Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 27, No. 1, September 17, 1927

FROM WHENCE SPRUNG THAT SINISTER AFFINITY BETWEEN THE MASTER AND THE BEATING HOOVES OF AN UNSEEN HORSEMAN RIDING TO THE TOWER?

Chapter I Doom — or the Man

“Murder is a word with an ugly sound.”

Barrington Bryan’s dark face wore a faint suggestion of a sneer as he spoke. He lay back in the armchair in which he was seated, and watched Sacha narrowly. He saw the last traces of blood ebb from her cheeks.

“It is not true.”

Her whispered words sounded loud in the intense silence. Far away, in Park Lane perhaps, they heard the rumble of an omnibus. Barrington raised his shoulders in a slight shrug.

“God knows,” he said, “you had excuse enough. Orme might have driven any woman to murder. He must so have driven any man as hopelessly in love with you, his wife, as Dick Lovelace.”

The words fell with calculated deliberation, like blows. Sacha sprang to her feet and stood facing her tormentor. Her eyes, suddenly, were filled with wild fear.

“Dick had nothing to do with it. I swear that Dick had nothing to do with it. Oh, God!”

Barrington leaned forward. His dark eyes glowed now, and the cruel expression on his face was intensified.

“It doesn’t matter in the least what you swear,” he declared coldly. “Facts are facts.”

Sacha tottered and grasped the back of a chair to support herself. In an instant he had come to her side.

“It is in your power to save him,” he exclaimed in low tones. “If you marry me, nobody will ever know — anything.”

She did not reply. She stood with her eyes half closed, like a tall lily which the winds have bruised. He glanced admiringly at the frock she wore, a calyx of tissue of gold about the white petals of her shoulders.

“Well?”

“I... I can’t marry you.”

“You mean that you have promised to marry Dick Lovelace?”

His tones thrilled with passion. His rather cold face had assumed a brutal expression. She did not speak.

“You shall never marry him! My God, Sacha, I wall have no mercy if you refuse me. No mercy — no pity. Within a single week the death of your husband will be the talk of the whole world—”

He stopped suddenly. The girl had sunk down on her knees on the floor. The light from the electric lamps kindled the living gold of her hair, so that he gasped at the sight of it. He bent over her and whispered in her ear:

“I love you, Sacha, as I have never loved any woman in my life.”

Again she remained unresponsive. He reached out and took her hand. He repeated:

“It is in your power to save him.”

Suddenly she stood up. She faced him again, and he saw her lips were bloodless.

“Why should you wish to break my heart?” she asked simply. “To kill me?”

“My dear Sacha, it is my heart against yours.”

He laughed as he spoke, adding, “Hearts are not so easily broken as you think.”

They heard the sound of a car approaching along Green Street. The car came to the door.

A moment later the buzz of the bell announced a visitor. Barrington started.

“Who can that be?”

He strode to the window and raised a corner of the blind. Then he turned back to Sacha.

“Well,” he demanded, “which is it to be— Yes or No?”

He drew close to her. She raised her eyes to his eyes, and saw, written therein, the doom of the man she loved.

She bowed her head so that he might not read in her face the desperate resolution to which she had come.

“I will marry you,” she whispered.

They heard steps ascending the stairs. The door of the little drawing-room was opened. A maid announced:

“Mr. Dick Lovelace.”

Chapter II A Knock on the Door

Dick Lovelace entered the room quickly. He saw Barrington Bryan, and immediately stiffened as a man stiffens at the sight of a snake. He came to Sacha and took the hand she extended to him.

“Forgive me,” he apologized, “for this intrusion, but Lord Templewood is seriously ill. May I see you a moment in private?”

His voice had a hard, strained ring, as though, already, the — presence of Barrington had poisoned all the anticipated happiness of his visit. His cheeks, Sacha noticed, were paler than usual.

“Of course, we can go to the dining room—”

The girl’s voice faltered in spite of herself. She glanced at Barrington, whose expression had become bitterly hostile as she spoke.

“You will excuse me?” she asked.

He bowed, and turned away, so that Dick might not have the chance further to ignore his presence. They left him with the blind in his hand, looking out into the wet street. Dick closed the dining room door behind him in a manner which proclaimed eloquently his desire that it should remain closed for ever against the man upstairs.

“Your uncle’s mind,” he announced abruptly, “is giving way.”

He was standing in the middle of the floor with his slouch hat crushed in his hand. The hard light was still in his eyes. Sacha came to the mantelpiece and rested a bare arm on it. She did not speak.

“Dr. Andrews of Redden says that a specialist must be called in at once — tonight. He thinks that Lord Templewood may have to be certified as insane. As Lord Templewood’s agent, it was my duty to come to you.”

Dick’s tones had become sterner as he proceeded, perhaps because he recalled the fact that, though he had written to Sacha already about her uncle’s mental condition, she had not answered his letter. His voice held an accusing note as he added:

“You are what lawyers call his ‘next of kin.’ Your consent to the certification may be necessary. I think you must accompany me back to The Black Tower to-night, after we have seen the specialist, Dr. Hailey of Harley Street, and asked him to come down to Leicestershire at once.”

He paused. She realized vaguely that he was challenging her. She dared not meet his eyes. A sense of weakness, profound and overwhelming, caused her to turn away from him and set her elbows on the mantelpiece to keep herself from falling. He mistook that movement, perhaps, for emotion caused by his bad news.

“Ninon Darelli, the medium, is with Lord Templewood,” he stated. “She has not left him for three days now. He will scarcely permit her out of his sight though, I think, to do her justice, that she wants to get back to London to her clairvoyant business. He says that her presence alone saves him from the horseman whom he hears every night galloping up to the door of the old house.”

Sacha started. Then she turned and contracted her brows as if to recall thoughts already gone straying. She murmured:

“The Horseman of Death?”

“I believe that is what he calls it, yes.”

She nodded. A strange excitement glowed in her eyes.

“He comes when somebody, some member of the family, is going to die,” she declared, as though she were stating a fact which might not be doubted.

Suddenly she came to Dick and laid her hand on his arm.

“Oh, please go yourself and get the doctor,” she whispered, “oh please, please—”

Her voice broke on the last words. He looked down into her upturned face and caught his breath in a gasp of amazement and horror.

“Sacha, what is wrong? Oh, for God’s sake, tell me what is wrong!”

“Nothing is wrong. Only... only I am a little tired—”

She moved away from him again. She tried to master herself and smile, but the result of that effort was so piteous that she abandoned it. He stood a moment, watching her with eyes which were full of sorrow and bewilderment and pain.

“Sacha, dear,” he said gently, “will you tell me why Barrington Bryan is here tonight?”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“He called to see me. After all, he is our nearest neighbor at Redden.”

The pain in Dick’s eyes deepened. He caught his breath in sharp repudiation.

“Surely,” he exclaimed, “you know enough about him — about his character — to realize that—”

He stopped suddenly.

There was a sharp knocking at the door of the room.

Chapter III The Hour Was at Hand

Sacha ran to open the door. She seemed to have become endowed, suddenly, with a new strength. Barrington Bryan was standing behind it. He was wearing his overcoat, and held his hat in his hand.

“Forgive me,” he said crisply, “but I have an appointment which I must keep.”

He was frowning, and he glanced angrily in the direction of Dick Lovelace. It was obvious that his appointment interested him much less than the fact of Sacha’s presence in this room with her lover.

“Dr. Andrews of Redden,” the girl exclaimed, in breathless tones, “has sent for me to go to The Black Tower to-night! My uncle’s reason has given way.”

There was a note of pleading in her voice, which caused Dick to set his teeth. Barrington’s frown grew more pronounced. He advanced a little way into the room.

“What good can your going do?” he demanded.

“Dick says that my consent may be necessary if... if he is certified.”

Sacha’s voice shook. In her eyes, which were turned to Dick, there was a desperate appeal that he would maintain his self-restraint.

“Oh, very well.” Barrington appeared to hesitate a moment. Then he turned toward Dick with a new recklessness gleaming in his dark eyes.

“Mrs. Malone has just consented to marry me,” he announced. “In the circumstances, I am naturally reluctant that she should go away—”

He got no farther than that. Dick’s face had become so ghastly in its sudden pallor that, instinctively, he shrank back toward the door. Sacha came quickly between the two men. She laid her hand on Barrington’s arm.

“I will let you know what happens.”

He did not seem to hear her. He turned on his heel and strode out of the room. They heard him open the front door and descend the steps. The little gate clanged.

“Is it true, Sacha — what he said?”

“Yes, Dick.”

She faced him with a new, strange wildness in her eyes. He saw that she was trembling, but he saw also that the color had flowed back, in full tide, to her cheeks. He misread that sign, taking it for relief that her secret had been told. She caught her breath in a gasp.

“I’ll go and get ready,” she declared.

Upstairs, in her drawing-room, she wrote a letter. She put it in an envelope and sealed it. She addressed it to “The Coroner, Redden, Leicestershire.” She put it in her desk.

