It was a panelled room with a softly glowing wood fire upon the hearth, and heavy crimson curtains shutting out the dying lights of the day. On a gleaming mahogany sideboard were bottles of cut-glass, ruby, diamond, and amber; bottles in which the soft firelight gleamed and was repeated in a thousand twinkling points.
A loud sob of relief burst from the drunkard, and he went up to the sideboard with the impish greed and longing that one sees in some great ape.
And now, as his shadow, cast upon the wall in the firelight, parodied and distorted all his movements, there seemed two obscene and evil creatures in the rich and quiet room. It was as though the man with his huge hairless face were being watched and waited for by an ape-like ambassador from hell.
Guest clutched the mahogany sideboard and, his fingers were so hot that a greyness like that of damp breath on frosted glass glowed out upon the wood – it seemed as if the man's very touch brought mildew and blight.
Guest ran his eye rapidly along the decanters. His throat felt as though it was packed with hot flour. His mouth tasted as if he had been sucking a brass tap. His tongue was swollen and his lips were hard, cracked, and feverish. He snatched the brandy bottle from a spirit-case, and poured all that was in it into a heavy cut-glass tumbler. Then, looking round for more, for the tantalus had not been more than one-fourth part full, he saw a long wicker-covered bottle of curaçao, and he began to pour from it into the brandy. Then, without water, or mineral water, he began to gulp down this astonishing and powerful mixture, which, in a fourth of its quantity, would probably have struck down the ordinary man, as a tree snaps and falls in a sudden wind.
It had been Guest's intention to take enough alcohol to put him into something like a normal condition, and then to return to the laboratory to assist at the concluding scenes of the demonstration, and to enjoy it in his own malicious and sinister fashion. But as the liquor seemed to course through his veins and to relieve them of the intolerable strain, as he felt his whole body respond to the dose of poison to which he had accustomed it, thoughts of returning to the laboratory became very dim and misty.
Here was this large comfortable room with its panelled walls, its old family portraits in their massive gilt frames, this fire of wood logs in a great open hearth, sending out so pleasant and hospitable an invitation to remain. Every fibre of the wretch's body urged him to take the twilight hour and enjoy it.
Guest sat down in a great arm-chair, padded with crimson leather, and gazed dreamily into the white heart of the fire.
He felt at peace, and for five minutes sat there without movement, looking in the flickering firelight like some grotesque Chinese sculpture, some god of darkness made by a silent moon-faced man on the far shores of the Yang-tze-Kiang.
Then Mr. Guest began to move again; the fuel that he had taken was burning out. The man's organism had become like one of those toy engines for children, which have for furnace a little methyl lamp, and which must be constantly renewed if the wheels of the mechanism are to continue to revolve.
Mr. Guest rose from the arm-chair and shambled over to the sideboard again. The bottle of curaçao was still almost full, though there did not appear to be any more brandy.
That would do, he thought, and he poured from the bottle into his glass as if he had been pouring beer. The wretched man had forgotten that, in his present state – a state upon the very verge of swift and hidden paroxysm and of death – the long abstention of the morning and afternoon had modified his physiological condition. Moreover, the suddenness of these stealthy potations in the dining-room began to have their way with him. He was a man whom it was almost impossible to make intoxicated, as the ordinary person understands intoxication. When Guest was drunk, his mind became several shades more evil, that was all.
But at this moment the man succumbed, and in half-an-hour his brain was absolutely clouded and confused. He had forgotten both time and occasion, and could not think coherently.
At last he seemed to realize this himself. He rose to his feet and, clutching hold of the dining-room table, swayed and lurched towards the dining-room door. There was a dim consciousness within him of something which was imminently necessary to be done, but which he had forgotten or was unable to recall.
"What was it?" he kept asking himself with a thick indistinctness. "I knew I had somethin' to do, somethin' important, can't think what it was."
At that moment his hand, which he had thrust into his pocket, touched a key.
"I've got it," he said, "'course, I know now. I must go down and put the cap on Rathbone, after I have injected the alcohol preparation. William and I want to sit in front of the screen and follow his thoughts; they are funnier than they ever used to be before we told him what we were doing to him. I'll just take one more drink, then I'll go down-stairs to the cellars at once."
