It Came Out of Egypt/The Silken Cord
FIFTH MYSTERY—THE SILKEN CORD
NOT the least of the trials that Robert Cairn experienced, during the time when he and his father were warring with their supernaturally equipped opponent, was that of preserving silence upon this matter which loomed so large in his mind, and which already had changed the course of his life.
Sometimes he met men who knew Ferrara, but who knew him only as a man about town of somewhat sinister reputation. Even to these he dared not confide what he knew of the true Ferrara. Undoubtedly they would have deemed him mad, had he spoken of the pursuits and the deeds of this uncanny, this fiendish being. How would they have listened to him had he sought to tell them of the den of spiders in Port Said, of the bats of Meydum, of the secret incense and how it was made, of the numberless murders and atrocities, wrought by means not human, which stood to the account of this adopted son of the late Sir Michael Ferrara?
So, excepting his father, Robert had no confidant. Above all, it was necessary to keep the truth from Myra Duquesne—from Myra around whom his world circled, but who yet thought of the dreadful being who wielded the sorcery of forgotten ages, as a brother.
While Myra lay ill—not yet recovered from the ghastly attack made upon her life by the evildoer whom she trusted—while, having plentiful evidence of his presence in London, Dr. Cairn and Robert vainly sought for Antony Ferrara; while any night might bring some unholy visitant to the young man's rooms, obedient to the will of this modern wizard; while these fears, anxieties, doubts, and surmises danced, impish, through his brain, it was practically impossible to pursue with success his vocation of journalism:
Yet for many reasons it was necessary that he should do so. He was endeavoring to complete a series of articles which were the outcome of his recent visit to Egypt—his editor having given him that work as being less exacting than that which properly falls to the lot of the Fleet Street “copy hunter.”
Robert left his rooms about three o'clock in the afternoon, in order to seek, in the British Museum library, a reference which he lacked. The day was an exceedingly warm one, and he derived some little satisfaction from the fact that, at his present work, he was not called upon to don the sartorial armor of respectability. Pipe in mouth, he made his way across the Strand toward Bloomsbury.
As he walked up the steps of the museum, crossed the hallway, and passed in beneath the dome of the reading room, he wondered if, amid the mountains of erudition surrounding him, there was any wisdom so strange, so awful, as that of Antony Ferrara.
He soon found the information for which he was looking, and, having copied it into his notebook, he left the reading room. Then, as he was recrossing the hall, near the foot of the principal staircase, he paused. He found himself possessed by a sudden desire to go upstairs and visit the Egyptian Rooms. He had several times inspected the exhibits in those apartments, but never since his return from the land to whose ancient civilization they bore such striking witness.
Cairn was not pressed for time in these days, therefore he turned and passed slowly up the stairs.
There were but few visitors to the grove of mummies that afternoon. When he entered the first room, he found a small group of tourists passing idly from case to case; but on entering the second, he saw that he had the apartment to himself.
He remembered that his father had once mentioned that there was a ring in this room which had belonged to the Witch Queen. Robert Cairn wondered in which of the cases it was exhibited, and how he could recognize it.
Bending over a case containing scarabs and other amulets, many set in rings, he began to read the inscriptions on the little tickets placed beneath some of them; but none answered to the description, neither the ticketed nor the unticketed. He examined a second case with like results; but on passing to a third, in an angle near the door, his gaze immediately lighted upon a gold ring set with a strange green stone, engraved in a peculiar way. It bore no ticket, and yet, as Robert Cairn eagerly bent over it, he knew beyond the Possibility of doubt that this was the ring of the Witch Queen.
Where had he seen it, or its duplicate? With his eyes fixed upon the gleaming stone, he sought to remember. That he had seen this ring before, or one exactly like it, he knew; but, strangely enough, he was unable to determine where and upon what occasion. So, his hands resting upon the case, he leaned, peering down at the singular gem.
As he stood thus, frowning in the effort of recollection, a dull white hand, having long, tapered fingers, glided across the glass until it rested directly beneath his eyes. Upon one of the slender fingers was an exact replica of the ring in the case!
Robert Cairn leaped back with a stifled exclamation, for Antony Ferrara stood before him.
“The museum ring is a copy, dear Cairn,” came the huskily musical, hateful voice. “The one upon my finger is the real one.”
