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Title: Brood of the Witch-Queen

Author: Sax Rohmer

Release Date: November 3, 2006 [EBook #19706]

Language: English

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                             BROOD OF THE

                             WITCH-QUEEN



                                  BY

                              SAX ROHMER




                                LONDON

                      C. ARTHUR PEARSON, LIMITED

                        HENRIETTA STREET, W.C.

                                 1918

       *       *       *       *       *




CONTENTS


CHAPTER

I.      ANTONY FERRARA

II.     THE PHANTOM HANDS

III.    THE RING OF THOTH

IV.     AT FERRARA'S CHAMBERS

V.      THE RUSTLING SHADOWS

VI.     THE BEETLES

VII.    SIR ELWIN GROVES' PATIENT

VIII.   THE SECRET OF DHOON

IX.     THE POLISH JEWESS

X.      THE LAUGHTER

XI.     CAIRO

XII.    THE MASK OF SET

XIII.   THE SCORPION WIND

XIV.    DR. CAIRN ARRIVES

XV.     THE WITCH-QUEEN

XVI.    LAIR OF THE SPIDERS

XVII.   THE STORY OF ALI MOHAMMED

XVIII.  THE BATS

XIX.    ANTHROPOMANCY

XX.     THE INCENSE

XXI.    THE MAGICIAN

XXII.   MYRA

XXIII.  THE FACE IN THE ORCHID-HOUSE

XXIV.   FLOWERING OF THE LOTUS

XXV.    CAIRN MEETS FERRARA

XXVI.   THE IVORY HAND

XXVII.  THE THUG'S CORD

XXVIII. THE HIGH PRIEST HORTOTEF

XXIX.   THE WIZARD'S DEN

XXX.    THE ELEMENTAL

XXXI.   THE BOOK OF THOTH

       *       *       *       *       *




PREFATORY NOTICE


The strange deeds of Antony Ferrara, as herein related, are intended
to illustrate certain phases of Sorcery as it was formerly practised
(according to numerous records) not only in Ancient Egypt but also in
Europe, during the Middle Ages. In no case do the powers attributed to
him exceed those which are claimed for a fully equipped Adept.

S. R.

       *       *       *       *       *




BROOD OF THE WITCH-QUEEN

CHAPTER I

ANTONY FERRARA


Robert Cairn looked out across the quadrangle. The moon had just
arisen, and it softened the beauty of the old college buildings,
mellowed the harshness of time, casting shadow pools beneath the
cloisteresque arches to the west and setting out the ivy in stronger
relief upon the ancient walls. The barred shadow on the lichened
stones beyond the elm was cast by the hidden gate; and straight ahead,
where, between a quaint chimney-stack and a bartizan, a triangular
patch of blue showed like spangled velvet, lay the Thames. It was from
there the cooling breeze came.

But Cairn's gaze was set upon a window almost directly ahead, and west
below the chimneys. Within the room to which it belonged a lambent
light played.

Cairn turned to his companion, a ruddy and athletic looking man,
somewhat bovine in type, who at the moment was busily tracing out
sections on a human skull and checking his calculations from Ross's
_Diseases of the Nervous System_.

"Sime," he said, "what does Ferrara always have a fire in his rooms
for at this time of the year?"

Sime glanced up irritably at the speaker. Cairn was a tall, thin
Scotsman, clean-shaven, square jawed, and with the crisp light hair
and grey eyes which often bespeak unusual virility.

"Aren't you going to do any work?" he inquired pathetically. "I
thought you'd come to give me a hand with my _basal ganglia_. I shall
go down on that; and there you've been stuck staring out of the
window!"

"Wilson, in the end house, has got a most unusual brain," said Cairn,
with apparent irrelevance.

"Has he!" snapped Sime.

"Yes, in a bottle. His governor is at Bart's; he sent it up yesterday.
You ought to see it."

"Nobody will ever want to put _your_ brain in a bottle," predicted the
scowling Sime, and resumed his studies.

Cairn relighted his pipe, staring across the quadrangle again. Then--

"You've never been in Ferrara's rooms, have you?" he inquired.

Followed a muffled curse, crash, and the skull went rolling across the
floor.

"Look here, Cairn," cried Sime, "I've only got a week or so now, and
my nervous system is frantically rocky; I shall go all to pieces on my
nervous system. If you want to talk, go ahead. When you're finished, I
can begin work."

"Right-oh," said Cairn calmly, and tossed his pouch across. "I want to
talk to you about Ferrara."

"Go ahead then. What is the matter with Ferrara?"

"Well," replied Cairn, "he's queer."

"That's no news," said Sime, filling his pipe; "we all know he's a
queer chap. But he's popular with women. He'd make a fortune as a
nerve specialist."

"He doesn't have to; he inherits a fortune when Sir Michael dies."

"There's a pretty cousin, too, isn't there?" inquired Sime slyly.

"There is," replied Cairn. "Of course," he continued, "my governor and
Sir Michael are bosom friends, and although I've never seen much of
young Ferrara, at the same time I've got nothing against him. But--"
he hesitated.

"Spit it out," urged Sime, watching him oddly.

"Well, it's silly, I suppose, but what does he want with a fire on a
blazing night like this?"

Sime stared.

"Perhaps he's a throw-back," he suggested lightly. "The Ferraras,
although they're counted Scotch--aren't they?--must have been Italian
originally--"

"Spanish," corrected Cairn. "They date from the son of Andrea Ferrara,
the sword-maker, who was a Spaniard. Cæsar Ferrara came with the
Armada in 1588 as armourer. His ship was wrecked up in the Bay of
Tobermory and he got ashore--and stopped."

"Married a Scotch lassie?"

"Exactly. But the genealogy of the family doesn't account for Antony's
habits."

"What habits?"

"Well, look." Cairn waved in the direction of the open window. "What
does he do in the dark all night, with a fire going?"

"Influenza?"

"Nonsense! You've never been in his rooms, have you?"

"No. Very few men have. But as I said before, he's popular with the
women."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean there have been complaints. Any other man would have been sent
down."

"You think he has influence--"

"Influence of some sort, undoubtedly."

"Well, I can see you have serious doubts about the man, as I have
myself, so I can unburden my mind. You recall that sudden thunderstorm
on Thursday?"

"Rather; quite upset me for work."

"I was out in it. I was lying in a punt in the backwater--you know,
_our_ backwater."

"Lazy dog."

"To tell you the truth, I was trying to make up my mind whether I
should abandon bones and take the post on the _Planet_ which has been
offered me."

"Pills for the pen--Harley for Fleet? Did you decide?"

"Not then; something happened which quite changed my line of
reflection."

The room was becoming cloudy with tobacco smoke.

"It was delightfully still," Cairn resumed. "A water rat rose within
a foot of me and a kingfisher was busy on a twig almost at my elbow.
Twilight was just creeping along, and I could hear nothing but faint
creakings of sculls from the river and sometimes the drip of a
punt-pole. I thought the river seemed to become suddenly deserted; it
grew quite abnormally quiet--and abnormally dark. But I was so deep in
reflection that it never occurred to me to move.

"Then the flotilla of swans came round the bend, with Apollo--you know
Apollo, the king-swan?--at their head. By this time it had grown
tremendously dark, but it never occurred to me to ask myself why. The
swans, gliding along so noiselessly, might have been phantoms. A hush,
a perfect hush, settled down. Sime, that hush was the prelude to a
strange thing--an unholy thing!"

Cairn rose excitedly and strode across to the table, kicking the skull
out of his way.

"It was the storm gathering," snapped Sime.

"It was something else gathering! Listen! It got yet darker, but for
some inexplicable reason, although I must have heard the thunder
muttering, I couldn't take my eyes off the swans. Then it
happened--the thing I came here to tell you about; I must tell
somebody--the thing that I am not going to forget in a hurry."

He began to knock out the ash from his pipe.

"Go on," directed Sime tersely.

"The big swan--Apollo--was within ten feet of me; he swam in open
water, clear of the others; no living thing touched him. Suddenly,
uttering a cry that chilled my very blood, a cry that I never heard
from a swan in my life, he rose in the air, his huge wings
extended--like a tortured phantom, Sime; I can never forget it--six
feet clear of the water. The uncanny wail became a stifled hiss, and
sending up a perfect fountain of water--I was deluged--the poor old
king-swan fell, beat the surface with his wings--and was still."

"Well?"

"The other swans glided off like ghosts. Several heavy raindrops
pattered on the leaves above. I admit I was scared. Apollo lay with
one wing right in the punt. I was standing up; I had jumped to my feet
when the thing occurred. I stooped and touched the wing. The bird was
quite dead! Sime, I pulled the swan's head out of the water, and--his
neck was broken; no fewer than three vertebrae fractured!"

A cloud of tobacco smoke was wafted towards the open window.

"It isn't one in a million who could wring the neck of a bird like
Apollo, Sime; but it was done before my eyes without the visible
agency of God or man! As I dropped him and took to the pole, the storm
burst. A clap of thunder spoke with the voice of a thousand cannon,
and I poled for bare life from that haunted backwater. I was drenched
to the skin when I got in, and I ran up all the way from the stage."

"Well?" rapped the other again, as Cairn paused to refill his pipe.

"It was seeing the firelight flickering at Ferrara's window that led
me to do it. I don't often call on him; but I thought that a rub down
before the fire and a glass of toddy would put me right. The storm had
abated as I got to the foot of his stair--only a distant rolling of
thunder.

"Then, out of the shadows--it was quite dark--into the flickering
light of the lamp came somebody all muffled up. I started horribly. It
was a girl, quite a pretty girl, too, but very pale, and with
over-bright eyes. She gave one quick glance up into my face, muttered
something, an apology, I think, and drew back again into her
hiding-place."

"He's been warned," growled Sime. "It will be notice to quit next
time."

"I ran upstairs and banged on Ferrara's door. He didn't open at first,
but shouted out to know who was knocking. When I told him, he let me
in, and closed the door very quickly. As I went in, a pungent cloud
met me--incense."

"Incense?"

"His rooms smelt like a joss-house; I told him so. He said he was
experimenting with _Kyphi_--the ancient Egyptian stuff used in the
temples. It was all dark and hot; phew! like a furnace. Ferrara's
rooms always were odd, but since the long vacation I hadn't been in.
Good lord, they're disgusting!"

"How? Ferrara spent vacation in Egypt; I suppose he's brought things
back?"

"Things--yes! Unholy things! But that brings me to something too. I
ought to know more about the chap than anybody; Sir Michael Ferrara
and the governor have been friends for thirty years; but my father is
oddly reticent--quite singularly reticent--regarding Antony. Anyway,
have you heard about him, in Egypt?"

"I've heard he got into trouble. For his age, he has a devil of a
queer reputation; there's no disguising it."

"What sort of trouble?"

"I've no idea. Nobody seems to know. But I heard from young Ashby that
Ferrara was asked to leave."

"There's some tale about Kitchener--"

"_By_ Kitchener, Ashby says; but I don't believe it."

"Well--Ferrara lighted a lamp, an elaborate silver thing, and I found
myself in a kind of nightmare museum. There was an unwrapped mummy
there, the mummy of a woman--I can't possibly describe it. He had
pictures, too--photographs. I shan't try to tell you what they
represented. I'm not thin-skinned; but there are some subjects that no
man anxious to avoid Bedlam would willingly investigate. On the table
by the lamp stood a number of objects such as I had never seen in my
life before, evidently of great age. He swept them into a cupboard
before I had time to look long. Then he went off to get a bath towel,
slippers, and so forth. As he passed the fire he threw something in. A
hissing tongue of flame leapt up--and died down again."

"What did he throw in?"

"I am not absolutely certain; so I won't say what I _think_ it was,
at the moment. Then he began to help me shed my saturated flannels,
and he set a kettle on the fire, and so forth. You know the personal
charm of the man? But there was an unpleasant sense of something--what
shall I say?--sinister. Ferrara's ivory face was more pale than usual,
and he conveyed the idea that he was chewed up--exhausted. Beads of
perspiration were on his forehead."

"Heat of his rooms?"

"No," said Cairn shortly. "It wasn't that. I had a rub down and
borrowed some slacks. Ferrara brewed grog and pretended to make me
welcome. Now I come to something which I can't forget; it may be a
mere coincidence, but--. He has a number of photographs in his rooms,
good ones, which he has taken himself. I'm not speaking now of the
monstrosities, the outrages; I mean views, and girls--particularly
girls. Well, standing on a queer little easel right under the lamp was
a fine picture of Apollo, the swan, lord of the backwater."

Sime stared dully through the smoke haze.

"It gave me a sort of shock," continued Cairn. "It made me think,
harder than ever, of the thing he had thrown in the fire. Then, in his
photographic zenana, was a picture of a girl whom I am almost sure was
the one I had met at the bottom of the stair. Another was of Myra
Duquesne."

"His cousin?"

"Yes. I felt like tearing it from the wall. In fact, the moment I saw
it, I stood up to go. I wanted to run to my rooms and strip the man's
clothes off my back! It was a struggle to be civil any longer. Sime,
if you had seen that swan die--"

Sime walked over to the window.

"I have a glimmering of your monstrous suspicions," he said slowly.
"The last man to be kicked out of an English varsity for this sort of
thing, so far as I know, was Dr. Dee of St. John's, Cambridge, and
that's going back to the sixteenth century."

"I know; it's utterly preposterous, of course. But I had to confide in
somebody. I'll shift off now, Sime."

Sime nodded, staring from the open window. As Cairn was about to close
the outer door:

"Cairn," cried Sime, "since you are now a man of letters and leisure,
you might drop in and borrow Wilson's brains for me."

"All right," shouted Cairn.

Down in the quadrangle he stood for a moment, reflecting; then, acting
upon a sudden resolution, he strode over towards the gate and ascended
Ferrara's stair.

For some time he knocked at the door in vain, but he persisted in his
clamouring, arousing the ancient echoes. Finally, the door was opened.

Antony Ferrara faced him. He wore a silver-grey dressing gown, trimmed
with white swansdown, above which his ivory throat rose statuesque.
The almond-shaped eyes, black as night, gleamed strangely beneath the
low, smooth brow. The lank black hair appeared lustreless by
comparison. His lips were very red. In his whole appearance there was
something repellently effeminate.

"Can I come in?" demanded Cairn abruptly.

"Is it--something important?" Ferrara's voice was husky but not
unmusical.

"Why, are you busy?"

"Well--er--" Ferrara smiled oddly.

