"I've got an idea about it, that's all. Did Miss Haufmann hear it the same night?"
"Not the same night I did—no. She seems to have dozed off."
"When she did hear it, was it calling you?"
"She couldn't make out what it called!"
"Did she go to the window?"
"Yes, but she only looked out from behind the blind."
"See anything?"
"No."
"I should have very much liked an interview with her," said Ottley, thoughtfully.
"She could tell you no more than I have."
"About that, no! There's something else I would like to ask her."
That evening we all three dined at The Grove, dinner being prepared by a woman who departed directly we were finished. A desultory game of billiards served to pass the time between twilight and darkness, and the detective and I departed, leaving Haufmann alone in the house. This was prearranged by Ottley, who had some scheme in hand. Side by side we tramped down the poplar avenue, went out by the big gate, and closed it behind us. We then skirted the grounds to a point on the side opposite the gate, and, scaling the wall, found ourselves in a wilderness of neglected kitchen garden. Through this the American cautiously led the way toward the house, visible through the tangle of bushes and trees in sharp silhouette against the sky. On all fours we crossed a little yard and entered a side door which had been left ajar for the purpose, closing it softly
THE WHISPERING POPLARS 177
behind us. So, passing through the kitchen, we made our way upstairs and rejoined Haufmann.
A post had been allotted to me in the room next to his and I was enjoined to sit in the dark and watch for anything moving among the trees. Haufmann departed to a room on the west front with similar injunctions, and the detective remained in Hauf-mann's room.
As I crept cautiously to the window, avoiding the broad moonbeam streaming in, I saw a light on my left. Ottley was acting as Haufmann would have done if he had been retiring for the night. Three minutes later the light vanished, and the nervous vigil was begun.
There was very little breeze, but sufficient to send up and down the poplar ranks waves of that mysterious whispering which Klaw and I had previously noted. The moon, though invisible from that point, swam in an absolutely cloudless sky, and the shadow of the house lay black beneath me, its edge tropically sharp. A broad belt of moon-bright grass and gravel succeeded, and this merged into the light-patched gloom of the avenue. On the right of the poplars lay a shrubbery, and beyond that a garden stretching to the east wall. Just to the left, an outbuilding gleamed whitely. Some former occupant had built it for a coach house and it now housed Haufmann's car. The apartments above were at present untenanted.
I cannot say with certainty when I first detected,
mingled with the whistling of the branches, something that was not caused by the wind. But ultimately I found myself listening for this other sound. With my eyes fixed straight ahead and peering into the shadows of the poplars I crouched, every nerve at high tension. A slight sound on my left told of a window softly opened. It was Ottley creeping out on to the balcony. He, too, had heard it!
Then, with awful suddenness, the inexplicable happened.
A short, shrill cry broke the complete silence, succeeding one of those spells of whispering. A shot followed hot upon it—then a second. Somebody fell with a muffled thud upon the drive—and I leapt to the window, threw it widely open, and stepped out on the balcony.
"Ottley!" I cried. "Haufmann!"
A door banged somewhere and I heard Haufmann's muffled voice:
"Downstairs! Come down!"
I ran across the room, out on to the landing, and down into the hall. Haufmann was unfastening the bolts. His injured arm was still stiff, and I hastened to assist him.
"My God!" he cried, turning a pale face toward me. "It's Ottley gone! Did you see anything?"
"No! Did you?"
"Curse it! No! I had just slipped away from the window to get my repeater! You heard the voice? ,:
THE WHISPERING POPLARS 179
" Clearly!"
The door was thrown open and we ran out into the drive.
There was no sign of Ottley, and we stood for a moment, undecided how we should act. Then, just inside the shadow belt we found the detective lying.
Thinking him dead, we raised and dragged him back to the house. Having re-fastened the door, we laid him on a sofa in the morning room. His face was deathly and blood flowed from a terrible wound on his skull. Strangest of all, though, he had a gaping hole just above the right wrist. The skin about it was discoloured as if with burning. Neither of us could detect any sign of life, and we stood, two frankly frightened men, looking at each other over the body.
