 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Parasite. A story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. CHAPTER 1 March 24. The spring is fairly with us now. Beside my laboratory window, the great chestnut tree is all covered with the big glutinous gummy buds, some of which have already begun to break into little green shuttlecocks. As you walk down the lanes, you are conscious of the rich, silent forces of nature working all around you. The wet earth smells fruitful and luscious. Green shoots are peeping out everywhere. The twigs are stiff with their sap, and the moist, heavy English air is laden with a faintly resinous perfume. Buds in the hedges, lambs beneath them, everywhere the work of reproduction going forward. I can see it without, and I can feel it within. We also have our spring when the little arterioles dilate. The limp flows in a brisker stream. The glands work harder, winnowing and straining. Every year nature readjusts the whole machine. I can feel the ferment in my blood at this very moment, and as the cool sunshine pours through my window, I could dance about in it like a gnat. So I should, only that Charles Sadler would rush upstairs to know what was the matter. Besides, I must remember that I am Professor Gilroy. An old professor may afford to be natural, but when fortune has given one of the first chairs in the university to a man of four and thirty, he must try and act the part consistently. What a fellow Wilson is. If I could only throw the same enthusiasm into physiology that he does into psychology, I should become a Claude Bernard at the least. His whole life and soul and energy work to one end. He drops to sleep, collating his results of the past day, and he wakes to plan his researches for the coming one. And yet, outside the narrow circle who follow his proceedings, he gets so little credit for it. Physiology is a recognized science. If I even add a brick to the edifice, everyone sees and applauds it. But Wilson is trying to dig the foundations for a science of the future. His work is underground and does not show. Yet he goes on uncomplainingly, corresponding with a hundred semimaniacs in the hope of finding one reliable witness, sifting a hundred lies on the chance of gaining one little speck of truth, collating old books, devouring new ones, experimenting, lecturing, trying to light up in others the fiery interest which is consuming him. I am filled with wonder and admiration when I think of him. And yet, when he asks me to associate myself with his researches, I am compelled to tell him that, in their present state, they offer little attraction to a man who is devoted to exact science. If he could show me something positive and objective, I might then be tempted to approach the question from its physiological side. So long as half his subjects are tainted with charlatanry, and the other half with hysteria, we physiologists must contend ourselves with the body and leave the mind to our descendants. No doubt I am a materialist. Agatha says that I am a rank one. I tell her that is an excellent reason for shortening our engagements since I am in such urgent need of her spirituality. And yet I may claim to be a curious example of the effect of education upon temperament. For by nature I am, unless I deceive myself, a highly psychic man. I was a nervous sensitive boy, a dreamer, a somnambulist, full of impressions and intuitions. My black hair, my dark eyes, my thin olive face, my tapering fingers are all characteristic of my real temperament, and cause experts like Wilson to claim me as their own. But my brain is soaked with exact knowledge. I have trained myself to deal only with fact and with proof. Surmise and fancy have no place in my scheme of thought. Show me what I can see with my microscope, cut with my scalpel, weigh in my balance, and I will devote a lifetime to its investigation. But when you ask me to study feelings, impressions, suggestions, you ask me to do what is distasteful and even demoralizing. A departure from pure reason affects me like an evil smell or a musical discord, which is very sufficient reason why I am a little loath to go to Professor Wilson's tonight. Still, I feel that I could hardly get out of the invitation without positive rudeness. And now that Miss Marden and Agatha are going, of course I would not do it if I could. But I would rather meet them anywhere else. I know that Wilson would draw me into this nebulous semi-science of his if he could. In his enthusiasm he is perfectly impervious to hints or remonstrances. Nothing short of a positive quarrel will make him realize my aversion to the whole business. I have no doubt that he has some new mesmerist or clairvoyant or medium or trickster of some sort whom he is going to exhibit to us, for even his entertainments bear upon his hobby. Well, it will be a treat for Agatha at any rate. She is interested in it, as woman usually is in whatever is vague and mystical and indefinite. 10.50 p.m. This diary keeping of mine is, I fancy, the outcome of that scientific habit of mind about which I wrote this morning. I like to register impressions while they are fresh. Once a day at least I endeavor to define my own mental position. It is a useful piece of self-analysis and has, I fancy, a steadying effect upon the character. Frankly, I must confess that my own needs what stiffening I can give it. I fear that, after all, much of my neurotic temperament survives, that I am far from that cool, calm precision which characterizes Murdoch or Pratt-Haldane. Otherwise, why should the tomfoolery which I have witnessed this evening have set my nerves thrilling so that even now I am all in strung? My only comfort is that neither Wilson nor Miss Pinclosa nor even Agatha could have possibly known my weakness. And what in the world was there to excite me? Nothing, or so little that it will seem ludicrous when I set it down. The Mardins got to Wilson's before me. In fact, I was one of the last to arrive and found the room crowded. I had hardly time to say a word to Miss Mardin and to Agatha, who was looking charming and white and pink with glittering wheat ears in her hair, when Wilson came twitching at my sleeve. You want something positive Gilroy, said he, drawing me apart into a corner? My dear fellow, I have a phenomenon, a phenomenon. I should have been more impressed had I not heard the same before. His sanguine spirit turns every firefly into a star. No possible question about the bona fides this time, said he, an answer perhaps to some little gleam of amusement in my eyes. My wife has known her for many years. They both come from Trinidad, you know. Miss Pinclosa has been in England only a month or two, and knows no one outside the university circle. But I assure you that the things she has told us suffice in themselves to establish clairvoyance upon an absolutely scientific basis. There is nothing like her, amateur or professional. Come and be introduced. I like none of these mystery mongers, but the amateur least of all. With the paid performer, you may pounce upon him and expose him the instant that you have seen through his trick. He is there to deceive you, and you are there to find him out. But what are you to do with the friend of your host wife? Are you to turn on a light suddenly and expose her slapping a surreptitious banjo? Or are you to hurl cauchneal over her evening frock when she steals round with her phosphorus bottle and her supernatural platitude? There would be a scene, and you would be looked upon as a brute. So you have your choice of being that or a dupe. I was in no very good humor as I followed Wilson to the lady. Anyone less like my idea of a West Indian could not be imagined. She was a small, frail creature, well over forty, I should say, with a pale, peeky face and hair of a very light shade of chestnut. Her presence was insignificant and her manner retiring. In any group of ten women, she would have been the last one whom one would have picked out. Her eyes were perhaps her most remarkable, and also, I am compelled to say, her least pleasant feature. They were gray in color, gray with a shade of green, and their expression struck me as being decidedly furtive. I wonder if furtive is the word, or should I have said fierce? On second thoughts, feline would have expressed it better. A crutch leaning against the wall told me what was painfully evident when she rose, that one of her legs was crippled. So I was introduced to Miss Pinclosa, and it did not escape me that as my name was mentioned, she glanced across at Agatha. Wilson had evidently been talking, and presently, no doubt, thought I, she will inform me via cult means that I am engaged to a young lady with wheat ears in her hair. I wonder how much more Wilson had been telling her about me. Professor Gilroy is a terrible skeptic, said he. I hope, Miss Pinclosa, that you will be able to convert him. She looked keenly up at me. Professor Gilroy is quite right to be skeptical if he has not seen anything convincing, said she. I should have thought, she added, that you would yourself have been an excellent subject. For what, may I ask? Said I. Well, for mesmerism, for example. My experience has been that mesmerists go for their subjects to those who are mentally unsound. All their results are vitiated, as it seems to me, by the fact that they are dwelling, dealing with abnormal organisms. Which of these ladies would you say possessed a normal organism? She asked. I should like you to select the one who seems to you to have the best balanced mind. Should we say the girl in the pink and white? Miss Agatha Martin, I think the name is? Yes. I should attach a weight to any results from her. I have never tried how far she is impressionable. Of course, some people respond much more rapidly than others. May I ask how far your skepticism extends? I suppose that you admit the mesmeric sleep and the power of suggestion. I admit nothing, Miss Penclosa. Dear me, I thought science had got further than that. Of course, I know nothing about the scientific side of it. I only know what I can do. You see the girl in red, for example, over near the Japanese jar? I shall will that she come across to us. She bent forward as she spoke and dropped her fan upon the floor. The girl whisked round and came straight toward us with an inquiring look upon her face as if someone had called her. What do you think of that, go-roy? cried Wilson in a kind of ecstasy. I did not dare to tell him what I thought of it. To me it was the most bare-faced, shameless piece of imposture that I had ever witnessed. The collusion and the signal had really been too obvious. Professor Gilroy is not satisfied, said she, glancing up at me with her strange little eyes. My poor fan is to get the credit of that experiment. Well, we must try something else. Miss Martin, would you have any objection to my putting you off? Oh, I should love it, cried Agatha. By this time all the company had gathered round us in a circle. The shirt-fronted men and the white-throated women, some odd, some critical, as though it were something between a religious ceremony and a conjurer's entertainment. A red velvet armchair had been pushed into the center, and Agatha lay back in it a little flushed and trembling slightly from the excitement. I could see it from the vibration of the wheat ears. Miss Penclosa rose from her seat and stood over her, leaning upon her crutch. And there was a change in the woman. She no longer seemed small or insignificant. Twenty years were gone from her age. Her eyes were shining. A tinge of color had come into her sallow