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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
In "The Phantom Car," Fred M. White weaves a gripping narrative that blends elements of mystery, suspense, and eerie supernatural occurrences. The story revolves around a spectral automobile that haunts the roads, driving a plot infused with both tension and intrigue. White's literary style is characterized by vivid descriptions and a keen psychological insight into his characters, reflecting the turn-of-the-century fascination with the macabre. Set against the backdrop of the early 20th century, a period marked by rapid technological advancements and societal change, the novel engages with themes of fear, loss, and the unknown, ultimately inviting readers to ponder the complexities of the human psyche amidst the supernatural. Fred M. White was a prolific writer during the early 1900s, known for his mastery of mystery and adventure genres. His extensive background in journalism and an enduring curiosity about the supernatural landscape of his time undoubtedly influenced his storytelling approach. With a career spanning various forms of writing, White deftly captures the zeitgeist of his era, presenting narratives that delve into the interplay between modernity and the ghostly remnants of the past. "The Phantom Car" is an essential read for enthusiasts of early 20th-century literature and fans of mysterious tales that challenge rationality. With its rich atmospheric build-up and compelling storytelling, this novel serves as a poignant exploration of fear and technology, making it a timeless work that will resonate with readers seeking an eerie, thought-provoking experience.
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The Phantom Car
Table of Contents
I. — MORNING
Margaret Ferris came down the broad stone steps leading from the house into the garden and from thence into the serenity of that perfect May morning. It was early yet with the dew on the grass, and in the lofty elms around the house which, so to speak, christened it, the birds were singing to the glory of the day. And in all that lovely garden there was no fairer flower than Peggy Ferris herself.
She was tall and slim, a poem in white and gold, like her own Madonna lilies which were blooming in the borders—in short, all that a beautiful English girl might be. There was a filmy introspection in those deep, violet eyes of hers and a faint suggestion of mysticism which might have been inherited from some far off Eastern ancestors, a dreaminess that was not one of the least of her charms.
She glanced round that fair domain of hers with a sense of pleasure and happiness that is born of perfect health and youth at its best and brightest. Because Peggy was young with all the world before her and not even the shadow of a trouble in sight. Because Long Elms was absolutely her own property and the princely income that went with it was entirely in her own discretion. A lovely old house in its green setting which was a part of Peggy's very being. Small wonder, then, that she glanced about her with a certain innocent pride in the knowledge that all this, and more, was hers.
It was early yet and Peggy had not breakfasted. She walked down between the wide herbaceous borders, across the tennis lawn and thence to a rose garden, beyond which stood a pair of hammered iron gates, leading to the road. So far, there was nobody in sight, so that she had the whole of the fair prospect to herself. Then, from somewhere outside the great gates came the sound of wheels, and, a few moments later, an invalid chair pulled up on the other side of the bars.
"You are early this morning, Mr. Wilde," Peggy cried.
The man in the chair looked up with a slow benevolent smile. He was without a hat and his venerable grey hair that reached to his shoulders and his flowing beard were slightly ruffled by the morning breeze. He presented a fine picturesque figure as he leaned back in his invalid chair and the long arms with which he had been propelling himself by means of a pair of levers resting by his side. He might have been some great statesman or ambassador, so striking was his personality, and a natural dignity seemed to cling to his shoulders like a garment. For, according to all accounts, Sebastian Wilde was a great man indeed. Even the most critical would have been prepared to admit that, without knowing more of Wilde than might have been gleaned from his personal appearance. He seemed to be paralysed from his hips downwards, which, indeed, was the case, though his arms were vigorous enough and his affliction had not robbed him of the brightness of his eyes or blunted the edge of his amazing intellect. He looked up now with a slow smile dawning upon those striking features of his.
"Ah, Miss Peggy," he said, in a deep musical voice. "It does an old man like me good to see youth and beauty greeting this perfect morn. May I come inside?"
"Why, of course," Peggy cried. "But, tell me, Mr. Wilde, how do you come to be about so early?"
"Because I came to see you," the great man smiled. "I came to bring you those books I promised. I want you, one of these evenings, to come over to my house and discuss the matter about which we have spoken more than once. Not that there is any hurry. I am rather busy myself with a treatise I am writing on occult influences. I have been working on that ever since I came here two years ago."
"Then you have finished it?" Peggy asked.
