“And you get no clue from these facts?” he asked, a trifle surprised.
I searched every corner of my mind and imagination for some inkling of
his meaning, but was obliged to admit that I understood nothing so far.
“Never mind; you will later. And now,” he added, “we will go over the
wood and see what we can find.”
His words explained to me something of his method. We were to keep our
minds alert and report to each other the least fancy that crossed the
picture-gallery of our thoughts. Then, just as we started, he turned
again to me with a final warning.
“And, for your safety,” he said earnestly, “imagine _now_--and for that
matter, imagine always until we leave this place--imagine with the
utmost keenness, that you are surrounded by a shell that protects you.
Picture yourself inside a protective envelope, and build it up with the
most intense imagination you can evoke. Pour the whole force of your
thought and will into it. Believe vividly all through this adventure
that such a shell, constructed of your thought, will and imagination,
surrounds you completely, and that nothing can pierce it to attack.”
He spoke with dramatic conviction, gazing hard at me as though to
enforce his meaning, and then moved forward and began to pick his way
over the rough, tussocky ground into the wood. And meanwhile, knowing
the efficacy of his prescription, I adopted it to the best of my
ability.
The trees at once closed about us like the night. Their branches met
overhead in a continuous tangle, their stems crept closer and closer,
the brambly undergrowth thickened and multiplied. We tore our trousers,
scratched our hands, and our eyes filled with fine dust that made it
most difficult to avoid the clinging, prickly network of branches and
creepers. Coarse white grass that caught our feet like string grew here
and there in patches. It crowned the lumps of peaty growth that stuck
up like human heads, fantastically dressed, thrusting up at us out of
the ground with crests of dead hair. We stumbled and floundered among
them. It was hard going, and I could well conceive it impossible to
find a way at all in the night-time. We jumped, when possible, from
tussock to tussock, and it seemed as though we were springing among
heads on a battlefield, and that this dead white grass concealed eyes
that turned to stare as we passed.
Here and there the sunlight shot in with vivid spots of white light,
dazzling the sight, but only making the surrounding gloom deeper by
contrast And on two occasions we passed dark circular places in the
grass where fires had eaten their mark and left a ring of ashes. Dr.
Silence pointed to them, but without comment and without pausing, and
the sight of them woke in me a singular realisation of the dread that
lay so far only just out of sight in this adventure.
It was exhausting work, and heavy going. We kept close together. The
warmth, too, was extraordinary. Yet it did not seem the warmth of the
body due to violent exertion, but rather an inner heat of the mind that
laid glowing hands of fire upon the heart and set the brain in a kind
of steady blaze. When my companion found himself too far in advance,
he waited for me to come up. The place had evidently been untouched by
hand of man, keeper, forester or sportsman, for many a year; and my
thoughts, as we advanced painfully, were not unlike the state of the
wood itself--dark, confused, full of a haunting wonder and the shadow
of fear.
By this time all signs of the open field behind us were hid. No
single gleam penetrated. We might have been groping in the heart of
some primeval forest. Then, suddenly, the brambles and tussocks and
string-like grass came to an end; the trees opened out; and the ground
began to slope upwards towards a large central mound. We had reached
the middle of the plantation, and before us stood the broken Druid
stones our host had mentioned. We walked easily up the little hill,
between the sparser stems, and, resting upon one of the ivy-covered
boulders, looked round upon a comparatively open space, as large,
perhaps, as a small London Square.
Thinking of the ceremonies and sacrifices this rough circle of
prehistoric monoliths might have witnessed, I looked up into my
companion’s face with an unspoken question. But he read my thought and
shook his head.
“Our mystery has nothing to do with these dead symbols,” he said,
“but with something perhaps even more ancient, and of another country
altogether.”
“Egypt?” I said half under my breath, hopelessly puzzled, but recalling
his words in my bedroom.
He nodded. Mentally I still floundered, but he seemed intensely
preoccupied and it was no time for asking questions; so while his words
circled unintelligibly in my mind I looked round at the scene before
me, glad of the opportunity to recover breath and some measure of
composure. But hardly had I time to notice the twisted and contorted
shapes of many of the pine trees close at hand when Dr. Silence leaned
over and touched me on the shoulder. He pointed down the slope. And the
look I saw in his eyes keyed up every nerve in my body to its utmost
pitch.
