It Came Out of Egypt/The Book of Thoth
SIXTH MYSTERY—THE BOOK OF THOTH
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 dénouement was at any moment to be anticipated, his reason told him. 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 marshaled by Antony Ferrara. 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 that 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 upon him 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—just as, in feudal days, at the first hint of an approaching enemy, the baron was accustomed to call within the walls of his 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 the very gates of the citadel.
Myra, though still pale from her recent illness, was already recovering some of the freshness of her beauty. In her simple morning dress, as she used herself about the breakfast table, she was a sweet picture enough, and good to look upon. As Robert stood beside her, looking into her eyes, she smiled at him with a happy contentment that filled him with a new longing.
“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 gray eyes.
“We must not overlook any possible weapon,” he replied. “Give us particulars of your dream, Myra.”
Marston entered silently with the morning fare, and, having placed the dishes upon the table, as silently withdrew. Then 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 irregular patches of light and shadow upon the floor. A sort of door, like that of a stable, with a heavy bar across, was dimly perceptible at the farther 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. “It was one that I have seen in—Antony's rooms. Its shaded light shone upon a closed iron box. I immediately recognized the 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 highly 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 if they lived.”
She shuddered slightly.
“The same iron box, but open, stood upon the table, with a number of 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.”
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, then grew dim, then flickered up again, in a sort of phosphorescent way. They extended from lamp to lamp, so as 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 table. I cannot explain. 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 gray 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 dreamed no more, but awoke, conscious of a sensation as if some dead weight, which had been pressing upon me, had suddenly been removed.”
Dr. Cairn glanced across at his son significantly, but the subject was not renewed throughout breakfast.
II
“Come into the library, Rob,” said Dr. Cairn, when the meal was finished. “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 learned works, its store of forgotten wisdom, and pointed to the red leather armchair. As Robert Cairn seated himself and looked across at his father, who sat at the big writing table, the scene reminded him of many dangers met and overcome in the past; for the library of the Half Moon Street house was associated in his mind with some of the blackest pages in the history of Antony Ferrara.
“Do you understand the situation, Rob?” the doctor inquired 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, for the time, that we dwell in the twentieth century, and looking at the situation from the point of view, say, of Eliphas Levi, Cornelius Agrippa, or the Abbé de Villars, the man whom we know as Antony Ferrara is directing against this house, and against those within it, a type of elemental spirit known as a salamander.”
Robert Cairn smiled slightly.
“Ah!” said the doctor, with an answering smile, in which there was little mirth. “We are accustomed to laugh at this medieval terminology; but by what other can we speak of the activities of Ferrara?”
“Sometimes I think that we are the victims of a common madness,” said his son, raising his hand to his head in a manner almost pathetic.
“We are the victims of a common enemy,” replied his father sternly. “He employs weapons which often enough, in this enlightened age of ours, have condemned poor souls, as sane as you or I, to the madhouse. Why, in God's name,” he cried with a sudden excitement, “does science persistently ignore all those laws which cannot be examined in the laboratory? Will the day never come when some true man of learning will endeavor to explain the movements of a table upon which a ring of hands has been placed? Will no exact scientist condescend to examine the properties of a planchette? Will no one do for the phenomena termed 'thought forms' what Newton did for that of the falling apple? Ah, Rob, in some respects, this is a darker age than those which bear the stigma of darkness!”
Silence fell for a few moments between them.
“One thing is certain,” said Robert Cairn, at length. “We are in danger!”
“In the greatest danger.”
“Antony Ferrara, realizing that we are bent upon his destruction, is making a final, stupendous effort to compass ours. I know that you have placed certain seals upon the windows of this house, and that after dusk those windows are never opened. I know that imprints, strangely like the imprints of fiery hands, may be seen at this moment upon the casements of Myra's room, your room, my room, and elsewhere. I know that Myra's nocturnal visions are not ordinary, meaningless dreams. I have had other evidence. I don't want to analyze these things. I confess that my mind is not capable of the task. I do not even want to know the meaning of it all. At the present moment, I only want to know one thing—who is Antony Ferrara?”
