Chapter Seventeen
A Further Problem
I had seen the sign of the Hand against which Melvill Arnold had warned me with final effort before he expired.
I could not close my eyes again. Thoroughly awakened, I lay trying to convince myself that it was but a bad dream. Yet so distinct had been that touch, that I still felt the repulsive contact that had thrilled me and left upon me such a lasting impression.
In the uncertain light of early morning one’s brain is often full of weird fancies, and as I lay there wondering, a thousand curious unreal conjectures floated through my mind.
I was not old, yet in my life I had probably travelled more, and seen more, than most men of my age. Of little love affairs I had had, of course, one or two. None of them had been serious – none, until the present.
Yes, I may as well here confess it. I loved Asta Seymour.
From the first moment that she had met me in that lonely country road, and I had sat by her side in the car, she had exercised over me a strange and fatal fascination. I found myself beneath the spell of her bewitching beauty.
I was drawn towards her by some strange, irresistible, unknown power – drawn to her as the moth is drawn towards the candle.
Fascinated alike by the mystery surrounding her foster-father and by her sweet pensive face, I had been constantly in her company. My thoughts were ever of her, to the oblivion of all else in the world. She was all in all to me, and I was now involuntarily her slave, so entangled had I become in the net of her sweet and wondrous charm. Ah yes! I loved her – loved her with all the strength of my being, with all the passion of my soul.
But I had not spoken. My secret was as yet my own.
Nevertheless, it was in order to be near her that I, like Nicholson, had accepted Shaw’s invitation; in order also to protect her, for, knowing what I did of the man’s peril of arrest, I had been seized by a strange presage of evil that might befall her.
I lay awake, listening to the clanging of the old bells of a monastery near by, and thinking it all over. Yes, in those few weeks I had grown to love her, even though she undoubtedly was in possession of some strange if not guilty secret.
Yet how could I reveal my heart to her while recollections of poor Guy still, filled her mind? No, I must wait and watch in patience, my heart tortured constantly by the burning fires of unspoken love.
Thinking, reflecting, pondering, resolving, I still lay there, when suddenly I became conscious that my friend in the adjoining room was no longer snoring.
I heard a curious sound. He gave a quick, loud gasp, as though of alarm, followed by a murmured growl. Was he speaking in his sleep? I listened attentively until my ears caught another sound. He had risen and was moving about his room.
I was rather pleased than otherwise, for it relieved the tension, and I breathed more freely. The apparition of that claw-like hand before my face had, I believe, somewhat upset my nerves.
“Is that you, Shaw?” I called out, but there was no response.
All was quiet. The movement in the adjoining room had ceased.
Already I had satisfied myself that nobody could enter my room, both doors being bolted on the inside, but I slipped again out of bed, and, going to the communicating door, rapped upon it, crying —
“Shaw! Shaw! Are you asleep?”
“Hulloa?” growled a sleepy voice. “Why, what’s up, eh?”
“Nothing,” I laughed. “Are you still in bed?”
“Of course I am, why? What’s the matter? Anything wrong?”
“No, nothing,” I replied. “Only I heard you groaning, that’s all. Talking in your sleep, I expect.”
“I – I didn’t know,” he said. “Sorry, Kemball, if I disturbed you.”
“All right,” I laughed, and then returned to bed again.
I pondered over the fact that while he certainly had been upon, his feet – for I distinctly heard the creaking of the beeswaxed boards – a moment before I called, yet he made pretence of being asleep. The only explanation was that, while asleep, he had got out of bed, a not unusual circumstance with some people, and with that surmise I had to be content.
Truly, that night had been fraught with a strange inexplicable terror. Though dawn spread slowly, and from where I lay I could see the first flush of crimson in the sky heralding the sun’s coming, yet I could not rid myself of that phantom hand, those thin skeleton fingers that had touched my cheek and left a chilly impression upon it.
I rose and looked into the tiny oval toilet-glass, startled when I saw evidence that my experience was an actual tangible one.
Upon my left cheek was a faint red mark, almost like a scratch, where the chilly hand had touched me!
Carefully I examined it, but there seemed no abrasion of the skin. By the deadly contact it had been irritated, inflamed – seared, it seemed, by the chill finger of the dreaded Unknown.
Moving without a sound, so as not to attract Shaw’s attention, I made a minute survey of the apartment, examining the walls to assure myself of no hidden doorway such as are common in old houses of that description. But there was none. The only modes of ingress were both securely locked and bolted.
