The Soul Stealer
by Guy Thorne · English · Gutenberg #40520 · 397,736 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Soul Stealer
Author: Guy Thorne
Release date: August 17, 2012 [eBook #40520]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SOUL STEALER ***
THE SOUL STEALER
BY C. RANGER-GULL
Author of "The Serf," "The Harvest of Love," "The Price of Pity,"
"A Story of the Stage," etc., etc.
LONDON
F. V. WHITE & Co., Limited
14, BEDFORD STREET, STRAND, W.C.
1906
RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED
BREAD STREET HILL, E.C., AND
BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. MR. EUSTACE CHARLIEWOOD, MAN ABOUT TOWN 1
II. UNEXPECTED ENTRANCE OF TWO LADIES 19
III. NEWS OF A REVOLUTION 31
IV. THE SECOND LOVER ARRIVES 50
V. A CONSPIRACY OF SCIENTISTS 60
VI. "WILL YOU WALK INTO MY PARLOUR?" 70
VII. ENGLAND'S GREAT SENSATION 89
VIII. THE CHIVALROUS BARONET 100
IX. GRATITUDE OF MISS MARJORIE POOLE 109
X. A MAN ABOUT TOWN PAYS A DEBT 120
XI. BEEF TEA AND A PHOSPHATE SOLUTION 130
XII. THE TOMB-BOUND MAN 150
XIII. LORD MALVIN 160
XIV. DONALD MEGBIE SEES POSSIBILITIES 171
XV. HAIL TO THE LOVERS! 190
XVI. STRANGE OCCURRENCE IN THE TEMPLE 201
XVII. MARJORIE AND DONALD MEGBIE 211
XVIII. PLANS 222
XIX. A DEATH-WARRANT IS PRESENTED TO A PRISONER 230
XX. THOUGHTS OF ONE IN DURANCE 248
XXI. HOW THEY ALL WENT TO THE HOUSE IN REGENT'S PARK 258
XXII. THE DOOM BEGINS 264
XXIII. THE DOOM CONTINUES 280
XXIV. MR. WILSON GUEST MAKES A MISTAKE 286
XXV. AT LAST! 292
XXVI. TWO FINAL PICTURES 305
THE SOUL STEALER
CHAPTER I
MR. EUSTACE CHARLIEWOOD, MAN ABOUT TOWN
Upon a brilliant morning in the height of the winter, Mr. Eustace
Charliewood walked slowly up Bond Street.
The sun was shining brightly, and there was a keen, invigorating snap in
the air which sent the well-dressed people who were beginning to throng
the pavements, walking briskly and cheerily.
The great shops of one of the richest thoroughfares in the world were
brilliant with luxuries, the tall commissionaires who stood by the heavy
glass doors were continually opening them for the entrance of
fashionable women.
It was, in short, a typical winter's morning in Bond Street when
everything seemed gay, sumptuous and debonair.
Mr. Eustace Charliewood was greeted several times by various friends as
he walked slowly up the street. But his manner in reply was rather
languid, and his clean-shaven cheeks lacked the colour that the eager
air had given to most of the pedestrians.
He was a tall, well-built man, with light close-cropped hair and a large
intelligent face. His eyes were light blue in colour, not very direct in
expression, and were beginning to be surrounded by the fine wrinkles
that middle age and a life of pleasure imprint. The nose was aquiline,
the mouth clean cut and rather full.
In age one would have put Mr. Charliewood down as four and forty, in
status a man accustomed to move in good society, though probably more
frequently the society of the club than that of the drawing-room.
When he was nearly at the mouth of New Bond Street, Mr. Charliewood
stopped at a small and expensive-looking hairdresser's and perfumer's,
passed through its revolving glass doors and bowed to a stately young
lady with wonderfully-arranged coils of shining hair, who sat behind a
little glass counter covered with cut-glass bottles of scent and ivory
manicure sets.
"Good-morning, Miss Carling," he said easily and in a pleasant voice.
"Is Proctor disengaged?"
"Yes, Mr. Charliewood," the girl answered, "he's quite ready for you if
you'll go up-stairs."
"Quite well, my dear?" Mr. Charliewood said, with his hand upon the door
which led inwards to the toilette saloons.
"Perfectly, thank you, Mr. Charliewood. But you're looking a little
seedy this morning."
He made a gesture with his glove which he had just taken off.
"Ah well," he said, "very late last night, Miss Carling. It's the price
one has to pay, you know! But Proctor will soon put me right."
"Hope so, I'm sure," she answered, wagging a slim finger at him. "Oh,
you men about town!"
He smiled back at her, entered the saloon and mounted some thickly
carpeted stairs upon the left.
At the top of the stairs a glass door opened into a little ante-room,
furnished with a few arm-chairs and small tables on which _Punch_ and
other journals were lying. Beyond, another door stood half open, and at
the noise of Mr. Charliewood's entrance a short, clean-shaved,
Jewish-looking man came through it and began to help the visitor out of
his dark-blue overcoat lined and trimmed with astrachan fur.
Together the two men went into the inner room, where Mr. Charliewood
took off his coat and collar and sat down upon a padded chair in front
of a marble basin and a long mirror.
He saw himself in the glass, a handsome, tired face, the hair too light
to show the greyness at the temples, but hinting at that and growing a
little thin upon the top. The whole face, distinguished as it was, bore
an impress of weariness and dissipation, the face of a man who lived for
material enjoyment, and did so without cessation.
As he looked at his face, bearing undeniable marks of a late sitting the
night before, he smiled to think that in an hour or so he would be
turned out very different in appearance by the Jewish-looking man in the
frock coat who now began to busy himself with certain apparatus.
The up-stairs room at Proctor's toilette club was a select haunt of many
young-middle aged men about town. The new American invention known as
"Vibro Massage" was in use there, and Proctor reaped a large harvest by
"freshening up" gentlemen who were living not wisely but too well,
incidentally performing many other services for his clients. The masseur
pushed a wheeled pedestal up to the side of the chair, the top of which
was a large octagonal box of mahogany. Upon the side were various
electric switches, and from the centre of the box a thick silk-covered
wire terminated in a gleaming apparatus of vulcanite and steel which the
operator held in his hand.
Proctor tucked a towel round his client's neck, rubbed some
sweet-smelling cream all over his face and turned a switch in the side
of the pedestal.
Immediately an electric motor began to purr inside, like a great cat,
and the masseur brought the machine in his right hand, which looked not
unlike a telephone receiver, down upon the skin of the subject's face.
What was happening was just this. A little vulcanite hammer at the end
of the machine was vibrating some six thousand times a minute and
pounding and kneading the flesh, so swiftly and silently that
Charliewood felt nothing more than a faint thrill as the hammer was
guided skilfully over the pouches beneath the eyes, and beat out the
flabbiness from the cheeks.
After some five minutes, Proctor switched off the motor and began to
screw a larger and differently-shaped vulcanite instrument to the end of
the hand apparatus.
Mr. Charliewood lay back, in a moment of intense physical ease. By means
of the electrodes the recruiting force had vibrated gently through the
nerves. New animation had come into the blood and tissues of the tired
face, and already that sensation of youthful buoyancy, which is the
surest indication of good health, was returning to his dissipated mask.
"Now then, sir," said Proctor, "I've screwed on a saddle-shaped
electrode, and I'll go up and down the spine, if you please; kindly
stand up."
Once more the motor hummed, and Mr. Charliewood felt an indescribable
thrill of pleasure as the operator applied straight and angular strokes
of the rapidly vibrating instrument up and down his broad back,
impinging upon the central nerve system of the body and filling him with
vigour.
"By Jove, Proctor," he said, when the operation was over at last, and
the man was brushing his hair and spraying bay rum upon his face--"by
Jove, this is one of the best things I've ever struck! In the old days
one had to have a small bottle of Pol Roger about half-past eleven if
one had been sitting up late at cards the night before. Beastly bad for
the liver it was. But I never come out of this room without feeling
absolutely fit."
"Ah, sir," said Mr. Proctor, "it's astonishing what the treatment can
do, and it's astonishing what a lot of gentlemen come to me every day at
all hours. My appointment book is simply filled, sir, filled! And no
gentleman need be afraid now of doing exactly as he likes, till what
hour he likes, as long as he is prepared to come to me to put him right
in the morning."
After making an appointment for two days ahead, Mr. Charliewood passed
out into the ante-room once more. During the time while he had been
massaged another client had entered and was waiting there, lounging upon
a sofa and smoking a cigarette.
He was a tall, youngish looking man, of about the same height and build
as Mr. Charliewood, clean-shaved, and with dark red hair. He looked up
languidly as Proctor helped Charliewood into his fur coat. The first
arrival hardly noticed him, but bade the masseur a good-day, and went
out jauntily into Bond Street with a nod and a smile for the pretty girl
who sat behind the counter of the shop.
It was a different person who walked down Bond Street towards
Piccadilly--a Mr. Charliewood who looked younger in some indefinite way,
who walked with sprightliness, and over whose lips played a slight and
satisfied smile.
It was not far down Bond Street--now more bright and animated than
ever--to Mr. Charliewood's club in St. James's Street, a small but
well-known establishment which had the reputation of being more select
than it really was.
Swinging his neatly-rolled umbrella and humming a tune to himself under
his breath, he ran up the steps and entered. A waiter helped him off
with his overcoat, and he turned into the smoking-room to look at the
letters which the porter had handed him, and to get himself in a right
frame of mind for the important function of lunch.
In a minute or two, with a sherry and bitters by his side and a Parascho
cigarette between his lips he seemed the personification of correctness,
good-humour, and mild enjoyment.
Very little was known about Eustace Charliewood outside his social life.
He lived in Chambers in Jermyn Street, but few people were ever invited
there, and it was obvious that he must use what was actually his home as
very little more than a place in which to sleep and to take breakfast.
He was of good family, there was no doubt about that, being a member of
the Norfolk Charliewoods, and a second son of old Sir Miles Charliewood,
of King's Lynn. Some people said that Eustace Charliewood was not
received by his family; there had been some quarrel many years before.
This rumour gained general belief, as Charliewood never seemed to be
asked to go down to his father's place for the shooting, or, indeed,
upon any occasion whatever. There was nothing against Eustace
Charliewood. Nobody could associate his name with any unpleasant
scandal, or point out to him as being in any way worse than half a
hundred men of his own position and way of life. Yet he was not very
generally popular--people just liked him, said "Oh, Eustace Charliewood
isn't half a bad sort!" and left it at that. Perhaps a certain mystery
about him and about his sources of income annoyed those people who
would like to see their neighbour's bank-book once a week.
Charliewood lived fairly well, and everybody said, "How on earth does he
manage it?" the general opinion being that his father and elder brother
paid him an allowance to keep him outside the life of the family.
About one o'clock Mr. Charliewood went into the club dining-room. The
head waiter hurried up to him, and there was a somewhat protracted and
extremely confidential conversation as to the important question of
lunch. As the waiter would often remark to his underlings, "It's always
a pleasure to do for a gentleman like Mr. Charliewood, because he gives
real thought to his meals, chooses his wine with care and his food with
discrimination, not like them young men we get up from Hoxford and
Cambridge, who'll eat anything you put before 'em, and smacks their lips
knowing over a corked bottle of wine."
"Very well," Mr. Charliewood said, "Robert, the clear soup, a portion of
the sole with mushrooms, a grilled kidney and a morsel of Camembert.
That will do very well. A half bottle of the '82 Neirsteiner and a Grand
Marnier with my coffee."
Having decided this important question, Mr. Charliewood looked round the
room to see if any of his particular friends were there. He caught the
eye of a tall, young-looking man with a silly face and very carefully
dressed. This was young Lord Landsend, a peer of twenty-one summers, who
had recently been elected to the Baobab Tree Club, and who had a
profound admiration for the worldly wisdom of his fellow member.
The young man got up from his table and came over to Mr. Charliewood.
"I say, Charlie," he said, "I'm going to motor down to Richmond this
afternoon, just to get an appetite for dinner; will you come?"
Charliewood was about to agree, when a waiter brought him a telegram
upon a silver tray. He opened it, read it, crushed the flimsy pink
Government paper in his hand and said--
"Awfully sorry, Landsend, but I've just had a wire making an appointment
which I must keep."
He smiled as he did so.
"Ah," said the young gentleman, with a giggle, prodding his friend in
the shoulder with a thin, unsteady finger. "Ah, naughty, naughty!"
With that he returned to his place, and Mr. Charliewood lunched alone.
Once he smoothed out the telegram again, and read it with a slight frown
and an anxious expression in his eyes. It ran as follows--
_Be here three this afternoon without fail._
_GOULDESBROUGH._
When Mr. Charliewood had paid his bill and left the dining-room, the
head waiter remarked with a sigh and a shake of the head that his pet
member did not seem to enjoy his food to-day. "Which is odd, Thomas,"
concluded that oracle, "because a finer sole-oh-von-blong I never see
served in the Club."
Charliewood got into a cab, gave the driver the name and address of a
house in Regent's Park, lit a cigar and sat back in deep thought. He
smoked rather rapidly, seeing nothing of the moving panorama of the
streets through which the gondola of London bore him swiftly and
noiselessly. His face wore a sullen and rather troubled expression, not
at all the expression one would have imagined likely in a man who had
been summoned to pay an afternoon call upon so famous and popular a
celebrity as Sir William Gouldesbrough, F.R.S.
There are some people who are eminent in science, literature, or art,
and whose eminence is only appreciated by a small number of learned
people and stamped by an almost unregarded official approbation. These
are the people who, however good their services may be, are never in any
sense popular names, until many years after they are dead and their
labours for humanity have passed into history and so become recognized
by the crowd. But there are other celebrities who are popular and known
to the "Man in the street." Sir William Gouldesbrough belonged to the
latter class. Everybody knew the name of the famous scientist. His
picture was constantly in the papers. His name was a household word, and
with all his arduous and successful scientific work, he still found time
to be a frequent figure in society, and a man without whom no large
social function, whether public or private, was considered to be
complete. He was the sort of person, in short, of whom one read in the
newspapers--"and among the other distinguished guests were Sir Henry
Irving, Sir Alma Tadema, Mr. Rudyard Kipling, and Sir William
Gouldesbrough."
He had caught the popular attention by the fact that he was still a
comparatively young man of five and forty. He had caught the ear and
attention of the scientific world by his extraordinary researches into
the lesser known powers of electric currents. Moreover, and it is an
unusual combination, he was not only an investigator of the lesser known
attributes of electricity who could be ranked with Tessler, Edison, or
Marconi, but he was a psychologist and pathologist of European
reputation. He was said by those who knew to have probed more deeply
into mental processes than almost any man of his time, and for two or
three years now every one who was on the inside track of things knew
that Sir William Gouldesbrough was on the verge of some stupendous
discovery which was to astonish the world as nothing else had astonished
it in modern years.
Eustace Charliewood appeared to be an intimate friend of this great man.
He was often at his house, they were frequently seen together, and the
reason for this strange combination was always a fruitful subject of
gossip.
Serious people could not understand what Gouldesbrough saw in a mere
pleasant-mannered and idle clubman, of no particular distinction or
importance. Frivolous society people could not understand how Mr.
Charliewood cared to spend his time with a man who took life seriously
and was always bothering about stupid electricity, while in the same
breath they rather admired Charliewood for being intimate with such a
very important person in England as Sir William Gouldesbrough
undoubtedly was.
For two or three years now this curious friendship had been a piquant
subject of discussion, and both Sir William's and Mr. Charliewood's most
intimate friends had spent many pleasant hours in inventing this or that
base and disgraceful reason for such a combination.
Yet as the cab rolled smoothly up Portland Place Mr. Charliewood did not
look happy. He threw his cigar away with a petulant gesture, and watched
a street arab dive for it among the traffic with a sneer of disgust.
He unbuttoned his heavy astrachan coat; it felt tight across his chest,
and he realized that his nerves were still unstrung, despite the efforts
of the morning. Then he took a cheque-book from his pocket and turned
over the counterfoils till he came to the last balance. He frowned
again, put it away, and once more leant back with a sigh of resignation.
In a few more minutes the cab drew up at a brick wall which encircled a
large house of red brick, a house built in the Georgian period.
Only the top of the place could be seen from the street, as the wall was
somewhat unusually high, while the only means of entrance was a green
door let into the brickwork, with a brass bell-pull at one side.
In a moment or two the door opened to Charliewood's ring, and a
man-servant of the discreet and ordinary type stood there waiting.
"Good afternoon, sir," he said. "Sir William expects you."
Charliewood entered and walked along a wide gravel path towards the
portico of the house, chatting casually to the butler as he went.
It could now be seen that Sir William Gouldesbrough's residence was a
typical mansion of George the First's reign. The brick was mellowed to a
pleasant autumnal tint, the windows, with their white frames and small
panes, were set in mathematical lines down the façade, a flight of stone
steps led up to the square pillared porch, on each side of which a
clumsy stone lion with a distinctly German expression was crouching. The
heavy panelled door was open, and together the guest and the butler
passed into the hall.
It was a large place with a tesselated floor and high white painted
doors all round. Two or three great bronze urns stood upon marble
pedestals. There was a big leather couch of a heavy and old-fashioned
pattern, and a stuffed bear standing on its hind legs, some eight feet
high, and with a balancing pole in its paws, formed a hat rack.
The hall was lit from a square domed sky-light in the roof, which showed
that it was surrounded by a gallery, up to which led a broad flight of
stairs with carved balustrades.
The whole place indeed was old-fashioned and sombre. After the coziness
of the smart little club in St. James's Street, and the brightness and
glitter of the centre of the West End of town, Charliewood felt, as
indeed he always did, a sense of dislike and depression.
It was all so heavy, massive, ugly, and old-fashioned. One expected to
see grim and sober gentlemen in knee-breeches and powdered hair coming
silently out of this or that ponderous doorway--lean, respectable and
uncomfortable ghosts of a period now vanished for ever.
"Will you go straight on to the study, sir?" the butler said. "Sir
William expects you."
Charliewood did not take off his coat, as if he thought that the
interview to which he was summoned need not be unduly prolonged. But
with his hat and umbrella in his hand he crossed the hall to its
farthest left angle beyond the projecting staircase, and opened a green
baize door.
He found himself in a short passage heavily carpeted, at the end of
which was another door. This he opened and came at once into Sir William
Gouldesbrough's study.
Directly he entered, he saw that his friend was sitting in an arm-chair
by the side of a large writing-table.
Something unfamiliar in his host's attitude, and the chair in which he
was sitting, struck him at once.
He looked again and saw that the chair was slightly raised from the
ground upon a low daïs, and was of peculiar construction.
In a moment more he started with surprise to see that there was
something extremely odd about Sir William's head.
A gleam of sunlight was pouring into the room through a long window
which opened on to the lawn at the back of the house. It fell full upon
the upper portion of the scientist's body, and with a muffled expression
of surprise, Mr. Charliewood saw that Sir William was wearing a sort of
helmet, a curved shining head-dress of brass, like the cup of an acorn,
from the top of which a thick black cord rose upwards to a china plug
set in the wall not far away.
"Good heavens, Gouldesbrough!" he said in uncontrollable surprise,
"what----"
As he spoke Sir William turned and held up one hand, motioning him to
silence.
The handsome and intellectual face that was so well known to the public
was fixed and set into attention, and did not relax or change at
Charliewood's ejaculation.
The warning hand remained held up, and that was all.
Charliewood stood frozen to the floor in wonder and uneasiness, utterly
at a loss to understand what was going on. The tremor of his nerves
began again, his whole body felt like a pincushion into which
innumerable pins were being pushed.
Then, with extreme suddenness, he experienced another shock.
Somewhere in the room, quite close to him, an electric bell, like the
sudden alarm of a clock on a dark dawn, whirred a shrill summons.
The big man jumped where he stood.
At the unexpected rattle of the bell, Sir William put his hand up to his
head, touched something that clicked, and lifted the heavy metal cap
from it. He placed it carefully down upon the writing-table, passed his
hand over his face for a moment with a tired gesture, and then turned to
his guest.
"How do you do?" he said. "Glad to see you, Charliewood."
CHAPTER II
UNEXPECTED ENTRANCE OF TWO LADIES
For a moment or two Eustace Charliewood did not return his host's
greeting. He was not only surprised by the curious proceeding of which
he had been a witness, but he felt a certain chill also.
"What the deuce are you up to now, Gouldesbrough?" he said in an uneasy
voice. "Another of your beastly experiments? I wish you wouldn't startle
a fellow in this way."
