"Perhaps!" she said, looking at him with a sudden shyness. "What a pity you are not rich. Can't you get a post that would bring you in about 200 a year for a start? I believe you really want something to stimulate you, to make you work in grim earnest--then you would succeed. There's grit in you--I love grit--but at present it's latent, it wants bringing out."

"You are very kind," Shiel said, "but I'm afraid I'm a hopeless case, and, being such, have no business to be in your company. Will you come to the theatre with me?"

"The theatre! When you've no business to be in my company, and when it is as much as you can do to pay the rent of a back attic!"

"Oh, never mind that. I've had tickets given me. I've been doing odd bits of journalism lately, and a dramatic critic I know has given me two stalls at the Imperial!"

"The Imperial!" Lilian Rosenberg e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "That's where Gladys Martin is acting, surely! I can't bear her!"

"She's not the only person in the cast," Shiel observed drily, "and the play's a good one! Do come!"

With a little more persuasion Shiel gained her consent; and both he and she enjoyed the play, or more correctly speaking, the occasion, immensely. So long as Gladys was on the stage Shiel's eyes never once left her; whilst throughout the performance Lilian Rosenberg saw only Shiel, thought only of Shiel. The interest she had taken in him, the interest she had so confidently a.s.serted was only interest, had grown apace--had grown out of all recognition. It needed only a fillip now to convert that interest into something warmer; and the fillip was not long in coming.

Shiel was seeing Lilian home to her lodgings in Margaret Terrace, a turning off Oakley Street, when a man knocked a woman down right in front of them. He was just the ordinary type of street ruffian--the whitewashed English labourer--and the woman, having without doubt been served by him in the same manner fifty times before, was probably well used to such treatment. But it was more than Shiel, who had spent so much of his life where they treat women differently, could stand, and before Lilian Rosenberg had time to remonstrate, he had rushed up to the prostrate woman, and was holding the man at bay. A scuffle now began, in which the woman, whom Shiel had helped to regain her feet, joined. Both man and woman now attacked Shiel, who, placing himself with his back against the railings, defended himself as best he could.

The hour was late, there were no police about, and it seemed only too probable that the fracas would end in a tragedy. The labourer was a burly fellow, shorter than Shiel, but far broader and heavier, and any one could see at a glance that Shiel stood no chance against him.

Lilian Rosenberg, at her wits' end to know what to do, ran into Oakley Street, and as there was no one in sight, she made for the nearest lighted house and rang the bell furiously. A man came to the door, whom, unheeding his expostulations, she caught by the arm and dragged into the street.

They arrived on the scene of action, just as the ruffian, breaking through Shiel's guard, struck him a terrific blow on the forehead, which sent him reeling against the railings. The newcomer (upon whom, both man and woman, seeing Shiel incapacitated, instantly turned) would probably have shared the same fate, had not the occupants of several of the neighbouring houses--amongst whom were some half-dozen athletic young men--roused by the noise, come out into the street, and the ruffian and his companion, seeing the odds were against them, decamped.

Shiel had not fully regained consciousness, when Lilian Rosenberg, regardless of propriety, led him into her sitting-room, bathed his forehead, dosed him with brandy, and making up a bed for him on the sofa, bade him rest there, till the morning.

When he took his departure, he had quite recovered, and Lilian Rosenberg had, at last, realized that she loved him.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 23: There is no doubt that Moses inflicted the plagues, with which he tormented Pharaoh, in this way.]

[Footnote 24: In stage two this might have been performed by ethereal projection, but Hamar could not resort to this method as the power of projection had now pa.s.sed from him.]

CHAPTER XXIV

THE SUBPOENA

A few days after the incident in Margaret Terrace, Shiel had an inspiration. He was lunching with an old schoolfellow whom, quite by chance, he had met in Lincoln's Inn, having previously lost sight of him for many years, and the conversation, which had at first been confined to the old days, had gradually drifted to what was ever uppermost in Shiel's mind--namely, the Modern Sorcery Company, _i.e._ Hamar, Kelson and Curtis.

"Did you know," his friend remarked, "that the old statute, introduced in Henry the Fifth's reign against sorcery, has never been repealed?"

"You don't mean to say so," Shiel cried excitedly--a vague idea dawning on him. "Tell me all about it."

"Well, that's rather a long order. For one thing, it imposes all kinds of penalties from capital punishment to fines. For another, it was in force up to the beginning of George the Third's reign, when the last case of a person being burned for witchery in England occurred, and since then it has fallen into disuse."

"Could it be revived?" Shiel asked, a sudden wild hope surging through him.

"For all I know to the contrary, it could," his friend--who, by the way, was a barrister--replied. "Of course no one could be burned or hanged under it, but they might be fined or imprisoned."

"Then I wish to goodness you would file a case against the Modern Sorcery Company! I'd move heaven and earth to get the scoundrels sent to prison!" And he told his friend how matters stood between Gladys and Hamar.

The barrister--whose name was Sevenning--H.V. Sevenning, of T.C.D. and Cheltenham College renown--was keenly interested. It was not only that his sense of chivalry was stirred, but he saw sport. Consequently, the foregoing conversation resulted in a prosecution which, taking place some four weeks later, was reported in the London Herald as follows--

EXTRAORDINARY CHARGE HEARD AT THE OLD BAILEY.

REVIVAL OF AN ANCIENT STATUTE.

