Thorne Guy
The Soul Stealer

CHAPTER XII
THE TOMB-BOUND MAN

Mr. Guest had visited his victim and had gone.

Supper was over. Beef-tea and phosphorous! and Mr. Guest had said his mocking words of good-night.

"Sleep well, Mr. Rathbone! I shall not be compelled to ask you to wear that pretty metal cap until to-morrow, so I won't turn out the light. You have a book to read, you've had your supper, and I wish you a pleasant time alone. No doubt you will occupy your leisure in thinking of Miss Marjorie Poole. You'll recall that occasion in a certain room hung with pink, when you kissed her by the side of the piano in the white and gold case! I know you often recall that happy incident."

He had closed the heavy steel door with a last chuckle of malice and power, leaving the prisoner white and shaking with fear. How did this sinister and devilish gaoler know his intimate thoughts?

He groaned deeply, and then, as he had done a thousand times before, gazed round the place in which he was in terror-struck amazement. Where was he? What was this horrible prison with all its strange contrivances, its inexplicable mysteries?

He was in a large stone cell, brilliantly lit at this moment by two incandescent electric bulbs in the vaulted ceiling far above his head. A long time ago now, how long he could not have said, he was Gerald Rathbone, a man living in the world, seeing the sunlight and breathing the air of day. He had been Gerald Rathbone, moving honourably among his fellow men, seeing human faces, hearing the music of human voices, an accepted lover, and a happy man.

That was long ago, a dream, a vision which was fading away. It seemed years since he had heard any voice but that of the pink, hairless man who fed him and whose slave he had become.

Once more the prisoned thing that had been Gerald Rathbone gazed round the cell, striving with terrible intensity of thought to understand it and penetrate its mysteries. Here he had been put and here he had remained ever since that sickening moment when he had been talking to Sir William Gouldesbrough. He had been standing in front of the baronet, when his arms had been gripped from behind and unseen fingers held a damp cloth, with a faint sickly and aromatic smell, over his face. A noise like the rushing of great waters sounded in his ears, there was a sense of falling into a gulf of enveloping blackness.

He had awakened in the place which he was now surveying again, with frightful and fascinated curiosity.

In the brilliant light of the electric bulbs every object in the cell was clearly seen. The place was not small. It was oblong in shape, some sixteen feet by twelve. The walls were built of heavy slabs of Portland stone cemented together with extreme nicety and care. The door of the cell was obviously new. It was a heavy steel door with a complicated system of locks – very much like the door of a safe. The whole place, indeed, suggested that it had been used as a strong-room at some time or other. There was no window of any kind in the cell. In the centre of the arched roof there was a barred ventilator, and close by an electric fan whirled and whispered unceasingly. The sound made by the purring thing as it revolved two thousand times a minute was almost the only sound Gerald Rathbone heard now.

The floor of the cell was covered with cork carpet of an ordinary pattern. The victim cast his glance on all this without interest. Then, as if he did so unwillingly, but by the force of an attraction he could not resist, he stared, with lively doubt and horror rippling over his face, at something which stood against the opposite wall. He saw a long narrow couch of some black wood, slanting upwards towards the head. The couch stood upon four thick pedestals of red rubber, which in their turn rested upon four squares of thick porcelain. The whole thing had the appearance of a shallow box upon trestles, and at the head was a curious pillow of india-rubber. At the side of this thick pad was a collar-shaped circlet of vulcanite clamped between two arms of aluminium, which moved in any direction upon ball-pivots.

He stared at this mysterious couch, trying to understand it, to realize it.

He rose from the narrow bed on which he sat, and advanced to the centre of the cell – to the centre, but no further than that.

Around his waist a circlet of light steel was welded, and from it thin steel chains ran through light handcuffs upon his wrists, and were joined to steel bands which were locked upon his ankles. And all these chains, hardly thicker than stout watch-chains, but terribly strong, were caught up to a pulley that hung far above his head and, in its turn, gave its central chain to another pulley and swivel fixed in the roof.

In the half of his cell where his little bed was fixed, the prisoner had fair liberty of movement, despite his shackles. He could sit or lie, use his hands with some freedom. But whenever he attempted to cross the invisible line which divided one part of the cell from the other, the chains tightened and forbade him.

