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saying huskily. Here you see death perfectly counterfeited death-in-life. I would defy any doctor in
the world to prove this man alive. There was a note of triumph in his voice.
My own was uneven with horror. You instructed him to be dead?"
Yes."
And he didn't know it ahead of time?"
Of course not."
For an interminable period perhaps three or four seconds I stared at the blanched form of Fearing.
Then I turned to Max.
I don't like this, I said. Get him out of it."
There was something sneering about the smile he gave me.
Watch! He commanded fiercely, and rapped again.
It was only some change in the light, I told myself, that was giving Fearing's flesh a greenish tinge.
Then I saw the limp arms and legs stiffen and the face tighten into a sardonic mask.
Touch him!"
Unwillingly, only to get the thing over with as swiftly as possible, I obeyed. Fearing's arm felt as stiff as
a board and, if anything, colder than before.
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Rigor mortis.
But that faint odor of putrescence I knew that could only be my imagination.
For God's sake, Max, I pleaded, you've got to get him out of it. Then, throwing aside reserve, I
don't know what you're trying to do, but you can't. Velda "
Max jerked as I spoke the name. Instantly the terrifying shell that had gathered around him seemed to
drop away. It was as if that one word had roused him from a dream. Of course, he said, in his natural
voice. He smiled reassuringly and rapped.
Eagerly I watched Fearing.
Max rapped again: three one.
It takes time, I told myself. Now the muscles were beginning to relax, weren't they?
But Max was rapping again. The signal printed itself indelibly on my brain: three one.
And yet again. Three one. Three one. THREE ONE.
I looked at Max. In his tortured expression I read a ghastly certainty.
I wouldn't ever want to relive the next few hours. I imagine that in all history there was never a trick
conceived for reviving the dying that Max didn't employ, along with all the modern methods
injections, even into the heart itself, electrical stimulation, use of a new lightweight plastic version of the
iron lung, surgical entry into the chest and direct massage of the heart.
Whatever suspicions I had of Max vanished utterly during those hours. The frantic genuineness and
inspired ingenuity of his efforts to revive Fearing couldn't possibly have been faked. No more could his
tragic, rigidly suppressed grief have been simulated. I saw Max's emotions stripped to the raw during
those hours, and they were all good.
One of the first things he did was call in several of the other faculty doctors. They helped him, though I
could tell that from the first they looked upon the case as hopeless, and would have considered the whole
business definitely irregular, if it hadn't been for their extreme loyalty to Max, far beyond any
consideration of professional solidarity. Their attitude showed me, as nothing else ever had, Max's
stature as a medical man.
Max was completely frank with them and everyone else. He made no effort whatsoever to suppress the
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slightest detail of the events leading up to the tragedy. He was bitter in his self-accusations, insisting that
his judgment had been unforgivably at fault in the final experiment. He would have gone even further
than that if it hadn't been for his colleagues. It was they who dissuaded him from resigning from the
faculty and describing his experiments in such inaccurately harsh terms as to invite criminal prosecution.
And then there was Max's praiseworthy behavior toward Fearing's mother. While they were still
working on Fearing, though without any real hope, she burst in. Whatever reforms the psychiatrist may
have achieved in her personality, were washed out now. I still can close my eyes and visualize that
hateful, overdressed woman stamping around like an angry parrot, screaming the vilest accusations at
Max at the top of her voice and talking about her son and herself in the most disgusting terms. But
although he was near the breaking point, Max was never anything but compassionate toward her,
accepting all the blame she heaped on his head.
A little later Velda joined Ma. If I'd still had any of my early suspicions, her manner would have
dissipated them. She was completely practical and self-possessed, betraying no personal concern
whatsoever in Fearing's death. If anything, she was too cool and unmoved. But that may have been what
Max needed at the time.
The next days were understandably difficult. While most of the newspapers were admirably reserved
and judicious in reporting the case, one of the tabloids played up Max as The Doctor Who Ordered a
Man to Die, featuring an exclusive interview with Fearing's mother.
The chorus of wild bleats from various anti-science cults was of course to be expected. It led to a
number of stories that crept into the fringe of print and would have been more unpleasant if they hadn't
been so ridiculous. One man, evidently drawing on Poe's story The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,
demanded that a death watch be maintained on Fearing and, on the morning of the funeral, hinted
darkly that they were interring a man who was somehow still alive.
Even the medical profession was by no means wholly behind Max. A number of local doctors,
unconnected with the medical school, were severe in their criticisms of him. Such sensational
experiments reflected on the profession, were of doubtful value in any case, and so forth. Though none
of these criticisms were released to the public.
The funeral was held on the third day. I attended it out of friendship for Max, who felt it his duty to be
present. Fearing's mother was there, of course, dressed in a black outfit that somehow managed to look
loud and common. Since the tabloid interview there had been a complete break between her and our
group, so that her wailing tirades and nauseous sobbing endearments could only be directed at the empty
air and the bronze-fitted casket.
Max looked old. Velda stood beside him, holding his arm. She was as impassive as on the day of
Fearing's death.
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