Ten minutes later, she and Dick reached Harley Street. The servant who opened the door of No. 22 announced that Dr. Hailey was at home.

Her first sight of the doctor caused Sacha a sense of wonder. He looked so big and so kind, like one of the good giants of her fairy books. His expression, she thought, was as gentle as a woman’s, and as full of understanding. Dick handed him the letter he had brought from Dr. Andrews, and they stood in silence — a silence which had not been broken since they left Green Street — while he read it.

When he had finished reading the letter, Dr. Hailey raised his eyeglass to his eye.

“I think,” he said, “that, in the circumstances, I had better go down to Leicestershire at once. I suppose you are returning to Redden to-night?”

Dick assented. “I am taking Mrs. Malone down with me now. I ought to explain, perhaps, that I am Lord Templewood’s agent”

“And Mrs. Malone is his niece?”

“Yes.” A look of bewilderment came into the young man’s eyes. “You know Lord Templewood then?”

A faint smile appeared on Dr. Hailey’s large and genial face.

“Oh, no; but it is obvious, is it not? Lord Templewood, Dr. Andrews says, is a bachelor. On such occasions one summons only very near relations.” He added: “I shall follow you as soon as my car is ready.”

Sacha scarcely spoke a word during the long drive in the rain, and Dick did not try to make her speak. His misery and his indignation against her were too deep to be spent in the small change of talk.

A flickering lamp in the village street of Redden gave her a momentary sight of his face, and she saw that it was hard and stem as it had been in the dining room in Green Street. She caught her breath in a gasp of pain. It was terrible to do what she must do, alone, under the lash of his scorn.

Next moment, the car came to the lodge gates of The Black Tower. They were shut. Dick blew his horn, and after a short interval a figure appeared from the cottage.

“It’s all right, Robson. Mr. Lovelace—”

The big iron gates, which looked as though they had been designed for a prison, fell slowly back. The coupe moved forward. When it came abreast of the lodge-keeper, Dick announced that a second car might be expected any moment.

“Shall I need to shut the gates, sir, in the meantime?”

“Yes. That is his lordship’s special order, you know.”

The coupé drove on into the mysterious darkness of the long avenue.

Sacha told herself that her hour was at hand.

Chapter IV The Horseman of Death

Dr. Andrews of Redden met Dr. Hailey at The Black Tower, and then left to attend to an urgent case. Sacha accompanied Dr. Hailey to her uncle’s room to which Dick had already ascended. She started at the sight of the wan face which confronted her. Lord Templewood, who lay fully dressed on a couch, looked like a man who has only just succeeded in escaping from a critical illness.

And yet his voice, when he greeted the doctor, was strong and clear. The brainstorm from which he had suffered earlier in the day had by no means exhausted him. She saw that his gaze was as resolute as ever.

She stood near the window of the room while the doctor spoke to his patient. She could hear what was being said, but her mind wandered incessantly, as it had been wandering all these last hours, and she scarcely comprehended the drift of the conversation.

If only she could tell Dick the truth! If only his safety, his very life did not depend on her silence! She raised her eyes to his face in a swift, furtive glance, and saw the deep sorrow and disillusionment which were imprinted on it. That expression stabbed her with new pain.

Then her gaze traveled to the face of the Italian woman, Ninon Darelli, the “medium,” who was her uncle’s companion. Those strange, inscrutable features expressed no human emotion. If she but held the secret of that indifference!

The room was very warm, and yet there seemed to be a chill in its stuffy atmosphere. She wondered if that were due to the gas fire or merely to her own overstrained nerves. It was strangely silent, too, in spite of the voices of the doctor and his patient. What were they talking about? She listened and heard the drip of water in the moat below the window. What a terrible night!

“I assure you, doctor, that spiritualism saved my reason.”

She sighed. Her uncle was recounting that old story, which she had heard so many times, about how his dead fiancée had been restored to him in innumerable séances. Her name was Beatrice. “My angel Beatrice.” She had been killed in a hunting accident at nineteen.

How terrible to be dead so young, Sacha thought, suddenly. Poor Beatrice, with her love all young and wonderful round about her! Her grave was in the churchyard at Redden. It had a white marble cross at the head of it. There was an inscription, too, telling how she had died. The thought came, swift and unbidden, that perhaps her uncle if he recovered from this illness, would erect a cross on her grave also.

But no; that would scarcely be possible in her case. Sacha shuddered. People who took their own lives, she knew, were not buried within the churchyard walls. There had been the sad case of the gamekeeper at Redden Hall, Barrington’s keeper, whose death was really due to a broken heart because one of the village girls jilted him. If only men and women could escape from their feelings!

Lord Templewood began to speak again. Sacha broke off her own thoughts and listened, because his voice sounded gentler than usual. He was talking about Beatrice still! Oh, dear, could he not leave her to be dead in peace!

“She was everything to me — everything — everything. Her death — for so I called it in those darkest days — left me utterly desolate. Believe me, doctor, I had serious thoughts of taking my own life.”

His voice faded away. Sacha moved a few steps nearer to the couch. All her faculties, suddenly, were strained to breathless attention.

“As I know now,” Lord Templewood continued, “I should have defeated my own purpose if I had yielded to that impulse. It is a law of the spirit world that each of us must abide the will of Our Father. There was revealed to me a better way—”

He began to cough. Sacha came to him and rearranged the pillows. She glanced at his pale, wearied face, as she did so. She remained standing very close to the couch on which he lay, when she had completed her task, so that she might not miss a word.

“You mean your study of spiritualism?” Dr. Hailey asked.

“Yes.” Lord Templewood raised his thin hand in a gesture almost of benediction. “Ninon has given me back all, and more than all, that I have lost. Not one of the other mediums possesses a tithe of her divine gift. I know, for I have been seeking my angel Beatrice for more than twenty years. Only in this last year have I come as near to her as we were near to each other in our earthly relationship.”

Again his voice weakened to silence. Sacha glanced at Ninon and saw that her expression of inscrutability had not changed. Nor had Dick’s expression changed. She thought that he had been looking at her, because his eyes fell when she raised her head.

Could it be true what her uncle had said about the law of the spirit world against taking your own life? But her uncle’s case was different from her case. No one had forced him to be separated from the woman he adored here in this present life. Dr. Hailey’s voice came to her.

“You have been very happy, then, during the last year?”

He spoke quietly, but he appeared to watch closely the effect of his words. The effect was startling. Lord Templewood sat up and the last traces of color ebbed from his parchmentlike cheeks. He glared wildly about the room.

“I would have been happy, had it not been that powers and principalities of evil are massed against me!” he cried in hoarse tones, “as, from the beginning, they have always been massed against—”

The words died in his throat. His body grew rigid, as if suddenly grasped in mighty, invisible hands. His eyes stared with new horror.

“The Horseman!”

Sacha held her breath. From far-away, as it seemed, and faintly, there came the sound of galloping hooves.

The sound grew louder. Lord Templewood sprang to his feet and struck at the empty air with his hands. The pallor of his cheeks was replaced by a dusky hue, as though he struggled desperately to free himself from his unseen antagonist. His labored breathing mingles its harsh rhythm with the rhythm of the hooves.

They watched the dreadful encounter spellbound, while the galloping drew ever nearer, till it seemed to have come to the very edge of the moat.

Dick sprang to the window, and threw it open. He turned back suddenly to the room with a look of utter bewilderment on his face.

The galloping had ceased.

Lord Templewood sank down, limp and trembling. He began to moan, softly and pitifully, like a child in pain.

Sacha came to him.

At the same instant a cry pierced the heavy silence. She turned and saw the Italian woman struggling to free her arms from the grasp in which Dr. Hailey had secured them.

Chapter V Into the Night

“The woman, my dear Mrs. Malone, I is an impostor. That trick of the galloping horseman is as old as spiritualism itself. It is childishly easy when you know how to perform it.”

Dr. Hailey adjusted his eyeglass, and contemplated Sacha’s beautiful, distressed face with kindly concern. He added:

“I did not fully expose her in your uncle’s presence, because the poor man has built his life on his faith in her powers. His mind could scarcely endure the shock of learning that she has been deceiving him.”

They were seated in the great hall of the castle. Sacha drew her breath sharply and clasped her hands together in a gesture of deep uneasiness.

“But I don’t understand,” she cried. “What reason can she have for torturing my uncle in this dreadful fashion?”

“I don’t know. I should like to know.”

Dr. Hailey extracted a silver box from his pocket and took a pinch of snuff with great deliberation.

“With your consent,” he said, “I shall stay here for a day or two, until Lord Templewood is better. I have already suggested to Mile. Ninon that her affairs in London demand her attention urgently.”

Sacha rose to go to bed. She turned to the staircase and went a few steps toward it. Then she came back to him again. She asked:

“It is not true, then, that my uncle has been able to communicate with his dead fiancée?”

