“All sorts of singular things have happened,” began Sir James, “since my return from Australia. Of course, I cannot say if these are recent developments, because my uncle, for seven or eight years before his death, resided entirely in London, and Grange was in charge of the housekeeper. It is notorious, is it not, that housekeepers and such worthy ladies never by any chance detect anything unseemly in family establishments with which they are associated? Anyway, when I was dug up out of the Bush, and all the formalities were through, good old Clement here set about putting things to rights for me, and I arrived to find Grange a perfect picture from floor to roof. New servants engaged, too, though the housekeeper and the butler, who have been in the family for years, remained, of course, with some other old servants. As I have said, everything was in apple-pie order.”
“Including the ghost!” interpolated his cousin, laughing.
“That’s the trouble,” said Sir James, banging his fist upon the table; “the very first night I dined in this room there was a most uncanny manifestation. Clement and I were sitting here at this very table; we had dined—not unwisely, don’t think that—and were just smoking and chatting, when——”
He ceased abruptly; in fact, the effect was similar to that which would have resulted had a solid door suddenly been closed upon the speaker. But the stark silence which ensued was instantly interrupted. My blood seemed to freeze in my veins; a horrid, supernatural dread held me fast in my chair. For, echoing hollowly around and about the huge, ancient apartment, rolled, booming, a peal of demoniacal laughter! From whence it proceeded I was wholly unable to imagine. It seemed to be all about, above us, and beneath us. It was mad, devilish, a hell-sound impossible to describe. It rose, it fell, it rose again—and ceased abruptly.
“My God!” I whispered. “What was it?”
II
In the silence that followed the ghostly disturbance we sat around the table listening. Sir James was the first to speak.
“A demonstration, Mr. Klaw!” he said. “This sort of thing happens every night!”
“Ah!” rumbled Moris Klaw, “every night, eh? That laughing? You have investigated—yes—no?”
“I tried to investigate,” explained the baronet, “but quite frankly I didn’t know where to begin.”
We were all recovering our composure somewhat, I think.
“You hear that laughter nowhere but in this room?” asked Klaw.
“I have always heard it when we have been seated at this table,” was the reply; “at no other time, but it can be heard clearly beyond the room. The servants have heard it. Excepting the housekeeper and the butler, they are leaving almost immediately.”
“Ah! canaille!” grunted Moris Klaw; “fear-pigs! It is always so, these servants. So you have not located the one that laughs, no?”
“No,” answered Sir James; “and he doesn’t stop at laughing—does he, Clem?”
Clement Leyland shook his head. He looked even paler than usual, I thought, and the uncanny incident seemed to have disturbed him greatly.
“What else?” rumbled Moris Klaw. “The gray monk is forgetting his manners. He becomes rude, eh—that gray monk?”
“The house has practically become uninhabitable,” said the baronet, bitterly. “None of the usual phenomena are missing. We have slamming doors, phantom footsteps, and, if the servants are to be believed, half the forces of hell loose here at night!”
“But your own experiences?” interrupted Klaw.
“My own experiences in brief amount to this: I rarely sit at this table at night without hearing that beastly laughter, at least once. I never go into the billiard room, which opens out under the gallery yonder, without feeling a cold wind blowing upon my face or head, even in perfectly still weather, or with all the windows closed. To the left of the billiard room, and opening out of it, is a third centre of these disturbances. It’s the gun room, and guns have been fired there in the night, with the door locked, on no fewer than five occasions!”
Moris Klaw, from a tail pocket of his coat, produced a cylindrical scent spray and squirted verbena upon his high yellow forehead.
“It grows exciting, this,” he said. “I require the cool brain.”
“Finally,” added Sir James, “the only other point worth mentioning is the ghostly voice which regularly wakes me from my sleep at night.”
“A voice,” rumbled Klaw; “what voice, and what does it say, that voice?”
“I won’t repeat what it says!” replied the baronet, glancing at Isis; “but it offers obscene suggestions or that is the impression I have of it—a low, filthy mumbling; if you can follow me, the voice of something dead and infinitely evil.”
Moris Klaw stood up.
“This intelligence,” he rumbled, “a living or a dead one, has thoughts then, and thoughts, Sir James, are things. I shall sleep in one of the centres of its activity to-night, perhaps here, perhaps in the billiard room or the gun room. Isis, my child, bring for me my odically sterilized pillows. This is a charming case and worthy of the subtle method.”
He placed his hands upon the shoulders of Sir James Leyland, who stood facing him.
“Evil thoughts live, Sir James,” he said. “I cannot explain to you how hard it is to slay them. Few good thoughts survive; but such an ancient abode as this”—he waved his long hands characteristically about him—“is peopled with thought-forms surviving from the dark ages. I have opened the inner eye, my friend. Mercifully, perhaps, the inner eye is closed in most of us; in some it is blind. But I have opened that eye and trained it. As I sleep”—he lowered his voice oddly—“those thought things come to me. It is an uncomfortable gift, yes; for here in Grange I shall find myself to-night in evil company. Murders long forgotten will be accomplished again before that inner eye of mine! I shall swim in blood! Assassins will come stealing to me, murdered ones will scream in my ears, the secret knife will flash, the honest ax do its deadly work; for in the moment of such deeds two imperishable thought-forms are created: the thought-form of the slayer, strong to survive, because a blood-lustful thought, a revengeful thought; and the thought of the slain, likewise a long-surviving thought because a thought of wildest despair, a final massing of the mental forces greater than any generally possible in life, upon that last awful grievance.”
He paused, looking around him.
“From the phantom company,” he said, “I must pick out that one whose thought is of laughter, of firing guns, and of evil whisperings. What a task! Wondrous is the science of the mental negative!”
The meeting broke up, then, and Isis Klaw, having brought from a large case, which formed part of her father’s luggage, two huge red cushions, bade us good-night and retired to her own room. Moris Klaw, with a cushion swinging in each hand, went shuffling ungainly from room to room like some strange animal seeking a lair.
“Do I understand,” Clement Leyland whispered to me, “that your friend proposes to sleep down here?”
“Yes,” I replied, smiling at his evident wonderment; “such is his method of investigation, eccentric, but effective.”
“It is really effective, then? The experiences given in ‘Psychic Angles’ are not fabulous?”
“In no way. Moris Klaw is a very remarkable man. I have yet to meet the mystery which is beyond him.”
Moris Klaw’s rumbling voice, which frequently reminded me of the rolling of casks in a distant cellar, broke in upon our conversation:
“Here is the ideal spot; here upon this settee by the door of the gun room I am in the centre of these psychic storms which nightly arise in Grange.”
“If you are determined to remain here, Mr. Klaw,” said Sir James, “I shall not endeavour to dissuade you, of course; but I should prefer to see you turn into more comfortable quarters.”
“No, no,” was the reply; “it is here I shall lay down my old head, it is here I shall lie and wait for him, the one who laughs.”
Accordingly, since the hour grew late, we left this novel ghost-hunter stretched out upon the settee in the billiard room; and as I knew his objection to any disturbance, I suggested to Sir James that we should retire out of earshot for a final smoke ere seeking our separate apartments.
We sat chatting for close upon an hour, I suppose. Then Clement Leyland left us, saying that he had had a heavy day.
“Clement’s been working real hard,” the baronet confided to me. “In the circumstances, as I think I told you, I have decided to abandon Grange, and we are having the old Friars House, a mile from here, but on part of the estate, restored. It hasn’t been inhabited for about three generations, and it’s very much older than Grange; part of it dates back to King John. Perhaps I can get servants to stop there, though, and it’s quite impossible to keep up Grange without a staff. Clement has been superintending the work over there all day; he’s one of the best.”
A few moments later we parted for the night. I left Sir James at the door of his room, which had formerly opened off the balcony overlooking the banqueting hall. That door was now walled up, however, and the entrance was from the corridor beyond. The room allotted to me was upon the opposite side of the same corridor and farther to the north.
I felt particularly unlike sleep. The extremely modern furniture of my room could not rob the walls, with their small square panelling, of the air of hoary antiquity which was theirs. The one window, deep set and overlooking an extensive orchard, was such as might have formed the focus for cavalierly glance, was such as might have framed the head of a romantic maid of Stuart days. And with it all was that gloomy air that had a more remote antiquity, that harked back to darker times than those of the Merry Monarch: the air of ghostly evil, the cloud from which proceeded the devilish laughter, the obscene whisperings.
Where the shadows of the trees lay beneath me on the turf, I could fancy a gray cowled figure flitting across the lighted patches and lurking, evilly watching, amid the pools of darkness. Sleep was impossible. Moris Klaw, to whom such fears as mine were utterly unknown, might repose, nay, was actually reposing, in the very vortex of this psychical storm; but I was otherwise constituted. I had been with him in many cases of dark enough evil-doing, but this purely ghostly menace was something that sapped my courage.
Grange stood upon rather high ground, and in a northeasterly direction, peeping out from the trees of a wooded slope, showed a gray tower almost like a giant monkish figure under the moon. I watched it with a vague interest. It was Friars House, to which the baronet projected retreat from the haunted Grange. Lighting my pipe, I leaned from the window, idly watching that ancient tower and wondering if more evil deeds had taken place within it—long as it had stood there amid the trees—than those which had left their ghostly mark upon Grange.
The night was very beautiful and very still. Not the slightest sound could I detect within or without the house. How long I had lounged there in this half-dreamy, but vaguely fearful, mood I cannot say, but I was aroused by a tremendous outcry. Loud it broke in upon the silence of the night, broke in on my mood with nerve-racking effect. My pipe dropped to the floor, and taking one step across the room I stood there, rooted to the spot with indefinable horror.
“Father!” it came in a piercing scream, and again: “Father! O God! save him! save him!”
III
The voice was that of Isis Klaw!
Whenever I accompanied her father upon any of his inquiries I came armed, and now, with a magazine pistol held in my hand, I leapt out into the corridor and turned toward the stair. A door slammed open in front of me and Sir James Leyland also came running out, pulling on his dressing gown as he ran. One quick glance he gave me; his face was very pale; and together we went racing down the stairs into the hall patched with ghostly moonlight.
“You heard it?” he breathed, hoarsely. “It was Miss Klaw! What in God’s name has happened? Where is she?”
But even as he asked the question, and as we pressed on into the billiard room, it was answered. For Isis Klaw, with a dressing gown thrown over her night apparel, was kneeling beside the settee upon which her father lay.
“What has happened? What has happened?” groaned Sir James. Then, as we approached together: “Mr. Klaw! Mr. Klaw!” he cried.
“All right, my friend!” came the rumbling voice, and to my inestimable relief Moris Klaw sat up and looked around upon us, adjusting his pince-nez to the bridge of his massive nose: “I live! It has saved me, the Science of the Mind!”
Isis Klaw bowed her head upon the red cushion, and I saw that she was trembling violently. It was the first time I had known her to lose her regal composure, and, utterly mystified, I wondered what awful danger had threatened Moris Klaw.
“Thank Heaven for that!” said the baronet, earnestly.
Approaching footsteps sounded now, and a group of frightened servants, headed by the butler, appeared at the door of the billiard room. Through them came pressing Mr. Clement Leyland. His face was ghastly, showing a startling white against the dull red of the dressing gown he wore.
“James!” he said, huskily. “James! that awful screaming! What was it? What has occurred?”
I knew that he slept in the west wing and that he must have been unable to distinguish the words which Isis had cried. Thus heard, the shrill scream must have sounded even more terrifying.
Moris Klaw raised his hand protestingly.
“No fuss, dear friends,” he implored, in rumbling accents, “no wonderings and botherings. They so disturb the nerves. Let us be calm, let us be peaceful.” He laid his hand upon the head of the girl who knelt beside him. “Isis, my child, what a delicate instrument is the psychic perception! You knew it, the danger to your poor old father, to the poor old fool who lies here waiting to be slaughtered! Almost you knew it before I knew it myself!”
“For God’s sake, Mr. Klaw,” said Clement Leyland, shakily, “what has happened? Who, or what, came to you here? What occasioned Miss Klaw’s terror?”
“My friend,” replied Klaw, “you ask me conundrum-riddles. Some dreadful thing haunts this Grange, some deadly thing. The man has not lived who has not tasted fear, and I, the old foolish, have lived indeed to-night! I fail, my friend. There is some evil intelligence ruling this Grange, which I cannot capture upon my negative”—he tapped his brow characteristically—“to attempt it would be to die. It is too powerful for me. Grange is unclean, Sir James. You will leave Grange without delay; it is I, the old experienced who knows, that warns you. Fly from Grange. Take up your residence to-morrow at Friars House!”
No further explanation would he vouchsafe.
“I am defeated, my friends!” he declared, shrugging, resignedly.
Accordingly, Isis, her beautiful face deathly pale and her great eyes feverishly bright, returned to her room. She covered her face with her hands as she passed to the door. Moris Klaw accepted the use of an apartment next to mine, and we all sought our couches again in states of varying perturbation.
That there was some profound mystery underlying these happenings of the night was evident to me. Moris Klaw and Isis Klaw were keeping something back. They shared some dark secret and guarded it jealously; but with what motive they acted in this fashion was a problem that defied my efforts at solution.
The morning came and brought a haggard company to the breakfast table. Few, if any, beneath the roof of Grange, had known sleep that night, although, so far as I could gather, there had been no manifestations of any kind.
Moris Klaw talked incessantly about the fauna of the Sahara Desert, and so monopolized the conversation with his queer anecdotes of snakes and scorpions that no other topic found entrance.