"Oh, a visitor?" snapped Cairn.

"Not at all."

"Accounts for your delay in opening," said Cairn, and turned on his
heel. "Mistook me for the proctor, in person, I suppose. Good-night."

Ferrara made no reply. But, although he never once glanced back, Cairn
knew that Ferrara, leaning over the rail, above, was looking after
him; it was as though elemental heat were beating down upon his head.




CHAPTER II

THE PHANTOM HANDS


A week later Robert Cairn quitted Oxford to take up the newspaper
appointment offered to him in London. It may have been due to some
mysterious design of a hidden providence that Sime 'phoned him early
in the week about an unusual case in one of the hospitals.

"Walton is junior house-surgeon there," he said, "and he can arrange
for you to see the case. She (the patient) undoubtedly died from some
rare nervous affection. I have a theory," etc.; the conversation
became technical.

Cairn went to the hospital, and by courtesy of Walton, whom he had
known at Oxford, was permitted to view the body.

"The symptoms which Sime has got to hear about," explained the
surgeon, raising the sheet from the dead woman's face, "are--"

He broke off. Cairn had suddenly exhibited a ghastly pallor; he
clutched at Walton for support.

"My God!"

Cairn, still holding on to the other, stooped over the discoloured
face. It had been a pretty face when warm life had tinted its curves;
now it was congested--awful; two heavy discolorations showed, one on
either side of the region of the larynx.

"What on earth is wrong with you?" demanded Walton.

"I thought," gasped Cairn, "for a moment, that I knew--"

"Really! I wish you did! We can't find out anything about her. Have a
good look."

"No," said Cairn, mastering himself with an effort--"a chance
resemblance, that's all." He wiped the beads of perspiration from his
forehead.

"You look jolly shaky," commented Walton. "Is she like someone you
know very well?"

"No, not at all, now that I come to consider the features; but it was
a shock at first. What on earth caused death?"

"Asphyxia," answered Walton shortly. "Can't you see?"

"Someone strangled her, and she was brought here too late?"

"Not at all, my dear chap; nobody strangled her. She was brought here
in a critical state four or five days ago by one of the slum priests
who keep us so busy. We diagnosed it as exhaustion from lack of
food--with other complications. But the case was doing quite well up
to last night; she was recovering strength. Then, at about one
o'clock, she sprang up in bed, and fell back choking. By the time the
nurse got to her it was all over."

"But the marks on her throat?"

Walton shrugged his shoulders.

"There they are! Our men are keenly interested. It's absolutely
unique. Young Shaw, who has a mania for the nervous system, sent a
long account up to Sime, who suffers from a similar form of
aberration."

"Yes; Sime 'phoned me."

"It's nothing to do with nerves," said Walton contemptuously. "Don't
ask me to explain it, but it's certainly no nerve case."

"One of the other patients--"

"My dear chap, the other patients were all fast asleep! The nurse was
at her table in the corner, and in full view of the bed the whole
time. I tell you no one touched her!"

"How long elapsed before the nurse got to her?"

"Possibly half a minute. But there is no means of learning when the
paroxysm commenced. The leaping up in bed probably marked the end and
not the beginning of the attack."

Cairn experienced a longing for the fresh air; it was as though some
evil cloud hovered around and about the poor unknown. Strange ideas,
horrible ideas, conjectures based upon imaginings all but insane,
flooded his mind darkly.

Leaving the hospital, which harboured a grim secret, he stood at the
gate for a moment, undecided what to do. His father, Dr. Cairn, was
out of London, or he would certainly have sought him in this hour of
sore perplexity.

"What in Heaven's name is behind it all!" he asked himself.

For he knew beyond doubt that the girl who lay in the hospital was the
same that he had seen one night at Oxford, was the girl whose
photograph he had found in Antony Ferrara's rooms!

He formed a sudden resolution. A taxi-cab was passing at that moment,
and he hailed it, giving Sir Michael Ferrara's address. He could
scarcely trust himself to think, but frightful possibilities presented
themselves to him, repel them how he might. London seemed to grow
dark, overshadowed, as once he had seen a Thames backwater grow. He
shuddered, as though from a physical chill.

The house of the famous Egyptian scholar, dull white behind its
rampart of trees, presented no unusual appearances to his anxious
scrutiny. What he feared he scarcely knew; what he suspected he could
not have defined.

Sir Michael, said the servant, was unwell and could see no one. That
did not surprise Cairn; Sir Michael had not enjoyed good health since
malaria had laid him low in Syria. But Miss Duquesne was at home.

Cairn was shown into the long, low-ceiled room which contained so many
priceless relics of a past civilisation. Upon the bookcase stood the
stately ranks of volumes which had carried the fame of Europe's
foremost Egyptologist to every corner of the civilised world. This
queerly furnished room held many memories for Robert Cairn, who had
known it from childhood, but latterly it had always appeared to him in
his daydreams as the setting for a dainty figure. It was here that he
had first met Myra Duquesne, Sir Michael's niece, when, fresh from a
Norman convent, she had come to shed light and gladness upon the
somewhat, sombre household of the scholar. He often thought of that
day; he could recall every detail of the meeting--

Myra Duquesne came in, pulling aside the heavy curtains that hung in
the arched entrance. With a granite Osiris flanking her slim figure on
one side and a gilded sarcophagus on the other, she burst upon the
visitor, a radiant vision in white. The light gleamed through her
soft, brown hair forming a halo for a face that Robert Cairn knew for
the sweetest in the world.

"Why, Mr. Cairn," she said, and blushed entrancingly--"we thought you
had forgotten us."

"That's not a little bit likely," he replied, taking her proffered
hand, and there was that in his voice and in his look which made her
lower her frank grey eyes. "I have only been in London a few days, and
I find that Press work is more exacting than I had anticipated!"

"Did you want to see my uncle very particularly?" asked Myra.

"In a way, yes. I suppose he could not manage to see me--"

Myra shook her head. Now that the flush of excitement had left her
face, Cairn was concerned to see how pale she was and what dark
shadows lurked beneath her eyes.

"Sir Michael is not seriously ill?" he asked quickly. "Only one of the
visual attacks--"

"Yes--at least it began with one."

She hesitated, and Cairn saw to his consternation that her eyes became
filled with tears. The real loneliness of her position, now that her
guardian was ill, the absence of a friend in whom she could confide
her fears, suddenly grew apparent to the man who sat watching her.

"You are tired out," he said gently. "You have been nursing him?"

She nodded and tried to smile.

"Who is attending?"

"Sir Elwin Groves, but--"

"Shall I wire for my father?"

"We wired for him yesterday!"

"What! to Paris?"

"Yes, at my uncle's wish."

Cairn started.

"Then--he thinks he is seriously ill, himself?"

"I cannot say," answered the girl wearily. "His behaviour is--queer.
He will allow no one in his room, and barely consents to see Sir
Elwin. Then, twice recently, he has awakened in the night and made a
singular request."

"What is that?"

"He has asked me to send for his solicitor in the morning, speaking
harshly and almost as though--he hated me...."

"I don't understand. Have you complied?"

"Yes, and on each occasion he has refused to see the solicitor when he
has arrived!"

"I gather that you have been acting as night-attendant?"

"I remain in an adjoining room; he is always worse at night. Perhaps
it is telling on my nerves, but last night--"

Again she hesitated, as though doubting the wisdom of further speech;
but a brief scrutiny of Cairn's face, with deep anxiety to be read in
his eyes, determined her to proceed.

"I had been asleep, and I must have been dreaming, for I thought that
a voice was chanting, quite near to me."

"Chanting?"

"Yes--it was horrible, in some way. Then a sensation of intense
coldness came; it was as though some icily cold creature fanned me
with its wings! I cannot describe it, but it was numbing; I think I
must have felt as those poor travellers do who succumb to the
temptation to sleep in the snow."

Cairn surveyed her anxiously, for in its essentials this might be a
symptom of a dreadful ailment.

"I aroused myself, however," she continued, "but experienced an
unaccountable dread of entering my uncle's room. I could hear him
muttering strangely, and--I forced myself to enter! I saw--oh, how
can I tell you! You will think me mad!"

She raised her hands to her face; she was trembling. Robert Cairn took
them in his own, forcing her to look up.

"Tell me," he said quietly.

"The curtains were drawn back; I distinctly remembered having closed
them, but they were drawn back; and the moonlight was shining on to
the bed."

"Bad; he was dreaming."

"But was _I_ dreaming? Mr. Cairn, two hands were stretched out over my
uncle, two hands that swayed slowly up and down in the moonlight!"

Cairn leapt to his feet, passing his hand over his forehead.

"Go on," he said.

"I--I cried out, but not loudly--I think I was very near to swooning.
The hands were withdrawn into the shadow, and my uncle awoke and sat
up. He asked, in a low voice, if I were there, and I ran to him."

"Yes."

"He ordered me, very coldly, to 'phone for his solicitor at nine
o'clock this morning, and then fell back, and was asleep again almost
immediately. The solicitor came, and was with him for nearly an hour.
He sent for one of his clerks, and they both went away at half-past
ten. Uncle has been in a sort of dazed condition ever since; in fact
he has only once aroused himself, to ask for Dr. Cairn. I had a
telegram sent immediately."

"The governor will be here to-night," said Cairn confidently. "Tell
me, the hands which you thought you saw: was there anything peculiar
about them?"

"In the moonlight they seemed to be of a dull white colour. There was
a ring on one finger--a green ring. Oh!" she shuddered. "I can see it
now."

"You would know it again?"

"Anywhere!"

"Actually, there was no one in the room, of course?"

"No one. It was some awful illusion; but I can never forget it."




CHAPTER III

THE RING OF THOTH


Half-Moon Street was very still; midnight had sounded nearly
half-an-hour; but still Robert Cairn paced up and down his father's
library. He was very pale, and many times he glanced at a book which
lay open upon the table. Finally he paused before it and read once
again certain passages.

"In the year 1571," it recorded, "the notorious Trois Echelles was
executed in the Place de Grève. He confessed before the king, Charles
IX.... that he performed marvels.... Admiral de Coligny, who also was
present, recollected ... the death of two gentlemen.... He added that
they were found black and swollen."

He turned over the page, with a hand none too steady.

"The famous Maréchal d'Ancre, Concini Concini," he read, "was killed
by a pistol shot on the drawbridge of the Louvre by Vitry, Captain of
the Bodyguard, on the 24th of April, 1617.... It was proved that the
Maréchal and his wife made use of wax images, which they kept in
coffins...."

Cairn shut the book hastily and began to pace the room again.

"Oh, it is utterly, fantastically incredible!" he groaned. "Yet, with
my own eyes I saw--"

He stepped to a bookshelf and began to look for a book which, so far
as his slight knowledge of the subject bore him, would possibly throw
light upon the darkness. But he failed to find it. Despite the heat of
the weather, the library seemed to have grown chilly. He pressed the
bell.

"Marston," he said to the man who presently came, "you must be very
tired, but Dr. Cairn will be here within an hour. Tell him that I
have gone to Sir Michael Ferrara's."

"But it's after twelve o'clock, sir!"

"I know it is; nevertheless I am going."

"Very good, sir. You will wait there for the Doctor?"

"Exactly, Marston. Good-night!"

"Good-night, sir."

Robert Cairn went out into Half-Moon Street. The night was perfect,
and the cloudless sky lavishly gemmed with stars. He walked on
heedlessly, scarce noting in which direction. An awful conviction was
with him, growing stronger each moment, that some mysterious menace,
some danger unclassifiable, threatened Myra Duquesne. What did he
suspect? He could give it no name. How should he act? He had no idea.

Sir Elwin Groves, whom he had seen that evening, had hinted broadly at
mental trouble as the solution of Sir Michael Ferrara's peculiar
symptoms. Although Sir Michael had had certain transactions with his
solicitor during the early morning, he had apparently forgotten all
about the matter, according to the celebrated physician.

"Between ourselves, Cairn," Sir Elwin had confided, "I believe he
altered his will."

The inquiry of a taxi driver interrupted Cairn's meditations. He
entered the vehicle, giving Sir Michael Ferrara's address.

His thoughts persistently turned to Myra Duquesne, who at that moment
would be lying listening for the slightest sound from the sick-room;
who would be fighting down fear, that she might do her duty to her
guardian--fear of the waving phantom hands. The cab sped through the
almost empty streets, and at last, rounding a corner, rolled up the
tree-lined avenue, past three or four houses lighted only by the
glitter of the moon, and came to a stop before that of Sir Michael
Ferrara.

Lights shone from the many windows. The front door was open, and light
streamed out into the porch.

"My God!" cried Cairn, leaping from the cab. "My God! what has
happened?"

A thousand fears, a thousand reproaches, flooded his brain with
frenzy. He went racing up to the steps and almost threw himself upon
the man who stood half-dressed in the doorway.

"Felton, Felton!" he whispered hoarsely. "What has happened? Who--"

"Sir Michael, sir," answered the man. "I thought"--his voice
broke--"you were the doctor, sir?"

"Miss Myra--"

"She fainted away, sir. Mrs. Hume is with her in the library, now."

Cairn thrust past the servant and ran into the library. The
housekeeper and a trembling maid were bending over Myra Duquesne, who
lay fully dressed, white and still, upon a Chesterfield. Cairn
unceremoniously grasped her wrist, dropped upon his knees and placed
his ear to the still breast.

"Thank God!" he said. "It is only a swoon. Look after her, Mrs. Hume."

The housekeeper, with set face, lowered her head, but did not trust
herself to speak. Cairn went out into the hall and tapped Felton on
the shoulder. The man turned with a great start.

"What happened?" he demanded. "Is Sir Michael--?"

Felton nodded.

"Five minutes before you came, sir." His voice was hoarse with
emotion. "Miss Myra came out of her room. She thought someone called
her. She rapped on Mrs. Hume's door, and Mrs. Hume, who was just
retiring, opened it. She also thought she had heard someone calling
Miss Myra out on the stairhead."

"Well?"

"There was no one there, sir. Everyone was in bed; I was just
undressing, myself. But there was a sort of faint perfume--something
like a church, only disgusting, sir--"

"How--disgusting! Did _you_ smell it?"

"No, sir, never. Mrs. Hume and Miss Myra have noticed it in the house
on other nights, and one of the maids, too. It was very strong, I'm
told, last night. Well, sir, as they stood by the door they heard a
horrid kind of choking scream. They both rushed to Sir Michael's
room, and--"

"Yes, yes?"

