Conlon's gray-blue glance fixed me once more. "All right," he grunted, "I've no objections. But I'd 'a' thought your first wish would 'a' been to see your wife."
"No," I replied. "Mrs. Hunt separated from me years ago, for reasons of her own. I bore her no ill will; in a sense, I respected her, admired her. Understand me, Sergeant Conlon. There was nothing vulgar in her life, and her death in this stupid way—oh, it's indecent, damnable! A cheap outrage! I could do nothing for her living, and can do nothing now. But I prefer to remember her as she was. She would prefer it, too."
"Come on, then," said Conlon; pretty gruffly, I thought.
He unlocked the door.
III
It was a singular thing, but so convincing had my vision been to me that I felt no immediate desire to verify the details of its setting by an examination of Gertrude's boudoir. It had come to me bearing its own credentials, its own satisfying accent of truth. One question did, however, fasten upon me, as I followed Conlon's bulky form, down the hall to Lucette's bedroom. Whence had this vision, this psychic reel come to me? What was its source? How could the mere fact of it—clearing, as it did, at least, all perplexities from my own mind—have occurred? For the moment I could find no answer; the mystery had happened, had worked, but remained a mystery.
Like most men in this modern world I had taken a vague, mild interest in psychical research, reading more or less casually, and with customary suspension of judgment, anything of the sort that came in my way. I had a bowing acquaintance with its rapidly growing literature; little more; and until now I had had no striking psychical experiences of my own, and had never, as it happened, attended a séance of any kind, either popular or scientific. Nevertheless, I could—to put it so—speak that language. I was familiar with the described phenomena, in a general way, and with the conflicting theories of its leading investigators; but I had—honestly speaking—no pet theories of my own, though always impatient of spiritistic explanations, and rather inclined to doubt, too, the persistent claim that thought transference had been incontrovertibly established. On the whole, I suppose I was inclined to favor common-sense mechanistic explanations of such phenomena, and to regard all others with alert suspicion or wearily amused contempt.
Now at last, in my life's most urgent crisis, I had had news from nowhere; now, furthermore, the being I loved and would protect, must protect, had been thrown by psychic shock into that grim borderland, the Abnormal: that land of lost voices, of the fringe of consciousness, of dissociated personalities, of morbid obsession, and wild symbolic dreams. Following on Conlon's heels, then, I entered a softly illumined room—a restrained Louis Seize room—a true Gertrude room, with its cool French-gray panelled walls; but entered there as into sinister darkness, as if groping for light. The comfortably accustomed, the predictable, I felt, lay all behind me; I must step warily henceforth among shifting shadows and phosphoric blurs. The issues were too terrifying, too vast, for even one little false move; Susan's future, the very health of her soul, might depend now upon the blundering clumsiness or the instinctive tact with which I attempted to pick and choose my way. It was with a secret shuddering of flesh and spirit that I entered that discreet, faultless room.
Susan was lying on the low single French bed, a coverlet drawn over her; they had removed her trim tailored hat, the jacket of her dark suit, and her walking-boots, leaving them on the couch by the silk-curtained windows, where they had perhaps first placed her. She had not dressed for the evening before coming up to Gertrude's; it was evidently to have been a businesslike call. Her black weblike hair—smoky, I always called it, to tease her; it never fell lank or separated into strings—had been disordered, and a floating weft of it had drifted across her forehead and hung there. Her face was moon-white, her lips pale, the lines of cheek and chin had sharpened, her eyes were closed. It was very like death. My throat tightened and ached. . . .
Doctor Askew stood across the bed from us, looking down at her.