Dr. Cairn stood up, and, turning, faced his son.
“The time has come,” he said, “when that question, which you have asked me so many times before, shall be answered. I will tell you all I know, and leave you to form your own opinion. Ere we go any further, I assure you that I do not know for certain who he is.”
“You have said so before, sir. Will you explain what you mean?”
“When his adoptive father, Sir Michael Ferrara,” resumed the doctor, beginning to pace up and down the library—“when Sir Michael and I were in Egypt, in the winter of 1893, we conducted certain investigations in the Fayum. We camped for more than three months beside the Pyramid of Meydum. The object of our inquiries was to discover the tomb of a certain queen. I will not trouble you with the details, which could be of no interest to any one but an Egyptologist. I will merely say that apart from the name and titles by which she is known to the ordinary student, this queen is also known to certain inquirers as the Witch Queen. She was not an Egyptian, but an Asiatic. In short, she was the last high priestess of a cult which became extinct at her death. Her secret mark—I am not referring to a cartouche, or anything of that kind—was a spider. It was the mark of the religion or cult which she practiced. The high priest of the principal Temple of Ra, during the reign of the Pharaoh who was this queen's husband, was one Hortotef. This was his official position, but secretly he was also the high priest of the sinister creed to which I have referred. The temple of this religion—a religion allied to black magic—was the Pyramid of Meydum. So much we knew—or Ferrara knew, and imparted to me—but for any corroborative evidence of this cult's existence we searched in vain. We explored the interior of the pyramid foot by foot, inch by inch—and found nothing. We knew that there was some other apartment in the pyramid; but in spite of our soundings, measurements, and laborious excavations, we did not come upon the entrance to it. The tomb of the queen we also failed to discover, and we therefore concluded that her mummy was buried in the secret chamber of the pyramid. We had abandoned our quest in despair when, excavating in one of the neighboring mounds, we made a discovery.”
He opened a box of cigars, selected one, and pushed the box toward his son. Robert shook his head, almost impatiently, but Dr. Cairn lighted the cigar ere resuming.
“Directed, as I now believe, by a malignant will, we blundered upon the tomb of the high priest—”
“You found his mummy?”
“We found his mummy—yes; but owing to the carelessness—and the fears—of the native laborers, it was exposed to the sun until it crumbled away and was lost. I would a similar fate had attended the other one that we found!”
“What—another mummy?”
“We discovered”—Dr. Cairn spoke very deliberately—“a certain papyrus. The translation of this is contained”—he rested the point of his finger upon the writing table—“in the unpublished book of Sir Michael Ferrara, which lies here. That book, Rob, will never be published now. Furthermore, we discovered the mummy of a child—”
“A child?”
“A boy. Not daring to trust the natives, we removed it secretly, at night, to our own tent. Before we commenced the task of unwrapping it, Sir Michael, the most brilliant scholar of his age, had proceeded so far in deciphering the papyrus that he determined to complete his reading before we proceeded further. It contained directions for performing a certain process upon the mummy of the child.”
“Do I understand—”
“Already you are discrediting the story! Ah, I can see it; but let me finish. Unaided, we performed this process upon the embalmed body of the child. Then, in accordance with the directions of that dead magician—that accursed, malignant being, who thus had sought to secure for himself a new tenure of evil life—we laid the mummy, treated in a certain fashion, in the King's Chamber of the Pyramid of Meydum. It remained there for thirty days—from moon to moon.”
“You guarded the entrance?”
“You may assume what you like, Rob; but I could swear before any jury that no one entered the pyramid throughout that time. Yet, since we were only human, we may have been mistaken. I have only to add that at the rising of the new moon in the ancient Sothic month of Panoi, when we again entered the chamber, a living baby, some six months old, and perfectly healthy, solemnly blinked up at the lights that we held in our trembling hands!”
Dr. Cairn reseated himself at the table, and turned the chair so that he faced his son. He sat with the smoldering cigar between his teeth, and a slight smile upon his lips.