II
Cairn realized, in his own person, the literal meaning of the overworked phrase, “frozen with amazement.” Before him stood the most dangerous man in Europe—a man who had done murder and worse; a man only in name, a demon in nature. His long black eyes half closed, his perfectly chiseled ivory face expressionless, and his blood-red lips parted in a mirthless smile, Antony Ferrara watched Robert Cairn—Robert Cairn, whom he had sought to murder by means of hellish art.
Despite the heat of the day, he wore a heavy overcoat, lined with white fox fur. In his right hand—for his left still rested upon the case—he held a soft hat. With an easy nonchalance, he stood regarding the man who had sworn to kill him.
The latter made no move, uttered no word. Stark amazement held him inert.
“I knew that you were in the museum, Cairn,” Ferrara continued, still having his basilisk eyes fixed upon the other from beneath the drooping lids. “I called to you to join me here.”
Still Cairn did not move, did not speak.
“You have acted very harshly toward me in the past, dear Cairn; but because my philosophy consists in an admirable blending of that practiced in Sybaris with that advocated by the excellent Zeno; because, while I am prepared to make my home in a tub, like Diogenes, I nevertheless can enjoy the fragrance of a rose, the flavor of a peach—”
The husky voice seemed to be hypnotizing Cairn. It was a siren's voice, enthralling him.
“Because,” continued Ferrara evenly, “in common with all humanity, I am compound of man and woman, I can resent the enmity which drives me from shore to shore; but, being myself a connoisseur of the red lips and laughing eyes of maidenhood—I am thinking more particularly of Myra—I can forgive you, dear Cairn—”
Then Cairn recovered himself.
“You white-faced cur!” he snarled through clenched teeth, and his knuckles whitened as he stepped around the case. “You dare to stand there mocking me—”
Ferrara again placed the case between himself and his enemy.
“Pause, my dear Cairn,” he said, without emotion. “What would you do? Be discreet, dear Cairn. Reflect that I have only to call an attendant in order to have you pitched ignominiously into the street.”
“Before God, I will throttle the life from you!” said Cairn, in a voice savagely hoarse.
He sprang again toward Ferrara. Again the latter dodged around the case with an agility which defied the heavier man.
“Your temperament is so painfully Celtic, Cairn!” he protested mockingly. “I perceive quite clearly that you will not discuss this matter judicially. Must I then call for the attendant?”
Cairn clenched his fists convulsively. Through all the tumult of his rage there had penetrated the fact that he was helpless. He could not attack Ferrara in that place; he could not detain him against his will. Ferrara had only to claim official protection to bring about the complete discomfiture of his assailant.
Across the case containing the duplicate ring Cairn glared at this incarnate fiend, whom the law, which he had secretly outraged, now served to protect. Ferrara spoke again in his huskily musical voice.
“I regret that you will not be reasonable, Cairn. There is so much that I should like to say to you. There are so many things of interest which I could tell you. Do you know that in some respects I am peculiarly gifted, Cairn? At times I can recollect, quite distinctly, particulars of former incarnations. Do you see that priestess lying there, just through the doorway? I can quite distinctly remember having met her when she was a girl. She was beautiful, Cairn. I can recall how, one night beside the Nile—but I see that—you are growing impatient. If you will not avail yourself of this opportunity, I must bid you good day.”
He turned and walked toward the door. Cairn leaped after him; but Ferrara, suddenly beginning to run, reached the end of the Egyptian Room and darted out on the landing, before his pursuer had time to realize what he was about.
At the moment when Ferrara turned the corner ahead of him, Cairn saw something drop. Coming to the end of the room, he stooped and picked up the object, which was a plaited silk cord about three feet in length. He did not pause to examine it more closely, but thrust it into his pocket and raced down the steps after the retreating figure of Ferrara.
At the foot, a constable held out his arm, detaining him. Cairn stopped in surprise.
“I must ask you for your name and address,” said the constable gruffly.
“For Heaven's sake, what for?”
“A gentleman has complained—”
“My good man!” exclaimed Cairn, and proffered his card. “It is—it is a practical joke on his part. I know him well.”
The constable looked at the card, and, from the card, suspiciously, back to Cairn. Apparently the appearance of the latter reassured him—or he may have formed a better opinion of Cairn from the fact that half a crown had quickly changed hands.
“All right, sir,” he said. “It is no affair of mine. He did not charge you with anything. He only asked me to prevent you from following him.”
“Quite so!” snapped Cairn irritably, and dashed off along the gallery, in the hope of overtaking Ferrara.
But, as he had feared, Ferrara had made good use of his ruse to escape. He was nowhere to be seen; and Cairn was left to wonder with what object he had risked the encounter in the Egyptian Room—for that it had been deliberate, and not accidental, he clearly perceived.
He walked down the steps of the museum, deep in reflection. The thought that he and his father had been seeking the fiend Ferrara for months, that they were sworn to kill him as they would kill a mad dog, and that he, Robert Cairn, had stood face to face with their enemy, had spoken with him, and had let him go free, unscathed, was simply maddening. Yet, in the circumstances, how could he have acted otherwise?
With no recollection of having traversed the intervening streets, he found himself walking under the archway leading to the court in which his chambers were situated. In the far corner, shadowed by a tall plane tree, where the worn iron railings of the steps and the small panes of glass in the solicitor's window on the ground floor called up memories of Charles Dickens, he paused, filled with a sort of wonderment. It seemed strange to him that such an air of peace could prevail anywhere, while Antony Ferrara lived and remained at large.
Cairn ran up the stairs to the second landing, opened the door, and entered his chambers. He was pursued by a memory—the memory of certain gruesome happenings whereof these rooms had been the scene. Knowing the powers of Antony Ferrara, he often doubted the wisdom of living there alone; but he was persuaded that to allow these fears to make headway would be to yield a point to the enemy. Yet there were nights when he found himself sleepless, listening for sounds which had seemed to arouse him, imagining sinister whispers in his room—and imagining that he could detect the dreadful odor of the secret incense.
Seating himself by the open window, Cairn took from his pocket the cord which Ferrara had dropped in the museum, and examined it curiously.
His examination of the thing did not serve to enlighten him respecting its character. It was merely a piece of silken cord, very closely and curiously plaited. He threw it down on the table, determined to show it to Dr. Cairn at the earliest opportunity. He was conscious of a sort of repugnance; and, prompted by this, he carefully washed his hands, as if the cord had been some unclean thing. Then he sat down to work, only to realize immediately that work was impossible until he had informed his father of his encounter with Ferrara.
Lifting the telephone receiver, he called up Dr. Cairn, but the doctor was not at home. He replaced the receiver, and sat Staring vaguely at his open notebook.
III
For close upon an hour Robert Cairn sat at his writing table, endeavoring to puzzle out a solution of the mystery of Ferrara's motive. His reflections served only to confuse his mind. A tangible clew lay upon the table before him—the silken cord; but it was a clew of such a nature that, whatever deductions an expert detective might have based upon it, Cairn could base none.
Dusk was not far off, and he knew that his nerves were not what they had been before the events which had led to his Egyptian journey. He was back in his own chamber—the scene of one gruesome outrage in Ferrara's unholy campaign. Darkness is the ally of crime, and it had always been in the darkness that Ferrara's activities had most fearfully manifested themselves.
What was that?
Cairn ran to the window, and, leaning out, looked down into the court below. He could have sworn that a voice—a voice possessing a strange music, a husky music, wholly hateful—had called him by name.
The court was deserted, for it was already past the hour at which members of the legal fraternity desert their business premises to hasten homeward. Shadows were creeping under the quaint old archways; shadows were draping the ancient walls. There was something in the aspect of the place which reminded him of a college quadrangle at Oxford, across which, upon a certain fateful evening, he and another had watched the red light rising and falling in Antony Ferrara's rooms.
Clearly his imagination was playing him tricks; and against this he knew full well that he must guard himself. The light in his rooms was growing dim, but instinctively his gaze sought out and found the mysterious silken cord amid the litter on the table. He contemplated the telephone; but as he had left a message for his father, he knew that Dr. Cairn would ring him up as soon as he returned.
Work, Robert thought, would be the likeliest antidote to the poisonous thoughts which oppressed his mind, and again he seated himself at the table and opened his notes before him. The silken rope lay close to his left hand, but he did not touch it. He was about to switch on the reading lamp, for it was now too dark to write without it, when his mind wandered off along another channel of reflection.
