The Darrow Enigma Part 6

These were the last words this fiend incarnate ever spoke to me, but I know they are prophetic, and that he will keep his oath.

The next day I learned that Lona was dead. She had died with my name upon her lips, and her secret--the explanation of her strange conduct on that night--died with her. I shall never know it.

Bitterly did I repent my inability to reach her. The thought that she had waited in vain for me, that with her last breath she had called upon me, and I had answered not, was unendurable torture, and I fled India and came to America in the futile endeavour to forget it all. Out of my black past there shone but one bright star --her love! All these long years have I oriented my soul by that sweet, unforgettable radiance, prizing it above a galaxy of lesser joys.

There is little more to be said. I shall meet death as I have stated--I am sure of it--and no man will see the blow given.

Remember, as I loved that Indian maiden with a pa.s.sion which death has not chilled, so I loathe my rival with a hatred infinite and all-consuming; for, somehow, I know that demon crushed out the life of my fragile lotus-flower. He will work his will upon me, but if his cunning enable him to escape the gallows, my soul, if there be a conscious hereafter, will never rest in peace. Remember this, my dear child, and your promise, that G.o.d may bless you even as I bless you.

It was some time after Gwen had finished this interesting doc.u.ment before any of us spoke. The narrative, and the peculiar circ.u.mstances under which it had been read, deeply impressed us.

At length Maitland said in a subdued voice, as if he feared to break some spell:

"The Indian girl's letter; let us find that, and also the will."

Gwen went to the drawer in which her father kept his private papers, and soon produced them both. Maitland glanced hastily at the letter, and said: "You have already heard its contents"; then turning to Gwen, he said: "I will keep it with your permission. Now for the will." It was handed to him, and his face fell as he read it. In a moment he turned to us, and said: "The interest on the insurance money is to go to Miss Darrow, the entire princ.i.p.al to be held in trust and paid to the person bringing the a.s.sa.s.sin to justice, unless said person shall wed Miss Darrow, in which case half of the fund shall go to the husband, and the other half to the wife in her own right. The balance of the estate, which, by the way, is considerable, despite the reports given to Osborne, is to go to Miss Darrow. This is all the will contains having any bearing upon the case in hand.

Let us proceed with the rest of the papers." We made a long and diligent search, but nothing of importance came to light. When we had finished Maitland said:

"Our friend Osborne would say the doc.u.ment we have just perused made strongly for his theory, and was simply another fabrication to blind the eyes of the insurance company. That's what comes of wedding one's self to a theory founded on imperfect data."

"And what do you think?" Gwen inquired.

"That Rama Ragobah has small hands and feet," he replied. "That his left foot has met with an injury, and is probably deformed; that most likely he is lame in the left leg; that he had the motive for which we have been looking; that he may or may not have the habit of biting his nails; that he is crafty, and that if he were to do murder it is almost certain his methods would be novel and surprising, as well as extremely difficult to fathom--in short, that suspicion points unmistakably to Rama Ragobah. That is easily said, but to bring the deed home to him is quite another thing. I shall a.n.a.lyse the poison of the wound and microscopically examine the nature of the abrasion this afternoon. To-night I take the midnight train for New York.

To-morrow I shall sail for Bombay, via London and the Continent. I will keep you informed of my address. While I am away I would ask that you close the house here, leaving everything just as it is now dismiss the servants, and take up your abode with the Doctor and his sister." He rose to go as he said this, and then continued, as he turned to me: "I shall depend upon you to look after Miss Darrow's immediate interests in my absence." I knew this meant that I was to guard her health, not permitting her to be much by herself, and I readily acquiesced.

The look of amazement which had at first overspread Gwen's face at the mention of this precipitate departure gave place to one of modest concern, as she said softly to Maitland: "Is it necessary that you should encounter the dangers of such a journey, to say nothing, of the time and inconvenience it will cost?" He looked down at her quickly, and then said rea.s.suringly: "Do you know one is, by actual statistics, safer in an English railway carriage than when walking the crowded streets of London? I am daily subjecting myself to laboratory dangers which, I believe, are graver than any I am likely to meet between here and Bombay, or, for that matter, even at Bombay in the presence of our recent acquaintance Ragobah."

