'Then you believe it too?' said Susie.

'I don't know what I believe now,' he cried. 'After all, we can't do anything if she chooses to go back to her husband. She's apparently her own mistress.' He wrung his hands. 'And I'm imprisoned in London! I can't leave it for a day. I ought not to be here now, and I must get back in a couple of hours. I can do nothing, and yet I'm convinced that Margaret is utterly wretched.'

Susie paused for a minute or two. She wondered how he would accept the suggestion that was in her mind.

'Do you know, it seems to me that common methods are useless. The only chance is to fight him with his own weapons. Would you mind if I went over to Paris to consult Dr Porhoet? You know that he is learned in every branch of the occult, and perhaps he might help us.'

But Arthur pulled himself together.

'It's absurd. We mustn't give way to superst.i.tion. Haddo is merely a scoundrel and a charlatan. He's worked on our nerves as he's worked on poor Margaret's. It's impossible to suppose that he has any powers greater than the common run of mankind.'

'Even after all you've seen with your own eyes?'

'If my eyes show me what all my training a.s.sures me is impossible, I can only conclude that my eyes deceive me.'

'Well, I shall run over to Paris.'

13

Some weeks later Dr Porhoet was sitting among his books in the quiet, low room that overlooked the Seine. He had given himself over to a pleasing melancholy. The heat beat down upon the noisy streets of Paris, and the din of the great city penetrated even to his fastness in the ile Saint Louis. He remembered the cloud-laden sky of the country where he was born, and the south-west wind that blew with a salt freshness. The long streets of Brest, present to his fancy always in a drizzle of rain, with the lights of cafes reflected on the wet pavements, had a familiar charm.

Even in foul weather the sailor-men who trudged along them gave one a curious sense of comfort. There was delight in the smell of the sea and in the freedom of the great Atlantic. And then he thought of the green lanes and of the waste places with their scented heather, the fair broad roads that led from one old sweet town to another, of the _Pardons_ and their gentle, sad crowds. Dr Porhoet gave a sigh.

'It is good to be born in the land of Brittany,' he smiled.

But his _bonne_ showed Susie in, and he rose with a smile to greet her.

She had been in Paris for some time, and they had seen much of one another. He basked in the gentle sympathy with which she interested herself in all the abstruse, quaint matters on which he spent his time; and, divining her love for Arthur, he admired the courage with which she effaced herself. They had got into the habit of eating many of their meals together in a quiet house opposite the Cluny called La Reine Blanche, and here they had talked of so many things that their acquaintance was grown into a charming friendship.

'I'm ashamed to come here so often,' said Susie, as she entered. 'Matilde is beginning to look at me with a suspicious eye.'

'It is very good of you to entertain a tiresome old man,' he smiled, as he held her hand. 'But I should have been disappointed if you had forgotten your promise to come this afternoon, for I have much to tell you.'

'Tell me at once,' she said, sitting down.

'I have discovered an MS. at the library of the a.r.s.enal this morning that no one knew anything about.'

He said this with an air of triumph, as though the achievement were of national importance. Susie had a tenderness for his innocent mania; and, though she knew the work in question was occult and incomprehensible, congratulated him heartily.

'It is the original version of a book by Paracelsus. I have not read it yet, for the writing is most difficult to decipher, but one point caught my eye on turning over the pages. That is the gruesome fact that Paracelsus fed the _homunculi_ he manufactured on human blood. One wonders how he came by it.'

Susie gave a little start, which Dr Porhoet noticed.

'What is the matter with you?'

'Nothing,' she said quickly.

He looked at her for a moment, then proceeded with the subject that strangely fascinated him.

'You must let me take you one day to the library of the a.r.s.enal. There is no richer collection in the world of books dealing with the occult sciences. And of course you know that it was at the a.r.s.enal that the tribunal sat, under the suggestive name of _chambre ardente_, to deal with cases of sorcery and magic?'

'I didn't,' smiled Susie.

'I always think that these ma.n.u.scripts and queer old books, which are the pride of our library, served in many an old trial. There are volumes there of innocent appearance that have hanged wretched men and sent others to the stake. You would not believe how many persons of fortune, rank, and intelligence, during the great reign of Louis XIV, immersed themselves in these satanic undertakings.'

Susie did not answer. She could not now deal with these matters in an indifferent spirit. Everything she heard might have some bearing on the circ.u.mstances which she had discussed with Dr Porhoet times out of number. She had never been able to pin him down to an affirmation of faith. Certain strange things had manifestly happened, but what the explanation of them was, no man could say. He offered a.n.a.logies from his well-stored memory. He gave her books to read till she was saturated with occult science. At one moment, she was inclined to throw them all aside impatiently, and, at another, was ready to believe that everything was possible.

Dr Porhoet stood up and stretched out a meditative finger. He spoke in that agreeably academic manner which, at the beginning of their acquaintance, had always entertained Susie, because it contrasted so absurdly with his fantastic utterances.

'It was a strange dream that these wizards cherished. They sought to make themselves beloved of those they cared for and to revenge themselves on those they hated; but, above all, they sought to become greater than the common run of men and to wield the power of the G.o.ds. They hesitated at nothing to gain their ends. But Nature with difficulty allows her secrets to be wrested from her. In vain they lit their furnaces, and in vain they studied their crabbed books, called up the dead, and conjured ghastly spirits. Their reward was disappointment and wretchedness, poverty, the scorn of men, torture, imprisonment, and shameful death. And yet, perhaps after all, there may be some particle of truth hidden away in these dark places.'

