TWO FINAL PICTURES
There are two things to record--
(1)
His hair was quite grey, his face was old and lined. His body was
beginning to be ravaged by the devilish drugs with which it had been
inoculated.
But he lay upon a couch in the study, and Marjorie bent over him kissing
him, calling to him and cooing inarticulate words of belief and of love.
Lady Poole was there also, motionless and silent, while Lord Malvin and
the doctor, who had been hastily summoned from Baker Street, watched by
the head of the couch.
The doctor looked at Lord Malvin and nodded his head.
"He will be all right," he whispered. "Those devils have not killed him
yet. He will live and be as strong as ever."
The tears were rolling down Lord Malvin's face and he could not speak,
but he nodded back to the doctor.
And then they saw the face of Guy Rathbone, who lay there so broken and
destroyed, begin to change. The gashes, which supreme and long-continued
agony had cut into it, had not indeed passed away. The ashen visage
remained ashen still, but a new light came flickering into the tired
eyes, and in an indescribable way youth was returning.
Youth was returning, youth!
It came back, summoned out of the past by a supreme magic--the supreme
magic of love.
The girl who loved him was kissing him, he was with her at last, and all
was well.
* * * * *
(2)
"It is a grave thing and much considered to be," said Herr Schmoulder.
It was late at night.
They had taken Wilson Guest to the hospital, where the doctors were
holding him down, as he shrieked and laughed, and died in delirium
tremens.
Lord Malvin, Sir Harold Oliver, and the other scientists were gathered
together in the laboratory, that recent theatre of such terrible events.
"It is a very grave thing indeed, Herr Schmoulder," Lord Malvin
answered; "but I have not ventured to propose it without a consultation
in the highest quarters. Decies will be here at any moment, and then
upon his decision we shall act. He has been to see the King."
The distinguished men waited there silent and uneasy. All round them
stood the marvellous instruments by which the late Sir William
Gouldesbrough had obtained a triumph unknown before in the history of
the world.
The yellow radiance of the electric light poured down upon the gleaming
mahogany, brass, vulcanite and steel.
On the opposite wall was the great white screen--just an ordinary
stretch of prepared canvas upon steel rollers, a dead, senseless thing,
and no more than that. Yet as the least imaginative of them there
chanced to turn his head and see that great white sheet, he shuddered to
think of the long agony it had pictured while the two monsters had sat
and taken their amusement from it, as a man takes a glass of wine.
There was a rap upon the principal door of the laboratory. Lord Malvin
strode to it and opened it. The butler, a portly man on the morning of
this day, but now seeming to have shrunk into his clothes, and to have
lost much of his vitality, stood there.
Beside him was a gentleman in evening dress, with a keen clean-shaven
face and grey hair which curled.
The gentleman stepped quickly into the laboratory. It was the Home
Secretary.
He shook Lord Malvin by the hand, and his face was very troubled.
"You are quite right, my Lord," he said. "I may say that His Majesty is
at one with you and with me in this matter. His Majesty is much
disturbed."
Then Lord Malvin turned round to the other gentlemen.
"Come, my brethren," he said in a sad voice, "come and let us do what we
have to do. The Bishop of West London was wiser than any of us when he
said that God would never allow this thing to continue, and he was
right."
Lord Malvin turned to the frightened servant.
"Go into the kitchens," he said, "or send one of the other men, and
fetch a large hammer, such a hammer as you use for breaking up coal."
In a minute or two the butler returned, and handed a formidable
implement with a wedge-shaped iron head on a long ash shank to Lord
Malvin.
The Home Secretary stood by, and the great men of science clustered
round him, watching Lord Malvin's actions.
The peer went to the silent, soulless machines, which had been the
medium through which such wonder and terror had passed, and raising the
hammer about his head, he destroyed each one severally, with a sort of
ritual, as some priest carries out the ritual of his Faith.
This old man, whose name and personality stood so high, so supreme
indeed, in the modern world, was like some ancient prophet of the Lord,
who, fired with holy zeal, strode down the pagan avenues of the ancient
world and tore and beat the false idols from their pedestals in the
frenzy of one who kills and destroys that truth may enter and the world
be calm.