He found himself picturing Myra as she had looked the last time that he had seen her. She was seated in Mr. Saunderson's garden, still pale from her dreadful illness, but beautiful—more beautiful in the eyes of Robert Cairn than any other woman in the world. The breeze was blowing her rebellious curls across her eyes—eyes bright with a happiness which he loved to see.
Her cheeks were paler than they were wont to be, and the sweet lips had lost something of their firmness. She wore a short cloak and a wide-brimmed hat, unfashionable but becoming. No one but Myra could have worn that hat successfully, he thought.
Wrapt in such loverlike memories, he forgot that he had sat down to write—forgot that he held a pen in his hand, and that this same hand had been outstretched to ignite the lamp.
When he ultimately awoke again to the hard facts of his lonely environment, he also awoke to a singular circumstance, and made the acquaintance of a strange phenomenon. He found that he had been writing unconsciously!
This was what he had written:
- Robert Cairn, renounce your pursuit of me, and renounce Myra; or to-night—
The sentence was unfinished.
Momentarily he stared at the words, endeavoring to persuade himself that he had written them consciously, in idle mood; but some voice within gave him the lie. With a suppressed groan he muttered aloud:
“It has begun!”
Almost as he spoke, there came from the passage outside a sound that led him to slide his hand across the table, and to seize his revolver.
The visible presence of the little weapon reassured him. As a further sedative, he resorted to tobacco. He filled and lighted his pipe and leaned back in the chair, blowing smoke rings toward the closed door.
He listened intently—and heard the sound again. It was a soft hiss!
And now he thought he could detect another noise, as of some creature dragging its body along the floor.
“A lizard!” he thought, and a memory of the basilisk eyes of Antony Ferrara came to him.
Both the sounds seemed to come slowly nearer and nearer—the dragging thing being evidently responsible for the hissing—until Cairn decided that the creature must be immediately outside the door.
Revolver in hand, he leaped across the room, and threw the door open. The red carpet, to right and left, was innocent of reptiles.
Perhaps the creaking of the revolving chair, as he had prepared to quit it, had frightened the thing. With that idea before him, he systematically searched all the rooms into which it might have gone.
His search was unavailing; the mysterious reptile was not to be found.
Returning again to the study, he seated himself behind the table, facing the door, which he left ajar.
Ten minutes passed in silence, only broken by the dim murmur of the distant traffic. Cairn had almost persuaded himself that his imagination—quickened by the atmosphere of mystery and horror wherein he had recently moved—was responsible for the hiss, when a new sound came to confute his reasoning.
The people occupying the chambers below were moving about, so that their footsteps were faintly audible. Above these faint footsteps, a rustling—vague, indefinite—demonstrated itself. As in the case of the hiss, it proceeded from the passage.
A light burned inside the outer door, and this, as Cairn knew, must cast a shadow before any person or thing approaching the room..
Sssf! Sssf! It was a sound like the rustle of light draperies.
The nervous suspense was almost unbearable. Cairn waited. What was creeping, slowly, cautiously, toward the open door?
Cairn toyed nervously with the trigger of his revolver.
“The arts of the West shall try conclusions with those of the East!” he said.
A shadow! Inch upon inch it grew—creeping across the door, until it covered all the threshold visible.
Some one was about to appear.
He raised the revolver.
The shadow moved along. Cairn saw the tail of it creep past the door, until no shadow was there. The shadow had come, and gone, but there was no substance.
“I am going mad!”
The words forced themselves to his lips. He rested his chin upon his hands and clenched his teeth grimly. Did the horrors of insanity stare him in the face?
Despite his stay in Egypt, he had never fully recovered from his recent illness in London, when his nervous system had utterly collapsed.
“A month will see you fit again,” his father had said.
Perhaps he had been wrong—perchance the affection had been deeper than Dr. Cairn had suspected; and now this endless carnival of supernatural happenings had strained the weakened cells, so that Robert had become as a man in a delirium.
Where did reality end and phantasy begin? Was it all merely subjective? He had read of such aberrations; and now he sat wondering if he were the victim of a like affliction.
While he wondered, he stared at the rope of silk. That was real!
Logic came to his rescue. If he had seen and heard strange things, so, too, had Sime in Egypt—so had his father, both in Egypt and in London. Inexplicable things were happening around him; and all could not be mad!
