The policeman, after the manner of policemen, was non-committal; but it did not require a very shrewd observer to deduce that Hugo Astley was well known, but not well liked, in official circles. With Frank Fouldes he did not seem to be familiar, but Murchison gathered that it had not done Fouldes any good in the eyes of the law to have been found lying on the same door-mat with Hugo Astley.
Murchison returned up the stairs, a shilling having changed hands without being observed by either party. He found Ursula Brangwyn sitting up in the big chair looking considerably more normal than she had done since the incident at the station, the excitement of the fracas evidently having distracted her attention from her troubles.
Murchison grinned cheerfully at her.
‘That's disposed of them,’ he said. ‘Second trick to us, I think.’
‘Yes, that's disposed of them for the moment,’ said the girl. ‘But they won't leave it at that; and Hugo Astley will never forget you for having laughed at him.’
‘You know him, then?’ said Murchison.
‘Yes, I know him.’ Ursula Brangwyn shuddered.
A key sounded in the lock again, and Murchison spun round, ready to throw the next entrant down the stairs without even inquiring his business. But it was Brangwyn this time, who gave a whistle of surprise as he saw his sister sitting there, looking white and shaken.
‘Hullo?’ he said. ‘What's Ursula doing here?’
‘We've had a spot of trouble,’ replied Murchison. ‘A chap called Frank Fouldes turned up at the station as I was seeing Miss Brangwyn off, and made himself unpleasant; so I persuaded her to come back here and wait till the next train, instead of risking further trouble with him on the journey. And then, when we got back here, he and another chap called Hugo Astley let 'emselves in with a latch-key, and I had to chuck 'em out. And I chucked 'em out so hard they lay all in a heap on the mat at the bottom, and a bobby came along and picked 'em up and took their names and addresses. He seemed to know Astley all right.’
‘What's all this you're telling me, Murchison? Let's have a few details. I must get the hang of this.’
He looked at his sister closely.
‘Ursula, my child,’ he said, ‘run off to your own quarters. You are better out of it.’ The girl rose silently and obeyed him.
Brangwyn dropped into the chair she had vacated.
‘Now then, Murchison,’ he said, ‘let's begin at the beginning and have it slowly. You'd be a good man to write telegrams. What did Fouldes do at the station that upset Ursula?’
‘He didn't exactly do anything. He just said “Hullo,” and looked at her, and she conked completely out.’
‘Fainted?’
‘No. Came all over dazed. I saw something was up, so I hauled her out of the carriage and got her into the refreshment-room and gave her some brandy, and told him to clear out or he'd get his head punched.’
‘What was your impression of the transaction?’
‘Well, I don't know much about hypnotism, save what I picked up when I used to go and see one or two of our chaps in the shell-shock hospital, but it looked uncommonly like it to me. I should say he'd been in the habit of hypnotizing her, and had got her thoroughly under his thumb, so that now he's only got to look at her and off she goes. It was an ugly thing to see. I'm jolly glad to have had the privilege of chucking him down the stairs.’
‘So you don't think it's all imagination and hysteria on Ursula's part?’
‘No, sir, I don't. The fellow recognized the symptoms when she went all goosey, and was pleased. He was aiming at that result, and he got what he expected to get, if you ask me. She's exactly like a shell-shock case at the present moment.’
Brangwyn nodded. ‘That's the best diagnosis we've had yet, and I've taken her to half Harley Street. They scout the idea of hypnosis, and want to psycho-analyse her for infantile repressions.’
‘The treatment that did her most good was chucking the chap down the stairs,’ said Murchison, grinning reminiscently. ‘That doesn't go with infantile repressions, but it bears out the hypnotism theory.’
‘How did you get her away from him at the station?’
‘Picked her up bodily. Same as a kitten.’
Brangwyn laughed, remembering a certain dream.
‘Was she willing?’
‘Didn't ask her.’
‘Caveman stuff!’ said his employer, chuckling. Murchison felt himself blushing. ‘What happened next?’
‘I brought her back here. She wasn't fit to travel. I talked to her a bit, and she was beginning to perk up a little when I heard a key in the door, and thought it was you. But it was these two blighters, and we had a bit of a fracas because I stuck to my instructions and wouldn't let ‘em in.’
