The Gloved Hand Read online

  CHAPTER VII

  THE TRAGEDY

  The wall was masked on the other side by a dense growth of shrubbery,and struggling through this, I found myself on the gravelled pathwhere I had seen Marjorie Vaughan. Before me, along this path, sped ashadow which I knew to be Godfrey, and I followed at top speed. At theend of a moment, I caught a flash of light among the trees, and knewthat we were nearing the house; but I saw no sign of Swain.

  We came to the stretch of open lawn, crossed it, and, guided by thelight, found ourselves at the end of a short avenue of trees. At theother end, a stream of light poured from an open door, and againstthat light a running figure was silhouetted. Even as I saw it, itbounded through the open door and vanished.

  "It's Swain!" gasped Godfrey; and then we, too, were at that opendoor.

  For an instant, I thought the room was empty. Then, from behind thetable in the centre, a demoniac, blood-stained figure rose into view,holding in its arms a white-robed woman. With a sort of nervous shock,I saw that the man was Swain, and the woman Marjorie Vaughan. Athrill of fear ran through me as I saw how her head fell backwardsagainst his shoulder, how her arms hung limp....

  Without so much as a glance in our direction, he laid her gently on acouch, fell to his knees beside it, and began to chafe her wrists.

  It was Godfrey who mastered himself first, and who stepped forward toSwain's side.

  "Is she dead?" he asked.

  Swain shook his head impatiently, without looking up.

  "How is she hurt?" Godfrey persisted, bending closer above theunconscious girl.

  Swain shot him one red glance.

  "She's not hurt!" he said, hoarsely. "She has fainted--that's all. Goaway."

  But Godfrey did not go away. After one burning look at Swain'slowering face, he bent again above the still figure on the couch, andtouched his fingers to the temples. What he saw or felt seemed toreassure him, for his voice was more composed when he spoke again.

  "I think you're right, Swain," he said. "But we'd better callsomeone."

  "Call away!" snarled Swain.

  "You mean there's no one here? Surely, her father ..."

  He stopped, for at the words Swain had burst into a hoarse laugh.

  "Her father!" he cried. "Oh, yes; he's here! Call him! He's overthere!"

  He made a wild gesture toward a high-backed easy-chair beside thetable, his eyes gleaming with an almost fiendish excitement; then thegleam faded, and he turned back to the girl.

  Godfrey cast one astonished glance at him and strode to the chair. Isaw his face quiver with sudden horror, I saw him catch at the tablefor support, and for an instant he stood staring down. Then he turnedstiffly toward me and motioned me to approach.

  In the chair a man sat huddled forward--a grey-haired man, clad in awhite robe. His hands were gripping the chair-arms as though in agony.His head hung down almost upon his knees.

  Silently Godfrey reached down and raised the head. And a cry of horrorburst from both of us.

  The face was purple with congested blood, the tongue swollen andhorribly protruding, the eyes suffused and starting from theirsockets. And then, at a motion from Godfrey's finger, I saw that aboutthe neck a cord was tightly knotted. The man had been strangled.

  Godfrey, after a breathless moment in which he made sure that the manwas quite dead, let the head fall forward again. It turned me sick tosee how low it sagged, how limp it hung. And I saw that the collar ofthe white robe was spotted with blood.

  I do not know what was in Godfrey's mind, but, by a common impulse, weturned and looked at Swain. He was still on his knees beside thecouch. Apparently he had forgotten our presence.

  "It's plain enough," said Godfrey, his voice thick with emotion. "Shecame in and found the body. No wonder she screamed like that! Butwhere are the servants? Where is everybody?"

  The same thought was in my own mind. The utter silence of the house,the fact that no one came, added, somehow, to the horror of themoment. Those wild screams must have echoed from cellar to garret--andyet no one came!

  Godfrey made a rapid scrutiny of the room, which was evidently thelibrary, with a double door opening upon the grounds and anotheropposite opening into the hall. On the wall beside the inner door, hefound an electric button, and he pushed it for some moments, but therewas no response. If it rang a bell, the bell was so far away that wecould not hear it.

  A heavy curtain hung across the doorway. Godfrey pulled it aside andpeered into the hall beyond. The hall was dark and silent. With facedecidedly grim, he took his torch from one pocket and his pistol fromanother.

  "Come along, Lester," he said. "We've got to look into this. Have yourtorch ready--and your pistol. God knows what further horrors thishouse contains!"

  He pulled back the curtain, so that the hall was lighted to someextent from the open doorway, and then passed through, I after him.The hall was a broad one, running right through the centre of thehouse from front to rear. Godfrey proceeded cautiously and yet rapidlythe whole length of it, flashing his torch into every room. They wereall luxuriously furnished, but were empty of human occupants. From thekitchen, which closed the hall at the rear, a flight of stone stepsled down into the basement, and Godfrey descended these with asteadiness I could not but admire. We found ourselves in a square,stone-flagged room, evidently used as a laundry. Two doors opened outof it, but both were secured with heavy padlocks.

  "Store-rooms or wine-cellars, perhaps," Godfrey ventured, mounted thestairs again to the kitchen, and returned to the room whence we hadstarted.

  Everything there was as we had left it. The dead man sat huddledforward in his chair; Swain was still on his knees beside the couch;the girl had not stirred. Godfrey went to the side of the couch, and,disregarding Swain's fierce glance, again placed his fingers lightlyon the girl's left temple. Then he came back to me.

  "If she doesn't revive pretty soon," he said, "we'll have to tryheroic measures. But there must be somebody in the house. Let's lookupstairs."

