by Sax Rohmer
He decided, however, that these minor mysteries must not be permitted to intrude upon that line of inquiry which he had in mind.
“You mean that you were in another room — a room which we have not seen yet — engaged in some occupation which no doubt ye will explain later, when you heard a sound. What was the sound?”
Sir Marcus raised one hand to his brow in an effort of recollection.
“I had become dimly conscious of a disturbance in the lobby. I had deliberately ignored it, supposing that Wake had returned.”
“Who is Wake?”
“My butler.”
“And had he returned?”
“No. Shortly after this sound interrupted me, however, (it resembled that of scuffling footsteps and other slight movements), someone rang the door bell.”
“The door bell? What did you do?”
“Accepting the interruption as unavoidable, I was forced to inquire what had caused it. In the lobby on the couch, as you see him now, I found a man lying. Until I actually touched him, I did not realise that he was dead, and I had gone to the dining-room for water, hoping to revive him.”
“You disturbed the body in no way?”
“Beyond placing my arm under his shoulders in order to raise him, I did not.”
There was a short uneasy silence. Even silence in this strange house of Lord Marcus Amberdale possessed some quality unlike that of other silences. Chief Inspector Firth was glad when Bluett broke it.
“Do I understand your lordship to mean that there was no one else but yourself here at the time?”
Lord Marcus inclined his head in that characteristic gesture; “No one else who was conscious.”
“Conscious?” Firth repeated in an irritably bewildered way. “Was there someone who was unconscious?”
“The physical shell of a woman: her spirit was far away, climbing the staircase of the planets.”
The police officers exchanged furtive glances. Firth’s hazel eyes, which could kindle to a flame of anger, or grow moist in the presence of human suffering, flashed danger signals.
Following a momentary consideration of the fine fanatical face of Lord Marcus, the inspector seemed to come to a conclusion.
“I should like to point out, sir,” he said, and his strident voice had become stern, his accent strongly marked, “that a murder, a most brutal murder, has been committed in this hoose to-night. What the staircase o’ the planets has to do wi’ it is not for me to say. But do I understand there is someone else on these premises — someone we have not seen — who was present at the time?”
“There is — but she remains in a state of exaltation, of trance. To arouse her might be fatal.”
“That will be for the doctor to decide,” said Firth drily. “Ye say that ye’re butler was not in?”
“No. Speaking physically, I was alone in the house, Chief Inspector. I wish to make that clear.”
“Quite so. And when ye came out into the lobby, would ye be noticing if the front door was open?”
“I opened it myself, and looked out into the street. There was no one in sight, although I could see right to the corner.”
“But,” Firth persevered, “ye found the door shut?”
“It was shut.”
Firth stared at his assistant rather helplessly.
“This is quite beyond me,” he confessed. “Are we to suppose that a man wi’ a broken neck admitted himself into yon lobby? I think not. Therefore, someone else must ha’ brought him in, and then slipped out again, unless he is still here. Have you searched the hoose?”
“I have not left the ground floor. I was forced to return immediately to the Rites.”
Firth stood up, and then sat down again. “The doctor is out yonder,” he muttered, “so that if there is anyone else inside, he canna very well get out. Have you a back entrance?”
“No, there is no other entrance.”
“Who, other than yoursel’, has a key o’ the front door?”
“Wake has one. But Wake has not returned.”
“Late hours for a butler,” Bluett suggested, glancing at his wrist-watch.
Rather wearily Lord Marcus explained: “Wake sometimes sleeps out. His wife acts as caretaker at a house in Grosvenor Square. With my permission, he occasionally spends the night there. To-night, when he set out (it was his evening off), I told him that I should be engaged until very late, and — provided he reported in the morning — that it would be unnecessary for him to return.”
“And no one else has a key, sir?” Firth insisted.
“No one else. It is a Yale lock, and there are only two keys for it.”
Sergeant Bluett, who had been making notes, glanced up with a puzzled frown. “Was it before or after the bell rang that you heard these shuffling footsteps?”
