Mr. Ember, having completed all his arrangements, went in search of Lady
Heritage. She had sat silently through lunch and disappeared directly
afterwards. Having failed to find her downstairs, Ember was about to
pass along the upper corridor to the steel gate which shut off the north
wing, when he noticed that the door of the small Oak Room on his left
was standing ajar. He thought he heard a movement within, and, after
pausing for a moment to listen, he pushed the door wide and looked in.
As far as his knowledge went, Lady Heritage had never entered this room
during the time that they had been in the house. He accepted the fact
and could have stated the reasons for it. It had been the playroom, and
the walls were covered with Anthony Luttrell’s school groups. The book
shelves held his books, the cabinets his collections. In a very intimate
sense it was his room.
Raymond Heritage stood at the far end of it now. She wore a dress of
soft white wool bound with a plaited girdle from the ends of which heavy
tassels swung. She had taken one of the groups from the wall and was
looking at it with an intensity which closed her thought to all other
impressions. She stood half turned from the door. Ember looked at her
and, looking, experienced some strange sensations. This was Raymond
Carr-Magnus, a younger, softer, lovelier woman than Raymond Heritage.
The curious cold something, like transparent glass or very thin ice,
which seemed to wall her from her fellows, was gone. It was as if the
ice had dissolved leaving the air misty and tremulous.
The little flame which always burned in him took on brightness and
intensity, and a second flame sprang up beside it, a flame that burned
to a still white heat of anger because this change, this softening, was
for Anthony Luttrell and not for Jeffrey Ember.
There was no sign of emotion, however, in face or expression as he moved
slightly and said:
“Are you busy? May I speak to you for a few minutes?”
It was characteristic of Raymond that she did not appear in the least
startled. She turned quite slowly, laid the photograph on the open front
of the bureau by which she stood, and said:
“Now? Do you want me now?” A softness was in her voice as she spoke, and
a dream in her eyes.
Her beauty struck Ember as a thing seen for the first time. He had to
use great force to keep his answer on a note of indifference.
“If you can spare the time,” he said.
Raymond looked round her. There was a caressing quality in her glance.
“Yes; I’ll come downstairs,” she said.
This was Anthony’s room. She would not talk to another man in Anthony’s
room. The thought may have been in her mind. The breath of it beat on
Ember’s flames and fanned them higher still. He led the way downstairs
and into Sir William’s study.
Raymond Heritage had passed from the despairing mood of her first
interview with Anthony. Then to know him alive and to feel him
unforgiving had stabbed her to the quick. But that phase had passed.
During the many hours that she had spent alone the one amazing radiant
thought that he was alive had come to dominate everything. The cold
finality of death had been lifted. Instead of a blank wall, there opened
before her an infinite number of ways, any one of which might lead her
back to her lost happiness. She began to live in the past, to go over
the old times, to make a dream her companion.
She came into the study with Ember and waited to hear what he wanted,
giving him just that surface attention which he recognised and resented.
His first words were meant to startle her.
“Lady Heritage,” he said, “you know, of course, that there are certain
passages and rooms under this house?”
She did start a little, he thought. Certainly her attention deepened.
“Who told you that, Jeffrey?” she said, and hardly heard her own voice
because Anthony’s rang in her ears insisting, “I _know_ that you told
Ember.”
“Mr. Luttrell told me,” said Ember.
She exclaimed incredulously. At least her thoughts were not wandering
now. Ember felt a certain triumph as he realised it. He went on speaking
quite quietly:
“It was when Sir William and I were down here the year before Mr.
Luttrell died. He, Mr. Luttrell, was taken very ill and I sat up with
him. In the night he was delirious. It was obvious that he had something
on his mind. He began to talk about the passages and to say that the
secret must not be lost. He took me for his nephew Henry March, and
nothing would serve him but he must show me the entrance in the hall. He
got out of bed, and was so much excited that I thought it best to give
way. When he had shown me the spring he calmed down and went quietly
back to bed. In the morning he had forgotten all about it.”
Raymond listened, frowning.
“Why do you tell me this?” she said. “I knew Mr. Luttrell had told
Henry.”
“Henry March knows?” said Ember.
“Yes, I think so. Yes, I’m sure he does. Why, Jeffrey?”
Ember was too busy with his thoughts to speak for a moment. What an
appalling risk they had run. If Henry March knew of the passages, then
they had been on the very brink of the abyss all along. He spoke at
last, very seriously:
“I want you to come down with me into the passages if you will. There’s
something I want to show you—something which I think you ought to know.”