Now it was Robert's turn to rise and begin feverishly to-pace the floor.
“You mean, sir, that this infant, which you found in the pyramid, was adopted by Sir Michael?”
“Was adopted—yes. Sir Michael engaged nurses for him, reared him here in England, educating him as an Englishman, sent him to a public school, sent him to—”
“To Oxford! Antony Ferrara! What? Do you seriously tell me that this is the history of Antony Ferrara?”
“On my word of honor, boy, that is all I know of Antony Ferrara. Is it not enough?”
“Merciful God! It is incredible!” groaned Robert Cairn.
“From the time that he attained to manhood,” said Dr. Cairn evenly, “this adopted son of my poor old friend has passed from crime to crime. By means which are beyond my comprehension, and which go far to confirm his supernatural origin, he has acquired—knowledge. According to the ancient Egyptian beliefs, the khu, or magical power, of a fully equipped adept, at the death of the body, could enter into anything prepared for its reception. According to these ancient beliefs, then, the khu of the high priest Hortotef entered into the body of this infant, who was his son, and whose mother was the Witch Queen; and to-day, in this modern London, a wizard of ancient Egypt, armed with the lost lore of that magical land, walks among us! What that lore is worth, it would be profitless for us to discuss; but that he possesses it—all of it—I know beyond doubt. The most ancient and most powerful magical book which has ever existed was the 'Book of Thoth.'”
The doctor walked across to a distant shelf, selected a volume, opened it at a particular page, and placed it on his son's knees.
“Read there!” he said, pointing.
The words seemed to dance before the younger man's eyes, and this is what he read:
- To read two pages enables you to enchant the heavens, the earth, the abyss, the mountains, and sea.
- You shall know what the birds of the sky and the crawling things are saying.
- When the second page is read, if you are in the world of ghosts, you will grow again in the shape you wore on earth.
“Heavens!” whispered Robert Cairn. “Is this the writing of a madman, or can such things possibly be?”
He read on:
- This book is in the middle of the river at Koptos, in an iron box—
“An iron box!” he muttered. “An iron box!”
“So you recognize the iron box?” jerked Dr. Cairn.
His son read on:
- In the iron box is a bronze box; in the bronze box is a sycamore box; in the sycamore box is an ivory and ebony box; in the ivory and ebony box is a silver box; in the silver box is a golden box; and in that is the book.
- It is twisted all round with snakes and scorpions and all the other crawling things.
“The man who holds the 'Book of Thoth,'” said Dr. Cairn, breaking the silence, “holds a power which should only belong to God. The creature who is known to the world as Antony Ferrara holds that book—do you doubt it? Therefore you know now, as I have known long enough, with what manner of enemy we are fighting. You know that this time it is a fight to the death—”
He stopped abruptly, staring out of the window.
A man with a large photographic camera, standing upon the opposite pavement, was busily engaged in focusing the house.
“What is this?” muttered Robert Cairn, also stepping to the window.
“It is a link between sorcery and science,” replied the doctor. “You remember Ferrara's photographic gallery at Oxford—the zenana, you used to call it? You remember having seen in his collection photographs of persons who afterward came to violent ends?”
“I begin to understand!”
“Thus far, his endeavors to concentrate the whole of the evil forces at his command upon this house have had but poor results. They have merely caused Myra to dream strange dreams—clairvoyant dreams, instructive dreams, more useful to us than to the enemy—and have resulted in certain marks upon the outside of the house, adjoining the windows, which I have sealed in a particular manner. You understand me?”
“By means of photographs he—concentrates, in some way, malignant forces upon certain points—”
“He focuses his will—yes. The man who can really control his will, Rob, is supreme, below the Godhead. Ferrara can almost do this now. Before he has become wholly proficient—”
“I understand, sir,” snapped his son grimly.
“He is barely of age, boy,” Dr. Cairn said, almost in a whisper. “In another year he would menace the world. Where are you going?”
He grasped his son's arm as Robert started for the door.
