The Thinking Machine Collected Stories Part 116

Mr. Phillips regarded him keenly. He was seeking in the other's manner some inkling to a solution of a mystery which each moment seemed more hopelessly beyond him.

"I shouldn't care to part with it," he replied casually. "It was given to me by my wife."

"Then no offer I might make would be considered?"

"No, certainly not," replied Mr. Phillips tartly. There was a pause. "This gong has interested me immensely. I should like to know its history. Perhaps you can enlighten me?"

With the imperturbability of his race, Mr. Matsumi declined to give any information. But, with a graceful return of his former exquisite courtesy, he sought more definite knowledge for himself.

"I will not ask you to part with the gong," he said, "but perhaps you can inform me where your wife bought it?" He paused for a moment. "Perhaps it would be possible to get another like it?"

"I happen to know there isn't another," replied Mr. Phillips. "It came from a little curio shop in Cranston Street, kept by a German named Johann Wagner."

And that was all. This incident pa.s.sed as the other had, the net result being only further to stimulate Mr. Phillips' curiosity. It seemed a futile curiosity, yet it was ever present, despite the fact that the gong still hung silent.

On the next evening, a balmy, ideal night of spring, Mr. Phillips had occasion to go into the small room. This was just before dinner was announced. It was rather close there, so he opened the east window to a grateful breeze, and placed the screen in position, after which he stooped to pull out a drawer of his desk. Then came again the quick, clangorous boom of the bell-One! Two! Three! Four! Five! Six! Seven!

At the first stroke he straightened up; at the second he leaned forward toward the gong with his eyes riveted to the fifth disc. As it continued to ring he grimly held on to jangling nerves and looked for the cause. Beneath the bells, on top, all around them he sought. There was nothing! nothing! The sounds simply burst out, one after another, as if from a heavy blow, yet the bell did not move. For the seventh time it struck, and then with white, ghastly face and chilled, stiff limbs Mr. Phillips rushed out of the room. A dew of perspiration grew in the palms of his quavering hands.

It was a night of little rest and strange dreams for him. At breakfast on the following morning Mrs. Phillips poured his coffee and then glanced through the mail which had been placed beside her.

"Do you particularly care for that gong in your room?" she inquired.

Mr. Phillips started a little. That particular object had enchained his attention for the last dozen hours, awake and asleep.

"Why?" he asked.

"You know I told you I bought it of a curio dealer," Mrs. Phillips explained. "His name is Johann Wagner, and he offers me five hundred dollars if I will sell it back to him. I presume he has found it is more valuable than he imagined, and the five hundred dollars would make a comfortable addition to my charity fund."

Mr. Phillips was deeply thoughtful. Johann Wagner! What was this new twist? Why had Wagner denied all knowledge of the gong to him? Having denied, why should he now make an attempt to buy it back? In seeking answers to these questions he was silent.

"Well, dear?" inquired his wife after a pause. "You didn't answer me."

"No, don't sell the gong," he exclaimed abruptly. "Don't sell it at any price. I-I want it. I'll give you a cheque for your charity."

There was something of uneasiness in her devoted eyes. Some strange, subtle, indefinable air which she could not fathom was in his manner. With a little sigh which breathed her unrest she finished her breakfast.

On the following morning still another letter came from Johann Wagner. It was an appeal-an impa.s.sioned appeal-hurriedly scrawled and almost incoherent in form. He must have the gong! He would give five thousand dollars for it. Mrs. Phillips was frankly bewildered at the letter, and turned it over to her husband. He read it through twice with grimly-set teeth.

"No," he exclaimed violently; "it sha'n't be sold for any price!" Then his voice dropped as he recollected himself. "No, my dear," he continued, "it shall not be sold. It was a present from you to me. I want it, but"-and he smiled whimsically-"if he keeps raising the price it will add a great deal to your charity fund, won't it?"

Twice again within thirty-six hours Mr. Phillips heard the bell ring-once on one occasion and four on the other. And now visibly, tangibly, a great change was upon him. The healthy glow went from his face. There was a constant twitching of his hands; a continual, impatient snapping of his fingers. His eyes lost their steady gaze. They roved aimlessly, and one's impression always was that he was listening. The strength of the master spirit was being slowly destroyed, eaten up by a hideous gnawing thing of which he seemed hopelessly obsessed. But he took no one into his confidence; it was his own private affair to work out to the end.

