CHAPTER TWENTT-SIX

THE TERRIFIC WIND DIED AWAY AS SUDDENLY AS it had arisen, leaving the room in utter darkness. Veronica could hear the old man fumbling for the matches. The little pale flame lit up at last, a feeble gleam among the shadows The lamp, smashed to fragments, lay in a corner, and the old doctor turned slowly round, seeking for something to light. As he turned, he suddenly stopped with a half-strangled exclamation, for, framed in the shattered window-space, stood the figure of a man. They both gazed at it in speechless amazement as the dying flame of the match illumined the strange, impassive countenance, exaggerating with its flickering shadows the deep lines of the parchment skin, the hollow cheeks, the high cheek-bones, the great jaw and the lofty forehead. The eyes, deep-set and glittering, were those of the hawk, not the Mongol, otherwise the newcomer might have passed for an Asiatic rather than a European, and the lithe, silent movement with which he entered the room confirmed the illusion of the East, yet Veronica knew that this man was not an Asiatic, any more than he was a Westerner ; he was absolutely detached. He gave the impression of tremendous power, utterly impersonal, completely under control. Veronica had seen enough of the members of the mysterious Fraternity in whose headquarters she had been concealed to recognize the sign manual of its discipline. The glittering eyes of Dr. Latimer, the catlike movement of Lucas, the sense of impersonal power of the hard-faced man, all these she saw developed to a far greater degree and concentrated in a single individual. She knew without telling that this man had to do with the Fraternity, but was far higher, far bigger, than the men she had so far encountered in the handling of its affairs. He as far transcended Lucas as Lucas transcended herself, and she knew without telling that he was not only a man to be obeyed, but to be trusted.

The match burnt itself out in the old man's fingers while he gazed speechless at this apparition, and the room was once again in darkness and silence.

The voice of the stranger broke the spell.

“You know me ?”

“Yes, you are—you are—the Third.” Dr. Latimer spoke brokenly, like a man overwhelmed by emotion.

“Quite right. I am the Third. Now I suggest that you strike a light. There are matters I wish to discuss with you.”

Veronica could here the footsteps of the stranger as he crossed the bare parquet. He moved in the darkness with the precision of a man who could see where he was going, and the clink of metal told her that he had laid hands on the two brass bedroom candlesticks that stood on the table near the door. By the time Dr. Latimer had got the match alight, he was standing before him, holding the candlesticks.

Veronica could now examine him at her leisure. The loose frieze overcoat he wore exaggerated his height and the massiveness of his frame, but as he laid it aside she saw that he was clad in the ordinary lounge suit of civilization. Unlike some students of the occult, the members of this fraternity, which really possessed power and knowledge, did not seek to be impressive, but rather to conceal themselves under the bushel of convention in order to pursue their studies undisturbed. “Don't stir up Mrs. Grundy,” Lucas had once said to her, “she is an old lady well worth conciliating if you want to be let alone.” The newcomer was evidently of the same opinion, for mien and manner were studiously approximated to the ordinary.

He knelt before the smouldering hearth and drew the ashes together gently, as if handling living creatures. The instantaneous blazing of the fire under his hand seemed to Veronica of a piece with his power to move in the darkness : he might wear ordinary clothes, but he was no ordinary man.

For the first time he looked directly at her as she sat motionless in her big chair, as she had sat ever since his entrance.

“Come, my child,” he said, laying his hand on hers. “Draw up to the fire and warm yourself. You are cold.”

That kindly touch, which had nothing of a man's familiarity in it, told Veronica yet more about the stranger. Dr. Latimer had brains and kindness, but no strength ; the hard-faced man had brains and strength, but no kindness ; the newcomer had all three, and Veronica knew by this that he was a far greater man in every way than either of the others was ever likely to be, “Talk of angels and you hear their wings,” says the proverb, and even as she thought of her old opponent, a step sounded on the gravel of the terrace, and his burly figure stood framed in the window.

