“The Vengeance of the Dead” by Lionel Sparrow

I.

The disappearance of Martin Calthorpe—“that wonderful man”, as his admirers called him, “that arch-impostor,” as he was stigmatised by others —was something more than a nine days’ wonder, and it has not yet quite faded out of the recollection of those who are attracted or impressed by such mysteries. These will have no difficulty in recalling the circumstances, so far as they were known, of his evanishment. The mystery, however, was so complete that little was left to feed the curiosity of the quidnuncs. When it is stated that he had an appointment with a “client” in his chambers in Brunswick-street on an afternoon of November, 1892, and was waited for in vain, and that he was not seen or heard of afterwards by anyone who could or would admit the fact, the available information (outside of these memoirs) is pretty well exhausted. Some particulars, however, may be added concerning his antecedents preliminary to the well-nigh incredible story of how the mystery was subsequently revealed.

“Professor” Calthorpe was apparently one of those strange beings who, finding themselves possessed of powers outside the cognisance of material science, set about turning them to pecuniary account, without seeking to probe their inner meaning, without realising their legitimate uses. (I say “apparently” for a reason which will be developed later.) 

Calthorpe described himself as a hypnotist, a psychometrist, and one or two other “ists”; also as a Clairvoyant. In some or all of these capacities he was remarkably successful, to judge by the number of people who were willing to pay him liberally for whatever services he rendered them. Indeed, the house in Brunswick-street was daily besieged by the many who believe in occult phenomena. The professor had a wife, who was a noted spiritualistic medium, and who also drew a handsome income from her “profession.” 

It was suggestive of the irony of fate that I, who looked upon such people as Professor and Mrs. Calthorpe as little better than criminal impostors, and their clients as mere gulls, should find my destiny involved with theirs. So, at least, I thought then. Later events have changed my opinions considerably, but they have not increased my respect for the crew who seek to tamper with the mysteries of life and death for their personal profit. However, I must not anticipate. 

The professor, as I have said, disappeared. He failed to keep his appointment; and the clients waited in vain. The man of mystic powers was not again seen in his usual sphere of life, and all efforts made to trace him failed. His wife could throw no light upon the mystery—or would not. She seemed greatly agitated—overcome by a sort of terror rather than by natural grief. My friend, Detective Mainspray, who was engaged in the matter, gave me these particulars. Mrs. Calthorpe did not long survive her husband. From the day of his disappearance she gave up her “work,” if so it might be called, and fell into a kind of lethargy of horror, like one obsessed, making no effort to arouse herself, though by no means resigning herself to the thought of death. Her bodily vigour (which had been great) declined with remarkable rapidity, but as the end approached a frantic rebellion seemed to rise within her. The final scenes were made memorable by circumstances in the highest degree calculated to unnerve those who witnessed them. I, of course, was not present, but I was told that the dying woman’s appearance and demeanour were fan from being marked by that tranquillity with which those who are at peace with conscience usually approach the solemn portals of death. 

The appalling intensity of her despair shocked the few friends who stood around her death-bed. She seemed to be struggling in the tolls of an adversary invisible to them, but only too tangibly present to herself. This death-agony was attributed by some of those who witnessed it to an exaggerated horror of the common fate; the more thoughtful, however, accepted this view with extreme reluctance. Later developments, in which I had part, threw a light upon the mystery. The cause of her death was given as heart disease, accelerated by abnormal neurotic conditions connected with the practice of her “profession” as a medium. A circumstance which greatly puzzled not only her friends, but also the physicians who attended her, was her excessive appetite for rich foods during the last few weeks of her life: this appetite, increasing with a rapid loss of flesh, seemed wholly inexplicable. Those who, knowing the quantities of food she had daily assimilated, looked at last upon a body bloodless and emaciated to an incredible degree, were stricken dumb with wonderment and horror. 

II.

Neither the disappearance of Martin Calthorpe nor the death of his wife would have interested me to any considerable degree, but for the fact that I knew my parents to have been acquainted with the man. My father, moody, reticent as he had always been within my memory of him, was not likely to divulge any secrets concerning his past life. Through my friend Mainspray, however, I had glimpses of his early career, which taught me that the book of a man’s life may contain pages which it is not wise nor well for a son to turn; and, apart from the bald fact that many years earlier a powerful hatred had been engendered between the two men, through some wrong committed by Calthorpe, I knew little, and sought no further knowledge. When the hypnotist disappeared, however, it became plain to me that my father’s gloom had sensibly deepened, and I could not help wondering if this had any connection with the matter. My mother had died only a few months before, after a lingering illness, however, and her death would seem to supply a sufficient and more natural cause for the change observable in the bereaved husband.