“Before. I should have ignored them if these sounds had not been followed by that of the bell.”
“I see.” Bluett scratched his upstanding hair in a manner which suggested that he did not see at all.
“What other servants are there?” Firth asked.
“A woman who acts as cook and who attends daily; otherwise Wake is in sole charge of my small household. Let me epitomise the situation, gentlemen.” He glanced with those dreamy eyes from face to face. “I was engaged in a ritualistic experiment the results of which might well have meant the end of that evil which oppresses the world. One corner of the veil, at last, had been lifted. To this moment I had dedicated my life for many years. You see—” he smiled sadly— “I was doomed to be plucked back at the very threshold of Knowledge. Hearing the sounds which I have described, I forced myself from the subconscious back into the conscious, and went out to the lobby. The man — I had never seen him before, but you say he is Sir Giles Loeder — was lying as you found him. The front door was locked. I can tell you nothing more, gentlemen, for this is all I know.”
There was a further uneasy pause: Sergeant Bluett took out the evening paper, stared at it as though he wondered how it had got there, and put it back in another pocket.
“Realising that the man was dead,” said Firth, “you came to the ‘phone, which I see on the table, yonder, and called up Scotland Yard. Is that correct?”
“It is correct. I then returned hoping that in the short time still left to me before final interruption should occur, I might reconquer some of what I had lost.”
“You mean that you went into another room, leaving no one in the lobby but the dead man?”
“Yes.”
“Then someone in hiding,” Bluett suggested, “might have slipped out? Before we arrived, I mean.”
“I have no reason to suppose that there was anyone in hiding.”
The door opened and Dr. Fawcett entered, sniffing and looking from face to face, a man whose curiosity could brook no further repression. A wave of that disturbing perfume followed him in.
“Why do you burn incense, Lord Marcus?” he asked rather tersely— “and what is it?”
“It is kyphi, the sacred kyphi of the Ancient Egyptian temples. Its production is the result of many years of experiment upon the formula of Dioscorides. I am the only man in modern times who has succeeded in producing it. As to why I burn it, I burn it during the Rites.”
The surgeon shook his head, staring inquiringly at Chief Inspector Firth. “Probably you will want to check the dead man’s possessions,” he said. “The cause of death is perfectly clear, of course. He seems to have been lifted up, lifted bodily up, and cast down, head first, upon the paving — an operation which, in the case of a powerful man — and I should say he was a fairly powerful man — would have created a tremendous disturbance.”
“There was no such disturbance, doctor,” murmured Lord Marcus. “He cannot have sustained that frightful injury in my house.”
“Certainly, I can find no evidence of a struggle in the lobby; but I can account for his condition in no other way — unless of course he met his death elsewhere. There is nothing to suggest, however, that he was k
nocked down in the street for instance. His clothing bears no trace of grease or mud.”
Dr. Fawcett stared in surprise at the mummy, which he now saw for the first time, transferring his glance from this to those other curious objects which lay upon the large table.
“You study strange subjects, Lord Marcus,” he observed.
His manner was brisk, direct, but strictly professional; his curiosity was professional, too. He believed that Lord Marcus Amberdale dabbled in magic, and he knew from personal experience that such pursuits sometimes lead to insanity. But as if to prevent a possible diversion, Chief Inspector Firth stood up.
He knew that the moment was come to make a demand which he anticipated would be declined. And although he fought a stout inward fight, he was unable to disguise from himself the fact that Lord Marcus, whom he believed to be mad, inspired him with a sort of respect, which, although he despised the weakness he was unable to shake off. He faced him across the dimly lighted room.
“I must now request, sir,” he said, his strident voice quite toneless, “to interview the other witness who, by your own account, was present at the time that the events reported took place.”
3
Shrine of Isis
Dr. Fawcett observed a change stealing over the ascetic face of Lord Marcus. The dreamy blue eyes grew hard, the jaw more angular. He remembered vaguely that Lord Marcus had formerly been a soldier, and these were the eyes of a soldier which now looked out from the mask of the visionary.