CHAPTER XXV
AT LAST!
When the sounds of amused laughter at Lord Landsend's unconscious revelation had passed away, and that young nobleman, slightly flushed indeed, but still with the imperturbability that a man of his class and kind learns how to wear on all occasions, had regained his seat, a fire of questions poured in upon Sir William Gouldesbrough.
The famous scientists of the party had all risen and were conferring together in a ripple of rapid and exciting talk, which for the convenience of the foreign members of their number, was conducted in French.
Marjorie Poole, who had not looked at Sir William at all during the whole of the afternoon, was very pale and quiet.
Gouldesbrough had noticed this, and even in the moment of supreme triumph his heart was heavy within him. He feared that something irrevocable had come between him and the girl he loved, and her pallor only intensified his longing to be done with the whole thing, to be alone with her and to have the explanation which he desired so keenly and yet dreaded so acutely. For what Lord Malvin had said to him had stabbed him with a deadly fear, as each solemn, significant word rang through the room.
"Could it be," he asked himself, "could it possibly be that these people suspected or knew anything?"
His quick brain answered the question in its own swift and logical fashion. It was utterly impossible that Lord Malvin could know anything. His words were a coincidence and that was all. No, he need not fear, and possibly, he thought, the long strain of work and worry had had its influence upon his nerves and he had become morbid and unstrung. That fear passed, but there was still in his heart the fear, and strangely enough an even greater fear, that he would never now make Marjorie his own.
His outward face and demeanour showed nothing of the storm and riot within. He was calm, self-possessed, and smiling, quick to answer and to reply, to explain this or that point in his discoveries, to be adequate, confident and serene.
In reply to a question from Dean Weare, Sir William leant upon one of the cases which covered the thought-transforming mechanism and gave a little lecture.
"Quite so, Mr. Dean," he said; "it is exactly as you suppose, the form, power, and vividness of the pictures upon the screen correspond exactly with the strength of the intellect of the person whose thoughts are making these pictures. You will find your strongly imaginative man, or your man whose brain is much turned inward upon himself, and who, for this very reason takes little part in the action or movement of life, will give a far more complete and vivid picture than any other. For example, assuming that the Bishop's valet is an ordinary servant and accompanied his Lordship to Palestine a few months ago, and saw exactly what his Lordship saw, that man's memories would not be thrown upon the screen with such wonderful vividness as his Lordship's were. He would not be able, in all probability, to produce a picture, a general impression, which is a real picture and not a photograph, and which so conveys the exact likeness of a place far more than any photograph could ever do. His thoughts would probably be represented by some special incident which had struck his fancy at the time and assumed a proportion in his mind which a cultured and logical faculty of thought would at once reject as being out of due proportion. And finally, in a precise ratio to the power of the brain – I do not mean to its health, or ill-health, its weight or size, I mean its pure thinking power – so are the thoughts, when transformed into light, vivid or not vivid, as the case may be."
Mrs. Hoskin-Heath turned to Lord Landsend, who was sitting beside her. Her pretty face wore a roguish smile as she whispered to him.
"Billy, what an awful donkey you must be."
Lord Landsend looked at her for a moment. Then he answered —
"Well, you know, I am not at all sure that it is not a jolly good thing to be sometimes. I would not be that fellow Gouldesbrough for anything."
She looked at him in amusement. There was something quite serious in the young man's face.
"Why," she said, in a whisper, "what do you mean, Billy?"
"I may not be clever," said Lord Landsend, "but I prefer to spend my life doing what amuses me, not what other people think I ought to do. At the same time I know men, and I know that scientific Johnny over there has got something on his mind which I should not care to have. Poor Tommy Decies had that look in his eyes the night before Ascot last year, poor Eustace Charliewood had it just before he went down to Brighton and shot himself; and you may take it from me, Mrs. Hoskin-Heath, that I know what I am talking about."
"And now," said Sir William, looking up and down the rows of faces opposite him. "And now, which of you will submit himself to the next experiment?"
Then Lord Landsend spoke. He was determined to "get his own back," as he would have put it, if possible.