“Something wrong?”
“I think you ought to see for yourself. I’d rather not say any more if
you don’t mind. I’ll show you what I mean. I really think you ought to
come and see for yourself. This is a good time, as the servants are
safely out of the way and Miss Molloy seems to have taken herself off.”
“Very well, I’ll come. I must get a cloak though, or I shall get into
such a mess. Those passages simply cover one with slime.”
Ember stood still with his hand on the half-opened door.
“You’ve been down there?”
“Why, yes, once or twice.”
“Lately?” His voice was rather low.
“Yes, quite lately.”
Ember gripped the door.
“And how did you know—oh, I beg your pardon.”
“Yes, I don’t think we need go into that.” She spoke gently but from a
distance. As she spoke she passed him and went through the hall and up
the stairs. The heavy tassels of her girdle knocked softly against each
shallow step.
Ember went on gripping the door until she came down again wrapped in a
long black cloak. When he dropped his hand there was a red incised line
across the palm. He saw that the cloak was smeared with green. How near
to the edge they had been, how horribly near!
He opened the door and lighted her down the steps in silence, and in
silence walked as far as the laboratory turning. When he turned to the
left and flashed his light ahead of them, Raymond spoke:
“I’ve never been along that passage,” she said. “I know there are holes
in some of them, and I’ve never liked the look of these side tunnels.”
“This one’s quite safe,” said Ember, and led the way.
Jane heard the murmur of their voices, and for a moment saw the faint
glow of the light. Then the glow and the voices died again. It was dark,
she was alone, she was cold, she wanted Henry, oh, how she wanted Henry.
At that moment Jane’s idea of Paradise was to be able to put her head
down on Henry’s shoulder and cry. It was not, perhaps, a very exalted
idea, but it was very insistent.
When Ember switched on the light, swung open the steel gate, and stood
aside for her to pass, Lady Heritage uttered a sharp exclamation.
“Jeffrey, what’s this?” she said.
“That is what I wanted you to see,” replied Ember.
She crossed the threshold, walked a pace or two into the room, and
looked around her with eyes from which all dreaminess had vanished.
Bewilderment took its place.
“Who did this? What does it mean?” she asked.
Ember did not answer her until he too was within the chamber. He pushed
the steel gate with his hand and it fell to with a clang.
“It is, as you see, a well-equipped laboratory,” he said—“worth coming
to see, I think.”
“Yes, but, Jeffrey——”
“You are interested? I thought you would be; won’t you sit down?”
She looked about her with puzzled eyes.
“Do sit,” said Ember in his quiet, friendly way. “You will find this
chair more comfortable than the benches.”
He brought it forward as he spoke—a high-backed chair with arms. It
struck her then as a curious piece of furniture to find in a laboratory.
“Brought here on purpose for you,” said Ember.
But Raymond did not sit. Instead she rested her hands lightly on the
back of the chair, and, looking across it, said:
“Jeffrey, what does all this mean?”
“I’m going to tell you,” said Ember seriously. “I have brought you here
to tell you, only I wish you would sit down.”
“No, thank you. Jeffrey, what is this place?”
“A laboratory,” said Ember. “As you see, a laboratory, and the scene of
some extremely interesting experiments.”
“Carried out by you?”
“Carried out by me ... and some others.”
“You have brought other people in here? Jeffrey, I think that was
inexcusable.”
“I have not yet attempted to excuse myself.”
For a moment his eyes met hers. She saw something, a spark, a flash,
from the flames within. It was her first hint that there was, or could
be, a flame there at all. It startled her in just the same degree that
an actual spark touching her flesh would have startled her—not more.
He spoke again at once.
“Just now I called this place a laboratory. If I were a poet”—he laughed
easily—“I might have used another word. I might have said, ‘This is the
crucible out of which has come the new Philosopher’s Stone.’”
Raymond lifted her eyebrows.
“You’ve not been touched by that mediæval dream?” she said. “This is the
twentieth century, Jeffrey.”
“Yes,” said Ember slowly. “Yes, the twentieth century, and I said ... ‘a
_new_ Philosopher’s Stone.’ The mediæval alchemists dreamed of something
that would turn all it touched to gold, that would transmute the baser
metals. I have found something which will touch this base civilisation,
this rotten fabric with which we have surrounded ourselves, and dissolve
it. And when it is in solution there will be gold and to spare.”
“What do you mean?” said Lady Heritage.
Ember met her frown with a smile.
