That night Helen slept little. Her talk with Saul Hartz had proved
cruelly disturbing to the mind and to the emotions. She was haunted
by it. For hours she lay awake thinking of this man who had played so
strange a part in her life. Seeing him now as the thing he truly was,
her fear of him was unnerving. It troubled her that they should be
under one roof. She had an insurgent desire to seek at once the safety
of her home. There could be no rest for her until she had returned to
that haven and to the man she loved.
Much of the next day, Sunday, was spent in active dread of the
Colossus and a desire to avoid him. Helen mixed freely with the other
guests. She went to church in the morning, she played bridge in the
afternoon and by every means that was open to her she took precaution
against being caught unawares. The last thing she desired was another
_tête-à-tête_ with Saul Hartz.
In her present emotional state she was met with one harsh fact. For
some reason she was now the prey of a secret fear. An unknown force had
invaded her life. Suddenly the future had become an abyss. To such an
extent was she possessed by a sense of the impending, that it was as if
a sword was about to fall.
What this menace could be she was without means of knowing. But it was
surely there, a phantom perhaps of an overdriven brain. At least Helen
hoped that it might prove no worse than that. Certainly as far as she
was aware, it had no ground in reason or logic, and was, therefore,
without the stay of fact.
Color, however, was lent to this new fear in a rather odd way. Among
her fellow week-end guests was a man named Wygram. The personality of
this man excited Helen’s curiosity. She had never met any one like him.
A rather exotic, oriental appearance seemed to lend value and emphasis
to his views on occultism, mental telepathy, thought transference and
kindred subjects which were now so much in the air, and upon which, in
an unobtrusive way, he seemed to be a veritable mine of information.
After Helen had spent an entrancing hour in talk with Mr. Wygram, she
gleaned from her hostess by dint of judicious inquiry that he was now
recognized the world over as an authority upon the Unseen. She learned
further that this remarkable man had found a solution to more than one
mystery that seemed impenetrable and that the police often had recourse
to his services.
This view of Wygram’s unique powers was supported by the attention
paid him by Saul Hartz. It was never a habit of the Colossus to
flatter the vanity of his fellow men by sitting in public at the feet
of Gamaliel. But it was clear to Helen that the orientalist had some
potent attraction for him. More than once in the course of that day she
saw the two men together in quiet corners. And to judge by the look of
concentration on Mr. Hartz’s face the subject of their talk was to him
of vital concern.
At dinner, no doubt as a concession to the keen curiosity Helen had
shown in regard to Mr. Wygram, she was taken in by him. Further
acquaintance did but add to the interest he excited in her. Little
passed between them that average people could have laid hold of as
definitely enlarging the boundaries of human knowledge, but Helen felt
all the same that her approach to certain subjects whose importance
and value she could but vaguely surmise would from now on be more
practical, more scientific, more expert.
“How far do you think it possible,” she ventured to ask, “for one mind,
or for a group of minds, to act subconsciously upon the mind of another
person, without coming into direct contact with it, in order to control
its actions?”
“An interesting speculation!” Wygram spoke with the simple candor of
one very much a master of his subject. “I think myself the science--and
as one happens to know, a dark and terrible science it is, which the
East has already brought to an uncanny perfection--of imposing one’s
will upon the will of another is being developed to a point which
threatens some very ugly developments.”
“That is just what one feels oneself,” said Helen.
“Only the other day,” said Wygram, “I was called in by the New York
police to help in a terrible case which has made a great impression
over there. It was that of a man, otherwise presumably sane, who
committed a perfectly senseless and illogical crime because a deadly
enemy, an expert practitioner of the new science, had been able to
tamper with the mind of that man subconsciously while he slept.”
“How dreadful!”
Wygram agreed that the speculations opened up by a fact so sinister
were not pleasant. “The whole world is on the down grade,” he said.
“Man has played things up too high. For many years he has been dealing
with unclean things--subtle poisons, high explosives, black magic. But
to my mind this new science which has come out of the East is the worst
of all, because it is by far the most elusive.”