My father at first neglected, then finally resigned his business affairs into my charge, and thenceforth lived a very secluded life. I saw but little of him, for he seemed hardly aware at times of my existence. Nothing could exceed, however, the moody intensity of the affection he lavished upon his two daughters, Constance and Winifred. Winnie, the younger, was (if he had any preference) his favourite, for her eyes were startlingly like her mother’s. We lived in a rather large house near the St. Kilda-road, about two miles from the city. He owned another house in South Yarra, which should have brought in a substantial sum in rent, but it was out of repair, and, for some reason, he would not allow it to be touched. 

Not long after the strange death of Mrs. Calthorpe, my father sought medical advice for our Winnie. We all, Winnie included, were rather surprised, for we could see no cause for alarm in her appearance. Winnie herself protested that she felt well enough, except that she found it rather a bore to cycle or play tennis, and much preferred to go out driving with our friends, the Thorntons, in their new motor car. Old Dr. Gair found nothing the matter with her, except that perhaps she was just a trifle less buxom than a girl of her age and build might be. I think he prescribed some sort of tonic. My father received his optimistic verdict with a gloomy contempt, and it was plain that he was by no means satisfied. The incident passed, and for the time we thought no more about it. 

Some weeks later, however, I happened to enter the drawing room, where my sisters were talking, and Winnie was saying – 

“No; I can’t explain it. And I have such strange dreams, too.” 

“What sort of dreams, sis?” I asked, lightly; but a glance at her serious face told me that she was in no mood for banter. 

“Father seems to have been right, after all,” said Connie, in her quiet tones; “Win is getting run down.” 

I looked at the girl more intently. She was paler than I had ever noticed her to be, and her hands had certainly rather a fragile appearance. She was about eighteen at this time, and should have been flushed with exuberant health. Indeed, a few months before she had been full of a somewhat hoydenish energy and vigour. Now all was changed.

Next week my father took her away to the Blue Mountains. They returned towards the fall of the year, but the girl had not improved. In fact, she had barely held her own. My father called in the best specialists, but they were evidently puzzled by the very simplicity of the case. There was no organic disease, either acute or chronic—no disease of any sort; only a growing weakness, an increasing languor; days darkened by a strange weariness, and nights poisoned by dreams which she would not tell. 

To me Winnie was a child—“the baby”; and thus I was on more intimate terms with Connie, who was then in her early twenties. We talked the matter over many times, and discussed the expediency of taking the girl away for a more extended trip. 

“It would do you good also, Con,” I said; “you’re not looking too well.” 

I said this without attaching much meaning to the words, but Connie gave something of a start. 

“Do you think so?” she said; “perhaps I’ve been worrying about Win. But, really, I don’t feel quite myself lately.” 

This made me look at her closely, and I saw that there was indeed a noticeable change. But the summer had been very trying, and, as she said, the anxiety about Winnie was enough to account for a certain lowering of physical tone. 

III. 

My father did not fall in with the proposed trip. He only laughed bitterly when it was mooted, and said, in a harsh voice – 

“What’s the use? There’s no hope.” 

“No hope.” I shall never forget the note of tragic despair in those final words. It was as if a fiat had gone forth—as if in some strange way Irrevocable Fate had spoken with his voice. 

In these councils of ours Harry Thornton had borne no part. For some reason or other Connie, who had at this time been engaged to him for nearly a year, was unwilling to take him into her confidence in the matter, and as time went on and her own health did not improve, she became even less inclined to talk about it with him.

