第54章

The Swami engaged to explain the "wonderful Karmic law," and by his method one could develop a wonderful magnetic personality by which he could win anything the human heart desired.It was therefore with great anticipation that we sought out the wonderful Swami and, falling into the spirit of his advertisement, posed as "come-ons"and pleaded to obtain this wonderful magnetism and a knowledge of the Karmic law - at a ridiculously low figure, considering its inestimable advantages to one engaged in the pursuit of criminal science.Naturally the Swami was pleased at two such early callers, and his narrow, half-bald head, long slim nose, sharp grey eyes, and sallow, unwholesome complexion showed his pleasure in every line and feature.

Rubbing his hands together as he motioned us into the next room, the Swami seated us on a circular divan with piles of cushions upon it.There were clusters of flowers in vases about the room, which gave it the odour of the renewed vitality of the year.

A lackey entered with a silver tray of cups of coffee and a silver jar in the centre.Talking slowly and earnestly about the "great Karmic law," the Swami bade us drink the coffee, which was of a vile, muddy, Turkish variety.Then from the jar he took a box of rock crystal containing a sort of greenish compound which he kneaded into a little gum - gum tragacanth, I afterward learned, - and bade us taste.It was not at all unpleasant to the taste, and as nothing happened, except the suave droning of the mystic before us, we ate several of the gum pellets.

I am at a loss to describe adequately just the sensations that Isoon experienced.It was as if puffs of hot and cold air were alternately blown on my spine, and I felt a twitching of my neck, legs, and arms.Then came a subtle warmth.The whole thing seemed droll; the noise of the Swami's voice was most harmonious.His and Kennedy's faces seemed transformed.They were human faces, but each had a sort of animal likeness back of it, as Lavater has said.The Swami seemed to me to be the fox, Kennedy the owl.Ilooked in the glass, and I was the eagle.I laughed outright.

It was sensuous in the extreme.The beautiful paintings on the walls at once became clothed in flesh and blood.A picture of a lady hanging near me caught my eye.The countenance really smiled and laughed and varied from moment to moment.Her figure became rounded and living and seemed to stir in the frame.The face was beautiful but ghastly.I seemed to be borne along on a sea of pleasure by currents of voluptuous happiness.

The Swami was affected by a profound politeness.As he rose and walked about the room, still talking, he salaamed and bowed.When=20I spoke it sounded like a gun, with an echo long afterward rumbling in my brain.Thoughts came to me like fury, bewildering, sometimes as points of light in the most exquisite fireworks.

Objects were clothed in most fantastic garbs.I looked at my two animal companions.I seemed to read their thoughts.I felt strange affinities with them, even with the Swami.Yet it was all by the psychological law of the association of ideas, though I was no longer master but the servant of those ideas.

As for Kennedy, the stuff seemed to affect him much differently than it did myself.Indeed, it seemed to rouse in him something vicious.The more I smiled and the more the Swami salaamed, the more violent I could see Craig getting, whereas I was lost in a maze of dreams that I would not have stopped if I could.Seconds seemed to be years; minutes ages.Things at only a short distance looked much as they do when looked at through the inverted end of a telescope.Yet it all carried with it an agreeable exhilaration which I can only describe as the heightened sense one feels on the first spring day of the year.

At last the continued plying of the drug seemed to be too much for Kennedy.The Swami had made a profound salaam.In an instant Kennedy had seized with both hands the long flowing hair at the back of the Swami's bald forehead, and he tugged until the mystic yelled with pain and the tears stood in his eyes.

With a leap I roused myself from the train of dreams and flung myself between them.At the sound of my voice and the pressure of my grasp, Craig sullenly and slowly relaxed his grip.Avacant look seemed to steal into his face, and seizing his hat, which lay on a near-by stool, he stalked out in silence, and Ifollowed.

Neither of us spoke for a moment after we had reached the street, but out of the corner of my eye I could see that Kennedy's body was convulsed as if with suppressed emotion.

"Do you feel better in the air?" I asked anxiously, yet somewhat vexed and feeling a sort of lassitude and half regret at the reality of life and not of the dreams.

It seemed as if he could restrain himself no longer.He burst out into a hearty laugh."I was just watching the look of disgust on your face," he said as he opened his hand and showed me three or four of the gum lozenges that he had palmed instead of swallowing.

"Ha, ha! I wonder what the Swami thinks of his earnest effort to expound the Karmic law."It was beyond me.With the Swami's concoction still shooting thoughts like sky rockets through my brain I gave it up and allowed Kennedy to engineer our next excursion into the occult.

One more seer remained to be visited.This one professed to "hold your life mirror" and by his "magnetic monochrome," whatever that might be, he would "impart to you an attractive personality, mastery of being, for creation and control of life conditions."He described himself as the "Guru," and, among other things, he professed to be a sun-worshipper.At any rate, the room into which we were admitted was decorated with the four-spoked wheel, or wheel and cross, the winged circle, and the winged orb.The Guru himself was a swarthy individual with a purple turban wound around his head.