"Why don't you have a try yourself, Sir William," he said, with a not very friendly grin; "or won't what d'you call 'em work for its master? You had my thoughts for nothing, I'll give you twopence for yours."
There was an ill-suppressed titter from the more frivolous portion of the spectators; but Lord Malvin turned round and looked at the young man with a frown of disapproval. There was something in that leonine head and those calm wise eyes which compelled him to silence.
Then Herr Schmoulder, a famous savant from Berlin, spoke.
"It would an interesting demonstration make," he said, "of der statement of der relative power that the strong and weak brain possesses if we could see der apparatus in operation upon der thought vibrations transformed of an intelligence which not equal to our own is."
Mrs. Hoskin-Heath chimed in, her beautiful, silvery notes coming, after the deep, grave, guttural, like a peal of bells heard in the lull of a thunderstorm.
"What a good idea, Sir William!" she said. "I wish you would let me send for my footman. He is sure to be in the servants' hall. It would be so interesting to know his real opinion of me and my husband; and he certainly is a most consummate fool, and would be a thoroughly good subject for such an experiment. I brought him out of Gloucestershire. You know, he was one of the under-footmen at my brother's place, and I have been trying to train him, though with little success. I mean that he is too stolid to be shy, and, therefore, won't object at all, as some men would, to put the cap on and sit down here in the dark. He won't be frightened, I am sure."
"By all means, Mrs. Hoskin-Heath," Gouldesbrough said with a smile. "No doubt one could not have a better subject, and I really shall be able to illustrate the difference between the relative values of brain-power by this means. You will all be able to notice the difference in the vividness and outline of the pictures or words that will appear."
Sir William turned round for Wilson Guest, whom he proposed to send upon the mission, but could not find him.
"I will ring for the butler," he said, "and tell him to fetch your man, Mrs. Hoskin-Heath."
"Oh! don't do that," a voice said upon the second tier. "I – I – am – er – not feeling very well, Sir William, and I was going to ask your permission to go and sit down in the hall for a few minutes; I will tell one of your servants, they are sure to be about."
The voice was the voice of Donald Megbie. He did not look at all ill, but he stepped down with a smile and went out of the laboratory, while everybody waited for the advent of Mrs. Hoskin-Heath's footman.
Once more Sir William looked round to see if Wilson Guest had returned.
The actual projecting apparatus by which the transformed light rays were thrown upon the screen required some attention. The delicate apparatus which focussed the lens of the projector, in order to bring it into the nearest possible co-ordination with the light which it had to magnify and transmit, needed some little care.
"Will you excuse me for a moment," he said to everybody there, "if I leave you in darkness again, until the man comes? I wish to attend to a portion of the mechanism here, and I can only do so by turning off the lights."
There was a chorus of "Oh, please do so, Sir William," and suddenly the laboratory was once more plunged into utter blackness.
Nobody talked much now, curiously enough. For a moment there was nothing heard but the regular beating of Lady Poole's fan, and one whispering conversation which might, or might not, have been carried on between Lord Landsend and Mrs. Hoskin-Heath.
Then the thunder, which had been quiet for a little time, began to mutter once more. The dark air became hot and full of oppression. And in the dark Lord Malvin took the hand of Marjorie Poole in his own. "Be brave," he said into her ear. "I know what you must suffer, believing what you believe."
She whispered back to him.
"I have known it ever since I have been in this place," she said. "Oh! Lord Malvin, I have known it quite certainly, Guy is in this house!"
"Donald Megbie has gone out, as you saw just now," he answered. "Be brave! be strong! I believe that God is guiding you. I too have felt the psychic influence of something strange and very, very terrible in the air of this house."
In a moment more the beginning of the end came. The great twelve-foot circle of light flashed out upon the screen, but now with an extraordinary brightness and vividness, such as the spectators had not seen before during the course of the experiments. For a space of, perhaps, ten seconds, there was no sound at all. Nobody quite realized that anything out of the ordinary was happening, except possibly the scientists, who had a complete grasp of the mechanical methods of the experiments and realized that in this room, at any rate, no one was wearing the cap.
There was a loud cry of astonishment, and, so it seemed, of alarm.