A thin, almost imperceptible column of blue smoke was rising among the
trees some twenty yards away at the foot of the mound. It curled up and
up, and disappeared from sight among the tangled branches overhead. It
was scarcely thicker than the smoke from a small brand of burning wood.
“Protect yourself! Imagine your shell strongly,” whispered the doctor
sharply, “and follow me closely.”
He rose at once and moved swiftly down the slope towards the smoke,
and I followed, afraid to remain alone. I heard the soft crunching of
our steps on the pine needles. Over his shoulder I watched the thin
blue spiral, without once taking my eyes off it. I hardly know how
to describe the peculiar sense of vague horror inspired in me by the
sight of that streak of smoke pencilling its way upwards among the
dark trees. And the sensation of increasing heat as we approached was
phenomenal. It was like walking towards a glowing yet invisible fire.
As we drew nearer his pace slackened. Then he stopped and pointed, and
I saw a small circle of burnt grass upon the ground. The tussocks were
blackened and smouldering, and from the centre rose this line of smoke,
pale, blue, steady. Then I noticed a movement of the atmosphere beside
us, as if the warm air were rising and the cooler air rushing in to
take its place: a little centre of wind in the stillness. Overhead the
boughs stirred and trembled where the smoke disappeared. Otherwise, not
a tree sighed, not a sound made itself heard. The wood was still as a
graveyard. A horrible idea came to me that the course of nature was
about to change without warning, _had_ changed a little already, that
the sky would drop, or the surface of the earth crash inwards like a
broken bubble. Something, certainly, reached up to the citadel of my
reason, causing its throne to shake.
John Silence moved forward again. I could not see his face, but his
attitude was plainly one of resolution, of muscles and mind ready for
vigorous action. We were within ten feet of the blackened circle when
the smoke of a sudden ceased to rise, and vanished. The tail of the
column disappeared in the air above, and at the same instant it seemed
to me that the sensation of heat passed from my face, and the motion
of the wind was gone. The calm spirit of the fresh October day resumed
command.
Side by side we advanced and examined the place. The grass was
smouldering, the ground still hot. The circle of burned earth was a
foot to a foot and a half in diameter. It looked like an ordinary
picnic fire-place. I bent down cautiously to look, but in a second
I sprang back with an involuntary cry of alarm, for, as the doctor
stamped on the ashes to prevent them spreading, a sound of hissing rose
from the spot as though he had kicked a living creature. This hissing
was faintly audible in the air. It moved past us, away towards the
thicker portion of the wood in the direction of our field, and in a
second Dr. Silence had left the fire and started in pursuit.
And then began the most extraordinary hunt of invisibility I can ever
conceive.
He went fast even at the beginning, and, of course, it was perfectly
obvious that he was following something. To judge by the poise of his
head he kept his eyes steadily at a certain level--just above the
height of a man--and the consequence was he stumbled a good deal over
the roughness of the ground. The hissing sound had stopped. There was
no sound of any kind, and what he saw to follow was utterly beyond me.
I only know, that in mortal dread of being left behind, and with a
biting curiosity to see whatever there was to be seen, I followed as
quickly as I could, and even then barely succeeded in keeping up with
him.
And, as we went, the whole mad jumble of the Colonel’s stories ran
through my brain, touching a sense of frightened laughter that was only
held in check by the sight of this earnest, hurrying figure before me.
For John Silence at work inspired me with a kind of awe. He looked
so diminutive among these giant twisted trees, while yet I knew that
his purpose and his knowledge were so great, and even in hurry he was
dignified. The fancy that we were playing some queer, exaggerated game
together met the fact that we were two men dancing upon the brink of
some possible tragedy, and the mingling of the two emotions in my mind
was both grotesque and terrifying.
He never turned in his mad chase, but pushed rapidly on, while I panted
after him like a figure in some unreasoning nightmare. And, as I ran,
it came upon me that he had been aware all the time, in his quiet,
internal way, of many things that he had kept for his own secret
consideration; he had been watching, waiting, planning from the very
moment we entered the shade of the wood. By some inner, concentrated
process of mind, dynamic if not actually magical, he had been in direct
contact with the source of the whole adventure, the very essence of the
real mystery. And now the forces were moving to a climax. Something
was about to happen, something important, something possibly dreadful.