"It's got to be done!" said Haufmann, slowly. "One of us has to stay here and do what he can for him, and one has to go for a doctor! There's no telephone!"
"Where's the nearest doctor?" I asked.
"There's one at the corner of the first road on the right."
"I'll go!" I said.
Without shame I confess that from the moment the door closed behind me, I ran my hardest down the poplar avenue until I had passed the gate! And it was not anxiety that spurred me, for I did not doubt that Ottley was dead, but stark fear!
in
Moris Klaw deposited a large grip and a travelling rug upon the veranda.
"Good day, Mr. Haufmann! Good day, Mr. Searles!" At an open window the white-aproned figure of a nurse appeared. "Good day, Nurse! I am direct from Paris. This is a case which cannot be dealt with under the head of the Cycle of Crime, and I do not think it has any relation with the history of The Park. But thoughts are things, Mr. Haufmann. How helpful that is!"
Forty-eight hours had elapsed since Haufmann and I had picked up Ottley for dead in the poplar avenue. Now he lay in a bed made up in the billiard room hovering between this world and another. I had a shrewd suspicion that the doctor who attended him was mystified by some of the patient's symptoms.
Haufmann stared oddly at Moris Klaw, not altogether comprehending the drift of his words.
"If only Ottley could tell us!" he muttered.
"He will tell us nothing for many a day," I said; "if, indeed, he ever speaks again."
"Ah," interrupted Moris Klaw, "to me he will speak! How? With the mind! Something—we have yet to learn what—struck him down that night. The blow, if it was a blow, made so acute an impression upon his brain that no other has secured admittance yet! Good! That blow, it still resides within
THE WHISPERING POPLARS 181
his mind. To-night I shall sleep beside his bed. I shall be unable odically to sterilize myself, but we must hope. From amid the phantasms which that sick brain will throw out upon the astral film—upon the surrounding ether—I must trust that I find the thought, the last thought before delirium came!"
Haufmann looked amazed. I had prepared.him, to some extent, for Klaw's theories, but, nevertheless, he was tremendously surprised. Klaw, however, paid no attention to this. He looked around at the trees.
"I am glad," he rumbled, impressively, "that you managed to hush up. Distinctly, we have now a chance."
"A chance of what?" I cried. "The thing seems susceptible of no ordinary explanation! How can you account for what happened to Ottley and for his condition ? What incredible thing came out from the poplars?"
"No thing!" answered Moris Klaw. "No thing, my good friend!"
"Then what did he fire at?"
"At the coach house!"
I met the gaze of his peculiar eyes, fixed upon me through the pince-nez.
"If you will look at the coach-house chimney," he continued, "you will see it—the hole made by his bullet!"
I turned quickly, and even from that considerable
distance the hole was visible; a triangular break on the red-tiled rim.
"What on earth does it mean?" I asked, more hopelessly mystified than ever.
"It means that Ottley is a clev
er man who knows his business; and it means, Mr. Searles, that we must take up this so extraordinary affair where the poor Ottley dropped it!"
"What do you propose?"
"I propose that you invite yourself to a few days' holiday, as I have done. You stay here. Do not allow even the doctor to know that you are in the house. The nurse you will have to confide in, I suppose. Mr. Haufmann"—he turned to the latter —"you will occupy your old room. Do not, I beg of you, go outside after dusk upon any consideration. If either of you shall hear it again—the evil whispering—come out by the front door, and keep in the shadow. Carry no light. Above all, do not come out upon the balcony!"
"Then you," I said, "will be unable to stay?"
"I shall be so unable," was the reply; "for I go to Brighton to secure the interview with Miss Greta which the poor Ottley so much required!"
"You don't suggest that she knows "
"She knows no more than we do, Mr. Searles! But I think she holds a clue and does not know that she holds a clue! For an hour I shall slumber—I who, like the tortoise, know that to sleep is to live—
THE WHISPERING POPLARS 183
I shall slumber beside the sick man's bed. Then, we shall see!"
