“Now, gentlemen, as I told you before, time is the essence of the contract, for, deprived of his peculiar form of sustenence, Lucas will no longer be able to hold his physical body together, and you have just about the same time in which to act as would elapse between death and burial in the ordinary way. Lucas has returned to his grave by now, for it is past cockcrow, and he will probably return to it again to-morrow, but I doubt if he will be able to use it much longer.”
“The correct thing to do is to ‘Bury him at four cross roads, with a stake in his inside,’” said the hard-faced man, his sneer again getting the better of his discretion.
His interlocutor looked at him sharply. “Don't talk nonsense,” he said. “That is nothing to do with the matter. The body will disintegrate, anyway. Lucas has already renounced his vampiricism. What we have to decide is, whether we will let events take their natural course and leave Lucas to wander as an earth-bound spirit till his time is up, or try to get him back into his physical body, which is at present lying in deep trance in the graveyard.”
The old man sat up with a start. “Then—then he is not dead ?” he said.
“By no manner of means,” said the Third. “He has performed a very advanced yogi operation, just such a one as Stevenson records in ‘The Master of Balantrae.’ If you were to examine his body, you would probably find that even the injuries inflicted by the post-mortem had been reconstructed. He had been out of his body some time when the death-stroke fell upon it, and had evidently planned to lie in trance until he could arrange to get his body exhumed under the proper conditions, living as a vampire meanwhile. You can read an account of similar occurrences in ‘Dracula,’ written by a man who had more knowledge than Stevenson. Lucas took a very long chance, it was a thousand to one against his experiment succeeding, but as he had managed in holding his form together so long there is a possibility that he might have succeeded had he continued. He is a brave man, and whatever the cruelties by which he had kept himself going, I can forgive a great deal to bravery.”
He paused and looked round the room, studying the effect his words had had upon his hearers. Dr. Latinier was gazing at him in eager perplexity. There could be no doubt as to the way his wishes went, but he feared to allow himself to hope too much lest the disappointment should be too keen. Lucas had meant a great deal to him, had been like a son to his lonely old age, and he had painstakingly transmitted to him all his laboriously acquired occult knowledge, hoping to see the younger man accomplish the Great Work that had been denied to himself.
The hard-faced man had lost the immobile calm of the trained occultist and had his hand at his moustache, tugging at it nervously. It was obvious that a vindictive temper was striving for the upper hand. He hated having his judgments reversed, he resented the tacit assumption of superiority by the stranger, but he appeared to consider resistance as futile and showed signs of making good his retreat as best he could. He rose to his feet.
“I have given you my opinion,” he said, “but I don't resist your authority. The responsibility is yours. All I ask is, that you will excuse me from sharing the consequences.”
“That is an absolution I have no power to give,” replied the Third. “You will not see the end of the consequences of this affair for many a long life to come. But we hold no man against his will. If it is your wish to withdraw, you have my permission to do so.”
The hard-faced man pulled on a heavy leather motoring-coat, his eyes wandering from one to another of the faces before him. For Veronica they held something that almost approached pity : to old Dr. Latimer he gave a glance of resentment and contempt : the eyes of the Third he was unable to meet. Nevertheless, he addressed him.
“Things may turn out as you expect,” he said, “or they may not. Lucas may have succeeded in eluding the Dark Ray or—he may not. But in any case” (turning to Dr. Latimer), “I wish him joy of the leavings of the postmortem.” With which parting shot he closed the door behind him, and they heard his footsteps die away through the empty, echoing house.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“THAT, OF COURSE,” SAID THE THIRD, “IS THE crux of the matter. What has the postmortem left ? We cannot tell that till we open the grave. Our immediate practical problem is, how to get the grave open. There is one person, however, who has got to be consulted before we commence this undertaking. Now, Miss Main-waring, what is your feeling about the matter ? Do you wish to stand clear of it, also ? If so, I can put you in my car and drive you across running water and effectually prevent Lucas getting on your trail again ?”
Veronica gazed at him, unable to reply for a moment. The thought of meeting Lucas quickened her pulses and brought a faint flush to her cheeks, but the fear of what such a meeting might mean closed like a cold hand about her heart. The dark hawk's eyes of the strange man before her watched her compassionately, but he made no attempt to help her. It was her deepest instincts that had to give the answer, and no influence must be used to sway the surface.
But Veronica's answer was a foregone conclusion. She had gone too far down this path to turn back, and the Karma of a million years was behind her.
“I will stand by—Justin,” she said, using the Christian name of her sinister lover for the first time. “For I think he will need me when he comes back.”
“I think so, too,” said the Third. “In fact, it would have served little purpose to bring him back without you, but the decision had to be free. Pity and duty are no substitutes for love.” He looked at the watch on his wrist. “It has just gone three ; the sun rises at seven-thirty ; we have, therefore, about three hours between now and second cock-crow to do that which we have to do.”
“How are we to get the grave opened ?” enquired Dr. Latimer. “We have no time to get an order from the Home Office, and clandestine digging is impractical.”
“There are more ways of opening a grave than with a spade,” said the mysterious man with the hawk-like eyes. “Have you got your robes with you?”
“Of course,” said the old man, and taking one of the bedroom candles departed into the draughty darkness of the whispering, creaking house.
The solitary remaining candle did no more than make the darkness palpable in the big room with its shadowy furniture. The man who called himself the Third sat for a while gazing silently into the dying fire, the dull red glow from its embers throwing strange lights and shadows on his rugged features, making him look like a grotesque idol carved by some forgotten race. He seemed far away in the depths of thought, oblivious of his remaining companion, and Veronica was able to study him at her leisure, wondering what manner of discipline had made him the man he was. Suddenly he looked up, and crossing the hearthrug, sat down on a chair close beside hers, taking her hand in his.
“My child,” he said, “Do you realize what lies before you? Have you any understanding of the matter ?”
Veronica gave him her slow Monna Lisa smile. “I understand better than you think,” she said, “I have known these things before ?”
“And you remember? Yes, I see you do. That is good, very good. I believe we shall be able to carry this thing through with your assistance. To rouse Lucas from his trance is simple enough matter, but to make him live afterwards, ah, that is the problem. You will have to marry him, my child, do you realize that? And the mating of an occultist is much more than the ordinary marrying. You will have to mate with him in the Unseen as well as on the earth, and in the Unseen, you must be the male force, you must be the controller. Your spiritual nature has got to marry his intellect, and you must fertilize it, not be fertilized by it. Do you understand that? You cannot lean on him on the Inner Planes, by sheer spirituality you have got to take the lead. His mind must never get the upper hand again, your spiritual nature must be the dominant. Child that you are, can you do it? Can you hold a man of that type by his ideals ?”
Veronica withdrew her eyes from his and gazed far off into the shadows. Could she do what was required of her? Or had she in her ignorance comm
itted herself to tasks utterly beyond her capacity? No one knew her weaknesses better than Veronica did ; she was only too well aware of the simplicity and inexperience that made her a ready prey to the designing, of the diffidence that prevented her from giving effect even to that which she knew, and the lack of self confidence that held her helpless and inarticulate.
Yet within her there was a curious sense of power. Little, bright, clear-cut pictures, like the images seen through the wrong end of a pair of opera glasses, broke and re-formed before her eyes in an ever-shifting kaleidoscope. The portico of a temple, with its great pillars sparkling white in the sun ; then the bowed, silent congregation within, the drifting incense and the shifting lights ; then the darkness of the Holy of Holies, with the coals in the tripod glowing redly and the dim forms of elemental spirits shaping themselves in the fume.
The man's hands held hers in a grip of iron, his eyes burned themselves into her brain.
“Oh Pythoness !” he said, “Can you not remember ?”
She looked at: him with eyes that seemed to gaze through deep water, but as the light cleared, she saw that about his face were forming the folds of the striped head-dress of Egypt ; behind him rose the shadow of a vast pylon. His hands crushed hers as his will drove into her, and she could feel the burning heat of them against her skin.
“Oh Priestess of Isis, have you forgotten ?” His voice boomed and rolled like a drum through the room. The shadowy pylon behind him came clear for a moment in rose-red sandstone, then changed into another though similar, type of masonry, more roughly hewn, though white as milk. Far below her, as if seen from a precipice, the huddled roofs of houses, covered with some yellow metal that was not gold, gleamed dully through the thick, misty air, and the sun hung large in the heavens, like a disk of copper.
“Helios, Helios, Quanto Rhopantanek !” breathed the voice in her ear, and all Lost Atlantis woke to the chant of the Sun-god. She saw the great processions of the white-clad priests and remembered the part she had taken in them : she saw the smoke rise from the sacred volcano, and knew what her function was, and she heard her voice answer in the antiphone, “Quanto Rhopantanek, Helioun !”
She sprang to her feet and threw up her hands in the Salute of the Sun. The ancient invocation to the Great Initiator sprang to her lips.
“Waft thou my soul down the River of Naradek :
Bring it to Light, and to Life, and to Love.”
The man who was called the Third rose from his chair and gave the answering salute. Through all the changes of the vision, his face had been the one thing that had not changed, under Egyptian nemys or Atlantean filet, it had been the same. He looked deeply into her eyes.
“Do you remember me ?” he said.
“Yes,” she answered.
“By what name did you call me last ?”
“You were known to us as The Count.”
He nodded, and the tenseness went from his attitude as he relaxed the effort of will he had been making.
At that moment the door opened and Dr. Latimer entered, bearing a small black bag in his hand. He laid it on the table beside another of similar shape and size that evidently belonged to the newcomer ; then, without instruction, he assisted the man who was called the Third, and also the Count, to shift the furniture into the corners of the room and clear a floor-space. Then he knelt in the middle and held one end of a thread while his companion drew out a circle with a lump of putty-like substance attached to the other end, which left a luminous mark upon the floor, as of some phosphorus compound.
“What sygils ?” said he, taking another lump of the same stuff out of his black bag.
“Put the Signs and Seals of the Princes of the Powers of the Air,” replied the other, “I am going to invoke the Spirits of Tempest. What we cannot dig up we may be able to wash out as the grave is almost on the bank of the river.”
Veronica was reminded of the famous floor-cloth that Lucas had told her about, the thing that first turned his thoughts to the study of occultism. The old man left his companion to complete the hieroglyphs, and put a small piece of some black substance on the glowing embers of the hearth ; when it began to smoulder, he took it up with tongs and placed it in a copper thurible of antique workmanship, and sprinkled what looked like fine gravel upon it. A dense cloud of smoke went up instantly, filling the room with aromatic odours and curling into fantastic forms as the draughts took it. He delivered the little censer into the hands of Veronica.
“You must take charge of this,” he said, “And you must on no account let it go out. Keep it swinging gently all the time.”
They turned to see that the other man had lifted a small table into the centre of the circle and draped it with a black cloth into the semblance of an altar. In a little bowl of ruby glass a floating wick showed a point of flame as it swam on the surface of the sacred oil ; its light fell with a ruddy glow on certain metallic objects of peculiar shape that were disposed around it.
Veronica's attention was distracted for a moment by the censer in her charge, from which the smoke had ceased to issue, and mindful of Dr. Latimer's warning, she swung it back and forth till the glowing charcoal once more set the incense smouldering. She looked up to find that a change had occurred in the room. The personality of Dr. Latimer had completely disappeared under the flowing black robe and cowl of an Inquisitor which he had assumed, but the individuality of the Third was revealed rather than hidden by his robes, for his cowl was pushed back to frame the face, and upon his head he wore the royal head-dress of Egypt.
He came towards Veronica holding out a similar robe to that which shrouded Dr. Latimer.
“This you must wear,” he said, “for you will need protection in that which we are about to do.”
Veronica, completely enveloped in the flowing black draperies of the voluminous garment, felt strangely cut-off from the world. It had evidently been used for rituals before, for its folds were full of the smell of incense.
“Now,” said the Third, “are we ready? Have we got everything? We can't step outside the circle once we have started, you know.”
He came towards Veronica.
“This is your place,” he said. “Whenever you have finished a circumambulation, come back here, and be sure and keep the censer going. There is some more incense in that box. The charcoal ought to last out all right. Always go round the way of the sun. Be sure you never get into the reverse circumambulation. Don't try and cut across the circle ; whatever happens, keep going round, and whatever you do, don't step outside that line. Get the censer going well, and then walk three times round the circle the way of the sun.”
He returned to the altar, taking his stand with his back to the East, immediately in front of it. The light from the floating wick threw into strong relief the rugged lines of his face ; and the hawk-like eyes, deep set under heavy brows, flashed with an unnatural fire. The long black lines of his draperies added to his height and made him look gigantic in the shifting shadows, and the golden head-dress of Egypt, with the serpent rising as if to strike from above the brow, seemed the fitting crown for a face that was neither young nor old, but strangely deathless in its calm, as if all the races of the earth had risen and fallen before its unageing wisdom and power.
He raised his arms above his head to their full extent, and a great shadow followed him across the ceiling. In his right hand he held a sword, and the towering figure and the flashing blade seemed gigantic among the shadows. The Kab-alistic Cross of purification was marked on brow and breast, and a strange stillness fell upon the room.
At a sign from him, Veronica set out upon her task of pacing the circle. The cowl stifled her, she could see out of the eye-holes with difficulty, the incense rose in clouds into her face as she moved, and at every step she found an increased difficulty in balancing. To walk that circle was no simple task, for she seemed to be pushing her way through invisible currents. The second time round, however, was easier, and at the third round a force seemed to push her along, and
when she returned to the station assigned to her, she saw that a circle of fire now shone where she had walked. It appeared and disappeared as she gazed at it, and she could not make out what it was that she saw. At first she thought it was an optical illusion, then she thought that something had actually caught fire, and finally she realized that what she saw was not of this earth, and appeared and disappeared as her consciousness wavered between two planes.
The Third dropped the point of his sword upon the symbol on the altar and began the chant of evocation. Vibrant Names of harsh consonants rang out into the darkness as demon after demon was reminded of his oath and conjured from the abyss to come to the service of the magus. By the Secret Names of God were they conjured, and by the names of the great Archangels of the Elements ; and as each Name rang out in resonant syllables the atmosphere of the room changed perceptibly.
Demons of storm, Princes of the Powers of the Air, Vice-Regents of the Elements, he called them all by name.
“Oh fiends of the abyss, remember your oath upon the Symbol. Oh dark and mighty ones, remember Who calls upon you.”
The night without was still, pitch dark, and frosty. There was no sound within but the faint shifting of logs on the hearth and the perpetual creaking and whispering of the old house settling upon its timbers. Both men stood like statues, and Veronica, old memories stirring within her, maintained the same stillness, for she had worked ritual magic before, and knew the discipline that teaches immobility.
The evocation ended, dead silence fell upon the room. Force seemed to be pouring in a river of light down the sword on to the symbol, and the figure of the magician was like a dynamo, vibrating with the power of its invisible speed. A faint sigh of wind in the treetops at length broke the stillness ; then it came again more strongly, and they heard the scurry of dead leaves over the frosty ground. It was not the kind of night for a thunderstorm, but Veronica was put in mind of the sudden wind that heralds the thunder.
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