Every nerve, every sense, every significant gesture of the plunging
figure before me proclaimed the fact just as surely as the skies, the
winds, and the face of the earth tell the birds the time to migrate and
warn the animals that danger lurks and they must move.
In a few moments we reached the foot of the mound and entered the
tangled undergrowth that lay between us and the sunlight of the field.
Here the difficulties of fast travelling increased a hundredfold. There
were brambles to dodge, low boughs to dive under, and countless tree
trunks closing up to make a direct path impossible. Yet Dr. Silence
never seemed to falter or hesitate. He went, diving, jumping, dodging,
ducking, but ever in the same main direction, following a clean trail.
Twice I tripped and fell, and both times, when I picked myself up
again, I saw him ahead of me, still forcing a way like a dog after
its quarry. And sometimes, like a dog, he stopped and pointed--human
pointing it was, psychic pointing,--and each time he stopped to point I
heard that faint high hissing in the air beyond us. The instinct of an
infallible dowser possessed him, and he made no mistakes.
At length, abruptly, I caught up with him, and found that we stood
at the edge of the shallow pond Colonel Wragge had mentioned in his
account the night before. It was long and narrow, filled with dark
brown water, in which the trees were dimly reflected. Not a ripple
stirred its surface.
“Watch!” he cried out, as I came up. “It’s going to cross. It’s bound
to betray itself. The water is its natural enemy, and we shall see the
direction.”
And, even as he spoke, a thin line like the track of a water-spider,
shot swiftly across the shiny surface; there was a ghost of steam in
the air above; and immediately I became aware of an odour of burning.
Dr. Silence turned and shot a glance at me that made me think of
lightning. I began to shake all over.
“Quick!” he cried with excitement, “to the trail again! We must run
round. It’s going to the house!”
The alarm in his voice quite terrified me. Without a false step I
dashed round the slippery banks and dived again at his heels into the
sea of bushes and tree trunks. We were now in the thick of the very
dense belt that ran round the outer edge of the plantation, and the
field was near; yet so dark was the tangle that it was some time before
the first shafts of white sunlight became visible. The doctor now ran
in zigzags. He was following something that dodged and doubled quite
wonderfully, yet had begun, I fancied, to move more slowly than before.
“Quick!” he cried. “In the light we shall lose it!”
I still saw nothing, heard nothing, caught no suggestion of a trail;
yet this man, guided by some interior divining that seemed infallible,
made no false turns, though how we failed to crash headlong into the
trees has remained a mystery to me ever since. And then, with a sudden
rush, we found ourselves on the skirts of the wood with the open field
lying in bright sunshine before our eyes.
“Too late!” I heard him cry, a note of anguish in his voice. “It’s
out--and, by God, it’s making for the house!”
I saw the Colonel standing in the field with his dogs where we had left
him. He was bending double, peering into the wood where he heard us
running, and he straightened up like a bent whip released. John Silence
dashed passed, calling him to follow.
“We shall lose the trail in the light,” I heard him cry as he ran. “But
quick! We may yet get there in time!”
That wild rush across the open field, with the dogs at our heels,
leaping and barking, and the elderly Colonel behind us running as
though for his life, shall I ever forget it? Though I had only vague
ideas of the meaning of it all, I put my best foot forward, and, being
the youngest of the three, I reached the house an easy first. I drew
up, panting, and turned to wait for the others. But, as I turned,
something moving a little distance away caught my eye, and in that
moment I swear I experienced the most overwhelming and singular shock
of surprise and terror I have ever known, or can conceive as possible.
For the front door was open, and the waist of the house being narrow, I
could see through the hall into the dining-room beyond, and so out on
to the back lawn, and there I saw no less a sight than the figure of
Miss Wragge--running. Even at that distance it was plain that she had
seen me, and was coming fast towards me, running with the frantic gait
of a terror-stricken woman. She had recovered the use of her legs.
Her face was a livid grey, as of death itself, but the general
expression was one of laughter, for her mouth was gaping, and her eyes,
always bright shone with the light of a wild merriment that seemed the
merriment of a child, yet was singularly ghastly. And that very second,
as she fled past me into her brother’s arms behind, I smelt again most
unmistakably the odour of burning, and to this day the smell of smoke
and fire can come very near to turning me sick with the memory of what
I had seen.