IV
It was a quarter to seven when Moris Klaw entered the sick room. Ottley lay in a trance-like condition, and the eccentric investigator, of whose proceedings the nurse strongly disapproved, settled himself in a split-cane armchair by the bedside, and waving his hand in dismissal to Haufmann and myself, placed a large silk handkerchief over his sparsely covered skull and composed himself for slumber.
We left him and tiptoed from the room.
"If you hadn't told me what he's done in the past," whispered Haufmann, "I should say our old friend was mad a lot!"
The great empty house was eerily silent, and during the time that we sat smoking and awaiting the end of Moris Klaw's singular telepathic experiment, neither of us talked very much. At eight o'clock the man whose proceedings savoured so much of charlatanism, but whom I knew for one of the foremost criminologists of the world, emerged, spraying his face with verbena.
"Ah, gentlemen," he said, coming in to us, "I have recovered some slight impression"—he tapped his moist forehead—"of that agonizing thought which preceded the unconsciousness of Ottley. I depart. Sometime to-night will come Sir Bartram Vane
from Half-Moon Street, the specialist, to confer with the physician who is attending here. Mr. Searles, remain concealed. Not even he must know of your being here; no one outside the house must know. Remember my warnings. I depart."
Behind the thick pebbles his eyes gleamed with some excitement repressed. By singular means, he would seem to have come upon a clue.
"Good-night, Mr. Haufmann," he said. "Goodnight, Mr. Searles. To the nurse I have said goodnight and she only glared. She thinks I am the mad old £001!"
He departed, curtly declining company, and carrying his huge plaid rug and heavy grip. As his slouching footsteps died away along the avenue, Haufmann and I looked grimly at each other.
"Seems we're left!" said my friend. "You won't desert me, Searles?"
"Most certainly I shall not! You are tied here by the presence of poor Ottley, in any event, and you can rely upon me to keep you company."
At about ten o'clock Sir Bartram Vane drove up, bringing with him the local physician who was attending upon Ottley. I kept well out of sight, but learnt, when the medical men had left, that the course of treatment had been entirely changed.
Thus commenced our strange ordeal; how it terminated you presently shall learn.
Moris Klaw, in pursuit of whatever plan he had
formed, never appeared on the scene, but evidence of his active interest reached us in the form of telegraphic instructions. Once it was a wire telling Haufmann to detain the American servants in London should they arrive and to go on living as we were. Again it was a warning not to go out on the balcony after dusk; and, again, that we should not desert our posts for one single evening. On the fourth day the doctor pronounced a slight improvement in Ottley's condition, and Haufmann determined to run down to Brighton on the following morning, returning in the afternoon.
That night we again heard the voice.
The house was very still, and Haufmann and I had retired to our rooms, when I discerned, above the subdued rustling whisper of the leaves, that other sound that no leaf ever made. In an instant I was crouching by the open window. A lull followed. Then, again, I heard the soft voice calling. I could not detect the words, but in obedience to the instructions of Klaw, I picked up the pistol which I had brought for the purpose, and ran to the door. The idea that the whispering menace was something that could be successfully shot at robbed it of much of its eerie horror, and I relished the prospect of action after the dreary secret sojourn in the upper rooms of the house.
I groped my way down to the hall. As we had carefully oiled the bolts, I experienced no difficulty
in silently opening the door. Inch by inch I opened it, listening intently.
Again I heard the queer call.
Now, by craning my neck, I could see the moon-bright front of the house; and looking upward, I was horrified to see Shan Haufmann, a conspicuous figure in his light pajama suit, crouching on the balcony! The moonlight played vividly on the nickelled barrel of the pistol he carred as he rose slowly to his feet.
Though I did not know what danger threatened, nor from whence it would proceed, I knew well that Klaw's was no idle warning. I could not imagine what madness had prompted Haufmann to neglect it, and was about to throw wide the door and call to him, when a series of strange things happened in bewildering succession.
An odd strumming sound came from somewhere in the outer darkness. Haufmann dropped to his knees (I learnt, afterward, that the loose slippers he wore had tripped him). The glass of the window behind him was shattered with a great deal of noise.
