“Anon she turned back, and on her arms and in her hands were many things; objects I could not certainly identify, but seeming to be articles of clothing and ornaments—grave-loot from the old ones’ tombs, I doubt not, and worth a kingly ransom for their great antiquity, whatever their intrinsic worth might be.”
“But why did you pretend you’d seen nothing?” I demanded. “Do you suspect—”
“I suspect nothing; I know nothing,” he rejoined. “I declared my mission fruitless that the young monsieur might not have new perplexities added to those he already has. What sort of business Mademoiselle Louella makes—or proposes to make—I do not know. At any rate, her actions were most strange, and we shall be advised to sit with one eye and one ear fast-glued to our keyhole throughout the night.”
3
WRAPPING MYSELF IN A dressing-gown, I dropped into one of the deep wing chairs flanking the bedroom fireplace and lighted a cigar.
Jules de Grandin paced the length of the chamber, lighted a cigarette and flung it aside after two or three puffs, drew something from the pocket of his lounge-robe and examined it, replaced it, finally seated himself on the extreme edge of the easy-chair across the hearth and seemed to freeze statue-still.
Once or twice I essayed a remark, but his quickly lifted hand cut me short each time. His attitude was one of intent listening for some expected sound, and I found myself thinking again how suggestive of a feline the fellow little was. With his round, blue eyes widened by the intentness of his attention, the sharp, needle-fine ends of his waxed mustache fairly quivering with nervous tautness and his delicate, narrow nostrils now and again expanding as though he would discover the presence of that for which he waited by virtue of his sense of smell, he was for all the world like a tensed, expectant, but infinitely patient tom-cat stationed at the entrance of a promising rathole.
Time crept by with weighted feet. I yawned, stretched myself, tossed away my cigar, and fell into a doze.
“Trowbridge, mon vieux, arouse!” de Grandin’s sibilant whisper cut through my nap. “Awake, my friend—listen!”
In the room above us, the chamber where crippled David Monteith slept, there sounded the indistinct murmur of a voice—a woman’s voice—and blending with it like a cunningly played accompaniment to a soloist’s recitation was the faint, musical chiming of a bell. Yet it was not like any bell I had ever heard; rather it was like a staff of chimes with a single, tri-toned note, or a major note with two undertones pitched differently.
“Sounds like—” I began.
“Zut! Be quiet—come!” commanded Jules de Grandin.
Silently as a panther stalking through the jungle, he led the way into the corridor and up the stairs. Before the door of David’s room he paused, raising his hand in an arresting, minatory gesture.
The voice behind the panels was that of Louella Monteith, yet strangely different from it; deeper, more reverberant than the girl’s usual contralto. The words she spoke were in a language strange to me, but reminiscent, somehow, of such few phrases of Hebrew as I had learned when as a young hospital intern I’d ridden an ambulance through the crowded foreign sections of the city. And blending with the cold, passionless monotone of the woman’s voice was a second one, a man’s voice, quivering with passion, accusatory, low and vindictive as a serpent’s hiss.
With a quick movement of his left hand de Grandin thrust the door back and advanced across the threshold, the tableau thus revealed struck me numb with blank amazement.
Although no light burned, the scene was clear-cut as though enacted in brilliant moonlight, for a silvery, radiant luminance without apparent source seemed to permeate the atmosphere of an Egyptian room.
Crouched on a couch, his eyes wide with grisly, unbelieving horror, was David Monteith. Kneeling on the drugget in an attitude half of adoration, half cringing servility, was a man clothed only in a loin-cloth. His shaven head accented his lean, cruel features. One of his long, bony hands was extended, pointing fiercely at young Monteith, and it seemed to me the pointed hand was like an aimed weapon, serving to direct the unabating flood of invective the kneeling creature hurled toward the man upon the bed.
But it was the woman that stood in regal, awful majesty in the midst of the moon-like effulgence who caught and riveted my attention. Louella Monteith it was, but a changed, transmuted version of the girl we knew. Upon her head was the crown of Isis—the vulture cap with beaten gold and blue-enamel wings and the vulture’s head with gem-set eyes, above it two upright horns between which shone the red gold disk of the full moon, beneath them the uræus, emblem of Osiris.
