Chapter 13

I nearly upset the table in my excitement. I ran into the hall. Who wouldn't? Sir Henry Hodges! The English scientist about whom the whole world was talking! The most gifted investigator of the day; the most widely informed; of all men on the face of the globe, the best equipped, mentally, to explore the unknown! Without the slightest formality I grabbed his hand and shook it until he smiled at my enthusiasm.

“My dear Sir Henry,” I told him, “I'm immensely glad to see you! The truth is, I've been hoping you'd be interested in our case; but I didn't have the nerve to bother you with it!”

“And I,” he admitted in his quiet way, “have been longing to take a hand in it, ever since I first heard of Professor Holcomb's disappearance. Didn't like to offer myself; understood that the matter had been hushed up and--”

“For the very simple reason,” I explained, “that there was nothing to be gained by publicity. If we had given the public the facts, we would have been swamped with volunteers to help us. I didn't know whom to confide in, Sir Henry; couldn't make up my mind. I only knew that one such man as yourself was just what I needed.”

He overlooked the compliment, and pulled out the newspaper from his pocket. “Bought this a few minutes ago. Saw your ad, and jumped to the conclusion that matters had reached an acute stage. Let me have the whole story, my boy, as briefly as you can.”

He already knew the published details. Also, he seemed to be acquainted--in some manner which puzzled me--with much that had not been printed. I sketched the affair as quickly as I could, making it clear that we were face to face with a crisis. When I wound up by saying that it was Dr. Higgins who gave Ariadne three days, ending about midnight, in which she might recover if we could secure Rhamda Avec, he said kindly:

“I'm afraid you made a mistake, my boy, in not seeking some help. The game has reached a point where you cannot have too many brains on your side. Time is short for reinforcements!”

He heartily approved of my course in enlisting the aid of Miss Clarke and her colleagues. “That is the sort of thing you need! People with mentality; plenty of intellectual force!” And he went on to make suggestions.

As a result, within an hour and a half our house was sheltering five more persons.

Miss Clarke has already been introduced. She was easily one of the ten most advanced practitioners in her line. And she had the advantage of a curiosity that was interested in everything odd, even though she labelled it “non-existent.” She said it helped her faith in the real truths to be conversant with the unreal.

Dr. Malloy was from the university, an out-and-out materialist, a psychologist who made life interesting for those who agreed with William James. His investigations of abnormal psychology are world-acknowledged.

Mme. Le Fabre, we afterwards learned, had come from Versailles especially to investigate the matter that was bothering us. She possessed no mediumistic properties of her own but was a staunch proponent of spiritualism, believing firmly in immortality and the omnipotence of “translated” souls.

Professor Herold is most widely known as the inventor of certain apparatus connected with wireless. But he is also considered the West's most advanced student of electrical and radio-active subjects.

I was enormously glad to have this man's expert, high-tension knowledge right on tap.

The remaining member of the quintet which Sir Henry advised me to summon requires a little explanation. Also, I am obliged to give him a name not his own; for it is not often that brigadier-generals of the United States army can openly lend their names to anything so far removed apparently from militarism as the searching of the occult.

Yet we knew that this man possessed a power that few scientists have developed; the power of co-ordination, of handling and balancing great facts and forces, and of deciding promptly how best to meet any given situation. Not that we looked for anything militaristic out of the Blind Spot; far from it. We merely knew not what to expect, which was exactly why we wanted to have him with us; his type of mind is, perhaps, the most solidly comforting sort that any mystery-bound person can have at his side.

By the time these five had gathered, Jerome had neither returned nor telephoned. There was not the slightest trace of Rhamda Avec; no guessing as to whether he had seen the ad. It was then one o'clock in the afternoon. Only six hours ago! It doesn't seem possible.

So there were eight of us--three women and five men--who went upstairs and quietly inspected the all but lifeless form of Ariadne and afterwards gathered in the library below.

All were thoroughly familiar with the situation. Miss Clarke calmly commented to the effect that the entire Blind Spot affair was due wholly and simply to the cumulative effects of so many, many subjects; the result, in other words, of error.

