The Soul Stealer

He stood up in the middle of the room. Tall, columnar, with a great dignity about him, had there been any one there to see. It was a dual dignity, the dignity of supreme success and the dignity of irremediable pain.

The butler came in with the letters upon a copper tray. There was a great pile of them, and as the man closed the door after he put the tray upon the writing-table, Sir William began to deal the letters like a pack of cards, throwing this and that one on the floor, with a shuffling movement of the wrist, and as he did so his eyes were horrid in their searching and their intensity. At last he came to the one he sought. A letter addressed to him in a bold but feminine handwriting. As his fingers touched it a loud sob burst out into the silence of the room. With shaking fingers he tore it open, standing among the litter of the unopened letters, and began to read.

He read the letter right through, then walked to the mantel-piece, leaning his right arm upon it as if for support. But the tension was now a little relaxed. He had come down to find the worst, to meet the inevitable. He had met it, and there was now neither premonition of the moment of realization nor the last and torturing flicker of despairing hope.

This was the letter. It began without preface or address —

"You must have known this was coming. Everything in your manner has shown me that you knew it was coming. And for that, unhappy as I am, I am glad. I have a terrible confession to make to you. But you who are so great, you who know the human mind from your great height, as a conquering general surveys a country from a mountain-top, you will understand. When you asked me to marry you and I said 'Yes,' I was pleased and flattered, and I had a tremendous admiration and respect for you and for all you have done. Then when we came to know each other, I began to see the human side of you, and I had, and if you will let me say so, still have, a real affection for you. And had it not been that something more powerful than affection has come into my life, I would have been a true and faithful wife and companion to you.

"But you have seen, and you must know, that things are changed. Are we not all subject to the laws of destiny, the laws of chance? Is it not true that none of us on our way through the world can say by whom or how we shall be caught up out of ourselves and changed into what we could not be before? Oh, you know it all. You of all men know it!

"I need not here speak in detailed words, because from things you have seen you know well enough what I am about to say, of whom I would speak if I could. But it is enough, William, to tell you what you already know. That I love some one else, and that if I am true to myself, which is after all the first duty of all of us, I could never marry you. I can never be to you what you wish or what I would like to be as your wife. I am stricken down with the knowledge of the pain all this will give you, though, thank God, it is not a pain for which you are unprepared. I dare not ask your forgiveness, I can say nothing to console you. I have acted wickedly and wrongly, but I cannot do anything else but what I am doing.

"Forgive, if you can. Think kindly, if you can, of Marjorie."

Now he knew. He folded the letter gently, kissed it – an odd action for a man so strong – and put it in the inside pocket of his coat, which pressed next his heart.

Then he rang the bell.

"Ask Mr. Guest to come," he said.

"Very well, Sir William," the butler answered, "but Mr. Charliewood has just arrived."

"Then ask him in," Gouldesbrough answered.

Charliewood came into the room.

"By Jove!" he said, "you look about as seedy as I've ever seen you look!"

Sir William went up to him and put his hand upon his shoulder.

"Look here," he said, "I've had a smack in the face this morning, Charliewood. You know what it is, I need not tell you. And look here, too, I'm going to ask you to help me as you've never helped me before. I'm afraid, old fellow, I've often been a nuisance to you, and often rather rubbed in the fact that you owe me money, and that you've had to do things for me. Forgive me now, if you will. I'm going to call upon you for active friendship."

"Oh," Charliewood answered, "we won't talk about friendship between you and me. I've done what I had to do and there's enough."

Sir William still held him by the shoulder. "You don't really feel that, Charliewood?" he said in a quiet voice, and as he did so the magnetism of his personality began to flow and flood upon the weaker man and influence him to kindliness.

"Well, well," he said, "what is it now? I suppose we've been running round a vicious circle and we've come to the last lap?"

"That's just about it," Sir William answered. "Just let me say that this is the last service I shall ever ask from you. I'll give you back all the I.O.U.'s and things, and I'll give you enough money to put yourself absolutely right with the world, then we'll say good-bye."

Charliewood started. "That's awfully good of you," he said. "I don't think that I want to say good-bye. But still, what is it?"

"Rathbone," Sir William answered, pronouncing the name with marked difficulty.

"It's all over then?" Charliewood answered.

"Yes."

"I thought it would be. I have told you all that has been going on, and I knew it would be."

"She's written to me this morning," Gouldesbrough said. "A kind letter, but a letter finishing it all."

Then the weaker, smaller man became, as so often happens in life, the tempter – the instrument which moves the lever of a man's career towards the dark sinister side of the dial.

Charliewood was touched and moved by the unexpected kindness in his patron's voice.