"Well, not quite," Wilde said. "You see, there has been so much to do. And when everything seemed to be going so smoothly, this unfortunate trouble came upon me. That is why I had to abandon my scientific investigations in South Africa and hasten back home. It is a great blow to me, but I am getting resigned to it now. After all, I have a lot to be thankful for. I can still work as well as ever."
There was a world of sympathy and pity in Peggy's eyes as she glanced down at the stricken giant in the bath chair. Two years ago, Sebastian Wilde had come into that neighbourhood looking for peace and quietness and the placid atmosphere which was necessary to his recovery and, since then, Peggy and her old aunt, who more or less acted as her chaperone, had seen a great deal of the Anglo-American who had settled down in what had once been an old priory, half a mile further along the road. There he seemed to spend most of his time in strict seclusion, together with his secretary, James Ebbsmith, and an elderly couple called Brettle, who presided over his modest wants and took care of his household.
Naturally enough, the neighbours had been rather curious when the elderly man with the leonine face and noble head first came into the locality and speculation had been aroused. But as time went on, all that had been forgotten and now Sebastian Wilde was accepted as part and parcel of the place. He had no friends and no visitors; he was content, he said, to work quietly at the task of his lifetime and perhaps, when that was finished, he might emerge from his obscurity and take his proper place in the great world once more. Meanwhile, he was content with his labours and an occasional visit to Long Elms, where he could bask in the society of Peggy and that pleasant old aunt of hers who was supposed to keep watch and ward over her.
Very dexterously, Wilde steered his chair through the gate and up the drive till the house was reached. There he paused to make a few scholarly and learned remarks on the subject of some late bulbs which were flowering under the dining-room window. He was still discussing these when the iron gates were flung open and a young man came up the path.
"Cheerio, Peggy," he cried. "Am I too late or too early? What I mean is, have you breakfasted?"
"No, I haven't, Trevor," Peggy smiled. "And I should be surprised to hear that you have either. I was tempted outside by the loveliness of the morning and wandered as far as the gate, when I found Mr. Wilde making an early call."
"Ah, good morning, sir," Trevor Capner cried heartily. "What an example to set us young people. Do you often get out in your chair as early as this?"
"Very seldom," Wilde admitted. "But it was so perfect that I couldn't sleep. You see, I can manage to dress myself and get about the ground floor on two sticks. So I tumbled out of bed and—well—here I am. This is one of the advantages of having a bedroom on the ground floor. Even my man Ebbsmith has not the remotest notion that I have ventured out this morning. But don't let me detain you, Miss Peggy."
"Oh, there is no hurry," Peggy said. "Now you are here, why not come in and have breakfast with us?"
"Does that include me?" Capner asked smilingly.
"Oh, well, you are a law unto yourself," Peggy retorted. "I was thinking more about Mr. Wilde than you."
"Alas, that I have to decline," Wilde said resignedly. "You see, dear young lady, breakfast is a meal I never touch. I find it interferes with my work and there is no time like the morning for clear thinking. Just give me a hand and I will let you have those books I spoke about."
"What books are those?" Trevor asked.
"Two scientific treatises," Wilde explained. "They are by a German professor who is the greatest authority living to-day on which I might call psychic reactions. Not exactly spiritualism, if you understand what I mean, but scientific measurement of phenomena. Ah, you may shake your head, young fellow, but there is more in that business than you imagine."
Trevor Capner scowled slightly. There was a dogged expression on his face and a gleam in his eye.
"I dare say there is, sir," he said coldly. "But it is not the sort of stuff for outsiders to play with. I take the same view of spiritualism as the churches do. It is dangerous and morbid and calculated to undermine faith in the hereafter. I know of a very sad case of a young and impressionable girl, not unlike Peggy, who got bitten with that sort of thing and eventually committed suicide. If you take my advice, my dear girl, you will thank Mr. Wilde for his offer and tell him politely to take his books back again."
It was a challenge in a way and a claim to interference which Peggy was inclined to resent. Just for a moment, her eyes flashed and a flush mounted to her cheeks. It seemed to her that Trevor was taking just a little too much upon himself. She was exceedingly fond of him and knew that he literally worshipped the ground she trod on, knew—too, that if nothing happened, they would marry, ere long—but this was a case where Trevor's air of possession had been carried a step too far.
"What nonsense," she said, almost angrily. "My dear boy, you don't suppose there is anything morbid about me, do you? Why shouldn't I take an interest in this psychic business?"