This condition was upon him at a time when the activity of the speculative centres of the world was abnormal, and when every faculty was needed in the great financial schemes of which he was the centre. He, in person, held the strings which guided millions. The importance of his business affairs was so insistently and relentlessly thrust upon him that he was compelled to meet them. But the effort was a desperate one, and that night late, when a city slept around him, the bell sounded twice.

When he reached his downtown office next day an enormous amount of detail work lay before him, and he attacked it with a feverish exaltation which followed upon days and nights of restlessness. He had been at his desk only a few minutes when his private telephone clattered. With an exclamation he arose; comprehending, he sat down again.

Half-a-dozen times within the hour the bell rang, and each time he was startled. Finally he arose in a pa.s.sion, tore the desk-telephone from its connecting wires and flung it into the waste-basket. Deliberately he walked around to the side of his desk and, with a well-directed kick, smashed the battery-box. His secretary regarded him in amazement.

"Mr. Camp," directed the financier sharply, "please instruct the office operator not to ring another telephone-bell in this office-ever."

The secretary went out and he sat down to work again. Late that afternoon he called on his family physician, Doctor Perdue, a robust individual of whom it was said that his laugh cured more patients than his medicine. Be that as it may, he was a successful man, high in his profession. Doctor Perdue looked up with frank interest as he entered.

"h.e.l.lo, Phillips!" was his greeting. "What can I do for you?"

"Nerves," was the laconic answer.

"I thought it would come to that," remarked the physician, and he shook his head sagely. "Too much work, too much worry and too many cigars; and besides, you're not so young as you once were."

"It isn't work or cigars," Phillips replied impatiently. "It's worry-worry because of some peculiar circ.u.mstances which-which--"

He paused with a certain childish feeling of shame, of cowardice. Doctor Perdue regarded him keenly and felt of his pulse.

"What peculiar circ.u.mstances?" he demanded.

"Well, I-I can hardly explain it myself," replied Mr. Phillips, between tightly-clenched teeth. "It's intangible, unreal, ghostly-what you will. Perhaps I can best make you understand it by saying that I'm always-I always seem to be waiting for something."

Doctor Perdue laughed heartily; Mr. Phillips glared at him.

"Most of us are always waiting for something," said the physician. "If we got it there wouldn't be any particular object in life. Just what sort of thing is it you're always waiting for?"

Mr. Phillips arose suddenly and paced the length of the room twice. His under jaw was thrust out a little, his teeth crushed together, but in his eyes lay a haunting, furtive fear.

"I'm always waiting for a-for a bell," he blurted fiercely, and his face became scarlet. "I know it's absurd, but I awake in the night trembling, and lie for hours waiting, waiting, yet dreading the sound as no man ever dreaded anything in this world. At my desk I find myself straining every nerve, waiting, listening. When I talk to any one I'm always waiting, waiting, waiting! Now, right this minute, I'm waiting, waiting for it. The thing is driving me mad, man, mad! Don't you understand?"

Doctor Perdue arose with grave face and led the financier back to his seat.

"You are behaving like a child, Phillips!" he said sharply. "Sit down and tell me about it."

"Now, look here, Perdue," and Mr. Phillips brought his fist down on the desk with a crash, "you must believe it-you've got to believe it! If you don't, I shall know I am mad."

"Tell me about it," urged the physician quietly.

Then haltingly, hesitatingly, the financier related the incidents as they had happened. Incipient madness, fear, terror, blazed in his eyes, and at times his pale lips quivered as a child's might. The physician listened attentively and nodded several times.

"The bell must be-must be haunted!" Mr. Phillips burst out in conclusion. "There's no reasonable way to account for it. My common-sense tells me that it doesn't sound at all, and yet I know it does."

Doctor Perdue was silent for several minutes.

"You know, of course, that your wife did buy the bell of the old German?" he asked after a while.

"Why, certainly, I know it. It's proved absolutely by the letters he writes trying to get it back."

"And your fear doesn't come from anything the j.a.panese said?"

"It isn't the denial of the German; it isn't the childish things Mr. Matsumi said and did; it's the actual sound of the bell that's driving me insane-it's the hopeless, everlasting, eternal groping for a reason. It's an inanimate thing and it acts as if-it acts as if it were alive!"

The physician had been sitting with his fingers on Mr. Phillips' wrist. Now he arose and mixed a quieting potion which the other swallowed at a gulp. Soon after his patient went home somewhat more self-possessed, and with rigid instructions as to the regularity of his life and habits.