‘How did Ursula take it?’
‘I dunno. I was busy with them.’
‘What was your impression of Astley?’
‘I think he's the man up higher.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, whatever Fouldes is playing at with your sister, it's Astley who's at the bottom of it, not Fouldes, if you know what I mean. The hands are the hands of Esau, but the voice is the voice of Jacob.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘I can't imagine Hugo Astley going out of his way to do a good turn to anybody, can you?’
‘No, I certainly can't,’ said Brangwyn.
‘Then he wouldn't have bothered to come round here with Fouldes and start a row and get himself thrown downstairs if he hadn't got ends of his own to serve. I shouldn't be surprised if Fouldes is only one degree better off than your sister.’
Brangwyn looked at his new secretary sharply. ‘How do you come to know all this?’ he inquired.
‘Just put two and two together, and used my common sense. Am I right?’
‘I think you are. But I couldn't convince Harley Street. I found I'd got to handle her myself if she were to be handled at all.’
‘She's easy enough to handle when you've got her on the spot,’ said Murchison.
‘I haven't found her so,’ said Brangwyn. ‘She fought me like a cat.’
‘She didn't fight me,’ said Murchison. ‘I'd have turned her up and spanked her if she had, and I expect she knew it.’
‘I expect she did,’ said Brangwyn, chuckling.
Murchison suddenly realized that he was not speaking of his employer's sister in a manner that might be expected of an employee, and was smitten by alarm. But far from resenting his freedom, Brangwyn seemed highly delighted.
‘There are one or two things that puzzle me, however,’ said Brangwyn. ‘How did Fouldes know that Ursula was travelling by that train?’
‘Might be chance,’ said Murchison.
‘And how did he know she had come straight back to my place? It's long odds against both being chance.’
‘And how did he get hold of your keys?’
‘Yes, how indeed?’
‘A traitor in the camp?’
‘Looks like it.’
‘Who served breakfast? You were discussing the matter at the breakfast table. There's a service hatch, or something, behind that curtain, isn't there?’
‘Yes. If the service hatch had been left open, anyone who wanted to could have heard what was said. I'll get hold of Luigi. There'll be a murder done in the restaurant before nightfall if it's one of his people.’
‘Nasty business for Miss Brangwyn.’
‘Very nasty indeed, poor child. Astley's a most dangerous brute. Look what he's done to Fouldes. When I first knew Fouldes he was a decent, straight chap; a bit impressionable and apt to throw his weight about, but not an ounce of vice in him; and look at him now!’
‘Do you think it's wise to leave your sister alone too long?’
‘No, my dear fellow, you're quite right, it isn't. Will you go and fetch her while I phone Luigi for lunch?’
‘Don't you think we ought to get a woman in to look after her?’
‘What's the use of a woman? She can't pick her up like a kitten. Carry on with the good work, Murchison.’
Murchison raised his eyebrows. ‘Want me to sit up with her at night?’ he inquired.
‘We'll manage between us,’ said Brangwyn.
‘Right-o,’ said Murchison, ‘I don't mind if she doesn't.’
He went off up the winding stairs, his heavy brogues resounding on the polished wood, and knocked on the door of Ursula Brangwyn's sitting-room. Getting no answer, he opened the door and walked in. She lay face downwards in a crumpled heap on the sofa.
‘Miss Brangwyn?’ he said, but there was no reply.
He walked over to her and laid a hand on her shoulder.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Lunch is ready,’ and shook her gently.
She gave a shudder, and burrowed deeper into the cushions. It was no use standing on ceremony, thought Murchison. In his new job as hospital orderly he had got to get on with it. He sought for an arm, laid hold of it, and began to pull.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Up you get!’
Ursula Brangwyn began to slide, and to save herself from falling off the sofa, had to put out a leg. Murchison wondered whether he had gone too far, but she sat up and gazed at him quite unresentfully, and he concluded that caveman tactics suited her psychology.
‘Come on,’ he said, and with Ursula towing limply behind him started for the stairs. The small cold fingers in his big hand caught at his heart. It was so like a child's hand. He suddenly thought of children. Small children, running about all over a lawn, and a man coming home to them after his day's work. Brangwyn, watching them from the lounge as they went along the gallery, smiled to himself.
