for you will now bring more sympathy, andtherefore more help, to our experiment. For, of course, in this case, weonly want the blood to tempt the creature from its lair and enclose itin a form--"
"I quite understand. And I only hesitated just now," he went on, hiswords coming much more slowly, as though he felt he had already said toomuch, "because I wished to be quite sure it was no mere curiosity, butan actual sense of necessity that dictated this horrible experiment."
"It is your safety, and that of your household, and of your sister, thatis at stake," replied the doctor. "Once I have _seen_, I hope todiscover whence this elemental comes, and what its real purpose is."
Colonel Wragge signified his assent with a bow.
"And the moon will help us," the other said, "for it will be full in theearly hours of the morning, and this kind of elemental-being is alwaysmost active at the period of full moon. Hence, you see, the cluefurnished by your diary."
So it was finally settled. Colonel Wragge would provide the materialsfor the experiment, and we were to meet at midnight. How he wouldcontrive at that hour--but that was his business. I only know we bothrealised that he would keep his word, and whether a pig died atmidnight, or at noon, was after all perhaps only a question of the sleepand personal comfort of the executioner.
"Tonight, then, in the laundry," said Dr. Silence finally, to clinch theplan; "we three alone--and at midnight, when the household is asleep andwe shall be free from disturbance."
He exchanged significant glances with our host, who, at that moment, wascalled away by the announcement that the family doctor had arrived, andwas ready to see him in his sister's room.
For the remainder of the afternoon John Silence disappeared. I had mysuspicions that he made a secret visit to the plantation and also to thelaundry building; but, in any case, we saw nothing of him, and he keptstrictly to himself. He was preparing for the night, I felt sure, butthe nature of his preparations I could only guess. There was movement inhis room, I heard, and an odour like incense hung about the door, andknowing that he regarded rites as the vehicles of energies, my guesseswere probably not far wrong.
Colonel Wragge, too, remained absent the greater part of the afternoon,and, deeply afflicted, had scarcely left his sister's bedside, but inresponse to my inquiry when we met for a moment at tea-time, he told methat although she had moments of attempted speech, her talk was quiteincoherent and hysterical, and she was still quite unable to explain thenature of what she had seen. The doctor, he said, feared she hadrecovered the use of her limbs, only to lose that of her memory, andperhaps even of her mind.
"Then the recovery of her legs, I trust, may be permanent, at any rate,"I ventured, finding it difficult to know what sympathy to offer. And hereplied with a curious short laugh, "Oh yes; about that there can be nodoubt whatever."
And it was due merely to the chance of my overhearing a fragment ofconversation--unwillingly, of course--that a little further light wasthrown upon the state in which the old lady actually lay. For, as I cameout of my room, it happened that Colonel Wragge and the doctor weregoing downstairs together, and their words floated up to my ears beforeI could make my presence known by so much as a cough.
"Then you must find a way," the doctor was saying with decision; "for Icannot insist too strongly upon that--and at all costs she must be keptquiet. These attempts to go out must be prevented--if necessary, byforce. This desire to visit some wood or other she keeps talking aboutis, of course, hysterical in nature. It cannot be permitted for amoment."
"It shall not be permitted," I heard the soldier reply, as they reachedthe hall below.
"It has impressed her mind for some reason--" the doctor went on, by wayevidently of soothing explanation, and then the distance made itimpossible for me to hear more.
At dinner Dr. Silence was still absent, on the public plea of aheadache, and though food was sent to his room, I am inclined to believehe did not touch it, but spent the entire time fasting.
We retired early, desiring that the household should do likewise, and Imust confess that at ten o'clock when I bid my host a temporarygood-night, and sought my room to make what mental preparation I could,I realised in no very pleasant fashion that it was a singular andformidable assignation, this midnight meeting in the laundry building,and that there were moments in every adventure of life when a wise man,and one who knew his own limitations, owed it to his dignity to withdrawdiscreetly. And, but for the character of our leader, I probably shouldhave then and there offered the best excuse I could think of, and haveallowed myself quietly to fall asleep and wait for an exciting story inthe morning of what had happened. But with a man like John Silence, sucha lapse was out of the question, and I sat before my fire counting theminutes and doing everything I could think of to fortify my resolutionand fasten my will at the point where I could be reasonably sure that myself-control would hold against all attacks of men, devils, orelementals.