Sir William looked keenly at the big man whose face had become curiously
pallid.
There was a tremendous contrast in the two people in the room.
Gouldesbrough was a very handsome man, as handsome as Charliewood
himself had been in younger days, but it was with an entirely different
beauty. His face was clean shaved, also, but it was dark, clear-cut and
ascetic. The eyes were dark blue, singularly bright and direct in
glance, and shaded by heavy brows. The whole face and poise of the tall
lean body spoke of power, knowledge, and resolution.
One man was of the earth, earthy; the other seemed far removed from
sensual and material things. Yet, perhaps, a deep student of character,
and one who had gone far into the hidden springs of action within the
human soul, would have preferred the weak, easy-going sensualist, with
all his meannesses and viciousness, to the hard and agate intellect, the
indomitable and lawless will that sometimes shone out upon the face of
the scientist like a lit lamp.
Charliewood sat down in obedience to a motion of his host's hand. He sat
down with a sigh, for he knew that he had been summoned to Sir William
Gouldesbrough's house to perform yet another duty which was certain to
be distasteful and furtive.
Yes! there was no hope for it now. For the last few years the man about
town had been under the dominion of a stronger will than his, of a more
cunning, of a more ruthless brain. Little by little he had become
entangled within the net that Gouldesbrough had spread for him. And the
lure had been then and afterwards a lure of money--the one thing
Charliewood worshipped in the world.
The history of the growth of his secret servitude to this famous man
was a long one. Money had been lent to him, he had signed this or that
paper, he had found his other large debts bought up by the scientist,
and at the end of three years he had found himself willy nilly, body and
soul, the servant of this man, who could ruin him in a single moment and
cast him down out of his comfortable life for ever and a day.
No living soul knew or suspected that there was any such bond as this
between the two men. Even Charliewood's enemies never guessed the
truth--that he was a sort of jackal, a spy to do his master's bidding,
to execute this or that secret commission, to go and come as he was
ordered.
As yet all the services which Charliewood had rendered to Sir William,
and for which, be it said, he was excellently paid, were those which,
though they bordered upon the dishonourable and treacherous, never
actually overstepped the borders.
Gouldesbrough employed Charliewood to find out this or that, to make
acquaintance with one person or another, to lay the foundation, in fact,
of an edifice which he himself would afterwards build upon information
supplied by the clubman. There was no crime in any of these proceedings,
no robbery or black-mail. And what happened after he had done his work
Charliewood neither knew nor cared. Of one thing, however, he was
certain, that whatever the scientist's motives might be--and he did not
seek to probe them--they were not those of the ordinary criminal or
indeed ever bordered upon the criminal at all. All that Charliewood
knew, and realized with impotence and bitterness, was that he had
allowed himself to become a mere tool and spy of this man's, a prober of
secrets, a walker in tortuous by-paths.
"What did you wire to me for?" Charliewood said in a sulky voice. "What
do you want me to do now?"
Sir William looked quickly at his guest, and there was a momentary gleam
of ill-temper in his eyes, but he answered smoothly enough.
"My dear Charliewood, I wish you wouldn't take that tone. Surely we have
been associated too long together for you to speak to me in that way
now. It has suited your convenience to do certain things for me, and it
has suited my convenience to make it worth your while to do them. There
is the whole matter. Please let's be friendly, as we always have been."
Charliewood shrugged his shoulders.
"You know very well, Gouldesbrough," he said, "that I am in your hands
and have got to do anything you ask me in reason. However, I don't want
to insist on that aspect of the question if you don't. What did you wire
to me for?"
"Well," Sir William said, passing a cigar-box over to the other, though
he did not smoke himself, "there is a certain man that I am interested
in. I don't know him personally, though I know something about him. I
want to know him, and I want to know everything I can about him too."
"I suppose," Charliewood answered, "that there is no difficulty for you
in getting to know anybody you want to?" He said it with a slight sneer.
"Oh, of course not," Sir William answered, "but still in this case I
want you to get to know him first. You can easily do this if you wish,
you are sure to have some mutual acquaintances. When you get to know him
make yourself as pleasant as you can be to him--and nobody can do that
more gracefully than yourself, my dear boy. Become his intimate friend,
if possible, and let me know as much as you can about his habits and
objects in life. I don't want you to spare any expense in this matter if
it is necessary to spend money, and of course you will draw upon me for
all you require in the matter."
Charliewood held up his cigar and looked steadily at the crust of white
ash which was forming at the end.
"What's the man's name?" he asked without moving his eyes.
"His name," said Sir William lightly, "is Rathbone, a Mr. Guy Rathbone.
He is a barrister and has chambers in the Temple. A youngish man, I
understand, of about seven and twenty."
At the name Charliewood gave a momentary start. He allowed a slight
smile to come upon his lips, and it was not a pleasant smile.
Gouldesbrough saw it, flushed a little and moved uneasily, feeling that
although this man was his servant there were yet disadvantages in
employing him, and that he also could sting when he liked.
Directly Sir William had mentioned the name of the person on whose
actions and life, not to put too fine a point on it, he was ordering his
henchman to become a spy, Charliewood knew the reason. He realized in an
instant what was the nature of the interest Sir William Gouldesbrough
took in Mr. Guy Rathbone, barrister-at-law.
The famous scientist, long, it was said in society, a man quite
impervious to the attractions of the other sex and the passion of love,
had but a few months ago become engaged.
Wealthy as he was, distinguished, handsome and attractive in his manner,
there had not been wanting ladies who would have very gladly shared and
appropriated all these advantages. Like any other unmarried man in his
desirable position, the scientist had been somewhat pursued in many
drawing-rooms. Of late, however, the pursuit had slackened. Match-making
mothers and unappropriated daughters seemed to have realized that here
was a citadel they could not storm. Six months ago, therefore, society
had been all the more startled to hear of Sir William's engagement to
Miss Marjorie Poole, the only daughter of old Lady Poole of Curzon
Street.
Marjorie Poole was the daughter of a rather poor baronet who had died
some years before, the title going to a cousin. Lady Poole was left with
a house in Curzon Street and a sufficient income for her own life, but
that was all. And among many of the women who hunt society for a husband
for their daughters, as a fisherman whips a stream for trout, the
dowager was one of the most conspicuous.
It was said that she had angled for Sir William with an alertness and
unwearying pursuit which was at last crowned by success. More charitable
people, and especially those who knew and liked Miss Poole, said that
the girl would never have lent herself to any schemes of her mother's
unless she had been genuinely fond of the man to whom she was engaged.
There had been much talk and speculation over the engagement at first,
a speculation which had in its turn died away, and which during the last
few weeks had been again revived by certain incidents.
Eustace Charliewood, whose whole life and business it was to gather and
retail society gossip, was very well aware of the reason which made
people once more wag their heads and hint this or that about the
Gouldesbrough engagement.
Mr. Guy Rathbone had appeared upon the scene, a young barrister of good
family but of no particular fortune. Several times Mr. Rathbone had been
seen skating with Miss Poole at Prince's. At this or that dance--Sir
William Gouldesbrough did not go to dances--Rathbone had danced a good
deal with Miss Poole. Many envious and linx-like eyes had watched them
for some weeks, and men were beginning to say in the clubs that "young
Rathbone is going to put the scientific Johnny's nose out of joint."
It was this knowledge which caused the little sneering smile to appear
on Charliewood's face, and it gave him pleasure to detect the human
weakness of jealousy in the inscrutable man who held him so tightly in
his grip.
"Well, all right," Charliewood said at length. "I'll do what you want."
"That's a good fellow," Sir William answered, smiling genially, his
whole face lighting up and becoming markedly attractive as it did so,
"you've always been a good friend to me, Charliewood."
"My banking account is very low just at present," the other went on.
"Then I'll write you a cheque at once," Sir William answered, getting up
from his chair and going to the writing-table in the corner of the room.
Charliewood's face cleared a little. Then he noticed his cigar had been
burning all down one side. He dropped it into an ash-tray and put his
hand in his coat pocket to find a cigarette.
He took out an ordinary silver case, when his eye fell upon the crest
engraved upon the cover. He started and looked again, turning it so that
the light fell full upon it.
The crest of the Charliewood family was a hand with a battle-axe and the
motto, "Ne Morare," and in the usual custom it was engraved upon
Charliewood's own case.
But this was not the Charliewood crest. It was a wyvern charged on a
shield, and the motto consisted of the single word "GARDEZ."
He gave a startled exclamation.
"What's the matter?" Sir William said, turning round sharply.
"I've got some other fellow's cigarette-case," Charliewood answered in
amazement, opening it as he did so.
There was only one cigarette in the case, but there were several
visiting-cards in one compartment, and moreover the name of the owner
was cut in the inside of the lid.
The case dropped from Charliewood's fingers with a clatter, and he grew
quite pale.
"What is it?" his host inquired again.
"Have you been playing some infernal trick on me, Gouldesbrough?"
Charliewood said.
"No; why?"
"Because this cigarette-case, by some strange chance, is the
cigarette-case of the man we've been talking about, this Guy Rathbone!"
He stood up, thrusting his hands deep into the pockets of the fur coat
as he did so. Then he pulled out a letter, stamped and addressed and
obviously ready for the post.
"Good heavens!" he said, "here's something else. It's a letter for the
post."
"Who is it addressed to?" Sir William asked in a curious voice.
Charliewood looked at it and started again.
"As I live," he answered, "it's addressed to Miss Poole, 100A, Curzon
Street!"
There was a curious silence for a moment or two. Both men looked at
each other, and mingled astonishment and alarm were on the face of
either. The whole thing seemed uncanny. They seemed, while concocting
something like a plot, to have trodden unawares into another.
Suddenly Charliewood stamped his foot upon the ground and peeled off his
overcoat.
"I've got it," he cried. "Why, of course I've seen the very man myself
this morning. This is his coat, not mine. I went to a hairdresser's this
morning and left my coat in the ante-room while I was going through a
massage treatment. When I came out there was a man waiting there for his
turn, and I must have taken his coat in exchange for mine. And the man
was this Mr. Guy Rathbone, of course. You know these dark blue coats
lined with astrachan are quite ordinary, everybody is wearing them this
year. And I noticed, by Jove, that the thing seemed a little tight in
the cab! It's about the oddest coincidence that I've ever come across in
my life!"
Sir William bowed his head in thought for a minute or two.
"Well, this is the very best opportunity you could have, my dear
fellow," he said, "of making the man's acquaintance. Of course you can
take him back the coat and the cigarette-case at once."
"And the letter?" Charliewood said swiftly. "The letter to Miss Poole?"
Sir William looked curiously at his guest.
"I think," he said slowly, "that I'll just spend half-an-hour with this
letter first. Then you can take it away with the other things. I assure
you that it will look just the same as it does now."
Charliewood shrugged his shoulders.
"Have it your own way," he said contemptuously, "but don't ask _me_ to
open any letters to a lady, that's all."
Sir William flushed up and was about to make an angry reply, when the
door of the study was suddenly thrown open and they saw the butler
standing there.
There was a rustle of skirts in the passage.
"Lady Poole and Miss Poole, sir," said the butler.
CHAPTER III
NEWS OF A REVOLUTION
Marjorie and Lady Poole came into the room. For two at least of the
people there it was an agonizing moment. But a second before, Sir
William Gouldesbrough had been proposing to steal and open a letter
written by another man to his _fiancée_. But a second before, Mr.
Eustace Charliewood, the well-known society man, had sullenly acquiesced
in the proposal. And now here was Marjorie Poole confronting them.
"We thought we'd come to tea, William," Lady Poole said effusively,
going forward to shake hands with her future son-in-law. "Ah, Mr.
Charliewood, how do you do?" She gave him a bright nod, and he turned to
Marjorie, while her mother was shaking hands with the scientist.
Charliewood's face was flushed a deep red, and his hand trembled so that
the tall girl looked at him in some surprise.
Marjorie Poole was a maiden for whom many men had sighed. The oval face
with its pure olive complexion, the large brown eyes, clear as a forest
pool, the coiled masses of hair, the colour of deeply ripened corn, made
up a personality of singular distinction and charm. She was the sort of
girl of whom people asked, "Who is she?" And if younger sons and other
people who knew that they could never win and wear her, said that she
was a little too reserved and cold, it was only a prejudiced way of
expressing her complete grace and ease of manner.
"How are you, Mr. Charliewood?" she said in a clear, bell-like voice. "I
haven't seen you since the Carr's dance."
"Well, to tell the truth, Miss Poole," Charliewood answered with a voice
that had a singular tremor in it, "you startled me out of my wits when
you came in. Just a moment before, Sir William had mentioned your name,
and we were both thinking of you when, as quick as one of those
ridiculous entrances on the stage, pat upon the very word, the butler
threw open the door and you came in."
"Oh, a stage entrance!" Marjorie answered. "I don't like stage
entrances;" and turning away she went up to her _fiancé_, making it
quite clear that, whatever her opinions about the conventions of the
boards might be, she did not like Mr. Charliewood.
The big, light-haired man stayed for a moment or two, made a few
conventional remarks, and then wished his host farewell.
As he crossed the hall he began mechanically to put on the heavy
astrachan coat upon his arm, then, with a muttered curse which surprised
the butler, he took it off again and hurriedly left the house.
"Well, and how are you, William?" said Lady Poole, sitting down by the
fire. "Are you going to give us some tea? We have been paying calls, and
I told Marjorie that we would just come on and see how you were, in case
you might be in. And how is the electricity going? Why don't you invent
a flying-machine? I'm sure it would be more useful than the things you
do invent. How charming it would be to step out of one's bedroom window
into one's aëriel brougham and tell the man to fly to the Savoy!"
Gouldesbrough did not immediately reply, but old Lady Poole was used to
this.
She was a tall, florid old thing, richly dressed, with an ample and
expansive manner. Now that Sir William had proposed and the forthcoming
marriage was an accepted thing, the good lady felt her duty was done.
Having satisfied herself of Sir William's position, his banking account
and his general eligibility, she cared for nothing else, and she had
grown quite accustomed to the little snubs she received from his hands
from time to time.
Gouldesbrough was looking at Marjorie. His deep blue eyes had leapt up
from their usual intense calm into flame. The thin-cut lips were
slightly parted, the whole man had become humanized and real in a single
moment.
The sinister suggestion had dropped from him as a cloak is thrown off,
and he remembered nothing of the plot he had been hatching, but only saw
before him the radiant girl he adored with all the force of his nature
and all the passion of a dark but powerful soul, to which love had never
come before.
"How are you, dearest?" he said anxiously. "Do you know that I haven't
heard from you or seen you for nearly four days? Tell me all that you
have been doing, all that you have been thinking."
"Four days, is it?" Lady Poole broke in. "Well, you know, my dear
William, you will have plenty of time with Marjorie in the future, you
mustn't attempt to monopolize her just at present. There have been so
many engagements, and I'm sure you have been entirely happy with the
electricity, haven't you? Such a comfort, I think, to have a hobby. It
gives a real interest in life. And I'm sure, when a hobby like yours has
proved so successful, it's an additional advantage. I have known so
many men who have been miserable because they have never had anything to
do to amuse them. And unless they take up wood-carving or fretwork or
something, time hangs so heavily, and they become a nuisance to their
wives. Poor Sir Frederick only took up tact as a hobby. Though that was
very useful at a party, it was horribly boring in private life. One
always felt he understood one too well!"
Up to the present Marjorie had said nothing. She seemed slightly
restless, and the smile that played about her lips was faint and
abstracted. Her thoughts seemed elsewhere, and the scrutiny of the deep
blue eyes seemed slightly to unnerve her.
At that moment the butler entered, followed by a footman carrying a
tea-table.
Marjorie sank down with a sigh of relief.
"I'm so tired," she said in a quiet voice. "Mother's been dragging me
about to all sorts of places. William, why do you have that horrid man,
Eustace Charliewood, here? He always seems about the house like a big
tame cat. I detest him."
Gouldesbrough winced at the words. He had put his hand into the
side-pocket of his coat, and his fingers had fallen upon a certain
letter. Ah! why, indeed, did he have Charliewood for a friend?
His answer was singularly unconvincing, and the girl looked at him in
surprise. He was not wont to speak thus, with so little directness.
"Oh, I don't know, dear," he answered. "He's useful, you know. He
attends to a lot of things for me that I'm too busy to look after
myself."
Again Marjorie did not answer.
"What have you been doing, William?" she said at length, stirring the
tea in her cup.
"I've been thinking about you principally," he answered.
She frowned a little. "Oh, I don't mean in that way," she answered
quickly. "Tell me about real things, important things. What are you
working at now? How is your work going?"
He noticed that something like enthusiasm had crept into her voice--that
she took a real interest in his science. His heart throbbed with anger.
It was not thus that he wished to hear her speak. It was he himself, not
his work, that he longed with all his heart and soul this stately damsel
should care about.
But, resolute always in will, completely master of himself and his
emotion, he turned at once and began to give her the information which
she sought.
And as he spoke his voice soon began to change. It rang with power. It
became vibrant, thrilling. There was a sense of inordinate strength and
confidence in it.
While old Lady Poole leant back in her chair with closed eyes and a
gentle smile playing about her lips, enjoying, in fact, a short and
well-earned nap, the great scientist's passionate voice boomed out into
the room and held Marjorie fascinated.
She leant forward, listening to him with strained attention--her lips a
little parted, her face alight with interest, with eagerness.
"You want to hear, dearest," he said, "you want to hear? And to whom
would I rather tell my news? At whose feet would I rather lay the
results of all I am and have done? Listen! Even to you I cannot tell
everything. Even to you I cannot give the full results of the problems I
have been working at for so many years. But I can tell you enough to
hold your attention, to interest you, as you have never been interested
before."
He began to speak very slowly.
"I have done something at last, after years of patient working and
thought, which it is not too much to say will revolutionize the whole of
modern life--will revolutionize the whole of life, indeed, as it has
never been changed before. All the other things I have done and made,
all the results of my scientific work have been but off-shoots of this
great central idea, which has been mine since I first began. The other
things that have won me fame and fortune were discovered upon the way
towards the central object of my life. And now, at last, I find myself
in full possession of the truth of all my theories. In a month or two
from now my work will be perfected, then the whole world will know what
I have done. And the whole world will tremble, and there will be fear
and wonder in the minds of men and women, and they will look at each
other as if they recognized that humanity at last was waking out of a
sleep and a dream."
"Is it so marvellous as all that?" she said almost in a whisper, awed by
the earnestness of his manner.
"I am no maker of phrases," he replied, "nor am I eloquent. I cannot
tell you how marvellous it is. The one great citadel against which human
ingenuity and time have beaten in vain since our first forefathers, is
stormed at last! In my hands will shortly be the keys of the human soul.
No man or woman will have a secret from me. The whole relation of
society will be changed utterly."
"What is it? What is it?" she asked with a light in her eyes. "Have you
done what mother said in jest? Have you indeed finally conquered the
air?"
He waved his hand with a scornful gesture.
"Greater far--greater than that," he answered. "Such a vulgar and
mechanical triumph is not one I would seek. In a material age it is
perhaps a great thing for this or that scientist to invent a means of
transit quicker and surer than another. But what is it, after all? Mere
accurate scientific knowledge supplemented by inventive power. No! Such
inventions as the steam-engine, printing, gun-powder, are great in their
way, but they have only revolutionized the surface of things; the human
soul remains as it was before. What I now know is a far, far loftier and
more marvellous thing."
In his excitement he had risen and was bending over her.
Now she also rose, and stared into his face with one hand upon his arm.
"Oh, tell me," she said, "what in life can be so strange, so terrible in
its effects as this you speak of?"
"Listen," he answered once more. "You know what LIGHT is? You know that
it can be split up into its component parts by means of the prism in the
spectroscope?"
"Every child knows that to-day," she answered.
"Good!" he replied. And he went on. "I am putting this in the very
simplest possible language. I want you to see the broadest, barest,
simplest outlines. Do you know anything of the human mind? What should
you say hypnotism was, for instance, in ordinary words?"
"Surely," she replied, "it is the power of one brain acting upon
another."
"Exactly," he said, "and in what way? How is a brain, not physically
touching another brain, able to influence it?"
"By magnetism," she replied, "by"--she hesitated for a word--"by a sort
of current passing from one brain to another."
He held out both his hands in front of him. They were clasped, and she
saw that his wrists were shaking. He was terribly excited.
