"And your dream?" Megbie said quietly.
She started. "Ah, you know," she said. "The spirit of Eustace Charliewood could not tell me while I was conscious. But in sleep he could influence my brain in some other mysterious way. I dreamed that Guy was in a sort of cell. By some means or other I knew that it was underground. A man was there, a man whom I have met, a man—a horrible creature—who is a fellow-worker of Sir William Gouldesbrough. The man was doing something to Guy. I couldn't see what it was. Then the picture faded away. I seemed to be moving rapidly in a cold empty place where there was no wind or air, sound, or, or—I can't describe it. It was a sort of 'between place.'"
"And then?"
"Then I saw you standing by the side of William Gouldesbrough. It was at the party—Lord Malvin's party, which we had just left. I saw this as if from a vast distance. It was a tiny, tiny picture, just as one could see something going on under a microscope. William was talking to some one whom I couldn't see. But I knew it was myself, that I was looking at the exact scene which had happened at the party, when you were going away with William, and he had stopped on the way to ask me to go into supper with him. And, strangely enough, in another part of my mind, the sub-conscious part I suppose, I knew that I was looking at an event of the past, and that this was the reason why it seemed so tiny and far-off. The picture went away in a flash—just like an eye winking. You've been to one of those biograph shows and seen how suddenly the picture upon the screen goes?—well, it was just like that. Then a voice was speaking—a very thin and very distant voice. If one could telephone to the moon, one would hear the voice at the other end just like that, I should think. And though the voice was so tiny, it was quite distinct, and it had a note of terrible entreaty. 'Go to Donald Megbie,' it said. 'Go at once to Donald Megbie, the writer. He will help. There is still time. Go to Donald Megbie. I have been able to communicate with him. He has the silver—Guy——' And then, Mr. Megbie, the voice stopped suddenly. Those were the exact words. What they meant, I did not know. But when I awoke they remained ringing in my ears like the echo of a bell heard over a wide expanse of country. In the morning I resolved to come to you. I didn't know where you lived, but I looked you up in 'Who's Who.' And as soon as I could get away without any one knowing, I came here."
Donald Megbie rose from his chair. He realized at once that it was necessary to keep the same high tension of this interview. If that were lost everything would go.
"I know what the poor troubled spirit—if it is a spirit—of the man, Charliewood, meant by his last words. There is a thing called psychometry, Miss Poole. In brief, it means that any article which belongs, or has belonged, to any one, somehow retains a part of their personality. It may well be that the mysterious thought-vibrations which Sir William Gouldesbrough has discovered can linger about an actual and material object. Last night, when Sir William left me to take you in to supper at Lord Malvin's, he left his cigarette-case behind him in the conservatory where we had been sitting. I didn't want to bother him then, so I put it in my pocket, intending to send it to him to-day; here it is. It belonged to Guy Rathbone. I found it in Sir William's possession, and I believe that it has been the means—owing, to some law or force which we do not yet understand—of bringing us together this morning." He handed her the cigarette-case.
Neither of them could know that this was the case which Eustace Charliewood had found in the pocket of Rathbone's fur coat, when he had taken it from the Bond Street coiffeur in mistake.
Neither of them could see how it had been restored by Charliewood to Rathbone, and had been appropriated by Mr. Guest, when the captive had been taken to his silent place below the old house in Regent's Park.
And even Sir William Gouldesbrough did not know that he had seen the thing in his study, just as he was starting for Lord Malvin's house, and had absently slipped it into his pocket, thinking it was his own.