"Because it is not good for you," Capner said almost curtly. "It isn't good for any woman, unless she happens to be one of the modern, scientific school. I hate the whole thing. I would just as soon see you take up surgery."
"Again why not?" Peggy asked. "There are several celebrated lady surgeons to-day. My dear boy, because you happen to be a famous airman, which means that you haven't any nerves, you seem to imagine that women are not endowed with the same strength of mind. Now, Mr. Wilde, if you will let me have those books, we will talk about something else."
With a deeper frown between his brows, Capner turned on one side, whilst Peggy helped Wilde to retrieve the books from the depths of his chair. All this time Wilde had said nothing, though, under those penthouse brows of his, he had been watching the little scene with a sort of benevolent malice.
"There you are, my dear young lady," he said. "Take the books and keep them as long as you like. But don't try to understand too much. If you get into a tangle, let me know and I will do my best to put it right for you. Now, if you don't mind, I will go. Far be it for a selfish old bachelor like me to keep youth and beauty from its breakfast."
"I will come with you a little way, if you don't mind," Capner said. "There is something I have to say. You go in to breakfast, Peggy, and I will come along later on and discuss that tennis tournament with you. I may not be able to play myself, but I can't say definitely till after the middle-day post comes in. Now, sir, let me give you a shove along the road."
"As you like," Peggy said coldly, as she turned towards the house. "I am not going out this morning."
Capner turned away without another word.
II. — NOON
As the morning stole away and the pearly mists melted before the caressing touch of the sun, Peggy felt her own ill temper vanishing into nothingness. Perhaps she had been disposed to resent Trevor's air of complete proprietorship, perhaps she had been too quick in reading a wrong interpretation of what he had said. She was conscious, moreover, that she was more deeply interested in this psychic business than she had pretended. There was a romantic, dreamy side to her nature which she shyly hid, almost from herself, but it was there, all the same, and she was always conscious of it.
And there was another matter, a sacred thing of which she spoke but seldom and then with dimmed eyes and bated breath. Because there had been a time when Long Elms and its estate and all the revenues thereto had not belonged to Peggy, but to her only brother, who had been killed in the Great War. He like Trevor Capner, had had a brilliant career in the Air Force, where he had won the Victoria Cross in a never-to-be-forgotten exploit, only to be brought down during the very last week of the war in flames. And though Peggy was but a child at the time and many years had elapsed since, she had never forgotten her brother Victor, to whom she had been devoted and who had represented to her all that was worth while in the world. Even now, there were times when she woke in the night and thought of her dead brother, and there were times when he seemed to be very near to her, so near, indeed, that she could almost touch him. As if he were somewhere behind a veil striving in vain to get in contact with her.
It was not until after Sebastian Wilde had come into the neighbourhood and she had fallen somewhat under his influence that she began, tentatively, to discuss these mysteries with that eminent man of science. And he had not laughed at her, as she had half expected. On the contrary, he had been most understanding and sympathetic.
"Of course," he had said. "There are such things as mediums. Second sight and intermediaries and all that sort of thing. They are gifts you can cultivate—in fact, I have cultivated them myself. It is rather out of my line, but more than once I have succeeded in conjuring up pictures that almost frighten me. There is a scientific basis for them all, if we only knew what it was, but I hesitate to carry you along that path with me. Your temperament is too highly strung and romantic. If anything happened to you, I should never cease to blame myself. I mean, if anything happened to you mentally. Mind you, I am not saying that you could not rise to heights, but one never can tell, especially when dealing with one of your sex. And I am not going to say it is impossible for you to communicate with your brother on the other side. I myself have had some startling experiences."
At that point, Wilde had broken off and declined to say any more. From time to time he allowed Peggy to flirt round the subject, but he never encouraged her beyond the field of ordinary speculation. From time to time he lent her certain books, written, for the most part, by abstruse authors on a highly scientific plane, and with this Peggy was fain to be content. But the subject was never very far from her mind, a mind that was not naturally inclined to the morbid.
However, she put all this out of her head and busied herself for an hour or two in the garden until towards lunch-time, when Trevor Capner reappeared. There was a flush on his face and a sparkle in his eyes that aroused a vague alarm in Peggy's breast. She could not have said why, but that was what was uppermost in her head as Trevor came towards her.