“Was it a week ago that I heard you say, ‘If I could smash it all’? And
didn’t you sing:
“‘Ah Love, could you and I with Fate conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would we not shatter it to bits, and then
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart’s Desire?’
You sang that as if you meant it, Raymond. You sang it with all your
heart in your beautiful voice. Well, Fate has conspired for you and
given this sorry scheme of things into your hands to shatter—to shatter
and re-mould.”
Raymond had been leaning a little forward over the back of the chair,
touching it lightly. She straightened herself when Ember used her name,
and looked at him with a sort of grave displeasure. He laughed a little.
“Do you begin to understand?” he said.
“I don’t think, Jeffrey, that I want to understand,” said Lady Heritage.
“How like a woman,” said Mr. Ember. “Here is what you cried out for.
Here is opportunity, power, the greatest adventure that ever has been or
ever will be, and you are afraid to face it. I offer you the throne of
the world—and you don’t wish to understand.”
The extreme quiet of his voice was in sharp contradiction to the
flamboyant words. Raymond looked at him in some anxiety.
“You’re not well,” she began, and then stopped before the sarcasm of his
glance.
“I’m not mad,” he said. “This is a business proposition. You’ve had
poetry, but I can give you prose if you prefer it. I have discovered
something—I won’t at this moment go into details—which enables me to
smash up civilisation as you’d smash a rotten egg. Every city, every
town of the so-called civilised world is accounted for, divided amongst
my agents. They only await my signal. Those alone whom we mark for
survival will survive, the rest are eliminated. Remains a world at our
disposal to recreate. In that world I am supreme—and you. Is that plain
enough?”
Her face showed deep distress and concern.
“Jeffrey, indeed you’re not well,” she repeated.
“Am I not?”
He came a step towards her and saw her draw back, as it were,
involuntarily. “Have I not made you understand yet? Perhaps a little
documentary evidence will assist you?” He took a quick step towards her,
looked at her full, and said in a different voice, “Raymond, I’m in dead
earnest—dead sober earnest.” Then with a sudden movement he turned away
and went across to the safe in the far corner of the chamber. With his
back to Raymond he unlocked it, and occupied himself for a minute or two
with the picking out of some papers. When he turned she was at the gate
with her hand on it. He spoke at once in his most ordinary voice:
“That’s a safety-catch. It won’t open without the key.”
“Will you open it, please?”
He said, “No, Raymond,” in a tone of cool finality, and she lost colour
a little.
“Jeffrey,” she began, then paused and bit her lip.
“Raymond.”
A scarlet patch of anger came suddenly to her cheek and she was silent
until it had died again. Long years of self-control do not go for
nothing. When she spoke at last there was only sadness in her voice:
“Jeffrey, I have valued our friendship—very much.”
“I hope,” he said, “that you will value my love even more.”
Her hand dropped from the door. She did not answer. The hope of moving
him died. She drew her cloak about her, crossed the floor slowly, and
seated herself in the chair. She did not look at Ember.
When the last faint murmur of voices ceased, and the dark silence closed
about her, Jane sat quite still for a while. It is very difficult indeed
to keep one’s eyes open in the dark. Jane found that her lids dropped,
or else that the blackness became full of odd traceries that worried and
disturbed her. She felt as if she had been there for hours and hours;
and she knew that it really might be hours before Henry came.
She got up and walked slowly to where the passage came out into the main
corridor. She stood under the arch and looked towards the laboratory
turning. She had only to feel her way as far as that, turn up it, and
she would come within sight of the lighted chamber where Ember and Lady
Heritage were talking. The laboratory drew her, and the light drew her.
She began to move cautiously along the corridor. She had on light
house-shoes which made no sound.
The little glow which presently relieved the blackness cheered her
unreasonably. It was a danger signal and she knew it, but it cheered
her.
“One would rather be doing something dangerous than just mouldering in
the pitch dark,” she told herself, and edged slowly nearer and nearer to
the light.
She was now at the corner, and could look round it and through the steel
bars into part of the laboratory. The disadvantage of her position was
that she might be taken in the rear by any one who came along either the
passage that she herself had come up or the slanting passage with the
well in it which ran into the other at an acute angle, about six feet
from where she was standing.
Jane, however, knew of no one who was at all likely to arrive except
Henry. She therefore did not trouble about her rear, but looked with all
her eyes into the laboratory. She saw Lady Heritage sitting in a tall
chair, a little turned away. Her right elbow rested on one arm, and her
chin was in her hand. Her eyes were downcast. She was speaking in a
cold, gentle voice:
“I have not many friends—I thought you were my friend. Was it all lies,
Jeffrey?”