"Yes," he went on, his voice dropping lower and lower and becoming even
more intense, "you have said exactly the truth. The brain is a
marvellous instrument, a sensitive instrument, an electric instrument
which is constantly giving out strange, subtle, and hitherto
uninvestigated currents. It is like the transmitter at the top of Signor
Marconi's wireless telegraphy station. Something unseen goes out into
the air, and far away over the Mother of Oceans something answers to its
influence. That is exactly what happens with the human brain. Countless
experiments have proved it, the scientists of the world are agreed."
"Then----?" she said.
"Supposing I had discovered how to collect these rays or vibrations, for
that is the better word, these delicate vibrations which come from the
human brain?"
"I think I begin to see," Marjorie said slowly, painfully, as if the
words were forced from her and she spoke them under great emotion. "I
think I begin to see a little light."
"Ah," he answered, "you are always above ordinary women. There is no one
in the world like you. Your brain is keen, subtle, strong. You were
destined for me from the first."
Once more, even in the midst of her excitement, a shade passed over her
face. She touched him on the arm again.
"Go on! Tell me! Not this, not that. Tell me about the work!"
"I," he repeated, "I alone of all men in the world have learnt how to
collect the invisible vibrations of thought itself. Now, remember what I
told you at first. I mentioned Light, the way in which Light can be
passed through a prism, split up into its component parts, and give the
secret of its composition to the eye of the scientist. Not only can _I_
collect the mysterious vibrations of the human brain, but _I_ can pass
them through a spectroscope more marvellous than any instrument ever
dreamt of in the history of the world. I can take the vibrations of
thought, and discover their consistency, their strength, their MEANING."
She stared at him incredulously. "Even yet," she said, "I fail to see
the ultimate adaptation of all this. I realize that you have discovered
a hitherto unproved truth about the mechanism of thought. That is an
achievement which will send your name ringing down the avenues of the
future. But there seems to be something behind all you are telling me.
You have more to say. What is the _practical_ outcome of all this, this
theoretical fact?"
"It is this," he answered. "I hold in my hands the power to know what
this or that person, be it a king upon his throne, a girl on her wedding
day, or a criminal in the dock, is thinking at any given moment."
She started from him with a little cry. "Oh no," she said, and her face
had grown very white indeed. "Oh no, God would not allow it. It is a
power only God has."
He laughed, and in his laugh she heard something that made her shrink
back still further. It was a laugh such as Lucifer might have laughed,
who defied a Power which he would not acknowledge to be greater than
his.
"You will never do that," she said, "wonderful as you are."
"Marjorie," he answered, "I am a man with a brain that theorizes, but
never ventures upon a statement that cannot be proved by fact. If I tell
you this, if I hint broadly at the outcome of my life's work, I am doing
so, believe me, because I have chapter and verse for all I say, because
I can prove that it has passed from the dim realms of theory and of hope
into the brilliant daylight of actual achievement!"
She stared at him. His words were too much for her mind to grasp
immediately.
It was an intense moment.
But, as in real life intense moments generally are, it was broken by a
curious interruption.
A voice came thickly from the arm-chair by the fire, where old Lady
Poole had been reclining in placid sleep. It was the strange voice of
one who sleeps, without expression, but perfectly distinct.
"I will not have it, cook--(indistinguishable murmur)--explained when I
engaged you--will _not_ have men in the kitchen!"
Sir William and Marjorie looked at each other for a moment with blank
faces. Then, all overstrung as they were, the absurdity of the
occurrence struck them at the same moment, and they began to laugh
softly together.
It was a little pleasant and very human interlude in the middle of these
high matters, and at that moment the great man felt that he was nearer
to Marjorie than he had been before at any other moment of the
afternoon. She no longer hung entranced upon his impassioned and
wonderful words, she laughed with him quite quietly and simply.
Lady Poole snored deeply, and no longer vocalized the drama of her
domestic dream.
Suddenly Marjorie turned back once more to Sir William.
"It's only mother dreaming about one of the servants we have had to send
away," she said. "What a stupid interruption! Now, go on, go on!"
Her voice recalled him to his marvellous story.
"Tell me what is the actual achievement," she said.
"It is this. When you speak into a telephone the vibrations of your
voice agitate a sensitive membrane, and by means of electricity the
vibrations are conveyed to almost any distance. When Madame Melba sings
into the gramophone, her voice agitates the membrane, which in its turn
agitates a needle, which in its turn again makes certain marks upon a
waxen disc."
"Yes, go on, go on!"
"When I put a certain instrument upon the head of a man or a woman, when
I surround the field of emanation by a shield which captures the
vibrations, they are conducted to a receiver more delicate and sensitive
than anything which has ever been achieved by scientific process
before. That receiver collects these vibrations and can transmit them,
just in the manner of a telephone or telegraph wire, for almost any
distance."
"And at the other end?" Marjorie asked.
"It has been a difficulty of ten long, anxious, unwearying years."
"And now?"
"Now that difficulty has been finally overcome."
"Therefore?"
"What a person thinks in London can be sent in vibrations along a wire
to Paris."
"I see. I understand! But when there they can only be transmitted to
another brain, of course. You mean that you have invented a more
marvellous system of telegraphy than has ever been invented before. For
instance, I could sit here in this room and communicate with you with
absolute freedom in Paris. How wonderful that is! What a triumphant
achievement! But--but, William, marvellous as it is, you do not
substantiate what you said just now. The secrets of thought may be
yours, but only when the sender wills it."
"Ah," he answered, with a deep note of meaning coming into his voice.
"If I had only discovered what you say, I should have discovered much.
But I have gone far, far away from this. I have done much, much more.
And in that lies the supreme value of my work."
Once more they were standing together, strained with wonder, with
amazement and triumph passing between them like the shuttle of a loom;
once more she was caught up into high realms of excitement and dawning
knowledge, the gates of which had never opened to her brain before.
"To come back to the phonograph," Sir William said. "The marks are made
upon the waxen disc, and they are afterwards reproduced in sound,
recorded upon metal plates to remain for ever as a definite reproduction
of the human voice. Now, and here I come to the final point of all, I
have discovered a means by which thought can be turned into actual
vision, into an actual expression of itself for every one to read. What
I mean is this. I have discovered the process, and I have invented the
machine by which, as a person thinks, the thought can be conveyed to any
distance along the wire, can be received at the other end by an
instrument which splits it up into this or that vibration. And these
vibrations actuate upon a machine by the spectroscope, by the bioscope,
which show them upon a screen in the form of either pictures or of words
as the thoughts of the thinker are at that moment sent out by the brain
in words or pictures."
"Then what does this mean?"
"It means that once my apparatus, whether by consent of the subject or
by force, is employed to collect the thought vibrations, then no secrets
can be hidden. The human soul must reveal itself. Human personality is
robbed of its only defence. There will be no need to try the criminal of
the future. He must confess in spite of himself. The inviolability of
thought is destroyed. The lonely citadel of self exists no longer. The
pious hypocrite must give his secret to the world, and sins and sinners
must confess to man what only God knew before."
Marjorie sat down in her chair and covered her face with her hands.
Various emotions thronged and pulsed through her brain. The stupendous
thing that this man had done filled her with awe for his powers, with
terror almost, but with a great exultation also. She did not love him,
she knew well that she had never loved him, but she realized her
influence over him. She knew that this supreme intellect was hers to do
with as she would. She knew that if he was indeed, as he said, master of
the world, she was mistress of his mind, she was the mistress of him.
The mysterious force of his love, greater than any other earthly force
which he could capture or control, had made him, who could make the
minds of others his slaves and instruments, the slave of her.
Yes! LOVE! That, after all, was the greatest force in the whole world.
Here was a more conclusive proof than perhaps any woman had ever had
before in the history of humanity.
Love! Even while the inmost secrets of nature were wrested from her by
such a man as this, love was still his master, love was still the motive
power of the world.
And as she thought that, she forgot for a moment all her fears and all
her wonder, in a final realization of what all the poets had sung and
all the scientists striven to destroy. Her blood thrilled and pulsed
with the knowledge, but it did not thrill or pulse for the man whose
revelations had confirmed her in it. The man whom she had promised to
marry was the man who had confirmed her in the knowledge of the truth.
And all he had said and done filled her with a strange joy such as she
had never known before.
At that moment Sir William came towards her. He had switched on the
electric light, and the room was now brilliantly illuminated. In his
hand he held a large oval thing of brass, bright and shining.
At that moment, also, old Lady Poole woke up with a start.
"Dear me," she said, "I must have taken forty winks. Well, I suppose, my
dear children, that I have proved my absolute inability to be _de trop_!
What are you doing, William?"
"It's a little experiment," Sir William said, "one of my inventions,
Lady Poole. Marjorie, I want you to take off your hat."
Marjorie did so. With careful and loving hands the great man placed the
metal helmet upon her head. The girl let him do so as if she were in a
dream. Then Sir William pressed a button in the wall. In a few seconds
there was an answering and sudden ring of an electric bell in the study.
"Now, Marjorie!" Sir William said, "now, all I have told you is being
actually proved."
He looked at her face, which flowered beneath the grotesque and shining
cap of metal.
"Now, Marjorie, everything you are thinking is being definitely recorded
in another place."
For a moment or two the significance of his words did not penetrate to
her mind.
Then she realized them.
Lady Poole and the scientist saw the rapt expression fade away like a
lamp that is turned out. Horror flashed out upon it, horror and fear.
Her hands went up to her head; she swept off the brilliant helmet and
flung it with a crash upon the ground.
Then she swayed for a moment and sank into a deep swoon.
She had been thinking of Mr. Guy Rathbone, barrister-at-law, and what
her thoughts were, who can say?
CHAPTER IV
THE SECOND LOVER ARRIVES
On the evening of the day in which she had fainted, Marjorie Poole sat
alone in the drawing-room of her mother's house in Curzon Street.
It was a large, handsome place, furnished in the Empire style with
mirrors framed in delicate white arabesques, and much gilding woven into
the pattern. The carpet was a great purple expanse covered with laurel
wreaths of darker purple.
There was but little furniture in the big, beautiful place, but it was
all airy, fantastic and perfect of its kind. There was a general air of
repose, of size and comely proportion in this delightful room. Here, an
old French clock clicked merrily, there were two or three inlaid
cabinets, and upon the walls were a few copies of some of Watteau's
delightful scenes in the old courtly gardens of Versailles.
Marjorie wore a long tea-gown, and she was sitting quite alone in the
brilliantly lit place, with a book in her hand. The book was in her
hand indeed, but she was not reading it. Her eyes were fixed upon the
opposite wall, though they saw nothing there. Her thoughts were busy and
her face was pale.
She had recovered from her swoon in a minute or two, and found her
mother fussing round her and her lover generally skilful in doing all
that was necessary. And a short time afterwards she had driven home with
Lady Poole.
What she had heard, the very strain of hearing and being so intensely
interested in it, had taken her strength away. Then had come the words
when Sir William told her that the very thoughts that she was thinking
at that moment were being in some mysterious way recorded and known. And
she knew that she had been thinking of another man, thinking of him as
an engaged girl should never think.
But as she had returned to consciousness, Sir William had told her
kindly and simply that if she had feared her thoughts, whatever they
might be, were known to him, she need fear no longer. "There was no
one," he said, "observing any record of vibrations from your dear mind.
Do you think that I should have allowed that, Marjorie? How could you
think it of me?"
She had driven home relieved but very weary, and feeling how complex
life was, how irrevocable the mistakes one made from impulse or lack of
judgment really were.
Ambition! Yes, it was that that had brought her to where she was now.
Her heart had never been touched by any one. She never thought herself
capable of a great love for a man. From all her suitors she had chosen
the one who most satisfied her intellectual aspirations, who seemed to
her the one that could give her the highest place, not only in the
meaningless ranks of society, but in and among those who are the elect
and real leaders of the world.
And now? Well, now she was waiting because Guy Rathbone was coming to
the house.
A letter from him had arrived just before dinner. She had expected it by
an earlier post, the post by which all his letters usually came, and she
had been impatient at its non-arrival. But it had come at last, and she
was sitting in the drawing-room waiting for him now.
He was on intimate terms in that house, and came and went almost as he
would, old Lady Poole liking to have young people round her, and feeling
that now Marjorie's future was satisfactorily settled, there was no need
to bar her doors to people she was fond of, but who, before the
engagement, she would have regarded as dangerous.
Even as Marjorie was thinking of him, the butler showed Guy Rathbone
into the room.
Marjorie got up, flushing a little as she saw him.
"Mother's very tired," she said; "she's not well to-night, and so she's
gone to bed. Perhaps you'd rather not stay."
He sat down, after shaking hands, without an answer in words. He looked
at her, and that was his answer.
He was a tall young man, as tall as Sir William, but more largely built,
with the form and figure not of the student but rather of the athlete.
His face was clean-shaven, frank, open and boyishly good-looking; but a
pair of heavy eyebrows hung over eyes that were alert and bright,
robbing the upper part of his face of a too juvenile suggestion. His
head was covered with dark red curls, and he had the walk and movements
of perfect health and great physical power, that had once led a
dyspeptic friend at the Oxford and Cambridge Club to remark of him, that
"Rathbone is the sort of fellow who always suggests that he could eat
all the elephants of India and pick his teeth with the spire of
Strasburg Cathedral afterwards."
There was force about him, the force of clean, happy youth, health, and
a good brain. It was not the concentrated force and power of Sir
William, but it was force nevertheless.
And as he came into the room, Marjorie felt her whole heart go out to
him, leaping towards him in his young and manly beauty. She knew that
here indeed was the one man that would satisfy her life for ever and a
day. He was not famous, he was clever without having a great intellect,
but for some reason or other he was the man for her. She knew it, and
she feared that he was beginning to know she knew it.
He was sitting in the chair, when he turned and looked her straight in
the face.
"I have come to-night," he said, "to say something very serious, very
serious indeed. I am glad Lady Poole isn't here, just for to-night,
Marjorie."
"I've told you you oughtn't to say Marjorie," she said.
"Well," he answered, "you've called me Guy for a good long time now, and
one good turn deserves another."
He smiled, showing a perfect and even row of teeth, a smile so simple,
hearty and spontaneous that once more that furiously beating heart of
hers seems striving to burst its physical bonds and leap to him.
Then he passed his hand through his hair, and his face immediately
became full of perplexity and doubt.
"I should have been here before," he said, "only I was detained. I met
a man who happened to take my overcoat to-day in mistake for his own
from the hairdresser's. He turned out to be a decent sort of chap, and I
couldn't get rid of him at once. But that's by the way. I've come here
to say something which is awfully difficult to say. I've fought it out
with myself, and I've wondered if I should be a bounder in saying it.
I'm afraid I'm going to say something that a gentleman oughtn't to say.
I don't know. I really don't know. But something within tells me that if
I don't say it I should be doing something which I should regret all my
life long. But you must forgive me, and if after what I've said to you
you feel that I oughtn't to have done so, I do beg you will forgive me,
Marjorie. Will you forgive me?"
Her voice was very low. "Yes," she said in almost a whisper.
"You are engaged to another man," he said. "I don't know him, I have
never seen him. I know he is a great swell and very important. A year
ago, if anybody had told me that I was going to talk to a girl who was
engaged to another man as I'm going to talk to you, I should probably
have knocked him down. Shows one never knows, doesn't it, Marjorie?"
She began to breathe quickly. Her breast rose and fell, her agitation
was very manifest. The tears were beginning to well up in her eyes. She
hated herself for this visible emotion; she did her best to control it,
but it was utterly impossible, and she knew that she was telling him
even now what she knew also he most desired to hear.
He got up from his chair, big, forceful, manly and young, and was by her
side in a moment.
"Marjorie," he said, "dear, sweet girl, I can't help telling you,
however wrong it may be. I love you, I love you deeply and dearly. I am
quite certain, I don't know how, but I'm certain, and nothing in the
world could persuade me I wasn't, that I'm the man who was made for you,
and that you're the girl who was made for me. I can't put it poetically,
I don't know how to say it beautifully, as the Johnnies say it in the
novels and on the stage, but, darling, I love you."
There was a catch and a break in his voice; a sob had come into it.
Then he went on. "Do you know, Marjorie, I can't help thinking somehow
that you must have made a mistake--" He was kneeling now by the side of
her chair. His arms stole round her, she made no motion to forbid it. It
was a moment of absolute surrender, a surrender which she had no power
to withstand.
And now he held her in his strong arms, his kisses fell upon her lips,
her head was on his shoulder, she was sobbing quietly and happily. With
no word of avowal spoken, she gave herself to him at that moment. He had
felt, and his whole body was shaken with joy and triumph, that come what
might, she was his in spirit if indeed she could never be his in any
other way.
It was a great moment for those two young lives. Young man and maid,
knowing themselves and each other for the first time. It wasn't
romantic, exactly, there was nothing very striking about it, perhaps,
but it was sweet--ah! unutterably sweet!
* * * * *
He was walking about the room.
"You must tell him," he said, "dearest. You'll have to go through so
much more than I shall, and it cuts me to the heart to think of it.
You'll have to face all the opposition of everybody, of your people, of
society and the world generally. And I can't help; you'll have to go
through this alone. It's a bitter thought that I can't help you. Dear,
dare you fight through this for me? Are you strong enough? are you brave
enough?"
She went up to him, and placed both her hands upon his shoulders,
looking straight into his face.
"I have been wicked," she said, "I have been wrong. But perhaps there
were excuses. Until one has felt love, real love, Guy, one doesn't
realize its claims or the duties one owes it. I was ambitious. I liked
William well enough. He interested me and stimulated me. I felt proud to
think that I was to be the companion of a man who knew and had done so
much. But now the mere thought of that companionship fills me with fear.
Not fear of him, but fear of the treachery I should have done my nature
and myself if I had married him. I don't know what will happen, but here
and now, Guy, whatever may be the outcome, I tell you that I love you,
and I swear to you, however wrong it may be, whatever violence I may be
doing to my plighted troth, I tell you that, however great the
unworthiness, I will be yours and yours alone. I know it's wrong, and
yet, somehow, I feel it can't be wrong. I don't understand,
but--but----" He took her in his arms once more and held her.
It was late, and he was going, and was bidding her farewell. He knelt
before her and took her hand, bowing over it and kissing it.
"Good-night," he said, "my lady, my love, my bride! I am with you now,
and shall be with you always in spirit until we are one--until the end
of our lives. And whatever may be in store in the immediate future I
shall be watching and waiting, I shall be guarding you and shielding you
as well as I can, and if things come to the worst, I shall be ready, and
we will count the world well lost, as other wise lovers have done, for
the sacred cause and in the holy service of Love."
So he bowed over her slim white hand and kissed it, looking in his
beauty and confidence and strength like any knight of old kneeling
before the lady he was pledged to serve. And when he was gone, and she
was alone in her room up-stairs, Marjorie was filled with a joy and
exhilaration such as she had never known before. Yet there seemed
hanging over the little rosy landscape, the brightly-lit landscape in
which she moved, a dark and massive cloud.
She dreamt thus. She dreamt that this cloud grew blacker and blacker,
and still more heavy, sinking lower and lower towards her. Then she saw
her lover as a knight in armour cutting upwards with a gleaming sword
until the cloud departed and rushed away, and all was once more bathed
in sunlight. She knew the name of that sword. It was not Excalibur, it
was Love.
CHAPTER V
A CONSPIRACY OF SCIENTISTS
Sir William Gouldesbrough had been up very late the night before. He
came down from his room on a grey morning a fortnight after the day on
which he had told Marjorie something of his hopes. It was nearly twelve
o'clock. He had not retired to rest until four upon the same morning.
And when he had at last left the great laboratories built out of the
back of the house, he had stumbled up to his room, a man drunk with an
almost incredible success--a success of detail so perfect and complete
that his intelligence staggered before the supreme triumph of his hopes.
But the remaining portion of the night, or rather during the beginning
of the chill wintry dawn, he had lain alone in his great Georgian
bedroom, watching the grey light filtering into the room, flood by
flood, until the dark became something more terrible, something filled
with vast moving shadows, with monstrous creatures which lurked in the
corners of the room, with strange half lights that went and came, and
gave the wan mirrors of the wardrobe, of the mantel-shelf, a ghost-like
life only to withdraw, and then once more increase it.
And as this great and famous man lay in this vast lonely room without
power of sleep, two terrible emotions surged and throbbed within
him,--two emotions in their intensity too great for one mind to hold.
One was the final and detailed triumph of all he held dear in the world
of science and in the department of his life's work. The other was the
imminent and coming ruin of his heart's hope, and the love which had
come to him, and which had seemed the most wonderful thing that life
could give.