"Don't say it's finished," he said; "nothing is finished for a man like you, with a man like me to help him. Of course it's not finished. You have not always been all you might to me, William, but I'll help you now. I'll do anything you want me to do. Buck up, old boy! You will pass the post first by a couple of lengths yet."

"How?"

"Well, what were you going to ask me to do?"

They looked each other in the face with glowing eyes and pale countenances, while a horrible excitement shone out upon them both.

At that moment the door opened very quietly, and an extraordinary person came into the room.

He was a short, fat, youthful-looking man, with a large, pink, and quite hairless face. The face was extremely intelligent, noticeably so, but it was streaked and furrowed with dissipation. It told the story not of the man who enjoyed the sensuous things of life in company, and as part of a merry progress towards the grave, but it betrayed the secret sot, the cunning sensualist private and at home.

This man was Mr. Guest, Sir William's faithful assistant in science, a man who had no initiative power, who could rarely invent a project or discover a scientific fact, but a man who, when once he was put upon the lines he ought to go, could follow them as the most intelligent sleuth-hound in the scientific world.

Wilson Guest was perhaps the greatest living physicist in Europe. He was of inestimable value to his chief, and he was content to remain between the high red-brick walls of the old house in Regent's Park, provided with all he needed for his own amusements, and instigated to further triumphs under the ægis of his master.

"Well, what is it?" said this fat, youthful and rather horrible-looking person.

"We've come to grips of the great fact, Guest," Sir William answered, still with his hand upon Charliewood's shoulder.

The pink creature laughed a hollow and merciless laugh.

"I knew it would come to this," he said, "since you have added another interest to your scientific interests, Gouldesbrough. Why have you called me in to a consultation?"

Gouldesbrough's whole face changed; it became malignant, the face of a devil.

"I'm going to win," he said. "I've had a knock-down blow, but I'm going to get up and win still! Mr. Rathbone must disappear. That can be easily arranged with the resources at our command."

Guest gave a horrible chuckle.

"And when we've got him?" he said.

"He must disappear for always," Gouldesbrough answered.

"Quite easy," Guest replied. "Quite easy, William. But, not until we've done with him, shall he?"

"What do you mean?"

"Why, isn't it the last condition of our experiments that we should have some one a slave, a dead man to the world, to use as we shall think fit? Here's your man. Do what you like to him afterwards. Let's make your rival a stepping-stone to your final success."

Then the three men looked at each other in fear.

Charliewood and Sir William Gouldesbrough were pale as linen, but the short, fat man was pink still, and laughed and chuckled nervously.

CHAPTER VI

"WILL YOU WALK INTO MY PARLOUR?"

Mr. Eustace Charliewood's chambers were in Jermyn Street. But few of his many friends had ever seen the interior of them. Such entertaining as the man about town did – and he was always one of those who were entertained, rather than one of those who offer hospitality – was done at his club.

The man who looked after the place and valeted his master was therefore the more surprised when Charliewood had called him up one morning after breakfast.

"Look here, William," Charliewood had said, "I've got a gentleman coming to dinner. We've some business to talk over, so I shan't dine him at the club. I suppose you can manage a little dinner here?"

"Certainly, sir, if necessary," the man answered. "Of course you're not in the habit of dining at home, and you've not got your own things. That is if you mean a proper little dinner, sir."

"I do, I do, William," his master answered hurriedly.

"But, there, that needn't matter," the man answered, "we can have everything in if you like, sir."

"That will be best," Charliewood answered. "I leave everything to you, William. Except," he added as an afterthought, "the menu. I want a small dinner, William, but quite good. Shall we say a little bisque for the soup? Then perhaps a small Normandy sole. Afterwards a chicken cooked en casserole. As an entrée some white truffles stewed in Sillery – you can get them in glass jars from Falkland & Masons – and then a morsel of Brie and some coffee. That will do, I think."

"And about the wine, sir?" said William, astonished at these unaccustomed preparations, and inwardly resolving that Mr. Eustace Charliewood had discovered a very brightly plumed pigeon to pluck.

"Oh, about the wine! Well, I think I'll see to that myself. I'll have it sent up from the club. You've an ice-pail for the champagne, haven't you, William?"

"Yes, sir, we certainly have that."

"Very good then. We'll say at eight then."

William bowed and withdrew.

All that day the various members of this or that fast and exclusive club round about St. James's Street, noticed that Eustace Charliewood was out of form. His conversation and his greetings were not so imperturbably cheerful and suave as usual. He took no interest in the absorbing question as to whether young Harry Rayke – the Earl of Spaydes' son – would after all propose to Lithia Varallette, the well-known musical comedy girl. The head waiter of the Baobab Club noticed Mr. Charliewood was off his food, and everybody with whom the man about town came in contact said that "Richard was by no means himself."

