From Afar

by John Russell Fearn

  “I have never even met Harkness,” she answered steadily. “And you are allowing yourself to jump to idiotic conclusions—”

  “Idiotic be damned! Haven’t you given me enough cause to worry recently? Acting like an—an automaton, gazing at things in that blood-curdling way.... I’m going to find out what’s wrong with you, Berry, even if it kills me!”

  “Hadn’t you better make quite sure that it doesn’t?” she asked, then as I gave her a puzzled look she turned away. “I have my hobby to attend to,” she added from the door. “I’m going down into the basement, and if you want good advice don’t follow me. My hobby is rather a dangerous one, and you might get hurt!”

  “And you think I’ll sit here and let you—?”

  “I know you will!”

  She still looked at me from the door. Once more I had that conviction that the room was nothing but her eyes. As though impelled by an invisible hand I moved from the fireplace and sank into the armchair, gazing at the flames in the fire.

  Yes, I heard the door click behind her. I heard the half-hour and then the hour strike from the hall clock, but I remained where I was, watching patterns in the crumbling red-hot logs.

  When I forced myself back to effort my pipe was dead ashes, and Beryl was before me again in the flickering glow. Twilight had died into night.

  The ghost of a thin, cold smile hung round Beryl’s lips.

  “I think,” she said, “it is time to retire....”

  My fitful sleep was tormented by the wildest nightmares. Inspector Hilton, Beryl’s eyes, a knife blade, brown paper, and lengths of cord knotted three times round a neck were all mixed up, and through the midst of it danced a massive object that had served as a paperweight for a dead candy king!

  Mad! Chaotic! It left me dull and heavy next morning, but there was still no thought in my mind of staying behind to look after Beryl in case that maniac— No, hang it! The very thought had been killed in my brain. But why? Was it feasible that Beryl had killed it? If so—How?

  She was as calmly inscrutable as ever during breakfast: her hand had healed a good deal too. I left her brusquely, did not even trouble to kiss her as I had on previous mornings. Since the showdown of the previous evening there seemed to radiate from her an alien coldness. It was not so much a material thing as a mental one. Between Beryl, the girl I had loved and married, and this impersonal white-faced, frozen-voiced woman there was a gulf, an unexplainable barrier through which I just couldn’t penetrate—yet.

  In London though, freed from the dreary shackles of the house, I emerged somewhat from the depths and did plenty of hard thinking. She had mentioned Who’s Who. Well, maybe something in that. I had the current edition brought to me and, as I had hoped, Boyd Harkness’ name was given in full, together with his achievements.

  Most of it was praise for his climb from newspapers to commercial eminence as the candy king, but towards the end of the eulogy was a section that impressed me a lot. It read:

  “—and amongst the many souvenirs of his private collection of antiques may be mentioned a part of the famous ‘Bloodstone’, of which there are only three others in the world. Valueless as gems, they are nevertheless unique for their antiquity, having been handed down from time immemorial—”

  Bloodstone? Never heard of it! But I had heard of a paperweight that the thing might have become, since it possessed no value outside of its antiquity.

  That struck me as an angle, so after lunch I browsed through the public library, and in Gems, Stones and their Origins I hit on the Bloodstone at last. The writer said:

  “A species of mineral allied to the carbon group, but remarkable for its deep blood-red hue. Originally the bloodstone was one massive piece of glasslike mineral, and was found in a remote corner of Arkansas by a trader in 1548. It was then handed down through various families. In 1630 it was split into four parts and became a prize for antique hunters. The four sections in the present day are owned by, Mr. Boyd Harkness, of Bilton-on-Maybury, Essex; Mr. Henry Carson, of Mayfair, London, a famous sportsman; Madame Elva Borini, the celebrated Italian prima-donna, of Naples, Italy; and Dr. Kenneth Cardew, resident envoy to the British Government in Bermuda.