Yes, there he lay, a king of intellect, a veritable prince of the powers
of the air, and all his triumph was but as dust and ashes and
bitterness, because he knew that he was losing a smaller principality
perhaps, but one he held dearer than all his other possessions.
Emperor of the great grey continent of science, he must now resign his
lordship of the little rosy principality of Love.
So, as he came down-stairs close upon mid-day of the winter's morning--a
tall distinguished figure in the long camel's-hair dressing-gown, with
its suggestion of a monk's robe--the butler who was crossing the hall
at the time was startled by the fixed pallor of his face.
The man went up to him.
"Excuse me, Sir William," he said, "but you're working too hard. You're
not well, sir. You mustn't overdo it. I have got you a sole and
mushrooms for breakfast, sir, but I should not advise you to touch it,
now I've seen you. If you'll allow me to offer my advice, I should
suggest a bowl of soup."
"Thank you, Delaine," Sir William answered. "But I don't think I could
even take anything at present. Will you send my letters into the study?"
"Yes, Sir William," the man replied, "and I shall make so bold as to
bring you a bowl of soup in half-an-hour, as well."
Gouldesbrough crossed the great gloomy hall and entered the study.
A bright fire was glowing on the hearth, the place was all dusted, tidy
and cheerful, even though the world outside was a blank wall of fog.
He stood up in the middle of the room. Tall, columnar, with a great
dignity about him, had there been any one there to see. It was a dual
dignity, the dignity of supreme success and the dignity of irremediable
pain.
The butler came in with the letters upon a copper tray. There was a
great pile of them, and as the man closed the door after he put the tray
upon the writing-table, Sir William began to deal the letters like a
pack of cards, throwing this and that one on the floor, with a shuffling
movement of the wrist, and as he did so his eyes were horrid in their
searching and their intensity. At last he came to the one he sought. A
letter addressed to him in a bold but feminine handwriting. As his
fingers touched it a loud sob burst out into the silence of the room.
With shaking fingers he tore it open, standing among the litter of the
unopened letters, and began to read.
He read the letter right through, then walked to the mantel-piece,
leaning his right arm upon it as if for support. But the tension was now
a little relaxed. He had come down to find the worst, to meet the
inevitable. He had met it, and there was now neither premonition of the
moment of realization nor the last and torturing flicker of despairing
hope.
This was the letter. It began without preface or address--
"You must have known this was coming. Everything in your manner has
shown me that you knew it was coming. And for that, unhappy as I
am, I am glad. I have a terrible confession to make to you. But
you who are so great, you who know the human mind from your great
height, as a conquering general surveys a country from a
mountain-top, you will understand. When you asked me to marry you
and I said 'Yes,' I was pleased and flattered, and I had a
tremendous admiration and respect for you and for all you have
done. Then when we came to know each other, I began to see the
human side of you, and I had, and if you will let me say so, still
have, a real affection for you. And had it not been that something
more powerful than affection has come into my life, I would have
been a true and faithful wife and companion to you.
"But you have seen, and you must know, that things are changed. Are
we not all subject to the laws of destiny, the laws of chance? Is
it not true that none of us on our way through the world can say by
whom or how we shall be caught up out of ourselves and changed into
what we could not be before? Oh, you know it all. You of all men
know it!
"I need not here speak in detailed words, because from things you
have seen you know well enough what I am about to say, of whom I
would speak if I could. But it is enough, William, to tell you what
you already know. That I love some one else, and that if I am true
to myself, which is after all the first _duty_ of all of us, I
could never marry you. I can never be to you what you wish or what
I would like to be as your wife. I am stricken down with the
knowledge of the pain all this will give you, though, thank God, it
is not a pain for which you are unprepared. I dare not ask your
forgiveness, I can say nothing to console you. I have acted
wickedly and wrongly, but I cannot do anything else but what I am
doing.
"Forgive, if you can. Think kindly, if you can, of Marjorie."
Now he knew. He folded the letter gently, kissed it--an odd action for a
man so strong--and put it in the inside pocket of his coat, which
pressed next his heart.
Then he rang the bell.
"Ask Mr. Guest to come," he said.
"Very well, Sir William," the butler answered, "but Mr. Charliewood has
just arrived."
"Then ask him in," Gouldesbrough answered.
Charliewood came into the room.
"By Jove!" he said, "you look about as seedy as I've ever seen you
look!"
Sir William went up to him and put his hand upon his shoulder.
"Look here," he said, "I've had a smack in the face this morning,
Charliewood. You know what it is, I need not tell you. And look here,
too, I'm going to ask you to help me as you've never helped me before.
I'm afraid, old fellow, I've often been a nuisance to you, and often
rather rubbed in the fact that you owe me money, and that you've had to
do things for me. Forgive me now, if you will. I'm going to call upon
you for active friendship."
"Oh," Charliewood answered, "we won't talk about friendship between you
and me. I've done what I had to do and there's enough."
Sir William still held him by the shoulder. "You don't really feel that,
Charliewood?" he said in a quiet voice, and as he did so the magnetism
of his personality began to flow and flood upon the weaker man and
influence him to kindliness.
"Well, well," he said, "what is it now? I suppose we've been running
round a vicious circle and we've come to the last lap?"
"That's just about it," Sir William answered. "Just let me say that this
is the last service I shall ever ask from you. I'll give you back all
the I.O.U.'s and things, and I'll give you enough money to put yourself
absolutely right with the world, then we'll say good-bye."
Charliewood started. "That's awfully good of you," he said. "I don't
think that I want to say good-bye. But still, what is it?"
"Rathbone," Sir William answered, pronouncing the name with marked
difficulty.
"It's all over then?" Charliewood answered.
"Yes."
"I thought it would be. I have told you all that has been going on, and
I knew it would be."
"She's written to me this morning," Gouldesbrough said. "A kind letter,
but a letter finishing it all."
Then the weaker, smaller man became, as so often happens in life, the
tempter--the instrument which moves the lever of a man's career towards
the dark sinister side of the dial.
Charliewood was touched and moved by the unexpected kindness in his
patron's voice.
"Don't say it's finished," he said; "nothing is finished for a man like
you, with a man like me to help him. Of course it's not finished. You
have not always been all you might to me, William, but I'll help you
now. I'll do anything you want me to do. Buck up, old boy! You will pass
the post first by a couple of lengths yet."
"How?"
"Well, what were you going to ask me to do?"
They looked each other in the face with glowing eyes and pale
countenances, while a horrible excitement shone out upon them both.
At that moment the door opened very quietly, and an extraordinary person
came into the room.
He was a short, fat, youthful-looking man, with a large, pink, and quite
hairless face. The face was extremely intelligent, noticeably so, but it
was streaked and furrowed with dissipation. It told the story not of the
man who enjoyed the sensuous things of life in company, and as part of a
merry progress towards the grave, but it betrayed the secret sot, the
cunning sensualist private and at home.
This man was Mr. Guest, Sir William's faithful assistant in science, a
man who had no initiative power, who could rarely invent a project or
discover a scientific fact, but a man who, when once he was put upon the
lines he ought to go, could follow them as the most intelligent
sleuth-hound in the scientific world.
Wilson Guest was perhaps the greatest living physicist in Europe. He was
of inestimable value to his chief, and he was content to remain between
the high red-brick walls of the old house in Regent's Park, provided
with all he needed for his own amusements, and instigated to further
triumphs under the ægis of his master.
"Well, what is it?" said this fat, youthful and rather horrible-looking
person.
"We've come to grips of the great fact, Guest," Sir William answered,
still with his hand upon Charliewood's shoulder.
The pink creature laughed a hollow and merciless laugh.
"I knew it would come to this," he said, "since you have added another
interest to your scientific interests, Gouldesbrough. Why have you
called me in to a consultation?"
Gouldesbrough's whole face changed; it became malignant, the face of a
devil.
"I'm going to win," he said. "I've had a knock-down blow, but I'm going
to get up and win still! Mr. Rathbone must disappear. That can be easily
arranged with the resources at our command."
Guest gave a horrible chuckle.
"And when we've got him?" he said.
"He must disappear for always," Gouldesbrough answered.
"Quite easy," Guest replied. "Quite easy, William. But, _not until we've
done with him, shall he_?"
"What do you mean?"
"Why, isn't it the last condition of our experiments that we should have
some one a slave, a dead man to the world, to use as we shall think fit?
Here's your man. Do what you like to him afterwards. Let's make your
rival a stepping-stone to your final success."
Then the three men looked at each other in fear.
Charliewood and Sir William Gouldesbrough were pale as linen, but the
short, fat man was pink still, and laughed and chuckled nervously.
CHAPTER VI
"WILL YOU WALK INTO MY PARLOUR?"
Mr. Eustace Charliewood's chambers were in Jermyn Street. But few of his
many friends had ever seen the interior of them. Such entertaining as
the man about town did--and he was always one of those who were
entertained, rather than one of those who offer hospitality--was done at
his club.
The man who looked after the place and valeted his master was therefore
the more surprised when Charliewood had called him up one morning after
breakfast.
"Look here, William," Charliewood had said, "I've got a gentleman coming
to dinner. We've some business to talk over, so I shan't dine him at the
club. I suppose you can manage a little dinner here?"
"Certainly, sir, if necessary," the man answered. "Of course you're not
in the habit of dining at home, and you've not got your own things. That
is if you mean a proper little dinner, sir."
"I do, I do, William," his master answered hurriedly.
"But, there, that needn't matter," the man answered, "we can have
everything in if you like, sir."
"That will be best," Charliewood answered. "I leave everything to you,
William. Except," he added as an afterthought, "the menu. I want a small
dinner, William, but quite good. Shall we say a little _bisque_ for the
soup? Then perhaps a small Normandy sole. Afterwards a chicken cooked
_en casserole_. As an _entrée_ some white truffles stewed in
Sillery--you can get them in glass jars from Falkland & Masons--and then
a morsel of Brie and some coffee. That will do, I think."
"And about the wine, sir?" said William, astonished at these
unaccustomed preparations, and inwardly resolving that Mr. Eustace
Charliewood had discovered a very brightly plumed pigeon to pluck.
"Oh, about the wine! Well, I think I'll see to that myself. I'll have it
sent up from the club. You've an ice-pail for the champagne, haven't
you, William?"
"Yes, sir, we certainly have _that_."
"Very good then. We'll say at eight then."
William bowed and withdrew.
All that day the various members of this or that fast and exclusive
club round about St. James's Street, noticed that Eustace Charliewood
was out of form. His conversation and his greetings were not so
imperturbably cheerful and suave as usual. He took no interest in the
absorbing question as to whether young Harry Rayke--the Earl of Spaydes'
son--would after all propose to Lithia Varallette, the well-known
musical comedy girl. The head waiter of the Baobab Club noticed Mr.
Charliewood was off his food, and everybody with whom the man about town
came in contact said that "Richard was by no means himself."
As the evening drew on, a dark, foggy evening, which promised as night
came to be darker and foggier still, Charliewood's agitation increased,
though just now there was no one to see it.
He walked down St. James's Street, past Marlborough House, and briskly
promenaded the wide and splendid avenue which now exists in front of
Buckingham Palace. The fog made him cough, the raw air was most
unpleasant, and it was no hour for exercise. But, despite the cold and
misery of it all, Charliewood continued his tramp backwards and
forwards.
When he returned to his chambers in Jermyn Street, about seven o'clock,
he found that his clothes were wet with perspiration, and only a hot
bath before dressing for dinner and a couple of bromide tabloids in a
wine-glass full of milk seemed to bring him back to his ordinary
condition.
When, however, he went into his little dining-room, to all outward
appearances he was the usual Eustace Charliewood of the pavements and
club-rooms of the West End.
The room was comfortable. A bright fire glowed upon the hearth, shining
upon the high-class sporting prints, the subdued wall-paper, the
comfortable padded chairs, and the shelves loaded with bachelor
nick-nacks and sporting trophies of his youth.
In one corner was a little round table set for two, gleaming with glass
and silver and lit by electric lights covered with crimson shades.
It was all very warm and inviting. He looked round it with satisfaction
for a moment.
Then, suddenly, as he stood on the hearth-rug, he put his plump, white
hand with the heavy seal ring upon it, up to his throat. The apple moved
up and down convulsively, and for a single moment the whole being of the
man was filled with overmastering fear of the future and horror and
loathing for himself.
The spasm passed as quickly as it came, the drug he had taken asserted
its grip upon the twitching nerves, the man whose whole life was
discreet adventure, who was a soldier of social fortune, who daily
faced perils, became once more himself.
That is to say, to put it in two words, his better angel, who had held
possession of him for a moment, fled sorrowfully away, while the
especial spirit deputed to look after the other side of him happened to
chance that way, and remembering he had often found a hospitable
reception from Mr. Eustace Charliewood, looked in, found his old
quarters duly swept and garnished, and settled down.
Charliewood's rooms were on the ground floor. In a minute or two, it was
about a quarter to eight, he heard someone upon the steps outside, in
Jermyn Street, and then the electric bell whirr down below in the
kitchen.
He rushed out into the hall. It generally took William some time to
mount from the lower regions, which were deep in the bowels of the
earth, and no doubt Mr. Charliewood kindly desired to spare the butler
the trouble of opening the door.
So, at least, William thought, as he mounted the kitchen stairs and came
out into the hall to find Mr. Charliewood already helping his guest off
with his coat and showing him into the dining-room. William did not know
that there were any special reasons in Mr. Charliewood's mind for not
having his guest's name announced and possibly remembered by the
servant.
"Well, my dear Rathbone, how are you?" Charliewood said, and no face
could have been kinder or more inviting and pleasant to see than the
face of the host. "Awfully good of you to come and take me like this,
but I thought we should be more comfortable here than at the Club. There
are one or two things I want to talk over. I'll do you as well as I can,
but I can't answer for anything. You must take pot luck!"
Guy Rathbone looked round the charming room and laughed--a full-blooded,
happy laugh.
"I wish you could see my chambers in the Temple," he said. "But you
fellows who live up this end do yourselves so jolly well!"
"I suppose one does overdo it," Charliewood answered, "in the way of
little comforts and things. It's a mistake, no doubt, but one gets used
to it and was brought up to it, and so just goes on, dependent upon
things that a sensible man could easily do without. Now, sit down and
have a sherry and bitters. Dinner will be up in a minute. And try one of
these cigarettes. It's a bad plan to smoke before dinner, I know, as a
rule, but these little things just go with the sherry and bitters, and
they are special. I get them over from Rio. They're made of black
Brazilian tobacco, as you see; they're only half as long as your finger,
and instead of being wrapped in filthy, poisonous rice paper, they're
covered with maize leaves."
Rathbone sank into the luxurious chair which his host pointed out to
him, took the sherry, in its heavily cut glass, and lit one of the
cigarettes. He stretched out his feet towards the fire and enjoyed a
moment of intense physical ease. The flames and the shaded electric
lights shone upon his fine and happy face, twinkled upon the stud in his
shirt front, and showed him for what he was at that moment--a young
gentleman intensely enjoying everything that life had to give.
In a moment or two more dinner was served.
"You needn't wait, William," Charliewood said, as they sat down to the
_hors d'oeuvre_. "Just put the soup on and I'll ring when we're ready."
"So good of you to ask me," Rathbone said. "I should have gone to the
Oxford and Cambridge Club, had a beef-steak, looked at the evening
papers, and then returned to chambers to write letters. Rather a dismal
proceeding on a night like this!"
"Hadn't you anything on to-night, then?" Charliewood asked carelessly.
"Not a single thing," Rathbone answered. "I've been cutting all my
engagements during the last week or two, telling people I was going out
of town. I've got a special reason for working very hard just now."
Charliewood started, and a slight gleam came into his eyes.
"Good idea, that!" he said, "telling people you're going out of town
when you want to be quiet for a week or two!"
"It is," Rathbone replied. "At most of the houses I'm in the habit of
going to just now every one thinks I'm away. I've been living the life
of a recluse, as far as society goes."
Charliewood slightly lifted a glass of Pol Roger.
"Here's success to the work, my dear boy," he said jovially. "And I
congratulate myself on the odd accident which brought us together. And
of course I don't know you very well, Rathbone, and I am sure I should
hate to be impertinent in any way. But still, as you know, I go about
everywhere, and one can't help hearing things. And, besides, I'm in a
special position in regard to a certain matter, too. Here's my best wish
for your happiness in the future, in another way!"
He looked straight into the young man's eyes as he said this, and as he
did so Rathbone, whose glass was lifted in response, began to colour
until his whole face became crimson.
"I haven't offended you?" Charliewood said quickly.
"Oh--er--not a bit, of course," Rathbone answered with manifest
uneasiness. "But I didn't know that anything had got about. I didn't
know that you knew. Oh, confound it," he concluded, "I don't want to
talk about my own affairs; I----Hang it all, Charliewood, tell me
straight out what you mean."
"I repeat," Charliewood answered, "that I haven't known you very long,
and therefore I am very chary of in any way infringing the natural
reticence that should be between men in our position. Still, you know
who I am; everybody knows all about me, and I should like you to believe
that I am really a friend."
As he said this, though his face was full of frankness and kindliness
once more, Charliewood felt that sick loathing of himself he had
experienced just before his guest had arrived. There was a throbbing at
his temples, his throat felt as if it were packed with warm flour. He
hurriedly gulped down some champagne and went on. "Everybody knows by
this time," he said in a quiet voice, "that--that--well, old chap, that
there has been a sort of set to partners and a change in certain
quarters."
At that moment William appeared with the fish, Charliewood having rung
for him at the psychological moment, knowing that the little interlude
would give his guest time to collect his thoughts.
When the man had once more left the room, Rathbone, who had been biting
his lips in perplexity and drumming upon the table with his fingers,
bent towards his host.
"I see you know all about it," he said; "and, upon my word, if you'd let
me, I should like to talk things over with you from one point of view."
"My dear Rathbone," Charliewood replied, "say nothing whatever to me
unless you like, but understand that what you did say would be said in
absolute confidence, and that if the experience of a man older in social
life, and accustomed to all its vagaries, can help you, I give it to you
with all my heart."
"Now I call that very good of you, Charliewood," the young man answered.
"I'll tell you straight out, what you probably already know, and I'll
ask you for a hint as to what I ought to do. Miss Poole"--he mentioned
the name with obvious reluctance--"has found that she made an--er, well,
a sort of mistake in her affections. I have no doubt it's all over
London that she's written to Sir William Gouldesbrough telling him so."
"Throwing him over, in fact," Charliewood said.
"If you like to put it so," the other answered, "and of course that is
just what it amounts to."
"Well then?" Charliewood said.
"I feel in a sort of way that I've done an awfully caddish thing,"
Rathbone went on. "Fortunately, I am not in Gouldesbrough's set. I don't
know him at all. At the same time it's awfully bad form to make love to
a girl who's engaged to any one else. And that, unconsciously, is just
what I seem to have been doing for a very long time. But, believe me,"
he concluded with a singular simplicity and boyishness, "I really
couldn't help it."
Charliewood laughed a little and then sighed to himself.
"I quite understand," he said; "these things do and will happen, and it
wasn't your fault at all. But I do think it's very wrong if a girl who
finds that she has made a mistake doesn't put it right before it becomes
unavoidable."
"Do you really?" Rathbone cried. "Well, do you know, that's just my
point of view, and it relieves me to hear you say so."
"And do you know," Charliewood replied, "that I'm probably the most
intimate friend William Gouldesbrough has in the world?"
Rathbone started. "Good Lord!" he said. "Then--what--then--why? And you
really mean that you can be friends with me?"
"That's just what I do mean," Charliewood answered; "and now we've got
to the point, I will tell you frankly that though our meeting was a pure
accident in the first place, I am awfully glad that we did meet and that
you are here to-night. I have talked the whole matter over with poor
dear Sir William a good deal lately. He has done me the honour to make
me his confidant in the matter. Two or three days ago I mentioned that I
knew you."
"What did he say?" Rathbone asked quickly.
"I can't tell you his words," Charliewood answered, "but I can tell you
their purpose. And it was a wonderful revelation to me of the strength
and beauty of my old friend's character. He's a fine fellow, Rathbone,
and when you know him you'll say so too."
"Know him?" Rathbone said. "My dear Charliewood, surely you see that
it's impossible that I should meet a man to whom I have unconsciously
done such a great injury."
