Brood of the Witch-Queen Part 9

"Very," he answered her, grimly.

"Can't you come in with me for awhile? Only just a little while, then you can come home to lunch--you and Antony." Her eyes sparkled now.

"Oh, do say yes!"

Knowing what he did know of the man upstairs, he longed to accompany her; yet, contradictorily, knowing what he did he could not face him again, could not submit himself to the test of being civil to Antony Ferrara in the presence of Myra Duquesne.

"Please don't tempt me," he begged, and forced a smile. "I shall find myself enrolled amongst the seekers of soup-tickets if I _completely_ ignore the claims of my employer upon my time!"

"Oh, what a shame!" she cried.

Their eyes met, and something--something unspoken but cogent--pa.s.sed between them; so that for the first time a pretty colour tinted the girl's cheeks. She suddenly grew embarra.s.sed.

"Good-bye, then," she said, holding out her hand. "Will you lunch with us to-morrow?"

"Thanks awfully," replied Cairn. "Rather--if it's humanly possible.

I'll ring you up."

He released her hand, and stood watching her as she entered the lift.

When it ascended, he turned and went out to swell the human tide of Piccadilly. He wondered what his father would think of the girl's visiting Ferrara. Would he approve? Decidedly the situation was a delicate one; the wrong kind of interference--the tactless kind--might merely render it worse. It would be awfully difficult, if not impossible, to explain to Myra. If an open rupture were to be avoided (and he had profound faith in his father's ac.u.men), then Myra must remain in ignorance. But was she to be allowed to continue these visits?

Should he have permitted her to enter Ferrara's rooms?

He reflected that he had no right to question her movements. But, at least, he might have accompanied her.

"Oh, heavens!" he muttered--"what a horrible tangle. It will drive me mad!"

There could be no peace for him until he knew her to be safely home again, and his work suffered accordingly; until, at about midday, he rang up Myra Duquesne, on the pretence of accepting her invitation to lunch on the morrow, and heard, with inexpressible relief, her voice replying to him.

In the afternoon he was suddenly called upon to do a big "royal"

matinee, and this necessitated a run to his chambers in order to change from Harris tweed into vicuna and cashmere. The usual stream of lawyers' clerks and others poured under the archway leading to the court; but in the far corner shaded by the tall plane tree, where the ascending steps and worn iron railing, the small panes of gla.s.s in the solicitor's window on the ground floor and the general air of d.i.c.kens-like aloofness prevailed, one entered a sort of backwater. In the narrow hall-way, quiet reigned--a quiet profound as though motor 'buses were not.

Cairn ran up the stairs to the second landing, and began to fumble for his key. Although he knew it to be impossible, he was aware of a queer impression that someone was waiting for him, inside his chambers. The sufficiently palpable fact--that such a thing _was_ impossible--did not really strike him until he had opened the door and entered. Up to that time, in a sort of subconscious way, he had antic.i.p.ated finding a visitor there.

"What an a.s.s I am!" he muttered; then, "Phew! there's a disgusting smell!"

He threw open all the windows, and entering his bedroom, also opening both the windows there. The current of air thus established began to disperse the odour--a fusty one as of something decaying--and by the time that he had changed, it was scarcely perceptible. He had little time to waste in speculation, but when, as he ran out to the door, glancing at his watch, the nauseous odour suddenly rose again to his nostrils, he stopped with his hand on the latch.

"What the deuce is it!" he said loudly.

Quite mechanically he turned and looked back. As one might have antic.i.p.ated, there was nothing visible to account for the odour.

The emotion of fear is a strange and complex one. In this breath of decay rising to his nostril, Cairn found something fearsome. He opened the door, stepped out on to the landing, and closed the door behind him.

At an hour close upon midnight, Dr. Bruce Cairn, who was about to retire, received a wholly unexpected visit from his son. Robert Cairn followed his father into the library and sat down in the big, red leathern easy-chair. The doctor tilted the lamp shade, directing the light upon Robert's face. It proved to be slightly pale, and in the clear eyes was an odd expression--almost a hunted look.

"What's the trouble, Rob? Have a whisky and soda."

Robert Cairn helped himself quietly.

"Now take a cigar and tell me what has frightened you."

"Frightened me!" He started, and paused in the act of reaching for a match. "Yes--you're right, sir. I _am_ frightened!"

"Not at the moment. You have been."

"Right again." He lighted his cigar. "I want to begin by saying that--well, how can I put it? When I took up newspaper work, we thought it would be better if I lived in chambers--"

"Certainly."

"Well, at that time--" he examined the lighted end of his cigar--"there was no reason--why I should not live alone. But now--"

"Well?"

"Now I feel, sir, that I have need of more or less constant companionship. Especially I feel that it would be desirable to have a friend handy at--er--at night time!"

Dr. Cairn leant forward in his chair. His face was very stern.

"Hold out your fingers," he said, "extended; left hand."

His son obeyed, smiling slightly. The open hand showed in the lamplight steady as a carven hand.

"Nerves quite in order, sir."

Dr. Cairn inhaled a deep breath.

"Tell me," he said.

"It's a queer tale," his son began, "and if I told it to Craig Fenton, or Madderley round in Harley Street I know what they would say. But you will _understand_. It started this afternoon, when the sun was pouring in through the windows. I had to go to my chambers to change; and the rooms were filled with a most disgusting smell."

His father started.

"What kind of smell?" he asked. "Not--incense?"

"No," replied Robert, looking hard at him--"I thought you would ask that. It was a smell of something putrid--something rotten, rotten with the rottenness of ages."

"Did you trace where it came from?"

"I opened all the windows, and that seemed to disperse it for a time.

Then, just as I was going out, it returned; it seemed to envelop me like a filthy miasma. You know, sir, it's hard to explain just the way I felt about it--but it all amounts to this: I was glad to get outside!"

Dr. Cairn stood up and began to pace about the room, his hands locked behind him.

"To-night," he rapped suddenly, "what occurred to-night?"

"To-night," continued his son, "I got in at about half-past nine. I had had such a rush, in one way and another, that the incident had quite lost its hold on my imagination; I hadn't forgotten it, of course, but I was not thinking of it when I unlocked the door. In fact I didn't begin to think of it again until, in slippers and dressing-gown, I had settled down for a comfortable read. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, to influence my imagination--in that way.

The book was an old favourite, Mark Twain's _Up the Mississippi_, and I sat in the armchair with a large bottle of lager beer at my elbow and my pipe going strong."

Becoming restless in turn, the speaker stood up and walking to the fireplace flicked off the long cone of grey ash from his cigar. He leant one elbow upon the mantel-piece, resuming his story: