CHAPTER XXIV
MR. WILSON GUEST MAKES A MISTAKE
Mr. Wilson Guest had seen all this many times before. The actual demonstration would have given him amusement and filled him with that odd secret pride which was the only reward he asked from that science which he had followed so long under different conditions than the present.
If Sir William Gouldesbrough had not absolutely prohibited the use of any alcohol upon that day, Guest might have been normal and himself. It was in this matter that Sir William made a great mistake. In his extreme nervousness and natural anxiety, he forgot the pathology of his subject, and did not realize how dangerous it is to rob a man of his drug, and then expect him to do his work.
Guest's assistance had been absolutely necessary in the first instance, in order to prepare the various parts of the Thought Spectrum, and to ensure the proper working of the machinery.
But now, when all that was done, when the demonstration was actually going on and everything was working smoothly and well, there was no immediate need at the moment for Guest's presence in the laboratory.
Accordingly, while Lord Landsend was vainly trying to secrete thought, Wilson Guest slipped out by the side-door in the dark. He was in a long passage leading to the other experimental rooms, and he heaved a great sigh of relief. High above in the air, the thunder could still be heard growling, but the corridor itself, lit by its rows of electric lights and softly carpeted, seemed to the wretched man nothing but an avenue to immediate happiness.
He shambled and almost trotted towards the dining-room in the other part of the house, where he knew that he would find something to drink quicker than anywhere else. He crossed the big hall and went into the dining-room. No one was there.
It was a panelled room with a softly glowing wood fire upon the hearth, and heavy crimson curtains shutting out the dying lights of the day. On a gleaming mahogany sideboard were bottles of cut-glass, ruby, diamond, and amber; bottles in which the soft firelight gleamed and was repeated in a thousand twinkling points.
A loud sob of relief burst from the drunkard, and he went up to the sideboard with the impish greed and longing that one sees in some great ape.
And now, as his shadow, cast upon the wall in the firelight, parodied and distorted all his movements, there seemed _two_ obscene and evil creatures in the rich and quiet room. It was as though the man with his huge hairless face were being watched and waited for by an ape-like ambassador from hell.
Guest clutched the mahogany sideboard and, his fingers were so hot that a greyness like that of damp breath on frosted glass glowed out upon the wood--it seemed as if the man's very touch brought mildew and blight.
Guest ran his eye rapidly along the decanters. His throat felt as though it was packed with hot flour. His mouth tasted as if he had been sucking a brass tap. His tongue was swollen and his lips were hard, cracked, and feverish. He snatched the brandy bottle from a spirit-case, and poured all that was in it into a heavy cut-glass tumbler. Then, looking round for more, for the tantalus had not been more than one-fourth part full, he saw a long wicker-covered bottle of curacao, and he began to pour from it into the brandy. Then, without water, or mineral water, he began to gulp down this astonishing and powerful mixture, which, in a fourth of its quantity, would probably have struck down the ordinary man, as a tree snaps and falls in a sudden wind.
It had been Guest's intention to take enough alcohol to put him into something like a normal condition, and then to return to the laboratory to assist at the concluding scenes of the demonstration, and to enjoy it in his own malicious and sinister fashion. But as the liquor seemed to course through his veins and to relieve them of the intolerable strain, as he felt his whole body respond to the dose of poison to which he had accustomed it, thoughts of returning to the laboratory became very dim and misty.
Here was this large comfortable room with its panelled walls, its old family portraits in their massive gilt frames, this fire of wood logs in a great open hearth, sending out so pleasant and hospitable an invitation to remain. Every fibre of the wretch's body urged him to take the twilight hour and enjoy it.
Guest sat down in a great arm-chair, padded with crimson leather, and gazed dreamily into the white heart of the fire.
He felt at peace, and for five minutes sat there without movement, looking in the flickering firelight like some grotesque Chinese sculpture, some god of darkness made by a silent moon-faced man on the far shores of the Yang-tze-Kiang.
Then Mr. Guest began to move again; the fuel that he had taken was burning out. The man's organism had become like one of those toy engines for children, which have for furnace a little methyl lamp, and which must be constantly renewed if the wheels of the mechanism are to continue to revolve.
Mr. Guest rose from the arm-chair and shambled over to the sideboard again. The bottle of curacao was still almost full, though there did not appear to be any more brandy.
That would do, he thought, and he poured from the bottle into his glass as if he had been pouring beer. The wretched man had forgotten that, in his present state--a state upon the very verge of swift and hidden paroxysm and of death--the long abstention of the morning and afternoon had modified his physiological condition. Moreover, the suddenness of these stealthy potations in the dining-room began to have their way with him. He was a man whom it was almost impossible to make intoxicated, as the ordinary person understands intoxication. When Guest was drunk, his mind became several shades more evil, that was all.
But at this moment the man succumbed, and in half-an-hour his brain was absolutely clouded and confused. He had forgotten both time and occasion, and could not think coherently.