As the evening drew on, a dark, foggy evening, which promised as night came to be darker and foggier still, Charliewood's agitation increased, though just now there was no one to see it.

He walked down St. James's Street, past Marlborough House, and briskly promenaded the wide and splendid avenue which now exists in front of Buckingham Palace. The fog made him cough, the raw air was most unpleasant, and it was no hour for exercise. But, despite the cold and misery of it all, Charliewood continued his tramp backwards and forwards.

When he returned to his chambers in Jermyn Street, about seven o'clock, he found that his clothes were wet with perspiration, and only a hot bath before dressing for dinner and a couple of bromide tabloids in a wine-glass full of milk seemed to bring him back to his ordinary condition.

When, however, he went into his little dining-room, to all outward appearances he was the usual Eustace Charliewood of the pavements and club-rooms of the West End.

The room was comfortable. A bright fire glowed upon the hearth, shining upon the high-class sporting prints, the subdued wall-paper, the comfortable padded chairs, and the shelves loaded with bachelor nick-nacks and sporting trophies of his youth.

In one corner was a little round table set for two, gleaming with glass and silver and lit by electric lights covered with crimson shades.

It was all very warm and inviting. He looked round it with satisfaction for a moment.

Then, suddenly, as he stood on the hearth-rug, he put his plump, white hand with the heavy seal ring upon it, up to his throat. The apple moved up and down convulsively, and for a single moment the whole being of the man was filled with overmastering fear of the future and horror and loathing for himself.

The spasm passed as quickly as it came, the drug he had taken asserted its grip upon the twitching nerves, the man whose whole life was discreet adventure, who was a soldier of social fortune, who daily faced perils, became once more himself.

That is to say, to put it in two words, his better angel, who had held possession of him for a moment, fled sorrowfully away, while the especial spirit deputed to look after the other side of him happened to chance that way, and remembering he had often found a hospitable reception from Mr. Eustace Charliewood, looked in, found his old quarters duly swept and garnished, and settled down.

Charliewood's rooms were on the ground floor. In a minute or two, it was about a quarter to eight, he heard someone upon the steps outside, in Jermyn Street, and then the electric bell whirr down below in the kitchen.

He rushed out into the hall. It generally took William some time to mount from the lower regions, which were deep in the bowels of the earth, and no doubt Mr. Charliewood kindly desired to spare the butler the trouble of opening the door.

So, at least, William thought, as he mounted the kitchen stairs and came out into the hall to find Mr. Charliewood already helping his guest off with his coat and showing him into the dining-room. William did not know that there were any special reasons in Mr. Charliewood's mind for not having his guest's name announced and possibly remembered by the servant.

"Well, my dear Rathbone, how are you?" Charliewood said, and no face could have been kinder or more inviting and pleasant to see than the face of the host. "Awfully good of you to come and take me like this, but I thought we should be more comfortable here than at the Club. There are one or two things I want to talk over. I'll do you as well as I can, but I can't answer for anything. You must take pot luck!"

Guy Rathbone looked round the charming room and laughed – a full-blooded, happy laugh.

"I wish you could see my chambers in the Temple," he said. "But you fellows who live up this end do yourselves so jolly well!"

"I suppose one does overdo it," Charliewood answered, "in the way of little comforts and things. It's a mistake, no doubt, but one gets used to it and was brought up to it, and so just goes on, dependent upon things that a sensible man could easily do without. Now, sit down and have a sherry and bitters. Dinner will be up in a minute. And try one of these cigarettes. It's a bad plan to smoke before dinner, I know, as a rule, but these little things just go with the sherry and bitters, and they are special. I get them over from Rio. They're made of black Brazilian tobacco, as you see; they're only half as long as your finger, and instead of being wrapped in filthy, poisonous rice paper, they're covered with maize leaves."

Rathbone sank into the luxurious chair which his host pointed out to him, took the sherry, in its heavily cut glass, and lit one of the cigarettes. He stretched out his feet towards the fire and enjoyed a moment of intense physical ease. The flames and the shaded electric lights shone upon his fine and happy face, twinkled upon the stud in his shirt front, and showed him for what he was at that moment – a young gentleman intensely enjoying everything that life had to give.

In a moment or two more dinner was served.

"You needn't wait, William," Charliewood said, as they sat down to the hors d'œuvre. "Just put the soup on and I'll ring when we're ready."

"So good of you to ask me," Rathbone said. "I should have gone to the Oxford and Cambridge Club, had a beef-steak, looked at the evening papers, and then returned to chambers to write letters. Rather a dismal proceeding on a night like this!"

"Hadn't you anything on to-night, then?" Charliewood asked carelessly.

"Not a single thing," Rathbone answered. "I've been cutting all my engagements during the last week or two, telling people I was going out of town. I've got a special reason for working very hard just now."

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