Thornton was a strange young fellow in many ways. Whilst he was fond of an outdoor life, excelling in all kinds of athletics, I knew him to be equally inclined to intellectual pursuits; in fact, he took up branches of study quite, foreign to ordinary taste Some years before, he had rather startled his friends by becoming the intimate of one Ravana Dâs, a Hindu pundit of the highest caste (Brahmans), and reputed to possess an extraordinary degree of erudition, both Western and Oriental. Thornton made what we chaffingly called a “pilgrimage” to his Eastern friend, and on his return it was plain that: he took his “master”, as he called him, with intense seriousness. He continued to correspond with this man, whose portrait had an honoured place on the wall of his study. The face was a remarkable one. It was as clearly and delicately cut as a bronze medallion of a proud, yet gentle, expression, and gave one the idea of a learned ascetic. A certain power, also, seemed to breathe from those features. Anyone studying the portrait (which was done in a sepia by an Indian artist) could readily understand the fascination which the man might exercise over impressionable natures. 

The Thorntons were wealthy people, and the young man had license to gratify his fancies. But he lived an extremely simple and blameless life, and I knew of no one more eligible as a husband for Connie, whose tastes, moreover, had much in common with his own. 

Harry was not long in perceiving Connie’s decline in health; and, connecting it, as I imagined, with that of her sister, grew very anxious. One day, after having taken them for an outing in his motor car, he asked me to accompany him to his rooms in the city. 

He said little on the way, but once in his “den” he spoke abruptly of Winnie’s illness, which was at this time rapidly progressing. 

“What do you think of it?” he asked. 

“The doctors advise a complete change of climate,” I said, vaguely. “Humbug!” he muttered. 

“It seems the only chance,” I said; “but my father has set his face against it. Says there’s no hope; but, or course—” 

“The girl will die,” he said, in a decisive tone. “The only man who could save her is away in the Himalayas, and could not be reached within I don’t know how many months.” 

“You mean -” 

“Ravana Dâs—yes. He might do it . . . or tell us how.” 

“Is he a physician, then?” 

“More than that. But it is not exactly a physician that is needed, Burford. There is nothing, I think, vitally wrong with Winnie. But there are possibilities that medical science knows nothing of. This vague talk about ‘going into a decline’ is merely a veil for ignorance.” 

“Well, old man, it you can supply a better hypothesis, one that we can work on, I shall be very grateful,” I said, a trifle ironically. 

“I can’t do that—yet.” he said,“I don’t know enough; and what I fear is too awfully improbable to spring upon an old sceptic like yourself . . . Tell me,” he added abruptly, “did your father know that man Calthorpe, the hypnotist, who disappeared about a year ago?” 

“Yes—why?” I answered, staring at him in a sort of terror, for which I could not account. 

“What was the nature of this acquaintance?” he asked. 

“Its nature? Well, I know very little. My father suffered at his hands in some way, and I believe that in a less law abiding country their enmity would have had a tragic ending.” 

“Burford, your father killed that man!” 

“You are mad, my boy—stark, staring mad!” 

“Not a bit of it. Oh! If only my master were accessible!” 

He stared in a sort of yearning rapture at the portrait on the wall, as if to draw inspiration from it. 

“Why do you connect this man Calthorpe with the matter?” I asked. “In the first place, it is not known whether the man is alive or dead.” 

“Your father’s fate is bound up with that man’s, Frank,” he said, gloomily. “I don’t know how. But I can dimly perceive possibilities that horrify me. I did not remark Winnie’s extreme weakness till quite lately—unobservant ass that I am! … After all, I may be mistaken—the thing seems altogether too hideous—too incredible !” 

“This is some beastly superstition your precious master has been filling you up with,” I said, impatiently. “Winnie is not the first girl who has gone into a decline. I don’t see how Hindu philosophers can help her any more than European physicians.” 

He made no reply. He was apparently absorbed in the face of the Hindu pundit, and did not seem to hear me. I saw no profit in staying longer, so, with an abrupt ‘Good-night!’ to which I got no reply, I left him. 

The next day Winnie did not rise till late in the evening; and, after that, not at all. She declined with an accelerated rapidity, and in ten days passed to her long rest. The close of her life was very peaceful; even the dreams, which had been ‘too dreadful to tell,’ left her on the seventh day from her decease. She had long intervals of trance-like sleep, from which she brought back vague memories at an indescribable bliss—as though the spirit, impatient of its fleshly tabernacle, could with difficulty be held to earth by the feeble thread of life. 

I need not dwell upon our sorrow. That of my father found some doubtful relief in alcohol and drugs; and only the solicitude and devotion of his surviving daughter saved him, for the time, from utter despair. 