cheeks. Her whole figure had expanded. So I have seen a dull-eyed, listless lad change in an instant into briskness in life when given a task of which he felt himself master. She looked down at Agatha with an expression which I resented from the bottom of my soul, the expression which a Roman empress might have looked at her kneeling slave. Then, with a quick commanding gesture, she tossed up her arms and swept them slowly down in front of her. I was watching Agatha narrowly. During three passes she seemed to be simply amused. At the fourth I observed a slight glazing of her eyes, accompanied by some dilation of her pupils. At the sixth there was a momentary rigor. At the seventh her lids began to droop. At the tenth her eyes were closed and her breathing was slower and fuller than usual. I tried as I watched to preserve my scientific calm, but a foolish, causeless agitation convulsed me. I trust that I hid it, but I felt as a child feels in the dark. I could not have believed that I was still open to such weakness. She is in the trance, said Miss Pinclosa. She is sleeping, I cried. Wake her then. I pulled her by the arm and shouted in her ear. She might have been dead for all the impression that I could make. Her body was there on the velvet chair, her organs were acting, her heart, her lungs, but her soul, it had slipped from beyond our kin. Wither had it gone. That power had dispossessed it. I was puzzled and disconcerted. So much for the mesmeric sleep, said Miss Pinclosa. As regards suggestion, whatever I may suggest Miss Martin will infallibly do, whether it be now or after she has awakened from her trance. Do you demand proof of it? Certainly, said I. You shall have it. I saw a smile pass over her face as though an amusing thought had struck her. She stooped and whispered earnestly into her subject's ear. Agatha, who had been so deaf to me, nodded her head as she listened. Awake, cried Miss Pinclosa, with a sharp tap of her crutch upon the floor. The eyes opened, the glazing cleared slowly away, and the soul looked out once more after its strange eclipse. We went away early. Agatha was none the worse for her strange excursion, but I was nervous and unstrung, unable to listen to or answer the stream of comments which Wilson was pouring out for my benefit. As I bade her good night, Miss Pinclosa slipped a piece of paper into my hand. Pray forgive me, said she, if I take means to overcome your skepticism. Open this note at ten o'clock tomorrow morning. It is a little private test. I can't imagine what she means, but there is the note, and it shall be open to she directs. My head is aching, and I have written enough for tonight. Tomorrow I dare say that what seems so inexplicable will take quite another complexion. I shall not surrender my convictions without a struggle. March twenty-five. I am amazed, confounded. It is clear that I must reconsider my opinion upon this matter. But first let me place on record what has occurred. I had finished my breakfast and was looking over some diagrams with which my lecture is to be illustrated when my housekeeper entered to tell me that Agatha was in my study and wished to see me immediately. I glanced at the clock and saw with sunrise that it was only half past nine. When I entered the room she was standing on the hearth rug facing me. Something in her pose chilled me and checked the words which were rising to my lips. Her veil was half down, but I could see that she was pale and that her expression was constrained. Austin, she said, I have come to tell you that our engagement is at an end. I staggered. I believe that I literally did stagger. I know that I found myself leaning against the bookcase for support. But—but—I stammered. This is very sudden, Agatha. Yes, Austin, I have come here to tell you that our engagement is at an end. Surely, I cried, you will give me some reason. This is unlike you, Agatha. Tell me how I have been unfortunate enough to offend you. It is all over, Austin. But why? You must be under some delusion, Agatha. Perhaps you have been told some falsehood about me, or you may have misunderstood something that I have said to you. Only let me know what it is, and a word may set it all right. We must consider it all at an end. But you left me last night without a hint of any disagreement. What could have occurred in the interval to change you so? It must have been something that happened last night. You have been thinking it over, and you have disapproved of my conduct. Was it the mesmerism? Did you blame me for letting that woman exercise her power over you? You know that at the least sign I should have interfered. It is useless, Austin. All is over. Her voice was cold and measured. Her manner strangely formal and hard. It seemed to me that she was absolutely resolved not to be drawn into any argument or explanation. As for me, I was shaking with agitation, and I turned my face aside so ashamed was I that she should see my want of control. You must know what this means to me, I cried. It is the blasting of all my hopes and the ruin of my life. You surely will not inflict such a punishment upon me unheard. You will let me know what is the matter. Consider how impossible it would be for me under any circumstances to treat you so. For God's sake, Agatha, let me know what I have done. She walked past me without a word and opened the door. It is quite useless, Austin, said she. You must consider our engagement at an end. An instant later she was gone, and before I could recover myself sufficiently to follow her, I heard the hall door close behind her. I rushed into my room to change my coat, with the idea of hurrying round to Miss Martin's to learn from her what the cause of my misfortune might be. So shaken was I that I could hardly lace my boots. Never shall I forget those horrible ten minutes. I had just pulled on my overcoat when the clock upon the mantelpiece struck ten. Ten. I associated the idea with Miss Penclosa's note. It was lying before me on the table, and I tore it open. It was scribbled in pencil in a peculiarly angular handwriting. My dear Professor Gilroy, it said, pray excuse the personal nature of the test which I am giving you. Professor Wilson happened to mention the relations between you and my subject of this evening, and it struck me that nothing could be more convincing to you than if I were to suggest to Miss Martin that she should call upon you at half past nine tomorrow morning and suspend your engagement for half an hour or so. Science is so exacting that it is difficult to give a satisfying test, but I am convinced that this, at least, will be an action which she would be most unlikely to do of her own free will. Forget anything that she may have said, as she has really nothing whatever to do with it, and will certainly not recollect anything about it. I write this note to shorten your anxiety, and to beg you to forgive me for the momentary unhappiness which my suggestion must have caused you. Yours faithfully, Helen Penclosa. Really, when I had read the note I was too relieved to be angry. It was a liberty. Certainly it was a very great liberty indeed on the part of a lady whom I had met only once. But after all, I had challenged her by my skepticism. It may have been, as she said, a little difficult to devise a test which would satisfy me. And she had done that. There could be no question at all upon that point. For me, hypnotic suggestion was finally established. It took its place from now onward as one of the facts of life. That Agatha, who of all women of my acquaintance has the best balanced mind, had been reduced to a condition of automatism appeared to be certain. A person at a distance had worked her as an engineer on the shore might guide a Brennan torpedo. A second soul had stepped in, as it were, had pushed her own aside, and had seized her nervous mechanism, saying, I will work this for half an hour. And Agatha must have been unconscious as she came and as she returned. Could she make her way in safety through the streets in such a state? I put on my hat and hurried round to see if all was well with her. Yes, she was at home. I was shown into the drawing-room and found her sitting with a book upon her lap. You are an early visitor, Austen, she said, smiling. And you have been an even earlier one, I answered. She looked puzzled. What do you mean, she asked? You have not been out today? No, certainly not. Agatha, I said I seriously, would you mind telling me exactly what you have done this morning? She laughed at my earnestness. You've got on your professional look, Austen. See what comes of being engaged to a man of science? However, I will tell you, though I can't imagine what you want to know for. I got up at eight. I breakfasted at half-past. I came into this room ten minutes past nine and began to read the memoirs of Mademoiselle de Remoisat. In a few minutes I did the French lady the bad compliment of dropping to sleep over her pages, and I did you, sir, the very flattering one of dreaming about you. It is only a few minutes since I woke up, and found yourself where you had been before? Why where else should I find myself? Would you mind telling me, Agatha, what it was that you dreamed about? It really is not mere curiosity on my part. I merely had a vague impression that you came into it. I cannot recall anything definite. If you have not been out today, Agatha, how is it that your shoes are dusty? A pained look came over her face. Really, Austen, I do not know what is the matter with you this morning. One would almost think that you doubted my word. If my boots are dusty, it must be, of course, that I have put on a pair which the maid had not cleaned. It was perfectly evident that she knew nothing whatever about the matter. And I reflected that, after all, perhaps it was better that I should not enlighten her. It might frighten her, and could serve no good purpose that I could see. I said no more about it, therefore, and left shortly afterward to give my lecture. But I am immensely impressed. My horizon of scientific possibilities has suddenly been enormously extended. I no longer wonder at Wilson's demonic energy and enthusiasm. Who would not work hard who had a vast virgin field ready to his hand? Why I have known the novel shape of the nucleolus, or a trifling peculiarity of striped muscle fiber seen under a 300-diameter lens fill me with exultation. How petty do such researches seem when compared to this one which strikes at the very roots of life and the nature of the soul? I had always looked upon spirit as a product of matter. The brain, I thought, secreted the mind as the liver does the bile. But how can this be when I see mind working from a distance and playing upon matter as a musician might upon a violin? The body does not give rise to the soul then, but is rather the rough instrument by which the spirit manifests itself. The windmill does not give rise to the wind, but only indicates it. It was opposed to my whole habit of thought, and yet it was undeniably possible and worthy of investigation. And why should I not investigate it? I see that under yesterday's date I said, if I could see something positive and objective, I might be tempted to approach it from the physiological aspect. Well, I've got my test. I shall be as good as my word. The investigation would, I am sure, be of immense interest. Some of my colleagues might look a scant at it, for science is full of unreasoning prejudices. But if Wilson has the courage of his convictions, I can afford to have it also. I shall go to him tomorrow morning, to him and to Miss Penclosa. If she can show