"He was lying half out of bed, sir--"

"Dead?"

"Seemed like he'd been strangled, they told me, and--"

"Who is with him now?"

The man grew even paler.

"No one, Mr. Cairn, sir. Miss Myra screamed out that there were two
hands just unfastening from his throat as she and Mrs. Hume got to the
door, and there was no living soul in the room, sir. I might as well
out with it! We're all afraid to go in!"

Cairn turned and ran up the stairs. The upper landing was in darkness
and the door of the room which he knew to be Sir Michael's stood wide
open. As he entered, a faint scent came to his nostrils. It brought
him up short at the threshold, with a chill of supernatural dread.

The bed was placed between the windows, and one curtain had been
pulled aside, admitting a flood, of moonlight. Cairn remembered that
Myra had mentioned this circumstance in connection with the
disturbance of the previous night.

"Who, in God's name, opened that curtain!" he muttered.

Fully in the cold white light lay Sir Michael Ferrara, his silver hair
gleaming and his strong, angular face upturned to the intruding rays.
His glazed eyes were starting from their sockets; his face was nearly
black; and his fingers were clutching the sheets in a death grip.
Cairn had need of all his courage to touch him.

He was quite dead.

Someone was running up the stairs. Cairn turned, half dazed,
anticipating the entrance of a local medical man. Into the room ran
his father, switching on the light as he did so. A greyish tinge
showed through his ruddy complexion. He scarcely noticed his son.

"Ferrara!" he cried, coming up to the bed. "Ferrara!"

He dropped on his knees beside the dead man.

"Ferrara, old fellow--"

His cry ended in something like a sob. Robert Cairn turned, choking,
and went downstairs.

In the hall stood Felton and some other servants.

"Miss Duquesne?"

"She has recovered, sir. Mrs. Hume has taken her to another bedroom."

Cairn hesitated, then walked into the deserted library, where a light
was burning. He began to pace up and down, clenching and unclenching
his fists. Presently Felton knocked and entered. Clearly the man was
glad of the chance to talk to someone.

"Mr. Antony has been 'phoned at Oxford, sir. I thought you might like
to know. He is motoring down, sir, and will be here at four o'clock."

"Thank you," said Cairn shortly.

Ten minutes later his father joined him. He was a slim, well-preserved
man, alert-eyed and active, yet he had aged five years in his son's
eyes. His face was unusually pale, but he exhibited no other signs of
emotion.

"Well, Rob," he said, tersely. "I can see you have something to tell
me. I am listening."

Robert Cairn leant back against a bookshelf.

"I _have_ something to tell you, sir, and something to ask you."

"Tell your story, first; then ask your question."

"My story begins in a Thames backwater--"

Dr. Cairn stared, squaring his jaw, but his son proceeded to relate,
with some detail, the circumstances attendant upon the death of the
king-swan. He went on to recount what took place in Antony Ferrara's
rooms, and at the point where something had been taken from the table
and thrown in the fire--

"Stop!" said Dr. Cairn. "What did he throw in the fire?"

The doctor's nostrils quivered, and his eyes were ablaze with some
hardly repressed emotion.

"I cannot swear to it, sir--"

"Never mind. What do you _think_ he threw in the fire?"

"A little image, of wax or something similar--an image of--a swan."

At that, despite his self-control, Dr. Cairn became so pale that his
son leapt forward.

"All right, Rob," his father waved him away, and turning, walked
slowly down the room.

"Go on," he said, rather huskily.

Robert Cairn continued his story up to the time that he visited the
hospital where the dead girl lay.

"You can swear that she was the original of the photograph in Antony's
rooms and the same who was waiting at the foot of the stair?"

"I can, sir."

"Go on."

Again the younger man resumed his story, relating what he had learnt
from Myra Duquesne; what she had told him about the phantom hands;
what Felton had told him about the strange perfume perceptible in the
house.

"The ring," interrupted Dr. Cairn--"she would recognise it again?"

"She says so."

"Anything else?"

"Only that if some of your books are to be believed, sir, Trois
Echelle, D'Ancre and others have gone to the stake for such things in
a less enlightened age!"

"Less enlightened, boy!" Dr. Cairn turned his blazing eyes upon him.
"_More_ enlightened where the powers of hell were concerned!"

"Then you think--"

"_Think_! Have I spent half my life in such studies in vain? Did I
labour with poor Michael Ferrara in Egypt and learn _nothing_? Just
God! what an end to his labour! What a reward for mine!"

He buried his face in quivering hands.

"I cannot tell exactly what you mean by that, sir," said Robert Cairn;
"but it brings me to my question."

Dr. Cairn did not speak, did not move.

"_Who is Antony Ferrara_?"

The doctor looked up at that; and it was a haggard face he raised from
his hands.

"You have tried to ask me that before."

"I ask now, sir, with better prospect of receiving an answer."

"Yet I can give you none, Rob."

"Why, sir? Are you bound to secrecy?"

"In a degree, yes. But the real reason is this--I don't know."

"You don't know!"

"I have said so."

"Good God, sir, you amaze me! I have always felt certain that he was
really no Ferrara, but an adopted son; yet it had never entered my
mind that you were ignorant of his origin."

"You have not studied the subjects which I have studied; nor do I wish
that you should; therefore it is impossible, at any rate now, to
pursue that matter further. But I may perhaps supplement your
researches into the history of Trois Echelles and Concini Concini. I
believe you told me that you were looking in my library for some work
which you failed to find?"

"I was looking for M. Chabas' translation of the _Papyrus Harris_."

"What do you know of it?"

"I once saw a copy in Antony Ferrara's rooms."

Dr. Cairn started slightly.

"Indeed. It happens that my copy is here; I lent it quite recently
to--Sir Michael. It is probably somewhere on the shelves."

He turned on more lights and began to scan the rows of books.
Presently--

"Here it is," he said, and took down and opened the book on the table.
"This passage may interest you." He laid his finger upon it.

His son bent over the book and read the following:--

"Hai, the evil man, was a shepherd. He had said: 'O, that I might have
a book of spells that would give me resistless power!' He obtained a
book of the Formulas.... By the divine powers of these he enchanted
men. He obtained a deep vault furnished with implements. He made waxen
images of men, and love-charms. And then he perpetrated all the
horrors that his heart conceived."

"Flinders Petrie," said Dr. Cairn, "mentions the Book of Thoth as
another magical work conferring similar powers."

"But surely, sir--after all, it's the twentieth century--this is mere
superstition!"

"I thought so--_once_!" replied Dr. Cairn. "But I have lived to know
that Egyptian magic was a real and a potent force. A great part of it
was no more than a kind of hypnotism, but there were other branches.
Our most learned modern works are as children's nursery rhymes beside
such a writing as the Egyptian _Ritual of the Dead_! God forgive me!
What have I done!"

"You cannot reproach yourself in any way, sir!"

"Can I not?" said Dr. Cairn hoarsely. "Ah, Rob, you don't know!"

There came a rap on the door, and a local practitioner entered.

"This is a singular case, Dr. Cairn," he began diffidently. "An
autopsy--"

"Nonsense!" cried Dr. Cairn. "Sir Elwin Groves had foreseen it--so had
I!"

"But there are distinct marks of pressure on either side of the
windpipe--"

"Certainly. These marks are not uncommon in such cases. Sir Michael
had resided in the East and had contracted a form of plague. Virtually
he died from it. The thing is highly contagious, and it is almost
impossible to rid the system of it. A girl died in one of the
hospitals this week, having identical marks on the throat." He turned
to his son. "You saw her, Rob?"

Robert Cairn nodded, and finally the local man withdrew, highly
mystified, but unable to contradict so celebrated a physician as Dr.
Bruce Cairn.

The latter seated himself in an armchair, and rested his chin in the
palm of his left hand. Robert Cairn paced restlessly about the
library. Both were waiting, expectantly. At half-past two Felton
brought in a tray of refreshments, but neither of the men attempted
to avail themselves of the hospitality.

"Miss Duquesne?" asked the younger.

"She has just gone to sleep, sir."

"Good," muttered Dr. Cairn. "Blessed is youth."

Silence fell again, upon the man's departure, to be broken but rarely,
despite the tumultuous thoughts of those two minds, until, at about a
quarter to three, the faint sound of a throbbing motor brought Dr.
Cairn sharply to his feet. He looked towards the window. Dawn was
breaking. The car came roaring along the avenue and stopped outside
the house.

Dr. Cairn and his son glanced at one another. A brief tumult and
hurried exchange of words sounded in the hall; footsteps were heard
ascending the stairs, then came silence. The two stood side by side in
front of the empty hearth, a haggard pair, fitly set in that desolate
room, with the yellowing rays of the lamps shrinking before the first
spears of dawn.

Then, without warning, the door opened slowly and deliberately, and
Antony Ferrara came in.

His face was expressionless, ivory; his red lips were firm, and he
drooped his head. But the long black eyes glinted and gleamed as if
they reflected the glow from a furnace. He wore a motor coat lined
with leopard skin and he was pulling off his heavy gloves.

"It is good of you to have waited, Doctor," he said in his huskily
musical voice--"you too, Cairn."

He advanced a few steps into the room. Cairn was conscious of a kind
of fear, but uppermost came a desire to pick up some heavy implement
and crush this evilly effeminate thing with the serpent eyes. Then he
found himself speaking; the words seemed to be forced from his throat.

"Antony Ferrara," he said, "have you read the _Harris Papyrus_?"

Ferrara dropped his glove, stooped and recovered it, and smiled
faintly.

"No," he replied. "Have you?" His eyes were nearly closed, mere
luminous slits. "But surely," he continued, "this is no time, Cairn,
to discuss books? As my poor father's heir, and therefore your host,
I beg of you to partake--"

A faint sound made him turn. Just within the door, where the light
from the reddening library windows touched her as if with sanctity,
stood Myra Duquesne, in her night robe, her hair unbound and her
little bare feet gleaming whitely upon the red carpet. Her eyes were
wide open, vacant of expression, but set upon Antony Ferrara's
ungloved left hand.

Ferrara turned slowly to face her, until his back was towards the two
men in the library. She began to speak, in a toneless, unemotional
voice, raising her finger and pointing at a ring which Ferrara wore.

"I know you now," she said; "I know you, son of an evil woman, for you
wear her ring, the sacred ring of Thoth. You have stained that ring
with blood, as she stained it--with the blood of those who loved and
trusted you. I could name you, but my lips are sealed--I could name
you, brood of a witch, murderer, for I know you now."

Dispassionately, mechanically, she delivered her strange indictment.
Over her shoulder appeared the anxious face of Mrs. Hume, finger to
lip.

"My God!" muttered Cairn. "My God! What--"

"S--sh!" his father grasped his arm. "She is asleep!"

Myra Duquesne turned and quitted the room, Mrs. Hume hovering
anxiously about her. Antony Ferrara faced around; his mouth was oddly
twisted.

"She is troubled with strange dreams," he said, very huskily.

"Clairvoyant dreams!" Dr. Cairn addressed him for the first time. "Do
not glare at me in that way, for it may be that _I_ know you, too!
Come, Rob."

"But Myra--"

Dr. Cairn laid his hand upon his son's shoulder, fixing his eyes upon
him steadily.

"Nothing in this house can injure Myra," he replied quietly; "for Good
is higher than Evil. For the present we can only go."

Antony Ferrara stood aside, as the two walked out of the library.




CHAPTER IV

AT FERRARA'S CHAMBERS


Dr. Bruce Cairn swung around in his chair, lifting his heavy eyebrows
interrogatively, as his son, Robert, entered the consulting-room.
Half-Moon Street was bathed in almost tropical sunlight, but already
the celebrated physician had sent those out from his house to whom the
sky was overcast, whom the sun would gladden no more, and a group of
anxious-eyed sufferers yet awaited his scrutiny in an adjoining room.

"Hullo, Rob! Do you wish to see me professionally?"

Robert Cairn seated himself upon a corner of the big table, shaking
his head slowly.

"No, thanks sir; I'm fit enough; but I thought you might like to know
about the will--"

"I do know. Since I was largely interested, Jermyn attended on my
behalf; an urgent case detained me. He rang up earlier this morning."

"Oh, I see. Then perhaps I'm wasting your time; but it was a
surprise--quite a pleasant one--to find that Sir Michael had provided
for Myra--Miss Duquesne."

Dr. Cairn stared hard.

"What led you to suppose that he had _not_ provided for his niece? She
is an orphan, and he was her guardian."

"Of course, he should have done so; but I was not alone in my belief
that during the--peculiar state of mind--which preceded his death, he
had altered his will--"

"In favour of his adopted son, Antony?"

"Yes. I know _you_ were afraid of it, sir! But as it turns out they
inherit equal shares, and the house goes to Myra. Mr. Antony
Ferrara"--he accentuated the name--"quite failed to conceal his
chagrin."

"Indeed!"

"Rather. He was there in person, wearing one of his beastly fur
coats--a fur coat, with the thermometer at Africa!--lined with
civet-cat, of all abominations!"

Dr. Cairn turned to his table, tapping at the blotting-pad with the
tube of a stethoscope.

"I regret your attitude towards young Ferrara, Rob."

His son started.

"Regret it! I don't understand. Why, you, yourself brought about an
open rupture on the night of Sir Michael's death."

"Nevertheless, I am sorry. You know, since you were present, that Sir
Michael has left his niece--to my care--"

"Thank God for that!"

"I am glad, too, although there are many difficulties. But,
furthermore, he enjoined me to--"

"Keep an eye on Antony! Yes, yes--but, heavens! he didn't know him for
what he is!"

Dr. Cairn turned to him again.

"He did not; by a divine mercy, he never knew--what we know. But"--his
clear eyes were raised to his son's--"the charge is none the less
sacred, boy!"

The younger man stared perplexedly.

"But he is nothing less than a ----"

His father's upraised hand checked the word on his tongue.

"_I_ know what he is, Rob, even better than you do. But cannot you see
how this ties my hands, seals my lips?"

Robert Cairn was silent, stupefied.