III
At a quarter before midnight, clad in a heavy ulster, and with slipperedfeet, I crept cautiously from my room and stole down the passage to thetop of the stairs. Outside the doctor's door I waited a moment tolisten. All was still; the house in utter darkness; no gleam of lightbeneath any door; only, down the length of the corridor, from thedirection of the sick-room, came faint sounds of laughter and incoherenttalk that were not things to reassure a mind already half a-tremble, andI made haste to reach the hall and let myself out through the frontdoor into the night.
The air was keen and frosty, perfumed with night smells, and exquisitelyfresh; all the million candles of the sky were alight, and a faintbreeze rose and fell with far-away sighings in the tops of the pinetrees. My blood leaped for a moment in the spaciousness of the night,for the splendid stars brought courage; but the next instant, as Iturned the corner of the house, moving stealthily down the gravel drive,my spirits sank again ominously. For, yonder, over the funereal plumesof the Twelve Acre Plantation, I saw the broken, yellow disc of thehalf-moon just rising in the east, staring down like some vast Beingcome to watch upon the progress of our doom. Seen through the distortingvapours of the earth's atmosphere, her face looked weirdly unfamiliar,her usual expression of benignant vacancy somehow a-twist. I slippedalong by the shadows of the wall, keeping my eyes upon the ground.
The laundry-house, as already described, stood detached from the otheroffices, with laurel shrubberies crowding thickly behind it, and thekitchen-garden so close on the other side that the strong smells of soiland growing things came across almost heavily. The shadows of thehaunted plantation, hugely lengthened by the rising moon behind them,reached to the very walls and covered the stone tiles of the roof with adark pall. So keenly were my senses alert at this moment that I believeI could fill a chapter with the endless small details of the impressionI received--shadows, odour, shapes, sounds--in the space of the fewseconds I stood and waited before the closed wooden door.
Then I became aware of some one moving towards me through the moonlight,and the figure of John Silence, without overcoat and bareheaded, camequickly and without noise to join me. His eyes, I saw at once, werewonderfully bright, and so marked was the shining pallor of his facethat I could hardly tell when he passed from the moonlight into theshade.
He passed without a word, beckoning me to follow, and then pushed thedoor open, and went in.
The chill air of the place met us like that of an underground vault; andthe brick floor and whitewashed walls, streaked with damp and smoke,threw back the cold in our faces. Directly opposite gaped the blackthroat of the huge open fireplace, the ashes of wood fires still piledand scattered about the hearth, and on either side of the projectingchimney-column were the deep recesses holding the big twin cauldrons forboiling clothes. Upon the lids of these cauldrons stood the two littleoil lamps, shaded red, which gave all the light there was, andimmediately in front of the fireplace there was a small circular tablewith three chairs set about it. Overhead, the narrow slit windows, highup the walls, pointed to a dim network of wooden rafters
half lost amongthe shadows, and then came the dark vault of the roof. Cheerless andunalluring, for all the red light, it certainly was, reminding me ofsome unused conventicle, bare of pews or pulpit, ugly and severe, and Iwas forcibly struck by the contrast between the normal uses to which theplace was ordinarily put, and the strange and medieval purpose which hadbrought us under its roof tonight.
Possibly an involuntary shudder ran over me, for my companion turnedwith a confident look to reassure me, and he was so completely master ofhimself that I at once absorbed from his abundance, and felt the chinksof my failing courage beginning to close up. To meet his eye in thepresence of danger was like finding a mental railing that guided andsupported thought along the giddy edges of alarm.
"I am quite ready," I whispered, turning to listen for approachingfootsteps.
He nodded, still keeping his eyes on mine.