About her neck lay a broad collar of hammered gold thick-set with emeralds and carnelian, and round her wrists were bands of gold and gleaming, blue enamel in which were studded emeralds and coral. Her bosom was bare, but high beneath her breasts was clasped a belt of blue and gold from which cascaded a diaphanous garment of web-fine linen gathered in scores of tiny, narrow pleats and fringed about the hem with a border of sparkling gems which hung an inch or less above the narrow, arching insteps of her white and tiny feet. In one hand she held a gold and crystal instrument fashioned like a cross with an elongated loop at its top, while in the other she bore a three-lashed golden scourge, the emblem of Egyptian royalty.
All this I noted in a sort of wondering daze, but it was the glaring, implacable eyes of her which held me rooted to the spot. Like the eyes of a tigress, or a leopardess, they were, and glowed with a horrid, inward light, as though illumined from behind by the phosphorescent luminance of an all-consuming, heatless flame.
Even as we halted spellbound she raised her golden scourge and aimed it at the man upon the bed, while the crouching thing at her feet gave vent to a wild, demoniac cachinnation—a triumphant laugh of hatred appeased and vengeance satisfied. A low, weak moan came from David Monteith, a groan of abysmal agony, as though his tortured soul were being ravished from his tormented flesh and tore his crippled body into tatters as it was dragged forth.
I started forward with a cry of horror, but Jules de Grandin was before me. “Accursed of God!” he shouted, and his voice was harsh and strident as a battle-cry. “Fallen foes of the Lord Jehovah; upstarts against the power of the most High; in nomine Domini, conjuro te, scleratissime, abire ad tuum locum! Hence, loathed remnants of a false and futile faith; in the name of Him who overcame ye, I command it!”
For a moment—or an eternity, I know not which—there was dead, frozen silence in that weirdly lighted room. Every actor in the drama stood sculptured-still, like a figure on a graven monument, and only the frantic pulsation of my heart sounded in my cars.
The Frenchman thrust his right hand into the pocket of his lounge-robe and brought forth something—a tiny golden reliquary, a little thing of gold and modest, purple amethyst so small a man might hide it in the hollow of his hand—and letting it slip through his fingers swung it by a slender golden chain, waving it slowly to and fro in the air as though it were a censer. “By the power of the one who cast ye out, O Aset, Aset of olden Egypt, by the memory of Cyrillus of Alexandria, I conjure ye,” he chanted slowly. “Behold the thing which I have brought from out the Land of Khem, even that which the holy one of old upraised against ye and against your power; behold, and be afraid!” He swung the little golden cross ceremonially before him and advanced into the room.
The groveling man-shape cut short its horrid laughter, and with jaws still agape, half-rose, half-crawled across the floor, its lean and claw-like hands upraised as if to ward away some stream of invincible power which flowed from out the bit of gold de Grandin held.
Jabbering half-formed words in an outlandish tongue, words I could not understand, but which were clearly an appeal, the thing retreated as de Grandin pursued inexorably.
I held my breath in horror, then almost screamed aloud as the Frenchman and his adversary reached the room’s boundary, for the hunted creature passed directly through the wall, as though brick and mortar had no substance!
&n
bsp; The little Frenchman turned from his quarry and approached the form of Isis, which seemed to stand irresolute beside the bed. Only, it was no longer a goddess we beheld, but a woman. True, she was still beautiful and queenly in her trappings of barbaric splendor, but the odd and moonlike light no longer shone around her, nor was there an aura of dread and fearsomeness about her, and the awful, flowing eyes which filled my soul with fear were now recognizable for what they were—the likeness of staring, vengeful eyes drawn in luminous paint upon her lowered lids!
“To your chamber, Mademoiselle, I command it!” de Grandin ordered in a low, authoritative voice. Then, to me:
“Look to Monsieur David, Friend Trowbridge. You will find him suffering from shock, but not greatly hurt otherwise, I think.”