"Give me time to see my way clearly, Rob. At the moment I cannot
reconcile my duty and my conscience; I confess it. But give me time.
If only as a move--as a matter of policy--keep in touch with Ferrara.
You loathe him, I know; but we _must_ watch him! There are other
interests--"

"Myra!" Robert Cairn flushed hotly. "Yes, I see. I understand. By
heavens, it's a hard part to play, but--"

"Be advised by me, Rob. Meet stealth with stealth. My boy, we have
seen strange ends come to those who stood in the path of someone. If
you had studied the subjects that I have studied you would know that
retribution, though slow, is inevitable. But be on your guard. I am
taking precautions. We have an enemy; I do not pretend to deny it; and
he fights with strange weapons. Perhaps I know something of those
weapons, too, and I am adopting--certain measures. But one defence,
and the one for you, is guile--stealth!"

Robert Cairn spoke abruptly.

"He is installed in palatial chambers in Piccadilly."

"Have you been there?"

"No."

"Call upon him. Take the first opportunity to do so. Had it not been
for your knowledge of certain things which happened in a top set at
Oxford we might be groping in the dark now! You never liked Antony
Ferrara--no men do; but you used to call upon him in college. Continue
to call upon him, in town."

Robert Cairn stood up, and lighted a cigarette.

"Right you are, sir!" he said. "I'm glad I'm not alone in this thing!
By the way, about--?"

"Myra? For the present she remains at the house. There is Mrs. Hume,
and all the old servants. We shall see what is to be done, later. You
might run over and give her a look-up, though."

"I will, sir! Good-bye."

"Good-bye," said Dr. Cairn, and pressed the bell which summoned
Marston to usher out the caller, and usher in the next patient.

In Half-Moon Street, Robert Cairn stood irresolute; for he was one of
those whose mental moods are physically reflected. He might call upon
Myra Duquesne, in which event he would almost certainly be asked to
stay to lunch; or he might call upon Antony Ferrara. He determined
upon the latter, though less pleasant course.

Turning his steps in the direction of Piccadilly, he reflected that
this grim and uncanny secret which he shared with his father was like
to prove prejudicial to his success in journalism. It was eternally
uprising, demoniac, between himself and his work. The feeling of
fierce resentment towards Antony Ferrara which he cherished grew
stronger at every step. _He_ was the spider governing the web, the web
that clammily touched Dr. Cairn, himself, Robert Cairn, and--Myra
Duquesne. Others there had been who had felt its touch, who had been
drawn to the heart of the unclean labyrinth--and devoured. In the mind
of Cairn, the figure of Antony Ferrara assumed the shape of a monster,
a ghoul, an elemental spirit of evil.

And now he was ascending the marble steps. Before the gates of the
lift he stood and pressed the bell.

Ferrara's proved to be a first-floor suite, and the doors were opened
by an Eastern servant dressed in white.

"His beastly theatrical affectation again!" muttered Cairn. "The man
should have been a music-hall illusionist!"

The visitor was salaamed into a small reception room. Of this
apartment the walls and ceiling were entirely covered by a fretwork in
sandalwood, evidently Oriental in workmanship. In niches, or doorless
cup-boards; stood curious-looking vases and pots. Heavy curtains of
rich fabric draped the doors. The floor was of mosaic, and a small
fountain played in the centre. A cushioned divan occupied one side of
the place, from which natural light was entirely excluded and which
was illuminated only by an ornate lantern swung from the ceiling. This
lantern had panes of blue glass, producing a singular effect. A silver
_mibkharah_, or incense-burner, stood near to one corner of the divan
and emitted a subtle perfume. As the servant withdrew:

"Good heavens!" muttered Cairn, disgustedly; "poor Sir Michael's
fortune won't last long at this rate!" He glanced at the smoking
_mibkharah_. "Phew! effeminate beast! Ambergris!"

No more singular anomaly could well be pictured than that afforded by
the lean, neatly-groomed Scotsman, with his fresh, clean-shaven face
and typically British air, in this setting of Eastern voluptuousness.

The dusky servitor drew back a curtain and waved him to enter, bowing
low as the visitor passed. Cairn found himself in Antony Ferrara's
study. A huge fire was blazing in the grate, rendering the heat of the
study almost insufferable.

It was, he perceived, an elaborated copy of Ferrara's room at Oxford;
infinitely more spacious, of course, and by reason of the rugs,
cushions and carpets with which its floor was strewn, suggestive of
great opulence. But the littered table was there, with its nameless
instruments and its extraordinary silver lamp; the mummies were there;
the antique volumes, rolls of papyrus, preserved snakes and cats and
ibises, statuettes of Isis, Osiris and other Nile deities were there;
the many photographs of women, too (Cairn had dubbed it at Oxford "the
zenana"); above all, there was Antony Ferrara.

He wore the silver-grey dressing-gown trimmed with white swansdown in
which Cairn had seen him before. His statuesque ivory face was set in
a smile, which yet was no smile of welcome; the over-red lips smiled
alone; the long, glittering dark eyes were joyless; almost, beneath
the straightly-pencilled brows, sinister. Save for the short,
lustreless hair it was the face of a handsome, evil woman.

"My dear Cairn--what a welcome interruption. How good of you!"

There was strange music in his husky tones. He spoke unemotionally,
falsely, but Cairn could not deny the charm of that unique voice. It
was possible to understand how women--some women--would be as clay in
the hands of the man who had such a voice as that.

His visitor nodded shortly. Cairn was a poor actor; already his _rôle_
was oppressing him. Whilst Ferrara was speaking one found a sort of
fascination in listening, but when he was silent he repelled. Ferrara
may have been conscious of this, for he spoke much, and well.

"You have made yourself jolly comfortable," said Cairn.

"Why not, my dear Cairn? Every man has within him something of the
Sybarite. Why crush a propensity so delightful? The Spartan philosophy
is palpably absurd; it is that of one who finds himself in a garden
filled with roses and who holds his nostrils; who perceives there
shady bowers, but chooses to burn in the sun; who, ignoring the choice
fruits which tempt his hand and court his palate, stoops to pluck
bitter herbs from the wayside!"

"I see!" snapped Cairn. "Aren't you thinking of doing any more work,
then?"

"Work!" Antony Ferrara smiled and sank upon a heap of cushions.
"Forgive me, Cairn, but I leave it, gladly and confidently, to more
robust characters such as your own."

He proffered a silver box of cigarettes, but Cairn shook his head,
balancing himself on a corner of the table.

"No; thanks. I have smoked too much already; my tongue is parched."

"My dear fellow!" Ferrara rose. "I have a wine which, I declare, you
will never have tasted but which you will pronounce to be nectar. It
is made in Cyprus--"

Cairn raised his hand in a way that might have reminded a nice
observer of his father.

"Thank you, nevertheless. Some other time, Ferrara; I am no wine man."

"A whisky and soda, or a burly British B. and S., even a sporty
'Scotch and Polly'?"

There was a suggestion of laughter in the husky voice, now, of a sort
of contemptuous banter. But Cairn stolidly shook his head and forced a
smile.

"Many thanks; but it's too early."

He stood up and began to walk about the room, inspecting the
numberless oddities which it contained. The photographs he examined
with supercilious curiosity. Then, passing to a huge cabinet, he began
to peer in at the rows of amulets, statuettes and other,
unclassifiable, objects with which it was laden. Ferrara's voice came.

"That head of a priestess on the left, Cairn, is of great interest.
The brain had not been removed, and quite a colony of Dermestes
Beetles had propagated in the cavity. Those creatures never saw the
light, Cairn. Yet I assure you that they had eyes. I have nearly forty
of them in the small glass case on the table there. You might like to
examine them."

Cairn shuddered, but felt impelled to turn and look at these gruesome
relics. In a square, glass case he saw the creatures. They lay in rows
on a bed of moss; one might almost have supposed that unclean life yet
survived in the little black insects. They were an unfamiliar species
to Cairn, being covered with unusually long, black hair, except upon
the root of the wing-cases where they were of brilliant orange.

"The perfect pupæ of this insect are extremely rare," added Ferrara
informatively.

"Indeed?" replied Cairn.

He found something physically revolting in that group of beetles whose
history had begun and ended in the skull of a mummy.

"Filthy things!" he said. "Why do you keep them?"

Ferrara shrugged his shoulders.

"Who knows?" he answered enigmatically. "They might prove useful, some
day."

A bell rang; and from Ferrara's attitude it occurred to Cairn that he
was expecting a visitor.

"I must be off," he said accordingly.

And indeed he was conscious of a craving for the cool and
comparatively clean air of Piccadilly. He knew something of the great
evil which dwelt within this man whom he was compelled, by singular
circumstances, to tolerate. But the duty began to irk.

"If you must," was the reply. "Of course, your press work no doubt is
very exacting."

The note of badinage was discernible again, but Cairn passed out into
the _mandarah_ without replying, where the fountain plashed coolly and
the silver _mibkharah_ sent up its pencils of vapour. The outer door
was opened by the Oriental servant, and Ferrara stood and bowed to his
departing visitor. He did not proffer his hand.

"Until our next meeting. Cairn, _es-selâm aleykûm_!" (peace be with
you) he murmured, "as the Moslems say. But indeed I shall be with you
in spirit, dear Cairn."

There was something in the tone wherein he spoke those last words that
brought Cairn up short. He turned, but the doors closed silently. A
faint breath of ambergris was borne to his nostrils.




CHAPTER V

THE RUSTLING SHADOWS


Cairn stepped out of the lift, crossed the hall, and was about to walk
out on to Piccadilly, when he stopped, staring hard at a taxi-cab
which had slowed down upon the opposite side whilst the driver awaited
a suitable opportunity to pull across.

The occupant of the cab was invisible now, but a moment before Cairn
had had a glimpse of her as she glanced out, apparently towards the
very doorway in which he stood. Perhaps his imagination was playing
him tricks. He stood and waited, until at last the cab drew up within
a few yards of him.

Myra Duquesne got out.

Having paid the cabman, she crossed the pavement and entered the
hall-way. Cairn stepped forward so that she almost ran into his arms.

"Mr. Cairn!" she cried. "Why! have you been to see Antony?"

"I have," he replied, and paused, at a loss for words.

It had suddenly occurred to him that Antony Ferrara and Myra Duquesne
had known one another from childhood; that the girl probably regarded
Ferrara in the light of a brother.

"There are so many things I want to talk to him about," she said. "He
seems to know everything, and I am afraid I know very little."

Cairn noted with dismay the shadows under her eyes--the grey eyes that
he would have wished to see ever full of light and laughter. She was
pale, too, or seemed unusually so in her black dress; but the tragic
death of her guardian, Sir Michael Ferrara, had been a dreadful blow
to this convent-bred girl who had no other kin in the world. A longing
swept into Cairn's heart and set it ablaze; a longing to take all her
sorrows, all her cares, upon his own broad shoulders, to take her and
hold her, shielded from whatever of trouble or menace the future might
bring.

"Have you seen his rooms here?" he asked, trying to speak casually;
but his soul was up in arms against the bare idea of this girl's
entering that perfumed place where abominable and vile things were,
and none of them so vile as the man she trusted, whom she counted a
brother.

"Not yet," she answered, with a sort of childish glee momentarily
lighting her eyes. "Are they _very_ splendid?"

"Very," he answered her, grimly.

"Can't you come in with me for awhile? Only just a little while, then
you can come home to lunch--you and Antony." Her eyes sparkled now.
"Oh, do say yes!"

Knowing what he did know of the man upstairs, he longed to accompany
her; yet, contradictorily, knowing what he did he could not face him
again, could not submit himself to the test of being civil to Antony
Ferrara in the presence of Myra Duquesne.

"Please don't tempt me," he begged, and forced a smile. "I shall find
myself enrolled amongst the seekers of soup-tickets if I _completely_
ignore the claims of my employer upon my time!"

"Oh, what a shame!" she cried.

Their eyes met, and something--something unspoken but cogent--passed
between them; so that for the first time a pretty colour tinted the
girl's cheeks. She suddenly grew embarrassed.

"Good-bye, then," she said, holding out her hand. "Will you lunch with
us to-morrow?"

"Thanks awfully," replied Cairn. "Rather--if it's humanly possible.
I'll ring you up."

He released her hand, and stood watching her as she entered the lift.
When it ascended, he turned and went out to swell the human tide of
Piccadilly. He wondered what his father would think of the girl's
visiting Ferrara. Would he approve? Decidedly the situation was a
delicate one; the wrong kind of interference--the tactless kind--might
merely render it worse. It would be awfully difficult, if not
impossible, to explain to Myra. If an open rupture were to be avoided
(and he had profound faith in his father's acumen), then Myra must
remain in ignorance. But was she to be allowed to continue these
visits?

Should he have permitted her to enter Ferrara's rooms?

He reflected that he had no right to question her movements. But, at
least, he might have accompanied her.

"Oh, heavens!" he muttered--"what a horrible tangle. It will drive me
mad!"

There could be no peace for him until he knew her to be safely home
again, and his work suffered accordingly; until, at about midday, he
rang up Myra Duquesne, on the pretence of accepting her invitation to
lunch on the morrow, and heard, with inexpressible relief, her voice
replying to him.

In the afternoon he was suddenly called upon to do a big "royal"
matinée, and this necessitated a run to his chambers in order to
change from Harris tweed into vicuna and cashmere. The usual stream of
lawyers' clerks and others poured under the archway leading to the
court; but in the far corner shaded by the tall plane tree, where the
ascending steps and worn iron railing, the small panes of glass in the
solicitor's window on the ground floor and the general air of
Dickens-like aloofness prevailed, one entered a sort of backwater. In
the narrow hall-way, quiet reigned--a quiet profound as though motor
'buses were not.

Cairn ran up the stairs to the second landing, and began to fumble for
his key. Although he knew it to be impossible, he was aware of a queer
impression that someone was waiting for him, inside his chambers. The
sufficiently palpable fact--that such a thing _was_ impossible--did
not really strike him until he had opened the door and entered. Up to
that time, in a sort of subconscious way, he had anticipated finding a
visitor there.

"What an ass I am!" he muttered; then, "Phew! there's a disgusting
smell!"

He threw open all the windows, and entering his bedroom, also opening
both the windows there. The current of air thus established began to
disperse the odour--a fusty one as of something decaying--and by the
time that he had changed, it was scarcely perceptible. He had little
time to waste in speculation, but when, as he ran out to the door,
glancing at his watch, the nauseous odour suddenly rose again to his
nostrils, he stopped with his hand on the latch.

"What the deuce is it!" he said loudly.

Quite mechanically he turned and looked back. As one might have
anticipated, there was nothing visible to account for the odour.

The emotion of fear is a strange and complex one. In this breath of
decay rising to his nostril, Cairn found something fearsome. He opened
the door, stepped out on to the landing, and closed the door behind
him.

