Somerset maughan

I think the odd trick is mine
.' 
This cruel vindictiveness, joined with a schoolboy love of taunting 
the vanquished foe, was very characteristic. Susie gave Arthur 
Burdon the note which she had found in Margaret's room. He read 
it and then thought for a long time. 
'I'm afraid she's right,' he said at length. 'It seems quite hopeless. 
The man has some power over her which we can't counteract.' 
Susie wondered whether his strong scepticism was failing at last. 
She could not withstand her own feeling that there was something 
preternatural about the hold that Oliver had over Margaret. She had 
no shadow of a doubt that he was able to affect his wife even at a 
distance, and was convinced now that the restlessness of the last few 
days was due to this mysterious power. He had been at work in 
some strange way, and Margaret had been aware of it. At length she 
could not resist and had gone to him instinctively: her will was as 
little concerned as when a chip of steel flies to a magnet. 
'I cannot find it in my heart now to blame her for anything she has 
done,' said Susie. 'I think she is the victim of a most lamentable fate. 
I can't help it. I must believe that he was able to cast a spell on her; 
and to that is due all that has happened. I have only pity for her 
great misfortunes.' 
'Has it occurred to you what will happen when she is back in 
Haddo's hands?' cried Arthur. 'You know as well as I do how 
revengeful he is and how hatefully cruel. My heart bleeds when I 
think of the tortures, sheer physical tortures, which she may suffer.' 
He walked up and down in desperation. 

---

'And yet there's nothing whatever that one can do. One can't go to 
the police and say that a man has cast a magic spell on his wife.' 
'Then you believe it too?' said Susie. 
'I don't know what I believe now,' he cried. 'After all, we can't do 
anything if she chooses to go back to her husband. She's apparently 
her own mistress.' He wrung his hands. 'And I'm imprisoned in 
London! I can't leave it for a day. I ought not to be here now, and I 
must get back in a couple of hours. I can do nothing, and yet I'm 
convinced that Margaret is utterly wretched.' 
Susie paused for a minute or two. She wondered how he would 
accept the suggestion that was in her mind. 
'Do you know, it seems to me that common methods are useless. 
The only chance is to fight him with his own weapons. Would you 
mind if I went over to Paris to consult Dr Porhoët? You know that 
he is learned in every branch of the occult, and perhaps he might 
help us.' 
But Arthur pulled himself together. 
'It's absurd. We mustn't give way to superstition. Haddo is merely a 
scoundrel and a charlatan. He's worked on our nerves as he's 
worked on poor Margaret's. It's impossible to suppose that he has 
any powers greater than the common run of mankind.' 
'Even after all you've seen with your own eyes?' 
'If my eyes show me what all my training assures me is impossible, I 
can only conclude that my eyes deceive me.' 
'Well, I shall run over to Paris.' 

---

13 
Some weeks later Dr Porhoët was sitting among his books in the 
quiet, low room that overlooked the Seine. He had given himself 
over to a pleasing melancholy. The heat beat down upon the noisy 
streets of Paris, and the din of the great city penetrated even to his 
fastness in the Île Saint Louis. He remembered the cloud-laden sky 
of the country where he was born, and the south-west wind that 
blew with a salt freshness. The long streets of Brest, present to his 
fancy always in a drizzle of rain, with the lights of cafés reflected on 
the wet pavements, had a familiar charm. Even in foul weather the 
sailor-men who trudged along them gave one a curious sense of 
comfort. There was delight in the smell of the sea and in the 
freedom of the great Atlantic. And then he thought of the green 
lanes and of the waste places with their scented heather, the fair 
broad roads that led from one old sweet town to another, of the 
Pardons
and their gentle, sad crowds. Dr Porhoët gave a sigh. 
'It is good to be born in the land of Brittany,' he smiled. 
But his 
bonne
showed Susie in, and he rose with a smile to greet her. 
She had been in Paris for some time, and they had seen much of one 
another. He basked in the gentle sympathy with which she 
interested herself in all the abstruse, quaint matters on which he 
spent his time; and, divining her love for Arthur, he admired the 
courage with which she effaced herself. They had got into the habit 
of eating many of their meals together in a quiet house opposite the 
Cluny called La Reine Blanche, and here they had talked of so many 
things that their acquaintance was grown into a charming 
friendship. 
'I'm ashamed to come here so often,' said Susie, as she entered. 
'Matilde is beginning to look at me with a suspicious eye.' 
'It is very good of you to entertain a tiresome old man,' he smiled, as 
he held her hand. 'But I should have been disappointed if you had 
forgotten your promise to come this afternoon, for I have much to 
tell you.' 
'Tell me at once,' she said, sitting down. 

---

'I have discovered an MS. at the library of the Arsenal this morning 
that no one knew anything about.' 
He said this with an air of triumph, as though the achievement were 
of national importance. Susie had a tenderness for his innocent 
mania; and, though she knew the work in question was occult and 
incomprehensible, congratulated him heartily. 
'It is the original version of a book by Paracelsus. I have not read it 
yet, for the writing is most difficult to decipher, but one point 
caught my eye on turning over the pages. That is the gruesome fact 
that Paracelsus fed the