The Soul Stealer

"My friend," he said, "you yourself will not last another month if you go on as you are going. That is quite certain. You ought to know it as well as I do. Another attack of delirium and nothing can save you."

Mr. Guest smiled horribly. "Very possibly, William," he said, "I have thought that it may be so myself. But why should I care? I'm not like you. I have no human interests. Nothing matters to me except my work."

"And if you die in delirium tremens you won't be able to go on with your work."

"My dear William, there is nothing left for me to do. In this new discovery of ours, yours has been the master-mind. I quite admit that. But you could not have done without me. I know, as you know, that there is no one else in Europe except myself who could have helped you to bring the toil of years to such a glorious conclusion. Well, there is the end of it. I am nearly fifty years old. There is no time to start again, to begin on something new. Life will not be long enough. I have used up all my powers in the long-continued thought-spectrum experiments. I have no more energy for new things. I rest upon my laurels, content that I have done what I have, and content from the purely scientific point of view. I've fulfilled my destiny. My mind is not like the minds of other men I meet. It is not quite human. It's a purely scientific mind, a piece of experimental apparatus which has now done its work."

He laughed, a laugh which was so mirthless and cold that even Gouldesbrough shuddered at the soulless, melancholy sound. Then he got down from the table and shambled over the floor of the laboratory towards a cupboard. He took a bottle of whisky from a shelf, half filled a tumbler with the spirit, and lifted it towards his chief in bitter mockery.

"Here's luck, William," he said, "luck to the great man, the pet of Europe, the saviour of the race! You see I have been reading Mr. Donald Megbie's articles in the papers." He drank the whisky and poured some more into the glass. "Yet, William, most fortunate of living men! you seem unhappy. 'The Tetrarch has a sombre air,' as the play says. What a pity it is that you are not like me, without any human affections to trouble me! I don't want to pry into your private affairs – I never did, did I? – but I presume something has gone wrong with your matrimonial affairs again? I'm right, am I not? Can't Miss Marjorie make up her mind? Tell me if you like. I can't give you any sympathy, but I can give you advice."

Gouldesbrough flushed and moved impatiently in his chair. Then he began to speak.

"If what you say is true, Guest, then you must be a happy man. Your life is complete, you have got what you wanted, you have done what you wanted to do. And if you choose to kill yourself with amyl alcohol, I suppose that's your affair. What you say is quite right. I am terribly worried and alarmed about the success of my great desire, the one wish remaining to me. I don't expect or want sympathy from you, but your advice is worth having, and you shall give it to me if you will."

Wilson Guest nodded. "Tell me what is worrying you," he said.

"You know that I have had great hopes of obtaining Miss Poole's consent to our re-engagement. Everything has been going on well. Miss Poole believes – or did believe – that the man Rathbone is dead. I used your suggestion and hinted at a vulgar intrigue. At Brighton, when Charliewood shot himself, I was constantly with Miss Poole and her mother. My pretended efforts to solve the mystery of Rathbone's disappearance told. I saw that I was winning back all the ground I had lost. I had great hopes. These seemed to culminate the other night at Lord Malvin's reception. Miss Poole promised to receive me the next day and give me a definite answer. I knew what that meant; it meant yes. I was prepared to stake everything upon it. When I called at Curzon Street in the evening I was told that she was unwell, and could not see me. The next day I succeeded in seeing her. I was taken aback. There was a distinct change in her manner. The old intimacy and freedom which I had been able to re-establish had gone. There was almost a shrinking in her attitude – she seemed afraid of me."

"Well, that is easily accounted for. You have done something hitherto beyond human power. Naturally she regards you as a person apart – some one who can work miracles. But what did she say?"

"It wasn't that sort of shrinking, Guest. I know Miss Poole well. I understand the real strength and brilliancy of her mind. She is not a foolish, ordinary girl to be frightened as you suggest. I told her that I had come for my answer. I think I spoke well. My heart was in what I said, and I urged my cause as powerfully as I could. Miss Poole absolutely refused to give me any answer at all."

"Well, that is no very terrible thing, William. I know little of women, but one is told that is their way. She will not yield at once, that is all."

"I wish I could think so, Guest. It did not strike me in that way at all. And she said a curious thing also. She said that I might re-open the question after the public demonstration. She wouldn't pledge herself to give an answer even then. But she said that I must say nothing more to her on the subject until after the demonstration."

Wilson Guest laughed.

"What a powerful drug this love is!" he said. "It's as unexpected in its action as ether! My dear William, you are worrying yourself about nothing. I'm sure of it. Remember that you can't look at the thing with an unprejudiced eye. It's all quite clear to me. Miss Poole simply wants to wait until she has seen your triumph with her own eyes. That is all, believe me. You are in too much of a hurry. How curious that is! It is the strangest thing in the world to find you– you of all men – in a hurry. It is only by monumental and marvellous patience that you have succeeded in discovering a law, and applying that law with my help, which makes you the greatest man of science the world has ever known. And yet you leap at the fence of a girl's hesitation and reserve as if everything depended on breaking a record for the jump!"

Gouldesbrough smiled faintly and shook his head. He was not convinced, but it was plain that he was comforted by what Guest had said.

His smile was melancholy and gently sad; and in the electric radiance of the huge mysterious room he seemed like some eager and kindly priest or minister who bewailed the sins of his flock, but with a humorous and human understanding of mortal frailty.

And there he stood, the greatest genius of modern times, and also one of the most cruel and criminal of living men. Yet so strange and tortuous is the human soul, so enslaved can conscience be by the abnormal mind, that he thought of himself as nothing but a devoted lover.

His passion and desire for this girl were horrible in their egotism and their intensity alike. But the man with the marvellous brain thought that the one thing which set him apart from the herd and redeemed him for his crime was his love for Marjorie Poole. He really, honestly and truly, believed that!

It was not without reason that Donald Megbie had seen the blaze of insanity in Sir William's eyes. A supreme genius is very seldom sane. Professor Lombroso has said so, Max Nordau agitated scientific Europe by saying it a few years ago.

Yet some one more important said it many years before —

"Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide."

"So the matter rests there?" Guest asked.

"Yes," Sir William answered; "but I have altered the day of the demonstration. There is no need to wait after all! Everything is prepared. I have sent out cards for Friday next, three days from now."

Guest poured out some more of the spirit. He laughed rather contemptuously.

"Can't wait, then!" he said. "I'm glad I'm free from these entanglements, William. Of course it doesn't matter when the people come to see the thing at work. As you say, everything is quite ready. But there is another thing to be considered. What about Rathbone? He's no more use to us now, and he must be got rid of. Shall I go down-stairs and kill him?"

He said it with the indifference with which he might have proposed to wash his hands.

CHAPTER XIX

A DEATH-WARRANT IS PRESENTED TO A PRISONER

When Wilson Guest spoke of the final extinction of the wretched subject of their experiments, Sir William Gouldesbrough did not answer. He began to pace the long room, his head was sunk upon his breast, and his face was like the face of Minos, inscrutable and deadly calm.

Suddenly the whistle of a speaking tube sounded in the wall. All the laboratories and experimental rooms were thus connected with the house proper. None of the servants were allowed to pass the connecting door, unless by special leave.

Guest went to the speaking-tube and placed it against his ear – an ear that was pointed like a goat's ear.

Then he looked at the tall figure which was pacing the laboratory. "William," he called out with an impish giggle, "a lady has called to see you. A lady from Curzon Street!"

Gouldesbrough stopped short in his walk and raised his head. His face suddenly became a mask of eager attention and alertness.

Guest tittered with amusement at the effect which his words had produced. "Don't be agitated," he said, "and don't look like Henry Irving when he played Romeo. It isn't the young lady. It's the old one. It's Lady Poole. The butler has shown her into the study, and she's waiting to know if you can see her."

