A DEATH-WARRANT IS PRESENTED TO A PRISONER
When Wilson Guest spoke of the final extinction of the wretched subject
of their experiments, Sir William Gouldesbrough did not answer. He began
to pace the long room, his head was sunk upon his breast, and his face
was like the face of Minos, inscrutable and deadly calm.
Suddenly the whistle of a speaking tube sounded in the wall. All the
laboratories and experimental rooms were thus connected with the house
proper. None of the servants were allowed to pass the connecting door,
unless by special leave.
Guest went to the speaking-tube and placed it against his ear--an ear
that was pointed like a goat's ear.
Then he looked at the tall figure which was pacing the laboratory.
"William," he called out with an impish giggle, "a lady has called to
see you. A lady from Curzon Street!"
Gouldesbrough stopped short in his walk and raised his head. His face
suddenly became a mask of eager attention and alertness.
Guest tittered with amusement at the effect which his words had
produced. "Don't be agitated," he said, "and don't look like Henry
Irving when he played Romeo. It isn't the young lady. It's the old one.
It's Lady Poole. The butler has shown her into the study, and she's
waiting to know if you can see her."
Gouldesbrough did not reply, but left the laboratory at once. Guest
could hear his hurried footsteps echoing along the corridor. Then the
pink-faced man turned to the whisky bottle again. He poured out a
four-finger peg and sat down in the arm-chair which stood by the
vulcanite table which controlled the vast and complicated apparatus of
the thought spectrum. He sipped the whisky and looked at his watch.
"Rathbone's had the cap on for an hour," he said. "Well, he can go on
wearing it for a bit. If William agrees when he comes back it will be
the last time Rathbone will have the pleasure of helping in our
experiments. I may as well take a peep at his thoughts now. Lord! what a
fascinating game it is!" He turned a switch, and all the lights in the
place went out suddenly. Then his fingers found the starting lever of
the machines.
He moved it, and immediately a low humming sound, as of a drum or fan
revolving at immense speed was heard, far away at the other end of the
laboratory. Then, immediately in front of where the scientist sat, the
great white disc of light, full twelve feet in diameter, suddenly
flashed into view.
Images and pictures began to form themselves upon the screen.
* * * * *
Sir William found old Lady Poole in his study, not sitting placidly in
the most comfortable chair she could find, her usual plan wherever she
might be, but standing upon the hearth-rug and nervously swinging a thin
umbrella, the jewelled handle of which sparkled in the firelight.
"Ah, William," she said at once in an agitated voice, letting him lead
her to a chair while she was speaking. "Ah, William, I am upset about
Marjorie. I am very upset about the girl. I thought over what was best
to be done, and I determined that I would take the bull by the horns and
come and talk things over with you. That is right, isn't it?"
There was a little anxiety in the good lady's voice, for, however much
she desired Sir William for a son-in-law and liked him personally, she
was considerably afraid of him in certain of his moods.
"My dear Lady Poole," he replied with one of his rare and charming
smiles, "there is no one whom I would rather see than you. And I'm sure
that you know that. Tell me all about it."
His tone was gentle and confidential, and Lady Poole's face brightened
at once.
"Dear William!" she said. "Well, I've come to you to talk about
Marjorie. Our interests are absolutely identical in regard to her. You
can't want to marry my daughter more than I want to see my daughter
married to you. Lately things have been going well between you both. I
saw that at once; nothing escapes me where Marjorie is concerned. She
was quite forgetting her foolish fancy for that wretched young Rathbone,
owing to his perfectly providential disappearance or death or whatever
it was. Then I made sure that everything had come right at Lord Malvin's
party, and especially when I heard that you were going to call next day.
I went out. I thought it better. And when I came home my maid told me
that Marjorie had not seen you after all. And since then I've kept an
eye on all that was going on, and I'm very seriously disturbed. Anything
I say seems to have no effect. Marjorie will hardly let me mention your
name to her; I cannot understand it at all. Her manner is changed too.
She seems expecting something or some one. My firm conviction is that
she has another fit of pining for young Rathbone. I told her as much
one evening. In fact, I'm afraid I rather lost my temper. 'Guy Rathbone
is most certainly dead,' I told her. 'I was as kind and sympathetic as I
could be,' I said, 'when Mr. Rathbone first disappeared. I very much
disapproved of him, but I recognized you had a certain right to choose
your own future companion, within limits. But now you're simply making
yourself and me miserable and ridiculous, and you're treating one of the
best-hearted and distinguished men in England in a way which is simply
abominable. It's heartless, it's cruel, and you will end by disgusting
society altogether, and we shall have to go and live among the retired
officers at Bruges or some place like that.'"