A shot! ... a spurt of flame in the black darkness of the poplar avenue! ... a shriek from somewhere on the west front . . . and I ran out on to the drive.
With a tremendous crash a bulky form rolled down the sloping roof of the coach house, to fall with a sickening thud to the ground!
THE WHISPERING POPLARS 187
Then, out into the moonlight, Moris Klaw came running, his yet smoking pistol in his hand!
"Haufmann!" he cried, and again, "Haufmann!"
The big American peered down from the balcony, hauling in something which seemed to be a line, but which I was unable to distinguish in the darkness.
"Good boy!" he panted. "I was a fool to do it! But I saw him lying behind the chimney and thought I could drop him!"
Moris Klaw ran, ungainly, across to the coach house and I followed him. The figure of a tall, lithe man, wearing a blue serge suit, lay face downward on the gravel. As we turned him over, Haufmann, breathing heavily, joined us. The moonlight fell on a dark saturnine face.
"Gee!" came the cry. "It's Corpus Chris!"
"Where did I get hold upon the clue?" asked Moris Klaw, when he, Haufmann, and I sat, in the gray dawn, waiting for the police to come and take away the body of Costa. "It was from the brain of Ottley! His poor mind"—he waved long hands circularly in the air—"goes round and round about the thing that happened to him on the balcony."
"And what was that?" demanded Haufmann, eagerly. "Same as happened to me?"
"It was something—something that his knowledge of strange things tells him is venomous—which struck
his wrist as he raised his revolver! What did he do? I can tell you; because he is doing it over and over again in his poor feverish mind. He clapped to the injured wrist the barrel of his revolver and fired! Then, swooning, he toppled over and fell among the bushes. The wound that so had puzzled all becomes explained. It was self-inflicted—a precaution—a cauterizing; and it saved his life. For I saw Sir Bartram Vane to-day and he had spoken with the other doctor on the telephone. The new treatment succeeds."
"I am still in the dark
!" confessed Haufmann.
"Yes?" rumbled Moris Klaw. "So? Why do I go to Brighton? I go to ask Miss Greta what Ottley would have asked her."
"And that is?"
"What she feared that made her so very anxious to get you away from your home. To me she admitted that she had received from the man Costa impassioned appeals, such as, foolish girl, she had been afraid to show to you—her father!"
"Good heavens! the scamp!"
"The canaille! But no matter, he is dead canaille! After you got the brother hanged, this Corpus Chris (it was Fate that named him!) sent to your daughter a mad letter, swearing that if she does not fly with him, he will kill you if he has to follow you around the world! Yes, he was insane, I fancy; I think so.
THE WHISPERING POPLARS 189
But he was a man of very great culture. He held a Cambridge degree! You did not know? I thought not. He tracked you to Europe and right to this house. Its history he learned in some way and used for his own ends. Probably, too, he had no oppor-tunity of getting at you otherwise, without leaving behind a clue or being seen and pursued."
Moris Klaw picked up an Indian bow which lay upon the floor beside him.
"A bow of the Sioux pattern," he rumbled, impressively.
He stooped again, picking up a small arrow to which a length of thin black twine was attached.
"One standing on the balcony in the moonlight," he continued, "what a certain mark if the wind be not too high! And you will remember that on gently blowing nights the whispering came!"
He raised the point of the arrow. It was encrusted in some black, shining substance. Moris Klaw lowered his voice.
"Curari!" he said, horasely, "the ancient arrow poison of the South American tribes! This small arrow would make only a tiny wound, and it could be drawn back again by means of the twine attached. Costa, of course, mistook Ottley for you, Mr. Hauf-mann. Ah, a clever fellow! I spent three evenings up the second tree in the avenue waiting for him. I need not have shot him if you had followed my
instructions and not come out on the balcony. We could have captured him alive!"
"I'm not crying about it!" said Haufmann.
"Neither do I weep," rumbled Moris Klaw, and bathed his face with perfume. "But I loathe it, this curari —it smells of death. Ah! the canaille!"
The dream detective: being some account of the methods of Moris Klaw Page 13