It was suggestive of the irony of fate that I, who looked upon such people as Professor and Mrs. Calthorpe as little better than criminal impostors, and their clients as mere gulls, should find my destiny involved with theirs. So, at least, I thought then. Later events have changed my opinions considerably, but they have not increased my respect for the crew who seek to tamper with the mysteries of life and death for their personal profit. However, I must not anticipate.
The professor, as I have said, disappeared. He failed to keep his appointment; and the clients waited in vain. The man of mystic powers was not again seen in his usual sphere of life, and all efforts made to trace him failed. His wife could throw no light upon the mystery—or would not. She seemed greatly agitated—overcome by a sort of terror rather than by natural grief. My friend, Detective Mainspray, who was engaged in the matter, gave me these particulars. Mrs. Calthorpe did not long survive her husband. From the day of his disappearance she gave up her “work,” if so it might be called, and fell into a kind of lethargy of horror, like one obsessed, making no effort to arouse herself, though by no means resigning herself to the thought of death. Her bodily vigour (which had been great) declined with remarkable rapidity, but as the end approached a frantic rebellion seemed to rise within her. The final scenes were made memorable by circumstances in the highest degree calculated to unnerve those who witnessed them. I, of course, was not present, but I was told that the dying woman’s appearance and demeanour were fan from being marked by that tranquillity with which those who are at peace with conscience usually approach the solemn portals of death.
The appalling intensity of her despair shocked the few friends who stood around her death-bed. She seemed to be struggling in the tolls of an adversary invisible to them, but only too tangibly present to herself. This death-agony was attributed by some of those who witnessed it to an exaggerated horror of the common fate; the more thoughtful, however, accepted this view with extreme reluctance. Later developments, in which I had part, threw a light upon the mystery. The cause of her death was given as heart disease, accelerated by abnormal neurotic conditions connected with the practice of her “profession” as a medium. A circumstance which greatly puzzled not only her friends, but also the physicians who attended her, was her excessive appetite for rich foods during the last few weeks of her life: this appetite, increasing with a rapid loss of flesh, seemed wholly inexplicable. Those who, knowing the quantities of food she had daily assimilated, looked at last upon a body bloodless and emaciated to an incredible degree, were stricken dumb with wonderment and horror.
II.
Neither the disappearance of Martin Calthorpe nor the death of his wife would have interested me to any considerable degree, but for the fact that I knew my parents to have been acquainted with the man. My father, moody, reticent as he had always been within my memory of him, was not likely to divulge any secrets concerning his past life. Through my friend Mainspray, however, I had glimpses of his early career, which taught me that the book of a man’s life may contain pages which it is not wise nor well for a son to turn; and, apart from the bald fact that many years earlier a powerful hatred had been engendered between the two men, through some wrong committed by Calthorpe, I knew little, and sought no further knowledge. When the hypnotist disappeared, however, it became plain to me that my father’s gloom had sensibly deepened, and I could not help wondering if this had any connection with the matter. My mother had died only a few months before, after a lingering illness, however, and her death would seem to supply a sufficient and more natural cause for the change observable in the bereaved husband.
My father at first neglected, then finally resigned his business affairs into my charge, and thenceforth lived a very secluded life. I saw but little of him, for he seemed hardly aware at times of my existence. Nothing could exceed, however, the moody intensity of the affection he lavished upon his two daughters, Constance and Winifred. Winnie, the younger, was (if he had any preference) his favourite, for her eyes were startlingly like her mother’s. We lived in a rather large house near the St. Kilda-road, about two miles from the city. He owned another house in South Yarra, which should have brought in a substantial sum in rent, but it was out of repair, and, for some reason, he would not allow it to be touched.
Not long after the strange death of Mrs. Calthorpe, my father sought medical advice for our Winnie. We all, Winnie included, were rather surprised, for we could see no cause for alarm in her appearance. Winnie herself protested that she felt well enough, except that she found it rather a bore to cycle or play tennis, and much preferred to go out driving with our friends, the Thorntons, in their new motor car. Old Dr. Gair found nothing the matter with her, except that perhaps she was just a trifle less buxom than a girl of her age and build might be. I think he prescribed some sort of tonic. My father received his optimistic verdict with a gloomy contempt, and it was plain that he was by no means satisfied. The incident passed, and for the time we thought no more about it.
Some weeks later, however, I happened to enter the drawing room, where my sisters were talking, and Winnie was saying -
“No; I can’t explain it. And I have such strange dreams, too.”
“What sort of dreams, sis?” I asked, lightly; but a glance at her serious face told me that she was in no mood for banter.
“Father seems to have been right, after all,” said Connie, in her quiet tones; “Win is getting run down.”
I looked at the girl more intently. She was paler than I had ever noticed her to be, and her hands had certainly rather a fragile appearance. She was about eighteen at this time, and should have been flushed with exuberant health. Indeed, a few months before she had been full of a somewhat hoydenish energy and vigour. Now all was changed.
