by Sax Rohmer
What then, did it mean? His father had told him, and the uncanny events of the evening stood evidence of Dr. Cairn’s wisdom. The mysterious and evil force which Antony Ferrara controlled was being focussed upon him!
Slight sounds from time to time disturbed the silence and to these he listened attentively. He longed for the arrival of his father — for the strong, calm counsel of the one man in England fitted to cope with the Hell Thing which had uprisen in their midst. That he had already been subjected to some kind of hypnotic influence, he was unable to doubt; and having once been subjected to this influence, he might at any moment (it Was a terrible reflection) fall a victim to it again.
Cairn directed all the energies of his mind to resistance; ill-defined reflection must at all costs be avoided, for the brain vaguely employed he knew to be more susceptible to attack than that directed in a well-ordered channel.
Clocks were chiming the hour — he did not know what hour, nor did he seek to learn. He felt that he was at rapier play with a skilled antagonist, and that to glance aside, however momentarily, was to lay himself open to a fatal thrust.
He had not moved from the table, so that only the reading lamp upon it was lighted, and much of the room lay in half shadow. The silken cord, coiled snake-like, was close to his left hand; the revolver was close to his right. The muffled roar of traffic — diminished, since the hour grew late — reached his ears as he sat. But nothing disturbed the stillness of the court, and nothing disturbed the stillness of the room.
The notes which he had made in the afternoon at the Museum, were still spread open before him, and he suddenly closed the book, fearful of anything calculated to distract him from the mood of tense resistance. His life, and more than his life, depended upon his successfully opposing the insidious forces which beyond doubt, invisibly surrounded that lighted table.
There is a courage which is not physical, nor is it entirely moral; a courage often lacking in the most intrepid soldier. And this was the kind of courage which Robert Cairn now called up to his aid. The occult inquirer can face, unmoved, horrors which would turn the brain of many a man who wears the V.C.; on the other hand it is questionable if the possessor of this peculiar type of bravery could face a bayonet charge. Pluck of the physical sort, Cairn had in plenty; pluck of that more subtle kind he was acquiring from growing intimacy with the terrors of the Borderland.
“Who’s there?”
He spoke the words aloud, and the eerie sound of his own voice added a new dread to the enveloping shadows.
His revolver grasped in his hand, he stood up, but slowly and cautiously, in order that his own movements might not prevent him from hearing any repetition of that which had occasioned his alarm. And what had occasioned this alarm?
Either he was become again a victim of the strange trickery which already had borne him, though not physically, from Fleet Street to the secret temple of Méydûm, or with his material senses he had detected a soft rapping upon the door of his room.
He knew that his outer door was closed; he knew that there was no one else in his chambers; yet he had heard a sound as of knuckles beating upon the panels of the door — the closed door of the room in which he sat!
Standing upright, he turned deliberately, and faced in that direction.
The light pouring out from beneath the shade of the table-lamp scarcely touched upon the door at all. Only the edges of the lower panels were clearly perceptible; the upper part of the door was masked in greenish shadow.
Intent, tensely strung, he stood; then advanced in the direction of the switch in order to light the lamp fixed above the mantel-piece and to illuminate the whole of the room. One step forward he took, then ... the soft rapping was repeated.
“Who’s there?”
This time he cried the words loudly, and acquired some new assurance from the imperative note in his own voice. He ran to the switch and pressed it down. The lamp did not light!
“The filament has burnt out,” he muttered.
Terror grew upon him — a terror akin to that which children experience in the darkness. But he yet had a fair mastery of his emotions; when — not suddenly, as is the way of a failing electric lamp — but slowly, uncannily, unnaturally, the table-lamp became extinguished!
Darkness.... Cairn turned towards the window. This was a moonless night, and little enough illumination entered the room from the court.
Three resounding raps were struck upon the door.
At that, terror had no darker meaning for Cairn; he had plumbed its ultimate deeps; and now, like a diver, he arose again to the surface.
