Pharos, The Egyptian Part 21

What the pa.s.sers-by must have thought I do not know, nor do I care. The dreadful thought that filled my mind was more to me than anyone else's good opinion could possibly be. When I recovered myself I resumed my walk to the hotel, breathing in gasps as the thought returned upon me, and my whole body alternately flushing with hope and then numbed with terror. More dead than alive I entered the building and climbed the stairs to the sitting-room I had engaged. I had half hoped that on opening the door I should find Valerie awaiting me there, but I was disappointed. Unable to contain my anxiety any longer, I went along the pa.s.sage and knocked at the door of her room.

"Who is there?" a voice that I scarcely recognised asked in German.

"It is I," I replied. "Are you feeling better?"

"Yes, better," she answered, still in the same hard tone, "but I think I would prefer to lie here a little longer. Do not be anxious about me, I shall be quite myself again by dinner time."

I asked if there was anything I could procure for her, and on being informed to the contrary, left her and went down to the manager's office in the hope that I might be able to discover from him some way in which we might escape to our own country.

"You have reached Hamburg at a most unfortunate time," he answered. "As you are doubtless aware, the plague has broken out here, and Heaven alone knows what we shall do if it continues. I have seen one of the councillors within the last hour, and he tells me that three fresh cases have been notified since midday. The evening telegrams report that more than five thousand deaths have already occurred in Turkey and Russia alone. It is raging in Vienna, and indeed through the whole of Austria.

In Dresden and Berlin it has also commenced its dreadful work, while three cases have been certified in France. So far England is free, but how long she will continue to be so it is impossible to say. That they are growing anxious there is evident from the stringency of the quarantine regulations they are pa.s.sing. No vessel from any infected country, they do not limit it even to ports, is allowed to land either pa.s.sengers or cargo until after three weeks' quarantine, so that communication with the Continent is practically cut off. The situation is growing extremely critical, and every twenty-four hours promises to make it more so."

"In that case I do not know what I shall do," I said, feeling as if my heart would break under the load it was compelled to carry.

"I am extremely sorry for you, sir," the manager answered, "but what is bad for you is even worse for us. You simply want to get back to your home. We have home, nay, even life itself at stake."

"It is bad for everyone alike," I answered, and then, with a heart even heavier than it was before, I thanked him for his courtesy and made my way upstairs to our sitting-room once more. I opened the door and walked in, and then uttered a cry of delight, for Valerie was at the farther end of the room, standing before the window. My pleasure, however, was short lived, for on hearing my step she turned, and I was able to see her face. What I saw there almost brought my heart into my mouth.

"Valerie," I cried, "what has happened? Are you worse that you look at me like that?"

"Hush!" she whispered, "do not speak so loud. Can not you see that Pharos is coming?"

Her beautiful eyes were open to their widest extent, and there was an air about her that spoke of an impending tragedy.

"Pharos is coming," she said again, this time very slowly and deliberately. "It is too late for us to escape. He is driving down the street."

There was a long pause, during which I felt as if I were being slowly turned to stone.

"He has entered the hotel."

There was another pause.

"He is here." And as she spoke the handle of the door was turned.

As the person, whoever he might be, entered, Valerie uttered a little cry and fell senseless into my arms. I held her tightly and then wheeled round to see who the intruder might be.

_It was Pharos!_

CHAPTER XVI.

For more than a minute neither of us moved. Valerie lay in my arms just as she had fallen, Pharos stood a foot or so inside the door, while I stood looking first at her and then at him without being able to utter a word. As far as my own feelings were concerned the end of the world had come, for I had made up my mind that Valerie was dying. If that were so, Pharos might do his worst.

"My friends, it would seem as if I have come only just in time," he said with sarcastic sweetness. "My dear Forrester, I must offer you my congratulations upon the neat manner in which you effected your escape.

Unfortunately I was aware of it all along. Knowing what was in your heart, I laid my plans accordingly, and here I am. And pray, may I ask, what good have you done yourself by your impetuosity? You chase across Europe at express speed, hoping to get to England before I can catch you, only to find on arrival here that the plague has headed you off, and that it is impossible for you to reach your destination."

"Are you going to stand talking all day?" I said, forgetting caution and the need that existed for humouring him, everything in fact, in my anxiety. "Can not you see that she is ill? Good heavens, man, she may be dying!"

"What do you mean?" he asked quickly, with a change of voice as he crossed the room and came over to where I was standing. "Let me see her instantly!"

With a deftness, and at the same time a tenderness I had never noticed in him before, he took her from me and placed her upon a sofa. Having done so, he stooped over her and commenced his examination. Thirty seconds had not elapsed before he turned fiercely on me again.

