she made no answer, and he turned back to see John Burley lighting his
cigar at the lamp chimney, his face thrust forward as he did so. He
stood a second, watching him, as the lips sucked hard at the cigar to
make it draw; the strength of the features was emphasized to sternness.
He had meant to stand by the door and listen for the least sound from
the adjoining room, but now found his whole attention focused on the
face above the lamp. In that minute he realized that Burley had
wished--had meant--his wife to go. In that minute also he forgot his
love, his shameless, selfish little mistress, his worthless, caddish
little self. For John Burley looked up. He straightened slowly, puffing
hard and quickly to make sure his cigar was lit, and faced him. Mortimer
moved forward into the room, self-conscious, embarrassed, cold.
"Of course it was only wind," he said lightly, his one desire being to
fill the interval while they were alone with commonplaces. He did not
wish the other to speak, "Dawn wind, probably." He glanced at his
wrist-watch. "It's half-past two already, and the sun gets up at a
quarter to four. It's light by now, I expect. The shortest night is
never quite dark." He rambled on confusedly, for the other's steady,
silent stare embarrassed him. A faint sound of Mrs. Burley moving in the
next room made him stop a moment. He turned instinctively to the door,
eager for an excuse to go.
"That's nothing," said Burley, speaking at last and in a firm quiet
voice. "Only my wife, glad to be alone--my young and pretty wife. She's
all right. I know her better than you do. Come in and shut the door."
Mortimer obeyed. He closed the door and came close to the table, facing
the other, who at once continued.
"If I thought," he said, in that quiet deep voice, "that you two were
serious"--he uttered his words very slowly, with emphasis, with intense
severity--"do you know what I should do? I will tell you, Mortimer. I
should like one of us two--you or myself--to remain in this house,
dead."
His teeth gripped his cigar tightly; his hands were clenched; he went on
through a half-closed mouth. His eyes blazed steadily.
"I trust her so absolutely--understand me?--that my belief in women, in
human beings, would go. And with it the desire to live. Understand me?"
Each word to the young careless fool was a blow in the face, yet it was
the softest blow, the flash of a big deep heart, that hurt the most. A
dozen answers--denial, explanation, confession, taking all guilt upon
himself--crowded his mind, only to be dismissed. He stood motionless and
silent, staring hard into the other's eyes. No word passed his lips;
there was no time in any case. It was in this position that Mrs. Burley,
entering at that moment, found them. She saw her husband's face; the
other man stood with his back to her. She came in with a little nervous
laugh. "A bell-rope swinging in the wind and hitting a sheet of metal
before the fireplace," she informed them. And all three laughed together
then, though each laugh had a different sound. "But I hate this house,"
she added. "I wish we had never come."
"The moment there's light in the sky," remarked her husband quietly, "we
can leave. That's the contract; let's see it through. Another half-hour
will do it. Sit down, Nancy, and have a bite of something." He got up
and placed a chair for her. "I think I'll take another look round." He
moved slowly to the door. "I may go out on to the lawn a bit and see
what the sky is doing."
It did not take half a minute to say the words, yet to Mortimer it
seemed as though the voice would never end. His mind was confused and
troubled. He loathed himself, he loathed the woman through whom he had
got into this awkward mess.
The situation had suddenly become extremely painful; he had never
imagined such a thing; the man he had thought blind had after all seen
everything--known it all along, watched them, waited. And the woman, he
was now certain, loved her husband; she had fooled him, Mortimer, all
along, amusing herself.
"I'll come with you, sir. Do let me," he said suddenly. Mrs. Burley
stood pale and uncertain between them. She looked scared. What has
happened, she was clearly wondering.
"No, no, Harry"--he called him "Harry" for the first time--"I'll be back
in five minutes at most. My wife mustn't be alone either." And he went
out.
The young man waited till the footsteps sounded some distance down the
corridor, then turned, but he did not move forward; for the first time
he let pass unused what he called "an opportunity." His passion had left
him; his love, as he once thought it, was gone. He looked at the pretty
woman near him, wondering blankly what he had ever seen there to attract
him so wildly. He wished to Heaven he was out of it all. He wished he
were dead. John Burley's words suddenly appalled him.
One thing he saw plainly--she was frightened. This opened his lips.