Soon after six o’clock I dressed and went out. I could remain in that chamber no longer. I wandered through the quaint old village, already agog, for Arnay-le-Duc retires early and is astir with the rising of the sun. Ascending the hill, I had a look at the round frowning towers of the ancient stronghold of the Counts d’Arnay, now, alas! grey, weather-beaten, and ruined. In them a last stand was made by a party of the 79th Regiment of Infantry against the Prussians in 1870, when the latter brought some field-pieces to bear upon the place and completed the ruin which time had long ago begun. Part of the village had afterwards been burned by the enemy, who had already devastated the whole of the smiling countryside of the Côte d’Or, and laid bare the valley of the Yonne with fire and sword.
As I stood beneath the battered walls where great ugly holes showed as mute evidence of the destruction wrought by the German guns, a beautiful panorama of sloping wine-lands, of river and rich pastures spread before me, while behind lay the long open road to Lyons, fringed on each side by high poplars planted at regular intervals and running straight as an arrow across the blue distant plain to old-world Mâcon.
Over that road we sped two hours later at a speed which would never be allowed in England, and raising a perfect wall of dust behind us. Asta, seated between Shaw and myself, seemed unusually bright and happy, for she laughed merrily, and declared herself delighted with the novelty and change of the journey.
“What was the matter with you early this morning, Kemball?” inquired my host presently with a laugh.
“You woke me up suddenly, and I believed that you were unwell!”
“No,” I said. “On the contrary, I was awake, and I heard you sigh and groan, therefore I believed you were ill.”
“You were awake?” he echoed, regarding me sharply through his dark spectacles. “Then – then I must have had the nightmare or something, eh?”
“Probably you had,” I said. Then I added, “I didn’t pass a very good-night myself.”
“I hate sleeping in strange beds,” Asta declared.
“One has to get used to them on a motor-tour,” remarked Shaw, leaning back again, his face set straight before him.
I was half inclined to relate my weird experience, yet I felt that if I did Asta might only regard me as a frightened fool.
Therefore the subject dropped when next moment, as the road ran over the hillside, we burst forth into admiration of the wide and magnificent panorama with a splendid old château with numberless round-slated turrets, perched upon a huge rock rising from the valley in the foreground – a huge, mediaeval fortress, yet still inhabited. Below clustered the sloping roofs of a small village within the ponderous walls of the château, entrance to which was by two ancient gates, with guard-houses built above them – a place which long ago had been the stronghold of one of the robber-barons of the Yonne.
Truly the Lyons road is full of variety and picturesqueness, running, as it does, through those rich vinelands and mountains of the Côte d’Or, before descending to the valley where the broad Saone flows south to join the mighty Rhone.
Passing through the beautiful Saussey forest, where the thick trees met in many places overhead, we shot through Ivry village, and, fifty kilometres after leaving Arnay-le-Duc, were compelled to slow down on entering the busy agricultural town of Chalons-sur-Saone. There we came to the river-bank, following it through a number of villages well-known in the wine-country, St. Loup, Beaumont, Tournus, and Fleurville, until at last we found ourselves passing slowly over the uneven cobbles and among the curious high-gabled houses of old-world Mâcon.
There, at the Hotel Terminus, we lunched, and afterwards, while Shaw sat smoking, I went forth with Asta to an antiquarian, to whom we were recommended, in order to buy antique crosses.
In the musty old shop, down in the older part of the town, kept by a short, bald-headed, but urbane Frenchman, we found several treasures, beautiful old crucifixes of carved ivory and mother-of-pearl which Asta at once purchased in great delight and at moderate prices.
I bought an old thumb-ring and a couple of other trifles, and having plenty of time at our disposal we strolled into the old cathedral and had a look round the market-place.
Ah! how delightful it was to be her escort; how sweet to have her even for one single hour alone!
As we retraced our way to the hotel with halting steps, I resolved to tell her of my weird experience of the previous night.
“A curious thing happened to me last night – or rather very early this morning,” I said, turning to her as we walked.
She looked quickly into my face and her lips were pressed together. But only for a second.
“What was that? Tell me,” she said.
“Well. Do you see upon my left cheek a long red mark? It’s going away now, but it was very plain this morning,” I said.
“Yes,” she replied. “I noticed it when we started. It hardly shows at all now.”
“Well, its cause is quite inexplicable – a mystery,” I said. “I am in no way superstitious, and I am no believer in the supernatural, but in that inn at Arnay-le-Duc there is a Something – something uncanny. I was sound asleep when, just before night gave place to day, a cold hand touched my cheek – a phantom hand that left the mark which you see?”
“A hand?” she gasped, staring at me, her lips pale and cheeks suddenly blanched. “Explain it. I – I can’t understand.”