After breakfast the whole party, in Sir James’s car, drove over to Friars House; and despite the up-to-date furniture and upholstery, I found it a very gloomy residence. Stripped of its ghostly atmosphere, Grange had been quite a charming seat for any man; but this dungeonesque place, with its lichened tower that had dominated the valley when John signed Magna Charta, with its massive walls and arrow-slit windows, its eccentrically designed apartments and crypt-like smell, was altogether too archaic to be comfortable.
Moris Klaw, standing in the room which had been fitted up as a library, removed his flat-topped brown bowler and fumbled for his scent spray.
“This place,” he said, “smells abominably of dead abbots!”
He squirted verbena upon himself and upon Isis. He replaced the scent spray in the lining of the hat, and was about to replace the hat on his head, when he paused, staring straight up at the ceiling reflectively.
“My notes!” he said, abruptly; “I have left those notes in my valise. I must have them. Curse me, for an old foolish! Sir James, you will show Isis this charming old tower in my absence? Do I intrude? But I would borrow the car and return to Grange for my notes!”
“Not a bit!” replied the baronet, readily. “Clement can go with you!”
“No, no! Certainly no! I could not think of it! My old friend, Mr. Searles, may come if he so likes; if not, I go alone.”
Naturally, I agreed to accompany him; and, leaving the others at the ancient gateway, we set off in Sir James’s car back to Grange. Down into the valley we swept and up the slope to Grange, Moris Klaw sitting muttering in his beard, but offering no remark and patently desirous to avoid conversation.
“Come, my friend,” he said, as the car drew up before the house, “and I will show you what my mental negative recorded to me last night, just before the great danger came.”
He led the way into the billiard room, curtly directing the butler to leave us. When we were alone—
“You will note something,” he rumbled, swinging his arm vaguely around in the direction of the banqueting hall. “What you will note is this: the laughter—where is it heard? It is heard here, in the gun room on my right, in the banquet room before me. Great is the Science of the Mind! I will now test my negative.”
I followed him with wondering gaze as he stepped into the deep old-fashioned fireplace which formed one of the quaintest features of the room. He bent his tall figure to avoid striking his head upon the stonework, and placed the historic brown bowler upon one of the settles.
“Perhaps I cannot find it,” came his rumbling voice; “my negative was fogged by assassinations, murderous sieges, candle-light duels, and other thought-forms of the troubled past; but I may triumph—I may triumph!”
He was standing on a settle with his head far up the chimney, and presently a faint grating sound proceeded from that sooty darkness.
“I have it!” he rumbled, triumphantly. “And in my pocket reposes the electric lamp. I ascend; you, my good friend, will follow.”
True enough he scrambled upward and, to my unspeakable amazement, disappeared in the chimney. Filled with great wonder I followed and saw him standing in a recess high above my head, a recess which he must have opened in some way unknown to me. He extended a long arm and grasped my hand in his.
“Up!” he cried, exerted his surprising strength, and jerked me up beside him with as little effort as though I had been a child.
He pressed the button of a torch which he held and I saw that we stood upon an exceedingly steep and narrow wooden stair.
“It is in the thickness of the wall between the panellings,” he whispered, solemnly; “a Jacobite hiding place. Sir James knows nothing of it, for has he not spent his life in the Bush?”
He mounted the stair.
“On the right,” his voice came back to me, “the gun room, the billiard room! On the left, the banquet room. From here comes the laughter—from here comes the danger.”
Still he ascended and I followed. The narrow stair terminated in a dusty box-like apartment no more than six feet high by six feet square. Moris Klaw, ducking his head grotesquely, stood there shining the light about him. From the floor he took up a square wooden case and waved to me to descend again.
“No exit,” he said; “no exit. Sir James’s bedroom is upon the farther side, but, as I had anticipated, there is no exit.”
We returned the way we had come; clearly there was no other. Beneath his caped coat Moris Klaw jealously concealed the case which he had discovered in the secret chamber. I was filled with intense curiosity; but Moris Klaw, having gone to his room, asking me to await him outside in the drive, returned, ultimately, without the case, but carrying a huge notebook, and intimated that he was prepared to reënter the waiting car.
Behind the pebbles of his pince-nez his strange eyes gleamed triumphantly.
“We triumph,” he said. “The haunting of Grange succumbs to the Science of the Mind!”
IV
We all had lunch at Friars House, but were by no means a jovial party. Sir James seemed worried and preoccupied, and Clement Leyland even more reticent than usual. Moris Klaw talked, certainly, but his conversation turned entirely upon the subject of the Borgias, concerning which notorious family he was possessed of a stock of most unsavoury anecdote. So realistic were his gruesome stories, delivered in that rumbling whisper, wholly impossible to describe or imitate, that every mouthful of food which I swallowed threatened to choke me.
Afterward we wandered idly about the beautiful old grounds, which bore ineffaceable marks of monkish cultivation. Sir James, who was walking ahead with Moris Klaw and Isis, suddenly turned and waited for me. I had been examining a sundial with much interest, but I now walked on and joined our host.
“Mr. Searles,” he said, “may I press you to remain here over the week-end?”
“That’s very good of you,” I replied. “I think I could manage it, and I should enjoy the stay immensely.”
I concluded that Moris Klaw also was remaining, and consequently was surprised when a short time later he drew me aside into a rose-covered arbour and announced that he was leaving by the four-o’clock train.
“But I shall be back in the morning, Mr. Searles,” he assured me, wagging his finger mysteriously; “I shall be back in the morning!”
“And Miss Klaw?”
“She, too, goes by the four-o’clock train and will not be returning—for the present.”
“I understand that Sir James is taking up his residence here at Friars House from now onward?”
“It is so, my friend; he deserts Grange. The servants come over here to-day. Is he not well advised? Mr. Clement has all along recommended that this shall be his residence. He was against it, the idea of inhabiting Grange, from the first. He is wise, that Mr. Clement. He has lived in these parts so long. He knows that Grange is haunted, is uninhabitable.”
Later, then, Moris Klaw and Isis took their departure; and just as the car was about to drive off my eccentric friend removed his brown bowler and sprayed his bald brow with verbena. He bent to me:
“Day and night,” he whispered, huskily, “do not lose sight of him, Sir James! Above all, allow him not to explore!”
With that the car drove off, and I stood looking after it, wondering, utterly mystified. On the steps behind me stood Clement Leyland and his cousin. The latter’s gaze followed the course of the car along the picturesque winding road until it became lost from view. I thought I heard him sigh.
Ensued an uneventful day and night. Life was pleasant enough at Friars House, if a trifle dull; and Sir James seemed unsettled, whilst his disquietude was reflected in his cousin. The latter, now that his active labours in preparing this new residence for the baronet were checked, seemed a man at a loss what to do with himself. His was one of those quietly ardent temperaments, I divined, and idleness palled upon him. Apparently he had no profession, and although I presumed that he had some residence of his own in the neighbourhood, he, apparently, was prepared indefinitely to prolong his stay at Friars House. I think his companionship was welcome to Sir James, for the latter was yet strange to the new duties of a landed gentleman.