“For her sake,” he said to me, “I will try and keep up; but she also is doomed—my boy—she also is doomed.” 

“Why do you talk like this?” I demanded. 

His eye grew wild. “There are devils,” he said, thickly: “or men with devilish arts.You may stab them through and through with knives—you may spatter their brains on the wall with bullets—no use! They come back in the night and mock you: they rob you of your dearest ones . . . ” 

I thought of Thornton’s words, and said— 

“Had you anything to do with the disappearance of that man Calthorpe?” He started as if stung then broke into a harsh laugh. 

“The devil should claim his own, one would think,” he muttered. “But what are you driving at?” he asked, suddenly raising his head and meeting my eye sternly. “What should I know about Calthorpe’s disappearance?” 

“I had the idea that in some way—hypnotism or something—the man may have had a hand in—” 

“Her death? Nonsense, boy! You rave!” 

He would say no more. 

IV.

By some process of unconscious reasoning, I had evolved the idea that Calthorpe, dead though he was, was exerting a hypnotic power over my sisters, thus striking at my father through his loved ones. It may seem strange that I, a hard-headed man of the world, should have given any attention to such occult hypotheses. But I had lost one beloved sister through a most mysterious malady, and now that malady threatened the other. 

Having questioned orthodox science in vain, however, in my extremity, I lent an ear to the suggestions of an alleged knowledge of forces lying outside the range of ordinary experience—a knowledge I had hitherto denied and ridiculed, as the pretension of predatory quacks and impostors. The drowning man catches at straws, and every straw seems a plank of safety. 

Connie very soon developed all the symptoms which had marked her sister’s decline: and she, too, had mysterious dreams, which no argument or persuasion could induce her to disclose, and which evidently filled her with a conviction that she was doomed. 

One day she came to me front her father’s room, in a state of wild agitation. 

“You must watch him,” she said. “He is very near madness. I think he will destroy himself.” 

“What has he said?” 

“Oh, his talk is very wild—I can make little of it. He is possessed with the idea of some enemy—someone who is dead. ‘I must seek him in his own place,’ he keeps on saying; ‘I will find him, and drag him down— down!’ Oh, the wildest language! It terrifies me.”

I soothed her as best I could; and then, obeying some impulse, for which I could not account, I went to Thornton’s rooms, though not expecting to see him. I found him there, however, and he greeted me with an intense earnestness. 

“I am glad you have come,” he said; I have received a communication.” “From whom?” 

“My master. He came to me last night, in his—but you would not understand. Let us call it a dream. He knows our trouble, and will help us. That was impressed upon me beyond all doubt. He will help us! Isn’t that glorious, Burford?” 

“He has left it pretty late,” I said, grimly; and I spoke of my father’s condition. 

“He should be pacified. To pass on to the next plane in his present state would be extremely perilous, unless he was specially guarded.” 

“I can’t follow your ideas, Harry,” I said, with some impatience. “But about your friend, Ravana Dâs. You tell me he is away among the Himalayas. How, then, can he help us?” 

“He can easily do so, if he be permitted. Though I have the honour to call him master, he is himself a pupil—the disciple of a still higher teacher. Of course, you don’t understand these things. But it was made known to me last night that he will help us, and that he will soon be with us.” 

“What do you call soon? Unless be travels in some impossible airship, I don’t see how. And poor Connie is evidently following her sister. She herself seems to feel it. Only to-day—” 

A fixed and startled expression on my friend’s face froze the words on my lips. He seemed to see or bear something which I could not. Suddenly the look turned to one of supreme joy and peace, and he sank back in his chair like one relieved of all anxiety. 

Involuntarily I turned, and saw that there was a stranger in the room. He was near the door, and must of course, have entered thereby, though I had not seen it open. One glance told me that it was the Hindu, the pundit, Ravana Dâs. There were the delicate, finely-carved, ascetic features, with their grave, gentle, yet lofty expression, as of one who knew all that philosophy could teach, and had renounced all that the world could give. To conceive of this man having a single evil thought was impossible. I remembered afterwards that he was dressed in ordinary clothes, such as we wore ourselves; but I did not remark this at the time. 

“I am with you, as you see,” he said, in a low, musical voice, which seemed just a trifle muffled; “and I will give you what help I can. But time is limited.” 