"What's the matter?" he asked, and his hushed voice shirked the familiar
Christian name. "Did you see anything?" He nodded his head in the
direction of the adjoining room. It was the sound of his own voice
addressing her coldly that made him abruptly see himself as he really
was, but it was her reply, honestly given, in a faint even voice, that
told him she saw her own self too with similar clarity. God, he thought,
how revealing a tone, a single word can be!
"I saw--nothing. Only I feel uneasy--dear." That "dear" was a call for
help.
"Look here," he cried, so loud that she held up a warning finger,
"I'm--I've been a damned fool, a cad! I'm most frightfully ashamed. I'll
do anything--_anything_ to get it right." He felt cold, naked, his
worthlessness laid bare; she felt, he knew, the same. Each revolted
suddenly from the other. Yet he knew not quite how or wherefore this
great change had thus abruptly come about, especially on her side. He
felt that a bigger, deeper emotion than he could understand was working
on them, making mere physical relationships seem empty, trivial, cheap
and vulgar. His cold increased in face of this utter ignorance.
"Uneasy?" he repeated, perhaps hardly knowing exactly why he said it.
"Good Lord, but he can take care of himself----"
"Oh, _he_ is a man," she interrupted; "yes."
Steps were heard, firm, heavy steps, coming back along the corridor. It
seemed to Mortimer that he had listened to this sound of steps all
night, and would listen to them till he died. He crossed to the lamp and
lit a cigarette, carefully this time, turning the wick down afterwards.
Mrs. Burley also rose, moving over towards the door, away from him. They
listened a moment to these firm and heavy steps, the tread of a man,
John Burley. A man ... and a philanderer, flashed across Mortimer's
brain like fire, contrasting the two with fierce contempt for himself.
The tread became less audible. There was distance in it. It had turned
in somewhere.
"There!" she exclaimed in a hushed tone. "He's gone in."
"Nonsense! It passed us. He's going out on to the lawn."
The pair listened breathlessly for a moment, when the sound of steps
came distinctly from the adjoining room, walking across the boards,
apparently towards the window.
"There!" she repeated. "He did go in." Silence of perhaps a minute
followed, in which they heard each other's breathing. "I don't like his
being alone--in there," Mrs. Burley said in a thin faltering voice, and
moved as though to go out. Her hand was already on the knob of the door,
when Mortimer stopped her with a violent gesture.
"Don't! For God's sake, don't!" he cried, before she could turn it.
He darted forward. As he laid a hand upon her arm a thud was audible
through the wall. It was a heavy sound, and this time there was no wind
to cause it.
"It's only that loose swinging thing," he whispered thickly, a dreadful
confusion blotting out clear thought and speech.
"There was no loose swaying thing at all," she said in a failing voice,
then reeled and swayed against him. "I invented that. There was
nothing." As he caught her, staring helplessly, it seemed to him that a
face with lifted lids rushed up at him. He saw two terrified eyes in a
patch of ghastly white. Her whisper followed, as she sank into his arms.
"It's John. He's----"
At which instant, with terror at its climax, the sound of steps suddenly
became audible once more--the firm and heavy tread of John Burley coming
out again into the corridor. Such was their amazement and relief that
they neither moved nor spoke. The steps drew nearer. The pair seemed
petrified; Mortimer did not remove his arms, nor did Mrs. Burley attempt
to release herself. They stared at the door and waited. It was pushed
wider the next second, and John Burley stood beside them. He was so
close he almost touched them--there in each other's arms.
"Jack, dear!" cried his wife, with a searching tenderness that made her
voice seem strange.
He gazed a second at each in turn. "I'm going out on to the lawn for a
moment," he said quietly. There was no expression on his face; he did
not smile, he did not frown; he showed no feeling, no emotion--just
looked into their eyes, and then withdrew round the edge of the door
before either could utter a word in answer. The door swung to behind
him. He was gone.
"He's going to the lawn. He said so." It was Mortimer speaking, but his
voice shook and stammered. Mrs. Burley had released herself. She stood
now by the table, silent, gazing with fixed eyes at nothing, her lips
parted, her expression vacant. Again she was aware of an alteration in
the room; something had gone out.... He watched her a second, uncertain
what to say or do. It was the face of a drowned person, occurred to
him. Something intangible, yet almost visible stood between them in that
narrow space. Something had ended, there before his eyes, definitely
ended. The barrier between them rose higher, denser. Through this
barrier her words came to him with an odd whispering remoteness.
