V
Enlightenment came about in this fashion—seeking to quench a feverish thirst, Dillon discovered that no glass had been left in his room. He determined to fetch one from the buffet cupboard downstairs. Softly, in slippered feet, he descended the stairs and was crossing the hallway when he kicked something—a small book, he thought—that lay there upon the floor. Groping, he found it, slipped it into the pocket of his dressing-gown, and entered the dining-room. He found a tumbler without difficulty, in the dark, noted the presence of a heavy, oppressive odour, and returned upstairs. Now he made another discovery. He had forgotten the nightly draught of medicine prescribed by Dr. Kassimere; a new unopened phial stood upon the dressing-table.
He mixed himself a mild whisky and soda from the decanter and siphon which his host’s hospitality caused nightly to be placed in his room, and then, seized by a sudden thought, took out the little book which he had found in the hall.
It was a faded manuscript, in monkish Latin; a copy of an unpublished work of Paracelsus. Many passages had been rendered into English, and the translations, in Dr. Kassimere’s minute, cramped writing, were interposed between the bound pages. In these again were interpolated marginal notes, some in the shape of unintelligible symbols, others in that of chemical formulæ. Several passages were marked in red ink. And, having perused the first of these which he chanced upon, a clammy moisture broke out upon his skin, accompanied by so marked a nervous trembling that he was forced to seat himself upon the bed.
The secret of this man’s ghastly life-work was in his hands; he knew, now, what bargain Dr. Kassimere had proposed to the Frenchman and to the other; he knew why he had adopted the lovely daughter of Louis Devant—and he knew why he, Jack Dillon, had been invited to Hollow Grange. That such a ghoul in human shape could live and have his being amid ordinary mankind was a stupendous improbability which, ten minutes earlier, he would have laughed to scorn.
“My God!” he whispered. “My God!”
His glance fell upon the unopened phial on his dressing-table, and from his soul a silent thanksgiving rose to heaven that he had left that potion untasted. He realised that his own case differed from those of his predecessors in two particulars: He was actually in residence under Dr. Kassimere’s roof and receiving treatment from the man’s hands. No option was to be offered to him; the great experiment, the Magnum Opus, was to be performed without his consent!
And Phryné!—Phryné, the other innocent victim of this fiend’s lust for knowledge! The thought restored his courage. More than life itself depended upon his coolness and address; he must act, at once. The monstrous possibility hinted at by von Hohenheim—in his earliest published work, Practica D. Theophrasti Paracelsi, printed at Augsburg in 1529, was, in this hideous pamphlet, elaborated and brought within the bounds of practical experiment.
He crept to the door, opened it, and stood listening intently. That silence which seemed like a palpable cloud—a cloud masking the presence of one who watched—lay over the house. Slowly he descended to the hall and dropped the horror which the evil genius of von Hohenheim had conceived, upon the spot where it had lain when his foot had discovered it.
A creaking sound warned him of some one’s approach, and he had barely time to slip behind some draperies ere a cowled figure bearing a lantern came out into the hall. It was Dr. Kassimere, wearing a loose gown having a monkish hood—and he was searching for something.
Nothing in his experience—not the blood-lust seen in the eyes of men in battle—had prepared him for that which transfigured the face of Dr. Kassimere. The strange semblance of Thoth was there no more; it had given place to another, more active malevolence, to a sort of Satanic eagerness indescribably terrifying; it was the face of one possessed.
Like some bird of prey he pounced upon the book, thrust it into the pocket of his gown, and began furtively to retrace his steps. As he entered the big dining-room, Dillon was close upon his heels.
Dr. Kassimere passed into the small room beyond and turned from thence into the library. Dillon, observing every precaution, followed. From the library the doctor entered the short, narrow passage leading to that quaint relic of bygone days and ways—the tiny chapel. At the entrance Dillon paused, watchful. Once, the man in the monkish robe turned, on the time-worn step of the altar, and looked back over his shoulder, revealing a face that might well have been that of Asmodeus himself.
On the left of the altar was the cupboard wherein, no doubt, in past ages, the priest had kept his vestments. The oppressive odour which Dillon had first observed in the dining-room was very perceptible in the chapel; and as Dr. Kassimere opened the door of the cupboard and stepped within, an explanation of the presence of this deathly smell in the house occurred to Dillon’s mind. The laboratory adjoined the Grange on this side; here was a private entrance known to, and used by, Dr. Kassimere alone.
His surmise proved to be correct. Occasioning scarcely a sound, the secret door opened, and a fiery glow leapt out across the altar steps, accompanied by a wave of heated air laden with the nauseous, unnameable smell. Within the redly lighted doorway, Dr. Kassimere paused, and glanced at a watch which he wore upon his wrist. Then for a moment he disappeared, to reappear carrying a small squat bottle and a contrivance of wire and gauze the sight of which created in Dillon a sense of physical nausea. It was a chloroform-mask! Both he placed upon a vaguely seen table and again approached the door.
Weakly, Dillon fell back, pressing himself, closely against the chapel wall, as the doctor, this time leaving the secret entrance open—with a purpose in view which the watcher shudderingly recognized—recrossed the chapel and went off, softly treading, in the direction of the library.
All his courage, moral and physical, was called upon now, and knowing, by some intuition of love, what and whom he should find there, he stepped unsteadily into Dr. Kassimere’s laboratory....
That there were horrors—monstrosities that may not be described, whose names may not be written—in the place, he realised, in some subconscious fashion; but—prone upon a low, metal couch of most curious workmanship lay Phryné, in her night-robe, still—white; perfect in her pale beauty as her namesake who posed for Praxiteles.
Dillon reeled, steadied himself, and sank upon his knees by the couch.
“Phryné!” he whispered, locking his arms about her—“my Phryné!...”
Then he remembered the gauze mask and even detected the sickly, sweet smell of the anaesthetic. Anger gave him new strength; he raised the girl in his arms and turned towards the door communicating with the chapel.
Framed in the opening was the hooded figure of Dr. Kassimere, confronting him. His face was immobile again, with the immobility of ibis-headed Thoth; his eyes were hard, his voice was cold.
“What is the meaning of this outrage?” he demanded sternly. “Phryné has been taken suddenly ill; an immediate operation may be necessary——”
“Out of my way!” said Dillon, advancing past a huge glass jar filled with reddish liquid that stood upon a pedestal between the couch and the door.
“Be careful, you fool!” shrieked Dr. Kassimere, frenziedly, his calm dropping from him like a cloak and a new and dreadful light coming into the staring eyes.
But he was too late. Dillon’s foot had caught the pedestal. With a resounding crash the thing overturned; as Dr. Kassimere sprang forward, he slipped in the slimy stream that was pouring over the laboratory floor—and fell....
Laying Phryné upon the altar, her head resting against the age-worn communion rails, Dillon turned and closed the secret door dividing the house of God from the house of Satan. One glimpse, in the red furnace glow, he had of Dr. Kassimere, writhing upon the slimy floor, shrieking, blaspheming—and fighting, fighting madly, as a man fights for life and more than life....
He had not yet carried the unconscious girl beyond the dining-room, when, above that other smell, he detected the odour of burning wood. A fire had broken out in the laboratory.
*****
Mrs. Jack Dillon mourns her guardian (no trace of whom was ever found in the charred remains of Hollow Grange) to this day; for she retains no memory of the night of the great fire, but believes that, overcome by the fumes, she was rescued and carried insensible from the house, by her lover. In the latter’s bosom the grim secret is locked, with the memory of a demoniac figure, fighting, fighting....