Heedless of the darkness, of the seemingly supernatural means by which it had been occasioned, he threw open the door and thrust his revolver out into the corridor.
For terrors, he had been prepared — for some gruesome shape such as we read of in The Magus. But there was nothing. Instinctively he had looked straight ahead of him, as one looks who expects to encounter a human enemy. But the hall-way was empty. A dim light, finding access over the door from the stair, prevailed there, yet, it was sufficient to have revealed the presence of anyone or anything, had anyone or anything been present.
Cairn stepped out from the room and was about to walk to the outer door. The idea of flight was strong upon him, for no man can fight the invisible; when, on a level with his eyes — flat against the wall, as though someone crouched there — he saw two white hands!
They were slim hands, like the hands of a woman, and, upon one of the tapered fingers, there dully gleamed a green stone.
A peal of laughter came chokingly from his lips; he knew that his reason was tottering. For these two white hands which now moved along the wall, as though they were sidling to the room which Cairn had just quitted, were attached to no visible body; just two ivory hands were there ... and nothing more!
That he was in deadly peril, Cairn realised fully. His complete subjection by the will-force of Ferrara had been interrupted by the ringing of the telephone bell But now, the attack had been renewed!
The hands vanished.
Too well he remembered the ghastly details attendant upon the death of Sir Michael Ferrara to doubt that these slim hands were directed upon murderous business.
A soft swishing sound reached him. Something upon the writing-table had been moved.
The strangling cord!
Whilst speaking to his father he had taken it out from the drawer, and when he quitted the room it had lain upon the blotting-pad.
He stepped back towards the outer door.
Something fluttered past his face, and he turned in a mad panic. The dreadful, bodiless hands groped in the darkness between himself and the exit!
Vaguely it came home to him that the menace might be avoidable. He was bathed in icy perspiration.
He dropped the revolver into his pocket, and placed his hands upon his throat. Then he began to grope his way towards the closed door of his bedroom.
Lowering his left hand, he began to feel for the doorknob. As he did so, he saw — and knew the crowning horror of the night — that he had made a false move. In retiring he had thrown away his last, his only, chance.
The phantom hands, a yard apart and holding the silken cord stretched tightly between them, were approaching him swiftly!
He lowered his head, and charged along the passage, with a wild cry.
The cord, stretched taut, struck him under the chin.
Back he reeled.
The cord was about his throat!
“God!” he choked, and thrust up his hands.
Madly, he strove to pluck the deadly silken thing from his neck. It was useless. A grip of steel was drawing it tightly — and ever more tightly — about him....
Despair touched him, and almost he resigned himself. Then,
“Rob! Rob! open the door!”
Dr. Cairn was outside.
A new strength came — and he knew that it was the last atom left to him. To remove the rope was humanly impossible. He dropped hi
s cramped hands, bent his body by a mighty physical effort, and hurled himself forward upon the door.
The latch, now, was just above his head.
He stretched up ... and was plucked back. But the fingers of his right hand grasped the knob convulsively.
Even as that superhuman force jerked him back, he turned the knob — and fell.
All his weight hung upon the fingers which were locked about that brass disk in a grip which even the powers of Darkness could not relax.
The door swung open, and Cairn swung back with it.
He collapsed, an inert heap, upon the floor. Dr. Cairn leapt in over him.
When he reopened his eyes, he lay in bed, and his father was bathing his inflamed throat.
“All right, boy! There’s no damage done, thank God....”
“The hands!—”
“I quite understand. But I saw no hands but your own, Rob; and if it had come to an inquest I could not even have raised my voice against a verdict of suicide!”
“But I — opened the door!”
“They would have said that you repented your awful act, too late. Although it is almost impossible for a man to strangle himself under such conditions, there is no jury in England who would have believed that Antony Ferrara had done the deed.”