“That man yonder—”
“Diplomacy, Rob! Guile against guile! Let the man do his work, which he does in all innocence; then follow him. Learn where his studio is situated, and, from that point, proceed to learn—”
“The situation of Ferrara's hiding place?” cried his son excitedly. “I understand! Of course you are right, sir!”
“I will leave the inquiry in your hands, Rob. Unfortunately other duties call me.”
III
Robert Cairn entered a photographer's shop in Baker Street.
“You recently arranged to do views of some houses in the West End for a gentleman?” he said to the girl in charge.
“That is so,” she replied, after a moment's hesitation. 'We did pictures of the house of some celebrated specialist, to illustrate a magazine article, I believe. Do you wish us to do something similar?”
“Not at the moment,” replied Robert Cairn, smiling slightly. “I merely want the address of your client.”
“I do not know that I can give you that,” replied the girl doubtfully; “but he will be here about eleven o'clock for proofs, if you wish to see him.”
“I wonder if I can confide in you!” said Robert Cairn, looking the girl frankly in the eyes.
She seemed rather confused.
“I hope there is nothing wrong,” she murmured.
“You have nothing to fear,” he replied; “but unfortunately there is something wrong, which, however, I cannot explain. Will you promise me not to tell your client—I do not ask his name—that I have been here, or have been making any inquiries respecting him?”
“I think I can promise that,” the girl replied.
“I am much indebted to you.”
Robert Cairn hastily left the shop, and began to look about him for a likely hiding place from whence, unobserved, he might watch the photographer's. An antique furniture shop, some little distance away on the opposite side of the street, attracted his attention. He glanced at his watch. It was half past ten.
If, upon the pretense of examining some of the stock, he could linger in the furniture shop for half an hour, he would be enabled to get upon the track of Ferrara!
His mind made up, he walked along and entered the shop. For the next half hour, he passed from item to item of the collection displayed there, surveying each in the leisurely manner of a connoisseur; but always he kept watch, through the window, on the photographer's establishment across the street.
Promptly at eleven o'clock a taxicab drew up at the door, and from it a slender man alighted. Despite the heat of the morning, he wore an overcoat of some woolly material. In his gait, as he crossed the pavement to enter the photographer's shop, there was something revoltingly effeminate—a sort of catlike grace which would have been noticeable in a woman, but which was unnatural, and, for some obscure reason, sinister, in a man.
It was Antony Ferrara!
Even at that distance and in that brief time, Robert Cairn could see the ivory face, the abnormal red lips, and the long black eyes of this arch fiend, this monster masquerading as a man. He had much ado to restrain his rising passion; but, knowing that all depended upon his cool action, he waited until Ferrara had entered the photographer's door.
With a word of apology to the furniture dealer, Cairn passed quickly into Baker Street. Everything rested, now, upon his securing a cab before Ferrara came out again. Ferrara's cabman, evidently, was waiting for him.
Fortunately, a taxi driver hailed Cairn at the very moment that he gained the pavement. Concealing himself behind the vehicle, he gave the man rapid and precise instructions.
“You see that taxi outside the photographer's?” he said.
The man nodded.
“Wait until some one comes out of the shop and is driven off in it; then follow. Do not lose sight of the cab for a moment. When it draws up, and wherever it draws up, drive right past it. Don't attract attention by stopping. You understand?”
“Quite, sir,” said the man, smiling slightly.
Cairn entered the cab, and the driver drew up at a point some little distance beyond, from whence he could watch.
Two minutes later Ferrara came out and was driven off. The pursuit commenced.
His cab, ahead, proceeded to Westminster Bridge, across to the south side of the river, and, by way of a commercial thoroughfare at the back of St. Thomas's Hospital, emerged at Vauxhall. Thence the pursuit led to Stockwell, Herne Hill, and still onward toward Dulwich.
It suddenly occurred to Robert Cairn that Ferrara was making in the direction of Mr. Saunderson's house at Dulwich Common—the house in which Myra had had her mysterious illness, and in which she had remained until it became evident that her safety depended upon her never being left alone for one moment.
“What can be his object?” muttered Cairn.
