At Ernest's approach he looked up without evincing the least sign ofterror or surprise. Calmly, almost majestically, he folded his arms overhis breast, but there was a menacing glitter in his eyes as heconfronted his victim.
XXX
Silently the two men faced each other. Then Ernest hissed:
"Thief!"
Reginald shrugged his shoulders.
"Vampire!"
"So Ethel has infected you with her absurd fancies! Poor boy! I amafraid.... I have been wanting to tell you for some time.... But Ithink... We have reached the parting of our road!"
"And that you dare to tell me!"
The more he raged, the calmer Reginald seemed to become.
"Really," he said, "I fail to understand.... I must ask you to leave myroom!"
"You fail to understand? You cad!" Ernest cried. He stepped to thewriting-table and opened the secret drawer with a blow. A bundle ofmanuscripts fell on the floor with a strange rustling noise. Then,seizing his own story, he hurled it upon the table. And behold--the lastpages bore corrections in ink that could have been made only a fewminutes ago!
Reginald smiled. "Have you come to play havoc with my manuscripts?" heremarked.
"Your manuscripts? Reginald Clarke, you are an impudent impostor! Youhave written no word that is your own. You are an embezzler of the mind,strutting through life in borrowed and stolen plumes!"
And at once the mask fell from Reginald's face.
"Why stolen?" he coolly said, with a slight touch of irritation. "Iabsorb. I appropriate. That is the most any artist can say for himself.God creates; man moulds. He gives us the colours; we mix them."
"That is not the question. I charge you with having wilfully andcriminally interfered in my life; I charge you with having robbed me ofwhat was mine; I charge you with being utterly vile and rapacious, ahypocrite and a parasite!"
"Foolish boy," Reginald rejoined austerely. "It is through me that thebest in you shall survive, even as the obscure Elizabethans live in himof Avon. Shakespeare absorbed what was great in little men--a greatnessthat otherwise would have perished--and gave it a setting, a life."
"A thief may plead the same. I understand you better. It is yourinordinate vanity that prompts you to abuse your monstrous power."
"You err. Self-love has never entered into my actions. I am careless ofpersonal fame. Look at me, boy! As I stand before you I am Homer, I amShakespeare ... I am every cosmic manifestation in art. Men have doubtedin each incarnation my individual existence. Historians have more totell of the meanest Athenian scribbler or Elizabethan poetaster than ofme. The radiance of my work obscured my very self. I care not. I have amission. I am a servant of the Lord. I am the vessel that bears theHost!"
He stood up at full length, the personification of grandeur and power. Atremendous force trembled in his very finger tips. He was like agigantic dynamo, charged with the might of ten thousand magnetic stormsthat shake the earth in its orbit and lash myriads of planets throughinfinities of space....
Under ordinary circumstances Ernest or any other man would have quailedbefore him. But the boy in that epic moment had grown out of hisstature. He felt the sword of vengeance in his hands; to him wasintrusted the cause of Abel and of Walkham, of Ethel and of Jack. Hiswas the struggle of the individual soul against the same blind and cruelfate that in the past had fashioned the ichthyosaurus and the mastodon.
"By what right," he cried, "do you assume that you are the literaryMessiah? Who appointed you? What divine power has made you the stewardof my mite and of theirs whom you have robbed?"
"I am a light-bearer. I tread the high hills of mankind.... I point theway to the future. I light up the abysses of the past. Were not mystature gigantic, how could I hold the torch in all men's sight? Thevery souls that I tread underfoot realise, as their dying gaze followsme, the possibilities with which the future is big.... Eternally secure,I carry the essence of what is cosmic ... of what is divine.... I amHomer ... Goethe ... Shakespeare.... I am an embodiment of the sameforce of which Alexander, Caesar, Confucius and the Christos were alsoembodiments.... None so strong as to resist me."
A sudden madness overcame Ernest at this boast. He must strike now ornever. He must rid humanity of this dangerous maniac--this demon ofstrength. With a power ten times intensified, he raised a heavy chair soas to hurl it at Reginald's head and crush it.
Reginald stood there calmly, a smile upon his lips.... Primal crueltiesrose from the depth of his nature.... Still he smiled, turning hisluminous gaze upon the boy ... and, behold ... Ernest's hand began toshake ... the chair fell from his grasp.... He tried to call for help,but no sound issued from his lips.... Utterly paralysed heconfronted ... the Force....
Minutes--eternities passed.
And still those eyes were fixed upon him.
But this was no longer Reginald!
It was all brain ... only brain ... a tremendous brain-machine ...infinitely complex ... infinitely strong. Not more than a mile awayEthel endeavoured to call to him through the night. The telephone rang,once, twice, thrice, insistingly. But Ernest heard it not. Somethingdragged him ... dragged the nerves from his body dragged, dragged,dragged.... It was an irresistible suction ... pitiless ... passionless... immense.
Sparks, blue, crimson and violet, seemed to play around the livingbattery. It reached the finest fibres of his mind.... Slowly ... everytrace of mentality disappeared.... First the will ... then feeling ...judgment ... memory ... fear even.... All that was stored in hisbrain-cells came forth to be absorbed by that mighty engine....
The Princess With the Yellow Veil appeared ... flitted across the roomand melted away. She was followed by childhood memories ... girls'heads, boys' faces.... He saw his dead mother waving her arms to him....An expression of death-agony distorted the placid features.... Then,throwing a kiss to him, she, too, disappeared. Picture on picturefollowed.... Words of love that he had spoken ... sins, virtues,magnanimities, meannesses, terrors ... mathematical formulas even, andsnatches of songs. Leontina came and was swallowed up.... No, it wasEthel who was trying to speak to him ... trying to warn.... She wavedher hands in frantic despair.... She was gone.... A pale face ... dark,dishevelled hair.... Jack.... How he had changed! He was in the circleof the vampire's transforming might. "Jack," he cried. Surely Jack hadsomething to explain ... something to tell him ... some word that ifspoken would bring rest to his soul. He saw the words rise to the boy'slips, but before he had time to utter them his image also had vanished.And Reginald ... Reginald, too, was gone.... There was only the mightybrain ... panting ... whirling.... Then there was nothing.... Theannihilation of Ernest Fielding was complete.
Vacantly he stared at the walls, at the room and at his master. Thelatter was wiping the sweat from his forehead. He breathed deeply....The flush of youth spread over his features.... His eyes sparkled with anew and dangerous brilliancy.... He took the thing that had once beenErnest Fielding by the hand and led it to its room.
XXXI
With the first flush of the morning Ethel appeared at the door of thehouse on Riverside Drive. She had not heard from Ernest, and had beenunable to obtain connection with him at the telephone. Anxiety hadhastened her steps. She brushed against Jack, who was also directing hissteps to the abode of Reginald Clarke.
At the same time something that resembled Ernest Fielding passed fromthe house of the Vampire. It was a dull and brutish thing, hideouslytransformed, without a vestige of mind.
"Mr. Fielding," cried Ethel, beside herself with fear as she saw himdescending.
"Ernest!" Jack gasped, no less startled at the change in his friend'sappearance.
Ernest's head followed the source of the sound, but no spark ofrecognition illumined the deadness of his eyes. Without a present andwithout a past ... blindly ... a gibbering idiot ... he stumbled downthe stairs.
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