  “The actual origin of the stone is lost in antiquity. Science has puzzled over the fact that ít represents no mineral form known on earth; therefore it seems not illogical to assume that perhaps it came in the dim past from a passing meteor, or as the result of some fusion in the cosmos—”

  Yes, definitely I had got something! Though it did not by any means explain Beryl’s queer behavior. I realized that before me there lay a trial such as a detective is usually called upon to take; and, like a detective, I realized that a slip-up on my part might mean an untimely end. Beryl had warned me of that, and I was more than sure that she was not joking....

  * * * * * * *

  I left the office early and called on Inspector Hilton on my way home.

  “How’d you make out at the ‘Mount’?” I asked him.

  He shrugged. For some reason his manner seemed evasive.

  “Not so well. We caught the maniac anyway—or rather the Asylum people did. He was twenty miles away from the ‘Mount’ when they got him, a distance far too great for him to have been connected with the murder of Harkness. At the moment it’s a case of murder by a person or persons unknown—”

  I nodded slowly, then reminded him he had said something about footprints.

  “The gardener’s,” he said. “Last night when I called up at your place I hadn’t got all the facts. I have now.”

  There was something about the way he looked at me with his keen little gray eyes, something about the calm evasiveness of his manner—

  “Have you any ideas?” he asked quietly. “Is that why you came?”

  I bluffed my way out of this. “No. Just that your call last night has got me interested in the business—Harkness being our nearest neighbor, I mean. I’m glad you got the maniac, though. It’s a load off my mind.”

  “I’m glad,” he said, and before he could perhaps wheedle something out of me I took my departure. Beryl was reading in the lounge when I got in. She glanced up at me.

  “So they got the maniac,” she said.

  “Yes, that’s right. They—” I broke off and stared at her. “How did you know?”

  “Inspector Hilton came to tell me this afternoon.”

  “So that was why he was so evasive,” I breathed. “Trying to get me separate from you and match up both lots of statements—”

  Beryl asked slowly, “You called on him, then? Just why?”

  “Only to see how far he’d got with the Harkness murder.”

  “Your concern over Harkness is most touching,” she commented dryly, tossing down her book. “It would be more truthful to say that you really wanted to discover if I had had anything to do with it, wouldn’t it? I have already warned you, Dick, not to dabble in things which do not concern you.”

  “This does concern me!” I shouted.

  “I think,” she said, “you had better freshen up for dinner.”

  The hot retort I had ready died. I left the room, tidied up and came down to dinner in silence. It was as I ate that my eye wandered to the book Beryl had been reading. It was Calcot’s Advanced Astronomy.

  “It happens to interest me,” Beryl remarked, following my gaze. “In fact in these days it is about the only thing that does interest me. There is something rather wonderful...about space and time.”

  “I suppose so,” I said. No use reminding her she had never even looked at a star in the old days, let alone studied astronomy. Then I got to thinking about the bloodstone. ‘Perhaps from a passing meteor or outer space,’ that write-up had said.... Lord! I decided to look at that textbook more closely if I ever got the chance.

  Dinner over and our conversation none too free we took up positions on opposite sides of the lounge. Beryl took up her textbook again and I scowled through the evening paper. First chance I had had so far to look through
it, and pretty soon I came across something that hit me right between the eyes.

  Ordinarily it would not have meant a thing, for it was only a tiny column, but now—

  FAMOUS SOPRANO FOUND MURDERED

  I read the report hurriedly. It stated that Madame Elva Borini, famous Italian prima-donna, had been found mysteriously murdered in her Naples villa that morning. Found by her maid. The famous singer had had a sash cord wrapped three times round her neck and knotted. Police were investigating, and so on and so on.

  I looked up with a grim face over my newspaper. I was on the point of asking Beryl if she had ever heard of Madame Borini when her eyes lifted from her book and looked straight into mine—calmly, insolently. Completely and utterly the question went out of my mind. But the mystery of the business remained—

  This was getting beyond all reason. A woman in Italy had died in precisely the same fashion as Boyd Harkness—But how? Definitely Beryl could not have done it, separated by a thousand miles of land and sea. Or could she...?

