The Soul Stealer

"I feel you will not misunderstand my motives," the girl went on, "when I explain myself. In certain cases, and among certain persons, conventions are bourgeois. We don't know each other very well, Mr. Megbie, though we have sometimes had some interesting talks together. But in a sense I know you better than you know me. You see, I have read your books and other writings. In common with the rest of the world I can gather something of your temper of mind, and of your outlook upon life."

Megbie once more inclined his head. He wondered furiously what all this might mean. At the moment he was absolutely in the dark. He stretched out his hand towards a tin of cigarettes that stood on a bracket by the side of the fireplace, and then withdrew it suddenly, remembering who was present.

"Oh, do smoke," she said, instantly interpreting the movement. "Now let me just tell you exactly why I am here, why I had to come here. Of all the men I know, you are the most likely to understand. You have made a study of psychical affairs, of what the man in the street calls 'spooks' – you know about dreams."

At that Megbie started forward, every muscle in his body becoming rigid and tense, his hands gripping the knobs of his chair arms.

"Of course!" he said, in a voice that rippled with excitement. "Go on, please. I might have known your coming here this morning is all part of the wonderful and uncanny experiences I had last night. You've come about Guy Rathbone!"

It was the girl's turn to start. Fear came creeping into eyes which were not wont to show fear, the proud mouth grew tremulous.

Marjorie stretched out her hands – little hands in tan-coloured gloves. "Ah!" she cried, in a voice that had become shrill and full of pain, "then it is true! Things have happened to you too! Mr. Megbie, you and I have become entangled in some dark and dreadful thing. I dare not think what it may be. But Guy is not dead."

Megbie answered her in the same words.

"No," he said, "Guy Rathbone is not dead." His voice had sunk several tones. It tolled like a bell.

"Miss Poole," he went on, "tell me, tell me at once what happened to you last night."

With a great effort of control, Marjorie began her story.

"It was very late when we got home last night after the party," she said. "I was in a curious state of nerves and excitement. I must touch upon a personal matter – this is no time for reticence or false shame. I had been with William Gouldesbrough. You know that we were at one time engaged – oh, this is horribly difficult for me to say, Mr. Megbie."

"Go on, Miss Poole. I know, I know. But what does it matter in such a time as this?"

"Nothing at all," she answered in a resolute voice. "I was engaged to Sir William when I found out that my affection was going elsewhere – Guy, Mr. Rathbone – "

"You needn't go into the past, Miss Poole," Donald broke in, "tell me about last night."

"I was with Sir William at supper-time. There was a remarkable scene. It was a sort of triumph for him, and I was with him, every one included me in it. It was, obviously, generally assumed that we had become engaged once more. On the way home, Sir William again asked me to be his wife. I told him that I could not give him an answer then. I said that I would tell him to-night. He is coming to Curzon Street to-night."

"I beg you, I implore you to wait."

Megbie's words were so grave, he seemed so terribly in earnest, that the girl shrank from them, as one would shrink from blows.

The same thought began to lurk in the eyes of the woman and the man, the same incredible and yet frightful thought.

Marjorie's cheeks were almost grey in colour. To Megbie, as he watched her, she seemed to have grown older suddenly. The lustre seemed to him to have gone out of her hair.

"I reached home," she said. "Mother made me take a cup of beef-tea, and I went to my room. I was preparing for bed, indeed I was brushing my hair before the mirror, when a curious sense of disturbance and almost of fear came over me. I felt as if there was another presence in the room. Now my looking-glass is a very large one indeed. It commands the whole of the room. The whole of the room is reflected in it without any part left out, except of course which I could see where I sat. When this strange feeling of another presence came over me, I thought it was merely reaction after a terribly exciting night. I looked into the glass and saw that the room was absolutely empty. Still the sensation grew. It became so strong at last that I turned round. And there, Mr. Megbie, I tell you in the utmost bewilderment, but with extreme certainty, there, though the mirror showed nothing at all, a figure was standing, the figure of a man. It was not three feet away."

Megbie broke in upon her narrative.

"The figure," he said in a hushed voice, "was the figure of Mr. Eustace Charliewood, who shot himself at Brighton some little time ago."

She cried out aloud, "Yes! But how did you know?"

"He came to me also, last night. He came to me out of the other world, which is all round us, but which we cannot see. He was trying to tell me something about Guy Rathbone."

Marjorie Poole began to sob quietly.

"I knew it," she answered. "Mr. Charliewood in another state sees more than we see, he knows where Guy is. Oh, my love, my love!"

Megbie went up to her. He had some sal-volatile in his dressing-case, and he made her take it.

"Be brave," he said; "you have more to tell me yet, as I have more to tell you. Guy is alive, we are certain of that. But he is in some one's power. The spirit of this man, Eustace Charliewood, knows where he is. He is trying to tell us. He is trying to make amends for something. He must have had something to do with Guy's disappearance."

"Mr. Charliewood," Marjorie said in a whisper, "was William Gouldesbrough's intimate friend. He was always about the house. When Guy Rathbone disappeared, Eustace Charliewood killed himself. William was at Brighton at the time. He was trying to help me and my mother to find Guy."

"Go on with your story, if you can," Megbie said. "One more effort!"

"I knew that the figure was trying to tell me about Guy. Something told me that with absolute certainty. But it couldn't tell me. It began to weep and wring its hands. Oh, it was pitiful! Then suddenly, it seemed to realize that it was no use. It stood upright and rigid, and fixed its eyes upon me. Mr. Megbie, such mournful eyes, eyes so full of sorrow and terrible remorse, were never in a human face. As those eyes stared down at me, a deep drowsiness began to creep over me. Sleep came flooding over me with a force and power such as I had never known before. It was impossible to withstand it. People who have taken some drug must feel like that. Just as I was, in the chair in front of the dressing-table, I sank into sleep."

"And your dream?" Megbie said quietly.

She started. "Ah, you know," she said. "The spirit of Eustace Charliewood could not tell me while I was conscious. But in sleep he could influence my brain in some other mysterious way. I dreamed that Guy was in a sort of cell. By some means or other I knew that it was underground. A man was there, a man whom I have met, a man – a horrible creature – who is a fellow-worker of Sir William Gouldesbrough. The man was doing something to Guy. I couldn't see what it was. Then the picture faded away. I seemed to be moving rapidly in a cold empty place where there was no wind or air, sound, or, or – I can't describe it. It was a sort of 'between place.'"

"And then?"

"Then I saw you standing by the side of William Gouldesbrough. It was at the party – Lord Malvin's party, which we had just left. I saw this as if from a vast distance. It was a tiny, tiny picture, just as one could see something going on under a microscope. William was talking to some one whom I couldn't see. But I knew it was myself, that I was looking at the exact scene which had happened at the party, when you were going away with William, and he had stopped on the way to ask me to go into supper with him. And, strangely enough, in another part of my mind, the sub-conscious part I suppose, I knew that I was looking at an event of the past, and that this was the reason why it seemed so tiny and far-off. The picture went away in a flash – just like an eye winking. You've been to one of those biograph shows and seen how suddenly the picture upon the screen goes? – well, it was just like that. Then a voice was speaking – a very thin and very distant voice. If one could telephone to the moon, one would hear the voice at the other end just like that, I should think. And though the voice was so tiny, it was quite distinct, and it had a note of terrible entreaty. 'Go to Donald Megbie,' it said. 'Go at once to Donald Megbie, the writer. He will help. There is still time. Go to Donald Megbie. I have been able to communicate with him. He has the silver – Guy – ' And then, Mr. Megbie, the voice stopped suddenly. Those were the exact words. What they meant, I did not know. But when I awoke they remained ringing in my ears like the echo of a bell heard over a wide expanse of country. In the morning I resolved to come to you. I didn't know where you lived, but I looked you up in 'Who's Who.' And as soon as I could get away without any one knowing, I came here."

Donald Megbie rose from his chair. He realized at once that it was necessary to keep the same high tension of this interview. If that were lost everything would go.

"I know what the poor troubled spirit – if it is a spirit – of the man, Charliewood, meant by his last words. There is a thing called psychometry, Miss Poole. In brief, it means that any article which belongs, or has belonged, to any one, somehow retains a part of their personality. It may well be that the mysterious thought-vibrations which Sir William Gouldesbrough has discovered can linger about an actual and material object. Last night, when Sir William left me to take you in to supper at Lord Malvin's, he left his cigarette-case behind him in the conservatory where we had been sitting. I didn't want to bother him then, so I put it in my pocket, intending to send it to him to-day; here it is. It belonged to Guy Rathbone. I found it in Sir William's possession, and I believe that it has been the means – owing, to some law or force which we do not yet understand – of bringing us together this morning." He handed her the cigarette-case.

Neither of them could know that this was the case which Eustace Charliewood had found in the pocket of Rathbone's fur coat, when he had taken it from the Bond Street coiffeur in mistake.

Neither of them could see how it had been restored by Charliewood to Rathbone, and had been appropriated by Mr. Guest, when the captive had been taken to his silent place below the old house in Regent's Park.

And even Sir William Gouldesbrough did not know that he had seen the thing in his study, just as he was starting for Lord Malvin's house, and had absently slipped it into his pocket, thinking it was his own.

CHAPTER XVIII

PLANS

Sir William Gouldesbrough stood in the large laboratory. The great room was perfectly dark, save only for a huge circle of bright light upon one of the walls, like the circle thrown upon a screen by a magic-lantern.

A succession of dim and formless figures moved and slid over the illuminated space in fantastic silence. Now and then the face of part of the dress of one of the figures would suddenly glow out into colour and absolute distinctness. Then it would fade away into mist.

There was a "click," and the circle of light vanished, another, and the vast laboratory glowed out into being as Sir William turned on a hundred electric bulbs.

Mr. Guest was sitting upon a long, low table swinging his legs. His great pink face was blotched and stained by excess, and his hand shook like an aspen leaf.

He jerked his head towards the opposite wall upon which the huge screen was stretched – an enormous expanse of white material stretched upon rollers of hollow steel.

"Rathbone's getting about done," he said. "I give him another month before his brain goes or he pegs out altogether. Look at those results just now! All foggy and uncertain. He's losing the power of concentrating his thoughts. Continuous thinking is getting beyond him."

Sir William was sitting in an arm-chair. By the side of it was a circular table with a vulcanite top, covered with switch-handles and controlling mechanism. His long thin finger played with a little brass button, and his face was set in lines of deep and gloomy thought. His eyes were fixed and brooding, and sombreness seemed to surround him like an atmosphere. He showed no signs of having heard his assistant for a moment or two. Then he turned his face suddenly towards him.