"Look here, old thing," he said. "I am very sorry if I upset you this morning. Of course, I was a fool to talk like I did before Wilde and I shouldn't have done it if he hadn't annoyed me. And he did annoy me."
"Did he?" Peggy asked. "In what way?"
"Oh, well, if you put it like that, I can't tell you. He is a great man and a fine old fellow, and all that sort of thing, and I have the greatest possible respect for him, but he does encourage you in that spiritualistic nonsense."
"But he doesn't," Peggy protested. "He is always warning me to leave it alone. He says it is not the sort of thing that anybody with a romantic disposition like mine should embark upon. He is never tired of saying so."
"Oh, I dare say. But he is always lending you books and all that sort of thing. Cut it out, Peggy, cut it out. It only makes you miserable. Perhaps you think I don't notice it, but you spend a lot of time dreaming about poor old Victor. He was a splendid chap, and I know what a terrible blow his death was to you. I believe that if I hadn't been an airman like Victor, you would never have fallen in love with me. And you would give this place and all the money you have to bring the poor old chap back to your side again. But he is dead and gone, and you can't reach him. You never will reach him till you pass over to the other side yourself. Don't dwell upon it, darling, don't dwell upon it. After all, you have a lot to be thankful for, and so have I, for that matter. So let us be happy and thankful for the goods the gods provide."
"I am happy and I am thankful," Peggy whispered. "And I am none the less thankful because you promised me that you would give up flying. I should never have a moment's peace if I thought that my husband was an airman. I should regard it as a distinct affront to providence. Oh, you can call me foolish if you like. You may say that I should never have spoken like that if my dearest Victor had not been taken. Very well, Trevor darling, let us forget all about it. I won't think about Victor that way now you have given up your commission in the Air Force. Mr. Wilde can have his books back and—but what is the matter?"
"Well, it's like this," Capner stammered. "You see, I hadn't actually resigned my commission, although I promised you I would do so. You know how one puts that sort of thing off. Besides, I am interested in aeroplane construction, as you know. There was that helicopter of mine."
"Yes, yes, I know all about that," Peggy said eagerly. "It is one thing to design flying machines, and quite another to exploit them in the air. Trevor, you don't mean to say you have promised—I mean you are not committed——"
"Well, I am afraid I am, in a way," Capner blundered on. "You see, I haven't sent in my papers. I was so busy on that new bus of mine that I forgot all about it. I am still in the Air Force, and if I am called upon for a big stunt, then I shall have to obey. Think what people would say if I didn't. They would say that I was going to marry a girl with a heap of money and that I was thinking more of my own skin than of my country. More than that, they would say that I wouldn't dare to fly the plane for which I claim so much."
"Let us sit down," Peggy said a little faintly. "Let us sit down and talk it over quietly. I am very much afraid, Trevor, that you have something serious to say to me."
Capner gave a sign that might have been anxiety, and yet, on the other hand, might have been relief.
"Well, I have," he confessed. "I told you that I was expecting an important letter by the middle-day post, and here it is. Read it yourself. You can see that it comes from the Air Ministry. They highly approve of my new plane, which is equally adapted to war or peace. They want me to give it a thorough test. I have been asked—nay—ordered to fly from Croydon to Australia, and I am expected to make a record of it. If I accept, then I shall be off almost at once."
"And if you refuse," Peggy whispered.
"My dearest girl, how can I possibly refuse? Do you want me to be stamped for ever as a coward?"
"A coward," Peggy mocked. "With your reputation!"
"Well, it would look like it. And I am a coward in a way, because I was afraid to come and tell you what I have just said. Can't you see how cruelly I am situated? If I refuse this offer, I shall have it flung in my teeth that I was thinking of my personal comfort first."
"But of course that would not be true," Peggy cried. "Ridiculous to say that you are marrying me for my money, when your own private income is nearly as big as mine. And your own place is, if possible, a more desirable residence than Long Elms. And isn't the promise you made to your future wife just as sacred as your duty to the Air Force? For the last six or seven years you have done your country splendid service. You have taken risks that few men would care to face, and there are no new honours for you. Besides, I feel it in my bones that if you set off on this expedition you will never return. Oh, can't you see how cruel it is? First of all I lost a brother I loved more than I loved myself, and now I am asked to lend the man I have given my heart to with a risk that I may never see him again. Why should I be put to this double sacrifice? You promised, Trevor, you promised."