"Harry.... You saw? You noticed?"
"What d'you mean?" he said gruffly. He tried to feel angry,
contemptuous, but his breath caught absurdly.
"Harry--he was different. The eyes, the hair, the"--her face grew like
death--"the twist in his face----"
"What on earth are you saying? Pull yourself together." He saw that she
was trembling down the whole length of her body, as she leaned against
the table for support. His own legs shook. He stared hard at her.
"Altered, Harry ... altered." Her horrified whisper came at him like
a knife. For it was true. He, too, had noticed something about the
husband's appearance that was not quite normal. Yet, even while they
talked, they heard him going down the carpetless stairs; the sounds
ceased as he crossed the hall; then came the noise of the front door
banging, the reverberation even shaking the room a little where they
stood.
Mortimer went over to her side. He walked unevenly.
"My dear! For God's sake--this is sheer nonsense. Don't let yourself go
like this. I'll put it straight with him--it's all my fault." He saw by
her face that she did not understand his words; he was saying the wrong
thing altogether; her mind was utterly elsewhere. "He's all right," he
went on hurriedly. "He's out on the lawn now----"
He broke off at the sight of her. The horror that fastened on her brain
plastered her face with deathly whiteness.
"That was not John at all!" she cried, a wail of misery and terror in
her voice. She rushed to the window and he followed. To his immense
relief a figure moving below was plainly visible. It was John Burley.
They saw him in the faint grey of the dawn, as he crossed the lawn,
going away from the house. He disappeared.
"There you are! See?" whispered Mortimer reassuringly. "He'll be back
in----" when a sound in the adjoining room, heavier, louder than before,
cut appallingly across his words, and Mrs. Burley, with that wailing
scream, fell back into his arms. He caught her only just in time, for
she stiffened into ice, daft with the uncomprehended terror of it all,
and helpless as a child.
"Darling, my darling--oh, God!" He bent, kissing her face wildly. He was
utterly distraught.
"Harry! Jack--oh, oh!" she wailed in her anguish. "It took on his
likeness. It deceived us ... to give him time. He's done it."
She sat up suddenly. "Go," she said, pointing to the room beyond, then
sank fainting, a dead weight in his arms.
He carried her unconscious body to a chair, then entering the adjoining
room he flashed his torch upon the body of her husband hanging from a
bracket in the wall. He cut it down five minutes too late.
X
THE MAN WHO FOUND OUT (A NIGHTMARE)
1
Professor Mark Ebor, the scientist, led a double life, and the only
persons who knew it were his assistant, Dr. Laidlaw, and his publishers.
But a double life need not always be a bad one, and, as Dr. Laidlaw
and the gratified publishers well knew, the parallel lives of this
particular man were equally good, and indefinitely produced would
certainly have ended in a heaven somewhere that can suitably contain
such strangely opposite characteristics as his remarkable personality
combined.
For Mark Ebor, F.R.S., etc., etc., was that unique combination hardly
ever met with in actual life, a man of science and a mystic.
As the first, his name stood in the gallery of the great, and as the
second--but there came the mystery! For under the pseudonym of "Pilgrim"
(the author of that brilliant series of books that appealed to so many),
his identity was as well concealed as that of the anonymous writer of
the weather reports in a daily newspaper. Thousands read the sanguine,
optimistic, stimulating little books that issued annually from the pen
of "Pilgrim," and thousands bore their daily burdens better for having
read; while the Press generally agreed that the author, besides being an
incorrigible enthusiast and optimist, was also--a woman; but no one ever
succeeded in penetrating the veil of anonymity and discovering that
"Pilgrim" and the biologist were one and the same person.
Mark Ebor, as Dr. Laidlaw knew him in his laboratory, was one man; but
Mark Ebor, as he sometimes saw him after work was over, with rapt eyes
and ecstatic face, discussing the possibilities of "union with God" and
the future of the human race, was quite another.
