i expected miss ottley next afternoon, and hubbard, as though aware i wished to be alone, went out soon after three. but she did not come. hubbard returned an hour after midnight. he kept me awake by tramping about his room until far into the small hours. next morning i found the library filled with corded boxes and hubbard's man padlocking the last of them. "master's gone to france, and i'm to follow," he announced with an air of suppressed exultation. "he left this letter for you."
the letter contained these lines: "i know you at length for the cunning scamp you are. how you must have laughed at me. but i forgive you. we shall be away a year, at least. as always, everything i have is yours. let us find you here on our return. i cannot write more. my heart is too full. pinsent, she loves me! d. h." the last three words were deeply underlined. by the end of that week i had completed the revision of my book and forwarded the manuscript to mr. coen. afterwards, i was uncomfortably lonely and unoccupied. i waited in from three to five every [pg 212]afternoon, but no one came. the rest of the days i spent wandering about the streets nursing the long sickness of too much thinking. the end of it was, i disobeyed miss ottley and went one afternoon to call on her. i might as well have saved myself the trouble. she was "out," likewise her father and dr. belleville. two days later i called again. again everyone was out. then i wrote a guarded note and sent it with an advance copy of my book, asking for an expression of her opinion. after much waiting, i received a long typewritten disquisition challenging on apocryphal authority my attribution of a stele superscribed by amen-aken to the fourteenth dynasty. it was signed by miss ottley, but i failed to recognise it as her composition. one evening, however, having nothing else to do, i applied to its verbiage the simple rules of a well-known cipher. this gave me an astonishing result. "impossible see you without endangering your life. constant supervision." but it was worth testing the matter further. i therefore composed a formal reply to the challenge, showing my reasons for concluding that amen-aken had unwarrantably altered for purposes of his own glorification the historic record of a predecessor. i used the same cipher and embodied the following message by its aid: "shall pass the house before midnight friday. throw letter from window explaining all! i live to serve you." this document i forwarded to miss ottley enclosed in a letter in[pg 213] which i took pains to show that i had been disappointed by her criticism, and that i was not anxious for the correspondence to be continued. then i waited as patiently as possible for friday to come round. the hours passed with leaden feet, but they passed—and midnight found me in the lane walking slowly by the house. it was wrapped in gloom from roof to basement, but her window was open. as the clocks began to chime, a white thing flashed out and fluttered to my feet. it was a kerchief weighted with a golden bracelet. i felt a paper crinkle in its folds. hastily concealing it within my coat, i pressed on and returned by a circuitous route to bruton street. soon i was poring over my treasure. it was typewritten like the challenge. it read: "i have been obliged to typewrite this, because i am a close prisoner and am forbidden the use of pen or pencil. but they make me work as their stenographer some hours each day—and i was forced to seize the opportunity so presented. thank god you understood the cipher. if you love me give out that you proceed immediately to egypt. then go to paris and return to london under another name and well disguised. take lodgings east; and wait until you see in personal column of daily wire directions addressed to 'd. menchikoff!' follow them implicitly! am in power of fiends. open opposition perilous. must allay suspicion. otherwise forced immediate marriage b." here the missive ended.
[pg 214]
i sat down before the fire and thought hard for some minutes. the paper was crunched up in my hand. suddenly the door opened. i turned my head at the sound of the creak, but could see no one. what could have opened the door? i heard the sound of caught breath, a foot on the door and a sigh. in a flash i understood. i had been seen by my enemies picking up the letter in the street, and they had sent their invisible messenger to win it from me. quick as thought i thrust the paper in the flames and sprang afoot. there followed a deep-voiced oath and a rush of air fanned my face. i struck out with all my strength right and left, half beside myself with rage and fear. but my blows encountered nothing tangible, and a second later the door banged shut. i was so unnerved that i simply walked over and locked it. how can a man fight with an enemy he cannot see? or even follow him? when my hands stopped shaking i began to pack up my trunks. i resolved to follow miss ottley's bidding to the letter. to-morrow i would announce my departure for egypt and cross the channel in order to put belleville off the track. meanwhile i ransacked my wardrobe. presently i received a shock. from an unremembered corner in a chest i brought out the clothes i had worn on the day of poor weldon's death. they were covered with dyed bloodstains, the blood of my dead friend. i placed them on the table and eyed them, shuddering. my mind, as if spell-compelled,[pg 215] reviewed all the details of weldon's death. i saw him stagger back, back, and fall beneath the wheels of the onrushing locomotive. i heard his dying shriek. once more i struggled desperately, but alas! how vainly with the dark angel, for his life. once more, as the end approached, i saw his glazed eyes open and look into mine. once more i heard his dying words—"give me your hand!"
and but—god in heaven! how could i ever have forgotten it! had he not given me something—something i had put in my pocket half unconsciously without looking to see what it was—something he had implored me to "keep safe."