He wondered if Ferrara, for some inscrutable reason, was about to call upon Mr. Saunderson; but when the cab ahead, having passed the park, continued on past the lane in which the house was situated, he began to search for some other solution of the problem of Ferrara's destination.
Suddenly he saw that the cab ahead had stopped. The driver of his own taxi, without slackening speed, pursued his way.
Cairn crouched down upon the floor, fearful of being observed. No house was visible to right or left, merely open fields; and he knew that it would be impossible for him to delay in such a spot without attracting attention.
Ferrara's cab passed. It was empty.
“Keep on till I tell you to stop!” cried Cairn.
He dropped the speaking tube, and, turning, looked out through the little window at the back. Ferrara had dismissed his cab. Cairn saw him entering a gate and crossing a field on the right of the road.
Cairn turned again, and took up the tube.
“Stop at the first house we come to!” he directed. “Hurry!”
Presently a deserted-looking building was reached—a large, straggling house which obviously had no tenant. Here the man pulled up, and Cairn leaped out. As he did so, he heard Ferrara's cab driving back by the way it had come.
“Here,” he said, and gave the man half a sovereign. “Wait for me.”
He started back along the road at a run. Even had he suspected that he was followed, Ferrara could not have seen him; but when he came up level with the gate through which Antony had gone, Cairn slowed down and crept cautiously forward.
Ferrara, who by this time had reached the other side of the field, was in the act of entering a barnlike structure which must once have formed part of some farm buildings. Opening one of the big doors, he disappeared within.
“The place of which Myra has been dreaming!” muttered Cairn.
Certainly, viewed from that point, it seemed to answer, externally, to the girl's description. The roof was of moss-grown red tiles, and Cairn could imagine how the moonlight would readily find access through the chinks which no doubt existed in the weather-worn structure. He had little doubt that this was the place dreamed of, or seen clairvoyantly, by Myra, and that this was the place to which Ferrara had retreated in order to conduct his nefarious operations.
It was eminently suited to the purpose, being entirely surrounded by unoccupied land. For what ostensible purpose Ferrara had leased it, Cairn could not conjecture, nor did he concern himself with the matter. His enemy's real intent was sufficiently evident to the man who had suffered so much at the hands of this modern sorcerer.
To approach closer would have been indiscreet, as Cairn could see; and he was sufficiently diplomatic to resist the temptation to obtain a nearer view of the place. He knew that everything depended upon secrecy. Antony Ferrara must not suspect that his black laboratory was known.
Cairn decided to return to Half Moon Street without delay, fully satisfied with the result of his investigation. He walked rapidly back to where the cab waited, gave the man his father's address, and, in three-quarters of an hour, was back in Half Moon Street.
Dr. Cairn had not yet dismissed the last of his patients. Myra, accompanied by Miss Saunderson, was out shopping; and Robert found himself compelled to possess his soul in patience. He paced restlessly up and down the library, sometimes taking a book at random, scanning its pages with unseeing eyes, and replacing it without having formed the slightest impression of its contents.
He tried to smoke; but his pipe was constantly going out, and he had littered the hearth untidily with burned matches, when Dr. Cairn suddenly opened the library door and entered.
“Well?” he said eagerly.
Robert Cairn leaped forward.
“I have tracked him, sir!” he cried. “My God, while Myra was at Saunderson's, she was almost next door to the beast! His den is in a field no more than a thousand yards from the garden wall—from Saunderson's orchid houses!”
“He is daring,” muttered Dr. Cairn; “but his selection of that site served two purposes. The spot was suitable in many ways, and we were least likely to look for him next door, as it were. It was a move characteristic of the accomplished criminal that he is.”
Robert Cairn nodded.
“It is the place of which Myra dreamed, sir—I have not the slightest doubt about that. What we have to find out is at what times of the day and sight he goes there.”
“I doubt,” interrupted Dr. Cairn, “if he often visits the place during the day. As you know, he has abandoned his rooms in Piccadilly; but I have no doubt, knowing his sybaritic habits, that he has some other palatial place in town. I have been making inquiries in several directions, especially in—certain directions—”
The physician paused.
