by Sax Rohmer
“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 swee
test 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 soun
d 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?”