Lady Poole paused for breath. She had spoken with extreme volubility and
earnestness, and there were tears in her voice.
It is a mistake to assume that because people are worldly they are
necessarily heartless too. Lady Poole really loved her daughter, but she
did earnestly desire to see her married to this wealthy and famous man
who seemed to have no other desire.
Sir William broke in upon the pause. "All you tell me, dear Lady Poole,"
he said, "is very chilling and depressing to my dearest hope. But
difficulties were made to be overcome, weren't they? and to the strong
man there are no fears--only shadows. But what answer did Marjorie make
when you said all this to her?"
"A very strange one, William. She said, 'Guy is not dead, mother. I know
it. I feel it. I feel certain of it. And when I feel this how can I say
anything to Sir William!' Then I asked her if she proposed to keep you
waiting for the rest of both your lives before she said anything
definite. She burst into tears and said that she was very miserable, but
that she intended to say something definite to you after the coming
reception here when you are going to show every one your new invention."
"Yes," Sir William answered. "She has promised that, but I fear what her
answer will be. Well, we must hope for the best, Lady Poole. If I were
you I shouldn't worry. Leave everything to me. I have everything at
stake."
"Well, I felt I must come and tell you, William," Lady Poole said. "I
felt that it would help you to know exactly how things stand. Perhaps
all will come well. Girls are very difficult to manage. I wanted
Marjorie to go out a great deal in order to occupy her mind and to keep
her from brooding over this absurd fancy that Guy Rathbone is alive. But
she seems to shun all engagements. However, she's fortunately thought
that she would like to try her hand at writing something, she was
always interested in books, you know. So she's spending a good deal of
time over it--a story I think--and Mr. Donald Megbie is helping her. He
calls now and then and makes suggestions on what she has done. A nice,
quiet little man he seems, and a fervent admirer of yours. I sounded him
on that point the other day. So even this little fancy of Marjorie's for
writing may turn out to be a help. Mr. Megbie is sure to become
enthusiastic if your name is mentioned in any way, and it will keep the
fact of how the world regards you well before Marjorie. Now, good-bye.
It's a relief to have come and told you everything. I must fly, and I
know you will want to get back to your electricity and things."
Sir William went with her to the garden-gate in the wall, where her
carriage was waiting. Then he went back to the study and took down the
speaking-tube that communicated with the large laboratory. He asked
Wilson Guest to come to him at once.
In a few minutes the assistant shambled in. His eyes were bright with
the liquid brightness of alcoholic poisoning; his speech was much
clearer and more decided than it had been earlier in the day. It had
tone and _timbre_. The crimson blotches on the face were less in
evidence. Guest had drunk a bottle of whisky since breakfast-time, a
quantity which would hopelessly intoxicate three ordinary men and
probably kill one. But this enormous quantity of spirit was just
sufficient, in the case of this man, to make him as near the normal as
he could ever get. A bottle of whisky in the morning acted upon the
drink-sodden tissues as a single peg might act upon an ordinary person
who was jaded and faint.
Gouldesbrough knew all the symptoms of his assistant's disease very
well. He recognized that the moment in the day when Guest was most
himself and was most useful had now arrived. The effects of yesterday's
drinking were now temporarily destroyed.
"I want your help, Wilson," he said, with a strange look in his eyes. "I
want to resume the discussion we were beginning when Lady Poole called.
You are all right now?"
"Oh yes, William," the man answered without a trace of his usual giggle,
with the former sly malice of his manner quite obliterated. "This is my
good hour. I feel quite fit--for me--and I'm ready. About Rathbone you
mean?"
"Exactly. Lady Poole has given me to understand that her daughter is
still pining after this person."
"Call him a _thing_, William. He isn't a person any more. He is just a
part of our machinery, nothing more. And moreover a part of our
machinery that is getting worn out, that we don't want any more, and
that we ought to get rid of."
"You think so?"
"I'm certain of it. We must not lose sight of the fact that while there
is life in that body there is always danger for us. Not much danger, I
admit--everything was managed too well in the first instance. But still
there is danger, and a danger that grows."
"How grows?"
"Because at the present moment the newspapers of the civilized world are
full of your name. Because the eyes of the whole world are directed
towards this house in Regent's Park."
"There is something in that, Wilson. Now my thought is that if the body
could actually be found, then Miss Poole would know, with the rest of
the world, that the fellow was actually dead. Could that be managed?"
Guest lit a cigarette. "I suppose so," he said, thoughtfully. "But that
would be giving up an experiment I had hoped to have had the opportunity
of performing. Human vivisection would give us such an enormous increase
of scientific knowledge. It is only silly sentiment that does not give
the criminal to the surgeon. But have it your own way, William. I will
forego the experiment. It is obvious that if the body is to be found,
there must be no traces of anything of that sort. There would be a
post-mortem of course."
