‘Upon others?’ I insisted.
He hesitated an instant.
‘Upon one other—yes,’ he admitted.
‘Intentionally?’ And something quivered in me as I asked it.
He shrugged his shoulders slightly. ‘I’m merely a speculative archaeologist,’ he smiled, ‘and—and an imaginative Egyptologist. My bounden duty is to reconstruct the past so that it lives for others.’
An impulse rose in me to take him by the throat.
‘You know perfectly well, of course, the magical effect it’s sure—likely at least—to have?’
He stared steadily at me through the cigarette smoke. To this day I cannot think exactly what it was in this man that made me shudder.
‘I’m sure of nothing,’ he replied smoothly, ‘but I consider it quite legitimate to try. Magical—the word you used—has no meaning for me. If such a thing exists, it is merely scientific—undiscovered or forgotten knowledge.’ An insolent, aggressive light shone in his eyes as he spoke; his manner was almost truculent. ‘You refer, I take it, to—our friend—rather than to yourself?’
And with difficulty I met his singular stare. From his whole person something still emanated that was forbidding, yet overmasteringly persuasive. It brought back the notion of that invisible Web, that dim gauze curtain, that motionless Influence lying waiting at the centre for its prey, those monstrous and mysterious Items standing, alert and watchful, through the centuries. ‘You mean,’ he added lower, ‘his altered attitude to life—his going?’