us so much, it is probable that she can show us more. End of Chapter 1, The Parasite, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Parasite, a story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Chapter 2, March 26. Wilson was, as I had anticipated, very exultant over my conversion, and Miss Penclosa was also demurely pleased at the result of her experiment. Strange what a silent, colorless creature she is, save only when she exercises her power. Even talking about it gives her color and life. She seems to take a singular interest in me. I cannot help observing how her eyes follow me about the room. We have the most interesting conversation about her own powers. It is just as well to put her views on record, though they cannot, of course, claim any scientific weight. You are on the very fringe of the subject, said she, when I had expressed wonder at the remarkable instance of suggestion which she had shown me. I had no direct influence upon Miss Martin when she came round to you. I was not even thinking of her that morning. What I did was to set her mind, as I might set the alarm of a clock, so that at the hour named it would go off of its own accord. If six months instead of twelve hours had been suggestion, it would have been the same. And if the suggestion had been to assassinate me, she would most inevitably have done so. But this is a terrible power, I cried. It is, as you say, a terrible power, she answered gravely. And the more you know of it, the more terrible it will seem to you. May I ask, said I, what you meant when you said that this matter of suggestion is only at the fringe of it? What do you consider the essential? I had rather not tell you. I was surprised at the decision of her answer. You understand, said I, that it is not out of curiosity, I ask, but in the hope that I may find some scientific explanation for the facts with which you furnish me. Frankly, Professor Gilroy, said she, I am not at all interested in science, nor do I care whether it can or cannot classify these powers. That I was hoping, ah, that is quite another thing. If you make it a personal matter, said she, with the pleasantest of smiles, I shall be only too happy to tell you anything you wish to know. Let me see, what was it you asked me? Oh, about the further powers. Professor Wilson won't believe in them, but they are quite true all the same. For example, it is possible for an operator to gain complete command over his subject, presuming that the latter is a good one. Without any previous suggestion he may make him do whatever he likes. Without the subject's knowledge? That depends. If the force were strongly exerted, he would know no more about it than Miss Martin did when she came around and frightened you so. Or if the influence was less powerful, he might be conscious of what he was doing, but be quite unable to prevent himself from doing it. Would he have lost his own willpower then? It would be overridden by another stronger one. Have you exercised this power yourself? Several times. Is your own will so strong then? Well, it does not entirely depend upon that. Many have strong wills which are not detachable from themselves. The thing is to have the gift of projecting it into another person and superseding his own. I find that the power varies with my own strength and health. Practically, you send your soul into another person's body. Well, you might put it that way. And what does your own body do? It merely feels lethargic. Well, but is there no danger to your own health? There might be a little. You have to be careful never to let your own consciousness absolutely go. Otherwise, you might experience some difficulty in finding your way back again. You must always preserve the connection, as it were. I am afraid I express myself very badly, Professor Gilroy, but of course I don't know how to put these things in a scientific way. I am just giving you my own experiences and my own explanations. Well, I read this over now at my leisure, and I marvel at myself. Is this Austin Gilroy, the man who has won his way to the front by hard reasoning power and by his devotion to fact? Here I am gravely retelling the gossip of a woman who tells me how her soul may be projected from her body, and how, while she lies in a lethargy, she can control the actions of people at a distance. Do I accept it? Certainly not. She must prove and re-prove before I yield a point. But if I am still a skeptic, I have at least ceased to be a scoffer. We are to have a sitting this evening, and she is to try if she can produce any mesmeric effect upon me. If she can, it will make an excellent starting point for our investigation. No one can accuse me at any rate of complicity. If she cannot, we must try and find some subject who will be like Caesar's wife. Wilson is perfectly impervious. 10 p.m. I believe that I am on the threshold of an epoch-making investigation. To have the power of examining these phenomena from inside, to have an organism which will respond and at the same time a brain which will appreciate and criticize, that is surely a unique advantage. I am quite sure that Wilson would give five years of his life to be as susceptible as I have proved myself to be. There was no one present except Wilson and his wife. I was seated with my head leaning back, and Miss Pinclosa standing in front and a little to the left used the same long, sweeping strokes as with Agatha. At each of them a warm current of air seemed to strike me, and to suffuse a thrill and glow all through me from head to foot. My eyes were fixed upon Miss Pinclosa's face, but as I gazed the features seemed to blur and to fade away. I was conscious only of her own eyes looking down at me, gray, deep, inscrutable. Larger they grew and larger until they changed suddenly into two mountain lakes toward which I seemed to be falling with horrible rapidity. I shuddered, and as I did so some deeper stratum of thought told me that the shutter represented the rigor which I had observed in Agatha. An instant later I struck the surface of the lakes, now joined into one, and down I went beneath the water with a fullness in my head and a buzzing in my ears. Down I went, down, down, and then with a swoop up again until I could see the light streaming brightly through the green water. I was almost at the surface when the word awake rang through my head, and with a start I found myself back in the armchair, with Miss Pinclosa leaning on her crutch and Wilson his notebook in his hand peeping over her shoulder. No heaviness or weariness was left behind. On the contrary, though it is only an hour or so since the experiment, I feel so wakeful that I am more inclined for my study than my bedroom. I see quite a vista of interesting experiments extending before us, and am all impatient to begin upon them. March 27 A blank day as Miss Pinclosa goes with Wilson and his wife to the Sutton's, have begun Benet and Feret's animal magnetism. What strange deep waters these are. This results, results, and the cause an absolute mystery. It is stimulating to the imagination, but I must be on my guard against that. Let us have no inferences nor deductions, and nothing but solid facts. I know that the mesmeric trance is true. I know that the mesmeric suggestion is true. I know that I am myself sensitive to this force. That is my present position. I have a large new notebook which shall be devoted entirely to scientific detail. Long talk with Agatha and Miss Martin in the evening about our marriage. We think that the summer vacation, the beginning of it, would be the best time for the wedding. Why should we delay? I grudge even those few months. Still, as Miss Martin says, there are a good many things to be arranged. March 28 Mesmerized again by Miss Pinclosa. Experience much the same as before saved that insensibility came on more quickly. See notebook A for temperature of room barometric pressure, pulse, and respiration as taken by Professor Wilson. March 29 Mesmerized again, details in notebook A. March 30 Sunday and a blank day. I grudge any interruption of our experiments. At present they merely embrace the physical signs which go with slight, with complete, and with extreme insensibility. Afterward we hope to pass on to the phenomena of suggestion and of lucidity. Professors have demonstrated these things upon women at Nancy and at the Sault Petrie. It will be more convincing when a woman demonstrates it upon a professor with a second professor as a witness, and that I should be the subject, I, the skeptic, the materialist. At least I have shown that my devotion to science is greater than to my own personal consistency. The eating of our own words is the greatest sacrifice which truth ever requires of us. My neighbor, Charles Sadler, the handsome young demonstrator of anatomy, came in this evening to return a volume of Virchow's archives which I had lent him. I call him young but as a matter of fact he is a year older than I am. I understand, Gilroy, said he, that you are being experimented upon by Miss Pinclosa. Well, he went on when I had acknowledged it. If I were you I should not let it go any further. You will think me very impertinent no doubt, but nonetheless I feel it to be my duty to advise you to have no more to do with her. Of course I asked him why. I am so placed that I cannot enter into particulars as freely as I could wish, said he. Miss Pinclosa is the friend of my friend and my position is a delicate one. I can only say this, that I have myself been the subject of some of the woman's experiments, and that they have left a most unpleasant impression upon my mind. He could hardly expect me to be satisfied with that, and I tried hard to get something more definite out of him, but without success. Is it conceivable that he could be jealous at my having superseded him? Or is he one of those men of science who feel personally injured when facts run counter to their preconceived opinions? He cannot seriously suppose that because he have some vague grievance I am, therefore, to abandon a series of experiments which promise to be so fruitful of results. He appeared to be annoyed at the light way in which I treated his shadowy warnings, and we parted with some little coldness on both sides. March 31. Mesmerized by Miss P. April 1. Mesmerized by Miss P. See Notebook A. April 2. Mesmerized by Miss P. Bimographic Chart taken by Professor Wilson April 3. It is possible that this course of mesmerism may be a little trying to the general constitution. Agatha says that I am thinner and darker under the eyes. I am conscious of a nervous irritability which I had not observed in myself before. The least noise, for example, makes me start, and the stupidity of a student causes me exasperation instead of amusement. Agatha wishes me to stop, but I tell her that every course of study is trying and that one can never attain a result without paying some price for it. When she sees the sensation which my forthcoming paper on the relation between mind and matter may make, she will understand that it is worth a little nervous wear and tear. I should not be surprised if I got my FRS over it. Mesmerized again in the evening. The effect is produced more rapidly now and the subjective visions are less marked. I keep full notes of each sitting. Wilson is leaving town for a week or ten days, but we shall not interrupt the experiments which depend for their value as much upon my sensations as on his observations. April 4. I must be carefully on my guard. A complication has crept into our experiments which I had not reckoned upon. In my eagerness for scientific facts I have