Murchison steered his charge safely down the winding stair and landed her in front of her brother, and let go her hand. Or rather tried to, for the small, cold fingers clung tenaciously to his, as a baby's fingers cling when they grasp something. He gently loosened them beneath her brother's watching eyes.
‘Come along, Ursula,’ said Brangwyn, and led the way to the dining-room. Murchison was relieved to find that they were to wait on themselves, and there was no Luigi with his intolerable chatter of menus.
Between them they got Ursula Brangwyn to take some food, and after the meal they tucked her up on a sofa at the far side of the big lounge, where she immediately seemed to fall asleep, and themselves settled down by the fire, talking in low voices so as not to disturb her.
‘I think I had better explain things a bit,’ said Brangwyn. ‘I had not meant to do so just yet, but they have come up to a head so quickly that there is nothing else for it. Of course, you understand that all this is in strict confidence?’
Murchison nodded. There was no need to have said that. Naturally these were things one did not talk about.
Brangwyn paused, and seemed to be collecting his thoughts. He gave his companion a cigarette and lit one himself, and they smoked in silence for a short time, Murchison, out of the tail of his eye, keeping watch on the motionless, rug-covered form on the couch at the far end of the room, its face turned to the wall like Ahab.
‘It's not very easy to know where to begin,’ said the older man at length. ‘There is so much to explain, and unless you know the ideas underlying it all you will not make head or tail of it; and I don't want to give you a lecture. You must ask questions as I go along if there is anything you don't understand.’
Murchison gave his usual taciturn grunt. Brangwyn continued:
‘You know I am interested in psychology, and you also know that I am interested in the old pagan religions, because I have told you as much myself. I wonder whether you realize that there must have been certain aspects of psychology that were known in those times, and are known to primitive peoples today, which Harley Street knows nothing about?’
‘It had never occurred to me,’ said Murchison. ‘But, now you mention it, it sounds quite likely. They knew a thing or two, those old priests. Especially the Egyptians.’
‘They knew several things, Murchison; some of them dangerous, like that’ - he indicated the muffled form on the couch with a gesture - ‘and some of them very valuable - like your invocation of Pan.’
He paused, but Murchison made no comment.
He continued.
‘When I came in for some money after my mother's death I travelled in the East and elsewhere, investigating these things. And I saw some things that have to be seen to be believed. I may tell you about them some day. It is impossible to write them. One would merely be discredited.
‘Most people would call them occult. I shouldn't, in the light of what I know now. That is, if you give the word occult its ordinary meaning as supernatural. In my opinion they are simply the powers of the trained human mind - and the mind side of nature.’
‘What's that?’ asked Murchison.
‘Has it ever occurred to you that there might be an invisible reality behind appearances?’
‘Yes. Always has. I've known that ever since I can remember. Nothing ever is just itself to me. During the War I could feel the soul of the German nation and the soul of the British nation contending with each other. The Kaiser was just a figurehead, poor old dud; and the German people were just a flock of sheep. They couldn't help 'emselves. It was this thing that drove 'em on. And now it's coughed up Hitler, God help 'em. It's exactly the same thing over again with different dummies. These chaps don't lead. They're shoved.’
‘Did you feel the British group-soul, too?’ asked Brangwyn.
‘Yes, I felt it all right.’ Murchison paused. ‘It was that I drew on when I went over the top berserk.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Difficult to describe.’ Murchison pulled at his cigarette and exhaled clouds of smoke. ‘It was as if imagination became real and there was tremendous pressure of life within me. I could have gone through anything. Gone through a brick wall. And you know, sir, I never had a scratch, and twice I was the only chap left alive in a dugout after a direct hit.’
Brangwyn nodded. ‘You had the reputation of bearing a charmed life,’ he said.
‘And I could communicate - whatever it was - to the fellows under me’, Murchison continued eagerly, Ursula Brangwyn and her troubles forgotten as he re-lived his great days.
‘We all saw that,’ said Brangwyn. ‘You were marked out for high rank if the War had gone on.’
