What could have induced her to come to his rooms? He loosened his holdon her and did as she asked.
How pale she looked in the light, how beautiful! Surely, she hadsorrowed for him; but why had she not answered his letter? Yes, why?
"Your letter?" She smiled a little sadly. "Surely you did not expect meto answer that?"
"Why not?" He had again approached her and his lips were close to hers."Why not? I have yearned for you. I love you."
His breath intoxicated her; it was like a subtle perfume. Still she didnot yield.
"You love me now--you did not love me then. The music of your words wascold--machine-made, strained and superficial. I shall not answer, I toldmyself: in his heart he has forgotten you. I did not then realise that adangerous force had possessed your life and crushed in your mind everyimage but its own."
"I don't understand."
"Do you think I would have come here if it were a light matter? No, Itell you, it is a matter of life and death to you, at least as anartist."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Have you done a stroke of work since I last saw you?"
"Yes, let me see, surely, magazine articles and a poem."
"That is not what I want to know. Have you accomplished anything big?Have you grown since this summer? How about your novel?"
"I--I have almost finished it in my mind, but I have found no chance tobegin with the actual writing. I was sick of late, very sick."
No doubt of it! His face was pinched and pale, and the lines about themouth were curiously contorted, like those of a man suffering from apainful internal disease.
"Tell me," she ventured, "do you ever miss anything?"
"Do you mean--are there thieves?"
"Thieves! Against thieves one can protect oneself."
He stared at her wildly, half-frightened, in anticipation of somedreadful revelation. His dream! His dream! That hand! Could it be morethan a dream? God! His lips quivered.
Ethel observed his agitation and continued more quietly, but with thesame insistence: "Have you ever had ideas, plans that you began withouthaving strength to complete them? Have you had glimpses of vocal visionsthat seemed to vanish no sooner than seen? Did it ever seem to you as ifsome mysterious and superior will brutally interfered with the workingsof your brain?"
Did it seem so to him! He himself could not have stated more plainlythe experience of the last few months. Each word fell from her lips likethe blow of a hammer. Shivering, he put his arm around her, seekingsolace, not love. This time she did not repulse him and, trustingly, asa child confides to his mother, he depicted to her the suffering thatharrowed his life and made it a hell.
As she listened, indignation clouded her forehead, while rising tears ofanger and of love weighed down her lashes. She could bear the pitifulsight no longer.
"Child," she cried, "do you know who your tormentor is?"
And like a flash the truth passed from her to him. A sudden intimationtold him what her words had still concealed.
"Don't! For Christ's sake, do not pronounce his name!" he sobbed. "Donot breathe it. I could not endure it. I should go mad."
XXIV
Very quietly, with difficulty restraining her own emotion so as not toexcite him further, Ethel had related to Ernest the story of herremarkable interview with Reginald Clarke. In the long silence thatensued, the wings of his soul brushed against hers for the first time,and Love by a thousand tender chains of common suffering welded theirbeings into one.
Caressingly the ivory of her fingers passed through the gold of his hairand over his brow, as if to banish the demon-eyes that stared at himacross the hideous spaces of the past. In a rush a thousand incidentscame back to him, mute witnesses of a damning truth. His play, thedreams that tormented him, his own inability to concentrate his mindupon his novel which hitherto he had ascribed to nervous disease--all,piling fact on fact, became one monstrous monument of Reginald Clarke'scrime. At last Ernest understood the parting words of Abel Felton andthe look in Ethel's eye on the night when he had first linked his fatewith the other man's. Walkham's experience, too, and Reginald's remarkson the busts of Shakespeare and Balzac unmistakably pointed toward thenew and horrible spectre that Ethel's revelation had raised in place ofhis host.
And then, again, the other Reginald appeared, crowned with the lyricwreath. From his lips golden cadences fell, sweeter than the smell ofmany flowers or the sound of a silver bell. He was once more the divinemaster, whose godlike features bore no trace of malice and who hadraised him to a place very near his heart.