Dr. Malloy was equally outspoken in his announcement that he proposed to deal with the matter from the standpoint of psychic aberration. He mentioned dissociated personalities, group hypnosis, and so on. But he declared that he was open to conviction, and anxious to get any and all facts.

Sir Henry had a good deal of difficulty in getting Mme. Le Fabre to commit herself. Probably she felt that, since Sir Henry had gone on record as being doubtful of the spiritistic explanation of psychic phenomena, she might get into a controversy with him. But in the end she stated that she expected to find our little mystery simply a novel variation on what was so familiar to her.

As might be supposed, General Hume had no opinion. He merely expressed himself as being prepared to accept any sound theory, or portions of such theories as might be advanced, and arrive at a workable conclusion therefrom. Which was exactly what we wanted of him.

Of them all, Professor Herold showed the most enthusiasm. Perhaps this was because, despite his attainments, he is still young. At any rate, he made it clear that he was fully prepared to learn something entirely new in science. And he was almost eager to adjust his previous notions and facts to the new discoveries.

When all these various viewpoints had been cleared up, and we felt that we understood each other, it was inevitable that we should look to Sir Henry to state his position. This one man combined a large amount of the various, specialised abilities for which the others were noted, and they all knew and respected him accordingly. Had he stood and theorised half the afternoon, they would willingly have sat and listened. But instead he glanced at his watch, and observed:

“To me, the most important development of all was hearing the sound of a dog's bark coming from the ring. As I recall the details, the sound was emitted just after the gem had been submitted to considerable handling, from Miss Fenton's fingers to her brother's and back again. In other words, it was subjected to a mixture of opposing animal magnetisms. Suppose we experiment further with it now.”

Charlotte slipped the gem from her finger and passed it around. Each of us held it for a second or two; after which Charlotte clasped the ring tightly in her palm, while we all joined hands.

It was, as I have said, broad daylight; the hour, shortly after one. Scarcely had our hands completed the circuit than something happened.

From out of Charlotte's closed hand there issued an entirely new sound. At first it was so faint and fragmentary that only two of us heard it. Then it became stronger and more continuous, and presently we were all gazing at each other in wonderment.

For the sound was that of footsteps.

XXVI

DIRECT FROM PARADISE

The sound was not like that of the walking of the human. Nor was it such as an animal would make. It was neither a thud nor a pattering, but more like a scratching shuffle, such as reminded me of nothing that I had ever heard before.

Next moment, however, there came another sort of sound, plainly audible above the footsteps. This was a thin, musical chuckle which ended in a deep, but faint, organ-like throb. It happened only once.

Immediately it was followed by a steady clicking, such as might be made by gently striking a stick against the pavement; only sharper. This lasted a minute, during which the other sounds ceased.

Once more the footsteps. They were not very loud, but in the stillness of that room they all but resounded.

Presently Charlotte could stand it no longer. She placed the ring on the table, where it continued to emit those unplaceable sounds.

“Well! Do--do you people,” stammered Dr. Malloy, “do you people all hear THAT?”

Miss Clarke's face was rather pale. But her mouth was firm. “It is nothing,” said she, with theosophical positiveness. “You must not believe it--it is not the truth of--”

“Pardon me,” interrupted Sir Henry, “but this isn't something to argue about! It is a reality; and the sooner we all admit it, the better. There is a living creature of some kind making that sound!”

“It is the spirit of some two-footed creature,” asserted Mme. Le Fabre, plainly at her ease. She was on familiar ground now. “If only we had a medium!”

Abruptly the sounds left the vicinity of the ring. At first we could not locate their new position. Then Herold declared that they came from under the table; and presently we were all gathered on the floor, listening to those odd little sounds, while the ring remained thirty inches above, on the top of the table!

It may be that the thing, whatever it was, did not care for such a crowd. For shortly the shuffling ceased. And for a while we stared and listened, scarcely breathing, trying to locate the new position.