Dr. Hailey’s large face became vacant suddenly. He contracted his brows.

“On the face of it, no,” he declared. “Ninon Darelli is a fraud. And yet it is not quite safe, I think, to conclude that, because she is evidently capable of deception, all her actions are necessarily of that character.

“It may well be that she really does possess in a high degree what is called ‘psychic power,’ though I am not going to say that I put any reliance on such a gift. The story of spiritualism, as perhaps you know, is the most amazing mixture of palpable fraud and passionate sincerity.”

She left him and climbed the stairs to the room which she always occupied on her visits to The Black Tower. She lit the gas fire and sat down before it. She was shivering with cold, and her head throbbed dreadfully, so that the thoughts which she meant to summon to her help were hopelessly scattered. If only she were not so great a coward!

She tried to think of death as she had been taught to think of it when she was a child, as a gentle falling on sleep, a mere passing from earth to heaven. But that beautiful vision wore no longer its first allurement. Her mind pictured, instead, the darkness and coldness of the Redden churchyard, where she had seen them bury her young husband beside the grave of the poor Beatrice.

She recalled that scene now with amazing clearness. Everybody had been so full of sympathy for her, and she had not desired or required any sympathy. Did not life, with his young glory, wait, impatient at her side? All that she was burying was her grief and her disillusionment — her bitter shame and degradation. And yet Orme had sometimes been kind to her, when he was not drinking. And he had been so full of the zest of his fierce living!

Well, now, at any rate, he had his revenge of her.

She bent forward, gazing vacantly at the blue flames. They would not be able to bury her beside Orme, because his grave was in consecrated ground! She would be buried in that patch beyond the churchyard wall, where they had laid the poor gamekeeper who died of a broken heart.

She remembered how Barrington had laughed at her when she told him that he was breaking her heart. To-morrow he would know that she had not spoken lightly — that, for the sake of her lover, a woman will gladly give up her own life.

What if Dick should be like her uncle, and try to find her in the darkness, as her uncle was trying to find his Beatrice!

She got up suddenly, and turned out the fire. She came to the door of the room and opened it. She stood listening. There was not a sound anywhere, except the drip of the rain. She walked a little way till she reached the end of the corridor opening on the gallery.

She could see the door of Dick’s bedroom from here. She stretched out her hands to him and whispered his name; the thought that her death would make him safe gave her new strength and new courage.

She suddenly told herself that she would go on whispering his name after she had shut the door of her room — until her lips could no longer speak any sound.

She ran back to her bedroom and closed the door. She came to the fireplace, and bent down swiftly, with outstretched hand. She turned on the gas. A faint hiss came to her ears like the hiss of a viper when it is about to strike. She rose to her feet and began to undress with feverish haste. Already the horrid smell of the escaping gas was in her nostrils.

She turned suddenly with a cry of dismay. The door of the room had been opened.

Ninon Darelli was standing on the threshold.

Chapter VI That Which Is Silent

Sacha could not remember, afterward, exactly what happened when Ninon Darelli found her in that gas-laden atmosphere. Probably her brain had already begun to yield to the deadly vapor.

Her first clear recollection was feeling a cool hand pressed firmly on her brow. For some reason, that touch exasperated her. She shrank away from it and then, with suddenly restored energy, jumped out of bed and faced her rescuer.

“What do you mean by coming into my room like this, you — cheat?”

The dark eyes of the medium flashed for an instant and then, immediately, grew listless again. She shook her beautiful head sadly.

“I am sorry for you.”

There was just a trace of a foreign accent in the tones. Sacha saw that the girl’s expression was very gentle. The spasm of anger which had prompted her bitterness passed as quickly as it had come, and as inexplicably. She moaned:

“Now I shall have to start all over again, from the beginning. Oh, God, and I have no courage left.”

She flung herself down on the bed, and began to sob violently, so that her whole body was shaken. In their fierce reaction, her nerves wrought a terrible punishment. Ninon, a slight figure in her white, furred dressing gown, stood beside her, holding her wrist until the storm had begun to subside.

“Listen to me,” she whispered at last, “and I will tell you something. It was because I dreamed about you that I came here — just in time. It is not the will of the Great Spirit, you see, that you should pass over to-night.”

Her accents were low and melodious. She added:

“The man you love is in danger, from which only you can save him.”

She spoke these last words like an oracle speaking the message of Heaven. The effect on Sacha was instantaneous and overwhelming. She sat up with staring eyes already red with her weeping. She seized the hand of the medium.

“What do you say?”

Ninon repeated her message in the same tones.

“In my dream,” she whispered, “there came to me the poor girl, Beatrice, who was betrothed to Lord Templewood.”

She stood, a figure of mystery, gazing fixedly at Sacha, who regarded her with deepening wonder. It seemed impossible to doubt her sincerity. And yet there was the incident of the galloping horseman to sustain all manner of doubts.

“If I could only trust you,” the girl moaned piteously.

Ninon raised her shoulders in a gesture of contempt.

“I know. You are thinking of the doctor, who is stupid, like all doctors. I will tell you.” She paused and drew a deep breath. “If I had not been with you in that room,” she said at last, “you would not have been able to hear the sound of the hooves.

“After the doctor had laid his hands on me, you could not hear the sound any more. But, for all that, there was no trick. I did not make the sound which you heard; I am a medium. The truth is that you were able by my help to listen to that which is silent—”

A strange, distant look haunted the girl’s eyes as she spoke. Sacha felt a swift uneasiness, like the first stirrings of fear. Her scruples began to melt away.

“Will you tell me,” Ninon continued, “how I could have known that you meant to take your life to-night, if I was not able to speak to the spirits who know all things? It is not likely, on the face of it, that a young girl who has been called to the sickbed of her uncle will use that chance to commit suicide.”

“No — that is true—”

“And then this message about your lover. It must be a true message, since it has stirred your heart so deeply. Yet, for myself, I do not know, even, who your lover is, though I may perhaps suspect because of my knowledge of this house—”

She stopped speaking. Her expression was full of wonder now, like the wonder which rests always in the eyes of wild creatures. Sacha murmured:

“It is a true message.”

“And yet Mr. Lovelace, for that is whom I have guessed to be your lover, is not in any danger at all that I can think of.”

The tones were casual, almost indifferent. They conveyed the suggestion that Ninon was accustomed to being made the recipient of information which she could not understand. She sighed, and turned from the bed.

“I have given you the message,” she declared finally.

She moved to the door of the room, and seemed to be about to go away; but when she reached the door, Sacha’s voice recalled her.

“Oh, please,” the girl cried, “will you stay with me and help me? Mr. Lovelace is in such terrible danger.”

Chapter VII Footsteps

Ninon came back to the bed and took Sacha’s hand in her own hands.

“I am very tired,” she explained gently. “To-night, I cannot help you, though I would like to help you. There is only one thing that I can do, and that is to give you a little medicine which, sometimes, I take myself. You will sleep, then.”

“What, a sleeping draft!” Sacha’s voice expressed bitter disappointment. She added: “I don’t think any sleeping draft is strong enough to drive away my fears.”

“Not a sleeping draft.”

Ninon bent over the girl and once again gazed fixedly into her eyes. Sacha was aware, suddenly, of a sense of relief, such as she had not known during all the dreadful hours since Barrington Bryan came to her house in Green Street — a swift, compelling sense which wooed her faculties to tranquillity. She closed her eyes.

“Very well,” she murmured; “if you think it will help me—”

Ninon rose from her seat and went silently out of the room. She returned in a few moments carrying in her hand a tiny silver box which gleamed brightly in the lamplight. Sacha was awaiting her return uneasily. At the sight of the gleaming box, she uttered an exclamation of fear.

“Not an injection of morphia!”

“Oh, no.”

Ninon set her box down on the mantelpiece, and opened it with deft fingers. She extracted a small cylinder of glass and then a long needle which gleamed as brightly as the box gleamed. She fitted the needle to the point of the syringe. Then she crossed the room to the washstand and poured a little water into the tumbler with which it was furnished.

“It is not morphia, I swear it,” she stated.

Sacha was sitting up again. She followed every movement of the medium with restless attention, but she did not utter any further protest. The strain of the last hours had exhausted all her nerves, so that she could no longer think clearly on any subject. Only the fear which clutched at her heart held her from utter oblivion.

Ninon carried the tumbler to the mantelpiece and set it down there. She took a tiny pellet from a phial which was contained in the lid of the box, and dropped it into her syringe.

Then she filled the syringe with water by gently drawing back its glass plunger. She rotated it slowly between her fingers until the pellet was completely dissolved.

Then she came to Sacha, and bade her lie down again and close her eyes.

“It will hurt you a very little,” she warned, in low tones.

Next moment Sacha felt a sharp sting on her forearm, and then a duller pain, which seemed to vanish almost as quickly as the sting.

“That is all—”

Ninon returned to the mantelpiece, and put her syringe back in its box. She shut the box with a click.