"You fool!" he cried, "are you mad? Lock that door this instant. This is more serious than I imagined. Do you know what it is?"

"How should I?" I answered in agony. "Tell me, tell me, can not you see how much I am suffering?"

I clutched him by the arm so tightly that he winced under it and had to exert his strength to throw me off.

"It is the plague," he answered, "and but for your folly in running away from me she would never have caught it. If she dies the blame will rest entirely with you."

But I scarcely heard him. The knowledge that my darling was the victim of the scourge that was ravaging all Europe drove me back against the wall faint and speechless with terror. "If she dies," he had said, and the words rang in my ears like a funeral knell. But she should not die.

If any power in the world could save her, it should be found.

"What can I do?" I whispered hoa.r.s.ely. "For pity's sake let me help in some way. She must not die, she shall not die!"

"In that case you had better bestir yourself," he said. "There is but one remedy, and that we must employ. Had it not been for your folly I should have it with me now. As it is, you must go out and search the town for it. Give me writing materials."

These were on a neighbouring table, and when I had put them before him he seized the pen and scrawled something upon a sheet of notepaper, then folding it, he handed it to me.

"Take that with all speed to a chemist," he said. "Tell him to be particularly careful that the drugs are fresh, and bring it back with you as soon as you can. In all probability you will have a difficulty in procuring it, but you must do so somewhere. Rest a.s.sured of this, that if she does not receive it within an hour nothing can possibly save her."

"I will be back in less than half that time," I answered, and hastened from the room.

From a man in the street I inquired the address of the nearest chemist, and, as soon as he had directed me, hastened thither as fast as my legs could carry me. Entering the shop, I threw the prescription upon the counter, and in my impatience could have struck the man for his slowness in picking it up. If his life had depended upon his deciphering it properly he could not have taken longer to read it. Before he had got to the end of it my impatience had reached boiling heat.

"Come, come," I said, "are you going to make it up or not? It is for an urgent case, and I have wasted ten minutes already."

The man glanced at the paper again, smoothed it out between his fat fingers, and shook his head until I thought his gla.s.ses would have dropped from his nose.

"I can not do it," he said at length. "Two of the drugs I do not keep in stock. Indeed, I do not know that I ever saw another prescription like it."

"Why did you not say so at once?" I cried angrily, and s.n.a.t.c.hing the paper from his hand, I dashed madly out and along the pavement. At the end of the street was another shop, which I entered. On the door it was set forth that English, French and German were spoken there. I was not going to risk a waste of time on either of the two first, however, but opened upon the man in his own language. He was very small, with an unwholesome complexion, and was the possessor of a nose large enough to have ent.i.tled him to the warmest esteem of the great Napoleon. He took the prescription, read it through in a quarter of the time taken by the other man, and then retired behind his screen. Scarcely able to contain my delight at having at last been successful, I curbed my impatience as well as I could, examined all the articles displayed in the gla.s.s case upon the counter, fidgeted nervously with the india-rubber change mat, and when, at the end of several minutes, he had not made it up, was only prevented from going in search of him by his appearance before me once more.

"I am exceedingly sorry to say," he began, and directly he opened his mouth I knew that some fresh misfortune was in store for me, "that I can not make up the prescription for you at all. Of one of the drugs I remember once reading, but of the other I have never even heard.

However, if----"

But before he could utter another word I had seized the paper and was out of the shop. This was the second time I had been fooled, and upward of half an hour, thirty precious minutes, had been wasted. Even then Valerie might be dying, and I was powerless to save her. Never in my life before had time seemed so precious. I stopped a pa.s.ser-by and inquired the direction of the nearest chemist. He referred me to the shop I had just left; I stopped another, but he confessed himself a stranger in the city. At last, at my wit's end to know what to do, finding myself before the office of the steamship company I had visited that afternoon, I determined to go inside and make inquiries.

To my surprise, in place of the half dozen clerks who had stared at me only a few hours before, I found but one man, and before he had opened his lips I realized that he was drunk.

"Ha, ha!" he said, with a burst of tipsy laughter, "so you have come back again, my friend? Want to get a boat to take you to England, I suppose. Oh, of course you do. We know all about that. We're not as blind, I mean as blind drunk, as you suppose."

With that he lurched against the desk, and cannoned off it on to me.

Then, having reached that stage of inebriation when music becomes a necessity, he leant against the wall and burst into song:--

Drink to me only with thine eyes, And I will pledge with mine, Or leave a kiss within....