"Ah," Charliewood answered, "you don't know William. It is just the
possibility which makes his character so fine. Practically, what he said
to me was this. 'You know this young fellow, Eustace. Is he a decent
sort of man? A gentleman in ideas, as well as in position, clean living
and all that?' 'As far as I know,' I answered, 'he's just so in every
way.'"
Once more Rathbone coloured up to the eyes.
Charliewood went on.
"Then William unburdened himself to me fully. 'I only want Marjorie
Poole to be happy,' he said, 'and when the proper time arrives I shall
just write and tell her so. I was fond of her, deeply fond of her; what
man would not be? I thought if she cared for me that she would be a
worthy mistress of my house, and an ideal partner to share my fortune
and the position I have won. But I am much older than she is. I am
immersed, as you know, in grave, scientific pursuits, and I quite
realize that I could not give her what as a young girl she has a right
to expect. I don't say that I relinquish my claim upon her without a
pang, but I have other interests, and my wife and love could in any case
only be a part of my life. Do you know what I should like to do more
than anything else, Eustace?' 'What?' I said. 'Why,' he continued, 'to
meet this young Mr. Rathbone. To tell him all that I am telling you,
perfectly frankly, to shake him by the hand, and, by Jove, to be the
best man at his wedding, if he'd let me. Then I shall get back to my
inventions with a quiet mind, knowing that the only girl who has ever
touched me in the least degree is safe and happy.'"
Rathbone pushed back his chair and jumped up.
"Why, heavens," he said, "what a noble fellow! There's a _man_, if you
like. I can quite see it all, Charliewood, and you've relieved my mind
of a tremendous weight. I can see it all quite distinctly. One of the
most distinguished and charming men of the day sees a beautiful and
intellectual girl and thinks the time has come when he must marry. Of
course, he can't really know what _love_ is, like a younger man or a man
who has not made his mark in the world. He can't feel what I feel, for
instance. And so he bows to the inevitable, and in the kindest and most
chivalrous way wants to make every one happy. Charliewood! It's just
like a story-book!"
"I don't read 'em myself much, the papers do for me. But, 'pon my soul,
since you put it in that way, so it is."
Mr. Charliewood quite forgot to add what sort of story-book. Even the
most popular novels of to-day don't always have the traditional happy
ending.
"Sit down, old fellow," Charliewood said with great kindness. "You
mustn't miss this chicken, it is a rather special dish, and I'm going to
ring for William."
"Oh, hang chicken!" Rathbone answered, his face glowing.
"Never abuse your dinner," Charliewood answered. "Only people who are
not able to dine do that. You never know when you may dine again."
As he said this the wicked exhilaration at having successfully played
with sure and dexterous fingers upon this young and impressionable
nature flowed over the older man. An evil joy in his own powers came to
him--a devilish satisfaction in his knowledge of the horrid future. For
a moment the Tenant who had lately taken up his abode within Mr. Eustace
Charliewood was looking out of his host's eye.
Rathbone laughed carelessly. Then, after the waiter had once more
entered and left the room, he bent over the table and began to speak
more earnestly.
"I suspect," he said, "that I owe you a great deal in this matter,
Charliewood, more than you would care to confess. Now tell me, don't I?"
Charliewood waved his hand.
"Oh, we won't go into that part of the question," he said. "But there's
just one thing I would like to say. Your feeling in the matter has been
quite splendid, Rathbone. I admire you for the way you have felt and
spoken since you have been telling me about your engagement, from first
to last. Such a lot of men would have congratulated themselves upon
winning the girl away from the other fellow without a thought of what
the other fellow would feel. Now look here, I do think you owe William
this much reparation----"
"Anything in the world I can do----" Rathbone was beginning.
"Well, there's one thing you can do," Charliewood answered, "you can
satisfy him that you're the sort of man to whom he would care to
surrender Miss Poole. He is willing and anxious to make friends with
you. In fact, I know he is most anxious to meet you. I admit that it may
be rather an awkward meeting for you, but I think that you owe it to
him, considering the way in which he regards the whole affair."
"Of course I will meet him," Rathbone answered. "I shall be proud to
meet a man like that. Any time you like."
"Well, I don't want to press things, Rathbone; but, personally, I should
say there was no time like the present. We are sure to find
Gouldesbrough in to-night after dinner. Suppose we walk up to Regent's
Park and call on him. I know you will be received in the kindest way, in
a way you never suspected before we talked the matter over."
"We'll do it," Rathbone answered, "and I shall leave his house to-night
feeling a great burden has been removed from me."
Charliewood made no answer to this last remark but merely pushed the
champagne-bottle over to his guest.
* * * * *
An hour afterwards the two men, both with the astrachan coats which
brought them so curiously together turned up about their ears, were
walking briskly towards Oxford Street. The fog was very heavy and few
people were about, though Charliewood said he knew exactly how to find
the way.
"You needn't worry," he said, "we'll go up Portland Place, and I can
find Sir William's house without the least trouble. In fact, I think it
would be a mistake to take a hansom on a night like this. The roads are
horribly greasy. You can't see the lights of any vehicle a few yards
ahead, and we're just as likely to be run into as not. Of course, if
you'd rather ride----"
"Not a bit," Rathbone answered, "exercise will do me good, and I shall
feel calmer and more prepared for the interview. I'm not a sybarite like
you are, and after a dinner like you've given me I should not be nearly
in such good form unless I did have a walk."
"Right oh!" Charliewood replied; "then come along. We will walk fast to
keep warm."
They went on, neither talking much, because of the thick fog that stung
the nostrils and the eyes and poured down the throat when the mouth was
opened.
In about three-quarters of an hour they had passed up Portland Place,
turned to the left and were drawing near the house they sought.
"It's not very far now," Charliewood said.
He shook as he said so, and his voice had a very muffled sound.
"Don't you talk, old fellow," Rathbone answered. "I can see you're cold,
and this fog plays the deuce with the lungs. Do keep quiet; there's no
need to say anything. I'll follow where you lead."
They stood at last before the little door in the high wall of Sir
William Gouldesbrough's house.
In the distance the faint rumble of London came to their ears, but there
was not a soul about. Nobody saw them as Charliewood opened the door
with a pass-key, explaining to Rathbone that Sir William had given him
the key in order to save the servants coming through the garden.
"I'm always in and out of the house," he explained, still with the cold
and fog in his voice.
They opened the door, and it clicked behind them.
Rathbone brushed against some laurel bushes.
"I say," he said, "how dark it is here! You must conduct me,
Charliewood, up this path. Let me take your arm."
He took his friend's arm, noticing with wonder how the cold seemed to
have penetrated the bones of his host; for the big man's whole body was
trembling.
The gravel crunched beneath their feet as they walked for thirty yards
or so. Then Rathbone saw a dim light above his head. It was the lamp
which hung in the porch. His feet knocked against the step.
"Here we are," Charliewood said; "six steps, and then the front door."
Once more Charliewood produced a key, opened the massive door of the
hall, and entered with his friend.
"Take off your coat," he said, as Rathbone looked round wonderingly at
the big, gloomy and dimly-lit place. "This is rather miserable, but
Gouldesbrough has got a little snuggery down the passage, where we shall
be quite comfortable. Are you ready? Very well, then, come along."
The house seemed absolutely still, save for Charliewood's echoing
footsteps as he led the way towards the door on the right-hand side of
the wide staircase.
Rathbone followed him. As he did so the sombre emptiness of the place
began to steal over his nerves and influence them, coupled, no doubt,
with the expectation of the coming interview.
He shuddered a little, and wished that he was back again in the cosy
little room in Jermyn Street.
Then a green baize door opened, they passed through, and it swung back
noiselessly behind them.
CHAPTER VII
ENGLAND'S GREAT SENSATION
In the course of a week or so London, and shortly afterwards the whole
of England, realized that a new and absorbing sensation was dawning.
Perhaps there is nothing which more excites the popular mind than the
sudden disappearance of anybody from whatever class of society.
It began to be realized, whispered and hinted at in the newspapers that
a young and rising barrister of good family, named Mr. Guy Rathbone, of
the Inner Temple, had suddenly vanished. It was but a year or two before
that the whole of the country had been thrilled by the sad case of Miss
Hickman. The event and the excitement it had raised at the time were
still fresh in the public mind; and when it began to be rumoured that
something even more sensational than that had taken place, the Press
began to be on the alert. In ten days' time such as were known of the
facts of Mr. Guy Rathbone's apparent departure from ordinary life had
become the topic of the hour. The newspapers were filled with columns of
surmises. Hour by hour, as the evening papers of London and the
provinces appeared, new theories, clues, explanations filled the leader
pages and the contents' bills. The "Rathbone Mystery," as it was called,
absorbed the whole interest of the country. An announcement of war would
have been momentarily disregarded by the man in the street, while he yet
remained unsatisfied as to the truth about the young gentleman who
seemed to have been utterly wiped out from the world of men and women,
to have vanished into thin air without a trace of his movements or a
single clue as to his whereabouts.
All that was accurately known was summed up again and again in the Press
and in general conversation, and it amounted to just this and no more.
Mr. Guy Rathbone was in fairly prosperous circumstances; he had an
income of his own, was slowly but steadily climbing the laborious ladder
of the Bar, was popular in society, and, as far as could be ascertained,
had no troubles of any sort whatever.
It was shown that Rathbone was not in debt, and practically owed nothing
whatever, except the ordinary current accounts, which he was accustomed
to settle every quarter. He had a fair balance at the bank, and his
securities, which provided him with his income, were intact. His life
had been a singularly open one. His movements had never suggested
anything secret or disreputable. His friends were all people in good
circumstances, and no one had ever alleged any shady acquaintances
against him. He was in perfect health, was constantly in the habit of
taking exercise at the German Gymnasium, still played football
occasionally, and held a commission in the Inns of Court Volunteers. He
had never been observed to be downcast or despondent in any way. In
short, there was no earthly reason, at any rate upon the surface, for a
voluntary withdrawal on his part from the usual routine of his life.
The idea of suicide was frankly scouted by both friends, acquaintances
and business connections. People do not destroy themselves without a
real or imaginary reason, and this young man had always been regarded as
so eminently healthy-minded and sane, that no one was prepared to
believe even that he had made away with himself in a sudden fit of
morbidity or madness. It was shown that there had been no taint of
insanity in his family for several generations. The theory of suicide
was clearly untenable. This was the conclusion to which journalists,
police, and the new class of scientific mystery experts which has sprung
up during the last few years unanimously came. Moreover, in the London
of to-day, or even in the country, it is a most difficult thing for a
man to commit suicide without the more or less immediate discovery of
his remains.
There was not wanting the class of people who hinted at foul play. But
that theory was immensely narrowed by the fact that no one could have
had any motive for murdering this young man, save only a member of the
criminal classes, who did so for personal gain. It was quite true that
he might have been robbed and his body cunningly disposed of. Such
things have happened, such things do, though very rarely, happen in the
London of to-day. But the class of criminal who makes a practice and
livelihood of robbery with violence, of attempted or actual murder, is a
small class. Every member of it is intimately known to the police, and
Scotland Yard was able to discover no single suspicious movement of this
or that criminal who might reasonably be concerned in such an affair.
Moreover, it was pointed out that such criminals were either invariably
brought to justice or that, at any rate, the _fact_ that some one or
other unknown has committed a murder is invariably discovered within a
week or so of the occurrence.
For fourteen days the hundreds of people engaged in trying to solve this
mystery had found no single indication of foul play.
Where, then, was Guy Rathbone? Was he alive? was he dead? Nobody was
prepared to say.
The one strange circumstance which seemed to throw a tiny light upon the
mystery was this. For a fortnight or so before his disappearance, Mr.
Rathbone, usually in the habit of going a good deal to dinner-parties,
dances, and so on, had declined all invitations. Many people who had
invited him to this or that function now came forward and announced that
their invitations had been declined, as Mr. Rathbone had said he was
going out of town for a short time. Inquiries in the Temple showed that
Mr. Rathbone had not been out of town at all. He had remained almost
entirely in his chambers, and even his appearances in the Law Courts,
where he had only done three days' actual work for the last week or two,
had been less frequent than usual.
Rathbone was in the habit of being attended to by a woman who came early
in the morning, lit the fires, prepared his bath and breakfast, and then
swept the chambers. The woman generally arrived at seven and left about
twelve, returning again for an hour about six in the evening, to make up
the fires and do anything else that might be required. Rathbone either
lunched in the Inner Temple or in one of the Fleet Street restaurants.
If not dining out, he generally took this meal at the Oxford and
Cambridge Club, of which he was a member.
The waiters in the Temple Hall said that his attendance had not been
quite as regular as usual in the fortnight or so before his
disappearance, but they certainly thought that they had seen him every
other day or so.
The woman who looked after the chambers stated that Mr. Rathbone had
remained indoors a good deal more than usual, seeming to be engrossed in
law books. On several occasions when she had arrived at six in the
evening, she had found that he did not require his dress clothes put
out, and had asked her to bring him in some sandwiches or some light
food of that description, as he intended to work alone far into the
night.
These slight divergencies from his ordinary habits were, every one
agreed, significant of something. But what that something was nobody
knew, and the wild suggestions made on all sides seemed to provide no
real solution.
The last occasion upon which Mr. Rathbone had been seen by any one able
to report the occurrence was in the early morning at breakfast. Mrs.
Baker, the bed-maker, had cooked the breakfast as usual, and had asked
her master if he would excuse her attendance in the evening, as she had
a couple of orders for the Adelphi, in return for displaying the bills
of the theatre in a little shop she kept with her daughter in a street
off Holborn.
"My master seemed in his usual spirits," the good woman had said in an
interview with a member of the staff of the _Westminster Gazette_. "He
gave me permission at once to go to the theatre, and said that he
himself would be out that evening. There was no trace of anything
unusual in his manner. When I arrived in the morning and opened the
outer doors of the chambers with my pass key, I went into the study and
the sitting-room as usual, lit two fires, turned on the bath, made a cup
of tea and took it to Mr. Rathbone's bedroom. There was no answer to my
knock, and when I opened the door and went in, thinking he was
over-sleeping himself, I found the bed had not been slept in. This was
very unusual in a gentleman of Mr. Rathbone's regular habits. It would
not have attracted my notice in the case of some gentlemen I have been
in the habit of doing for, who were accustomed to stay out without any
intimation of the fact. But I did think it strange in the case of Mr.
Guy, always a very steady gentleman. I waited about till nearly one
o'clock, and he did not return. I then went home, and did not go to the
chambers again till six o'clock, when I found things in the same state
as before, the fires burnt out, and no trace of anybody having entered.
As I left the Inn I asked the porter if he had seen Mr. Rathbone, and he
replied that he had not returned. The same thing happened for the next
two days, when the porter communicated with the authorities of the Inn,
and an inspector of police was called in."
The interview disclosed few more facts of importance, save only one.
This was that Mr. Rathbone had dressed for dinner on the night of his
disappearance. His evening clothes were not in the wardrobe, and the
morning suit he had been wearing at breakfast was neatly folded and
placed upon a chest of drawers ready for Mrs. Baker to brush it.
This seemed to show indubitably that the barrister had no thought of
being absent from home that night.
There the matter had rested at first. Meanwhile, as no new discovery was
made, and not the slightest ray of light seemed to be forthcoming, the
public interest was worked up to fever heat. Rathbone had few relations,
though many friends. His only surviving relative appeared to be his
uncle, a brother of his mother, who was the Dean of Bexeter. The
clergyman was interviewed, and stated that he generally received a
letter from his nephew every three weeks or so, but nothing in the most
recent letter had been unusual, and that he was as much in the dark as
any ordinary member of the public.
This much was known to the man in the street. But in society, while the
comment and amazement was no less in intensity, much more was known than
the outside world suspected.
For some time past every one had remarked the apparent and growing
intimacy between the lost man and Miss Marjorie Poole, who was engaged
to the famous scientist, Sir William Gouldesbrough, F.R.S. How far
matters had gone between the young couple was only conjectured, but at
the moment of Rathbone's disappearance it was generally believed that
Miss Poole was about to throw over Sir William for his young rival--this
was the elegant way in which men talked in the clubs and women in their
drawing-rooms.
Nothing is hidden now-a-days, and the fierce light of publicity beats
upon the doings of the countess and the coster-monger alike. The
countess may, perhaps, preserve a secret a little longer than the
coster-monger, and that is the only difference between them in this
regard.
Accordingly, on the fifteenth or sixteenth day of the mystery, a
sensational morning paper published a special article detailing what
professed to be an entirely new light upon the situation. If statements
affecting the private and intimate life of anybody can be called in good
taste, the article was certainly written with a due regard to
proprieties, and with an obvious attempt to avoid hurting the feelings
of any one. But, as it was pointed out in a prefatory note, the whole
affair had passed from the regions of private life into the sphere of
national interest, and therefore it was the duty of a journal to give to
the world all and every fact which had any bearing upon the affair,
without fear or favour.
This last article, which created a tremendous sensation, was in
substance as follows:--
It hinted that a young lady of great charm, and moving in the highest
circles, a young lady who had been engaged for some little time to one
of the most distinguished Englishmen of the day, had lately been much
seen with the vanished man. The gossip of society had hinted that this
could mean nothing more or less than the young lady had been mistaken in
the first disposal of her affections, and was about to make a change.
How did this bear upon the situation?
During the next day or two, though no names were actually printed, it
became generally known who the principal characters in the supposed
little drama of love really were. Everybody spoke freely of old Sir
Frederick Poole's distinguished daughter, of Lady Poole of Curzon
Street, and of Sir William Gouldesbrough.
When the article first appeared everybody began to say, "Ah, now we
shall have the whole thing cleared up." But as the days went on people
began to realize that the new facts threw little new light upon the
mystery, and only provided a possible motive for Mr. Guy Rathbone's
suicide. And then once more people were compelled to ask themselves if
Mr. Rathbone really was in love with Miss Poole, and had found that
either she would have nothing to say to him, or that she was inevitably
bound to Sir William Gouldesbrough in honour. Then when, how and where
did he make away with himself?
And to that question there was absolutely no answer.
CHAPTER VIII
THE CHIVALROUS BARONET
Lady Poole and her daughter had been living in rooms in the great Palace
Hotel at Brighton for a fortnight.
Marjorie, utterly broken down by the terrible mystery that enveloped
her, and shrinking from the fierce light that began to beat upon the
details of her private life, had implored her mother to take her from
London.
There had been a terrible scene between the old lady and her daughter
when, the day after Marjorie had written to Sir William Gouldesbrough
telling him that she could not marry him, she had confessed the truth to
Lady Poole.
In her anger and excitement the elder woman had said some bitter and
terrible things. She was transformed for a space from the pleasant and
easy-going society dame into something hard, furious, and even coarse.
Marjorie had shrunk in amazement and fear from the torrent of her
mother's wrath. And finally she had been able to bear it no longer, and
had lost consciousness.
Allowances should be made for the dowager. She was a worldly woman, good
and kind as far as she went, but purely worldly and material. The hope
of her life had seemed gained when her daughter became engaged to Sir
William. The revelation that, after all, the engagement was now broken,
was nothing more than a delusion, and that a younger and ineligible man,
from the worldly point of view, had won Marjorie's affection, was a
terrible blow to the woman of the world. All her efforts seemed useless.
The object of her life, so recently gained, so thoroughly enjoyed, was
snatched away from her in a sudden moment.
But when Marjorie had come to herself again, and the doctor had been
summoned to treat her for a nervous shock, she found her mother once
more the kindly and loved parent of old. Lady Poole had been frightened
at her own violence, and repented bitterly for what she had said. She
tended and soothed the girl in the sweetest and most motherly way. And
without disguising from Marjorie the bitter blow the girl's decision was
to her, she told her that she was prepared to accept the inevitable, and
to re-organize all her ideas for the future.
And then had come the black mystery of Guy's utter vanishing from the
world of men and women.
Lady Poole had always been fond of Guy Rathbone, and now, by a curious
contradiction of nature, when she had schooled herself to realize that
it was on this man her daughter's life was centred, the old lady was
terribly and genuinely affected at Guy's disappearance. No one could
have been more helpful or more sympathetic during these black hours, and
she gladly left Curzon Street for Brighton, in order that she might be
alone with her daughter and endeavour to bring her back in some measure
to happiness, or, if not happiness, to interest in life.
Soon after Marjorie had written her letter to Sir William, Lady Poole
had received a reply from the scientist, enclosing a short note for her
daughter.
It had been a wonderful letter. The writer said that he could not
disguise from himself that he had seen, or at least suspected, the way
things were going.
