The Soul Stealer

The room was absolutely still.

Something like a grey mist or curtain descended over Megbie's eyes. It rolled up, like a curtain, and Megbie saw the man with absolute clearness and certainty. He could almost have put out his hand and touched him.

Measured by the mere material standard of time, these events did not take more than a second, perhaps only a part of a second.

Then the writer became aware that the room was filled with sound – sudden, loud and menacing. It was a sound as of sudden drums at midnight, such a sound as the gay dances in Brussels heard on the eve of Waterloo, when the Assembly sounded in the great square, and the whole city awoke.

In another moment, Megbie knew what the sound in his ears really was. His own heart and pulses were racing and beating like the sudden traillerie of drums.

In a flash he recognized the face and form of his visitor – this outward form and semblance of a man which had sprung up and grown concrete in the night! The phantom – if indeed it was a phantom – wore the dress and aspect of Eustace Charliewood, the well-known man about town who had killed himself at Brighton a few years ago!

Megbie had never spoken to Charliewood – so far as he could remember – but he knew him perfectly well by sight, as every one in the West End of London had known him, and he was a member of one of the clubs to which the dead man had belonged.

The Thing that stood there, the Thing or Person which had sprung out of the air, wore the earthly semblance of Eustace Charliewood.

Megbie shouted out loud. A great cry burst from his lips, a cry of surprise and fear, a challenge of that almost dreadful curiosity that men experience now and then when they are in the presence of the inexplicable, the terrible and the unknown.

Then Megbie saw that the face of the Apparition was horribly contorted.

The mouth was opening and shutting rapidly in an agony of appeal. It seemed as though a torrent of words must be pouring from it, though there was not a sound of human speech in the large warm room.

Great tears rolled down the large pale cheeks, the brow was wrinkled with pain. The hands gesticulated and pointed, flickering rapidly hither and thither without sound. And continually, over and over again, the hands pointed to the gleaming silver case for cigarettes which Donald Megbie clasped tightly in his right hand.

The silent agitated Thing, so close – ah, so close! was trying to tell Donald something.

It was trying to say something about the cigarette-case, it was trying to tell Megbie something about Guy Rathbone.

And what? What was this fearful message that the agonized Thing was so eager and so horribly impotent to deliver?

Megbie's voice came to him. It sounded thin and muffled, just like the voice of a mechanical toy.

What is it? What is it? What are you trying to say to me about poor Guy Rathbone?

And then, as if it had seen that Megbie was trying to speak to it, but it could not hear his words, the figure of Eustace Charliewood wrung its hands, with a gesture which was inexpressibly dreadful, unutterably painful to see.

Megbie started up. He stepped forward. "Oh, don't, don't!" he said. As he spoke he dropped the cigarette-case, which, up to the present he had clutched in a hot wet hand. It fell with a clatter against the fender – that at any rate was a real noise!

In a moment the mopping, mourning, weeping phantom was gone.

The room was exactly as it had been before, still, warm, brilliantly-lit. And Donald Megbie stood upon the hearth-rug dazed and motionless, while a huge and icy hand seemed to creep round his heart and clutch it with lean, cold fingers.

Donald Megbie stood perfectly motionless for nearly a minute.

Then he knelt down and prayed fervently for help and guidance. At moments such as this men pray.

Much comforted and refreshed he rose from his knees, and went to one of the windows that looked out over the Thames.

He pulled aside the heavy green curtain, and saw that a clear colourless light immediately began to flow and flood into the room.

It was not yet dawn, but that mysterious hour which immediately presages the dawn had come.

The river was like a livid streak of pewter, the leafless plane-trees of the embankment seemed like delicate tracery of iron in the faint half-light. London was sleeping still.

The writer felt very calm and quiet as he turned away from the window and moved towards his bedroom.

The fire was nearly dead, but he saw the silver cigarette-case upon the rug and picked it up. He went to bed with the case under his pillow, and this is what he dreamed —

He saw Guy Rathbone in a position of extreme peril and danger. The circumstances were not defined, what the actual peril might be was not revealed. But Megbie knew that Rathbone was communicating with his brain while he slept. Rathbone was living somewhere. He was captive in the hands of enemies, he was trying to "get through" to the brain of some one who could help him.

The journalist only slept for a few short hours. He rose refreshed in body and with an unalterable conviction in his mind. The events of the last night were real. No chance or illusion had sent the vision and the dream, and the innocent-looking cigarette-case that lay upon the table, and which had come into his hands so strangely, was the pivot upon which strange events had turned.

The little silver thing was surrounded by as black and impenetrable a mystery as ever a man had trodden into unawares.

And in the broad daylight, when all that was fantastic and unreal was banished from thought, Megbie knew quite well towards whom his thoughts tended, on what remarkable and inscrutable personality his dreadful suspicions had begun to focus themselves.

He sat down and wrote his article till lunch-time. It was the best thing he had ever done, he felt, as he gathered the loose sheets together, and thrust a paper-clip through the corners.

He rose and was about to ring for his man – who had returned at breakfast-time – when the door opened and the man himself came in.

"Miss Marjorie Poole would like to see you, sir, if you are disengaged," he said.

Donald Megbie's face grew quite white with surprise.

Once more he felt the mysterious quickenings of the night before.

"Ask Miss Poole to come in," he said.

CHAPTER XVII

MARJORIE AND DONALD MEGBIE

The valet showed Marjorie Poole into Donald Megbie's study.

She wore a coat and skirt of dark green Harris Tweed with leather collar and cuffs, and a simple sailor hat.

Megbie, who had never met Miss Poole in the country, but only knew her in London and during the season, had never seen her dressed like this before. He had always admired her beauty, the admirable poise of her manner, the evidences of intellectuality she gave.

At the moment of her entry the journalist thought her more beautiful than ever, dressed as if for covert-side or purple-painted moor. And his quick brain realized in a moment that she was dressed thus in an unconscious attempt to escape observation, to be incognito, as it were.

But why had she come to see him? She was in trouble, her face showed that – it was extraordinary, altogether unprecedented.

Megbie showed nothing of the thoughts which were animating him, either in his face or manner. He shook hands as if he had just met Miss Poole in Bond Street.

"Do sit down," he said, "I think you'll find that chair a comfortable one."

Marjorie sat down. "Of course, Mr. Megbie," she said, "you will think it very strange that I should come here alone; when I tell you why, you will think it stranger still. And I don't want any one to know that I have been here. I shall tell mother, of course, when I get back."

Megbie bowed and said nothing. It was the most tactful thing to do.