been foolishly blind to the human relations between Miss Pinclosa and myself. I can write here what I would not breathe to a living soul. The unhappy woman appears to have formed an attachment for me. I should not say such a thing, even in the privacy of my own intimate journal, if it had not come to such a past that it is impossible to ignore it. For some time, that is, for the last week, there have been signs which I have brushed aside and refused to think of. Her brightness when I come, her dejection when I go, her eagerness that I should come often, the expression of her eyes, the tone of her voice, I tried to think that they meant nothing and were perhaps only her ardent West Indian manner. But last night, as I awoke from the mesmeric sleep, I put out my hand unconsciously, involuntarily, and clasped hers. When I came fully to myself we were sitting with them locked. She looked up at me with an expectant smile. The horrible thing was that I felt impelled to say what she expected me to say. What a false wretch I should have been! How I should have loathed myself today had I yielded to the temptation of that moment. But thank God I was strong enough to spring up and hurry from the room. I was rude, I fear, but I could not know, I could not trust myself another moment. I, a gentleman, a man of honor, engaged to one of the sweetest girls in England, and yet in a moment of reasonless passion I nearly professed love for this woman whom I hardly know. She is far older than myself and a cripple. It is monstrous, odious, and yet the impulse was so strong that, had I stayed another minute in her presence, I should have committed myself. What was it? I have to teach others the workings of our organism, and what do I know of it myself? Was it the sudden upcropping of some lower stratum in my nature, a brutal, primitive instinct suddenly asserting itself? I could almost believe the tales of obsession by evil spirits. So overmastering was the feeling. Well, the incident places me in a most unfortunate position. On the one hand I am very loath to abandon a series of experiments which have already gone so far and which promise such brilliant results. On the other, if this unhappy woman has conceived a passion for me, but surely even now I must have made some hideous mistake. She, with her age and her deformity, it is impossible. And then she knew about Agatha. She understood how I was placed. She only smiled out of amusement, perhaps, when in my dazed state I seized her hand. It was my half-mesmerized brain which gave it a meaning, and spraying with such bestial swiftness to meet it. I wish I could persuade myself that it was indeed so. On the whole, perhaps, my wisest plan would be to postpone our other experiments until Wilson's return. I have written a note to Miss Penclosa, therefore, making no illusion till last night, but saying that our press of work would cause me to interrupt our sittings for a few days. She has answered formally enough to say that if I should change my mind I should find her at home at the usual hour. 10 p.m. Well, well, what a thing of straw I am. I am coming to know myself better of late, and the more I know the lower I fall in my own estimation. Finally I was not always so weak as this. At four o'clock I should have smiled had anyone told me that I should go to Miss Penclosa's tonight, and yet, at eight, I was at Wilson's door as usual. I don't know how it occurred, the influence of habit, I suppose. Perhaps there is a mesmeric craze as there is an opium craze, and I am a victim to it. I only know that as I worked in my study I became more and more uneasy. I fidgeted, I worried, I could not concentrate my mind upon the papers in front of me, and then, at last, almost before I knew what I was doing, I seized my hat and hurried round to keep my usual appointment. We had an interesting evening. Miss Wilson was present during most of the time which prevented the embarrassment which one, at least of us, must have felt. Miss Penclosa's manner was quite the same as usual, and she expressed no surprise at my having come in spite of my note. There was nothing in her bearing to show that yesterday's incident had made any impression upon her, and so I am inclined to hope that I overrated it. April six. Evening. No. No. No. No. I did not overrate it. I can no longer attempt to conceal for myself that this woman has conceived a passion for me. It is monstrous, but it is true. Again tonight I awoke from the mesmeric trance to find my hand in hers, and to suffer that odious feeling which urges me to throw away my honor, my career, everything, for the sake of this creature who, as I can plainly see when I am away from her influence, possesses no single charm upon earth. But when I am near her I do not feel this. She rouses something in me, something evil, something I had rather not think of. She paralyzes my better nature, too, at the moment when she stimulates my worse. Decidedly it is not good for me to be near her. Last night was worse than before. Instead of flying I actually sat for some time with my hand in hers talking over the most intimate subjects with her. We spoke of Agatha, among other things. What could I have been dreaming of? Miss Penclosa said that she was conventional and I agreed with her. She spoke once or twice in a disparaging way of her, and I did not protest. What a creature I have been! Weak as I have proved myself to be, I am still strong enough to bring this sort of thing to an end. It shall not happen again. I have sense enough to fly when I cannot fight. From this Sunday night onward I shall never sit with Miss Penclosa again. Never. Let the experiments go. Let the research come to an end. Anything is better than facing this monstrous temptation which drags me so low. I have said nothing to Miss Penclosa, but I shall simply stay away. She can tell the reason without any words of mine. April 7. Have stayed away as I said. It is a pity to ruin such an interesting investigation, but it would be a greater pity still to ruin my life, and I know that I cannot trust myself with that woman. 11 p.m. God help me. What is the matter with me? Am I going mad? Let me try and be calm and reason with myself. First of all, I shall set down exactly what occurred. It was nearly eight when I wrote the lines with which this day begins. Feeling strangely restless and uneasy, I left my rooms and walked round to spend the evening with Agatha and her mother. They both remarked that I was pale and haggard. About nine, Professor Pratt Haldane came in and we played a game of wist. I tried hard to concentrate my attention upon the cards, but the feeling of restlessness grew and grew until I found it impossible to struggle against it. I simply could not sit still at the table. At last, in the very middle of a hand, I threw my cards down and, with some sort of incoherent apology about an appointment, I rushed from the room. As if in a dream I have a vague recollection of tearing through the hall, snatching my hat from the stand and slamming the door behind me. As in a dream, too, I have the impression of the double line of gas lamps and my bespattered boots tell me that I must have run down the middle of the road. It was all misty and strange and unnatural. I came to Wilson's house. I saw Miss Wilson and I saw Miss Penclosa. I hardly recall what we talked about, but I do remember that Miss P. shook the head of her crutch at me in a playful way and accused me of being late and of losing interest in our experiments. There was no mesmerism, but I stayed some time and have only just returned. My brain is quite clear again now and I can think over what has occurred. It is absurd to suppose that it is merely weakness and force of habit. I tried to explain it in that way the other night, but it will no longer suffice. It is something much deeper and more terrible than that. Why, when I was at the marten's wist table, I was dragged away as if the noose of a rope had been cast around me. I can no longer disguise it for myself. The woman has her grip upon me. I am in her clutch, but I must keep my head and reason it out and see what is best to be done. What a blind fool I have been. In my enthusiasm over my research I have walked straight into the pit although it lay gaping before me. Did she not herself warn me? Did she not tell me, as I can read in my own journal, that when she has acquired power over a subject she can make him do her will, and she has acquired that power over me? I am for the moment at the beck and call of this creature with the crutch. I must come when she wills it. I must do as she wills. Worst of all I must fill as she wills. I loathe her and fear her, yet while I am under the spell she can doubtless make me love her. There is some consolation in the thought, then, that these odious impulses for which I have blamed myself do not really come from me at all. They are all transferred from her little as I could have guessed it at the time. I feel cleaner and lighter for the thought. April 8. Yes, now in broad daylight, riding coolly and with time for reflection, I am compelled to confirm everything which I wrote in my journal last night. I am in a horrible position, but above all I must not lose my head. I must pit my intellect against her powers. After all, I am no silly puppet to dance at the end of a string. Couragey, brains, courage. For all her devil's tricks I may beat her yet. May. I must, or what is to become of me? Let me try to reason it out. This woman, by her own explanation, can dominate my nervous organism. She can project herself into my body and take command of it. She has a parasite soul. Yes, she is a parasite, a monstrous parasite. She creeps into my frame as the hermit crab does into the welks' shell. I am powerless. What can I do? I am dealing with the forces of which I know nothing. And I can tell no one of my trouble. They would set me down as a madman. Certainly if it got noise to broad the university would say that they had no need of a devil-ridden professor. And Agatha. No. No. I must face it alone. End of Chapter 2. The Parasite. By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Parasite. A story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Chapter 3. I read over my notes of what the woman said when she spoke about her powers. There is one point which fills me with dismay. She implies that when the influence is slight the subject knows what he is doing but cannot control himself, whereas when it is strongly exerted he is absolutely unconscious. Now I have always known what I did, though less so last night than on the previous occasions. That seems to mean that she has never yet exerted her full powers upon me. Was ever a man so placed before? Yes, perhaps there was, and very near me too. Charles Sadler must know something of this. His vague words of warning take a meaning now. Oh, if I had only listened to him then, before I helped by these repeated sittings to forge the links of the chain which binds me, but I will see him to-day. I will apologize to him for having treated his warning so lightly. I will see if he can advise me. 4 p.m. No, he cannot. I have talked with him, and he showed such surprise at the first words in which I tried to express my unspeakable secret that I went no further. As far as I can gather by hints and inferences rather than by any statement. His own experience was limited to some words or looks such as I myself have endured. His abandonment of Miss Penclosa is in itself a sign that he was never really in her toils. Oh, if only he knew his escape. He has to thank his phlegmatic Saxon