“My dear master,” said Thornton, with the utmost reverence; “you have saved us all. This is my friend, Mr. Burford.” 

“Yes.Well? You are troubled about your sister, Mr. Burford; and your father, too? Is it not so?” 

His accent was pure enough, but there was a strange intonation or expression difficult to describe. I was completely subdued by the sheer personality of the man, yet I found courage to say – 

“You have come here all the way from the Himalayas?” 

Yes. But that is not our present business. There was one known to you as Martin Calthorpe, whom you suppose to be in some way connected with the death of your younger sister, and the illness of the one still living. Tell me briefly all you know about this man.” 

I told him the little that I knew, and also what I guessed. His chiselled face remained impassive during my speech. He was silent for some moments; then he turned to Thornton. 

“The man is not unknown to us,” he said. “He took the darker path many years ago, and developed some powers. By the unbridled use of those powers he finally wrenched away his lower personality from the higher self, and when the time came he passed from earth suddenly. Doubtless he was what you call killed. Being so utterly evil, he found it necessary—you understand.” 

Thornton act bolt upright, deadly pale. 

“Of course,” he stammered: “I—I should have known; but—but these things are so incredible—”

“You were always of the sceptical ones,” said Ravana Dâs, with his gentle smile. “This being is happily one of the last of his kind. We must destroy him.” 

“Destroy him?” I repeated. “But you say he has already been killed!” 

“He has been what you call killed. That is probable. Words are misleading. Our task now is to put it out of his power to do further harm; and I think that can be done.” 

I was silent, pondering these enigmatical words.When I looked up the Hindu had gone. I turned to Thornton, but he grasped my hand, and said, “Come again to-night, Frank. I promise you the end of all this horror.” 

I understood that I had to leave, and went away in a confused and dissatisfied state of mind, yet with a growing hope struggling to rise in my heart. 

On my return home, I found the house in a commotion. The cause was soon made known to me. My father had shot himself. Connie was prostrated by the shock and could not be seen. A note was handed to me. 

“My Dear Frank” it read, “I can bear up no longer. I killed that man’s body and now I go to find his black soul. If the wretch’s own beliefs are correct, I shall meet him in some sphere of troubled or erring spirits, and there our lifelong war shall he renewed. It is my fate. He and I are bound together. He is striking at me through my loved ones, but the end has not yet come. Farewell!” 

A madman’s letter? So I should have thought, but for the meeting with the Hindu mystic. Now, to my bewildered mind, all things seemed possible. In some strange realm “out of space, out of time”—I pictured two unhappy, crime stained, earth-bound spirits, grappling with each other, entangled in an awful conflict for a supremacy that should be eternal. 

V.

The requirements of the law having been hastily complied with, I tried to pull myself together for the night’s appointment. In a few hours Connie had recovered sufficiently to see me, and I found her, though prostrated in body, calm in mind.

“These are cruel things that have come upon us, Frank,” she said, in a tone of gentle resignation, “and I am afraid you will soon be left alone—” 

“No, no, Connie!” I said “It’s all unutterably strange, but I have a feeling that something is being done for us even now, when all seems at the blackest. My dearest, you must not lose heart!” 

She looked at me strangely. My careless, man-of-the-world attitude in religious matters had often pained her devotional nature, and perhaps she took my words as indicating a reviving trust in the mercy of Providence. 

“I feel that I would rather be with dear Winnie,” she murmured: “yet I would not like to leave you, Frank.” 

“Harry wouldn’t like to lose you either, sis,” I replied, with some faint effort at cheerfulness, at which the ghost of a smile appeared on her pallid lips. 

As noon as darkness came I hurried away to Thornton’s rooms. He was waiting for me. 

“There is work for us to-night, Burford,” he said. “My master has traced the whole thing from the beginning.” 

“An Indian Sherlock Holmes?” I muttered. 

“No, nothing of that sort. These men work on different lines—not, perhaps, so very different, though, If the truth were known. He has only to change his centre of consciousness, and read what we call the akashic records—pictures automatically photographed, as it were, upon the ether by all the events that have ever happened—and—But what’s the matter? Anything new?” 

He had noticed a change in me. I told him of the tragedy at home. Though greatly shocked, he did not seem very much surprised. He read my father’s last words with attention. 