Finally we went back to our chairs. We had heard nothing further. Nevertheless, we continued to keep silence, with our ears alert for anything more.

“Hush!” whispered Charlotte all of a sudden. “Did you hear that?” And she looked up toward the ceiling.

In a moment I caught the sound. It was exceedingly faint, like the distant thrumming of a zither. Only it was a single note, which did not rise and fall, although there seemed a continual variation in its volume.

Unexpectedly the other sounds came again, down under the table. This time we remained in our seats and simply listened. And presently Sir Henry, referring to the ring, made this suggestion:

“Suppose we seal it up, and see whether it inducts the sound then as well as when exposed.”

This appealed to Herold very strongly; the others were agreeable; so I ran upstairs to my room and secured a small screw-top metal canister, which I knew to be airtight. It was necessary to remove the stone from the ring, in order to get it into the opening in the can. Presently this was done; and while our invisible visitor continued his scratchy little walking as before, I screwed the top of the can down as tightly as I could.

Instantly the footsteps halted.

I unscrewed the top a trifle. As instantly the stepping was resumed.

“Ah!” cried Herold. “It's a question of radioactivity, then! Remember Le Bon's experiments, Sir Henry?”

But Miss Clarke was sorely mystified by this simple matter, and herself repeated the experiments. Equally puzzled was Mme. Le Fabre. According to her theory, a spirit wouldn't mind a little thing like a metal box. Of them all, Dr. Malloy was the least disturbed; so decidedly so that General Hume eyed him quizzically.

“Fine bunch of hallucinations, doctor.”

“Almost commonplace,” retorted Malloy.

Presently I mentioned that the Rhamda had come from the basement on the night that Ariadne had materialised; and I showed that the only possible route into the cellar was through the locked door in the breakfast room, since the windows were all too small, and there was no other door. Query: How had the Rhamda got there? Immediately they all became alert. As Herold said:

“One thing or the other is true; either there is something downstairs which has escaped you, Fenton, or else Avec is able to materialise in any place he chooses. Let's look!”

We all went down except Charlotte, who went upstairs to stay with Ariadne. By turns, each of us held the ring. And as we unlocked the basement door we noted that the invisible, walking creature had reached there before us.

Down the steps went those unseen little feet, jumping from one step to the next just ahead of us all the way. When within three or four steps of the bottom, the creature made one leap do for them all.

I had previously run an extension cord down into the basement, and both compartments could now be lighted by powerful electric lamps. We gave the place a quick examination.

“What's all this newly turned earth mean?” inquired Sir Henry, pointing to the result of Jerome's efforts a few months before. And I explained how he and Harry, on the chance the basement might contain some clue as to the localisation of the Blind Spot, had dug without result in the bluish clay.

Sir Henry picked up the spade, which had never been moved from where Jerome had dropped it. And while I went on to tell about the pool of liquids, which for some unknown reason had not seeped into the soil since forming there, the Englishman proceeded to dig vigorously into the heap I had mentioned.

The rest of us watched him thoughtfully. We remembered that Jerome's digging had been done after Queen's disappearance. And the dog had vanished in the rear room, the one in which Chick and Dr. Holcomb had last been seen. Now, when Jerome had dug the clay from the basement under this, the dining-room, he had thrown it through the once concealed opening in the partition; had thrown the clay, that is, in a small heap under the library. And--after Jerome had done this the phenomena had occurred in the library, not in the dining-room.

“By Jove!” ejaculated General Hume, as I pointed this out. “This may be something more, you know, that mere coincidence!”

Sir Henry said nothing, but continued his spading. He paid attention to nothing save the heap that Jerome had formed. And with each spadeful he bent over and examined the clay very carefully.

Miss Clarke and Mme. Le Fabre both remained very calm about it all. Each from her own viewpoint regarded the work as more or less a waste of time. But I noticed that they did not take their eyes from the spade.

Sir Henry stopped to rest. “Let me,” offered Herold; and went on as the Englishman had done, holding up each spadeful for inspection. And it was thus that we made a strange discovery.

