“I have told you what is to come after that.”
“Oh, yes, you have told me. You will get rid of Sacha.” Ninon’s red lips parted in a sneer, the bitterness of which made him wilt. “My man,” she added, “I do not take chances when it is a pretty wife who shall be got rid of by such a husband as you. Also, I say to myself, I will help him to get rid of her.”
“My God, it is horrible.” He drew his hand across his brow in a gesture of despair. “Do you know that, because of your crystal or your dope, or both together, already, this afternoon, Sacha tried to kill me with a poker? Had it not been—”
He stopped speaking abruptly. The ghastliness of Ninon’s face made him spring to her support. He set her down in the chair he had just vacated.
“It is not true,” she pleaded, “oh, no, it cannot be true.”
“It is absolutely true.”
She raised her horrified eyes to his face.
“But that is Beatrice,” she whispered. “It was so that Beatrice struck at Lord Templewood twenty years ago, after she had confessed to him that your father was her lover. Lord Templewood tried to kill her and himself also. He has told me, many times—”
“My father?”
The buzz of the telephone bell smote sturdily on their ears. Ninon rose and crossed the floor with faltering steps. She lifted the receiver.
“Yes. Yes, it is Mlle. Darelli speaking. Who is that? Dr. Hailey? Oh, yes — what do you say? Lord Templewood wishes me to come back to-night to The Black Tower? So... so... I will come.”
She hung up the receiver and turned to Barrington.
The look of fear had not passed from her eyes.
Chapter XVI
The Temple of Peace
Lord Templewood spent most of the morning, following his somnambulistic attack, in bed. But, just before luncheon he rose and came downstairs to the library where Dr. Hailey awaited him. He was still very pale, but his cold, beautiful face was no longer drawn in lines of anxiety.
“Forgive me,” he apologized, “for having refused to see you this morning. I felt that I must obtain as much sleep as possible. I have seen nobody at all, not even Ninon.”
He sighed deeply as he pronounced the name of his medium. Apparently he had been informed of her departure to London. Dr. Hailey proposed that they should avail themselves of the March sunlight to walk for a little while in the grounds.
They crossed the drawbridge, which retained its ancient lifting chains, and strolled round the moat, in whose dark waters goldfish moved sleepily. Lord Templewood led the way through a bower of evergreens, to a space which had a high, wooded mound as its background, and in which a building, half summer-house and half shrine, had been erected.
The building was built at the far end into the mound which perhaps had been raised by human hands in old times. It recalled irresistibly those little temples which lie tucked away in recesses of the park at Versailles. Its owner presented it with a sweep of his thin hand.
“The Temple of Peace,” he announced. “My thank offering for the goodness of the Great Spirit in restoring to me the happiness which long ago was taken out of my life.”
His face was expressionless as he spoke, but his eyes glowed. Dr. Hailey watched him narrowly. Such language might or might not indicate a twist of the mind.
“Is it permitted to enter?”
“Oh, yes.”
Lord Templewood took a key from his pocket and opened the door of the building. An exclamation of wonder escaped the doctor’s lips. Never before in his life had he beheld so amazing an interior. The Temple seemed to be filled with dazzling light.
At the far end facing the door was a huge altar of purest marble, and on the altar a crystal globe in which points of cold fire burned with strange intensity. On either side of the crystal globe were golden candlesticks each with seven horns like the candlesticks which stood in the Temple at Jerusalem until Titus, the son of Vespasian, carried them away to Rome.
“It is beautiful, is it not?”
The doctor inclined his head. The beauty was undeniable, but it was less than the suggestion of barbaric profusion. In such a temple a warrior might hang up the plunder of his foes, whether taken worthily or by stealth.
“You hold your séances here?” he asked.
“No!”
Lord Templewood seemed impatient to be gone. He pointed out in his quick, staccatic accents, that the mere opening of the door automatically switched on all the lights. These, however, could be extinguished from a place behind the altar. There were no windows in the building.
Dr. Hailey leaned against the door, surveying the strange mosaic of the pavement at his feet. He touched one or two of the elements of the mosaic with his walking stick. Suddenly he started. His body seemed to stiffen. The stick shook in his hand. He turned to Lord Templewood.
“That’s queer. I felt as if I had had an electric shock.”
The old man did not reply.
When they came back again to the sunlight, Dr. Hailey helped himself to a pinch of snuff. Then he rubbed his arm as if it hurt him slightly.
“How are you feeling this morning?” he asked his patient abruptly.
“Well — except for this wound in my throat.” Lord Templewood stood still and faced his companion with weary eyes. “You know, perhaps, already,” he said, “that I am a victim of sleep-walking. Always on those occasions the same terrible experience is vouchsafed to me — the experience of attempting to take my own life. That is why it is necessary that I should keep myself constantly under the influence of narcotic drugs—”
He drew up the sleeve of his coat as he spoke, and revealed to the doctor’s astonished gaze a forearm mottled with innumerable points of pigment — the unmistakable sign of hypodermic injection repeated over a long period of time.
Chapter XVII
Body and Soul not His Own
Dr. Hailey made no comment on this strange disclosure, except to ask the nature of the drug used. He heard, as he had expected to hear, that it was cocaine; and he guessed that the supplies of that forbidden substance were obtained through the instrumentality of Ninon Darelli.
Even so, there was nothing very unusual in such a state of affairs. The opinions which the ordinary man cherishes about “drugs,” and the facts of the case as every doctor knows them, are different. There are drug addicts who have made a moderate and reasonable use of both cocaine and morphia over many years. Some of these people are to be found in Harley Street itself.
They came to the castle again. Lord Templewood announced that, after luncheon, he proposed to go motoring. He invited the doctor to accompany him.
“I always drive myself,” he explained, in laconic tones. “So if you feel any anxiety, please do not hesitate to say so.”
“I do not feel any anxiety.”
During the meal, there was little talk of any kind. But though Lord Templewood scarcely spoke at all, he proved a gracious and attentive host. Dr. Hailey wondered more and more on what grounds the local doctor had reached the conclusion that he was “certifiable,” unless, indeed, he held the view that an interest in spiritualism is a sign of mental derangement.
Then his thoughts traveled to the scene of the night before, when Ninon produced her imitation of a galloping horseman. It was difficult to realize that this calm, self-possessed man was the same individual who had been thrown into so dreadful a state of panic by that vulgar swindle. It was just possible that, in Lord Templewood’s case, belief in spiritualism did amount to a monomania.