  He led the way up the broad stairs, which rose midway of the hall,sending a long ray of light ahead of him. I followed in no very happyframe of mind, for I confess that this midnight exploration of anunknown house, with a murdered man for its only occupant, was gettingon my nerves. But Godfrey proceeded calmly and systematically.

  The hall above corresponded to that below, with two doors on eachside, opening into bedroom suites. The first was probably that of themaster of the house. It consisted of bedroom, bath and dressing-room,but there was no one there. The next was evidently Miss Vaughan's. Italso had a bath and a daintily-furnished boudoir; but these, too, wereempty.

  Then, as we opened the door across the hall, a strange odour salutedus--an odour suggestive somehow of the East--which, in the firstmoment, caught the breath from the throat, and in the second seemed tomuffle and retard the beating of the heart.

  A flash of Godfrey's torch showed that we were in a little entry,closed at the farther end by a heavy drapery. Godfrey strode forwardand swept the drapery aside. The rush of perfume was over-powering,and through the opening came a soft glow of light.

  It was a moment before I got my breath; then a mist seemed to fallfrom before my eyes and a strange sense of exaltation and well-beingstole through me. I saw Godfrey standing motionless, transfixed, withone hand holding back the drapery, and his torch hanging unused in theother, and I crept forward and peered over his shoulder at thestrangest scene I have ever gazed upon.

  Just in front of us, poised in the air some three feet from the floor,hung a sphere of crystal, glowing with a soft radiance which seemed towax and wane, to quiver almost to darkness and then to burn moreclearly. It was like a dreamer's pulse, fluttering, pausing, leaping,in accord with his vision. And as I gazed at the sphere, I fancied Icould see within it strange, elusive shapes, which changed and mergedand faded from moment to moment, and yet grew always clearer and moresuggestive. I bent forward, straining my eyes to see them better, tofathom their meaning ...

  Godfr
ey, turning to speak to me, saw my attitude and shook me roughlyby the arm.

  "Don't do that, Lester!" he growled in my ear. "Take your eyes offthat crystal!"

  I tried to move my eyes, but could not, until Godfrey pulled me aroundto face him. I stood blinking at him stupidly.

  "I was nearly gone, myself, before I realised the danger," he said. "Asphere like that can hypnotise a man more quickly than anything elseon earth, especially when his resistance is lessened, as it is by thisheavy perfume."

  "It was rather pleasant," I said. "I should like to try it some time."

  "Well, you can't try it now. You've got something else to do. Besides,it has two victims already."

  "Two victims?"

  "Look carefully, but keep your eyes off the sphere," he said, andswung me around toward the room again.

  The room was shrouded in impenetrable darkness, except for the faintand quivering radiance which the sphere emitted, and as I plunged myeyes into its depths in an effort to see what lay there, it seemed tome that I had never seen blackness so black. As I stared into it,with straining eyes, a vague form grew dimly visible beside theglowing sphere; and then I recoiled a little, for suddenly it tookshape and I saw it was a man.

  I had a queer fancy, as I stood there, that it was really a pictureinto which I was gazing--one of Rembrandt's--for, gradually, onedetail after another emerged from the darkness, vague shadows took onshape and meaning, but farther back there was always more shadow, andfarther back still more ...

  The man was sitting cross-legged on a low divan, his hands crossed infront of him and hanging limply between his knees. His clothing Icould see but vaguely, for it was merged into the darkness about him,but his hands stood out white against it. He was staring straight atthe crystal, with unwavering and unwinking gaze, and sat as motionlessas though carved in stone. The glow from the sphere picked out hisprofile with a line of light--I could see the high forehead, thestrong, curved nose, the full lips shaded by a faint moustache, andthe long chin, only partially concealed by a close-clipped beard. Itwas a wonderful and compelling face, especially as I then saw it, andI gazed at it for a long moment.

  "It's the adept, I suppose," said Godfrey, no longer taking care tolower his voice.

  It sounded unnaturally loud in the absolute stillness of the room,and I looked at the adept quickly, but he had not moved.

  "Can't he hear you?" I asked.

  "No--he couldn't hear a clap of thunder. That is, unless he's faking."

  I looked again at the impassive figure.

  "He's not faking," I said.

  "I don't know," and Godfrey shook his head sceptically. "It looks likethe real thing--but these fellows are mighty clever. Do you see theother victim? There's no fake about it!"

  "I see no one else," I said, after a vain scrutiny.

  "Look carefully on the other side of the sphere. Don't you seesomething there?"

  My eyes were smarting under the strain, and for a moment longer I sawnothing; then a strange, grey shape detached itself from theblackness. It was an ugly and repulsive shape, slender below, butswelling hideously at the top, and as I stared at it, it seemed to methat it returned my stare with malignant eyes screened by a pair ofwhite-rimmed glasses. Then, with a sensation of dizziness, I saw thatthe shape was swaying gently back and forth, in a sort of rhythm. Andthen, quite suddenly, I saw what it was, and a chill of horrorquivered up my back.

  It was a cobra.

  To and fro it swung, to and fro, its staring eyes fixed upon thesphere, its spectacled hood hideously distended.

  The very soul within me trembled as I gazed at those unwinking eyes.What did they see in the sphere? What was passing in that inscrutablebrain? Could it, too, reconstruct the past, read the mysteries of thefuture ...

  Some awful power, greater than my will, seemed stretching itstentacles from the darkness: I felt them dragging at me, certain,remorseless, growing stronger and stronger ...

  With something very like a shriek of terror, I tore myself away, outof the entry, into the hall, to the stairs, and down them into thelighted room below.

  And as I stood there, gasping for breath, Godfrey followed me, and Isaw that his face, too, was livid.