He stood now, straining to the limit of his bonds, gazing at the long couch of black wood, with its rubber feet, its clamps and collar at the head.

Above the mysterious couch, upon a triangular shelf by the door, was something that gleamed and shone brightly. It was a cap of metal, shaped like a huge acorn cup, or a bishop's mitre. From an ivory stud in the centre of the peak, coils of silk-covered wire ran to a china plug in the wall.

Rathbone stood upright for several minutes gazing at these things. Then with a long, hopeless sigh, to the accompanying jingle of his fetters, he turned and sat down once more upon his bed.

As prisoners do, he had contracted the habit of talking aloud to himself. It was a poor comfort – this mournful echo of one's own voice! – but it seemed to make the profound solitude more bearable for a moment. He began a miserable monologue now.

"I must understand it!" he said. "That is the first step of all, if I am to keep my brain, if there is ever to be the slightest chance of escape, I must understand this terrible and secret business.

"What are these fiends doing to me?

"Let me go through the whole thing slowly and in order."

He began to reconstruct the scenes of his frequent torture, with the logic and precision with which he would have worked out a proposition of Euclid. It was the only way in which he could keep a grip upon a failing mind; a logical process of thought alone could solve this horrid mystery.

What happened every day, sometimes two or three times a day? Just this. He would be lying on his bed, reading, perhaps, if the electric lights were turned on. There would be a sudden creak and rattle of the big pulleys high up in the roof, a rattle which came without any warning whatever.

Then the central chain, to which all the other thinner chains were fastened, would begin to tighten and move. Slowly, inch by inch, as if some one were turning a winch-handle outside the cell, the chain wound up into the roof. As it did so, the smaller chains, which were fixed to the steel bands upon his limbs, tightened also.

Struggle as he might, the arrangements and balance of the weights were so perfect that in less than a minute he would be swinging clear of the bed, as helpless as a bale of goods at the end of a crane.

Then the upward movement of the chain would stop, the door open with a clicking of its massive wards, and Guest would come in.

In a moment more Gerald always found himself swung on to the long black couch. His neck was encircled by the collar of thick vulcanite, his head was bent upwards by means of an india-rubber pillow beneath it, his hands and feet were strapped to the framework of the couch.

And finally Guest would take the metal cap and fix it firmly upon his head, pressed down to the very eyes so that he could in no way shake it off. The man would leave the cell, sometimes with a chuckle or a malicious sentence that seemed full of hidden meaning, sometimes in silence.

And then the electric light invariably went out.

Rathbone never knew how long he was forced to remain thus in the dark, the subject of some horrible experiment, at the nature of which he could only guess. The period seemed to vary, but there was no possible test of time. Long ago time had ceased to exist for him.

Release would come at last, release, food and light – and so the dreadful silent days went on.

"What are these devils doing to me?"

The hollow voice of reverie and self-communing cut into the silence like a knife.

"It must be that I am being made the victim of an awful revenge and hatred. Charliewood was the decoy and tool of Gouldesbrough; it was all planned from the first. Marjorie was never really relinquished by Gouldesbrough. He meant all along to get me out of the way, to get Marjorie back if he could. All this is clear enough. I thought I was dealing with an honourable gentleman, and a great man, too great to stoop even to anything petty or mean. I have been dealing with desperate and secret criminals, people who live hideous double lives, who walk the world and sit in high places and do unnameable evil in the dark. Yes! That is clear enough. Even now, perhaps, my darling is once more in the power of this monster Gouldesbrough!"

The thin voice failed and died away into a tortured whimper. The tall form shook with agony and the rattle of the steel chains mingled with the "purr," "purr" of the electric fan in the roof.

By a tremendous effort of will Rathbone clutched at his thoughts again. He wrenched his mind back from the memory of his dreadful plight to the solving of the mystery.

Till he had some glimmering of the meaning of what was being done to him, he was entirely hopeless and helpless.

He began to murmur to himself again.