Murchison sighed. ‘I'm afraid I'm a fighting man, and nothing but a fighting man. There's not much doing for me in times of peace. I'm out of a job then. As long as you only want callers chucked down the stairs, I'm a first-class secretary. But if you want any typing or shorthand, you mayn't be quite so pleased.’
Brangwyn laughed.
‘I wonder what will become of my sort if the League of Nations gets away with it, said Murchison with a sigh.
‘It won't, as long as your sort continues to be born into the world’, said Brangwyn.
They smoked for a time in silence; Murchison living over again the great days of the War, the present forgotten as something of the old magic and marvel of the battle-lust came back to him, when he had felt lifted out of himself and caught up in great tides of racial emotion and sent hurtling like a shell at the heads of the enemy. Brangwyn considered first one opening and then another, and debated as to which would be the best method of approach to inform, and explain, and carry conviction to the mind of the man opposite him, whose cooperation he so urgently needed and upon whose ability to do what was required of him the sanity of Ursula Brangwyn depended.
For Brangwyn was seriously alarmed by his sister's relapse. All the carefully built-up gain of months had been swept away by one look from the man who had caused all the trouble, and she was as bad as ever she had been. Worse, in fact; for he liked this apathy and stupor a great deal less than any amount of excitement.
It was an exceedingly difficult thing he had to do. He had counted upon teaching and training Murchison over a period of time; some weeks at least, before he asked for anything in the way of active cooperation from him. But his hand was forced by Ursula's collapse, and something had got to be done at once. He could no longer leave her safely hidden away among the Welsh mountains. Things wouldn't wait. He felt like the conductor of an orchestra who has to rely on a first violin who is sight-reading. It would take an uncommonly good man to get through the performance without letting him down.
He returned to the attack.
‘When you went over the top, you experienced a kind of “divine inebriation,” as the ancients called it?’
‘I experienced something quite out of the ordinary, and highly enjoyable. Inebriation is as good a word as any for it. I was certainly drunk on something.’
‘And you experienced another kind of influx of force when the old padre at your school chapel got worked up emotionally while he was taking a service?’
‘Yes. You're right. The same sort of thing, but different.’
‘And yet a third kind when you yourself got worked up and invoked Pan in front of the British Museum, of all places?’
‘Yes, you're quite right. All three were different types of the same thing. I hadn't thought of that before. And, of course, they throw light on each other.’
‘Can you think of any condition which was the causative factor in each case?’
‘You mean what trod on the self-starter? Yes. Somebody got worked up emotionally.’
‘There you have it in a nutshell. It is emotion which is the self-starter in all these cases of divine inebriation - the lifting of one out of oneself into a wider consciousness.’
‘I don't know about wider consciousness,’ said Murchison. ‘I wasn't conscious of anything except what was going on. But I felt a tremendous increase in the pressure of life inside me, as it were; and, as I said, I could have gone through a brick wall when the power was on me.’
‘Like falling, in love,’ said Brangwyn watching him.
‘I haven't tried that, so I couldn't say. I should describe it personally as exactly like the early stages of getting tight. I have tried that, so I know.’
‘And you realize that three different kinds of emotion heralded three different kinds of experience?’
‘Yes.’
‘Has it ever occurred to you that there might be a technique for inducing that emotion and so producing those states of mind at will?’
‘A trick, you mean?’
‘No, I don't call it a trick. I mean understanding the psychology of it, so that you can bring it about and intensify and concentrate it.’
‘No, it had never occurred to me that that was possible. It would be mighty interesting if it were, but rather dangerous, I should say. You would want to know what you were about.’
‘Don't you need to do that with anything that has got any power behind it? You can't come to much harm pushing a pram, but you can come a mighty smash in a high-powered car; all the same, the car is the better vehicle, provided you have the nerve to handle it; if not, you are better off with the pram - or in it.’ Murchison glanced across the room towards the sofa.
‘Is that an example of a psychological car-smash?’ he asked.
‘It is,’ said Brangwyn, ‘and I want you to drive the breakdown lorry, if you'll be so good.’