“I awoke quickly at the chill death-like contact, and saw the hand a few inches from my face – thin, claw-like, and yet a dark shadowy phantom which disappeared in an instant, even before I, so suddenly awakened, could realise what it actually was. But it was a hand – of that I am absolutely positive.”
“Yes,” she said slowly, in a low, hoarse voice, nodding her head and pausing as though reflecting deeply. “Yes, Mr Kemball, you were not mistaken. I – I, too, strangely enough, had a very similar experience about six weeks ago, while staying up at Scarborough with Louise Oliver, an old schoolfellow of mine. I, too, saw the terrible Thing – the Hand!”
“You!” I gasped, staring at her. “You have seen it!”
In response she nodded, her eyes set straight before her, but no word escaped her white, pent-up lips.
Chapter Eighteen
I Make a Discovery
The Terminus Hotel at Lyons is, as you know, a large, artistically furnished place at the Perrache Station, an hotel with a huge and garish restaurant below, decorated in the style known as art nouveau. It is a busy spot, where rushing travellers are continuously going and coming, and where the excitable Frenchman, fearing to lose his train, is seen at his best.
It was there we arrived about six o’clock, and at seven we sat together, a merry trio, at dinner. The cooking was perfect, the wines excellent, and after dinner Shaw mentioned that he had letters to write. Therefore I seized the opportunity to stroll out with Asta, for it was pleasant to walk after so many hours in the car.
She was dressed neatly in black coat and skirt, and a small straw hat trimmed with black ribbon – mourning for Guy Nicholson – and as we wandered out our careless footsteps led us across that wide square called the Cours du Midi, and down upon the Quai de la Charité beside the broad, swiftly flowing Rhone, the water of which ran crimson in the brilliant afterglow.
A hot, breathless evening, in which half Lyons seemed to be taking an airing along the Quais of that winding river-bank which traverses the handsome city. We had turned our backs upon the high railway bridge which spans the river, and set our faces towards the centre of the city, when I noticed that Asta seemed again very silent and thoughtful.
I inquired the reason, when she replied —
“I’ve been thinking over your curious experience of last night. I – I’ve been wondering.”
“Wondering what?”
“I’ve been trying to discern what connection your experience had with my own up in Yorkshire,” she said. “I saw the hand distinctly – a thin, scraggy hand just as you saw it. But I have remained silent because – well, because I could not convince myself that such a thing was actually a reality.”
“Describe the whole circumstance,” I urged. “On the occasion when you saw it, was the door of your room locked?”
“Most certainly,” was her reply. “Louise, who is married to a solicitor in Scarborough, invited me up to stay a week with her, and I went alone, Dad having gone to London. The house was on the Esplanade, one of the row of big grey houses that face the sea on the South Cliff. The family consisted only of Louise, her husband, three maids, and myself, as visitor. My room was on the second floor, in the front facing the sea, and my experience was almost identical with that of yourself last night. I was awakened just before dawn by feeling a cold touch upon my cheek. And opening my eyes I saw the hand – it seemed to be the horrible hand of Death himself!”
“Most extraordinary!” I ejaculated.
“Since then, Mr Kemball, I have wondered whether; that touch was not sent as warning of impending evil – sent to forewarn me of the sudden death of the man I loved!”
I was silent. The circumstances, so curiously identical, were certainly alarming. Indeed, I could see that the narration of my extraordinary experience had terrified her. She seemed to have become suddenly most solicitous regarding my welfare, for after a slight pause she exclaimed anxiously —
“Do, Mr Kemball, take every precaution to secure your own safety. Somehow I – well, I don’t know how it is, but I feel that the hand is seen as warning – a warning against something which threatens – against some evil of which we have no expectation, or – ”
“It warned you of the terrible blow which so soon afterwards fell upon you,” I interrupted. “And it has warned me – of what?”
She shook her head.
“How can we tell?” she asked.
In a flash the remembrance of that bronze cylinder and the dire misfortune which had befallen every one of its possessors occurred to me. I recollected the ancient hieroglyphics upon the scraps of brown crinkled papyri, and their translation. But surely the apparition of the Hand could have no connection with what had been written long ago, before our Christian era?
“Did you actually feel the cold touch of the Hand?” I asked her in eagerness.
“Yes. It awakened me, just as it awakened you.”
“And there was no one else in the house but the persons you named. I mean you are positive that you were not a victim of any practical joke, Miss Seymour?” I asked.
“Quite certain. The door of my room was locked and bolted. It was at the head of the stairs. There were four rooms on that floor, but only mine was occupied.”
“The window? If I recollect aright, most of the houses on the Esplanade at Scarborough have balconies,” I remarked.