Yesterday, at the Old Bailey, before His Honour Judge Rosher, Leon Hamar, Edward Curtis and Matthew Kelson, of the Modern Sorcery Company Ltd., were indicted under the 23rd of Henry the Fifth, C.

15, which makes it a capital offence to practise and administer spells. The case for the prosecution promises to be a lengthy one.

An enormous number of witnesses, who are most anxious to make statements, will be called; and it is antic.i.p.ated that much of their evidence will be of a most extraordinary nature.

The accused are cited with having worked spells to the injury--which injury, in many instances, has been fatal--of a vast number of people, representative of every rank in life.

Hilda, Countess of Ramsgate, who appeared in heavy mourning, was the first witness called. In her evidence she stated, that it was owing to an advertis.e.m.e.nt she had seen in the _Ladies' Meadow_, that she had consulted the Modern Sorcery Company Ltd., with the object of buying a spell to prevent her Pekingese pet, Brutus, catching colds on his liver. She had hoped to see Mr. Kelson, as she had heard that he was more sympathetic, where ladies were concerned, than either Mr. Hamar or Mr. Curtis, but as Mr. Kelson was engaged, she had consulted Mr. Edward Curtis instead. The latter had given her a spell which he had a.s.sured her would have the desired effect, but directly she got home, her adored Brutus developed melancholia, and died raving mad, after having bitten her child, who, by the way, had died, too.

For the defence, Gerald Kirby, K.C., declared that the spell his client had given the Countess was perfectly harmless; that it could not possibly have produced either melancholia or madness.

"Can any dependence," he said, "be placed on a woman, who obviously thinks more of her dog's death than that of her child!"

The Court was adjourned till to-morrow.

In the following day's paper, the evidence for the prosecution was continued. Lady Marjorie Tatler, who, in the weekly and ill.u.s.trated journals, for no other reason than her reputed beauty, was reintroduced over and over again to the long-suffering public, was the first to step into the witness-box.

She declared that Edward Curtis, instead of giving her a spell to make Florillda win the Derby, had given her a diabolical something that had brought out spots all over her face, and that she had to undergo a most expensive treatment before they could be got rid of.

In cross-examination, Lady Marjorie Tatler admitted that she had asked Edward Curtis for a spell that would cause all the horses running in that particular race, save Florillda, to be taken ill.

For the defence, Gerald Kirby, K.C., explained that his client was so disgusted at the immorality of Lady Marjorie's request, that he had purposely given her a spell that would have no effect upon a horse, and could not possibly bring out spots on her Ladyship's face. "The spell Edward Curtis gave her," Gerald Kirby said, "was a mixture of hempseed and sago, flavoured with violet powder, and my client instructed her Ladyship to wear it next her heart."

(Loud laughter.)

Lady Coralie Mars, the next witness, who declared she had sought a spell to make the man, she was forced into marrying, fall into a trance, just before the marriage ceremony was to take place; and that, instead of bringing this about, the spell Edward Curtis had sold her had caused her to have St. Vitus's Dance,--was adroitly trapped into admitting that she had really wanted her fiance smitten with paralysis. "A wish," Gerald Kirby announced, with a dramatic flourish of his hands, "that so aroused my client's indignation that, instead of giving her the spell she wanted, he gave her one that would make her affianced husband more than ever hungry for the marriage hour to arrive. As for St. Vitus's Dance, would any woman, with an emotional and hysterical-nature, such as obviously was that of Lady Coralie Mars, ever be free from such a complaint?"

The Hon. Augusta Mapple, who stated that she had visited the Modern Sorcery Company, for the purpose of obtaining a spell to bring about a defeat of the Government, by afflicting the bulk of their supporters with such bilious attacks as would necessitate their absence from the House, and that, instead of giving her such a spell, Edward Curtis had given her one which had caused every member of her household to fall downstairs--admitted, under cross-examination, that she had asked for a spell that would make every supporter of the Government in the House be suddenly seized with teta.n.u.s. "A diabolical request, your lordship," Gerald Kirby said, "and one to which my client could not possibly accede.

Consequently, as a punishment for such cruelty, he sold her a spell that would result in her having a sharp attack of toothache.

It could not possibly have produced any of the mishaps she attributes to it."

It is unnecessary to quote further. By far the greater number of these witnesses, on being cross-examined by Mr. Kirby, who defended with an ability that has rarely, if ever, been excelled, were made to confess that they had wanted the spells for a far more subtle and dangerous purpose than they had previously stated; admissions which, of course, were highly prejudicial to the case for the prosecution.

Shiel lost hope. He had looked forward to the trial with an excitement that almost bordered on frenzy. It was never out of his mind. He thought of it at meals, he thought of it at his work, he thought of it out of doors, and, when he went to bed, he dreamed of it.

"I'll save you! I'll save you yet!" he wrote to Gladys. "The trial can only result in one thing--the breaking up and imprisonment of the trio."

But when he read the papers each day, and saw how, in almost every instance, evidence which ought to have been d.a.m.ning to the accused, had been twisted into their favour, his heart sank.

There was only one chance now--Lilian Rosenberg. She, of all the staff employed in the Hall in c.o.c.kspur Street, was best acquainted with the _modus operandi_ of Messrs. Hamar, Curtis and Kelson.

"We must get hold of that girl at all costs," H.V. Sevenning remarked to Shiel. "You say you feel sure she likes you. Work upon her feelings to show the Firm up."