Next week my father took her away to the Blue Mountains. They returned towards the fall of the year, but the girl had not improved. In fact, she had barely held her own. My father called in the best specialists, but they were evidently puzzled by the very simplicity of the case. There was no organic disease, either acute or chronic—no disease of any sort; only a growing weakness, an increasing languor; days darkened by a strange weariness, and nights poisoned by dreams which she would not tell.
To me Winnie was a child—“the baby”; and thus I was on more intimate terms with Connie, who was then in her early twenties. We talked the matter over many times, and discussed the expediency of taking the girl away for a more extended trip.
“It would do you good also, Con,” I said; “you’re not looking too well.”
I said this without attaching much meaning to the words, but Connie gave something of a start.
“Do you think so?” she said; “perhaps I’ve been worrying about Win. But, really, I don’t feel quite myself lately.”
This made me look at her closely, and I saw that there was indeed a noticeable change. But the summer had been very trying, and, as she said, the anxiety about Winnie was enough to account for a certain lowering of physical tone.
III.
My father did not fall in with the proposed trip. He only laughed bitterly when it was mooted, and said, in a harsh voice -
“What’s the use? There’s no hope.”
“No hope.” I shall never forget the note of tragic despair in those final words. It was as if a fiat had gone forth—as if in some strange way Irrevocable Fate had spoken with his voice.
In these councils of ours Harry Thornton had borne no part. For some reason or other Connie, who had at this time been engaged to him for nearly a year, was unwilling to take him into her confidence in the matter, and as time went on and her own health did not improve, she became even less inclined to talk about it with him.
Thornton was a strange young fellow in many ways. Whilst he was fond of an outdoor life, excelling in all kinds of athletics, I knew him to be equally inclined to intellectual pursuits; in fact, he took up branches of study quite, foreign to ordinary taste Some years before, he had rather startled his friends by bec
oming the intimate of one Ravana Dâs, a Hindu pundit of the highest caste (Brahmans), and reputed to possess an extraordinary degree of erudition, both Western and Oriental. Thornton made what we chaffingly called a “pilgrimage” to his Eastern friend, and on his return it was plain that: he took his “master”, as he called him, with intense seriousness. He continued to correspond with this man, whose portrait had an honoured place on the wall of his study. The face was a remarkable one. It was as clearly and delicately cut as a bronze medallion of a proud, yet gentle, expression, and gave one the idea of a learned ascetic. A certain power, also, seemed to breathe from those features. Anyone studying the portrait (which was done in a sepia by an Indian artist) could readily understand the fascination which the man might exercise over impressionable natures.
The Thorntons were wealthy people, and the young man had license to gratify his fancies. But he lived an extremely simple and blameless life, and I knew of no one more eligible as a husband for Connie, whose tastes, moreover, had much in common with his own.
Harry was not long in perceiving Connie’s decline in health; and, connecting it, as I imagined, with that of her sister, grew very anxious. One day, after having taken them for an outing in his motor car, he asked me to accompany him to his rooms in the city.
He said little on the way, but once in his “den” he spoke abruptly of Winnie’s illness, which was at this time rapidly progressing.
“What do you think of it?” he asked.
“The doctors advise a complete change of climate,” I said, vaguely.
“Humbug!” he muttered.
“It seems the only chance,” I said; “but my father has set his face against it. Says there’s no hope; but, or course—”
“The girl will die,” he said, in a decisive tone. “The only man who could save her is away in the Himalayas, and could not be reached within I don’t know how many months.”
“You mean -”
“Ravana Dâs—yes. He might do it . . . or tell us how.”
“Is he a physician, then?”
“More than that. But it is not exactly a physician that is needed, Burford. There is nothing, I think, vitally wrong with Winnie. But there are possibilities that medical science knows nothing of. This vague talk about ‘going into a decline’ is merely a veil for ignorance.”
“Well, old man, it you can supply a better hypothesis, one that we can work on, I shall be very grateful,” I said, a trifle ironically.
“I can’t do that—yet.” he said,“I don’t know enough; and what I fear is too awfully improbable to spring upon an old sceptic like yourself . . . Tell me,” he added abruptly, “did your father know that man Calthorpe, the hypnotist, who disappeared about a year ago?”
“Yes—why?” I answered, staring at him in a sort of terror, for which I could not account.
“What was the nature of this acquaintance?” he asked.
“Its nature? Well, I know very little. My father suffered at his hands in some way, and I believe that in a less law abiding country their enmity would have had a tragic ending.”
“Burford, your father killed that man!”
“You are mad, my boy—stark, staring mad!”
“Not a bit of it. Oh! If only my master were accessible!”
He stared in a sort of yearning rapture at the portrait on the wall, as if to draw inspiration from it.
“Why do you connect this man Calthorpe with the matter?” I asked. “In the first place, it is not known whether the man is alive or dead.”
“Your father’s fate is bound up with that man’s, Frank,” he said, gloomily. “I don’t know how. But I can dimly perceive possibilities that horrify me. I did not remark Winnie’s extreme weakness till quite lately—unobservant ass that I am! ... After all, I may be mistaken—the thing seems altogether too hideous—too incredible !”
“This is some beastly superstition your precious master has been filling you up with,” I said, impatiently. “Winnie is not the first girl who has gone into a decline. I don’t see how Hindu philosophers can help her any more than European physicians.”