“You feel better?” she asked.

“Oh yes, much better.”

Sacha was smiling now, and the look of weariness had vanished miraculously from her eyes. Her cheeks were no longer draw and haggard. She sighed, as those sigh who are rid of an overwhelming burden.

“I feel wonderful — just wonderful.”

She stretched out her hands to Ninon who came and clasped them.

“Oh please, please forgive me for my rudeness when you came at first.”

The girl did not reply. She had stiffened suddenly, and was listening with every sense strained to the utmost.

Sacha listened also.

They heard slow, heavy footsteps approaching along the corridor.

Chapter VIII “Your Beatrice”

The footsteps came to the door of the room and stopped. Ninon’s cheeks had grown dreadfully pale. She whispered:

“It is Lord Templewood.”

She moved away from the bed and stood looking wildly about her, as if seeking for some means of escape. She wrung her hands in her dismay.

“He must not find me here. To-night I am too tired to help him. Oh, you do not know how terrible is his anger!”

Her voice shook; all her self-confidence had vanished. Sacha slipped out of bed, and ran across the room to the door. She turned the key in the door.

The lock had not been used for a long time. It grated noisily. That sound roused the silent visitor to sudden activity. He struck on the panels with his fist, calling:

“Sacha— Sacha—” in shrill tones.

Sacha switched out the light, and then came back to Ninon.

“Get into bed,” she whispered, “and cover yourself up. I am not afraid of him—”

She was completely self-possessed now, a being, as it seemed, transformed. She waited while the girl at her side obeyed her and then returned to her place behind the door. Lord Templewood knocked again, this time with great violence.

“Open,” he shouted, “open, Sacha, for God’s sake!”

Sacha switched up the light. She glanced at the bed and then, with a swift movement of both her wrists, unlocked and opened the door. The sight which met her eyes as she did so, caused her to gasp in amazement and horror.

The front of her uncle’s pyjamas was covered with blood. Small trickles of blood were running down his neck from a wound in his throat. And yet his eyes were quite vacant.

With a thrill of wonder, she realized that he was asleep.

He stumbled into the room, and must have fallen, had not Sacha caught him in her arms. Half-carrying, half-supporting she brought him to the armchair beside the fire and set him down in it. Then she ran to the washstand to get a towel to bind about his neck.

She was standing there, at the wash-stand, with the towel in her hand when, suddenly, she knew that he had risen from the chair, and was following her on stealthy feet.

With a movement as swift as that of a wild animal, she turned and faced him.

And then she saw that he was holding an open razor in his right hand. What was he going to do?

Even in that awful moment, Sacha’s newfound strength did not desert her. She drew back a little way, smiling.

“Please go back to your chair—”

Lord Templewood started at the sound of her voice, but she saw that his eyes remained blank, like the eyes of a dreamer turned inward on his dream. He raised the knife, and the light flashed on its blade. She heard him murmur, more to himself than to her, the name of his dead fiancée Beatrice.

That name came to Sacha as a gift from heaven. She realized suddenly that, in some mysterious way, in his dream, he was confusing her with the girl he had loved and lost. She extended her arms to him, and cried in low tones which pleaded with the silence:

“Oh Gerald, Gerald — you would not hurt me. Do you not know me? Look, I am Beatrice, your Beatrice, who was lost.”

Chapter IX What Usually Happens

That name, uttered in those tones, smote Lord Templewood like a sword. The strength seemed to go out of his tall body. He reeled, and caught the rail of the bedstead to support himself. The razor fell from his hand to the carpet.

“Beatrice!”

In an instant, Sacha was beside him. She put her arms round him to hold him up. But, with a gesture of supreme repudiation, he flung her away from him.

“My God, no!”

He was still holding the rail of the bedstead. His cheeks were flushed; his eyes seemed to have become bloodshot. Sacha felt herself start with amazement as she looked at him. She was aware of a queer “sense of recollection,” as if, long ago, she had played a part in this very scene which must now be reenacted.

So strange, and so commanding was that feeling, that she awaited the next words he should speak to her in a tension that was almost painful. They fell from his lips with overwhelming bitterness.

“Never again. For you there is no forgiveness.”

His eyes were fixed on her face. In their dimness, but half-veiled by sleep, was such misery and regret as she had never before seen in any human eyes. Instinctively she shrank away from him. What secret was this, of his heart, which her necessity had surprised?

Had his love of Beatrice, then, even that great love, been crossed with pain and disillusionment? She glanced at the red scar across his throat, at the pitiful bloodstains on his nightclothes, at his withered, clutching hands so lately turned against his own life.

The powers and principalities of evil, of which he had spoken to the doctor, were, surely, gathered against him now in overwhelming array. Sacha felt a new sense of compassion for him. If only she could arouse him from this nightmare in which he dwelt with so stubborn a persistence. She took a step toward him, and began to speak his name.

But, at that same moment, she saw Ninon Darelli raise herself in the bed. Ninon’s voice came to her across the silence.

And, at the sound of Ninon’s voice, so rich, so full-toned, Lord Templewood’s sleep was resolved. His expression changed, passing from dull despair to beatitude. He allowed Sacha to lead him back to his chair.

Ninon rose and came beside them. She whispered to Sacha that now he would be easy to manage, because his fit was spent.

“If you will get the doctor, I will stay with him. Already, as you see, he is falling into a natural sleep.”

“What does it mean?”

The medium’s eyes darkened. She shook her head.

“Each time,” she said enigmatically, “it is the same. Always — the same.”

Sacha managed to rouse Dr. Hailey. She gave him an account of what had happened. He came at once to the bedroom. A single glance at Lord Templewood’s throat revealed to him the fact that the wound was a mere scratch. He called Sacha out of the room.

“May I ask why that woman was in your bedroom to-night?” he queried, in his gentle tones.

“She came herself, after I had gone to bed.”

“To explain that she was not the impostor I had proved her?”

“She did explain that, yes.”

“Hm!” Dr. Hailey thought a moment. “I suppose your poor uncle tried to summon her, and discovered that her room was empty. He would naturally conclude that you had ordered her off the premises.”

Sacha sighed deeply.

“His brain has given way utterly, I am afraid,” she said.

“And yet there was method in his madness.” Dr. Hailey’s large face expressed the perplexity he felt. “As I told you last night, this spiritualism business is the foundation of his life. If he really did believe that he was about to be certified as a lunatic, and so separated from his Ninon, suicide would seem the only avenue of escape left to him. His failure to kill himself, clearly, unhinged his nerves. That is what usually happens.”

Chapter X A Visiting Card

The promise which Ninon Darelli had made to Sacha was fulfilled. Her sleep, after her uncle had been carried back to his bedroom, was deep and dreamless.

But when she awoke, it was as if she had not slept at all. Instantly, the fear which had driven her to the very gates of death clutched once again at her heart. She rose and walked to the window of the room. Her head ached and her mouth seemed to be dry and burning. All that calm, wonderful confidence of the night before, which had saved her from her uncle’s maniacal fury, had deserted her utterly.

And the danger threatening the man she loved was not abated by a single jot.

She held her hands to her brow, trying to clear her thoughts. Ninon Darelli had told her that she alone could save Dick. But how? How? Fresh doubts of the medium crowded in now on her mind. It was so easy to make statements of that kind; indeed, they were the stock-in-trade of every vulgar fortune teller in the land.

On the other hand, Ninon had come to her bedroom at the moment of crisis. And Ninon had certainly been aware that Dick was in great danger. The injection, too, which she had administered, had wrought all, and more than all, that she promised of it.

If only, now, she could obtain another injection!

She rang the bell, and told the maid who answered it to prepare her bath. The maid informed her that Mlle. Darelli had already left The Black Tower to return to London.

So there was no chance of getting another injection! And she did not know Ninon’s address in London. A sense of despair came to Sacha, of weakness and great exhaustion, such as she had never before experienced in her life. She sank down in the armchair, and covered her face with her hands.

Would it not be better to tell everything that she knew about that awful night when her husband was snatched suddenly from his wild business of living? Would not the truth save Dick, even though appearances might be against him? But no — what she told would not be believed.

That had been the whole strength of Barrington’s blackmail of her.

She glanced up with haunted eyes. She must marry Barrington then, as she had promised, seeing that the other way, which she tried to follow, was closed against her. She began to sob and was not able to control her weeping.

Unless, indeed, there was anything in what Ninon Darelli had told her.

That hope gleamed suddenly with new brightness. In spite of what Dr. Hailey had said, there could be no harm in asking the help of this woman. After all, she could not fail to help. At the very worse, things could not be blacker than they were already. And Ninon did certainly possess strange powers. It might be that what she had said about Beatrice was no more than the simple truth as she had experienced it.

Sacha started in recalling the name of her uncle’s fiancée. Was it the presence of Ninon in her room which had brought to her mind the idea of pretending to be Beatrice when her uncle was threatening her?