“It’s a great misfortune, old fellow; but don’t let these lines disturb you. The vibrations set up by your father’s last thoughts will take him into very unpleasant states of consciousness for a time, no doubt; but he will never meet Calthorpe again—that gentleman goes to his own place to-night. And your father will be helped—there is no doubt of that.”

“You seem to know all about it,” I said wearily. “But where is your master, as you call him?” 

“He is here!” said the young man, gravely. 

I turned. The Hindu was seated on a chair beside me. This time I was positive that he had not entered by the door, and a moment before the chair had been empty. 

“We must go,” said Ravana Dâs, ignoring my amazement. My time is precious.” 

“Come!” said Thornton. 

We went into the street and boarded a South Yarra tram, just like a trio of ordinary mortals. The Hindu was silent until Domain-road was reached, then he said to me— 

“Whatever happens, friend Burford, you must not let your nerve desert you.You have a house in a street called Caroline?” 

“Caroline Street—yes. But it is empty.” 

“Assuredly there are no ordinary tenants there. Yet we shall find someone. I think it will he necessary to destroy your house.” 

“As you please; but it’s rather a fine property.” 

“Property—wealth—all Illusion!” muttered Ravana Dâs: and he spoke a few words to Thornton which I did not catch. 

We alighted at Park Street, near the gates of the Botanical Gardens, and walked thence to the street in which the house stood. Together we entered the empty house.Thornton produced an electric torch, and we passed along a passage and reached a store-room or pantry, from which we descended some steps into a cellar, the Hindu guiding us. Except for some lumber, the cellar was quite empty. 

“Whatever you see,” whispered Thornton, “be silent until he speaks!” 

The Hindu stood with folded arms gazing intently at the wall opposite the entrance. Several minutes passed in profound silence. Suddenly a brick fell to the floor. It seemed to come from near the top. It was followed by others in quick succession, till in a few moments an opening was made revealing a small, inner cell, from which came the acrid odour of cement mingled with that of long pent-up air. The Hindu, of whom I now stood in the utmost awe, but in nowise feared, signed us to enter. 

Raising aloft his torch, Thornton went first, and I followed. There was but one object in the cell, and that was the dead body of a man; and there needed no ghost from the grave to tell me that it was the mortal remains of Martin Calthorpe. It was stretched upon the earthen floor, and stared with glassy eyes at the low, cemented ceiling. 

The body was that of a man in the prime of life—a portly, well-nourished body that might have been merely asleep, but for the staring eyes and a bullet-hole in the centre of the forehead. There was not the least appearance of decay—no more than if the man had just been killed. There was even colour in the cheeks. I thought of another corpse lying at my almost desolated home, and a dull, deadly rage began to swell up within my heart. 

Then wonder and horror possessed me. How could this body have been preserved so long? Had Calthorpe met his rate so recently? Or had the walling-up of the cell – 

“He has been thus a year or more,” said Ravana Dâs, answering my thoughts. “But to your work, “he added, taking the torch from Harry. 

Signing to me, Thornton took the body by the shoulders, a hand under each; I took the ankles, and we essayed to lift it. Harry is an athlete, and my own strength is above the average, but our utmost efforts quite failed to move the corpse. 

“It’s no use,” said the young man, with a gasp, and we fell back, I in a state of speechless amazement. 

“Use your blade, then!” said the Hindu. 

Thornton drew from under his coat a heavy Goorkha sword, and approached the body, as though that lifeless clay were a living toe. My feeling of hatred had returned, and I set my teeth. 

Thornton bent his knee, and aimed a powerful blow at the dead man’s neck. To my unutterable horror the blade stopped within a few inches of its mark and flew from the striker’s hand. He retreated, dazed. 

The Hindu turned to me.

“Take the weapon,” he said, calmly. “After all, it is the son who should avenge his father.” He gave the torch to Harry, and stood at the feet of the corpse. One glimpse I caught of bin bronze features, and it was no longer a living man I saw. It was incarnate Will! 

Nerved with a power not my own, I grasped the sword and aimed a deadly blow. It was stopped as before, and my arm tingled an though I had struck a log of wood. 

“Again!” cried the Hindu, raising his two hands, and thrusting them forward over the body. 

