The Soul Stealer. Thorne Guy
entered and walked along a wide gravel path towards the portico of the house, chatting casually to the butler as he went.
It could now be seen that Sir William Gouldesbrough's residence was a typical mansion of George the First's reign. The brick was mellowed to a pleasant autumnal tint, the windows, with their white frames and small panes, were set in mathematical lines down the façade, a flight of stone steps led up to the square pillared porch, on each side of which a clumsy stone lion with a distinctly German expression was crouching. The heavy panelled door was open, and together the guest and the butler passed into the hall.
It was a large place with a tesselated floor and high white painted doors all round. Two or three great bronze urns stood upon marble pedestals. There was a big leather couch of a heavy and old-fashioned pattern, and a stuffed bear standing on its hind legs, some eight feet high, and with a balancing pole in its paws, formed a hat rack.
The hall was lit from a square domed sky-light in the roof, which showed that it was surrounded by a gallery, up to which led a broad flight of stairs with carved balustrades.
The whole place indeed was old-fashioned and sombre. After the coziness of the smart little club in St. James's Street, and the brightness and glitter of the centre of the West End of town, Charliewood felt, as indeed he always did, a sense of dislike and depression.
It was all so heavy, massive, ugly, and old-fashioned. One expected to see grim and sober gentlemen in knee-breeches and powdered hair coming silently out of this or that ponderous doorway – lean, respectable and uncomfortable ghosts of a period now vanished for ever.
"Will you go straight on to the study, sir?" the butler said. "Sir William expects you."
Charliewood did not take off his coat, as if he thought that the interview to which he was summoned need not be unduly prolonged. But with his hat and umbrella in his hand he crossed the hall to its farthest left angle beyond the projecting staircase, and opened a green baize door.
He found himself in a short passage heavily carpeted, at the end of which was another door. This he opened and came at once into Sir William Gouldesbrough's study.
Directly he entered, he saw that his friend was sitting in an arm-chair by the side of a large writing-table.
Something unfamiliar in his host's attitude, and the chair in which he was sitting, struck him at once.
He looked again and saw that the chair was slightly raised from the ground upon a low daïs, and was of peculiar construction.
In a moment more he started with surprise to see that there was something extremely odd about Sir William's head.
A gleam of sunlight was pouring into the room through a long window which opened on to the lawn at the back of the house. It fell full upon the upper portion of the scientist's body, and with a muffled expression of surprise, Mr. Charliewood saw that Sir William was wearing a sort of helmet, a curved shining head-dress of brass, like the cup of an acorn, from the top of which a thick black cord rose upwards to a china plug set in the wall not far away.
"Good heavens, Gouldesbrough!" he said in uncontrollable surprise, "what – "
As he spoke Sir William turned and held up one hand, motioning him to silence.
The handsome and intellectual face that was so well known to the public was fixed and set into attention, and did not relax or change at Charliewood's ejaculation.
The warning hand remained held up, and that was all.
Charliewood stood frozen to the floor in wonder and uneasiness, utterly at a loss to understand what was going on. The tremor of his nerves began again, his whole body felt like a pincushion into which innumerable pins were being pushed.
Then, with extreme suddenness, he experienced another shock.
Somewhere in the room, quite close to him, an electric bell, like the sudden alarm of a clock on a dark dawn, whirred a shrill summons.
The big man jumped where he stood.
At the unexpected rattle of the bell, Sir William put his hand up to his head, touched something that clicked, and lifted the heavy metal cap from it. He placed it carefully down upon the writing-table, passed his hand over his face for a moment with a tired gesture, and then turned to his guest.
"How do you do?" he said. "Glad to see you, Charliewood."
CHAPTER II
UNEXPECTED ENTRANCE OF TWO LADIES
For a moment or two Eustace Charliewood did not return his host's greeting. He was not only surprised by the curious proceeding of which he had been a witness, but he felt a certain chill also.
"What the deuce are you up to now, Gouldesbrough?" he said in an uneasy voice. "Another of your beastly experiments? I wish you wouldn't startle a fellow in this way."
Sir William looked keenly at the big man whose face had become curiously pallid.
There was a tremendous contrast in the two people in the room. Gouldesbrough was a very handsome man, as handsome as Charliewood himself had been in younger days, but it was with an entirely different beauty. His face was clean shaved, also, but it was dark, clear-cut and ascetic. The eyes were dark blue, singularly bright and direct in glance, and shaded by heavy brows. The whole face and poise of the tall lean body spoke of power, knowledge, and resolution.
One man was of the earth, earthy; the other seemed far removed from sensual and material things. Yet, perhaps, a deep student of character, and one who had gone far into the hidden springs of action within the human soul, would have preferred the weak, easy-going sensualist, with all his meannesses and viciousness, to the hard and agate intellect, the indomitable and lawless will that sometimes shone out upon the face of the scientist like a lit lamp.
Charliewood sat down in obedience to a motion of his host's hand. He sat down with a sigh, for he knew that he had been summoned to Sir William Gouldesbrough's house to perform yet another duty which was certain to be distasteful and furtive.
Yes! there was no hope for it now. For the last few years the man about town had been under the dominion of a stronger will than his, of a more cunning, of a more ruthless brain. Little by little he had become entangled within the net that Gouldesbrough had spread for him. And the lure had been then and afterwards a lure of money – the one thing Charliewood worshipped in the world.
The history of the growth of his secret servitude to this famous man was a long one. Money had been lent to him, he had signed this or that paper, he had found his other large debts bought up by the scientist, and at the end of three years he had found himself willy nilly, body and soul, the servant of this man, who could ruin him in a single moment and cast him down out of his comfortable life for ever and a day.
No living soul knew or suspected that there was any such bond as this between the two men. Even Charliewood's enemies never guessed the truth – that he was a sort of jackal, a spy to do his master's bidding, to execute this or that secret commission, to go and come as he was ordered.
As yet all the services which Charliewood had rendered to Sir William, and for which, be it said, he was excellently paid, were those which, though they bordered upon the dishonourable and treacherous, never actually overstepped the borders.
Gouldesbrough employed Charliewood to find out this or that, to make acquaintance with one person or another, to lay the foundation, in fact, of an edifice which he himself would afterwards build upon information supplied by the clubman. There was no crime in any of these proceedings, no robbery or black-mail. And what happened after he had done his work Charliewood neither knew nor cared. Of one thing, however, he was certain, that whatever the scientist's motives might be – and he did not seek to probe them – they were not those of the ordinary criminal or indeed ever bordered upon the criminal at all. All that Charliewood knew, and realized with impotence and bitterness, was that he had allowed himself to become a mere tool and spy of this man's, a prober of secrets, a walker in tortuous by-paths.
"What did you wire to me for?" Charliewood said in a sulky voice. "What do you want me to do now?"
Sir William looked quickly at his guest, and