That might explain the curious sensation she had felt of having acted the same part often and often before; for Ninon had said that all his outbursts were similar to this one. Suppose that the spirit of the dead Beatrice had entered for a moment into her body and spoken with her voice! Just as, perhaps, the hooves of the Horseman of Death had been heard by means of Ninon’s body.

Sacha rose with a new excitement burning in her eyes, and then, with an exclamation of delight, lifted from the mantelpiece a tiny visiting card which had been left there since she went to sleep. It bore the name and address:

Chapter XI The Soul of a Medium

Ninon Darelli’s flat was on the first floor. Sacha was shown into a waiting room which was furnished so austerely as to suggest an apartment in a convent.

She glanced about her in surprise, with which a sense of relief was mingled. Not thus, in her experience, did charlatans and impostors furnish their houses. The plain gray walls and bare, polished floor, the chairs upholstered in black leather, the steel fender, shining dully in the diminished light, bore silent witness to the sincerity of this girl. Sacha found that witness unexpectedly convincing.

Nor was this impression removed by the appearance of Ninon herself, or by the furnishings of her private room. The austere note of the waiting room characterized this apartment also. Ninon was dressed in a frock of pale green material, which enhanced her girlishness rather than the psychic qualities of her beauty. She looked almost gay.

“So,” she said, in her musical voice, “you have come to me after all. I am glad.”

She waved her visitor to a deep sofa, which extended across a corner of the room, and sat down near her on a narrow divan.

“Tell me,” she invited, “what I can do to help you.”

Sacha was conscious already of the wonderful sense of relief which this girl had bestowed on her the night before. She lay back on the soft cushions and closed her eyes.

“I have come,” she said, “to thank you. That first. Last night I slept so soundly that all my troubles seemed to have been blotted out.”

“Ah, my medicine did not fail then.”

“Your medicine is the most wonderful, the most blessed in the whole world.”

Ninon sighed. “I will give you some more of it presently,” she promised; “but first I wish to ask you something, and to tell you something. And I will begin by telling. It is about your uncle, Lord Templewood. Last night was not the first occasion on which he has tried to take his own life—”

She spoke quickly. She glanced at Sacha, as if to note the effect of her words. Sacha’s expression was unmoved.

“It is always the same. First he sleeps; then he walks in his sleep. And then there is that terrible business of trying to kill—”

Ninon broke off and shuddered.

“Last night,” she whispered, “I was so tired that I thought I would not be able to call his Beatrice to him. I was dreadfully frightened then, because if Beatrice does not come, he grows violent.”

“So it was you who called Beatrice!” Sacha exclaimed. “I felt sure of it.”

“Of course. When she — his Beatrice — spoke to him, it was your lips which spoke, but the accents of the voice were not your accents. Do you know what that means?”

Ninon’s tones had grown suddenly peremptory. Sacha shook her head.

“No.”

“It means that you also have the soul of a medium, a little of that soul, at any rate.”

She rose as she spoke, and crossed to a table in the far corner of the room. She took a black box, like a large jewel-case, from the table, and brought it to Sacha. She set it down on the arm of the sofa, close to where the girl was sitting. She opened it. A ball of crystal was revealed, set on a pedestal of black velvet.

“It is possible,” Ninon said, “that if you look for a time, you may see.”

Sacha glanced at the shining ball, with its mysterious deep lights, and then turned away from it. She raised pleading eyes to Ninon’s face.

“Will you not give me the medicine now,” she begged. “I am so tired.”

Ninon went to fetch her syringe. She was in the act of administering the dose, when the bell rang sharply. A moment later, Barrington Bryan strode into the room.

At the sight of the cruel little needle gleaming on Sacha’s white skin, he uttered a cry of dismay.

Chapter XII A Girl on Horseback

“What are you doing?” Barrington demanded, in tones the anxiety of which he was not able to control.

He addressed himself to Ninon. She did not so much as look up from the task on which she was engaged. With a swift movement, she drove the plunger of the little syringe home, so that a small lump, made by the injected contents, appeared on the skin of Sacha’s forearm.

She withdrew the needle, and laid her finger on the puncture which it had made in the skin.

“Say, what is that stuff you have given her?”

“Some medicine.”

Ninon’s voice was soft and melodious as ever. She rose from her knees, and turned to greet her visitor.

“Since you have come,” she said, “you had better stay. Mrs. Malone, whom I think you know, is going to try her powers as a gazer into the crystal—”

Her eyes and her smiling lips challenged the man and quelled him. A look of fear dawned in his face.

“Oh, very well,” he said, “if you wish it; though I had business to discuss with you — about the Friday Club.”

Ninon turned to Sacha, who was still gazing fixedly at the puncture mark on her arm, so that she might avoid meeting Barrington’s eyes.

“Let me arrange you comfortably,” she said.

She brought a small table, and set it in front of the girl. Then she placed the case with the crystal on the table. She motioned Barrington to be seated, and sat down herself.

“Look at it steadily,” she instructed, “and then allow your thoughts to drift anywhere they like. Don’t try to concentrate your attention.”

Sacha bent forward over the shining glass. Her cheeks were bright again, and the careworn expression had vanished from her eyes. Her long lashes swept her cheeks in delicious composure.

“Shall I tell you what I see?” she asked, in quiet tones.

“No, no. It is not necessary.”

Silence wrapped them about, so that the traffic in Brook Street became a vivid background to their thoughts. Ninon closed her eyes and began to breathe deeply in a slow rhythm. She had thrown her head back against the chair on which she was sitting, and her delicate throat was revealed) with its swift, earnest lines and curves.

But Barrington had no eyes for that delectable revelation. His eyes were on Sacha’s face, framed in its living aureole, and grown wild, with a new, mysterious beauty. He leaned forward in his chair that he might, the more greedily, imbibe the wine of her beauty.

And so he did not perceive that, from beneath half closed lids, Ninon was watching him even as he was watching Sacha. He did not see that her little hands were clenched tight, until the knuckles were bloodless.

Sacha’s voice broke the spell of the silence.

“There is a girl on horseback,” she whispered, “riding up to the door of The Black Tower—”

She was silent during many minutes after that, but Barrington saw the expression of her face change gradually, from repose to anxiety. He strained forward still closer to her, gripping the arms of his chair with his two hands.

“Now she is talking to a young man in my uncle’s room. Oh, dear, it must be my uncle to whom she is talking. And he is sc terribly angry with her—”

Sacha clutched at the crystal, and drew it nearer to her eyes. Her breath came sharply, as if she were weeping.

“Oh, dear, he has wounded himself! Look! Look! Ah!”

She uttered a scream and stood erect with staring eyes. She flung the little table violently away from her.

The crystal fell to the floor with a dull thud.

Chapter XIII Injection of Madness

Ninon came and put her hand on Sacha’s arm. She called her by name. The girl started and then, like a sleeper awakening, drew her hand across her brow. She murmured:

“I have had such a terrible dream.”

She sank back on the sofa and closed her eyes again. In an instant, as it seemed, she was sleeping soundly. Ninon brought a rug and covered her. Then she turned to Barrington.

“You see. I have done more even than you asked me to do.”

There was a note of challenge in her voice. He caught his breath in a gasp.

“It is horrible.”

The girl’s dark eyes flashed dangerously.

“So — you are sorry for her, are you?” she sneered.

“God knows — yes. I am sorry for her.”

He did not raise his head. Ninon stood looking at him with frowning brows.

“You love her, eh?”

He started.

“No — of course not.”

“Of course not — since you love me.”

A bitter laugh accompanied these last words. Ninon’s anger was rising very quickly. The man looked at her and recoiled from that pale fury.

“Don’t be a fool, Ninon. You know that I love you. You know that I have always loved you.”

He put out his hand to her, but she eluded his hand. She nodded, as if she confirmed the forebodings of her own mind.

“Always. It is true. Until this girl of white and gold has come to you. But now—”

She snapped her fingers in his face, and the sound was sharp and vehement, like her anger. Barrington wilted before her anger.

“You will ruin everything with your jealousy,” he exclaimed, in faltering tones.

“I do not care. No more. I do not care.”

“Listen to me.” He put his hand out again, and this time succeeded in grasping her wrist and drawing her toward him. “My nerves are weak to-day. I have had a touch of my war fever. The sight of that needle of yours made me feel ill. See, I am shaking now.”

He stretched out his disengaged hand before her, showing her its unsteadiness. In an instant the hardness vanished from her eyes.

“I am sorry.”

She turned to him with a new gentleness in her expression.

“You love me?” she pleaded, in accents that were piteous.

“Always.”

He bent and kissed her lips.

“And now,” he said, in quick, anxious tones, “tell me what has happened — everything.”

For answer she pointed to the couch, and laid her finger on her lips.

Sacha had begun to move uneasily in her sleep.

When Sacha awoke, Barrington took her back to her house in Green Street in a taxicab. Neither of them spoke at all during the short journey. He accompanied her into the house.

