The Invisible Power
Summary
In a tawdry lantern-lit cabaret where brassy fanfares collide with the sour stench of rye, Major Dean—surgeon, mesmeric visionary—drifts through cigar haze like a pilgrim studying grotesque saints. His gaze snags on Mabel, a caged canary whose tremolo falsetto masks a pulse racing with dread of her keeper, Lorenzo, the hall’s velvet-clawed proprietor. One flex of Dean’s preternatural will and the crystal tumbler in Mabel’s hand lowers untasted; thought has become leash, suggestion scalpel. Gunfire erupts, chandeliers implode, and a bullet kisses the dancer’s skull, deleting yesterday. Dean spirits the limp body to his sanatorium-lair, diagnosing amnesia wrought by rogue cerebral pressure. While she slumbers he pours a paternal fable into her blank slate—‘You are my daughter’—until the lie calcifies into memory. West-bound to a wind-scoured fort, surrogate father and reborn child encounter grizzled Sergeant Whitney, whose eyes flood with recognition: Mabel’s silhouette mirrors the daughter lured away years earlier by a gambler he swore to throttle. Across desert scrub and bugle calls, Lorenzo tracks his erased chattel, arriving in uniformed dusk to reclaim her. Telepathic salvos crackle: Dean, framed against a window, hurls silent commandments into Mabel’s cortex, repelling the hypnotic siren song of her past exploiter. Whitney’s vendetta detonates; a midnight grapple leaves both patriarch and pimp blood-soaked, one throttled, the other bullet-drained. Mabel awakens from fugue-sleepwalking, innocently dismissing the carnage as a nightmare; history remains buried, identity rewritten, the moral ledger smudged beyond legibility.
Synopsis
Major Dean's developed mental powers have enabled him to give demonstrations in thought-suggestion. Interested in character types, the major, who is an army surgeon, visits a notorious dance hall owned by Lorenzo. The surgeon is struck by the beauty of Mabel, one of the dance hall girls. Mabel lives in deadly fear of Lorenzo. Due to the interest he takes in her Major Dean again demonstrates his wonderful power of mental suggestion by causing the girl to lay down the glass she raised to her lips. Later, a fight is started in the dance hall. All lights are shot out. Mabel is stunned by a bullet. Seizing her in his arms, Major Dean takes her to his home. The following morning finds the girl still unconscious. Major Dean's diagnosis leads him to believe that due to the wound caused by the bullet, a pressure on certain brain cells has wiped all memory of the past from Mabel's mind. Realizing that despite her condition, the girl's subconscious mind is capable o£ registering impressions, the surgeon forces upon Mabel's mind the thought she is, and always has been, his daughter. The girl is possessed of this belief when she recovers. She later accompanies Major Dean to the western army post to which he has been assigned. Sergeant Whitney, an old soldier, is stationed at the post. The man is struck by the wonderful resemblance which Mabel bears to his daughter who, several years previous, had been enticed from her home by a gambler. Although Whitney has never seen the man, he has vowed to find and kill him. Meanwhile, Lorenzo learns what has become of his former victim. Resolved to regain her, he leaves for the west. Arriving at the army post, Lorenzo demands that Dean surrender Mabel. Knowing the girl will not recognize the man, the surgeon allows her to comfort him. Mabel shrinks from Lorenzo in repulsion. Suspecting the truth, Lorenzo later waylays his former victim while she is out riding and endeavors to revive in her mind the memory of her life with him. At the same instant, Major Dean is obsessed by a sense of impending danger. The surgeon gazes out of the window through a pair of field glasses. He discovers Lorenzo talking to Mabel. Aware of the man's nefarious scheme, Major Dean concentrates his powerful will in an effort to so influence Mabel's mind as to enable her to withstand Lorenzo's hypnotic influence. The girl, who had been wavering, receives the message emanating from the major's mind. It causes her to shrink from her former master with the assertion she has no recollection of the incidents he has mentioned. The opportune arrival of Sergeant Whitney prevents Lorenzo from seizing Mabel and carrying her away. That night, Lieutenant Sibley, a young army officer who has fallen in love with Mabel, asks the major for her hand. Feeling it to be his duty, Dean informs Sibley of the girl's past. The surgeon declares it is his belief that Mabel is the daughter of Sergeant Whitney, and that Lorenzo is the man who enticed her from home. So great is his love, that Sibley vows to marry Mabel in spite of what has happened. Unknown to the two, Whitney has overheard the story. Mad with hate, he seeks Lorenzo. Unaware of his impending doom, Lorenzo resolves to make one supreme effort to regain Mabel. Seated by his window, the man fixes his mind upon Mabel with every ounce of power he possesses. Although fast asleep, the girl's mind receives the command sent forth by her former master. As though in a trance, she dons her clothes. Again the sense of danger overcomes Major Dean. He hastens towards Mabel's room. Just at this instant, Whitney enters Lorenzo's room. The rage-maddened father engages the gambler in a death struggle. While this combat rages, Mabel stands as though petrified. Securing possession of Whitney's revolver, Lorenzo shoots, wounding the old soldier mortally. Although he has received his death wound, Whitney's consuming hatred gives him strength to continue the struggle. A sudden twist, and the sergeant secures a vise-like grip on Lorenzo's throat. He forces the man back towards the bed. Mabel awakens with a start. In answer to Major Dean's anxious query, she replies that a bad dream had caused her to walk in her sleep. In Lorenzo's room, Whitney draws back from the silent form on the bed. The soldier attempts to reach the door, but his strength fails. The man staggers and crumples to the floor.
