Nevertheless, as I saw Doctor Muñoz in that blast of cool air, I felt
a repugnance which nothing in his aspect could justify. Only his
lividly inclined complexion and coldness of touch could have afforded
a physical basis for this feeling, and even these things should have
been excusable considering the man's known invalidism. It might, too,
have been the singular cold that alienated me; for such chilliness was
abnormal on so hot a day, and the abnormal always excites aversion,
distrust, and fear. But repugnance was soon forgotten in admiration, for the strange
physician's extreme skill at once became manifest despite the
ice-coldness and shakiness of his bloodless-looking hands. He clearly
understood my needs at a glance, and ministered to them with a master's
deftness; the while reassuring me in a finely modulated though oddly
hollow and timbreless voice that he was the bitterest of sworn
enemies to death, and had sunk his fortune and lost all his friends
in a lifetime of bizarre experiment devoted to its bafflement and
extirpation. Something of the benevolent fanatic seemed to reside in
him, and he rambled on almost garrulously as he sounded my chest and
mixed a suitable draft of drugs fetched from the smaller laboratory
room. Evidently he found the society of a well-born man a rare novelty
in this dingy environment, and was moved to unaccustomed speech as
memories of better days surged over him. His voice, if queer, was at least soothing; and I could not even
perceive that he breathed as the fluent sentences rolled urbanely
out. He sought to distract my mind from my own seizure by speaking of
his theories and experiments; and I remember his tactfully consoling
me about my weak heart by insisting that will and consciousness are
stronger than organic life itself, so that if a bodily frame be
but originally healthy and carefully preserved, it may through a
scientific enhancement of these qualities retain a kind of nervous
animation despite the most serious impairments, defects, or even
absences in the battery of specific organs. He might, he half-jestingly
said, some day teach me to live--or at least to possess some kind
of conscious existence--without any heart at all! For his part, he
was afflicted with a complication of maladies requiring a very exact
regimen which included constant cold. Any marked rise in temperature
might, if prolonged, affect him fatally; and the frigidity of his
habitation--some fifty-five or fifty-six degrees Fahrenheit--was
maintained by an absorption system of ammonia cooling, the gasoline
engine whose pumps I had often heard in my room below. Relieved of my seizure in a marvelously short while, I left the shivery
place a disciple and devotee of the gifted recluse. After that I paid
him frequent overcoated calls, listening while he told of secret
researches and almost ghastly results, and trembling a bit when I
examined the unconventional and astonishingly ancient volumes on his
shelves. I was eventually, I may add, almost cured of my disease for
all time by his skilful ministrations. It seems that he did not scorn
the incantations of the mediævalists, since he believed these cryptic
formulæ to contain rare psychological stimuli which might conceivably
have singular effects on the substance of a nervous system from which
organic pulsations had fled. I was touched by his account of the aged
Doctor Torres of Valencia, who had shared his earlier experiments
and nursed him through the great illness of eighteen years before,
whence his present disorders proceeded. No sooner had the venerable
practitioner saved his colleague than he himself succumbed to the
grim enemy he had fought. Perhaps the strain had been too great; for
Doctor Muñoz made it whisperingly clear--though not in detail--that the
methods of healing had been most extraordinary, involving scenes and
processes not welcomed by elderly and conservative Galens. *       *       *       *       *

As the weeks passed, I observed with regret that my new friend
was indeed slowly but unmistakably losing ground physically, as
Mrs. Herrero had suggested. The livid aspect of his countenance
was intensified, his voice became more hollow and indistinct, his
muscular motions were less perfectly coördinated, and his mind and
will displayed less resilience and initiative. Of this sad change
he seemed by no means unaware, and little by little his expression
and conversation both took on a gruesome irony which restored in me
something of the subtle repulsion I had originally felt. He developed strange caprices, acquiring a fondness for exotic
spices and Egyptian incense until his room smelled like the vault
of a sepulchered Pharaoh in the Valley of Kings. At the same time,
his demands for cold air increased, and with my aid he amplified the
ammonia piping of his room and modified the pumps and feed of his
refrigerating machine until he could keep the temperature as low as
thirty-four or forty degrees, and finally even twenty-eight degrees;
the bathroom and laboratory, of course, being less chilled, in order
that water might not freeze, and that chemical processes might not
be impeded. The tenant adjoining him complained of the icy air from
around the connecting door; so I helped him fit heavy hangings to
obviate the difficulty. A kind of growing horror, of outré and morbid
cast, seemed to possess him. He talked of death incessantly, but
laughed hollowly when such things as burial or funeral arrangements
were gently suggested. All in all, he became a disconcerting and even gruesome companion; yet
in my gratitude for his healing, I could not well abandon him to the
strangers around him, and was careful to dust his room and attend to
his needs each day, muffled in a heavy ulster which I bought especially
for the purpose. I likewise did much of his shopping, and gasped in
bafflement at some of the chemicals he ordered from druggists and
laboratory supply houses. An increasing and unexplained atmosphere of panic seemed to rise around
his apartment. The whole house, as I have said, had a musty odor;
but the smell in his room was worse, in spite of all the spices and
incense, and the pungent chemicals of the now incessant baths which he
insisted on taking unaided. I perceived that it must be connected with
his ailment, and shuddered when I reflected on what that ailment might
be. Mrs. Herrero crossed herself when she looked at him, and gave him
up unreservedly to me; not even letting her son Esteban continue to
run errands for him. When I suggested other physicians, the sufferer
would fly into as much of a rage as he seemed to dare to entertain. He evidently feared the physical effect of violent emotion, yet his
will and driving force waxed rather than waned, and he refused to be
confined to his bed. The lassitude of his earlier ill days gave place
to a return of his fiery purpose, so that he seemed about to hurl
defiance at the death-demon even as that ancient enemy seized him.