Title: The Haunting of Low Fennel - The Haunting of Low Fennel—The Valley of the Just—The Blue Monkey—The Riddle of Ragstaff—The Master of Hollow Grange—The Curse of a Thousand Kisses—The Turquoise Necklace
Author: Rohmer, Sax, 1883-1959
Language: English
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THE HAUNTING OF LOW FENNEL

       *       *       *       *       *

_UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME._


  ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN KETTLE.
    BY C. J. CUTCLIFFE HYNE.

  THE LOVERS OF YVONNE.
    BY RAFAEL SABATINI.

  THE MARRIAGE OF MARGARET.
    BY E. M. ALBANESI.

  THE SECRET WAY.
    BY J. S. FLETCHER.

  CAPTAIN KETTLE, K.C.B.
    BY C. J. CUTCLIFFE HYNE.

       *       *       *       *       *


THE HAUNTING OF LOW FENNEL

by

SAX ROHMER

Author of "Brood of the Witch Queen,"
"The Quest of the Sacred Slipper," etc., etc.



London:
C. Arthur Pearson, Ltd.
Henrietta Street, W.C. 2

First Published      1920
Reprinted            1924

Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd., Frome and London



CONTENTS


                                 PAGE
  THE HAUNTING OF LOW FENNEL       11

  THE VALLEY OF THE JUST           61

  THE BLUE MONKEY                  97

  THE RIDDLE OF RAGSTAFF          119

  THE MASTER OF HOLLOW GRANGE     157

  THE CURSE OF A THOUSAND KISSES  189

  THE TURQUOISE NECKLACE          213



The Haunting of Low Fennel


I

"There's Low Fennel," said Major Dale.

We pulled up short on the brow of the hill. Before me lay a little
valley carpeted with heather, purple slopes hemming it in. A group of
four tall firs guarded the house, which was couched in the hollow of the
dip--a low, rambling building, in parts showing evidence of great age
and in other parts of the modern improver.

"That's the new wing," continued the Major, raising his stick;
"projecting out this way. It's the only addition I've made to the house,
which, as it stood, had insufficient accommodation for the servants."

"It is a quaint old place."

"It is, and I'm loath to part with it, especially as it means a big
loss."

"Ah! Have you formed any theories since wiring me?"

"None whatever. I've always been a sceptic, Addison, but if Low Fennel
is not haunted, I'm a Dutchman, by the Lord Harry!"

I laughed reassuringly, and the two of us descended the slope to the
white gate giving access to a trim gravel path flanked by standard
roses. Mrs. Dale greeted us at the door. She was, as I had heard, much
younger than the Major, and a distinctly pretty woman. In so far Dame
Rumour was confirmed; other things I had heard of her, but I was not yet
in a position to pass judgment.

She greeted me cordially enough, although women are usually natural
actresses. I thought that she did not suspect the real object of my
visit. Tea was served in a delightful little drawing-room which bore
evidence of having but recently left the hands of London decorators, but
when presently I found myself alone with my host in the Major's peculiar
sanctum, the real business afoot monopolised our conversation.

The room which Major Dale had appropriated as a study was on the ground
floor of the new wing--the wing which he himself had had built on to Low
Fennel. In regard to its outlook it was a charming apartment enough,
with roses growing right up to the open window, so that their perfume
filled the place, and beyond, a prospect of purple heather slopes and
fir-clad hills.

Sporting prints decorated the walls, and the library was entirely, or
almost entirely, made up of works on riding, hunting, shooting, racing,
and golf, with a sprinkling of Whyte-Melville and Nat Gould novels and a
Murray handbook or two. It was a most cosy room, probably because it was
so untidy, or, as Mrs. Dale phrased it, "so manny."

On a side table was ranked enough liquid refreshment to have inebriated
a regiment, and, in one corner, cigar-boxes and tobacco-tins were
stacked from the floor some two feet up against the wall. We were soon
comfortably ensconced, then, the Major on a hard leather couch, and I in
a deep saddle-bag chair.

"It's an awkward sort of thing to explain," began Dale, puffing away at
a cigar and staring through the open window; "because, if you're to do
anything, you will want full particulars."

I nodded.

"Well," the Major continued, "you've heard how that blackguard Ellis let
me down over those shares? The result?--I had to sell the Hall--Fennel
Hall, where a Dale has been since the time of Elizabeth! But still,
never mind! that's not the story. This place, Low Fennel, is really
part of the estate, and I have leased it from Meyers, who has bought the
Hall. It was formerly the home farm, but since my father's time it has
not been used for that purpose. The New Farm is over the brow of the
hill there, on the other side of the high road; my father built it."

"Why?"

"Well,"--Dale shifted uneasily and a look of perplexity crossed his
jolly, red face--"there were stories--uncomfortable stories. To cut a
long story short, Seager--a man named Seager, who occupied it at the
time I was at Sandhurst--was found dead here, or something; I never was
clear as to the particulars, but there was an inquiry and a lot of fuss,
and, in short, no one would occupy the property. Therefore the governor
built the New Farm."

"Low Fennel has been empty for many years then?"

"No, sir; only for one. Ord, the head gardener at the Hall, lived here
up till last September. The old story about Seager was dying out, you
see; but Ord must have got to hear about it--or I've always supposed
so. At any rate, in September--a dam' hot September, too, almost if not
quite as hot as this--Ord declined to live here any longer."

"On what grounds?"

"He told me a cock-and-bull story about his wife having seen a
horrible-looking man with a contorted face peering in at her bedroom
window! I questioned the woman, of course, and she swore to it."

He mopped his heated brow excitedly, and burnt several matches before he
succeeded in relighting his cigar.

"She tried to make me believe that she woke up and saw this apparition,
but I bullied the truth out of her, and, as I expected, the man Ord had
come home the worse for drink. I made up my mind that the contorted face
was the face of her drunken husband--whom she had declined to admit, and
who therefore had climbed the ivy to get in at the open window."

"She denied this?"

"Of course she denied it; they both did; but, from evidence obtained at
the _Three Keys_ in the village, I proved that Ord had returned home
drunk that night. Still"--he shrugged his shoulders ponderously--"the
people declined to remain in the place, so what could I do? Ord was a
good gardener, and his drunken habits in no way interfered with his
efficiency. He gained nothing out of the matter except that, instead
of keeping Low Fennel, a fine house, I sent him to live in one of the
Valley Cottages. He lives there now, for he's still head gardener at
the Hall."

I made an entry in my notebook.

"I must see Ord," I said.

"I should," agreed the Major in his loud voice; "you'll get nothing out
of him. He's the most pig-headed liar in the county! But to continue.
The place proved unlettable. All the old stories were revived, and I'm
told that people cheerfully went two miles out of their way in order to
avoid passing Low Fennel at night! When I sold the Hall and decided to
lease the place from the new proprietor, believe me it was almost hidden
in a wilderness of weeds and bushes which had grown up around it. By the
Lord Harry, I don't think a living soul had approached within a hundred
yards of the house since the day that the Ords quitted it! But it suited
my purpose, being inexpensive to keep up; and by adding this new wing I
was enabled to accommodate such servants as we required. The horses and
the car had to go, of course, and with them a lot of my old people, but
we brought the housekeeper and three servants, and when a London firm
had rebuilt, renovated, decorated, and so forth, it began to look
habitable."

"It's a charming place," I said with sincerity.

"Is it!" snapped the Major, tossing his half-smoked cigar on to a side
table and selecting a fresh one from a large box at his elbow. "Help
yourself, the bottle's near you. Is it!... Hullo! what have we here?"

He broke off, cigar in hand, as the sound of footsteps upon the gravel
path immediately outside the window became audible. Through the cluster
of roses peered a handsome face, that of a dark man, whose soft-grey hat
and loose tie lent him a sort of artistic appearance.

"Oh, it's you, Wales!" cried the Major, but without cordiality. "See you
in half an hour or so; little bit of business in hand at the moment,
Marjorie's somewhere about."

"All right!" called the new arrival, and, waving his hand, passed on.

"It's young Aubrey Wales," explained Dale, almost savagely biting
the end from his cigar, "son of Sir Frederick Wales, and one of my
neighbours. He often drops in."

Mentally considering the Major's attitude, certain rumours which had
reached me, and the youth and beauty of Mrs. Dale, I concluded that the
visits of Aubrey Wales were not too welcome to my old friend. But he
resumed in a louder voice than ever:--

"It was last night that the fun began. I can make neither head nor tail
of it. If the blessed place is haunted, why have we seen nothing of the
ghost during the two months or so we have lived at Low Fennel? The fact
remains that nothing unusual happened until last night. It came about
owing to the infernal heat.

"Mrs. Alson, the housekeeper, came down about two o'clock, intending, so
I understand, to get a glass of cider from the barrel in the cellar. She
could not sleep owing to the heat, and felt extremely thirsty. There's a
queer sort of bend in the stair--I'll show you in a minute; and as she
came down and reached this bend she met a man, or a thing, who was going
up! The moonlight was streaming in through the window right upon that
corner of the stair, and the apparition stood fully revealed.

"I gather that it was that of an almost naked man. Mrs. Alson naturally
is rather reticent on the point, but I gather that the apparition was
inadequately clothed. Regarding the face of the thing she supplies more
details. Addison"--the Major leant forward across the table--"it was
the face of a demon, a contorted devilish face, the eyes crossed, and
glaring like the eyes of a mad dog!

"Of course the poor woman fainted dead away on the spot. She might have
died there if it hadn't been for the amazing heat of the night. This
certainly was the cause of her trouble, but it also saved her. About
three o'clock I woke up in a perfect bath of perspiration. I never
remember such a night, not even in India, and, as Mrs. Alson had done
an hour earlier, I also started to find a drink. Addison! I nearly fell
over her as she lay swooning on the stair!"

He helped himself to a liberal tot of whisky, then squirted soda into
the glass.

"For once in a way I did the right thing, Addison. Not wishing to
alarm Marjorie, I knocked up one of the maids, and when Mrs. Alson had
somewhat recovered, gave her into the girl's charge. I sat downstairs
here in this room until she could see me, and then got the particulars
which I've given you. I wired you as soon as the office was open; for I
said to myself, 'Dale, the devilry has begun again. If Marjorie gets to
hear of it there'll be hell to pay. She won't live in the place.'"

He stood up abruptly, as a ripple of laughter reached us from the
garden.

"Suppose we explore the scene of the trouble?" he suggested, moving
toward the door.

I thought in the circumstance our inspection might be a hurried one;
therefore:

"Should you mind very much if I sought it out for myself?" I said. "It
is my custom in cases of the kind to be alone if possible."

"My dear fellow, certainly!"

"My ramble concluded, I will rejoin Mrs. Dale and yourself--say on the
lawn?"

"Good, good!" cried the Major, throwing open the door. "An opening has
been made on the floor above corresponding with this, and communicating
with the old stair. Go where you like; find out what you can; but
remember--not a word to Marjorie."


II

Filled with the liveliest curiosity, I set out to explore Low
Fennel. First I directed my attention to the exterior, commencing my
investigations from the front. That part of the building on either side
of the door was evidently of Tudor date, with a Jacobean wing to the
west containing apartments overlooking the lawn--the latter a Georgian
addition; whilst the new east wing, built by Major Dale, carried the
building out almost level with the clump of fir-trees, and into the very
heart of the ferns and bushes which here grew densely.

There was no way around on this side, and not desiring to cross the lawn
at present, I passed in through the house to the garden at the back.
This led me through the northern part of the building and the servants'
quarters, which appeared to be of even greater age than the front of the
house. The fine old kitchen in particular was suggestive of the days
when roasting was done upon a grand scale.

Beyond the flower garden lay the kitchen garden, and beyond that the
orchard. The latter showed evidences of neglect, bearing out the Major's
story that the place had been unoccupied for twelve months; but it
was evident, nevertheless, that the soil had been cultivated for many
generations. Thus far I had discovered nothing calculated to assist
me in my peculiar investigation, and entering the house I began a
room-to-room quest, which, beyond confirming most of my earlier
impressions, afforded little data.

The tortuous stairway, which had been the scene of the event described
by my host, occupied me for some time, and I carefully examined the
time-blackened panels, and tested each separate stair, for in houses
like Low Fennel secret passages and "priest-holes" were to be looked
for. However, I discovered nothing, but descending again to the hall I
made a small discovery.

There were rooms in Low Fennel which one entered by descending or
ascending two or three steps, but this was entirely characteristic of
the architectural methods of the period represented. I was surprised,
however, to find that one mounted three steps in order to obtain
access to the passage leading to the new wing. I had overlooked this
peculiarity hitherto, but now it struck me as worthy of attention. Why
should a modern architect introduce such a device? It could only mean
that the ground was higher on the east side of the building, and that,
for some reason, it had proved more convenient to adopt the existing
foundations than to level the site.

I returned to the hall-way and stood there deep in thought, when the
contact of a rough tongue with my hand drew my attention to a young
Airedale terrier who was anxious to make my acquaintance. I patted his
head encouragingly, and, having reviewed the notes made during my tour
of inspection, determined to repeat the tour in order to check them.

The Airedale accompanied me, behaving himself with admirable propriety
as we passed around the house and then out through the kitchens into
the garden. It was not until my journey led me back to the three steps,
communicating with the new wing, that my companion seemed disposed to
desert me.

At first I ascribed his attitude to mere canine caprice. But when
he persistently refused to be encouraged, I began to ascribe it to
something else.

Suddenly grasping him by the collar, I dragged him up the steps, along
the corridor, and into the Major's study. The result was extraordinary.
I think I have never seen a dog in quite the same condition; he
whimpered and whined most piteously. At the door he struggled furiously,
and even tried to snap at my hand. Then, as I still kept a firm grip
upon him, he set out upon a series of howls which must have been audible
for miles around. Finally I released him, having first closed the study
door, and lowered the window. What followed was really amazing.

The Airedale hurled himself upon the closed door, scratching at it
furiously, with intermittent howling; then, crouching down, he turned
his eyes upon me with a look in them, not savage, but truly piteous.
Seeing that I did not move, the dog began to whimper again; when,
suddenly making up his mind, as it seemed, he bounded across the room
and went crashing through the glass of the closed window into the rose
bushes, leaving me standing looking after him in blank wonderment.


III

Aubrey Wales stayed to dinner, and since he had no opportunity of
dressing, his presence afforded a welcome excuse for the other members
of the party. The night was appallingly hot; the temperature being such
as to preclude the slightest exertion. The Major was an excellent host,
but I could see that the presence of the younger man irritated him, and
at times the conversation grew strained; there was an uncomfortable
tension. So that altogether I was not sorry when Mrs. Dale left the
table and the quartet was broken up. On closer acquaintance I perceived
that Wales was even younger than I had supposed, and therefore I was the
more inclined to condone his infatuation for the society of Mrs. Dale,
although I felt less sympathetically disposed toward her for offering
him the encouragement which rather openly she did.

Ere long, Wales left Major Dale and myself for the more congenial
society of the hostess; so that shortly afterwards, when the Major,
who took at least as much wine as was good for him, began to doze in
his chair, I found myself left to my own devices. I quitted the room
quietly, without disturbing my host, and strolled around on to the lawn
smoking a cigarette, and turning over in my mind the matters responsible
for my presence at Low Fennel.

With no definite object in view, I had wandered towards the orchard,
when I became aware of a whispered conversation taking place somewhere
near me, punctuated with little peals of laughter. I detected the words
"Aubrey" and "Marjorie" (Mrs. Dale's name), and, impatiently tossing my
cigarette away, I returned to the house, intent upon arousing the Major
and terminating this tête-à-tête. That it was more, on Mrs. Dale's
part, than a harmless flirtation, I did not believe; but young Wales was
not a safe type of man for that sort of amusement.

The Major, sunk deep in his favourite chair in the study, was snoring
loudly, and as I stood contemplating him in the dusk, I changed my mind,
and retracing my steps, joined the two in the orchard, proclaiming my
arrival by humming a popular melody.

"Has he fallen asleep?" asked Mrs. Dale, turning laughing eyes upon me.

I studied the piquant face ere replying. Her tone and her expression had
reassured me, if further assurance were necessary, that my old friend's
heart was in safe keeping; but she was young and gay; it was a case for
diplomatic handling.

"India leaves its mark on all men," I replied lightly; "but I have no
doubt that the Major is wide-awake enough now."

My words were an invitation; to which, I was glad to note, she responded
readily enough.

"Let's come and dig him out of that cavern of his!" she said, and
linking her right arm in that of Wales, and her left with mine, she
turned us about toward the house.

Dusk was now fallen, and lights shone out from several windows of Low
Fennel. Suddenly, an upper window became illuminated, and Mrs. Dale
pointed to this.

"That is my room," she said to me; "isn't it delightfully situated? The
view from the window is glorious."

"I consider Low Fennel charming in every way," I replied.

Clearly she knew nothing of the place's sinister reputation, which
seemed to indicate that she employed herself little with the domestic
side of the household; otherwise she must undoubtedly have learnt of the
episode of the man with the contorted face, if not from the housekeeper,
from the maid. It was a tribute to the reticence of the servants that
the story had spread no further; but the broken study window and the
sadly damaged Airedale already afforded matter for whispered debate
among them, as I had noted with displeasure.

The "digging out" of the Major did not prove to be an entire success. He
was in one of his peculiar moods, which I knew of old, and rather surly,
being pointedly rude on more than one occasion to Wales. He had some
accounts to look into, or professed to have, and the three of us
presently left him alone. It was now about ten o'clock, and Aubrey Wales
made his departure, shaking me warmly by the hand and expressing the
hope that we should see more of one another. He could not foresee that
the wish was to be realised in a curious fashion.

Mrs. Dale informed me that the Major in all probability would remain
immured in his study until a late hour, which I took to be an intimation
that she wished to retire. I therefore pleaded weariness as a result
of my journey, and went up to my room, although I had no intention of
turning-in. I opened the two windows widely, and the heavy perfume
of some kind of tobacco plant growing in the beds below grew almost
oppressive. The heat of the night was truly phenomenal; I might have
been, not in an English home county, but in the Soudan. An absolute
stillness reigned throughout Low Fennel, and, my hearing being
peculiarly acute, I could detect the chirping of the bats which flitted
restlessly past my windows.

It was difficult to decide how to act. My experience of so-called
supernatural appearances had strengthened my faith in the theory
set forth in the paper "Chemistry of Psychic Phenomena"--which had
attracted unexpected attention a year before. Therein I classified
hauntings under several heads, basing my conclusions upon the fact that
such apparitions are invariably localised; often being confined, not
merely to a particular room, for instance, but to a certain wall, door,
or window. I had been privileged to visit most of the famous haunted
homes of Great Britain, and this paper was the result; but in the case
of Low Fennel I found myself nonplussed, largely owing to lack of data.
I hoped on the morrow to make certain inquiries along lines suggested by
oddities in the structure of the house itself and by the nature of the
little valley in which it stood.

When meditating I never sit still, and whilst marshalling my ideas I
paced the room from end to end, smoking the whole time. Both windows
and also the door, were widely opened. The amazing heat-wave which we
were then experiencing promised to afford me a valuable clue, for I had
proved to my own satisfaction that the apparitions variously known as
"controls" and "elementals," not infrequently coincided with abrupt
climatic changes, thunder-storms, or heat waves, or with natural
phenomena, such as landslides and the like.

This pacing led me from end to end of the room, then, between the open
door and the large dressing-table facing it. It was as I returned from
the door towards the dressing-table that I became aware of the presence
of the _contorted face_.

My peculiar studies had brought me into contact with many horrible
apparitions, and if familiarity had failed to breed contempt, at least
it had served to train my nerves for the reception of such sudden and
ghastly appearances. I should be avoiding the truth, however, if I
claimed to have been unmoved by the vision which now met me in the
mirror. I drew up short, with one sibilant breath, and then stood
transfixed.

Before me was a reflection of the open door, and of part of the landing
and stairs beyond it. The landing lights were extinguished, and
therefore the place beyond the door lay in comparative darkness. But,
crawling in, serpent-fashion, inch by inch, silently, intently, so that
the head, throat, and hands were actually across the threshold, came a
creature which seemed to be entirely naked! It had the form of a man,
but the face, the dreadful face which was being pushed forward slowly
across the carpet with head held sideways so that one ear all but
touched the floor, was the face, not of a man, but of a ghoul!

I clenched my teeth hard, staring into the mirror and trying to force
myself to turn and confront, not the reflection, but the reality.
Yet for many seconds I was unable to accomplish this. The baleful,
protruding eyes glared straight into mine from the glass. The chin and
lower lip of this awful face seemed to be drawn up so as almost to
meet the nose, entirely covering the upper lip, and the nostrils were
distended to an incredible degree, whilst the skin had a sort of purple
tinge unlike anything I had seen before. The effect was grotesque in the
true sense of the word; for the thing was clearly grimacing at me, yet
God knows there was nothing humorous in that grimace!

Nearer it came and nearer. I could hear the heavy body being drawn
across the floor; I could hear the beating of my own heart ... and I
could hear a whispered conversation which seemed to be taking place
somewhere immediately outside my room.

At the moment that I detected the latter sound, it seemed that the
apparition detected it also. The protruding eyes twisted in the head,
rolling around ridiculously but horribly. Despite the dread which held
me, I identified the whisperers and located their situation. Mrs. Dale
was at her open window and Aubrey Wales was in the garden below.

The thought crossed my mind and was gone--but gone no quicker than the
contorted face. By a sort of backward, serpentine movement, the thing
which had been crawling into my room suddenly retired and was swallowed
up in the shadows of the landing.

I turned and sprang toward the open door, the fever of research hot
upon me, and my nerves in hand again. At the door I paused and listened
intently. No sound came to guide me from the darkened stair, and when,
stepping quietly forward and leaning over the rail, I peered down into
the hall below, nothing stirred, no shadow of the many there moved to
tell of the passage of any living thing. I paused irresolute, unable to
doubt that I was in the presence of an authentic apparition. But how to
classify it?

Slowly I returned to my room, and stood there, thinking hard, and all
the while listening for the slightest sound from within or without the
house.

The whispered conversation continued, and I stole quietly to one of the
windows and leant out, looking to the left, in the direction of the
new wing. A light burnt in the Major's study, whereby I concluded that
he was still engaged with his accounts, if he had not fallen asleep.
Between my window and the new wing, and on a level with my eyes, was the
window of Mrs. Dale's room; and in the bright moonlight I could see her
leaning out, her elbows on the ledge. Her bare arms gleamed like marble
in the cold light, and she looked statuesquely beautiful. Wales I could
not see, for a thick, square-clipped hedge obstructed my view ... but I
saw something else.

Lizard fashion, a hideous unclad shape crawled past beneath me amongst
the tangle of ivy and low plants about the foot of the fir trees. The
moonlight touched it for a moment, and then it was gone into denser
shadows....

A consciousness of impending disaster came to me, but, because of its
very vagueness, found me unprepared. Then suddenly I saw young Wales. He
sprang into view above the hedge, against which, I presume, he had been
crouching; he leapt high in the air as though from some menace on the
ground beneath him. I have never heard a more horrifying scream than
that which he uttered.

"My God!" he cried, "Marjorie! Marjorie!" and yet again: "Marjorie!
_save me!_"

Then he was down, still screaming horribly, and calling on the woman
for aid--as though she could have aided him. The crawling thing made
no sound, but the dreadful screams of Wales sank slowly into a sort
of sobbing, and then into a significant panting which told of his dire
extremity.

I raced out of the room, and down the dark stair into the hall.
Everywhere I was met by locked doors which baffled me. I had hoped to
reach the garden by way of the kitchens, but now I changed my plan and
turned my attention to the front-door. It was bolted, but I drew the
bolts one after the other, and got the door open.

Outside, the landscape was bathed in glorious moonlight, and a sort of
grey mist hovered over the valley like smoke. I ran around the angle
of the house on to the lawn, and went plunging through flower-beds
heedlessly to the scene of the incredible conflict.

I almost fell over Wales as he lay inert upon the gravel path. The
shadows veiled him so that I could not see his face; but when, groping
with my hands, I sought to learn if his heart still pulsed, I failed
to discover any evidence that it did. With my hand thrust against his
breast and my ear lowered anxiously, I listened, but he gave no sign of
life, lying as still as all else around me.

Now this stillness was broken. Excited voices became audible, and doors
were being unlocked here and there. First of all the household, Mrs.
Dale appeared, enveloped in a lace dressing-gown.

"Aubrey!" she cried tremulously, "what is it? where are you?"

"He is here, Mrs. Dale," I answered, standing up, "and in a bad way, I
fear."

"For Heaven's sake, what has happened to him? Did you hear his awful
cries?"

"I did," I said shortly.

Standing with the moonlight fully upon her, Mrs. Dale sought him in the
shadows of the hedge--and I knew that by the manner of his frightened
outcry the man lying unconscious at my feet had forfeited whatever of
her regard he had enjoyed. She was dreadfully alarmed, not so much
on his behalf, as by the mystery of the attack upon him. But now she
composed herself, though not without visible effort.

"Where is he, Mr. Addison?" she said firmly, "and what has happened to
him?"

A man, who proved to be a gardener, now appeared upon the scene.

"Help me to carry him in," I said to this new arrival; "perhaps he has
only fainted."

We gathered up the recumbent body and carried it through the kitchens
into the breakfast-room, where there was a deep couch. All the servants
were gathered at the foot of the stairs, frightened and useless, but the
outcry did not seem to have aroused Major Dale.

Mrs. Dale and I bent over Wales. His face was frightfully congested,
whilst his tongue protruded hideously; and it was evident, from the
great discoloured weals which now were coming up upon his throat, that
he had been strangled, or nearly so. I glanced at the white face of my
hostess and then bent over the victim, examining him more carefully. I
stood upright again.

"Do you know first aid, Mrs. Dale?" I asked abruptly.

She nodded, her eyes fixed intently upon me.

"Then help to employ artificial respiration," I said, "and let one
of the girls get ammonia, if you have any, and a bowl of hot water.
We can patch him up, I think, without medical aid--which might be
undesirable."

Mrs. Dale seemed fully to appreciate the point, and in business-like
fashion set to work to assist me. Wales had just opened his eyes and
begun to clutch at his agonized throat, when I heard a heavy step
descending from the new wing--and Major Dale, in his dressing-gown,
joined us. His red face was more red than usual, and his eyes were round
with wonder.

"What the devil's the matter?" he cried; "what's everybody up for?"

"There has been an accident, Major," I said, glancing around at the
servants, who stood in a group by the door of the breakfast-room; "I can
explain more fully later."

Major Dale stepped forward and looked down at Wales.

"Good God!" he said hoarsely, "it's young Wales, by the Lord
Harry!--what's he doing here?"

Mrs. Dale, standing just behind me, laid her hand upon my arm; and,
unseen by the Major, I turned and pressed it reassuringly.


IV

The following day I lunched alone with the Major, Mrs. Dale being absent
on a visit. It had been impossible to keep the truth from her (or what
we knew of it) and at present I could not quite foresee the issue of
last night's affair. Young Wales, who had been driven home in a car sent
from his place at a late hour, had not since put in an appearance; and
it was sufficiently evident that Mrs. Dale would not welcome him should
he do so, the hysterical panic which he had exhibited on the previous
night having disgusted her. She had not said so in as many words, but I
did not doubt it.

"Well, Addison?" said the Major as I entered, "have you got the facts
you were looking for?"

"Some of them," I replied, and opening my notebook I turned to the pages
containing notes made that morning.

The Major watched me with intense curiosity, and almost impatiently
awaited my next words. The servant having left the room:

"In the first place," I began, glancing at the notes, "I have been
consulting certain local records in the town, and I find that in the
year 1646 a certain Dame Pryce occupied a cabin which, according to one
record, 'stood close beside unto ye Lowe Fennel.'"