“I appreciate, Chief Inspector,” — his musical voice remained low and untroubled— “that you have power to enforce this request. But if I assure you that the lady you desire to see, although present in the body, is actually far from this house, if I assure you that she has remained throughout oblivious of all that has occurred here, will you accept my word, and not compel me to arouse her? I assure you upon my honor that to do so might prove fatal.”
Firth glanced uneasily at Dr. Fawcett. “The decision on that point rests in your hands, doctor, but for my part I must certainly see this lady.”
“Can I count upon your support, sir?” asked Lord Marcus, turning to the surgeon. “If I make certain stipulations, as indeed I must, will you see that they are carried out?”
“To the best of my ability, Lord Marcus. But the conduct of this inquiry is in the hands of the Chief Inspector, not in mine.”
“My stipulations are these,” Lord Marcus went on: “I will permit you to see the shrine on the understanding that no sound is made, no word spoken. If you consider, Chief Inspector, that an interrogation is necessary, I must ask for more time.”
The three men exchanged glances, and Firth nodded.
“Verra weel,” he said dourly. “This is the queerest business that ever came my ways, but I must carry out my duty. Lead on, sir.”
Lord Marcus extended a long, slender hand, inviting his visitors to return to the lobby. Again, in passing, they all glanced down at the dead man. “Be good enough to remain immediately outside the door when I shall have opened it,” he said; “no foot but mine must cross the threshold. And be silent.”
He pulled a cord, and the purple curtain opened in its centre, to reveal another of the silver-plated doors. This also opened in the centre, its twin leaves sliding silently to right and left. As it opened, an overpowering wave of incense swept out into the lobby.
The tall, robed figure entered. An imperative gesture warned them to pause on the threshold. It was significant that they all moved on tiptoe as one does in the echoing vastness of a cathedral, although the place into which they looked was of no such dimensions. It was, however, of surprising form.
The floor was paved with shiny black stone; the walls were plastered and covered with mural decorations of Ancient Egyptian figures. It was lighted by two globular lamps resting on slender silver tripods to right and left of a golden curtain which occupied a great part of that wall which faced the door. The ceiling was apparently of dull black, creating an impression of space above. Apart from the two silver lamps there was absolutely no furniture whatever in the apartment.
Raising a finger to his lips as he looked back across his shoulder, Lord Marcus, stepping silently in his sandals, advanced to the golden curtain and drew it aside. The origin of those clouds of incense which permeated the house now became apparent. A silver burner rested on a third tripod, and, because of draught occasioned by their entrance, sent up wavering spirals of aromatic smoke through a perforated cover.
In spite of the injunction to silence, three sibilant inhalations marked the astonishment of the onlookers.
Recessed beyond the curtain a sort of shrine or altar lay. Upon a dais covered with a leopard skin rested a throne, evidently of great antiquity and inlaid with silver and gold. The recess embracing this throne was semi-circular, and decorated with designs from the Book of the Dead, so that a grotesque procession of gods of the Nile marched in eternal monotony behind the woman seated there: figures with the heads of hawks, of cats, of crocodiles; a saturnalia such as might have haunted the dreams of a sleeping Pharaoh.
This woman wore the asp headdress of royal Egypt, a dull gold bangle on her right arm and a number of antique rings upon her fingers. She sat in a rigid pose, her hands palm downward, her body upright, her knees and feet pressed closely together — and her beauty was melodramatic in its flamboyance, in its stark passivity.
Hair dressed in a barbaric fashion resembled polished copper; wide-open eyes which stared eerily before her were of amber flecked with green: beautiful eyes but they held no human spark of life or love or passion, but seemed to survey a past dead world. A sheath-like garment of transparent tissue permitted the curves of her body to gleam through it like those of an ivory statue. No pulse throbbed in that white throat: there was no perceptible movement of her breast. Her lips were slightly parted in a sibylline smile.