‘I'll do what I can,’ said Murchison, and Brangwyn felt that there was more in those few quiet words than in most men's oaths and protestations. For, although the younger man had kept quiet and kept his head, he suspected that he had been more than a little upset by the scenes they had been through during the last few hours. He obviously was unused to any intimate relationship with women, and especially with young and attractive women. He did not know what to do with them, or how to take them. He was ill at ease and self-conscious until he forgot for a moment that they were women, and then he treated them like men, and not every woman would stand for that. Brangwyn smiled as he remembered that Murchison's immediate remedy for Ursula's distress had been to stand her a drink.
It was Murchison who broke the silence first.
‘You think that Fouldes, Astley and Co. have been making use of Miss Brangwyn as part of their technique for inducing emotion, and smashed her in the process?’
‘Yes, that is about it. Or, rather, it was I who smashed her, and smashed her deliberately, rather than let them finish what they were doing; on the same principle that one runs a car into a hedge and takes a minor smash when it gets out of control on a hill rather than wait for the major smash at the bottom. What I want you to do is to help get her back on to the road again, take her steadily down the hill and steer her round the bend at the bottom, and then she ought to be able to get along under her own power.’
He watched his companion closely while giving this explanation, which explained much or little according to the way it was taken.
Murchison sat silent for a while, and Brangwyn did not break the silence, letting him digest what had been given him. At length he spoke.
‘What kind of emotion were they working for when the smash occurred?’
‘That is a little difficult to answer briefly. I'll tell you the history of the transaction, and then you will understand it better.
‘When I came back from my travels in the East, some years after my father's death, I heard that a little step-sister, whom I had never seen, was going to enter a convent, and that my consent as her trustee was necessary, as she was under age. It seemed to me a ghastly thing for a child like that to be put away for life without ever knowing what life was like. So I made it my business to stymie that transaction from the financial point of view, and when the convent found that she wasn't going to be the gilded pill they thought she was, they coughed her up quite willingly, and I had a leggy little colt of 17 on my hands to bring up as best I could.
‘I found her intensely devout and intensely ignorant, but I soon cured that. I talked to her straight, man to man, plain, unbowdlerized physiology and psychology and sociology, and she took to it like a duck to water, and made all the adjustments to life she had any need to. That is why I know that psychoanalysis is not needed with her. Ursula psychoanalysed herself when given the raw material to work on in the shape of the necessary facts.
‘Until this wretched business with Fouldes and Astley came along she was a singularly harmonious nature. It is on that that I base my hope of a reconstruction. We have got sound foundations to work on when once we can clear the debris.
‘She ran round here, and at another house I had before this, and read all my books, and met all my friends, and sat curled up on that sofa she is asleep on now, and heard all their talk, and educated herself pretty rapidly; and all the enthusiasm she had previously had for religion turned on to the researches I am doing, which are really, at bottom, my religion.
‘She helped me a very great deal in very many ways, for a woman's approach to these things differs somewhat to a man's, and there are some things she can do that he can't, and he has to have her help.’
‘I suppose she was your pythoness,’ said Murchison.
Brangwyn looked at him sharply.
‘You have read along these lines a good deal already, haven't you?’ he inquired.
‘No, I've never read anything. I never knew they existed till you began to tell me about them. I picked up that bit from the classics at school. I only piece two and two together. All sorts of bits and scraps start coming back to you, that you never knew the meaning of before, when once you have a bit to go on. This sort of thing's all round you if you only know what to look for.’
‘Yes,’ Brangwyn continued. ‘Ursula was a pretty high-grade pythoness till she got messed up; and a pythoness is to an ordinary medium what a medium is to ordinary mortals.
‘Well, as luck would have it, young Fouldes, who was interested in these matters, used to come along for talks, and to lend a hand in the experiments, and finally became my secretary, and he and Ursula got fond of each other. It's no reflection on Ursula's taste and judgment to say that, for what he is now is very different to what he was then. I was not averse from the alliance, though I cannot say I was exactly enthusiastic over it, for I thought Ursula was capable of better things. He was not an intellectual heavyweight; but then neither is she; she is intelligent and intuitive to a high degree, but not intellectual; and because he wouldn't suit me for a life-partner, it didn't follow that he wouldn't suit her. At any rate, one has to let people please themselves in these matters.’
He paused, for his present activities belied his words. He had no intention of letting Ursula choose for herself a second time.