Fast on her heels, too, came the terrified attendant, more mistress of
herself, and able to speak--which the old lady could not do--but with a
face almost, if not quite, as fearful.
“We were down by the bushes in the sun,”--she gasped and screamed in
reply to Colonel Wragge’s distracted questionings,--“I was wheeling the
chair as usual when she shrieked and leaped--I don’t know exactly--I
was too frightened to see--Oh, my God! she jumped clean out of the
chair--_and ran!_ There was a blast of hot air from the wood, and she
hid her face and jumped. She didn’t make a sound--she didn’t cry out,
or make a sound. She just ran.”
But the nightmare horror of it all reached the breaking point a few
minutes later, and while I was still standing in the hall temporarily
bereft of speech and movement; for while the doctor, the Colonel and
the attendant were half-way up the staircase, helping the fainting
woman to the privacy of her room, and all in a confused group of dark
figures, there sounded a voice behind me, and I turned to see the
butler, his face dripping with perspiration, his eyes starting out of
his head.
“The laundry’s on fire!” he cried; “the laundry building’s a-caught!”
I remember his odd expression “a-caught,” and wanting to laugh, but
finding my face rigid and inflexible.
“The devil’s about again, s’help me Gawd!” he cried, in a voice thin
with terror, running about in circles.
And then the group on the stairs scattered as at the sound of a shot,
and the Colonel and Dr. Silence came down three steps at a time,
leaving the afflicted Miss Wragge to the care of her single attendant.
We were out across the front lawn in a moment and round the corner
of the house, the Colonel leading, Silence and I at his heels, and
the portly butler puffing some distance in the rear, getting more and
more mixed in his addresses to God and the devil; and the moment we
passed the stables and came into view of the laundry building, we saw a
wicked-looking volume of smoke pouring out of the narrow windows, and
the frightened women-servants and grooms running hither and thither,
calling aloud as they ran.
The arrival of the master restored order instantly, and this retired
soldier, poor thinker perhaps, but capable man of action, had the
matter in hand from the start. He issued orders like a martinet, and,
almost before I could realise it, there were streaming buckets on the
scene and a line of men and women formed between the building and the
stable pump.
“Inside,” I heard John Silence cry, and the Colonel followed him
through the door, while I was just quick enough at their heels to hear
him add, “the smoke’s the worst part of it. There’s no fire yet, I
think.”
And, true enough, there was no fire. The interior was thick with smoke,
but it speedily cleared and not a single bucket was used upon the floor
or walls. The air was stifling, the heat fearful.
“There’s precious little to burn in here; it’s all stone,” the Colonel
exclaimed, coughing. But the doctor was pointing to the wooden covers
of the great cauldron in which the clothes were washed, and we saw that
these were smouldering and charred. And when we sprinkled half a bucket
of water on them the surrounding bricks hissed and fizzed and sent up
clouds of steam. Through the open door and windows this passed out with
the rest of the smoke, and we three stood there on the brick floor
staring at the spot and wondering, each in our own fashion, how in the
name of natural law the place could have caught fire or smoked at all.
And each was silent--myself from sheer incapacity and befuddlement, the
Colonel from the quiet pluck that faces all things yet speaks little,
and John Silence from the intense mental grappling with this latest
manifestation of a profound problem that called for concentration of
thought rather than for any words.
There was really nothing to say. The facts were indisputable.
Colonel Wragge was the first to utter.
“My sister,” he said briefly, and moved off. In the yard I heard him
sending the frightened servants about their business in an excellently
matter-of-fact voice, scolding some one roundly for making such a big
fire and letting the flues get over-heated, and paying no heed to the
stammering reply that no fire had been lit there for several days. Then
he dispatched a groom on horseback for the local doctor.
Then Dr. Silence turned and looked at me. The absolute control he
possessed, not only over the outward expression of emotion by gesture,
change of colour, light in the eyes, and so forth, but also, as I well
knew, over its very birth in his heart, the mask-like face of the dead
he could assume at will, made it extremely difficult to know at any
given moment what was at work in his inner consciousness. But now, when
he turned and looked at me, there was no sphinx-expression there, but
rather the keen, triumphant face of a man who had solved a dangerous
and complicated problem, and saw his way to a clean victory.
