Pilgrim Read Online Free PDF Page A

copies of their reports. I have spoken more than once to Greene on the telephone. Every effort they extended failed to produce a heartbeat. And in spite of every method of resuscitation, you also failed to breathe. Three hours—four, Mister Pilgrim, without a heartbeat. Five without breathing. Yet here you are and…”
    It is not a miracle, Doctor. Death would be the miracle. Not life.
    “Would you care to see your friend?”
    I have no friends.
    “Lady Quartermaine…”
    Sybil.
    “She is here, and would very much like to talk with you—speak with you. Would you be willing?”
    Pilgrim stood up.
    He reached across the desk and drew the doctor’s notes towards him, tearing off the top grey page. Then, page in hand, he went to the window.
    Furtwängler waited and watched him, motionless.
    Pilgrim held the paper up to the light. Spreading it against the glass, he smoothed it with his fingers.
    Still, Furtwängler did not move.
    Pilgrim pressed his forehead against the page. He pressed so hard, the frosting on the windowpane was melted.
    Then he turned and handed the page to Furtwängler.
    On it, above the Doctor’s notes, was a pattern—a design.
    For a moment, it looked almost like a word—and the word was NO .
    Its letters were not formed in ink, but in ice. Even as Furtwängler stared at them, they melted and faded away, leaving only the wet blankness of the page.

6
    That evening, Sybil Quartermaine stood staring at a large rectangular parcel that sat on a table beside the bay windows of her sitting-room at the Hôtel Baur au Lac.
    Its outer wrapping consisted of thick oiled canvastied with tough red cords. Now, the cords were cut—thanks to a hotel footman who had bowed out of the room just moments before. Sybil knew that inside, the parcel’s contents were further shrouded in layers of linen and paper. This she had discovered when she had first opened the package shortly after it had been presented to her just a week before.
    Forster had placed it on a table in her temporary rooms at number 18 Cheyne Walk, where she had taken up residence following Pilgrim’s suicide attempt. Say nothing, m’lady, he had cautioned her. These had been Pilgrim’s instructions to him—in a note deliberately placed on the floor outside Pilgrim’s bedroom, on the morning Forster had found his employer hanging from the maple tree in the garden. He had been further instructed to give the package to Lady Quartermaine and to destroy the note once he had read and understood its contents—and this he had done.
    The parcel had accompanied the rest of Sybil’s luggage to Zürich. Phoebe Peebles, her maid, had seemed puzzled by its presence—but had not dared to ask any questions.
    Nor had anyone else. And therefore Sybil Quartermaine was alone in her knowledge that she now possessed a complete set of Pilgrim’s journals. And was unsure what to do about them.
    Should she read them? They were his. They were private. But why else would Pilgrim have had them sent to her? Still, what if they revealed more than anyone should know? What if they revealed even morethan Sybil herself already knew? Or wanted to know.
    She sighed.
    Then she closed her eyes, opened them—and suddenly sat down at the table. She reached for the canvas and began to pull aside its folds. Then the linen. And finally, the paper.
    There they sat, bound in leather. Pilgrim’s writings, she thought. Pilgrim’s secrets…
    She lifted the top journal and set it on the table before her. Opening it, she began to leaf through the closely written pages, noting how meticulous Pilgrim had been about the margins—all the paragraphs squared on either side. Suddenly, a particular date caught her eye.
    By firelight: 2:00 a.m. Sunday, 1st December, 1901. Hartford Pryde.
    Henry James is given to lists. He told me this evening in the drawing-room that his journal entries almost inevitably end with columns of names.
    “People you’ve met?” I ask him. “Places you’ve