temperament for it. I am black and Celtic, and this hag's clutch is deep in my nerves. Shall I ever get out? Shall I ever be the same man that I was just one short fortnight ago? Let me consider what I had better do. I cannot lead the university in the middle of the term. If I were free, my course would be obvious. I should start at once and travel in Persia. But would she allow me to start? And could her influence not reach me in Persia and bring me back to within touch of her crutch? I can only find out the limits of this hellish power by my own bitter experience. I will fight and fight and fight. And what more can I do? I know very well that about eight o'clock tonight, that craving for her society, that irresistible restlessness will come upon me. How shall I overcome it? What shall I do? I must make it impossible for me to leave the room. I shall lock the door and throw the key out of the window. But then what am I to do in the morning? Never mind about the morning. I must at all cost break this chain, which holds me. April 9. Victory! I have done splendidly. At seven o'clock last night I took a hasty dinner and then locked myself up in my bedroom and dropped the key into the garden. I chose a cheery novel and lay in bed for three hours trying to read it, but really in a horrible state of trepidation, expecting every instant that I should become conscious of the impulse. The pain of the sort occurred, however, and I woke this morning with the feeling that a black nightmare had been lifted off me. Perhaps the creature realized what I had done and understood that it was useless to try to influence me. At any rate I have beaten her once and if I can do it once I can do it again. It was most awkward about the key in the morning. Luckily there was an under-gardener below and I asked him to throw it up. No doubt he thought I had just dropped it. I will have doors and windows screwed up and six stout men to hold me down in my bed before I will surrender myself to be hag-ridden in this way. I had a note from Miss Martin this afternoon, asking me to go round and see her. I intended to do so in any case, but had not expected to find bad news waiting for me. It seems that the Armstrongs, from whom Agatha has expectations, are due home from Adelaide in the Aurora, and that they have written to Miss Martin and to her to meet them in town. They will probably be away for a month or six weeks and as the Aurora is due on Wednesday they must go at once, tomorrow if they are ready in time. My consolation is that when we meet again there will be no parting between Agatha and me. I want you to do one thing, Agatha, said I, when we were alone together. If you should happen to meet Miss Penclosa either in town or here you must promise me never again to allow her to mesmerize you. Agatha opened her eyes, why, it was only the other day that you were saying how interesting it all was and how determined you were to finish your experiments. I know, but I have changed my mind since then. And you won't have it any more? No. I am so glad, Austen, you can't think how pale and worn you have been lately. It was really our principal objection to going to London now that we did not wish to leave you when you were so pulled down, and your manner has been so strange occasionally, especially that night when you left poor Professor Pratt-Haldane to play dummy. I am convinced that these experiments are very bad for your nerves. I think so too, dear. And for Miss Penclosa's nerves as well, you have heard that she is ill? No. Miss Wilson told us so last night. She described it as a nervous fever. Professor Wilson is coming back this week, and of course Miss Wilson is very anxious that Miss Penclosa should be well again, for he has quite a program of experiments which he is anxious to carry out. I was glad to have Agatha's promise, for it was enough that this woman should have one of us in her clutch. On the other hand, I was disturbed to hear about Miss Penclosa's illness. It rather discounts the victory which I appeared to win last night. I remember that she said that loss of health interfered with her power. That may be why I was able to hold my own so easily. Well, well, I must take the same precautions to-night and see what comes of it. I am childishly frightened when I think of her. April 10. April went very well last night. I was amused at the gardener's face when I had again to hail him this morning and to ask him to throw out my key. I shall get a name among the servants if this sort of thing goes on, but the great point is that I stayed in my room without the slightest inclination to leave. I do believe that I am shaking myself clear of this incredible bond, or is it only that the woman's power is in abeyance until she recovers her strength? I can but pray for the best. The marten's left this morning, and the brightness seems to have gone out of the spring sunshine. And yet it is very beautiful also as it gleams on the green chestnuts opposite my windows and gives a touch of gaiety to the heavy, lichen-modeled walls of the old colleges. How sweet and gentle and soothing is nature. Who would think that there lurked in her also such vile forces and such odious possibilities? For of course I understand that this dreadful thing which has sprung out at me is neither supernatural nor even preternatural. No, it is a natural force which this woman can use and society is ignorant of. The mere fact that it ebbs with her strength shows how entirely it is subject to physical laws. If I had time I might probe it to the bottom and lay my hands upon its antidote, but you cannot tame the tiger when you are beneath his claws. You can but try to writhe away from him. Ah, when I look in the glass and see my own dark eyes and clear-cut Spanish face I long for a vitriol splash or a bout of the smallpox. One or the other might have saved me from this calamity. I am inclined to think that I may have trouble tonight. There are two things which make me fear so. One is that I met Miss Wilson in the street and that she tells me that Miss Pinclosa is better, though still weak. I find myself wishing in my heart that the illness had been her last. The other is that Professor Wilson comes back in a day or two and his presence would act as a constraint upon her. I should not fear our interviews if a third person were present. For both these reasons I have a presentiment of trouble tonight, and I shall take the same precautions as before. April 10 No, thank God, all went well last night. I really could not face the gardener again. I locked my door and thrust the key underneath it so that I had to ask the maid to let me out in the morning. But the precaution was really not needed, for I never had any inclination to go out at all. Three evenings in succession at home. I am surely near the end of my troubles, for Wilson will be home again either today or tomorrow. Shall I tell him of what I have gone through or not? I am convinced that I should not have the slightest sympathy from him. He would look upon me as an interesting case and read a paper about me at the next meeting of the Psychical Society in which he would gravely discuss the possibility of my being a deliberate liar and weigh it against the chances of my being in an early stage of lunacy. No, I shall not get comfort out of Wilson. I am feeling wonderfully fit and well. I don't think I ever lectured with greater spirit. Oh, if I could only get the shadow off my life how happy I should be. Young, fairly wealthy in the front rank of my profession, engaged to a beautiful and charming girl, have I not everything which a man could ask for? Only one thing to trouble me. But what a thing it is. Midnight. I shall go mad. Yes, that will be the end of it. I shall go mad. I am not far from it now. My head throbs as I rest it on my hot hand. I am quivering all over like a scared horse. Oh, what a night I have had. And yet I have some cause to be satisfied also. At the risk of becoming the laughing stock of my own servant I again slipped my key under the door in prisoning myself for the night. Then, finding it too early to go to bed, I lay down with my clothes on and begin to read one of Dumas' novels. Suddenly I was gripped, gripped and dragged from the couch. It is only thus that I can describe the overpowering nature of the force which pounced upon me. I clawed at the coverlet. I clung to the woodwork. I believed that I screamed out in my frenzy. It was all useless, hopeless. I must go. There was no way out of it. It was only at the outset that I resisted. The force soon became too overmastering for that. I thanked goodness that there were no watchers there to interfere with me. I could not have answered for myself if there had been. And besides the determination to get out, there came to me also the keenest and coolest judgment in choosing my means. I lit a candle and endeavored kneeling in the front of the door to pull the key through with the feather end of a quill pin. It was just too short and it pushed it further away. Then, with quiet persistence, I got a paper knife out of one of the drawers and with that I managed to draw the key back. I opened the door, stepped into my study, took a photograph of myself from the bureau, wrote something across it, placed it in the inside pocket of my coat and then started off for Wilson's. It was all wonderfully clear and yet disassociated from the rest of my life as the incidents of even the most vivid dream might be. A peculiar double consciousness possessed me. There was the predominant alien will which was bent upon drawing me to the side of its owner, and there was the feebler protesting personality which I recognized as being myself, tugging feebly at the overmastering impulse as a lead terrier might at its chain. I can remember recognizing these two conflicting forces, but I recall nothing of my walk nor of how I was admitted to the house. Very vivid, however, is my recollection of how I met Miss Penclosa. She was reclining on the sofa in the little boudoir in which our experiments had usually been carried out. Her head was rested on her hand, and a tiger-skin rug had been partly drawn over her. She looked up expectantly as I entered, and as the lamp light fell upon her face I could see that she was very pale and thin with dark hollows under her eyes. She smiled at me and pointed to a stool beside her. It was with her left hand that she pointed, and I, running eagerly forward, seized it. I loathed myself as I think of it, and pressed it passionately to my lips. Then, seating myself upon the stool and still retaining her hand, I gave her the photograph which I had brought with me, and talked, and talked, and talked, of my love for her, of my grief over her illness, of my joy at her recovery, of the misery it was to me, to be absent a single evening from her side. She lay quietly looking down at me with imperious eyes and her provocative smile. Once I remembered that she passed her hand over my hair as one caresses a dog, and it gave me pleasure, the caress. I thrilled under it. I was her slave, body and soul, and for the moment I rejoiced in my recovery. And then came the blessed change. Never tell me that there is not a providence. I was on the brink of perdition. My feet were on the edge. Was it a coincidence that at that very instant help should come? No. No, no. There is a providence, and its hand has drawn me back. There is something in the universe stronger than this devil woman with her tricks. Oh, what a bomb to my heart it is to think of it. As I looked up at her, I was conscious of a change in her face. Her face, which had