Red Masquerade Part 33

She offered to rise.

"If that is all ..."

"Not quite. There are certain details to be arranged; and I may not see you again before we leave to-morrow afternoon. We will motor down to Frampton Court--it's not far, little more than an hour by train--starting about half after four, if you can be ready."

"Oh, yes."

"Sybil Waring will tell you what to take, and Chou Nu will see to your packing. Both, by the way, will accompany us. Sybil's maid will follow by train. For myself, I am taking Nogam--having found that English servants do not take kindly to my Chinese valet."

"Yes ..." Sofia uttered, listlessly, wondering why this information should be considered of interest to her.

"And one thing more: I am forgiven? You are not cross with me?"

"Why should I be?"

"Because of what happened this afternoon--when I scolded Karslake for making love to you."

"Oh," said Sofia with a good show of indifference--she was so tired--"that!"

"Believe me, little Sofia"--Victor put out a hand to hers, and held her eyes with a compelling gaze--"boy-and-girl romance is all very well, but there is a greater destiny reserved for you than marriage to a hired secretary, however amiable, personable, and well-meaning. You must prepare yourself to move in a world beyond and above the common hearthstone of bourgeois domesticity."

The girl shook a bewildered head.

"It is a riddle?" she asked, wearily.

"A riddle?" Victor echoed. "Why, one may safely term it that. Is not the Future always a riddle? Nature knows the Future as the Past, but Nature holds it secret, lest man go mad with too much knowledge. Only to the few, the favoured, does she grant rare glimpses through media which she has provided for the use of the initiate--such as this crystal here, in which I was studying your future, when you came in, the high future I plan for you."

"And--you won't tell me?"

"I may not. It is forbidden. Nature deals unkindly with those who violate her confidence. But--who knows?"

He checked himself as if struck by a new turn of thought, and studied the girl's face intently.

"Who knows?" he repeated, as if to himself.

"What--?"

"It is quite within the bounds of possibility," Victor mused, "that you should have inherited some of the psychic power which was born in me.

Perhaps--who knows?--to you as well Nature will be supple and disclose her secrets.... If you care to seek her favour?"

"But--how?"

"By consulting the crystal."

Sofia's eyes sought that coldly burning stone. Her head was so heavy, she hesitated, oppressed by misgivings without shape that she could name, phases of formless timidity having rise in some source which she was too tired to search out.

But she lingered and continued to stare at the crystal.

"Why not?" Victor's accents were gently persuasive. "At worst, you can only fail. And if you do not fail, it will make me happy to think that you have been given a little insight into my dreams for you."

"Yes," Sofia a.s.sented in a whisper--"why not?"

Victor drew her forward by the hand.

"Look," he said "look deep! Divest your mind as nearly as you can of all thought--let the crystal give up its message to a mind devoid of prejudice, its receptiveness unimpaired. Think of nothing, if you can manage it--simply look and see."

Automatically to a degree the girl obeyed, already in a phase of crepuscular hypnosis, her surface senses dulled by the potent "wine of China." And watching her closely, Victor permitted himself a smile of satisfaction as he noted the rapidity with which she yielded to the hypnogenic spell of the translucent quartz; how her breathing quickened, then took on a measured tempo like that of a sleeper; how a faint flush warmed the unnatural pallor of her cheeks, how her dilate eyes grew fixed in an unwinking stare, and slightly gla.s.sed....

Under her regard the goblin sphere took on with bewildering rapidity changing guises. Its rotundity was first lost, it a.s.sumed the semblance of a featureless disk of pallid light, which swiftly widened till it obscured all else, then seemed to advance upon and envelope her bodily, so that she became spiritually a part of it, an atom of ident.i.ty engulfed in a limpid world of glareless light, light that had had no rays and issued from no source but was circ.u.mambient and universal. Then in its remote heart a weird glow of rose began to burn and grow, pulsing through all the colours of the spectrum and beyond. Toward this she felt herself being drawn swiftly, attracted by an irresistible magnetism, riding the wings of a great wind, whose voice boomed without ceasing, like a heavy surf thunderously reiterating one syllable, "_Sleep!_" ... And in this flight through illimitable s.p.a.ce toward a goal unattainable, consciousness grew faint and flickered out like a candle in the wind.

Behind her chair the placid yellow face of Shaik Tsin appeared, as if materialized bodily out of the shadows. With folded arms he waited, dispa.s.sionately observant. Presently Prince Victor nodded to him over the head of the girl. Immediately the Chinaman moved round her chair and, employing both hands, in one instant switched off the hooded bulb and reilluminated the lamp of bra.s.s.

As the light died out in the crystal Sofia sighed heavily, and relaxed.

Leaden eyelids closed down over her staring eyes, she sank back into the chair, simultaneously into plumbless depths....

Victor made a sound of gratification. Shaik Tsin enquired briefly:

"It is accomplished, then?"

Victor nodded. "She yielded more quickly than I had hoped--worn out emotionally, of course."

"She sleeps--"

"In hypnosis, in absolute suspense of every faculty and function save those concerned solely with the maintenance of existence--in a state, that is, comparable only to the pre-natal life of a child."

"It is most interesting," Shaik Tsin admitted. "But what is the use? That is what interests me."

"Wait and see."

Bending close to the girl, Victor called in a strong voice of command: "Sofia! Sofia! It is I, Prince Victor, your father. Waken and attend!"

A slight spasm shook the slender body, the lips parted, respiration became hurried and broken, the long lashes fluttered on the cheeks.

"Do you hear me? I, Victor, command you: Waken and attend!"

Another struggle, more brief and sharp, ended with the opening of the eyes, which sought and remained steadfast to Victor's, yet without intelligence or animation.

"Do you hear me, Sofia?"

A voice like a sigh rustled on the parted lips, whose stir was imperceptible:

"I hear you...."

"Then heed what I say. My will is your law. You know that?"

Faintly the voice breathed: "Yes."

"Tell me what it is you know."