XXVI
DIRECT FROM PARADISE
The sound was not like that of the walking of the human. Nor was it suchas an animal would make. It was neither a thud nor a pattering, but morelike a scratching shuffle, such as reminded me of nothing that I hadever heard before.
Next moment, however, there came another sort of sound, plainly audibleabove the footsteps. This was a thin, musical chuckle which ended in adeep, but faint, organ-like throb. It happened only once.
Immediately it was followed by a steady clicking, such as might be madeby gently striking a stick against the pavement; only sharper. Thislasted a minute, during which the other sounds ceased.
Once more the footsteps. They were not very loud, but in the stillnessof that room they all but resounded.
Presently Charlotte could stand it no longer. She placed the ring on thetable, where it continued to emit those unplaceable sounds.
"Well! Do--do you people," stammered Dr. Malloy, "do you people all hearTHAT?"
Miss Clarke's face was rather pale. But her mouth was firm. "It isnothing," said she, with theosophical positiveness. "You must notbelieve it--it is not the truth of--"
"Pardon me," interrupted Sir Henry, "but this isn't something to argueabout! It is a reality; and the sooner we all admit it, the better.There is a living creature of some kind making that sound!"
"It is the spirit of some two-footed creature," asserted Mme. Le Fabre,plainly at her ease. She was on familiar ground now. "If only we had amedium!"
Abruptly the sounds left the vicinity of the ring. At first we couldnot locate their new position. Then Herold declared that they camefrom under the table; and presently we were all gathered on the floor,listening to those odd little sounds, while the ring remained thirtyinches above, on the top of the table!
It may be that the thing, whatever it was, did not care for such acrowd. For shortly the shuffling ceased. And for a while we stared andlistened, scarcely breathing, trying to locate the new position.
Finally we went back to our chairs. We had heard nothing further.Nevertheless, we continued to keep silence, with our ears alert foranything more.
"Hush!" whispered Charlotte all of a sudden. "Did you hear that?" Andshe looked up toward the ceiling.
In a moment I caught the sound. It was exceedingly faint, like thedistant thrumming of a zither. Only it was a single note, which didnot rise and fall, although there seemed a continual variation in itsvolume.
Unexpectedly the other sounds came again, down under the table. Thistime we remained in our seats and simply listened. And presently SirHenry, referring to the ring, made this suggestion:
"Suppose we seal it up, and see whether it inducts the sound then aswell as when exposed."
This appealed to Herold very strongly; the others were agreeable; so Iran upstairs to my room and secured a small screw-top metal canister,which I knew to be airtight. It was necessary to remove the stone fromthe ring, in order to get it into the opening in the can. Presently thiswas done; and while our invisible visitor continued his scratchy littlewalking as before, I screwed the top of the can down as tightly as Icould.
Instantly the footsteps halted.
I unscrewed the top a trifle. As instantly the stepping was resumed.
"Ah!" cried Herold. "It's a question of radioactivity, then! Remember LeBon's experiments, Sir Henry?"
But Miss Clarke was sorely mystified by this simple matter, and herselfrepeated the experiments. Equally puzzled was Mme. Le Fabre. Accordingto her theory, a spirit wouldn't mind a little thing like a metal box.Of them all, Dr. Malloy was the least disturbed; so decidedly so thatGeneral Hume eyed him quizzically.
"Fine bunch of hallucinations, doctor."
"Almost commonplace," retorted Malloy.
Presently I mentioned that the Rhamda had come from the basement on thenight that Ariadne had materialised; and I showed that the only possibleroute into the cellar was through the locked door in the breakfastroom, since the windows were all too small, and there was no other door.Query: How had the Rhamda got there? Immediately they all became alert.As Herold said:
"One thing or the other is true; either there is something downstairswhich has escaped you, Fenton, or else Avec is able to materialise inany place he chooses. Let's look!"
We all went down except Charlotte, who went upstairs to stay withAriadne. By turns, each of us held the ring. And as we unlocked thebasement door we noted that the invisible, walking creature had reachedthere before us.