been pale before, was now ghastly. Her eyes were dull, and the lids drooped heavily over them. Above all, the look of serene confidence had gone from her features. Her mouth had weakened. Her forehead had puckered. She was frightened and undecided. As I watched the change, my own spirit fluttered and struggled, trying hard to tear itself from the grip which held it. A grip which, from moment to moment, grew less secure. "'Austin,' she whispered, I have tried to do too much. I was not strong enough. I have not recovered yet from my illness. But I could not live longer without seeing you. You won't leave me, Austin.' This is only a passing weakness. If you will only give me five minutes, I shall be myself again. Give me the small decanter from the table in the window.' But I had regained my soul. With her waning strength, the influence had cleared away from me and left me free. And I was aggressive, bitterly fiercely aggressive. For once, at least, I could make this woman understand what my real feelings toward her were. My soul was filled with a hatred as bestial as the love against which it was a reaction. It was the savage, murderous passion of the revolted surf. I could have taken the crutch from her side and beaten her face in with it. She threw her hands up, as if to avoid a blow, and cowered away from me into the corner of the satis. The brandy she gassed, the brandy. I took the canter and poured it over the roots of a palm in the window. Then I snatched the photograph from her hand and tore it into a hundred pieces. You vile woman, I said. If I did my duty to society, you would never leave this room alive. I love you, Austin. I love you, she wailed. Yes, I cried, and Charles Sadler before. And how many others before that? Charles Sadler, she gasped. Has he spoken to you? So Charles Sadler, Charles Sadler. Her voice came through her white lips like a snake's hiss. Yes, I know you, and others shall know you, too. You shameless creature. You knew how I stood, and yet you used your vile power to bring me to your side. You may perhaps do so again, but at least you will remember that you have heard me say that I love Miss Martin from the bottom of my soul and that I loathe you, abhor you. The very sight of you and the sound of your voice fill me with horror and disgust. The thought of you is repulsive. That is how I feel toward you, and if it pleases you by your tricks to draw me again to your side as you have done tonight, you will at least, I should think, have a little satisfaction in trying to make a lover out of a man who has told you his real opinion of you. You may put what words you will into my mouth, but you cannot help remembering. I stopped, for the woman's head had fallen back and she had fainted. She could not bear to hear what I had to say to her. What a glow of satisfaction it gives me to think that, come what may, in the future she can never misunderstand my true feeling toward her. But what will occur in the future? What will she do next? I dare not think of it. Oh, if only I could hope that she will leave me alone. But when I think of what I said to her, never mind, I have been stronger than she for once. APRIL 11 I hardly slept last night and found myself in the morning so unstrong and feverish that I was compelled to ask Pratt Haldane to do my lecture for me. It is the first that I have ever missed. I rose at midday, but my head is aching, my hands quivering, and my nerves in a pitiable state. Who should come round this evening but Wilson? He has just come back from London where he has lectured, read papers, convened meetings, exposed a medium, conducted a series of experiments on thought transference, entertained Professor Rochet of Paris, spent hours gazing into a crystal, and obtained some evidence as to the passage of matter through matter. All this he poured into my ears in a single gust. But you, he cried at last, you are not looking well, and Miss Pincloza is quite prostrated today. How about the experiments? I have abandoned them. Tut, tut, why? The subject seems to me to be a dangerous one. What came his big brown notebook? This is of great interest, said he. What are your grounds for saying that it is a dangerous one? Please give your facts in chronological order with approximate dates and names of reliable witnesses with their permanent addresses. First of all, I asked, would you tell me whether you have collected any cases where the mesmerist has gained a command over the subject and has used it for evil purposes? Dozens, he cried exultantly. Crime by suggestion. I don't mean suggestion. I mean where a sudden impulse comes from a person at a distance, an uncontrollable impulse. Obsession, he shrieked in an ecstasy of delight. It is the rarest condition. We have eight cases, five well-attested. You don't mean to say. His exultation made him hardly articulate. No, I don't, said I. Good evening. You will excuse me, but I am not very well tonight. And so at last I got rid of him, still brandishing his pencil and his notebook. My troubles may be bad to hear, but at least it is better to hug them myself than to have myself exhibited by Wilson like a freak at a fair. He has lost sight of human beings. Everything to him is a case and a phenomenon. I will die before I speak to him again upon the matter. April 12. Yesterday was a blessed day of quiet, and I enjoyed an uneventful night. Wilson's presence is a great consolation. What can the woman do now? Surely when she has heard me say what I have said, she will conceive the same disgust for me which I have for her. She could not know she could not desire to have a lover who had insulted her. No, I believe I am free from her love, but how about her hate? Might she not use these powers of hers for revenge? Tute, why should I frighten myself over shadows? She will forget about me and I shall forget about her, and all will be well. April 13. My nerves have quite recovered their tone. I really believe that I have conquered the creature, but I must confess to living in some suspense. She is well again, for I hear that she was driving with Miss Wilson in High Street in the afternoon. April 14. I do wish I could get away from the place altogether. I shall fly to Agatha's side the very day that the term closes. I suppose it is pitiably weak of me, but this woman gets upon my nerves most terribly. I have seen her again, and I have spoken with her. It was just after lunch, and I was smoking a cigarette in my study when I heard the step of my servant Murray in the passage. I was languidly conscious that a second step was audible behind, and had hardly troubled myself to speculate who it might be when suddenly a slight noise brought me out of my chair with my skin creeping with apprehension. I had never particularly observed before what sort of sound the tapping of a crutch was, but my quivering nerves told me that I heard it now in the sharp wooden clack which alternated with the muffled thud of the footfall. Another instant my servant had shown her in. I did not attempt the usual conventions of society, nor did she. I simply stood with the smoldering cigarette in my hand and gazed at her. She in her turn looked silently at me, and at her look I remembered how in these very pages I had tried to define the expression of her eyes whether they were furtive or fierce. Today they were fierce, coldly and inexorably so. Well, she said at last, are you still of the same mind as when I saw you last? I have always been of the same mind. Let us understand each other, Professor Gilroy, said she slowly. I am not a very safe person to trifle with as you should realize by now. It was you who asked me to enter into a series of experiments with you. It was you who won my affections. It was you who professed your love for me. It was you who brought me your own photograph with words of affection upon it, and finally it was you who on the very same evening thought fit to insult me most outrageously, addressing me as no man has ever dared to speak to me yet. Tell me that those words came from you in a moment of passion, and I am prepared to forget and to forgive them. You did not mean what you said, Austen. You do not really hate me. I might have pitied this deformed woman such a longing for love broke suddenly through the menace of her eyes, but then I thought of what I had gone through in my heart set like flint. If ever you heard me speak of love, said I, you know very well that it was your voice which spoke, and not mine. The only words of truth which I have ever been able to say to you are those which you heard when you last met me. I know. Someone has set you against me. It was he. She tapped with her crutch upon the floor. Well, you know very well that I could bring you this instant crouching like a spaniel to my feet. You will not find me again in my hour of weakness when you can assault me with impunity. Have a care what you are doing, Professor Gilroy. You stand in a terrible position. You have not yet realized the hold which I have upon you. I shrugged my shoulders and turned away. Well, she said after a pause, if you despise my love, I must see what can be done with fear. You smile, but the day will come when you will come screaming to me for pardon. Yes, you will grovel on the ground before me, proud as you are, and you will curse the day that ever you turned me from your best friend into your most bitter enemy. Have a care, Professor Gilroy. I saw a white hand shaking in the air and a face which was scarcely human so convulsed was it with passion. An instant later she was gone, and I heard the quick hobble and tap receding down the passage. But she has left a weight upon my heart. Vague presentiments of coming misfortune lie heavy upon me. I try in vain to persuade myself that these are only words of empty anger. I can remember those relentless eyes too clearly to think so. What shall I do? What shall I do? I am no longer master of my own soul. At any moment this loathsome parasite may creep into me, and then I must tell someone of my hideous secret. I must tell it or go mad. If I had someone to sympathize and advise, Wilson is out of the question. Charles Sadler would understand me only so far as his own experience carries him. Pratt-Haldane. He is a well-balanced man, a man of great common sense and resource. I will go to him. I will tell him everything. God grant that he may be able to advise me. End of Chapter 3 The Parasite by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Parasite. A story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Chapter 4 6.45 p.m. No, it is useless. There is no human help for me. I must fight this out single-handed. Two courses lie before me. I might become this woman's lover, or I must endure such persecutions as she can inflict upon me. Even if none come, I shall live in a hell of apprehension. But she may torture me. She may drive me mad. She may kill me. I will never, never, never give in. What can she inflict, which would be worse than the loss of Agatha, and the knowledge that I am a perjured liar, and have forfeited the name of a gentleman? Pratt-Haldane was most amiable, and listened with all politeness to my story. But when I looked at his heavyset features, his slow eyes, and the ponderous study furniture which surrounded him, I could hardly tell him what I had come to say. It was also substantial, so material. Besides, what would I, myself, have said a short month ago if one of my colleagues had come to me with a story of demonic possession? Perhaps I should have been less patient than he was. As it was, he took notes of my statement, asked me how much tea I