The Soul Stealer

by Guy Thorne

  CHAPTER XVI

  STRANGE OCCURRENCE IN THE TEMPLE

  Like most writers, Donald Megbie was of a nervous and sensitivetemperament. Both mental and physical impressions recorded themselvesvery rapidly and completely upon his consciousness.

  He arrived at the Inner Temple with every nerve in a state ofexcitement, such as he had hardly ever known before.

  He walked down the dim echoing ways towards the river, his chambersbeing situated in the new buildings upon the embankment.

  A full moon hung in the sky, brilliant and honey-coloured, attended bylittle drifts of amber and sulphur-tinted clouds.

  But the journalist saw nothing of the night's splendour. He almoststumbled up the stairs to the first floor.

  A lamp was burning over the door of his rooms, and his name was paintedin white letters upon the oak. He went in and turned on the electriclight. Then, for a moment, he stood still in the hall, arichly-furnished place surrounded on all sides by doors painted white.His feet made no sound upon the thick Persian carpet, and the whole flatwas perfectly still.

  He felt uneasy, curiously so, as if some calamity was impending. Theexhilaration of his stirring talk with Sir William Gouldesbrough--sorecent, so profoundly moving--had now quite departed. His wholeconsciousness was concentrated upon a little box of metal in the pocketof his overcoat. It seemed alive, he was acutely conscious of itspresence, though his fingers were not touching it.

  "By Jove!" he said to himself aloud, "the thing's like an electricbattery. It seems as if actual currents radiated from it." His own voicesounded odd and unnatural in his ears, and as he hung up his coat andwent into the study with the cigarette-case in his hand, he foundhimself wishing that he had not given his man a holiday--he had allowedhim to go to Windsor to spend a night at his mother's house.

  A bright fire glowed in the grate of red brick. It shone upon thebook-lined walls, playing cheerily upon the crimson, green and gold ofthe bindings, and turned the great silver inkstand upon thewriting-table into a thing of flame.

  Everything was cheerful and just as usual.

  Megbie put the box down on the table and sank into a huge leatherarm-chair with a sigh of relief and pleasure.

  It was good to be back in his own place again, the curtains drawn, thelamps glowing, the world shut out. He was happier here than anywhereelse, after all! It was here in this beautiful room, with its books andpictures, its cultured comfort, that the real events of his life tookplace, those splendid hours of solitude, when he set down the vividexperiences of his crowded life with all the skill and power God hadgiven him, and he himself had cultivated so manfully and well.

  Now for it! Tired as his mind was, there lay a time of deep thinkingbefore it. There was the article for to-morrow to group and arrange. Itwas probably the most important piece of work he had ever been calledupon to do. It would startle the world, and it behoved him to put forthall his energies.

  Yet there was something else. He must consider the problem of thecigarette-case first. It was immediate and disturbing.

  How had this thing come into Sir William's possession? Whatcommunication had Gouldesbrough had with Guy Rathbone? That they wererivals for the hand of Miss Poole Megbie knew quite well. Every one knewit. It was most unlikely that the two men could have been friends oreven acquaintances. Indeed Megbie was almost certain that Rathbone didnot know Sir William.

  Was that little shining toy on the table a message from the past? Or wasit rather instinct with a present meaning?

  He took it up again and looked at it curiously.

  Immediately that he did so, the sense of agitation and unrest returnedto him with tremendous force.

  Megbie was not a superstitious man. But now-a-days we all know so muchmore about the non-material things of life that only the most ignorantpeople call a man with a belief in the supernatural, superstitious.

  Like many another highly educated man of our time, Megbie knew thatthere are strange and little-understood forces all round us. When anex-Prime Minister is a keen investigator into the psychic, when theprincipal of Birmingham University, a leading scientist, writesconstantly in dispute of the mere material aspect of life--the culturedworld follows suit.

  Megbie held the cigarette-case in his hand. All the electric lightsburned steadily. The door was closed and there was not a sound in theflat.

  Then, with absolute suddenness, Megbie saw that a man was standing infront of him, at the other side of the fireplace, not three yards away.He was a tall man, clean-shaven, with light close-cropped hair and arather large face. The eyes were light blue in colour and surrounded byminute puckers and wrinkles. The nose was aquiline, the mouth clean-cutand rather full. The man was dressed in a dark blue overcoat, and thecollar and cuffs of the coat were heavily trimmed with astrachan fur.

  The room was absolutely still.

  Something like a grey mist or curtain descended over Megbie's eyes. Itrolled up, like a curtain, and Megbie saw the man with absoluteclearness and certainty. He could almost have put out his hand andtouched him.

  Measured by the mere material standard of time, these events did nottake more than a second, perhaps only a part of a second.

  Then the writer became aware that the room was filled withsound--sudden, loud and menacing. It was a sound as of sudden drums atmidnight, such a sound as the gay dances in Brussels heard on the eve ofWaterloo, when the Assembly sounded in the great square, and the wholecity awoke.