Quickly, I ministered to the fainting man upon the bed, forced water mixed with brandy down his throat, pressed a vial of sal volatile to his nostrils and bathed his wrists and temples. He rallied slightly, gasped once or twice, then lapsed into a heavy, natural sleep. When at last he lay quietly on his pillow I opened his pajama jacket to listen to his heart, and on the flesh of his left breast, faint, but still recognizable for what it was, lay a tiny, reddish stigma, thus:
I hurried to de Grandin to tell him of my find, and met him tiptoeing from Louella Monteith’s room. “Softly, my friend,” he warned with upraised finger; “she sleeps.”
“WHERE’S DAVID?” LOUELLA MONTEITH asked as she joined de Grandin and me at breakfast the following morning. “He’s usually an early riser—I hope he’s not ill today?” She turned to ascend the stairs to her brother’s chamber, but de Grandin put forth a detaining hand.
“Your brother had rather a trying night, Mademoiselle,” he said. “Dr. Trowbridge has given him an opiate; it will be some time before he wakes.”
“Oh”—the concern in her eyes was very real—“don’t tell me the poor boy’s had another of his spells! He suffers so! Usually he calls me if he’s ill in the night, and I do what I can to help him; but last night I didn’t hear a thing. I slept so soundly, too. Do you—”
She brightened as a consoling thought seemed to come to her. “Of course,” she smiled. “Why should he have called me when we had two physicians in the house? I’m sure you did everything possible for him, gentlemen.”
“Precisely; we did, Mademoiselle,” Jules de Grandin returned noncommittally as he gave his undivided attention to the well-filled plate of bacon and eggs before him.
“NO! I TELL YOU; I’ll never willingly look at that she-devil again, so long as I live!” David Monteith almost shouted in response to de Grandin’s suggestion. “Talk all you will of her being my sister; I tell you she’s the vilest most unholy thing unhanged. Oh God, why doesn’t the law recognize witchcraft today? How I’d enjoy denouncing her, and seeing her tied to the stake!” He leaned back on his pillow, exhausted by the vehemence of his emotion, but his deep-set, greenish hazel eyes glowed with fury as he looked from one of us to the other. Then:
“She killed Uncle Absalom, too. I know it. Now I understand what old Maggie Gourlay meant when she warned me against the banshee. It was Louella—my sister! She killed our uncle, and she almost finished me last night. I tell you—”
“And I tell you, Monsieur David, that you talk like an uncommonly silly fool!” de Grandin broke in sharply. “Hear me, if you please—or if you do not please, for that matter. Attend me, listen, pay attention, forget your chuckle-headedness! You talk of witch-burning, and, parbleu, you do well to do so, for you assuredly show the shallow-emptiness of head which so characterized those old ones who sent innocent women to the flames!
“Non, listen to me,” he bade sharply as the other would have spoken. “You will hear me through, if I must knock you senseless and bind you to the bed in order to keep you quiet!
“Your story of your uncle’s death did greatly interest me when first you told it. That old Sepa, the Priest of Aset, or Isis, as we call her nowadays, had any personal part in it I did not seriously consider; but that the constant, continuous, subconscious thought of that old one’s curse had much to do with it I was very certain. Consider, my friend, you know how half-a-dozen people, thinking together, can sometimes influence one in a company? You have seen it demonstrated? Good. So it was in this case, only more so; much more so. For generations the dwellers in Egypt bowed the knee to Aset, the All-Mother, she whom they worshiped as She Who Was and Is and Is to Be. Now, whether such a personality as hers ever existed or not is beside the question; let but enough persons loose thoughts of her, and they have created a thought-image of such strength that only le bon Dieu knows its limitations.
“So with the vengeance of the dead. For more generations than you have hairs upon your head the Egyptians believed implicitly that he who broke the rest of the entombed dead laid himself open to direst vengeance. And to strengthen this belief, those who were buried were wont to place a curse-stone in their tombs, denouncing the disturbers of their long rest in such language as old Sepa directed against your late uncle. Yes, it is so.
“Your late lamented kinsman spent much time among the ancient tombs. It was inevitable he should have absorbed some sort of half-agnostic belief in the potency of the old ones’ curses. That sort of thing grows on one.
“Anon, having retired, he sets himself to translating the various tablets and papyri he had collected. At length he comes upon the curse-stone from old Sepa’s grave.