"That is, close beside this house?" interjected the Major excitedly.

"Exactly," I said. "She attracted the attention of one of the many
infamous wretches who disfigure the history of that period: Matthew
Hopkins, the self-styled Witch-Finder General. This was a witch-ridden
age, and the man Hopkins was one of those who fattened on the credulity
of his fellows, receiving a fee of twenty shillings for every unhappy
woman discovered and convicted of witchcraft. Poor Pryce was 'swum' in a
local pond (a test whereby the villain Hopkins professed to discover if
the woman were one of Satan's band, or otherwise) and burnt alive in
Reigate market-place on September 23, 1646."

"By God!" said the Major, who had not attempted to commence his lunch,
"that's a horrible story!"

"It is one of the many to the credit of Matthew Hopkins," I replied;
"but, without boring you with the details of this woman's examination
and so forth, I may say that what interests me most in the case is the
date--September 23."

"Why? I don't follow you."

"Well," I said, "there's a hiatus in the history of the place after
that, except that even in those early days it evidently suffered from
the reputation of being haunted; but without troubling about the
interval, consider the case of Seager, which you yourself related to
me. Was it not in the month of August that he was done to death here?"

"By Gad!" cried the Major, his face growing redder than ever,
"you're right!--and hang it all, Addison! it was in September--last
September--that the Ords cleared out!"

"I remember your mentioning," I continued, smiling at his excitement,
"that it was a very hot month?"

"It was."

"From a mere word dropped by one of the witnesses at the trial of poor
Pryce I have gathered that the month in which she was convicted of
practising witchcraft in her cabin adjoining Low Fennel (as it stood in
those days) was a tropically hot month also."

Major Dale stared at me uncomprehendingly.

"I'm out of my depth, Addison--wading hopelessly. What the devil has the
heat to do with the haunting?"

"To my mind everything. I may be wrong, but I think that if the glass
were to fall to-night, there would be no repetition of the trouble."

"You mean that it's only in very hot weather--"

"In phenomenally hot weather, Major--the sort that we only get in
England perhaps once in every ten years. For the glass to reach the
altitude at which it stands at present, in two successive summers, is
quite phenomenal, as you know."

"It's phenomenal for it to reach that point at all," said the Major,
mopping his perspiring forehead; "it's simply Indian, simply Indian,
sir, by the Lord Harry!"

"Another inquiry," I continued, turning over a leaf of my book, "I have
been unable to complete, since, in order to interview the people who
built your new wing, I should have to run up to London."

"What the blazes have they to do with it?"

"Nothing at all, but I should have liked to learn their reasons for
raising the wing three feet above the level of the hall-way."

Between the heat and his growing excitement, Major Dale found himself at
a temporary loss for words. Then:

"They told me," he shouted at the top of his voice, "they told me at the
time that it was something about--that it was due to the plan--that it
was----"

"I can imagine that they had some ready explanation," I said, "but it
may not have been the true one."

"Then what the--what the--is the true one?"

"The true one is that the new wing covers a former mound."

"Quite right; it does."

"If my theory is correct, it was upon this mound that the cabin of Dame
Pryce formerly stood."

"It's quite possible; they used to allow dirty hovels to be erected
alongside one's very walls in those days--quite possible."

"Moreover, from what I've learnt from Ord--whom I interviewed at the
Hall--and from such accounts as are obtainable of the death of Seager,
this mound, and not the interior of Low Fennel as it then stood, was the
scene of the apparitions."

"You've got me out of my depth again, Addison. What d'you mean?"

"Seager was strangled outside the house, not inside."

"I believe that's true," agreed the Major, still shouting at the top of
his voice, but gradually growing hoarser; "I remember they found him
lying on the step, or something."

"Then again, the apparition with the contorted face which peered in at
Mrs. Ord----"

"Lies, all lies!"

"I don't agree with you, Major. She was trying to shield her husband,
but I think she saw the contorted face right enough. At any rate it's
interesting to note that the visitant came from outside the house
again."

"But," cried the Major, banging his fist upon the table, "it wanders
about inside the house, and--and--damn it all!--it goes outside as
well!"

"Where it goes," I interrupted quietly, "is not the point. The point is,
where it comes from."

"Then where do you believe it comes from?"

"I believe the trouble arises, in the strictest sense of the word, from
the same spot whence it arose in the days of Matthew Hopkins, and from
which it had probably arisen ages before Low Fennel was built."

"What the--"

"I believe it to arise from the ancient barrow, or tumulus, above which
you have had your new wing erected."

Major Dale fell back in his chair, temporarily speechless, but breathing
noisily; then:

"Tumulus!" he said hoarsely; "d'you mean to tell me the house is built
on a dam' burial ground?"

"Not the whole house," I corrected him; "only the new wing."

"Then is the place haunted by the spirit of some uneasy Ancient Briton
or something of that sort, Addison? Hang it all! you can't tell me a
fairy tale like that! A ghost going back to pre-Roman days is a bit too
ancient for me, my boy--too hoary, by the Lord Harry!"

"I have said nothing about an Ancient British ghost--you're flying off
at a tangent!"

"Hang it all, Addison! I don't know what you're talking about at all,
but nevertheless your hints are sufficiently unpleasant. A tumulus! No
man likes to know he's sleeping in a graveyard, not even if it is two or
three thousand years old. D'you think the chap who surveyed the ground
for me knew of it?"

"By the fact that he planned the new wing so as to avoid excavation,
I think probably he did. He was wise enough to surmise that the order
might be cancelled altogether and the job lost if you learnt the history
of the mound adjoining your walls."

"A barrow under the study floor!" groaned the Major--"damn it all! I'll
have the place pulled down--I won't live in it. Gad! if Marjorie knew,
she would never close her eyes under the roof of Low Fennel again--I'm
sure she wouldn't, I know she wouldn't. But what's more, Addison, the
thing, whatever it is, is dangerous--infernally dangerous. It nearly
killed young Wales!" he added, with a complacency which was significant.

"It was the fright that nearly killed him," I said shortly.

Major Dale stared across the table at me.

"For God's sake, Addison," he said, "what does it mean? What unholy
thing haunts Low Fennel? You've studied these beastly subjects, and I
rely upon you to make the place clean and good to live in again."

"Major," I replied, "I doubt if Low Fennel will ever be fit to live
in. At any time an abnormal rise of temperature might produce the most
dreadful results."

"You don't mean to tell me----"

"If you care to have the new wing pulled down and the wall bricked up
again, if you care to keep all your doors and windows fastened securely
whenever the thermometer begins to exhibit signs of rising, if you avoid
going out on hot nights after dusk, as you would avoid the plague--yes,
it may be possible to live in Low Fennel."

Again the Major became speechless, but finally:

"What d'you mean, Addison?" he whispered; "for God's sake, tell me. What
is it?--what is it?"

"It is what some students have labelled an 'elemental' and some a
'control,'" I replied; "it is something older than the house, older,
perhaps, than the very hills, something which may never be classified,
something as old as the root of all evil, and it dwells in the Ancient
British tumulus."


V

As I had hoped, for my plans were dependent upon it, the mercury towered
steadily throughout that day, and showed no signs of falling at night;
the phenomenal heat-wave continued uninterruptedly. The household was
late retiring, for the grey lord--Fear--had imposed his will upon all
within it. Every shadow in the rambling old building became a cavern of
horrors, every sound that disturbed the ancient timbers a portent and a
warning.

That the servants proposed to leave _en masse_ at the earliest possible
moment was perfectly evident to me; in a word, all the dark old stories
which had grown up around Low Fennel were revived and garnished, and new
ones added to them. The horror of the night before had left its mark
upon every one, and the coming of dusk brought with it such a dread
as could almost be felt in the very atmosphere of the place. Ghostly
figures seemed to stir the hangings, ghostly sighs to sound from every
nook of the old hall and stairway; baleful eyes looked in at the open
windows, and the shrubberies were peopled with hosts of nameless things
who whispered together in evil counsel.

Mrs. Dale was as loath to retire as were the servants, more especially
since the Major and I were unable to disguise from her our intention of
watching for the strange visitant that night. But finally we prevailed
upon her to depart, and she ran upstairs as though the legions of the
lost pursued her, slamming and locking her door so that the sound echoed
all over the house.

We had told her nothing, of course, of my discoveries and theories, but
nevertheless the cat was out of the bag; the affair of the night before
had spoilt our scheme of secrecy.

In the Major's study we made our preparations. The windows were widely
opened, and the door was ajar. Not a breath of wind disturbed the
stillness of the night, and although Major Dale had agreed to act
exactly as I might direct, he stared in almost comic surprise when he
learnt the nature of these directions.

Placing two large silk handkerchiefs upon the table, I saturated them
with the contents of a bottle which I had brought in my pocket, and
handed one of the handkerchiefs to him.

"Tie that over your mouth and nostrils," I said, "and whatever happens
don't remove it unless I tell you."

"But, Addison...."

"You know the compact, Major? If you aren't prepared to assist I must
ask you to retire. To-night might be the last chance, perhaps, for
years."

Growling beneath his breath, Major Dale obeyed, and, a humorous figure
enough, stretched himself upon the couch, staring at me round-eyed. I
also fastened a handkerchief about my head.

"It would perhaps be better," I said, my voice dimmed by the wet silk,
"if we avoided conversation as much as possible."

Standing up, I rolled back a corner of the carpet, exposing the
floor-planks, and with a brace-and-bit, which I had in my pocket, I
bored a round hole in one of these. Into it I screwed the tube, attached
to a little watch-like contrivance, twisting the face of the dial so
that I could study it from where I proposed to sit. Then I took up my
post, smothering a laugh as I noted the expression upon that part of the
Major's red face which was visible to me.

Thus began the business of that strange night. Half an hour passed in
almost complete silence, save for the audible breathing of the Major--by
no means an ideal companion for such an investigation. But, having
agreed to assist me, in justice to my old friend I must say that he did
his best to stick to the bargain, and to play his part in what obviously
he regarded as an insane comedy.

At about the expiration of this thirty minutes, I thought I heard a door
open somewhere in the house. Listening intently, and glancing at my
companion, I received no confirmation of the idea. Evidently the Major
had heard nothing. Again I thought I heard a sound--as of the rustling
of silk upon the stair, or in an upper corridor; finally I was almost
certain that the floor of the room above (viz. the Major's bedroom)
creaked very slightly.

At that I saw my companion glance upward, then across at me, with a
question in his eyes. But not desiring to disturb the silence, I merely
shook my head.

An hour passed. There had been no repetition of the slight sounds to
which I have referred, and the stillness of Low Fennel was really
extraordinary. A thermometer, which I had placed upon the table near to
my elbow, recorded the fact that the temperature of the room had not
abated a fraction of a point since sunset, and, sitting still though I
was, I found myself bathed in perspiration. Despite the open door and
windows, not a breath of air stirred in the place, but the room was
laden with the oppressive perfume of those night-scented flowers which
I have mentioned elsewhere, for it was faintly perceptible to me,
despite the wet silk.

Once, a bat flew half in at one of the windows, striking its wings
upon the glass, but almost immediately it flew out again. A big moth
fluttered around the room, persistently banging its wings against the
lamp-shade. But nothing else within or without the house stirred, if I
except the occasional restless movements of the Major.

Then all at once--and not gradually as I had anticipated--the meter at
my feet began to register. Instantly, I looked to the thermometer. It
had begun to fall.

I glanced across at Major Dale. He was staring at something which seemed
to have attracted his attention in a distant corner of the room.
Glancing away from the meter, the indicator of which was still moving
upward, I looked in the same direction. There was much shadow there, but
nevertheless I could not doubt that a very faint vapour was forming in
that corner ... rising--rising--rising--slowly higher and higher.

It proceeded from some part of the floor concealed by the big saddle-bag
chair--the Major's favourite dozing-place (probably from a faulty
floor-board), and it was rising visibly, inch upon inch, as I watched,
until it touched the ceiling above. Then, like a column of smoke, it
spread out, mushroom fashion; it crept in ghostly coils along the
cornices, spreading, a dim grey haze, until it obscured a great part of
the ceiling.

Again I looked across at the Major. He was staring at the phenomenon
with eyes which were glassy with amazement. I could see that momentarily
he expected the vapour to take shape, to form into some ghoulish thing
with a contorted face and clutching, outstretched fingers.

But this did not happen. The vapour, which was growing more fine and
imperceptible, began to disperse. I glanced from corner to corner of the
room, then down to the meter on the floor. The indicator was falling
again.

Still I made no move, although I could hear Major Dale fidgeting
nervously, but I looked across at him ... and a dreadful change had come
over his face.

He was sitting upright upon the couch, the edge of which he clutched
with one hand, whilst with the other he combed the air in a gesture
evidently meant to attract my attention. He was trying to speak, but
only a guttural sound issued from his throat. His staring eyes were set
in a glare of stark horror upon the door of the study.

Swiftly I turned--to see the door slowly opening; to see, low down upon
the bare floor--for I had removed the carpet from that corner of the
room--a ghastly, contorted face, held sideways with one ear almost
touching the ground, and with the lower lip and the chin drawn up as
though they were of rubber, almost to the tip of the nose!

The eyes glared up balefully into mine, the hair hung a dishevelled mass
about the face, and I had a glimpse of one bare shoulder pressed upon
the floor.

Wider and wider opened the door; and further into the room crept the
horrible apparition....

The light gleamed equally upon the hideous, contorted face and upon the
rounded shoulders and slim, white arms, on one of which a heavy gold
Oriental bangle was clasped.

It was a woman!

In a flash of inspiration--at sight of the bangle--my doubts were
resolved; _I understood_. Leaning across the table, I extinguished the
lamp ... in the same instant that Major Dale, uttering an inarticulate,
choking cry, sprang to his feet and toppled forward, senseless, upon the
floor!

The study became plunged in darkness, but into the long corridor, beyond
the open door, poured the cold illumination of the moon. Framed in the
portal, uprose a slim figure, seeming like a black silhouette upon a
silvern background, or a wondrous statue in ebony. Elfin, dishevelled
locks crowned the head; the pose of the form was as that of a startled
dryad or a young Bacchante poised for a joyous leap....

Thus, for an instant, like some exquisite dream of Phidias visualised,
the figure stood ... then had fled away down the corridor and was gone!


VI

Close upon a month had elapsed. Major Dale and I sat in my study in
London.

"Young Aubrey Wales has gone abroad," I said. "He's ashamed to show up
again, I suppose."

"H'm!" growled the Major--"I've got nothing to crow about, myself,
by the Lord Harry! There's courage and courage, sir! I've led more
than one bayonet attack, but I'd never qualify for the D.S.O. as a
ghost-hunter!--never, by Gad!--never!"

He reached out for the decanter; then withdrew his hand. "Doctor's
orders," he muttered. "Discipline must be maintained!"

"It was the sudden excitement which precipitated the seizure," I said,
glancing at the altered face of my old friend. "I was wrong to expose
you to it; but of course I did not know that the doctor had warned you."

"And now," said the Major, sighing loudly as he filled his tumbler with
plain soda-water--"what have you to tell me?"

"In the first place--have you definitely decided to leave Low Fennel,
for good?"

"Certainly--not a doubt on the point! We're leasing a flat in town here
whilst we look around."

"Good! Because I very much doubt if the place could ever be rendered
tenable...."

"Then it's really haunted?"

"Undoubtedly."

"By what, Addison? Tell me that!--by what?"

"By a grey vapour."

Major Dale's eyes began to protrude, and:--

"Addison," he said hoarsely--"don't joke about it!--don't joke. It was
not a grey vapour that strangled Seager...."

"Certainly it was not. Seager was strangled by some wholly inoffensive
person--we shall probably never know his identity--who had fallen asleep
amongst the bushes on the mound, close beside the house...."

"But man alive! I've _seen_ the beastly thing, with my own eyes! You've
seen it! Wales saw it! Mrs. Ord saw it!..."

"Mrs. Ord saw her husband."

"Ah! you're coming round to my belief about the Ords!"

"Decidedly I am."

"But what did Wales see--eh? And what did _I_ see!"

"You saw the vapour in operation."

The Major fell back in his chair with an expression upon his face which
I cannot hope to describe. Words failed him altogether.

"I had come prepared for something of the sort," I continued rapidly;
"for I have investigated several cases of haunting--notably in the Peak
district--which have proved to be due to an emanation from the soil--a
vapour. But the effect of such vapour, in the other cases, was to
induce delusions of sight, in nearly every instance (although, in two,
the delusions were of hearing).

"In other words, the person affected by this vapour was drugged, and,
during the drugged state, perceived certain visions. I made the mistake,
at first, of supposing that Low Fennel came within the same category.
The classical analogy, of course, is that of the Sibyls, who delivered
the oracular responses from the tripod, under the afflatus of a vapour
said to arise from the sacred subterranean stream called Kassotis. The
theory is, therefore, by no means a new one!"

Major Dale stared dully, but made no attempt to interrupt me.

"There are probably many spots, in England alone," I continued,
"thus affected; but, fortunately, few of them have been chosen as
building-sites. Barrows and tumuli of the stone and bronze age, and
also Roman shrines, seem frequently to be productive of such emanations.
The barrow beside Low Fennel (and now under the new wing) is a case in
point.

"Sudden atmospheric changes seem to be favourable to the formation
of the vapour. The barrow in Peel Castle, Isle of Man, is peculiarly
susceptible to thunder-storms, for instance, whilst that at Low Fennel
emits a vapour only after a spell of intense heat, and at the exact
moment when the temperature begins to fall again. In the case of a
sustained heat-wave, this would take place at some time during each
night.

"And now for the particular in which the vapour at Low Fennel differs
from other, similar emanations. It is not productive of delusions of
sight; it induces a definite and unvarying form of transient insanity!"

Major Dale moved slightly, but still did not speak.

"Dame Pryce was the first recorded victim of the vapour. She was accused
of witchcraft by a neighbour who testified to having seen her transform
herself into a hideous and unrecognizable hag--whereas, in her proper
person, she seems to have been a comely old lady. Lack of evidence
compels us to dismiss the case of Seager, but consider that of the Ords.
The man Ord, on his own confession, had fallen asleep outside the house.
He became a victim of the vapour--and his own wife failed to recognize
him.

"To what extent the mania so produced is homicidal remains to be proved;
the gas is rare and difficult to procure, so that hitherto analysis has
not been attempted. My own theory is that the subject remains harmless
provided that, whilst under the mysterious influence, he does not
encounter any person distasteful to him. Thus, Seager may have met his
death at the hands of some tramp who had been turned away from the
house.

"As to the symptoms: they seem to be quite unvarying. The subject
strips, contorts his face out of all semblance to humanity (and always
in a particular fashion) and crawls, lizard-like upon the ground, with
the head held low, in an attitude of listening. That it is possible so
to contort the face as to render it unrecognizable is seen in some cases
of angina pectoris, of course.

"The subject apparently returns to the spot from whence he started and
sinks into profound sleep, as is seen in some cases of somnambulism;
and--like the somnambulist, again--he acquires incredible agility. How
you yourself came, twice, under the influence of the vapour, is easily
explained. The first time--when the housekeeper saw you--you had
actually been in bed; and the second time, as you have told me, you had
gone upstairs, undressed, and then slipped on your dressing-gown in
order to complete some work in the study. Instead of completing the
work, you dozed in your chair--and we know what followed! In the case
of--Mrs. Dale...."

"God! Addison," said the Major huskily, and stood up, clutching the
chair-arms--"Addison! You are trying to tell me that--what I saw was ...
_Marjorie_!..."

I nodded gravely.

"Without letting her suspect my reason for making the inquiries, I
learnt that on that last night at Low Fennel, feeling dreadfully lonely
and frightened, she determined to run along to the new wing--which
seemed a safer place--and to wait in your room until you came up. She
fell asleep, and...."

"Addison ... can a mere 'vapour' produce such...."

"You mean, is the vapour directed or animated, by some discarnate, evil
intelligence? My dear Major, you are taking us back to the theory of
Elemental spirits, and I blankly refuse to follow you!"



The Valley of the Just

A Story of the Shan Hills


I

The merciless sun beat down upon the little caravan, winding its way
upward and ever upward to the hill-land. Beneath stretched a panorama
limned in feverish greens and unhealthy yellows; scarlike rocks striated
the jungle, clothing the foothills, and through the dancing air, viewed
from the arid heights, they had the appearance of running water. Swamps
to the south-east showed like unhealing wounds upon the face of the
landscape; beyond them spread the muddy river waters, the bank of the
stream proper being discernible only by reason of a greater greenness
in the palm-tops: venomous green slopes beyond them again, a fringe of
dwarfed forest, and the brazen skyline.

On the right of the path rose volcanic rock, gnarled, twisted, and
contorted as with the agonies of some mighty plague, which in a
forgotten past had seized upon the very bowels of the world, and had
contorted whole mountains, and laid waste vast forests and endless
plains. Above, the cruel sun; ahead, more plague-twisted rocks, with
sandy scars dancing like running water; and, all around, the breathless
stillness, the swooning stillness of tropical midday. North, south,
east, and west, that haze of heat, that silence unbroken, lay like an
accursed mantle upon Burma.

Moreen Fayne could scarcely support herself upright in the saddle; her
head throbbed incessantly, and the veil which she wore could not protect
her eyes from the maddening glare of the sun. But although at any moment
during the past hour she could have slipped insensible from her saddle,
she sat stiffly upright, her dauntless eyes looking straight ahead, her
small mouth set with masculine sternness, and her hands clenched--the
physical reflection of the mental effort whereby, alone, she was enabled
to pursue the journey.

Just in front of her paced Ramsa Lal. His stride had not varied from
the lowlands, through the foothills, nor on the rocky mountain paths.
He had looked neither right nor left, but had walked, walked, walked.
At times Moreen had been hard put to it to choke down the hysterical
screams which had risen in her throat; madness had threatened her, as
she watched, in dumb misery, that silent striding man. Yet she knew that
it was only the presence of this tireless, immobile guide which had
enabled her to go on; although he never directed one glance towards her,
she knew that his steady march was meant for encouragement.

Behind, like the tail of a scorpion, trailed the native retinue, and on
the end of the tail, where the sting would be, rode her husband. This
simile had occurred to her at once, and she allowed her mind to dwell
upon the idea as an invalid will consider imaginary designs upon the
wall-paper of the sick-room.

Sometimes there was a sliding of hoofs and a sound of stumbling;
sometimes her own pony lost his footing. On such occasion, there would
be mechanical cries of encouragement from the natives, and perhaps
a growling curse from the man who brought up the rear of the little
company. The road wound through a frowning chasm, where lizards and
other creeping things darted into holes to right and left of their
progress. Grateful shadow ruled a while, and a stifled sigh escaped
from Moreen's lips. Ramsa Lal paced straightly onward, the others came
stumbling behind; fifty yards ahead the ravine opened out, and once more
the deathly heat poured unchecked upon their heads.

Again Moreen all but lost control of herself; her fortitude threatened
to slip from her; so that she bit her lips until the pain filled
her eyes with burning tears. The effort to control herself proved
successful, but left her white and quivering. She felt impelled to speak
to Ramsa Lal, and constrained herself only with a second effort of which
her will was barely capable. Then she saw that speech, which would be
dangerous, was unnecessary; the man's wonderful intuition had enabled
him to hear that crying of the soul, and he was answering her.

His brown fingers were clutching and unclutching convulsively, and as he
swung his arm, he would clench his right fist and beat the air. For a
moment he acted thus, and then, as if he knew that she had seen, and
understood, his fingers hung limply again, and his arm swung loosely
as before.

A sort of plateau was reached, and in a natural clearing, where giant
bamboos ranged back to the tangled, creeper-laden boughs of the forest
trees, the voice of Major Fayne cried a halt. Ramsa Lal was beside
Moreen's pony in a trice, and he so screened her exhausted descent from
the saddle, setting her down upon an hospitable bank hard by, that she
was enabled to maintain her inflexible attitude, when presently her
husband came striding along to stand looking down on her, where she sat.
His blackly pencilled brows were drawn together, and the pale blue eyes
shone out, saturnine, from cavernous sockets. His handsome face was
heavily lined, and in the appearance, in the whole attitude of the man,
was something aggressive, a violence markedly repellent. Moreen locked
her hands behind her, the fingers twining and intertwining, but she
raised a pale face to his, from which by a last supreme effort of will
she had driven all traces of emotion.

So they remained for a moment, whilst the servants busied themselves
with the baggage; he, with feet wide apart, staring down at her, and
slashing at the air with a fly-whisk, and she meeting his gaze with a
stony calm pitiful to behold, had there been any soul capable of pity
to see her. Ramsa Lal was directing operations.

"Here," said Major Fayne, "we camp."

His voice would have told a skilled observer that which the facial lines
and a certain odd puffiness of skin more than suggested, that Major
Fayne was not a temperate man.

Moreen made no sign, but simply sat watching the speaker.

"It's a delightful situation," continued he, "and your ambition,
frequently expressed in Mandalay, to see something of Burma other than
bridge parties and polo-matches, at last is realised."

He spoke with a seeming sincerity that had carried conviction to any,
save the most sceptical. But Moreen made no sign.

"Here," continued Major Fayne, "you may feast your eyes upon the glories
of a Burma forest. Those flowering creepers yonder, festooned from bough
to bough, are peculiar to this district, and if you care to explore
further, you will be rewarded by the discovery of some fine orchids.
Note, also, the perfume of the flowers."

He twirled his slight moustache, and turned away to supervise the work
of camping.

Ramsa Lal already had one of the tents nearly erected, and Moreen
watched his deft fingers at work, with an anxiety none the less because
it was masked. She knew that collapse was imminent. The cruel march
under the pitiless sun had had due effect, but it had not broken her
spirit. She knew that she had reached the end of her strength, but she
showed no sign of weakness before her husband.

It was done at last, and Ramsa Lal held the tent-cloth aside, and bowed.

Moreen stood up, clenched her teeth together grimly, and staggered
forward. As the tent-flap was dropped, she sank down beside the camp
bedstead, and her head fell upon the covering.


II

Dusk fell, a quick curtain, and the lamps of night shone out with
glorious brilliancy, illuminating the little plateau. The tents gleamed
whitely in the cold radiance; there was a dancing redness to show where
the fire had been built, with figures grouped dimly around it. On a
jagged rock, which started up from the very heart of a thicket, black
against the newly risen moon, was silhouetted the figure of Major Fayne.
Night things swept the air about him, and rustled in the cane brake
below him; the fire crackled in the neighbouring camp; sometimes a
murmur came from the group of natives.

But, heedless of these matters, Moreen's husband stood on the rocky
eminence looking back upon the way they had come, looking down to the
distant river valley.

For many minutes he remained so, but presently, clambering down, heavily
forced his way through the undergrowth to the little camp. Passing the
tents, he walked back to the dip of the pathway, and paused again,
watching and listening; then turned and strode to the fire, grasped
Ramsa Lal by the shoulder, and drew him away from the others.

"Come here!" he directed tersely.

At the head of the pathway he bade him halt.

"Listen!" he directed.

Ramsa Lal stood in an attitude of keen attention, and the Major watched
him with feverish anxiety, which he was wholly unable to conceal.

"Do you hear it?" he demanded--"hoofs on the path!"

Ramsa Lal shook his head.

"I hear nothing, Sahib."

"Put your ear to the ground, and listen. I tell you that I saw figures
moving away below there, and I heard--hoofs, stumbling hoofs."

The man knelt down upon the ground, and, bending forward, lowered his
head. Major Fayne watched him, and with growing anxiety, so that, what
with this and the pallid moonlight, his face appeared ghastly.

But again Ramsa Lal stood up, shaking his head.