"I have always held, as you know," he was saying one evening as he sat
in the little study beyond the laboratory with his assistant and
intimate, "that Vision should play a large part in the life of the
awakened man--not to be regarded as infallible, of course, but to be
observed and made use of as a guide-post to possibilities----"
"I am aware of your peculiar views, sir," the young doctor put in
deferentially, yet with a certain impatience.
"For Visions come from a region of the consciousness where observation
and experiment are out of the question," pursued the other with
enthusiasm, not noticing the interruption, "and, while they should be
checked by reason afterwards, they should not be laughed at or ignored.
All inspiration, I hold, is of the nature of interior Vision, and all
our best knowledge has come--such is my confirmed belief--as a sudden
revelation to the brain prepared to receive it----"
"Prepared by hard work first, by concentration, by the closest possible
study of ordinary phenomena," Dr. Laidlaw allowed himself to observe.
"Perhaps," sighed the other; "but by a process, none the less, of
spiritual illumination. The best match in the world will not light a
candle unless the wick be first suitably prepared."
It was Laidlaw's turn to sigh. He knew so well the impossibility of
arguing with his chief when he was in the regions of the mystic, but at
the same time the respect he felt for his tremendous attainments was so
sincere that he always listened with attention and deference, wondering
how far the great man would go and to what end this curious combination
of logic and "illumination" would eventually lead him.
"Only last night," continued the elder man, a sort of light coming into
his rugged features, "the vision came to me again--the one that has
haunted me at intervals ever since my youth, and that will not be
denied."
Dr. Laidlaw fidgeted in his chair.
"About the Tablets of the Gods, you mean--and that they lie somewhere
hidden in the sands," he said patiently. A sudden gleam of interest came
into his face as he turned to catch the professor's reply.
"And that I am to be the one to find them, to decipher them, and to give
the great knowledge to the world----"
"Who will not believe," laughed Laidlaw shortly, yet interested in spite
of his thinly-veiled contempt.
"Because even the keenest minds, in the right sense of the word, are
hopelessly--unscientific," replied the other gently, his face positively
aglow with the memory of his vision. "Yet what is more likely," he
continued after a moment's pause, peering into space with rapt eyes that
saw things too wonderful for exact language to describe, "than that
there should have been given to man in the first ages of the world some
record of the purpose and problem that had been set him to solve? In a
word," he cried, fixing his shining eyes upon the face of his perplexed
assistant, "that God's messengers in the far-off ages should have given
to His creatures some full statement of the secret of the world, of the
secret of the soul, of the meaning of life and death--the explanation of
our being here, and to what great end we are destined in the ultimate
fullness of things?"
Dr. Laidlaw sat speechless. These outbursts of mystical enthusiasm he
had witnessed before. With any other man he would not have listened to
a single sentence, but to Professor Ebor, man of knowledge and profound
investigator, he listened with respect, because he regarded this
condition as temporary and pathological, and in some sense a reaction
from the intense strain of the prolonged mental concentration of many
days.
He smiled, with something between sympathy and resignation as he met the
other's rapt gaze.
"But you have said, sir, at other times, that you consider the ultimate
secrets to be screened from all possible----"
"The _ultimate_ secrets, yes," came the unperturbed reply; "but that
there lies buried somewhere an indestructible record of the secret
meaning of life, originally known to men in the days of their pristine
innocence, I am convinced. And, by this strange vision so often
vouchsafed to me, I am equally sure that one day it shall be given to
me to announce to a weary world this glorious and terrific message."
And he continued at great length and in glowing language to describe the
species of vivid dream that had come to him at intervals since earliest
childhood, showing in detail how he discovered these very Tablets of the
Gods, and proclaimed their splendid contents--whose precise nature was
always, however, withheld from him in the vision--to a patient and
suffering humanity.
"The _Scrutator_, sir, well described 'Pilgrim' as the Apostle of Hope,"
said the young doctor gently, when he had finished; "and now, if that
reviewer could hear you speak and realize from what strange depths comes
your simple faith----"
The professor held up his hand, and the smile of a little child broke
over his face like sunshine in the morning.
