"Yes," admitted Phryné, "it is true. There were two of them."
"And"--Dillon hesitated--"were they in love with you?"
"Of course," said Phryné, naïvely.
"But you----"
Phryné shook her curly head.
"I rather liked the French boy, but I do not believe anything that a
Frenchman says to a girl; and Harry, the other, was handsome, but so
silly...."
"So you did not love either of them?"
"Of course not."
"But," said Dillon, and impulsively he swept her into his arms, "you are
going to love me."
One quick upward glance she gave, but instantly lowered her eyes and
withheld her bewitching face from him.
"Am I?" she whispered. "You are so conceited."
But as she spoke the words he kissed her, and she surrendered sweetly,
nestling her head against his shoulder for a moment. Then, leaping back,
bright-eyed and blushing, she turned and ran like a startled fawn across
the terrace and into the house.
He saw no more of her until dinner-time, and spent the interval in a
kind of suspended consciousness that was new and perturbing. Within him
life pulsed at delirious speed, but the universe seemed to have slowed
upon its course so that each hour became as two. Throughout dinner,
Phryné was deliciously shy to the point of embarrassment; and Dillon,
who several times surprised the bird-eyes of Dr. Kassimere studying the
girl's face, detained his host, and being a young man of orderly mind,
formally asked his consent to an engagement.
The doctor's joy was seemingly so unfeigned that Dillon almost liked him
for a moment. He placed no obstacle in the path of the suitor for his
adopted daughter's hand, graciously expressing every confidence in the
future. His joy was genuine enough, Dillon determined; but from what
source did it actually spring? The Thoth-like eyes were exultant, and
all the old mistrust poured back in a wave upon the younger man. Was
this distrust becoming an obsession? Why should he eternally be seeking
an ulterior motive for every act in this man's life?
He went to look for Phryné, and found her in the spot where he had first
seen her, prone in a nest of cushions. She sprang up as he entered the
room, and glanced at him in that new way which set his heart leaping....
And because of the magic of her presence, it was not until later, when
he stood alone in his own room, that he could order the facts gleaned
from her.
There was some grain of truth in the story of the ancient gossip at
the _Threshers_ after all. A young French lieutenant of artillery had
received an invitation to spend a leave at Hollow Grange. His Gallic
soul had been fired by Phryné's beauty, and although his advances had
been met with rebuff, he had asked Dr. Kassimere's permission to pay his
court to the girl. On the same evening he had departed hurriedly, and
Phryné had supposed, since the doctor never referred to him again, that
he had been sent about his business. Then came a strange letter, which
Phryné had shown to Dillon. Its tone throughout was of passionate anger,
and one passage recurred again and again to Dillon's mind. "I would give
my life for you gladly," it read, "but my soul belongs to God...."
Phryné had counted him demented and Dr. Kassimere had agreed with her.
But there was Harry Waynwright, the nephew of the vicar of St. Peter's
at Hainingham. An accidental meeting with Phryné had led to a courtesy
call--and the inevitable. It had all the seeming of a case of
love-sickness, and the unhappy youth grew seriously ill. From pestering
her daily he changed his tactics to studiously avoiding her, until,
meeting her in the village one morning, he greeted her with, "I can't do
it, Phryné! tell him I can't do it. He can rely upon my word; but I'm
going away to try to forget!"
Dr. Kassimere had professed entire ignorance of the meaning of the
words. A faint shadow had crossed Phryné's face as she spoke of these
matters, but, as a result of her extraordinary beauty, she was somewhat
callous where languishing admirers were concerned, and she had dismissed
the gloomy twain with a shrug of her charming shoulders.
"Mad!" she had said. "It seems my fate always to meet mad-men!"
The night silence had descended again upon Hollow Grange, disturbed only
by the mournful cry of the owl and the almost imperceptible note of the
bat. But to the nervous alertness of Dillon, a deep unrest seemed to
stir within the house; yet--an unrest not physical but spiritual; it was
as the shadow of a sleepless watcher--a shadow creeping over his soul.
What was the explanation lying at the back of it all? Vainly he sought
for a theory, however wild, however improbable, that should embrace all
the facts known to him and serve either to banish his black doubts or to
focus them. Upon one thing he had determined: There was some thing or
some one in Hollow Grange that he _feared_, some centre from whence fear
radiated.
Phryné, for one fleeting moment, had revealed to him that she, too, had
known this formless dread, but only latterly; probably from lack of a
more definite date, she had spoken of this fear as first visiting her at
about the time of the Frenchman's advent.