"I deeply appreciate," she replied, "the generous sacrifice you would make in my interests--but Bombay is such a long way--and--"

"If suspicion directed me to the North Pole," he interrupted, "I should start with equal alacrity," and he held out his hand to her to bid her farewell. She took it in a way that bespoke a world of grat.i.tude, if nothing more. He retained the small hand, while he said: "Have you forgotten, my friend, your promise to your father?

Do you not see in what terrible relations it may place you? How important, then, that no effort should be spared to prevent you from becoming indebted to one unmanly enough to take advantage of your position. I shall use every means within my power to myself discover your father's murderer, and you may comfort yourself with the a.s.surance that, if successful, I shall make no demand of any kind whatsoever upon your grat.i.tude. I think you understand me."

As he said this Gwen looked him full in the face. A little nervous tremor seized the corners of her mouth, and the tears sprang to her eyes. "Good-bye" was all she could say before she was compelled to turn aside to conceal her emotion.

Maitland, observing her agitation, said to her tenderly: "Your grat.i.tude for the little that I have already done is reward, more than ample, for all I shall ever be able to do. Good-bye," and he left the room.

Oh, man with your microscope! How is it that you find the smallest speck of dust, yet miss the mountain? Does the time seem too short?

It would not if you realised that events, not clocks, were the real measure thereof.

THE EPISODE OF RAMA RAGOBAH

CHAPTER I

Life is but a poor accountant when it leaves the Future to balance its entries long years after the parties to the transactions are but a handful of insolvent dust. When, in such wise, the chiefest item of one side of the sheet fails to explain itself to the other, the tragic is attained.

On the day following Maitland's departure for New York, Mr. Darrow was buried. The Osborne theory seemed to be universally accepted, and many women who had never seen Mr. Darrow during his life attended his funeral, curious to see what sort of a person this suicide might be. Gwen bore the ordeal with a fort.i.tude which spoke volumes for her strength of character, and I took good care, when it was all over, that she should not be left alone. In compliance with Maitland's request, whose will, since her promise to him, was law to her, she prepared to close the house and take up her abode with us.

It was on the night of the funeral, just after the lamps were lighted, that an event occurred which made a deep impression upon Gwen, though neither she nor I fully appreciated its significance till weeks afterward.

Gwen, who was to close the house on the morrow, was going from room to room collecting such little things as she wished to take with her.

The servants had been dismissed and she was entirely alone in the house. She had gathered the things she had collected in a little heap upon the sitting-room table, preparatory to doing them up. She could think of but one thing more which she must take--a cabinet photograph of her father. This was upon the top of the piano in the room where he had met his death. She knew its exact location and could have put her hand right upon it had it been perfectly dark, which it was not. She arose, therefore, and, without taking a light with her, went into the parlour. A faint afterglow illumined the windows and suffused the room with an uncertain, dim, ghostly light which lent to all its objects that vague flatness from which the imagination carves what shapes it lists. As Gwen reached for the picture, a sudden conviction possessed her that her father stood just behind her in the exact spot where he had met his death, --that if she turned she would see him again with his hand clutching his throat and his eyes starting from their sockets with that never-to-be-forgotten look of frenzied helplessness.

It would be difficult to find a woman upon whom superst.i.tion has so slight a hold as it has upon Gwen Darrow, yet, for all that, it required an effort for her to turn and gaze toward the centre of the room. A dim, ill-defined stain of light fell momentarily upon the chair in which the dead man had sat, and then flickered unsteadily across the room and, as it seemed to her, out through its western side, the while a faint, rustling sound caught her ear.

She was plainly conscious, too, of a something swishing by her, as if a strong draught had just fallen upon her. She was not naturally superst.i.tious, as I have said before, yet there was something in the gloom, the deserted house, and this fatal room with its untold story of death which, added to her weird perceptions and that indescribable conviction of an unseen presence, caused even Gwen to press her hand convulsively upon her throbbing heart. For the first time in her life the awful possibilities of darkness were fully borne in upon her and she knew just how her father had felt.

In a moment, however, she had recovered from her first shock and had begun to reason. Might not the sound she had heard, and the movement she had felt, both be explained by an open window? She knew she had closed and locked all the windows of the room when she had finished airing it after the funeral, and she was not aware that anyone had been there since, yet she said to herself that perhaps one of the servants had come in and opened a window without her knowledge. She turned and looked. The lower sash of the eastern window--the one through which she felt sure death had approached her father--was raised to its utmost.

"How fortunate," she murmured, "that I discovered this before leaving."