'You never go further than the cautious perhaps,' said Susie. 'You never give me any definite opinion.'

'In these matters it is discreet to have no definite opinion,' he smiled, with a shrug of the shoulders. 'If a wise man studies the science of the occult, his duty is not to laugh at everything, but to seek patiently, slowly, perseveringly, the truth that may be concealed in the night of these illusions.'

The words were hardly spoken when Matilde, the ancient _bonne_, opened the door to let a visitor come in. It was Arthur Burdon. Susie gave a cry of surprise, for she had received a brief note from him two days before, and he had said nothing of crossing the Channel.

'I'm glad to find you both here,' said Arthur, as he shook hands with them.

'Has anything happened?' cried Susie.

His manner was curiously distressing, and there was a nervousness about his movements that was very unexpected in so restrained a person.

'I've seen Margaret again,' he said.

'Well?'

He seemed unable to go on, and yet both knew that he had something important to tell them. He looked at them vacantly, as though all he had to say was suddenly gone out of his mind.

'I've come straight here,' he said, in a dull, bewildered fashion. 'I went to your hotel, Susie, in the hope of finding you; but when they told me you were out, I felt certain you would be here.'

'You seem worn out, _cher ami_,' said Dr Porhoet, looking at him. 'Will you let Matilde make you a cup of coffee?'

'I should like something,' he answered, with a look of utter weariness.

'Sit still for a minute or two, and you shall tell us what you want to when you are a little rested.'

Dr Porhoet had not seen Arthur since that afternoon in the previous year when, in answer to Haddo's telegram, he had gone to the studio in the Rue Campagne Premiere. He watched him anxiously while Arthur drank his coffee. The change in him was extraordinary; there was a cadaverous exhaustion about his face, and his eyes were sunken in their sockets. But what alarmed the good doctor most was that Arthur's personality seemed thoroughly thrown out of gear. All that he had endured during these nine months had robbed him of the strength of purpose, the matter-of-fact sureness, which had distinguished him. He was now unbalanced and neurotic.

Arthur did not speak. With his eyes fixed moodily on the ground, he wondered how much he could bring himself to tell them. It revolted him to disclose his inmost thoughts, yet he was come to the end of his tether and needed the doctor's advice. He found himself obliged to deal with circ.u.mstances that might have existed in a world of nightmare, and he was driven at last to take advantage of his friend's peculiar knowledge.

Returning to London after Margaret's flight, Arthur Burdon had thrown himself again into the work which for so long had been his only solace.

It had lost its savour; but he would not take this into account, and he slaved away mechanically, by perpetual toil seeking to deaden his anguish. But as the time pa.s.sed he was seized on a sudden with a curious feeling of foreboding, which he could in no way resist; it grew in strength till it had all the power of an obsession, and he could not reason himself out of it. He was sure that a great danger threatened Margaret. He could not tell what it was, nor why the fear of it was so persistent, but the idea was there always, night and day; it haunted him like a shadow and pursued him like remorse. His anxiety increased continually, and the vagueness of his terror made it more tormenting. He felt quite certain that Margaret was in imminent peril, but he did not know how to help her. Arthur supposed that Haddo had taken her back to Skene; but, even if he went there, he had no chance of seeing her. What made it more difficult still, was that his chief at St Luke's was away, and he was obliged to be in London in case he should be suddenly called upon to do some operation. But he could think of nothing else. He felt it urgently needful to see Margaret. Night after night he dreamed that she was at the point of death, and heavy fetters prevented him from stretching out a hand to help her. At last he could stand it no more. He told a brother surgeon that private business forced him to leave London, and put the work into his hands. With no plan in his head, merely urged by an obscure impulse, he set out for the village of Venning, which was about three miles from Skene.

It was a tiny place, with one public-house serving as a hotel to the rare travellers who found it needful to stop there, and Arthur felt that some explanation of his presence was necessary. Having seen at the station an advertis.e.m.e.nt of a large farm to let, he told the inquisitive landlady that he had come to see it. He arrived late at night. Nothing could be done then, so he occupied the time by trying to find out something about the Haddos.

Oliver was the local magnate, and his wealth would have made him an easy topic of conversation even without his eccentricity. The landlady roundly called him insane, and as an instance of his queerness told Arthur, to his great dismay, that Haddo would have no servants to sleep in the house: after dinner everyone was sent away to the various cottages in the park, and he remained alone with his wife. It was an awful thought that Margaret might be in the hands of a raving madman, with not a soul to protect her. But if he learnt no more than this of solid fact, Arthur heard much that was significant. To his amazement the old fear of the wizard had grown up again in that lonely place, and the garrulous woman gravely told him of Haddo's evil influence on the crops and cattle of farmers who had aroused his anger. He had had an altercation with his bailiff, and the man had died within a year. A small freeholder in the neighbourhood had refused to sell the land which would have rounded off the estate of Skene, and a disease had attacked every animal on his farm so that he was ruined. Arthur was impressed because, though she reported these rumours with mock scepticism as the stories of ignorant yokels and old women, the innkeeper had evidently a terrified belief in their truth.