The Soul Stealer

"I am no maker of phrases," he replied, "nor am I eloquent. I cannot tell you how marvellous it is. The one great citadel against which human ingenuity and time have beaten in vain since our first forefathers, is stormed at last! In my hands will shortly be the keys of the human soul. No man or woman will have a secret from me. The whole relation of society will be changed utterly."

"What is it? What is it?" she asked with a light in her eyes. "Have you done what mother said in jest? Have you indeed finally conquered the air?"

He waved his hand with a scornful gesture.

"Greater far – greater than that," he answered. "Such a vulgar and mechanical triumph is not one I would seek. In a material age it is perhaps a great thing for this or that scientist to invent a means of transit quicker and surer than another. But what is it, after all? Mere accurate scientific knowledge supplemented by inventive power. No! Such inventions as the steam-engine, printing, gun-powder, are great in their way, but they have only revolutionized the surface of things; the human soul remains as it was before. What I now know is a far, far loftier and more marvellous thing."

In his excitement he had risen and was bending over her.

Now she also rose, and stared into his face with one hand upon his arm.

"Oh, tell me," she said, "what in life can be so strange, so terrible in its effects as this you speak of?"

"Listen," he answered once more. "You know what light is? You know that it can be split up into its component parts by means of the prism in the spectroscope?"

"Every child knows that to-day," she answered.

"Good!" he replied. And he went on. "I am putting this in the very simplest possible language. I want you to see the broadest, barest, simplest outlines. Do you know anything of the human mind? What should you say hypnotism was, for instance, in ordinary words?"

"Surely," she replied, "it is the power of one brain acting upon another."

"Exactly," he said, "and in what way? How is a brain, not physically touching another brain, able to influence it?"

"By magnetism," she replied, "by" – she hesitated for a word – "by a sort of current passing from one brain to another."

He held out both his hands in front of him. They were clasped, and she saw that his wrists were shaking. He was terribly excited.

"Yes," he went on, his voice dropping lower and lower and becoming even more intense, "you have said exactly the truth. The brain is a marvellous instrument, a sensitive instrument, an electric instrument which is constantly giving out strange, subtle, and hitherto uninvestigated currents. It is like the transmitter at the top of Signor Marconi's wireless telegraphy station. Something unseen goes out into the air, and far away over the Mother of Oceans something answers to its influence. That is exactly what happens with the human brain. Countless experiments have proved it, the scientists of the world are agreed."

"Then – ?" she said.

"Supposing I had discovered how to collect these rays or vibrations, for that is the better word, these delicate vibrations which come from the human brain?"

"I think I begin to see," Marjorie said slowly, painfully, as if the words were forced from her and she spoke them under great emotion. "I think I begin to see a little light."

"Ah," he answered, "you are always above ordinary women. There is no one in the world like you. Your brain is keen, subtle, strong. You were destined for me from the first."

Once more, even in the midst of her excitement, a shade passed over her face. She touched him on the arm again.

"Go on! Tell me! Not this, not that. Tell me about the work!"

"I," he repeated, "I alone of all men in the world have learnt how to collect the invisible vibrations of thought itself. Now, remember what I told you at first. I mentioned Light, the way in which Light can be passed through a prism, split up into its component parts, and give the secret of its composition to the eye of the scientist. Not only can I collect the mysterious vibrations of the human brain, but I can pass them through a spectroscope more marvellous than any instrument ever dreamt of in the history of the world. I can take the vibrations of thought, and discover their consistency, their strength, their meaning."

She stared at him incredulously. "Even yet," she said, "I fail to see the ultimate adaptation of all this. I realize that you have discovered a hitherto unproved truth about the mechanism of thought. That is an achievement which will send your name ringing down the avenues of the future. But there seems to be something behind all you are telling me. You have more to say. What is the practical outcome of all this, this theoretical fact?"

"It is this," he answered. "I hold in my hands the power to know what this or that person, be it a king upon his throne, a girl on her wedding day, or a criminal in the dock, is thinking at any given moment."

She started from him with a little cry. "Oh no," she said, and her face had grown very white indeed. "Oh no, God would not allow it. It is a power only God has."

He laughed, and in his laugh she heard something that made her shrink back still further. It was a laugh such as Lucifer might have laughed, who defied a Power which he would not acknowledge to be greater than his.

"You will never do that," she said, "wonderful as you are."

"Marjorie," he answered, "I am a man with a brain that theorizes, but never ventures upon a statement that cannot be proved by fact. If I tell you this, if I hint broadly at the outcome of my life's work, I am doing so, believe me, because I have chapter and verse for all I say, because I can prove that it has passed from the dim realms of theory and of hope into the brilliant daylight of actual achievement!"

She stared at him. His words were too much for her mind to grasp immediately.

It was an intense moment.

But, as in real life intense moments generally are, it was broken by a curious interruption.

A voice came thickly from the arm-chair by the fire, where old Lady Poole had been reclining in placid sleep. It was the strange voice of one who sleeps, without expression, but perfectly distinct.

"I will not have it, cook – (indistinguishable murmur) – explained when I engaged you – will not have men in the kitchen!"

Sir William and Marjorie looked at each other for a moment with blank faces. Then, all overstrung as they were, the absurdity of the occurrence struck them at the same moment, and they began to laugh softly together.

It was a little pleasant and very human interlude in the middle of these high matters, and at that moment the great man felt that he was nearer to Marjorie than he had been before at any other moment of the afternoon. She no longer hung entranced upon his impassioned and wonderful words, she laughed with him quite quietly and simply.

Lady Poole snored deeply, and no longer vocalized the drama of her domestic dream.

Suddenly Marjorie turned back once more to Sir William.

"It's only mother dreaming about one of the servants we have had to send away," she said. "What a stupid interruption! Now, go on, go on!"

Her voice recalled him to his marvellous story.

"Tell me what is the actual achievement," she said.

"It is this. When you speak into a telephone the vibrations of your voice agitate a sensitive membrane, and by means of electricity the vibrations are conveyed to almost any distance. When Madame Melba sings into the gramophone, her voice agitates the membrane, which in its turn agitates a needle, which in its turn again makes certain marks upon a waxen disc."

"Yes, go on, go on!"

"When I put a certain instrument upon the head of a man or a woman, when I surround the field of emanation by a shield which captures the vibrations, they are conducted to a receiver more delicate and sensitive than anything which has ever been achieved by scientific process before. That receiver collects these vibrations and can transmit them, just in the manner of a telephone or telegraph wire, for almost any distance."

"And at the other end?" Marjorie asked.

"It has been a difficulty of ten long, anxious, unwearying years."

"And now?"

"Now that difficulty has been finally overcome."

"Therefore?"

"What a person thinks in London can be sent in vibrations along a wire to Paris."

"I see. I understand! But when there they can only be transmitted to another brain, of course. You mean that you have invented a more marvellous system of telegraphy than has ever been invented before. For instance, I could sit here in this room and communicate with you with absolute freedom in Paris. How wonderful that is! What a triumphant achievement! But – but, William, marvellous as it is, you do not substantiate what you said just now. The secrets of thought may be yours, but only when the sender wills it."