“Mine had a balcony, it is true, but both windows were securely fastened. I recollected latching them before retiring, as is my habit.”
“Then nobody could possibly have entered there!”
“Nobody. Yet I have a distinct recollection of having been touched by, and having actually seen, the hand being withdrawn from my pillow. I rushed out of the room and alarmed the house. In a few moments every one came out of their rooms, but when I told my story they laughed at me in ridicule, and Louise took me back to bed, declaring that I must have had a bad dream. But I could sleep there no longer, and returned home next day. I did not tell Dad, because I knew that he would only poke fun at me.”
For some moments I did not speak. Surely ours was a strange conversation in that busy modern thoroughfare, amid the café idlers seated out in the roadway, and the lounging groups enjoying the cool air from the river after the heat and burden of the day.
Strange it was – very strange – that almost the same inexplicable circumstances had occurred to her as to me.
Had I been superstitious I certainly should have been inclined to the belief that the uncanny hand – which was so material that it had left its imprint upon my flesh – was actually some evil foreboding connected with the bronze cylinder – the Thing which the papyri decreed shall not speak until the Day of Awakening. Was not the curse of the Wolf-god placed upon any one who sought knowledge of the contents of that cylinder, which had been placed for security in the tomb of the Great Merenptah, King of Kings? Even contact with the human hand was forbidden under pain of the wrath of the Sun-god, and of Osiris the Eternal.
As I walked there I recalled the quaint decipher of those ancient hieroglyphics.
Yes, the incident was the most weird and inexplicable that had ever happened to me. The whole problem indeed defied solution.
I had not attempted to open the cylinder, nor to seek knowledge of what was contained therein. It still reposed in the safe in the library at Upton End, together with that old newspaper, the threatening letter, and the translation of the papyri.
We wandered along the quay, Asta appearing unusually pale and pensive.
“I wonder you did not recount your strange experience to your father,” I exclaimed presently.
“It happened in the house of a friend, and not at home. Therefore I resolved to say nothing. Indeed I had grown to believe that, after all, it must have been mere imagination – until you described what happened to you last night. That has caused me to; think – it has convinced me that what I saw was material and real.”
“It’s a mystery, Miss Seymour,” I said; “one which we must both endeavour to elucidate. Let us say nothing – not even to your father. We will keep our own counsel and watch.”
When we returned to the hotel we found Shaw awaiting us. Asta, being fatigued, retired to her room, and afterwards he and I strolled down to one of those big cafés in the Place Bellecour. A string band was playing a waltz, and hundreds of people were sitting out upon the pavement drinking their bock or mazagran.
Darkness had fallen, and with it the air became fresher – welcome indeed after those long hours on the white, dusty road of the Bourgogne. My host, in the ease of straw hat and grey flannel suit, still wore his dark glasses, and as we sat together at one of the tin tables near the kerb a man and a woman at the adjacent table rose and left, so that we were comparatively alone and in the shadow.
After we had been chatting merrily – for he seemed in the best of spirits and full of admiration of the way in which the French roads were kept – he removed his spectacles and wiped them.
As he did so he laughed across at me, saying in a low voice —
“It’s a nuisance to be compelled to wear these – but I suppose I must exercise caution. One has always to bear the punishment of one’s indiscretion.”
“Why?”
He smiled grimly, but remained silent.
Even though he had admitted that he was not what he represented himself to be; even though I knew that he was an adventurer, and even though the dead man Arnold had urged me not to trust him implicitly, yet I somehow could not help liking him. He was always so full of quiet humour, and his small eyes twinkled merrily when those quaint remarks and caustic criticisms fell from his lips.
“I thought that the danger which existed that evening in Totnes had passed,” I remarked.
“Only temporarily, I fear. Thanks to your generous aid, Kemball, I was able to slip through their fingers, as I have done on previous occasions. But I fear that the meshes of the net may one day be woven a trifle too closely. I shouldn’t really care very much if it were not for Asta. You know how devoted I am to her,” he added, leaning his arms upon! the small table and bending towards me as he spoke.
“And if any little contretemps did happen to you?” I asked.
“Asta would, alas! be left alone,” he said in a low, hoarse voice. “Poor girl! I – I fear she would find a great change in her circumstances.”
It was upon the tip of my tongue to acknowledges to him how madly I loved her, and of my intention of asking her to be my wife, yet somehow I hesitated, fearing, I think, lest he might scorn such a proposition, for I remembered how, after all, she was his sole companion, and that without her he would be lonely and helpless. She was the one bright spot in his soured life, he had declared to me more than once. Though scarcely yet out of her teens, she directed the large household at Lydford with all the genius and economy of an experienced housewife. Yes! hers had been a strange career – the adopted daughter of a man who was so often compelled to go into hiding in strange guises and in strange places.