“I certainly did not expect to find you at Mlle. Darelli’s,” he remarked, in tones the anxiety of which he failed to dissemble. He added: “We are partners in a night club, called the ‘Friday.’ I had come to talk business with her.”

He lit a cigarette with shaking hand, as he spoke. Sacha invited him, with a gesture, to be seated.

“I went to Brook Street,” she declared, in bitter accents, “to ask Ninon Darelli to help me.”

She raised her eyes as she spoke, and faced him. There was a new challenge in her eves.

“Really?”

“To help me against you.”

Barrington inhaled a long whiff of smoke, and expelled it slowly. He seemed to be trying to pull himself together.

“I thought,” he said, in rather uncertain tones, “that we had settled that matter for good and all.”

“So did I. That was why, last night, I shut the door of my bedroom at The Black Tower, and turned on the gas. But for the fact that Ninon came to my room at the last moment, the matter would have been settled — for good and all.”

Her tones were casual, but they wrought a startling effect on her companion. He sprang to his feet, and stood in front of her with whitening cheeks.

“My God, no! It is not true!”

“It is true.”

He controlled himself with a strong effort.

“And then she gave you her dope!”

“She gave me a dose of medicine which she takes herself sometimes.”

Barrington flung his cigarette into the fireplace.

“Horrible, horrible,” he cried, in accents of consternation. Suddenly, a flush of anger mounted to his cheeks.

“Did you actually think that if you killed yourself Lovelace would be safe?” he demanded. He added: “Let me warn you that you were wrong. There is only one way in which you can make him safe, and that is by marrying me.”

“Or killing you.”

The man started. Again his cheeks blanched.

“It is Ninon’s dope,” he declared, “which has made you crazy. Her dope burns in the brain like fire.” He took a step toward her. “So we begin again at the point where we left off. Either you marry me, or your Dick Lovelace pays the penalty.”

Sacha did not flinch before this onslaught. Her pale loveliness, as he gazed on it, maddened him. The fear and dismay which he read in her eyes added, somehow, to her attractiveness. He promised himself that, in spite of anything which Ninon Darelli might do, he would possess that shrinking form which was so much more ravishing than all the Italian girl’s passion.

“Cannot I appeal to you as a gentleman?”

“No.”

She hesitated a moment. To his surprise, a look of defiance appeared on her face.

“Very well, then,” she said, “you can do your worst. I am not going to marry you.”

Barrington extracted his cigarette case as though his feelings demanded relief in some material action. He lit a cigarette.

“The facts,” he declared, “are these: Your husband was found dead in a field near The Black Tower, and his horse was found, saddled and bridled, wandering in the field beside him. The coroner’s jury came to the conclusion to which those who carried the body to the field intended they should come. When a man is thrown from his horse, his head is often severely bruised.”

He stopped. Sacha had advanced a few steps nearer to him. The fear which he had expected to see in her eyes was absent.

“Go on,” she commanded.

“I saw Dick Lovelace carry your husband’s body across the drawbridge of The Black Tower on his shoulder. I followed him and saw him deposit it in the field and then lead the horse into the field beside it.” He added: “Because I loved you, and meant to possess you, I remained silent about what I had seen.”

“Who is going to believe such a story?”

The girl’s tones vibrated with her defiance of him. He rose to his feet.

“Those who examine the wounds on your husband’s head will believe it,” he declared. “Medical science nowadays does not hesitate to wrest its secrets even from the grave, and it is well able to distinguish between one kind of injury and another.”

At last he had achieved his object. Sacha’s coolness deserted her. She shrank away from him and clutched at the mantelpiece. She sank down, helplessly, on her knees on the hearthrug. He saw her cover her face with one of her hands.

He stood, with his lighted cigarette between his fingers, watching her. But, nevertheless, he failed to see that her other hand was clutching at one of the fire irons. His cruel smile played freely now about his lips.

“I forbid you,” he declared, “to go back to Brook Street, to Ninon Darelli, or to have any further dealings with that woman.”

He turned from her and moved toward the door. Halfway across the room he slopped, and once again faced her.

“On my next visit,” he remarked, “you will, I hope, receive me a trifle more graciously.”

He resumed his walk.

Sacha measured, with frenzied eyes, the distance which separated her from him. Her grasp tightened on the fire iron at her side.

The next instant she had overtaken him with that terrible weapon raised in both her hands.

Chapter XIV The Greater Power

Barrington swung round, warned, by some uncharted sense, of his danger. He faced the girl with a stifled cry of horror on his lips.

With a swift movement, he wrenched the poker from her hands, and sent it clattering against the wainscoting.

“You little devil!”

His eyes were glaring. Sacha felt her strength ebb away from her. She tottered, and would have fallen, had he not caught her in his arms.

He carried her to the couch, and laid her down on it. Her eyes were closed, and her face was so pale that her skin seemed to have been turned to wax. He bent over her, and could only just detect the sound of her breathing. He dipped his handkerchief in a rose bowl which stood on a small table, and pressed it against her brow.

She opened her eyes. A look of bewilderment appeared in them. She sighed deeply, and then tears began to course down her cheeks.

“Oh dear,” she whispered, “what have I done?”

She sat up suddenly with wide horror in her expression. She seemed to be looking for some one. Barrington put his hand on her shoulders.

“It’s all right,” he said, “Don’t worry.”

His voice seemed to reassure her. She began to cry. She cried hysterically for many minutes, during which he stood looking at her, with great uneasiness in his face. At last, when she had grown a little calmer, he said:

“It’s that dope which Ninon Darelli gave you this afternoon.”

His tones proclaimed the fear which still clutched at his heart. The girl ceased her weeping, and looked up at him.

“No,” she said, deliberately, “I really meant to kill you. If you hadn’t turned, I would have killed you.”

“Because you are under the influence of some hellish poison — hashish probably. And also because you are under the influence of that woman—” He bent closer to her, and lowered his voice. “Was it this — that she showed you in her crystal?”

“No.”

He caught his breath in a gasp.

“Ninon Darelli is the most accomplished dope fiend in London,” he declared. “She is also a hypnotist. A girl such as you are is mere wax in her cunning hands.”

Sacha sighed again. She passed her hand wearily over her brow.

“Do, please, leave me now,” she begged him piteously.

Her eyes were almost expressionless, as though, still, her thoughts were wandering in another world.

“I can’t leave you. It is too horrible. If I leave you, you will go back to her. That is what always happens. That is what she is counting on.”

He hesitated a moment, hoping evidently, that she would answer him, but she remained motionless and silent.

“Let me take you back to Redden — to your own house, if you do not wish to go to The Black Tower.”

“No — no — no!”

“Sacha, for God’s sake, think what has happened. Think what may happen in the future.”

Suddenly she sprang to her feet. Her eyes blazed with repudiation of him.

“What can possibly happen in the future which will be worse than that which has happened already?” she challenged.

“Many things. The loss of your reason, for example.”

“That would be a blessing — the greatest possible blessing—”

He controlled himself with an effort.

“Ninon Darelli,” he said, “has reasons for trying to get you into her power. I warn you that she is without mercy to her victims—”

“Like yourself.”

He set his teeth. He turned from her and walked to the window.

“At least,” he declared, “I have the excuse that I love you.”

“And I have the excuse that I do not love you — that you are blackmailing me into a marriage against which my whole soul revolts.”

The defiant note in her voice had become dominant again. She was still, apparently, under the influence of Ninon’s dope. He made up his mind that it was useless to stay with her any longer.

Chapter XV History Repeats Itself

He left the Green Street house on foot, and turned toward Bond Street.

If only he had foreseen that, in her first agony, Sacha might turn to suicide as a way out of her difficulties! That folly had delivered her, bound hand and foot, into Ninon’s hands.

A grim smile curled his lips as he thought how eagerly Ninon must have clutched at the chance thus afforded her. Ninon had been desperately jealous of Sacha from the moment when he had first broached his plans — in spite of all the assurances he had given.

A woman’s instinct, he reflected bitterly, is seldom at fault where her rivals are concerned. Ninon must have seen, in Sacha’s eyes, some indication of the despair which possessed her; Ninon’s wonderful power of thought-reading, no doubt, brought her instantly to the truth.

He came to Bond Street and lingered a moment to glance at the display of neckties in a famous haberdasher’s window. But he looked without seeing. An exclamation of rage escaped his lips. Now, whatever happened to Lord Templewood, Ninon, and not himself, would be master of the situation. That terrible combination of drugs and hypnotism, poison of body and poison of mind, by which she had made Sacha her victim, was irresistible.

He turned into Brook Street. Five minutes later, he was accepting one of Ninon’s Abdulla cigarettes and bearing, with what composure he could summon, the scrutiny of her vigilant eyes.

“Tell me what has happened,” he commanded, in his crisp tones.

“Nothing has happened.”

“What! Do you mean to say the doctors have any doubt about certifying him?”

