The Soul Stealer

by Guy Thorne

From where his couch was placed, though he could not turn his head, he could see nearly the whole interior of his cell. There were the concrete walls, each cranny and depression of which he knew so well. There was the other, and scarcely less painful, bed upon which he slept, or tried to sleep at such times when exhausted nature mercifully banished the pain of his soul. It was not day when he slept, it was not night, for day and night are things of the world, the world with which he was never to have any more to do, and which he should never see again with material eyes.

There was the little table upon which was the last book they had let him have, a book brought to him in bitter mockery by Wilson Guest a child's picture book called "Reading without Tears." And he could see the network of ropes and india-rubber attachments which went up to the pulley in the roof, and which rendered him absolutely helpless by means of the mechanism outside the cell which was set in motion before his jailor entered.

There was hardly any need for these ingenious instruments any longer. The athlete was gaunt and wasted, his skin hung upon him in grey folds. The gold had faded out of his hair and it was nearly white. The firm and manly curve of the lips was broken and twisted. The whole mouth was puckered with pain and torture. It was almost a senile mouth now. Very little physical strength remained in the body—no, there was hardly any need for the pulley and ropes now, and soon there would be no need for them at all, until, perhaps, some other unhappy captive languished in the grip of these monsters.

His tired eyes gazed round the cell, and his thoughts were for a moment numbed into nothingness. There was just a piece of lead at the back of his brain, that was all. He was conscious of it being there, drowsily conscious, but no more than that.

Quite suddenly something seemed to start his mental lethargy, his brain resumed its functions instantaneously. There was a roaring in his ears like the sound of a wind, and he awoke to full consciousness and realization of what Sir William had told him, of the unutterable terror and frightfulness of his coming doom. All over his face, hands, and body, beads of perspiration started out in little jets. Then he felt as if a piece of ice were being slid smoothly down his spine—from the neck downwards. His hands opened and shut convulsively, gripping at nothing, and the soles of his feet, in their list slippers, became suddenly and strangely hot. The collar round his neck seemed to be throttling him, and his mouth opened, gasping for air.

Then that deep and hidden chamber was filled with a wail so mournful, melancholy and hopeless, so dismal and inhuman that the very concrete walls themselves might also have melted and dissolved away before the fire of such agony and the sound of such despair.

He knew the dark and more sinister reason of his captivity, he knew what they had made him and for what dreadful purpose.

Ah! It was a supreme revenge. They had stolen him from his love and they had stolen his very inmost soul from him. All the agonized prayers which had gone up to God like thin flames had been caught upon their way like tangible and material things, caught by the devilish power of one man, and thrown upon the wall for him to see and laugh over. All his passionate longing for Marjorie, all the messages he tried to frame and send her through the darkness and the walls of stone, all these had been but an amusement and a derision for the fiend whose slave he had become. And all his hatred, his deep cursings of his captor, all his futile half-formed plans for an escape were all known to the two men. And still worse, his very memories, his most sacred memories, had been taken from him and used as a theatre by William Gouldesbrough and Wilson Guest. He understood now the remarks that the assistant had sometimes made, the cruel and extraordinary knowledge he seemed to display of things that had happened in Rathbone's past. It was all quite plain, all terribly distinct.

And worst of all, the sacred moments when he had avowed his love for Marjorie, and she, that peerless maiden, had come to him in answer, these dear memories, which alone had kept his cooling mind from madness, were known and exulted over by these men. They had seen him kiss Marjorie; all the endearments of the lovers had passed before them like tableaux in a pantomime. Yes; this indeed was more than any brain could bear.

Rathbone knew now that he was going mad.