CHAPTER VIII
"And make my seated heart knock at my ribs Against the use of nature. Present fears Are less than horrible imaginings."--_Shakespeare_.
Big Ben announced the approaching hour of midnight, throwing thesonorous notes to the soft spring wind which wafted them up to HarleyStreet.
Save for the light thrown by the dancing flames of a log fire, and theorange disc made on the desk by the light of a heavily shaded lamp, theroom was dark; the silence broken only by the occasional crackle of thewood fire and the faint rustle as Sir Jonathan turned a page.
"Notes" was written in letters of brass across the thick book heavilybound in leather, and of which the small key to the massive Bramah lockwas kept in a pocket especially made in every waistcoat Sir Jonathanpossessed.
Slowly he read through the page he had just written, crossing a t,dotting an i, adding or scratching out a word of the writing which wasin no way more legible than that of any other surgeon; and when he hadread he ran his hand through the mass of snow-white hair, sighed, andpushed the book further back on to the desk.
It is an eerie sound that of someone speaking aloud to himself, andstill more eerie when it occurs in the middle of the night when theonly part of the speaker to be clearly seen is the strong white handsmoving in the orange disc thrown on the desk by the heavily shaded lamp.
And it is a strange habit this talking aloud of the solitary soul.
Mad?
Not a bit.
Dumb in the babel and din of chaotic midday, unresponsive to theuncongenial matter around, it will talk on subjects gay and grave, andeven laugh with the silent sympathetic shades of midnight.
Nevertheless it is mighty eerie to hear it unawares.
For the twentieth time the famous specialist picked up a letter andread it from beginning to end.
"Strange, Jim, old fellow," said he as he laid it down, "strange how Ithink of you to-night. Seeing your little one, I suppose. But somehowto-night more than ever I feel the blank you made in my life when youleft. How you'd have loved the kiddie, Jim. Strange wee soul with ashadow already on her life--a big black shadow, Jim, which I--I amgoing----!"
He turned his head and looked over his shoulder.
"Ugh!" he said, as he turned back to the desk and drew the book towardshim.
"Leonie Hetth--age seven--walks in her sleep and dreams--dreams areevidently of India--things that walk softly and purr--a smalllight--and wet red which may mean blood--green eyes and a black womanwho--who----"
Once more he ran his hand through his hair, but time irritably, thenshook his head from side to side rubbed his hand across his eyes.
"I've been sitting up too late these last few nights over that opiumcase. Don't seem to be able to collect or hold my thoughts. Jim, oldfellow, I wonder what made you leave Leonie in the care of that damnsilly, shallow woman, and I wonder how you could ever have producedanything so highly strung and temperamental as your little daughter. Isup----"
He stopped quite suddenly and rose, standing with his head bent forward.
There was not a sound!
Feeling for the arm of his chair with his face still turned to thecurtained window he sank back, only to spring upright with a bound.
Noiselessly, swiftly he crossed to the window, and pulling back thecurtain an inch or two peered out into the small garden with its onetree and border of shrubs.
There was no sound and nothing moved.
"Strange!" he muttered, "I could have sworn some-one knocked."
He jerked back the curtains so that they rasped on the brass rod,letting in the almost blinding glare of the full moon which drew animbus from the silvery head and threw shadows which danced andgibbered by the aid of the log fire over the walls and ceiling, and inand out of the open safe.
He turned, but stopped abruptly when half-way across the room, standingstock still with his back to the window.
There was a faint distinct tapping as though slender fingers werebeating a ghastly, distant drum.
It stopped--it continued--it stopped.
Then fell one little solitary rap like a drop of water falling on ametal plate, and it died away into silence.
And Sir Jonathan threw up his fine old head and laughed.
"Surely I've got India on the brain to-night, and as surely I want agood long holiday," he said, as he sat down at his desk and picked uphis pen. "And I must remember to tell the gardener to clip that treeto-morrow. How Jan will laugh when I tell him that I was absolutelyscared by a branch rubbing against the window."
For five long minutes he sat frowning down at the pen in his hand.Three times he commenced to write, and three times he stopped; twice helit a cigarette and let it go out, and deeper grew the lines betweenthe brows and round the mouth, until he shivered and turned quickly inhis chair.
"That felt just like a sea-fog creeping up behind; stupid to keep thewindow open even in spring," he said as he picked up a log from abasket by his side and threw it deftly into the wide-open grate, leantsideways to separate two brass ornaments on a table which had jangledone against the other, and sighing turned restlessly in his chair.
"Confound those great market lorries," he muttered, looking round theroom with its cabinets and shelves filled with the strange and weird,beautiful and unsightly curios he had brought back from every corner ofthe globe. "They shake the house enough to bring it down about one'sears."
The moon was slowly shifting as he leant back and settled himselfcomfortably in the high leather chair; the room was getting darker andthere had fallen that intense almost palpable stillness which envelopsmost great cities after midnight, and against which his thoughts stoodout like steel points upon a velvet curtain.
Clear and sharp as steel they shot indeed, this way and that throughhis mind; but hold them he could not, analyse or arrange them he couldnot, neither would his hand move towards the pen a few inches from thefinger-tips.
"God!" he suddenly thundered, striking the arm of the chair with hisfist. "The answer is just there on the tip of my tongue--before myvery eyes--within reach of my fingers, and yet I cannot grasp it--ah!why! could it _possibly_ be----"
He rose as he spoke and crossed to a massive bookcase packed tooverflowing with books, switched on a light hanging near, opened theglass door and ran his hand lovingly over the leather volumes.
Then he very gently laid his hand on his left shoulder and turned witha smile lighting up his face, which abruptly went blank in astonishment.
