The Soul Stealer

by Guy Thorne

  CHAPTER XVIII

  PLANS

  Sir William Gouldesbrough stood in the large laboratory. The great roomwas perfectly dark, save only for a huge circle of bright light upon oneof the walls, like the circle thrown upon a screen by a magic-lantern.

  A succession of dim and formless figures moved and slid over theilluminated space in fantastic silence. Now and then the face of part ofthe dress of one of the figures would suddenly glow out into colour andabsolute distinctness. Then it would fade away into mist.

  There was a "click," and the circle of light vanished, another, and thevast laboratory glowed out into being as Sir William turned on a hundredelectric bulbs.

  Mr. Guest was sitting upon a long, low table swinging his legs. Hisgreat pink face was blotched and stained by excess, and his hand shooklike an aspen leaf.

  He jerked his head towards the opposite wall upon which the huge screenwas stretched--an enormous expanse of white material stretched uponrollers of hollow steel.

  "Rathbone's getting about done," he said. "I give him another monthbefore his brain goes or he pegs out altogether. Look at those resultsjust now! All foggy and uncertain. He's losing the power ofconcentrating his thoughts. Continuous thinking is getting beyond him."

  Sir William was sitting in an arm-chair. By the side of it was acircular table with a vulcanite top, covered with switch-handles andcontrolling mechanism. His long thin finger played with a little brassbutton, and his face was set in lines of deep and gloomy thought. Hiseyes were fixed and brooding, and sombreness seemed to surround him likean atmosphere. He showed no signs of having heard his assistant for amoment or two. Then he turned his face suddenly towards him.

  "My friend," he said, "you yourself will not last another month if yougo on as you are going. That is quite certain. You ought to know it aswell as I do. Another attack of delirium and nothing can save you."

  Mr. Guest smiled horribly. "Very possibly, William," he said, "I havethought that it may be so myself. But why should I care? I'm not likeyou. I have no human interests. Nothing matters to me except my work."

  "And if you die in delirium tremens you won't be able to go on with yourwork."

  "My dear William, there is nothing left for me to do. In this newdiscovery of ours, yours has been the master-mind. I quite admit that.But you could not have done without me. I know, as you know, that thereis no one else in Europe except myself who could have helped you tobring the toil of years to such a glorious conclusion. Well, there isthe end of it. I am nearly fifty years old. There is no time to startagain, to begin on something new. Life will not be long enough. I haveused up all my powers in the long-continued thought-spectrumexperiments. I have no more energy for new things. I rest upon mylaurels, content that I have done what I have, and content from thepurely scientific point of view. I've fulfilled my destiny. My mind isnot like the minds of other men I meet. It is not quite human. It's apurely scientific mind, a piece of experimental apparatus which has nowdone its work."

  He laughed, a laugh which was so mirthless and cold that evenGouldesbrough shuddered at the soulless, melancholy sound. Then he gotdown from the table and shambled over the floor of the laboratorytowards a cupboard. He took a bottle of whisky from a shelf, half filleda tumbler with the spirit, and lifted it towards his chief in bittermockery.

  "Here's luck, William," he said, "luck to the great man, the pet ofEurope, the saviour of the race! You see I have been reading Mr. DonaldMegbie's articles in the papers." He drank the whisky and poured somemore into the glass. "Yet, William, most fortunate of living men! youseem unhappy. 'The Tetrarch has a sombre air,' as the play says. What apity it is that you are not like me, without any human affections totrouble me! I don't want to pry into your private affairs--I never did,did I?--but I presume something has gone wrong with your matrimonialaffairs again? I'm right, am I not? Can't Miss Marjorie make up hermind? Tell me if you like. I can't give you any sympathy, but I can giveyou advice."

  Gouldesbrough flushed and moved impatiently in his chair. Then he beganto speak.

  "If what you say is true, Guest, then you must be a happy man. Your lifeis complete, you have got what you wanted, you have done what you wantedto do. And if you choose to kill yourself with amyl alcohol, I supposethat's your affair. What you say is quite right. I am terribly worriedand alarmed about the success of _my_ great desire, the one wishremaining to me. I don't expect or want sympathy from you, but youradvice is worth having, and you shall give it to me if you will."

  Wilson Guest nodded. "Tell me what is worrying you," he said.

