“Mr. Laquedem,” Father Ambrose introduced the stranger to his American guests.
“Pardon me,” the newcomer remarked, “I could not help overhearing part of your conversation. You remind me of two figures in a painting of the Last Supper by a celebrated Russian. You, Professor, resemble his conception of Saint Thomas, whereas your friend suggests John the favorite disciple.”
Suddenly, the oldest of the monks placed his hand upon his heart and screamed as if someone had stabbed him. His companions splashed wine over his face, rubbed his temples, fanned him. It was not easy to revive him. “It seemed,” he whispered, “that I saw our Saviour nailed to the Cross a second time.”
When quiet was restored, Aubrey and Bassermann studied the newcomer. Mr. Laquedem was a man of uncertain age. At the first glance, one would have taken him for thirty, but on closer scrutiny, one discovered lines incompatible with youth. The name was Semitic, but there was little of the Hebrew in his caste of countenance. Certain traces suggested the Spaniard; others, so Professor Bassermann insinuated, the Russian. His quick nervous movements, his voice when raised by excitement, little mannerisms almost too trifling to be noticed, seemed more Oriental than European. In certain moments, in certain moods, he was positively Assyrian. The secrets of Egypt seemed to slumber in his long lashes. His eyes changing color with his moods, were baffling. Now they flashed like the glint of a sword, now softening, they seemed to swim with tears like eyes of one who had seen the fall of Jerusalem.
“What is your country?” Professor Bassermann asked.
“You speak English like a native,” interjected Aubrey.
“I am something of a linguist,” the other smiled.
“You are a Russian, are you not?” Bassermann again insisted.
“Call me—a Cosmopolitan.”
Isaac Laquedem toyed with the conversation. He tossed it like a ball into the air and caught it again unexpectedly with the skill of a juggler. He displayed a marvelous knowledge of out-of-the-way subjects. He spoke with such confidence of obscure authors and half forgotten periods of history that Aubrey, who listened fascinated, suspected him of being an imaginative and delightful liar rather than an erudite.
III: PROFESSOR BASSERMANN SUSPECTS
AFTER the repast, Father Ambrose invited the guests into his study, a room lighted with ancient candles in curious holders of bronze and precious wood. The tables were littered with yellow-tinted tomes in many languages. Parchments from Egypt brushed against the most recent treatises from the medical bookshops of Paris. The monk was acquainted with the revolutionary theories of the explorers of the unconscious,—Freud, Adler, and Jung.
Isaac Laquedem had retired to his room, but his valet, a young Japanese, brought with the compliments of his master, Russian cigarettes wrapped in silk, with the imperial initials.
“A brand manufactured especially for the Czar!” Professor Bassermann explained.
Aubrey lit one of the flavored cigarettes of the stranger. Curious Eastern visions rose out of the poppied smoke that curled in fantastic pillars, and colored his remarks to Bassermann and Father Ambrose.
The Japanese was patiently awaiting further orders. It was not clear whether the youth understood one word of the conversation. For a moment, an intolerably superior smile lit the wrinkles of his odd oriental mouth, but when Aubrey looked again, he saw merely a responsive servant. With a kind nod, Father Ambrose dismissed him, but Professor Bassermann, whose suspicions of the stranger had by no means been allayed, asked him whether he had traveled much with his master.
“Yes, sir,” the valet grinned.
“Have you just come from St. Petersburg?”
“Yes, sir,” the grin broadening to his ears.
“Do you like traveling?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How old are you?”
“Yes, sir,” very meekly.
Professor Bassermann suspected the lad was shamming. He asked other questions timing mentally the promptness of the response. The Oriental, eluding the scholar’s cunning psychological traps, withdrew respectfully, walking with his back toward the door. His step was noiseless, almost that of a cat. The three scholars were still discussing the valet, when Isaac Laquedem reappeared in a velvet smoking jacket. His eyes, a little cynical, a little sad, but shining with an almost uncanny luster, took in the situation.
“Kotikokura is very useful to me,” he remarked nonchalantly. “I picked him up in the East some years ago.”
“Does he speak English?” Professor Bassermann fired the question off like a shot.
“Perfectly.”
Bassermann looked eloquently at Aubrey. Isaac Laquedem caught his glance.
“Like all Orientals, Kotikokura has learned the wisdom of silence. He notices everything. He has a marvelous memory, but he never reveals himself even to me. Even I do not know what slumbers in the sub-caverns of his mind.”
“It is easy enough,” Aubrey remarked, “to rob the brain of its secrets. Psychoanalysis is the key that unlocks the uttermost portals.”
“I have read a library of psychoanalytic literature,” Father Ambrose remarked, “but its practical application is not clear to me.”
Aubrey Lowell explained Freud’s theories and his technique. Laquedem listened with grave attention. “Every century or so,” he remarked, “a new idea is discovered. To follow backward every thread in the tangled skein of one’s existence, to detect the little flaws that mar the woof, must be a fascinating experience!”
“The unconscious mind,” Aubrey added, “never forgets. The circumspect navigator sounding its secrets will find treasures as well as monsters in its mysterious depths. Every brain is a scroll scrawled over many times, but it is possible by patient analysis to decipher much, if not everything, that has gone before.”
“Unless the tablet itself is destroyed, human ingenuity can extricate the meaning of the original record, irrespective of subsequent interlineations,” Professor Bassermann remarked.
“Yes,” Aubrey continued, inhaling the smoke of his cigarette voluptuously, “I believe that it is even possible to establish memory reaching beyond the confines of the life of the individual. What are instincts, but inherited race memories?”
“It is perfectly true,” remarked Professor Bassermann, “that each organism carries within itself the history of its kind from the beginning of all life. But to attempt to conjure up the past stored in the memory cells smacks more of hocus-pocus than of science.”
“Have you ever experimented in this direction?” Father Ambrose remarked.
“No,” Aubrey replied, “psychoanalysis demands intense concentration. A perfect analysis, according to orthodox Freudians, requires three years. Even a preliminary sounding of the subconscious takes several months. Besides, the subject must be thoroughly in sympathy with the experiment.”
“Time is heavy on your hands here,” Father Ambrose added. “It will be weeks—maybe months—before you receive your visa. I am most anxious to be present at such an investigation. Even a preliminary study would be a fascinating experience. But where could we obtain a subject for the experiment?”
He unconsciously gazed at the stranger. Professor Bassermann caught the direction of his glance. He whistled softly to himself and then, as if seized by a sudden idea, he remarked: “Perhaps Mr. Laquedem would be willing to reveal his secrets to three stern priests of science?” His distrust of the stranger was evident in his words.
Isaac Laquedem smiled. “Professor Bassermann with the penetration of his remarkable mind has read my thoughts, for I was just about to volunteer my services.”
IV: PROBERS OF THE SOUL