  I started thinking then about the other people I’d read about—the remaining owners of the bloodstone jewel sections. Suppose they too were marked down? That the jewel had something to do with it I was now quite convinced. Could I warn them somehow? No. That would draw the whole attention of the law to Beryl and me, and I considered the mystery about her was a matter for me alone to solve.

  One thing I did know. I had got to see inside that cellar of hers. She had warned me to keep out, but just now things were so complex I had just got to act. I came to a decision.

  Going upstairs, I got four sleeping tablets from the phial in the bathroom cupboard, and returned downstairs with them in my pocket. Beryl looked at me rather curiously, and on the incredible assumption that she could perhaps read thoughts I purposely diverted my mind from my intention. Back went her eyes to her textbook.

  We had a light supper of biscuits and wine, during which process I took good care to slip the four tablets into her glass unnoticed. Then, without a word to each other we made tracks for retiring....

  CHAPTER FIVE

  IT WORKED! Inside thirty minutes Beryl was sleeping like a log; but I waited until the hall clock boomed out one before I moved, then I slipped into pants, shirt and shoes, sped downstairs and got my torch from the library desk.

  I found the cellar door under the stairs tightly locked—and a new lock at that. Beryl had had the old one replaced with one of the most foolproof and expensive ones made.

  Back I went upstairs, searched around for some sign of a key. At last I found it, on a silk cord round her neck. In fact there were two keys on the ring.

  Gently I disentangled the cord and hurried back, found the appropriate key and swung the cellar door open gently.

  I stepped forward, closed the door behind me, switched on my torch so that the beam fell down the stone steps. Queer, to pay rent for this darned place and I’d never been allowed to see the basements!

  I hurried down to the first basement, went through its emptiness to the second one. What I beheld here was neither revolting nor terrible: all the dark thoughts I’d conjured up had been groundless. What I saw was more surprising than anything else.

  There was quite a deal of electrical apparatus, with cables soldered very professionally to the main house power wire. This feed wire led back to a device that looked like a carbon arc holder. In fact that was exactly what it was, when I looked more closely—only it was of unusual design with a metal matrix fixed at the carbon point gaps, what for I had no idea.

  In a far corner was something like a long cylinder, half completed, with little tubes sprouting out of one end. It looked very like a bomb. Its metal was enormously tough and burnished, as though intended to stand an enormous amount of wear and tear.

  The rest comprised a bench full of up-to-date tools—all for metal-work apparently. There was also a chunk of wax among other things, which gave me the bright inspiration of taking an impression of the two keys I had got....

  That seemed to be everything—No, not everything, for my final glance around revealed a shelf in the shadows on which reposed a number of new books. So far everything was checking up. Beryl had said books, instruments, and odds and ends.... Right!

  First book I took down was a new edition of Gems, Stones, and Their Origins, identical with the library copy I had studied. I flipped the pages and studied the column about the bloodstone. Significant and obvious thing!

  The names of the owners of the quartered bloodstone were underlined in red ink! Even more significant, the names of Boyd Harkness and Madame Elva Borini were ticked in red over the top. A sort of mute ‘Account settled.’

  I went hastily through the rest of the books. They were brand new up-to-date Directories most of them—one for London, one for Naples, Italy, a smaller one giving particulars of addresses of British officials in Bermuda— The address of Boyd Harkness had not been necessary anyway, being close at hand. But Lord! What! How? Of all the riddles I’d ever heard of, this took the biscuit—and I was right in the middle of it.

  I came finally upon a note-pad among the books. On it, obviously culled from the reference books, were the full addresses of the four bloodstone jewel owners...but not only their addresses. Also given was the exact latitude and longitude where their homes were placed on the Earth’s surface! That, and a maze of figuring, that made no sense whatever to me.

  For a long time I puzzled over this new enigma, but nothing clicked in my mind. I was beaten—at the moment. I put the books and note-pad back, prepared to retreat, then I caught sight of a massive new safe in a corner near the entrance of the basement. The second key’s use became immediately apparent.