"Nothing, Sahib," he repeated.

Major Fayne suddenly grasped him by the shoulders, spinning him about,
and dragging him forward, so that the dusky face was but inches removed
from his own. He glared into the man's eyes.

"Are you lying to me?" he demanded, "are you lying?"

"I swear it is the truth: why should I lie to you, Sahib?"

"You want them----"

Major Fayne broke off abruptly and thrust the man away from him. A
different expression had crept into his face, an expression in which
there was something furtive. He spun around upon his heel and stepped
to the tent where Moreen was. Raising the flap slightly:

"Good-night," he called, and turned away.

Ramsa Lal had gone back to the fireside; and Fayne, following a moment
of hesitancy, strode with his swaggering military gait to the tent
erected in the furthermost corner of the clearing. He had stooped to
enter, when he hesitated, remaining there bent forward--and listening.

From the opposite side of the distant fire, Ramsa Lal, though few would
have suspected the fact, was watching. Evidently enough, the leader
of the little company was obsessed with his delusion that some one or
something clambered up the steep path beneath. Suddenly shrugging his
shoulders, he stooped yet lower, and dived into the tent.

One of the natives threw fresh fuel upon the fire, and a stream of
sparks sped up through the clear air in a widening trail ever growing
fainter.

There was a crackling, a murmur of voices, and then a new silence. This
in turn was broken by the distant howling of dogs, and in the near
stillness one might have heard the faint shrieking of the bats, who now
were embarked upon their nocturnal voyagings.

A shrill, wild scream burst suddenly from the heart of the trees in the
east, rose eerily upon the night, and died away. But the group about the
fire moved not at all, for this dreadful screaming but marked an animal
tragedy of the Burma forests. So furred things howled and screamed and
moaned in the woodlands, feathered things piped and hooted around and
above, and the bats, uncanny creatures of the darkness, who seem to have
kinship neither with fur nor feather, chirped faintly overhead.

Once there was a distant, hollow booming like the sound of artillery,
which echoed down the mountain gorges, and seemed to roll away over the
lowland swamps, and die, inaudible, by the remote river-bank.

Yet no one stirred; for this mysterious gunnery is a phenomenon met with
in that district, inexplicable, weird, but no novelty to one who has
camped in the Shan Hills.

A second time later in the night the phantom guns boomed; and again
their booming died away in the far valleys. The fire was getting low,
now.


III

Moreen lay, sleepless, wide-eyed, staring up at the roof of the tent.
She had eaten, could eat, nothing, but she was consumed by a parching
thirst. The sounds of the night had no terrors for her; indeed, she
scarcely noticed them, for she had other and more dreadful things to
think of.

Ramsa Lal had been her father's servant; him she could trust. But the
others--the others were Major Fayne's. They were no more than spies upon
her; guards.

What did it mean, this sudden dash from the bungalow into the hills?
It amused her husband to pretend that it was a pleasure-trip, but the
equipment was not of the sort one takes upon such occasions, and one is
not usually dragged from bed at midnight to embark upon such a journey.
It was additionally improbable in view of the fact that up to the moment
of departure Major Fayne had not spoken to her, except in public, for
six months. The dreadful, forced marches were breaking her down, and she
knew that her husband was drinking heavily. What, in God's name, would
be the end of it?

Weakly, she raised herself into a sitting position, groping for and
lighting a candle. From the bosom of her dress she took out a letter,
the last she had received from home before this mad flight. There was
something in it which had frightened her at the time, but which, viewed
in the light of recent events, was unspeakably horrifying.

During the long estrangement between her husband and herself she had
learnt, and had paid for her knowledge with bitter tears, that there was
a side to the character of Major Fayne which he had carefully concealed
from her before marriage; the dark, saturnine part of her husband's
character had dawned upon her suddenly. That had been the beginning of
her disillusionment, the disillusionment which has come to more than one
English girl during the first twelve months of married life in an Indian
bungalow.

Then, perforce, the gap had widened, and six months later had become a
chasm quite impassable except in the interests of social propriety.
Anglo-Indian society is notable for divorces, and poor Moreen very early
in her married life fully understood the reason.

She held the letter to the dim light and read it again attentively.
Allowing a certain discount for her mother's changeless animosity
towards Major Fayne, it yet remained a startling letter. Much of it
consisted in feckless condolences, characteristic but foolish; the
passage, however, which she read and re-read by the dim, flickering
light was as follows:

"Mr. Harringay in his last letter begged of me to come out by the
next boat to Rangoon," her mother wrote. "He has quite opened my eyes
to the truth, Moreen, not in such a way as to shock me all at once,
but gradually. I always distrusted Ralph Fayne and never disguised
the fact from you. I knew that his previous life had been far
from irreproachable, but his treatment of you surpasses even _my_
expectations. I know _all_, my poor darling! and I know something which
you do not know. His father did not die in Colombo at all; he died in a
madhouse! and there are two other known dipsomaniacs in Ralph Fayne's
family----"

A hand reached over Moreen's shoulder and tore the letter from her.

She turned with a cry--and looked up into her husband's quivering face!
For a moment he stood over her, his left fist clenching and unclenching
and his pale blue eyes glassy with anger. Then chokingly he spoke:

"So you carry one of his letters about with you?"

The veins were throbbing visibly upon his temples. Moreen clutched at
the blanket but did not speak, dared not move, for if ever she had
looked into the face of a madman it was at this moment when she looked
into the face of Ralph Fayne.

He suddenly grabbed the candle and, holding it close to the letter,
began to read. His hands were perfectly steady, showing the tremendous
nerve tension under which he laboured. Then his expression changed, but
nothing of the maniac glare left his eyes.

"From your mother," he said hoarsely, "and full of two things--your
wrongs, _your_ wrongs! and Jack Harringay--Jack Harringay--always Jack
Harringay! Damn him!"

He put down the candle and began to tear the letter into tiny fragments,
pouring forth the while a stream of coarse, blasphemous language.
Moreen, who felt that consciousness was slipping from her, crouched
there with a face deathly pale.

Fayne began to laugh softly as he threw the torn-up letter from him
piece by piece.

"Damn him!" he said again. He turned the blazing eyes towards his wife.
"You lying, baby-faced hypocrite! Why don't you admit that he is----"

He stopped; the sinister laughter died upon his lips and he stood there
shaking all over and with a sort of stark horror in his eyes dreadful
to see.

"Why don't you?" he muttered--and looked at her almost
pathetically,--"why of course you can't--no one can----"

He reeled and clutched at the tent-flap, then stumblingly made his way
out.

"No one can," came back in a shaky whisper--"no one can----"

Moreen heard him staggering away, until the sound of his uncertain
footsteps grew inaudible. A distant howling rose upon the night, and,
nearer to the clearing, sounded a sort of tapping, not unlike that of a
woodpecker. Some winged creature was fluttering over the tent.


IV

Dawn saw the dreadful march resumed. Major Fayne now exhibited
unmistakable traces of his course of heavy drinking. He brought up the
rear as hitherto, and often tarried far behind where some peculiar
formation of the path enabled him to study the country already
traversed. He had altered the route of the march, and now they were
leaving the Shan Hills upon the north-east and dipping down to a
chasm-like valley through which ran a tributary of the Selween River.
Since the dry season was commenced the entire country beneath them
showed through a haze of heat and dust.

They had partaken of a crude and hasty breakfast as strangers having
nothing in common who by chance share a table. Moreen no longer doubted
that her husband was mad, for he muttered to himself and was ever
glancing over his shoulder. This and his constant watching of the path
behind spoke of some secret terror from which he fled.

Towards noon, they skirted a village whose inhabitants poured forth _en
bloc_ to watch the passing of this unfamiliar company. A faint hope
that some European might be there died in Moreen's breast. Her position
was a dreadful one. Led by a madman--of this she was persuaded--and
surrounded by natives who, if not actively hostile, were certainly
unfriendly, with but one man to whom she could look for the slightest
aid, she was proceeding further and further from civilisation into
unknown wildernesses.

What her husband's purpose might be she could not conceive. She was
unable to think calmly, unable to formulate any plan. In the dull misery
of a sick dream she rode forward speculating upon the awakening.

The midday heat in the valley was so great that a halt became
imperative. They camped at the edge of a dense jungle where banks of
rotten vegetation, sun-dried upon the top, lay heaped about the bamboo
stems. None but a madman would have chosen to tarry in such a spot; and
Major Fayne's servants went about their work with many a furtive glance
at their master. Ramsa Lal's velvety eyes showed a great compassion, but
Moreen offered no protest. She was in an unreal frame of mind and her
will was merely capable of a mute indifference: any attempt to assert
herself would have meant a sudden breakdown. Something in her brain was
strained to utmost tension; any further effort must have snapped it.

In the hour of the greatest heat Major Fayne went out alone, offering no
explanation of his intentions and leaving no word as to the time of his
return. Moreen only learnt of his departure from Ramsa Lal. She received
the news with indifference and asked no questions. Inert she lay in
the little tent looking out at the wall of jungle, where it uprose but
twenty yards away. So the day wore on. Mechanically she partook of food
when Ramsa Lal placed it before her, but, although the man's attitude
palpably was one of uneasiness, she did not question him, and he
departed in silence. It was an incredible situation.

Throughout the afternoon nothing occurred to break this dread monotony
save that once there arose a buzz of conversation, and she became dimly
aware that some one from the native village which they had passed in
the morning had come into the camp. After a time the sounds had died
away again, and Ramsa Lal had stepped into view, looking towards her
interrogatively; but although she recognized his wish to speak to her,
the inertia which now claimed her mind and body prevailed, and she
offered him no encouragement to intrude upon her misery.

Thus the weary hours passed, until even to the dulled perceptions of
Moreen the sounds of unrest and uneasiness pervading the camp began to
penetrate. Yet Major Fayne did not return. The insect and reptile life
of a Burmese jungle moved around her, but she was curiously indifferent
to everything. Without alarm she brushed a venomous spider, fully one
inch in girth, from the camp-bedstead, and dully watched it darting away
into the jungle undergrowth.

Darkness swept down and tropical night things raised their mingled
voices; then came Ramsa Lal.

"Forgive me, Mem Sahib," he said, "but I must speak to you."

She half reclined, looking at him as he stood, a dimly seen figure,
before her.

"The men from the village," continued he, "come to say that we may
not camp. It is holy ground from this place away"--he waved his arm
vaguely--"to the end of the jungle where the river is."

"I can do nothing, Ramsa Lal."

"I fear--for him."

"Major Fayne?"

"He goes into the jungle to look for something. What does he go to look
for? Why does he not return?"

Moreen made no reply.

"All of them there"--he indicated the direction of the native
servants--"know this place. They are already afraid, and, with those
from the village coming to warn us, they get more afraid still. This is
a haunted place, Mem Sahib."

Moreen sat up, shaking off something of the lassitude which possessed
her.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"In that jungle," replied Ramsa Lal, "there is buried a temple, a very
old temple, and in the temple there is buried one who was a holy man.
His spirit watches over this place, and none may rest here because of
him----"

"But the men of the village came here," said Moreen.

"Before sunset, Mem Sahib. No man would come here after dark. Look! you
will see--they are frightened."

Languidly, but with some awakening to the necessities of the situation,
Moreen stepped out of the tent and looked across to where, about a great
fire, the retinue huddled in a circle. Ramsa Lal stood beside her with
something contemptuous in the bearing of his tall figure.

"A spell lies upon all this valley, Mem Sahib," he said. "Therefore it
is called the Valley of the Just."

"Why?"

"Because only the just can stay within its bounds through the night."

Moreen stared affrightedly.

"Do you mean that they die in the night, Ramsa Lal?"

"In the night, Mem Sahib, before the dawn."

"By what means?"

Ramsa Lal spread his palms eloquently.

"Who knows?" he replied. "It is a haunted place."

"And are you afraid?"

"I am not afraid, for I have passed a night in the Valley of the Just
many years ago, and I live."

"You were alone?"

"With two others, Mem Sahib."

"And the others?"

"One was bitten by a snake an hour before dawn, and the other, who was
an upright man, lives to-day."

Moreen shuddered.

"Do you know"--she still hesitated to broach this subject with the
man--"do you know where--Major Fayne has gone?"

"It is said, Mem Sahib, that a stream runs through the jungle close
beside the old temple, a stream which bubbles up from a cavern and which
is supposed to come underground from the Ruby Mine plateau. He goes
early in the morning to look for rubies--so I think."

Moreen tapped the ground with her foot.

"Do you think"--again she hesitated--"that Major Fayne is afraid of
something? Of something--where we have come from?"

Ramsa Lal bowed low.

"I cannot tell," he replied, "but we shall know ere sunrise."

For a moment Moreen scarcely grasped the significance of his words; then
their inner meaning became apparent to her.

"Make me some coffee, Ramsa Lal," she said; "I am cold--very cold."

She re-entered the tent, lighting the lamp.

The Valley of the Just! What irony, that her husband should have
selected that spot to camp in! She sat deep in thought, when presently
Ramsa Lal entered with coffee. He had just set down the tray when the
sound of a distant cry brought him rigidly upright. He stood listening
intently. The sound was repeated--nearer it seemed--a sort of hoarse
scream, terrible to hear--impossible to describe.

Moreen rose to her feet and followed the man out of the tent. Some
one--some one who kept crying out--was plunging heavily through the
jungle towards the camp.

The men about the fire were on their feet now. Obviously they would have
fled, but the prospect of flight into the haunted darkness was one more
terrible than that of remaining where they were.

It ceased, that strange cry; but whoever was approaching could be heard
alternately groaning and laughing madly.

Then out from the thicket on the west, into the red light of the fire,
burst a fearful figure. It was that of Major Fayne, wild eyed, and with
face which seemed to be of a dull grey. He staggered and almost fell,
but kept on for a few more paces and then collapsed in a heap almost at
Moreen's feet, amid the clatter of the strange loot wherewith he was
laden.

This consisted in a number of golden vessels heavily encrusted with
gems, a huge golden salver, and a dozen or more ropes of gigantic
rubies!

Amid these treasures, the ransom of a Sultan, the price of a throne, he
lay writhing convulsively.

Ramsa Lal was the first to recover himself. He leapt forward, seized
the prostrate man by the shoulders and dragged him into the tent, past
Moreen. Having effected this he raised his eyes in a mute question.
She nodded, and whilst Ramsa Lal seized the Major's shoulders, Moreen
grasped his ankles, and together they lifted him up on to the bed.

He lay there, rolling from side to side. His eyes were wide open, glassy
and unseeing; a slight froth was upon his lips, his fists rose and
fell in regular, mechanical beats, corresponding with the convulsive
movements of his knees.

Moreen dropped down beside him.

"Ramsa Lal! Ramsa Lal! What shall I do? What has happened to him?"

Ramsa Lal ripped the collar from Major Fayne's neck in order to aid his
respiration. Then, quietly signing to Moreen to hold the lamp, he began
to search the entire exposed surface of the Major's skin. Evidently he
failed to find that for which he was looking. He glanced down at the
ankles, but the Major wore thick putties and Ramsa Lal shook his head in
a puzzled way.

"It is like the bite of a hamadryad," he said softly, "but there is no
mark."

"What shall I do!" moaned Moreen--"what shall I do!"

There was a frightened murmur from the entrance, where the native
servants stood in a group, peering in. Moreen stood up.

"Hot water, Ramsa Lal!" she said. "We must give him brandy."

"But it is useless, Mem Sahib; he has not been bitten--there is no mark;
it may be a fever from the jungle."

Moreen beat her hands together helplessly.

"We must do _something_!" she said; "we must do _something_."

A sudden change took place in Major Fayne. The convulsive movements
ceased and he lay quiet, and breathing quite regularly. The glassy look
began to fade from his eyes, and with every appearance of being in full
possession of his senses, he stared at Moreen and spoke:

"You shall repent of your words, Harringay," he said in a quiet voice.
"You have deliberately accused me of faking the cards. I care nothing
for any of you. Why should I attempt such a thing? I could buy and sell
you all!..."

Moreen dropped slowly back upon her knees again, white to the lips,
watching her husband. With the same appearance of perfect sanity, but
now addressing the empty air, he continued:

"In my tent--my wife will tell you it is true--my wife, Harringay, do
you hear?--I have jewelled cups and strings of rubies, enough to buy up
Mandalay! I blundered on to them in that old ruined temple back in the
jungle, not five hundred yards from your bungalow. Harringay--think of
it--a treasure-room like that within sight of your verandah! There are
snakes there, snakes, you understand, in hundreds; but it is worth
risking for a big fortune like mine."

"He mixes time and place," murmured Ramsa Lal. "He talks to the
Commissioner Sahib in Mandalay of what is here in the Valley of the
Just."

Moreen nodded, catching her breath hysterically.

"You see," continued the delirious man, "I am as rich as Midas. Why
should _I_ want to cheat you! Don't talk to me of what you would do for
my wife's sake! Keep your favours, curse you!"

With a contemptuous smile, Major Fayne threw his head back upon the
pallet. Then came another change; the look of stark horror which Moreen
had seen once before crept into the grey face; and her husband raised
himself in bed, glaring wildly into the shadows beyond the lamp.

"You are a spirit!" The words came in a thrilling, eerie whisper. "Oh
God! I understand. Yes! I came away from Harringay's bungalow. My wife
was asleep and I sat drinking until I had emptied the whisky decanter."

He bent forward as if listening.

"Yes, I went back. I went back to reason with him. No! as God is my
witness I did not plan it! I went back to reason with him."

Again the uncanny attitude was resumed. Then:

"I stepped in through the verandah, and there he sat with Moreen's
photograph in his hand. Listen to me--_Listen!_" There was an agony of
entreaty in his voice; it rose to a thin scream--"My wife's photograph!
Do you hear me? Do you understand? _Moreen's_ photograph--and as I stood
behind him, he raised it to his lips--he----"

Major Fayne stopped abruptly, as if checked by a spoken word; and with
wildly beating heart Moreen found herself listening for the phantom
voice. She could hear the breathing of the natives clustered behind her;
but no other sound save a distant howling in the jungle was audible,
until her husband began again:

"I struck him down--from behind, yes, from behind. His blood poured over
the picture. You understand I was mad. If you are just--and is not this
called the Valley of the Just?--you cannot condemn me. Why did I fly?
I was not in my right mind; I had--been drinking, as I told you; I
was mad. If I was not mad I should never have fled, never have drawn
suspicion--on myself."

He fell back as if exhausted, then once more struggled upright and began
to peer about him. When he spoke again, his voice, though weak, was
more like his own.

"Moreen!" he said--"where the devil are you? why can't you give me a
drink?"

Suddenly, he seemed to perceive her, and he drew his brows together in
the old, ugly frown.

"Curse you!" he said. "I have found you out! I am a rich man now, and
when I have gone to England, see what Jack Harringay will do for you. I
will paint London red! I have looted the old temple, and they are after
me, they----"

The words merged into a frightful scream. Major Fayne threw up his hands
and fell back insensible upon the bed.

"Mem Sahib! Mem Sahib, you must be brave!" It was Ramsa Lal who spoke;
he supported Moreen with his arm. "There is a spell upon this place. No
medicine, nothing, can save him. There is only one thing----"

Moreen controlled herself by one of those giant efforts of which she was
capable.

"Tell me," she whispered--"what must we do?"

Ramsa Lal removed his arm, saw that she could stand unsupported, and
bent forward over the unconscious man. Following a rapid examination,
he signed to her to leave the tent. They came out into the white blaze
of the moonlight--and there at their feet lay the glittering loot of the
haunted temple, a dazzlement of rainbow sparks.

"Only for such a thing as this," said Ramsa Lal, "dare I go, but not one
of us will see another dawn if we do not go." He pointed to the heap of
treasure. "Mem Sahib must come also."

"But--my husband----"

"He must remain," he said. "It is of his own choosing."


V

The temple stood in a kind of clearing. Grotesquely horrible figures
guarded the time-worn entrance. Moreen drew a deep breath of relief on
emerging from the jungle path by which, amid the rustle of retreating
snakes, they had come, but shrank back affrighted from the blackness
of the ruined doorway. Ramsa Lal stood the lantern upon the stump of a
broken pillar, where its faint yellow light was paled by the moon-rays.

"It is _you_ who must restore," he said.

One by one he handed her the jewel-encrusted vessels and hung the ropes
of rubies upon her arm.

She nodded, and as Ramsa Lal took up the lantern and began to descend
the steps within followed him.

"No foot save his," came back to her, "has trod these sacred steps for
ages, for the secret of the jungle path is known only to the few...."

"How do you--know the way?"

Ramsa Lal did not reply.

They traversed a short tunnel; a heavy door was thrust open; and Moreen
found herself standing in a small pillared hall. Through a window high
in one wall, overgrown with tangled vegetation, crept a broken moonbeam.
Directly before her was the carven figure of a grotesque deity. A long,
heavily clamped chest stood before it like an altar step.

She staggered forward, deposited her priceless burden upon the floor,
and mechanically began to raise the lid of the chest.

"Not that one, Mem Sahib!" The voice of Ramsa Lal rose shrilly--"not
that one!..."

But he spoke too late. Moreen realised that there were three divisions
in the chest, each having a separate lid. As she raised the one in the
centre, a breath of fetid air greeted her nostrils, and she had a vague
impression that this was no chest but the entrance to a deep pit. Then
all these thoughts were swept away by the crowning horror which rose out
of the subterranean darkness.

A great winged creature, clammily white, rose towards her, passed
beneath her upraised hands and sailed into the darkness on the right.
She heard it flapping its great bat wings against the wall--heard them
beating upon a pillar--then saw it coming back towards her into the
moonlight--and knew no more.


VI

"Mem Sahib!"

Moreen opened her eyes. She lay, propped against a saddle, at the camp
beside the jungle. She shuddered icily.

"Ramsa Lal--how----"

"I carried the Mem Sahib! the treasures of the temple I restored to
their resting-place----"

"And the--the other----"

"The door that the Mem Sahib opened she opened by the decree of Fate. It
was not for Ramsa Lal to close it. That is a passage----"

"Yes?"

"--To the tomb of the great one who is buried in the temple!"

"Oh! heavens! that white thing----" She raised her hands to her face.
"But--the camp----"

"The camp is deserted! they all fled from----"

Moreen sat up, rigidly.

"From what?"

"From something that came for what we forgot!"

"My husband----"

"There was a ring upon his finger. I saw it, and knew where it came
from, but forgot to remove it."

Moreen stood up, and turned towards the nearer tent. Ramsa Lal gently
detained her.

"Not that way, Mem Sahib."

"But I must see him! I must, I _must_ tell him that he wrongs me,
cruelly, wickedly! You heard his words-- Oh, God! can he have----"

"It would be useless to tell him, Mem Sahib,--he could not hear you! But
that what you would tell him is true I know well; for see--it is the
dawn!"

"Ramsa Lal!..."

"The unjust cannot stay in this valley through a night and live to see
the dawn, Mem Sahib!"


VII

At about that same hour, Deputy-Commissioner Jack Harringay opened his
eyes and looked wonderingly at a grey-haired, white-aproned nurse who
sat watching him.

"Don't speak, Mr. Harringay," she said soothingly. "You have been very
ill, but you are on the high road to recovery now."

"Nurse!..."

"Please don't speak; I know what you would ask. There has been no
scandal. The attack upon you was ascribed to robbers. You have been
delirious, Mr. Harringay, and have told me--many things. I am old
enough, or nearly old enough, to be your mother, so you will not mind my
telling you that a love like yours deserves reward. God has spared your
life; be sure it was with a purpose----"



The Blue Monkey


I

A tropically hot day had been followed by a stuffy and oppressive
evening. In the tiny sitting-room of our tiny cottage, my friend--who,
for the purposes of this story, I shall call Mr. East--by the light
of a vapour lamp was busily arranging a number of botanical specimens
collected that morning. His briar fumed furiously between his teeth,
and, his grim, tanned face lowered over his work, he brought to bear
upon this self-imposed task all the intense nervous energy which was
his.

I sat by the open window alternately watching my tireless companion and
the wonderful and almost eerie effects of the moonlight on the heather.
Then:

"We came here for quiet--and rest, East," I said, smiling.

"Well!" snapped my friend. "Isn't it quiet enough for you?"

"Undeniably. But I don't remember to have seen you rest from the moment
that we left London! I exclude your brief hours of slumber--during
which, by the way, you toss about and mutter in a manner far from
reposeful."

"No wonder. My nerves are anything but settled yet, I grant you."

Indeed, we had passed through a long and trying ordeal, the particulars
whereof have no bearing upon the present matter, and in renting
this tiny and remote cottage we had sought complete seclusion and
forgetfulness of those evil activities of man which had so long engaged
our attention. How ill we had chosen will now appear.

I had turned again to the open window, when my meditations were
interrupted by a sound that seemed to come from somewhere away behind
the cottage. Cigarette in hand, I leaned upon the sill, listening, then
turned and glanced toward the littered table. East, his eyes steely
bright in the lamplight, was watching me.

"You heard it?" I said.

"Clearly. A woman's shriek!"

"Listen!"

Tense, expectant, we sat listening for some time, until I began to
suspect that we had been deceived by the note of some unfamiliar denizen
of the moors. Then, faintly, chokingly, the sound was repeated,
seemingly from much nearer.

"Come on!" snapped East.

Hatless, we both hurried around to the rear of the cottage. As we came
out upon the slope, a figure appeared on the brow of a mound some two
hundred yards away and stood for a moment silhouetted against the
moonlit sky. It was that of a woman. She raised her arms at sight of
us--and staggered forward.

Just in the nick of time we reached her, for her strength was almost
spent. East caught her in his arms.

"Good God!" he said, "it is Miss Baird!"

What could it mean? The girl, who was near to swooning and inarticulate
with fatigue and emotion, was the daughter of Sir Jeffrey Baird, our
neighbour, whose house, The Warrens, was visible from where we stood.

East half led, half carried her down the slope to the cottage; and there
I gave her professional attention, whilst, with horror-bright eyes and
parted lips, she fought for mastery of herself. She was a rather pretty
girl, but highly emotional, and her pathetically weak mouth was
doubtless a maternal heritage, for her father, Sir Jeffrey, had the
mouth and jaw of the old fighter that he was.

At last she achieved speech.

"My father!" she whispered brokenly; "oh, my poor father!"

"What!" I began----

"At Black Gap!..."

"Black Gap!" I said; for the place was close upon half a mile away.
"Have you come so far?"

"He is lying there! My poor father--dead!"

"What!" cried East, springing up--"Sir Jeffrey--dead? Not drowned?"

"No, no! he is lying on the path this side of the Gap! I ... almost
stumbled over ... him. He has been ... murdered! Oh, God help me!..."

East and I stared at one another, speechless with the sudden horror of
it. Sir Jeffrey murdered!

Suddenly the distracted girl turned to my friend, clutching frenziedly
at his arm.

"Oh, Mr. East!" she cried, "what had my poor father done to merit such
an end? What monster has struck him down? You will find him, will you
not? I thank God that you are here--for although I know you as 'Mr.
East,' my father confided the truth to me, and I am aware that you are
really a Secret Service agent, and I even know some of the wonderful
things you have done in the past...."

"Very indiscreet!" muttered East, and his jaws snapped together
viciously. But--"My dear Miss Baird," he added immediately, in the
kindly way that was his own, "rely upon me. Myself and my fellow-worker,
the doctor here, had sought to escape from the darker things of life,
but it was willed otherwise. I esteemed Sir Jeffrey very highly"--his
voice shook--"very highly indeed. I, too, thank God that I am here."


II

Five minutes later, East and I set out across the moor, leaving Miss
Baird at the cottage. By reason of the lonely situation, and the fact
that the nearest house, The Warrens, was fully a mile and a half
away, no other arrangement was possible, since delay could not be
entertained.