She was all but fully rea.s.sured now, as she stepped to the window to close it. Remembering how the sash stuck in the casing she raised both hands to forcibly lower it. As she did so a strong arm caught the sash from the outer side, and a stalwart masculine form arose directly in front of her. His great height brought his head almost to a level with her own, despite the fact that he was standing upon the ground outside. He was so near that she could feel his breath upon her face. His eyes, like two great coals of fire, blazed into hers with a sinister and threatening light. His countenance seemed to utterly surpa.s.s any personal malignancy and to exhibit itself as a type of all the hatreds that ever poisoned human hearts.

Only a moment before Gwen had felt a creepy, sickening sensation stealing over her as the result of an ill-defined and apparently causeless dread. Now an actual, imminent, and fearful peril confronted her. Under such circ.u.mstances most women would have fainted, and, indeed, if Gwen had herself been asked how she would have acted under such a supreme test, she would have prophesied the same maidenly course as her own, yet, in the real exigency--how little do we know of ourselves, save what actual experience has taught us!--this is precisely what she did not do. When the horrible apparition first rose in her very face, as it were, a momentary weakness caught her and she clung to the sash for support.

Then the wonderful fire of the malignant eyes, green, serpentine, opalescent, with the wave-like flux of a glowworm's light seen under a gla.s.s, riveted her attention. She had ceased to tremble.

Our fear of death varies with our desire for life. Dulled by a great grief, she did not so very much care what became of her. The future's burden was heavy, and if it were necessary she now put it down, there would still be a sense of relief. As this thought pa.s.sed like a shadow over her consciousness she felt herself irresistibly attracted to the awful face before her. Her a.s.sailant's gaze seemed to have wound itself about her own till she could not disentangle it. She was dimly conscious that she was falling under a spell and summoned all her remaining strength to break it. Quick as the uncoiling of a released spring, and without the slightest movement of warning, she threw her entire weight upon the sash in a last endeavour to close the window, but the man's upraised arm held both her weight and it, as if its muscles had been rods of steel. Gwen saw a long knife in his free hand,--saw the light shimmer along its blade, saw him raise it aloft to plunge it into her bosom, yet made no movement to withdraw beyond his reach and uttered no cry for help. It seemed to her that all this was happening to another and that she herself was only a fascinated spectator. She was wondering whether or not the victim would try to defend herself when the knife began its descent. It seemed ages in its downward pa.s.sage,--so long, indeed, that it gave her time to think of most of the main experiences of her life. At last it paused irresolutely within an inch of her bosom. She wondered that the victim made no attempt to escape, uttered no cry for help.

Suddenly she felt something whirling and buzzing in her brain, while a wild fluttering filled both her ears; then the swirling, fluttering torment rose in a swift and awful crescendo which seemed to involve all creation in its vortex; then a pang like a lightning-thrust and a crash like the thunder that goes with it, and she saw a tall man striding rapidly from the window. She was still sure it was no personal concern of hers, yet an idle curiosity noted his great height, his dark, mulatto-like skin, and a slight halt in his walk as he pa.s.sed through a narrow beam of light and off into the engulfing darkness.

It was many minutes before Gwen regained any considerable command of her faculties, and she afterwards told me that she was even then more than half inclined to consider the whole thing as a weird dream of an overwrought mind. At length, however, she realised that she had had an actual experience, and that it was of sufficient importance to make it known at once. She accordingly hastened to lay the whole matter before me, and I, in my turn, notified the police, who, at once inst.i.tuted as thorough a search as Gwen's description made possible. She had told me that her a.s.sailant was dark-skinned, yet with straight hair, and a cast of features that gave no hint of any Ethiopian taint. This, and his halting gait and great stature, were all the police had in the way of description, and I may as well add that the information was insufficient, for they never found any trace of Gwen's a.s.sailant.

I had had some hopes of this clue, but they were doomed to disappointment. It seemed evident to us that if anything were ever done in bringing Mr. Darrow's a.s.sa.s.sin to justice, Maitland would have to do it, unless, indeed, M. G.o.din solved the problem.

Osborne, Allen, and their a.s.sociates were simply out of the question.

We debated for some time as to whether or not we should write Maitland about Gwen's strange experience, and finally decided that the knowledge would be a constant source of worriment without being of the least a.s.sistance to him while he was so far away. We, therefore, decided to keep our own counsel, for the present at least.