“_Now_ do you guess?” he asked quietly, as though it were the simplest
matter in the world, and ignorance were impossible.
I could only stare stupidly and remain silent. He glanced down at the
charred cauldron-lids, and traced a figure in the air with his finger.
But I was too excited, or too mortified, or still too dazed, perhaps,
to see what it was he outlined, or what it was he meant to convey. I
could only go on staring and shaking my puzzled head.
“A fire-elemental,” he cried, “a fire-elemental of the most powerful
and malignant kind----”
“A what?” thundered the voice of Colonel Wragge behind us, having
returned suddenly and overheard.
“It’s a fire-elemental,” repeated Dr. Silence more calmly, but
with a note of triumph in his voice he could not keep out, “and a
fire-elemental enraged.”
The light began to dawn in my mind at last. But the Colonel--who had
never heard the term before, and was besides feeling considerably
worked-up for a plain man with all this mystery he knew not how to
grapple with--the Colonel stood, with the most dumfoundered look ever
seen on a human countenance, and continued to roar, and stammer, and
stare.
“And why,” he began, savage with the desire to find something visible
he could fight--“why, in the name of all the blazes----?” and then
stopped as John Silence moved up and took his arm.
“There, my dear Colonel Wragge,” he said gently, “you touch the heart
of the whole thing. You ask ‘Why.’ That is precisely our problem.” He
held the soldier’s eyes firmly with his own. “And that, too, I think,
we shall soon know. Come and let us talk over a plan of action--that
room with the double doors, perhaps.”
The word “action” calmed him a little, and he led the way, without
further speech, back into the house, and down the long stone passage to
the room where we had heard his stories on the night of our arrival.
I understood from the doctor’s glance that my presence would not make
the interview easier for our host, and I went upstairs to my own
room--shaking.
But in the solitude of my room the vivid memories of the last hour
revived so mercilessly that I began to feel I should never in my whole
life lose the dreadful picture of Miss Wragge running--that dreadful
human climax after all the non-human mystery in the wood--and I was not
sorry when a servant knocked at my door and said that Colonel Wragge
would be glad if I would join them in the little smoking-room.
“I think it is better you should be present,” was all Colonel Wragge
said as I entered the room. I took the chair with my back to the
window. There was still an hour before lunch, though I imagine that
the usual divisions of the day hardly found a place in the thoughts of
any one of us.
The atmosphere of the room was what I might call electric. The Colonel
was positively bristling; he stood with his back to the fire, fingering
an unlit black cigar, his face flushed, his being obviously roused
and ready for action. He hated this mystery. It was poisonous to his
nature, and he longed to meet something face to face--something he
could gauge and fight. Dr. Silence, I noticed at once, was sitting
before the map of the estate which was spread upon a table. I knew
by his expression the state of his mind. He was in the thick of it
all, knew it, delighted in it, and was working at high pressure. He
recognised my presence with a lifted eyelid, and the flash of the eye,
contrasted with his stillness and composure, told me volumes.
“I was about to explain to our host briefly what seems to me afoot in
all this business,” he said without looking up, “when he asked that you
should join us so that we can all work together.” And, while signifying
my assent, I caught myself wondering what quality it was in the calm
speech of this undemonstrative man that was so full of power, so
charged with the strange, virile personality behind it, and that seemed
to inspire us with his own confidence as by a process of radiation.
“Mr. Hubbard,” he went on gravely, turning to the soldier, “knows
something of my methods, and in more than one--er--interesting
situation has proved of assistance. What we want now”--and here he
suddenly got up and took his place on the mat beside the Colonel, and
looked hard at him--“is men who have self-control, who are sure of
themselves, whose minds at the critical moment will emit positive
forces, instead of the wavering and uncertain currents due to negative
feelings--due, for instance, to fear.”
He looked at us each in turn. Colonel Wragge moved his feet farther
apart, and squared his shoulders; and I felt guilty but said nothing,
conscious that my latent store of courage was being deliberately hauled
to the front. He was winding me up like a clock.
“So that, in what is yet to come,” continued our leader, “each of us
will contribute his share of power, and ensure success for my plan.”
“I’m not afraid of anything I can _see_,” said the Colonel bluntly.
“I’m ready,” I heard myself say, as it were automatically, “for
anything,” and then added, feeling the declaration was lamely
insufficient, “and everything.”