East had managed to glean some few important facts. Sir Jeffrey, whose
museum at The Warrens was justly celebrated, had been to London that day
to attend an auction at Sotheby's. His Greek secretary, Mr. Damopolon,
and his daughter had accompanied him. Returning by train to Stanby, the
nearest station, Miss Baird had called upon friends in the village (Mr.
Damopolon had remained in London on business), and Sir Jeffrey had set
out in the dusk to walk the two miles to The Warrens; for the car was
undergoing repairs.

Pursuing the same path later in the evening, the girl had come upon the
body of her father in the dramatically dreadful manner already related.
He had no enemies, she declared, or none known to her. She did not
believe that her father was carrying a large sum of money, nor--although
she had scarcely trusted herself to look at him--did she believe that
robbery had been the motive of the crime.

Sir Jeffrey had been carrying a large parcel containing one of his
purchases, and I remembered, as we silently pursued our way to the scene
of the murder, how East's keen eyes had seemed to dance with excitement
when Miss Baird, in reply to a question, had told us what this parcel
contained. It was a large figure, in blue porcelain, of a sacred ape,
and was of Burmese or Chinese origin; she was uncertain which.

Her father had apparently attached great importance to this strange
purchase, and had elected to bear it home in person rather than to trust
it to railway transport.

"Did you notice if this parcel was there," East had inquired eagerly,
"when you discovered him?"

Miss Baird had shaken her head in reply.

And now we were come to Black Gap, a weird feature in a weird landscape.
This was a great hole in the moor, having high clay banks upon one side
descending sheer to the tarn, and upon the other being flanked by low,
marshy ground about a small coppice. The road from Stanby to The Warrens
passed close by the coppice on the south-east.

Regarding this place opinions differed. By some it was supposed to be a
natural formation, but it was locally believed to mark the site of an
abandoned mine, possibly Roman. Its depth was unknown, and the legend
of the coach which lay at the bottom, and which could be seen under
certain favourable conditions, has found a place in all the guide-books
to that picturesque and wild district.

Whatever its origin, Black Gap was a weird and gloomy spot as one
approached and saw through the trees the gleam of the moonlight on
its mystic waters. And here, passing a slight southerly bend in the
track--for it was no more--we came upon Sir Jeffrey.

He lay huddled in a grotesque and unnatural attitude. His right hand was
tightly clenched, whilst with his left he clutched a tuft of rank grass.
Strangely enough, his soft hat was still upon his head. His tweed suit,
soft collar and, tie all bore evidence of the fierce struggle which the
old baronet had put up for his life. A quantity of torn brown paper lay
scattered near the body.

I dropped on my knees and made a rapid examination, East directing the
ray of a pocket-lamp upon the poor victim.

"Well?" rapped my friend.

"He was struck over the head by some heavy weapon," I said slowly,
"and perhaps partly stunned. His hat protected him to a degree, and
he tackled his assailant. Death was actually due, I should say, to
strangulation. His throat is very much bruised."

East made no reply. Glancing up from my gruesome task, I observed that
he was looking at a faint track, which, commencing amid the confused
marks surrounding the body, led in the direction of the coppice. East's
steely eyes were widely opened.

"In heaven's name, what have we here!" he said.

A kindred amazement to that which held East claimed me, as I studied
more closely the mysterious tracks.

The spot where Sir Jeffrey had fallen was soft ground, whereon the
lightest footstep must have left a clear impression. Indeed, around the
recumbent figure the ground showed a mass of indistinguishable marks.
But proceeding thence, as I have said, in the direction of the
neighbouring coppice, was this faint trail.

"It looks," I said, in a voice hushed with something very like awe, "it
looks like the track of ... _a child_!"

"Look again!" snapped East.

I stooped over the first set of marks. Clearly indented, I perceived the
impressions of two small, bare feet, and, eighteen or twenty inches
ahead, those of two small hands. I experienced a sudden chill; my blood
seemed momentarily to run coldly in my veins, and I longed to depart
from the shadow of the trees, from the neighbourhood of the Black Gap,
and from the neighbourhood of the man who had died there. For it seemed
to me that a barefooted infant had recently crawled from the side of the
dead man into the coppice overhanging the tarn.

Looking up, I found East's steely eyes set upon me strangely.

"Well!" said he, "do you not miss something that you anticipated
finding?"

I hesitated, fearfully. Then:

"Sir Jeffrey carries no cane," I began----

"Good! I had failed to note that. Good! But what else?"

Closely I surveyed the body, noting the disarranged garments, the
discoloured face.

"What of this torn brown paper?" snapped my friend.

"Good heavens!" I cried; and like a flash my glance sought again those
mysterious tracks--those tracks of _something_ that had crawled away
from the murdered man.

"Where," inquired East deliberately, "is the Burmese porcelain ape of
which we have heard? And, since there are no tracks _approaching_ the
body, where did the creature come from that made those retiring from it,
and ... what manner of creature was it?"


III

At East's request (for my friend was a man of very great influence) the
police, beyond the unavoidable formalities, took no steps to apprehend
the murderer of Sir Jeffrey. East had a long interview with the dead
man's daughter, and, shortly afterwards, went off to London, leaving me
to my own devices.

The subject of the strange death of the baronet naturally engrossed
my attention to the exclusion of all else. Especially, my mind kept
reverting to the tracks which we had discovered leading from the dead
man's body into the coppice. I scarcely dared to follow my ideas to what
seemed to be their logical conclusion.

That the track was that, not of a child, but of an _ape_, I was now
convinced. No such track approached where the victim had lain; no track
of any kind, other than that of his own heavy footprints, led to the
spot ... but the track of an ape receded from it; and the baronet had
been carrying an ape (inanimate, certainly, according to all known
natural laws), which was missing when his body was found!

"These are the reflections of a madman!" I said aloud. "Am I seriously
considering the possibility of a blue porcelain monkey having come to
life? If so, since no other footprints have been discovered, I shall be
compelled, logically, to assume that the blue porcelain monkey strangled
Sir Jeffrey!"

My friend, East, attached very great importance to the missing curio;
this he had not disguised from me. But, beyond spending half an hour or
so among the trees of the coppice and around the margin of the Black
Gap, he had not to my knowledge essayed any quest for it.

Finding my thoughts at once unpleasant and unprofitable company, I
suddenly determined to make a call at The Warrens, in order to inquire
about the health of poor Miss Baird, and incidentally to learn if there
were any new development.

Off I set, and failed to repress a shudder, despite the blazing
sunlight, as I passed the gap and the spot where we had found the dead
man. A tropical shower in the early morning had quite obliterated the
mysterious tracks. Coming to The Warrens, I was shown into the fine old
library. That air of hush, so awesome and so significant, prevailed
throughout the house whose master lay dead above, and when presently Mr.
Damopolon entered, attired in black, he seemed to complete a picture
already sombre.

As East and I had several times remarked, he was a singularly handsome
man, and moreover, a very charming companion, widely travelled and
deeply versed in those subjects to which the late baronet had devoted so
many years of his life. I had always liked Damopolon, though, as a rule,
I am distrustful of his race; and now, seeing at a glance how hard the
death of Sir Jeffrey had hit him, I offered no unnecessary word of
condolence, but immediately turned the conversation upon Miss Baird.

"She has but just hurried off to London, doctor," he said, to my
surprise. "A telegram from the solicitors rendered her immediate
departure unavoidable."

"She has sustained this dreadful blow with exemplary fortitude," I
replied. "Are you sure she was strong enough for travel?"

"I myself escorted her to the station; and Mrs. Grierson, the late
baronet's sister, has accompanied her to London."

"By the way," I said, "whilst I remember--was Sir Jeffrey carrying a
cane at the time of his death?"

"He had with him a heavy ash stick, as usual, when we parted at
Sotheby's, doctor; but, of course, he may have left it there, as he had
a large parcel to take."

"Ah! that parcel! You can no doubt enlighten me, Mr. Damopolon? What,
roughly, were the dimensions of this Burmese idol?"

"The monkey? I don't think it was actually an idol, doctor; it was,
rather, a grotesque ornament. Oh, it was about the size of a small
Moorish ape, hollow, and weighing perhaps six or seven pounds."

"Was it upon a pedestal?"

"No. It was completely modelled, even to the soles of the feet and the
nails."

"Extraordinary!" I muttered. "Uncanny!"

Some little while longer I remained, and then set out, my doubts in no
measure cleared up, for the cottage. To my surprise--for I had no idea
that I had tarried so long--dusk was come. I will frankly confess it--I
experienced a thrill of supernatural dread at the thought that my path
led close beside Black Gap. However, it was a glorious evening, and I
should have plenty of light for my return journey. I walked briskly
across the moorpath toward the scene of the mysterious crime, hoping
that I should find East returned when I gained the cottage.

Perhaps in a wandering life I have known more thrilling moments than
some men; but never while memory serves shall I forget that, when,
coming abreast of the coppice, and glancing hurriedly into the shadow of
the trees ... I saw a crouching figure looking out at me!

Speech momentarily failed me; I stood rooted to the spot. Then:

"All right, old man!" I heard. "Shall be with you in a moment!"

It was East!

Fear changed to the wildest astonishment. Carrying a strange-looking
bundle, he came out and joined me on the path.

"Did I frighten you?"

"Is it necessary to ask!" I cried. "But--whatever were you doing there
by the Black Gap?"

"Fishing! Look what I have caught!"

He held up for my inspection the object which he carried, by means of
two loops of stout cord bound about it. It was a large china figure of
an ape!

"The blue monkey!" he snapped. "Come! I am going to The Warrens."


IV

Again I sat in the fine old library of The Warrens. At the further
end of the long, book-laden table, facing me, sat East; Mr. Damopolon
occupied a chair on the right, and midway between us, in the centre of
the table, presiding over that strange meeting, was the fateful blue
monkey.

"You see, Mr. Damopolon," said East, "I knew that Sir Jeffrey was
carrying this thing"--he indicated the image--"at the time of his death,
and, since it had disappeared, I assumed at first that it had been the
motive of the crime. Sir Jeffrey had money and other valuables upon him;
therefore we were obviously dealing with no ordinary thief.

"Accordingly, I made inquiries respecting the history of the thing,
and found that it possessed but little market value and next to
no historical importance. It was of comparatively modern Chinese
workmanship, and Sir Jeffrey had bought it, apparently, because it
amused him, though why he should have taken the trouble to carry it
home, heaven only knows. My first idea--that the curio was a very rare
and costly piece--was thus knocked on the head.

"I sought another motive for a crime so horrible and, by a stroke of
intuition, I found one. You may not have had an opportunity of studying
the mysterious tracks which so puzzled us, Mr. Damopolon, before they
were obliterated, but my friend, the doctor, will bear me out. They
commenced, then, close beside the body of the murdered man, and they
were, as I now perceive, made by the feet of this blue monstrosity upon
the table here!"

"Impossible," murmured the secretary incredulously.

"So it appeared to me at the time, when, although I had not then
seen the image of the monkey, I perceived, by the absolutely regular
character of the impressions, that they were made, not by a living
creature, but by the model of one which had been firmly pressed into
the soft ground at slightly varying intervals. Since no footprints
other than those of Sir Jeffrey were to be found in the vicinity, I was
unable to account for the presence of the person who had made these
impressions. I devoted myself to a close scrutiny of those footprints
of Sir Jeffrey's which led up to the scene of the attack. It became
apparent, immediately, that some one had _followed_ him ... some one who
crept silently along behind the unsuspecting victim ... some one so
clever that he placed his feet _almost exactly_ in the marks made by the
baronet!

"Good! I had accounted for the presence of the murderer. He struck Sir
Jeffrey with some heavy implement, but failed to stun him. Then began
the struggle, which so churned up the ground that all tracks were lost.
The murderer prevailed. He was a man of wonderful nerve. Never once did
he place his foot upon virgin ground; not one imprint by which he might
be identified did he leave behind him!"

"Then how," inquired Damopolon, who was hanging upon every word, "did he
leave the scene if----"

"Listen," snapped East. "I found by the body the torn paper in which the
china image had been wrapped--but no string! I went all the way to
London to learn if the parcel had been tied with string and if Sir
Jeffrey had been carrying a stick!"

"But surely," said Damopolon, "I could have saved you the journey, since
I was with the late baronet immediately before he set out for home."

"Quite so--but I had another reason for my visit."

East shot a sudden glance from Damopolon to myself, and there ensued a
moment of electric silence.

"Beside the track made by the feet of the image," he resumed slowly, "I
found a series of wedge-shaped holes, one on either side of each
monkey-impression. Do you follow me, Mr. Damopolon?"

"Perfectly," replied the Greek, taking up and lighting a cigarette.
"Wedge-shaped holes, you say?"

"They were the clue for which I sought! I saw it all! The china ape had
been used as a _stepping-stone_! The cunning criminal had thus gained
the firm ground in the coppice without leaving a footprint behind!..."

"But, my dear East," I interrupted, "I cannot follow you. He stepped
from beside the body on to the image, which he had placed at a
convenient distance?"

"Yes. Then, by means of loops of string--see, they are still
attached!--he lifted it forward with his feet----"

"But----"

"Supporting his weight upon two sticks--Sir Jeffrey's and his own! Hence
the wedge-shaped holes beside the track! He had actually reached firm
ground when his own stick snapped off short, and he made the fatal error
of leaving the fragment and the ferrule, imbedded in the hole! Here is
the fragment!"

On the table East laid a fragment of an ebony cane, broken off short
some three inches above the nickel ferrule.

"Ebony is so brittle, is it not, Mr. Damopolon?" he said.

"It is indeed," agreed Damopolon, standing up as though he believed East
to have finished.

"Yet this stick was made of a particularly fine piece," added East.
"Carter!" he cried loudly.

The library door opened ... and Detective Sergeant Carter, of New
Scotland Yard, entered, carrying a broken ebony stick. Damopolon dropped
his cigarette, and, whilst he stooped to recover it:

"Carter and I went fishing this afternoon," said East, "in the Black
Gap. The criminal had sought to hide the broken cane--which bears his
monogram--and also the image. He had tied them together, filled the
image with clay, and dropped them into the water. Fortunately, they
stuck upon an outstanding mass of weeds, and we did not fish in vain.
Is there any point, Mr. Damopolon, which I have not made clear? I don't
know what implement you used to strike Sir Jeffrey, nor do I know what
you did with his ash-stick!..."

Clutching wildly at the table, I rose to my feet, my gaze set amazedly
upon the man thus accused, upon the man I had called my friend, upon
the man who owed so much to the dead baronet. And he?... He tossed his
cigarette into the hearth and shrugged his shoulders. But, now, I saw
that he was deathly pale. He began speaking, in a hoarse, mechanical
voice:

"I struck him with a broken elm branch," he said. "His hat saved him. I
completed the matter with my bare hands. I was desperate. You need not
tell me that Olive--Miss Baird--has confessed to our secret marriage,
nor shall I weary you with the many reasons I had to hate her father and
the pressing need I had for the fortune which she inherits at his death.
It is finished; I have lost, and----"

"Carter!" cried East. "Quick! quick!"

But though the detective, who had been edging nearer and nearer to the
speaker, now sprang upon him with the leap of a panther, he was too
late. The sound of a muffled shot echoed through The Warrens, and the
Greek fell with an appalling crash fully over the library table, so that
the blue monkey slid across its polished surface and was shattered to
bits upon the oaken floor!



The Riddle of Ragstaff


I

"Well, Harry, my boy, and what's the latest news from Venice?"

Harry Lorian stretched his long legs and lay back in his chair.

"I had a letter from the governor this morning, Colonel. He appears
to be filling his portfolio with studies of windows and doorways and
stair-rails and the other domestic necessities dear to his architectural
soul!"

Colonel Reynor laughed in his short, gruff way, as my friend, Lorian,
gazing sleepily about the quaint old hall in which we sat, but always
bringing his gaze to one point--a certain door--blew rings of smoke
straightly upward.

"I suppose," said our host, the Colonel, "most of the material will be
used for the forthcoming book?"

"I suppose so," drawled Lorian, glancing for the twentieth time at
the yet vacant doorway by the stair-foot. "The idea of architects and
artists and other constitutionally languid people, having to write
books, fills my soul with black horror."

"He had a glorious time with our old panelling, Harry," laughed the
Colonel, waving his cigar vaguely toward the panelled walls and nooks
which gradually were receding into the twilight.

"Yes," said my friend. "He was here quite an unconscionable time--even
for an old school chum of the proprietor. I hope you counted the spoons
when he left!"

Lorian's disrespectful references to Sir Julius, his father, were
characteristic; for he reverences that famous artist with the double
love of a son and a pupil.

"Of course we did," chuckled Reynor. "Nothing missing, my boy!"

"That's funny," drawled Lorian. "Because if he didn't steal it from here
I can't imagine from where he stole it!"

"Stole what, Harry?"

"Whatever some chap broke into his studio for last night!"

"Eh!" cried the Colonel, sitting suddenly very upright. "Into your
father's studio? Burglars?"

"Suppose so," was the reply. "They took nothing that I was aware to be
in his possession, though the place was ransacked. I naturally concluded
that they had taken something that I was _unaware_ to be in his----Ah!"

Sybil Reynor entered by the door which, for the past twenty minutes,
had been the focus of Lorian's gaze. The gathering dusk precluded the
possibility of my seeing with certainty, but I think her face flushed as
her dark eyes rested upon my friend. Her beauty is not of the kind which
needs deceptive half-lights to perfect it, but there in the dimness, as
she came towards us, she looked very lovely and divinely graceful. I did
not envy Lorian his good fortune; but I suppressed a sigh when I saw how
my existence had escaped the girl's notice and how the world in her
eyes, contained only a Henry Lorian, R.I.

Her mother entered shortly afterwards and a general conversation arose,
which continued until the arrival of Ralph Edie and his sister. They
were accompanied by Felix Hulme; and their advent completed the small
party expected at Ragstaff Park.

"You late arrivals," said Lorian, "have only just time to dress, unless
you want to miss everything but the nuts!"

"Oh, Harry!" said Mrs. Reynor, "you are as bad as your father!"

"Worse," said Lorian promptly. "I am altogether more rude and have a
bigger appetite!"

With such seeming trivialities, then, opened the drama of Ragstaff, the
drama in which Fate had cast four of us for leading rôles.


II

Following dinner, the men--or, as my friend has it, "the
gunners"--drifted into the hall. The hall at Ragstaff Park is fitted
as a smoking lounge. It dates back to Tudor days and affords some
magnificent examples of mediæval panelling. At every point the eye meets
the device of a man with a ragged staff--from which the place derives
its name, and which is the crest of the Reynors.

A conversation took place to which, at the time, I attached small
importance, but which, later, assumed a certain significance.

"Extraordinary business," said Felix Hulme--"that attempted burglary at
Sir Julius's studio last night."

"Yes," replied Lorian. "Who told you?"

Hulme appeared to be confused by the abrupt question.

"Oh," he replied, "I heard of it from Baxter, who has the next studio,
you know."

"When did you see Baxter?" asked Lorian casually.

"This morning."

"I suppose," said Colonel Reynor to my friend, "a number of your
father's drawings are there?"

"Yes," answered Lorian slowly; "but the more valuable ones I have at my
own studio, including those intended for use in his book."

Something in his tone caused me to glance hard at him.

"You don't think they were the burglar's objective?" I suggested.

"Hardly," was the reply. "They would be worthless to a thief."

"First I've heard of this attempt, Lorian," said Edie. "Anything
missing?"

"No. The thing is an utter mystery. There were some odds and ends lying
about which no ordinary burglar could very well have overlooked."

"If any loss had been sustained," said the Colonel, half jestingly, "I
should have put it down to the Riddle!"

"Don't quite follow you. Colonel," remarked Edie. "What riddle?"

"The family Riddle of the Ragstaffs," explained Lorian. "You've seen
it--over there by the staircase."

"Oh!" exclaimed the other, "you mean that inscription on the
panel--which means nothing in particular? Yes, I have examined it
several times. But why should it affect the fortunes of Sir Julius?"

"You see," was the Colonel's reply, "we have a tradition in the family,
Edie, that the Riddle brings us luck, but brings misfortune to anyone
else who has it in his possession. It's never been copied before; but I
let Lorian--Sir Julius--make a drawing of it for his forthcoming book
on Decorative Wood-carving. I don't know," he added smilingly, "if the
mysterious influence follows the copy or only appertains to the
original."

"Let us have another look at it," said Edie. "It has acquired a new
interest!"

The whole party of us passed idly across the hall to the foot of the
great staircase. From the direction of the drawing-room proceeded the
softly played strains of the _Duetto_ from _Cavalleria_. I knew Sybil
Reynor was the player, and I saw Lorian glance impatiently in the
direction of the door. Hulme detected the glance, too, and an expression
rested momentarily upon his handsome face which I found myself at a loss
to define.

"You see," said the Colonel, holding a candle close to the
time-blackened panel, "it is a meaningless piece of mediæval doggerel
roughly carved in the wood. The oak-leaf border is very fine, so your
father tells me, Harry"--to Lorian--"but it is probably the work of
another hand, as is the man and ragged staff which form the shield at
the top."

"Has it ever occurred to you," asked Hulme, "that the writing might be
of a very much later date--late Stuart, for instance?"

"No," replied the Colonel abruptly, and turned away. "I am sure it is
earlier than that."

I was not the only member of the party who noticed the curt tone of his
reply; and when we had all retired for the night I lingered in Lorian's
room and reverted to the matter.

"Is the late Stuart period a sore point with the Colonel?" I asked.

Lorian, who was in an unusually thoughtful mood, lighted his pipe and
nodded.

"It is said," he explained, "that a Reynor at about that time turned
buccaneer and became the terror of the two Atlantics! I don't know what
possessed Hulme to say such a thing. Probably he doesn't know about the
piratical page in the family records, however. He's a strange chap."

"He is," I agreed. "Everybody seems to know him, yet nobody knows
anything _about_ him. I first met him at the Travellers' Club. I was
unaware, until I came down here this time, that the Colonel was one of
his friends."

"Edie brought him down first," replied Lorian. "But I think Hulme had
met Sybil--Miss Reynor--in London, before. I may be a silly ass, but
somehow I distrust the chap--always have. He seems to know altogether
too much about other people's affairs."

I mentally added that he also took too great an interest in a
certain young lady to suit Lorian's taste. We chatted upon various
matters--principally upon the manners, customs, and manifold beauties
of Sybil Reynor--until my friend's pipe went out. Then I bade him good
night and went to my own room.


III

With that abruptness characteristic of the coast and season, a high wind
had sprung up since the party had separated. Now a continuous booming
filled the night, telling how the wrath of the North Atlantic spent
itself upon the western rocks.

To a town-dweller, more used to the vaguely soothing hum of the
metropolis, this grander music of the elements was a poor sedative.
Sleep evaded me, tired though I was, and I presently found myself
drifting into that uncomfortable frame of mind between dreaming and
waking, wherein one's brain becomes a torturing parrot-house, filled
with some meaningless reiteration.

"The riddle of the ragged staff--the riddle of the ragged staff," was
the phrase that danced maddeningly through my brain. It got to that pass
with me, familiar enough to victims of insomnia, when the words began to
go to a sort of monotonous melody.

Thereupon, I determined to light a candle and read for a while, in the
hope of inducing slumber.

The old clock down in the hall proclaimed the half-hour. I glanced at my
watch. It was half-past one. The moaning of the wind and the wild song
of the sea continued unceasingly.

Then I dropped my paper--and listened.

Amid the mighty sounds which raged about Ragstaff Park it was one slight
enough which had attracted my attention. But in the elemental music
there was a sameness which rendered it, after a time, negligible.
Indeed, I think sleep was not far off when this new sound detached
itself from the old--like the solo from its accompaniment.

Something had fallen, crashingly, within the house.

It might be some object insecurely fastened which had been detached
in the breeze from an open window. And, realising this, I waited and
listened.

For some minutes the wind and the waves alone represented sound. Then my
ears, attuned to this stormy conflict, and sensitive to anything apart
from it, detected a faint scratching and tapping.

My room was the first along the corridor leading to the west wing, and
therefore the nearest to the landing immediately above the hall. I
determined that this mysterious disturbance proceeded from downstairs.
At another time, perhaps, I might have neglected it, but to-night,
and so recently following upon Lorian's story of the attempt upon his
father's studio, I found myself keenly alive to the burglarious
possibilities of Ragstaff.

I got out of bed, put on my slippers, and, having extinguished the
candle, was about to open the door when I observed a singular thing.

A strong light--which could not be that of the moon, for ordinarily the
corridor beyond was dark--shone under the door!

Even as I looked in amazement it was gone.

Very softly I turned the knob.

Careful as I was, it slipped from my grasp with a faint _click_. To
this, I think, I owed my failure to see more than I did see. But what I
saw was sufficiently remarkable.

Cloud-banks raced across the sky tempestuously, and, as I peered over
the oaken balustrade down into the hall, one of these impinged upon the
moon's disc and, within the space of two seconds or less, had wholly
obscured it. Upon where a long, rectangular patch of light, splashed
with lozenge-shaped shadows spread from a mullioned window across
the polished floor, crept a band of blackness--widened--claimed
half--claimed the whole--and left the hall in darkness.

Yet, in the half-second before the coming of the cloud, and as I first
looked down, I had seen something--something indefinable. All but
immediately it was lost in the quick gliding shadow--yet I could be sure
that I had seen--what?

A gleaming, metallic streak--almost I had said a sword--which leapt from
my view into the bank of gloom!

Passing the cloud, and the moon anew cutting a line of light through the
darkness of the hall, nothing, no one, remained to be seen. I might have
imagined the presence of the shining blade, rod, or whatever had seemed
to glitter in the moon-rays; and I should have felt assured that such
was the case but for the suspicion (and it was nearly a certainty) that
a part of the shadow which had enwrapped the mysterious appearance had
been of greater depth than the rest--more tangible; in short, had been
no shadow, but a substance--the form of one who lurked there.

Doubtful how to act, and unwilling to disturb the house without good
reason, I stood hesitating at the head of the stairs.

A grating sound, like that of a rusty lock, and clearly distinguishable
above the noise occasioned by the wind, came to my ears. I began slowly
and silently to descend the stairs.

At the foot I paused, looking warily about me. There was no one in the
hall.

A new cloud swept across the face of the moon, and utter darkness
surrounded me again. I listened intently, but nothing stirred.

Briefly I searched all those odd nooks and corners in which the rambling
place abounded, but without discovering anything to account for the
phenomena which had brought me there at that hour of the night. The big
doors were securely bolted, as were all the windows. Extremely puzzled,
I returned to my room and to bed.

In the morning I said nothing to our host respecting the mysterious
traffic of the night, since nothing appeared to be disturbed in any way.

"Did you hear it blowing?" asked Colonel Reynor during breakfast. "The
booming of the waves sounded slap under the house. Good job the wind has
dropped this morning."

It was, indeed, a warm and still morning, when on the moorland strip
beyond the long cornfield, where the thick fir-tufts marked the warren
honeycomb, partridges might be met with in many coveys, basking in the
sandy patches.

There were tunnels through the dense bushes to the west, too, which led
one with alarming suddenness to the very brink of the cliff. And here
went scurrying many a hare before the armed intruder.

Lorian and I worked around by lunch-time to the spinneys east of
the cornfield, and, nothing loath to partake of the substantial
hospitalities of Ragstaff, made our way up to the house. There is a kind
of rock-garden from which you must approach from that side. It affords
an uninterrupted view of the lower part of the grounds from the lawn up
to the terrace.

Only two figures were in sight; and they must have been invisible from
any other point, as we, undoubtedly, were invisible to them.

