Part 29 (2/2)

There is nothing to be gained by worrying oneself, as you have evidently been doing.”

”I can see that you do not believe what I have told you,” I cried with great bitterness. ”Sir Edward, I implore you to do so. I a.s.sure you on my honour as a gentleman, I will swear, by any oath you care to name, that what I say is true in every particular. Pharos is still in London, in Park Lane, and if you are quick you can capture him. But there is not a moment to lose. For G.o.d's sake believe me before it is too late!”

”I have listened to all you have said, my dear Cyril,” he answered soothingly, ”and I can quite understand that you believe it to be true.

You have been ill, and it is plain your always excitable imagination has not yet recovered its equilibrium. Go home, as I say, and rest. Trust me, you will soon be yourself once more. Now I must go.”

”Oh, heavens! how can I convince you?” I groaned, wringing my hands. ”Is there nothing I can say or do that will make you believe my story? You will find out when it is too late that I have told you the truth. Men and women are dying like sheep to right and left of us, and yet the vile author of all this sorrow and suffering will escape unpunished. Is it any use, Sir Edward, for me to address one last appeal to you?”

Then a notion struck me. I thrust my hand into my coat pocket and produced the prescription which Pharos had given me for Valerie in Hamburg, and which, since it had done her so much good, I had been careful not to let out of my possession.

”Take that, Sir Edward,” I said. ”I came to make my confession to you because I deemed it my duty, and because of the load upon my brain, which I thought it might help to lighten. You will not believe me, so what can I do? This paper contains the only prescription which has yet been effectual in checking the disease. It saved the life of Valerie de Vocxqal, and I can vouch for its efficacy. Show it to the medical authorities. It is possible it may convince them that I am not as mad as you think me.”

He took it from me, but it was plain to me, from the look upon his face, that he believed it to be only another part of my delusion.

”If it will make your mind any easier,” he said, ”I will give you my word that it shall be placed before the members of the Commission. If they deem it likely that any good can result from it, you may be sure it will be used.”

He then wished me good-bye, and, with a feeling of unavailing rage and disappointment in my heart, I left the Offices and pa.s.sed out into Whitehall. Once more I made my way into St. James's Park, and reaching a secluded spot, threw myself down upon the turf and buried my face in my arms. At first I could think of nothing but my own shame; then my thoughts turned to Valerie. In my trouble I had for the moment forgotten her. Coward that I was, I had considered my own safety before hers. If anything happened to me, who would protect her? I was still debating this with myself when my ears caught the sound of a footstep on the hard ground, and then the rustle of a dress. A moment later a voice sounded in my ears like the sweetest music. ”Thank G.o.d!” it said, ”Oh! thank G.o.d! I have found you.”

Her cry of happiness ended in a little choking sob, and I turned and looked up to discover Valerie, her beautiful eyes streaming with tears, bending over me.

”How did you find me?” I inquired, in a voice that my love and longing for her rendered almost inaudible. ”How did you know that I was here?”

”Love told me,” she answered softly. ”My heart led me to you. You forget the strange power with which I am gifted. Though I did not see you leave the house, I knew that you were gone, and my instinct warned me not only where you were going, but what you were going to do. Cyril, it was brave of you to go.”

”It was useless,” I cried. ”I have failed. He would not believe me, Valerie, and I am lost eternally!”

”Hus.h.!.+” she said. ”Dear love, you must not say such things. They are not true. But rise. You must come to him. All this morning he has not been at all the same. I do not know what to think, but something is going to happen, I am certain.”

There was no need for her to say to whom she referred.

I did as she commanded me, and side by side we crossed the park.

”He has made arrangements to leave England this afternoon,” she continued, as we pa.s.sed into Piccadilly. ”The yacht is in the Thames, and orders have been sent to hold her in readiness for a long voyage.”

”And what does he intend doing with us?”

”I know nothing of that,” she answered. ”But there is something very strange about him to-day. When he sent for me this morning I scarcely knew him, he was so changed.”

We made our way along the deserted streets and presently reached Park Lane. As soon as we were inside the house I ascended the stairs beside her, and it was not until we had reached the top floor, on which Pharos's room was situated, that we paused before a door. Listening before it, we could plainly hear someone moving about inside. When we knocked, a voice I failed to recognise called upon us to enter. It was a strange picture we saw when we did so. In a large armchair before a roaring fire, though it was the middle of summer, sat Pharos, but so changed that I hardly knew him. He looked half his usual size; his skin hung loose about his face, as if the bones had shrunken underneath it; his eyes, always so deep-set in his head, were now so much sunken that they could scarcely be seen, while his hands were shrivelled until they resembled those of a mummy more than a man. The monkey also, which was huddled beside him in the chair, looked smaller than I had ever seen it.

As if this were not enough, the room was filled with Egyptian curios from floor to ceiling. So many were there, indeed, that there barely remained room for Pharos's chair. How he had obtained possession of them I did not understand; but since Sir George Legrath's confession, written shortly before his tragic death by his own hand, the mystery has been solved, and Pharos confronts us in an even more unenviable light than before. Hating, loathing, and yet fearing the man as I did, there was something in his look now that roused an emotion in me that was almost akin to pity.

”Thou hast come in time,” he said to Valerie, but in a different voice and without that harshness to which we had so long grown accustomed. ”I have been anxiously awaiting thee.”

He signed to her to approach him.

”Give me your hand,” he whispered faintly. ”Through you it is decreed that I must learn my fate. Courage, courage--there is naught for thee to fear!”

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