The Soul Stealer

Then upon the screen came words, terrible, poignant words —

"MARJORIE, MARJORIE DEAR, I KNOW THAT YOU ARE NEAR ME, NOW IN BODY AS YOU ARE ALWAYS NEAR ME IN THOUGHTS. I FEEL IT, I KNOW IT, AND EVEN IN THIS CRUEL PRISON, THIS HOPELESS PRISON, WHERE I AM DYING, AND SHALL SHORTLY DIE, I KNOW THAT YOU ARE NEAR ME IN BODY, AND IN THAT SPIRIT YOU ARE ALWAYS MINE AND I AM ALWAYS YOURS. LOVE, IF THE THOUGHTS THAT THEY ARE ROBBING ME OF, IF THE THOUGHTS THAT FILL MY MIND, AND WHICH THOSE TWO FIENDS ARE PROBABLY LOOKING AT AND LAUGHING OVER, HAVE ANY POWER AT ALL, THEN I SEND THEM TO YOU WITH MY LAST EFFORT, IN ONE LAST ATTEMPT TO REACH YOU AND TO SAY THAT I LOVE YOU AND TO SAY GOOD-BYE."

The circle of white light grew dimmer. Faint, eddying spirals of something that seemed like smoke rose up and obscured the words. They saw an ashen vapour of grey creep over the circle, as the shadow of the moon creeps over the sun at an eclipse. Then the circle disappeared finally, and they were left once more in the dark.

In the dark, indeed, but not in silence. A tumult of agonized voices filled the laboratory. And over them all a brave voice beat in upon the sound with the strong and regular assurance of a great bell, a bell like the mighty mass of metal which hangs in the ancient belfry of Bruges.

Lord Malvin was calling to them to be calm and silent, was telling them that he knew what all this meant and that they must be of courage and good cheer.

Then some one struck a match. It was Lord Landsend, his face very white and serious. He held it up above his head and called to Lord Malvin.

"Here you are, Sir," he said. "I will get down to you in a second. Then we can find the switch to turn on the electric light."

He stumbled down to where Lord Malvin sat, – showing the value of the practical man and polo player in a crisis – and together the two peers, the famous and honoured scientist and the wealthy young man whom the world flattered and called dilettante and a fool, went their way to the switch-table in the guiding light of this small torch.

Suddenly a blaze of light dispelled the darkness and showed a company of ghosts looking at each other with weeping faces.

It showed also the figure of a girl sunk upon its chair in a deadly swoon. And it showed also the body of Sir William Gouldesbrough lying upon the floor between the series of machines and the screen upon the opposite wall. The dead face was so horrible that some one ran up immediately and covered it with a handkerchief.

This was Lord Landsend.

The tumult was indescribable, but by sheer power of authority and wisdom Lord Malvin calmed them all. His hand was raised as the hand of a conductor holds the vehemence of a band in check.

In a few short trenchant sentences he told them the history of the strange occurrence which Donald Megbie and Mrs. Poole had brought to his notice; and even as he told them, Sir Harold Oliver and Lady Poole were bringing back the unconscious girl to life and realization.

"The man is here," Lord Malvin said, "the man is here. Guy Rathbone lies dying and prisoned in this accursed house. Sir Harold Oliver, I will ask you to remain with these ladies while I will go forth and solve this horrid mystery."

He looked round with a weary, questioning eye, seeking who should be his companion, and as he did so young Lord Landsend touched him on the arm and smiled.

"Come, my dear boy," the old man said with a melancholy smile of kindness, "you are just the man I want; come with me."

Then, before he left the laboratory, he spoke a few rapid words in French to one or two of the foreign scientists.

Upon that, these gentlemen went down among the strange and fantastic apparatus upon the tables and lifted up That which but a few minutes ago had held the soul and the personality of Sir William Gouldesbrough. They carried the long, limp, terrible dead Thing to the other end of the room, where there was a screen.

CHAPTER XXVI

TWO FINAL PICTURES

There are two things to record —

(1)

His hair was quite grey, his face was old and lined. His body was beginning to be ravaged by the devilish drugs with which it had been inoculated.

But he lay upon a couch in the study, and Marjorie bent over him kissing him, calling to him and cooing inarticulate words of belief and of love.

Lady Poole was there also, motionless and silent, while Lord Malvin and the doctor, who had been hastily summoned from Baker Street, watched by the head of the couch.

The doctor looked at Lord Malvin and nodded his head.

"He will be all right," he whispered. "Those devils have not killed him yet. He will live and be as strong as ever."

The tears were rolling down Lord Malvin's face and he could not speak, but he nodded back to the doctor.

And then they saw the face of Guy Rathbone, who lay there so broken and destroyed, begin to change. The gashes, which supreme and long-continued agony had cut into it, had not indeed passed away. The ashen visage remained ashen still, but a new light came flickering into the tired eyes, and in an indescribable way youth was returning.

Youth was returning, youth!

It came back, summoned out of the past by a supreme magic – the supreme magic of love.

The girl who loved him was kissing him, he was with her at last, and all was well.

(2)

"It is a grave thing and much considered to be," said Herr Schmoulder.

It was late at night.

They had taken Wilson Guest to the hospital, where the doctors were holding him down, as he shrieked and laughed, and died in delirium tremens.

Lord Malvin, Sir Harold Oliver, and the other scientists were gathered together in the laboratory, that recent theatre of such terrible events.

"It is a very grave thing indeed, Herr Schmoulder," Lord Malvin answered; "but I have not ventured to propose it without a consultation in the highest quarters. Decies will be here at any moment, and then upon his decision we shall act. He has been to see the King."

The distinguished men waited there silent and uneasy. All round them stood the marvellous instruments by which the late Sir William Gouldesbrough had obtained a triumph unknown before in the history of the world.

The yellow radiance of the electric light poured down upon the gleaming mahogany, brass, vulcanite and steel.

On the opposite wall was the great white screen – just an ordinary stretch of prepared canvas upon steel rollers, a dead, senseless thing, and no more than that. Yet as the least imaginative of them there chanced to turn his head and see that great white sheet, he shuddered to think of the long agony it had pictured while the two monsters had sat and taken their amusement from it, as a man takes a glass of wine.

There was a rap upon the principal door of the laboratory. Lord Malvin strode to it and opened it. The butler, a portly man on the morning of this day, but now seeming to have shrunk into his clothes, and to have lost much of his vitality, stood there.

Beside him was a gentleman in evening dress, with a keen clean-shaven face and grey hair which curled.

The gentleman stepped quickly into the laboratory. It was the Home Secretary.

He shook Lord Malvin by the hand, and his face was very troubled.

"You are quite right, my Lord," he said. "I may say that His Majesty is at one with you and with me in this matter. His Majesty is much disturbed."

Then Lord Malvin turned round to the other gentlemen.

"Come, my brethren," he said in a sad voice, "come and let us do what we have to do. The Bishop of West London was wiser than any of us when he said that God would never allow this thing to continue, and he was right."

Lord Malvin turned to the frightened servant.

"Go into the kitchens," he said, "or send one of the other men, and fetch a large hammer, such a hammer as you use for breaking up coal."