"Terrible," he said, "as this letter of your daughter's has been to
me, it would yet ill-become me not to receive it as a man. I had
hoped and believed that a very happy life was in store for me with
Marjorie and for her with me. Then I saw that it was not to be, and
Marjorie's letter comes as no surprise, but as only the definite
and final end of my dream. Dear Lady Poole, do realize that,
despite all this, it will always be my duty and my privilege to be
the friend of you and of your daughter if you and she will permit
me to be so. I have told her so often how I love her, and I tell
her so even now. But love, as I understand it, should have the
element of self-sacrifice in it, if it is true love. I will
therefore say no more about my personal feelings, except in one
way. Just as my whole life would have been devoted to making your
daughter happy, so I now feel it is my duty to devote myself as
well as I can to making her happy in another way. She has chosen a
man no doubt more worthy to be her husband than I should ever be.
You will forgive a natural weakness if I say no more on this point,
but the great fact is that she has chosen. Therefore, I say that my
only wish is for her life-long happiness, and that all my
endeavours, such as they are, will be still devoted to that end.
Let them be happy, let them be together. And if I can promote their
happiness, even though my own heart may be broken, believe me, dear
Lady Poole, it is my most fervent wish.
"Will you give Marjorie the enclosed little note of farewell? I
shall not trouble her more, until perhaps some day in the future we
may still be friends, though fate and her decision have forbidden
me to be anything more to her than just that.
"Believe me, my dear Lady Poole,
"In great sorrow and in sincere friendship,
"WILLIAM GOULDESBROUGH."
So the two ladies had gone to Brighton, and while the press of the
United Kingdom was throbbing with excitement, while hundreds of people
were endeavouring to solve the terrible mystery of Guy Rathbone's
disappearance, the girl more nearly interested in it than any one else
in the world stayed quietly with her mother at the pleasant sea-side
town, and was not molested by press or public.
Marjorie had become, even in these few days, a ghost of her former self.
The light had faded out of her eyes, they had ceased to appear
transparent and had become opaque. Her beautifully chiselled lips now
drooped in pathetic and habitual pain, her pallor was constant and
unvarying. She drank in the keen sea breezes, and they brought no colour
to her cheeks. She walked upon the white chalk cliffs and saw nothing of
the shifting gold and shadow as the sun fell upon the sea, heard nothing
of the harmonies of the Channel winds. Her whole heart was full of a
passionate yearning and a terrible despair; she was like a stately
flower that had been put out of its warm and sheltered home into an icy
blast, and was withered and blackened in an hour.
Kind as her mother was, Marjorie felt that there was nobody now left to
lean upon, to confide in. A girl of her temperament needs some stronger
arm than any woman can provide, to help and comfort, to keep awake the
fires of hope within her, and nothing of the sort was hers. In all the
world she seemed to have no one to confide in, no one to lean upon, no
one who would give her courage and hope for the black and impenetrable
future.
At the end of the first fortnight, Marjorie knew, though her mother only
just referred to the matter, that letters were daily arriving from Sir
William Gouldesbrough.
One evening Lady Poole, unable to keep the news from her daughter any
longer, told her of these communications.
"I dare say, darling," the old lady said, "I may give you pain, but I
think you really ought to know how wonderfully poor dear William is
behaving in this sad affair. Though it must be terribly hard for him,
though it must fill him with a pain that I can only guess at, he is
moving heaven and earth to discover what has become of your poor boy. He
is daily writing to me to tell me what he is doing, to inform me of his
hopes, and I tell you, Marjorie, that if human power can discover what
has happened to Guy, William Gouldesbrough will discover it. Do realize,
dear, what a noble thing this is in the man you have rejected. Whenever
I receive his letters I can't help crying a little, it seems so noble,
so touching, and so beautiful of him."
Marjorie was sitting at the table. The ladies dined in their private
rooms, and it was after the meal. Her head was in her hands and her eyes
were full of tears. She looked up as her mother said this, with a white,
wan face.
"Ah, yes, dear," she replied, "there is no doubt of that, William was
always noble. He is as great in heart as he is in intellect. He is
indeed one of the chosen and best. Don't think I don't realize it,
mother, now you've told me, indeed I _do_ realize it. My whole heart is
filled with gratitude towards him. No one else would have done as much
in his position."
"You do feel that, do you, dear?" Lady Poole said.
"Oh, indeed I do," she answered, "though I fear that even he, great as
his intellect is, will never disperse this frightful, terrible
darkness."
Lady Poole got up and came round to where her daughter was sitting. She
put her hand upon the shining coil of hair and said--
"Dear, do you think that you could bear to see him?"
"To see William?" Marjorie answered quickly with a curious catch in her
voice.
"Yes, darling, to see William. Would it give you too much pain?"
"But how, why, what for?"
"Oh, not to revive any memories of the past, there is nothing further
from his thoughts. But this morning he wrote me the very sweetest
letter, saying that in this crisis he might be able to give you a little
comfort."
"Has he discovered anything, then?" Marjorie asked.
"I fear not as yet. But he says that at this moment you must feel very
much alone. As you know, he is doing all that a mortal man can. Of
course, I have told him how broken you are by it all, and he thinks that
perhaps you might like to hear what he is doing, might like to confide
in him a little. 'If,' he says in his letter, 'she will receive me as a
brother, whose only wish is to help her in this terrible trial, can I
say how proud and grateful I shall be to come to her and tell her what I
can?'"
Marjorie gave a great sob. It was too much. In her nervous and weak
condition the gentle and kindly message her mother had given her was
terribly affecting.
"How good he is!" she murmured. "Yes, mother, if only he would come I
should like to see him."
"Then, my dear," Lady Poole replied, "that is very easily arranged, for
he is in the hotel to-night."
Marjorie started. Her mother went to a side table on which was a little
portable telephone. She held the receiver to her ear, and when the clerk
from the down-stairs office replied, asked that Sir William
Gouldesbrough should be told at once that Lady Poole would be very glad
to see him in Number 207.
Marjorie rose and began to pace the room. A growing excitement mastered
her, her hands twitched, her eyes were dilated. Perhaps she was at last
going to hear something, something definite, something new, about Guy.
There was a knock at the door. A waiter opened it, and Sir William
Gouldesbrough came into the room.
CHAPTER IX
GRATITUDE OF MISS MARJORIE POOLE
As the man to whom she had been engaged came into the room, Marjorie
rose to meet him. She was not embarrassed, the hour and occasion were
too serious for that, and she herself was too broken down for any
emotions save those that were intensely real and came from an anguished
heart. She went up to him, all pale and drooping, and took him by the
hand.
"Thank you, William," she said in a low voice, and that was all.
But in her words Gouldesbrough realized all that she was powerless to
say. He heard, with an inward thrill and leap of the pulses, an immense
respect for him, which, even in the days of their engagement, he had
never heard.
Always, Marjorie had reverenced his attainments, never had she seemed to
be so near to him as a _man_ as now.
He looked straight into her eyes, nor did his own flinch from her
direct and agonized gaze. The frightful power of his dominating will,
the horrible strength of his desire, the intensity of his purpose,
enabled him to face her look without a sign of tremor.
He, this man with a marvellous intellect and a soul unutterably stained
by the most merciless perfidy, was yet able to look back at her with a
kind, sorrowful, and touching glance.
Gouldesbrough wore no metal helmet which should make the horror of his
thoughts and knowledge plain for Marjorie to see. The man who had
committed a crime as foul and sinister as ever crime was yet, the man
who was responsible for the pale face of the girl he loved, the drooping
form, the tearful eyes, yet smiled back at her with a mask of patient
resignation, deference, and chivalry.
"I am so glad you've come, William," Lady Poole said; "and I'm sure,
distressing as all these circumstances are, we cannot thank you enough
for what you have done and are doing. No one else in your position would
have done so much. And on Marjorie's behalf and on my own I thank you
with a full heart."
Sir William bowed.
Then Lady Poole, voluble as she usually was, and unabashed in almost
every circumstance hesitated a little. The situation was certainly very
delicate, almost unparalleled, indeed, and it was certainly quite
outside even her wide experience. But her voice had a genuine ring of
thankfulness and gratitude, and the real woman emerged from the veneer
of worldliness and baffled ambition.
There was a pause for a moment, no one of the three spoke a single word.
Then Lady Poole, by an intuition, said and did exactly the right
thing--perhaps old Sir Frederick's "hobby of tact" had not been without
its use after all! She sank into a chair.
"There's no need for any explanation, I can see that," she said with a
sigh of relief. "With any other man it would have been so different, but
it's all right, William, I can see it in your manner and in your
presence here. Then let me say once and for all, that both Marjorie and
I feel at last we have got some one with us who will help us. We have
been terribly alone. We have both felt it most poignantly. After all,
women do want a man in a crisis! You, dear William, are the last man we
should have thought of asking to help us, and yet you are the first man
who has come to do so."
"Dear Lady Poole," Gouldesbrough answered in a quiet voice, "I think
perhaps I see a little of what you mean. I am not sure, but I think I
do. And I regard it as the greatest privilege and honour to come to you
with an offer of help and assistance in your trouble."
He turned to the younger lady.
"Marjorie," he said, "you must treat me just like a brother now. You
must forget all that has passed between us, and just lean on me, rely on
me, use me. Nothing could make me more happy than just that."
Lady Poole rose again. Who shall say in the volatile brain of the good
dame that already in the exhilaration of Sir William's presence and
kindness, new hopes and ambitions were not reviving? Lady Poole was a
woman, and she was an opportunist too. Woman-like, her mind moved fast
into an imaginary future; it had always done so. And it is possible that
upon the clouded horizon of her hopes a faint star began to twinkle once
more.
Who shall blame Lady Poole?
"Now, my dears," she said in a more matter of fact voice, "I think
perhaps you might be happier in discussing this matter if I were to go
away. Under the circumstances, I am perfectly aware that it's not the
correct thing to do, but that is speaking only from a conventional
standpoint, and none of us here can be conventional at a moment like
this. If you would rather have me stay, just say so. But it is with
pride and pleasure that I know that I can leave you with Marjorie,
William, even under these miserable circumstances and in this unhappy
business."
Gouldesbrough smiled sadly.
"It is as Marjorie wishes," he said. "But I know that Marjorie knows she
can trust me."
The great man saw that once more the girl lifted her eyes and looked at
him with something which was almost like reverence. Never before had he
seen her look at him like this. Once more the evil joy in the
possibility of victory after all leapt through his blood.
No thought nor realization of the terrible thing he had done, of the
horrors that he and the pink-faced man in Regent's Park were even now
perfecting, came to trouble that moment of evil pride. Everybody had
always said, everybody who had been brought into contact with him,
always knew that Sir William Gouldesbrough was a strong man!
Lady Poole waited a moment to see if her daughter made any sign of
wishing her to remain, and finding that there was none, for Marjorie was
standing with drooping head and made no movement, the dowager swept out
of the room with rustling skirts, and gently closed the door.
Sir William and Marjorie were left alone.
The man of action asserted himself.
"Sit down, Marjorie," he said in a commonplace tone, "and just let me
talk to you on pure matters of fact. Now, my dear, we haven't seen each
other since you wrote me the letter telling me that our engagement was a
mistake. You know what my reply to that was, and I believe and trust you
know that I shall remain perfectly true to both the spirit and actual
words of that communication. That's all we need say now, except just
this: I loved you dearly and I love you dearly now. I had hoped that we
might have been very happy together and that I might have spent my life
in your service. But that was not to be in the way that I had hoped. At
the same time, I am not a man easily moved or changed, and if I cannot
be yours in one way, dear girl, I will be yours in another. However,
that's all about that. Now, then, let me tell you how hard I have been
trying to discover the truth of this astounding disappearance of poor
Mr. Guy Rathbone."
A low sob came from the girl in the chair. It was a sob not only of
regret for her lost lover, but it had the same note of reverence, of
utter appreciation, of her first words.
"You are too good," she said. "William, I have treated you horribly
badly. You are too good. Oh, you are _too_ good!"
"Hush!" he said in a sharp staccato voice. "We agreed that aspect of
the question wasn't to be spoken of any more. The past is the past, and,
my dear little girl, I beg you to realize it. You loved poor Guy
Rathbone, and he seems to have been wiped out of ordinary life. My
business is to find him again for you, so that you may be happy. I have
been trying to do the utmost in my power for days. I have done
everything that my mind could suggest, and as yet nothing has occurred.
Now, Marjorie, let's just be business-like. Tell me what you think about
the matter, and I will tell you what I think. See if our two brains
cannot hit on something which will help us."
"William," she said with a full note, a chord rather, of deep pain in
her voice--"William, I don't know what to think. I can't understand it.
I am lost in utter darkness. There seems no possible reason why he
should have gone away. I can only think that the worst has happened, and
that some terrible people must have killed him."
"But why?"
"Oh," she answered almost hysterically, "he was so beautiful and so
strong. They must have killed him because he was so different to other
men." She did not see the tall man who sat before her wince and quiver.
She did not see his face change and contort itself into malignancy. She
did not realize that these innocent words, wrung from a simple
distressed and loving heart, meant awful things for the man she longed
for.
"But, Marjorie," the voice came steady and strong, "you know that is
just a little fantastic, if you will forgive me for saying so. People
don't go about injuring other people because they are better-looking or
have finer natures than themselves. They only say unkind things about
them, they don't kill them, you know."
"Oh, of course, you are right, William," she answered, "and I hardly
know what I'm saying, the pain of it all is so great. But then, there
_is_ nothing to say. I can't understand, I can hardly realize what has
happened."
"For my part," Sir William answered, "I have left no stone unturned to
discover the truth. I have been in communication with every force or
agency which might be able to explain the thing. And no one has given me
the slightest hint, except perhaps----"
She leapt up from her chair, her pale face changed.
"Yes?" she cried, "What is it? What is that?"
Her breath came thick and fast. Sir William remained sitting in his
chair and his head was bowed.
"Sit down, Marjorie," he answered; "I didn't mean to say that."
"But you said it," she replied. "Ah! my ears are very keen, and there
was something in your voice which had meaning. William, what is it? What
is it?"
"Nothing," he answered in a deep, decisive voice.
But the voice brought no conviction to her ears. She had detected, or
thought she had detected, the note of an inner knowledge when he had
first spoken. She crossed the room with rapid strides and laid her white
hand upon his shoulder.
"You've _got_ to tell me," she said imperiously. And her touch thrilled
him through and through with an exquisite agony and an exquisite joy.
"It's nothing," he repeated.
Now there was less conviction than ever in his voice. She laughed
hysterically. "William," she said, "I know you so well, you can't hide
anything from me. There's something you can tell me. Whatever it may be,
good or bad, you've just _got_ to tell me."
At that he looked up at her, and his face, she saw, was drawn and
frightened.
"Marjorie," he said, "don't let any words of mine persuade you into any
belief. Since you ask me I must say what I have got to say. But mind
you, I am in no way convinced myself that what I am going to tell you is
more than mere idle supposition."
"Tell me," she whispered, and her voice hissed like escaping steam.
"Well, it's just this," he said, "and it's awfully hard for me even to
hint such a thing to you. But, you know, Rathbone had recently made
rather a friend of poor Eustace Charliewood. I like Charliewood; you
never did. A man's point of view and a girl's point of view are quite
different about a man. But of course I can't pretend that Charliewood is
exactly, well--er--what you might call--I don't know quite how to put
it, Marjorie."
"I know," she said with a shudder of disgust "I know. Go on."
"Well, just before Rathbone disappeared those two seemed to have been
about together a good deal, and of course Charliewood is a man who has
some rather strange acquaintances, especially in the theatrical world.
That is to say, in the sub-theatrical world. Marjorie, I hardly know how
to put it to you, and I think I had better stop."
"Go on!" she cried once more.
"Well," he said wearily, "Rathbone was a good fellow, no doubt, but he
is a young man, and no girl really knows what the life of a young man
really is or may be. I know that Charliewood introduced Rathbone to a
certain girl. Oh, Marjorie, I can't go on, these suspicions are
unworthy."
"Terribly unworthy," she cried, standing up to her full height, and then
in a moment she drooped to him, and once more she asked him to go on.
He told her of certain meetings, saying that there could have been, of
course, no harm in them, skilfully hinting at this or that, and then
testifying to his utter disbelief in the suspicions that he himself had
provoked. She listened to him, growing whiter and whiter. At last his
hesitating speech died away into silence, and she stood looking at him.
"It might be," she whispered, half to herself, "it might be, but I do
not think it _could_ be. No man could be so unutterably cruel, so
unutterably base. I have made you tell me this, William, and I know that
you yourself do not believe it. He could not be so wicked as to
sacrifice everything for one of those people."
And then Sir William rose.
"No," he said, "he couldn't. I feel it, though I don't know him.
Marjorie, no living man could leave you for one of the vulgar syrens of
the half world."
She looked at him for a moment as he put the thing in plain language,
and then burst into a passion of weeping.
"I can't bear any more, William," she said between her sobs. "Go now,
but find him. Oh, find him!"
CHAPTER X
A MAN ABOUT TOWN PAYS A DEBT
The people in the luxurious smoking-room of the great Palace Hotel saw a
pale, ascetic-looking and very distinguished man come in to the
comfortable place and sit down upon a lounge.
"Do you know who that is?" one man whispered to another, flicking the
ash off a cigar.
"No; who is he?" his companion answered.
"That's Sir William Gouldesbrough."
"Oh, the great scientific Johnny, you mean."
"Yes, they say that he is going to turn the world topsy-turvy before
he's done."
"The world's good enough for me," was the reply, "and if I'd my way,
these people who invent things should all be taken out and shot. I'm
tired of inventions, they make life move too quickly. The good old times
were best, when it took eight hours to get from Brighton to London, and
one could not have telegrams from one's office to worry one."
"Perhaps you're right," said the first man. "But still, people look at
things differently now-a-days. At any rate, Gouldesbrough is said to be
one of the leading men in England to-day."
"He doesn't look happy over it," replied his companion. "He looks like a
death's-head."
"Well, you know, he's mixed up in the Rathbone mystery in a sort of
way."
"Oh yes, of course; he was engaged to the girl who chucked him over for
the Johnny who has disappeared, wasn't he?"
"That's it. Just watch him, poor wretch; doesn't he look pipped?"
"Upon my word, the perspiration's standing out on his forehead in beads.
He seems as if----"
"As if he had been overworking and overeating. He wants a Turkish bath,
I expect. Now then, Jones, what do you really think about the fall in
South Africans? Will they recover in the next two months? That's what I
want to know; that's what I want to be certain of."
Sir William had just left the up-stairs apartments of the Pooles. He had
rung for the lift and entered, without a word to the attendant, who had
glanced fearfully at the tall, pale man with the flashing eyes and the
wet face. Once or twice the lift-man noticed that the visitor raised his
hand to his neck above the collar and seemed to press upon it, and it
may have been fancy on the lift-man's part--though he was not an
imaginative person--but he seemed to hear a sound like a drum beating
under a blanket, and he wondered if the gentleman was troubled with
heart-disease.
Gouldesbrough pressed the little electric bell upon the oak table in
front of him, and in a moment a waiter appeared.
"Bring me a large brandy and soda," he said in a quiet voice.
The waiter bowed and hurried away.
The waiter did not know, being a foreigner, and unacquainted with the
tittle-tattle of the day, that Sir William Gouldesbrough, the famous
scientist, was generally known to be a practical teetotaller, and one
who abhorred the general use of alcoholic beverages.
When the brandy came, amber in the electric lights of the smoking-room,
and with a piece of ice floating in the liquid, Sir William took a small
white tabloid from a bottle in his pocket and dropped it into the glass.
It fizzed, spluttered, and disappeared.
Then he raised the tumbler to his lips, and as he did so the floating
ice tinkled against the sides of the glass like a tiny alarum.
"Nerves gone," the stock-broking gentleman close by said to his friend,
with a wink.
In five minutes or so, after he had lit a cigarette, Gouldesbrough rose
and left the smoking-room. He put on his coat in the hall and went out
of the front door.
It was not yet late, and the huge crescent of electric lights, which
seemed to stretch right away beyond Hove to Worthing, gleamed like a
gigantic coronet.
It was a clear night. The air was searching and keen, and it seemed to
steady the scientist as he walked down the steps and came out from under
the hotel portico on to the pavement.
A huge round moon hung over the sea, which was moaning quietly. The
lights in front of the Alhambra Music Hall gleamed brightly, and on the
promenade by the side of the shore innumerable couples paced and
re-paced amid a subdued hum of talk and laughter.