"In the first place Gouldesbrough has got me out of the way successfully. I have disappeared from the world of men, the field is clear for him. But he has not killed me. For some reason or other, dangerous though it must be for him, he is keeping me alive. It surely would have been safer for him to have murdered me in this secret place, and buried me beneath the stone flags here? I am forced to conclude that he is keeping me for an even worse revenge than that of immediate extinction. It is torture enough to imprison me like this, of course. But, if the man is what I feel he is – not man, but devil – would he not have tortured me in another way before now? There are dreadful pains that fiends can make the body suffer. One has read of unbearable agonies in old books, in the classics. Yet nothing of the sort has been done to me yet, and I have been long in this prison. My food has been plentiful and of good quality, even definitely stimulating I have thought at times.

"It is obvious then that I am not to be subjected to any of the horrors one has read of. What is being done to me? when, each day, I am fixed rigidly upon that couch, and the brass helmet is put upon my head, what is going on? I cannot feel any sensation out of the ordinary when I am tied down there. I am no weaker in body, my faculties are just as unimpaired when I am released as they were before. At least it seems so to me. I can discover no change in me either, mental or physical.

"Something is being done by means of electricity. The coils of wire that lead from the helmet to the plug in the wall show that. The way in which the couch is insulated, the vulcanite collar, the rubber pillow, all lead to the same conclusion. At first I thought that a torturing current of electricity was to be directed into the brain. That my faculties, my very soul itself, were to be dissolved and destroyed by some subtle means. But it is not so. There is no current coming to me through the wire. Nowhere does my head touch metal, the cap is lined throughout with rubber. But yesterday, as my gaoler held up the helmet to examine it before putting it on my head, I had an opportunity of seeing the whole interior for the first time.

"There was very little to see! At the top was a circular orifice which seemed to be closed by a thin disc of some shining material. That was all. It looked just like the part of a telephone into which one speaks. My brain, my body, are not being acted upon. Nothing is being slowly instilled into my being. Can it be that anything is being taken away?"

He bent his head upon his hands and groaned in agony. All was dark and impenetrable, there was no solution, no help. He was in the grip of merciless men, in the clutch of the unknown.

The electric light in the cell went out suddenly.

CHAPTER XIII
LORD MALVIN

If Sir William Gouldesbrough represented all that was most brilliant, modern, and daring in the scientific world of Europe, Lord Malvin stood as its official figure-head. He was the "grand old man" of science, and was regarded by every one as a final court of appeal in all such matters.

He was of a great age, almost eighty, in fact, yet his health was perfect, his intellect unimpaired, and his interest in human events as keen and vigorous as that of a man but half his age and in the full prime and meridian of life.

In science, he represented what the President of the Royal Academy represents in art, or the Lord Chief Justice in the law, and although he had almost ceased independent investigations, he was always appealed to and consulted when anything new and revolutionary in science was discovered or promulgated by any of the younger men.

The younger men themselves, while allowing their chief's vast knowledge and experience, his real and undeniable eminence, were apt to call him conservative, and to hint that he was of an alien generation. They would say that his judgment was sometimes obscured by his veneration and love for the past, and because he found himself unable to leap so rapidly to conclusions as they did, they put him down as an old fogey who had done valuable and remarkable work in his time, but who ought to be content with his peerage and immense fortune and retire to the planting of cabbages or the growing of roses in the country.

In the public eye, nevertheless, Lord Malvin remained as familiar and necessary a part of the English landscape as St. Paul's; and, whenever a great man died and the newspapers enumerated the few remaining veterans of the Commonwealth, Lord Malvin was usually the first to be mentioned.

For many years there had been an antagonism between Lord Malvin and Sir William Gouldesbrough. It was not personal so much as scientific, an abstract and intellectual antagonism. When Sir William's star first began to rise above the horizon – he was only Mr. Gouldesbrough then – Lord Malvin had recognized his talent as an inventor, but deprecated many of his theories. These ideas, these possibilities for the future which Gouldesbrough was fond of giving to the world in lectures and reviews, seemed horribly dangerous, subversive, and fantastic to the older man.

He said so in no uncertain voice, and for some years, though he was always kind and civil to Gouldesbrough, he certainly did much to discount the rising star's power of illumination.

But as time went on, each daring theory put forth by Gouldesbrough passed into the realm of actual fact. Lord Malvin saw that Sir William had been almost invariably right. He saw that the new man not only told the world that some day this or that marvel would come to pass, but immediately afterwards set to work and himself made it come to pass!

