The Mummy and Miss Nitocris Part 10

"I guess you're getting a little beyond me there, Miss Marmion. I don't think I ever heard of a--what is it?--a bar-sinister, before. What might it be?"

Nitocris flushed very faintly as she replied:

"I think I can explain it best, Mrs van Huysman, by saying that it means that Lord Leighton's ancestors have preserved their honour unstained through many generations. Of course, you know that some of our so-called n.o.ble families in England spring from anything but a n.o.ble origin. There are not a few English dukes and earls who would find it rather awkward to introduce their great-great-grandmothers to their present circle of friends."

"I should think they would, from what I have read of them, the shameless creatures!" said Mrs van Huysman, with a sniff of real republican virtue.

Then the Prince joined them, and the conversation was promptly switched off on to another line of interest.

Tea was served on the Old Lawn under the shade of the great cedars, which made its greatest adornment; and when everybody had had what he or she wanted, and the men had lit their cigarettes--and the Professors, by special permission, their pipes--Nitocris looked across a couple of tables at Oscarovitch, whom she had so far managed most adroitly to keep at an endurable distance, and said:

"Now, Prince, if your friend the Adept is in the mood to astonish us with his wonders, perhaps you will be good enough to tell him that we are all ready and willing to be startled--only I hope that he will be merciful to our ignorance and not frighten us too much."

"I can a.s.sure you, Miss Marmion, that my good friend from Egypt will be discretion itself," replied the Prince, with a look and a courtly gesture that inspired Commander Merrill with an almost pa.s.sionate longing to take him down one of the quiet paths under the beeches for a ten minutes' interlude. "I can promise that he will show you some marvels which even your learned and distinguished father and his _confreres_ may find difficult of explanation: but it shall all be white magic. I understand that your real adept considers the black variety as what you call bad form."

As the company rose and went in little groups towards the tennis-lawn, where Phadrig had elected to display his powers, the three Professors instinctively joined each other in a small phalanx of scepticism. If there was any trick or deception to be discovered all looked to them to do it, and they were almost gleefully aware of their responsibility.

Figuratively speaking, they each wore the scalps of many spiritualistic mediums, and both Professor van Huysman and Professor Hartley sensed a possible addition to their belts of scientific wampum which would not be the least of their trophies. It had been agreed to by Phadrig, with a quiet scorn, that they were to take any measures they liked to detect him in any practice that would convict him of being merely a conjurer; and they had accepted the permission with that whole-souled devotion to truth which excludes all idea of pity from the really scientific mind.

Franklin Marmion was naturally in a very different frame of mind, although, from reasons of high policy, he a.s.sumed a similar mask of almost scornful scepticism; but for all that he was by far the most anxious man in the company.

At the request of their hostess the guests arranged themselves sitting and standing in a s.p.a.cious circle on the tennis-lawn; and when this was, formed, Phadrig, whose isolation so far from the rest of the company had been satisfactorily explained by the Prince, walked slowly into the middle of it, and, after a quick, keen glance round him--a glance which rested for just a moment or so on Professor Marmion and his _confreres_, and then on Nitocris, who was sitting beside Brenda attended by Lord Leighton and Merrill--he said in a low but clear and far-reaching voice, and in perfect English:

"Ladies and gentlemen, I have come to the house of the learned Professor Marmion at the request of my very good friend and patron, His Highness Prince Oscar Oscarovitch, to give you a little display of what I may call white magic. But before I begin I must ask you to accept my word of honour as a humble student of the mysteries of what, for want of a better word, we call Nature, that I am not in any sense a conjurer, by which I mean one who performs apparent marvels by merely deceiving your senses.

"What I am going to show you, you really will see. My marvels, if you please to think them such, will be realities, not illusions; and I shall be pleased if you will take every means to satisfy yourselves that they are so. I say this with all the more pleasure because I know that there are present three gentlemen of great eminence in the world of science, and if they are not able to detect me in anything approaching trickery, I think you will take their word for it that I am not deceiving you.