“Additions to the zenana?” inquired Robert.
Dr. Cairn nodded his head grimly.
“Exactly,” he replied. “There is not a scrap of evidence upon which he could be legally convicted; but since his return from Egypt, Rob, he has added other victims to his list.”
“The fiend!” cried the younger man. “The unnatural fiend!”
“Unnatural is the word. He is literally unnatural; but many women find him irresistible. He is typical of the unholy brood to which he belongs. The evil beauty of the Witch Queen sent many a soul to perdition. The evil beauty of her son has zealously carried on the work.”
“What must we do?”
“I doubt if we can do anything to-day. The early morning is the most suitable time to visit his den at Dulwich Common.”
“But the new photographs of the house! There will surely be another attempt upon us to-night!”
“Yes—there will be another attempt upon us to-night,” said the doctor wearily. “This is the year 1914; yet here in Half Moon Street, when dusk falls, we shall be submitted to an attack of a kind to which mankind probably has not been submitted for many ages. We shall be called upon to dabble in the despised magical art. We shall be called upon to place certain seals upon our doors and windows; to protect ourselves against an enemy, who, like Eros, laughs at locks and bars.”
“Is it possible for him to succeed?”
“Quite possible, Rob, in spite of all our precautions. I feel in my very bones that to-night he will put forth a supreme effort.”
A bell rang.
“I think,” continued the doctor, “that this is Myra. She must get all the sleep she can during the afternoon; for to-night I have determined that we three must not think of sleep, but must remain together, here in the library. We must not lose sight cf one another—you understand?”
“I am glad that you have proposed it!” cried Robert Cairn eagerly. “I, too, feel that we have come to a critical moment in the contest.”
“To-night,” continued the doctor, “I shall be prepared to take certain steps. My preparations will occupy me throughout the rest of to-day.”
IV
At dusk that evening, Dr. Cairn, his son, and Myra Duquesne met together in the library. The girl looked rather pale.
An odor of incense pervaded the house, coming from the doctor's study, wherein he had locked himself early in the evening, after issuing instructions that he was not to be disturbed. The exact nature of the preparations which he had been making, Robert Cairn was unable to conjecture; and some instinct warned him that his father would not welcome any inquiry upon the matter. He realized that Dr. Cairn proposed to fight Antony Ferrara with his own weapons. Much against his will, the skilled physician was entering the arena in the character of a practical magician—a character quite new to him, and obviously abhorrent.
At half past ten the servants all retired, in accordance with Dr. Cairn's orders. From where he stood by the tall mantelpiece, Robert Cairn could watch Myra Duquesne, a delightful picture in her simple evening gown, where she sat reading in a distant corner, her delicate beauty forming a strong contrast to the background of somber volumes.
Dr. Cairn sat by the big table, smoking, and apparently listening. A strange idea which he had put in force every evening for the past week, he had adopted again tonight. There were little white seals, bearing a curious figure of interlaced triangles,—upon the inside of every window in the house, upon the doors, and even upon the fire grates.
At another time Robert might have thought his father mad, childish, thus to play at wizardry; but he had had experiences which had taught him to recognize that upon such seemingly trivial matters great issues might turn, that in the strange land over the border there were stranger laws—laws which he could but dimly understand. There he acknowledged the superior wisdom of Dr. Cairn, and did not question it.
At eleven o'clock a comparative quiet had come upon Half Moon Street. The sound of the traffic had gradually subsided, until it seemed to him that the house stood, not in the busy West End of London, but isolated, apart from its neighbors. It seemed to him an abode marked out and separated from the other abodes of man, a house enveloped in an impalpable cloud—a cloud of evil, summoned up and directed by the wizard hand of Antony Ferrara, son of the Witch Queen.