Lord Malvin was a noble man as well as a nobleman – sometimes a rare combination to-day – and he confessed himself in the wrong. Directly he saw that he had been mistaken, and that Sir William was no charlatan, but one of the most daring and brilliant scientists the world had ever known, the peer gave the newer man all the weight of his support. Nevertheless, while forced by circumstance and Gouldesbrough's justification of his own ideas into a scientific brotherhood, Lord Malvin, who constantly met the other, found a new problem confronting him.

While he had not believed in Gouldesbrough's theories, Lord Malvin had rather liked him personally.

Now that he was compelled to believe in Gouldesbrough's theories, Lord Malvin found that he experienced a growing dislike for the man himself. And as he was a fair and honourable man, Lord Malvin did everything he possibly could to rid himself of this prejudice, with the result that while his efforts to do so were quite unavailing, he redoubled his kindness and attentions to the man he disliked.

All the scientific world knew that Sir William was perfecting some marvellous discovery. In Berlin, Paris, Petersburg, Vienna, and Buda Pesth, learned savants were writing to their confrères in London to know what this might be. The excitement was intense, the rumours were endless, and it is not too much to say that the whole scientific intellect of the globe was roused and waiting.

Now when a number of leading brains are agitated upon one subject, something of that agitation begins to stir and move in the outside world.

Already some hints had got about, and the press of Europe and America was scenting some extraordinary news.

The whole business had at length culminated in the giving of a great reception by Lord Malvin.

Everybody who mattered was asked, not only in the scientific but also in the general world.

And everybody knew, that not only was the reception given in Sir William Gouldesbrough's honour, but that he would say something more or less definite about what he had in hand.

In short, a pronouncement was to be made, and the ears of every one were tingling to hear it.

Among the idle and frivolous section of society the promised revelation had become the topic of the hour. Everything else was quite forgotten. Gerald Rathbone's disappearance was already a thing of the past. Eustace Charliewood's suicide had not lasted for the proverbial nine days as a subject of talk. But here was something quite new! Something all the more attractive because of its mystery.

Some people said that Sir William had invented a way in which any one might become invisible for a few pence.

This suggested delightful possibilities to every one, save only the newly rich, whose whole endeavour was to be seen.

On the other hand there was a considerable section of people who asserted that Sir William had succeeded in supplying the lesion in the brain of the ape, and that now that intelligent animal would be able to talk, own property, and become recognized as a British citizen. Every one began to read the Jungle Book again, and a serious proposal was made in an Imperialistic Journal that England might thus colonize and secure the unexplored forests of Central Africa, by means of drilling and civilizing the monkeys of the interior.

A Gorilla-General was to be appointed, who should know the English language, but no other, and it was thought that by this means the British dominions and population would be enormously increased. The "Smart Set" especially welcomed this recruitment of their numbers.

In city circles both these conjectures were scouted.

The well-informed insisted that Sir William had discovered a method of solidifying alcohol, so that in future one would buy one's whiskey in chunks, and one's champagne in sticks like barley sugar.

Lord Malvin lived in Portland Place, in one of those great stone houses which, however sombre without, are generally most pleasant and attractive within. He was unmarried, and his niece Dorothea Backhouse acted as hostess and generally controlled his domestic affairs.

The stately rooms were crowded with well-known people of all sorts and conditions. Yet this assembly differed from others in a marked manner. All the society people who lived solely for amusement had been invited, and were there. But mingled with the butterflies, one saw the ants and bees. By the carefully groomed, and not ill-looking face of a young and fashionable man about town, could be seen the domed forehead, and the face gashed and scored with thought, of some great savant or deep thinker.

It was indeed an unusual assemblage that passed through the large and brilliant rooms, laughing and talking. In the blue drawing-room, Kubelik had just arrived and was beginning to play. Every one crushed in to hear the young maestro. Melba was to sing a song, perhaps two, later on in the evening, and the ball-room was filled with supper-tables.