"Slowly, he has changed towards me," she had whispered, referring to Dr.
Kassimere. "He watches me, sometimes, in a strange way. Oh, he has been
so good, so very kind and good, but--I shall be glad when----"
Could some part of the mystery be explained away by the doctor's
increasing absorption in his studies, which led him to regard the charge
of a ward, and a wayward one at that, as unduly onerous and disturbing?
Might it not fairly be supposed that ignorant superstition and the
ravings of unrequited passion accounted for the rest?
At the nature of Dr. Kassimere's studies he could not even guess. The
greater number of the works in the library related to mysticism in one
form or another, although there was a sprinkling of exact science to
leaven the whole.
"He can rely upon my word," Waynwright had said. Regarding what, or
regarding whom, had he given his word?
The cry of a night-hawk came, as if in answer; the hoot of an owl, as if
in mockery. Out beyond the terrace a dull red light showed from Dr.
Kassimere's laboratory.
V
Enlightenment came about in this fashion--seeking to quench a feverish
thirst, Dillon discovered that no glass had been left in his room. He
determined to fetch one from the buffet cupboard downstairs. Softly, in
slippered feet, he descended the stairs and was crossing the hallway
when he kicked something--a small book, he thought--that lay there upon
the floor. Groping, he found it, slipped it into the pocket of his
dressing-gown, and entered the dining-room. He found a tumbler without
difficulty, in the dark, noted the presence of a heavy, oppressive
odour, and returned upstairs. Now he made another discovery. He had
forgotten the nightly draught of medicine prescribed by Dr. Kassimere;
a new unopened phial stood upon the dressing-table.
He mixed himself a mild whisky and soda from the decanter and siphon
which his host's hospitality caused nightly to be placed in his room,
and then, seized by a sudden thought, took out the little book which he
had found in the hall.
It was a faded manuscript, in monkish Latin; a copy of an unpublished
work of Paracelsus. Many passages had been rendered into English, and
the translations, in Dr. Kassimere's minute, cramped writing, were
interposed between the bound pages. In these again were interpolated
marginal notes, some in the shape of unintelligible symbols, others in
that of chemical formulæ. Several passages were marked in red ink.
And, having perused the first of these which he chanced upon, a clammy
moisture broke out upon his skin, accompanied by so marked a nervous
trembling that he was forced to seat himself upon the bed.
The secret of this man's ghastly life-work was in his hands; he knew,
now, what bargain Dr. Kassimere had proposed to the Frenchman and to
the other; he knew why he had adopted the lovely daughter of Louis
Devant--and he knew why he, Jack Dillon, had been invited to Hollow
Grange. That such a ghoul in human shape could live and have his being
amid ordinary mankind was a stupendous improbability which, ten minutes
earlier, he would have laughed to scorn.
"My God!" he whispered. "My God!"
His glance fell upon the unopened phial on his dressing-table, and from
his soul a silent thanksgiving rose to heaven that he had left that
potion untasted. He realised that his own case differed from those of
his predecessors in two particulars: He was actually in residence under
Dr. Kassimere's roof and receiving treatment from the man's hands. No
option was to be offered to _him_; the great experiment, the _Magnum
Opus_, was to be performed without his consent!
And Phryné!--Phryné, the other innocent victim of this fiend's lust
for knowledge! The thought restored his courage. More than life itself
depended upon his coolness and address; he must act, at once. The
monstrous possibility hinted at by von Hohenheim--in his earliest
published work, _Practica D. Theophrasti Paracelsi_, printed at Augsburg
in 1529, was, in this hideous pamphlet, elaborated and brought within
the bounds of practical experiment.
He crept to the door, opened it, and stood listening intently. That
silence which seemed like a palpable cloud--a cloud masking the presence
of one who watched--lay over the house. Slowly he descended to the
hall and dropped the horror which the evil genius of von Hohenheim had
conceived, upon the spot where it had lain when his foot had discovered
it.
A creaking sound warned him of some one's approach, and he had barely
time to slip behind some draperies ere a cowled figure bearing a lantern
came out into the hall. It was Dr. Kassimere, wearing a loose gown
having a monkish hood--and he was searching for something.
Nothing in his experience--not the blood-lust seen in the eyes of men
in battle--had prepared him for that which transfigured the face of
Dr. Kassimere. The strange semblance of Thoth was there no more; it had
given place to another, more active malevolence, to a sort of Satanic
_eagerness_ indescribably terrifying; it was the face of one possessed.