"Then what do you propose, Guest?"
"Let me smoke for a moment and think."
He sat silent for two or three minutes with the heavy eyelids almost
veiling the large bistre-coloured eyes.
Then he looked up. His smile was so horrible in its cunning that
Gouldesbrough made an involuntary shrinking movement. But it was a
movement dictated by the nerves and not by the conscious brain, for,
dreadful as was the thing Guest was about to say, there was something in
Sir William Gouldesbrough's mind which was more dreadful still.
"The body shall be found," Guest said, "in the river, somewhere down
Wapping way, anywhere in the densely-populated districts of the Docks.
It shall be dressed in common clothes. When it is discovered and
identified--I know how to arrange a certain identification--it will be
assumed that Rathbone simply went down to the slums and lost himself.
There have been cases known where reputable citizens have suddenly
disappeared from their surroundings of their own free will and dropped
into the lowest kind of life for no explainable reason. De Quincey
mentions such a case in one of his essays."
"Good. But how can it be done? We can't carry a body to Wapping in a
brown paper parcel."
"Of course not. But has it not occurred to you that we are close to the
Regent's Canal? I haven't worked out details. They will shape themselves
later on. But there are plenty of barges always going up and down the
canal. Certainly we can do the thing. It is only a question of money. We
have an unlimited command of money. But, listen. Our body is alive
still. It will be quite easy for us--with our knowledge--to treat this
living body with certain preparations, and in such a way that when it is
dead it will present all the appearance of having been killed by excess
in some drug. The post-mortem will disclose it. If we keep it alive
during a month from now, we can make it a morphia maniac to all
appearance. We can inject anything we like into this Rathbone and make
him a slave to some drug, whether he likes it or not!"
"No, Guest. The really expert pathologist would discover it. It couldn't
be done in a month. It might in six."
"The really expert pathologist won't perform the post-mortem, William.
There are only ten in London! Some local doctor of the police will apply
the usual tests and discover exactly what we wish him to discover. He
will analyze a corpse. He won't synthesize a history of the corpse. Only
ten men in England could do that with certainty, and you and I are two
of those ten, though it is many years ago since we gave up that sort of
work for physics. So you see your object will be doubly served. The
actual death will be proved, and the fellow's life be discredited while
the apparently true reason of his disappearance will be revealed."
Sir William looked steadily at his assistant. "Your brain is wonderfully
sufficient," he said. "It is extraordinary how it withstands the ravages
of alcohol. Really, my dear Wilson, you are a remarkable man. All you
say is quite excellent. And, meanwhile, I have a proposal to make."
He suddenly rose from his chair, and his eyes began to blaze with insane
passion. He shook with it, his whole face was transformed. In his turn
he became abnormal.
And just as the famous man had thought of the lesser, a moment or two
ago--had regarded him coldly and spoken of him, to him, as a mind
diseased--so now the lesser, stimulated to spurious sanity for the
moment, saw the light of mania in his chief's eyes.
Two great forces, two great criminals, two horrid egotists, and both
lost men! Lost far more certainly and irrevocably than the prisoned and
dying gentleman far below in the strong room, where the electric fans
whispered all day and night, where the fetters jingled and the heart was
turning to salt stone!
The man was changed utterly. The grave courtly ascetic vanished as a
breath on glass vanishes. And in his stead stood a creature racked with
evil jealousy and malice, a gaunt inhuman figure in whose eyes was the
glitter of a bird of prey.
Guest saw the swift and terrible drop into the horrible and the
grotesque. He realized that for a brief moment he was master of the
situation.
"Tell me, William," he said. "And what is your idea?"
Gouldesbrough stopped. He turned towards his questioner and shook a
long, threatening arm at him.
"Why," he said, "all this time the man Rathbone has never known why we
are keeping him in prison. He has never seen me, but day by day you have
descended to his cell, caught him up in the toils of the chains which he
wears, and hoisted him on to the couch. And all this time, when you have
fitted the cap upon his head, the man has known nothing of the reasons.
He is in the dark, mentally, as he is so often in the dark from a
physical point of view, when you, his jailer, see fit to turn off the
light. But now he shall know what we are doing with him. I am going down
to tell him that every thought which has been born in his brain has been
noted and recorded by you and by me. I am going to tell him what we are
going to do with his wretched body. He shall know of your proposals, how
that we, his lords and masters, will simulate in his tissues the
physical appearances of protracted vice. He shall know to-day how his
body will be discovered, and how his memory will be for ever discredited
in the eyes of the world. And I shall tell him to-day, that as he lies
bound and in my power, wearing the helmet of brass which robs him of his
own power of secret thought, that I am going up-stairs to watch his
agony in pictures, and that Marjorie will be with me--that she is
utterly under my influence--and that we shall laugh together as we see
each thought, each agony, chasing one another over the screen. We shall
be together, I shall tell him, my arms will be round her, her lips will
seek mine, and for the first time in the history of the world...."