At an hour close upon midnight, Dr. Bruce Cairn, who was about to
retire, received a wholly unexpected visit from his son. Robert Cairn
followed his father into the library and sat down in the big, red
leathern easy-chair. The doctor tilted the lamp shade, directing the
light upon Robert's face. It proved to be slightly pale, and in the
clear eyes was an odd expression--almost a hunted look.

"What's the trouble, Rob? Have a whisky and soda."

Robert Cairn helped himself quietly.

"Now take a cigar and tell me what has frightened you."

"Frightened me!" He started, and paused in the act of reaching for a
match. "Yes--you're right, sir. I _am_ frightened!"

"Not at the moment. You have been."

"Right again." He lighted his cigar. "I want to begin by saying
that--well, how can I put it? When I took up newspaper work, we
thought it would be better if I lived in chambers--"

"Certainly."

"Well, at that time--" he examined the lighted end of his
cigar--"there was no reason--why I should not live alone. But now--"

"Well?"

"Now I feel, sir, that I have need of more or less constant
companionship. Especially I feel that it would be desirable to have a
friend handy at--er--at night time!"

Dr. Cairn leant forward in his chair. His face was very stern.

"Hold out your fingers," he said, "extended; left hand."

His son obeyed, smiling slightly. The open hand showed in the
lamplight steady as a carven hand.

"Nerves quite in order, sir."

Dr. Cairn inhaled a deep breath.

"Tell me," he said.

"It's a queer tale," his son began, "and if I told it to Craig Fenton,
or Madderley round in Harley Street I know what they would say. But
you will _understand_. It started this afternoon, when the sun was
pouring in through the windows. I had to go to my chambers to change;
and the rooms were filled with a most disgusting smell."

His father started.

"What kind of smell?" he asked. "Not--incense?"

"No," replied Robert, looking hard at him--"I thought you would ask
that. It was a smell of something putrid--something rotten, rotten
with the rottenness of ages."

"Did you trace where it came from?"

"I opened all the windows, and that seemed to disperse it for a time.
Then, just as I was going out, it returned; it seemed to envelop me
like a filthy miasma. You know, sir, it's hard to explain just the way
I felt about it--but it all amounts to this: I was glad to get
outside!"

Dr. Cairn stood up and began to pace about the room, his hands locked
behind him.

"To-night," he rapped suddenly, "what occurred to-night?"

"To-night," continued his son, "I got in at about half-past nine. I
had had such a rush, in one way and another, that the incident had
quite lost its hold on my imagination; I hadn't forgotten it, of
course, but I was not thinking of it when I unlocked the door. In fact
I didn't begin to think of it again until, in slippers and
dressing-gown, I had settled down for a comfortable read. There was
nothing, absolutely nothing, to influence my imagination--in that way.
The book was an old favourite, Mark Twain's _Up the Mississippi_, and
I sat in the armchair with a large bottle of lager beer at my elbow
and my pipe going strong."

Becoming restless in turn, the speaker stood up and walking to the
fireplace flicked off the long cone of grey ash from his cigar. He
leant one elbow upon the mantel-piece, resuming his story:

"St. Paul's had just chimed the half-hour--half-past ten--when my pipe
went out. Before I had time to re-light it, came the damnable smell
again. At the moment nothing was farther from my mind, and I jumped up
with an exclamation of disgust. It seemed to be growing stronger and
stronger. I got my pipe alight quickly. Still I could smell it; the
aroma of the tobacco did not lessen its beastly pungency in the
smallest degree.

"I tilted the shade of my reading-lamp and looked all about. There was
nothing unusual to be seen. Both windows were open and I went to one
and thrust my head out, in order to learn if the odour came from
outside. It did not. The air outside the window was fresh and clean.
Then I remembered that when I had left my chambers in the afternoon,
the smell had been stronger near the door than anywhere. I ran out to
the door. In the passage I could smell nothing; but--"

He paused, glancing at his father.

"Before I had stood there thirty seconds it was rising all about me
like the fumes from a crater. By God, sir! I realised then that it was
something ... following me!"

Dr. Cairn stood watching him, from the shadows beyond the big table,
as he came forward and finished his whisky at a gulp.

"That seemed to work a change in me," he continued rapidly; "I
recognised there was something behind this disgusting manifestation,
something directing it; and I recognised, too, that the next move was
up to me. I went back to my room. The odour was not so pronounced, but
as I stood by the table, waiting, it increased, and increased, until
it almost choked me. My nerves were playing tricks, but I kept a fast
hold on myself. I set to work, very methodically, and fumigated the
place. Within myself I knew that it could do no good, but I felt that
I had to put up some kind of opposition. You understand, sir?"

"Quite," replied Dr. Cairn quietly. "It was an organised attempt to
expel the invader, and though of itself it was useless, the mental
attitude dictating it was good. Go on."

"The clocks had chimed eleven when I gave up, and I felt physically
sick. The air by this time was poisonous, literally poisonous. I
dropped into the easy-chair and began to wonder what the end of it
would be. Then, in the shadowy parts of the room, outside the circle
of light cast by the lamp, I detected--darker patches. For awhile I
tried to believe that they were imaginary, but when I saw one move
along the bookcase, glide down its side, and come across the carpet,
towards me, I knew that they were not. Before heaven, sir"--his voice
shook--"either I am mad, or to-night my room was filled with things
that _crawled_! They were everywhere; on the floor, on the walls, even
on the ceiling above me! Where the light was I couldn't detect them,
but the shadows were alive, alive with things--the size of my two
hands; and in the growing stillness--"

His voice had become husky. Dr. Cairn stood still, as a man of stone,
watching him.

"In the stillness, very faintly, _they rustled_!"

Silence fell. A car passed outside in Half-Moon Street; its throb died
away. A clock was chiming the half-hour after midnight. Dr. Cairn
spoke:

"Anything else?"

"One other thing, sir. I was gripping the chair arms; I felt that I
had to grip something to prevent myself from slipping into madness. My
left hand--" he glanced at it with a sort of repugnance--"something
hairy--and indescribably loathsome--touched it; just brushed against
it. But it was too much. I'm ashamed to tell you, sir; I screamed,
screamed like any hysterical girl, and for the second time, ran! I ran
from my own rooms, grabbed a hat and coat; and left my dressing gown
on the floor!"

He turned, leaning both elbows on the mantel-piece, and buried his
face in his hands.

"Have another drink," said Dr. Cairn. "You called on Antony Ferrara
to-day, didn't you? How did he receive you?"

"That brings me to something else I wanted to tell you," continued
Robert, squirting soda-water into his glass. "Myra--goes there."

"Where--to his chambers?"

"Yes."

Dr. Cairn began to pace the room again.

"I am not surprised," he admitted; "she has always been taught to
regard him in the light of a brother. But nevertheless we must put a
stop to it. How did you learn this?"

Robert Cairn gave him an account of the morning's incidents,
describing Ferrara's chambers with a minute exactness which revealed
how deep, how indelible an impression their strangeness had made upon
his mind.

"There is one thing," he concluded, "against which I am always coming
up, I puzzled over it at Oxford, and others did, too; I came against
it to-day. Who _is_ Antony Ferrara? Where did Sir Michael find him?
What kind of woman bore such a son?"

"Stop boy!" cried Dr. Cairn.

Robert started, looking at his father across the table.

"You are already in danger, Rob. I won't disguise that fact from you.
Myra Duquesne is no relation of Ferrara's; therefore, since she
inherits half of Sir Michael's fortune, a certain course must have
suggested itself to Antony. You, patently, are an obstacle! That's
bad enough, boy; let us deal with it before we look for further
trouble."

"He took up a blackened briar from the table and began to load it.

"Regarding your next move," he continued slowly, "there can be no
question. You must return to your chambers!"

"What!"

"There can be no question, Rob. A kind of attack has been made upon
you which only _you_ can repel. If you desert your chambers, it will
be repeated here. At present it is evidently localised. There are laws
governing these things; laws as immutable as any other laws in Nature.
One of them is this: the powers of darkness (to employ a conventional
and significant phrase) cannot triumph over the powers of Will. Below
the Godhead, Will is the supreme force of the Universe. _Resist_! You
_must_ resist, or you are lost!"

"What do you mean, sir?"

"I mean that destruction of mind, and of something more than mind,
threatens you. If you retreat you are lost. Go back to your rooms.
_Seek_ your foe; strive to haul him into the light and crush him! The
phenomena at your rooms belong to one of two varieties; at present it
seems impossible to classify them more closely. Both are dangerous,
though in different ways. I suspect, however, that a purely mental
effort will be sufficient to disperse these nauseous shadow-things.
Probably you will not be troubled again to-night, but whenever the
phenomena return, take off your coat to them! You require no better
companion than the one you had:--Mark Twain! Treat your visitors as
one might imagine he would have treated them; as a very poor joke! But
whenever it begins again, ring me up. Don't hesitate, whatever the
hour. I shall be at the hospital all day, but from seven onward I
shall be here and shall make a point of remaining. Give me a call when
you return, now, and if there is no earlier occasion, another in the
morning. Then rely upon my active co-operation throughout the
following night."

"Active, sir?"

"I said active, Rob. The next repetition of these manifestations shall
be the last. Good-night. Remember, you have only to lift the receiver
to know that you are not alone in your fight."

Robert Cairn took a second cigar, lighted it, finished his whisky, and
squared his shoulders.

"Good-night, sir," he said. "I shan't run away a third time!"

When the door had closed upon his exit, Dr. Cairn resumed his restless
pacing up and down the library. He had given Roman counsel, for he had
sent his son out to face, alone, a real and dreadful danger. Only thus
could he hope to save him, but nevertheless it had been hard. The next
fight would be a fight to the finish, for Robert had said, "I shan't
run away a third time;" and he was a man of his word.

As Dr. Cairn had declared, the manifestations belonged to one of two
varieties. According to the most ancient science in the world, the
science by which the Egyptians, and perhaps even earlier peoples,
ordered their lives, we share this, our plane of existence, with
certain other creatures, often called Elementals. Mercifully, these
fearsome entities are invisible to our normal sight, just as the finer
tones of music are inaudible to our normal powers of hearing.

Victims of delirium tremens, opium smokers, and other debauchees,
artificially open that finer, latent power of vision; and the horrors
which surround them are not imaginary but are Elementals attracted to
the victim by his peculiar excesses.

The crawling things, then, which reeked abominably might be Elementals
(so Dr. Cairn reasoned) superimposed upon Robert Cairn's consciousness
by a directing, malignant intelligence. On the other hand they might
be mere glamours--or thought-forms--thrust upon him by the same wizard
mind; emanations from an evil, powerful will.

His reflections were interrupted by the ringing of the 'phone bell. He
took up the receiver.

"Hullo!"

"That you, sir? All's clear here, now. I'm turning in."

"Right. Good-night, Rob. Ring me in the morning."

"Good-night, sir."

Dr. Cairn refilled his charred briar, and, taking from a drawer in the
writing table a thick MS., sat down and began to study the
closely-written pages. The paper was in the cramped handwriting of the
late Sir Michael Ferrara, his travelling companion through many
strange adventures; and the sun had been flooding the library with
dimmed golden light for several hours, and a bustle below stairs
acclaiming an awakened household, ere the doctor's studies were
interrupted. Again, it was the 'phone bell. He rose, switched off the
reading-lamp, and lifted the instrument.

"That you, Rob?"

"Yes, sir. All's well, thank God! Can I breakfast with you?"

"Certainly, my boy!" Dr. Cairn glanced at his watch. "Why, upon my
soul it's seven o'clock!"




CHAPTER VI

THE BEETLES


Sixteen hours had elapsed and London's clocks were booming eleven that
night, when the uncanny drama entered upon its final stage. Once more
Dr. Cairn sat alone with Sir Michael's manuscript, but at frequent
intervals his glance would stray to the telephone at his elbow. He had
given orders to the effect that he was on no account to be disturbed
and that his car should be ready at the door from ten o'clock onward.

As the sound of the final strokes was dying away the expected summons
came. Dr. Cairn's jaw squared and his mouth was very grim, when he
recognised his son's voice over the wires.

"Well, boy?"

"They're here, sir--now, while I'm speaking! I have been
fighting--fighting hard--for half an hour. The place smells like a
charnel-house and the--shapes are taking definite, horrible form! They
have ... _eyes_!" His voice sounded harsh. "Quite black the eyes are,
and they shine like beads! It's gradually wearing me down, although I
have myself in hand, so far. I mean I might crack up--at any moment.
Bah!--"

His voice ceased.

"Hullo!" cried Dr. Cairn. "Hullo, Rob!"

"It's all right, sir," came, all but inaudibly. "The--things are all
around the edge of the light patch; they make a sort of rustling
noise. It is a tremendous, conscious _effort_ to keep them at bay.
While I was speaking, I somehow lost my grip of the situation.
One--crawled ... it fastened on my hand ... a hairy, many-limbed
horror.... Oh, my God! another is touching...."

"Rob! Rob! Keep your nerve, boy! Do you hear?"

"Yes--yes--" faintly.

"_Pray_, my boy--pray for strength, and it will come to you! You
_must_ hold out for another ten minutes. Ten minutes--do you
understand?"

"Yes! yes!--Merciful God!--if you can help me, do it, sir, or--"

"Hold out, boy! In _ten minutes_ you'll have won."

Dr. Cairn hung up the receiver, raced from the library, and grabbing a
cap from the rack in the hall, ran down the steps and bounded into the
waiting car, shouting an address to the man.

Piccadilly was gay with supper-bound theatre crowds when he leapt out
and ran into the hall-way which had been the scene of Robert's meeting
with Myra Duquesne. Dr. Cairn ran past the lift doors and went up the
stairs three steps at a time. He pressed his finger to the bell-push
beside Antony Ferrara's door and held it there until the door opened
and a dusky face appeared in the opening.

The visitor thrust his way in, past the white-clad man holding out his
arms to detain him.

"Not at home, _effendim_--"

Dr. Cairn shot out a sinewy hand, grabbed the man--he was a tall
_fellahîn_--by the shoulder, and sent him spinning across the mosaic
floor of the _mandarah_. The air was heavy with the perfume of
ambergris.

Wasting no word upon the reeling man, Dr. Cairn stepped to the
doorway. He jerked the drapery aside and found himself in a dark
corridor. From his son's description of the chambers he had no
difficulty in recognising the door of the study.