Down the steps went those unseen little feet, jumping from one step tothe next just ahead of us all the way. When within three or four stepsof the bottom, the creature made one leap do for them all.
I had previously run an extension cord down into the basement, and bothcompartments could now be lighted by powerful electric lamps. We gavethe place a quick examination.
"What's all this newly turned earth mean?" inquired Sir Henry, pointingto the result of Jerome's efforts a few months before. And I explainedhow he and Harry, on the chance the basement might contain some clueas to the localisation of the Blind Spot, had dug without result in thebluish clay.
Sir Henry picked up the spade, which had never been moved from whereJerome had dropped it. And while I went on to tell about the pool ofliquids, which for some unknown reason had not seeped into the soilsince forming there, the Englishman proceeded to dig vigorously into theheap I had mentioned.
The rest of us watched him thoughtfully. We remembered that Jerome'sdigging had been done after Queen's disappearance. And the dog hadvanished in the rear room, the one in which Chick and Dr. Holcomb hadlast been seen. Now, when Jerome had dug the clay from the basementunder this, the dining-room, he had thrown it through the once concealedopening in the partition; had thrown the clay, that is, in a small heapunder the library. And--after Jerome had done this the phenomena hadoccurred in the library, not in the dining-room.
"By Jove!" ejaculated General Hume, as I pointed this out. "This may besomething more, you know, that mere coincidence!"
Sir Henry said nothing, but continued his spading. He paid attention tonothing save the heap that Jerome had formed. And with each spadeful hebent over and examined the clay very carefully.
Miss Clarke and Mme. Le Fabre both remained very calm about it all.Each from her own viewpoint regarded the work as more or less a waste oftime. But I noticed that they did not take their eyes from the spade.
Sir Henry stopped to rest. "Let me," offered Herold; and went on as theEnglishman had done, holding up each spadeful for inspection. And it wasthus that we made a strange discovery.
We all saw it at the same time. Embedded in the bluish earth was asmall, egg-shaped piece of light-coloured stone. And protruding from itsupper surface was a tiny, blood-red pebble, no bigger than a good-sizedshot.
Herold thrust the point of his spade under the stone, to lift it up.Whereupon he gave a queer exclamation.
"Well, that's funny!" holding the stone up in front of us. "That littlething's as heavy as--as--it's HEAVIER than lead!"
Sir Henry picked the stone off the spade. Immediately the materialcrumbled in his hands, as though rotting, so that it left only thesmall, red pebble intact. Sir Henry weighed this thoughtfully in hispalm, then without a word handed it around.
We all wondered at the pebble. It was most astonishingly heavy. As Isay, it was no bigger than a fair-sized shot, yet it was vastly heavier.
Afterward we weighed it, upstairs, and found that the trifle weighedover half a pound. Considering its very small bulk, this worked out tobe a specific gravity of 192.6 or almost ten times as heavy as the samebulk of pure gold. And gold is heavy.
Inevitably we saw that there must be some connection between thisunprecedentedly heavy speck of material and that lighter-than-air gemof mystery. For the time being we were careful to keep the two apart. Asfor the unexplained footsteps, they were still slightly audible, as theinvisible creatures moved around the cellar.
At last we turned to go. I let the
others lead the way. Thus I wasthe last to approach the steps; and it was at that moment that I feltsomething brush against my foot.
I stooped down. My hands collided with the thing that had touched me.And I found myself clutching--
Something invisible--something which, in that brilliant light, showedabsolutely nothing to my eyes. But my hands told me I was grasping avery real thing, as real as my fingers themselves.
I made some sort of incoherent exclamation. The others turned and peeredat me.
"What is it?" came Herold's excited voice.
"I don't know!" I gasped. "Come here."
But Sir Henry was the first to reach me. Next instant he, too, wasfingering the tiny, unseen object. And such was his iron nerve andsuperior self-control, he identified it almost at once.
"By the lord!"--softly. "Why, it's a small bird! Come here."
Another second and they were all there. I was glad enough of it; for,like a flash, with an unexpectedness that startles me even now as Ithink of it--
The thing became visible. Right in my grasp, a little fluttering birdcame to life.
The Blind Spot Page 28