The Soul Stealer

"Ah, yes, dear," she replied, "there is no doubt of that, William was always noble. He is as great in heart as he is in intellect. He is indeed one of the chosen and best. Don't think I don't realize it, mother, now you've told me, indeed I do realize it. My whole heart is filled with gratitude towards him. No one else would have done as much in his position."

"You do feel that, do you, dear?" Lady Poole said.

"Oh, indeed I do," she answered, "though I fear that even he, great as his intellect is, will never disperse this frightful, terrible darkness."

Lady Poole got up and came round to where her daughter was sitting. She put her hand upon the shining coil of hair and said —

"Dear, do you think that you could bear to see him?"

"To see William?" Marjorie answered quickly with a curious catch in her voice.

"Yes, darling, to see William. Would it give you too much pain?"

"But how, why, what for?"

"Oh, not to revive any memories of the past, there is nothing further from his thoughts. But this morning he wrote me the very sweetest letter, saying that in this crisis he might be able to give you a little comfort."

"Has he discovered anything, then?" Marjorie asked.

"I fear not as yet. But he says that at this moment you must feel very much alone. As you know, he is doing all that a mortal man can. Of course, I have told him how broken you are by it all, and he thinks that perhaps you might like to hear what he is doing, might like to confide in him a little. 'If,' he says in his letter, 'she will receive me as a brother, whose only wish is to help her in this terrible trial, can I say how proud and grateful I shall be to come to her and tell her what I can?'"

Marjorie gave a great sob. It was too much. In her nervous and weak condition the gentle and kindly message her mother had given her was terribly affecting.

"How good he is!" she murmured. "Yes, mother, if only he would come I should like to see him."

"Then, my dear," Lady Poole replied, "that is very easily arranged, for he is in the hotel to-night."

Marjorie started. Her mother went to a side table on which was a little portable telephone. She held the receiver to her ear, and when the clerk from the down-stairs office replied, asked that Sir William Gouldesbrough should be told at once that Lady Poole would be very glad to see him in Number 207.

Marjorie rose and began to pace the room. A growing excitement mastered her, her hands twitched, her eyes were dilated. Perhaps she was at last going to hear something, something definite, something new, about Guy.

There was a knock at the door. A waiter opened it, and Sir William Gouldesbrough came into the room.

CHAPTER IX

GRATITUDE OF MISS MARJORIE POOLE

As the man to whom she had been engaged came into the room, Marjorie rose to meet him. She was not embarrassed, the hour and occasion were too serious for that, and she herself was too broken down for any emotions save those that were intensely real and came from an anguished heart. She went up to him, all pale and drooping, and took him by the hand.

"Thank you, William," she said in a low voice, and that was all.

But in her words Gouldesbrough realized all that she was powerless to say. He heard, with an inward thrill and leap of the pulses, an immense respect for him, which, even in the days of their engagement, he had never heard.

Always, Marjorie had reverenced his attainments, never had she seemed to be so near to him as a man as now.

He looked straight into her eyes, nor did his own flinch from her direct and agonized gaze. The frightful power of his dominating will, the horrible strength of his desire, the intensity of his purpose, enabled him to face her look without a sign of tremor.

He, this man with a marvellous intellect and a soul unutterably stained by the most merciless perfidy, was yet able to look back at her with a kind, sorrowful, and touching glance.

Gouldesbrough wore no metal helmet which should make the horror of his thoughts and knowledge plain for Marjorie to see. The man who had committed a crime as foul and sinister as ever crime was yet, the man who was responsible for the pale face of the girl he loved, the drooping form, the tearful eyes, yet smiled back at her with a mask of patient resignation, deference, and chivalry.

"I am so glad you've come, William," Lady Poole said; "and I'm sure, distressing as all these circumstances are, we cannot thank you enough for what you have done and are doing. No one else in your position would have done so much. And on Marjorie's behalf and on my own I thank you with a full heart."

Sir William bowed.

Then Lady Poole, voluble as she usually was, and unabashed in almost every circumstance hesitated a little. The situation was certainly very delicate, almost unparalleled, indeed, and it was certainly quite outside even her wide experience. But her voice had a genuine ring of thankfulness and gratitude, and the real woman emerged from the veneer of worldliness and baffled ambition.

There was a pause for a moment, no one of the three spoke a single word. Then Lady Poole, by an intuition, said and did exactly the right thing – perhaps old Sir Frederick's "hobby of tact" had not been without its use after all! She sank into a chair.

