The Ray Cummings MEGAPACK ®: 25 Golden Age Science Fiction and Mystery Tales. Ray Cummings
I shrank before him. “It is not trickery,” he added curtly.
Before I could reply, he had swung about and left the room.
For a moment I stood undecided. A little bell lay on the table. Should I summon an attendant and send for Dorian? Perhaps I had overstepped the bounds of friendship and owed him an apology.
I had reached no decision when, abruptly as he had left, Dorian returned. He smiled amusedly as he saw me standing there.
“Sit down, Carl! Our second visitor is waiting for me in another room. Sadji will show him in here in a moment.”
He seemed quite to have lost his anger, if indeed it were anger that he had felt.
“Not over there,” he added, as I started for my secluded chair. “Here—by me. You can talk with him also.”
I seated myself in the chair he indicated.
“It may interest you, Carl, to know that from this gentleman whom we are about to meet I am to receive, this afternoon, the largest single amount that anyone has ever paid me.” Dorian flicked his cigarette ash musingly. “That is, if my services are satisfactory.”
I watched him silently as he sat abstractedly staring at the floor.
“A very decent little fee—fifty thousand dollars.”
“Fifty thousand dollars!” I ejaculated.
“If my services are satisfactory,” he repeated calmly.
It seemed preposterous.
“Who is he?” I asked.
“His name is Roger Burton.” He had named a financier whose reputation was nation-wide. “What is the matter, Carl? May not I, Dorian Merlier, aspire to such a height?”
“Why, yes, I—I suppose you may,” I stammered.
“You looked so shocked! But never mind, we will—dispose of him quickly.” He seemed to choose the word deliberately. “Then I will take you in and show you—all that you wish to see!”
I had no time to recover from my surprise, or to read a meaning into these last words, before the door leading into the hall opened again. The Japanese attendant stood aside deferentially to allow the visitor to pass.
Dorian and I rose to our feet. The man coming toward us was perhaps in his early seventies—small and frail, with smooth-shaven face, thin and deeply furrowed. In his hand he carried his gray soft hat and a gold-topped walking-stick. He seemed wholly self-possessed, quite at his ease, as he advanced, smiling genially and extending a hand to Dorian.
I wondered how Dorian would greet him. I expected, I think, a renewal of that air of mystery which had characterized his meeting with the girl; but nothing of the sort occurred. Dorian shook the proffered hand cordially, and presented his distinguished visitor to me. The little man drew off his gloves and handed them, with his hat and cane, to the obsequious Japanese.
As the attendant withdrew, Dorian drew up chairs and we sat down together near one of the windows.
“I trust, Mr. Merlier, that you are not about to disappoint my expectations,” the financier began.
His tone was friendly, but crisp and businesslike. Dorian met him on his own ground.
“That, sir, is a result I do not anticipate, All that I have promised I am prepared to fulfill.”
The cleverness of the man was superb; his manner carried conviction. The visitor nodded.
“Then you will find me quite ready to carry out my part of the agreement. I assume that my word on that point is sufficient?” He glanced at me significantly. “Or perhaps you wish me to name the amount to this gentleman?”
I felt myself flush at this last suggestion; but Dorian’s face remained unchanged.
“I think, Mr. Burton, I have already said that your terms were quite satisfactory to me,” he answered calmly. “I require no witness to an agreement when I have the word of a gentleman.”
The little financier rubbed his hands together.
“Then that is settled. We may as well start—if you are ready?”
“At your convenience, sir.”
The visitor pondered a moment.
“Perhaps I should first say this, Mr. Merlier—I want you to realize that I am entering upon this experiment with no silly idea of looking into the future for sentimental reasons. If I were able to forecast certain business transactions—if you could predict what will occur in certain—”
Dorian frowned.
“You will please understand me, Mr. Burton. I am no fortune-teller; I predict nothing. I am about to lay bare before you all the allotted span of life you have left to live. I shall make it clear to you in every detail. When you leave this house this afternoon, your future will be to you as your past—a memory from which you can pick and choose, gleaning such facts as you desire; but that is all I can do. I cannot show you one thing and blot out another. Nor can you stop, once you start, until the very end is reached.”
Dorian spoke slowly. I thought I had never seen his gaze so piercing. It seemed to be measuring the effect of his words with infinite care.
“There is no half-way, Mr. Burton,” he added. “It is all or nothing.”
The financier shifted his glance, gazing fixedly across the room. After a moment he seemed to shake himself together. He rose to his feet.
“That—if you can do it—should be quite satisfactory,” he said. “Shall we start now, Mr. Merlier—if you are ready?”
As they left the room, Dorian lingered behind.
“When we return, Carl, you will be sitting there,” he said softly, indicating the darkened corner of the room behind the screen.
The door closed upon him, and I was again alone.
IV
I paced the room nervously, pondering all I had heard in these two widely different interviews. As before, I felt that ominous sense of dread come over me. I could not believe that Dorian was wholly sincere; and yet I think that perhaps it was the very dread of his sincerity that frightened me, for there seemed to be something almost sinister about the necromancy that could wrest from nature so vital a secret.
I had been pacing back and forth perhaps fifteen minutes when I suddenly remembered Dorian’s last words. I immediately dropped into the secluded seat behind the screen, although 1 had no expectation that he and his client would return in so short a time.
Hardly was I settled when the sound of a voice became audible. I heard a door slam; there followed the soft tread of footsteps. Then the door before me swung open.
“This way, Mr. Burton. We will rest out here a few moments more before you leave.”
The change in the financier was the most amazing thing I had yet seen in this extraordinary series of incidents. Scarcely a quarter of an hour had passed since he left the room a composed, self-possessed man of business, ready to put to the test the claims of one in whose sincerity I knew he had only half believed. He returned stripped of all that had made him before a dominant figure. His composure, his self-possession, completely gone, he came wavering through the doorway, half supported by Dorian, and sank trembling into the nearest chair.
“You’ll be all right in a moment, Mr. Burton,” said my friend soothingly.
The mellow light from the window fell full on the financier’s face. The look he gave Dorian was the look of a frightened child just awakened from a nightmare.
Dorian laid his hand gently on the little man’s forehead.
“A drop of brandy to steady you?”
He opened a cellarette