‘I had only one thing against the boy - he had a nice disposition, was intelligent, was well-blessed with this world's goods - but, and this is one of the biggest buts in the world, Murchison, he was exceedingly impressionable. Ursula could put him round her little finger; so could I; so could anybody; so, in the end, did Astley. To be impressionable, in this wicked world, is like working in a dissecting-room with an open cut on your finger.
‘There are certain things that can be done with the mind if you know how, which require a very steady nerve and considerable self-control to pull off successfully. Ursula wanted me to let Frank and her do some of these. Now I would have trusted Ursula to do the job; in fact, it was one of my hopes that she should try out that experiment for me when a suitable occasion came along; but Frank couldn't, and I wouldn't risk it, and Ursula and I had a quarrel over it. She, being in love, did not agree with my temperate estimate of Frank and his capacities.
‘Frank, not being taken at his own valuation, which was never unduly low, and had gone up considerably since he had had Ursula to tell him how wonderful he was, naturally wasn't very pleased either, and ceased to regard me as guide, philosopher and friend, and took up with Hugo Astley, who is a considerably more spectacular person than I am, and both he and Ursula kept me in the dark over the matter, though I will say for Ursula that, knowing what she did about the man, she was all for keeping at a safe distance. Frank assured her that this was what he intended to do, and that he had no intention whatsoever of getting into Astley's clutches; but he who sups with the devil needs a long spoon, and the inevitable happened; Astley, having touched Frank's little finger, drew his whole body after him, and he ended up as you see him now.’
‘I am a bit surprised that you think Fouldes a light-weight,’ said Murchison. ‘The first thing that struck me about him was the tremendous personality he had. Not pleasant, I grant you, but mighty strong of its kind.’
‘That also is Astley's work. Fouldes is burning under a forced draught, and it won't last long. No constitution can stand that pressure.’
‘Drugs?’ queried Murchison.
‘Partly. And partly certain kinds of psychological practices that Astley teaches.
‘But, to continue my story, for I want to get on with it as quickly as possible, so that you may know where you are before the next move takes place, as it will before long, if I'm not very much mistaken.
‘Astley took Fouldes in hand, and developed him hand over fist in a way I would never have risked doing with a man of Frank's make-up.’
‘Then there are other people as well as you working along these lines?’ interrupted Murchison.
Brangwyn hesitated for a moment, and then decided on frankness.
‘Ever heard of the occult fraternities?’
‘I've heard of the Rosicrucians.’
‘We'll name no names; but, anyway, you know that people do organize for the study of the kind of thing I'm interested in, and that there is a secret tradition and a lot of unpublished manuscripts on the subject?’
‘I know now you've told me. I didn't know before. Oh, yes, I did, though. The Sunday Herald had a whole lot about it, but I didn't believe a word. I thought all that sort of thing was extinct, like the Comte de St. Germain and Paracelsus.’
‘It is very far from being extinct. London, Paris, New York, Berlin - are full of all sorts and conditions of organizations experimenting and researching, and playing about generally with the Unseen. Mostly they are just mutual admiration societies, and the only credentials required are credulity and a vivid imagination. But some are like the one run by Hugo Astley, and that is an altogether different pair of boots.’
‘What do they go in for? Blackmail? Drugs? A spot of loose living?’
‘All those, and more, with a dash of subversive politics thrown in sometimes. But that is not peculiar to them; there are very few nightclubs that wouldn't answer to that description. No, the thing that entitles organizations like Astley's to our consideration, if not our respect, is their knowledge of certain of the rarer powers of the human mind. And that knowledge is genuine, Murchison. There is no fake about it. I'll tell you what it is, and I'll show you how it's done if you work with me.’
‘Are you planning an expose?’
‘What's the use? Astley's been exposed over and over again. Exposure is what he thrives on. So much free advertisement. No one who mixes up with Astley nowadays can plead ignorance of what they are doing. Besides, an exposure would only drag Ursula's name in the mud. No, I mean to fight him with his own weapons, get Ursula away from him, anyway, and lay him out once and for all if I can.’
‘Isn't Miss Brangwyn away from him, then?’
