because mary temple was afraid to ride over the narrow curving road after dark, the four prospective adventurers remained at jorny springs all night. before going to bed charmian, coached by the doctor, made arrangements with leach and morley to go to san francisco and sign certain papers to show good faith, which papers would be drawn up by the young widow’s attorney. when this matter had been settled, they were to drive together to the shinbone country—wherever that was—and make a thorough investigation of the properties.
both leach and morley had protested against entering into a written agreement. they offered to produce references which ought to satisfy the most suspicious, but dr. shonto remained firm. finally, seeing no way around the obstacle, they consented, but declared that they begrudged the time that would be taken up by the trip to san francisco.
after the plain, old-fashioned dinner served by the owners of jorny springs, charmian took a walk through the twilight. shortly after she left the house andy jerome set off in the opposite direction, stating that he too would like a stroll. but when the great trees hid him from the house he made a swift circle[44] back, and soon was on charmian’s trail. he found her leaning over a fence, watching a dozen fat and shockingly muddy pigs in a stake-and-rider corral.
“i see you prefer to choose your own company,” he observed, as he rested his arms on the fence beside her. “i hope one more won’t constitute a crowd.”
“aren’t they funny!” she laughed. “i love pigs and things like that. cows and chickens and horses and everything. do you know that i, as the head of the expedition to be, intend to make a hard-and-fast ruling at the very outset? it’s this: no one in the party will be permitted to kill any living thing.”
“why, that’s a funny idea,” he laughed. “if a fellow can’t do a little hunting to pass away dull hours, how’s he going to amuse himself? and it may be that we’ll frequently find ourselves in need of fresh meat.”
“i don’t care,” she said. “i don’t approve of the slaughter of the innocents. i used to hunt myself, but i gave it up. i can’t bear to take a life. man can’t create, yet in the winking of an eyelid he can and will destroy a life that he can never reproduce. it’s the same with a tree. one can cut down a tree in thirty minutes which nature has spent hundreds of years in growing. and man can’t replace it. whenever i hear one of these giant redwoods fall groaning under the ax my heart fairly bleeds.”
“but man must live,” andy pointed out.
“i don’t know whether he must or not,” she said seriously. “he’s made a complete botch of existence. sometimes i wish the entire race were wiped out, so nature could begin all over again. man is as barbarous[45] to-day as he was a thousand years ago. the only difference is that he has invented new machinery with which to practise his barbarism.”
“why, you’re a regular little cynic!” andy accused.
“perhaps. i have little patience with mankind, if that’s what you mean. the so-called lower animals have my love and sympathy. they haven’t made a farce of their lives, as we have. and vivisection—that’s what makes me wild! man, by his own selfish indulgences, by his reckless living, his complete disregard of the laws of nature, has succeeded in shortening his life and depleting his physical vigour. so, in his eagerness to continue the debauch, scared stiff at thought of the yawning precipice just ahead of him, he turns in his cowardly way to the so-called lower animals. he robs these helpless creatures of their health and vitality in order to patch up his poor, miserable, worthless body. like the five foolish virgins, men say to these wise virgins—these innocents of the earth who have conserved their oil of life—‘give us of your oil, for our lamps are gone out.’ could anything be more cowardly, mr. jerome?”
“but aren’t the lower animals placed on this earth for the benefit of man?” asked andy.
“oh, yes—man imagines everything on earth is put here for him to exploit and ruin! where are the buffaloes? where are the beavers? where are the elks? where are the bighorns? were they put here for man to destroy—to wipe almost completely from the face of the earth? when man has learned to step down from his papier-mâché throne of insufferable conceit,[46] he will find that he is only a part of nature’s scheme—that every other atom in the universe is as important as he is. then we can begin to look for the dawn of civilization.”
“i’m afraid,” said andy, “that you and doctor shonto are not destined to get along very well together.”
“why?”
“well, it is his business to exploit nature for the rebuilding of man.”
“yes—i know. i tried to draw him out this morning, but he refused to be tempted into a discussion of his work. how long have you known him, mr. jerome?”
“why, almost all my life, it seems. he is an old friend of my father and mother. i can’t remember when i didn’t know the doctor.”
“that seems strange. he is not so much older than you are. how old are you?”
“twenty-four,” andy replied.
“and i should say the doctor is not much over thirty.”