In so much Lord Malvin's party did not differ in any way from that of any other famous and wealthy London host. There was the same light and sparkle of jewels. The warm air was laden with perfume, the same beautiful and tired faces moved gracefully among all this luxury. But the men and women who worked and thought for the world were in this Portland Place palace also. They talked together in eager and animated groups, they paid little or no attention to this or that delight which had been provided for them. All these things were phantoms and unreal to these people. The real things were taking place within the brain as they conversed together. The army of intellect was massing within the citadel of thought, to wrest new territory from the old queen nature, mistress of the kingdom of the unknown.

Lord Malvin and his niece had received their guests at the head of the grand staircase. Now, when almost every one had arrived, the great scientist had withdrawn to an inner room at the end of a long series of apartments, and stood there talking with a small knot of friends.

This inner drawing-room was the culminating part of the suite, the throne room as it were; and the people standing there could look down a long and crowded vista of light and movement, while the yearning and sobbing of Kubelik's violin came to their ears in gusts and throbs of delicious sound.

Lord Malvin, a tall, upright old man with a long white beard, a high white brow beneath his velvet skull-cap, and wearing a row of orders, was talking to Sir Harold Oliver. Sir Harold was the principal of a great Northern University, a slim, hard-faced man of middle age, and the pioneer in the movement which was allowing a place to both philosophy and psychology in modern science.

A third person stood there also, a youngish man of middle height, Mr. Donald Megbie, the well-known journalist and writer on social and religious matters. Donald Megbie held rather a curious position in the literary world. He was the friend of many great people, and more often than not his pen was the vehicle chosen by them to first introduce their ideas and discoveries to the general public. When it was time to let the man in the street know of some stupendous discovery, Megbie was called in, and his articles, always brilliant and interesting, explained the matter in popular terms for the non-technical mind.

"So Gouldesbrough has not yet come?" Sir Harold Oliver said.

"Not yet," Lord Malvin answered. "I have had a telegram from him, however, to say that he is compelled to be rather later than he had expected. I have told the butler to wait in the hall for him, and to bring him straight through here directly he arrives."

"A remarkable man," said Mr. Megbie, in that low and pleasant voice which had become so familiar in high places – even in the private rooms of cabinet ministers it was said – during the last few years.

"A man none of us can afford to ignore," Sir Harold answered with a slight sigh of impatience.

Megbie smiled.

"My dear Donald," Sir Harold went on, "please don't smile in that superior sort of manner. I know what you are thinking. You're thinking 'how these scientists love one another.' You are accusing me of envy, jealousy and uncharitableness. I'm not jealous of Gouldesbrough, great as his attainments are, and I'm sure I don't envy him."

"Any one might be forgiven a little envy on such an occasion as this," Megbie answered. "I confess that if I thought every one of importance in London were met together in Lord Malvin's house to welcome me, to hear what I was going to do next, I should be rather more than pleased."

Lord Malvin smiled kindly, but the noble old face grew sad for a moment.

"Ah!" he said, "you are young, Mr. Megbie. I thought as you think when I was your age. But one finds out the utter worthlessness of fame and applause and so on, as one grows older. The work itself is the thing! Yes! There, and therein only, lies the reward. All else is vain and hollow. I am a very old man, and I am near my end. I suppose I may say that such honours as can be given have fallen to my share. Yet I can honestly say that I would give them all up, I would efface myself utterly if I thought that I was on the brink of the discovery which I believe William Gouldesbrough has made and will tell us something of to-night!"

The other two started. A deep note of seriousness had come into the voice of the venerable old man. It portended something, something vast and far-reaching, and they all stood silent for a moment occupied with their own thoughts.

The distant music of piano and violin rose higher and higher in keen vibrating melody. There was a note of triumph in it which seemed to accentuate the gravity and importance of Lord Malvin's words. The triumphant notes of the man who was coming were singing and ringing through the halls and chambers of this great house!

The music ceased suddenly, and there was a great clapping of hands.

At that moment the three men waiting in the inner room saw a tall, black figure moving towards them, the figure of a man on whom people were beginning to press and converge, a figure that smiled, bowed, stopped continually to shake hands and receive greetings, and made a slow progress towards them.

Sir William Gouldesbrough, the man of the future, radiant, honoured and successful, was arriving to greet Lord Malvin, the man of the past.