They both glanced involuntarily at the motionless form on the sofa at the far side of the room, vaguely outlined under the folds of the heavy fur rug, for, warm as the flat was, Ursula had complained of being cold.
‘Ursula is here all right, as you see, so far as her body is concerned. But you know the old song:
“My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here;
My Heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer;
Chasing the wild deer, and following the roe,
My heart's in the Highlands wherever I go.”
‘That's why Ursula's so dazed. She isn't here at all. She's off with Hugo Astley and Fouldes. She wants to do nothing but lie in a kind of day-dream and think of them.’
‘Can't we walk her up and down and flick her with a wet towel or something?’
‘That,’ said Brangwyn, 'is patching at symptoms while you leave the disease untouched. No, we've got to do more than that for Ursula, and that's what I'm coming to presently.
‘Where was I? O yes, I had told you how Astley got hold of Fouldes, and, through Fouldes, of Ursula.’
‘You had told me he had done so, but you didn't tell me how he had managed it. Do you want me to know that? I don't want to, if you don't.’
‘I want you to know all there is to know, my dear fellow, so that you can help me effectually. Astley, who is as cute as a waggon-load of monkeys, got hold of Fouldes through his vanity as easy as kiss hands. He forgot all he'd ever heard about Astley, and took the line that he was one of the world's misunderstood geniuses and a suffering martyr. He's a genius, all right, but he's not misunderstood. They understand him perfectly at Scotland Yard, though they can't catch him out, much as they'd like to; and he'll be a martyr too, one of these days, if my luck holds.
‘Astley couldn't get hold of Ursula direct, I'll say that for her. But he taught Fouldes some Voodoo tricks that he got from his negro grandmother, and Fouldes tried them out, and pretty soon he had Ursula on a string, and then Astley pulled the end of that string, and Ursula was in his hands.’
‘What did he want her for? The usual?’
‘Yes, and no. No, not quite the usual, though I have no doubt that would not have been entirely overlooked. Ever heard of the Black Mass?’
‘Gosh, yes! Was that the game? But what exactly is the Black Mass? They desecrate the Host, don't they? What had she got to do with it?’
‘Know what the altar is in a Black Mass?’
‘No, what is it?’
‘The body of a woman.’
‘Jerusalem!’ said Murchison, ‘and what happens to the woman?’
‘Astley's wife is in an asylum.’
‘So I should imagine. And glad to be there, I dare say.’
‘So you will naturally understand I was not anxious for Ursula to participate in any Black Masses, and as soon as I tumbled to what was afoot, and I tumbled to it early in the proceedings fortunately, for I knew the symptoms, I tackled the situation, horse, foot and artillery. I got Astley out of England by the simple expedient of putting a debt-collector on to buy up a selection of his debts and keep on county-courting him, and hoped I had settled the whole business, for Fouldes went with Astley. But things had been done to Ursula's soul that couldn't be dealt with quite so simply.
‘You remember what I told you about those down-rushes of power in the divine inebriation. Well, Ursula had been used for that purpose, and used pretty roughly, too, not in the way it should be done. Now, when you are doing a thing like that, you have to be in circuit, in the same way that an electric light is in circuit. It always has two wires, you notice. It won't light up if there's only one. For instance, when you had a divine inebriation with the spirit of Mars as you went berserk over the top, you earthed on to the Germans. When there weren't any Germans for you to earth on to, you were a bit of a handful, you know, Murchison.’
‘Who did I earth on to when I got in circuit with Pan outside the British Museum?’
‘You earthed on to me, because I happen to be a good conductor of that particular kind of force.’
‘What would have happened if you hadn't been about? Would I have blown a fuse?’
Brangwyn looked at him for a moment. ‘If I hadn't been about, it wouldn't have happened. I was in the Museum library for the purpose of looking up certain old formulae known in medieval times that are in the manuscripts there. My mind was on it, and, like the old padre at your school, I was emotionally worked up, for I am very fond of Ursula; she is like my own child to me, rather than a step-relation, and it was exactly a year ago that day that she and Frank had come to me for my blessing on their engagement.