We all saw it at the same time. Embedded in the bluish earth was a small, egg-shaped piece of light-coloured stone. And protruding from its upper surface was a tiny, blood-red pebble, no bigger than a good-sized shot.

Herold thrust the point of his spade under the stone, to lift it up. Whereupon he gave a queer exclamation.

“Well, that's funny!” holding the stone up in front of us. “That little thing's as heavy as--as--it's HEAVIER than lead!”

Sir Henry picked the stone off the spade. Immediately the material crumbled in his hands, as though rotting, so that it left only the small, red pebble intact. Sir Henry weighed this thoughtfully in his palm, then without a word handed it around.

We all wondered at the pebble. It was most astonishingly heavy. As I say, it was no bigger than a fair-sized shot, yet it was vastly heavier.

Afterward we weighed it, upstairs, and found that the trifle weighed over half a pound. Considering its very small bulk, this worked out to be a specific gravity of 192.6 or almost ten times as heavy as the same bulk of pure gold. And gold is heavy.

Inevitably we saw that there must be some connection between this unprecedentedly heavy speck of material and that lighter-than-air gem of mystery. For the time being we were careful to keep the two apart. As for the unexplained footsteps, they were still slightly audible, as the invisible creatures moved around the cellar.

At last we turned to go. I let the others lead the way. Thus I was the last to approach the steps; and it was at that moment that I felt something brush against my foot.

I stooped down. My hands collided with the thing that had touched me. And I found myself clutching--

Something invisible--something which, in that brilliant light, showed absolutely nothing to my eyes. But my hands told me I was grasping a very real thing, as real as my fingers themselves.

I made some sort of incoherent exclamation. The others turned and peered at me.

“What is it?” came Herold's excited voice.

“I don't know!” I gasped. “Come here.”

But Sir Henry was the first to reach me. Next instant he, too, was fingering the tiny, unseen object. And such was his iron nerve and superior self-control, he identified it almost at once.

“By the lord!”--softly. “Why, it's a small bird! Come here.”

Another second and they were all there. I was glad enough of it; for, like a flash, with an unexpectedness that startles me even now as I think of it--

The thing became visible. Right in my grasp, a little fluttering bird came to life.

XXVII

SOLVED

It was a tiny thing, and most amazingly beautiful. It could not have stood as high as a canary; and had its feathers been made of gleaming silver they could not have been lovelier. And its black-plumed head, and long, blossom-like tail, were such as no man on earth ever set eyes on.

Like a flash it was gone. Not more than a half a second was this enchanting apparition visible to us. Before we could discern any more than I have mentioned, it not only vanished but it ceased to make any sounds whatever. And each of us drew a long breath, as one might after being given a glimpse of an angel.

Right now, five or six hours after the events I have just described, it is very easy for me to smile at my emotions of the time. How startled and mystified I was! And--why not confess it?--just a trifle afraid. Why? Because I didn't understand! Merely that.

At this moment I sit in my laboratory upstairs in that house, rejoicing in having reached the end of the mystery. For the enigma of the Blind Spot is no more. I have solved it!

Now twenty feet away, in another room, lies Ariadne. Already there is a faint trace of colour in her cheeks, and her heart is beating more strongly. Another hour, says Dr. Higgins, and she will be restored to us!

The time is seven p.m. I didn't sleep at all last night; I haven't slept since. For the past five hours we have been working steadily on the mystery, ever since our finding that little, red pebble in the basement. The last three hours of the time I have been treating Ariadne, using means which our discoveries indicated. And in order to keep awake I have been dictating this account to a stenographer.

This young lady, a Miss Dibble, is downstairs, where her typewriter will not bother. Yes, put that down, too, Miss Dibble; I want people to know everything! She has a telephone clamped to her ears, and I am talking into a microphone which is fixed to a stand on my desk.

On that desk are four switches. All are of the four-way two-pole type; and from them run several wires, some going to one end of the room, where they are attached to the Holcomb gem. Others, running to the opposite end, making contact with the tiny heavy stone we found in the basement. Other wires run from the switches to lead bands around my wrists. Also, between switches are several connections--one circuit containing an amplifying apparatus. By throwing these switches in various combinations, I can secure any given alteration of forces, and direct them where I choose.

