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Page 30
When he spoke he had a trick of opening his mouth for a word and holding
it so, a not over-clean forefinger poised above an outheld palm. It
seemed to the listener that the word when it came would mean much. His
white moustache alone had a well-finished look, curving jauntily upward.
"Sit there!" An authoritative finger pointed Bean to the chair he had
lately occupied.
He sat nervously, suffering that peculiar apprehension which physicians
and dentists had always inspired.
"Most amazing! Most astounding!" muttered the professor as if to his own
ear alone. He sat in a chair facing Bean and regarded him long and
intently. At brief intervals his face twitched, his body stiffened, he
seemed to writhe in some malign grasp.
Bean gripped the arms of his chair. His tingling nerves were accurately
defining his spine. He waited, breathless.
"I see it all," breathed the professor in low, solemn tones, his eyes
fixed above Bean's head. "First the pomp and glitter of a throne. You
wrench it from a people whose weakness you play upon with a devilish
cunning, you ascend to it over the bodies of countless men slain in
battle. Power through blood! You are cruel, insatiable, a predatory
monster. But retribution comes. You are hurled from your throne. Again
you ascend it, but only for a brief time. You fight your last battle;
you _lose_! You are captured and taken to a lonely island somewhere far
to the south, there to be imprisoned until your death. Afterward I see
your body returned to the city that was once your capital. It now lies
in a heavy stone coffin. It is in a European city. I can almost hear the
name, but not plainly. I cannot get the name under which you ruled. I
look into the abyss and the cries of your victims drown it. Horror piles
upon horror!"
Bean was leaning forward, tense with excitement, his mouth open. "Yes,
that's just the way I felt about it," he murmured.
"But this was only a few paltry years ago, perhaps a hundred. It passes
from my view. I am led back, away from it--far back--the cries of those
you slaughtered echo but faintly--the scene changes--"
The professor paused. Bean had cowered in his chair, wincing under each
blow. He wiped his face and crumpled the moist handkerchief tightly in
one hand.
"Perhaps the name may come to me now," continued the professor. "But
your superior personality overwhelmed me at first; you are so
self-willed, so dominant, so ruthless. The name, the name!" He cried the
last words commandingly and snapped his fingers at the delinquent
control. "There! I seem to hear--"
"Never mind that name," broke in Bean hastily. "Let it go! I--I don't
want to know it. Go on back farther!"
Again the professor's look became trancelike.
"Ah! What a relief to be free from that blood-lust!" He breathed deeply
and his eyes rolled far up under their lids.
"What is this? A statesman, still crafty, still the lines of cunning
cruelty about the mouth. The city is Venice in the fourteenth century.
He is dressed in a richly bejewelled robe and toys with an inlaid
dagger. He is plotting the assassination of a Doge--"
"Please get still farther back, can't you?" pleaded Bean.
The seer struggled once more with his control.
"I next see you at the head of a Roman legion, going forth to battle.
You are a tyrant, ruling by fear alone, and with your own sword I see
you cut off the heads of--"
"Farther back," beseeched the sitter. "I--I've had enough of all that
battle and killing. I--I don't _like_ it. Go on back to the very first."
Patiently the adept redirected his forces.
"I see a poet. He sings his deathless lay by a roadside in ancient
Greece. He is an old man, feeble, blind--"
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