Dr. Silence left the mat and began walking to and fro about the room,
both hands plunged deep into the pockets of his shooting-jacket.
Tremendous vitality streamed from him. I never took my eyes off the
small, moving figure; small, yes,--and yet somehow making me think of
a giant plotting the destruction of worlds. And his manner was gentle,
as always, soothing almost, and his words uttered quietly without
emphasis or emotion. Most of what he said was addressed, though not too
obviously, to the Colonel.
“The violence of this sudden attack,” he said softly, pacing to and
fro beneath the bookcase at the end of the room, “is due, of course,
partly to the fact that to-night the moon is at the full”--here he
glanced at me for a moment--“and partly to the fact that we have all
been so deliberately concentrating upon the matter. Our thinking, our
investigation, has stirred it into unusual activity. I mean that the
intelligent force behind these manifestations has realised that some
one is busied about its destruction. And it is now on the defensive:
more, it is aggressive.”
“But ‘it’--what is ‘it’?” began the soldier, fuming. “What, in the name
of all that’s dreadful, _is_ a fire-elemental?”
“I cannot give you at this moment,” replied Dr. Silence, turning to
him, but undisturbed by the interruption, “a lecture on the nature and
history of magic, but can only say that an Elemental is the active
force behind the elements,--whether earth, air, water, _or fire_,--it
is impersonal in its essential nature, but can be focused, personified,
ensouled, so to say, by those who know how--by magicians, if you
will--for certain purposes of their own, much in the same way that
steam and electricity can be harnessed by the practical man of this
century.
“Alone, these blind elemental energies can accomplish little, but
governed and directed by the trained will of a powerful manipulator
they may become potent activities for good or evil. They are the basis
of all magic, and it is the motive behind them that constitutes the
magic ‘black’ or ‘white’; they can be the vehicles of curses or of
blessings, for a curse is nothing more than the thought of a violent
will perpetuated. And in such cases--cases like this--the conscious,
directing will of the mind that is using the elemental stands always
behind the phenomena----”
“You think that my brother----!” broke in the Colonel, aghast.
“Has nothing whatever to do with it--directly. The fire-elemental that
has here been tormenting you and your household was sent upon its
mission long before you, or your family, or your ancestors, or even the
nation you belong to--unless I am much mistaken--was even in existence.
We will come to that a little later; after the experiment I propose to
make we shall be more positive. At present I can only say we have to
deal now, not only with the phenomenon of Attacking Fire merely, but
with the vindictive and enraged intelligence that is directing it from
behind the scenes--vindictive and enraged,”--he repeated the words.
“That explains----” began Colonel Wragge, seeking furiously for words
he could not find quickly enough.
“Much,” said John Silence, with a gesture to restrain him.
He stopped a moment in the middle of his walk, and a deep silence
came down over the little room. Through the windows the sunlight
seemed less bright, the long line of dark hills less friendly, making
me think of a vast wave towering to heaven and about to break and
overwhelm us. Something formidable had crept into the world about us.
For, undoubtedly, there was a disquieting thought, holding terror as
well as awe, in the picture his words conjured up: the conception of a
human will reaching its deathless hand, spiteful and destructive, down
through the ages, to strike the living and afflict the innocent.
“But what _is_ its object?” burst out the soldier, unable to restrain
himself longer in the silence. “Why does it come from that plantation?
And why should it attack us, or any one in particular?” Questions
began to pour from him in a stream.
“All in good time,” the doctor answered quietly, having let him run
on for several minutes. “But I must first discover positively what,
or who, it is that directs this particular fire-elemental. And, to
do that, we must first”--he spoke with slow deliberation--“seek to
capture--to confine by visibility--to limit its sphere in a concrete
form.”
“Good heavens almighty!” exclaimed the soldier, mixing his words in his
unfeigned surprise.
“Quite so,” pursued the other calmly; “for in so doing I think we
can release it from the purpose that binds it, restore it to its
normal condition of latent fire, and also”--he lowered his voice
perceptibly--“also discover the face and form of the Being that ensouls
it.”
“The man behind the gun!” cried the Colonel, beginning to understand
something, and leaning forward so as not to miss a single syllable.
“I mean that in the last resort, before it returns to the womb of
potential fire, it will probably assume the face and figure of its
Director, of the man of magical knowledge who originally bound it with
his incantations and sent it forth upon its mission of centuries.”