They were those of a man and a girl. They stood upon the steps
leading down from the lawn to the rose-garden. It was impossible to
misunderstand the nature of the words which the man was speaking. But
I saw the girl turn aside and shake her head. The man sought to take
her hand and received a further and more decided rebuff.

We hurried on. Lorian, though I avoided looking directly at him,
was biting his lip. He was very pale, too. And I knew that he had
recognized, as I had recognized, Sybil Reynor and Felix Hulme.


IV

During lunch, a Mr. Findon, who had driven over with one of the
Colonel's neighbours, asked Sybil Reynor whether the peculiar and far
from beautiful ring which she invariably wore was Oriental. From his
conversation I gathered that he was something of an expert.

"It is generally supposed to be Phoenician, Mr. Findon," she answered;
and slipping it from her finger she passed it to him. "It is my lot in
life to wear it always, hideous though it is!"

"Indeed! An heirloom, I suppose?"

"Yes," replied the girl; "and an ugly one."

In point of fact, the history of the ring was as curious as that of the
Riddle. For generations it had been worn by the heir of Ragstaff from
the day of his majority to that of his eldest son's. Colonel Reynor
had no son. Hence, following the tradition as closely as circumstances
allowed, he had invested Sybil with the ring upon the day that she came
of age--some three months prior to the time of which I write.

As Mr. Findon was about to return the ring, Lorian said:

"Excuse me. May I examine it for a moment?"

"Of course," replied Sybil.

He took it in his hand and bent over it curiously. I cannot pretend to
explain what impelled me to glance towards Hulme at that moment; but I
did do so. And the expression which rested upon his dark and usually
handsome face positively alarmed me.

I concluded that, beneath the cool surface, he was a man of hot
passions, and I would have ascribed the fixed glare to the jealousy of
a rejected suitor in presence of a more favoured rival, had it centred
upon Lorian. But it appeared to be focused, particularly, upon the ring.

The incident impressed me very unfavourably. A sense of mystery was
growing up around me--pervading the atmosphere of Ragstaff Park.

After lunch Lorian and I again set out in company, but my friend
appeared to be in anything but sporting humour. We bore off at a sharp
angle from the Colonel and some others who were set upon the rough
shooting on the western rim of the moors and made for the honeycombed
ground which led one upward to the cliff edge.

Abruptly, we found ourselves upon the sheer brink, with the floor of the
ocean at our feet and all the great Atlantic before us.

"Let us relent of our murderous purpose," said Lorian, dropping
comfortably on to a patch of velvety turf and producing his pipe. "I
have dragged you up here with the malicious intention of talking to
you."

I was not sorry to hear it. There was much that I wished to discuss with
him.

"I should have stayed to say something to some one," he added, carefully
stuffing his briar, "but first I wanted to say something to you." He
paused, fumbling for matches. "What," he continued, finding some and
striking one, "is Felix Hulme's little game?"

"He wants to marry Miss Reynor."

"I know; but he needn't get so infernally savage because she won't
accept him. He looked at me in a positively murderous way at lunch
to-day."

"So you noticed that?"

"Yes--and I saw that you noticed it, too."

"Listen," I said. "Leaving Hulme out of the question, there is an
altogether more mysterious business afoot." And I told him of the
episode of the previous night.

He smoked stolidly whilst I spoke, frowning the while; then:

"Old chap," he said, "I begin to have a sort of glimmering of
intelligence. I believe I am threatened with an idea! But it's such an
utterly fantastic hybrid that I dare not name it--yet."

He asked me several questions respecting what I had seen, and my replies
appeared to confirm whatever suspicion was gathering in his mind. We saw
little enough sport, but came in later than anyone.

During dinner there was an odd incident. Lorian said:

"Colonel, d'you mind my taking a picture of the Riddle?"

"Eh!" said the Colonel. "What for? Your father made a drawing of it."

"Yes, I know," replied Lorian. "I mean a photograph."

"Well," mused the Colonel, "I don't know that there can be much
objection, since it has been copied once. But have you got a camera
here?"

"Ah--no," said my friend thoughtfully, "I haven't. Can anybody lend me
one?"

Apparently no one could.

"If you care to drive over to Dr. Mason's after dinner," said our host,
"he will lend you one. He has several."

Lorian said he would, and I volunteered to accompany him. Accordingly
the Colonel's high dogcart was prepared; and beneath a perfect moon,
swimming in a fleckless sky which gave no hint of the storm to come,
we set off for the doctor's.

My friend's manoeuvres were a constant source of surprise to me.
However, I allowed him to know his own business best, and employed my
mind with speculations respecting this mystery, what time the Colonel's
spirited grey whisked us along the dusty roads.

We had just wheeled around Dr. Mason's drive, when the fact broke in
upon my musings that a Stygian darkness had descended upon the night,
as though the moon had been snuffed, candle-wise.

"Devil of a storm brewing," said Lorian. "Funny how the weather changes
at night."

Two minutes after entering the doctor's cosy study, down came the rain.

"Now we're in for it!" said Mason. "I'll send Wilkins to run the dogcart
into the stable until it blows over."

The storm proved to be a severe one; and long past midnight, despite the
doctor's hospitable attempts to detain us, we set off for Ragstaff Park.

"We can put up the grey ourselves," said Lorian. "I love grooming
horses! And by going around into the yard and throwing gravel up at
his window, we can awaken Peters without arousing the house. This plan
almost startles me by its daring originality. I fear that I detect
within myself the symptoms of genius."

So, with one of Dr. Mason's cameras under the seat, we started back
through the sweet-smelling lanes; and, at about twenty minutes past one,
swung past the gate lodge and up the long avenue, the wheels grinding
crisply upon the newly wetted gravel. There was but little moon, now,
and the house stood up, an irregular black mass, before us.

Then, from three of the windows, there suddenly leapt out a dazzling
white light!

Lorian pulled up the grey with a jerk.

"Good God!" he said. "What's that! An explosion!"

But no sound reached us. Only, for some seconds, the hard, white glare
streamed out upon the steps and down on to the drive. Suddenly as it had
come--it was gone, and the whole of Ragstaff was in darkness as before!

The horse started nervously, but my friend held him with a firm hand,
turning and looking at me queerly.

"That's what shone under your door last night!" he said. "That light was
in the hall!"


V

Peters was awakened, the horse stabled and ourselves admitted without
arousing another soul. As we came around from the back of the house (we
had not entered by the main door), and, candles in hand, passed through
the hall, nothing showed as having been disturbed.

"Don't breathe a word of our suspicions to anyone," counselled Lorian.

"What _are_ our suspicions?" said I.

"At present," he replied, "indefinable."

To-night the distant murmur of the sea proved very soothing, and I slept
soundly. I was early afoot, however, but not so early as Lorian. As I
passed around the gallery above the hall, on my way to the bathroom, I
saw him folding up the tripod of the camera which he had borrowed from
Dr. Mason. The morning sun was streaming through the windows.

"Hullo!" Lorian called to me. "I've got a splendid negative, I think.
Peters is rigging up a dark-room in the wine-cellar--delightful site for
the purpose! Will you join me in developing?"

Although I was unable to conjecture what my friend hoped to gain by his
photographic experiments, I agreed, prompted as much by curiosity as
anything else. So, after my tub, I descended to the cellar and splashed
about in Hypo., until Lorian declared himself satisfied.

"The second is the best," he pronounced critically, holding the negative
up to the red lamp. "I made three exposures in all; but the reflection
from the polished wood has rather spoiled the first and also the third."

"Whatever do you want with this photograph, anyway," I said, "when the
original is available?"

"My dear chap," he replied, "one cannot squat in the hall fixedly
regarding a section of panel like some fakir staring at a palm leaf!"

"Then you intend to study it?"

"Closely!"

As a matter of fact, he did not join us during the whole of the day; but
since he spent the greater part of the time in his own room, I did not
proffer my aid. From a remark dropped by the Colonel, I gathered that
Sybil had volunteered to assist, during the afternoon, in preparing
prints.

I was one of the first in to tea, and Lorian came racing out to meet me.

"Not a word yet," he said, "but if the Colonel is agreeable, I shall
tell them all at dinner!"

"Tell them what?" I began----

Then I saw Sybil Reynor standing in the shadow of the porch, and, even
from that distance, saw her rosy blushes.

I understood.

"Lucky man!" I cried, and wrung his hand warmly. "The very best of good
wishes, old chap. I am delighted!"

"So am I!" replied Lorian. "But come and see the print."

We went into the house together; and Sybil blushed more furiously than
ever when I told her how I envied Lorian--and added that he deserved the
most beautiful girl in England, and had won her.

Lorian had a very clear print of the photograph pinned up to dry on the
side of his window.

"We shall be busy to-night!" he said mysteriously.

He had planned to preserve his great secret until dinner-time; but, of
course, it came out whilst we sat over tea on the balcony. The Colonel
was unfeignedly delighted, and there is nothing secretive about Colonel
Reynor. Consequently, five minutes after he had been informed how
matters were between his daughter and Lorian, all the house knew.

I studied the face of Hulme, to see how he would take the news. But
he retained a perfect mastery of himself, though his large dark eyes
gleamed at discord with the smile which he wore.

Our photographic experiments were forgotten; and throughout dinner,
whereat Sybil looked exquisitely lovely and very shy, and Lorian
preserved an unruffled countenance, other topics ruled.

It was late before we found ourselves alone in Lorian's room, with the
print spread upon the table beneath the light of the shaded lamp.

We bent over it.

"Now," said Lorian, "I assume that this is some kind of cipher!"

I stared at him surprisedly.

"And," he continued, "you and I are going to solve it if we sit up all
night!"

"How do you propose to begin?"

"Well, as it appears to mean nothing in particular, as it stands, I
thought of beginning by assuming that the letters have other values
altogether. Therefore, upon the basis that _e_ is the letter which most
frequently occurs in English, with _a_, _o_, _i_, _d_, _h_, _n_, _r_,
afterwards, I had thought of resolving it into its component letters."

"But would that rule apply to mediæval English?"

"Ah," said Lorian thoughtfully, "most sage counsellor! A wise and timely
thought! I'm afraid it wouldn't."

"What now?"

Lorian scratched his head in perplexity.

"Suppose," he suggested, "we write down the words plainly, and see if,
treating each one separately, we can find other meanings to them."

Accordingly, upon a sheet of paper, I wrote:

    Wherso eer thee doome bee
    Looke untoe ye strypped tree
    Offe ragged staffe. Upon itte ley
    Golde toe greene ande kay toe kay.

Our efforts in the proposed direction were rewarded with poor success.
Some gibberish even less intelligible than the original was the only
result of our labour.

Lorian threw down his pencil and began to reload his pipe.

"Let us consider possible meanings to the original words," he said. "Do
you know of anything in the neighbourhood which might answer to the
description of a 'strypped tree'?"

I shook my head.

"What has occasioned your sudden interest in the thing?" I asked
wearily.

"It is a long story," he replied; "and I have an idea that there's no
time to be lost in solving the Riddle!"

However, even Lorian's enthusiasm flagged at last. We were forced to
admit ourselves hopelessly beaten by the Riddle. I went to my own room
feeling thoroughly tired. But I was not destined to sleep long. A few
minutes after closing my eyes (or so it seemed), came a clamouring at
the door.

I stumbled sleepily out of bed, and, slipping on my dressing-gown,
admitted Lorian. Colonel Reynor stood immediately behind him.

"Most extraordinary business!" began the latter breathlessly. "Sybil
had--_you_ tell him, Harry!"

"Well," said Lorian, "it is not unexpected! Listen: Sybil woke up a
while ago, with the idea that she had forgotten something or lost
something--you know the frame of mind! She went to her dressing-table
and found the family ring missing!"

"_The_ ring!" burst in the Colonel excitedly. "Amazing!"

"She remembered having taken it off, during the evening, to--er--to put
another one on! But she was unable to recall having replaced it. She
determined to run down and see if she had left it upon the seat in the
corner of the library. Well, she went downstairs in her dressing-gown,
and, carrying a candle, very quietly, in order to wake no one, crossed
to the library and searched unavailingly. She heard a faint noise
outside in the hall."

Lorian paused. Felix Hulme had joined the party.

"What's the disturbance?" he asked.

"Oh," said Lorian, turning to him, "it's about Sybil. She was down in
the library a while ago to look for something, and heard a sort of
grating sound out in the hall. She came out, and almost fell over an
iron-bound chest, about a foot and a half long, which stood near the
bottom of the staircase!"

"Good heavens, Lorian!" I cried, "how had it come there?"

"Sybil says," he resumed, "that she could not believe her eyes. She
stooped to examine the thing ... and with a thrill of horror saw it to
be roughly marked _with a skull and cross-bones_!"

"My dear Lorian," said Hulme, "are you certain that Miss Reynor was
awake?"

"She woke _us_ quickly enough!" interrupted the Colonel. "Poor girl, she
was shaking dreadfully. Thought it was a supernatural appearance. She's
with her mother now."

"But the box!" I cried. "Where is the box?"

"That's the mystery," answered Colonel Reynor. "I was downstairs two
minutes later, and there was nothing of the kind to be seen! Has our
Ragstaff ghost started walking again, I wonder? You ought to know,
Hulme; you're in the Turret Room--that is the authentic haunted
chamber!"

"I was aroused by the bell ringing," replied Hulme. "I am a very light
sleeper. But I heard or saw nothing supernatural."

"By the way, Hulme," said my friend, "the Turret Room is directly above
the hall. I have a theory. Might I come up with you for a moment?"

"Certainly," replied Hulme.

We all went up to the Turret Room. Having climbed the stairs to this
apartment, you enter it by descending three steps. It is octagonal and
panelled all around. My friend tapped the panels and sounded all the
oaken floor-boards. Then, professing himself satisfied, he bade Hulme
good night, and accompanied me to my room.


VI

Ragstaff Park slumbered once more. But Lorian sat upon the edge of my
bed, smoking and thinking hard. He had been to his own room for the
print of the Riddle, and it lay upon a chair before him.

"Listen to this," he said suddenly: "(_a_) Some one breaks into the
governor's studio, and takes nothing. His drawings of the Ragstaff
Riddle happen to be at my studio. (_b_) You hear a noise in the night,
and see (1) a bright light; (2) a gleaming rod. (_c_) You and I see a
bright light on the following night, and presumably proceeding from
the same place; i.e., the hall. (_d_) Something I have not mentioned
before--Hulme has a camera in his kit! And he doesn't want the fact
known!"

"What do you mean?"

"I tested him the other night, by inquiring if anyone could lend me
a camera. He did not volunteer! The morning following the mysterious
business in the hall, observed by you, I saw a photographic printing
frame in his window! He must have one of those portable developers with
him."

"And to what does all this point?"

"To the fact that he has made at least three attempts to obtain a copy
of the Riddle, and has at last succeeded!"

"Three!"

"I really think so. The evidence points to him as the person who broke
into the studio. He made a bad slip. He referred to the matter, and
cited Horace Baxter as his informant. Baxter is away!"

"But this is serious!"

"I should say so! He couldn't attempt to photograph the panel in
daylight, so he employed magnesium ribbon at night! First time his
tripod slipped. It is evidently one of the light, telescopic kind. His
negative proved useless. It was one of the metal legs of the tripod
which you saw shining! The second time he was more successful. That was
the light of his magnesium ribbon you and I saw from the drive!"

"But, Lorian, I went down and searched the hall!"

"Now we come on to the, at present, conjectural part," explained Lorian.
"My theory is that Hulme, somewhere or other, has come across some old
documents which give the clue to those secret passages said to exist in
Ragstaff, but which the Colonel has never been able to locate. I feel
assured that there is some means of secret communication between the
Turret Room and the hall. I further believe that Hulme has in some way
got upon the track of another secret--that of the Riddle."

"But what _is_ the secret of the Riddle?"

"In my opinion the Riddle is a clue to another hiding-place, evidently
not connected with the maze of passages; possibly what is known as a
Priest's Hole. As you know, Hulme asked Sybil to marry him. I believe
the man to be in financial straits; so that we must further assume the
Riddle to conceal the whereabouts of a treasure, since the Reynors are
far from wealthy."

"The _chest_! Lorian! The chest!" I cried.

"Quite so. But what immediately preceded its appearance? The loss of the
family ring! If I am not greatly in error, Hulme found that ring! And
the ring is the key to the riddle! Do you recall the shape of the bezel?
Simply _a square peg of gold_! Look at the photograph!"

He was excited, for once.

"What does it say?" he continued: "'Ye strypped tree!' That means the
device of leaves, twigs, and acorns--stripped _from_ a tree--see? Here,
at the bottom of the panel, is such a group, and (this is where we have
been so blind!) intertwined with the design is the word _CAEG_--Ancient
Saxon for _key_! Look! 'Golde toe Greene and kay toe kay'! Amongst the
_green_ leaves is a square hole. The _gold_ knob on the ring fits it!"

For a moment I was too greatly surprised for speech. Then:

"You think Hulme discovered this?"

"I do. And I think Sybil's mislaying her ring gave him his big chance.
He had got the chest out whilst she was in the library. He must have
been inside somewhere looking for it when she passed through the hall.
Then, hearing her approach from the library, he was forced to abandon
his heavy 'find' and hide in the secret passage which communicates with
his room. Directly she ran upstairs he returned for the chest!"

I looked him hard in the face.

"We don't want a scene, Lorian," I began. "Besides, it's just possible
you may be wrong."

"I agree," said Lorian. "Come up to his room, now."

Passing quietly upstairs, we paused before the door of the Turret Room.
A faint light showed under it. Lorian glanced at me--then knocked.

"Who's there?" came sharply.

"Lorian," answered my friend. "I want a chat with you about the secret
passage and the old treasure chest--_before speaking to the Colonel_!"

There was a long silence, then:

"Just a moment," came hoarsely. "Don't come in until I call."

We looked at one another doubtfully. A long minute passed. I could hear
a faint sound within. At last came Hulme's voice:

"All right. Come in."

As Lorian threw the door open, a faint _click_ sounded from somewhere.

The Turret Room was empty!

"By heaven! he's given us the slip!" cried my friend.

We glanced around the room. A candle burnt upon the table. And upon the
bed stood an iron-barred chest, with a sheet of notepaper lying on its
lid!

Lorian pounced upon the note. We read it together.

"Mr. Henry Lorian" (it went), "I realize that you have found me out. I
will confess that I had no time to open the chest. But as matters stand
I only ask you not to pursue me. I have taken nothing not my own. The
ring, and an interesting document which I picked up some years ago, are
on the table. Offer what explanation of my disappearance you please. I
am in your hands."

We turned again to the table. Upon a piece of worn parchment lay the
missing ring. Lorian spread out the parchment and bent over it.

"Why," I cried, "it is a plan of Ragstaff Park!"

"With a perfect network of secret passages!" added my friend, "and some
instructions, apparently, as to how to enter them. It bears the initials
'R. R.' and, in brackets, 'Capt. S.' I begin to understand."

He raised the candle and stepped across to the ancient chest. It bore
a roughly designed skull and cross-bones, and, in nearly defaced red
characters, the words:

"_CAPTAIN SATAN_."

"Captain Satan!" I said. "He was one of the most bloodthirsty pirates
who ever harried the Spanish Main!"

"He was," agreed Lorian; "and his real name was Roderick Reynor. He
evidently solved the riddle some generations earlier than Hulme--and
stored his bloodstained hoard in the ancient hiding-place. Also, you
see, he knew about the passages."

"What shall we do?"

"Hulme has surrendered. You can see that the chest has not been opened.
Therefore there is only one thing that we _can_ do. We must keep what we
know to ourselves, return the chest to its hiding-place, and proclaim
that we have found the missing ring!"

Down to the hall we bore the heavy chest. The square knob on the ring
fitted, as Lorian had predicted, into the hole half hidden among the
oak leaves of the design. Without much difficulty we forced back the
fastening (it proved to be of a very simple pattern), and slid the whole
panel aside. A small, square chamber was revealed by the light of the
candle--quite empty.

"As I had surmised," said my friend; "a Priest's Hole."

We carried the chest within, and reclosed the panel, which came to with
a sharp _click_.

       *       *       *       *       *

The story which we invented to account for Hulme's sudden departure
passed muster; for one topic usurped the interests of all--the ghostly
box, with its piratical emblem.

"My boy," Colonel Reynor said to Lorian, "I cannot pretend to explain
what Sybil saw. But it bears curiously upon a certain black page in the
family history. If the chest had been tangible, and had contained a
fortune, I would not have opened it. Let all pertaining to that part of
our records remain buried, say I."

"Which determines our course," explained Lorian to me. "The chest is not
ours, and the Colonel evidently would rather not know about it. I regret
that I lack the morals of a burglar."



The Master of Hollow Grange


I

Jack Dillon came to Hollow Grange on a thunderous black evening when an
ebony cloud crested the hill-top above, and, catching the upflung rays
of sunset, glowed redly like the pall of Avalon in the torchlight.
Through the dense ranks of firs cloaking the slopes a breeze, presaging
the coming storm, whispered evilly, and here in the hollow the birds
were still.

The man who had driven him from the station glanced at him, with a
curiosity thinly veiled.

"What about your things, sir?" he inquired.

Dillon stared rather blankly at the ivy-covered lodge, which, if
appearances were to be trusted, was unoccupied.

"Wait a moment; I will ring," he said curtly; for this furtive
curiosity, so ill concealed, had manifested itself in the manner of the
taxi-driver from the moment that Dillon had directed him to drive to
Hollow Grange.

He pushed open the gate and tugged at the iron ring which was suspended
from the wall of the lodge. A discordant clangour rewarded his efforts,
the cracked note of a bell that spoke from somewhere high up in the
building, that seemed to be buffeted to and fro from fir to fir, until
it died away, mournfully, in some place of shadows far up the slope. In
the voice of the bell there was something furtive, something akin to the
half-veiled curiosity in the eyes of the man who stood watching him;
something fearful, too, in both, as though man and bell would whisper:
"Return! Beware of disturbing the dwellers in this place."

But Dillon angrily recalled himself to the realities. He felt that
these ghostly imaginings were born of the Boche-maltreated flesh, were
products of lowered tone; that he would have perceived no query in the
glance of the taxi-driver and heard no monkish whisper in the clang of
the bell had he been fit, had he been fully recovered from the effects
of his wound. Monkish whisper? Yes, that was it--his mind had supplied,
automatically, an aptly descriptive term: the cracked bell spoke with
the voice of ancient monasteries, had in it the hush of cloisters and
the sigh of renunciation.

"Hang it all!" muttered Dillon. "This won't do."

A second time he awoke the ghostly bell-voice, but nothing responded to
its call; man, bird, and beast had seemingly deserted Hollow Grange. He
was conscious of a sudden nervous irritation, as he turned brusquely and
met the inquiring glance of the taxi-man.

"I have arrived before I was expected," he said. "If you will put my
things in the porch here I will go up to the house and get a servant to
fetch them. They will be safe enough in the meantime."

His own words increased his irritability; for were they not in the
nature of an apology on behalf of his silent and unseen host? Were they
not a concession to that nameless query in the man's stare? Moreover,
deep within his own consciousness, some vague thing was stirring; so
that, the man dismissed and promptly departing, Dillon stood glancing
from the little stack of baggage in the lodge porch up the gloomy,
narrow, and over-arched drive, indignantly aware that he also carried
a question in his eyes.

The throb of the motor mounting the steep, winding lane grew dim and
more dim until it was borne away entirely upon the fitful breeze.
Faintly he detected the lowing of cattle in some distant pasture; the
ranks of firs whispered secretly one to another, and the pall above the
hills grew blacker and began to extend over the valley.

Amid that ominous stillness of nature he began to ascend the cone-strewn
path. Evidently enough, the extensive grounds had been neglected for
years, and that few pedestrians, and fewer vehicles, ever sought Hollow
Grange was demonstrated by the presence of luxuriant weeds in the
carriage way. Having proceeded for some distance, until the sheer
hillside seemed to loom over him like the wall of a tower, Dillon
paused, peering about in the ever-growing darkness. He was aware of
a physical chill; certainly no ray of sunlight ever penetrated to
this tunnel through the firs. Could he have mistaken the path and be
proceeding, not toward the house, but away from it and into the midnight
of the woods mantling the hills?

There was something uncomfortable in that reflection; momentarily
he knew a childish fear of the darkening woods, and walked forward
rapidly, self-assertively. Ten paces brought him to one of the many
bends in the winding road--and there, far ahead, as though out of some
cavern in the very hillside, a yellow light shone.

He pressed on with greater assurance until the house became visible. Now
he perceived that he had indeed strayed from the carriage-sweep in some
way, for the path that he was following terminated at the foot of a
short flight of moss-covered brick steps. He mounted the steps and found
himself at the bottom of a terrace. The main entrance was far to his
left and separated from the terrace by a neglected lawn. That portion
of the place was Hanoverian and ugly, whilst the wing nearest to him
was Tudor and picturesque. Excepting the yellow light shining out from
a sunken window almost at his feet, no illuminations were visible about
the house, although the brewing storm had already plunged the hollow
into premature night.

Indeed, there was no sign of occupancy about the strange-looking
mansion, which might have hidden forgotten for centuries in the
horseshoe of the hills. He had sought for rest and quiet; here he should
find them. The stillness of the place was of that sort which almost
seems to be palpable; that can be seen and felt. A humid chill arose
apparently from the terrace, with its stone pavings outlined in moss,
crept up from the wilderness below and down from the fir-woods above.

A thought struggled to assume form in his mind. There was something
reminiscent about this house of the woods, this silent house which
struck no chord of human companionship, in which was no warmth of life
or love. Suddenly, the thought leapt into complete being.

This was the palace of the sleeping beauty to which he had penetrated.
It was the fairy-tale dear to childhood which had been struggling for
expression in his mind ever since he had emerged from the trees on to
the desolate terrace. With the departure of the station cab had gone the
last link with to-day, and now he was translated to the goblin realm of
fable.

He had crossed the terrace and the lawn, and stood looking through an
open French window into a room that evidently adjoined the hall. A
great still darkness had come, and on a little table in the room a
reading-lamp was burning. It had a quaint, mosaic shade which shut in
much of the light, but threw a luminous patch directly on a heap of
cushions strewn upon the floor. Face downward in this silken nest, her
chin resting upon her hands and her elfin curly brown hair tousled
bewitchingly, lay a girl so audaciously pretty that Dillon hesitated to
accept the evidence of his eyes.

The crunching of a piece of gravel beneath his foot led to the awakening
of the sleeping beauty. She raised her head quickly and then started
upright, a lithe, divinely petite figure in a green velvet dress, having
short fur-trimmed sleeves that displayed her pretty arms. For an instant
it was a startled nymph that confronted him; then a distracting dimple
appeared in one fair cheek, and:

"Oh! how you frightened me!" said the girl, speaking with a slight
French accent which the visitor found wholly entrancing. "You must be
Jack Dillon? I am Phryné."

Dillon bowed.

"How I envy Hyperides!" he said.

A blush quickly stained the lovely face of Phryné, and the roguish eyes
were lowered, whereby the penitent Dillon, who had jested in the not
uncommon belief that a pretty girl is necessarily brainless, knew that
the story of the wonder-woman of Thespiæ was familiar to her modern
namesake.

"I am afraid," declared Phryné, with a return of her mischievous
composure, "that you are very wicked."

Dillon, who counted himself a man of the world, was temporarily at a
loss for a suitable rejoinder. The cause of his hesitancy was twofold.
In the first place he had reached the age of disillusionment, whereat a
man ceases to believe that a perfectly lovely woman exists in the flesh,
and in the second place he had found such a fabulous being in a house of
gloom and silence to which, a few moments ago, he had deeply regretted
having come.