The next morning brought Moris Klaw, and I learned with ever-growing surprise that he had made arrangements to spend the following week beneath the hospitable roof of Friars House.
I have nothing to record of interest up to the time I left; but often during the ensuing six days the problem of the haunting of Grange, and the mystery of Moris Klaw’s protracted visit to Friars House came between me and my work. Then on the Saturday morning arrived a telegram:
“Can you join us for week-end—car will meet 2:30. Wire reply. Best wishes.—Leyland.”
I determined to accept the invitation; for respecting the nature of Moris Klaw’s business at Friars House—and that he had some other motive than ordinary in sojourning there I was persuaded—my curiosity knew no bounds. Accordingly, I packed my grip, and at about five o’clock on a delightful afternoon found myself taking tea in a cloister-like apartment of the former Friary.
“Grange,” said Sir James, in answer to a question of mine, “is shut up.”
“It is shut, yes,” rumbled Moris Klaw. “What a pity! What a pity!”
In the course of the day occurred incidents which I have since perceived to have been significant. I will pass over them, however, and hasten to what I may term the catastrophe of this very singular case.
Four of us sat down to dinner in an apartment which clearly had been the ancient refectory of the monks. Clement Leyland, who had arrived barely in time to dress, looked haggard and worried. I determined that he had some private troubles of his own, and beneath his quiet geniality I thought I could detect a sort of brooding gloom. His pale, clean-shaven face, so like yet so unlike that of his cousin, was a mask that ill repaid study; yet I knew that the real Clement Leyland was a stranger to me, perhaps to all of us.
I was most anxious to learn if Moris Klaw had divulged the secret of the hidden chamber at Grange to Sir James; and I was unspeakably curious concerning the box of which I had had but a glimpse—the box that he had found there. But he baffled my curiosity at every point.
Have you experienced that sense of impending calamity which sometimes heralds tragic things? It was with me that night, throughout dinner; and afterward, when we entered the library and sat over our cigars, it grew portentously. I felt that I stood upon the brink of a precipice. And literally I was not in great error. Moris Klaw, to the evident discomfort of Sir James, brought the conversation around to the subject of the haunting. I observed him to glance at his watch, with a rather odd expression upon his vellum-hued face.
“Is it not singular,” he said, “how poor spectres are confined, like linnets, to their cages? They seem, these spooks, never to roam. That laughing demon of Grange—look at him. He remains in that empty, desolate house; he——”
There was a dreadful interruption.
Commencing with a sort of guttural rattle, out upon the cloisteresque stillness burst a peal of wicked laughter.
It rang throughout the room; it poured fear into my every fibre. It died away—and was gone.
Sir James, clutching the leather-covered chair-arms, looked like a man of stone. I was frankly terrorized. Moris Klaw stood behind me, by a bookcase, him I could not see. But Clement Leyland’s face I can never forget. It was positively deathlike. His eyes seemed starting from their sockets, and his teeth chattered horribly.
“God in Heaven!” he whispered, brokenly. “What is it? O God! What is it! Take it away—take it away!”
Then Moris Klaw spoke, slowly:
“It is for you to take it away, Mr. Leyland!”
Clement Leyland rose from his seat; he swayed like a drunken man, and there was madness in the glaring eyes that he turned in Klaw’s direction.
“You—you——” he gasped.
“I—I——” rumbled Moris Klaw, sternly, and took a step forward; “I have entered the Jacobite hiding place at Grange, and there I found a box! Ah! you glare! glare on, my friend! I returned that box to where I found it; but first I examined its contents! What! that demon laughter frightens you! Then descend, Mr. Leyland, descend and bring him out—the one who laughs!”
Rigidly, Sir James sat in his chair; I, too, seemed to be palsied. But at sight of the next happening we both stood up. Moris Klaw stamped heavily upon the oaken floor in a deep recess; then applied his weight to a section of the seemingly solid stone wall.
It turned, as on a pivot, revealing a dark cavity.
He stood there, a bizarre figure, pointing down into the blackness.
“Descend, my friend!” he cried. “The one who laughs is upon the seventh step!”
“The seventh step!”
In a whisper the words came from Clement Leyland. A draft of damp, cavernous air blew into the library out of the opening.
“Descend, my friend!”
Remorselessly, Moris Klaw repeated the words. In the centre of the room, Clement Leyland, a pitiable sight, stood staring—and hesitating. Suddenly his cousin spoke.
“Don’t go, Clement!” he whispered.
The other turned to him, dazedly.
“Don’t go—down that place. But—O God! I understand at last, or partly.… Quit! I give you half an hour!”
Sir James sank back into his chair and buried his face in his hands; Moris Klaw never moved from where he stood by the cavity. But Clement Leyland, with bowed head, walked from the room.
In the silence that followed his going—
“Await me, gentlemen,” rumbled Klaw; “I descend for the laughter!”
He stepped into the opening.
“One,” he counted, “two—three—four—five—” his voice came up to us from the depths—“six!”
We heard him ascending. Walking into the library he placed upon the table beside Sir James a very large and up-to-date gramophone!
“The laughter!” he explained, simply. “That night, my friends, when first I slept at Grange, I secured, among a host of other dreadful negatives, the negative of one who lurked in a secret hiding place. I saw him come creeping from the chimney corner, bearing a great mace which I recognized for one that had hung in the hall! Almost, the Science of the Mind betrayed me; for I mistook him for a thought-form! But the mind of Isis is en rapport with the mind of her poor old father. In her dreams she saw my peril, and she it was who, screaming, saved me!—saved me from the murderer with the mace!”
Sir James made no sign. Moris Klaw continued:
“I gathered, then, that the one who sometimes lurked in the Jacobite hiding place and who, somehow, made the demon laughter, and the other phenomena, sought one end. It was to cause you to leave Grange and to live in Friars House! Beyond so far, my science could not show me. I assisted, therefore, the project of the lurker; and came myself, too, in order to watch, my friend, to guard and to spy!
“His gramophone I found, examined, and replaced. It had a clockwork attachment, very ingenious, which both started and stopped it; there was little or no scraping. To-night, from his room, unknown to him, I removed the instrument from its case, which lay hidden at the bottom of his trunk. Yes! I stole his key! I am the old fox! Why did he bring it here? I cannot reply. Perhaps he meant again to use it; his future projects are dark to me, but their object is all too light.”
Sir James groaned.
“Old Clem!” he whispered, “and how I trusted him!”
“He did not quite believe in my science,” resumed Moris Klaw, “but he did not know that, hidden, I slept almost beside him as he sat, planning, in this very room! From his own bad mind I secured my second negative; and it showed me the death trap of some bad old son of Mother Church! At Grange there was but the Jacobite hiding place, but here was the devilry of feudal times! I returned to London. Why? To learn if my suspicions were well founded. Yes! You may or may not be aware; but if you die childless, the wicked Clement inherits Grange!”