Although Myra pretended to read, and Dr. Cairn, from his fixed expression, might have been supposed to be preoccupied, in point of fact they were all waiting, with nerves at highest tension, for the opening of the attack. In what form it would come—whether it would be vague moanings and tappings upon the windows, such as they had already experienced, whether it would be a phantasmal storm, a clap of phenomenal thunder—they could not conjecture. They did not know whether the enemy would attack suddenly, or if his menace would grow, threatening from afar off, and then gradually penetrating into the heart of the garrison.
It came suddenly and dramatically.
Dropping her book, Myra uttered a piercing scream of horror, and, with eyes glaring madly, fell forward on the carpet, unconscious.
Robert Cairn leaped to his feet with clenched fists. His father stood up so rapidly as to overset his chair, which fell crashing upon the floor.
Together, they turned and looked in the direction in which the girl had been looking. They fixed their eyes upon the draperies of the library window—which were drawn together. The whole window was luminous, as if a bright light shone outside—the light of some unholy fire!
Involuntarily they both stepped back, and Robert Cairn clutched his father's arm convulsively.
The curtains seemed to be rendered transparent, as if some powerful ray were directed upon them. The window appeared through them as a rectangular blue patch. Only two lamps were burning in the library—one in the corner, by which Myra had been reading, and the green-shaded lamp upon the table. The end of the room by the window, then, was in shadow, against which this unnatural light shone brilliantly.
“My God!” whispered Robert Cairn. “That's Half Moon Street outside. There can be no light—”
He broke off, for now he perceived the thing which had occasioned the girl's scream of horror.
In the middle of the rectangular patch of light, a gray shape, only partially opaque, moved with shifting, luminous clouds about it. It was taking form, growing momentarily more substantial.
It had some remote resemblance to a man, but its unique characteristic was its awful grayness. It had the grayness of a rain cloud, yet rather that of a column of smoke; and from the center of the dimly defined head, two eyes—balls of living fire—glared out into the room.
Heat was beating into the library from the window—physical heat, as if a furnace door had been opened. The shape, ever growing more palpable, was moving forward toward the inmates of the room—approaching—the heat every instant growing greater.
It was impossible to look at those two eyes of fire. It was almost impossible to move. Indeed, Robert Cairn was transfixed with such horror as, in all his dealings with the monstrous Ferrara, he had never known before.
His father, shaking off the dread which possessed him also, leaped at one bound to the library table. Robert Cairn vaguely perceived that a small group of objects, looking like balls of wax, lay there. Dr. Cairn had evidently been preparing them in the locked study. Now he took them all up in his left hand, and confronted the thing—which seemed to be growing into the room, for it did not advance in the ordinary sense of the word.
One by one, the doctor threw the white pellets into that vapory grayness. As they touched the curtain, they hissed, as if they had been thrown into a fire; they melted; and upon the transparency of the drapings, as upon a sheet of gauze, showed faint streaks, where, melting, they trickled down the tapestry.
As he cast each pellet from his hand, Dr. Cairn took a step forward, and cried out certain words in a loud voice—words which Robert Cairn had never heard uttered before—words in a language which some instinct told him to be ancient Egyptian.
Their effect was to force that dreadful shape gradually to disperse, as a cloud of smoke might disperse when the fire which occasions it is extinguished slowly. Seven pellets, in all, Dr. Cairn threw toward the window. The seventh struck the curtains, now once more visible in their proper form.
The fire elemental had been vanquished!
Robert Cairn clutched his hair in a sort of frenzy. He glared at the draped window, feeling that he was making a supreme effort to retain his sanity. Had it ever looked otherwise? Had the tapestry ever faded before him, becoming visible in a great light which had shone through it from behind? Had the thing, a thing unnamable, indescribable, stood there?
He read his answer upon the tapestry. Whitening streaks showed where the doctor's pellets, melting, had trickled down the curtains!
“Lift Myra upon the settee.”
It was Dr. Cairn speaking, calmly, but in a strained voice.
As if emerging from a mist, Robert Cairn turned to the recumbent white form upon the carpet. Then, with a great cry, he leaped forward and raised the girl's head.
“Myra!” he groaned. “Myra, speak to me!”