‘I was wanting someone to complete the circuit so that I could get Ursula on to her feet again, and it was exceedingly difficult to find exactly what I wanted: and all the time I was copying out the old symbols, and the names of power, and the words of evocation, my mind was questing back and forth over this person and that person, and piecing together a sort of ideal person out of this quality and that quality, a highly magical operation, of course, and, hey presto, I picked up you, who had exactly the qualities I wanted, as surely as a big gun picks up an invisible target.’
‘So this is magic, is it?’ said Murchison quietly, his face an expressionless mask.
‘Do you define magic as mumbo-jumbo?’
‘I always have.’
‘I define it as the practical application of a knowledge of the little-understood powers of the human mind.’
‘Is this the technique you spoke of?’
‘Yes, Murchison, it is. Do you dislike the idea?’
Murchison thought it over for the best part of a cigarette.
‘Can't say I like it,’ he said at length.
This was a setback for Brangwyn, and a serious one.
‘There is nothing but the use of these little-understood powers that will put Ursula on her feet.’
‘Maybe; but she ought never to have got into this condition.’
‘She never would have if she had stuck to me and steered clear of Astley. If a drug is active enough to do any good, it is always capable of doing damage in an overdose. Don't you differentiate between Black Magic and White Magic?’
‘Afraid I don't. It all seems pretty murky to me.’
‘You said once you trusted me, Murchison. Would you say I was a bad man?’
‘No, I've always thought you were the best chap I've ever met.’
‘Well, such as I am, it was the practice of these little-understood things that have made me what I am. You can judge a tree by its fruits.’
‘The same tree sprouted Astley.’
‘No, that is just exactly what it didn't do, Murchison. He is working on an entirely different formula.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘I am trying to get in touch with the spiritual forces that built the universe so that I may be part of evolving life; he is trying to use them for his own ends. Working on his formula, Frank swells up like a bull-frog and Ursula is like a sucked orange. Working on my formula, they would have been the positive and negative poles of a battery, generating current.’
‘What sort of current?’
‘An intensification of life on all its levels.’
‘I see. And Fouldes goes and plugs in with the wrong voltage and shorts the whole caboodle?’
‘Something like that.’
‘And what do you want me to do?’
‘I want to go back and repeat the experiment up to the point it went wrong, and so get Ursula back in circuit with cosmic force again, so that she can charge up, for at the moment she is like a run-down battery.’
‘You mean you want to work the Black Mass?’
‘Good God, no, my dear fellow, what do you take me for? No, I should like to teach you the technique I would have taught Fouldes if he'd been any use, and let you and Ursula work together. If she once gets interested again, she'll soon pick up.’
He hoped he might be forgiven this Machiavellianism. After all, the experiment, once started, possessed a perfectly self-regulating mechanism. If it wasn't going on all right it would speedily come to an end. To explain in detail was hopeless at the present juncture. How could the fellow be expected to understand? And if he only half understood, he might shy at cooperating. It was best to run him in blinkers for the present. If the dream of the black cat were a reliable indicator, he would run in the desired direction. Black cats were reputed lucky, thought Brangwyn with a chuckle. ‘Are you game for the experiment?’ he asked.
‘Well, sir,’ said the cautious Murchison, ‘I'm game for it as far as I can see it. I can't say more than that, can I? Now what is it exactly that you want me to do?’
‘For the moment I only want you to get into sympathetic rapport with Ursula.’
‘How do I do that?’
‘How were you feeling towards her when you pulled her out of the train at the station?’
‘I felt frightfully sorry for her; and I'd have loved to have kicked her pal for his own sweet sake, quite apart from her. There was something about that fellow that got my goat at the very first sight.’
‘Go on feeling sorry for her. Feel as sorry as you can, for, God knows, she needs it. Imagine yourself standing between her and these blighters. Resist them mentally, and hang on to her for all you're worth. You will soon pick up a rapport with her if you do that.’
‘I may pick up a rapport with her all right. In fact, I fancy I've done so already. But will she pick up one with me? I don't fancy she has very much use for me.’
‘She soon will have, if you give her a sense of protection.’ Brangwyn prayed that he might be forgiven this half-truth.
‘I can give her that all right. I'm big enough and ugly enough to protect anything. And she'll know she's safe with me. I'm not interested in Black Masses. I don't see where the fun comes in with that sort of thing.’