The Crack of Doom
I found at first displeasing, was what I wanted to help me to shake off
the gloomy incubus of thought oppressing me. It was hardly within the
proprieties to call upon her at such an hour, but it could not matter
very much, when the girl's own ideas were so unconventional. She had
independent means, and lived apart from her family in order to be rid of
domestic limitations. She had told me that she carried a
latch-key--indeed she had shown it to me with a flourish of triumph--and
that she delighted in free manners. Free manners, she was careful to
add, did not mean bad manners. To my mind the terms were synonymous.
When opposite her number I decided to call, and, having knocked at the
door, was told that Miss Metford was at home.
"Hallo, Marcel! Glad to see you," she called out, somewhat stridently
for my taste. Her dress was rather mannish, as usual. In lieu of her
out-door tunic she wore a smoking-jacket. When I entered she was sitting
in an arm-chair, with her feet on a music-stool. She arose so hastily
that the music-stool was overturned, and allowed to lie where it fell.
"What is the matter?" she asked, concerned. "Have you seen a ghost?"
"I think I have seen many ghosts of late," I said, "and they have not
been good company. I was passing your door, and I have come in for
comfort."
She crossed the room and poured out some whisky from a decanter which
was standing on a side-board. Then she opened a bottle of soda-water
with a facility which suggested practice. I was relieved to think that
it was not Natalie who was my hostess. Handing me the glass, she said
peremptorily:
"Drink that. That is right. Give me the glass. Now smoke. Do I allow
smoking here? Pah! I smoke here myself."
I lit a cigar and sat down beside her. The clouds began to lift from my
brain and float off in the blue smoke wreaths. We talked on ordinary
topics without my once noticing how deftly they had been introduced by
Miss Metford. I never thought of the flight of time until a chime from a
tiny clock on the mantelpiece--an exquisite sample of the tasteful
furniture of the whole room--warned me that my visit had lasted two
hours. I arose reluctantly.
She rallied me on my ingratitude. I had come in a sorry plight. I was
now restored. She was no longer useful, therefore I left her. And so on,
till I said with a solemnity no doubt lugubrious:
"I am most grateful, Miss Metford. I cannot tell you how grateful I am.
You would not understand--"
"Oh, please leave my poor understanding alone, and tell me what has
happened to you. I should like to hear it. And what is more, I like
you." She said this so carelessly, I did not feel embarrassed. "Now,
then, the whole story, please." Saying which, she sat down again.
"Do you really know nothing more of Brande's Society than you admitted
when I last spoke to you about it?" I asked, without taking the chair
she pushed over to me.
"This is all I know," she answered, in the rhyming voice of a young
pupil declaiming a piece of a little understood and less cared for
recitation. "The society has very interesting evenings. Brande shows one
beautiful experiments, which, I daresay, would be amazingly instructive
if one were inclined that way, which I am not. The men are mostly
long-haired creatures with spectacles. Some of them are rather
good-looking. All are wholly mad. And my friend--I mean the only girl I
could ever stand as a friend--Natalie Brande, is crazy about them."
"Nothing more than that?"
"Nothing more."
The clock now struck the hour of nine, the warning chime for which had
startled me.
"Is there anything more than that?" Miss Metford asked with some
impatience.
I thought for a moment. Unless my own senses had deceived me that
evening in Brande's house, I ran a great risk of sharing George Delany's
fate if I remained where I was much longer. And suppose I told her all
I knew, would not that bring the same danger upon her too? So I had to
answer:
"I cannot tell you. I am a member now."
"Then you must know more than any mere outsider like myself. I suppose
it would not be fair to ask you. Anyhow, you will come back and see me
soon. By the way, what is your address?"
I gave her my address. She wrote it down on a silver-cased tablet, and
remarked:
"That will be all right. I'll look you up some evening."
As I drove to my hotel, I felt that the mesmeric trick, or whatever
artifice had been practised upon me by Brande and Grey, had now assumed
its true proportion. I laughed at my fears, and was thankful that I had
not described them to the strong-minded young woman to whose kindly
society I owed so much. What an idiot she would have thought me!
A servant met me in the hall.
"Telegram, sir. Just arrived at this moment."
I took the telegram, and went upstairs with it unopened in my hand. A
strange fear overcame me. I dared not open the envelope. I knew
beforehand who the sender was, and what the drift of the message would
be. I was right. It was from Brande.
"I beg you to be more cautious. Your discussion with Miss M. this
evening might have been disastrous. I thought all was over at nine
o'clock.
"BRANDE."
I sat down stupefied. When my senses returned, I looked at the table
where I had thrown the telegram. It was not there, nor in the room. I
rang for the man who had given it to me, and he came immediately.
"About that telegram you gave me just now, Phillips--"
"I beg your pardon, sir," the man interrupted, "I did not give you any
telegram this evening."
"I mean when you spoke to me in the hall."
"Yes, sir. I said 'good-night,' but you took no notice. Excuse me, sir,
I thought you looked strange."
"Oh, I was thinking of something else. And I remember now, it was
Johnson who gave me the telegram."