Gouldesbrough did not reply, but left the laboratory at once. Guest could hear his hurried footsteps echoing along the corridor. Then the pink-faced man turned to the whisky bottle again. He poured out a four-finger peg and sat down in the arm-chair which stood by the vulcanite table which controlled the vast and complicated apparatus of the thought spectrum. He sipped the whisky and looked at his watch. "Rathbone's had the cap on for an hour," he said. "Well, he can go on wearing it for a bit. If William agrees when he comes back it will be the last time Rathbone will have the pleasure of helping in our experiments. I may as well take a peep at his thoughts now. Lord! what a fascinating game it is!" He turned a switch, and all the lights in the place went out suddenly. Then his fingers found the starting lever of the machines.

He moved it, and immediately a low humming sound, as of a drum or fan revolving at immense speed was heard, far away at the other end of the laboratory. Then, immediately in front of where the scientist sat, the great white disc of light, full twelve feet in diameter, suddenly flashed into view.

Images and pictures began to form themselves upon the screen.

Sir William found old Lady Poole in his study, not sitting placidly in the most comfortable chair she could find, her usual plan wherever she might be, but standing upon the hearth-rug and nervously swinging a thin umbrella, the jewelled handle of which sparkled in the firelight.

"Ah, William," she said at once in an agitated voice, letting him lead her to a chair while she was speaking. "Ah, William, I am upset about Marjorie. I am very upset about the girl. I thought over what was best to be done, and I determined that I would take the bull by the horns and come and talk things over with you. That is right, isn't it?"

There was a little anxiety in the good lady's voice, for, however much she desired Sir William for a son-in-law and liked him personally, she was considerably afraid of him in certain of his moods.

"My dear Lady Poole," he replied with one of his rare and charming smiles, "there is no one whom I would rather see than you. And I'm sure that you know that. Tell me all about it."

His tone was gentle and confidential, and Lady Poole's face brightened at once.

"Dear William!" she said. "Well, I've come to you to talk about Marjorie. Our interests are absolutely identical in regard to her. You can't want to marry my daughter more than I want to see my daughter married to you. Lately things have been going well between you both. I saw that at once; nothing escapes me where Marjorie is concerned. She was quite forgetting her foolish fancy for that wretched young Rathbone, owing to his perfectly providential disappearance or death or whatever it was. Then I made sure that everything had come right at Lord Malvin's party, and especially when I heard that you were going to call next day. I went out. I thought it better. And when I came home my maid told me that Marjorie had not seen you after all. And since then I've kept an eye on all that was going on, and I'm very seriously disturbed. Anything I say seems to have no effect. Marjorie will hardly let me mention your name to her; I cannot understand it at all. Her manner is changed too. She seems expecting something or some one. My firm conviction is that she has another fit of pining for young Rathbone. I told her as much one evening. In fact, I'm afraid I rather lost my temper. 'Guy Rathbone is most certainly dead,' I told her. 'I was as kind and sympathetic as I could be,' I said, 'when Mr. Rathbone first disappeared. I very much disapproved of him, but I recognized you had a certain right to choose your own future companion, within limits. But now you're simply making yourself and me miserable and ridiculous, and you're treating one of the best-hearted and distinguished men in England in a way which is simply abominable. It's heartless, it's cruel, and you will end by disgusting society altogether, and we shall have to go and live among the retired officers at Bruges or some place like that.'"

Lady Poole paused for breath. She had spoken with extreme volubility and earnestness, and there were tears in her voice.

It is a mistake to assume that because people are worldly they are necessarily heartless too. Lady Poole really loved her daughter, but she did earnestly desire to see her married to this wealthy and famous man who seemed to have no other desire.

Sir William broke in upon the pause. "All you tell me, dear Lady Poole," he said, "is very chilling and depressing to my dearest hope. But difficulties were made to be overcome, weren't they? and to the strong man there are no fears – only shadows. But what answer did Marjorie make when you said all this to her?"

"A very strange one, William. She said, 'Guy is not dead, mother. I know it. I feel it. I feel certain of it. And when I feel this how can I say anything to Sir William!' Then I asked her if she proposed to keep you waiting for the rest of both your lives before she said anything definite. She burst into tears and said that she was very miserable, but that she intended to say something definite to you after the coming reception here when you are going to show every one your new invention."