He turned the handle--the door proved to be unlocked--and entered the
darkened room.

In the grate a huge fire glowed redly; the temperature of the place
was almost unbearable. On the table the light from the silver lamp
shed a patch of radiance, but the rest of the study was veiled in
shadow.

A black-robed figure was seated in a high-backed, carved chair; one
corner of the cowl-like garment was thrown across the table. Half
rising, the figure turned--and, an evil apparition in the glow from
the fire, Antony Ferrara faced the intruder.

Dr. Cairn walked forward, until he stood over the other.

"Uncover what you have on the table," he said succinctly.

Ferrara's strange eyes were uplifted to the speaker's with an
expression in their depths which, in the Middle Ages, alone would have
sent a man to the stake.

"Dr. Cairn--"

The husky voice had lost something of its suavity.

"You heard my order!"

"Your _order_! Surely, doctor, since I am in my own--"

"Uncover what you have on the table. Or must I do so for you!"

Antony Ferrara placed his hand upon the end of the black robe which
lay across the table.

"Be careful, Dr. Cairn," he said evenly. "You--are taking risks."

Dr. Cairn suddenly leapt, seized the shielding hand in a sure grip and
twisted Ferrara's arm behind him. Then, with a second rapid movement,
he snatched away the robe. A faint smell--a smell of corruption, of
ancient rottenness--arose on the superheated air.

A square of faded linen lay on the table, figured with all but
indecipherable Egyptian characters, and upon it, in rows which formed
a definite geometrical design, were arranged a great number of little,
black insects.

Dr. Cairn released the hand which he held, and Ferrara sat quite
still, looking straight before him.

"_Dermestes beetles!_ from the skull of a mummy! You filthy, obscene
beast!"

Ferrara spoke, with a calm suddenly regained:

"Is there anything obscene in the study of beetles?"

"My son saw these things here yesterday; and last night, and again
to-night, you cast magnified doubles--glamours--of the horrible
creatures into his rooms! By means which you know of, but which _I_
know of, too, you sought to bring your thought-things down to the
material plane."

"Dr. Cairn, my respect for you is great; but I fear that much study
has made you mad."

Ferrara reached out his hand towards an ebony box; he was smiling.

"Don't dare to touch that box!"

He paused, glancing up.

"More orders, doctor?"

"Exactly."

Dr. Cairn grabbed the faded linen, scooping up the beetles within it,
and, striding across the room, threw the whole unsavoury bundle into
the heart of the fire. A great flame leapt up; there came a series of
squeaky explosions, so that, almost, one might have imagined those
age-old insects to have had life. Then the doctor turned again.

Ferrara leapt to his feet with a cry that had in it something inhuman,
and began rapidly to babble in a tongue that was not European. He was
facing Dr. Cairn, a tall, sinister figure, but one hand was groping
behind him for the box.

"Stop that!" rapped the doctor imperatively--"and for the last time do
not dare to touch that box!"

The flood of strange words was dammed. Ferrara stood quivering, but
silent.

"The laws by which such as you were burnt--the _wise_ laws of long
ago--are no more," said Dr. Cairn. "English law cannot touch you, but
God has provided for your kind!"

"Perhaps," whispered Ferrara, "you would like also to burn this box to
which you object so strongly?"

"No power on earth would prevail upon me to touch it! But you--you
_have_ touched it--and you know the penalty! You raise forces of evil
that have lain dormant for ages and dare to wield them. Beware! I know
of some whom you have murdered; I cannot know how many you have sent
to the madhouse. But I swear that in future your victims shall be few.
There is a way to deal with you!"

He turned and walked to the door.

"Beware also, dear Dr. Cairn," came softly. "As you say, I raise
forces of evil--"

Dr. Cairn spun about. In three strides he was standing over Antony
Ferrara, fists clenched and his sinewy body tense in every fibre. His
face was pale, as was apparent even in that vague light, and his eyes
gleamed like steel.

"You raise other forces," he said--and his voice, though steady was
very low; "evil forces, also."

Antony Ferrara, invoker of nameless horrors, shrank before him--before
the primitive Celtic man whom unwittingly he had invoked. Dr. Cairn
was spare and lean, but in perfect physical condition. Now he was
strong, with the strength of a just cause. Moreover, he was dangerous,
and Ferrara knew it well.

"I fear--" began the latter huskily.

"Dare to bandy words with me," said Dr. Cairn, with icy coolness,
"answer me back but once again, and before God I'll strike you dead!"

Ferrara sat silent, clutching at the arms of his chair, and not daring
to raise his eyes. For ten magnetic seconds they stayed so, then again
Dr. Cairn turned, and this time walked out.

The clocks had been chiming the quarter after eleven as he had entered
Antony Ferrara's chambers, and some had not finished their chimes when
his son, choking, calling wildly upon Heaven to aid him, had fallen in
the midst of crowding, obscene things, and, in the instant of his
fall, had found the room clear of the waving antennæ, the beady eyes,
and the beetle shapes. The whole horrible phantasmagoria--together
with the odour of ancient rottenness--faded like a fevered dream, at
the moment that Dr. Cairn had burst in upon the creator of it.

Robert Cairn stood up, weakly, trembling; then dropped upon his knees
and sobbed out prayers of thankfulness that came from his frightened
soul.




CHAPTER VII

SIR ELWIN GROVES' PATIENT


When a substantial legacy is divided into two shares, one of which
falls to a man, young, dissolute and clever, and the other to a girl,
pretty and inexperienced, there is laughter in the hells. But, to the
girl's legacy add another item--a strong, stern guardian, and the
issue becomes one less easy to predict.

In the case at present under consideration, such an arrangement led
Dr. Bruce Cairn to pack off Myra Duquesne to a grim Scottish manor in
Inverness upon a visit of indefinite duration. It also led to heart
burnings on the part of Robert Cairn, and to other things about to be
noticed.

Antony Ferrara, the co-legatee, was not slow to recognise that a
damaging stroke had been played, but he knew Dr. Cairn too well to put
up any protest. In his capacity of fashionable physician, the doctor
frequently met Ferrara in society, for a man at once rich, handsome,
and bearing a fine name, is not socially ostracised on the mere
suspicion that he is a dangerous blackguard. Thus Antony Ferrara was
courted by the smartest women in town and tolerated by the men. Dr.
Cairn would always acknowledge him, and then turn his back upon the
dark-eyed, adopted son of his dearest friend.

There was that between the two of which the world knew nothing. Had
the world known what Dr. Cairn knew respecting Antony Ferrara, then,
despite his winning manner, his wealth and his station, every door in
London, from those of Mayfair to that of the foulest den in Limehouse,
would have been closed to him--closed, and barred with horror and
loathing. A tremendous secret was locked up within the heart of Dr.
Bruce Cairn.

Sometimes we seem to be granted a glimpse of the guiding Hand that
steers men's destinies; then, as comprehension is about to dawn, we
lose again our temporal lucidity of vision. The following incident
illustrates this.

Sir Elwin Groves, of Harley Street, took Dr. Cairn aside at the club
one evening.

"I am passing a patient on to you, Cairn," he said; "Lord Lashmore."

"Ah!" replied Cairn, thoughtfully. "I have never met him."

"He has only quite recently returned to England--you may have
heard?--and brought a South American Lady Lashmore with him."

"I had heard that, yes."

"Lord Lashmore is close upon fifty-five, and his wife--a passionate
Southern type--is probably less than twenty. They are an odd couple.
The lady has been doing some extensive entertaining at the town
house."

Groves stared hard at Dr. Cairn.

"Your young friend, Antony Ferrara, is a regular visitor."

"No doubt," said Cairn; "he goes everywhere. I don't know how long his
funds will last."

"I have wondered, too. His chambers are like a scene from the 'Arabian
Nights.'"

"How do you know?" inquired the other curiously. "Have you attended
him?"

"Yes," was the reply. "His Eastern servant 'phoned for me one night
last week; and I found Ferrara lying unconscious in a room like a
pasha's harem. He looked simply ghastly, but the man would give me no
account of what had caused the attack. It looked to me like sheer
nervous exhaustion. He gave me quite an anxious five minutes.
Incidentally, the room was blazing hot, with a fire roaring right up
the chimney, and it smelt like a Hindu temple."

"Ah!" muttered Cairn, "between his mode of life and his peculiar
studies he will probably crack up. He has a fragile constitution."

"Who the deuce is he, Cairn?" pursued Sir Elwin. "You must know all
the circumstances of his adoption; you were with the late Sir Michael
in Egypt at the time. The fellow is a mystery to me; he repels, in
some way. I was glad to get away from his rooms."

"You were going to tell me something about Lord Lashmore's case, I
think?" said Cairn.

Sir Elwin Groves screwed up his eyes and readjusted his pince-nez, for
the deliberate way in which his companion had changed the conversation
was unmistakable. However, Cairn's brusque manners were proverbial,
and Sir Elwin accepted the lead.

"Yes, yes, I believe I was," he agreed, rather lamely. "Well, it's
very singular. I was called there last Monday, at about two o'clock in
the morning. I found the house upside-down, and Lady Lashmore, with a
dressing-gown thrown over her nightdress, engaged in bathing a bad
wound in her husband's throat."

"What! Attempted suicide?"

"My first idea, naturally. But a glance at the wound set me wondering.
It was bleeding profusely, and from its location I was afraid that it
might have penetrated the internal jugular; but the external only was
wounded. I arrested the flow of blood and made the patient
comfortable. Lady Lashmore assisted me coolly and displayed some skill
as a nurse. In fact she had applied a ligature before my arrival."

"Lord Lashmore remained conscious?"

"Quite. He was shaky, of course. I called again at nine o'clock that
morning, and found him progressing favourably. When I had dressed the
wounds--"

"Wounds?"

"There were two actually; I will tell you in a moment. I asked Lord
Lashmore for an explanation. He had given out, for the benefit of the
household, that, stumbling out of bed in the dark, he had tripped upon
a rug, so that he fell forward almost into the fireplace. There is a
rather ornate fender, with an elaborate copper scrollwork design, and
his account was that he came down with all his weight upon this, in
such a way that part of the copperwork pierced his throat. It was
possible, just possible, Cairn; but it didn't satisfy me and I could
see that it didn't satisfy Lady Lashmore. However, when we were alone,
Lashmore told me the real facts."

"He had been concealing the truth?"

"Largely for his wife's sake, I fancy. He was anxious to spare her the
alarm which, knowing the truth, she must have experienced. His story
was this--related in confidence, but he wishes that you should know.
He was awakened by a sudden, sharp pain in the throat; not very acute,
but accompanied by a feeling of pressure. It was gone again, in a
moment, and he was surprised to find blood upon his hands when he felt
for the cause of the pain.

"He got out of bed and experienced a great dizziness. The hemorrhage
was altogether more severe than he had supposed. Not wishing to arouse
his wife, he did not enter his dressing-room, which is situated
between his own room and Lady Lashmore's; he staggered as far as the
bell-push, and then collapsed. His man found him on the
floor--sufficiently near to the fender to lend colour to the story of
the accident."

Dr. Cairn coughed drily.

"Do you think it was attempted suicide after all, then?" he asked.

"No--I don't," replied Sir Elwin emphatically. "I think it was
something altogether more difficult to explain."

"Not attempted murder?"

"Almost impossible. Excepting Chambers, Lord Lashmore's valet, no one
could possibly have gained access to that suite of rooms. They number
four. There is a small boudoir, out of which opens Lady Lashmore's
bedroom; between this and Lord Lashmore's apartment is the
dressing-room. Lord Lashmore's door was locked and so was that of the
boudoir. These are the only two means of entrance."

"But you said that Chambers came in and found him."

"Chambers has a key of Lord Lashmore's door. That is why I said
'excepting Chambers.' But Chambers has been with his present master
since Lashmore left Cambridge. It's out of the question."

"Windows?"

"First floor, no balcony, and overlook Hyde Park."

"Is there no clue to the mystery?"

"There are three!"

"What are they?"

"First: the nature of the wounds. Second: Lord Lashmore's idea that
something was in the room at the moment of his awakening. Third: the
fact that an identical attempt was made upon him last night!"

"Last night! Good God! With what result?"

"The former wounds, though deep, are very tiny, and had quite healed
over. One of them partially reopened, but Lord Lashmore awoke
altogether more readily and before any damage had been done. He says
that some soft body rolled off the bed. He uttered a loud cry, leapt
out and switched on the electric lights. At the same moment he heard a
frightful scream from his wife's room. When I arrived--Lashmore
himself summoned me on this occasion--I had a new patient."

"Lady Lashmore?"

"Exactly. She had fainted from fright, at hearing her husband's cry, I
assume. There had been a slight hemorrhage from the throat, too."

"What! Tuberculous?"

"I fear so. Fright would not produce hemorrhage in the case of a
healthy subject, would it?"

Dr. Cairn shook his head. He was obviously perplexed.

"And Lord Lashmore?" he asked.

"The marks were there again," replied Sir Elwin; "rather lower on the
neck. But they were quite superficial. He had awakened in time and had
struck out--hitting something."

"What?"

"Some living thing; apparently covered with long, silky hair. It
escaped, however."

"And now," said Dr. Cairn--"these wounds; what are they like?"

"They are like the marks of fangs," replied Sir Elwin; "of two long,
sharp fangs!"




CHAPTER VIII

THE SECRET OF DHOON


Lord Lashmore was a big, blonde man, fresh coloured, and having his
nearly white hair worn close cut and his moustache trimmed in the neat
military fashion. For a fair man, he had eyes of a singular colour.
They were of so dark a shade of brown as to appear black: southern
eyes; lending to his personality an oddness very striking.

When he was shown into Dr. Cairn's library, the doctor regarded him
with that searching scrutiny peculiar to men of his profession, at the
same time inviting the visitor to be seated.

Lashmore sat down in the red leathern armchair, resting his large
hands upon his knees, with the fingers widely spread. He had a massive
dignity, but was not entirely at his ease.

Dr. Cairn opened the conversation, in his direct fashion.

"You come to consult me, Lord Lashmore, in my capacity of occultist
rather than in that of physician?"

"In both," replied Lord Lashmore; "distinctly, in both."

"Sir Elwin Groves is attending you for certain throat wounds--"

Lord Lashmore touched the high stock which he was wearing.

"The scars remain," he said. "Do you wish to see them?"

"I am afraid I must trouble you."

The stock was untied; and Dr. Cairn, through a powerful glass,
examined the marks. One of them, the lower, was slightly inflamed.