“I knew that,” whispered Sir James.
“Ah! you knew? So. I returned to here, for, even at that time, I suspected that your accidental death was the object of removal! Then I secured it, my second negative. Biding my time, I explored that death-smelling place. Its wicked machinery had been freshly oiled! Ah! he knew its secrets well, the old house that he hoped to inherit!
“One night, all innocent, as you sat here, with other guests, he would have blundered upon that doorway! And you, the host, would have led the search party! But I saw that he feared to move whilst I remained, and so I played the ghost upon him with his own spook!”
Sir James Leyland looked up. His bronzed face was transformed with emotion.
“Mr. Klaw,” he said, huskily, “why did you lay so much emphasis upon the words, ‘the seventh step’?”
Moris Klaw shrugged, replying simply:
“Because there is no seventh step—only the mouth of a well!”
TENTH EPISODE.
CASE OF THE VEIL OF ISIS
I
I have made no attempt, in these chronicles, to arrange the cases of my remarkable friend, Moris Klaw, in sections. Yet, as has recently been pointed out to me, they seem naturally to fall into two orders. There were those in which he appeared in the rôle of criminal investigator, and in which he was usually associated with Inspector Grimsby. There was another class of inquiry in which the criminal element was lacking: mysteries which never came under the notice of New Scotland Yard.
Since Moris Klaw’s methods were, if not supernatural, at any rate supernormal, I have been asked if he ever, to my knowledge, inquired into a case which proved insusceptible of a natural explanation—which fell strictly within the province of the occult.
To that I answer that I am aware of several; but I have refrained from including them because readers of these papers would be unlikely to appreciate the nature of Klaw’s investigations outside the sphere of ordinary natural laws. Those who are curious upon the point cannot do better than consult the remarkable work by Moris Klaw entitled, “Psychic Angles.”
But there was one case with which I found myself concerned that I am disposed to include, for it fell between the provinces of the natural and supernatural in such a way that it might, with equal legitimacy, be included under either head. On the whole, I am disposed to bracket it with the case of the headless mummies.
I will take leave to introduce you, then, to the company which met at Otter Brearley’s house one night in August.
“This is most truly amazing,” Moris Klaw was saying; “and I am indebted to my good friend Searles”—he inclined his sparsely covered head in my direction—“for the opportunity to be one of you. It is a séance? Yes and no. But there is a mummy in it—and those mummies are so instructive!”
He extracted the scent spray from his pocket and refreshed his yellow brow with verbena.
“How to be regretted that my daughter is in Paris,” he continued, his rumbling voice echoing queerly about the room. “She loves them like a mother—those mummies! Ah, Mr. Brearley, this will cement your great reputation!”
Otter Brearley shook his head.
“I am not yet prepared to make it public property,” he declared, slowly. “No one, outside the present circle, knows of my discovery. I do not wish it to go farther—at present.”
He glanced around the table, his prominent blue eyes passing from myself to Moris Klaw and from Klaw to the clean-cut dark face of Doctor Fairbank. The latter, scarce heeding his host’s last words, sat watching how the shaded light played, tenderly, amid the soft billows of Ailsa Brearley’s wonderful hair.
“Shall you make it the subject of a paper?” he asked suddenly.
“My dear Doctor Fairbank!” rumbled Moris Klaw, solemnly, “if you had been paying attention to our good friend you would have heard him say that he was not prepared, at present, to make public his wonderful discovery.”
“Sorry!” said Fairbank, turning to Brearley. “But if it is not to be made public I don’t altogether follow the idea. What do you intend, Brearley?”
“I intend to experiment,” answered Brearley.
“In what way?” I asked.
“In every way possible!”
Doctor Fairbank sat back in his chair and looked thoughtful.
“Rather a comprehensive scheme?”
Brearley toyed with the bundle of notes under his hand.
“I have already,” he said, “exhaustively examined seven of the possibilities; the eighth, and—I believe, the last—remains to be considered.”
“Listen now to me, Mr. Brearley,” said Moris Klaw, wagging a long finger. “I am here, the old curious, and find myself in delightful company. But until this evening I know nothing of your work except that I have read all your books. For me you will be so good as to outline all the points—yes?”
Otter Brearley mutely sought permission of the company, and turned the leaves of his manuscript. All men have an innate love of “talking shop,” but few can make such talk of general interest. Brearley was an exception in this respect. He loved to talk of Egypt, of the Pharaohs, of the temples, of the priesthood and its mysteries; but others loved to hear him. That made all the difference.
“The discovery,” he now began, “upon which I have blundered—for pure accident, alone, led me to it—assumes its great importance by reason of the absolute mystery surrounding certain phases of Egyptian worship. In the old days, Fairbank, you will recall that it was my supreme ambition to learn the secrets of Isis-worship as practised in early Egyptian times. Save for impostors, and legitimate imaginative writers, no one has yet lifted the veil of Isis. That mystical ceremony by which a priest was consecrated to the goddess, or made an arch adept, was thought to be hopelessly lost, or, by others, to be a myth devised by the priesthood to awe the ignorant masses. In fact, we know little of the entire religion but its outward form. Of that occult lore so widely attributed to its votaries we know nothing—absolutely nothing! By we, I mean students in general. I, individually, have made a step, if not a stride, into that holy of holies!”
“Mind you don’t lose yourself!” said Fairbank, lightly.
But, professionally, he was displeased with Brearley’s drawn face and with the feverish brightness of his eyes. So much was plain for all to see. In the eyes of Ailsa Brearley, so like, yet so unlike, her brother’s, he read understanding of his displeasure, I think, together with a pathetic appeal.
Brearley waved his long white hand carelessly.
“Rest assured of that, Doctor!” he replied. “The labyrinth in which I find myself is intricate, I readily admit; but all my steps have been well considered. To return, Mr. Klaw”—addressing the latter—“I have secured the mummy of one of those arch adepts! That he was one is proved by the papyrus, presumably in his own writing, which lay upon his breast! I unwrapped the mummy in Egypt, where it now reposes; but the writing I brought back with me and have recently deciphered. A glance had showed me that it was not the usual excerpts from the ‘Book of the Dead.’ Six months’ labour has proved it to be a detailed account of his initiation into the inner mysteries!”
“Is such a papyrus unique?” I asked.
“Unique!” cried Moris Klaw. “Name of a little blue man! It is priceless!”
“But why,” I pursued, “should this priest, alone among the many who must have been so initiated, have left an account of the ceremony?”
“It was forbidden to divulge any part, any word, of it, Searles!” said Brearley. “Departure from this law was visited with fearful punishments in this world and dire penalties in the next. Khamus, for so this priest was named, well knew this. But some reason which, I fear, can never be known, prompted him to write the papyrus. It is probable, if not certain, that no eye but his, and mine, has read what is written there.”