"In order that there may not be the smallest possible chance of error, I will ask Professors Marmion, Hartley, and Van Huysman to come and stand near to me, so that they may be satisfied that I make use of none of the mere conjurer's apparatus. I shall use nothing but the knowledge, and therefore the power, to which it has been my privilege to attain."

Phadrig spoke with all the calm confidence of perfect self-reliance, and therefore his words were not wanting in effect on his audience, critical and sceptical as it was.

"I reckon that's a challenge we can't very well afford to let go," said Professor van Huysman, with a keen look at his two brother scientists.

"Of course he's just a trick-merchant, but they're so mighty clever nowadays, especially these fellows from the gorgeous East, that you've got to keep your eyes wide open all the time they've got the platform."

"Certainly," said Professor Hartley, as they moved out from the circle; "it must be trickery of some sort, and we shall be doing a public service by exposing it. What do you think, Marmion? I hope you won't mind the exposure taking place in your own garden and among your own guests?"

"Not a bit, my dear Hartley," replied Franklin Marmion with a smile, which was quite lost upon his absolutely materialistic friends. "We have, as Van Huysman says, received a direct challenge. We should be most unworthy servants of our great Mistress if we did not take it up.

Personally, I mean to find out everything that I can."

"And, gentlemen," laughed the Prince, who had been standing with them and now moved away towards Nitocris, "I sincerely hope that what you find out will be worth the learning."

"He's a big man, that," said Professor van Huysman, when he was out of earshot, "but he's not the sort I'd have much use for. I wonder why those people who are on the war-path in his country ever let him out of it alive?"

In accordance with Phadrig's request, they made a triangle of which he was the central point. Without any formula of introduction, he said rather abruptly:

"Professor van Huysman, will you oblige me by taking a croquet ball and holding it in your hand as tightly as you can?"

Brenda ran out of the circle and gave him one. He took it and gripped it in a fist that looked made to hold things. Phadrig glanced at the ball, and said quietly:

"Follow me!"

Then he turned away, and, in spite of all the Professor's efforts to hold it, the ball somehow slipped through his fingers and fell on to the lawn. Then, to the utter amazement of every one, except Franklin Marmion, it rolled towards the Adept and followed him at a distance of about three yards as he walked round the circle of spectators. He did not even look at it. When he had made the round, he took his place in the Triangle of Science, and the ball stopped at his feet.

"It is now released, Professor," he said to Van Huysman. "You may take it away, if you wish."

There was something in the saying of the last sentence that nettled him.

He had seen all, or nearly all, the physical laws, which were to him as the Credo is to a Catholic or the Profession of Faith to a Moslem, openly and shamelessly outraged, defied, and set at nought. To say he was angry would be to give a very inadequate idea of his feelings, because he, the greatest exposer of Spiritualism, Dowieism, and Christian Scientism in the United States, was not only angry, but--for the time being only, as he hoped--utterly bewildered. It was too much, as he would have put it, to take lying down, and so, greatly daring, he took a couple of strides towards Phadrig, and said with a snarl in his voice:

"I guess you mean really if _you_ wish, Mr Miracle-Worker. It was mighty clever, however you did it, but you haven't got me to believe that physical laws are frauds yet. You want me to pick that ball up?"

"Certainly, Professor--if you can--now," replied Phadrig, with a little twitch of his lips which might have been a smile, or something else.

Hoskins van Huysman was a strong man, and he knew it. Not very many years before, he had been able to shoulder a sack of flour and take it away at a run, and now he could bend a poker across his shoulders without much trouble. He stooped down and gripped the ball, expecting, of course, to lift it quite easily. It didn't move. He put more force into his arms and tried again. For "all the move he got on it," as he said afterwards, it might have weighed a ton. It was ridiculous, but it was a fact. In spite of all his pulling and straining, the ball remained where it was as though it had been rooted in the foundations of the world. He was wise enough to know when he was beaten, so he let go, and when he pulled himself up, somewhat flushed after his exertions, he said:

"Well, Mister Phadrig, I don't know how you do it, but I've got to confess that it lets me out. I'm beaten. If you can make the law of gravitation do what you want, you're a lot bigger man in physics than I am."

