The study of
dementia was, of course, outside his special province as a specialist,
but he knew enough of it to understand how small a matter might be the
actual cause of how great an illusion, and he had been devoured from the
very beginning by a ceaseless and increasing anxiety to know what the
professor had found in the sands of "Chaldea," what these precious
Tablets of the Gods might be, and particularly--for this was the real
cause that had sapped the man's sanity and hope--what the inscription
was that he had believed to have deciphered thereon. The curious feature of it all to his own mind was, that whereas his
friend had dreamed of finding a message of glorious hope and comfort, he
had apparently found (so far as he had found anything intelligible at
all, and not invented the whole thing in his dementia) that the secret
of the world, and the meaning of life and death, was of so terrible a
nature that it robbed the heart of courage and the soul of hope. What,
then, could be the contents of the little brown parcel the professor had
bequeathed to him with his pregnant dying sentences? Actually his hand was trembling as he turned to the writing-table and
began slowly to unfasten a small old-fashioned desk on which the small
gilt initials "M.E." stood forth as a melancholy memento. He put the key
into the lock and half turned it. Then, suddenly, he stopped and looked
about him. Was that a sound at the back of the room? It was just as
though someone had laughed and then tried to smother the laugh with a
cough. A slight shiver ran over him as he stood listening. "This is absurd," he said aloud; "too absurd for belief--that I should
be so nervous! It's the effect of curiosity unduly prolonged." He smiled
a little sadly and his eyes wandered to the blue summer sky and the
plane trees swaying in the wind below his window. "It's the reaction,"
he continued. "The curiosity of two years to be quenched in a single
moment! The nervous tension, of course, must be considerable." He turned back to the brown desk and opened it without further delay. His hand was firm now, and he took out the paper parcel that lay inside
without a tremor. It was heavy. A moment later there lay on the table
before him a couple of weather-worn plaques of grey stone--they looked
like stone, although they felt like metal--on which he saw markings of
a curious character that might have been the mere tracings of natural
forces through the ages, or, equally well, the half-obliterated
hieroglyphics cut upon their surface in past centuries by the more or
less untutored hand of a common scribe. He lifted each stone in turn and examined it carefully. It seemed to him
that a faint glow of heat passed from the substance into his skin, and
he put them down again suddenly, as with a gesture of uneasiness. "A very clever, or a very imaginative man," he said to himself, "who
could squeeze the secrets of life and death from such broken lines as
those!" Then he turned to a yellow envelope lying beside them in the desk, with
the single word on the outside in the writing of the professor--the word
_Translation_. "Now," he thought, taking it up with a sudden violence to conceal his
nervousness, "now for the great solution. Now to learn the meaning of
the worlds, and why mankind was made, and why discipline is worth while,
and sacrifice and pain the true law of advancement." There was the shadow of a sneer in his voice, and yet something in him
shivered at the same time. He held the envelope as though weighing it in
his hand, his mind pondering many things. Then curiosity won the day,
and he suddenly tore it open with the gesture of an actor who tears open
a letter on the stage, knowing there is no real writing inside at all. A page of finely written script in the late scientist's handwriting lay
before him. He read it through from beginning to end, missing no word,
uttering each syllable distinctly under his breath as he read. The pallor of his face grew ghastly as he neared the end. He began to
shake all over as with ague. His breath came heavily in gasps. He still
gripped the sheet of paper, however, and deliberately, as by an intense
effort of will, read it through a second time from beginning to end. And
this time, as the last syllable dropped from his lips, the whole face of
the man flamed with a sudden and terrible anger. His skin became deep,
deep red, and he clenched his teeth. With all the strength of his
vigorous soul he was struggling to keep control of himself. For perhaps five minutes he stood there beside the table without
stirring a muscle. He might have been carved out of stone. His eyes were
shut, and only the heaving of the chest betrayed the fact that he was a
living being. Then, with a strange quietness, he lit a match and applied
it to the sheet of paper he held in his hand. The ashes fell slowly
about him, piece by piece, and he blew them from the window-sill into
the air, his eyes following them as they floated away on the summer wind
that breathed so warmly over the world. He turned back slowly into the room. Although his actions and movements
were absolutely steady and controlled, it was clear that he was on the
edge of violent action. A hurricane might burst upon the still room any
moment. His muscles were tense and rigid. Then, suddenly, he whitened,
collapsed, and sank backwards into a chair, like a tumbled bundle of
inert matter. He had fainted. In less than half an hour he recovered consciousness and sat up. As
before, he made no sound. Not a syllable passed his lips. He rose
quietly and looked about the room. Then he did a curious thing. Taking a heavy stick from the rack in the corner he approached the
mantlepiece, and with a heavy shattering blow he smashed the clock to
pieces. The glass fell in shivering atoms. "Cease your lying voice for ever," he said, in a curiously still, even
tone. "There is no such thing as _time_!" He took the watch from his pocket, swung it round several times by the
long gold chain, smashed it into smithereens against the wall with a
single blow, and then walked into his laboratory next door, and hung its
broken body on the bones of the skeleton in the corner of the room. "Let one damned mockery hang upon another," he said smiling oddly. "Delusions, both of you, and cruel as false!" He slowly moved back to the front room. He stopped opposite the bookcase
where stood in a row the "Scriptures of the World," choicely bound and
exquisitely printed, the late professor's most treasured possession, and
next to them several books signed "Pilgrim." One by one he took them from the shelf and hurled them through the open
window. "A devil's dreams! A devil's foolish dreams!" he cried, with a vicious
laugh. Presently he stopped from sheer exhaustion. He turned his eyes slowly to
the wall opposite, where hung a weird array of Eastern swords and
daggers, scimitars and spears, the collections of many journeys. He
crossed the room and ran his finger along the edge.