drank, how many hours I slept, whether I had been overworking much, had I had sudden pains in the head, little dreams, singing in the ears, flashes before the eyes, all questions which pointed to his belief that brain congestion was at the bottom of my trouble. Finally, he dismissed me with a great many platitudes about open-air exercise and avoidance of nervous excitement. His prescription, which was for cholerol and bromide, I rolled up and threw into the gutter. No, I can look for no help from any human being. If I consult any more, they may put their heads together, and I may find myself in an asylum. I could but grip my courage with both hands and pray that an honest man may not be abandoned. April 10. It is the sweetest spring within memory of man, so green, so mild, so beautiful. Ah, what a contrast between nature without and my own soul so torn with doubt and terror. It has been an uneventful day, but I know that I am on the edge of an abyss. I know it, and yet I go on with the routine of my life. The one bright spot is that Agatha is happy and well and out of all danger. If this creature had a hand on each of us, what might she not do? April 16. The woman is ingenious in her torments. She knows how fond I am of my work and how highly my lectures are thought of, so it is from that point that she now attacks me. It will end, I can see, in my losing my professorship, but I will fight to the finish. She shall not drive me out of it without a struggle. I was not conscious of any change during my lecture this morning, save that for a minute or two I had a dizziness and swimminess which rapidly passed away. On the contrary, I congratulated myself upon having made my subject, the functions of the red corpuscles, both interesting and clear. I was surprised, therefore, when a student came into my laboratory immediately after the lecture and complained of being puzzled by the discrepancy between my statements and those in the textbooks. He showed me his notebook in which I was reported as having in one portion of the lecture champion the most outrageous and unscientific heresies. Of course I denied it and declared that he had misunderstood me, but on comparing his notes with those of his companions it became clear that he was right and that I really had made some preposterous statements. Of course I shall explain it away as being the result of a moment of aberration, but I feel only too sure that it will be the first of a series. It is but a month now, to the end of the session, and I pray that I may be able to hold out until then. April 26. Ten days have elapsed since I have had the heart to make any entry in my journal. Why should I record my own humiliation and degradation? I had vowed never to open it again, and yet the force of habit is strong, and here I find myself taking up once more the record of my own dreadful experiences, in much the same spirit in which a suicide has been known to take notes of the effects of the poison which killed him, while the crash which I had foreseen has come, and that no further back than yesterday. The university authorities have taken my lectureship from me. It has been done in the most delicate way, purporting to be a temporary measure to relieve me from the effects of overwork, and to give me the opportunity of recovering my health. Nonetheless, it has been done, and I am no longer Professor Gilroy. The laboratory is still in my charge, but I have little doubt that that also will go soon. The fact is that my lectures had become the laughing stock of the university. My class was crowded with students who came to see and hear what the eccentric professor would do or say next. I cannot go into the detail of my humiliation. Oh, that devilish woman! There is no depth of buffoonery and imbecility to which she has not forced me. I would begin my lecture clearly and well, but always with the sense of a coming eclipse. Then as I felt the influence I would struggle against it, striving with clinched hands and beads of sweat upon my brow to get the better of it, while the students, hearing my incoherent words and watching my contortions, would roar with laughter at the antics of their professor. And then, when she had once fairly mastered me, out would come the most outrageous things. Silly jokes, sentiments as though I were proposing a toast, snatches of ballads, no abuse, even against some member of my class. And then in a moment my brain would clear again, and my lecture would proceed decorously to the end. No wonder that my conduct has been the talk of the colleges. No wonder that the university senate has been compelled to take official notice of such a scandal. Oh, that devilish woman! And the most dreadful part of it all is my own loneliness. Where I sit in a commonplace English bow window, looking out upon a commonplace English street with its garish buses and its lounging policemen, and all behind me there hangs a shadow which is out of all keeping with the age in place. In the home of knowledge I am weighed down and tortured by a power of which science knows nothing. No magistrate would listen to me. No paper would discuss my case. No doctor would believe my symptoms. My own most intimate friends would only look upon it as a sign of brain derangement. I am out of all touch with my kind. Oh, that devilish woman! Let her have a care. She may push me too far. When the law cannot help a man, he may make a law for himself. She met me in High Street yesterday evening and spoke to me. It was as well for her, perhaps, that it was not between the hedges of a lonely country road. She asked me with her cold smile whether I had been chastened yet. I did not deign to answer her. We must try another turn of the screw, said she. Have a care, my lady. Have a care. I had her at my mercy once. Perhaps another chance may come. April 28. The suspension of my lectureship has had the effect also of taking away her means of annoying me, and so I have enjoyed two blessed days of peace. After all, there is no reason to despair. Simply pours into me from all sides, and everyone agrees that it is my devotion to science and the arduous nature of my researches which have shaken my nervous system. I have the kindest message from the council advising me to travel abroad and expressing the confident hope that I may be able to resume all my duties by the beginning of the summer term. Nothing could be more flattering than their allusions to my career and to my services to the university. It is only in misfortune that one can test one's own popularity. This creature may weary of tormenting me, and then all may yet be well. May God grant it. April 29. Our sleepy little town has had a small sensation. The only knowledge of crime which we ever have is when a rowdy undergraduate breaks a few lamps or comes to blows with a policeman. Last night, however, there was an attempt made to break into the branch of the Bank of England, and we are all in a flutter in consequence. Parkinson, the manager, is an intimate friend of mine, and I found him very much excited when I walked around there after breakfast. Had the thieves broken into the counting-house, they would still have had the safes to reckon with, so that the defense was considerably stronger than the attack. Indeed, the latter does not appear to have ever been very formidable. Two of the lower windows have marks as if a chisel or some such instrument had been pushed under them to force them open. The police should have good clue for the woodwork had been done with green paint only the day before, and from the smears it is evident that some of it has found its way unto the criminal's hands or clothes. 4.30 p.m. Ah, that accursed woman! That thrice accursed woman! Never mind. She shall not beat me. No, she shall not. But oh, the she-devil! She has taken my professorship. Now she would take my honor. Is there nothing I can do against her? Can save—ah, but pushed hard as I am, I cannot bring myself to think of that. It was about an hour ago that I went into my bedroom and was brushing my hair before the glass when suddenly my eyes lit upon something which left me so sick and cold that I sat down upon the edge of the bed and began to cry. It is many a long year since I shed tears, but all my nerve was gone, and I could but sob and sob in impotent grief and anger. There was my house-jacket, the coat I usually wear after dinner, hanging on its peg by the wardrobe, with the right sleeve thickly crusted from wrist to elbow with dobs of green paint. So this was what she meant by another turn of the screw. She had made a public imbecile of me. Now she would brand me as a criminal. This time she has failed. But how about the next? I dare not think of it, and of Agatha, and my poor old mother. I wished that I were dead. Yes, this is the other turn of the screw, and this is also what she meant, no doubt, when she said that I had not realized yet the power she has over me. I look back at my account of my conversation with her, and I see how she declared that with a slight exertion of her will her subject would be conscious and with a stronger one unconscious. Last night I was unconscious. I could have sworn that I slept soundly in my bed without so much as a dream, and yet those stains tell me that I had dressed, made my way out, attempted to open the bank windows and return. Was I observed? Is it possible that someone saw me do it and followed me home? Oh, what a hell my life has become! I have no peace, no rest! But my patience is nearing its end. 10 p.m. I have cleaned my coat with turpentine. I do not think that anyone could have seen me. It was with my screwdriver that I made the marks. I found it all crusted with paint, and I have cleaned it. My head aches as if it would burst, and I have taken five grains of antipurin. If it were not for Agatha I should have taken fifty and had an end of it. May 3. Very quiet days. This hell-fiend is like a cat with a mouse. She lets me loose only to pounce upon me again. I am never so frightened as when everything is still. My physical state is deplorable, perpetual hiccup and ptosis of the left eyelid. I have heard from the Martens that they will be back the day after tomorrow. I do not know whether I am glad or sorry. They were safe in London. Once here they may be drawn into the miserable network in which I myself am struggling. I must tell them of it. I cannot marry Agatha so long as I know that I am not responsible for my own actions. Yes, I must tell them even if it brings everything to an end between us. Tonight is the university ball and I must go. God knows I had never felt less in the humor for festivity, but I must not have it said that I am unfit to appear in public. If I am seen there and have speech with some of the elders of the university, it will go a long way toward showing them that it would be unjust to take my chair away from me. 10 p.m. I have been to the ball. Charles Sadler and I went together, but I have come away before him. I shall wait up for him, however, for indeed I fear to go to sleep these nights. He is a cheery, practical fellow, and a chat with him will setting my nerves. On the whole the evening was a great success. I talked to everyone who has influence, and I think that I made them realize that my chair is not vacant quite yet. The creature was at the ball, unable to dance, of course, but sitting with Miss Wilson. Again and again her eyes rested upon me. They were almost the last things I saw before I left the room. Since as I sat sideways to her, I watched her and saw that her gaze was following someone else. It was Sadler, who was dancing at the time