He made no reply. He was apparently absorbed in the face of the Hindu pundit, and did not seem to hear me. I saw no profit in staying longer, so, with an abrupt ‘Good-night!’ to which I got no reply, I left him.
The next day Winnie did not rise till late in the evening; and, after that, not at all. She declined with an accelerated rapidity, and in ten days passed to her long rest. The close of her life was very peaceful; even the dreams, which had been ‘too dreadful to tell,’ left her on the seventh day from her decease. She had long intervals of trance-like sleep, from which she brought back vague memories at an indescribable bliss—as though the spirit, impatient of its fleshly tabernacle, could with difficulty be held to earth by the feeble thread of life.
I need not dwell upon our sorrow. That of my father found some doubtful relief in alcohol and drugs; and only the solicitude and devotion of his surviving daughter saved him, for the time, from utter despair.
“For her sake,” he said to me, “I will try and keep up; but she also is doomed—my boy—she also is doomed.”
“Why do you talk like this?” I demanded.
His eye grew wild. “There are devils,” he said, thickly: “or men with devilish arts.You may stab them through and through with knives—you may spatter their brains on the wall with bullets—no use! They come back in the night and mock you: they rob you of your dearest ones . . . ”
I thought of Thornton’s words, and said—
“Had you anything to do with the disappearance of that man Calthorpe?”
He started as if stung then broke into a harsh laugh.
“The devil should claim his own, one would think,” he muttered. “But what are you driving at?” he asked, suddenly raising his head and meeting my eye sternly. “What should I know about Calthorpe’s disappearance?”
“I had the idea that in some way—hypnotism or something—the man may have had a hand in—”
“Her death? Nonsense, boy! You rave!”
He would say no more.
IV.
By some process of unconscious reasoning, I had evolved the idea that Calthorpe, dead though he was, was exerting a hypnotic power over my sisters, thus striking at my father through his loved ones. It may seem strange that I, a hard-headed man of the world, should have given any attention to such occult hypotheses. But I had lost one beloved sister through a most mysterious malady, and now that malady threatened the other.
Having questioned orthodox science in vain, however, in my extremity, I lent an ear to the suggestions of an alleged knowledge of forces lying outside the range of ordinary experience—a knowledge I had hitherto denied and ridiculed, as the pretension of predatory quacks and impostors. The drowning man catches at straws, and every straw seems a plank of safety.
Connie very soon developed all the symptoms which had marked her sister’s decline: and she, too, had mysterious dreams, which no argument or persuasion could induce her to disclose, and which evidently filled her with a conviction that she was doomed.
One day she came to me front her father’s room, in a state of wild agitation.
“You must watch him,” she said. “He is very near madness. I think he will destroy himself.”
“What has he said?”
“Oh, his talk is very wild—I can make little of it. He is possessed with the idea of some enemy—someone who is dead. ‘I must seek him in his own place,’ he keeps on saying; ‘I will find him, and drag him down—down!’ Oh, the wildest language! It terrifies me.”
I soothed her as best I could; and then, obeying some impulse, for which I could not account, I went to Thornton’s rooms, though not expecting to see him. I found him there, however, and he greeted me with an intense earnestness.
“I am glad you have come,” he said; I have received a communication.”
“From whom?”
“My master. He came to me last night, in h
is—but you would not understand. Let us call it a dream. He knows our trouble, and will help us. That was impressed upon me beyond all doubt. He will help us! Isn’t that glorious, Burford?”
“He has left it pretty late,” I said, grimly; and I spoke of my father’s condition.
“He should be pacified. To pass on to the next plane in his present state would be extremely perilous, unless he was specially guarded.”
“I can’t follow your ideas, Harry,” I said, with some impatience. “But about your friend, Ravana Dâs. You tell me he is away among the Himalayas. How, then, can he help us?”
“He can easily do so, if he be permitted. Though I have the honour to call him master, he is himself a pupil—the disciple of a still higher teacher. Of course, you don’t understand these things. But it was made known to me last night that he will help us, and that he will soon be with us.”
“What do you call soon? Unless be travels in some impossible airship, I don’t see how. And poor Connie is evidently following her sister. She herself seems to feel it. Only to-day—”
A fixed and startled expression on my friend’s face froze the words on my lips. He seemed to see or bear something which I could not. Suddenly the look turned to one of supreme joy and peace, and he sank back in his chair like one relieved of all anxiety.
Involuntarily I turned, and saw that there was a stranger in the room. He was near the door, and must of course, have entered thereby, though I had not seen it open. One glance told me that it was the Hindu, the pundit, Ravana Dâs. There were the delicate, finely-carved, ascetic features, with their grave, gentle, yet lofty expression, as of one who knew all that philosophy could teach, and had renounced all that the world could give. To conceive of this man having a single evil thought was impossible. I remembered afterwards that he was dressed in ordinary clothes, such as we wore ourselves; but I did not remark this at the time.
“I am with you, as you see,” he said, in a low, musical voice, which seemed just a trifle muffled; “and I will give you what help I can. But time is limited.”
Vintage Vampire Stories Page 30