He looked just as surprised to see the man who had called himself the Third as Dr. Latimer had looked, and Veronica had a secret suspicion that he was not any too pleased. He was not the type of man who would take kindly to yielding, and the stranger would certainly rule any group in which he found himself. On the other hand, she knew intuitively that Dr. Latimer was immensely relieved at the intervention of the unknown man, and quite ready to trust the issue into his hands.

“If you will be good enough to come in, Mr. Fordice,” said that personage, “we will be able to close the window.”

The hard-faced man gave a grunt that sounded rather resentful of even this reasonable request, but nevertheless he did as he was asked, and lent his assistance to secure the mouldering shutters that threatened to fall bodily into the room.

No questions were asked or answered, but nevertheless, Veronica, with her quickened intuition, felt certain that each of these three men had obeyed a silent summons, though whether that summons had issued from the Third, or whether he, too, had been summoned, she could not tell. They were gathered in a semicircle round the now blazing fire, and two pipes and a cigar were rapidly obscuring the atmosphere, and still no word was spoken ; she felt that these men were “sensing” the state of affairs, “sensing” each other, and acting and reacting in a way which she could not divine. She had always thought that occultists were ascetic people who touched neither meat, drink nor tobacco, but Dr. Latimer had always eaten without a murmer whatever the caretaker had chosen to set before him, and the Third was smoking a long black cigar that would have put the average man upon his back. They might be psychics, but they were certainly not sensitives.

Finally the Third spoke. “We must settle this matter as speedily as possible,” he said. “Time is an important factor in the case.”

“I thought it had been settled,” said the hard-faced man, with something that closely approached a sneer.

“I thought so, too,” said Dr. Latimer, looking up in surprise. “Lucas, in my hearing, accepted his fate and went out to the Judgment Hall of Osiris.”

“And was turned back at the gate,” said the Third, “for his time was not yet come. They would no more accept him than they would accept a murdered man or—” he paused significantly, “—a suicide.”

“Would you consider,” said the hard-faced man, “that a criminal who was executed in accordance with the law was a murdered man ?”

“The law of the land rules the land,” said the Third, “and when the Race Spirit takes a life, it is a death according to the law, and therefore a natural death ; whether it is right or wise to take that life, is another matter, and in any case the issue is one we are not concerned with here, for the law was not invoked. It was a private vendetta, gentlemen, and it is no use pretending otherwise, and the consequences of your rash action you must face, for you have caused a soul to leave its body before its natural term had arrived, and that soul, therefore, ‘ walks ‘ as surely as any other suicide.”

“Why do you keep on emphasizing the word suicide ?” asked the man he had called Fordice, peering sharply at the Third.

“Because I do not know what other word to use for a man who voluntarily vacates his body, the makers of dictionaries had not foreseen such an eventuality as the one we are discussing. No, gentlemen, with all your cleverness you did not even succeed in ‘bagging ’ our friend. He eluded you.”

Fordice gave a sound that was almost a snarl. He was evidently more annoyed to learn that his magic had failed of its purpose than relieved to fina that he had not got a crime on his conscience. His character appeared to have undergone a profound change even during the short time that Veronica had known him ; the evil of which Lucas had rid his soul seemed to have entered into him.

“The question is, what do you propose to do with our friend ?” continued the Third. “He is a member of your Lodge, gentlemen, it is your problem.”

“The reason he does not go to his last account is that he is a vampire,” said Fordice. “If you opened the grave you would probably find his body as fresh as when it was buried.”

“Precisely,” said the Third. “We all know that. But the question is : What are you going to do about it ?”

“You also know the traditional way of dealing with vampires, no doubt ?” answered his opponent, the sneer appearing openly on the surface of his expression.

“I knew it before you were born,” said the Third, a slow smile stirring the lines of his face. “But, considering the circumstances under which this man became a vampire, would you be justified in using it. You, of all men ?”

At this home thrust the hard-faced man winced and kept silence.

“It has always been my belief,” said Dr. Latimer, “that Justin, with all his faults, did not enter our Fraternity without a reason, and it is also my belief that when he gave himself as a voluntary sacrifice to save another, he wiped out a very great deal, if not all, of his debt.”

“Did he not contract a fresh debt when he elected to become a vampire ?” asked Fordice.