“I'm getting morbid again,” he told himself. “The tricks of that damnable Ferrara are getting on my nerves—which is just what he desires and intends!”
This latter reflection spurred Cairn to new activity. Pocketing the revolver, he switched off the light in the study, and looked out of the window. Glancing across the court, he thought he saw a man standing below, peering upward.
With his hands resting upon the window ledge, Cairn looked long and steadily. There certainly was some one standing in the shadow of the tall plane tree; but whether a man or a woman, he could not determine.
The unknown remaining in the same position, apparently watching, Cairn ran downstairs, and, passing out into the court, walked rapidly across to the tree. There he paused in some surprise. There was no one visible by the tree, and the whole court was quite deserted.
“Must have slipped off through the archway,” he concluded.
Walking back, he remounted the stair and entered his chambers again.
Feeling a renewed curiosity regarding the silken rope which had so strangely come into his possession, he sat down at the table, and, mastering his distaste for the thing, took it in his hands and examined it closely by the light of the lamp.
He was seated with his back to the windows, facing the door, so that no one could possibly have entered the room unseen by him. It was as he bent down to scrutinize the curious plaiting that he felt a strange sensation stealing over him, as if some one was standing very close to his chair.
Grimly determined to resist any hypnotic tricks that might be practiced against him, and well assured that there could be no other person actually present in his chambers, he sat back, resting his revolver on his knee. Prompted by he knew not what, he slipped the silk cord into the table drawer and turned the key upon it.
As he did so, a hand crept over his shoulder. The hand was followed by a bare arm of the hue of old ivory—a woman's arm!
Transfixed he sat, his eyes fastened upon a ring of dull metal, bearing a green stone inscribed with a complex figure vaguely resembling a spider, which adorned the index finger.
A faint perfume stole to his nostrils—that of the secret incense. The ring was the ring of the Witch Queen!
In this incredible moment he relaxed that iron control of his mind which alone had saved him before. Even as he realized it, and strove to recover himself, he knew that it was too late. He knew that he was lost!
IV
Gloom and blackness, unrelieved by any speck of light; murmuring, subdued, all around—the murmuring of a concourse of people. The darkness was odorous with a heavy perfume.
A voice came—followed by complete silence.
Again the voice sounded, chanting sweetly; and a response followed in deep male voices.
The response was taken up all around, while a tiny speck grew in the gloom, and grew, until it took form. Out of the darkness, the shape of a white-robed woman appeared—high up—far away.
Wherever the ray that illumined her figure originated, it did not perceptibly dispel the Stygian gloom all about her. She was bathed in dazzling light, but framed in impenetrable darkness.
Her dull gold hair was encircled by a band of white, silvery metal, bearing in front a round, burnished disk, which shone like a minor sun. Above the disk projected an ornament having the shape of a spider.
The intense light picked out every detail vividly. Neck and shoulders were bare—the gleaming ivory arms were uplifted—the long, slender fingers held aloft a golden casket covered with dim figures, almost indiscernible at that distance.
A glittering zone of the same white metal confined the woman's snowy draperies. Her bare feet peeped out from beneath her flowing robe.
Above, below, and around her was—Memphian darkness!
The silence was awesome, the perfume was stifling.
Then a voice, seeming to come from a great distance, cried:
“On your knees to the Book of Thoth! On your knees to the Queen of Wisdom, who is deathless, being unborn, who is dead though living, whose beauty is for all men—that all men may die!”
The whole invisible concourse took up the chant, and the light faded, until only the speck of the disk below the spider was visible.
Then that, too, vanished.
A bell was ringing furiously. Its din grew louder and louder until it became insupportable. Cairn threw out his arms and staggered up like a man intoxicated. He grasped at the table lamp only just in time to prevent it overturning.
The ringing was that of his telephone bell. He had been unconscious, then—under some spell!
He unhooked the receiver, and heard his father's voice.
“That you, Rob?” asked the doctor anxiously.
“Yes, sir,” replied Cairn eagerly.
He opened the drawer and slipped his hand in for the silken cord.
“There is something you have to tell me?” the doctor went on.
Cairn, without preamble, plunged excitedly into an account of his meeting with Ferrara.
“The silk cord,” he concluded, “I have in my hand at the present moment, and—”
“Hold on a moment!” came Dr. Cairn's voice, rather grimly.