His father, who had accepted the invitation from an old college friend
on his son's behalf, had made no mention of a Phryné, whereas Phryné
clearly took herself for granted and evidently knew all about Jack
Dillon. The latter experienced a volcanic change of sentiment; Hollow
Grange was metamorphosed, and assumed magically the guise of a Golden
House, an Emperor's pleasure palace, a fair, old-world casket holding
this lovely jewel. But who was she?--and in what spirit should he
receive her bewildering coquetries?

"I trust," he said, looking into the laughing eyes, "that you will learn
to know me better."

Phryné curtsied mockingly.

"You have either too much confidence in your own character or not enough
in my wisdom," she said.

Dillon stepped into the room, and, stooping, took up a book which lay
open upon the floor. It was a French edition of _The Golden Ass_ of
Apuleius.

The hollow was illuminated by a blinding flash of lightning, and
Phryné's musical laughter was drowned in the thunder that boomed and
crashed in deepening peals over the hills. In a sudden tropical torrent
the rain descended, as Dr. Kassimere entered the room.


II

Jack Dillon leant from his open window and looked out over the valley to
where a dull red glow crowned the hill-top. There was a fire somewhere
in the neighbourhood of the distant town; probably a building had been
struck by lightning. The storm had passed, although thunder was still
audible dimly, like the roll of muffled drums or a remote bombardment.
Stillness had reclaimed Hollow Grange.

He was restless, uneasy; he sought to collate his impressions of the
place and its master. Twelve years had elapsed since his one previous
meeting with Dr. Kassimere, and little or no memory of the man had
remained. So much had intervened; the war--and Phryné. Now that he was
alone and could collect his ideas he knew of what Dr. Kassimere's gaunt,
wide-eyed face had reminded him: it was of Thoth, the Ibis-headed god
whose figure he had seen on the walls of the temples during his service
in Egypt.

"Kassimere was always a queer fish, Jack," his father had said; "but
most of his eccentricities were due to his passion for study. The Grange
is the very place Sir Francis" (the specialist) "would have chosen for
your convalescence, and you'll find nothing dangerously exciting in
Kassimere's atmosphere!"

Yet there was that about Dr. Kassimere which he did not and could not
like; his quietly cordial welcome, his courteous regret that his guest's
arrival by an earlier train (a circumstance due to reduced service) had
led to his not being met at the station; the charming simplicity with
which he confessed to the smallness of his household, and to the
pleasure which it afforded him to have the son of an old chum beneath
his roof--all these kindly overtures had left the bird-like eyes cold,
hard, watchful, calculating. The voice was the voice of a friend and a
gentleman, but the face was the face of Thoth.

The mystery of Phryné was solved in a measure. She was Dr. Kassimere's
adopted daughter and the orphaned child of Louis Devant, the famous
Paris cartoonist, who had died penniless in 1911, at the height of his
success. In his selection of a name for her, the brilliant and dissolute
artist had exhibited a breadth of mind which Phryné inherited in an
almost embarrassing degree.

Her mental equipment was bewildering: the erudition of an Oxford don
spiced with more than a dash of Boul' Mich', which made for complexity.
Her curious learning was doubtless due to the setting of a receptive
mind amid such environment, but how she had retained her piquant
vivacity in Hollow Grange was less comprehensible. The servants
formed a small and saturnine company, only two--the housekeeper, Mrs.
Harman, a black and forbidding figure, and Madame Charny, a French
companion--sleeping in the house. Gawly, a surly creature who neglected
the gardens and muttered savagely over other duties, together with his
wife, who cooked, resided at the lodge. There were two maids, who lived
in the village....

The glow from the distant fire seemed to be reflected upon the firs
bordering the terrace below; then Dillon, watching the dull, red light,
remembered that Dr. Kassimere's laboratory adjoined the tiny chapel, and
that, though midnight drew near, the doctor was still at work there.

Owls and other night birds hooted and shrieked among the trees and
many bats were in flight. He found himself thinking of the pyramid
bats of Egypt, and of the ibis-headed Thoth who was the scribe of the
under-world.

Dr. Kassimere had made himself medically responsible for his case, and
had read attentively the letters which Dillon had brought from his own
physician. He was to prescribe on the following day, and to-night the
visitor found Morpheus a treacherous god. Furtive activities disturbed
the house, or so it seemed to the sleepless man tossing on his bed;
alert intelligences within Hollow Grange responded to the night-life of
the owls without, and he seemed to lie in the shadow of a watchfulness
that never slumbered.


III

"There's many a fine walk hereabouts," said the old man seated in the
arm-chair in the corner of the _Threshers' Inn_ bar-parlour.

Dillon nodded encouragingly.

"There's Ganton-on-the-Hill," continued the ancient. "You can see the
sea from there in clear weather; and many's the time I've heard the guns
in France from Upper Crobury of a still night. Then, four mile away,
there's the haunted Grange, though nobody's allowed past the gate. Not
as nobody wants to be," he added, reflectively.

"The haunted Grange?" questioned Dillon. "Where is that?"

"Hollow Grange?" said the old man. "Why, it lies----"

"Oh, Hollow Grange--yes! I know where Hollow Grange is, but I was
unaware that it was reputed to be haunted."

"Ah," replied the other, pityingly, "you're new to these parts; I see
that the minute I set eyes on you. Maybe you was wounded in France, and
you're down here to get well, like?"

"Quite so. Your deductive reasoning is admirable."

"Ah," said the sage, chuckling with self-appreciation, "I ain't lived in
these here parts for nigh on seventy-five years without learning to use
my eyes, I ain't. For seventy-four years and seven months," he added
proudly, "I ain't been outside this here county where I was born, and
I can use my eyes, I can; I know a thing I do, when I see it. Maybe it
was providence, as you might say, what brought you to the _Threshers_
to-day."

"Quite possibly," Dillon admitted.

"He was just such another as you," continued the old man with apparent
irrelevance. "You don't happen to be stopping at Hainingham Vicarage?"

"No," replied Dillon.

"Ah! he was stopping at Hainingham Vicarage and he'd been wounded in
France. How he got to know Dr. Kassimere I can't tell you; not at
parson's, anyway. Parson won't never speak to him. Only last Sunday week
he preached agin him; not in so many words, but I could see his drift.
He spoke about them heathen women livin' on an island--sort of female
Robinson Crusoes, I make 'em out, I do--as saves poor shipwrecked
sailors from the sea and strangles of 'em ashore."

Dillon glanced hard at the voluble old man.

"The sirens?" he suggested, conscious of a sudden hot surging about his
heart.

"Ah, that's the women I mean."

"But where is the connection?"

"Ah, you're new to these parts, you are. That Dr. Kassimere he keeps a
siren down in Hollow Grange. They see her--these here strangers (same as
the shipwrecked sailors parson told about)--and it's all up with 'em."

Dillon stifled a laugh, in which anger would have mingled with contempt.
To think that in the twentieth century a man of science was like to meet
with the fate of Dr. Dee in the days of Elizabeth! Truly there were dark
spots in England. But could he credit the statement of this benighted
elder that a modern clergyman had actually drawn an analogy between
Phryné Devant and the sirens? It was unbelievable.

"What was the unhappy fate," he asked, masking his intolerance, "of the
young man staying at the Vicarage?"

"The same as them afore him," came the startling reply; "for he warn't
the first, and maybe"--with a shrewd glance of the rheumy old eyes--"he
won't be the last. Them sirens has the powers of darkness. I know,
'cause I've seen one--her at the Grange; and though I'm an old man, nigh
on seventy-five, I'll never forget her face, I won't, and the way she
smiled at me!"

"But," persisted Dillon, patiently, "what became of this particular
young man, the one who was staying at the Vicarage?"

The ancient sage leant forward in his chair and tapped the speaker upon
the knee with the stem of his clay pipe.

"Ask them as knows," he said, with impressive solemnity. "Nobody else
can tell you!"

And, having permitted an indiscreet laugh to escape him, not another
word on the subject could Dillon induce the old man to utter, he
strictly confining himself, in his ruffled dignity, to the climatic
conditions and the crops.

When Dillon, finally, set out upon the four-mile walk back to the
Grange, he realised, with annoyance, that the senile imaginings of his
bar-parlour acquaintance lingered in his mind. That Dr. Kassimere dwelt
outside the social life of the county he had speedily learnt; but for
this he had been prepared. That he might possibly be, not a recluse, but
a pariah, was a new point of view. Trivial things, to which hitherto he
had paid scant attention, began to marshal themselves as evidence. The
two village "helpers," he knew, received extravagant wages, because, as
Phryné had confessed, they had "found it almost impossible to get girls
to stay." Why?

Of the earlier guest, or guests, who had succumbed to the siren lure of
Phryné, he had heard no mention. Why? Save at meal-times he rarely saw
his host, who frankly left him to the society of Phryné. Again--why? Dr.
Kassimere, in his jealously locked laboratory, was at work day and night
upon his experiments. What were these experiments? What was the nature
of the doctor's studies?

He had now been for nearly three weeks at Hollow Grange, and never had
Dr. Kassimere spoken of his work. And Phryné? The sudden, new thought of
Phryné was so strange, so wonderful and overwhelming, that it reacted
physically; and he pulled up short in the middle of a field-path, as
though some palpable obstacle blocked the way.

Why had he set out alone that day, when all other days had been spent
in the girl's company? He had deliberately sought solitude--because
of Phryné; because he wanted to think calmly, judicially, to arraign
himself before his own judgment, remote from the witchery of her
presence. He had tried to render his mind a void, wherein should linger
not one fragrant memory of her delicate beauty and charm, so that he
might return unbiased to his judgment. He had returned; he was judged.

He loved Phryné madly, insanely. His future, his life, lay in the hollow
of her hands.


IV

"Yes," admitted Phryné, "it is true. There were two of them."

"And"--Dillon hesitated--"were they in love with you?"

"Of course," said Phryné, naïvely.

"But you----"

Phryné shook her curly head.

"I rather liked the French boy, but I do not believe anything that a
Frenchman says to a girl; and Harry, the other, was handsome, but so
silly...."

"So you did not love either of them?"

"Of course not."

"But," said Dillon, and impulsively he swept her into his arms, "you are
going to love me."

One quick upward glance she gave, but instantly lowered her eyes and
withheld her bewitching face from him.

"Am I?" she whispered. "You are so conceited."

But as she spoke the words he kissed her, and she surrendered sweetly,
nestling her head against his shoulder for a moment. Then, leaping back,
bright-eyed and blushing, she turned and ran like a startled fawn across
the terrace and into the house.

He saw no more of her until dinner-time, and spent the interval in a
kind of suspended consciousness that was new and perturbing. Within him
life pulsed at delirious speed, but the universe seemed to have slowed
upon its course so that each hour became as two. Throughout dinner,
Phryné was deliciously shy to the point of embarrassment; and Dillon,
who several times surprised the bird-eyes of Dr. Kassimere studying the
girl's face, detained his host, and being a young man of orderly mind,
formally asked his consent to an engagement.

The doctor's joy was seemingly so unfeigned that Dillon almost liked him
for a moment. He placed no obstacle in the path of the suitor for his
adopted daughter's hand, graciously expressing every confidence in the
future. His joy was genuine enough, Dillon determined; but from what
source did it actually spring? The Thoth-like eyes were exultant, and
all the old mistrust poured back in a wave upon the younger man. Was
this distrust becoming an obsession? Why should he eternally be seeking
an ulterior motive for every act in this man's life?

He went to look for Phryné, and found her in the spot where he had first
seen her, prone in a nest of cushions. She sprang up as he entered the
room, and glanced at him in that new way which set his heart leaping....

And because of the magic of her presence, it was not until later, when
he stood alone in his own room, that he could order the facts gleaned
from her.

There was some grain of truth in the story of the ancient gossip at
the _Threshers_ after all. A young French lieutenant of artillery had
received an invitation to spend a leave at Hollow Grange. His Gallic
soul had been fired by Phryné's beauty, and although his advances had
been met with rebuff, he had asked Dr. Kassimere's permission to pay his
court to the girl. On the same evening he had departed hurriedly, and
Phryné had supposed, since the doctor never referred to him again, that
he had been sent about his business. Then came a strange letter, which
Phryné had shown to Dillon. Its tone throughout was of passionate anger,
and one passage recurred again and again to Dillon's mind. "I would give
my life for you gladly," it read, "but my soul belongs to God...."

Phryné had counted him demented and Dr. Kassimere had agreed with her.
But there was Harry Waynwright, the nephew of the vicar of St. Peter's
at Hainingham. An accidental meeting with Phryné had led to a courtesy
call--and the inevitable. It had all the seeming of a case of
love-sickness, and the unhappy youth grew seriously ill. From pestering
her daily he changed his tactics to studiously avoiding her, until,
meeting her in the village one morning, he greeted her with, "I can't do
it, Phryné! tell him I can't do it. He can rely upon my word; but I'm
going away to try to forget!"

Dr. Kassimere had professed entire ignorance of the meaning of the
words. A faint shadow had crossed Phryné's face as she spoke of these
matters, but, as a result of her extraordinary beauty, she was somewhat
callous where languishing admirers were concerned, and she had dismissed
the gloomy twain with a shrug of her charming shoulders.

"Mad!" she had said. "It seems my fate always to meet mad-men!"

The night silence had descended again upon Hollow Grange, disturbed only
by the mournful cry of the owl and the almost imperceptible note of the
bat. But to the nervous alertness of Dillon, a deep unrest seemed to
stir within the house; yet--an unrest not physical but spiritual; it was
as the shadow of a sleepless watcher--a shadow creeping over his soul.

What was the explanation lying at the back of it all? Vainly he sought
for a theory, however wild, however improbable, that should embrace all
the facts known to him and serve either to banish his black doubts or to
focus them. Upon one thing he had determined: There was some thing or
some one in Hollow Grange that he _feared_, some centre from whence fear
radiated.

Phryné, for one fleeting moment, had revealed to him that she, too, had
known this formless dread, but only latterly; probably from lack of a
more definite date, she had spoken of this fear as first visiting her at
about the time of the Frenchman's advent.

"Slowly, he has changed towards me," she had whispered, referring to Dr.
Kassimere. "He watches me, sometimes, in a strange way. Oh, he has been
so good, so very kind and good, but--I shall be glad when----"

Could some part of the mystery be explained away by the doctor's
increasing absorption in his studies, which led him to regard the charge
of a ward, and a wayward one at that, as unduly onerous and disturbing?
Might it not fairly be supposed that ignorant superstition and the
ravings of unrequited passion accounted for the rest?

At the nature of Dr. Kassimere's studies he could not even guess. The
greater number of the works in the library related to mysticism in one
form or another, although there was a sprinkling of exact science to
leaven the whole.

"He can rely upon my word," Waynwright had said. Regarding what, or
regarding whom, had he given his word?

The cry of a night-hawk came, as if in answer; the hoot of an owl, as if
in mockery. Out beyond the terrace a dull red light showed from Dr.
Kassimere's laboratory.


V

Enlightenment came about in this fashion--seeking to quench a feverish
thirst, Dillon discovered that no glass had been left in his room. He
determined to fetch one from the buffet cupboard downstairs. Softly, in
slippered feet, he descended the stairs and was crossing the hallway
when he kicked something--a small book, he thought--that lay there upon
the floor. Groping, he found it, slipped it into the pocket of his
dressing-gown, and entered the dining-room. He found a tumbler without
difficulty, in the dark, noted the presence of a heavy, oppressive
odour, and returned upstairs. Now he made another discovery. He had
forgotten the nightly draught of medicine prescribed by Dr. Kassimere;
a new unopened phial stood upon the dressing-table.

He mixed himself a mild whisky and soda from the decanter and siphon
which his host's hospitality caused nightly to be placed in his room,
and then, seized by a sudden thought, took out the little book which he
had found in the hall.

It was a faded manuscript, in monkish Latin; a copy of an unpublished
work of Paracelsus. Many passages had been rendered into English, and
the translations, in Dr. Kassimere's minute, cramped writing, were
interposed between the bound pages. In these again were interpolated
marginal notes, some in the shape of unintelligible symbols, others in
that of chemical formulæ. Several passages were marked in red ink.
And, having perused the first of these which he chanced upon, a clammy
moisture broke out upon his skin, accompanied by so marked a nervous
trembling that he was forced to seat himself upon the bed.

The secret of this man's ghastly life-work was in his hands; he knew,
now, what bargain Dr. Kassimere had proposed to the Frenchman and to
the other; he knew why he had adopted the lovely daughter of Louis
Devant--and he knew why he, Jack Dillon, had been invited to Hollow
Grange. That such a ghoul in human shape could live and have his being
amid ordinary mankind was a stupendous improbability which, ten minutes
earlier, he would have laughed to scorn.

"My God!" he whispered. "My God!"

His glance fell upon the unopened phial on his dressing-table, and from
his soul a silent thanksgiving rose to heaven that he had left that
potion untasted. He realised that his own case differed from those of
his predecessors in two particulars: He was actually in residence under
Dr. Kassimere's roof and receiving treatment from the man's hands. No
option was to be offered to _him_; the great experiment, the _Magnum
Opus_, was to be performed without his consent!

And Phryné!--Phryné, the other innocent victim of this fiend's lust
for knowledge! The thought restored his courage. More than life itself
depended upon his coolness and address; he must act, at once. The
monstrous possibility hinted at by von Hohenheim--in his earliest
published work, _Practica D. Theophrasti Paracelsi_, printed at Augsburg
in 1529, was, in this hideous pamphlet, elaborated and brought within
the bounds of practical experiment.

He crept to the door, opened it, and stood listening intently. That
silence which seemed like a palpable cloud--a cloud masking the presence
of one who watched--lay over the house. Slowly he descended to the
hall and dropped the horror which the evil genius of von Hohenheim had
conceived, upon the spot where it had lain when his foot had discovered
it.

A creaking sound warned him of some one's approach, and he had barely
time to slip behind some draperies ere a cowled figure bearing a lantern
came out into the hall. It was Dr. Kassimere, wearing a loose gown
having a monkish hood--and he was searching for something.

Nothing in his experience--not the blood-lust seen in the eyes of men
in battle--had prepared him for that which transfigured the face of
Dr. Kassimere. The strange semblance of Thoth was there no more; it had
given place to another, more active malevolence, to a sort of Satanic
_eagerness_ indescribably terrifying; it was the face of one possessed.

Like some bird of prey he pounced upon the book, thrust it into the
pocket of his gown, and began furtively to retrace his steps. As he
entered the big dining-room, Dillon was close upon his heels.

Dr. Kassimere passed into the small room beyond and turned from thence
into the library. Dillon, observing every precaution, followed. From the
library the doctor entered the short, narrow passage leading to that
quaint relic of bygone days and ways--the tiny chapel. At the entrance
Dillon paused, watchful. Once, the man in the monkish robe turned, on
the time-worn step of the altar, and looked back over his shoulder,
revealing a face that might well have been that of Asmodeus himself.

On the left of the altar was the cupboard wherein, no doubt, in past
ages, the priest had kept his vestments. The oppressive odour which
Dillon had first observed in the dining-room was very perceptible in the
chapel; and as Dr. Kassimere opened the door of the cupboard and stepped
within, an explanation of the presence of this deathly smell in the
house occurred to Dillon's mind. The laboratory adjoined the Grange on
this side; here was a private entrance known to, and used by, Dr.
Kassimere alone.

His surmise proved to be correct. Occasioning scarcely a sound, the
secret door opened, and a fiery glow leapt out across the altar steps,
accompanied by a wave of heated air laden with the nauseous, unnameable
smell. Within the redly lighted doorway, Dr. Kassimere paused, and
glanced at a watch which he wore upon his wrist. Then for a moment he
disappeared, to reappear carrying a small squat bottle and a contrivance
of wire and gauze the sight of which created in Dillon a sense of
physical nausea. It was a chloroform-mask! Both he placed upon a vaguely
seen table and again approached the door.

Weakly, Dillon fell back, pressing himself, closely against the chapel
wall, as the doctor, this time leaving the secret entrance open--with a
purpose in view which the watcher shudderingly recognized--recrossed the
chapel and went off, softly treading, in the direction of the library.

All his courage, moral and physical, was called upon now, and knowing,
by some intuition of love, what and whom he should find there, he
stepped unsteadily into Dr. Kassimere's laboratory....

That there were horrors--monstrosities that may not be described,
whose names may not be written--in the place, he realised, in some
subconscious fashion; but--prone upon a low, metal couch of most curious
workmanship lay Phryné, in her night-robe, still--white; perfect in her
pale beauty as her namesake who posed for Praxiteles.

Dillon reeled, steadied himself, and sank upon his knees by the couch.

"Phryné!" he whispered, locking his arms about her--"my Phryné!..."

Then he remembered the gauze mask and even detected the sickly, sweet
smell of the anaesthetic. Anger gave him new strength; he raised the
girl in his arms and turned towards the door communicating with the
chapel.

Framed in the opening was the hooded figure of Dr. Kassimere,
confronting him. His face was immobile again, with the immobility of
ibis-headed Thoth; his eyes were hard, his voice was cold.

"What is the meaning of this outrage?" he demanded sternly. "Phryné has
been taken suddenly ill; an immediate operation may be necessary----"

"Out of my way!" said Dillon, advancing past a huge glass jar filled
with reddish liquid that stood upon a pedestal between the couch and the
door.

"Be careful, you fool!" shrieked Dr. Kassimere, frenziedly, his calm
dropping from him like a cloak and a new and dreadful light coming into
the staring eyes.

But he was too late. Dillon's foot had caught the pedestal. With a
resounding crash the thing overturned; as Dr. Kassimere sprang forward,
he slipped in the slimy stream that was pouring over the laboratory
floor--and fell....

Laying Phryné upon the altar, her head resting against the age-worn
communion rails, Dillon turned and closed the secret door dividing the
house of God from the house of Satan. One glimpse, in the red furnace
glow, he had of Dr. Kassimere, writhing upon the slimy floor, shrieking,
blaspheming--and fighting, fighting madly, as a man fights for life and
more than life....

He had not yet carried the unconscious girl beyond the dining-room,
when, above that other smell, he detected the odour of burning wood. A
fire had broken out in the laboratory.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mrs. Jack Dillon mourns her guardian (no trace of whom was ever found in
the charred remains of Hollow Grange) to this day; for she retains no
memory of the night of the great fire, but believes that, overcome by
the fumes, she was rescued and carried insensible from the house, by
her lover. In the latter's bosom the grim secret is locked, with the
memory of a demoniac figure, fighting, fighting....



The Curse of a Thousand Kisses


Introductory

Saville Grainger will long be remembered by the public as a brilliant
journalist and by his friends as a confirmed misogynist. His distaste
for the society of women amounted to a mania, and to Grainger a pretty
face was like a red rag to a bull. This was all the more extraordinary
and, for Grainger, more painful, because he was one of the most
handsome men I ever knew--very dark, with wonderful flashing eyes and
the features of an early Roman--or, as I have since thought, of an
aristocratic Oriental; aquiline, clean-cut, and swarthy. At any mixed
gathering at which he appeared, women gravitated in his direction as
though he possessed some magnetic attraction for the sex; and Grainger
invariably bolted.

His extraordinary end--never explained to this day--will be remembered
by some of those who read of it; but so much that affected whole
continents has occurred in the interval that to the majority of the
public the circumstances will no longer be familiar. It created a
considerable stir in Cairo at the time, as was only natural, but
when the missing man failed to return, the nine days' wonder of his
disappearance was forgotten in the excitement of some new story or
another.

Briefly, Grainger, who was recuperating at Mena House after a rather
severe illness in London, went out one evening for a stroll, wearing a
light dust-coat over his evening clothes and smoking a cigarette. He
turned in the direction of the Great Pyramid--and never came back. That
is the story in its bald entirety. No one has ever seen him since--or
ever reported having seen him.

If the following story is an elaborate hoax--perpetrated by Grainger
himself, for some obscure reason remaining in hiding, or by another well
acquainted with his handwriting--I do not profess to say. As to how it
came into my possession, that may be told very briefly. Two years after
Grainger's disappearance I was in Cairo, and although I was not staying
at Mena House I sometimes visited friends there. One night as I came
out of the hotel to enter the car which was to drive me back to the
Continental, a tall native, dressed in white and so muffled up that
little more of his face than two gleaming eyes was visible, handed me
a packet--a roll of paper, apparently--saluted me with extraordinary
formality, and departed.

No one else seemed to have noticed the man, although the chauffeur, of
course, was nearly as close to him as I was, and a servant from the
hotel had followed me out and down the steps. I stood there in the dusk,
staring at the packet in my hand and then after the tall figure--already
swallowed up in the shadow of the road. Naturally I assumed that the man
had made some mistake, and holding the package near the lamp of the car
I examined it closely.

It was a roll of some kind of parchment, tied with a fragment of thin
string, and upon the otherwise blank outside page my name was written
very distinctly!

I entered the car, rather dazed by the occurrence, which presented
several extraordinary features, and, unfastening the string, began
to read. Then, in real earnest, I thought I must be dreaming. Since I
append the whole of the manuscript I will make no further reference to
the contents here, but will content myself with mentioning that it was
written--with dark-brown ink--in Saville Grainger's unmistakable hand
upon some kind of parchment or papyrus which has defied three different
experts to whom I have shown it, but which, in short, is of unknown
manufacture. The twine with which it was tied proved to be of finely
plaited reed.

That part of Grainger's narrative, if the following amazing statement
is really the work of Grainger, which deals with events up to the time
that he left Mena House--and the world--I have been able to check. The
dragoman, Hassan Abd-el-Kebîr, was still practising his profession at
Mena House at the time of my visit, and he confirmed the truth of
Grainger's story in regard to the heart of lapis-lazuli, which he had
seen, and the meeting with the old woman in the Mûski--of which Grainger
had spoken to him.

For the rest, the manuscript shall tell Grainger's story.


THE MANUSCRIPT

I

Two years have elapsed since I quitted the world, and the presence in
Egypt of a one-time colleague, of which I have been advised, prompts me
to put on record these particulars of the strangest, most wonderful, and
most beautiful experience which has ever befallen any man. I do not
expect my story to be believed. The scepticism of the material world of
Fleet Street will consume my statement with its devouring fires. But I
do not care. The old itching to make a "story" is upon me. As a "story"
let this paper be regarded.

Where the experience actually began I must leave to each reader to judge
for himself. I, personally, do not profess to know, even now. But the
curtain first arose upon that part of the story which it is my present
purpose to chronicle one afternoon near the corner of the Street
of the Silversmiths in Cairo. I was wandering in those wonderful
narrow, winding lanes, unaccompanied, for I am by habit a solitary
being; and despite my ignorance of the language and customs of the
natives I awakened to the fact that a link of sympathy--of silent
understanding--seemed to bind me to these busy brown men.

I had for many years cherished a secret ambition to pay a protracted
visit to Egypt, but the ties of an arduous profession hitherto had
rendered its realisation impossible. Now, a stranger in a strange land,
I found myself _at home_. I cannot hope to make evident to my readers
the completeness of this recognition. From Shepheard's, with its throngs
of cosmopolitan travellers and its hosts of pretty women, I had early
fled in dismay to the comparative quiet of Mena House. But the only real
happiness I ever knew--indeed, as I soon began to realise, had ever
known--I found among the discordant cries and mingled smells of perfume
and decay in the native city. The desert called to me sweetly, but it
was the people, the shops, the shuttered houses, the noise and the
smells of the Eastern streets which gripped my heart.