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE HIGH PRIEST, HORTOTEF
The breakfast-room of Dr. Cairn’s house in Half-Moon Street presented a cheery appearance, and this despite the gloom of the morning; for thunderous clouds hung low in the sky, and there were distant mutterings ominous of a brewing storm.
Robert Cairn stood looking out of the window. He was thinking of an afternoon at Oxford, when, to such an accompaniment as this, he had witnessed the first scene in the drama of evil wherein the man called Antony Ferrara sustained the leading rôle.
That the denouément was at any moment to be anticipated, his reason told him; and some instinct that was not of his reason forewarned him, too, that he and his father, Dr. Cairn, were now upon the eve of that final, decisive struggle which should determine the triumph of good over evil — or of evil over good. Already the doctor’s house was invested by the uncanny forces marshalled by Antony Ferrara against them. The distinguished patients, who daily flocked to the consulting-room of the celebrated specialist, who witnessed his perfect self-possession and took comfort from his confidence, knowing it for the confidence of strength, little suspected that a greater ill than any flesh is heir to, assailed the doctor to whom they came for healing.
A menace, dreadful and unnatural, hung over that home as now the thunder clouds hung over it. This well-ordered household, so modern, so typical of twentieth century culture and refinement, presented none of the appearances of a beleaguered garrison; yet the house of Dr. Cairn in Half-Moon Street, was nothing less than an invested fortress.
A peal of distant thunder boomed from the direction of Hyde Park. Robert Cairn looked up at the lowering sky as if seeking a portent. To his eyes it seemed that a livid face, malignant with the malignancy of a devil, looked down out of the clouds.
Myra Duquesne came into the breakfast-room.
He turned to greet her, and, in his capacity of accepted lover, was about to kiss the tempting lips, when he hesitated — and contented himself with kissing her hand. A sudden sense of the proprieties had assailed him; he reflected that the presence of the girl beneath the same roof as himself — although dictated by imperative need — might be open to misconstruction by the prudish. Dr. Cairn had decided that for the present Myra Duquesne must dwell beneath his own roof, as, in feudal days, the Baron at first hint of an approaching enemy formerly was, accustomed to call within the walls of the castle, those whom it was his duty to protect. Unknown to the world, a tremendous battle raged in London, the outer works were in the possession of the enemy — and he was now before their very gates.
Myra, though still pale from her recent illness, already was recovering some of the freshness of her beauty, and in her simple morning dress, as she busied herself about the breakfast table, she was a sweet picture enough, and good to look upon. Robert Cairn stood beside her, looking into her eyes, and she smiled up at him with a happy contentment, which filled him with a new longing. But:
“Did you dream again, last night?” he asked, in a voice which he strove to make matter-of-fact.
Myra nodded — and her face momentarily clouded over.
“The same dream?”
“Yes,” she said in a troubled way; “at least — in some respects—”
Dr. Cairn came in, glancing at his watch.
“Good morning!” he cried, cheerily. “I have actually overslept myself.”
They took their seats at the table.
“Myra has been dreaming again, sir,” said Robert Cairn slowly.
The doctor, serviette in hand, glanced up with an inquiry in his grey eyes.
“We must not overlook any possible weapon,” he replied. “Give us particulars of your dream, Myra.”
As Marston entered silently with the morning fare, and, having placed the dishes upon the table, as silently withdrew, Myra began:
“I seemed to stand again in the barn-like building which I have described to you before. Through the rafters of the roof I could see the cracks in the tiling, and the moonlight shone through, forming light and irregular patches upon the floor. A sort of door, like that of a stable, with a heavy bar across, was dimly perceptible at the further end of the place. The only furniture was a large deal table and a wooden chair of a very common kind. Upon the table, stood a lamp—”
“What kind of lamp?” jerked Dr. Cairn.
“A silver lamp” — she hesitated, looking from Robert to his father— “one that I have seen in — Antony’s rooms. Its shaded light shone upon a closed iron box. I immediately recognised this box. You know that I described to you a dream which — terrified me on the previous night?”