Barrington’s manner had become aggressive in an instant. A new anxiety filled his eyes. Ninon hesitated a moment, and then gave him an account of the events of the preceding night. She added,

“To be a medium is not easy when one is dealing with fools — like this Dr. Eustace Hailey.”

“Why did you give Dr. Hailey the chance to catch you?” he demanded abruptly. “Surely there was no need to trouble about that galloping horseman.”

She drew herself up.

“I am a medium. Can I help it, if— things happen?”

He made a gesture of impatience. They had quarreled too often on this topic for him to wish to reopen it. Ninon, apparently, possessed limitless powers of self-deception — like all spiritualists.

“It is damnably awkward,” he declared. “And it may become a great deal more awkward still, if these doctors find out what has been going on. If we don’t get Templewood out of the way at once, we shall never finger a penny of that money, and unless I can have thirty thousand pounds within the next month, I must leave the country — for ever. You understand, for ever.”

He emphasized the last words viciously. Ninon’s cheeks paled as she heard him.

“To-day,” she said, in low tones, “he has had no medicine at all. When he has nothing, his temper is terrible.”

“That is not good enough. Bad temper is not insanity. No doctor dare sign a certificate of insanity on such grounds.” He flung his cigarette away from him. “I thought you said that these drugs of yours were certain in their action?”

“They are certain — but it requires a little time.”

“You have had a week nearly.” He drew a sharp breath. “And now you have been sent out of the house.”

“I shall return to it, never fear.” Ninon’s voice was calm. “There is his Beatrice whom he cannot find without me.”

Barrington uttered an exclamation of contempt.

“My dear Ninon, the doctors have got him under their control now,” he declared. “They will know how to soothe his nerves so that there will be no more sleep-walking, no more hankering after spirits. Their medicines, believe me, are just as strong as your medicines.” He added bitterly: “It is all a question of medicine.”

Ninon gazed at him in silence for a few moments. Her eyes were deeply reproachful.

“It is not all a question of medicine,” she said. “You are like the rest — so blind. About Beatrice I have practiced no deception, and I say to-morrow, or the day after to-morrow, again, he will call for me to find for him his Beatrice.”

Barrington helped himself to another smoke.

“I wish I shared your faith. To-morrow we are more likely to have Scotland Yard here making inquiries about your dope business. Dr. Hailey, as I happen to know, is a great friend of Scotland Yard.”

He frowned again. Then he leaned toward her.

“What is the meaning of this affair you are carrying on with the girl?” he demanded, in hoarse tones.

Ninon did not reply, but the color rushed violently to her cheeks. She took a quick step away from him. He laughed mirthlessly.

“But I need not ask you. I know. It is that damned jealousy of yours, in case I should fall in love with Sacha after I have married her. Now, with your dreams and your drugs, you think you will be able to take her away from me whenever you choose.”

He watched the girl closely as he spoke. To his surprise she did not wince under his blow.

“Because I know you,” she said, in vibrating tones.

Her defiance exasperated him. He sprang up and laid his hands on her shoulders.

“I won’t have it,” he shouted. “Do you hear, I won’t have it. Already you have driven Sacha half crazy.”

Ninon escaped from his grasp with a swift, catlike movement of her body. Her anger leaped to meet his anger.

“You won’t have it, eh?” she cried. “You won’t have it! The pretty Sacha must not be harmed, eh? It is I, Ninon, who must pull for you your chestnuts out of the fire, that you may eat them with this girl who is so good and so sweet. And after that, eh? What is to come after that?”

“I have told you what is to come after that.”

“Oh, yes, you have told me. You will get rid of Sacha.” Ninon’s red lips parted in a sneer, the bitterness of which made him wilt. “My man,” she added, “I do not take chances when it is a pretty wife who shall be got rid of by such a husband as you. Also, I say to myself, I will help him to get rid of her.”

“My God, it is horrible.” He drew his hand across his brow in a gesture of despair. “Do you know that, because of your crystal or your dope, or both together, already, this afternoon, Sacha tried to kill me with a poker? Had it not been—”

He stopped speaking abruptly. The ghastliness of Ninon’s face made him spring to her support. He set her down in the chair he had just vacated.

“It is not true,” she pleaded, “oh, no, it cannot be true.”

“It is absolutely true.”

She raised her horrified eyes to his face.

“But that is Beatrice,” she whispered. “It was so that Beatrice struck at Lord Templewood twenty years ago, after she had confessed to him that your father was her lover. Lord Templewood tried to kill her and himself also. He has told me, many times—”

“My father?”

The buzz of the telephone bell smote sturdily on their ears. Ninon rose and crossed the floor with faltering steps. She lifted the receiver.

“Yes. Yes, it is Mlle. Darelli speaking. Who is that? Dr. Hailey? Oh, yes — what do you say? Lord Templewood wishes me to come back to-night to The Black Tower? So... so... I will come.”

She hung up the receiver and turned to Barrington.

The look of fear had not passed from her eyes.

Chapter XVI The Temple of Peace

Lord Templewood spent most of the morning, following his somnambulistic attack, in bed. But, just before luncheon he rose and came downstairs to the library where Dr. Hailey awaited him. He was still very pale, but his cold, beautiful face was no longer drawn in lines of anxiety.

“Forgive me,” he apologized, “for having refused to see you this morning. I felt that I must obtain as much sleep as possible. I have seen nobody at all, not even Ninon.”

He sighed deeply as he pronounced the name of his medium. Apparently he had been informed of her departure to London. Dr. Hailey proposed that they should avail themselves of the March sunlight to walk for a little while in the grounds.

They crossed the drawbridge, which retained its ancient lifting chains, and strolled round the moat, in whose dark waters goldfish moved sleepily. Lord Templewood led the way through a bower of evergreens, to a space which had a high, wooded mound as its background, and in which a building, half summer-house and half shrine, had been erected.

The building was built at the far end into the mound which perhaps had been raised by human hands in old times. It recalled irresistibly those little temples which lie tucked away in recesses of the park at Versailles. Its owner presented it with a sweep of his thin hand.

“The Temple of Peace,” he announced. “My thank offering for the goodness of the Great Spirit in restoring to me the happiness which long ago was taken out of my life.”

His face was expressionless as he spoke, but his eyes glowed. Dr. Hailey watched him narrowly. Such language might or might not indicate a twist of the mind.

“Is it permitted to enter?”

“Oh, yes.”

Lord Templewood took a key from his pocket and opened the door of the building. An exclamation of wonder escaped the doctor’s lips. Never before in his life had he beheld so amazing an interior. The Temple seemed to be filled with dazzling light.

At the far end facing the door was a huge altar of purest marble, and on the altar a crystal globe in which points of cold fire burned with strange intensity. On either side of the crystal globe were golden candlesticks each with seven horns like the candlesticks which stood in the Temple at Jerusalem until Titus, the son of Vespasian, carried them away to Rome.

“It is beautiful, is it not?”

The doctor inclined his head. The beauty was undeniable, but it was less than the suggestion of barbaric profusion. In such a temple a warrior might hang up the plunder of his foes, whether taken worthily or by stealth.

“You hold your séances here?” he asked.

“No!”

Lord Templewood seemed impatient to be gone. He pointed out in his quick, staccatic accents, that the mere opening of the door automatically switched on all the lights. These, however, could be extinguished from a place behind the altar. There were no windows in the building.

Dr. Hailey leaned against the door, surveying the strange mosaic of the pavement at his feet. He touched one or two of the elements of the mosaic with his walking stick. Suddenly he started. His body seemed to stiffen. The stick shook in his hand. He turned to Lord Templewood.

“That’s queer. I felt as if I had had an electric shock.”

The old man did not reply.

When they came back again to the sunlight, Dr. Hailey helped himself to a pinch of snuff. Then he rubbed his arm as if it hurt him slightly.

“How are you feeling this morning?” he asked his patient abruptly.

“Well — except for this wound in my throat.” Lord Templewood stood still and faced his companion with weary eyes. “You know, perhaps, already,” he said, “that I am a victim of sleep-walking. Always on those occasions the same terrible experience is vouchsafed to me — the experience of attempting to take my own life. That is why it is necessary that I should keep myself constantly under the influence of narcotic drugs—”

He drew up the sleeve of his coat as he spoke, and revealed to the doctor’s astonished gaze a forearm mottled with innumerable points of pigment — the unmistakable sign of hypodermic injection repeated over a long period of time.

Chapter XVII Body and Soul not His Own

Dr. Hailey made no comment on this strange disclosure, except to ask the nature of the drug used. He heard, as he had expected to hear, that it was cocaine; and he guessed that the supplies of that forbidden substance were obtained through the instrumentality of Ninon Darelli.

Even so, there was nothing very unusual in such a state of affairs. The opinions which the ordinary man cherishes about “drugs,” and the facts of the case as every doctor knows them, are different. There are drug addicts who have made a moderate and reasonable use of both cocaine and morphia over many years. Some of these people are to be found in Harley Street itself.