“Let us hope nothing will happen,” I said cheerfully. “Why should it?”
His face broadened into a meaning grin, and he readjusted his hideous round spectacles and lit a fresh cigar.
“Really, Mr Shaw,” I said, “your dark forebodings and your strange declarations puzzle me. True, I have endeavoured to serve your interests, and I regard you as a friend, heedless of what I cannot help suspecting. Yet you are never open and frank with me concerning one thing – your friendship with Melvill Arnold.”
He started at mention of the name – a fact which caused me to ponder.
“I hardly follow you.”
“Well,” I said. “Shortly before leaving England I received a visit from a certain Mrs Olliffe – a lady living near Bath. I believe you know her?”
“Yes!” he gasped, grasping the edge of the table and half rising from his seat. “Then she has seen you!” he cried. “What did she tell you?”
“Several things,” I replied. “She alleges that you were not Arnold’s friend – but his fiercest enemy.”
“She has told you that!” he cried bitterly. “And what else has that woman said against me?”
“Nothing much.”
“Come,” he exclaimed boldly. “Tell me, Kemball, man to man, all that woman has said.”
I saw that his manner had changed, his small eyes were flashing with fire, while upon his pale cheeks showed two scarlet patches.
Through my brain surged recollections of the woman’s allegations, but, seeing him in such anger, I did not desire to irritate him further, therefore I declared that whatever the lady had said was in no way derogatory to him.
“You are not telling me the truth, Kemball,” he declared, looking straight into my eyes. “I know her too well. She has lied to you about me.”
“Probably,” was my reply. “I happen by a curious chance to know the character of the lady, and it is hardly such as would inspire me with confidence.”
“You know her then!” he exclaimed, staring at me hard.
“I know that at one time she passed as Lady Lettice Lancaster, and was sentenced to penal servitude as an adventuress.”
“Who told you that? How do you know that?” he asked quickly.
“It is surely common knowledge,” was my reply. “Therefore please dismiss from your mind that anything she might say to your detriment would impair our friendship.”
“Ah yes!” he cried suddenly, taking my hand and wringing it warmly. “I know, Kemball, that you, being my friend, will refuse to be influenced in any way by evil report. That woman is, as you rightly say, an unscrupulous adventuress. I knew her once – before her conviction – but I have since lost sight of her. Yet, I know she is my enemy, and – well, if it were to her interest she would have no compunction in giving me away to Scotland Yard.”
“Then she is your enemy?”
“My worst enemy.”
“Ah! Then I understand the reason of her allegations,” I said, and a moment later the subject dropped.
We returned to the hotel just before midnight, and I ascended in the lift to my room. Shaw shook my hand and turned into his own room.
From my window I found that I commanded a wide, view of the great Place Carnot and the adjacent streets, picturesque with their many lights. I had not switched on my light, and was standing gazing below, when, of a sudden, I distinguished Shaw hurrying out of the hotel again and crossing the Place towards the Pont du Midi, the iron bridge on the right which spans the Rhone.
He had in a moment changed both hat and coat, I noticed, and therefore his sudden exit, after having led me to believe he was about to turn in, struck me as curious. So, without hesitation, I, too, slipped on another coat, and putting on a golf cap descended in the lift, and was soon speeding away in the direction he had taken.
When halfway across the bridge I saw him walking slowly before me, therefore I held back and watched. I followed him across the river, when he suddenly turned to the left along the Quai Claude Bernard, until at the foot of the next bridge, the Guillotière, he turned to the left along the Cours Gambetta until he came to a small square, the Place du Pont.
There he suddenly halted beneath a lamp and glanced at his watch. Then he idled across to the corner of one of the half-dozen dark, deserted streets which converged there, as though awaiting some one.
For a quarter of an hour he remained there calmly smoking, and quite unsuspicious of my proximity.
But his patience was at last rewarded, because from the shadow there emerged a female figure in dark jacket and skirt, to which after a moment’s hesitation he went forward with words of greeting.
They met beneath the light of a street lamp, and from where I stood, hidden in a doorway, I was sufficiently close to get a view of her countenance.
I held my breath.
It was that of the woman who had stood in the dock of the Old Bailey and been convicted of fraud – the woman who now lived in such style at Ridgehill Manor, and who was known in Bath as Mrs Olliffe.
For a moment they stood there in the night, their hands clasped, neither uttering a single word.
And yet Shaw had only an hour before declared her to be his most bitter and dangerous enemy!