"I know I did," Trevor groaned. "And it was a promise I meant to keep. I will keep it now if I can."
"Wouldn't that be easy?" Peggy demanded eagerly. "You have done a great work in the past, you are presenting your country with a new type of 'plane from which great things are expected and, surely, there are plenty of ambitious young officers who would give an eye to have the chance that lies before you. Why not stand aside and let them have the opportunity?"
Peggy dropped her voice to a low and pleading tone that shook Trevor to the centre of his being. To sit there and watch the tears gathering in her eyes and see the mute appeal on that lovely face of hers moved him strangely.
"Very well," he said at length. "I will see what can be done. I don't like the task at all, because I know exactly what the big men at the Air Ministry will think. And there are others who will think, too, who won't be nice in the way they express their thoughts. And those confounded newspapers will get hold of it, too, and my rivals. They will hint that I have successfully deceived the Ministry and that I am selling them a machine that I dare not fly myself. Can't you see this? Can't you see the position in which I am placed?"
Peggy bent her head lower and lower, like one of her own lilies. There was no blinding herself to the cruel logic of Trevor's words. Still, he had made a promise to her and, womanlike, she could only see that that promise must be carried out to the letter.
"Then you will go to London?" she asked.
"Oh, yes, I shall go to London," Trevor said. "But, first of all, I will get on to a friend of mine at the Ministry through the telephone. I shall be able to catch him before he goes to lunch if I put a call through now. But if there is any doubt about it, then, my dear, I shall have to go."
"I think that would be the best," Peggy whispered. "And I rely upon you, Trevor, to do all you can."
Capner rose hastily from his seat.
"Very well, darling," he said. "Very well. But it is going to be cruelly hard either way."
III. — A SCIENTIST AT HOME
Sebastian Wilde had turned away from Peggy and Trevor Capner in the garden at Long Elms and had steered his way along the road in the direction of his own house with a little frown between his brows and a rather puzzled expression on that fine, leonine face. It was as if he was working out some problem in his mind, for the veins on his forehead had swollen and there was a sort of baffled look in his eyes. So deeply intent was he upon his thoughts that a little way further down the road he almost collided with a passing car and only by a dexterous swerve into the ditch saved himself from what might have been a serious accident. The owner of the car shouted some abuse over his shoulder, but Wilde was too busy extricating himself to take any notice. Then, just as he had swerved on to the roadway again, a voice from the other side of the hedge accosted him. He looked up to see a keen pair of dark eyes in a humorous face regarding him half seriously.
"That was a pretty narrow squeak," the man behind the hedge said. "I dared not cry out, Mr. Wilde, because I might have startled you. Let me congratulate you on the strength of your arms. At any rate, there is nothing the matter with them."
"Yes, my arms are all right," Wilde admitted. "If my legs were half as good, I should not have much to grumble about. But where have you been lately, Mr. Manthon?"
The man with the humorous face and the keen, penetrating eyes bent over the hedge with a pipe in his mouth. The two seemed to be on fairly good terms and had been ever since Wilde had come into the neighbourhood, but for some reason or another he was not enamoured of Roy Manthon, the novelist and psychologist, whose intimate studies of the workings of the human mind had brought him fame and fortune at an age when most authors are still struggling for recognition. But he was famous now, and on the way to fortune, perfectly happy in that quaint old bungalow of his, which he had adapted out of a pair of workmen's cottages. Most of his time was spent in the village of Lincombe, where he had made a few friends, which included Peggy Ferris and Trevor Capner; indeed, there were shrewd observers who had been heard to declare that if Capner had been out of the way, Peggy would have had no need to look further for a husband. But whether that was true or not, that secret was locked in Manthon's breast and none could question his loyalty towards the lovers.
He looked down at the man in the invalid chair with that quizzical gaze that, for some reason of other, always seemed to disconcert the eminent man of science. It was as if this master of introspection was gazing into his soul, or analysing his thoughts through a mental microscope. It was a feeling Wilde could never rid himself of. Not that he was a man to shirk an issue of that sort. On the contrary, he rather cultivated Manthon's acquaintance and had made him free of the old half-ruined priory called Monkshole which he had purchased when he came to the neighbourhood a year or two before. Manthon was free to come and go as he pleased, and there they discussed such occult matters that their minds mutually delighted in.