It was like an order to the soldier in battle. I struck; and this time the heavy blade met with no resistance. The head rolled aside, and there gushed from the trunk torrents of rich, red blood, until the body seemed literally to swim in it. 

“It is done!” said the voice of Ravana Dâs.“You know the rest. Farewell!” 

He was gone. 

******

The work of carrying the corpse (which was easily lifted now) to one of the upper rooms was accomplished in silence. Fifteen minutes later we stood amongst a rapidly increasing crowd of people, watching a dense mass of flames spurting from all quarters of the wooden house.The roof fell in, and when it became certain that no part of the building could be saved, we left. 

******

It was not yet very late, though it seemed to me that ages had passed since I left home. We returned to Harry’s rooms, for I was thirsting for some explanation of the things I had seen I was feverish with excitement, but Thornton seemed to have acquired something of his master’s self-control; and when we were comfortably seated in his little den, with the pictured, palebronze features of the Indian occultist gazing benignantly down upon us, my friend entered into an explanation which, I must confess, only increased my amazement. 

“This Calthorpe,” he began,“was a man who had given himself up entirely to evil.” 

“That much seems to be abundantly evident,” I interjected. 

“You must try and realise, however, what to meant by the absolute rejection of the good in every shape and form. Ordinarily, evil is relative, not absolute—we seldom meet the aristocrat of crime. The fatal grandeur, the awful eminence of a ‘Satan’ is rarely revealed to us. Had this man been gifted with intellect in proportion to his wickedness, he could easily have made himself a national—ay, even a world-wide scourge.” 

“Yet he was not of a low type of intellect?” 

“Too low to flee to the grander conceptions of crime. What he has accomplished we shall never know, for he wielded powers that enabled him to laugh at human justice, as your friend Detective Mainspray understands it.” 

“I have heard you say that the development of these occult powers depends on entire purity of thought and deed?” 

“The full development—yes. You have seen how easily my master (who is himself only a disciple as yet) overcame by force of will the etheric resistance which Calthorpe was able to interpose between my sword and his precious neck.Yes, occult powers are, at their highest, united with great loftiness of character and nobility of aim; sometimes they are associated, in a limited form, with a grovelling and sordid nature; and, again, as in Calthorpe’s case, they are seen in combination with positive malevolence and tendencies of an altogether evil kind. The so-called ‘black magicians’ of the middle ages were, no doubt, men of the stamp of Calthorpe. Such beings, gifted with powers which, though limited on their own plane, are superior to the workings of physical science as commonly known, must possess, as you will see, potentialities for active evil before which the imagination may well stand appalled.”

“And this power—whatever it may be—how could this wretch carry it with him to the next world?” 

“The power really belongs to the ‘next world,’ as you call it, and can be more readily exerted there. But let me explain. This man had literally thrown away the immortal part of himself, since be was all evil, and nothing that is evil can live. He was doomed to a sort of slow disintegration—the gradual conscious decay and death of the animal personality that had wilfully wrenched itself away from its immortal essence.” 

“You mean the soul? And what becomes of that?” 

“It rests on its own plane, so to speak, till the time arrives for its next incarnation on earth.” 

“Very well. Go on.” 

“We know that Calthorpe was killed. Having some occult knowledge, he was aware that a soulless entity, deprived or its physical vehicle, was doomed to perish. The ordinary man, after the death of the body, remains for a time in a state the Hindus call ‘Pretaloka’ until his thoughts are entirely freed from earthly concerns. Pretaloka is the scientific fact behind the dogma of purgatory.While living, Calthorpe could, in trance, visit the lower levels of Pretaloka, and roam about there at will—that is, his thought could vibrate in unison with the vibrations of the spirit-matter of those levels, and thus function there.” 

“But this was only on condition, I understand, that he had a living body to return to?” 

“Exactly. Being without a soul to which he could cling, he needed a body as a sort of point of support. Losing his physical life utterly, he would sink by a natural and inevitable law to a lower state even than Pretaloka, there to suffer, as I have said, the horrors of disintegration and decay, ending in the complete annihilation of the human personality.” 

“But what use could his body be when he was shot dead?” 

