The Voice of Káli/Chapter 15
Chapter XV
ONE WHO PASSED BY
SOME ten minutes after the departure of Harley and Latham, the rest of the party, seated in the drawing room and endeavoring to forget the horror which was locked up in the library, were startled by the tones of a distant, deep-toned bell.
“Oh, murder!” cried Jim Westbury. “What's that?”
“It's the bell of the lodge!” said Joyce in a hushed voice. Then, “Why, of course. It is probably the local police and the doctor. Mr. Harley must have relocked the gate.”
There was a momentary pause.
“Can you let me have the keys, Van Dean,” said Westbury, standing up. “I'll go down and unlock it.”
“Oh, Jim,” muttered Mrs. Moody, “you ought not to go alone!”
“We will go together,” said Van Dean, rising
“No, I'll go with him,” Joyce volunteered.
“Oh, no, you will not, dear!” pronounced Mrs. Moody.
“Really, Joyce,” Phil declared, “I don't know how you can think of going out of this room!”
There came a knock at the door and Wu Chang came in.
“Wu Chang can go,” said Van Dean. “My presence is small use,” he added pathetically.
“Wu Chang won't!” cried Westbury stoutly. “I'm going! All right, Wu Chang,” he cried and went out of the room.
In the lobby, as Westbury unfastened front door, Bates, the chauffeur, joined him.
“If you're going down to the lodge, sir,” he said, “I think I'll come with you, if I may.”
Secretly welcoming the man's company, Jim replied with an effort at nonchalance, “Right-o, Bates. Are you armed?”
“No, sir. Are you?”
“Yes; rather! I've got a revolver in my pocket.”
Presently, as the party waited in the drawing room, listening intently and in a high state of tension, a shrill electric bell began to ring, apparently in the library.
“Good heavens!” cried Phil, “what is it?” She clung to Mrs. Moody.
“It's the alarm,” said Van Dean. “I reset it after Harley went. It will go on ringing all night, unless I stop it now.”
“Oh, good gracious!” said Joyce, who had sprung to her feet. “Of course! How foolish we are. I will stop it, Mr. Van Dean; sit down.”
“But, my dear,” exclaimed Phil, “you are surely not going into the library!”
“It's the shortest way into the study where the bell is ringing,” was the reply. “Therefore, why not? My dear, a dead man can't hurt one. It was when he was alive that we should have been afraid of him!”
She walked quickly and resolutely from the drawing room and was heard crossing the lobby and opening the library door. There was an interval of half a minute and then the bell ceased. Joyce returned, a little pale, but quite composed.
“You're wonderful, Joyce,” said Phil. “I couldn't have entered that room if my salvation had depended upon it.”
“Neither could I, dear,” returned Mrs. Moody.
And now voices could be heard from the drive.
“Good gracious!” exclaimed Joyce, going out into the lobby. “Surely there is a woman amongst them!”
“A woman!” cried Phil. “How can that be?”
“I don't know, but I'm sure I heard a woman's voice.”
Quick footsteps became audible crossing the lobby and Jim Westbury appeared, full of excitement.
“What do you think?” he cried. “Mother's here!”
“What!” said Phil, standing up very suddenly.
“The telegram was a fake! The solicitor never turned up! Mother was in a panic and sent Willis down to the police. So, on their way here, they called; and she insisted on being brought along. So like her!”
Phil had grown very pale, until Mrs. Moody, taking her arm affectionately, said, “Leave it all to me, dear. I know exactly what you're thinking. But I understand your mother perfectly; so don't be afraid.”
Now, into the lobby, came the superintendent from Middle Boro', with a sergeant and the police surgeon, the latter escorting Mrs. Westbury, fur-wrapped and very agitated. She was a handsome woman of much stronger personality than her daughter.
“Oh, my dear!” exclaimed Mrs. Moody. “This has been such a terrible night!”
A deafening peal of thunder crashed and reverberated around the house.
MEANWHILE, Harley and Latham were speeding down that sloping lane along which Inspector Gorleston and his subordinates had preceded them, not so very long before. Conversation was spasmodic.
“Do you think this nameless Mandarin is operating the thing personally?” asked Latham.
“I am inclined to think he is,” Harley cried back. “Van Dean had news, tonight, from a reliable source, that the Mandarin K, who was known to be in London, had left, yesterday.”
“Why was he not arrested, if he was known to be in London?”
“My dear fellow!” Harley laughed unmirthfully. “If you knew how many clever men all over the world have tried to capture the Mandarin K, you would be more sympathetic toward Scotland Yard!”
He spoke with a suppressed excitement which communicated itself to his companion.
“You have hopes of apprehending him, tonight?” suggested the latter.
“Yes, but I am not really sanguine. There are so many things I don't understand.”
“You say that all this murder plot is directed against you and not against Van Dean?”
“I did say so; yes. Let me explain. They evidently conceived the idea of using Van Dean as a decoy. That was why they let him go when he blundered so far into their secrets in Tibet. That was why he returned alive. Having watched him settle here in Norfolk, they proceeded to manifest themselves in such a way that he could not well fail to apply to the police for protection. Their persecution increased to a point where Scotland Yard necessarily intervened. By the arrival of Wessex on the scene they knew that the truth was out and that sooner or later I, too, should be on the spot. Their installation of the murder machine was not meant for Van Dean—they could have dealt with him twenty times over—but for me!”
“But what about the death of Denby?” cried Latham.
“Poor Denby had learned too much,” was the reply. “At all costs it became necessary to deal with him. I can only suppose that he had partially solved the mystery of the Ernst Trajector; but only partially, or he would not have met his end in that way. Tonight, Latham, I received a message from Innes, my secretary, in London. The authorities have been at work along certain lines, night and day, since I left. Their inquiries resulted this evening in the discovery that Mohammed Khán was an impostor, a very clever one. The credentials which he presented to the agency were quite in order. He had actually been a butler in the service of an Indian officer, now retired.
“It needed a lot of tracing out, Latham, but at last the men at work upon the job discovered that prior to his entering the household of the colonel, he had been, beyond all doubt, associated with a known member of the S. Group! I might have acted at once, but I waited.”
“I don't understand why, Harley!” cried Latham.
“I will tell you. I knew that, in some way, the S. Group had learned of these inquiries, and I expected desperate danger to prompt desperate measures. Accordingly, I waited, in order to solve the mystery of the Listening Death. Hullo! What's this?”
They had arrived at the farm buildings adjoining the road. Here, leaning against a wall, were three bicycles! They pulled up and jumped out.
“This is extraordinary!” said Latham. “Because, so far as I remember, there is a footpath just beyond here which leads, when it is light enough to follow it, to the Warren!”
“Ah,” said Harley, examining the bicycles, “does it lead anywhere else?”
“Nowhere in particular. It skirts the mound on which the ruined tower stands.”
“I thought so!” cried Harley. “I thought so!”
The night was now black as pitch, save for flickers of lightning on the further slope where the Abbey stood. There was an incessant rumbling of thunder.
“I place myself in your hands, Latham. The owners of these bicycles have undoubtedly gone along that path. Let us do the same.”
“I am at your service,” replied Latham shortly. “Have you any idea what this means?”
“Yes, a faint one,” muttered Harley. “The local police are here before us; that's what it means!”
“The local police?”
“Yes, and I only hope they have not bungled badly.”
“But what can have led them here?”
“I think I know that also, but as I may be wrong I won't mention my theory at the moment. Do we turn to the right, here?”
“Yes, through the trees. By Jove!”
Latham paused and looked back. There had been a tremendous flash of lightning over by the Abbey, followed by deafening peals of thunder.
“They are getting it over there.”
He turned and pressed on, followed by Harley, picking their way in the new darkness amongst the tree trunks.
“The most significant thing that has happened tonight, since the death of Mohammed Khán,” said Latham, “is the disappearance of Parker. Does that fit into your theory of the affair?”
“It does,” replied Harley shortly. “Are we near the tower now?”
“Yes. If it were light we could see it.”
“Then don't talk any more. We must proceed cautiously, now. Make as little noise as possible.”
In silence they trekked on, until Latham paused and grasped Harley's arm.
“I think we are nearly at the foot of he place, now,” he whispered. “Do you want to go in?”
“No. Hush! Be quite still for a moment.”
His sixth sense had become suddenly alert. He experienced so acutely the odd inner depression that he knew, although his reason could give no explanation, that a deadly peril lurked very near to him in the surrounding darkness. Nerves at high tension, he stood listening.
Suddenly, Latham pressed his arm and, bending close to his ear, whispered, “Someone is moving near us!”
Harley grasped his shoulder in reply, but did not speak. There was no sound to tell of that presence which both of them had detected in their different manners. But that someone, or something, approached them out of the darkness, neither doubted.
“Drop down slightly,” said Harley. And down they both went into the undergrowth at the moment that the night was again whitely illuminated by lightning. Right above them loomed the ruined tower, but no living thing could be seen in that momentary illumination.
The storm had settled now over the farther slope, but when the thunder came, it echoed hollowly and weirdly in the shell of the old ruin. Then, silence fell once more, an awe-inspiring silence.
A sense of some near presence was experienced by both. Then from the shell of the building ahead, came a sudden cry of, “Hold him!”
“Out of the way!” cried another angry voice.
“Quick! He is going through the window!”
Excited shouts and sounds of stumbling and falling followed.
Latham leaped to his feet.
“What now?” he demanded.
Harley sprang forward.
“Into the tower!” he cried. “But we are too late! We are too late! He passed us out there in the darkness!”