For there are two other wires. These run from my own lead bracelets to another room; a pair clamped around the wrists of Ariadne.

For I, Hobart Fenton, am now a living, human transforming station. I am converting the power of the Infinite into the Energy of Life. And I am transmitting that power directly out of the ether, as conduced through these two marvellous stones, back into the nervous system of the girl I love. Another hour, and she will Exist!

It was all so very simple, now that I understand it. And yet--well, an absolutely new thing is always very hard to put into words.

To begin with, I must acknowledge the enormous help which I have had from my friends: Miss Clarke, Mme. Le Fabre, General Hume, Dr. Malloy, and Herold. These people are still in the house with me; I think they are eating supper. I've already had mine. Really, I can't take much credit to myself for what I have found out. The others supplied most of the facts. I merely happened to fit them together; and, because of my relationship to the problem, am now doing the heroic end of the work.

As for Harry--he and Dr. Holcomb, Chick Watson and even the dog--I shall have them out of the Blind Spot inside of twelve hours. All I need is a little rest. I'll go straight to bed as soon as I finish reviving Ariadne; and when I wake up, we'll see who's who, friend Rhamda!

I'm too exuberant to hold myself down to the job of telling what I've discovered. But it's got to be done. Here goes!

I practically took my life in my hands when I first made connection. However, I observed the precaution of rigging up a primary connection direct from the ring to the pebble, running the wire along the floor some distance away from where I sat. No ill effects when I ventured into the line of force; so I began to experiment with the switches.

That precautionary circuit was Herold's idea. His, also, the amplifying apparatus. The mental attitude was Miss Clarke's, modified by Dr. Malloy. The lead bracelets were Mme. Le Fabre's suggestion; they work fine. Sir Henry was the one who pointed out the advantage of the microphone I am using. If my hands become paralysed I can easily call for help to my side.

Well, the first connection I tried resulted in nothing. Perfectly blank. Then I tried another and another, meanwhile continually adjusting the amplifier; and as a result I am now able, at will, to do either or all of the following:

(1) I can induct sounds from the Blind Spot; (2) I can induct light, or visibility; or (3) any given object or person, in toto.

And now to tell how. No, I'm just sleepy, not weak.

Let's see; where was I? Oh, yes; those connections. They've got to be done just right, with the proper tension in the coils, and the correct mental attitude, to harmonise. I wish I wasn't so tired!

One moment! No, no; I'm all right. I--Queer! By Jove, that's a funny thing just now! I must have got an inducted current from another wire, mixed with these! And--I got a glimpse into the Blind Spot!

A great--No; it's a--What a terrific crowd! Wonder what they're all--By Jove, it's--Good Lord, it's he! And Chick! No, I'm not wandering! I'm having the experience of my life!

Now--THAT'S the boy! Don't let 'em bluff you! Good! Good! Tell 'em where to head in! That's the boy! Rub it in! I don't know what you're up to, but I'm with you!

Er--there's a big crowd of ugly looking chaps there, and I can't make it out--Just a moment--a moment. What does it mean, anyway? Just--I--

DANGER, by Heaven! THAT'S what it means!

No; I'm all right. The--thing came to an end, abruptly. That's all; everything normal again; the room just the same as it was a moment ago. Hello! I seem to have started something! The wire down on the floor has commenced to hum! Oh, I've got my eye on it, and if anything--

Miss Dibble! Tell Herold to come! On the run! Quick! Did you? Good! don't stop writing! I--

There's Chick! CHICK! How did you get here? What? YOU CAN'T SEE ME! Why--

Chick! Listen! Listen, man! I've gone into the Blind Spot! Write this down! The connection--

That's Herold! Herold, this is Chick Watson! Listen, now, you two! The--the--I can hardly--it's from No. 4 to--to--to the ring--then--coil--

Both switches, Chick! Ah! I've--