“thirty-four, i believe.”
“then he was ten years old when you were born. could you call him a ‘friend of your father and mother’ when he was ten years old? did you play with him when you were a boy?”
for a long time andy jerome was silent. then he said slowly:
“i must tell you something about myself. i can recall almost nothing of my childhood before my twelfth[47] birthday. and my earliest recollections are of doctor shonto. i remember him as about twenty-two or twenty-three years old. and, to me, he never was younger than that.”
“why, i can’t understand you at all!” exclaimed the girl.
“it’s very difficult to understand,” he said in low tones. “but when i was about eight years old, they tell me, something happened to me. it seems that i got a crack on the noodle while playing and lost my memory. i remained in that condition from the age of eight until i was perhaps between eleven and twelve. it was doctor shonto, who had just been graduated from a medical college and was already making a big name for himself, who treated me and brought me out of my coma. but, strange to say, it left me with a weak heart. i have to take treatment for it right along, and the doctor tells me that, if i neglect this treatment, my old condition will come back, or i may suddenly drop dead. for all that, i’m fit as a fiddle and strong as an ox. it seems funny to think that i may bump off at any moment—hard to believe. but nobody ever doubts doctor shonto. however, he has assured me again and again that i have nothing whatever to worry about, so long as i take my medicine diligently. i guess i haven’t missed a day since he began his treatment.”
“why, how strange!” was charmian’s only comment.
“it is strange—mighty strange. now and then i get a faint glimmering of something that took place[48] before i was eight years of age, but it’s so hazy that it seems like it happened to some one else instead of me. and it seemed that, when i gradually regained my memory, i was being born all over again. i had the mind of a child of two or three, though i was over twelve years old. i remembered nothing of what had been taught me in the private school that they told me i had once attended. i had to begin my schooling at the very bottom again. lord, how they made me cram! i studied night and day, and seemed eager enough to learn. they tell me that i have caught up because of my perpetual digging—that i now have the mentality of a normal man of my age. and so for the past year i have studied very little, and have been catching up on the physical end. i have lived in the open months at a time, and frequently doctor shonto has been with me. he likes it himself, and he likes to be with me. and i can tell you right here and now that i think doctor inman shonto the greatest man alive!”
“i’ll bet you do,” said charmian warmly. “but it strikes me as rather strange that you should never call him doc, since you two are so close.”
“i guess i’d never think of calling him that,” said andy reflectively. “no, that wouldn’t seem the proper thing to do.”
“what do you do when you’re at home, mr. jerome?”
“why, i hope to become a lawyer some day,” he replied. “you see, i’m still a student. i’ve studied law a little and mean to take up a regular course[49] next year. but for the present my parents and doctor shonto think it best for me to loaf around outdoors.”
“i suppose your folks are wealthy,” said charmian in her frank way.
“yes, they’re accounted so. pop has retired. he was a candy and cracker manufacturer. i’d like to have you meet my mother. she’s a peach. you’d like her. she’d like you, too.”
“and so your hero is doctor inman shonto,” mused charmian. “i wonder if it would be proper for me to ask you about his work, after he himself has refused to tell me anything?”
“precious little i can tell you,” laughed andy. “but i’ll do my best. if doctor shonto has any secrets, they’re safe with me because i couldn’t explain them if i wanted to. fire ahead. doctor shonto doesn’t like to talk about himself. he’s entirely too modest.”
“i wanted to ask you,” said the girl, “if doctor shonto is in any way responsible for the horrible things i have read about in the papers lately. rich men hiring thugs to waylay strong, healthy men, knock them out, and take them to doctors, who operate on them and steal their glands, which are substituted for the worn-out glands of the rich men?”
“nothing doing!” loyally cried andy. “doctor shonto says the most of that news is nothing but hot air. no, he never uses human glands in his work. he uses sheep glands exclusively. and the animals are killed before he cuts the glands out of them.”
“are you positive?”
“i have only his word for it. but he’s a very tender-hearted[50] man—for a surgeon. and he has a magnificent sense of justice. no, not in a thousand years would doctor shonto countenance anything like that.”
“i’m glad to hear you say so,” she sighed. “i think that is simply horrible—ghoulish! but why was it, then, that the doctor refused to tell me anything about his work?”
“well, he has accomplished wonders, they say. and, as i told you before, he’s modest.”
