The sense of the presence departed, but he walked on in the same direction, until he had a feeling of aimlessness in the night. Then again he stood, with what unconcern he could make apparent, until there was a whisper in his consciousness of threat. Whirling, he followed it as before. Thus he traveled for several blocks, changing direction once. Whatever was spying upon him or seeking to ambush him, it was retreating toward a definite base of operations… At length he was able to knock upon a certain door in a certain hotel.
Rowley Thorne opened to him, standing very calm and even triumphant in waistcoat and shirtsleeves.
“Come in, Thunstone,” he said, in mocking cordiality. “This is more than I had dared hope for.”
“I was able to face and chase your hound-thing, whatever it is,” Thunstone told him, entering. “It led me here.”
“I knew that,” nodded Thorne, his shaven head gleaming dully in the brown-seeming light of a single small desk lamp. “Won’t you make yourself comfortable? You see,” and he took up a shaggy-covered book from the arm of an easy chair, “I am impelled at last to accept the idea of a writing which, literally, tells one everything he needs to know.”
“You killed Cavet Leslie for it, didn’t you?” inquired Thunstone, and dropped his hat on the bed.
Thorne clicked his tongue. “That’s bad luck for somebody, a hat on the bed. Cavet Leslie had outlived everything but a scrap of his physical self. Somewhere he’s outliving that, for I take it that his experiences and studies have unfitted his soul for any conventional hereafter. But he left me a rather amusing legacy.” And he dropped his eyes to the open book.
“I should be flattered that you concentrated first of all in immobilizing me,” observed Thunstone, leaning his great shoulder against the doorjamb.
“Flattered? But surely not surprised. After all, you’ve hampered me again and again in reaping a harvest of—”
“Come off it, Thorne. You’re not even honest as a worshiper of evil. You don’t care whether you establish a cult of Satan or not.”
Thorne pursued his hard lips. “I venture to say you’re right. I’m not a zealot. Cavet Leslie was. He entered the Deep School—know about it?”
“I do,” Thunstone told him. “Held in a cellar below a cellar—somewhere on this continent. I’ll find it some day, and put an end to the curriculum.”
“Leslie entered the Deep School,” Thorne continued, “and finished all the study it had to offer. He finished himself as a being capable of happiness, too. He could not look at the light, or summon the strength to walk, or even sit. Probably death was a relief to him—though, not knowing what befell him after death, we cannot be certain. What I’m summing up to is that he endured that wretched life underground to get the gift of this text book. Now I have it, without undergoing so dreadful an ordeal. Don’t reach out for it, Thunstone. You couldn’t read it, anyway.”
He held it forward, open. The pages showed dull and blank.
“They’re written in letters of cold fire,” reminded Thunstone. “Letters that show only in the dark.”
“Shall we make it dark, then?”
Thorne switched off the lamp.
Thunstone, who had not stirred from his lounging stance at the door, was aware at once that the room was most completely sealed. Blackness was absolute in it. He could not even judge of dimension or direction. Thorne spoke again, from the midst of the choking gloom:
“Clever of you, staying beside the door. Do you want to try to leave?”
“It’s no good running away from evil,” Thunstone replied. “I didn’t come to run away again.”
“But try to open the door,” Thorne almost begged, and Thunstone put out his hand to find the knob. There was no knob, and no door. Of a sudden, Thunstone was aware that he was not leaning against a doorjamb any more. There was no doorjamb, or other solidity, against which to lean.
“Don’t you wish you knew where you were?” jeered Thorne. “I’m the only one who knows, for it’s written here on the page for me to see—in letters of cold fire.”
Thunstone took a stealthy step in the direction of the voice. When Thorne spoke again, he had evidently fallen back out of reach.
“Shall I describe the place for you, Thunstone? It’s in the open somewhere. A faint breeze blows,” and as he spoke, Thunstone felt the breeze, warm and feeble and foul as the breath of some disgusting little animal. “And around us are bushes and trees. They’re part of a thick growth, but just here they are sparse. Because, not more than a dozen steps away, is open country. I’ve brought you to the borderland of a most interesting place, Thunstone, merely by speaking of it.”
Thunstone took another step. His feet were on loose earth, not on carpet. A pebble turned and rattled under his shoe-sole.
“You’re where you always wanted to be,” he called to Thorne. “Where by saying a thing, you can make it so. But many things will need to be said before life suits you.” He tried a third step, silently this time. “Who will believe?”
“Everybody will believe.” Thorne was almost airy. “Once a fact is demonstrated, it is no longer wonderful. Hypnotism was called magic in its time, and became accepted science. So it is being achieved with thought transference, by experimentation at Duke University and on radio programs in New York. So it will be when I tell of my writings, very full and very clear—but haven’t we been too long in utter darkness?”
On the instant, Thunstone could see a little. Afterwards he tried to decide what color that light, or mock-light, actually was. Perhaps it was a lizardy green, but he was never sure. It revealed, ever so faintly, the leafless stunted growths about him, the bare dry-seeming ground from which they sprang, the clearing beyond them. He could not be sure of horizon or sky.
Something moved, not far off. Thorne, by the silhouette. Thunstone saw the flash of Thorne’s eyes, as though they gave their own light.
“This country,” Thorne said, “may be one of several places. Another dimension—do you believe in more dimensions than these? Or a spirit world of some kind. Or another age of the world we know. I brought you here, Thunstone, without acting or even speaking—only by reading in my book.”
Thunstone carefully slid a hand inside his pocket. His forefinger touched something smooth, heavy, rectangular. He knew what it was—a lighter, given him on an occasion of happy gratitude by Sharon, the Countess Monteseco.
“Cold fire,” Thorne was saying. “These letters and words are of a language known only in the Deep School—but the sight of them is enough to convey knowledge. Enough, also, to create and direct. This land is spacious enough, don’t you think, to support other living creatures than ourselves?”
Thunstone made out blots of black gloom in the green gloom of the clearing. Immense, gross blots, that moved slowly but knowingly toward the bushes. And somewhere behind him a great massive bulk made a dry crashing in the strange shrubbery.
“Are such things hungry?” mused Thorne. “They will be, if I make them so by a thought. Thunstone, I think I’ve done enough to occupy you. Now I’m ready to leave you here, also by a thought—taking with me the book with letters of cold fire. You can’t have that cold fire—”
“I have warm fire,” said Thunstone, and threw himself.
It was a powerful lunge, unthinkably swift. Thunstone is, among other things, a trained athlete. His big body crashed against Thorne’s, and the two of them grappled and went sprawling among the brittle twigs of one of the bushes. As Thorne fell, undermost, he flung up the hand that held the book, as if to put it out of Thunstone’s reach. But Thunstone’s hand shot out, too, and it held something—the lighter. A flick of his thumb, and flame sprang out, warm orange flame in a sudden spurting tongue that for a moment licked into the coarse shaggy hair of the untanned hide that bound the book.