  Once I’d opened the safe door the first thing to hit the beam of my torch was a flood of ruby, bloodlike radiance.

  Carefully I took out the heavy mass, studied its amazing lustrous depths in awe. Beyond doubt, Harkness’ paperweight, sent by mail to Beryl. But why should he send it to her when he didn’t even know her? And why murder afterwards—? But there, I was getting on the deep side again. I needed more obvious things right now.

  The safe contained nothing else, so at last I put the stone back and went back to bed, put the keys safely back round Beryl’s neck. She did not move in the least—and I had a wax lump in my coat pocket....

  I slept badly, brooding— At last dawn crept to the windows.

  * * * * * * *

  If Beryl suspected anything of my nocturnal activities she showed no sign of it. As we breakfasted her manner was still that of cold aloofness. I went out again in the same brusque way, determined to spend my day doing a lot of hard thinking instead of going to my office. I was getting too wound up to think straight much longer....

  I felt it was as inevitable as the sunrise that before long death would overtake the two remaining bloodstone owners—Carson of London and Cardew of Bermuda. But still I didn’t see how I could stop it without getting across the track of the law, and that was the last thing I wanted. Nor could I get any truth out of Beryl: between us loomed that invisible, merciless wall.

  I had driven the car out of the drive and on to the main village road, thinking deeply as I went, when I saw the postman approaching on an ancient bicycle. I hailed him.

  “Anything for me?”

  He got off his machine, wheeled it over and stuck a horny finger and thumb through his little bundle.

  “No, I’m afraid not, Mr. Shaw. Not this— But I’m forgetting this parcel!” He dived in his bag and brought a smallish brown paper one to light.

  “For Mrs. Shaw,” he said, then as he studied it, “And air mail too. Foreign air mail. Rare round here. Must be important, Plenty of weight for air mail—”

  “Be all right. I’ll take it for her,” I said. “No need to go all the way to the house with it.”

  “Well. I— Okay, it’ll be all right,” he nodded, handing it over. “Rare we get two parcels for the same place two days running. Things have livened up a bit in the parcel mail sin
ce you and your wife came, Mr. Shaw. That one the day before yesterday and this one to-day—”

  “That what mails are for, isn’t it?” I interrupted him shortly. “Thanks!”

  I drove on again rather hurriedly, but for some reason I felt he was watching me go. He was: my rear mirror showed it. Irritated, I drove on until I was out of his sight, then stopped and examined the parcel hurriedly. Air mail express, stamped ‘Napoli, Italia.’

  I ripped off the cords, tore away the paper, opened a strong cardboard box—

  Within a bed of cotton-wool was a glowing chunk of red glasslike stone....

  Thoughts just wouldn’t come to me. I was stunned. One thousand miles away a total stranger had mailed Beryl a piece of an antique jewel. And air mail to be sure of top speed. Then—then Madame Borini had been murdered, same as Boyd Harkness.... It gave me cold shudders to think of it. I began to get an insight upon the hellish, supernatural thing I was living with. More! Married to it!

  And the law too showed signs that it might catch up. Inspector Hilton was nobody’s fool. The postman was already a nosey kind of individual, and had noted the parcels arriving. If he told the police—

  Something happened to me at this point in my thoughts. Don’t ask me what it was because I can’t tell you. I simply became aware that my skin was pricking and that the road and the car were both swaying unnaturally. It was like being on the edge of a faint— Only it wasn’t a faint because I started the car up, reversed, and went back to the house.

  I picked up the jewel in its box, let myself in by the front door and went right through to the lounge. Beryl was there, as though waiting for me. She was smiling imperturbably. I put the box down on the table beside her without a word, went out again, drove away again in my car....

  The dreamlike sensation left me suddenly, left me limp and breathless. I was drawn up on the side of the road where I had stopped before. Had I been asleep, or what— Had I really been back home? I searched around the car frantically but the jewel and its box had gone as though it had never been.