Mr. Ember came into view for a moment. He must have been at the far end
of the room. He came down it now, walked past Lady Heritage, and turned
to face her. Jane saw his profile. He was smiling faintly.
“I am not fond of lies,” he said; “they are very entangling—so hard to
keep one’s head and remember what one has said. Now the truth is so
simple and easy; besides, you may believe it or not, I really do dislike
lying to you. I have always told you the truth where it was humanly
possible to do so. Even in the matter of Miss Molloy——”
Lady Heritage exclaimed suddenly and sharply, lifting her chin from her
hand and throwing her head back:
“Renata Molloy! She’s in this wretched conspiracy of yours, I suppose?”
Ember laughed.
“No,” he said.
“Then what is she?”
“I wish I knew,” said Ember, speaking soberly enough.
“But what you told me wasn’t true?”
“Some of it was. I was really rather pleased with my neat dovetailing.
I’ll run over it, and you’ll see that I told the truth whenever I could.
All that about my having known Molloy in Chicago—solid fact. Then I
think I said that I ran across him again in London, and found he had
taken Government service with Scotland Yard—that was fiction, and so was
the yarn about his warning me that foreign agents were on the track of
the Government formula. But it’s perfectly true that he has a daughter,
and that she sometimes walks in her sleep. When I told you that she had
come in—sleep walking—during an important conversation about the
Government formula, and that neither Molloy nor I was sure how much she
had heard, I was mingling fact and fiction. Renata Molloy happened in on
a meeting of The Great Council—that is the Council of the managing
agents from all the countries within the scope of our operations, and no
one knew what she had heard, or what she understood. When I told you
that I thought she would be safer down here under my own eye, and that I
was not sure whether she had been got at, I was speaking very serious
fact indeed. They’d have killed her then and there if corpses were just
a little easier to dispose of in London. I now very much regret that we
didn’t chance it.”
A trembling bewilderment had descended upon Jane. She saw Raymond stare
for a moment at Ember with a curious horrified look and then drop her
chin upon her hand again. Ember came a step nearer.
“Having disposed of that,” he said, “I should be glad if you would just
look at these papers. Documentary evidence, as I said just now, is
convincing. This is a short summary of our plans which has been issued
to all managing agents. This is a list of those agents. They form The
Great Council. These four names”—he paused—“I should have told you that
there was an Inner Council. It is the Inner Council which really runs
everything. There are four members. I come Second, Molloy was Third, and
Belcovitch, who will be here presently, is Number Four.”
Jane’s heart beat faster and faster. She heard that Belcovitch would be
there presently, but she could not tear herself away. She saw Raymond
Heritage put out her left hand for the papers and glance at them
indifferently, saw her brow contract as she read, saw her drop the first
two papers upon her lap and lift the third. There was a dead silence
whilst she read it. It was the list which gave the names of the Inner
Council. She let it drop from her hand and an extraordinary rush of
colour transformed her.
“What is my name doing there?” she said. Her voice was not loud, but it
rang.
Ember turned upon her a face from which all blankness and coldness had
vanished.
“Your name?” he said. “Why, the whole thing has been built up round your
name. The head of the Council, the inspiration of the movement, the
driving force—you, you, Raymond, you. You are as indissolubly knit with
the plan as if you had conceived it. The whole Council, The Great
Council, knows you as Number One of The Four who are the Inner Council.
The work has been done here under your auspices.” His air of excitement
vanished suddenly, his voice dropped to an ordinary note. “I told you it
was a business proposition. I assure you that it has been most
adequately worked out. In the painful and improbable event of criminal
proceedings, you would be cast for the chief rôle. A wealth of
corroborative detail has been provided. In business, as you know, one
has to think of everything. I’m showing you the penalty of failure, but
we shan’t fail. I’m showing what success will mean. Think of it—the
absolute power to say, ‘This shall be done.’ The absolute power to
impose your will! The absolute power to blot out of existence whatever
crosses it!” A gleam came into his eyes like nothing that Jane had ever
seen before. “Raymond, I’m not a visionary or a madman. The thing is
within my grasp. I’m offering it to you. It’s yours for the taking.”
Raymond did not speak. She only lifted her eyes and looked at him. It
was a long look. Whilst it lasted Jane held her breath. Raymond looked
down again; there was silence.
Into the silence came a distant sound—a faint dragging sound.