"No," he cried, "it is impossible. It's all a dream, a horriblenightmare."
"But he has himself confessed it," she interjected.
"Perhaps he has spoken in symbols. We all absorb to some extent othermen's ideas, without robbing them and wrecking their thought-life.Reginald may be unscrupulous in the use of his power of impressing uponothers the stamp of his master-mind. So was Shakespeare. No, no, no!You are mistaken; we were both deluded for the moment by his picturesqueaccount of a common, not even a discreditable, fact. He may himself haveplayed with the idea, but surely he cannot have been serious."
"And your own experience, and Abel Felton's and mine--can they, too, bedismissed with a shrug of the shoulder?"
"But, come to think of it, the whole theory seems absurd. It isunscientific. It is not even a case of mesmerism. If he had said that hehypnotised his victims, the matter would assume a totally differentaspect. I admit that something is wrong somewhere, and that the home ofReginald Clarke is no healthful abode for me. But you must also rememberthat probably we are both unstrung to the point of hysteria."
But to Ethel his words carried no conviction.
"You are still under his spell," she cried, anxiously.
A little shaken in his confidence, Ernest resumed: "Reginald is utterlyincapable of such an action, even granting that he possessed theterrible power of which you speak. A man of his splendid resources, aliterary Midas at whose very touch every word turns into gold, is underno necessity to prey on the thoughts of others. Circumstances, I admit,are suspicious. But in the light of common day this fanciful theoryshrivels into nothing. Any court of law would reject our evidence asmadness. It is too utterly fantastic, utterly alien to any humanexperience."
"Is it though?" Ethel replied with peculiar intonation.
"Why, what do you mean?"
"Surely," she answered, "you must know that in the legends of everynation we read of men and women who were called vampires. They arebeings, not always wholly evil, whom every night some mysterious impulseleads to steal into unguarded bedchambers, to suck the blood of thesleepers and then, having waxed strong on the life of their victims,cautiously to retreat. Thence comes it that their lips are very red. Itis even said that they can find no rest in the grave, but return totheir former haunts long after they are believed to be dead. Those whomthey visit, however, pine away for no apparent reason. The physiciansshake their wise heads and speak of consumption. But sometimes, ancientchronicles assure us, the people's suspicions were aroused, and underthe leadership of a good priest they went in solemn procession to thegraves of the persons suspected. And on opening the tombs it was foundthat their coffins had rotted away and the flowers in their hair wereblack. But their bodies were white and whole; through no empty socketscrept the vermin, and their sucking lips were still moist with a littleblood."
Ernest was carried away in spite of himself by her account, whichvividly resembled his own experience. Still he would not give in.
"All this is impressive. I admit it is very impressive. But you yourselfspeak of such stories as legends. They are unfounded upon any tangiblefact, and you cannot expect a man schooled in modern sciences to admit,as having any possible bearing upon his life, the crude belief of theMiddle Ages!"
"Why not?" she responded. "Our scientists have proved true the wildesttheories of mediaeval scholars. The transmutation of metals seems to-dayno longer an idle speculation, and radium has t
ransformed into potentialreality the dream of perpetual motion. The fundamental notions ofmathematics are being undermined. One school of philosophers claims thatthe number of angles in a triangle is equal to more than two rightangles; another propounds that it is less. Even great scientists whohave studied the soul of nature are turning to spiritism. The world isovercoming the shallow scepticism of the nineteenth century. Life hasbecome once more wonderful and very mysterious. But it also seems that,with the miracles of the old days, their terrors, their nightmares andtheir monsters have come back in a modern guise."
Ernest became even more thoughtful. "Yes," he observed, "there issomething in what you say." Then, pacing the room nervously, heexclaimed: "And still I find it impossible to believe your explanation.Reginald a vampire! It seems so ludicrous. If you had told me that suchcreatures exist somewhere, far away, I might have discussed the matter;but in this great city, in the shadow of the Flatiron Building--no!"