The soldier sat down and gasped openly in his face, breathing hard; but
it was a very subdued voice that framed the question.
“And how do you propose to make it visible? How capture and confine it?
What d’ye mean, Dr. John Silence?”
“By furnishing it with the materials for a form. By the process of
materialisation simply. Once limited by dimensions, it will become
slow, heavy, visible. We can then dissipate it. Invisible fire, you
see, is dangerous and incalculable; locked up in a form we can perhaps
manage it. We must betray it--to its death.”
“And this material?” we asked in the same breath, although I think I
had already guessed.
“Not pleasant, but effective,” came the quiet reply; “the exhalations
of freshly-spilled blood.”
“Not human blood!” cried Colonel Wragge, starting up from his chair
with a voice like an explosion. I thought his eyes would start from
their sockets.
The face of Dr. Silence relaxed in spite of himself, and his
spontaneous little laugh brought a welcome though momentary relief.
“The days of human sacrifice, I hope, will never come again,” he
explained. “Animal blood will answer the purpose, and we can make the
experiment as pleasant as possible. Only, the blood must be freshly
spilled and strong with the vital emanations that attract this peculiar
class of elemental creature. Perhaps--perhaps if some pig on the estate
is ready for the market----”
He turned to hide a smile; but the passing touch of comedy found
no echo in the mind of our host, who did not understand how to
change quickly from one emotion to another. Clearly he was debating
many things laboriously in his honest brain. But, in the end, the
earnestness and scientific disinterestedness of the doctor, whose
influence over him was already very great, won the day, and he
presently looked up more calmly, and observed shortly that he thought
perhaps the matter could be arranged.
“There are other and pleasanter methods,” Dr. Silence went on to
explain, “but they require time and preparation, and things have gone
much too far, in my opinion, to admit of delay. And the process need
cause you no distress: we sit round the bowl and await results. Nothing
more. The emanations of blood--which, as Levi says, is the first
incarnation of the universal fluid--furnish the materials out of which
the creatures of discarnate life, spirits if you prefer, can fashion
themselves a temporary appearance. The process is old, and lies at
the root of all blood sacrifice. It was known to the priests of Baal,
and it is known to the modern ecstasy dancers who cut themselves to
produce objective phantoms who dance with them. And the least gifted
clairvoyant could tell you that the forms to be seen in the vicinity of
slaughterhouses, or hovering above the deserted battlefield, are--well,
simply beyond all description. I do not mean,” he added, noticing the
uneasy fidgeting of his host, “that anything in our laundry-experiment
need appear to terrify us, for this case seems a comparatively simple
one, and it is only the vindictive character of the intelligence
directing this fire-elemental that causes anxiety and makes for
personal danger.”
“It is curious,” said the Colonel, with a sudden rush of words,
drawing a deep breath, and as though speaking of things distasteful
to him, “that during my years among the Hill Tribes of Northern India
I came across--personally came across--instances of the sacrifices of
blood to certain deities being stopped suddenly, and all manner of
disasters happening until they were resumed. Fires broke out in the
huts, and even on the clothes, of the natives--and--and I admit I
have read, in the course of my studies,”--he made a gesture towards
his books and heavily laden table,--“of the Yezidis of Syria evoking
phantoms by means of cutting their bodies with knives during their
whirling dances--enormous globes of fire which turned into monstrous
and terrible forms--and I remember an account somewhere, too, how the
emaciated forms and pallid countenances of the spectres, that appeared
to the Emperor Julian, claimed to be the true Immortals, and told him
to renew the sacrifices of blood ‘for the fumes of which, since the
establishment of Christianity, they had been pining’--that these were
in reality the phantoms evoked by the rites of blood.”
Both Dr. Silence and myself listened in amazement, for this sudden
speech was so unexpected, and betrayed so much more knowledge than we
had either of us suspected in the old soldier.
“Then perhaps you have read, too,” said the doctor, “how the Cosmic
Deities of savage races, elemental in their nature, have been kept
alive through many ages by these blood rites?”
“No,” he answered; “that is new to me.”