“Can it be used, do you suppose, on a large scale?”
“The fear is that it can be,” said Wygram, “and that it will be. An
unlucky signalman the other day at Hellington had a lapse of memory.
The London express ran into a goods train that was being shunted out
of a siding. Such a thing, in normal circumstances, should never
occur. By reason of it, sixteen people were killed and sixty-eight
injured. Among the killed were the Chancellor of the Exchequer and a
Judge of the High Court. Accident, says the world. A rub of the green,
say the directors of the railway company. Fate, say the newspapers.
Call it what you will, but at the point the perverted mind of man has
now reached, who shall say what the real cause was? Perhaps a certain
very distinguished Chinese thinker now in this country might be able
to throw a new light on a terrible occurrence.” At the look of horror
in the eyes of the woman at his side, Wygram paused. “Mind you,” he
said, “one does not for a moment accept all the implications that such
a theory may open up. Let the possibility be advanced just for what it
is worth. And I think”--his voice grew very gentle--“it would have been
kinder, and perhaps wiser, not to have advanced such a possibility at
all.”
“Your studies have made you pessimistic,” said Helen, hoping this was a
straw to which she might cling.
“Yes, I quite think so,” Wygram agreed. “Every mind becomes subdued to
that in which it works. But I do feel that human life was never exposed
to so many hidden perils as to-day.”
“One feels that, too,” said Helen. “Indeed,”--she shivered
slightly--“the truth of that somehow strikes to one’s marrow.”
As she spoke, she was sharply aware that the man at her side was
looking at her with a grave curiosity.
“Forgive the question,” he said, in his soft voice, “if it should seem
impertinent,--but do you say that as a private member of the community,
or as the wife of a man to whom so many eyes now turn in the hope that
he may be able to do a great and much needed work for us all?”
Girt by the thought that Saul Hartz was at another table and that no
fragment of their talk was likely to reach his ear, Helen confessed
that she was now haunted, not so much on her own account as on that of
her husband, by a great fear.
Something in her manner seemed to impress Wygram deeply. “Tell me,” he
said, in a voice hardly above a whisper, “just what it is that you fear
in regard to him in the near future?”
“It is too vague to be put into words,” said Helen, anxiously. But
again she shivered, and again Wygram looked at her with his questioning
eyes.
He forbore, however, from pressing the point further. So sharp was her
distress that he gave the subject an adroit turn, and did not refer to
it again. But this talk, all the same, made a profound impression upon
Helen.
Next morning she breakfasted early, at the beck of a strong desire to
catch the first possible train. London, her home, her husband were
calling her. A second night of very little sleep had made Cloudesley
and its surroundings almost intolerable. She was oppressed by a sense
of being urgently needed elsewhere. Hour by hour, a conviction had
gained strength in her mind that something was about to happen to John.
Perhaps “the something” had happened already. Who could say? An
obsession seized her that such was the case. At all events, the
breaking of his engagement for the week-end, without being able to give
a reason, a proceeding altogether unlike him, lent color to this new
and harsh belief. Both Hartz and Wygram, men whose every word meant
much, had dropped more than one hint that her husband was in the toils
of ineluctable fate.
Helen could not hope for peace of mind until she was back in Brompton
Square. And soon after half past eight, as she crossed the hall to the
car which was to take her to the station, with every thought fixed upon
getting away from this hive of unpleasant memories, a simple thing
happened which yet seemed to add tenfold to her fears.
Wygram, who was just coming down to breakfast, intercepted her at
the foot of the stairs. “Good-by, my dear Mrs. Endor,” he said, in a
cordial tone. And then in one much lower, but of vital urgency, “Take
care of your husband. The world has need of him. And if in the course
of the next few days you feel you must have a friend whom you can
really trust, please remember your compatriot, George Hierons, who, I
believe, is still in London. It may be, of course, that the need will
not arise. Sincerely one hopes it may not. But if it does, consult
him. Again, good-by!”
These cryptic words did not lessen Helen’s alarm. More than ever she
was convinced that something had happened or was about to happen to the
man she loved.