Part 11 (2/2)
”I've more to tell you since I saw you yesterday, Mr. John,” said Jones huskily. He adopted toward the young man that mixture of patronage and servility which indicates, in a menial, the acceptance of some bribe in return for a dereliction of duty. ”We saw her last night, sir. I thought I heard a burglar downstairs and dressed myself and went out to see. On the landing I met the master coming out of his room. He had heard the noise too. We went down softlike, and suddenly we saw her, as plain as life, coming along the pa.s.sage.”
”Who was she?” interrupted Sykes in a voice choking with emotion.
”That I wouldn't take it upon myself to say, sir,” said the butler with a smirk. ”'Twasn't anybody I know, leastways, so far as I could tell by the walk, because she wore a veil and was all in white, which is a powerful disguiser for females, sir. So I says to myself: 'Jones, if the master chooses to have young female ghosts in his house at 2 in the morning, that ain't no business of yours.' So I turns to go back, and, while I was looking at her, she disappeared, right under my eyes.
Suddenly Sykes flew at the man like a deerhound and grasped him by the collar, shaking him furiously.
”You rascal, tell me who the woman was,” he cried.
The butler's face turned purple.
”'Twasn't anybody I know, sir,” he gasped, breaking loose and reeling back against the wall. ”I'll swear it wasn't any human living being, sir. She vanished right before my very eyesa””
Sykes stood off and looked at the man contemptuously.
”Jones,” he said, ”you are a dirty, lying hound. You told your cronies here that it was Mrs. Sykes.”
The man began to tremble.
”You know me from old times, Jones,” continued the young man more coldly. ”You shall have one chance to prove your statement, and if you can't I'll shoot you like a dog.”
”I swear” a” the man began to babble a” ”I swear I told n.o.body. But it was her, Mr. John, and I can't lie to you. I'm willing to prove it and to stake my life on it.”
”Jones,” said the young man, ”these gentlemen are friends of mine. At 10 o'clock tonight, or as soon afterward as the light goes out in your master's study, we shall be at the side door. You will unlock it and admit us to the empty picture gallery which commands a full view of the corridors. Here!” He took a roll of bills from his pocket and peeled off half a dozen. ”Take this for your services. And if ever you say a word in the villagea””
”Yes sir a” yes, Mr. John,” babbled the man, pouching the money with avidity. ”I'll be there on time, sir.” He turned and crept out of the room. Once outside, however, he gradually rea.s.sumed his jaunty demeanor.
When he was gone, John Sykes began to pace the floor with long strides. Brodsky and I watched him in silence. Presently he wheeled and came up to us.
”You see my wife's name has become a byword of village gossip,” he exclaimed angrily. ”Evidently in her infatuation she has lost all sense of fear. As likely as not she is even now planning a return trip to the mansion. I have no criticism to make, of her,” he went on brokenly. ”It is my brother who has first robbed me of my inheritance and then of the only woman I have loved. May, they be accurseda””
”Stop!” said Brodsky, laying his hand restrainingly upon the young man's shoulder. ”It will be time to accuse her when you know. At present you know nothing.”
John Sykes looked at him incredulously.
”Do you mean a” that there can be any hope?” he whispered hoa.r.s.ely. ”Do you think she is innocent?”
”I believe in all women as long as I can,” said Brodsky simply.
Nevertheless, looking into his face, I read the struggle which he was undergoing against the weight of the evidence. And suddenly the young man collapsed into a chair and buried his face in his hands. He pulled a locket from his breast, opened it, and pressed his lips to the inside. Then he held it up to us.
”Look at it,” he whispered. ”Look at her face and say what you can read there.”
It was the miniature of a young woman. She was strikingly beautiful, even in this land of beautiful women; but what held and fascinated the observer was the quality of innocence and purity that seemed to s.h.i.+ne through the external features, as a light in a lamp. The artist had done his work surpa.s.singly well. I stole a glance at Brodsky; his brow had cleared.
”I believe in her,” he said again. ”And I think before the night has gone your fears and doubts will have been dispelled. Courage, friend. And now let us have supper, for the physical condition has a powerful reaction upon the spirits.”
