The talkers

"The Talkers" by Robert W. Chambers is a novel written in the early 20th century. Set between postwar Paris and New York’s bohemian circles, it pits brilliant conversationalists against action, centering on the sardonic journalist Casimir Sadoul, the wary and captivating Gilda Greenway, the amoral researcher Dr. Sidney Pockman, and the decent onlooker Stuart Sutton. Mixing social satire with psychological tension and speculative medical intrigue, it explores obsession, manipulation, and the risks of living by talk alone. At the start of the story, Sadoul—a cynical writer dabbling in hypnosis—becomes possessive of Gilda, a red‑haired young woman he meets in Paris and brings back to New York, where she escapes him. In the Fireside Club’s gossiping milieu, Pockman pursues gland experiments, and at George Derring’s masked ball Gilda suddenly collapses; declared dead, she becomes the subject of Pockman’s secret graft of a “nymphalic” gland performed in Derring’s rooms while Sutton keeps vigil. Near dawn she revives, confused and in pain, and Sutton helps her home, their tentative bond beginning as Sadoul seethes and Pockman insists on studying her. Pockman then pressures Sadoul with supposed fingerprints from the fatal hairpin, while Gilda confronts Sadoul, accusing him of trying to trap her “soul” and let another self take possession, and flees. The opening closes by contrasting this turmoil with Gilda’s modest, solitary routine, underscoring the clash between the city’s talkers and the human costs of their schemes.

The talkers, by Robert W. Chambers. Republished by OpenStories from Project Gutenberg eBook #77500.