Sharply outlined against the brilliant circle, sharply outlined in a gigantic shape, and standing full in the screen of the light that streamed from the lens of the projector, the spectators saw that Sir William Gouldesbrough was standing. They caught a glimpse of his face. It was a face like the face of a dead man. His arms were whirling in the air like mills, and then as a cry died away in mournful echoes in the high roof of the laboratory, there was a dead sound as the figure of the scientist disappeared and fell out of the circle of light upon the floor.
Upon the screen itself there came a picture. It was the picture of a girl, but of a girl with a face so sweetly tender and compassionate, so irradiated with utter confidence and trust, so pained and yet so tender, that no painter had ever put so wonderful a thing on canvas, and no Madonna in the galleries of the world was more beautiful or more kind.
And the face was one that they all knew well and recognized in a moment. It was the face of one of them, the face of Marjorie Poole, and it was so beautiful because it was painted by an artist whose pictures have never before appealed so poignantly to human eyes – it was painted by despairing Love itself.
At that marvellous sight, a sight which none of those present ever forgot in after life, a strange cry went up into the high-domed roof. It was a cry uttered by many voices and in many keys. There was a gasp of excitement and of fear, shrill women's tones, the guttural of the Teuton, the bass of the startled Englishmen, the high, staccato cry of the Latin, as the French savants joined in it.
But in whatever key the exclamations were pitched, they all blended into something like a wail, a composite, multiple thing, the wail of a company of people who had seen something behind the Veil for the first time in their lives.
The picture glowed and looked out at them in all its ineffable tenderness and glory, and then grew dim, trembled, dissolved, and melted away.
Then upon the screen came words, terrible, poignant words —
"MARJORIE, MARJORIE DEAR, I KNOW THAT YOU ARE NEAR ME, NOW IN BODY AS YOU ARE ALWAYS NEAR ME IN THOUGHTS. I FEEL IT, I KNOW IT, AND EVEN IN THIS CRUEL PRISON, THIS HOPELESS PRISON, WHERE I AM DYING, AND SHALL SHORTLY DIE, I KNOW THAT YOU ARE NEAR ME IN BODY, AND IN THAT SPIRIT YOU ARE ALWAYS MINE AND I AM ALWAYS YOURS. LOVE, IF THE THOUGHTS THAT THEY ARE ROBBING ME OF, IF THE THOUGHTS THAT FILL MY MIND, AND WHICH THOSE TWO FIENDS ARE PROBABLY LOOKING AT AND LAUGHING OVER, HAVE ANY POWER AT ALL, THEN I SEND THEM TO YOU WITH MY LAST EFFORT, IN ONE LAST ATTEMPT TO REACH YOU AND TO SAY THAT I LOVE YOU AND TO SAY GOOD-BYE."
The circle of white light grew dimmer. Faint, eddying spirals of something that seemed like smoke rose up and obscured the words. They saw an ashen vapour of grey creep over the circle, as the shadow of the moon creeps over the sun at an eclipse. Then the circle disappeared finally, and they were left once more in the dark.
In the dark, indeed, but not in silence. A tumult of agonized voices filled the laboratory. And over them all a brave voice beat in upon the sound with the strong and regular assurance of a great bell, a bell like the mighty mass of metal which hangs in the ancient belfry of Bruges.
Lord Malvin was calling to them to be calm and silent, was telling them that he knew what all this meant and that they must be of courage and good cheer.
Then some one struck a match. It was Lord Landsend, his face very white and serious. He held it up above his head and called to Lord Malvin.
"Here you are, Sir," he said. "I will get down to you in a second. Then we can find the switch to turn on the electric light."
He stumbled down to where Lord Malvin sat, – showing the value of the practical man and polo player in a crisis – and together the two peers, the famous and honoured scientist and the wealthy young man whom the world flattered and called dilettante and a fool, went their way to the switch-table in the guiding light of this small torch.
Suddenly a blaze of light dispelled the darkness and showed a company of ghosts looking at each other with weeping faces.
It showed also the figure of a girl sunk upon its chair in a deadly swoon. And it showed also the body of Sir William Gouldesbrough lying upon the floor between the series of machines and the screen upon the opposite wall. The dead face was so horrible that some one ran up immediately and covered it with a handkerchief.