“Admittedly. But do you not think that he wiped that out also when he went voluntarily to the Second Death? Remember, we had not power to force him to surrender his wraith-form, he laid it down of his own free will rather than injure one whom he loved. The Second Death is a terrible thing for a man in his position to face, and he had no means of knowing that the Second Death would reject him.”

“And even if he had known it,” interposed the Third, “to wander homeless in the Intermediate State is a much worse thing than to burn in Hell, for you suffer all the pains of purgatory with none of its purification. That soul is out on the astral now, where, between you, you have despatched him.”

“Now, gentlemen, as I told you before, time is the essence of the contract, for, deprived of his peculiar form of sustenence, Lucas will no longer be able to hold his physical body together, and you have just about the same time in which to act as would elapse between death and burial in the ordinary way. Lucas has returned to his grave by now, for it is past cockcrow, and he will probably return to it again to-morrow, but I doubt if he will be able to use it much longer.”

“The correct thing to do is to ‘Bury him at four cross roads, with a stake in his inside,’” said the hard-faced man, his sneer again getting the better of his discretion.

His interlocutor looked at him sharply. “Don't talk nonsense,” he said. “That is nothing to do with the matter. The body will disintegrate, anyway. Lucas has already renounced his vampiricism. What we have to decide is, whether we will let events take their natural course and leave Lucas to wander as an earth-bound spirit till his time is up, or try to get him back into his physical body, which is at present lying in deep trance in the graveyard.”

The old man sat up with a start. “Then—then he is not dead ?” he said.

“By no manner of means,” said the Third. “He has performed a very advanced yogi operation, just such a one as Stevenson records in ‘The Master of Balantrae.’ If you were to examine his body, you would probably find that even the injuries inflicted by the post-mortem had been reconstructed. He had been out of his body some time when the death-stroke fell upon it, and had evidently planned to lie in trance until he could arrange to get his body exhumed under the proper conditions, living as a vampire meanwhile. You can read an account of similar occurrences in ‘Dracula,’ written by a man who had more knowledge than Stevenson. Lucas took a very long chance, it was a thousand to one against his experiment succeeding, but as he had managed in holding his form together so long there is a possibility that he might have succeeded had he continued. He is a brave man, and whatever the cruelties by which he had kept himself going, I can forgive a great deal to bravery.”

He paused and looked round the room, studying the effect his words had had upon his hearers. Dr. Latinier was gazing at him in eager perplexity. There could be no doubt as to the way his wishes went, but he feared to allow himself to hope too much lest the disappointment should be too keen. Lucas had meant a great deal to him, had been like a son to his lonely old age, and he had painstakingly transmitted to him all his laboriously acquired occult knowledge, hoping to see the younger man accomplish the Great Work that had been denied to himself.

The hard-faced man had lost the immobile calm of the trained occultist and had his hand at his moustache, tugging at it nervously. It was obvious that a vindictive temper was striving for the upper hand. He hated having his judgments reversed, he resented the tacit assumption of superiority by the stranger, but he appeared to consider resistance as futile and showed signs of making good his retreat as best he could. He rose to his feet.

“I have given you my opinion,” he said, “but I don't resist your authority. The responsibility is yours. All I ask is, that you will excuse me from sharing the consequences.”

“That is an absolution I have no power to give,” replied the Third. “You will not see the end of the consequences of this affair for many a long life to come. But we hold no man against his will. If it is your wish to withdraw, you have my permission to do so.”

The hard-faced man pulled on a heavy leather motoring-coat, his eyes wandering from one to another of the faces before him. For Veronica they held something that almost approached pity : to old Dr. Latimer he gave a glance of resentment and contempt : the eyes of the Third he was unable to meet. Nevertheless, he addressed him.

“Things may turn out as you expect,” he said, “or they may not. Lucas may have succeeded in eluding the Dark Ray or—he may not. But in any case” (turning to Dr. Latimer), “I wish him joy of the leavings of the postmortem.” With which parting shot he closed the door behind him, and they heard his footsteps die away through the empty, echoing house.