They came to the castle again. Lord Templewood announced that, after luncheon, he proposed to go motoring. He invited the doctor to accompany him.

“I always drive myself,” he explained, in laconic tones. “So if you feel any anxiety, please do not hesitate to say so.”

“I do not feel any anxiety.”

During the meal, there was little talk of any kind. But though Lord Templewood scarcely spoke at all, he proved a gracious and attentive host. Dr. Hailey wondered more and more on what grounds the local doctor had reached the conclusion that he was “certifiable,” unless, indeed, he held the view that an interest in spiritualism is a sign of mental derangement.

Then his thoughts traveled to the scene of the night before, when Ninon produced her imitation of a galloping horseman. It was difficult to realize that this calm, self-possessed man was the same individual who had been thrown into so dreadful a state of panic by that vulgar swindle. It was just possible that, in Lord Templewood’s case, belief in spiritualism did amount to a monomania.

They ran out to a village some ten miles away. If the doctor had felt any nervousness about his host’s powers as a motor driver, that feeling was soon dispelled. Lord Templewood drove with care and discretion. When they turned homeward again, Dr. Hailey broached the subject which he had made up his mind to discuss.

“I suppose,” he said, “that in your experience as a spiritualist, you have come across mediums who were dishonest — who were frank impostors?”

“Oh, yes.” Lord Templewood’s tones did not invite further discussion.

“It is doubtless a great temptation — to make use of fraud when the natural powers are overstrained.”

“Doubtless.”

Again, it was evident that the subject was highly distasteful. The doctor made up his mind to use a more direct method.

“I took upon myself,” he declared, “to order Mile. Ninon Darelli to return to London this morning — because of that demonstration last night of the galloping horseman.”

The car swerved. For a moment, it seemed that an accident was inevitable. Then Lord Templewood managed to regain control. He brought the vehicle to a standstill.

“Will you explain to me,” he said, in tones of remarkable coolness, “exactly what you are suggesting — about Ninon.”

Dr. Hailey thought a moment. He could not overlook the danger that if he told the exact truth, and was believed, he might shatter, at a single blow, the whole foundation of this man’s life.

On the other hand, he could scarcely doubt — after what he had seen — that such a catastrophe was the very object which Ninon Darelli had set out to achieve. If she returned, anything might happen, since poisons both of the body and of the mind were at her disposal.

“I am suggesting that Ninon is a fraudulent medium,” he said, in quiet tones.

“You mean that the galloping horseman had no real existence?”

“I mean that the sound of galloping was faked — there are various ways, known to every impostor, of reproducing such a sound.”

Lord Templewood sighed deeply.

“You are wrong, Dr. Hailey,” he said quietly. “And the proof is this. Not only did I hear that sound, I felt it.”

The doctor contracted his broad brow.

“That,” he said, “can be explained easily enough without invoking the supernatural to explain it. Some people are endowed with a marvelous sensitive sense of vibration. They feel every sound.”

The car resumed its way, though at a slower pace. When the car came near the castle, Lord Templewood turned again to the doctor.

“I have considered your opinion,” he announced. “I hope that I have accorded it its due weight. But I have not accepted it — not yet, at any rate. There are reasons why I wish you, if you will, to ask Ninon to return here — since you took it on yourself to send her away.”

“What reasons?” Dr. Hailey’s voice was almost peremptory.

“The fact that she administers my narcotic drugs. I have a great horror of thrusting a hypodermic needle into my own flesh. The fact, also, that she certainly is able to summon to me my angel, Beatrice.”

The courteous manner of the old man was unruffled. Yet the doctor fancied he detected just a shade of anxiety in the level tones.

“May I speak a word of warning,” he asked, “as a man, rather than as a physician?”

“Of course.”

“Those to whom we intrust the care of both our minds and our bodies possess over us a power of measureless strength.”

“I am aware of that. On the other hand, it is better, surely, to live dangerously than not to live at all.”

They came to the bridge across the moat. Lord Templewood handed the car over to a servant, because the garages were situated some distance from the house. Then he asked:

“What advantage could Ninon derive if... if she did undermine my reason? I pay her well. If I were sent to an asylum, she would get nothing more.”

Again that note of uneasiness was in his voice.

Dr. Hailey shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “I have been asking myself that very question for the last twelve hours, but, so far, I confess that I have found no answer to it.”

“You will send for Ninon?”

“Yes, if you will permit me to send also for your niece, Mrs. Malone.”

Chapter XVIII “Polly Flinders”

Ninon came by the last train. She found Dr. Hailey and Lord Templewood seated in the great hall of the castle. She left them immediately and ascended the stairs to her bedroom. They heard the car which had brought her from the station drive away to the garages. The doctor noticed that his patient’s senses were strained to follow that receding sound.

He took his snuffbox from his pocket, and helped himself to a large pinch.

Suddenly, his eyes narrowed. Lord Templewood’s face had grown pale; his hands were twitching. Dr. Hailey listened. The sound of a horse’s hooves came very faintly to his ears.

He leaned toward his host as if about to ask him a question, but a peremptory gesture commanded him to silence Lord Templewood shrank back in his chair, like a man who hears at last the approach of a long-expected doom. Beads of perspiration stood out on his brow. The sound of the hooves grew louder. Dr. Hailey replaced his snuffbox in his pocket, and rose from his chair.

“Don’t move — for God’s sake.”

The old man was glaring so wildly, his tones were so fully charged with horror, that the doctor resumed his seat again. The hooves clattered to the drawbridge and came thudding and stamping across it to the great door. There was a loud rapping on the door. Lord Templewood rose, as a condemned criminal may rise, to answer the summons of the hangman. He stood with bloodless lips and quaking knees, a figure of tragedy.

“Shall I open?”

“Don’t move.”

Silence held them in a strong grasp. Then, suddenly, the thudding of the hooves on the wooden bridge began again. The hooves receded.

Dr. Hailey sprang to his patient and caught him before he fell. He helped him back to his chair, and set him down in it.

Then he strode to the door and threw it open.

There was nobody behind the door, nor could he hear any sound of hooves in the still night.

Dr. Hailey closed the door and returned to Lord Templewood, who had recovered slightly. There was a look of bewilderment in the doctor’s eyes. Lord Templewood asked:

“There is nobody there?”

“Nobody.”

“Did you hear the hooves going away?”

“No.”

“Oh, God!”

The old man shuddered. He covered his face with his thin, clawlike hands, and remained thus during several minutes. Then, suddenly, he looked up.

“That sound,” he said, in low tones, “fell on my ears for the first time at the most awful moment of my life. Twenty years ago, on the night before her death, my angel Beatrice rode to that door.”

He broke off suddenly, and stumbled to his feet.

“I shall go to bed, I think.”

Dr. Hailey offered his arm, but the offer was refused. Lord Templewood moved toward the stairway. Suddenly, they heard a quick step on the drawbridge. A key grated in the lock of the front door, which opened to admit Dick Lovelace. Lord Templewood turned sharply. He demanded:

“Have you come from the village?”

“Yes.”

“You... you did not meet anybody on horseback?” There was a ring almost of entreaty in the tones, as though the old man clutched still at the hope of an ordinary explanation of the sound of the hooves.

“No.”

Dick glanced uneasily from his employer to the doctor.

“Did you hear a horseman?”

“No.”

Lord Templewood sighed deeply. He resumed his walk to the staircase, and began the ascent. Dr. Hailey followed him to his bedroom.

“If you like,” he said, “I will give you something to steady your nerves.”

“No, thank you.”

Lord Templewood had seated himself in a deep armchair. He was leaning back in the chair and breathing heavily. “Tonight,” he whispered, “there is no question of fraud by Ninon — or anybody else.”

“No.”

“I am going to send for Ninon.”

Dr. Hailey’s eyes darkened. He contracted his brow.

“I can only urge you not to send for her,” he said gently. “At least not just now.”

“Why not?”

“Because... because I do not trust her.”

The old man closed his eyes wearily.

“You cannot help me,” he murmured.

“Let me summon Dr. Andrews. He called, it seems, while we were out motoring this afternoon.”

“No. Andrews cannot help me either.”

There was a quick step in the corridor without. Some one knocked on the door of the room. A moment later, Sacha was kissing her uncle’s pale brow and explaining, in staccatic tones, that it was her horse which he had heard on the drawbridge.

“I drove myself out from town,” she declared, “but the car broke down a couple of miles the other side of Beech Croft; so I just walked on there and told them to put her saddle on Polly Flinders. When nobody answered my knock downstairs, I rode round to the stables.”

Her manner was a little breathless. Dr. Hailey guessed that Dick Lovelace had told her about the disastrous effect of her coming on horseback to the Tower, and sent her to apologize. He glanced at Lord Templewood to see how he was taking the unromantic disposal of his fears. As he did so, a look of amazement appeared on his genial face.