The pier stretched away into the water like a jewelled snake. It was
Brighton at ten o'clock, bright, gay, and animated.
Sir William was staying at the Brighton Royal, the other great hotel
which towers up upon the front some quarter of a mile away from the
Palace, where Marjorie and Lady Poole were.
He strode through the crowds, seeing nothing of them, hearing nothing
but the beat of his own heart.
Even for a man so strong as he, the last hour had been terrible. Never
before in all his life, at the moment of realization when some great
scientific theory had materialized into stupendous fact, when first
Marjorie had promised to marry him--at any great crisis of his life--had
he undergone so furious a strain as this of the last hour.
He came out of the Palace Hotel, knowing that he had carried out his
intentions with the most consummate success. He came out of it,
realizing that not half-a-dozen men in England could have done what he
had done, and as the keen air smote upon his face like a blow from the
flat of a sword, he realized also that not six men in England, walking
the pleasant, happy streets of any town, were so unutterably stained and
immeasurably damned as he.
As he passed through the revolving glass doors of his own hotel, and the
hall-porters touched their caps, he exerted all the powers of his will.
He would no longer remember or realize what he had done and what it
meant to him. He would only rejoice in his achievement, and he banished
the fear that comes even to the most evil when they know they have
committed an almost unpardonable sin.
He did not use the lift to go to his sitting-room on the second floor;
he ran lightly up the stairs, wanting the exercise as a means of
banishing thought.
He entered his own room, switched on the electric light, took off his
coat, and stood in front of the fire, stretching his arms in pure
physical weariness.
Yes! That was over! Another step was taken. Once more he had progressed
a step towards his desire, in spite of the most adverse happenings and
the most forbidding aspects of fate.
The unaccustomed brandy at the Palace Hotel, and the bromide solution he
had dropped into it, had calmed his nerves, and suddenly he laughed
aloud in the rich, silent room, a laugh of pure triumph and excitement.
Even as the echoes of his voice died away, his eyes fell upon the table
and saw that there was a letter lying there addressed to him. The
address was written in a well-known handwriting. He took it up, tore
open the envelope and read the communication.
It was this--
"I have been down here for several days, trying to escape from
London and the thoughts which London gives me. But it has been
quite useless. I saw to-day, quite by chance, in the hotel
register, that you have arrived here. I did not think that we were
ever likely to meet again, except in the most casual way. I hope
not. Since I have been here, the torture of my life has increased a
thousand-fold, and I have come to the conclusion that my life must
stop. I am not fit to live. I don't blame you too much, because if
I hadn't been a scoundrel and a wastrel all my life, I should never
have put myself in your hands. As far as your lights go, you have
acted well to me. You have paid me generously for the years of
dirty work I have done at your bidding. For what I have done
lately, you have made me financially free, and I shall die owing no
man a penny, and with no man, save you only, knowing that I die
without hope--lost, degraded and despairing. Don't think I blame
you, William Gouldesbrough, because I don't. When I was at Eton, I
was always a pleasure-loving little scug. I was the same at Oxford.
I have been the same in all my life in town. I have never been any
good to myself, and I have disappointed all the hopes my people had
for me. It's all been my own fault. Then I became entangled with
you, and I was too weak to resist the money you were prepared to
pay me for the things I have done for you.
"But it's all over now. I have gone too far. I have helped you, and
am equally guilty with you, to commit a frightful crime. Lax as I
have always been, I can no longer feel I have any proper place
among men of my own sort. All I can say is that I am glad I shall
die without anybody knowing what I really am.
"I write this note after dinner, and, finding the number of your
room from the hotel clerk, I leave it here for you to see. I am
going to make an end of it all in an hour or two, when I have
written a few notes to acquaintances and so on. I can't go on
living, Gouldesbrough, because night and day, day and night, I am
haunted by the thought of that poor young man you have got in your
foul house in Regent's Park. What you are doing to him I don't
know. The end of your revenge I can only guess at. But it is all so
horrible that I am glad to be done with life. I wish you good-bye;
and I wish to God--if there is really a God--that I had never
crossed your path and never been your miserable tool.
"EUSTACE CHARLIEWOOD."
As Sir William Gouldesbrough read this letter, his whole tall figure
became rigid. He seemed to stiffen as a corpse stiffens.
Then, quite suddenly, he turned round and pushed the letter into the
depths of the glowing fire, pressing the paper down with the poker until
every vestige of it was consumed.
He strode to the door of the room, opened it, came out into the wide
carpeted corridor and hurried up to the lift.
He pressed the button and heard it ring far down below.
In a minute or two there came the clash of the shutting doors, the
"chunk" of the hydraulic mechanism, and he saw the shadow of the
lift-roof rising up towards him.
The attendant opened the door.
"Will you take me up to the fourth floor, please," he said, "to Mr.
Eustace Charliewood's room?"
"Mr. Charliewood, sir?" the man replied. "Oh, yes, I remember, number
408. Tall, clean-shaved gentleman."
"That's him," Sir William said. "I have only just learnt that he has
been staying in the hotel. He is an old friend, and I had no idea he was
here."
The iron doors clashed, the lift shot upward, and the attendant and Sir
William arrived at the fourth floor.
"Down the corridor, sir, and the first turning on the right," the
lift-man said. "But perhaps I'd better show you."
He ran the ironwork gates over their rollers and hurried down the
corridor with Sir William. They turned the corner, and the man pointed
to a door some fifteen yards away.
"That's it, sir," he said. "That's Mr. Charliewood's room."
Even as he spoke there was a sudden loud explosion which seemed to come
from the room to which he had pointed--a horrid crash in the warm,
richly-lit silence of the hotel.
The man turned to Sir William with a white face.
"Come on," he said, forgetting his politeness. "Something has happened.
Come, quick!"
When they burst into the room they found the man about town lying upon
the hearth-rug with a little blue circle edged with crimson in the
centre of his forehead. The hands were still moving feebly, but what had
been Eustace Charliewood was no longer there.
CHAPTER XI
BEEF TEA AND A PHOSPHATE SOLUTION
Sir William Gouldesbrough remained in Brighton for three days. Eustace
Charliewood had died in two minutes after the lift-man and the scientist
had burst into the room. The suicide had said no word, and indeed was
absolutely unconscious from the moment the shot had been fired, until
his almost immediate death.
Sir William had made all the necessary arrangements. He had communicated
with old Sir Miles Charliewood, of Norfolk, he had expedited the
arrangements for the inquest, and he was, as the newspapers said,
"overcome with grief at the death of his old and valued friend."
During the three days, the demeanour of the famous scientist was
reported on with great admiration in all quarters. He had known of
nothing to cause Mr. Eustace Charliewood any trouble or worry, and he
was struck down by the loss he had sustained.
"It shows," many of the leading people in Brighton said to each other,
"that science is, after all, not the de-humanizing agency it is
popularly said to be. Here is perhaps the most famous scientific man of
the age, grieving like a brother for his friend, a mere society man of
charming manners and without any intellectual attainments. Melancholy as
the occasion is, it has served to bring out some fine and noble traits
in a man whose private life has always been something of a mystery to
the public."
The inquest was a short one. There were few witnesses. One or two
intimate friends of the dead man came down from London--club friends
these--and testified that they knew of nothing which could have prompted
the suicide, though the dead man had been noticed to be somewhat
depressed for the last fortnight or so.
Sir William himself, in a short but learned exposition given during the
course of his evidence, pronounced it as his opinion that Eustace
Charliewood had been suddenly seized by one of those unexplainable
impulses of mania which, like a scarlet thread, sometimes lurk
unsuspected for years in the pearly cells of the brain.
His view was accepted by the coroner and the jury, and the usual verdict
of temporary insanity was returned.
"He was," Sir William had said at the close of the evidence and in a
voice broken with deep feeling, "the best and truest friend I have ever
had. Our walks in life were utterly different. He took no interest in,
nor did he understand, my scientific work. And I, on the other hand,
took very little part in the social duties and amusements which made up
the greater part of Mr. Eustace Charliewood's life. Perhaps for that
very reason we were the more closely drawn together. No one will ever
know, perhaps, the real underlying goodness, generosity and faithfulness
in my dead friend's character. I cannot go into details of his private
life, I can only say that the mysterious seizure which has robbed
society of one of its ornaments, has taken from the world a gentleman in
every thought and deed, a type of man we can ill afford to lose in the
England of to-day."
Young Lord Landsend, who, with Mr. Percy Alemare, had attended the
inquest from London, looked at his friend with a somewhat cynical smile,
as the deep voice of Sir William Gouldesbrough faltered in its
peroration. Mr. Percy Alemare replied to the smile with a momentary
wink. Both of the young men were very sorry that Eustace Charliewood had
dropped out so suddenly. They had liked him well enough, but they
certainly had not discerned the innate nobility of character, so
feelingly set forth by Sir William Gouldesbrough, and so fully reported
by the newspaper-men present.
Afterwards, in the hotel, old Sir Miles Charliewood had shaken the
scientist warmly by the hand.
"What I have heard you say, Sir," he said, "comforted me very much. I
wish poor Eustace's eldest brother had been here to hear you say it. But
James is in India with his regiment. Eustace did not come to us at
Charliewood Hall. There were family reasons of long standing, why there
was a breach between his family and himself. These, Sir William, I will
not enter into here. But death heals all breaches, and remembering
Eustace as a bright and happy boy at Eton, before we became estranged, I
feel a father's natural sorrow. But let me say, Sir William, once more,
that you have lightened that sorrow somewhat. I had regarded my son as
living a useless and selfish life upon the allowance I was in the habit
of paying into his bank. To hear that there was an underlying strata of
goodness and nobleness in his character is indeed a solace."
Sir William had bowed, and old Sir Miles, a courtly old gentleman of
great age, whose grief had not prevented him from making an excellent
dinner the evening before, and from passing somewhat acrid criticisms
upon the hotel wine, drove away to the station, smoking a cigar, and
feeling that the troublesome and unpleasant episode was well over.
Thus, Mr. Eustace Charliewood, man about town, made his sudden exit from
Vanity Fair.
Thus, Sir William Gouldesbrough, F.R.S., had another secret to lock up
in the sombre recesses of his brain.
During the three days that he had been forced to remain in Brighton by
the tragedy, Sir William had seen something of the two ladies at the
Palace Hotel.
Both Lady Poole and Marjorie during that time had come insensibly to
lean upon him, and to ask his advice about this or that. A terrible gap
had been created in Marjorie's life, and though Gouldesbrough could not
fill it, he came at the right moment to comfort and sustain.
Before he returned to London, Sir William had gradually glided into a
new relation with the girl to whom he had been engaged. He found his
power over her had increased. She was more dependent and subservient in
her great trouble than she had ever been during the time when she was
promised to be his wife, and he must sue for favours.
And Gouldesbrough noticed also that, though the girl's grief seemed in
no way lessened her hopes of ever seeing Guy Rathbone again seemed to
be dwindling. The cunning words that he had spoken, the little hint of a
vulgar Circe was perhaps beginning to germinate within Marjorie's brain.
She was too loyal to believe any such statement, but, nevertheless, it
had an unconscious influence with her. At any rate, she began to cease
discussion of the mystery, and there was the hinting of a coming
resignation to the hard and impenetrable fact.
This at least was what Sir William Gouldesbrough deduced.
Trained watcher of the mind and human impulse as he was, psychologist of
marvellous knowledge and penetration, he began to see, or so he thought
to himself, that all was not yet lost, that it might well be that the
events of the last few weeks would some day--not yet or soon, but some
day--place him upon a higher pedestal than ever before.
On the evening of the fourth day after his arrival, Sir William
Gouldesbrough returned to town. In the afternoon he had driven with Lord
Landsend and Percy Alemare to the cemetery.
It had been a cold and blustering afternoon, and the plain hearse and
the single carriage that followed it had trotted through the
semi-deserted streets until the grave-side was reached. The shivering
vicar of a neighbouring church, whose turn it was to take the cemetery
duty for the week, had said the words of the burial-service, and in some
half-an-hour all that was mortal of Mr. Eustace Charliewood had
disappeared for ever and a day.
He would never stroll up Bond Street in his fur coat any more. Never
again would he chat with the head-waiter upon the important question of
a lunch. No longer would Mr. Proctor, the masseur, set the little rubber
hammers to beat out the lines of dissipation upon that weak and handsome
face. Mr. Eustace Charliewood had resigned his membership of the St.
James's Street Clubs, and had passed out of Vanity Fair into the night.
After the funeral, Gouldesbrough went to say good-bye to Lady Poole and
Marjorie. His last words to them were these--
"I shall go on," he said, "doing all that I can in every possible way.
And everything that I do I will let you know, and if I can discover the
slightest clue to this terrible mystery, you shall hear it at once. But
don't buoy yourself up with false hopes, that is all I ask. None of us
can say what the future may have in store, but for my part I have not
much hope. It may seem a cruel thing for me to say, Marjorie, but I
think it is my duty to say it. Bear up and be brave, and remember that I
am always close by to do anything I can in any and every way to help you
and your mother."
And when he had gone, the two ladies, sitting in the twilight before the
glowing fire in the open hearth of the hotel sitting-room, had felt that
something, some one, who had become necessary to them, had departed.
Sir William Gouldesbrough travelled up to Victoria in a Pullman car. He
sat in his arm-chair before a little table, on which was a pile of
evening papers. During the first ten minutes he had glanced through all
of them, and only one part of the news' columns claimed his
attention--this was the portion of the paper devoted to the "Rathbone
Mystery."
He noticed that already the clamour and agitation was beginning to die
down. The shrewd purveyors of news were beginning to realize that the
mystery was not likely to be solved, and that the public appetite was
satiated with it.
The two columns or more which had been usual in the early days of
Rathbone's disappearance, had now dwindled to a single three-quarters of
a column. Sir William realized that the public interest was already
dying out.
For a few minutes, when he had methodically folded the papers in a pile,
he allowed his thoughts to dwell upon the recent incidents at Brighton.
Charliewood had killed himself. What did that mean? It simply meant that
Eustace Charliewood was out of the way. The baronet had not a single
regret in his mind. Despite the geniality of his manner to his late
henchman, when circumstances had seemed to require that, he had regarded
him as simply a servant and a tool, and as of considerably less
importance in the scheme of things than, say, a delicate induction coil,
or a new drum armature.
Then there was Marjorie. In his quick summarizing way, allowing no
emotion to enter his brain at the moment, Sir William reviewed that
aspect of his Brighton visit too. Well, that also was satisfactory.
Things were going indeed far better than he had hoped. He had
accomplished exactly what he had meant to do, rather more indeed, and he
had done so with singular success. His position with Lady Poole and her
daughter was perhaps stronger than it had ever been, even in the days
when his position was, so to speak, an official one. Good again!
And with that, the cool, hard intellect dismissed personal affairs
entirely, and with a sigh of relief the physical body of the man leant
back in his chair, while the brain went swiftly and gladly into the high
realms of science.
At Victoria, Sir William's motor brougham was waiting, and he was driven
swiftly through the lighted streets of London towards his own house in
Regent's Park. He smoked a cigar and bent forward, looking at the moving
panorama of people under the gas-lamps, as a man sits in an arm-chair
and lets the world defile before him. And as he watched the countless
throngs, streams that moved and pulsed in the arteries of the great city
as the blood moves and pulses in the veins and arteries of man, he was
filled with a tremendous exultation and pride.
Soon, ah, soon! he would be master of every single mind and soul that,
housed in its envelope of flesh, flitted so rapidly past the windows of
the swift-moving machine in which he sat.
No secrets, great or small, noble or petty, worthy or evil, would be
hidden from him, and he, alone, by the power of his intellect and the
abnormal force of his will, had wrested from nature the most stupendous
and mysterious of all her secrets.
There was but little more to be done now, before the great invention
would be shown to the leading scientists of the world.
Already slight hints, thin rumours of what was being done in the
laboratories of Regent's Park, were beginning to filter through the most
important scientific circles. A paper read by Sir William at the British
Association, a guarded article contributed to the _Nineteenth Century_,
propounding some most daring theories as to the real action of the
mind, had already prepared some of the shrewdest brains in Europe for a
possible revelation of something stupendously startling in the realms of
scientific achievement.
A few keen and brilliant brains had realized, if Sir William was right,
even in these preliminary conclusions, whither the conclusions tended.
Lesser scientists who could not see so far, knew nothing. The man in the
street was only aware that the great scientist had been working for
years upon abstruse problems which had no interest for him whatever.
But, nevertheless, in the highest circles, there was an indubitable stir
and rumour.
Yes! But little now remained to be done before absolute perfection of
the invention was obtained. A few more experiments, more delicate and
decisive than any that had gone before, still remained to be made. The
apparatus itself was completed. Its working under certain conditions was
certain. It was still necessary, however, to test it by means of
continuous experiments upon a living human brain.
During the last year of their work, Gouldesbrough and Wilson Guest had
begun to realize this last necessity with increasing conviction. They
saw that the coping-stone of the marvellous edifice which they had
slowly built up through the years, was now resolving itself into this,
and this alone. Neither had said as much to each other in so many
words, until some four months ago. Then, upon one memorable night, when,
excited by drink to an unusual freedom and openness of speech, Guest had
voiced the unspoken thought of his master and himself.
A human brain, a living human brain, in a living human body was an
absolute and final requirement.
There were not wanting, there never have been wanting, scientific
enthusiasts who will submit themselves to experiment. But in this case a
voluntary subject was impossible, for reasons which will presently
appear. It became a definite problem with the two men as to how, and by
what means, they should obtain a living creature who should be
absolutely subject to their will.
And then chance had provided Sir William with the unique opportunity. He
had seen his way to rid himself of a hated rival, and to provide a
subject for experiment at one and the same time. He had not hesitated.
Brains so far removed from the ordinary sphere of humanity as his never
hesitate at anything.
Guy Rathbone had disappeared.
The motor stopped at the door in the great, grim wall which surrounded
Sir William's house. He said good-night to the chauffeur who looked
after his two cars at a garage some half-a-mile away, and opened the
wicket with his key.
As he walked through the dark garden and saw the great square block of
the house looming up before him, it was with a quickening sense of
anticipation and pleasure. All the worries of his life were momentarily
over and done with, he was coming back to his great passion, to his life
work, the service of science!
It was about ten o'clock, and as he opened the front door and came into
the hall, everything was silent and still. He lifted up the padded stick
which hung beside the dinner-gong and struck the metal, standing still
while the deep booming note echoed mournfully through the house.
The butler did not answer the summons. Sir William realized that the man
must be out; Wilson Guest had probably given the servants an evening's
holiday for some purpose of his own.
He crossed the dimly-lit hall, pushed open the baize door which led to
the study, and entered his own room.
The fire was burning brightly, the electric lights glowed, but the place
was quite empty. On his writing-table were a pile of letters, on a round
table set beside the fire was a cold chicken and a bottle of claret.
Obviously his first surmise had been right, and the servants were out.
He left the study, proceeded onwards down the passage and unlocked
another door, a door through which no one but himself and Guest were
allowed to penetrate, a door that was always kept locked, and which led
to the laboratories, mechanical rooms, and invention studios, which had
been built out at the back of the house over what were once the tennis
lawns, and occupied a considerable area.
Locking the door behind him, Sir William went on down a short passage.
The first door on the right had the letter "A" painted on it in white.
He opened this door and looked in.
The room was empty, though it was brilliantly lit. It was a place filled
with large tables, on which there were drawing instruments, sheets of
figures and tracings.
Guest was not there.
Closing the door again and passing onward, Sir William entered the
chemical laboratory, a long, low place, lit by a sky-light in day, and
by electricity at night. As he opened the door quietly, he heard sounds
of movement. And then immediately, at the far end of the laboratory, he
saw the man he was looking for.
The place was in entire darkness save at one end, where two incandescent
bulbs glowed above an experiment table.
The assistant was bending over a Bunsen burner above which a large glass
tube was clamped, in which some liquid was boiling.
Suddenly he heard Sir William's advancing footsteps, and leapt up. For a
single moment the grey-pink hairless face was suffused with furtive
terror at the sound. It shone out in the light of the lamps clear and
distinct, though the lower part of the body was hidden by the darkness.
"Here you are then," Gouldesbrough said. "The whole house seems
deserted."
Guest sighed with relief, and then began to titter in his curious,
almost feminine, way--
"By Jove!" he said, "you startled me, William. I had no idea when you'd
be back. My nerves are like lumps of wet velvet. He! he!"