"There's no need for any explanation, I can see that," she said with a sigh of relief. "With any other man it would have been so different, but it's all right, William, I can see it in your manner and in your presence here. Then let me say once and for all, that both Marjorie and I feel at last we have got some one with us who will help us. We have been terribly alone. We have both felt it most poignantly. After all, women do want a man in a crisis! You, dear William, are the last man we should have thought of asking to help us, and yet you are the first man who has come to do so."

"Dear Lady Poole," Gouldesbrough answered in a quiet voice, "I think perhaps I see a little of what you mean. I am not sure, but I think I do. And I regard it as the greatest privilege and honour to come to you with an offer of help and assistance in your trouble."

He turned to the younger lady.

"Marjorie," he said, "you must treat me just like a brother now. You must forget all that has passed between us, and just lean on me, rely on me, use me. Nothing could make me more happy than just that."

Lady Poole rose again. Who shall say in the volatile brain of the good dame that already in the exhilaration of Sir William's presence and kindness, new hopes and ambitions were not reviving? Lady Poole was a woman, and she was an opportunist too. Woman-like, her mind moved fast into an imaginary future; it had always done so. And it is possible that upon the clouded horizon of her hopes a faint star began to twinkle once more.

Who shall blame Lady Poole?

"Now, my dears," she said in a more matter of fact voice, "I think perhaps you might be happier in discussing this matter if I were to go away. Under the circumstances, I am perfectly aware that it's not the correct thing to do, but that is speaking only from a conventional standpoint, and none of us here can be conventional at a moment like this. If you would rather have me stay, just say so. But it is with pride and pleasure that I know that I can leave you with Marjorie, William, even under these miserable circumstances and in this unhappy business."

Gouldesbrough smiled sadly.

"It is as Marjorie wishes," he said. "But I know that Marjorie knows she can trust me."

The great man saw that once more the girl lifted her eyes and looked at him with something which was almost like reverence. Never before had he seen her look at him like this. Once more the evil joy in the possibility of victory after all leapt through his blood.

No thought nor realization of the terrible thing he had done, of the horrors that he and the pink-faced man in Regent's Park were even now perfecting, came to trouble that moment of evil pride. Everybody had always said, everybody who had been brought into contact with him, always knew that Sir William Gouldesbrough was a strong man!

Lady Poole waited a moment to see if her daughter made any sign of wishing her to remain, and finding that there was none, for Marjorie was standing with drooping head and made no movement, the dowager swept out of the room with rustling skirts, and gently closed the door.

Sir William and Marjorie were left alone.

The man of action asserted himself.

"Sit down, Marjorie," he said in a commonplace tone, "and just let me talk to you on pure matters of fact. Now, my dear, we haven't seen each other since you wrote me the letter telling me that our engagement was a mistake. You know what my reply to that was, and I believe and trust you know that I shall remain perfectly true to both the spirit and actual words of that communication. That's all we need say now, except just this: I loved you dearly and I love you dearly now. I had hoped that we might have been very happy together and that I might have spent my life in your service. But that was not to be in the way that I had hoped. At the same time, I am not a man easily moved or changed, and if I cannot be yours in one way, dear girl, I will be yours in another. However, that's all about that. Now, then, let me tell you how hard I have been trying to discover the truth of this astounding disappearance of poor Mr. Guy Rathbone."

A low sob came from the girl in the chair. It was a sob not only of regret for her lost lover, but it had the same note of reverence, of utter appreciation, of her first words.

"You are too good," she said. "William, I have treated you horribly badly. You are too good. Oh, you are too good!"

"Hush!" he said in a sharp staccato voice. "We agreed that aspect of the question wasn't to be spoken of any more. The past is the past, and, my dear little girl, I beg you to realize it. You loved poor Guy Rathbone, and he seems to have been wiped out of ordinary life. My business is to find him again for you, so that you may be happy. I have been trying to do the utmost in my power for days. I have done everything that my mind could suggest, and as yet nothing has occurred. Now, Marjorie, let's just be business-like. Tell me what you think about the matter, and I will tell you what I think. See if our two brains cannot hit on something which will help us."

"William," she said with a full note, a chord rather, of deep pain in her voice – "William, I don't know what to think. I can't understand it. I am lost in utter darkness. There seems no possible reason why he should have gone away. I can only think that the worst has happened, and that some terrible people must have killed him."

"But why?"