“And just what,” Haggard asked, “does that ominous remark mean?”
“Nothing, maybe.” Flint wasn’t very convincing.
“The word ‘catalepsy,’” Haggard began a bit uncertainly, “is a clinical description of a morbid state in which the patient lies motionless, unresponsive to stimuli, his pulse and respiration slowed, his skin pale. There is a waxy rigidity of the limbs which retain the various positions into which they may be put for a time. The cataleptic state is ordinarily involuntary, occurring in mental derangements — schizophrenia and hysteria. But it is closely allied — the exact distinction, if there is one, is vague — to autohypnosis. The hypnotist can produce cataleptic-trance symptoms in a good subject and the latter, with practice, could induce them in himself. There are a few cases on record. It’s not medically impossible, only rare.
“I suspect, though, that the fakirs, the reporters, and those doctors Merlini mentioned have been misusing the word. All the descriptions mention a very stiff rigid muscular state much more pronounced than the waxy flexibility that is usually indicative of catalepsy. It sounds much more like autohypnosis, although I don’t know that the distinction means a lot, since differentiating between them is largely a matter of definition. Due to the fact that it’s an unfamiliar thing which the layman, and a lot of M.D.’s for that matter, know little about, the fakirs pretend, and some of them may really believe, that it is something supernatural. Actually it is only abnormal. I might add that in crymotherapy, the new ‘frozensleep’ technique now being used in the treatment of cancer and schizophrenia, the patient remains in an insensible, cold-induced coma not very different from catalepsy sometimes as long as eight days.”
“All right, suppose I’m in a cataleptic coma,” Flint said, looking just a bit as if he wished he were. “How would that keep me from suffocating when I’m buried underground?”
“The lowered respiration rate,” Haggard answered. “Since it is reduced to an often indetectible minimum, a sort of super shallow breathing beyond anything that could be attained consciously, the subject would require an astonishingly small amount of air. But I doubt very much that either Rahman or Hamid Bey or any other fakir induced catalepsy in themselves to order several times a day every day on their vaudeville tours. You can’t play around with catalepsy or even autohypnosis quite as nonchalantly as all that.”
“And you don’t,” Merlini added, “when it’s quite unnecessary.”
“Unnecessary!” Flint exploded violently. “What the blazing blue hinges of hell are we talking about it for then?”
“I don’t know,” Merlini said. “You asked Haggard about it. I didn’t. Hamid’s three-hour burial doesn’t prove he used it. It was longer and more spectacular than Houdini’s hour-and-a-half underwater shallow-breathing record, but Hamid wasn’t by any means hermetically sealed. There would be considerable air in, and some seepage of air through, the loose dirt that was shoveled in above him. Voluntary, rather than trance-induced, shallow breathing could have turned the trick. If Houdini had been on deck, I suspect he’d have come forward, or rather gone down, to prove it.”
“But you said that the doctors present at Hamid’s burial admitted he was in a cataleptic trance,” Flint objected.
Merlini nodded. “I know, but most of these fakirs do seem to have one uncanny ability — they somehow always manage to pick out medical men who make sweeping assertions after only the sketchiest sort of examinations. The ballyhoo bug bites them — or something. Houdini had his examining physician take temperature, pulse, respiration, and blood-pressure readings before and after his burial. But all that the doctors examining Rahman and Hamid ever did was to note that rigidity was present, that the respiration was ‘low,’ and take the pulse rate.
“The rigidity, of course, proves nothing. Anyone can hold himself rigid during an examination. The stooges a stage hypnotist carries with his act do it all the time. Head on one chair, heels on another, they’ll let you stand on them. I’ll do that one for you myself, no hypnosis or catalepsy required. Actually Rahman’s and Hamid’s rigidity is even suspicious since the true cataleptic coma is not a rigid one at all.
“A low respiration rate is likewise meaningless. Anyone can breathe slowly, or even hold his breath and cease breathing altogether, during the few moments he is being examined. As for the pulse rate, Rahman’s, like Houdini’s, went up, which is not what you’d expect if the trance was bona fide. Hamid’s went down, from a normal 72 to 58. That effect could be produced either by autohypnosis or by purely mechanical means — pressure applied to the large artery of the arm shutting off the flow of blood. A hard object concealed under the armpit or a tight band of adhesive tape around the upper arm are the methods usually used.”
“But,” Haggard put in, “what if the reading were taken at the heart rather than the wrist? You can’t fake a low rate there.”
“No,” Merlini said. “That would tear it, unless the performer happened to be one of those abnormal and rare persons whose hearts fluctuate erratically. Or unless autosuggestion really was used. But Rahman and Hamid didn’t have to clear that hurdle. The medical examinations were so slipshod that faking was quite possible.”
“I wish to hell,” Flint said exasperatedly, “that you’d make up your mind. Did they fake it or didn’t they?”
“I suspect they did. If not, then they missed out on a swell chance to make the stunt really convincing. If they were using autosuggestion as claimed, they should have asked the doctors to roll up their sleeves and really go to town on the tests. They should have asked that the heart action be checked with an electrocardiograph, respiration with a basal-metabolism mask, and temperature with a clinical thermometer. That’s what I’d do if I wanted to impress the American Medical Association as well as the newspapermen. But I wouldn’t stay unconscious a bit longer than was necessary to cover the examination period. I’d come out of it but play possum, and go into the grave conscious so that I’d have some chance of sending out an SOS if anything went wrong. Once underground, I’d use the shallow-breathing method. The medicos couldn’t catch me at that unless they were buried alive with me.”
“That,” Flint said, eyeing both Merlini and Haggard with a disgusted look, “wouldn’t be a bad idea at all. So you want me to think that Garner is an Algerian whirling dervish who played dead, fooled Haggard, let himself be buried, stayed underground for an hour—”
“Yes. Hamid Bey’s three-hour burial makes Mr. Garner’s one-hour emulation of the hedgehog class as small potatoes. And Doctor Haggard not only had no reason to suspect monkey business in the form of self-hypnosis, but his examination was no more thorough than the ones Hamid and Rahman, underwent. Any doctor might have made the same mistake. I’m afraid it’s quite possible that Scotty may have seen just what he says he did, and that Garner may still be very much alive at this moment.”
Flint didn’t want to buy it at all. “You’ll certainly be way out on a limb it we find him dead. If he’s alive, I may have to admit he’s a shallow-breathing, human dormouse but I’ll bet I can explain Haggard’s diagnosis of death without any hypnotic cataleptic hocus-pocus. If Garner was just playing dead, then Haggard and I are going to the station for a nice little heart-to-heart talk.”
The doctor froze as if at the onset of one of the more rigid forms of trance. “Are you accusing me,” he asked coldly, “of perjury — of diagnosing death when I knew—”
“No, not yet. But I may. You gave me a signed statement certifying death, and if we find him alive—”