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."
"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 Idorealize 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.
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 amanas 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 aretoogood!"
"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, thereisnothing 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'vegotto 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 justgotto 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 itcouldbe. 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!"
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."
"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.
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 theNineteenth 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."