Dr. Cairn nodded, frowning darkly.
“Repeat your account of the former dream,” he said. “I regard it as important.”
“In my former dream,” the girl resumed — and her voice had an odd, far-away quality— “the scene was the same, except that the light of the lamp was shining down upon the leaves of an open book — a very, very old book, written in strange characters. These characters appeared to dance before my eyes — almost as though they lived.”
She shuddered slightly; then:
“The same iron box, but open, stood upon the table, and a number of other, smaller, boxes, around it. Each of these boxes was of a different material. Some were wooden; one, I think, was of ivory; one was of silver — and one, of some dull metal, which might have been gold. In the chair, by the table, Antony was sitting. His eyes were fixed upon me, with such a strange expression that I awoke, trembling frightfully—”
Dr. Cairn nodded again.
“And last night?” he prompted.
“Last night,” continued Myra, with a note of trouble in her sweet voice— “at four points around this table, stood four smaller lamps and upon the floor were rows of characters apparently traced in luminous paint. They flickered up and then grew dim, then flickered up again, in a sort of phosphorescent way. They extended from lamp to lamp, so as entirely to surround the table and the chair.
“In the chair Antony Ferrara was sitting. He held a wand in his right hand — a wand with several copper rings about it; his left hand rested upon the iron box. In my dream, although I could see this all very clearly, I seemed to see it from a distance; yet, at the same time, I stood apparently close by the tables — I cannot explain. But I could hear nothing; only by the movements of his lips, could I tell that he was speaking — or chanting.”
She looked across at Dr. Cairn as if fearful to proceed, but presently continued:
“Suddenly, I saw a frightful shape appear on the far side of the circle; that is to say, the table was between me and this shape. It was just like a grey cloud having the vague outlines of a man, but with two eyes of red fire
glaring out from it — horribly — oh! horribly! It extended its shadowy arms as if saluting Antony. He turned and seemed to question it. Then with a look of ferocious anger — oh! it was frightful! he dismissed the shape, and began to walk up and down beside the table, but never beyond the lighted circle, shaking his fists in the air, and, to judge by the movements of his lips, uttering most awful imprecations. He looked gaunt and ill. I dreamt no more, but awoke conscious of a sensation as though some dead weight, which had been pressing upon me had been suddenly removed.”
Dr. Cairn glanced across at his son significantly, but the subject was not renewed throughout breakfast.
Breakfast concluded:
“Come into the library, Rob,” said Dr. Cairn, “I have half-an-hour to spare, and there are some matters to be discussed.”
He led the way into the library with its orderly rows of obscure works, its store of forgotten wisdom, and pointed to the red leathern armchair. As Robert Cairn seated himself and looked across at his father, who sat at the big writing-table, that scene reminded him of many dangers met and overcome in the past; for the library at Half-Moon Street was associated in his mind with some of the blackest pages in the history of Antony Ferrara.
“Do you understand the position, Rob?” asked the doctor, abruptly.
“I think so, sir. This I take it is his last card; this outrageous, ungodly Thing which he has loosed upon us.”
Dr. Cairn nodded grimly.
“The exact frontier,” he said, “dividing what we may term hypnotism from what we know as sorcery, has yet to be determined; and to which territory the doctrine of Elemental Spirits belongs, it would be purposeless at the moment to discuss. We may note, however, remembering with whom we are dealing, that the one-hundred-and-eighth chapter of the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, is entitled ‘The Chapter of Knowing the Spirits of the West.’ Forgetting, pro tem., that we dwell in the twentieth century, and looking at the situation from the point of view, say, of Eliphas Lévi, Cornelius Agrippa, or the Abbé de Villars — the man whom we know as Antony Ferrara, is directing against this house, and those within it, a type of elemental spirit, known as a Salamander!”