Delightedly I watched the passage of those commercial vehicles, narrow
and set high upon monstrous wheels, which convey loads of indescribable
variety along streets no wider than the "hall" of a small suburban
residence. The Parsees in the Khân Khalîl with their carpets and
shining silk-ware, the Arab dealers, fierce swarthy tradesmen from the
desert, and the smooth-tongued Cairenes upholding embroidered cloths and
gauzy _yashmaks_ to allure the eye--all these I watched with a kind of
gladness that was almost tender, that was unlike any sentiment I had
ever experienced toward my fellow-creatures before.

Mendicants crying the eternal "_Bakshîsh!_", _Sakhas_ with their skins
of Nile water, and the other hundred and one familiar figures of the
quarter filled me with a great and glad contentment.

I purposely haunted the Mûski during the heat of the day because at
that hour it was comparatively free from the presence of Europeans and
Americans. Thus, on the occasion of which I write, coming to the end
of the street in which the shops of the principal silversmiths are
situated, I found myself to be the only white man (if I except the
Greeks) in the immediate neighbourhood.

A group of men hurrying out of the street as I approached it first
attracted my attention. They were glancing behind them apprehensively
as though at a rabid dog. Then came a white-bearded man riding a tiny
donkey and also glancing back apprehensively over his shoulder. He all
but collided with me in his blind haste; and, stepping quickly aside to
avoid him, I knocked down an old woman who was coming out of the street.

The man who had been the real cause of the accident rode off at headlong
speed and I found myself left with the poor victim of my clumsiness
in a spot which seemed miraculously to have become deserted. If the
shopkeepers remained in their shops, they were invisible, and must
have retreated into the darkest corners of the caves in the wall which
constitute native emporiums. Pedestrians there were none.

I stooped to the old woman, who lay moaning at my feet ... and as I did
so, I shrank. How can I describe the loathing, the repulsion which I
experienced? Never in the whole of my career had I seen such a hideous
face. A ragged black veil which she wore had been torn from its brass
fastenings as she fell, and her countenance was revealed in all its
appalling ugliness. Yellow, shrivelled, toothless, it was scarcely
human; but, above all, it repelled because of its aspect of _extreme
age_. I do not mean that it was like the face of a woman of eighty;
it was like that of a woman who had miraculously survived decease for
several centuries! It was a witch-face, a deathly face.

And as I shrank, she opened her eyes, moaning feebly, and groping with
claw-like hands as if darkness surrounded her. Furthermore I saw a new
pain, and a keener pain, light up those aged eyes. She had detected my
involuntary movement of loathing.

Those who knew me will bear testimony to the fact that I was not an
emotional man or one readily impressionable by any kind of human appeal.
Therefore they will wonder the more to learn that this pathetic light in
the old woman's eyes changed my revulsion to a poignant sorrow. I had
roughly knocked her from her feet and now hesitated to assist her to
rise again! Truly, she was scorned and rejected by all. A wave of
tenderness, that cannot be described, that could not be resisted, swept
over me. My eyes grew misty and a great remorse claimed me.

"Poor old soul!" I whispered.

Stooping, I gently raised the shrivelled, ape-like head, resting it
against my knee; and, bending down, I kissed the old woman on the brow!

I record the fact, but even now, looking back upon its happening, and
seeking to recapture the cold, solitary Saville Grainger who has left
the world, I realise the wonder of it. That _I_ should have given rein
to such an impulse! That such an impulse should have stirred me! Which
phenomenon was the more remarkable?

The result of my act--regretted as soon as performed--was singular. The
aged, hideous creature sighed in a manner I can never forget, and an
expression that almost lent comeliness to her features momentarily crept
over her face. Then she rose to her feet with difficulty, raised her
hands as if blessing me, and muttering something in Arabic went
shuffling along the deserted street, stooping as she walked.

Apparently the episode had passed unnoticed. Certainly if anyone
witnessed it he was well concealed. But, conscious of a strange
embarrassment, with which were mingled other tumultuous emotions, I
turned out of the Street of the Silversmiths and found myself amid the
normal activities of the quarter again. The memory of the Kiss was
repugnant, I wanted to wipe my lips--but something seemed to forbid the
act; a lingering compassion that was almost a yearning.

For once in my life I desired to find myself among normal, healthy,
moderately brainless Europeans. I longed for the smell of cigar-smoke,
for the rattle of the cocktail-maker and the sight of a pretty face. I
hurried to Shepheard's.


II

The same night, after dinner, I walked out of Mena House to look for
Hassan Abd-el-Kebîr, the dragoman with whom I had contracted for a
journey, by camel, to Sakhâra on the following day. He had promised to
attend at half-past eight in order to arrange the time of starting in
the morning, together with some other details.

I failed to find him, however, among the dragomans and other natives
seated outside the hotel, and to kill time I strolled leisurely down the
road toward the electric-tram terminus. I had taken no more than ten
paces, I suppose, when a tall native, muffled to the tip of his nose in
white and wearing a white turban, appeared out of the darkness beside
me, thrust a small package into my hand, and, touching his brow, his
lips and his breast with both hands, bowed and departed. I saw him no
more!

Standing there in the road, I stared at the little package stupidly. It
consisted of a piece of fine white silk fastened about some small, hard
object. Evidently, I thought, there had been a mistake. The package
could not have been intended for me.

Returning to the hotel, I stood near a lamp and unfastened the silk,
which was delicately perfumed. It contained a piece of lapis-lazuli
carved in the form of a heart, beautifully mounted in gold and bearing
three Arabic letters, inlaid in some way, also in gold!

At this singular ornament I stared harder than ever. Certainly the
muffled native had made a strange mistake. This was a love-token--and
emphatically not for _me_!

I was standing there lost in wonderment, the heart of lapis-lazuli in my
palm, when the voice of Hassan disturbed my stupor.

"Ah, my gentleman, I am sorry to be late but----"

The voice ceased. I looked up.

"Well?" I said.

Then I, too, said no more. Hassan Abd-el-Kebîr was glaring at the
ornament in my hand as though I had held, not a very choice example of
native jewellery, but an adder or a scorpion!

"What's the matter?" I asked, recovering from my surprise. "Do you know
to whom this amulet belongs?"

He muttered something in guttural Arabic ere replying to my question.
Then:

"It is the heart of lapis," he said, in a strange voice. "It is the
heart of lapis!"

"So much is evident," I cried, laughing. "But does it alarm you?"

"Please," he said softly, and held out a brown hand--"I will see."

I placed the thing in his open palm and he gazed at it as one might
imagine an orchid hunter would gaze at a new species of _Odontoglossum_.

"What do the figures mean?" I asked.

"They form the word _alf_," he replied.

"_Alf?_ Somebody's name!" I said, still laughing.

"In Arab it mean ten hundred," he whispered.

"A thousand?"

"Yes--one thousand."

"Well?"

Hassan returned the ornament to me, and his expression was so strange
that I began to grow really annoyed. He was looking at me with a
mingling of envy and compassion which I found to be quite insufferable.

"Hassan," I said sternly, "you will tell me all you know about this
matter. One would imagine that you suspected me of stealing the thing!"

"Ah, no, my gentleman!" he protested earnestly. "But I will tell you,
yes, only you will not believe me."

"Never mind. Tell me."

Thereupon Hassan Abd-el-Kebîr told me the most improbable story to which
I had ever listened. Since to reproduce it in his imperfect English,
with my own frequent interjections, would be tedious, I will give it in
brief. Some of the historical details, imperfectly related by Hassan as
I learned later, I have corrected.

In the reign of the Khalîf El-Mamûn--a son of Hárûn er-Rashîd and
brother of the prototype of Beckford's _Vathek_--one Shâwar was Governor
of Egypt, and the daughter of the Governor, Scheherazade, was famed
throughout the domains of the Khalîf as the most beautiful maiden in the
land. Wazîrs and princes sought her hand in vain. Her heart was given
to a handsome young merchant of Cairo, Ahmad er-Mâdi, who was also the
wealthiest man in the city. Shâwar, although an indulgent father, would
not hear of such a union, however, but he hesitated to destroy his
daughter's happiness by forcing her into an unwelcome marriage. Finally,
passion conquered reason in the breasts of the lovers and they fled,
Scheherazade escaping from the palace of her father by means of a
rope-ladder smuggled into the _harêm_ apartments by a slave whom Ahmad's
gold had tempted, and meeting Ahmad outside the gardens where he waited
with a fleet horse.

Even the guard at the city gate had been bought by the wealthy merchant,
and the pair succeeded in escaping from Cairo.

The extensive possessions of Ahmad were confiscated by the enraged
father and a sentence of death was passed upon the absent man--to be
instantly put into execution in the event of his arrest anywhere within
the domain of the Khalîf.

Exiled in a distant oasis, the Sheikh of which was bound to Ahmad by
ties of ancient friendship, the prospect which had seemed so alluring to
Scheherazade became clouded. Recognising this change in her attitude,
Ahmad er-Mâdi racked his brains for some scheme whereby he might recover
his lost wealth and surround his beautiful wife with the luxury to
which she had been accustomed. In this extremity he had recourse to a
certain recluse who resided in a solitary spot in the desert far from
the haunts of men and who was widely credited with magical powers.

It was a whole week's journey to the abode of the wizard, and, unknown
to Ahmad, during his absence a son of the Khalîf, visiting Egypt,
chanced to lose his way on a hunting expedition, and came upon the
secret oasis in which Scheherazade was hiding. This prince had been one
of her most persistent suitors.

The ancient magician consented to receive Ahmad, and the first boon
which the enamoured young man craved of him was that he might grant him
a sight of Scheherazade. The student of dark arts consented. Bidding
Ahmad to look into a mirror, he burned the secret perfumes and uttered
the prescribed incantation. At first mistily, and then quite clearly,
Ahmad saw Scheherazade, standing in the moonlight beneath a tall palm
tree--her lips raised to those of her former suitor!

At that the world grew black before the eyes of Ahmad. And he, who had
come a long and arduous journey at the behest of love, now experienced
an equally passionate hatred. Acquainting the magician with what he had
seen, he demanded that he should exercise his art in visiting upon the
false Scheherazade the most terrible curse that it lay within his power
to invoke!

The learned man refused; whereupon Ahmad, insane with sorrow and anger,
drew his sword and gave the magician choice of compliance or instant
death. The threat sufficed. The wizard performed a ghastly conjuration,
calling down upon Scheherazade the curse of an ugliness beyond that of
humanity, and which should remain with her not for the ordinary span of
a lifetime but for incalculable years, during which she should continue
to live in the flesh, loathed, despised, and shunned of all!

"Until one thousand compassionate men, unasked and of their own free
will, shall each have bestowed a kiss upon thee," was the exact text of
the curse. "Then thou shalt regain thy beauty, thy love--and death."

Ahmad er-Mâdi staggered out from the cavern, blinded by a hundred
emotions--already sick with remorse; and one night's stage on his return
journey dropped dead from his saddle ... stricken by the malignant will
of the awful being whose power he had invoked! I will conclude this wild
romance in the words of Hassan, the dragoman, as nearly as I can recall
them.

"And so," he said, his voice lowered in awe, "Scheherazade, who was
stricken with age and ugliness in the very hour that the curse was
spoken, went out into the world, my gentleman. She begged her way from
place to place, and as the years passed by accumulated much wealth in
that manner. Finally, it is said, she returned to Cairo, her native
city, and there remained. To each man who bestowed a kiss upon her--and
such men were rare--she caused a heart of lapis to be sent, and upon the
heart was engraved in gold the number of the kiss! It is said that
these gifts ensured to those upon whom they were bestowed the certain
possession of their beloved! Once before, when I was a small child,
I saw such an amulet, and the number upon it was nine hundred and
ninety-nine."

The thing was utterly incredible, of course; merely a picturesque
example of Eastern imagination; but just to see what effect it would
have upon him, I told Hassan about the old woman in the Mûski. I had to
do so. Frankly, the coincidence was so extraordinary that it worried
me. When I had finished:

"It was she--Scheherazade," he said fearfully. "And it was the _last_
kiss!"

"What then?" I asked.

"Nothing, my gentleman. I do not know!"


III

Throughout the expedition to Sakhâra on the following day I could not
fail to note that Hassan was covertly watching me--and his expression
annoyed me intensely. It was that compound of compassion and resignation
which one might bestow upon a condemned man.

I charged him with it, but of course he denied any such sentiment.
Nevertheless, I knew that he entertained it, and, what was worse, I
began, in an uncomfortable degree, to share it with him! I cannot make
myself clearer. But I simply felt the normal world to be slipping
from under my feet, and, no longer experiencing a desire to clutch at
modernity as I had done after my meeting with the old woman, I found
myself to be reconciled to my fate!

To my fate? ... to what fate? I did not know; but I realised, beyond
any shade of doubt, that something tremendous, inevitable, and ultimate
was about to happen to me. I caught myself unconsciously raising the
heart of lapis-lazuli to my lips! Why I did so I had no idea; I seemed
to have lost identity. I no longer knew myself.

When Hassan parted from me at Mena House that evening he could not
disguise the fact that he regarded the parting as final; yet my plans
were made for several weeks ahead. Nor did I quarrel with the man's
curious attitude. _I_ regarded the parting as final, also!

In a word I was becoming reconciled--to something. It is difficult, all
but impossible, to render such a frame of mind comprehensible, and I
shall not even attempt the task, but leave the events of the night to
speak for themselves.

After dinner I lighted a cigarette, and avoiding a particularly
persistent and very pretty widow who was waiting to waylay me in the
lounge, I came out of the hotel and strolled along in the direction of
the Pyramid. Once I looked back--bidding a silent farewell to Mena
House! Then I took out the heart of lapis-lazuli from my pocket and
kissed it rapturously--kissed it as I had never kissed any object or
any person in the whole course of my life!

And why I did so I had no idea.

All who read my story will be prepared to learn that in this placid and
apparently feeble frame of mind I slipped from life, from the world. It
was not so. The modern man, the Saville Grainger once known in Fleet
Street, came to life again for one terrible, strenuous moment ... and
then passed out of life for ever.

Just before I reached the Pyramid, and at a lonely spot in the path--for
this was not a "Sphinx and Pyramid night"--that is to say, the moon was
not at the full--a tall, muffled native appeared at my elbow. He was the
same man who had brought me the heart of lapis-lazuli, or his double. I
started.

He touched me lightly on the arm.

"Follow," he said--and pointed ahead into the darkness below the
plateau.

I moved off obediently. Then--suddenly, swiftly, came revolt. The modern
man within me flared into angry life. I stopped dead, and

"Who are you? Where are you leading me?" I cried.

I received no reply.

A silk scarf was slipped over my head by some one who, silently, must
have been following me, and drawn tight enough to prevent any loud
outcry but not so as to endanger my breathing. I fought like a madman. I
knew, and the knowledge appalled me, that I was fighting for life. Arms
like bands of steel grasped me; I was lifted, bound and carried--I knew
not where....

Placed in some kind of softly padded saddle, or, as I have since
learned, into a _shibrîyeh_ or covered litter on a camel's back, I felt
the animal rise to its ungainly height and move off swiftly. As suddenly
as revolt had flamed up, resignation returned. I was contented. My bonds
were unnecessary; my rebellion was ended. I yearned, wildly, for the end
of the desert journey! Some one was calling me and all my soul replied.

For hours, as it seemed, the camel raced ceaselessly on. Absolute
silence reigned about me. Then, in the distance I heard voices, and the
gait of the camel changed. Finally the animal stood still. Came a word
of guttural command, and the camel dropped to its knees. Pillowed among
a pile of scented cushions, I experienced no discomfort from this
usually painful operation.

I was lifted out of my perfumed couch and set upon my feet. Having been
allowed to stand for a while until the effects of remaining so long in a
constrained position had worn off, I was led forward into some extensive
building. Marble pavements were beneath my feet, fountains played, and
the air was heavy with burning ambergris.

I was placed with my back to a pillar and bound there, but not harshly.
The bandage about my head was removed. I stared around me.

A magnificent Eastern apartment met my gaze--a great hall open on one
side to the desert. Out upon the sands I could see a group of men who
had evidently been my captors and my guards. The one who had unfastened
the silk scarf I could not see, but I heard him moving away behind the
pillar to which I was bound.

Stretched upon a luxurious couch before me was a woman.

If I were to seek to describe her I should inevitably fail, for her
loveliness surpassed everything which I had ever beheld--of which I had
ever dreamed. I found myself looking into her eyes, and in their depths
I found all that I had missed in life, and lost all that I had found.

She smiled, rose, and taking a jewelled dagger from a little table
beside her, approached me. My heart beat until I felt almost suffocated
as she came near. And when she bent and cut the silken lashing which
bound me, I knew such rapture as I had hitherto counted an invention of
Arabian poets. I was raised above the joys of common humanity and tasted
the joy of the gods. She placed the dagger in my hand.

"My life is thine," she said. "Take it."

And clutching at the silken raiment draping her beautiful bosom, she
invited me to plunge the blade into her heart!

The knife dropped, clattering upon the marble pavement. For one instant
I hesitated, watching her, devouring her with my eyes; then I swept her
to me and pressed upon her sweet lips the thousand and first kiss....

(NOTE.--The manuscript of Saville Grainger finishes here.)



The Turquoise Necklace


I

"He is the lord of the desert, Effendi," declared Mohammed the dragoman.
"From the Valley of Zered to Damascus he is known and loved, but feared.
They say"--he lowered his voice--"that he is a great _welee_, and that
he is often seen in the street of the attars, having the appearance of a
simple old man; but in the desert he is like a bitter apple, a viper and
a calamity! Overlord is he of the Bedouins, and all the sons of the
desert bow to Ben Azreem, Sheikh of the Ibn-Rawallah."

"What is a _welee_, exactly?" asked Graham.

"A man of God, Effendi, favoured beyond other men."

"And this Arab Sheikh is a _welee_?"

"So it is said. He goes about secretly aiding the poor and afflicted,
when he may be known by his white beard----"

"There are many white beards in Egypt," said Graham.

But the other continued, ignoring the interruption:

"And in the desert, Ben Azreem, a horseman unrivalled, may be known by
the snow-white horse which he rides, or if he is not so mounted, by his
white camel, swifter than the glance of envy, more surefooted than the
eager lover who climbs to his enslaver's window."

"Indeed!" said Graham dryly. "Well, I hope I may have the pleasure of
meeting this mysterious notability before I leave the country."

"Unless you journey across the sands for many days, it is unlikely. For
when he comes into Egypt he reveals himself to none but the supremely
good,"--Graham stared--"and the supremely wicked!" added Mohammed.

The poetic dragoman having departed, Graham leaned over to his wife, who
had sat spellbound, her big blue eyes turned to the face of Mohammed
throughout his romantic narrative.

"These wild native legends appeal to you, don't they?" he said, smiling
and patting her hand affectionately. "You superstitious little
colleen!"

Eileen Graham blushed, and the blush of a pretty Irish bride is a very
beautiful thing.

"Don't you believe it at all, then?" she asked softly.

"I believe there may be such a person as Ben Azreem, and possibly he's a
very imposing individual. He may even indulge in visits, incognito, to
Cairo, in the manner of the late lamented Hárûn er-Rashîd of _Arabian
Nights_ memory, but I can't say that I believe in _welees_ as a class!"

His wife shrugged her pretty shoulders.

"There is something that _I_ have to tell you, which I suppose you will
also refuse to believe," she said, with mock indignation. "You remember
the Arabs whom we saw at the exhibition in London?"

Graham started.

"The gentlemen who were advertised as 'chiefs from the Arabian Desert'?
I remember _one_ in particular."

"That is the one I mean," said Eileen.

Her husband looked at her curiously.

"Your explanation is delightfully lucid, dear!" he said jocularly.
"My memories of the gentleman known as El-Suleym, I believe, are
not pleasant; his memories of me must be equally unfavourable. He
illustrated the fact that savages should never be introduced into
civilised society, however fascinating they may be personally. Mrs.
Marstham was silly enough to take the man up, and because of the way he
looked at you, I was wise enough to knock him down! What then?"

"Only this--I saw him, to-day!"

"Eileen!" There was alarm in Graham's voice. "Where? Here, or in Cairo?"

"As we were driving away from the mosque of the Whirling Dervishes. He
was one of a group who stood by the bridge."

"You are certain?"

"Quite certain."

"Did he see you?"

"I couldn't say. He gave no sign to show that he had seen me."

John Graham lighted a cigarette with much care.

"It doesn't matter, anyway," he said, carelessly. "You are as safe here
as at the _Ritz_."

But there was unrest in the glance which he cast out across the prospect
touched by moon-magic into supernatural beauty.

In the distance gleamed a fairy city of silvern minarets, born, it
seemed, from the silvern stream. Beyond lay the night mystery of the
desert, into whose vastness marched the ghostly acacias. The discordant
chattering and chanting from the river-bank merged into a humming song,
not unmusical. The howling of the dogs, even, found a place in the
orchestral scheme.

Behind him, in the hotel, was European and American life--modernity;
before him was that other life, endless and unchanging. There was
something cold, sombre, and bleak in the wonderful prospect, something
shocking in the presence of those sight-seeing, careless folk, the
luxurious hotel, _all_ that was Western and new, upon that threshold of
the ancient, changeless desert.

A menace, too, substantial yet cloaked with the mystery of the
motherland of mysteries, had arisen now. Although he had assured Eileen
that Gizeh was as safe as Piccadilly, he had too much imagination to be
unaware that from the Egypt of Cook's to the Egypt of secrets is but a
step.

None but the very young or very sanguine traveller looks for adventure
nowadays in the neighbourhood of Mena House. When the intrepid George
Sandys visited and explored the Great Pyramid, it was at peril of his
life, but Graham reflected humorously that the most nervous old ladies
now performed the feat almost daily. Yet out here in the moonlight where
the silence was, out beyond the radius of "sights," lay a land unknown
to Europe, as every desert is unknown.

It was a thought that had often come to him, but it came to-night with a
force and wearing a significance which changed the aspect of the sands,
the aspect of all Egypt.

He glanced at the charming girl beside him. Eileen, too, was looking
into the distance with far-away gaze. The pose of her head was
delightful, and he sat watching her in silence. Within the hotel the
orchestra had commenced softly to play; but Graham did not notice the
fact. He was thinking how easily one could be lost out upon that grey
ocean, with its islands of priestly ruins.

"It is growing rather chilly, dear," he said suddenly; "even for fur
wraps. Suppose we go in?"


II

The crowd in the bazaar was excessive, and the bent old figure which
laboured beneath a nondescript burden, wrapped up in a blue cloth,
passed from the noisiness out into the narrow street which ran at
right-angles with the lane of many shops.

Perhaps the old Arab was deaf, perhaps wearied to the point of
exhaustion; but, from whatever cause, he ignored, or was unaware of, the
oncoming _arabeeyeh_, whose driver had lost control of his horse. Even
the shrill scream of the corpulent, white-veiled German lady, who was
one of its passengers, failed to arouse him. Out into the narrow roadway
he staggered, bent almost double.

Graham, accompanied by Mohammed, was some distance away, haggling with a
Greek thief who held the view that a return of three hundred and fifty
per cent. spelled black ruination.

Eileen, finding the air stifling, had walked on in the direction of the
less crowded street above. Thus it happened that she, and the poor old
porter, alone, were in the path of the onward-whirling carriage.

Many women so placed would have stood, frozen with horror, have been
struck down by the frantic animal; some would have had sufficient
presence of mind to gain the only shelter attainable in time--that of a
deep-set doorway. Few would have acted as Eileen acted.

It was under the stimulus of that Celtic impetuosity--that generous
madness which seems to proceed, not from the mind, but from the
heart--that she leapt, not back, but forward.

She never knew exactly what took place, nor how she escaped destruction;
but there was a roaring in her ears, above it rising the Teutonic
screams of the lady in the _arabeeyeh_; there was a confused chorus of
voices, a consciousness of effort; and she found herself, with wildly
beating heart, crouching back into the recess which once had held a
_mastabah_.

From some place invisible, around a bend in the tortuous street, came
sounds of shouting and that of lashing hoofs. The runaway was stopped.
At her feet lay a shapeless bundle wrapped in a blue cloth, and beside
her, leaning back against the whitewashed wall, and breathing with
short, sobbing breaths, was the old porter.

Now, her husband had his arms about her, and Mohammed, with frightened
eyes, hovered in the background. Without undue haste, all the bazaar
gradually was coming upon the scene.

"My darling, are you hurt?"

John Graham's voice shook. He was deathly pale.

Eileen smiled reassuringly.

"Not a bit, dear," she said breathlessly. "But I am afraid the poor old
man is."

"You are quite sure you are not hurt?"

"I was not so much as touched, though honestly I don't know how either
of us escaped. But do see if the old man is injured."

Graham turned to the rescued porter, who now had recovered his
composure.

"Mohammed, ask him if he is hurt," he directed.

Mohammed put the question. A curious group surrounded the party. But the
old man, ignoring all, knelt and bowed his bare head to the dust at
Eileen's feet.

"Oh, John," cried the girl, "ask him to stand up! I feel ashamed to see
such a venerable old man kneeling before me!"

"Tell him it is--nothing," said Graham hastily to Mohammed,
"and--er----"--he fumbled in his pocket--"give him this."

But Mohammed, looking ill at ease, thrust aside the proffered
_bakshîsh_--a novel action which made Graham stare widely.

"He would not take it, Effendi," he whispered. "See, his turban lies
there; he is a _hadj_. He is praying for the eternal happiness of his
preserver, and he is interceding with the Prophet (_Salla--'lláhu
'aleyhi wasellum_), that she may enjoy the delights of Paradise equally
with all true Believers!"

"Very good of him," said Graham, who, finding the danger passed and his
wife safe, was beginning to feel embarrassed. "Thank him, and tell him
that she is greatly indebted!"

He took Eileen's arm, and turned to force a way through the strangely
silent group about. But the aged porter seized the hem of the girl's
white skirt, gently detaining her. As he rose upon his knees, Mohammed,
with marks of unusual deference, handed him his green turban. The old
man, still clutching Eileen's dress, signed that his dirty bundle should
likewise be passed to him. This was done.

Graham was impatient to get away. But----

"Humour him for a moment, dear," said Eileen softly. "We don't want to
hurt the poor old fellow's feelings."

Into the bundle the old man plunged his hand, and drew out a thin gold
chain upon which hung a queerly cut turquoise. He stood upright, raised
the piece of jewellery to his forehead and to his lips, and held it out,
the chain stretched across his open palms, to Eileen.

"He must be some kind of pedlar," said Graham.

Eileen shook her head, smiling.

"Mohammed, tell him that I cannot possibly take his chain," she
directed. "But thank him all the same, of course."

Mohammed, his face averted from the statuesque old figure, bent to her
ear.

"Take it!" he whispered. "Take it! Do not refuse!"

There was a sort of frightened urgency in his tones, so that both Graham
and his wife looked at him curiously.

"Take it, then, Eileen," said Graham quickly. "And, Mohammed, you must
find out who he is, and we will make it up to him in some way."

"Yes, yes, Effendi," agreed the man readily.

Eileen accordingly accepted the present, glancing aside at her husband
to intimate that they must not fail to pay for it. As she took the chain
in her hands, the donor said something in a low voice.

"Hang it round your neck," translated Mohammed.

Eileen did so, whispering:

"You must not lose sight of him, Mohammed."

Mohammed nodded; and the old man, replacing his turban and making a low
obeisance, spoke rapidly a few words, took up his bundle, and departed.
The silent bystanders made way for him.

"Come on," said Graham; "I am anxious to get out of this. Find a
carriage, Mohammed. We'll lunch at Shepheard's."

A carriage was obtained, and they soon left far behind them the scene of
this odd adventure. With Mohammed perched up on the box, Graham and his
wife could discuss the episode without restraint. Graham, however, did
most of the talking, for Eileen was strangely silent.