i felt my senses rock at the recollection; and then i went hot all over with shame, to think of my neglect, my inattention. until that moment—despite his dying direction, i had utterly forgotten his sad trust. and the thing he had given me to keep—where was it now? where, indeed, but in the pocket of that coat where i had placed it. oh! it was safe enough, no doubt—but that did not absolve me. for weeks i had been a recreant trustee. i had, i saw it now, i had been a coward. i felt his death so much that i had resolutely put all thoughts of him aside, smothered them with work, fearing the misery which they must bring. and i had been his friend!
i took up the coat and felt in the pocket. yes, it was there. what was it? i drew it out before the light and saw nothing! yet i held something[pg 216] heavy and hard. was i going mad? was my sight diseased or what? i rubbed my eyes and looked again. nothing! i strode over to the gas jet and held the thing between my visual organs and the flame. ah! something now! but how describe it? i saw a small light blur; a sort of shapeless haze off which the rays, the jet of light diffused, recoiled obliquely. it was not transparent, but neither was it in the true sense visible. it seemed to defy the light rays, to repulse them rather than absorb them. when held directly before the flame i could not see the gas jet through it, and yet itself i could not truly see. it confused and disarranged my vision as a watery mote does floating on the surface of an eyeball. slowly and surely experimenting with the thing, i found that the farther i withdrew it from the lamp the less sensibly my sense became aware of its existence. but when i placed it directly against the lamp the flame became mysteriously obscured. i say mysteriously, because the thing cast no discoverable shadow, and although solid to the sense of touch, it was not otherwise apparently opaque. the flame still burned behind it, and i still saw the flame, yet not through, but over and around an intermediate blur. in that connection the thing did not resemble glass. had the reverse been the case i should have seen the flame through it directly. as it was, as far as i can make out, the impression of the flame was conveyed to my retina by rays of light that[pg 217] did not travel in a straight path. they climbed over and surrounded the interposed object first, and thus gave me a slightly distorted image of the flame; and instead of revealing the obstacle which they had to overcome in transit, all they did was to indicate vaguely its situation. thus, above and below the indiscernible point where their straight and proper course was interfered with i perceived a misty, indefinable haze. and at the point where the rays seemed to reassemble and readjust themselves to the resumption of their ordinary business there was a blur. perhaps the best way to depict the effect was to present the hypothesis of a weak flame held up before a stronger one. this does not exactly describe the phenomenon i witnessed and investigated, but it approximates as closely as i can manage. the chief points of difference are, that every flame casts a shadow, and this thing did not, unless a blur of light be a shadow; and furthermore, a flame may be seen even confronted with a stronger flame, and this thing i held was destitute of a perceptible outline. the pity was that i was then working without a single clue to any comprehension of the thing; and the greater pity is that though my knowledge became fuller, i am still ignorant of the action of the properties which made the thing visually impalpable. i can only guess at them. but i think i guess correctly when i conjecturally assert that it was surface coated with some essence which had the power to compel the[pg 218] great majority of the light rays to travel along its sides and surface and to resume their original direction afterwards. i do not pretend to understand how this essence could so interfere with and control the laws of light. but granting that it could, the explanation is a natural one. and though scientists may frown at me for advancing a theory which i am unable to substantiate, i prefer to incur their scorn rather than adopt the alternative—supernatural agency. i simply decline to believe in the supernatural. it is my profound conviction that nothing has ever happened on this planet, however mysterious and inexplicable, which has not been produced by a purely and perfectly natural cause. and the longer i live the more certain do i become that, deep and wonderful as our scientific acquaintance with nature undoubtedly is, we have not yet even thoroughly explored the porch of her palace of secrets, her vast treasure-house of wonders.
but i stray from my subject. it is my present business to relate events, not to discuss their basic principles.
to resume then, after a great while spent in experimenting with the thing which poor weldon had given me, before the light, i was obliged to confess myself baffled. i then fell back upon my other four senses. i got out a pair of scales and weighed the thing. it weighed exactly seven ounces. then i smelt it. the thing was odourless. i bit it, but it was tasteless. yet it yielded to my[pg 219] teeth like stiff rubber or leather. next i placed it on a sheet of paper and traced its outlines with a pencil. that was the first really definite result i got. the tracing showed a bulbous object four inches wide by five long. it was shaped something like a pear. its base contained four indentations with corresponding rounded protuberances like knuckles. the apex was ragged. next i took a knife and with the blade scratched its surface. a moment later a long streak of dark, dry tissue was revealed. i could see it plainly. i shook all over with excitement. the mystery seemed to be clearing up. but even as i took up the knife again i paused, convulsed with a wild, improbable idea. what if?—but there. i held my breath and took the thing before the fire to think its problem out. i sat down. my nerves were all jangled. the fire needed replenishing. it was low and i was cold. i stooped down and heaped on some coal. then came a thought. i put the thing on a shovel and held it over the grate. heat! yes, heat! the greatest of great resolvents. fool not to have thought of it before. fool, indeed! one minute—two—three. there was a shadow on the shovel. i bent forward. instantly my nostrils were assailed with the unforgettable perfume of the tomb of ptahmes! ah! the flood of recollections that came surging at its bidding to my brain! but i fought them back. i bent right over the fire—and i made out presently, lying on the shovel, the dim form of a tight-clenched human hand.