He turned and went back to his place, looking, as his daughter whispered to Nitocris, "pretty well shaken up." The Prince caught Phadrig's eye for an instant, and said:

"Miss Marmion, will you confound the wisdom of the wise and bring the ball here?"

It was not the words but the challenge in them that impelled her to rise from her chair, aided by Merrill's hand, and not the one that the Prince held out, and walk across the lawn towards Phadrig. She took no notice of him. She just stooped and picked up the ball and carried it back to her chair. She tossed it down on the gra.s.s, and sat down again without a word, quaking with many inward emotions, but outwardly as calm as ever. What Professor van Huysman said to himself when he saw this will be better left to himself.

It might have been expected that the miracle, or at least the extraordinary defiance of physical law which had been accomplished by Phadrig, would have produced something like consternation among the bulk of the spectators. It did nothing of the sort. They were, perhaps, above the ordinary level of Society intellect in London; but they only saw something wonderful in what had been done. Nothing would have persuaded them that it was not the result of such skill as produced the marvels of the Egyptian Hall, simply because they were not capable of grasping its inner significance. Could they have done that, the panic which Professor Marmion was beginning to fear would probably have broken the party up in somewhat unpleasant fashion. As it was they contented themselves with saying: "How exceedingly clever!" "He must be quite a remarkable man!"

"I wonder we've never heard of him before!" "He must make a great deal of money!" "I wonder if I could persuade the dear Prince--what a charming man he is!--to bring him to my next At Home day?" and so on, perfectly ignorant, as it was well they should be, that they had witnessed a real conquest of Knowledge over Force.

Phadrig, who seemed to be the least interested person on the lawn, looked about him, and said as quietly as before:

"I should be very much obliged if the best tennis player in the company will do me the honour to have a game with me."

Now, it so happened that Brenda, in addition to her other athletic honours, had recently won the Ladies' Tennis Tournament at Washington, which carried with it the Championship of the State for the year, and so this challenge appealed both to her pride in the game and her spirit of adventure. She looked round at Nitocris, and said:

"I've half a mind to try, Niti. I suppose he won't strike me with lightning or send me down through the earth if I happen to beat him.

Shall I?"

"Yes, do," replied her hostess, with a suspicion of mischief in her voice; "those dear Professors of ours are puzzling so delightfully over the first miracle, or whatever it was, that I _do_ want to see them worried a little more. It will be a wholesome chastening for the overweening pride of knowledge."

"Very well," laughed Brenda, rising and dropping a light cloak from her shoulders. "It's the first time I've had the honour of playing against a magician, mind, so you mustn't be too hard on me if I lose."

Lord Leighton fetched her racquet and one for Phadrig, and they went together towards the tennis-court in which he was standing. The three Professors left their places and stood at one end of the net, Messrs Hartley and Van Huysman indulging in audible growls of baffled scepticism, and Franklin Marmion silently observant, divided between interest and amus.e.m.e.nt. He could not help imagining what would happen if he were to stand in the middle of the circle and remove himself to the Higher Plane, and then go round shaking hands and saying, "Good afternoon."

Brenda acknowledged Phadrig's bow with a gracious nod as she took her place. Then Lord Leighton handed the other racquet to the Adept. To his astonishment he declined it with another bow, saying:

"I thank you, my lord, but I do not need it."

"What!" exclaimed the other, with a frank stare of astonishment. "Excuse me, but tennis without a racquet, you know--are you going to play with your hands?"

"To some extent, yes, my lord," replied Phadrig, as he took his place.

"Will you ask Miss van Huysman if she will be kind enough to serve?"