed strange to him, addressed to a ghost; but he couldn’t resist at times, annoyed as he was. Only he took good care not to talk if any one was about.
It was getting so that there was no real place for him outside of an asylum, for often he would get up screaming at night—he had to, so sharp was the clutch on his throat—and then always, wherever he was, a servant would come in and want to know what was the matter. He would have to say that it was a nightmare—only the management always requested him to leave after the second or third time, say, or after an explosion or two. It was horrible!
He might as well apply to a private asylum or sanatorium now, having all the money he had, and explain that he had delusions—delusions! Imagine!—and ask to be taken care of. In a place like that they wouldn’t be disturbed by his jumping up and screaming at night, feeling that he was being choked, as he was, or by his leaving the table because he couldn’t eat the food, or by his talking back to Mersereau, should they chance to hear him, or by the noises when they occurred.
They could assign him a special nurse and a special room, if he wished—only he didn’t wish to be too much alone. They could put him in charge of some one who would understand all these things, or to whom he could explain. He couldn’t expect ordinary people, or hotels catering to ordinary people, to put up with him any more. Mersereau and his friends made too much trouble.
He must go and hunt up a good place somewhere where they understood such things, or at least tolerated them, and explain, and then it would all pass for the hallucinations of a crazy man,—though, as a matter of fact, he wasn’t crazy at all. It was all too real, only the average or so-called normal person couldn’t see or hear as he could—hadn’t experienced what he had.