It was done, over. The politician shook hands with Lord Malvin, and
resumed his dry, official manner, perhaps a little ashamed or frightened
at the emotion which he had exhibited.
"Good-bye, Lord Malvin," he said. "This terrible business is now over. I
have to return to the palace to tell His Majesty that this--this
_devilish_ invention is destroyed. Good-night, good-night."
Then a tall man with a pointed beard came into the laboratory, saluting
the Home Secretary as he was leaving, with several of the other
scientists who had witnessed the whole thing from first to last and now
felt that they must go home.
The man with the beard was the man who had been sent from Scotland Yard.
He walked up to Lord Malvin and saluted.
"I think, my Lord," he said, "that everything requisite has now been
done. I have all the servants in my charge, and we have fifteen or
twenty men in the house, seeing that nothing is disturbed until official
inquiry is due."
By this time nobody was left in the laboratory but the detective
inspector, Lord Malvin, and Herr Schmoulder.
"Oh! and there is one other thing, my Lord, I have to ask you. Mr.
Donald Megbie, the writing gentleman is here, and begs that he may be
allowed to see you. Should I be right in admitting the gentleman?"
"Certainly, certainly," Lord Malvin replied. "Bring him in at once,
please inspector."
In less than a minute a plain-clothes policeman ushered Donald Megbie
into the laboratory.
He went up to Lord Malvin, and his face was bright and happy.
"It is all right, my Lord," he said, "Rathbone is recovering swiftly.
Miss Poole is with him, and the doctors say, that though they feared for
a short time that his reason would go, they are now quite satisfied that
he will recover. He is sleeping quietly in a private room at Marylebone
Hospital, and Marjorie Poole is sitting by his side holding his hand."
Then Megbie looked at the wreck upon the floor.
"Ah!" he said, "so you have destroyed this horrid thing?"
"Yes," Lord Malvin answered; "I discussed it with Decies, and Decies
went to see the King. It was thought to be better and wiser for the
safety of the commonwealth--for the safety of the world indeed--that Sir
William Gouldesbrough's discovery should perish with Sir William
Gouldesbrough."
"Ah!" Donald Megbie answered; "I felt sure that that was the best
course. It would have been too terrible, too subversive. The world must
go on as it has always gone on. I have thought, during the last few
hours, that Sir William Gouldesbrough was not himself at all. Is it not
possible that he himself might have died long ago, and that _something_
was inhabiting his body, something which came out of the darkness behind
the Veil?"
"That, Mr. Megbie," said Lord Malvin, "is the picturesque thought of the
literary man. Science does not allow the possibility of such sinister
interferences. And now, I am going home. You will realize, of course,
that your supreme services in this matter will be recognized, though I
fear that the recognition can never be acknowledged publicly."
Donald Megbie bowed.
"My Lord," he said, "they have been recognized already, because I have
seen how love has called back a soul into life. I have seen Marjorie
Poole sitting by the bedside of Guy Rathbone. And, do you know, Lord
Malvin," he continued in a less exalted tone, "I never wish to see
anything in my life here more utterly beautiful than that."
"Come," said Lord Malvin, "it is very late; we are all tired and
unstrung."
The two men, arm in arm, the young writer and the great man, moved
towards the door of the laboratory.
The detective inspector stood watching the scene with quiet and
observant eyes.
But Herr Schmoulder surveyed the wreckage of the Thought-Spectroscope,
and as he turned at length to follow Lord Malvin and Donald Megbie, he
heaved a deep Teutonic sigh.
"It was der most wonderful triumph that ever der unknown forces occurred
has been," he muttered.
Then the three men crossed the vast, sombre hall, now filled with
frightened servants and the stiff official guardians of the law, and
went out through the path among the laurel bushes to the gate in the
wall, where their carriages were waiting.
And Donald Megbie, as he drove home through the silent streets of the
West End, heard a tune in his heart, which responded and lilted to the
regular beat of the horse's feet upon the macadam. And the burden of the
tune was "_Love_."
_Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London and Bungay._