"Half the good my books do would be instantly destroyed," he said
sadly; "they would say that I wrote with my tongue in my cheek. But
wait," he added significantly; "wait till I find these Tablets of the
Gods! Wait till I hold the solutions of the old world-problems in my
hands! Wait till the light of this new revelation breaks upon confused
humanity, and it wakes to find its bravest hopes justified! Ah, then, my
dear Laidlaw----"
He broke off suddenly; but the doctor, cleverly guessing the thought in
his mind, caught him up immediately.
"Perhaps this very summer," he said, trying hard to make the suggestion
keep pace with honesty; "in your explorations in Assyria--your digging
in the remote civilization of what was once Chaldea, you may find--what
you dream of----"
The professor held up his hand, and the smile of a fine old face.
"Perhaps," he murmured softly, "perhaps!"
And the young doctor, thanking the gods of science that his leader's
aberrations were of so harmless a character, went home strong in the
certitude of his knowledge of externals, proud that he was able to refer
his visions to self-suggestion, and wondering complaisantly whether in
his old age he might not after all suffer himself from visitations of
the very kind that afflicted his respected chief.
And as he got into bed and thought again of his master's rugged face,
and finely shaped head, and the deep lines traced by years of work and
self-discipline, he turned over on his pillow and fell asleep with a
sigh that was half of wonder, half of regret.
2
It was in February, nine months later, when Dr. Laidlaw made his way to
Charing Cross to meet his chief after his long absence of travel and
exploration. The vision about the so-called Tablets of the Gods had
meanwhile passed almost entirely from his memory.
There were few people in the train, for the stream of traffic was now
running the other way, and he had no difficulty in finding the man he
had come to meet. The shock of white hair beneath the low-crowned felt
hat was alone enough to distinguish him by easily.
"Here I am at last!" exclaimed the professor, somewhat wearily, clasping
his friend's hand as he listened to the young doctor's warm greetings
and questions. "Here I am--a little older, and _much_ dirtier than when
you last saw me!" He glanced down laughingly at his travel-stained
garments.
"And _much_ wiser," said Laidlaw, with a smile, as he bustled about the
platform for porters and gave his chief the latest scientific news.
At last they came down to practical considerations.
"And your luggage--where is that? You must have tons of it, I suppose?"
said Laidlaw.
"Hardly anything," Professor Ebor answered. "Nothing, in fact, but what
you see."
"Nothing but this hand-bag?" laughed the other, thinking he was joking.
"And a small portmanteau in the van," was the quiet reply. "I have no
other luggage."
"You have no other luggage?" repeated Laidlaw, turning sharply to see if
he were in earnest.
"Why should I need more?" the professor added simply.
Something in the man's face, or voice, or manner--the doctor hardly knew
which--suddenly struck him as strange. There was a change in him, a
change so profound--so little on the surface, that is--that at first he
had not become aware of it. For a moment it was as though an utterly
alien personality stood before him in that noisy, bustling throng. Here,
in all the homely, friendly turmoil of a Charing Cross crowd, a curious
feeling of cold passed over his heart, touching his life with icy
finger, so that he actually trembled and felt afraid.
He looked up quickly at his friend, his mind working with startled and
unwelcome thoughts.
"Only this?" he repeated, indicating the bag. "But where's all the stuff
you went away with? And--have you brought nothing home--no treasures?"
"This is all I have," the other said briefly. The pale smile that went
with the words caused the doctor a second indescribable sensation of
uneasiness. Something was very wrong, something was very queer; he
wondered now that he had not noticed it sooner.
"The rest follows, of course, by slow freight," he added tactfully, and
as naturally as possible. "But come, sir, you must be tired and in want
of food after your long journey. I'll get a taxi at once, and we can see
about the other luggage afterwards."
It seemed to him he hardly knew quite what he was saying; the change
in his friend had come upon him so suddenly and now grew upon him more
and more distressingly. Yet he could not make out exactly in what it
consisted. A terrible suspicion began to take shape in his mind,
troubling him dreadfully.
"I am neither very tired, nor in need of food, thank you," the professor
said quietly. "And this is all I have. There is no luggage to follow. I
have brought home nothing--nothing but what you see."
His words conveyed finality. They got into a taxi, tipped the porter,
who had been staring in amazement at the venerable figure of the
scientist, and were conveyed slowly and noisily to the house in the
north of London where the laboratory was, the scene of their labours of
years.