“modesty reaps its reward only in fiction.”
“i imagine the doctor is keener after results than rewards,” andy mused. “i’ll tell you the little that i have gleaned—mostly about the thyroid gland, which, you know, is in our throats.
“it seems that, if a fellow is shy on thyroid, he’s up against it in many ways. he may be slow to learn, clumsy, and may have an unbalanced sense of right and wrong. if he is fed the extract of the thyroid glands of sheep, this can be corrected.
“it is the same with the other glands in our system. some control one thing, some another. and, according to doctor shonto’s theory, the time is close at hand when deficient people can be entirely remade by injecting into them, or feeding them, the extract of the gland secretion that they’re shy on. this will revolutionize our social system, according to doctor shonto. we will know then that mental defectives, criminals, people who are petulant and hard to get along with—in fact, everybody who is in any way not up to normal—are so because of the absence, or the over-supply, of the secretions of certain glands. this science can[51] correct, and the time may come when we will be able to do away with prisons and corrective institutions, and treat our fellowmen instead of mistreating them.”
“heaven speed the day!” said charmian fervently. “but why, tell me, did doctor shonto hesitate about telling me that?”
andy shrugged his broad shoulders. “quien sabe,” he said, “unless his modesty made him reticent. i think he’s afraid of being ridiculed as a visionary theorist.”
“doctor shonto doesn’t strike me as a man who would shrink from ridicule, if he thought he was in the right,” charmian declared.
two days later the six who were interested in the opal project and the valley of arcana arrived in san francisco late in the evening. it was after business hours, so nothing could be done toward drawing up the papers until the following morning. charmian called up her attorney, briefly outlined the situation, and arranged for a conference at ten the following day. then she went to her apartments with mary temple, while andy and dr. shonto took rooms in the palace hotel. smith morley sent a telegram to his wife in los angeles, after which he and his partner sought a cheap rooming house on kearny street. they were to meet the others in the offices of charmian’s lawyer at eleven o’clock next morning.
charmian reemy was tired from the long automobile ride from the wilderness, and went early to bed. shortly after her retirement mary temple stepped[52] softly to her bedroom door and listened until convinced that her young charge was sound asleep. then she put on her ancient fur coat and her surprisingly old-fashioned hat, and noiselessly left the apartment.
the elevator was still running, and she rode in it to the ground floor, where she slipped out into a cold, foggy night. at the corner she took a streetcar and rode to a point in the city directly opposite golden gate park. here she left the car, walked three blocks, and rang the bell of a three-story flat.
presently the door automatically swung open, and she entered a warm, carpeted hall. she briskly ascended a long flight of stairs, at the top of which a large woman in a blue-silk kimono awaited her.
“oh, it’s you, is it, dearie?” greeted the woman. “i thought you were in the country.”
“we came back this evening, madame destrehan,” said mary, reaching the large woman’s side and extending her hand. “and i came direct to you. i’m in trouble again. that little minx has a new wild scheme in her head. i can’t talk her out of it. but i’m afraid. i just know there’s something wrong.”
“come in and tell me all about it,” offered madame destrehan. “i know i can help you. i—i—” she placed a fat, white, bejewelled hand to her forehead and brushed across it. “i see something now.”
they entered the medium’s apartment. both seated themselves, and mary temple poured out the story of the two strangers who had invaded el trono de tolerancia, and of the opal claims and the valley of arcana. madame destrehan listened with both eyes[53] closed. she sat immovable after mary’s cracked voice ceased, her eyelids still lowered.
then she began waving her plump hands slowly this way and that. she did not open her eyes, but she mumbled something which mary could not interpret. then suddenly she began speaking in a low, awed tone.
“i see that valley,” said the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter. “it’s beautiful, but death stalks across it from end to end. and i see— oh, horrors! i see an ugly face. the face of a man. it is bluish, and the eyes are popping from the head. the eyes are glazed, and his thick, blue tongue hangs out like the tongue of a tired dog. the man’s hair is dishevelled and long. a matted beard covers his face. his eyes stare, then gleam with ferocity. his skin is withered and yellow, and his finger nails are long. he grits his teeth and babbles like a madman. and—oh, horrors! he is leaning over mrs. reemy, and his crooked fingers are drawing nearer and nearer to her white throat!”