“Now, we do not realize when the Uncinaria americana infects our systems with its eggs, but anon we suffer drowsiness, anemia and dropsy. We have no desire to do anything but sit about and sleep—we have the disease known as hookworm, for the eggs have germinated. So it was with old Sepa’s curse. Monsieur your uncle wrought out the translation of the curse-stone, and paid little heed to what he read—at first. But all the same the idea of a dreadful doom awaiting him who invaded that wicked old one’s tomb was firmly lodged in his subconscious mind, and there it germinated, and grew into a monstrous thing, even as the hookworm’s eggs grow in the body of their victim. And when your uncle read of the young Englishman’s death, and how he was the tenth to die of those who opened Tutankhamen’s tomb, such doubts as he might have had disappeared utterly. He did resign himself to death by Sepa’s vengeance.
“Your sister, being sensitive to thought-influence, at length became infected, too. It was as if your uncle, all unknowingly, transferred his fearful thoughts to her subconscious mind, much as a hypnotist imposes his thought and will upon his subject. Your sister is tall, stately, beautiful. She had the peculiar greenish eyes which go with mysticism. What more natural than that your uncle should have conceived the Goddess Aset as in your sister’s image, and, so conceiving, impregnated your sister with his thought. All unknowingly, she was to him, and to herself, the very incarnation of that olden one—that probably non-existent one—whose wrath had been called down on Monsieur your kinsman by the curse-stone found in Sepa’s grave.
“Very good. Upon the night in which your uncle died your sister did arise, descend the stairs into the museum, and there equip herself with the garments once worn by some Egyptian priestess. Consider, now: She did not consciously know what was in those cabinets below, she knew not which keys fitted the locks, she did not know how the ancient priestesses arrayed themselves, for she had no knowledge of archeology, yet she went unerringly to the proper case, chose the proper trappings, and donned them in the proper manner. Why? Because Your uncle’s thought guided her!
“All this she did at the urge of her subconscious mind. Her conscious mind, by which she recognized external things, was fast asleep meanwhile. Yet so deftly did her dream-commanded mind order the disguise that she even went so far as to trace the likeness of open, staring eyes upon her lids with phosphorescent paint.
“And then, arrayed as Aset, she did repair to your uncle’s room, and with her went the thought-concept of another one, the thought-induced and thought-begotten likeness of the long-dead Sepa.
“With ancient ri
tual she read aloud your uncle’s doom, the doom he had decreed upon himself by his persistent thought, and he—poor man!—believing that his doom was sealed, did die for very fright.
“Now, concerning yourself: Like her, you knew of the curse; like her you had read of the death of the young Englishman who violated the tomb of Tutankhamen. Very well. Subconsciously you feared the curse which Sepa had put upon your uncle and your uncle’s kin hovered over you. Although you strove to shake it off, the thought would not die, for the more you dismissed it from your conscious mind, the deeper it penetrated into your subconscious, there to fester like a septic splinter in one’s finger. Yes.
“Last night was the crucial time. Once more Mademoiselle your sister donned Aset’s unholy livery; once more she did pronounce the doom of Sepa upon your uncle’s kin—and, parbleu, she did almost succeed in doing it! Friend Trowbridge and I were not a second too soon, I damn think.”
“But the mark—the mark on Uncle Absalom’s breast, and which Dr. Trowbridge said appeared on mine too; what of that?” young Monteith persisted.
“Perhaps you have not seen it, but I have,” de Grandin returned: “a hypnotist can, by his bare mental command, cause the blood to leave his subject’s arm, and make the member become white and cold as death. So with the death-sign on your uncle’s breast, and yours. It was but the stigma of a mental order—a thought made physically manifest.”
“But what did you do—what did you use?” Monteith demanded. “I saw you drive the ghost of Sepa from the room with something. What was it?”
“To understand, you must know the history of Isis,” de Grandin answered. “Her cult was one of the most powerful of all the ancient world. Despite the sternest opposition she had her votaries in both Greece and Rome, and she was the last of the old gods to be expelled from Egypt, for notwithstanding the Christianizing of the land and the great strength of the Alexandrian Church, her shrine at Philae continued to draw worshipers until the sixth century of our era.
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