“In any case,” Dr. Silence added, “I am glad you are not wholly
unfamiliar with the subject, for you will now bring more sympathy, and
therefore more help, to our experiment. For, of course, in this case,
we only want the blood to tempt the creature from its lair and enclose
it in a form----”
“I quite understand. And I only hesitated just now,” he went on,
his words coming much more slowly, as though he felt he had already
said too much, “because I wished to be quite sure it was no mere
curiosity, but an actual sense of necessity that dictated this horrible
experiment.”
“It is your safety, and that of your household, and of your sister,
that is at stake,” replied the doctor. “Once I have _seen_, I hope to
discover whence this elemental comes, and what its real purpose is.”
Colonel Wragge signified his assent with a bow.
“And the moon will help us,” the other said, “for it will be full in
the early hours of the morning, and this kind of elemental-being is
always most active at the period of full moon. Hence, you see, the clue
furnished by your diary.”
So it was finally settled. Colonel Wragge would provide the materials
for the experiment, and we were to meet at midnight. How he would
contrive at that hour--but that was his business. I only know we
both realised that he would keep his word, and whether a pig died at
midnight, or at noon, was after all perhaps only a question of the
sleep and personal comfort of the executioner.
“To-night, then, in the laundry,” said Dr. Silence finally, to clinch
the plan; “we three alone--and at midnight, when the household is
asleep and we shall be free from disturbance.”
He exchanged significant glances with our host, who, at that moment,
was called away by the announcement that the family doctor had arrived,
and was ready to see him in his sister’s room.
For the remainder of the afternoon John Silence disappeared. I had my
suspicions that he made a secret visit to the plantation and also to
the laundry building; but, in any case, we saw nothing of him, and
he kept strictly to himself. He was preparing for the night, I felt
sure, but the nature of his preparations I could only guess. There was
movement in his room, I heard, and an odour like incense hung about the
door, and knowing that he regarded rites as the vehicles of energies,
my guesses were probably not far wrong.
Colonel Wragge, too, remained absent the greater part of the afternoon,
and, deeply afflicted, had scarcely left his sister’s bedside, but in
response to my inquiry when we met for a moment at tea-time, he told me
that although she had moments of attempted speech, her talk was quite
incoherent and hysterical, and she was still quite unable to explain
the nature of what she had seen. The doctor, he said, feared she had
recovered the use of her limbs, only to lose that of her memory, and
perhaps even of her mind.
“Then the recovery of her legs, I trust, may be permanent, at any
rate,” I ventured, finding it difficult to know what sympathy to offer.
And he replied with a curious short laugh, “Oh yes; about that there
can be no doubt whatever.”
And it was due merely to the chance of my overhearing a fragment of
conversation--unwillingly, of course--that a little further light was
thrown upon the state in which the old lady actually lay. For, as I
came out of my room, it happened that Colonel Wragge and the doctor
were going downstairs together, and their words floated up to my ears
before I could make my presence known by so much as a cough.
“Then you must find a way,” the doctor was saying with decision; “for
I cannot insist too strongly upon that--and at all costs she must be
kept quiet. These attempts to go out must be prevented--if necessary,
by force. This desire to visit some wood or other she keeps talking
about is, of course, hysterical in nature. It cannot be permitted for a
moment.”
“It shall not be permitted,” I heard the soldier reply, as they reached
the hall below.
“It has impressed her mind for some reason----” the doctor went on, by
way evidently of soothing explanation, and then the distance made it
impossible for me to hear more.
At dinner Dr. Silence was still absent, on the public plea of a
headache, and though food was sent to his room, I am inclined to
believe he did not touch it, but spent the entire time fasting.
We retired early, desiring that the household should do likewise, and
I must confess that at ten o’clock when I bid my host a temporary
good-night, and sought my room to make what mental preparation I could,
I realised in no very pleasant fashion that it was a singular and
formidable assignation, this midnight meeting in the laundry building,
and that there were moments in every adventure of life when a wise
man, and one who knew his own limitations, owed it to his dignity
to withdraw discreetly. And, but for the character of our leader, I
probably should have then and there offered the best excuse I could
think of, and have allowed myself quietly to fall asleep and wait for
an exciting story in the morning of what had happened. But with a man
like John Silence, such a lapse was out of the question, and I sat
before my fire counting the minutes and doing everything I could think
of to fortify my resolution and fasten my will at the point where I
could be reasonably sure that my self-control would hold against all
attacks of men, devils, or elementals.