Invasion of this secret temple produced no visible change in that entranced beauty. Lord Marcus raised his arms like a priest before the altar, and intoned words in his soft, musical voice, and in a language unfamiliar to any of those who listened. The long-lashed eyes of the woman never flickered. Lowering his arms, he stood aside, and for a period of perhaps a minute allowed the three men to watch — and to wonder. Then, turning, he gave a sweeping gesture to intimate that they should retire.
Stepping again on tiptoe, with extreme caution, acutely aware of their clumsy shoes, those who had watched withdrew. Lord Marcus reclosed the silent door, and replaced the purple curtain ...
It was Dr. Fawcett who broke an awkward silence. His expression, as he watched Lord Marcus, was diagnostic, but the effort which it cost him to recapture his professional manner was not lost upon Inspector Firth.
“Hypnotism?” the doctor inquired, with raised eyebrows.
“Not entirely, doctor,” Lord Marcus replied, and that hard light had died from his eyes: he was again the prophetic dreamer. “Kyphi has singular properties, and a preparation of hashish, which I can procure only from Aleppo, more widely opens the inner eye. Personal magnetism, which is fully established between us, directs the quest of the released spirit.”
Chief Inspector Firth interrupted. “I am afraid, sir, there are certain important points which I must clear up before I can send for an ambulance and have the body removed.”
“I beg that you will make your inquiries as brief as possible.”
“I’ll do that. First and foremost I would ask, Dr. Fawcett: Are you prepared to say that yon woman is in a trance?”
“Yes, or under the influence of some drug.”
“She’s no’ just pretending?”
“I am prepared to state that she is unconscious. I can say no more without a proper examination.”
“Verra good, doctor. And now, Lord Marcus, I understand that this woman, who has been drugged or hypnotised by you, is being used for some kind of an experiment. Am I right?”
“She is playing her part in the Rites,” Lord Marcus replied, in that musical, weary v
oice, “which are probably more than two thousand years old, and which, it is equally probable, have never been attempted by any living man. You may have observed that to-night is the night of the full moon. It is the full moon of the Ancient Egyptian Sothic month of Paophi, which means that, failing, I cannot even attempt to do what I sought to do for a whole year again.”
“Might I ask, Lord Marcus,” the doctor interjected eagerly, “what you sought to do?”
“Certainly.” The reply was calm and courteous. “You, very properly, in common with these officers, assume that I am mad. I assure you that I am sane. The ancients, so scorned in this machine age, knew more of the power of the spirit than we to-day even suspect. I have endeavored for more than twenty years to recover some of that lost knowledge. To-night I had sent an untrammelled soul upon a voyage of exploration. I sought to know why the world was so sorely afflicted, and when its punishment would end.”
“It is possible that ye mean, sir,” said Firth, and he was funereally Caledonian in his dourness, “that ye sought to find out when the war would end?”
“Substantially, perhaps, that was my object. It is vain of you to endeavor to conceal the fact, Chief Inspector, that you regard me as a mental case, and even despise me a little for behavior which you look upon as egregiously flippant at a time of national stress. But you are wrong. I stood, to-night, upon the edge of knowledge denied to men for thousands of years, when, ordained by some fatality which I cannot even pretend to explain, that man died who lies there before us.”
“Fatality may be right,” murmured the Chief Inspector, his eyes fixed upon Lord Marcus with an expression no doubt similar to that which fired the eyes of Torquemada when he rebuked a heretic. “Mysel’, I would ca’ it the Hand of God. His ways are strange and beyond computing. And I think, Lord Marcus, that what ye sought to know, it is not intended that man should know.”
Lord Marcus smiled: It was a sweet and a wistful smile. “You may even be wiser than I, Chief Inspector. I am perhaps not sufficiently purified. Indeed, I may venture too greatly. But I sought, not for my own good, but for the good of the world. This I ask you to believe.”