with the second Miss Thurston. To judge by her expression it is well for him that he is not in her grip as I am. He does not know the escape he has had. I think I hear his step in the street now, and I will go down and let him in. If he will, May 4. Why did I break off in this way last night? I never went downstairs after all. At least I have no recollection of doing so. But on the other hand I cannot remember going to bed. One of my hands is greatly swollen this morning, and yet I have no remembrance of injuring it yesterday. Otherwise I am feeling all the better for last night's festivity. But I cannot understand how it is that I did not meet Charles Sadler when I so fully intended to do so. Is it possible? My God, it is only too probable. Has she been leading me some devil's dance again? I will go down to Sadler and ask him. Midday. The thing has come to a crisis. My life is not worth living. But if I am to die, then she shall come also. I will not leave her behind to drive some other man mad as she has me. No. I have come to the limit of my endurance. She has made me as desperate and dangerous a man as walks the earth. God knows I have never had the heart to hurt a fly. And yet, if I had my hands upon that woman, she should never leave this room alive. I shall see her this very day. She shall learn what she has to expect from me. I went to Sadler and found him to my surprise in bed. As I entered he sat up and turned a face toward me, which sickened me as I looked at it. My Sadler! What has happened? I cried. But my heart turned cold as I said it. Gilroy, he answered, mumbling with his swollen lips. I have for some weeks been under the impression that you are a madman. Now I know it, and that you are a dangerous one as well. If it were not that I am unwilling to make a scandal in the college, you would now be in the hands of the police. Do you mean? I cried. I mean that, as I opened the door last night, you rushed out upon me, struck me with both your fists in the face, knocked me down, kicked me furiously in the side, and left me lying almost unconscious in the street. Look at your own hand bearing witness against you. Yes, there it was, puffed up with sponge-like knuckles after some terrific blow. What could I do? Though he put me down as a madman, I must tell him all. I sat by his bed and went over all my troubles from the beginning. I poured them out with quivering hands and burning words which might have carried conviction to the most skeptical. She hates you, and she hates me, I cried. She revenged herself last night on both of us at once. She saw me leave the ball, and she must have seen you also. She knew how long it would take you to reach home. Then she had but to use her wicked will. Ah, your bruised face is a small thing beside my bruised soul. He was struck by my story. That was evident. Yes, yes, she watched me out of the room, he muttered. She is capable of it. But is it possible that she has really reduced you to this? What do you intend to do? To stop it, I cried. I am perfectly desperate. I shall give her fair warning today, and the next time will be the last. Do nothing rash, said he. Rash! I cried. The only rash thing is that I should postpone it another hour. With that I rushed to my room, and here I am on the eve of what may be the great crisis of my life. I shall start at once. I have gained one thing today, for I have made one man at least realize the truth of this monstrous experience of mine. And if the worst should happen, this diary remains as a proof of the goad that has driven me. Evening When I came to Wilson's, I was shown up and found that he was sitting with Miss Penclosa. For half an hour I had to endure his fussy talk about his recent research into the exact nature of the spiritualistic rap, while the creature and I sat in silence looking across the room at each other. I read a sinister amusement in her eyes, and she must have seen hatred and menace in mine. I had almost despaired of having speech with her when he was called from the room, and we were left for a few moments together. Well, Professor Gilroy, or is it Mr. Gilroy, said she, with that bitter smile of hers? How is your friend Mr. Charles Sadler after the ball? You fiend, I cried. You have come to the end of your tricks now. I will have no more of them. According to what I say, I strode across and shook her roughly by the shoulder. As sure as there is a God in heaven, I swear that if you try another of your devil-trees upon me, I will have your life for it. Come what may, I will have your life. I have come to an end of what a man can endure. Accounts are not quite settled between us, said she, with a passion that equalled my own. I can love, and I can hate. You had your choice. You chose to spurn the first. Now you must test the other. It will take a little more to break your spirit, I see, but broken it shall be. Miss Martin comes back tomorrow, as I understand. What is that to do with you, I cried. It is a pollution that you should dare even to think of her. If I thought that you would harm her, she was frightened, I could see, though she tried to brazen it out. She read the black thought in my mind and cowered away from me. She is fortunate in having such a champion, said she. He actually dares to threaten a lonely woman. I must really congratulate Miss Martin upon her protector. The words were bitter, but the voice and manner were more acid still. There is no use talking, said I. I only came here to tell you, and to tell you most solemnly, that your next outrage upon me will be your last. With that, as I heard Wilson step upon the stair, I walked from the room. She may look venomous and deadly, but for all that she is beginning to see now that she has as much to fear from me as I can have to fear from her. Murder. It has an ugly sound, but you don't talk of murdering a snake or of murdering a tiger. Let her have a care now. May 5. I met Agatha and her mother at the station at eleven o'clock. She is looking so bright, so happy, so beautiful. And she was so overjoyed to see me. What have I done to deserve such love? I went back home with them and we lunched together. All the troubles seemed in a moment to have been shredded back from my life. She tells me that I am looking pale and worried and ill. The dear child puts it down to my loneliness and the perfunctory attentions of a housekeeper. I pray that she may never know the truth. May the shadow, if shadow there must be, lie ever black across my life and leave hers in the sunshine. I have just come back from them feeling a new man. With her by my side I think that I could show a bold face to anything which life might send. 5. PM. Let me try to be accurate. Let me try to say exactly how it occurred. It is fresh in my mind, and I can set it down correctly, though it is not likely that the time will ever come when I shall forget the doings of today. I had returned from the mardins after lunch and was cutting some microscopic sections in my freezing micro-tome, when in an instant I lost consciousness in the sudden hateful fashion which has become only too familiar to me of late. When my senses came back to me I was sitting in a small chamber very different from the one in which I had been working. It was cozy and bright with chintz-covered settees, colored hangings and a thousand little pretty trifles on the wall. A small ornamental clock ticked in front of me and the hands pointed to half past three. It was all quite familiar to me, and yet I stared about for a moment in a half-dazed way until my eyes fell upon a cabinet photograph of myself upon the top of the piano. On the other side stood one of Miss Marden. Then of course I remembered where I was. It was Agatha's Boudoir. But how came I there, and what did I want? A horrible sinking came to my heart. Had I been sent here on some devilish errand? Had that errand already been done? Surely it must, otherwise why should I be allowed to come back to consciousness? Oh, the agony of that moment! What had I done? I sprang to my feet in despair, and as I did so a small glass bottle fell from my knees onto the carpet. It was unbroken, and I picked it up. Outside was written Sulfuric Acid, Fort. When I drew the round glass stopper, a thick fume rose slowly up, and a pungent choking smell pervaded the room. I recognized it as one which I kept for chemical testing in my chambers. But why had I brought a bottle of vitriol into Agatha's chamber? Was it not this thick, reeking liquid with which jealous women have been known to mar the beauty of their rivals? My heart said still as I held the bottle to the light. Thank God it was full. No mischief had been done as yet. But had Agatha come in a minute sooner, was it not certain that the hellish parasite within me would have dashed the stuff into her? Ah, it will not bear to be thought of. But it must have been for that. Why else should I have brought it? At the thought of what I might have done, my worn nerves broke down, and I sat shivering and twitching, the pitiable wreck of a man. It was the sound of Agatha's voice in the wrestle of her dress which restored me. I looked up and saw her blue eyes, so full of tenderness and pity, gazing down at me. We must take you away to the country, Austin, she said. You want rest and quiet. You look wretchedly ill. Oh, it is nothing, said I, trying to smile. It was only a momentary weakness. I'm all right now again. I'm so sorry to keep you waiting. Poor boy, you must have been here quite half an hour. The vicar was in the drawing room, and as I knew that you did not care for him, I thought it better that Jane should show you up here. I thought the man would never go. Thank God he stayed. Thank God he stayed, I cried hysterically. Why, what is the matter with you, Austin, she asked, holding my arm as I staggered up from the chair? Why are you glad that the vicar stayed? And what is this little bottle in your hand? Nothing, I cried, thrusting it into my pocket, but I must go. I have something important to do. How stern you look, Austin. I have never seen your face like that. You are angry? Yes, I am angry. But not with me. No, no, my darling, you would not understand. But you have not told me why you came. I came to ask you whether you would always love me, no matter what I did or what shadow might fall on my name. Would you believe in me and trust me, however black appearances might be against me? You know that I would, Austin. Yes, I know that you would. What I do, I shall do for you. I am driven to it. There is no other way out, my darling. I kissed her and rushed from the room. The time for indecision was at an end. As long as the creature threatened my own prospects and my honor, there might be a question as to what I should do. But now, when Agatha, my innocent Agatha, was endangered, my duty laid before me like a turnpike rode. I had no weapon, but I never paused for that. What weapon should I need when I felt every muscle quivering with the strength of a frenzied man? I ran through the streets, so set upon what I had to do, that I was only dimly conscious of the faces of friends whom I met. Dimly conscious also that Professor Wilson met me, running with equal precipitants in the opposite direction. Breathless but resolute, I reached the house and rang the bell. A white cheeked maid opened the door and turned wider yet when she saw the face that looked in at her. Show me up at once to Miss Penclosa, I demanded. Sir, she gasped, Miss Penclosa died this afternoon at half past three, end of chapter four and of the story, The Parasite by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.