"It is quite a fine stone," he said, examining the necklace so curiously
acquired. "We must find some way of repaying the old chap which will not
offend his susceptibilities."

Eileen nodded absently; and her husband, with his eyes upon the dainty
white figure, found gratitude for her safety welling up like a hot
spring in his heart. The action had been characteristic; and he longed
to reprove her for risking her life, yet burned to take her in his arms
for the noble impulse that had prompted her to do so.

He wondered anxiously if her silence could be due to the after-effects
of that moment of intense excitement.

"You don't feel unwell, darling?" he whispered.

She smiled at him radiantly, and gave his hand a quick little squeeze.

"Of course not," she said.

But she remained silent to the end of the short drive. This was not due
to that which her husband feared, however, but to the fact that she had
caught a glimpse, amongst the throng at the corner of the bazaar, of the
handsome, sinister face of El-Suleym, the Bedouin.


III

The moon poured radiance on the desert. At the entrance to a camel-hair
tent stood a tall, handsome man, arrayed in the picturesque costume of
the Bedouin. The tent behind him was upheld by six poles. The ends and
one side were pegged to the ground, and the whole of that side before
which he stood was quite open, with the exception of a portion before
which hung a goat-hair curtain.

This was the "house of hair" of the Sheikh El-Suleym, of the
Masr-Bishareen--El-Suleym, "the Regicide" outcast of the great tribe of
the Bishareen. At some distance from the Sheikh's tent were some half a
dozen other and smaller tents, housing the rascally following of this
desert outcast.

Little did those who had engaged the picturesque El-Suleym, to display
his marvellous horsemanship in London, know that he and those that came
with him were a scorn among true sons of the desert, pariahs of that
brotherhood which extends from Zered to the Nile, from Tanta to the Red
Sea; little did those who had opened their doors in hospitality to the
dashing horseman dream that they entertained a petty brigand, sought
for by the Egyptian authorities, driven out into ostracism by his own
people.

And now before his tent he stood statuesque in the Egyptian moonlight,
and looked towards Gizeh, less than thirty miles to the north-east.

As El-Suleym looked towards Gizeh, Graham and his wife were seated
before Mena House looking out across the desert. The adventure of the
morning had left its impression upon both of them, and Eileen wore the
gold chain with its turquoise pendant. Graham was smoking in silence,
and thinking, not of the old porter and his odd Eastern gratitude, but
of another figure, and one which often came between his mental eye and
the beauties of that old, beautiful land. Eileen, too, was thinking of
El-Suleym; for the Bedouin now was associated in her mind with the old
pedlar, since she had last seen the handsome, sinister face amid the
throng at the entrance to the bazaar.

Telepathy is a curious fact. Were Graham's reflections _en rapport_ with
his wife's, or were they both influenced by the passionate thoughts of
that other mind, that subtle, cunning mind of the man who at that moment
was standing before his house of hair and seeking with his eagle glance
to defy distance and the night?

"Have you seen--him, again?" asked Graham abruptly. "Since the other day
at the bridge?"

Eileen started. Although he had endeavoured to hide it from her, she was
perfectly well aware of her husband's intense anxiety on her behalf.
She knew, although he prided himself upon having masked his feelings,
that the presence of the Bedouin in Egypt had cast a cloud upon his
happiness. Therefore she had not wished to tell him of her second
encounter with El-Suleym. But to this direct question there could be
only one reply.

"I saw him again--this morning," she said, toying nervously with the
pendant at her neck.

Graham clasped her hand tensely.

"Where?"

"Outside the bazaar, in the crowd."

"You did not--tell me."

"I did not want to worry you."

He laughed dryly.

"It doesn't worry me, Eileen," he said carelessly. "If I were in
Damascus or Aleppo, it certainly might worry me to know that a man, no
doubt actively malignant towards us, was near, perhaps watching; but
Cairo is really a prosaically safe and law-abiding spot. We are as
secure here as we should be at--Shepherd's Bush, say!"

He laughed shortly. Voices floated out to them, nasal, guttural,
strident; voices American, Teutonic, Gallic, and Anglo-Saxon. The
orchestra played a Viennese waltz. Confused chattering, creaking, and
bumping sounded from the river. Out upon the mud walls dogs bayed the
moon.

But beyond the native village, beyond the howling dogs, beyond the
acacia ranks out in the silver-grey mystery of the sands hard by, an
outpost of the Pharaohs, where a ruined shrine of Horus bared its secret
places to the peeping moon, the Sheikh of the Masr-Bishareen smiled.

Graham felt strangely uneasy, and sought by light conversation to shake
off the gloom which threatened to claim him.

"That thief, Mohammed," he said tersely, "has no more idea than Adam, I
believe, who your old porter friend really is."

"Why do you think so?" asked Eileen.

"Because he's up in Cairo to-night, searching for him!"

"How do you know?"

"I cornered him about it this afternoon, and although I couldn't force
an admission from him--I don't think anybody short of an accomplished
K.C. could--he was suspiciously evasive! I gave him four hours to
procure the name and address of the old gentleman to whom we owe the
price of a turquoise necklace. He has not turned up yet!"

Eileen made no reply. Her Celtic imagination had invested the morning's
incident with a mystic significance which she could not hope to impart
to her hard-headed husband.

A dirty and ragged Egyptian boy made his way on to the verandah,
furtively glancing about him, as if anticipating the cuff of an unseen
hand. He sidled up to Graham, thrusting a scrap of paper on to the
little table beside him.

"For me?" said Graham.

The boy nodded; and whilst Eileen watched him interestedly, Graham,
tilting the communication so as to catch the light from the hotel
windows, read the following:

"He is come to here but cannot any farther. I have him waiting the boy
will bring you.

  "Your obedient Effendi,
  MOHAMMED."

Graham laughed grimly, glancing at his watch.

"Only half an hour late," he said, standing up, "Wait here, Eileen; I
shall not be many minutes."

"But I should like to see him, too. He might accept the price from me
where you would fail to induce him to take it."

"Never fear," said her husband; "he wouldn't have come if he meant to
refuse. What shall I offer him?"

"Whatever you think," said Eileen, smiling; "be generous with the poor
old man."

Graham nodded and signed to the boy that he was ready to start.

The night swallowed them up; and Eileen sat waiting, whilst the band
played softly and voices chatted incessantly around her.

Some five minutes elapsed; ten; fifteen. It grew to half an hour, and
she became uneasy. She stood up and began to pace up and down the
verandah. Then the slinking figure of the Egyptian youth reappeared.

"Graham Effendi," he said, showing his gleaming teeth, "says you come
too."

Eileen drew her wrap more closely about her and smiled to the boy to
lead the way.

They passed out from the hotel, turned sharply to the left, made in the
direction of the river, then bore off to the right in the direction of
the sand-dunes. The murmuring life of Mena House died into remoteness;
the discordance of the Arab village momentarily took precedence; then
this, in turn, was lost, and they were making out desert-ward to the
hollow which harbours the Sphinx. Great events in our lives rarely leave
a clear-cut impression; often the turning-point in one's career is a
confused memory, a mere clash of conflicting ideas. Trivial episodes
are sharp silhouettes; unforgettable; great happenings but grey, vague
things in life's panorama. Thus, Eileen never afterwards could quite
recall what happened that night. The thing that was like to have wrecked
her life had no sharp outlines to etch themselves upon the plate of
memory. Vaguely she wondered to what meeting-place the boy was leading
her. Faintly she was conscious of a fear of the growing silence, of
a warning instinct whispering her to beware of the loneliness of the
desert.

Then the boy was gone; the silence was gone; harsh voices were in her
ears--a cloth was whipped about her face and strong arms lifted her. She
was not of a stock that swoon or passively accept violence. She strove
to cry out, but the band was too cunningly fastened to allow of it;
she struck out with clenched fists and not unshrewdly, for twice her
knuckles encountered a bearded face and a suppressed exclamation told
that the blows were not those of a weakling. She kicked furiously and
drew forth a howl of pain from her captor. Her hands flew up to the
bandage, but were roughly seized, thrust down and behind her, and tied
securely.

She was thrown across a saddle, and with a thrill of horror knew herself
a captive. Out into the desert she was borne, into that unknown land
which borders so closely upon the sight-seeing track of Cook's. And her
helplessness, her inability to fight, broke her spirit, born fighter
that she was; and the jarring of the saddle of the galloping horse, the
dull thud of the hoofs on the sand, the iron grip which held her, fear,
anger, all melted into a blank.


IV

Mohammed the dragoman, with two hotel servants, came upon Graham some
time later, gagged and bound behind a sand hillock less than five
hundred yards from Mena House. They had him on his feet in an instant,
unbound; and his face was ghastly--for he knew too well what the outrage
portended.

"Quick!" he said hoarsely. "How long is she gone?"

Mohammed was trembling wildly.

"Nearly an hour, Effendi--nearly an hour. Allah preserve us, what shall
we do? I heard it in Cairo to-night--it is all over the bazaars--the
Sheikh El-Suleym with the Masr-Bishareen is out. They travel like the
wind, Effendi. It is not four days since they stopped a caravan ten
miles beyond Bir-Amber, now they are in Lower Egypt. Allah preserve
her!" he ran on volubly--"who can overtake the horsemen of the
Bishareen?"

So he ran on, wildly, panting as they raced back to the hotel. The place
was in an uproar. It was an event which furnished the guests with such a
piece of local colour as none but the most inexperienced tourist could
have anticipated.

An Arab raid in these days of electric tramways! A captive snatched from
the very doors of Mena House! One would as little expect an Arab raid
upon the _Ritz_!

The authorities at headquarters, advised of the occurrence, found
themselves at a loss how to cope with this stupendous actuality. The
desert had extended its lean arm and snatched a captive to its bosom.
Cairo had never before entirely realised the potentialities of that
all-embracing desert. There are a thousand ways, ten thousand routes,
across that ruin-dotted wilderness. Justly did the ancient people
worship in the moon the queenly Isis; for when the silver emblem of the
goddess claims the sands for her own, to all save the desert-born they
become a place of secrets. Here is a theatre for great dramas, wanting
only the tragedian. The outlawed Sheikh of the Bishareen knew this full
well, but, unlike others who know it, he had acted upon his convictions
and revealed to wondering Egypt what Bedouin craft and a band of
intrepid horsemen can do, aided by a belt of sand, and cloaked by night.

Graham was distracted. For he was helpless, and realised it. Already the
news was in Cairo, and the machinery of the Government at work. But what
machinery, save that of the Omniscient, could avail him now?

A crowd of visitors flocked around him, offering frightened consolation.
He broke away from them violently--swearing--a primitive man who wanted
to be alone with his grief. The idea uppermost in his mind was that of
leaping upon a horse and setting out in pursuit. But in which direction
should he pursue? One declared that the Arabs must have rode this way,
another that, and yet another a third.

Some one shouted--the words came to him as if through a thick
curtain--that the soldiers were coming.

"What the hell's the good of it!" he said, and turned away, biting his
lips.

When a spruce young officer came racing up the steps to gather
particulars, Graham stared at him dully, said, "The Arabs have got
her--my wife," and walked away.

The hoof-clatter and accompanying martial disturbance were faint in the
distance when Mohammed ran in to where Graham was pacing up and down in
an agony of indecision--veritably on the verge of insanity. The dragoman
held a broken gold chain in his hand, from which depended a big
turquoise that seemed to blink in the shaded light.

"Effendi," he whispered, and held it out upon trembling fingers, "it is
her necklet! I found it yonder,"--pointing eastward. "_Sallee 'a-nebee!_
it is her necklet!"

Graham turned, gave one wild glance at the thing, and grasped the man
by the throat, glaring madly upon him.

"You dog!" he shouted. "You were in the conspiracy! It was you who sent
the false messages!"

A moment he held him so, then dropped his hands. Mohammed fell back,
choking; but no malice was in the velvet eyes. The Eastern understands
and respects a great passion.

"Effendi," he gasped--"I am your faithful servant, and--I cannot write!
_Wa-llah!_ and by His mercy, this will save her if anything can!"

He turned and ran fleetly out, Graham staring after him.

It may seem singular that John Graham remained thus inert--inactive. But
upon further consideration his attitude becomes explainable. He knew the
futility of a blind search, and dreaded being absent if any definite
clue should reach the hotel. Meanwhile, he felt that madness was not far
off.

"They say that they have struck out across the Arabian Desert, Mr.
Graham--probably in the direction of the old caravan route."

Graham did not turn; did not know nor care who spoke.

"It's four hundred miles across to the caravan route," he said slowly;
"four hundred miles of sand--of sand."


V

The most simple Oriental character is full of complexity. Mohammed the
dragoman, by birth and education a thief, by nature a sluggard, spared
no effort to reach Cairo in the shortest space of time humanly possible.
The source of his devotion is obscure. Perhaps it was due to a humble
admiration which John Graham's attempt to strangle him could not alter,
or perhaps to a motive wholly unconnected with mundane matters. Certain
it is that a sort of religious fervour latterly had possessed the man.
From being something of a scoffer (for Islam, like other creeds, daily
loses adherents), he was become a most devout Believer. To what this
should be ascribed I shall leave you to judge.

Exhausted, tottering with his giant exertions, he made his way through
the tortuous streets of Old Cairo--streets where ancient palaces and
mansions of wealthy Turks displayed their latticed windows, and, at that
hour, barred doors to the solitary, panting wayfarer.

Upon one of these barred doors he beat. It was that of an old palace
which seemed to be partially in ruins. After some delay, the door was
opened and Mohammed admitted. The door was reclosed. And, following upon
the brief clamour, silence claimed the street again.

Much precious time had elapsed since Eileen Graham's disappearance from
the hotel by the Pyramids, when a belated and not too sober Greek,
walking in the direction of Cairo, encountered what his muddled senses
proclaimed to be an apparition--that of a white-robed figure upon a
snow-white camel, which sped, silent, and with arrow-like swiftness,
past him towards Gizeh. About this vision of the racing camel (a more
beautiful creature than any he had seen since the last to carry the
Mahmal), about the rider, spectral in the moonlight, white-bearded,
there was that which suggested a vision of the Moslem Prophet. Ere the
frightened Greek could gather courage to turn and look after the phantom
rider, man and camel were lost across the sands.

Mena House was in an uproar. No one beneath its roof had thought
of sleep that night. Futile searches were being conducted in every
direction, north, south, east, and west. Graham, feeling that another
hour of inactivity would spell madness, had succumbed to the fever to
be up and doing, and had outdistanced all, had left the boy far behind
and was mercilessly urging his poor little mount out into the desert,
well knowing that in all probability he was riding further and further
away from the one he sought, yet madly pressing on. He felt that to
stop was to court certain insanity; he must press on and on; he must
search--search.

His mood had changed, and from cursing fate, heaven, everything and
every one, he was come to prayer.

He, then, was the next to see the man on the white camel, and, like
the Greek, he scarcely doubted that it was a wraith of his tortured
imagination. Indeed, he took it for an omen. The Prophet had appeared
to him to proclaim that the desert, the home of Islam, had taken Eileen
from him. The white-robed figure gave no sign, looked neither to the
right nor to the left, but straight ahead, with eagle eyes.

Graham pulled up his donkey, and sat like a shape of stone, until the
silver-grey distance swallowed up the phantom.

Out towards the oasis called the Well of Seven Palms, the straggling
military company proceeded in growing weariness. The officer in charge
had secured fairly reliable evidence to show that the Arabs had struck
out straight for the Red Sea. Since he was not omniscient, he could not
know that they had performed a wide detour which would lead them back
an hour before dawn to the camp by the Nile beside the Temple of Horus,
where El-Suleym waited for his captive.

It was at the point in their march when, to have intercepted the
raiders, they should have turned due south instead of proceeding toward
the oasis, that one of them pulled up, rubbed his eyes, looked again and
gave the alarm.

In another moment they all saw it--a white camel; not such a camel
as tourists are familiar with, the poor hacks of the species, but a
swan-like creature, white as milk, bearing a white-robed rider who
ignored utterly the presence of the soldiers, who answered by no word or
sign to their challenge, but who passed them like a cloud borne along by
a breeze and melted vaporously into the steely distances of the desert.
The captain was hopelessly puzzled.

"Too late to bring him down," he muttered, "and no horse that was ever
born could run down a racing camel. Most mysterious."

Twenty miles south of their position, and exactly at right-angles to
their route, rode the Bishareen horsemen, the foremost with Eileen
Graham across his saddle. And now, eighteen miles behind the Bishareen,
a white camel, of the pure breed which yearly furnishes the stately
bearer of the Mahmal, spurned the sand and like a creature of air gained
upon the Arabs, wild riders though they were, mile upon mile, league
upon league.

Within rifle-shot of the camp, and with the desert dawn but an hour
ahead, only a long sand-ridge concealed from the eyes of the Bishareen
troupe that fleet shape which had struck wonder to the hearts of all
beholders. Despite their start of close upon two hours, despite the fact
that the soldiers were now miles, and hopeless miles, in their rear, the
racer of the desert had passed them!

Eileen Graham had returned to full and agonizing consciousness. For
hours, it seemed, her captives had rode and rode in silence. Now a
certain coolness borne upon the breeze told her that they were nearing
the river again. Clamour sounded ahead. They were come to the Arab
camp. But ere they reached it they entered some lofty building which
echoed hollowly to the horses' tread. She was lifted from her painful
position, tied fast against a stone pillar, and the bandage was
unfastened from about her head.

She saw that she was lashed to one of the ruined pillars which once
had upheld the great hall of a temple. About her were the crumbling
evidences of the sacerdotal splendour that was Ancient Egypt. The moon
painted massive shadows upon the debris, and carpeted the outer place
with the black image of a towering propylæum. Upon the mound which once
had been the stone avenue of approach was the Bedouin camp. It was
filled with a vague disturbance. She was quite alone; for those who had
brought her there were leading their spent horses out to the camp.

Eileen could not know what the hushed sounds portended; but actually
they were due to the fact that the outlaw chief, wearied with that most
exhausting passion--the passion of anticipation--had sought his tent,
issuing orders that none should disturb him. Many hours before he knew
they could return, he had stood looking out across the sands, but at
last had decided to fit himself, by repose, for the reception of his
beautiful captive.

A sheikh's tent has two apartments--one sacred to the lord and master,
the other sheltering his harem. To the former El-Suleym had withdrawn;
and now his emissaries stood at the entrance, where the symbolic spear
was stuck, blade upward, in the sand. Those who had thrown in their lot
with El-Suleym, called the Regicide, had learnt that a robber chief
whose ambitions have been whetted by a sojourn in Europe is a hard
master, though one profitable to serve. They hesitated to arouse him,
even though their delicate task was well accomplished.

And whilst they debated before the tent, which stood alone, as is usual,
at some little distance from the others, amid which moved busy figures
engaged in striking camp, Eileen, within the temple, heard a movement
behind the pillar to which she was bound.

She was in no doubt respecting the identity of her captor, and the
author of the ruse by which she had been lured from the hotel, and now,
unable to turn, it came to her that this was _he_, creeping to her
through the moon-patched shadows. With eyes closed, and her teeth
clenched convulsively, she pictured the sinister, approaching figure.
Then, from close beside her, came a voice:

"Only I can save you from him. Do not hesitate, do not speak. Do as I
tell you."

Eileen opened her eyes. She could not see the speaker, but the voice was
oddly familiar. Her fevered brain told her that she had heard it before,
but speaking Arabic. It was the voice of an old man, but a strong,
vibrant voice.

"It is the will of Allah, whose name be exalted, that I repay!"

A lean hand held before her eyes a broken gold chain, upon which
depended a turquoise. She knew the voice, now: it was that of the old
pedlar! But his English, except for the hoarse Eastern accent, was
flawless, and this was the tone of no broken old man, but of one to be
feared and respected.

Her reason, she thought, must be tricking her. How could the old pedlar,
however strong in his queer gratitude, save her now? Then the hand came
again before her eyes, and it held a tiny green phial.

"Be brave. Drink, quickly. They are coming to take you to him. It is the
only escape!"

"Oh, God!" she whispered, and turned icily cold.

This was the boon he brought her. This was the road of escape, escape
from El-Suleym--the road of death! It was cruel, unspeakably horrible,
with a bright world just opening out to her, with youth, beauty, and----
She could not think of her husband.

"God be merciful to him!" she murmured. "But he would prefer me dead
to----"

"Quick! They are here!"

She placed her lips to the phial, and drank.

It seemed that fire ran through every vein in her body. Then came chill.
It grew, creeping from her hands and her feet inward and upward to her
heart.

"Good-bye ... dear...." she whispered, and sobbed once, dryly.

The ropes held her rigidly upright.


VI

"_Wa-llah!_ she is dead, and we have slain her!"

El-Suleym's Bedouins stood before the pillar in the temple, and fear
was in their eyes. They unbound the girl, beautiful yet in her marble
pallor, and lowered her rigid body to the ground. They looked one at
another, and many a glance was turned toward the Nile.

Then the leader of the party extended a brown hand, pointing to the
tethered horses. They passed from the temple, muttering. No one among
them dared to brave the wrath of the terrible sheikh. As they came out
into the paling moonlight, the camp seemed to have melted magically; for
ere dawn they began their long march to the lonely oasis in the Arabian
Desert which was the secret base of the Masr-Bishareen's depredatory
operations.

Stealthily circling the camp, which buzzed with subdued activity--even
the dogs seemed to be silent when the sheikh slept--they came to the
horses. Solitary, a square silhouette against the paling blue, stood the
sheikh's tent, on top of the mound, which alone was still untouched.

The first horseman had actually leapt into the saddle, and the others,
with furtive glances at the ominous hillock, were about to do likewise,
when a low wail, weird, eerie, rose above the muffled stirring of the
camp.

"_Allah el-'Azeen!_" groaned one of the party--"what is that?"

Again the wail sounded--and again. Other woman voices took it up. It
electrified the whole camp. Escape, undetected, was no longer possible.
Men, women, and children were abandoning their tasks and standing,
petrified with the awe of it, and looking towards the sheikh's tent.

As they looked, as the frightened fugitives hesitated, looking also,
from the tent issued forth a melancholy procession. It was composed of
the women of El-Suleym's household. They beat their bared breasts and
cast dust upon their heads.

For within his own sacred apartment lay the sheikh in his blood--a
headless corpse.

And now those who had trembled before him were hot to avenge him. Riders
plunged out in directions as diverse as the spokes of a wheel. Four of
them rode madly through the temple where they had left the body of their
captive, leaping the debris, and circling about the towering pillars, as
only Arab horsemen can. Out into the sands they swept; and before them,
from out of a hollow, rose an apparition that brought all four up short,
their steeds upreared upon their haunches.

It was the figure of a white-bearded man, white-robed and wearing the
green turban, mounted upon a camel which, to the eyes of the four,
looked in its spotless whiteness a creature of another world. Before
the eagle-eyed stranger lay the still form of Eileen Graham, and as the
camel rose to its feet, its rider turned, swung something high above
him, and hurled it back at the panic-stricken pursuers. Right amongst
their horses' feet it rolled, and up at them in the moonlight from out a
mass of blood-clotted beard, stared the glassy eyes of El-Suleym!

The sun was high in the heavens when the grey-faced and haggard-eyed
searchers came straggling back to Mena House. Two of them, who had come
upon Graham ten miles to the east, brought him in. He was quite passive,
and offered no protest, spoke no word, but stared straight in front of
him with a set smile that was dreadful to see.

No news had come from the company of soldiers; no news had come from
anywhere. It was ghastly, inconceivable; people looked at one another
and asked if it could really be possible that one of their number had
been snatched out from their midst in such fashion.

Officials, military and civil, literally in crowds, besieged the hotel.
Amid that scene of confusion no one missed Mohammed; but when all the
rest had given up in despair, he, a solitary, patient figure, stood out
upon a distant mound watching the desert road to the east. He alone saw
the return of the white camel with its double burden, from a distance
of a hundred yards or more; for he dared approach no closer, but stood
with bowed head pronouncing the _fáthah_ over and over again. He saw it
kneel, saw its rider descend and lift a girl from its back. He saw him
force something between her lips, saw him turn and make a deep obeisance
toward Mecca. At that he, too, knelt and did likewise. When he arose,
camel and rider were gone.

He raced across the sands as Eileen Graham opened her eyes, and
supported her as she struggled to her feet, pale and trembling.

       *       *       *       *       *

"I don't understand it at all," said Graham.

Eileen smiled up at him from the long cane chair. She was not yet
recovered from her dreadful experience. "Perhaps," she said softly, "you
will not laugh in future at my Irish stories of the 'good people'!"

Graham shook his head and turned to Mohammed.

"What does it all mean, Mohammed?" he said. "Thank God it means that
I have got her back, but how was it done? She returned wearing the
turquoise necklace, which I last saw in your hand."

Mohammed looked aside.

"I took it to him, Effendi. It was the token by which he knew her need."

"The pedlar?"

"The pedlar, Effendi."

"You knew where to find him, then?"

"I knew where to find him, but I feared to tell you; feared that you
might ridicule him."

He ceased. He was become oddly reticent. Graham shrugged his shoulders,
helplessly.

"I only hope the authorities will succeed in capturing the Bishareen
brigands," he said grimly.

"The authorities will never capture them," replied the dragoman with
conviction. "For five years they have lived by plunder, and laughed at
the Government. But before another moon is risen"--he was warming to his
usual eloquence now--"no Masr-Bishareen will remain in the land, they
will be exterminated--purged from the desert!"

"Indeed," said Graham; "by whom?"

"By the Rawallah, Effendi."

"Are they a Bedouin tribe?"

"The greatest of them all."

"Then why should they undertake the duty?"

"Because it is the will of the one who saved her for you, Effendi! I
am blessed that I have set eyes upon him, spoken with him. Paradise is
assured to me because my hand returned to him his turban when it lay in
the dust!"

Graham stared, looking from his wife, who lay back smiling dreamily, to
Mohammed, whose dark eyes burnt with a strange fervour--the fervour of
one mysteriously converted to an almost fanatic faith.

"Are you speaking of our old friend, the pedlar?"

"I am almost afraid to speak of him, Effendi, for he is the chosen of
heaven, a cleanser of uncleanliness; the scourge of God, who holds His
flail in his hand--the broom of the desert!"

Graham, who had been pacing up and down the room, paused in front of
Mohammed.

"Who is he, then?" he asked quietly. "I owe him a debt I can never hope
to repay, so I should at least like to know his real name."

"I almost fear to speak it, Effendi." Mohammed's voice sank to a
whisper, and he raised the turquoise hanging by the thin chain about
Eileen's throat, and reverently touched it with his lips. "He is the
_welee_--Ben Azreem, Sheikh of the Ibn-Rawallah!"


_Printed in Great Britain by_ Butler & Tanner Ltd., _Frome and London_



       *       *       *       *       *



Transcriber's note:

Small capitals have been replaced by all capitals.

The following corrections have been made, on page

   48 ...." added (But, Addison....")
   74 "he" changed to "her" (looked up into her husband's quivering
      face!)
   97 ' changed to " (and rest, East," I said)
  126 . added (lighted his pipe and nodded.)
  142 "then" changed to "than" (blushed more furiously than ever when
      I told her)
  144 . added (I asked wearily.)
  172 " added ("Nobody else can)
  190 "posesssion" changed to "possession" (how it came into my
      possession, that may)
  208 , removed (and avoiding a particularly persistent)
  236 "Mahommed" changed to "Mohammed" (when Mohammed ran in to where
      Graham was).

Otherwise the original has been preserved, including inconsistent
hyphenation.





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Haunting of Low Fennel - The Haunting of Low Fennel—The Valley of the Just—The Blue Monkey—The Riddle of Ragstaff—The Master of Hollow Grange—The Curse of a Thousand Kisses—The Turquoise Necklace" ***

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