It was a mournful supper in the deserted inn. Brodsky was at his best. He kept us amused with countless anecdotes of his own life. I had never known how much he had undergone, what he had seen, now tramping through Europe as a penniless student, now taking a leading part in the battle for Polish freedom; anon, imprisoned in the underground dungeon at St. Peter and St. Paul, escaping in a workman's clothes and working his way to America as a sailor under the noses of the Russian Marine officers. But, though once or twice our companion's face lit up and he smiled faintly, it was evident that he was almost overwhelmed by the tragedy that had come into his life.
No further reference was made to the engagement of the evening, but we sat there, smoking and talking, and listening to Brodsky, until ten strokes rang out from the old-fas.h.i.+oned clock in the corner. Then, with a deep sigh, the young man rose and led the way out into the darkness of the fall evening. At the end of the street the large bulk of the mansion appeared, cutting off the view beyond with its great mansard roof and outbuildings, of which the Sykes cottage seemed to form a part. Even as we looked, a light went out suddenly in a lower window, to reappear shortly afterward immediately overhead. The master of the mansion had retired to his room.
As we pa.s.sed silently down the deserted street I caught the faint reflection from the light above the door of the inn as it struck upon some rounded, metallic thing which the young man was fingering. It was a pistol. On the way I contrived to s.n.a.t.c.h a fleeting word with Brodsky.
”Doctor,” I said, ”you are abetting a murder.”
”No,” he answered me, ”I am saving a woman's name and her husband's happiness.
We halted at a side door and waited. After quite an interval the butler came out and admitted us. He led the way on tiptoe, we following with infinite precautions, along a corridor, up some carpeted stairs, and out upon the dimly lit circle of an old picture gallery, where generations of the Sykes family looked gravely down from their heavily gilded frames. The sight aroused the young man to a frenzy of pa.s.sion. This was the inheritance of which he had been defrauded! I saw him shake as with an ague, saw his fingers tighten convulsively upon the handle of his pistol; then I saw Brodsky's restraining arm encircle his shoulders and steady him. The little drama was enacted in, perfect silence. We crouched down at the edge of the platform, below which we could see the pa.s.sages of the rambling old structure radiating away on the three sides as spokes of a wheel. And we waited, s.h.i.+vering, there, none speaking, only gluing our eyes upon the distant end of the corridor which led toward the wing of the mansion which Philip Sykes occupied. The butler had slipped away, but John had forgotten him.
Eleven o'clock boomed out from a deep-sounding clock; the air grew chilly. I s.h.i.+vered. I looked at Brodsky. He was watching every movement of his patient, his hand, alert and sinuous, seemingly ready to leap forth to restrain him from any deed of rashness. But John was oblivious to both of us also; he fingered his pistol and knelt there watching, watchinga”
Crouching there, we three seemed to have become actors in some horrible drama that was being enacted for the benefit of those rows of silent ghosts, those family ancestors of dead and gone Sykes, looking out, starched and bewigged, from their gold frames, which were so faintly illuminated by the dull light of the low gas jets that the painted figures seemed to stand out as in a stereoscope, to have the verisimilitude of living men. I must have become half-hypnotized by the monotony of watching. My mind slipped away from the work that was at hand. I was living over my life in other places, thinking of the past, of the ambitions and aspirations with which I had started out on my career, of my strange meeting with Brodsky, of a thousand things.
Suddenly I felt Brodsky's fingers tighten upon my sleeve. I glanced along the distant corridor. My heart bounded in my breast and seemed to stand still. For there, emerging from out of the gloom, clothed in a misty garment, her head covered with a filmy veil, was a woman that glided toward us as no human, waking being moves, the eyes fixed and trancelike. For all the dimness and distance I knew her. It was the woman of the miniature. Brodsky recognized her, too, and the young man.