He stopped for a moment. His hand went up to his throat as if the
torrent of words were choking him. Then Guest cut in to his insane
ecstasy.
"You are a fool, William," came from the pink-faced man, in an icy
titter. "Of course when you tell him why and how we have used him, he
will believe it. But I don't think that he will believe in your pleasant
fiction of you and the girl as a sort of latter-day Lacoön in one
arm-chair, laughing together as you take your supreme revenge."
Gouldesbrough strode up to Guest. He clutched him by the shoulder. "Give
me the keys," he said, "the keys, the keys."
Guest was not at all dismayed. Laughing still, he put his hand into his
pocket and took out the pass-key of the strong-room.
"There you are, William," he said; "now go down and enjoy yourself. Our
friend is still tied down on the couch--he's been like that for several
hours, because I've forgotten to go and loose him. I'm going to have
some more whisky, and then I shall go to the big laboratory and switch
on the current. If I'm not very much mistaken, our friend's brain will
provide a series of pictures more intense and vivid, more sharply
defined in both outline and colour, than I have ever seen before, during
the whole course of our experiments."
Gouldesbrough took the key and was out of the room in a flash. Guest
groped for the decanter.
* * * * *
His hair was quite grey now. All the gold had gone from it, just as the
youth had passed from his face--his face which was now the colour of
ashes, and gashed with agony.
And he lay there, trussed and tied in his material fetters of
india-rubber and aluminium. On his head the gleaming metal cap was
clamped. He was supine and an old man. All the sap had gone from the
fine athlete of a few weeks ago, and the splendid body that had been,
was just a shell, a husk.
But the soul looked through the eyes still, tortured but undaunted, in
agony but not afraid.
In the lower silence of that deep cellar where Guy suffered there were
but two sounds. One was the insistent whisper of the electric fan, the
other was the voice which came from Sir William Gouldesbrough as he bent
over the recumbent figure--the broken, motionless figure in which,
still, brave eyes were set like jewels.
"So now you know! You know it all, you realize, dead man, all that I
have done to you, and all that I am going to do. Down here, in this
little room, you have thought that you were alone. You have imagined
that whatever had happened to you, you were yet alone with the agony of
your thoughts, and with God! But you were not! Though you never knew it
until now, you never were! Each prayer that you thought you were
sending up to the unknown force that rules the world, was caught by me.
For weeks I have daily seen into your soul, and laughed at its
irremediable pain. I have got your body, and for the first time in the
history of the world, your mind, your soul, are mine also."
The voice stopped for a moment. It had become very harsh and dry. It
clicked and rang with a metallic sound in this torture-chamber far
underground.
And still the bright eyes watched the body of the man who was possessed,
very calmly, very bravely.
The horrid voice rose into an insane shriek.
"She is up-stairs now, the girl you presumed to love, the rose of all
the roses that you dared to come near, is sitting, laughing as she sees
all that you are thinking now, vividly before her in pictures and in
words. In a moment I shall be with her, and together we shall mock your
agonies, twined in each other's arms."
Perhaps a vault in the dungeons of the Inquisition or in some other
place of horror where merciless men have watched the agonies of their
brethren, has echoed with pure merriment. Who can say, who can tell?
Such a thing may have happened, but we do not know. But to-night, at
this very moment, from the prone figure stretched on its bed of pain,
from the heart of a man who had just heard that he was doomed to a cruel
death, and robbed of his very individuality, there came a bright and
merry laugh which rang out in that awful place as the Angelus rings over
the evening fields of France, and all the peasants bow in homage to
their Maker.
And then the voice. "I know now why I am here, and what has been done to
me during these long, leaden hours. I am now at the point of death. But,
with all your devilish cleverness, with all your brilliancy, you are but
as a child. I suppose I shall not see you again, but I forgive you,
Gouldesbrough, forgive you utterly. And it is easier for me to do this,
because I know that you are lying. In this world she still loves me, in
the next she is mine, as I am hers. And it is because you know this that
you come and rant and laugh, and show yourself as the fearful madman
that you are. Good-bye, good-night; I am happier than you as I lie here,
because I know that, for ever and a day, Marjorie loves me and I love
Marjorie. And it won't be any time at all before we meet."
And once again the laugh that echoed from stone wall to ceiling of
stone, was blithe and confident.