A silence of a few seconds followed his words.
“Yes,” rumbled Klaw, presently; “it is undoubtedly a discovery of extraordinary importance, this. You agree, my friend?”
I nodded.
“That’s evident,” I replied. “But I cannot altogether get the hang of the ceremony itself, Brearley. That is the point upon which I am particularly hazy.”
“To read you the entire account in detail,” Brearley resumed, “would occupy too long, and would almost certainly confuse you. But the singular thing is this: Khamus distinctly asserts that the goddess appeared to him. His writing is eminently sane and reserved, and his account of the ceremony, up to that point, highly interesting. Now, I have tested the papyrus itself—though no possibility of fraud is really admissible, and I have been able to confirm many of the statements made therein. There is only one point, it seems to me, remaining to be settled.”
“What is that?” I asked.
“Whether, as a result of the ceremony described, Khamus did see Isis, or whether he merely imagined he did!”
No one spoke for a moment. Then—
“My friend,” said Moris Klaw, “I have a daughter whom I have named Isis. Why did I name her Isis? Mr. Brearley, you must know that that name has a mystic and beautiful significance. But I will say something—I am glad that my daughter is not here! Mr. Brearley—beware! Beware, I say: you play with burning fires; my friend—beware!”
His words impressed us all immensely; for there was something underlying them more portentous than appeared upon the surface.
Fairbank stared at Brearley, hard.
“Do I understand,” he began, quietly, “that you admit the first possibility?”
“Certainly!” replied Brearley, with conviction.
“You are prepared to admit the existence, as an entity, of Isis?”
“I am prepared to admit the existence of anything until it can be proved not to exist!”
“Then, admitting the existence of Isis, what should you assume it, or her, to be?”
“That is not a matter for presumption; it is a matter for inquiry!”
The doctor glanced quickly toward Ailsa Brearley, and her beautiful face was troubled.
“And this inquiry—how should you propose to conduct it?”
“In surroundings as nearly as possible identical with those described in the papyrus,” replied Brearley, with growing excitement. “I should follow the ceremony, word by word, as Khamus did!”
His eyes gleamed with pent-up enthusiasm. We four listeners, again stricken silent, watched him; and again it was the doctor who broke the silence.
“Is the ceremony spoken?”
“In the first half there is a long prayer, which is chanted.”
“But Egyptian, as a spoken language, is lost, surely?”
“The exact pronunciation, or accent, is lost, of course; but there are many who can speak it. I can, for instance.”
“And I,” rumbled Moris Klaw, gloomily. “But these special surroundings? Eh, my friend?”
“I have spent a year in searching for the necessary things, as specified in the writing. At last my collection is complete. Some of the things I have had made, in the proper materials mentioned. These materials, in some cases, have been exceedingly difficult to procure. But now I have a complete shrine of Isis fitted up! Khamus’s initiation took place in a small chamber of which he gives a concise and detailed account. It is because my duplicate of this chamber is ready that I have asked you to meet me here to-night.”
“How long have you been at work upon this inquiry?” said Fairbank.
He put the question as he might have put one relating to a patient’s symptoms; and this Brearley detected in his tone, with sudden resentment.
“Fairbank,” he said, huskily, “I believe you think me insane!”
With his pale, drawn face and long, fair hair, he certainly looked anything but normal, as he sat with bright, staring eyes fixed upon the other across the table.
“My dear chap,” replied the doctor, soothingly, “what a strange idea! My question was prompted by a professional spirit, I will admit, for I thought you had been sticking to this business too closely. You are the last man in the world I should expect to go mad, Brearley, but I should not care to answer for your nerves if you don’t give this Isis affair a rest.”
Brearley smiled, and waved his hand characteristically. “Excuse me, Fairbank,” he said, “but to the average person my ideas do seem fantastic, I know. That is what makes me so touchy on the point, I suppose.”
“You are hoping for too much from what is at most only a wild conjecture, Brearley. Your translation of the manuscript, alone, is a sufficiently notable achievement. If I were in your place, I should leave the occult business to the psychical societies. ‘Let the cobbler,’ you know.”
“It has gone too far for that,” returned Brearley, “and I must see it through, now.”
“You are putting too much into it,” said the doctor, severely. “I want you to promise me that if nothing results from your final experiment, you will drop the whole inquiry.”
Brearley frowned thoughtfully.
“Do you really think I am overdoing it?” he asked.
“Sure,” was the answer. “Drop the whole thing for a month or two.”
“That is impossible.”
“Why?”
“Because the ceremony must take place upon the first night of Panoi, the tenth month of the Sacred Sothic year. This we take to correspond to the April of the Julian year.”
“Yes,” rumbled Moris Klaw, “it is to-night!”
“Why!” I cried, “of course it is! Do you mean, Brearley, that you are going to conduct your experiment now?”
“Exactly,” was the calm reply; “and I have asked you all—Mr. Moris Klaw in particular—in order that it may take place in the presence of competent witnesses!”
Moris Klaw shook his massive head and pulled at his scanty, toneless beard in a very significant manner. All of us were vaguely startled, I think, and through my mind the idea flashed that the first of April was a date pathetically appropriate for such an undertaking. Frankly, I was beginning to entertain serious doubts regarding Brearley’s sanity.
“I have given the servants a holiday,” said the latter. “They are at a theatre in town; so there is no possibility of the experiment being interrupted.”
Something of his enthusiasm, unnatural though it seemed, strangely enough began to communicate itself to me.
“Come upstairs,” he continued, “and I will explain what we all have to do.”
Moris Klaw squirted verbena upon his brow.
II
“Doctor Fairbank!”
Fairbank, startled by the touch on his arm, stopped. It was Ailsa Brearley who had dropped behind her brother and now stood confronting us. In the dense shadows of the corridor one could barely distinguish her figure, but a stray beam of light touched one side of her pure oval face and burnished her fair hair.
She wanted help, guidance. I had read it in her eyes before. I was sorry that her sweet lips should have that pathetic little droop.
“Doctor Fairbank! I have wanted to ask you all night—do you think he——”
She could not speak the words, and stood biting her lips, with eyes averted.
“Miss Brearley,” he replied, “I do, certainly, fear that your brother is liable to a nervous breakdown at any moment. He has applied his mind too closely to this inquiry, and has studiously surrounded himself with a morbid atmosphere.”
Ailsa Brearley was now watching him, anxiously.
“Should we allow him to go on with it?”
“I fear any attempt to prevent him would prove most detrimental, in his present condition.”
“But——” There was clearly something else which she wanted to say. “But, apart from that”—she suddenly turned to Moris Klaw, instinctively it almost seemed—“Mr. Klaw—is this—ceremony right?”
He peered at her through his pince-nez.
“In what way, my dear Miss Brearley—how right?”
“Well—what I mean is—it amounts to idolatry, does it not?”
I started. It was a point of view which had not, hitherto, occurred to me.