  In another moment, Megbie knew what the sound in his ears really was.His own heart and pulses were racing and beating like the sudden_traillerie_ of drums.

  In a flash he recognized the face and form of his visitor--this outwardform and semblance of a man which had sprung up and grown concrete inthe night! The phantom--if indeed it was a phantom--wore the dress andaspect of Eustace Charliewood, the well-known man about town who hadkilled himself at Brighton a few years ago!

  Megbie had never spoken to Charliewood--so far as he could remember--buthe knew him perfectly well by sight, as every one in the West End ofLondon had known him, and he was a member of one of the clubs to whichthe dead man had belonged.

  The Thing that stood there, the Thing or Person which had sprung out ofthe air, wore the earthly semblance of Eustace Charliewood.

  Megbie shouted out loud. A great cry burst from his lips, a cry ofsurprise and fear, a challenge of that almost dreadful _curiosity_ thatmen experience now and then when they are in the presence of theinexplicable, the terrible and the unknown.

  Then Megbie saw that the face of the Apparition was horribly contorted.

  The mouth was opening and shutting rapidly in an agony of appeal. Itseemed as though a torrent of words must be pouring from it, thoughthere was not a sound of human speech in the large warm room.

  Great tears rolled down the large pale cheeks, the brow was wrinkledwith pain. The hands gesticulated and pointed, flickering rapidly hitherand thither without sound. And continually, over and over again, thehands pointed to the gleaming silver case for cigarettes which DonaldMegbie clasped tightly in his right hand.

  The silent agitated Thing, so close--ah, so close! was trying to tellDonald something.

  It was trying to say something about the cigarette-case, it was tryingto tell Megbie something about Guy Rathbone.

  And what? What was this fearful message that the agonized Thing was soeager and so horribly impotent to deliver?

  Megbie's voice came to him. It sounded thin and muffled, just like thevoice of a mechanical toy.

  What is it? What is it? What are you trying to say to me about poor GuyRathbone?

  And then, as if it had seen that Megbie was trying to speak to it, butit could not hear his words, the figure of Eustace Charliewood wrung itshands, with a gesture which was inexpressibly dreadful, unutterablypainful to see.

  Megbie started up. He stepped forward. "Oh, don't, don't!" he said. Ashe spoke he dropped the cigarette-case, which, up to the present he hadclutched in a hot wet hand. It fell with a clatter ag
ainst thefender--that at any rate was a real noise!

  In a moment the mopping, mourning, weeping phantom was gone.

  The room was exactly as it had been before, still, warm,brilliantly-lit. And Donald Megbie stood upon the hearth-rug dazed andmotionless, while a huge and icy hand seemed to creep round his heartand clutch it with lean, cold fingers.

  Donald Megbie stood perfectly motionless for nearly a minute.

  Then he knelt down and prayed fervently for help and guidance. Atmoments such as this men pray.

  Much comforted and refreshed he rose from his knees, and went to one ofthe windows that looked out over the Thames.

  He pulled aside the heavy green curtain, and saw that a clear colourlesslight immediately began to flow and flood into the room.

  It was not yet dawn, but that mysterious hour which immediately presagesthe dawn had come.

  The river was like a livid streak of pewter, the leafless plane-trees ofthe embankment seemed like delicate tracery of iron in the fainthalf-light. London was sleeping still.

  The writer felt very calm and quiet as he turned away from the windowand moved towards his bedroom.

  The fire was nearly dead, but he saw the silver cigarette-case upon therug and picked it up. He went to bed with the case under his pillow, andthis is what he dreamed--

  He saw Guy Rathbone in a position of extreme peril and danger. Thecircumstances were not defined, what the actual peril might be was notrevealed. But Megbie knew that Rathbone was communicating with his brainwhile he slept. Rathbone was living somewhere. He was captive in thehands of enemies, he was trying to "get through" to the brain of someone who could help him.

  The journalist only slept for a few short hours. He rose refreshed inbody and with an unalterable conviction in his mind. The events of thelast night were real. No chance or illusion had sent the vision and thedream, and the innocent-looking cigarette-case that lay upon the table,and which had come into his hands so strangely, was the pivot upon whichstrange events had turned.

  The little silver thing was surrounded by as black and impenetrable amystery as ever a man had trodden into unawares.

  And in the broad daylight, when all that was fantastic and unreal wasbanished from thought, Megbie knew quite well towards whom his thoughtstended, on what remarkable and inscrutable personality his dreadfulsuspicions had begun to focus themselves.

  He sat down and wrote his article till lunch-time. It was the best thinghe had ever done, he felt, as he gathered the loose sheets together, andthrust a paper-clip through the corners.

  He rose and was about to ring for his man--who had returned atbreakfast-time--when the door opened and the man himself came in.

  "Miss Marjorie Poole would like to see you, sir, if you are disengaged,"he said.

  Donald Megbie's face grew quite white with surprise.

  Once more he felt the mysterious quickenings of the night before.

  "Ask Miss Poole to come in," he said.