But, behind it all, there was ever that feeling on Wilde's part that the younger man was holding him in balance and weighing him. It was a new sensation for Wilde and one that annoyed him, because he had been accustomed to a monopoly of that sort of thing himself. It was a case of opposites attracting one another and, for the moment, Wilde was content to let it go at that. He smiled up into the face of the man standing above him and murmured some commonplaces about the beauty of the morning. Manthon smiled in response.
"Lovely morning indeed," he said. "But where, may I ask, have you been so early?"
"I have been as far as Long Elms," Wilde explained. "Taking some books which I promised to Miss Ferris."
"Oh, indeed?" Manthon observed. "Do you find her interested in your sort of work? I have known her pretty intimately for a long time now, but I have never detected any scientific leaning on her part. But then, a many sided man like you has divers interests—the psychic, for instance. I should not be at all surprised to find that Peggy Ferris is attracted by that."
There was almost a challenge in Wilde's eyes as he looked up. Was this man a thought reader, he wondered?
"What make you think that?" he asked.
"Oh, I don't know. Miss Ferris is a bit of a dreamer, despite her outdoor activities. Her's is a perfect specimen of the normal mind in a sound and healthy body. But there is an Eastern strain in her blood somewhere, a certain mystical vein that shows itself to observing eyes on occasions. I have seen it more than once. In fact, I have seen it every time she speaks of her dead brother. Have you noticed that?"
Wilde hastened to say that he had not. All the same, he was not telling the truth, and both of them knew it. Then Wilde switched off the conversation abruptly to something else and, a moment or two later, was propelling his way along the road in the direction of Monkshole. Manthon watched him until the old man was out of sight.
"A most fascinating enigma," he told himself. "The sort of character that Robert Louis Stevenson would have delighted in. Not the Jekyll and Hyde business exactly, but something suggesting that dual psychology. On the whole, the most interesting bit of character study I ever encountered."
Time ago, and that not very long since, the house called Monkshole has been little more than a mediaeval ruin. There were ruins about it now, the remains of a chapel, a few stones standing where a great monastery had once been, and in the centre of it the Prior's residence, which had withstood the assaults of time. A rambling house with one great sitting room, now turned into a library, a bedroom or two, with part of a ruined tower overhead and certain domestic offices. Here Wilde had established himself with a man and his wife to look after his comfort, and for the rest, his secretary, James Ebbsmith, who was, in his way, almost as remarkable a character as his employer.
In the great library Wilde had placed his books. It was lighted by a big dormer window at the one end and lined throughout with wonderfully carved panelling, relieved here and there by slender oak pillars that rose up to the roof twenty feet overhead. A wonderful room, and eminently suited to the personality of the man who occupied it.
In the centre of one of the walls was a broad, deep fireplace with its enormous chimney and its two great powder closets on either side. Everything there was exactly as it had been three hundred years before, save for the carpets on the floor and the comfortable chairs scattered around the room.
Apart from the well-lined bookshelves, there was little else to indicate that here was the workshop of a great scientist. There was no machinery or mechanical appliance of any sort, nothing to suggest a laboratory of a man who was deeply engaged in new discoveries or inventions. From one point of view, it was rather a disappointing room, save for its air of repose and quiet dignity which impressed itself at once upon the most casual observer.
At a small table under the big window the secretary, James Ebbsmith, sat writing. He was a little man with sharp, rather irregular features, and quick, evasive eyes which seemed to elude, rather than avoid, the look of anyone who was addressing him. In a queer way, he suggested flexibility, much as if he had been constructed out of india-rubber, which was not remarkable, considering that he had started life, many years ago, as a circus contortionist and conjurer. How and where Wilde had found him nobody but that strangely assorted couple ever knew. But he was the ideal secretary that Wilde had been searching for for years, and the understanding between them was complete.
Not that Ebbsmith had the smallest claim to call himself a scientist. It was his nimbleness of body and quick apprehension of mind on the part of others that was the chief asset in his usefulness to Sebastian Wilde. Mentally, they were as far apart as the poles, but that did not prevent a perfect understanding between them.
Ebbsmith looked up quickly as his employer entered.
"Well?" he demanded. "Well?"
"Oh, not so fast, please," Wilde smiled. "I have been as far as Long Elms with those books for Miss Ferris. I suppose you marked the passages I spoke about?"
"Yes, I did all that, boss," Ebbsmith said. "I suppose you didn't happen to see young Capner there?"