“You probably understand the nature of the thing better than we do, Miss Brearley,” said Fairbank. “Do you mean that it involves worship of Isis?”
“He has always avoided a direct answer when I have asked him that,” she said. “But it is only reasonable to suppose that it does. His translation of the writing I have never seen. But he has been dieting in a most extraordinary manner for nearly a year! Since the workmen completed it, no one but himself has been inside the chamber which he has had constructed at the end of his study; and he spends hours and hours there every day—and every night!”
Her anxiety became more evident with each word.
“You saw that he ate nothing at dinner,” she continued, “and taxed him with faddism. But it is something more than that. Why has he sent the servants away to-night? Oh, Doctor Fairbank! I have a dreadful foreboding! I am so afraid!”
The light in her eyes, suddenly upturned to him in the vague half-light, the tone in her voice, the appeal in her attitude—were unmistakable. Fairbank had been abroad for three years, and I could see that between these two was an undeclared love, and almost I felt that I intruded. Moris Klaw looked away for a moment, too. Then—
“My dear young lady,” he rumbled, paternally, “do not be afraid. I, the old know-all, so fortunately am here! Perhaps there is danger—yes, I admit it; there may be danger. But it is such danger as dwells here”—he tapped his yellow brow—“it is a danger of the mind. For thoughts are things, Miss Brearley—that is where it lies, the peril—and thought things can kill!”
“Ailsa! Fairbank! Mr. Klaw!” came Brearley’s voice. “We have none too much time!”
“Proceed, my friends,” rumbled Moris Klaw; “I am with you.” And, oddly enough, I was comforted by his presence; so, it was evident, were the girl and the doctor; for Moris Klaw, beneath that shabby, ramshackle exterior, Moris Klaw, the Wapping curio dealer, was a man of power—an intellectual ark of refuge.
In the Egyptologist’s study all appeared much the same as when last I had set foot there. The cases filled with vases, scarabs, tablets, weapons, and the hundred-and-one relics of the great dead age with which the student had surrounded himself; the sarcophagi; the frames of papyri—all seemed familiar.
Brearley sat at the huge writing table, littered, as of yore, and in picturesque confusion.
“We must begin almost immediately!” he said, as we entered.
A danger spot burned lividly upon either pale cheek. His eyes gleamed brilliantly. The prolonged excitement of his strange experiment was burning the man up. His nerve centres must be taxed abnormally, I knew.
Brearley glanced at his watch.
“I must be very brief,” he explained, hurriedly, “as it is vitally important that I commence in time. Beyond the bookcase, there, you will see that a part of the room has been walled off.”
We looked in the direction indicated. Although it was not noticeable at first glance I now saw that the apartment was, indeed, smaller than formerly. The usual books covered the new wall, giving it much the same aspect as the old; but, where hitherto there had been nothing but shelves, a small, narrow door of black wood now broke the imposing expanse of faded volumes.
“In there,” Brearley resumed, “is the Secret Place described by Khamus!”
He placed his long, thin hand upon a yellow roll that lay partly opened on the table.
“No one but myself may enter there—until after to-night, at any rate!” with a glance at Moris Klaw. “To the most minute particular”—patting the papyrus—“it is equipped as Khamus describes. For many months I have prepared myself, by fasting and meditation, as he prepared! There was, as no doubt you know, a widespread belief in ancient times that for any but the chosen to look upon the goddess was death. As I admit the possibility of Isis existing, I must also admit the possibility of this belief being true—the more so as it is confirmed by Khamus! Therefore none may enter with me.”
“One moment, Mr. Brearley,” interrupted Klaw; “in what form does Khamus relate that the goddess appeared?”
A cloud crossed Brearley’s face.
“It is the one point upon which he is not clear,” was the reply. “I do not know, in the least, what to expect!”
“Go on!” I said, quickly. Although I seriously doubted my poor friend’s sanity, I began to find the affair weirdly, uncannily fascinating.
Brearley continued:
“The ritual opens with a chant, which I may broadly translate as ‘The Hymn of Dedication.’ Its exact purport is not very clear to me. This hymn is the only part of the ceremony in which I am assisted. It is to be ‘sung by a virgin beyond the door.’ That is, directly I have entered yonder it must be sung out here. Ailsa has composed a sort of chant to the words, which, I think, is the proper kind of setting. Have you not, Ailsa?”
She bowed her graceful head, glancing, under her lashes, toward Fairbank.
“She has learned the words—for, of course, it must be sung in Egyptian——”
“But have no idea of their meaning,” said his sister, softly.
“That is unnecessary,” he went on, quickly. “After this, I want you all just to remain here in this room. I am afraid you will have to sit in the dark! Any sounds which you detect, please note. I will not tell you what to expect, then imagination cannot deceive you. I will be back in a moment.”
With another hasty glance at his watch, he went out in high excitement.
“Please,” began Ailsa Brearley, the moment he was gone, “do not think that because I assist him I approve of this attempt! I think it is horrible! But what am I to do? He is wrapped up in it! I dare not try to check him!”
“We understand that,” said Fairbank; “all of us. Do as he desires. When he has made the attempt, and failed—as, of course, he must do—the folly of the whole thing will become apparent to him. Do not let it worry you, Miss Brearley. Your brother is not the first man to succumb, temporarily, to the glamour of the Unknown.”
She shook her head sadly.
“It is an unpleasant farce,” she said. “But there is something more in it than that.”
Her blue eyes were full of trouble.
“What do you mean, Miss Brearley?” asked Moris Klaw.
“I hardly know, myself!” was the reply; “but for the past two months an indefinable horror of some kind has been growing upon me.”
With a deep sigh, she turned to a tall case and took from it a kind of slender harp. The instrument, of which the frame, at any rate, was evidently ancient Egyptian work, rested upon a claw-shaped pedestal.
“Do you play this? Yes? No?” inquired Moris Klaw, with interest.
“Yes,” she said, wearily. “It comes from the tomb of a priestess of Isis and was played by her in the temple. It is scaled differently from the modern harp, but any one with a slight knowledge of the ordinary harp, or even of the piano, can perform upon it with ease. It is sweet toned, but—creepy!”
She smiled slightly at her own expression, and I was glad to see it.
Brearley returned.
He wore a single loose garment of white linen, and thin sandals were upon his feet. Save for his long, fair hair, he looked a true pagan priest, his eyes bright with the fire of research that consumed him, his features gaunt, ascetic.
Some ghost of his old humorous expression played, momentarily, about his lips as he observed the astonishment depicted upon our faces. But it was gone almost in the moment of its coming.
“You wonder at me, no doubt,” he said; “and at times I have wondered at myself! Do not think me fanatic. I scarcely hope for any result. But remembering that the writing is authentic and that there prevails, to this day, a widespread belief in the occult wisdom of the Egyptians, why should not this problem in psychics receive the same attention from me that one in physics would receive from you, Fairbank?”