I saw his figure stiffen; every muscle in his body became as taut as steel. He crouched there, watching her, upon his face an aspect of horror and hatred terrible to witness. The figure approached us; now it was directly under us and had not seemed to notice us. Suddenly his hand shot out; I saw the gleam of the pistol. Then, still more quickly, I saw Brodsky's arm dart forward, and an instant later the heavy report of the discharge went echoing through the half-empty house, arousing a thousand echoes among the rafters.
I was upon my feet and Brodsky was pulling at my sleeve. ”Follow me,” he cried. ”To the cottage!”
He dragged me after him, and the young man followed us. I moved as though in a dream, under Brodsky's compulsion; but, though we ran like the wind, John Sykes easily outstripped us. I knew what pa.s.sion winged his speed. Overhead we heard noises and movement. Shouts were borne after us.
”This way,” cried the doctor, as I halted, confused, in the middle of the winding galleries. He pulled me toward the door. Another moment and we were outside, pressing the yielding turf beneath our feet. We ran around the house and darted toward the cottage, John Sykes ahead of us, the pistol still clenched in his hand. From the right we heard the sound of a man running. At the very door of the cottage Philip Sykes broke out upon us; and, as Philip drew back in amazement, John leaped at him, bearing him down upon the threshold, striving to free his right arm to gain pistol vantage. Philip perceived the peril and fought desperately for life; John's hand was upon his throat, his brother's grasp relaxed; another instant all would have been over. But even at the moment of his triumph he stopped and staggered backward. For the door had opened, and there, confronting us, fully attired, a lantern in her hand, her eyes wide with suspense and terror, was the lady of the miniature. And the three waited motionless as figures carved out of stone, till Brodsky stepped up and broke the silence. He took the pistol from John Sykes' unresisting hand.
”Let us go in and talk over the matter,” he said.
If tears are akin to laughter, tragedy is surely akin to comedy. For hours, as it seems to me now, the four of them sat in the little cottage parlor, laughing incoherently, listening at first incredulously to the account that Brodsky unfolded. For the merest chance words let drop by John Sykes during their first interview had set him upon the track of his daring hypothesis, which he had courageously verified, even at the risk of murder. Afterward they began to believe, though I am not sure that Philip Sykes believes it yet; as for John, his joy at the restoration of his confidence in the lady drowned all baser emotions of rage or resentment. For, whatever other explanation there might have been, he knew that his wife could not possibly have been inside his brother's house in person, when she had met him at his own door.
”I was not sure until the end that my hypothesis was correct,” said Brodsky. ”But it was your statement of the sentimental regard which Mrs. Sykes felt for the old mansion, and her deep disappointment at the loss of it, that put me upon the track. Do you recollect the tenth commandment, which begins: 'Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house?' many people have wondered at the inclusion of so comparatively, as it seems-venial a sin among those of theft and murder.
”Yet, like most things, that commandment exists with very good reason, for undoubtedly the Great Lawgiver was acquainted with the physical results of spiritual things. There was a ghost in the mansion.” He turned to Mrs. Sykes. ”Have you not dreamed of it continually?” he asked.
”Often and often,” she answered.
”You were the ghost,” said Brodsky. ”It was you, who by the strength of your longing, were nightly transplanted there. You were there in spirit, but not in body, when we watched in the gallery. And had that pistol bullet pierced your ghostly form it would have killed you none the less surely, so intimately a.s.sociated are the body and that Psychical envelope which men miscall the soul, which is the body of desires and emotions. And unless you can overcome this longing, I confess I fear that you will continue to haunt the mansion.”
”I shall haunt it no more,” replied Mrs. Sykes, laughing. ”My brother-in-law was willing long ago to dispose of it to my husband.”
”Indeed, I have been most anxious to do so,” said Philip, ”But my brother, who has inherited the Sykes temper, refused all overtures for reconciliation until your happy intervention this evening. But now I shall insist upon his taking the place off my hands upon any terms he will accept, for I confess I am a practical sort of 'man and don't want to be troubled by ghosts, even when they, are the personal property of a very, charming and newly-discovered sister-in-law.”
A VICTIM OF HIGHER s.p.a.cE.
[Psychic sleuth: John Silence].
Algernon Blackwood.
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