Lord Lashmore retied his stock, standing before the small mirror set
in the overmantel.

"You had an impression of some presence in the room at the time of the
outrage?" pursued the doctor.

"Distinctly; on both occasions."

"Did you see anything?"

"The room was too dark."

"But you felt something?"

"Hair; my knuckles, as I struck out--I am speaking of the second
outrage--encountered a thick mass of hair."

"The body of some animal?"

"Probably the head."

"But still you saw nothing?"

"I must confess that I had a vague idea of some shape flitting away
across the room; a white shape--therefore probably a figment of my
imagination."

"Your cry awakened Lady Lashmore?"

"Unfortunately, yes. Her nerves were badly shaken already, and this
second shock proved too severe. Sir Elwin fears chest trouble. I am
taking her abroad as soon as possible."

"She was found insensible. Where?"

"At the door of the dressing-room--the door communicating with her own
room, not that communicating with mine. She had evidently started to
come to my assistance when faintness overcame her."

"What is her own account?"

"That is her own account."

"Who discovered her?"

"I did."

Dr. Cairn was drumming his fingers on the table.

"You have a theory, Lord Lashmore," he said suddenly. "Let me hear
it."

Lord Lashmore started, and glared across at the speaker with a sort of
haughty surprise.

"_I_ have a theory?"

"I think so. Am I wrong?"

Lashmore stood on the rug before the fireplace, with his hands locked
behind him and his head lowered, looking out under his tufted eyebrows
at Dr. Cairn. Thus seen, Lord Lashmore's strange eyes had a sinister
appearance.

"If I had had a theory--" he began.

"You would have come to me to seek confirmation?" suggested Dr. Cairn.

"Ah! yes, you may be right. Sir Elwin Groves, to whom I hinted
something, mentioned your name. I am not quite clear upon one point,
Dr. Cairn. Did he send me to you because he thought--in a word, are
you a mental specialist?"

"I am not. Sir Elwin has no doubts respecting your brain, Lord
Lashmore. He has sent you here because I have made some study of what
I may term psychical ailments. There is a chapter in your family
history"--he fixed his searching gaze upon the other's face--"which
latterly has been occupying your mind?"

At that, Lashmore started in good earnest.

"To what do you refer?"

"Lord Lashmore, you have come to me for advice. A rare
ailment--happily very rare in England--has assailed you. Circumstances
have been in your favour thus far, but a recurrence is to be
anticipated at any time. Be good enough to look upon me as a
specialist, and give me all your confidence."

Lashmore cleared his throat.

"What do you wish to know, Dr. Cairn?" he asked, with a queer
intermingling of respect and hauteur in his tones.

"I wish to know about Mirza, wife of the third Baron Lashmore."

Lord Lashmore took a stride forward. His large hands clenched, and his
eyes were blazing.

"What do you know about her?"

Surprise was in his voice, and anger.

"I have seen her portrait in Dhoon Castle; you were not in residence
at the time. Mirza, Lady Lashmore, was evidently a very beautiful
woman. What was the date of the marriage?"

"1615."

"The third Baron brought her to England from?--"

"Poland."

"She was a Pole?"

"A Polish Jewess."

"There was no issue of the marriage, but the Baron outlived her and
married again?"

Lord Lashmore shifted his feet nervously, and gnawed his finger-nails.

"There _was_ issue of the marriage," he snapped. "She was--my
ancestress."

"Ah!" Dr. Cairn's grey eyes lighted up momentarily. "We get to the
facts! Why was this birth kept secret?"

"Dhoon Castle has kept many secrets!" It was a grim noble of the
Middle Ages who was speaking. "For a Lashmore, there was no difficulty
in suppressing the facts, arranging a hasty second marriage and
representing the boy as the child of the later union. Had the second
marriage proved fruitful, this had been unnecessary; but an heir to
Dhoon was--essential."

"I see. Had the second marriage proved fruitful, the child of Mirza
would have been--what shall we say?--smothered?"

"Damn it! What do you mean?"

"He was the rightful heir."

"Dr. Cairn," said Lashmore slowly, "you are probing an open wound. The
fourth Baron Lashmore represents what the world calls 'The Curse of
the House of Dhoon.' At Dhoon Castle there is a secret chamber, which
has engaged the pens of many so-called occultists, but which no man,
save every heir, has entered for generations. It's very location is a
secret. Measurements do not avail to find it. You would appear to know
much of my family's black secret; perhaps you know where that room
lies at Dhoon?"

"Certainly, I do," replied Dr. Cairn calmly; "it is under the moat,
some thirty yards west of the former drawbridge."

Lord Lashmore changed colour. When he spoke again his voice had lost
its _timbre_.

"Perhaps you know--what it contains."

"I do. It contains Paul, fourth Baron Lashmore, son of Mirza, the
Polish Jewess!"

Lord Lashmore reseated himself in the big armchair, staring at the
speaker, aghast.

"I thought no other in the world knew that!" he said, hollowly. "Your
studies have been extensive indeed. For three years--three whole years
from the night of my twenty-first birthday--the horror hung over me,
Dr. Cairn. It ultimately brought my grandfather to the madhouse, but
my father was of sterner stuff, and so, it seems, was I. After those
three years of horror I threw off the memories of Paul Dhoon, the
third baron--"

"It was on the night of your twenty-first birthday that you were
admitted to the subterranean room?"

"You know so much, Dr. Cairn, that you may as well know all."
Lashmore's face was twitching. "But you are about to hear what no man
has ever heard from the lips of one of my family before."

He stood up again, restlessly.

"Nearly thirty-five years have elapsed," he resumed, "since that
December night; but my very soul trembles now, when I recall it! There
was a big house-party at Dhoon, but I had been prepared, for some
weeks, by my father, for the ordeal that awaited me. Our family
mystery is historical, and there were many fearful glances bestowed
upon me, when, at midnight, my father took me aside from the company
and led me to the old library. By God! Dr. Cairn--fearful as these
reminiscences are, it is a relief to relate them--to _someone_!"

A sort of suppressed excitement was upon Lashmore, but his voice
remained low and hollow.

"He asked me," he continued, "the traditional question: if I had
prayed for strength. God knows I had! Then, his stern face very pale,
he locked the library door, and from a closet concealed beside the
ancient fireplace--a closet which, hitherto, I had not known to
exist--he took out a bulky key of antique workmanship. Together we set
to work to remove all the volumes from one of the bookshelves.

"Even when the shelves were empty, it called for our united efforts to
move the heavy piece of furniture; but we accomplished the task
ultimately, making visible a considerable expanse of panelling. Nearly
forty years had elapsed since that case had been removed, and the
carvings which it concealed were coated with all the dust which had
accumulated there since the night of my father's coming of age.

"A device upon the top of the centre panel represented the arms of the
family; the helm which formed part of the device projected like a
knob. My father grasped it, turned it, and threw his weight against
the seemingly solid wall. It yielded, swinging inward upon concealed
hinges, and a damp, earthy smell came out into the library. Taking up
a lamp, which he had in readiness, my father entered the cavity,
beckoning me to follow.

"I found myself descending a flight of rough steps, and the roof above
me was so low that I was compelled to stoop. A corner was come to,
passed, and a further flight of steps appeared beneath. At that time
the old moat was still flooded, and even had I not divined as much
from the direction of the steps, I should have known, at this point,
that we were beneath it. Between the stone blocks roofing us in oozed
drops of moisture, and the air was at once damp and icily cold.

"A short passage, commencing at the foot of the steps, terminated
before a massive, iron-studded door. My father placed the key in the
lock, and holding the lamp above his head, turned and looked at me. He
was deathly pale.

"'Summon all your fortitude,' he said.

"He strove to turn the key, but for a long time without success for
the lock was rusty. Finally, however--he was a strong man--his efforts
were successful. The door opened, and an indescribable smell came out
into the passage. Never before had I met with anything like it; I have
never met with it since."

Lord Lashmore wiped his brow with his handkerchief.

"The first thing," he resumed, "upon which the lamplight shone, was
what appeared to be a blood-stain spreading almost entirely over one
wall of the cell which I perceived before me. I have learnt since that
this was a species of fungus, not altogether uncommon, but at the
time, and in that situation, it shocked me inexpressibly.

"But let me hasten to that which we were come to see--let me finish
my story as quickly as may be. My father halted at the entrance to
this frightful cell; his hand, with which he held the lamp above his
head, was not steady; and over his shoulder I looked into the place
and saw ... _him_.

"Dr. Cairn, for three years, night and day, that spectacle haunted me;
for three years, night and day, I seemed to have before my eyes the
dreadful face--the bearded, grinning face of Paul Dhoon. He lay there
upon the floor of the dungeon, his fists clenched and his knees drawn
up as if in agony. He had lain there for generations; yet, as God is
my witness, there was flesh on his bones.

"Yellow and seared it was, and his joints protruded through it, but
his features were yet recognisable--horribly, dreadfully,
recognisable. His black hair was like a mane, long and matted, his
eyebrows were incredibly heavy and his lashes overhung his cheekbones.
The nails of his fingers ... no! I will spare you! But his teeth, his
ivory gleaming teeth--with the two wolf-fangs fully revealed by that
death-grin!...

"An aspen stake was driven through his breast, pinning him to the
earthern floor, and there he lay in the agonised attitude of one who
had died by such awful means. Yet--that stake was not driven through
his unhallowed body until a whole year after his death!

"How I regained the library I do not remember. I was unable to rejoin
the guests, unable to face my fellow-men for days afterwards. Dr.
Cairn, for three years I feared--feared the world--feared
sleep--feared myself above all; for I knew that I had in my veins the
blood of a _vampire_!"




CHAPTER IX

THE POLISH JEWESS


There was a silence of some minutes' duration. Lord Lashmore sat
staring straight before him, his fists clenched upon his knees. Then:

"It was after death that the third baron developed--certain
qualities?" inquired Dr. Cairn.

"There were six cases of death in the district within twelve months,"
replied Lashmore. "The gruesome cry of 'vampire' ran through the
community. The fourth baron--son of Paul Dhoon--turned a deaf ear to
these reports, until the mother of a child--a child who had
died--traced a man, or the semblance of a man, to the gate of the
Dhoon family vault. By night, secretly, the son of Paul Dhoon visited
the vault, and found....

"The body, which despite twelve months in the tomb, looked as it had
looked in life, was carried to the dungeon--in the Middle Ages a
torture-room; no cry uttered there can reach the outer world--and was
submitted to the ancient process for slaying a vampire. From that hour
no supernatural visitant has troubled the district; but--"

"But," said Dr. Cairn quietly, "the strain came from Mirza, the
sorceress. What of her?"

Lord Lashmore's eyes shone feverishly.

"How do you know that she was a sorceress?" he asked, hoarsely. "These
are family secrets."

"They will remain so," Dr. Cairn answered. "But my studies have gone
far, and I know that Mirza, wife of the third Baron Lashmore,
practised the Black Art in life, and became after death a ghoul. Her
husband surprised her in certain detestable magical operations and
struck her head off. He had suspected her for some considerable time,
and had not only kept secret the birth of her son but had secluded
the child from the mother. No heir resulting from his second marriage,
however, the son of Mirza became Baron Lashmore, and after death
became what his mother had been before him.

"Lord Lashmore, the curse of the house of Dhoon will prevail until the
Polish Jewess who originated it has been treated as her son was
treated!"

"Dr. Cairn, it is not known where her husband had her body concealed.
He died without revealing the secret. Do you mean that the taint, the
devil's taint, may recur--Oh, my God! do you want to drive me mad?"

"I do not mean that after so many generations which have been free
from it, the vampirism will arise again in your blood; but I mean that
the spirit, the unclean, awful spirit of that vampire woman, is still
earth-bound. The son was freed, and with him went the hereditary
taint, it seems; but the mother was _not_ freed! Her body was
decapitated, but her vampire soul cannot go upon its appointed course
until the ancient ceremonial has been performed!"

Lord Lashmore passed his hand across his eyes.

"You daze me, Dr. Cairn. In brief, what do you mean?"

"I mean that the spirit of Mirza is to this day loose upon the world,
and is forced, by a deathless, unnatural longing to seek incarnation
in a human body. It is such awful pariahs as this, Lord Lashmore, that
constitute the danger of so-called spiritualism. Given suitable
conditions, such a spirit might gain control of a human being."

"Do you suggest that the spirit of the second lady--"

"It is distinctly possible that she haunts her descendants. I seem to
remember a tradition of Dhoon Castle, to the effect that births and
deaths are heralded by a woman's mocking laughter?"

"I, myself, heard it on the night--I became Lord Lashmore."

"That is the spirit who was known, in life, as Mirza, Lady Lashmore!"

"But--"

"It is possible to gain control of such a being."

"By what means?"

"By unhallowed means; yet there are those who do not hesitate to
employ them. The danger of such an operation is, of course, enormous."

"I perceive, Dr. Cairn, that a theory, covering the facts of my recent
experiences, is forming in your mind."

"That is so. In order that I may obtain corroborative evidence, I
should like to call at your place this evening. Suppose I come
ostensibly to see Lady Lashmore?"

Lord Lashmore was watching the speaker.

"There is someone in my household whose suspicions you do not wish to
arouse?" he suggested.

"There is. Shall we make it nine o'clock?"

"Why not come to dinner?"

"Thanks all the same, but I think it would serve my purpose better if
I came later."

       *       *       *       *       *

Dr. Cairn and his son dined alone together in Half-Moon Street that
night.

"I saw Antony Ferrara in Regent Street to-day," said. Robert Cairn. "I
was glad to see him."

Dr. Cairn raised his heavy brows.

"Why?" he asked.

"Well, I was half afraid that he might have left London."

"Paid a visit to Myra Duquesne in Inverness?"

"It would not have surprised me."

"Nor would it have surprised me, Rob, but I think he is stalking other
game at present."

Robert Cairn looked up quickly.

"Lady Lashmore," he began--

"Well?" prompted his father.

"One of the Paul Pry brigade who fatten on scandal sent a veiled
paragraph in to us at _The Planet_ yesterday, linking Ferrara's name
with Lady Lashmores.' Of course we didn't use it; he had come to the
wrong market; but--Ferrara was with Lady Lashmore when I met him
to-day."

"What of that?"

"It is not necessarily significant, of course; Lord Lashmore in all
probability will outlive Ferrara, who looked even more pallid than
usual."