She replied with warmth: "Yet they exist--always have existed. Not onlyin the Middle Ages, but at all times and in all regions. There is nonation but has some record of them, in one form or another. And don'tyou think if we find a thought, no matter how absurd it may seem to us,that has ever occupied the minds of men--if we find, I say, such aperennially recurrent thought, are we not justified in assuming that itmust have some basis in the actual experience of mankind?"
Ernest's brow became very clouded, and infinite numbers of hiddenpremature wrinkles began to show. How wan he looked and how frail! Hewas as one lost in a labyrinth in which he saw no light, convincedagainst his will, or rather, against his scientific conviction, that shewas not wholly mistaken.
"Still," he observed triumphantly, "your vampires suck blood; butReginald, if vampire he be, preys upon the soul. How can a man suckfrom another man's brain a thing as intangible, as quintessential asthought?"
"Ah," she replied, "you forget, thought is more real than blood!"
XXV
Only three hours had passed since Ethel had startled Ernest from hissombre reveries, but within this brief space their love had matured asif each hour had been a year. The pallor had vanished from his cheeksand the restiveness from his eyes. The intoxication of her presence hadrekindled the light of his countenance and given him strength to combatthe mighty forces embodied in Reginald Clarke. The child in him had maderoom for the man. He would not hear of surrendering without a struggle,and Ethel felt sure she might leave his fate in his own hand. Love hadlent him a coat of mail. He was warned, and would not succumb. Still shemade one more attempt to persuade him to leave the house at once withher.
"I must go now," she said. "Will you not come with me, after all? I amso afraid to think of you still here."
"No, dear," he replied. "I shall not desert my post. I must solve theriddle of this man's life; and if, indeed, he is the thing he seems tobe, I shall attempt to wrest from him what he has stolen from me. Ispeak of my unwritten novel."
"Do not attempt to oppose him openly. You cannot resist him."
"Be assured that I shall be on my guard. I have in the last few hourslived through so much that makes life worth living, that I would notwantonly expose myself to any danger. Still, I cannot go withoutcertainty--cannot, if there is some truth in our fears, leave the bestof me behind."
"What are you planning to do?"
"My play--I am sure now that it is mine--I cannot take from him; that isirretrievably lost. He has read it to his circle and prepared for itspublication. And, no matter how firmly convinced you or I may be of hisstrange power, no one would believe our testimony. They would pronounceus mad. Perhaps we _are_ mad!"
"No; we are not mad; but it is mad for you to stay here," she asserted.
"I shall not stay here one minute longer than is absolutely essential.Within a week I shall have conclusive proof of his guilt or innocence."
"How will you go about it?"
"His writing table--"
"Ah!"
"Yes, perhaps I can discover some note, some indication, some proof--"
"It's a dangerous game."
"I have everything to gain."
"I wish I could stay here with you," she said. "Have you no friend, noone whom you could trust in this delicate matter?"
"Why, yes--Jack."
A shadow passed over her face.
"Do you know," she said, "I have a feeling that you care more for himthan for me?"
"Nonsense," he said, "he is my friend, you, you--immeasurably more."
"Are you still as intimate with him as when I first met you?"
"Not quite; of late a troubling something, like a thin veil, seems tohave passed between us. But he will come when I call him. He will notfail me in my hour of need."
"When can he be here?"
"In two or three days."
"Meanwhile be very careful. Above all, lock your door at night."
"I will not only lock, but barricade it. I shall try with all my powerto elucidate this mystery without, however, exposing myself to needlessrisks."
"I will go, then. Kiss me good-bye."
"May I not take you to the car?"
"You had better not."
At the door she turned back once more. "Write me every day, or call meup on the telephone."
He straightened himself, as if to convince her of his strength. Yet whenat last the door had closed behind her, his courage forsook him for amoment. And, if he had not been ashamed to appear a weakling before thewoman he loved, who knows if any power on earth could have kept him inthat house where from every corner a secret seemed to lurk!