His hand shook as he came forward to greet his chief. Sir William knew
well that this man was a consistent and secret drunkard, and he never
made any comment on the fact. Guest was at liberty to do exactly as he
pleased, to gratify his vices to the full--because Guest, drunk or
sober, was a complete and brilliant helper, and because Sir William not
only could not do without him, but knew that the man was his, body and
mind, so long as he was allowed to indulge himself as he would. Yet, as
the greater man shook hands with the lesser, he was conscious of a
sudden thrill of repulsion at the filthy fears of the sensualist.
"Yes, I'm back," Gouldesbrough answered, "and everything has gone very
well. I suppose you have seen that Eustace Charliewood killed himself?"
"Yes, I did," Guest answered, "and for a few hours I was considerably
troubled about it. Then I saw by the paper that you were down there, so
I knew it would be all right. He never said anything, of course, or left
anything behind him?"
"Only a letter to me, which I destroyed."
"Good," Guest answered, and his interest in Eustace Charliewood and his
end ceased immediately. "Well, I've lots to tell you. I've gone as far
as I could on my own lines, but I've been longing for you to come back.
My dear William, it's simply splendid! How right you have been always!
How absolutely necessary it was to have a living brain to experiment
on!"
"How is the man, in good health?"
"Well, of course there's been a considerable waste of tissue, and the
absolute lack of exercise has had its effect. But the cell is well
ventilated with an electric fan which I keep constantly going, and I
allow the subject to read two or three hours every day--such books as he
may ask for. The rest of the time I turn out the light, after I have
fixed on the cap. I find that the thought images thrown upon the screen
in room "D" are more vivid when the subject is kept in darkness. Still,
speaking as a whole, the physical health is good, and it's singular how
vivid the thought pictures are, which shows that the cerebrum is in a
perfectly strong and healthy condition. As you know, it is from that
part of the brain we get all our voluntary and actual pictures;
therefore, we are to be congratulated that there is no weakness in that
regard so far. Still, when you came in, I was just preparing a phosphate
solution which I'm going to mix with the subject's soup, which he will
take in an hour or so. Three or four days' phosphate treatment will
intensify the vibrations within the magnetic field of the cap. I was
doing this in view of your return, when we shall really begin to
experiment seriously."
"Have you had any trouble, physical trouble I mean, with the subject?"
Gouldesbrough asked.
"Oh, no," Guest replied indifferently. "Of course he's as strong as a
horse, but the aluminium fetters and the system of india-rubber cord
that you suggested, have proved all that was necessary. I can render him
quite helpless directly I get inside the cell and before he could
possibly reach me. Then fitting the cap is a simple matter. The head is
rigid in the vulcanite depression which encloses the neck, and there is
no resistance at all."
"Good," Gouldesbrough answered. "Curiously enough, I found that design
in a strange old book published at the time of the Reformation,
detailing some of the methods of the Holy Office in Spain, with
appropriate wood cuts."
Guest chuckled horribly.
"Of course as yet," Gouldesbrough went on in calm, even tones, "the
subject has not the slightest idea what the experiments mean? He doesn't
know why you fit on the receiver? He is quite in the dark?"
"Entirely," Guest answered, "and he is at a loss to imagine what we are
doing to him."
"Ah, well," Gouldesbrough replied, "when we do tell him----"
"It will be lovely," the assistant replied, tittering once more, "to
watch the pictures that come on the screen when he knows that we are
reading his inmost thoughts when he tries to control them, to alter
them, and fails in his agony! When he realizes that he doesn't belong to
himself any more!"
The creature rubbed its plump and delicate hands together in an ecstasy
of evil enjoyment.
"I suppose," Gouldesbrough said with some slight hesitation, "you've
gathered a good deal of the fellow's opinions, memories, etc., lately?"
"Never had such an amusing time in all my life," Guest answered. "I've
gone down and put on the cap and tied him up, and I've come up and sat
alone in front of the screen in Room "D," turned on the generating
current and sat in an arm-chair with a bottle of whisky at my side, and
laughed till I cried! You'll learn a few home truths about yourself,
William, before very long. The curious thing is, that whenever your
picture comes upon the screen, it's all distorted. You are a fairly
passable-looking man, as men go, William, but you should see yourself as
this man sees you in his brain."
He laughed once more, malicious and horrible laughter which echoed high
up in the sky-light of this weird and empty place.
Gouldesbrough made an impatient movement.
"How do you mean?" he said.
"Well," Guest answered, intensely enjoying the situation, "I've seen a
good many pictures of nasty ugly looking devils and monsters, and I've
been in the Weirtz Museum at Brussels, but no artist who ever painted or
drew, and no man who ever modelled in wax, ever made such a face as this
man's brain makes of you, when he thinks of you!"
Gouldesbrough laughed grimly.
"Poor devil," he said indifferently, "he naturally would. But I'm glad
we have got such an excellent brain for experiment. The Pons Varolii
must be exceptionally active."
"I should think it was," Guest answered. "You should see the pictures
that come on the screen when he is thinking of Marjorie Poole!"
Gouldesbrough started.
"How do you mean?" he said.
"Well," Guest replied, turning off the blue flame of the Bunsen burner,
and stirring the mixture in the test-tube with a glass rod--"well,
Marjorie Poole's a pretty girl, but when this man calls her up in his
memory, she's a sort of angel. You know what a difficulty we had when we
got over the Lithium lines in the ash of the muscular tissue of the
blood, which had to be translated through the new spectroscope into
actual colour upon the screen? Well, we did get over it, but when the
subject thinks of Marjorie Poole, the colour all fades out of the
picture, the actual primary colours, I mean. The girl flashes out into
the dark in white light, like a sort of angel! and the first time I saw
it I jumped up from my chair, shut off the connecting switch and turned
up the lamps. It was so unlike any of the other pictures we have ever
got, and for a moment I thought I had been over-doing it a little in the
whisky line."
Gouldesbrough stopped the strange inhuman creature in his unholy
amusement.
"Well, I'm going to bed now," he said. "We'll begin work to-morrow. I
saw some supper put out for me in the study."
"Right oh," Guest answered. "Good-night then, William. I'm going to take
the beef broth and phosphates to our Brain down below in the cell."
CHAPTER XII
THE TOMB-BOUND MAN
Mr. Guest had visited his victim and had gone.
Supper was over. Beef-tea and phosphorous! and Mr. Guest had said his
mocking words of good-night.
"Sleep well, Mr. Rathbone! I shall not be compelled to ask you to wear
that pretty metal cap until to-morrow, so I won't turn out the light.
You have a book to read, you've had your supper, and I wish you a
pleasant time alone. No doubt you will occupy your leisure in thinking
of Miss Marjorie Poole. You'll recall that occasion in a certain room
hung with pink, when you kissed her by the side of the piano in the
white and gold case! I know you often recall that happy incident."
He had closed the heavy steel door with a last chuckle of malice and
power, leaving the prisoner white and shaking with fear. How did this
sinister and devilish gaoler know his intimate thoughts?
He groaned deeply, and then, as he had done a thousand times before,
gazed round the place in which he was in terror-struck amazement. Where
was he? _What_ was this horrible prison with all its strange
contrivances, its inexplicable mysteries?
He was in a large stone cell, brilliantly lit at this moment by two
incandescent electric bulbs in the vaulted ceiling far above his head. A
long time ago now, how long he could not have said, he was Gerald
Rathbone, a man living in the world, seeing the sunlight and breathing
the air of day. He had been Gerald Rathbone, moving honourably among his
fellow men, seeing human faces, hearing the music of human voices, an
accepted lover, and a happy man.
That was long ago, a dream, a vision which was fading away. It seemed
years since he had heard any voice but that of the pink, hairless man
who fed him and whose slave he had become.
Once more the prisoned thing that had been Gerald Rathbone gazed round
the cell, striving with terrible intensity of thought to understand it
and penetrate its mysteries. Here he had been put and here he had
remained ever since that sickening moment when he had been talking to
Sir William Gouldesbrough. He had been standing in front of the baronet,
when his arms had been gripped from behind and unseen fingers held a
damp cloth, with a faint sickly and aromatic smell, over his face. A
noise like the rushing of great waters sounded in his ears, there was a
sense of falling into a gulf of enveloping blackness.
He had awakened in the place which he was now surveying again, with
frightful and fascinated curiosity.
In the brilliant light of the electric bulbs every object in the cell
was clearly seen. The place was not small. It was oblong in shape, some
sixteen feet by twelve. The walls were built of heavy slabs of Portland
stone cemented together with extreme nicety and care. The door of the
cell was obviously new. It was a heavy steel door with a complicated
system of locks--very much like the door of a safe. The whole place,
indeed, suggested that it had been used as a strong-room at some time or
other. There was no window of any kind in the cell. In the centre of the
arched roof there was a barred ventilator, and close by an electric fan
whirled and whispered unceasingly. The sound made by the purring thing
as it revolved two thousand times a minute was almost the only sound
Gerald Rathbone heard now.
The floor of the cell was covered with cork carpet of an ordinary
pattern. The victim cast his glance on all this without interest. Then,
as if he did so unwillingly, but by the force of an attraction he could
not resist, he stared, with lively doubt and horror rippling over his
face, at something which stood against the opposite wall. He saw a long
narrow couch of some black wood, slanting upwards towards the head. The
couch stood upon four thick pedestals of red rubber, which in their turn
rested upon four squares of thick porcelain. The whole thing had the
appearance of a shallow box upon trestles, and at the head was a curious
pillow of india-rubber. At the side of this thick pad was a
collar-shaped circlet of vulcanite clamped between two arms of
aluminium, which moved in any direction upon ball-pivots.
He stared at this mysterious couch, trying to understand it, to realize
it.
He rose from the narrow bed on which he sat, and advanced to the centre
of the cell--to the centre, but no further than that.
Around his waist a circlet of light steel was welded, and from it thin
steel chains ran through light handcuffs upon his wrists, and were
joined to steel bands which were locked upon his ankles. And all these
chains, hardly thicker than stout watch-chains, but terribly strong,
were caught up to a pulley that hung far above his head and, in its
turn, gave its central chain to another pulley and swivel fixed in the
roof.
In the half of his cell where his little bed was fixed, the prisoner had
fair liberty of movement, despite his shackles. He could sit or lie,
use his hands with some freedom. But whenever he attempted to cross the
invisible line which divided one part of the cell from the other, the
chains tightened and forbade him.
He stood now, straining to the limit of his bonds, gazing at the long
couch of black wood, with its rubber feet, its clamps and collar at the
head.
Above the mysterious couch, upon a triangular shelf by the door, was
something that gleamed and shone brightly. It was a cap of metal, shaped
like a huge acorn cup, or a bishop's mitre. From an ivory stud in the
centre of the peak, coils of silk-covered wire ran to a china plug in
the wall.
Rathbone stood upright for several minutes gazing at these things. Then
with a long, hopeless sigh, to the accompanying jingle of his fetters,
he turned and sat down once more upon his bed.
As prisoners do, he had contracted the habit of talking aloud to
himself. It was a poor comfort--this mournful echo of one's own
voice!--but it seemed to make the profound solitude more bearable for a
moment. He began a miserable monologue now.
"I _must_ understand it!" he said. "That is the first step of all, if I
am to keep my brain, if there is ever to be the slightest chance of
escape, I must understand this terrible and secret business.
"What are these fiends doing to me?
"Let me go through the whole thing slowly and in order."
He began to reconstruct the scenes of his frequent torture, with the
logic and precision with which he would have worked out a proposition of
Euclid. It was the only way in which he could keep a grip upon a failing
mind; a logical process of thought alone could solve this horrid
mystery.
What happened every day, sometimes two or three times a day? Just this.
He would be lying on his bed, reading, perhaps, if the electric lights
were turned on. There would be a sudden creak and rattle of the big
pulleys high up in the roof, a rattle which came without any warning
whatever.
Then the central chain, to which all the other thinner chains were
fastened, would begin to tighten and move. Slowly, inch by inch, as if
some one were turning a winch-handle outside the cell, the chain wound
up into the roof. As it did so, the smaller chains, which were fixed to
the steel bands upon his limbs, tightened also.
Struggle as he might, the arrangements and balance of the weights were
so perfect that in less than a minute he would be swinging clear of the
bed, as helpless as a bale of goods at the end of a crane.
Then the upward movement of the chain would stop, the door open with a
clicking of its massive wards, and Guest would come in.
In a moment more Gerald always found himself swung on to the long black
couch. His neck was encircled by the collar of thick vulcanite, his head
was bent upwards by means of an india-rubber pillow beneath it, his
hands and feet were strapped to the framework of the couch.
And finally Guest would take the metal cap and fix it firmly upon his
head, pressed down to the very eyes so that he could in no way shake it
off. The man would leave the cell, sometimes with a chuckle or a
malicious sentence that seemed full of hidden meaning, sometimes in
silence.
And then the electric light invariably went out.
Rathbone never knew how long he was forced to remain thus in the dark,
the subject of some horrible experiment, at the nature of which he could
only guess. The period seemed to vary, but there was no possible test of
time. Long ago time had ceased to exist for him.
Release would come at last, release, food and light--and so the dreadful
silent days went on.
"What are these devils doing to me?"
The hollow voice of reverie and self-communing cut into the silence like
a knife.
"It must be that I am being made the victim of an awful revenge and
hatred. Charliewood was the decoy and tool of Gouldesbrough; it was all
planned from the first. Marjorie was never really relinquished by
Gouldesbrough. He meant all along to get me out of the way, to get
Marjorie back if he could. All this is clear enough. I thought I was
dealing with an honourable gentleman, and a great man, too great to
stoop even to anything petty or mean. I have been dealing with desperate
and secret criminals, people who live hideous double lives, who walk the
world and sit in high places and do unnameable evil in the dark. Yes!
That is clear enough. Even now, perhaps, my darling is once more in the
power of this monster Gouldesbrough!"
The thin voice failed and died away into a tortured whimper. The tall
form shook with agony and the rattle of the steel chains mingled with
the "purr," "purr" of the electric fan in the roof.
By a tremendous effort of will Rathbone clutched at his thoughts again.
He wrenched his mind back from the memory of his dreadful plight to the
solving of the mystery.
Till he had some glimmering of the _meaning_ of what was being done to
him, he was entirely hopeless and helpless.
He began to murmur to himself again.
"In the first place Gouldesbrough has got me out of the way
successfully. I have disappeared from the world of men, the field is
clear for him. But he has not killed me. For some reason or other,
dangerous though it must be for him, he is keeping me alive. It surely
would have been safer for him to have murdered me in this secret place,
and buried me beneath the stone flags here? I am forced to conclude that
he is keeping me for an even worse revenge than that of immediate
extinction. It is torture enough to imprison me like this, of course.
But, if the man is what I feel he is--not man, but devil--would he not
have tortured me in another way before now? There are dreadful pains
that fiends can make the body suffer. One has read of unbearable agonies
in old books, in the classics. Yet nothing of the sort has been done to
me yet, and I have been long in this prison. My food has been plentiful
and of good quality, even definitely stimulating I have thought at
times.
"It is obvious then that I am not to be subjected to any of the horrors
one has read of. What _is_ being done to me? when, each day, I am fixed
rigidly upon that couch, and the brass helmet is put upon my head, what
is going on? I cannot feel any sensation out of the ordinary when I am
tied down there. I am no weaker in body, my faculties are just as
unimpaired when I am released as they were before. At least it seems so
to me. I can discover no change in me either, mental or physical.
"Something is being done by means of electricity. The coils of wire that
lead from the helmet to the plug in the wall show that. The way in which
the couch is insulated, the vulcanite collar, the rubber pillow, all
lead to the same conclusion. At first I thought that a torturing current
of electricity was to be directed into the brain. That my faculties, my
very soul itself, were to be dissolved and destroyed by some subtle
means. But it is not so. There is no current coming to me through the
wire. Nowhere does my head touch metal, the cap is lined throughout with
rubber. But yesterday, as my gaoler held up the helmet to examine it
before putting it on my head, I had an opportunity of seeing the whole
interior for the first time.
"There was very little to see! At the top was a circular orifice which
seemed to be closed by a thin disc of some shining material. That was
all. It looked just like the part of a telephone into which one speaks.
My brain, my body, are not being acted upon. Nothing is being slowly
instilled into my being. _Can it be that anything is being taken away?_"
He bent his head upon his hands and groaned in agony. All was dark and
impenetrable, there was no solution, no help. He was in the grip of
merciless men, in the clutch of the unknown.
The electric light in the cell went out suddenly.
CHAPTER XIII
LORD MALVIN
If Sir William Gouldesbrough represented all that was most brilliant,
modern, and daring in the scientific world of Europe, Lord Malvin stood
as its official figure-head. He was the "grand old man" of science, and
was regarded by every one as a final court of appeal in all such
matters.
He was of a great age, almost eighty, in fact, yet his health was
perfect, his intellect unimpaired, and his interest in human events as
keen and vigorous as that of a man but half his age and in the full
prime and meridian of life.
In science, he represented what the President of the Royal Academy
represents in art, or the Lord Chief Justice in the law, and although he
had almost ceased independent investigations, he was always appealed to
and consulted when anything new and revolutionary in science was
discovered or promulgated by any of the younger men.
The younger men themselves, while allowing their chief's vast knowledge
and experience, his real and undeniable eminence, were apt to call him
conservative, and to hint that he was of an alien generation. They would
say that his judgment was sometimes obscured by his veneration and love
for the past, and because he found himself unable to leap so rapidly to
conclusions as they did, they put him down as an old fogey who had done
valuable and remarkable work in his time, but who ought to be content
with his peerage and immense fortune and retire to the planting of
cabbages or the growing of roses in the country.
In the public eye, nevertheless, Lord Malvin remained as familiar and
necessary a part of the English landscape as St. Paul's; and, whenever a
great man died and the newspapers enumerated the few remaining veterans
of the Commonwealth, Lord Malvin was usually the first to be mentioned.
For many years there had been an antagonism between Lord Malvin and Sir
William Gouldesbrough. It was not personal so much as scientific, an
abstract and intellectual antagonism. When Sir William's star first
began to rise above the horizon--he was only Mr. Gouldesbrough
then--Lord Malvin had recognized his talent as an inventor, but
deprecated many of his theories. These ideas, these possibilities for
the future which Gouldesbrough was fond of giving to the world in
lectures and reviews, seemed horribly dangerous, subversive, and
fantastic to the older man.
He said so in no uncertain voice, and for some years, though he was
always kind and civil to Gouldesbrough, he certainly did much to
discount the rising star's power of illumination.
But as time went on, each daring theory put forth by Gouldesbrough
passed into the realm of actual fact. Lord Malvin saw that Sir William
had been almost invariably right. He saw that the new man not only told
the world that some day this or that marvel would come to pass, but
immediately afterwards set to work and himself made it come to pass!
Lord Malvin was a noble man as well as a nobleman--sometimes a rare
combination to-day--and he confessed himself in the wrong. Directly he
saw that he had been mistaken, and that Sir William was no charlatan,
but one of the most daring and brilliant scientists the world had ever
known, the peer gave the newer man all the weight of his support.
Nevertheless, while forced by circumstance and Gouldesbrough's
justification of his own ideas into a scientific brotherhood, Lord
Malvin, who constantly met the other, found a new problem confronting
him.
While he had not believed in Gouldesbrough's theories, Lord Malvin had
rather liked him personally.
Now that he was compelled to believe in Gouldesbrough's theories, Lord
Malvin found that he experienced a growing dislike for the man himself.
And as he was a fair and honourable man, Lord Malvin did everything he
possibly could to rid himself of this prejudice, with the result that
while his efforts to do so were quite unavailing, he redoubled his
kindness and attentions to the man he disliked.
All the scientific world knew that Sir William was perfecting some
marvellous discovery. In Berlin, Paris, Petersburg, Vienna, and Buda
Pesth, learned savants were writing to their _confrères_ in London to
know what this might be. The excitement was intense, the rumours were
endless, and it is not too much to say that the whole scientific
intellect of the globe was roused and waiting.
Now when a number of leading brains are agitated upon one subject,
something of that agitation begins to stir and move in the outside
world.
Already some hints had got about, and the press of Europe and America
was scenting some extraordinary news.
The whole business had at length culminated in the giving of a great
reception by Lord Malvin.
Everybody who mattered was asked, not only in the scientific but also in
the general world.
And everybody knew, that not only was the reception given in Sir William
Gouldesbrough's honour, but that he would say something more or less
definite about what he had in hand.
In short, a pronouncement was to be made, and the
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