The Soul Stealer

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?"