There was a misgiving, too, in the woman's heart as she left the boybehind,--a prey to the occult power that, seeking expression in multipleactivities, has made and unmade emperors, prophets and poets.
As she stepped into a street car she saw from afar, as in a vision, theface of Reginald Clarke. It seemed very white and hungry. There was nohuman kindness in it--only a threat and a sneer.
XXVI
For over an hour Ernest paced up and down his room, wildly excited byEthel's revelations. It required an immense amount of self-control forhim to pen the following lines to Jack: "I need you. Come."
After he had entrusted the letter to the hall-boy, a reaction set in andhe was able to consider the matter, if not with equanimity, at leastwith a degree of calmness. The strangest thing to him was that he couldnot bring himself to hate Reginald, of whose evil influence upon hislife he was now firmly convinced. Here was another shattered idol; butone--like the fragment of a great god-face in the desert--intenselyfascinating, even in its ruin. Then yielding to a natural impulse,Ernest looked over his photographs and at once laid hold upon theaustere image of his master and friend. No--it was preposterous; therewas no evil in this man. There was no trace of malice in this face, theface of a prophet or an inspired madman, a poet. And yet, as hescrutinised the picture closely a curious transformation seemed to takeplace in the features; a sly little line appeared insinuatingly aboutReginald's well-formed mouth, and the serene calm of his Jupiter-headseemed to turn into the sneak smile of a thief. Nevertheless, Ernest wasnot afraid. His anxieties had at last assumed definite shape; it waspossible now to be on his guard. It is only invisible, incomprehensiblefear, crouching upon us from the night, that drives sensitive natures tothe verge of madness and transforms stern warriors into cowards.
Ernest realised the necessity of postponing the proposed investigationof Reginald's papers until the morning, as it was now near eleven, andhe expected to hear at any moment the sound of his feet at the door.Before retiring he took a number of precautions. Carefully he locked thedoor to his bedroom and placed a chair in front of it. To make doublysure, he fastened the handle to an exquisite Chinese vase, a gift ofReginald's, that at the least attempt to force an entrance from withoutwould come down with a crash.
Then, although sleep seemed out of the question, he went to bed. He hadhardly touched the pillow when a leaden weight seemed to fall upon hiseyes. The day's commotion had been
too much for his delicate frame. Byforce of habit he pulled the cover over his ear and fell asleep.
All night he slept heavily, and the morning was far advanced when aknock at the door that, at first, seemed to come across an immeasurabledistance, brought him back to himself. It was Reginald's manservantannouncing that breakfast was waiting.
Ernest got up and rubbed his eyes. The barricade at the door at oncebrought back to his mind with startling clearness the events of theprevious evening.
Everything was as he had left it. Evidently no one had attempted toenter the room while he slept. He could not help smiling at thearrangement which reminded him of his childhood, when he had sought bysimilar means security from burglars and bogeys. And in the broaddaylight Ethel's tales of vampires seemed once more impossible andabsurd. Still, he had abundant evidence of Reginald's strange influence,and was determined to know the truth before nightfall. Her words, thatthought is more real than blood, kept ringing in his ears. If such wasthe case, he would find evidence of Reginald's intellectual burglaries,and possibly be able to regain a part of his lost self that had beensnatched from him by the relentless dream-hand.
But under no circumstances could he face Reginald in his present stateof mind. He was convinced that if in the fleeting vision of a moment theother man's true nature should reveal itself to him, he would be soterribly afraid as to shriek like a maniac. So he dressed particularlyslowly in the hope of avoiding an encounter with his host. But fatethwarted this hope. Reginald, too, lingered that morning unusually longover his coffee. He was just taking his last sip when Ernest entered theroom. His behaviour was of an almost bourgeois kindness. Benevolencefairly beamed from his face. But to the boy's eyes it had assumed a newand sinister expression.