"You regard him as an utterly unscrupulous fortune-hunter?"

"Certainly."

"Did Lady Lashmore appear to be in good health?"

"Perfectly."

"Ah!"

A silence fell, of some considerable duration, then:

"Antony Ferrara is a menace to society," said Robert Cairn. "When I
meet the reptilian glance of those black eyes of his and reflect upon
what the man has attempted--what he has done--my blood boils. It is
tragically funny to think that in our new wisdom we have abolished the
only laws that could have touched him! He could not have existed in
Ancient Chaldea, and would probably have been burnt at the stake even
under Charles II.; but in this wise twentieth century he dallies in
Regent Street with a prominent society beauty and laughs in the face
of a man whom he has attempted to destroy!"

"Be very wary," warned Dr. Cairn. "Remember that if you died
mysteriously to-morrow, Ferrara would be legally immune. We must wait,
and watch. Can you return here to-night, at about ten o'clock?"

"I think I can manage to do so--yes."

"I shall expect you. Have you brought up to date your record of those
events which we know of, together with my notes and explanations?"

"Yes, sir, I spent last evening upon the notes."

"There may be something to add. This record, Rob, one day will be a
weapon to destroy an unnatural enemy. I will sign two copies to-night
and lodge one at my bank."




CHAPTER X

THE LAUGHTER


Lady Lashmore proved to be far more beautiful than Dr. Cairn had
anticipated. She was a true brunette with a superb figure and eyes
like the darkest passion flowers. Her creamy skin had a golden
quality, as though it had absorbed within its velvet texture something
of the sunshine of the South.

She greeted Dr. Cairn without cordiality.

"I am delighted to find you looking so well, Lady Lashmore," said the
doctor. "Your appearance quite confirms my opinion."

"Your opinion of what, Dr. Cairn?"

"Of the nature of your recent seizure. Sir Elwin Groves invited my
opinion and I gave it."

Lady Lashmore paled perceptibly.

"Lord Lashmore, I know," she said, "was greatly concerned, but indeed
it was nothing serious--"

"I quite agree. It was due to nervous excitement."

Lady Lashmore held a fan before her face.

"There have been recent happenings," she said--"as no doubt you are
aware--which must have shaken anyone's nerves. Of course, I am
familiar with your reputation, Dr. Cairn, as a psychical
specialist--?"

"Pardon me, but from whom have you learnt of it?"

"From Mr. Ferrara," she answered simply. "He has assured me that you
are the greatest living authority upon such matters."

Dr. Cairn turned his head aside.

"Ah!" he said grimly.

"And I want to ask you a question," continued Lady Lashmore. "Have you
any idea, any idea at all respecting the cause of the wounds upon my
husband's throat? Do you think them due to--something supernatural?"

Her voice shook, and her slight foreign accent became more marked.

"Nothing is supernatural," replied Dr. Cairn; "but I think they are
due to something supernormal. I would suggest that possibly you have
suffered from evil dreams recently?"

Lady Lashmore started wildly, and her eyes opened with a sort of
sudden horror.

"How can you know?" she whispered. "How can you know! Oh, Dr. Cairn!"
She laid her hand upon his arm--"if you can prevent those dreams; if
you can assure me that I shall never dream them again--!"

It was a plea and a confession. This was what had lain behind her
coldness--this horror which she had not dared to confide in another.

"Tell me," he said gently. "You have dreamt these dreams twice?"

She nodded, wide-eyed with wonder for his knowledge.

"On the occasions of your husband's illnesses?"

"Yes, yes!"

"What did you dream?"

"Oh! can I, dare I tell you!--"

"You must."

There was pity in his voice.

"I dreamt that I lay in some very dark cavern. I could hear the sea
booming, apparently over my head. But above all the noise a voice was
audible, calling to me--not by name; I cannot explain in what way; but
calling, calling imperatively. I seemed to be clothed but scantily, in
some kind of ragged garments; and upon my knees I crawled toward the
voice, through a place where there were other living things that
crawled also--things with many legs and clammy bodies...."

She shuddered and choked down an hysterical sob that was half a laugh.

"My hair hung dishevelled about me and in some inexplicable way--oh!
am I going mad!--my head seemed to be detached from my living body! I
was filled with a kind of unholy anger which I cannot describe. Also,
I was consumed with thirst, and this thirst...."

"I think I understand," said Dr. Cairn quietly. "What followed?"

"An interval--quite blank--after which I dreamt again. Dr. Cairn, I
_cannot_ tell you of the dreadful, the blasphemous and foul thoughts,
that then possessed me! I found myself resisting--resisting--something,
some power that was dragging me back to that foul cavern with my thirst
unslaked! I was frenzied; I dare not name, I tremble to think, of the
ideas which filled my mind. Then, again came a blank, and I awoke."

She sat trembling. Dr. Cairn noted that she avoided his gaze.

"You awoke," he said, "on the first occasion, to find that your
husband had met with a strange and dangerous accident?"

"There was--something else."

Lady Lashmore's voice had become a tremulous whisper.

"Tell me; don't be afraid."

She looked up; her magnificent eyes were wild with horror.

"I believe you know!" she breathed. "Do you?"

Dr. Cairn nodded.

"And on the second occasion," he said, "you awoke earlier?"

Lady Lashmore slightly moved her head.

"The dream was identical?"

"Yes."

"Excepting these two occasions, you never dreamt it before?"

"I dreamt _part_ of it on several other occasions; or only remembered
part of it on waking."

"Which part?"

"The first; that awful cavern--"

"And now, Lady Lashmore--you have recently been present at a
spiritualistic _séance_."

She was past wondering at his power of inductive reasoning, and merely
nodded.

"I suggest--I do not know--that the _séance_ was held under the
auspices of Mr. Antony Ferrara, ostensibly for amusement."

Another affirmative nod answered him.

"You proved to be mediumistic?"

It was admitted.

"And now, Lady Lashmore"--Dr. Cairn's face was very stern--"I will
trouble you no further."

He prepared to depart; when--

"Dr. Cairn!" whispered Lady Lashmore, tremulously, "some dreadful
thing, something that I cannot comprehend but that I fear and loathe
with all my soul, has come to me. Oh--for pity's sake, give me a word
of hope! Save for you, I am alone with a horror I cannot name. Tell
me--"

At the door, he turned.

"Be brave," he said--and went out.

Lady Lashmore sat still as one who had looked upon Gorgon, her
beautiful eyes yet widely opened and her face pale as death; for he
had not even told her to hope.

       *       *       *       *       *

Robert Cairn was sitting smoking in the library, a bunch of notes
before him, when Dr. Cairn returned to Half-Moon Street. His face,
habitually fresh coloured, was so pale that his son leapt up in alarm.
But Dr. Cairn waved him away with a characteristic gesture of the
hand.

"Sit down, Rob," he said, quietly; "I shall be all right in a moment.
But I have just left a woman--a young woman and a beautiful
woman--whom a fiend of hell has condemned to that which my mind
refuses to contemplate."

Robert Cairn sat down again, watching his father.

"Make out a report of the following facts," continued the latter,
beginning to pace up and down the room.

He recounted all that he had learnt of the history of the house of
Dhoon and all that he had learnt of recent happenings from Lord and
Lady Lashmore. His son wrote rapidly.

"And now," said the doctor, "for our conclusions. Mirza, the Polish
Jewess, who became Lady Lashmore in 1615, practised sorcery in life
and became, after death, a ghoul--one who sustained an unholy
existence by unholy means--a vampire."

"But, sir! Surely that is but a horrible superstition of the Middle
Ages!"

"Rob, I could take you to a castle not ten miles from Cracow in Poland
where there are--certain relics, which would for ever settle your
doubts respecting the existence of vampires. Let us proceed. The son
of Mirza, Paul Dhoon, inherited the dreadful proclivities of his
mother, but his shadowy existence was cut short in the traditional,
and effective, manner. Him we may neglect.

"It is Mirza, the sorceress, who must engage our attention. She was
decapitated by her husband. This punishment prevented her, in the
unhallowed life which, for such as she, begins after ordinary decease,
from practising the horrible rites of a vampire. Her headless body
could not serve her as a vehicle for nocturnal wanderings, but the
evil spirit of the woman might hope to gain control of some body more
suitable.

"Nurturing an implacable hatred against all of the house of Dhoon,
that spirit, disembodied, would frequently be drawn to the
neighbourhood of Mirza's descendants, both by hatred and by affinity.
Two horrible desires of the Spirit Mirza would be gratified if a Dhoon
could be made her victim--the desire for blood and the desire for
vengeance! The fate of Lord Lashmore would be sealed if that spirit
could secure incarnation!"

Dr. Cairn paused, glancing at his son, who was writing at furious
speed. Then--

"A magician more mighty and more evil than Mirza ever was or could
be," he continued, "a master of the Black Art, expelled a woman's
spirit from its throne and temporarily installed in its place the
blood-lustful spirit of Mirza!"

"My God, sir!" cried Robert Cairn, and threw down his pencil. "I begin
to understand!"

"Lady Lashmore," said Dr. Cairn, "since she was weak enough to
consent to be present at a certain _séance_, has, from time to time,
been _possessed_; she has been possessed by the spirit of a vampire!
Obedient to the nameless cravings of that control, she has sought out
Lord Lashmore, the last of the House of Dhoon. The horrible attack
made, a mighty will which, throughout her temporary incarnation, has
held her like a hound in leash, has dragged her from her prey, has
forced her to remove, from the garments clothing her borrowed body,
all traces of the deed, and has cast her out again to the pit of
abomination where her headless trunk was thrown by the third Baron
Lashmore!

"Lady Lashmore's brain retains certain memories. They have been
received at the moment when possession has taken place and at the
moment when the control has been cast out again. They thus are
memories of some secret cavern near Dhoon Castle, where that headless
but deathless body lies, and memories of the poignant moment when the
vampire has been dragged back, her 'thirst unslaked,' by the ruling
Will."

"Merciful God!" muttered Robert Cairn, "Merciful God, can such things
be!"

"They can be--they are! Two ways have occurred to me of dealing with
the matter," continued Dr. Cairn quietly. "One is to find that cavern
and to kill, in the occult sense, by means of a stake, the vampire who
lies there; the other which, I confess, might only result in the
permanent 'possession' of Lady Lashmore--is to get at the power which
controls this disembodied spirit--kill Antony Ferrara!"

Robert Cairn went to the sideboard, and poured out brandy with a
shaking hand.

"What's his object?" he whispered.

Dr. Cairn shrugged his shoulders.

"Lady Lashmore would be the wealthiest widow in society," he replied.

"_He_ will know now," continued the younger man unsteadily, "that you
are up against him. Have you--"

"I have told Lord Lashmore to lock, at night, not only his outer door
but also that of his dressing-room. For the rest--?" he dropped into
an easy-chair,--"I cannot face the facts, I--"

The telephone bell rang.

Dr. Cairn came to his feet as though he had been electrified; and as
he raised the receiver to his ear, his son knew, by the expression on
his face, from where the message came and something of its purport.

"Come with me," was all that he said, when he had replaced the
instrument on the table.

They went out together. It was already past midnight, but a cab was
found at the corner of Half-Moon Street, and within the space of five
minutes they were at Lord Lashmore's house.

Excepting Chambers, Lord Lashmore's valet, no servants were to be
seen.

"They ran away, sir, out of the house," explained the man, huskily,
"when it happened."

Dr. Cairn delayed for no further questions, but raced upstairs, his
son close behind him. Together they burst into Lord Lashmore's
bedroom. But just within the door they both stopped, aghast.

Sitting bolt upright in bed was Lord Lashmore, his face a dingy grey
and his open eyes, though filming over, yet faintly alight with a
stark horror ... dead. An electric torch was still gripped in his left
hand.

Bending over someone who lay upon the carpet near the bedside they
perceived Sir Elwin Groves. He looked up. Some little of his usual
self-possession had fled.

"Ah, Cairn!" he jerked. "We've both come too late."

The prostrate figure was that of Lady Lashmore, a loose kimono worn
over her night-robe. She was white and still and the physician had
been engaged in bathing a huge bruise upon her temple.

"She'll be all right," said Sir Elwin; "she has sustained a tremendous
blow, as you see. But Lord Lashmore--"

Dr. Cairn stepped closer to the dead man.

"Heart," he said. "He died of sheer horror."

He turned to Chambers, who stood in the open doorway behind him.

"The dressing-room door is open," he said. "I had advised Lord
Lashmore to lock it."

"Yes, sir; his lordship meant to, sir. But we found that the lock had
been broken. It was to have been replaced to-morrow."

Dr. Cairn turned to his son.

"You hear?" he said. "No doubt you have some idea respecting which of
the visitors to this unhappy house took the trouble to break that
lock? It was to have been replaced to-morrow; hence the tragedy of
to-night." He addressed Chambers again. "Why did the servants leave
the house to-night?"

The man was shaking pitifully.

"It was the laughter, sir! the laughter! I can never forget it! I was
sleeping in an adjoining room and I had the key of his lordship's door
in case of need. But when I heard his lordship cry out--quick and
loud, sir--like a man that's been stabbed--I jumped up to come to him.
Then, as I was turning the doorknob--of my room, sir--someone,
something, began to _laugh_! It was in here; it was in here,
gentlemen! It wasn't--her ladyship; it wasn't like _any_ woman. I
can't describe it; but it woke up every soul in the house."

"When you came in?"

"I daren't come in, sir! I ran downstairs and called up Sir Elwin
Groves. Before he came, all the rest of the household huddled on their
clothes and went away--"

"It was I who found him," interrupted Sir Elwin--"as you see him now;
with Lady Lashmore where she lies. I have 'phoned for nurses."

"Ah!" said Dr. Cairn; "I shall come back, Groves, but I have a small
matter to attend to."

He drew his son from the room. On the stair:

"You understand?" he asked. "The spirit of Mirza came to him again,
clothed in his wife's body. Lord Lashmore felt the teeth at his
throat, awoke instantly and struck out. As he did so, he turned the
torch upon her, and recognised--his wife! His heart completed the
tragedy, and so--to the laughter of the sorceress--passed the last of
the house of Dhoon."

The cab was waiting. Dr. Cairn gave an address in Piccadilly, and the
two entered. As the cab moved off, the doctor took a revolver from his
pocket, with some loose cartridges, charged the five chambers, and
quietly replaced the weapon in his pocket again.

One of the big doors of the block of chambers was found to be ajar,
and a por