There was reason in his argument and in his manner of advancing it. Fairbank glanced from Brearley to the girl sitting with her white hands listlessly caressing the harp strings. The silence of the great empty house grew oppressive. Suppose the ancients indeed possessed the strange lore attributed to them? Suppose in those Dark Continents, the Past and the Future, somewhere in the vast unknown, there existed a power, a being, a spirit, named by the Egyptians, Isis?
Those were my thoughts, when Moris Klaw said suddenly:
“Mr. Brearley, it is not yet too late to turn back! This sensitive plate”—he tapped his forehead—“warns me that some evil thought thing hovers about us! You are about to give form to that thought being. Be wise, Mr. Brearley—abandon your experiment!”
His tone surprised everyone. Otter Brearley looked at him with an odd expression and then glanced at the watch upon the writing table.
“Mr. Klaw,” he said, quietly, “I had hoped for a different attitude in you; but if you really disapprove of what I am about to attempt, I can only ask you to withdraw; it is too late for further arguments.”
“I remain, my friend! I spoke not for myself—my life has been passed in this coping with evil things; I spoke for others.”
None of us entirely understood his words, but Brearley went on, impatiently:
“Listen, please. I rely upon your coöperation. From now onward I require absolute silence. Whatever happens make no noise.”
“I shall not be noisy, I, my friend!” rumbled Moris Klaw. “I am the old silent; I watch and wait—until I am wanted.”
He shrugged his shoulders and nodded, significantly.
“Good!” said Brearley, and his voice quivered with excitement; “then the experiment, the final experiment, has begun!”
III
He suddenly extinguished the light.
Passing to a window, he looked up to the moon, and, a moment later, lowered the blind. Dimly visible in his white garment, he crossed the room. He might be heard unfastening the door of the inner chamber, and a faint, church-like smell crept to our nostrils. The door closed.
Immediately the harp sounded.
Its tone was peculiar—uncomfortable. The strain which Ailsa played was a mere repetition of three notes. Then she began to sing.
Our eyes becoming more accustomed to the gloom, we could vaguely discern her now; the soft outlines of her figure; the white, ghost-like fingers straying over the strings of the instrument. The music of the chant was very monotonous, and weird to a marked degree. The sound of that ancient tongue, dead for many ages, chanted softly by Ailsa Brearley’s beautiful voice, was almost incredibly eerie. I found myself gripped hard by a powerful sense of the uncanny.
No other sound was audible. Throughout the rambling old house intense silence prevailed. A slight breeze stirred the cedars outside. Every now and again it came—like a series of broken sighs.
How long the chant lasted I cannot pretend to state. It seemed interminable. I became aware of a curious sense of physical loss. I found myself drawn to high tension, as though the continuance of the chant demanded a vast effort on my part. Though I told myself that imagination was tricking me, the music seemed to be draining my nerve force!
Ailsa’s voice grew louder and clearer, until the queer words, of unknown purport, rang out passionately, imperatively.
She ceased.
In the ensuing silence I could hear distinctly Moris Klaw’s heavy breathing. A compelling atmosphere of mystery had grown up about us. Repel it how we might, it was there—commanding acknowledgment.
Fairbank, who sat nearest, was the first to see Ailsa Brearley rise, unsteadily, and move in the direction of the study door.
Something in her manner alarmed us all, and the doctor quietly left his seat and followed her. As she quitted the room, he came out behind her; and in the better light on the landing, as he told us later, saw that she was deathly pale.
“Miss Brearley!” he said.
She turned.
“Ssh!” she whispered, anxiously, “it is nothing—Doctor Fairbank. The excitement has made me rather faint, that is all. I shall go to my room and lie down. Believe me, I am quite well!”
“But there is no servant in the house,” he whispered, “if you should become worse——”
“If I need anything I shall not hesitate to ring,” she answered. “It is so still, you will hear the bell. Please go back! He has hoped for so much from this.”
Fairbank was nonplussed. But the appeal was so obviously sincere, and the situation so difficult, that he saw no alternative. Ailsa Brearley passed along the corridor. Fairbank slipped back into the study, where Moris Klaw and I anxiously awaited him.
From the inner room came Brearley’s voice, muffled.
The long vigil began.
I found myself claimed by the all-pervading spirit of mystery. For some little time I listened in expectation of hearing Ailsa Brearley returning. But soon the strange business of the night claimed my mind, to the exclusion of every other idea. I found myself listening only for Brearley’s muffled voice. Although the half-audible words were meaningless, their sound assumed, as time wore on, a curious significance. They seemed potent with a strange power proceeding not from them, but to them.
Then I heard a new sound.
Fairbank heard it—for I saw him start, and Moris Klaw muttered something.
It did not come from the trees outside, nor from the inner room. It was somewhere in the house.
A faint rattling it was, bell-like but toneless.
Brearley’s voice had ceased.
Again the sound rose—nearer.
I turned my head toward Fairbank, and seemed to perceive him more clearly. I had less difficulty in distinguishing the objects about.
Again it came—the shivering, bell-like sound.
Even the strings of the harp were visible now.
“Curse me!” came Moris Klaw’s hoarse whisper; “it seems to grow light! That is a delusion of the mind, my friends—repel it—repel it!”
Fairbank drew a quick, sibilant breath. A half-suppressed exclamation from Klaw followed; for the high-pitched rattle came from close at hand! The sense of the supernormal had grown unbearable. Fairbank’s science and my own semi-scepticism were but weapons of sand against it.
The door opened silently, admitting a flood of the soft moon-like radiance. And Ailsa Brearley entered!
Her slim figure was bathed in light; her fair hair, unbound, swept like a gleaming torrent about her shoulders. She looked magnificently, unnaturally beautiful. A diaphanous veil was draped over her face. From her radiant figure I turned away my head in sudden, stark fear!
Fairbank, clutching the arms of his chair, seemed to strive to look away, too.
Her widely opened eyes, visible even through the veil, were awful in their supernormal, significant beauty. Was it Ailsa Brearley? I clenched my fists convulsively; I felt my reason tottering. As the luminous figure, so terrible in its perfect loveliness, moved slowly toward the inner door, with set gaze that was not for any about her, Doctor Fairbank wrenched himself from his chair and leapt forward.
“Ailsa!”
His voice came in a hoarse shriek. But it was drowned by a rumbling roar from Moris Klaw.
“Look away! Look away!” he shouted. “The good God! Do not look at her! Look away!”
The warning came too late. Fairbank had all but reached her side, when she turned her eyes upon him—looking fully in his face.
With no sound or cry he went down as though felled with a mighty blow!
She passed to the door of the inner room. It swung open noiselessly. A stifling cloud of some pungent perfume swept into the study; and the door reclosed.
“Fairbank!” I whispered, huskily. “My God! he’s dead!”
Moris Klaw sprang forward to where Fairbank, clearly visible in the soft light, lay huddled upon the floor.