Flames Part 8

"I would rather you didn't. I hate that curtain. If I were you I would have it taken down altogether."

Valentine looked at him in surprise. He had uttered the words with an energy almost violent. But even as Valentine looked Julian switched off the electric light and the leaping darkness hid his face.

"Come now. Business! Business!" he cried.

And again they sat with their hands loosely on the table, not touching each other.

Valentine felt that Julian was being less frank with him than usual.

Perhaps for this reason he was immediately conscious that they were not so much in sympathy as on the two former occasions of their sittings.

Or there might have been some other reason which he could not identify.

It is certain that he gradually became acutely aware of a stifling sense of constraint, which he believed to be greatly intensified by the surrounding darkness and silence. He wondered if Julian was conscious of it also, and at moments longed to ask. But something held him back, that curious something which we all feel at times like a strong hand laid upon us. He made up his mind that this discomfort of his soul, unreasonably considerable though it was, must be due solely to Julian's abrupt demeanour and obvious desire to check his curiosity about the drawing of the curtain. But, as the moments ran by, his sense of uneasiness a.s.sumed such fantastic proportions that he began to cast about for some more definite, more concrete, cause. At one instant he found it in the condition of his health. The day had been damp and dreary, and he had suffered from neuralgia. Doubtless the pain had acted upon his nervous system, and was accountable for his present and perpetually increasing anxiety. A little later he was fain to dismiss this supposition as untenable. His sense of constraint was changing into a positive dread, and not at all of Julian, around whom he had believed that his thoughts were in flight. Something, he knew not at all what, interposed between him and Julian, and so definitely that Valentine felt as if he could have fixed the exact moment in which the interposition had taken place, as one can fix the exact moment in which a person enters a room where one is sitting. And the interposition was one of great horror,--entirely malignant, Valentine believed.

He had an impulse to spring up from the table, to turn on the light, and to say, "Let us make an end of this jugglery!" Yet he sat still, wondering why he did so. A curiosity walked in his mind, pacing about till he could almost fancy he heard its footsteps. He sat, then, as one awaiting an arrival, that has been heralded in some way, by a telegram, a message, a carrier-pigeon flown in at an open window. But the herald, too, was horrible. What then would follow it? What was coming? Valentine felt that he began to understand Marr's queer remark, "You are _en route_." At the first sitting he had felt a very vague suggestion of immoderate possibilities, made possibilities by the apparently futile position a.s.sumed at a table by himself and Julian. To-night the vague seemed on march towards the definite. Fancy was surely moving towards fact.

With his eyes wide open Valentine gazed in the direction of Julian, sitting invisible opposite to him. He wondered how Julian was feeling, what he was thinking. And then he remembered that strange saying of Marr's, that thoughts could take form, materialize. What would he give to witness that monstrous procession of embodied brain-actions trooping from the mind of his friend! He imagined them small, spare, phantom-like things, fringed with fire, as weapon against the darkness, silent-footed as spirits, moving with a level impetus, as pale ghosts treading a sea, onward to the vast world of clashing minds, to which we carelessly cast out our thoughts as a man who shoots rubbish into a cart. The vagrant fancies danced along with attenuated steps and tiny, whimsical gestures of fairies, fluttering their flame-veined wings. The sad thoughts moved slowly with drooped heads and monotonous hands, and tears fell forever about their feet. The thoughts that were evil--and Julian had acknowledged them many, though combatted--were endowed with a strangely sinister gait, like the gait of those modern sinners who express, ignorantly, in their motions the hidden deeds their tongues decline to speak. The wayward thoughts had faces like women, who kiss and frown within the limits of an hour. On the cheeks of the libertine thoughts a rosy cloud of rouge shone softly, and their haggard eyes were brightened by a cunning pigment. And the n.o.ble thoughts, grand in gesture, G.o.dlike in bearing, did not pa.s.s them by, but spoke to them serene words, and sought to bring them out from their degradation. And there was no music in this imagined procession which Valentine longed to see. All was silent as from the gulf of Julian's mind the inhabitants stole furtively to do their mission. Yes, Valentine knew to-night that he should feel no wonder if thought took form, if a disembodied voice spoke, or a detached hand moved into ripples of the air. Only he was irritated and alarmed by the abiding sense of some surrounding danger, which stayed with him, which he fought against in vain. His common sense had not deserted him. On the contrary, it was argumentative, cogent in explanation and in rebuke. It strove to sneer his distress down with stinging epithets, and shot arrows of laughter against his aimless fears. But the combat was, nevertheless, tamely unequal. Common sense was routed by this enigmatic enemy, and at length Valentine's spirits became so violently perturbed that he could keep silence no longer.