At last he seemed to realize this himself. He rose to his feet and, clutching hold of the dining-room table, swayed and lurched towards the dining-room door. There was a dim consciousness within him of something which was imminently necessary to be done, but which he had forgotten or was unable to recall.
"What was it?" he kept asking himself with a thick indistinctness. "I knew I had somethin' to do, somethin' important, can't think what it was."
At that moment his hand, which he had thrust into his pocket, touched a key.
"I've got it," he said, "'course, I know now. I must go down and put the cap on Rathbone, after I have injected the alcohol preparation. William and I want to sit in front of the screen and follow his thoughts; they are funnier than they ever used to be before we told him what we were doing to him. I'll just take one more drink, then I'll go down-stairs to the cellars at once."
CHAPTER XXV
AT LAST!
When the sounds of amused laughter at Lord Landsend's unconscious revelation had passed away, and that young nobleman, slightly flushed indeed, but still with the imperturbability that a man of his class and kind learns how to wear on all occasions, had regained his seat, a fire of questions poured in upon Sir William Gouldesbrough.
The famous scientists of the party had all risen and were conferring together in a ripple of rapid and exciting talk, which for the convenience of the foreign members of their number, was conducted in French.
Marjorie Poole, who had not looked at Sir William at all during the whole of the afternoon, was very pale and quiet.
Gouldesbrough had noticed this, and even in the moment of supreme triumph his heart was heavy within him. He feared that something irrevocable had come between him and the girl he loved, and her pallor only intensified his longing to be done with the whole thing, to be alone with her and to have the explanation which he desired so keenly and yet dreaded so acutely. For what Lord Malvin had said to him had stabbed him with a deadly fear, as each solemn, significant word rang through the room.
"Could it be," he asked himself, "could it possibly be that these people suspected or knew anything?"
His quick brain answered the question in its own swift and logical fashion. It was utterly impossible that Lord Malvin _could_ know anything. His words were a coincidence and that was all. No, he need not fear, and possibly, he thought, the long strain of work and worry had had its influence upon his nerves and he had become morbid and unstrung.
That fear passed, but there was still in his heart the fear, and strangely enough an even greater fear, that he would never now make Marjorie his own.
His outward face and demeanour showed nothing of the storm and riot within. He was calm, self-possessed, and smiling, quick to answer and to reply, to explain this or that point in his discoveries, to be adequate, confident and serene.
In reply to a question from Dean Weare, Sir William leant upon one of the cases which covered the thought-transforming mechanism and gave a little lecture.
"Quite so, Mr. Dean," he said; "it is exactly as you suppose, the form, power, and vividness of the pictures upon the screen correspond exactly with the strength of the intellect of the person whose thoughts are making these pictures. You will find your strongly imaginative man, or your man whose brain is much turned inward upon himself, and who, for this very reason takes little part in the action or movement of life, will give a far more complete and vivid picture than any other. For example, assuming that the Bishop's valet is an ordinary servant and accompanied his Lordship to Palestine a few months ago, and saw exactly what his Lordship saw, that man's memories would not be thrown upon the screen with such wonderful vividness as his Lordship's were. He would not be able, in all probability, to produce a picture, a general impression, which is a real picture and not a photograph, and which so conveys the exact likeness of a place far more than any photograph could ever do. His thoughts would probably be represented by some special incident which had struck his fancy at the time and assumed a proportion in his mind which a cultured and logical faculty of thought would at once reject as being out of due proportion. And finally, in a precise ratio to the power of the brain--I do not mean to its health, or ill-health, its weight or size, I mean its pure _thinking_ power--so are the thoughts, when transformed into light, vivid or not vivid, as the case may be."
Mrs. Hoskin-Heath turned to Lord Landsend, who was sitting beside her.
Her pretty face wore a roguish smile as she whispered to him.
"Billy, what an awful donkey _you_ must be."
Lord Landsend looked at her for a moment. Then he answered--
"Well, you know, I am not at all sure that it is not a jolly good thing to be sometimes. I would not be that fellow Gouldesbrough for anything."
She looked at him in amusement. There was something quite serious in the young man's face.
"Why," she said, in a whisper, "what do you mean, Billy?"
"I may not be clever," said Lord Landsend, "but I prefer to spend my life doing what amuses me, not what other people think I ought to do. At the same time I know men, and I know that scientific Johnny over there has got something on his mind which I should not care to have. Poor Tommy Decies had that look in his eyes the night before Ascot last year, poor Eustace Charliewood had it just before he went down to Brighton and shot himself; and you may take it from me, Mrs. Hoskin-Heath, that I know what I am talking about."
"And now," said Sir William, looking up and down the rows of faces opposite him. "And now, which of you will submit himself to the next experiment?"
Then Lord Landsend spoke. He was determined to "get his own back," as he would have put it, if possible.