Maitland had written us a few lines from New York telling us the result of his a.n.a.lysis, and ended by saying:

There is no doubt that Mr. Darrow died of poison injected into the blood through the slight wound in the throat. This wound was not deep, and seemed to have been torn rather than cut in the flesh.

What sort of weapon or projectile produced that wound is a question of the utmost importance, shrouded in the deepest of mysteries.

Once this point is settled, however, its very uniqueness will be greatly in our favour. I have an idea our friend Ragobah might be able to throw some light upon this subject, therefore I am starting on my way to visit him this afternoon, and shall write you en route whenever occasion offers. My kindest regards to Miss Darrow.

Yours sincerely, GEORGE MAITLAND.

P. S. I shall have leisure now on shipboard to set tie that question of atomic pitches, which is still a thorn in my intellectual flesh.

I handed this letter to Gwen, and, after she had read it through very carefully, she questioned me about this new theory of Maitland's.

I went through the form of telling her, after the usual practice of amiable men discoursing to women, feeling sure she would be no wiser when I had finished, and was dumfounded when she replied: "It looks very reasonable. Professor Bjerknes, if I remember the name, has produced all the phenomena of magnetic attraction, repulsion, and polarisation, by air vibrations corresponding, I suppose, to certain fixed musical notes. Why might not something similar to this be true of atomic, as well as of larger, bodies?"

If the roof of my house had fallen in, I should not have been more surprised than at this quiet remark. How many times had I said: "You can always count on a young woman, however much she flutter over the surface of things, being ignorant of all the great underlying verities of existence"? I promptly decided, on all future occasions, to add to that--"When not brought up by her father." I was convinced that of the attainments of a girl educated by her father absolutely nothing could be definitely predicted.

We had a short note from Maitland written at Trieste. He excused its brevity by saying he had been obliged to travel night and day in order to reach this port in time to catch the Austrian Lloyd steamer Helois, bound for Aden, Bombay, Ceylon, Singapore, and Hong Kong. From Aden I received the following:

MY DEAR DOCTOR:

We have just been through the Red Sea, and I know now the real origin of the Calvinistic h.e.l.l. Imagine it! A cloudless sky; the sun beating down with an intolerable fierceness; not a breath stirring, and the thermometer registering 120 degrees F. in the shade! It seemed as though reason must desert us. The constant motion of the punkas in the saloons, and an unlimited supply of ice-water was all that saved us. Sleep was hardly to be thought of, for at no time during the night did the mercury drop below 100 deg. F. Apart from the oppressive heat referred to, the entire voyage has been exceedingly pleasant. I have not solved the atomic-pitch problems, as attendance at meals has left me little time for anything else. They seem to eat all the time on these boats. At 8 A. M. coffee and bread; at ten a hearty breakfast of meat, eggs, curry and rice, vegetables and fruit; at 1 P. M. a luncheon, called "tiffin," of cold meats, bread and b.u.t.ter, potatoes, and tea; at five o'clock a regular dinner of soups, meats with relishes, farinaceous dishes, dessert, fruits, and coffee, and lastly, at 8 P. M., the evening meal of tea, bread and b.u.t.ter, and other light dishes. Five meals a day, and there are some English people who fill up the gaps between them by constantly munching nuts and sweets! Verily, if specialisation of function means anything, some of these people will soon become huge gastric balloons with a little wart on top representing the atrophied brain structure. They run their engines of digestion wholly on the high-pressure system.

After eight days' voyage on the Indian Ocean we shall be in Bombay.

I must close now, for there is really nothing to say, and, besides, I am wanted on deck. My engagement is with a Rev. Mr. Barrows, who is bound as missionary to Hong Kong. This worthy Methodist gentleman is very much exercised because I insist that potentiality is necessity and rebut his arguments on free-will. He got quite excited yesterday, and said to me severely: "Do you mean to say, young man, that I can't do as I please?" I must say I don't think his warmth was much allayed by my replying: "I certainly mean to say you can't please as you please. You may eat sugar because you prefer it to vinegar, but you can't prefer it just because you will to do so." He has probably got some new arguments now and is anxious to try their effect, so, with kind regards to Miss Darrow --I trust she is well--I remain, Cordially your friend, GEORGE MAITLAND.

P. S. (Like a woman I always write a postscript.) You shall hear again from me as soon as I reach Bombay.