Like some bird of prey he pounced upon the book, thrust it into the
pocket of his gown, and began furtively to retrace his steps. As he
entered the big dining-room, Dillon was close upon his heels.
Dr. Kassimere passed into the small room beyond and turned from thence
into the library. Dillon, observing every precaution, followed. From the
library the doctor entered the short, narrow passage leading to that
quaint relic of bygone days and ways--the tiny chapel. At the entrance
Dillon paused, watchful. Once, the man in the monkish robe turned, on
the time-worn step of the altar, and looked back over his shoulder,
revealing a face that might well have been that of Asmodeus himself.
On the left of the altar was the cupboard wherein, no doubt, in past
ages, the priest had kept his vestments. The oppressive odour which
Dillon had first observed in the dining-room was very perceptible in the
chapel; and as Dr. Kassimere opened the door of the cupboard and stepped
within, an explanation of the presence of this deathly smell in the
house occurred to Dillon's mind. The laboratory adjoined the Grange on
this side; here was a private entrance known to, and used by, Dr.
Kassimere alone.
His surmise proved to be correct. Occasioning scarcely a sound, the
secret door opened, and a fiery glow leapt out across the altar steps,
accompanied by a wave of heated air laden with the nauseous, unnameable
smell. Within the redly lighted doorway, Dr. Kassimere paused, and
glanced at a watch which he wore upon his wrist. Then for a moment he
disappeared, to reappear carrying a small squat bottle and a contrivance
of wire and gauze the sight of which created in Dillon a sense of
physical nausea. It was a chloroform-mask! Both he placed upon a vaguely
seen table and again approached the door.
Weakly, Dillon fell back, pressing himself, closely against the chapel
wall, as the doctor, this time leaving the secret entrance open--with a
purpose in view which the watcher shudderingly recognized--recrossed the
chapel and went off, softly treading, in the direction of the library.
All his courage, moral and physical, was called upon now, and knowing,
by some intuition of love, what and whom he should find there, he
stepped unsteadily into Dr. Kassimere's laboratory....
That there were horrors--monstrosities that may not be described,
whose names may not be written--in the place, he realised, in some
subconscious fashion; but--prone upon a low, metal couch of most curious
workmanship lay Phryné, in her night-robe, still--white; perfect in her
pale beauty as her namesake who posed for Praxiteles.
Dillon reeled, steadied himself, and sank upon his knees by the couch.
"Phryné!" he whispered, locking his arms about her--"my Phryné!..."
Then he remembered the gauze mask and even detected the sickly, sweet
smell of the anaesthetic. Anger gave him new strength; he raised the
girl in his arms and turned towards the door communicating with the
chapel.
Framed in the opening was the hooded figure of Dr. Kassimere,
confronting him. His face was immobile again, with the immobility of
ibis-headed Thoth; his eyes were hard, his voice was cold.
"What is the meaning of this outrage?" he demanded sternly. "Phryné has
been taken suddenly ill; an immediate operation may be necessary----"
"Out of my way!" said Dillon, advancing past a huge glass jar filled
with reddish liquid that stood upon a pedestal between the couch and the
door.
"Be careful, you fool!" shrieked Dr. Kassimere, frenziedly, his calm
dropping from him like a cloak and a new and dreadful light coming into
the staring eyes.
But he was too late. Dillon's foot had caught the pedestal. With a
resounding crash the thing overturned; as Dr. Kassimere sprang forward,
he slipped in the slimy stream that was pouring over the laboratory
floor--and fell....
Laying Phryné upon the altar, her head resting against the age-worn
communion rails, Dillon turned and closed the secret door dividing the
house of God from the house of Satan. One glimpse, in the red furnace
glow, he had of Dr. Kassimere, writhing upon the slimy floor, shrieking,
blaspheming--and fighting, fighting madly, as a man fights for life and
more than life....
He had not yet carried the unconscious girl beyond the dining-room,
when, above that other smell, he detected the odour of burning wood. A
fire had broken out in the laboratory.
* * * * *
Mrs. Jack Dillon mourns her guardian (no trace of whom was ever found in
the charred remains of Hollow Grange) to this day; for she retains no
memory of the night of the great fire, but believes that, overcome by
the fumes, she was rescued and carried insensible from the house, by
her lover. In the latter's bosom the grim secret is locked, with the
memory of a demoniac figure, fighting, fighting....