"Upon my word," he said, "whatever made me think that Jan had come inand had put his hand upon my shoulder. Old fool that I am to-night."
For a moment he stood looking into the shadowy corners, then turnedagain to the case, ran his finger along a row of books until he came toone with the title "India," pulled it out and opened it under the light.
The book opened quite suddenly and wide, and his eyes fell on the firstfew lines. Without a movement he stood staring down at the printedwords, reading to the end of the page, then he violently closed thebook, thrust it back into the case, and closing the doors, pressedagainst them with both hands as though in an endeavour to keep backsomething which was trying to get out.
"No! my God! No! never! not that--not _that_ as an end--not for _that_baby--and yet----"
He moved across to the desk, sank heavily like a very old man into hischair and covered his face with his hands.
Then very slowly and as though against his will he uncovered his face,and leaning forward stared across to the bookcase whilst he groped forthe pen beside the book.
"And the cure," he muttered, "the remedy--I _must_ find it--I--I----"
His heart was thudding heavily with the merest suspicion of a completepause between the beats, his hand trembled almost imperceptibly, whilsthis eyes glanced questioningly this way and that.
"I don't understand, I don't understand!" he whispered, just like afrightened child as he plucked at his collar and moved his head quicklyfrom side to side as though trying t
o loosen some stranglehold abouthis neck.
He turned and stared unseeingly into the fire with the look ofperplexity deepening on his face, then slowly he raised his eyes, firstto the delicate tracings of the Adams mantelpiece, then to the variedornaments on the shelf.
"Tish!" he said impatiently as they roved from the central figure ofbenign undisturbed Buddha, to a snake of brass holding a candle, and onto a blatant and grotesque dragon from China.
For a second he stared uncomprehendingly, then raised his head.
Inch by inch his eyes moved until they reached the top shelf of theovermantel and stopped. A shiver shook him as he lay back in hischair, his widespread fingers clutched at the chair arms, a tiny beadof perspiration showed upon the broad forehead.
Staring down at him, shining evilly in the moonlight, was a glistening,unwavering eye.
Just a slanting mother-o'-pearl eye in the battered head of a god orgoddess of India, with features almost obliterated by the passage ofcenturies.
For a full minute Sir Jonathan sat staring up at the eye which staredback; then moving with a convulsive jerk, ran both hands through themane of silvery hair as though to lift some crushing load from abouthis head; and turning sideways in his chair stretched out one handbetween the eye above and his own as he clumsily seized the pen in theshaking fingers.
"Ah! my God!" he muttered, "the answer is still there, on the tip of mytongue, before my eyes, within reach of my fingers, and I cannot graspit--ah!--yes----"
Slowly and with infinite pain he wrote, printing the letters in thickand crooked capitals, whilst his breath whistled through the dilatednostrils and one foot beat unceasingly against the desk.
"The answer to the problem concerning Leonie Hetth is in the thirdvolume upon----"
His hand stopped suddenly when the fingers involuntarily spread wideapart, letting fall the pen which rolled across the book; and thesilvery head turned inch by inch until the grey eyes had lifted to theone shining in the shadows.
And there commenced a desperate, a bitter struggle for a child'sreason, perhaps for a child's life, as the moon gently withdrew herlight.
Like the clammy wraiths of fog upon the moor, like the searchingtentacles of some blind monster of the sea, fear crept upon thesplendid old man in this still hour of the night.
It held his hands, it was folded about his mouth, it pounded violentlyupon his gallant heart, whilst the eye looked him between the eyes, sothat his brain was seared as strive he might to turn away his head hekept his face turned piteously upward.
"What is it," he muttered thickly, as though his tongue clove to theroof of the mouth, "what is it that is pulling me, pressing upon me,choking me! I have no body, no--no hands--I--have--no power tomove--I----"
And then he screamed, though but a whisper fell, as with a spasmodicjump of his whole body he flung himself round in his chair, andcowering low against the arm, peered into the deepening shadows.
"All round about me," he whispered, "all about me those hands arepulling, and yet--and--and----"
He laughed until his face, a white cameo against a grey velvet pall,grinned like a mask of mirthless death, as slowly he raised oneclenched fist and shook it weakly until it fell back with a dull thud,useless, against the chair.
"I thought I was afraid--I--I thought I saw--I saw death behind--butI--I shall not die until--until I have written--written--what is it Iam to write--ah! yes!"
Searching sideways with his left hand he groped and found the pen, thenvery carefully, very slowly turned towards the desk.
He drove the pen in fiercely, making a thick black mark; he pushed ituntil the nib stuck, spluttered, and broke as he flung out both handsas if grasping at something which evaded him.
"Gone!" he mouthed, though there was no sound of speech in the room."Gone--gone!" and he suddenly tore at his collar and his cuffs asthough to break some bond which held him, as he glanced furtively aboutthe room.
For one long moment he sat leaning forward, staring far beyond theIndian screen upon which his eyes were fixed, and then slowly, almostimperceptibly, his head moved.
The drawn white face had the hunted look of some animal at bay, theagonised eyes moved as the head moved; slowly, slowly, inch by inch,the breath coming stertorously as the mouth tried vainly to frame someword.
The moon had gathered the last fold of her silvery raiment about herand was creeping away through the open window just as Sir Jonathanlooked straight up into the eye gleaming malevolently through the gloom.
And as he looked the head moved gently so that the eye leered cunninglyinto the distorted face beneath; it, hovered for a fraction of time onthe edge of the shelf and fell, just as the old man, with a blindingflash of understanding sweeping his face, sprang to his feet, stoodupright, swayed forward, and fell back sideways, dead, across hischair, staring across the room into eternity with eyes full ofknowledge and infinite horror.
Leonie of the Jungle Page 8