“Control yourself, boy,” rapped Dr. Cairn sternly. “She cannot speak until you have revived her. She has swooned—nothing worse.”
“And—”
“We have conquered!”
V
The mists of early morning still floated over the fields when these two, set upon strange business, walked through the damp grass to the door of the barn, whence radiated the deadly waves which on the previous night had reached them, or almost reached them, in the library of the house in Half Moon Street.
The big double door was padlocked, but for this they had come provided. Ten minutes' work upon the padlock sufficed—and Dr. Cairn swung wide the door.
A suffocating smell—the smell of that incense with which they had too often come in contact—was waited out to them. There was a dim light inside the place. Without hesitation both entered.
A deal table and chair constituted the sole furniture of the interior. Part of the floor was roughly boarded, and a brief examination of the boarding sufficed to discover the hiding place in which Antony Ferrara kept the utensils of his awful art.
Dr. Cairn lifted out two heavy boards, and in a recess below lay a number of singular objects. There were four antique lamps of most peculiar design. There was a larger silver lamp, which both of them had seen before in various apartments occupied by Antony Ferrara. There were a number of other things which Robert Cairn could not have described, had he been called upon to do so, for the reason that he had seen nothing like them before, and had no idea of their nature or purpose.
Conspicuous among this curious hoard was a square iron box, of workmanship dissimilar from any workmanship known to Robert Cairn. Its lid was covered with a curious sort of scrollwork. Robert reached down, in order to lift it out.
“Do not touch it!” cried the doctor. “For God's sake, do not touch it!”
Robert Cairn started back, as if he had seen a poisonous snake. Turning to his father, he saw that the latter was pulling on a pair of white gloves. As he fixed his eyes upon these, in astonishment, he perceived that they were smeared all over with some white preparation.
“Stand aside, boy!” said the doctor—and for once his voice shook slightly. “Do not look again until I call to you. Turn your head aside!”
Silent with amazement, Robert Cairn obeyed. He heard his father lift out the iron box. He heard him open it, for he had already perceived that it was not locked. Then, quite distinctly, he heard him close it again, and replace it in the cache.
“Do not turn, boy!” came a hoarse whisper.
Robert did not turn, but waited, his heart beating painfully, for what should happen next.
“Stand aside from the door,” came the order. “When I have gone out, do not look after me. I will call to you when it is finished.”
He obeyed without demur.
His father passed him, and Robert heard him walking through the damp grass outside the door of the barn. There followed an intolerable interval. From some place, not very distant, he could hear Dr. Cairn moving, could hear the chink of glass upon glass, as if he were pouring out something from a stoppered bottle. Then a faint acrid smell was wafted to his nostrils, perceptible even above the heavy odor of the incense from the barn.
“Relock the door!” came the cry.
Robert Cairn reclosed the door, snapped the padlock fast, and began to fumble with the skeleton keys with which they had come provided. He discovered that to reclose the padlock was quite as difficult as to open it. His hands were trembling, too, and he was all anxiety to see what had taken place behind him.
At last, when a sharp click told of the task accomplished, he turned in a flash and saw his father placing tufts of grass upon a charred patch, from which a faint haze of smoke still arose. He walked over and joined him.
“What have you done, sir?”
“I have robbed him of his armor!” replied the doctor grimly. His face was very pale, his eyes were very bright. “I have destroyed the 'Book of Thoth'!”
“Then he will be unable—”
“He will still be able to summon his dreadful servant, Rob. Having summoned him once, he can summon him again, but—”
“Well, sir?”
“He cannot control him.”
“Good God!”
That night brought no repetition of the uncanny attack. In the gray half light before the dawn, Dr. Cairn and his son, themselves like two phantoms, again crept across the fields to the barn in which Antony Ferrara had kept his utensils.
The padlock hung loose in the ring.
“Stay where you are, Rob!” cautioned the doctor.
He gently pushed the door open—wider—wider—and looked in. There was an overpowering odor of burning flesh. He turned to Robert, and spoke in a steady voice.
“The brood of the Witch Queen is extinct!” he said.
THE END