“Hello, Rob!” the doctor went on, after a short interval. “Listen to this, from to-night's paper:
- “A curious discovery was made by an attendant in one of the rooms of the Indian Section of the British Museum late this evening. A case had been opened in some way, and, although it contained more valuable objects, the only item which the thief had abstracted was a Thug's strangling cord from Kundelee.”
“But I don't understand—”
“Ferrara meant you to find that cord, boy! Remember, he is unacquainted with your chambers, and he requires a focus for his damnable forces. He knows well that you will have the thing somewhere near to you, and probably he knows something of its awful history. You are in danger! Keep a firm hold upon yourself. I shall be with you in less than half an hour!”
V
As Robert Cairn hung up the receiver, and found himself cut off again from the outer world, he realized, with terror beyond his control, how in this quiet backwater, so near to the main stream, he yet was far from human companionship.
He recalled a night when, amid such a silence as this which now prevailed about him, he had been made the subject of an uncanny demonstration; how his sanity, his very life, had been attacked; how he had fled from the crowding horrors which had been massed against him by his supernaturally endowed enemy.
There was something terrifying in the quietude of the court—a quietude which to others might have spelled peace, but which to Robert Cairn spelled menace. That Ferrara's device was aimed at his freedom, that it was intended to lead to the detention of the evildoer's enemies while he directed his activities in other directions, seemed a plausible explanation, though perhaps an inadequate one.
The carefully planned incident at the museum, whereby the policeman had become possessed of Cairn's card; the distinct possibility that a detective might knock upon his door at any moment—with the inevitable result of his detention pending inquiries—formed a chain which had seemed complete, save that Antony Ferrara was the schemer. For another to have compassed so much would have been a notable victory; for Ferrara, such a success would be trivial.
What, then, did it mean? His father had warned him, and the uncanny events of the evening stood as evidence of Dr. Cairn's wisdom. The mysterious and evil force which Antony Ferrara controlled was being focused 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 hellish thing that had uprisen in their midst. That he had already been subjected to some kind of hypnotic influence, Robert 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 snakelike, 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. 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. 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 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 his growing intimacy with the terrors of the spiritual 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, slowly and cautiously, in order that his own movements might not prevent him from hearing any repetition of the sound which had occasioned his alarm. And what had occasioned this alarm?
Either he had again become a victim of the strange trickery which already had borne him, though not physically, from Fleet Street to the secret temple of Meydum, 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 he advanced in the direction of the switch, in order to light the lamp fixed above the mantelpiece, 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 he 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 burned out, I suppose,” he muttered.
Terror grew upon him—a terror akin to that which children experience in the darkness; but he still had a fair mastery of his emotions.
Then—not suddenly, as is the way of a failing electric lamp—but slowly, uncannily, unnaturally, the glow of the table lamp became extinguished!
Darkness! Cairn turned toward 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, and 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 Cairn looked straight ahead of him, as one looks who expects to encounter a human enemy; but the hallway was empty. A dim light, finding access over the door from the stair, prevailed there—sufficient to reveal the presence of any one or anything, had any one 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.
On a level with his eyes—flat against the wall, as if some one crouched there—he saw two white hands! They were slender hands, like the hands of a woman. Upon one of the tapered fingers there dully gleamed a green stone.
A peal of laughter came chokingly from Cairn's lips. He knew that his reason was tottering; for these two white hands, which now moved along the wall, as if they were sidling to the room that 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 realized 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 slender hands were again directed upon murderous business.
A soft swishing sound reached him. Something upon the writing table had been moved. It was the strangling cord!
While speaking to his father, Cairn had taken it out from the drawer, and when he quitted the room it lay upon the blotting pad.
He stepped back toward 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!
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 toward the closed door of his bedroom.
Lowering his left hand, he began to feel for the door knob. As he did so, he saw that he had made a false move. In retreating 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. His efforts were useless. A grip of steel was drawing it tightly, and ever more tightly, about him. Despair touched him, and almost he resigned himself.
“Rob! Rob! Open the door!”
Dr. Cairn was outside.
A new strength came to Robert, and he knew that it was the last atom left to him. To remove the rope was humanly impossible. He dropped his cramped hands, bent his body by a mighty physical effort, and hurled himself forward upon the door.
The latch was just above his head. He stretched up.
He 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 that 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 leaped 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. 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.”