Part 25 (1/2)

'Then you believe it too?' said Susie.

'I don't know what I believe now,' he cried. 'After all, we can't do anything if she chooses to go back to her husband. She's apparently her own mistress.' He wrung his hands. 'And I'm imprisoned in London! I can't leave it for a day. I ought not to be here now, and I must get back in a couple of hours. I can do nothing, and yet I'm convinced that Margaret is utterly wretched.'

Susie paused for a minute or two. She wondered how he would accept the suggestion that was in her mind.

'Do you know, it seems to me that common methods are useless. The only chance is to fight him with his own weapons. Would you mind if I went over to Paris to consult Dr Porhoet? You know that he is learned in every branch of the occult, and perhaps he might help us.'

But Arthur pulled himself together.

'It's absurd. We mustn't give way to superst.i.tion. Haddo is merely a scoundrel and a charlatan. He's worked on our nerves as he's worked on poor Margaret's. It's impossible to suppose that he has any powers greater than the common run of mankind.'

'Even after all you've seen with your own eyes?'

'If my eyes show me what all my training a.s.sures me is impossible, I can only conclude that my eyes deceive me.'

'Well, I shall run over to Paris.'

13

Some weeks later Dr Porhoet was sitting among his books in the quiet, low room that overlooked the Seine. He had given himself over to a pleasing melancholy. The heat beat down upon the noisy streets of Paris, and the din of the great city penetrated even to his fastness in the ile Saint Louis. He remembered the cloud-laden sky of the country where he was born, and the south-west wind that blew with a salt freshness. The long streets of Brest, present to his fancy always in a drizzle of rain, with the lights of cafes reflected on the wet pavements, had a familiar charm.

Even in foul weather the sailor-men who trudged along them gave one a curious sense of comfort. There was delight in the smell of the sea and in the freedom of the great Atlantic. And then he thought of the green lanes and of the waste places with their scented heather, the fair broad roads that led from one old sweet town to another, of the _Pardons_ and their gentle, sad crowds. Dr Porhoet gave a sigh.

'It is good to be born in the land of Brittany,' he smiled.

But his _bonne_ showed Susie in, and he rose with a smile to greet her.

She had been in Paris for some time, and they had seen much of one another. He basked in the gentle sympathy with which she interested herself in all the abstruse, quaint matters on which he spent his time; and, divining her love for Arthur, he admired the courage with which she effaced herself. They had got into the habit of eating many of their meals together in a quiet house opposite the Cluny called La Reine Blanche, and here they had talked of so many things that their acquaintance was grown into a charming friends.h.i.+p.

'I'm ashamed to come here so often,' said Susie, as she entered. 'Matilde is beginning to look at me with a suspicious eye.'

'It is very good of you to entertain a tiresome old man,' he smiled, as he held her hand. 'But I should have been disappointed if you had forgotten your promise to come this afternoon, for I have much to tell you.'

'Tell me at once,' she said, sitting down.

'I have discovered an MS. at the library of the a.r.s.enal this morning that no one knew anything about.'

He said this with an air of triumph, as though the achievement were of national importance. Susie had a tenderness for his innocent mania; and, though she knew the work in question was occult and incomprehensible, congratulated him heartily.

'It is the original version of a book by Paracelsus. I have not read it yet, for the writing is most difficult to decipher, but one point caught my eye on turning over the pages. That is the gruesome fact that Paracelsus fed the _homunculi_ he manufactured on human blood. One wonders how he came by it.'

Susie gave a little start, which Dr Porhoet noticed.

'What is the matter with you?'

'Nothing,' she said quickly.

He looked at her for a moment, then proceeded with the subject that strangely fascinated him.

'You must let me take you one day to the library of the a.r.s.enal. There is no richer collection in the world of books dealing with the occult sciences. And of course you know that it was at the a.r.s.enal that the tribunal sat, under the suggestive name of _chambre ardente_, to deal with cases of sorcery and magic?'