"Julian," he said, with a pressure of chained alarm in his voice, "Julian!"

"Yes," Julian replied, tensely.

"Anything wrong with you?"

"No, no. Or with you?"

"Nothing definite."

"What then?"

"I will confess to you that to-night I feel--I feel, well, horribly afraid."

"Of what?"

"I have no idea. The feeling is totally unreasonable. That gives it an inexplicable horror."

"Ah! then that is why you joined your left hand with my right five minutes ago. I wondered why you did it."

"I! Joined hands!"

"Yes."

"I haven't moved my hand."

"My dear Val! How is it holding mine then?"

"Don't be absurd, Julian; my hand is not near yours. Both my hands are just where they were when we sat down, on my side of the table."

"Just where they were! Your little finger has been tightly linked in mine for the last five minutes. You know that as well as I do."

"Nonsense!"

"But it is linked now while I am speaking."

"I tell you it isn't."

"I'll soon let you know it too. There! Ah! no wonder you have s.n.a.t.c.hed it away. You forget that my muscles are like steel, and that I can pinch as a gin pinches a rabbit's leg. I say, I didn't really hurt you, did I? It was only a joke to stop your little game."

"I tell you," Valentine said, almost angrily, "your hand has never once touched mine, nor mine yours."

His accent of irritable sincerity appeared suddenly to carry conviction to the mind of Julian, for he sprang violently up from the table, and cried, in the darkness:

"Then who the devil's in the room with us?"

Valentine also, convinced that Julian had not been joking, was appalled. He switched on the light, and saw Julian standing opposite to him, looking very white. They both threw a rapid glance upon the room, whose dull green draperies returned their inquiry with the complete indifference of artistic inanimation.

"Who the devil's got in here?" Julian repeated, with the savage accent of extreme uneasiness.

"n.o.body," Valentine replied. "You know the thing's impossible."

"Impossible or not, somebody has found means to get in."

Valentine shook his head.

"Then you were lying?"

"Julian, what are you saying? Don't go too far."

"Either you were, or else a man has been sitting at that table between us, and I have held his hand, the hand of some stranger. Ouf!"

He shook his broad shoulders in an irrepressible shudder.

"I was not lying, Julian. I tell you so, and I mean it."

Valentine's eyes met Julian's, and Julian believed him.

"Put your hands on the table again," Julian said.

Valentine obeyed, and Julian laid his beside them, linking one of his little fingers tightly in one of Valentine's, and at the same time shutting his eyes. After a long pause he grew visibly whiter, and hastily unlinked his finger.

"No, d.a.m.n it, Val, I hadn't hold of your hand. The hand I touched was much harder, and the finger was bigger, thicker. I say, this is ghastly."

Again he shook himself, and cast a searching glance upon the little room.

"Somebody has been in here with us, sitting between us in the dark," he repeated. "Good G.o.d, who is it?"

Valentine looked doubtful, but uneasy too.

"Let us go through the rooms," he said.

They took a candle, and, as on the previous night, searched, but in vain. They found no trace of any alien presence in the flat. No book, no ornament, had been moved. No door stood open. There was no sound of any footsteps except their own. When they came to Valentine's bedroom, Rip leaped to greet them, and seemed in excellent spirits. He showed no excitement until he had followed them back into the tentroom. But, arrived there, he suddenly stood still, raised one white paw from the ground, and emitted a long and dreary howl. The young men stared at him, and then at each other.