The Dark Brotherhood Read Online Free PDF

that I would see Mr. Allan again that night. I had no way of knowing whether my visit to his home had been observed, despite the observer I thought I had glimpsed in an upper window in my flight, and I encountered him therefore in some trepidation. But this was evidently ill-founded, for when I greeted him on Benefit Street there was nothing in his manner or in his words to suggest any change in his attitude, such as I might have expected had he been aware of my intrusion. Yet I knew full well his capacity for being without expression—humor, disgust, even anger or irritation were alien to his features, which never changed from that introspective mask which was essentially that of Poe.
    “I trust you have recovered from our experiment, Mr. Phillips,” he said after exchanging the customary amenities.
    “Fully,” I answered, though it was not the truth. I added something about a sudden spell of dizziness to explain my bringing the experiment to its precipitate end.
    “It is but one of the worlds outside you saw, Mr. Phillips,” Mr. Allan went on. “There are many. As many as a hundred thousand. Life is not the unique property of Earth. Nor is life in the shape of human beings. Life takes many forms on other planets and far stars, forms that would seen bizarre to humans, as human life is bizarre to other life-forms.”
    For once, Mr. Allan was singularly communicative, and I had little to say. Clearly, whether or not I laid what I had seen to hallucination—even in the face of my discovery in my companion’s house—he himself believed implicity in what he said. He spoke of many worlds, as if he were familiar with them. On occasion he spoke almost with reverence of certain forms of life, particularly those with the astonishing adaptability of assuming the life-forms of other planets in their ceaseless quest for the conditions necessary to their existence.
    “The star I looked upon,” I broke in, “was dying.”
    “Yes,” he said simply.
    “You have seen it?”
    “I have seen it, Mr. Phillips.”
    I listened to him with relief. Since it was manifestly impossible to permit any man sight of the intimate life of outer space, what I had experienced was nothing more than the communicated hallucination of Mr. Allan and his brothers. Telepathic communication certainly, aided by a form of hypnosis I had not previously experienced. Yet I could not rid myself of the disquieting sense of evil that surrounded my nocturnal companion, nor of the uneasy feeling that the explanation which I had so eagerly accepted was unhappily glib.
    As soon as I decently could, thereafter, I made excuses to Mr. Allan and took my leave of him. I hastened directly to the Athenaeum in the hope of finding Rose Dexter there, but if she had been there, she had already gone. I went then to a public telephone in the building and telephoned her home.
    Rose answered, and I confess to an instantaneous feeling of gratification.
    “Have you seen Mr. Allan tonight?” I asked.
    “Yes,” she replied. “But only for a few moments. I was on my way to the library.”
    “So did I.”
    “He asked me to his home some evening to watch an experiment,” she went on.
    “Don’t go,” I said at once.
    There was a long moment of silence at the other end of the wire. Then, “Why not?” Unfortunately, I failed to acknowledge the edge of truculence in her voice.
    “It would be better not to go,” I said, with all the firmness I could muster.
    “Don’t you think, Mr. Phillips, I am the best judge of that?”
    I hastened to assure her that I had no wish to dictate her actions, but meant only to suggest that it might be dangerous to go.
    “Why?”
    “I can’t tell you over the telephone,” I answered, fully aware of how lame it sounded, and knowing even as I said it that perhaps I could not put into words at all the horrible suspicions which had begun to take shape in my mind, for they were so fantastic, so outré, that no one could be expected to believe