"Johnson left yesterday, sir."
"Then it was yesterday I was thinking of. You may go, Phillips."
So Brande's telepathic power was objective as well as subjective. My own
brain, unaccustomed to be impressed by another mind "otherwise than
through the recognised channels of sense," had supplied the likeliest
authority for its message. The message was duly delivered, but the
telegram was a delusion.
CHAPTER VII.
GUILTY!
As to protecting Natalie Brande from her brother and the fanatics with
whom he associated, it was now plain that I was powerless. And what
guarantee had I that she herself was unaware of his nefarious purpose;
that she did not sympathise with it? This last thought flashed upon me
one day, and the sting of pain that followed it was so intolerable, I
determined instantly to prove its falsity or truth.
I telegraphed to Brande that I was running down to spend a day or two
with him, and followed my message without waiting for a reply. I have
still a very distinct recollection of that journey, notwithstanding much
that might well have blotted it from my memory. Every mile sped over
seemed to mark one more barrier passed on my way to some strange fate;
every moment which brought me nearer this incomprehensible girl with
her magical eyes was an epoch of impossibility against my ever
voluntarily turning back. And now that it is all over, I am glad that I
went on steadfastly to the end.
Brande received me with the easy affability of a man to whom good
breeding had ceased to be a habit, and had become an instinct. Only once
did anything pass between us bearing on the extraordinary relationship
which he had established with me--the relation of victor and victim, I
considered it. We had been left together for a few moments, and I said
as soon as the others were out of hearing distance:
"I got your message."
"I know you did," he replied. That was all. There was an awkward pause.
It must be broken somehow. Any way out of the difficulty was better than
to continue in it.
"Have you seen this?" I asked, handing Brande a copy of a novel which I
had picked up at a railway bookstall. When I say that it was new and
popular, it will be understood that it was indecent.
He looked at the title, and said indifferently: "Yes, I have seen it,
and in order to appreciate this class of fiction fairly, I have even
tried to read it. Why do you ask?"
"Because I thought it would be in your line. It is very advanced." I
said this to gain time.
"Advanced--advanced? I am afraid I do not comprehend. What do you mean
by 'advanced'? And how could it be in my line. I presume you mean by
that, on my plane of thought?"
"By 'advanced,' I mean up-to-date. What do you mean by it?"
"If I used the word at all, I should mean educated, evolved. Is this
evolved? Is it even educated? It is not always grammatical. It has no
style. In motive, it ante-dates Boccaccio."
"You disapprove of it."
"Certainly not."
"Then you approve it, notwithstanding your immediate condemnation?"
"By no means. I neither approve nor disapprove. It only represents a
phase of humanity--the deliberate purpose of securing money or notoriety
to the individual, regardless of the welfare of the community. There is
nothing to admire in that. It would be invidious to blame it when the
whole social scheme is equally wrong and contemptible. By the way, what
interest do you think the wares of any literary pander, of either sex,
could possess for me, a student--even if a mistaken one--of science?"
"I did not think the book would possess the slightest interest for you,
and I suppose you are already aware of that?"
"Ah no! My telepathic power is reserved for more serious purposes. Its
exercise costs me too much to expend it on trifles. In consequence I do
not know why you mentioned the book."
To this I answered candidly, "I mentioned it in order to get myself out
of a conversational difficulty--without much success."
Natalie was reserved with me at first. She devoted herself unnecessarily
to a boy named Halley who was staying with them. Grey had gone to
London. His place was taken by a Mr. Rockingham, whom I did not like.
There was something sinister in his expression, and he rarely spoke save
to say something cynical, and in consequence disagreeable. He had "seen
life," that is, everything deleterious to and destructive of it. His
connection with Brande was clearly a rebound, the rebound of disgust.
There was nothing creditable to him in that. My first impression of him
was thus unfavourable. My last recollection of him is a fitting item in
the nightmare which contains it.
The youth Halley would have interested me under ordinary circumstances.
His face was as handsome and refined as that of a pretty girl. His
figure, too, was slight and his voice effeminate. But there my own
advantage, as I deemed it, over him ceased. Intellectually, he was a
pupil of Brande's who did his master credit. Having made this discovery
I did not pursue it. My mind was fixed too fast upon a definite issue to
be more than temporarily interested in the epigrams of a peachy-cheeked
man of science.
The afternoon was well advanced before I had an opportunity of speaking
to Natalie. When it came, I did not stop to puzzle over a choice of
phrases.
"I wish to speak to you alone on a subject of extreme importance to me,"
I said hurriedly. "Will you come with me to the sea-shore? Your time, I
know, is fully occupied. I would not ask this if my happiness did not
depend upon it."
The philosopher looked on me with grave, kind eyes. But the woman's
heart within her sent the red blood flaming to her cheeks. It was then
given to me to fathom the lowest depth of boorish stupidity I had ever
sounded.
"I don't mean that," I cried, "I would not dare--"
The blush on her cheek burnt deeper as she tossed her head proudly back,
and said straight out, without any show of fence or shadow of
concealment: