The Voice of Káli/Chapter 5
Chapter V
SCIENTIFIC MURDER
IMMEDIATELY Paul Harley found himself alone in the study, he proceeded to lock the door. Then, seating himself in the chair which Van Dean habitually occupied, he closed his eyes and endeavored for a moment to concentrate upon this new development in the case.
It was characteristic of Westbury, of whom Joyce Gayford had said that he “had a magnificent drive, but intellectually was negligible,” to lock an Airedale terrier in this room of all others. Here, so far as he could judge at the moment, lay the hub of the mystery. Here, in this room, was the explanation of why the S. Group had turned aside temporarily from their gigantic intrigues and had detailed no less formidable a personality than the Mandarin K to do—what? Presumably, to recover from Burton Van Dean something of such value to their schemes that no crime was too great to deter them in its recovery.
Sitting thus in reflection, his pipe, long since cold, clenched between his teeth, Paul Harley became suddenly aware of that odd lowering of the temperature which unfailingly advised him of evil activity. He opened his eyes and looked sharply about him. The body of the dog had been removed by his orders, but there was a bloodstain on the carpet not far from his feet, where the animal had lain.
He endeavored to reconstruct the events which had led up to the death of the dog. Someone, by using a duplicate key to the door which opened upon the corridor of the north wing, or by means of the ivy which formed a natural ladder from the shrubbery beneath to the open window, had entered Van Dean's study that evening. The intruder, he must conclude, had been unaware of the presence of the dog. The animal, with the instinct of its breed, had attacked instantly. Recognizing detection to be imminent, the unknown visitor had stabbed the dog to the heart and decamped, probably by the same route by which he had come. So far, it was clear enough.
His leaving so valuable a clue as the jewelled knife, might be accounted for by panic. It is easier to drive a keen blade into a thorax than to withdraw it. The explanation did not satisfy Harley, but it sufficed for the moment. Clearly, then, a member of the S. Group had been in the Abbey that evening. Came the unanswerable question: For what?
He had been through Van Dean's notes, he had examined in detail every tangible record of his dreadful sojourn on the borders of Tibet. The importance of his discoveries it were impossible to minimize; and unless the death of the man who held such dangerous knowledge were the object of the organization, to what other end had the S. Group made this house the focus of a dangerous part of its activities?
Again, presuming the death of Van Dean to be their object, why had the unknown visitor penetrated to the study that evening, when it must have been evident from an outside survey that Van Dean was not at his table?
Harley found himself baffled. The safe had not been. tampered with. Indeed, so far as he could learn, nothing had been disturbed in the room. Yet, that he was near to the heart of the mystery, that queer sixth sense of his insisted urgently. It was all very baffling. He mentally reviewed his recent interview with Mohammed Khán, the Indian butler, and that, less satisfactory, with Wu Chang, Van Dean's Chinese servant.
The American's eccentricities irritated him. For a man who knew himself to have incurred the enmity of a powerful Eastern group to retain in his household a native of Rajputana, and one of Canton, was not in accordance with common sense. But eccentricity must be excused, he reflected, in a man distinguished alike by his intellect and his millions. Harley stood up, knocked out his pipe in an ash tray and reloaded it thoughtfully.
That inner prompting of his higher imagination spoke to him no more, but intellectually he was alert. These isolated incidents were rapidly leading up to some crowning event; and for this he must be prepared.
When he came down from the study to go to his room to change, for he had had little enough time before dinner, he discovered Wu Chang engaged in drawing the curtains before the French windows. He had not yet lighted up, however, and beyond the terrace Harley had a glimpse of an angry sky, although save for that distant rumble, the brewing storm, so far, had failed to proclaim itself.
As Harley left the library, the Chinaman, his task completed, turned and, tucking his hands into the sleeves of his blouse, stared up at the study door with half-closed eyes. No man could have read anything from the expression of that shrivelled, yellow face, nor have improved his knowledge of the psychology of Wu Chang by studying the curious shrug which he presently gave, ere shuffling across to the door beneath the balcony and leaving the library.
Almost at the same moment a car came purring up the drive, and Mohammed Khán, opening the door, admitted a pretty, rather fragile looking girl, curiously unlike, yet in some way oddly like, her gloomy brother Jim. She was accompanied by a man so deeply bronzed as to tell of recent exposure to tropical suns. His neatly groomed black hair, short regulation mustache and upright bearing, all spoke of the soldier. He carried a suitcase, and as Mohammed Khán opened the door of the library and turned up the lights he directed, “Take this suitcase to Mr. Westbury.”
Mohammed Khán bowed.
“Van Dean Sahib presents his compliments and will be with you in a moment,” he said.
“Oh, thanks,” murmured the visitor and followed his companion into the library.
“Harry, I'm frightened!” said the girl, at the moment of the butler's departure. “I'm sorry now we came. There was something strange about that telegram.”
“Hush,” returned the man; “there's someone coming. Don't let your imagination run away with you, Phil”
“But,” she protested, “I have always been frightened in the Abbey. And lately”
She paused as Mrs. Moody, dressed for dinner, entered with beaming face.
“Phil, darling!” she called from the open doorway. “You look perfectly sweet.” She turned to the man. “Don't you think she looks perfectly sweet?”
“Perfectly,” he agreed. And he spoke with sincerity.
“So glad to see you again, Captain Latham,” Mrs. Moody said, “before your leave expires.”
Torrential rain had begun to descend, pattering up from the terrace onto the library windows.
“Brute of a night, isn't it?” said Latham. “We've just dodged it. But I shall miss every spot of that dear old rain when I'm back in Rangoon.”
“But I thought you liked Burma,” claimed Mrs. Moody.
“Well,” said Latham, glancing at Phil, “it may not be so bad, at times.”
“But, my dear!” cried Mrs. Moody, again turning to the girl, “Where is your mother?”
“Well” Phil Westbury hesitated. “She had a queer telegram.” She stopped, as if at a loss for words, and Latham continued, “Yes, Mrs. Moody, the family solicitor is coming down to see her, tonight. Urgent affairs, I gathered. Asked us to apologize.”
Just then came an interruption. Jim Westbury, in an ill-fitting dressing gown, his face lathered and a shaving brush in his hand, peered in through the doorway.
“Phil! Phil!” he complained to his sister. “You've brought the wrong waistcoat!”
Latham, smiling whimsically, stared at the lathered face in the doorway.
“Jim,” he said, “in the name of decency, don't discuss your wardrobe before ladies. You, my host, disappear after lunch from the clubhouse, owing me a return round, and reappear now in a semi-clothed condition. Go away, Jim. I'm offended.”
“Oh, is that so!” drawled Jim Westbury gloomily. “Well,” he waved his shaving brush, “cheerio, everybody.” And he departed.
“I like people to make themselves at home,” smiled Mrs. Moody. She turned again to Phil Westbury. “Come and leave your things in my room, dear. I know you'll excuse us, Captain Latham. The men will be in, in a moment.”
As if to confirm her words, Harley, dressed for dinner, met them in the doorway.
“Good evening, Miss Westbury,” he said. With a bow, he closed the door after the ladies and turned to Latham,
“Ah, Latham,” he said, “I wanted to see you.”
“Good,” was the reply. “Is there any news, then?”
Harley dropped into an armchair facing the speaker.
“Yes. Bad news,” he replied. “But first a question. Did you by any chance see the body of the man who met his death in the shrubbery here, recently?”
Latham stared hard at the speaker for a while.
“Yes,” he presently replied. “When I heard of the tragedy, I thought the man might be the same who called recently at the Warren—Phil was with me at the time—and asked for work. Therefore, I applied to see the body; but it was not that of the same man.”
“Ah,” said Harley.
“Did anything occur to you at sight of him?” asked Harley.
“It did,” replied Latham, staring harder than ever. “You may remember that curious epidemic in Burma early in '22—the series of mysteries which became known as the Listening Death.”
“Ah!” Paul Harley jumped up and banged his fist on the table. “So you noticed it?”
“Look here,” said Latham, looking badly puzzled, “I wonder if we're driving at the same thing?”
“Listen!” Paul Harley's face grew very grim. “Were you stationed in Burma during the affairs you speak of?”
“Yes, Moulmein. The district superintendent put the deaths down to fanaticism, to some dodge of the devotees of Káli, sort of wishing a man to death.”
“Quite!” snapped Harley. “They were found with that horrible expression of listening upon their faces?”
“Yes; and no marks of violence. There was nearly a panic. Talk about Káli calling for victims! When I saw that poor beggar's face, the other day, I had an awful shock.”
“You recognized the Listening Death in peaceful Norfolk?”
Latham smiled unmirthfully. “Of course it was a delusion,” he said.
“It was no delusion!”
“What?”
Paul Harley shook his head grimly.
“The Listening Death,” he explained, “is not peculiar to Eastern people. And now I am coming to my point. Do you recall Dr. Ulric Ernst?”
“Yes,” Latham answered, closing his eyes and speaking musingly. “The Swiss electrician, inventor of the Ernst Trajector, much discussed but never demonstrated.”
“That's the man,” snapped Harley; “he died abroad, and—well, the voice of Káli is a far reaching voice!”
“But, damn it all, Harley!” exclaimed Latham. “The voice of Káli doesn't kill folks in England!”
“It does!” Harley's expression grew more grim than ever. “The man you saw died of the Listening Death!”
“My dear fellow!” Latham's tone was almost incredulous. “What is it? A disease? Hypnotism? Magic?”
“No,” snapped Harley. “Scientific murder! Listen!” He stood up and looked from door to door as if expecting eavesdroppers. “That 'tramp' who was found to have died 'from natural causes,' by a local jury, was really here to protect Burton van Dean.”
“What!”
“He was Detective Sergeant Denby of Scotland Yard! Oh, we gagged the Press, but Denby was murdered. That is why I am here!”
“Good God!” whispered Latham.
“Another victim was sacrificed this evening, old man,” Harley continued. “I'm sorry to have to tell you, but Rex, your Airedale that Westbury brought over, was killed in Van Dean's study.”
“Rex!” cried Latham, standing up. “Rex! Here?”
From a pocket of his dinner jacket Harley took that jewelled knife.
“I found him with this through his heart,” he said. He returned the knife to his pocket once more. “The women don't know the truth, yet,” he added. “Remember.”