This was Lord Landsend.
The tumult was indescribable, but by sheer power of authority and wisdom Lord Malvin calmed them all. His hand was raised as the hand of a conductor holds the vehemence of a band in check.
In a few short trenchant sentences he told them the history of the strange occurrence which Donald Megbie and Mrs. Poole had brought to his notice; and even as he told them, Sir Harold Oliver and Lady Poole were bringing back the unconscious girl to life and realization.
"The man is here," Lord Malvin said, "the man is here. Guy Rathbone lies dying and prisoned in this accursed house. Sir Harold Oliver, I will ask you to remain with these ladies while I will go forth and solve this horrid mystery."
He looked round with a weary, questioning eye, seeking who should be his companion, and as he did so young Lord Landsend touched him on the arm and smiled.
"Come, my dear boy," the old man said with a melancholy smile of kindness, "you are just the man I want; come with me."
Then, before he left the laboratory, he spoke a few rapid words in French to one or two of the foreign scientists.
Upon that, these gentlemen went down among the strange and fantastic apparatus upon the tables and lifted up That which but a few minutes ago had held the soul and the personality of Sir William Gouldesbrough. They carried the long, limp, terrible dead Thing to the other end of the room, where there was a screen.
CHAPTER XXVI
TWO FINAL PICTURES
There are two things to record —
(1)His hair was quite grey, his face was old and lined. His body was beginning to be ravaged by the devilish drugs with which it had been inoculated.
But he lay upon a couch in the study, and Marjorie bent over him kissing him, calling to him and cooing inarticulate words of belief and of love.
Lady Poole was there also, motionless and silent, while Lord Malvin and the doctor, who had been hastily summoned from Baker Street, watched by the head of the couch.
The doctor looked at Lord Malvin and nodded his head.
"He will be all right," he whispered. "Those devils have not killed him yet. He will live and be as strong as ever."
The tears were rolling down Lord Malvin's face and he could not speak, but he nodded back to the doctor.
And then they saw the face of Guy Rathbone, who lay there so broken and destroyed, begin to change. The gashes, which supreme and long-continued agony had cut into it, had not indeed passed away. The ashen visage remained ashen still, but a new light came flickering into the tired eyes, and in an indescribable way youth was returning.
Youth was returning, youth!
It came back, summoned out of the past by a supreme magic – the supreme magic of love.
The girl who loved him was kissing him, he was with her at last, and all was well.
(2)"It is a grave thing and much considered to be," said Herr Schmoulder.
It was late at night.
They had taken Wilson Guest to the hospital, where the doctors were holding him down, as he shrieked and laughed, and died in delirium tremens.
Lord Malvin, Sir Harold Oliver, and the other scientists were gathered together in the laboratory, that recent theatre of such terrible events.
"It is a very grave thing indeed, Herr Schmoulder," Lord Malvin answered; "but I have not ventured to propose it without a consultation in the highest quarters. Decies will be here at any moment, and then upon his decision we shall act. He has been to see the King."
The distinguished men waited there silent and uneasy. All round them stood the marvellous instruments by which the late Sir William Gouldesbrough had obtained a triumph unknown before in the history of the world.
The yellow radiance of the electric light poured down upon the gleaming mahogany, brass, vulcanite and steel.
On the opposite wall was the great white screen – just an ordinary stretch of prepared canvas upon steel rollers, a dead, senseless thing, and no more than that. Yet as the least imaginative of them there chanced to turn his head and see that great white sheet, he shuddered to think of the long agony it had pictured while the two monsters had sat and taken their amusement from it, as a man takes a glass of wine.
There was a rap upon the principal door of the laboratory. Lord Malvin strode to it and opened it. The butler, a portly man on the morning of this day, but now seeming to have shrunk into his clothes, and to have lost much of his vitality, stood there.
Beside him was a gentleman in evening dress, with a keen clean-shaven face and grey hair which curled.
The gentleman stepped quickly into the laboratory. It was the Home Secretary.
He shook Lord Malvin by the hand, and his face was very troubled.
"You are quite right, my Lord," he said. "I may say that His Majesty is at one with you and with me in this matter. His Majesty is much disturbed."