“The effect of the bullet would be merely to transfer his consciousness to Pretaloka. By occult arts he could preserve his remains from decomposition as long as they were not disturbed. Evidently your father played into his hands by walling up the body in that cell. If he had only thought of destroying it, as we did, by burning down the house, thus severing the magnetic line of communication, so to speak, depended on by Calthorpe for mere existence, that worthy would have gone to his own place almost immediately.” 

“And that place is—” 

“We will not speak of it,” said Thornton, with a shiver. “As it was, in order to remain in the state called Pretaloka (for it is not a place), he was compelled to preserve his late vehicle—his body—in a sort of cataleptic trance, and that he could only do by stealing vitality front the living and transferring it to the corpse.” 

I shuddered as I recalled the scene in the cell—the torrents of fresh blood. 

“Then,” I muttered, “this—this creature was nothing but a vampire?” 

“A vampire, indeed—glutting his vengeance and serving his necessity at the same time. Remember how his wife died—she was his first victim; and her fate was the more terrible because she knew what was happening. Calthorpe was a ‘black occultist’ of inferior powers, or he would probably have been better known to my master, in which case help might have come sooner.” 

“His powers seem to have been sufficient for his purposes,” I said, bitterly. 

“Yes. Yet, with a deeper knowledge, he could have demateri-alised his body, and removed it to some inaccessible place; and, again with wider powers, he could have kept it alive by extracting the necessary vitality from the physical air, which contains all that is needed for human sustenance. But his fate was decreed, and he himself was the instrument of his own undoing.” 

“That may be very well, old man, but it doesn’t bring back Winnie and the poor, old dad.” 

“They are far better off where they are, Frank. Religion and occultism agree on that point, as on so many others. The grief of friends for those gone before only harms them, for it attracts their thoughts earthward during their stay in that realm of illusion I have called Pretaloka, and so delays them on their journey heavenward. Thus we should not grieve, but rather, in the words of the poet – 

“‘Waft the angel on her flight with a paean of old days.’” 

“And—and is the creature finally disposed of? Is Connie entirely freed from all further peril?” 

“You shall see!” said the young man, his voice vibrating with confidence and joy. “We have slain the cockatrice. Its power for evil is now confined to its own plane. The thing is perishing with its self-created poison. Let us think of it no further.” 

“One more question,” I said. “How did your Indian teacher get here if he were away in the Himalayas only the day before?” 

“What we saw was not his physical body at all. The body is the prison of the soul for ordinary mortals. We can see merely what comes before its windows. But the occultist has found the, key of his prison, and can emerge from it at pleasure. It is no longer a prison for him—merely a dwelling. In other words, he can project his ego, his soul, his true self—whatever name you choose to give it—out of his body to any place he pleases with the rapidity of thought” 

“He seemed a substantial enough body, as far as I could see.” 

“Doubtless. Thought is creative in a deeper sense than we dream. Science tells us that all the materials that constitute our physical bodies exist in the air we breathe. An advanced occultist can draw thence by the power of will all he needs for a temporary vehicle in which to function; or, if he so prefers he can produce by illusion all that he wishes people to believe they see.” 

We talked on till daylight neither of us feeling any desire for sleep. Thornton went deeply into his strange teachings, and I heard for the first time a great deal that was wildly incredible; but I had to confess that, if it was madness, there was no lack of method in it. 

Early in the morning, feeling the need of fresh air and action, we set out on foot for my home, still discussing the tremendous questions of man’s life and destiny. 

Arrived at the house, a servant informed us that Connie was in the morning-room, and that breakfast was served there. Somewhat surprised, and forgetting our unwashed and unkempt condition, we entered. Connie was seated at the table, with a liberal repast before her. 

She arose hurriedly, a bright flush suffusing her cheeks. 

“I—I felt so hungry,” she said; “you really must excuse me—” 

A rush of terrible memories surged up within my heart, and I fell into a seat, giving way to a fit of hysterical weeping. And Harry, for all his assumed calmness, incontinently joined in my sudden emotion, and the scene was at once ludicrous and tragic. Two strong young men crying like children, and a delicate girl—whom they had helped in a humble degree to rescue from the clutches of a monster—doing her utmost to soothe them. 

It was some time before we could join Connie at her breakfast, but when we did I felt that the meal inaugurated a new period of health and happiness for the dear girl and her devoted lover, and formed a peace and resignation such as I had lately despaired of.