  "You know that I have had great hopes of obtaining Miss Poole's consentto our re-engagement. Everything has been going on well. Miss Poolebelieves--or did believe--that the man Rathbone is dead. I used yoursuggestion and hinted at a vulgar intrigue. At Brighton, whenCharliewood shot himself, I was constantly with Miss Poole and hermother. My pretended efforts to solve the mystery of Rathbone'sdisappearance told. I saw that I was winning back all the ground I hadlost. I had great hopes. These seemed to culminate the other night atLord Malvin's reception. Miss Poole promised to receive me the next dayand give me a definite answer. I knew what that meant; it meant yes. Iwas prepared to stake everything upon it. When I called at Curzon Streetin the evening I was told that she was unwell, and could not see me. Thenext day I succeeded in seeing her. I was taken aback. There was adistinct change in her manner. The old intimacy and freedom which I hadbeen able to re-establish had gone. There was almost a shrinking in herattitude--she seemed afraid of me."

  "Well, that is easily accounted for. You have done something hithertobeyond human power. Naturally she regards you as a person apart--someone who can work miracles. But what did she say?"

  "It wasn't that sort of shrinking, Guest. I know Miss Poole well. Iunderstand the real strength and brilliancy of her mind. She is not afoolish, ordinary girl to be frightened as you suggest. I told her thatI had come for my answer. I think I spoke well. My heart was in what Isaid, and I urged my cause as powerfully as I could. Miss Pooleabsolutely refused to give me any answer at all."

  "Well, that is no very terrible thing, William. I know little of women,but one is told that is their way. She will not yield at once, that isall."

  "I wish I could think so, Guest. It did not strike me in that way atall. And she said a curious thing also. She said that I might re-openthe question after the public demonstration. She wouldn't pledge herselfto give an answer even then. But she said that I must say nothing moreto her on the subject until after the demonstration."

  Wilson Guest laughed.

  "What a powerful drug this love is!" he said. "It's as unexpected in itsaction as ether! My dear William, you are worrying yourself aboutnothing. I'm sure of it. Remember that you can't look at the thing withan unprejudiced eye. It's all quite clear to me. Miss Poole simply wantsto wait until she has seen your triumph with her own eyes. That is all,believe me. You are in too much of a hurry. How curious that is! It isthe strangest thing in the world to find _you_--you of all men--in ahurry. It is only by monumental and marvellous patience that you havesucceeded in discovering a law, and applying that law with my help,which makes you the greatest man of science the world has ever known.And yet you leap at the fence of a girl's hesitation and reserve as ifeverything depended on breaking a record for the jump!"

  Gouldesbrough smiled faintly and shook his head. He was not convinced,but it was plain that he was comforted by what Guest had said.

  His smile was melancholy and gently sad; and in the electric radiance ofthe huge mysterious room he seemed like some eager and kindly priest orminister who bewailed the sins of his flock, but with a humorous andhuman understanding of mortal frailty.

  And there he stood, the greatest genius of modern times, and also one ofthe most cruel and criminal of living men. Yet so strange and tortuousis the human soul, so enslaved can conscience be by the abnormal mind,that he thought of himself as nothing but a devoted lover.

  His passion and desire for this girl were
horrible in their egotism andtheir intensity alike. But the man with the marvellous brain thoughtthat the one thing which set him apart from the herd and redeemed himfor his crime was his love for Marjorie Poole. He really, honestly andtruly, believed that!

  It was not without reason that Donald Megbie had seen the blaze ofinsanity in Sir William's eyes. A supreme genius is very seldom sane.Professor Lombroso has said so, Max Nordau agitated scientific Europe bysaying it a few years ago.

  Yet some one more important said it many years before--

  "Great wits are sure to madness near allied, And thin partitions do their bounds divide."

  "So the matter rests there?" Guest asked.

  "Yes," Sir William answered; "but I have altered the day of thedemonstration. There is no need to wait after all! Everything isprepared. I have sent out cards for Friday next, three days from now."

  Guest poured out some more of the spirit. He laughed rathercontemptuously.

  "Can't wait, then!" he said. "I'm glad I'm free from theseentanglements, William. Of course it doesn't matter when the people cometo see the thing at work. As you say, everything is quite ready. Butthere is another thing to be considered. What about Rathbone? He's nomore use to us now, and he must be got rid of. Shall I go down-stairsand kill him?"

  He said it with the indifference with which he might have proposed towash his hands.