Wilde smiled approvingly at his subordinate.
"You are really getting on, James," he said. "That telepathic complex of yours is getting more marked every day. As a matter of fact, I did happen to see Trevor Capner. There is something wrong between those two young people."
"What, do you mean they have had a quarrel?"
"I won't go as far as to say that, but there is a rift in the lute somewhere. Mind you, Trevor is not the easy-going sportsman that we take him for. He resents the friendship between Peggy Ferris and myself. Just fancy a handsome young airman with his reputation being jealous of a poor, miserable paralysed man like Sebastian Wilde."
For some reason or another, this remark seemed to strike Ebbsmith as being particularly humorous, for he threw back his head and filled the room with cackling laughter.
"Oh, yes, I see your point of view," Wilde smiled tolerantly. "But there are other things. James Ebbsmith, what is it that I want more particularly than anything else at the present moment?"
"Well, I should say £50,000," Ebbsmith grinned.
"At the very least," Wilde went on. "And I want it in cash, where I can handle it as required. The great invention stands still for need of a sum like that. Why is it that all we scientists are so poor?"
"Well, you haven't done so badly without money."
"That is true enough, yes. But consider the months of maddening weary waiting between the supplies. Five hundred here and a thousand there, and then weeks doing nothing. I tell you, if I could put my hand upon a round sum in cash, I could startle the world, within a year. They talk about their television, which I am not denying is the opening up of a wonderful new field, but I could take it a great deal further than flashing photographs across the Atlantic and showing a lot of gaping fools a theatrical performance on a white screen. I am talking now, James, as I have never talked to you before. What would you think if I told you that I am within striking distance of making myself invisible."
"Coo," Ebbsmith purred. "Great, boss. Invisible, eh? My sacred aunt! Mean to say you could walk about the world without anybody seeing you, as they did in the fairy stories?"
"Yes, I mean even that," Wilde declared. "The thing is possible. Anything is possible now that a man can sit in a room believing himself to be in utter darkness when he is really in the centre of a blaze of light."
"You are not pulling my leg?" Ebbsmith asked.
"Nothing of the sort, James. What I speak of has been done. It is done every day. If I wanted to televise you, I should place you in front of a simple apparatus and reproduce your features, yes, even your cigarette and the smoke from it, on a screen a thousand miles away. And you would sit in the operating room under the impression that you were in pitch darkness, but you wouldn't be. You would be in the centre of an illumination from which everything but the infra-red rays of light would be abstracted. I don't want to go into technical details, but in my workshop overhead I have satisfied myself that the thing can be done. Indeed, the Scotch inventor, Baird, has already told the world as much. Now, listen. If I can make you believe that you are sitting in a ring of electric light when, so far as your eyes are concerned, you are in absolute darkness, then I can invert the process. My experiments with those rays tell me that I can so manipulate light within a radius of a few feet from my own person that you, or anybody else, could stand, say two yards away, and never know that I was present. That is what I am going to do."
Wilde had sunk his voice almost to a whisper. Ebbsmith regarded him with open mouth and staring eyes.
"You absolutely mean that, boss," he gasped. "My word, if you can do that, then you don't want to go plunging about looking for money. You could go and take it. You could walk into a big house in the West End, when the family sat at dinner, and help yourself from my lady's jewel case, even when her maid was actually in her dressing-room."
A tolerant smile crossed Wilde's lips.
"Yes, I could do that," he said. "And I should be perfectly safe so long as nobody touched me, or came within a few feet of my aura. I could walk behind one of the counters of the Bank of England and get away with banknotes to a fabulous amount, as easily as you could cross this room. But, my dear James, a lot has to be done before we reach that stage. I want all sorts of things. To begin with, I need radium. I could do with a bit, not much more than a pin's head, but even that would cost something like £10,000. And that is only one of the items. If I am going to succeed in what I have set myself out to attain then I need £50,000."
"And you think that Miss Ferris——"
"Ah, there you go again, James, with your telepathic vision." Wilde interrupted. "Yes, she could do it easily enough. And she would not miss it, either. I suppose she must be worth at least four times that amount. And the man she is going to marry is rich. I am wondering——"
"Yes, that is all very well," Ebbsmith cut in. "But isn't the mere fact that Capner is a wealthy man rather a stumbling-block, eh? He would certainly have something to say in the matter. And so long as the girl is under his influence——"
