The Lost Million Part 26

I realised how far-seeing she was, how carefully she had weighed all the consequences, and how anxious she was for her father's safety. On the other hand, however, Shaw was certainly not a man to run any unnecessary risks. From what I had seen of him, he appeared full of craft and cunning, as became one who lived upon his wits.

"Tell me what you know concerning Mr Arnold's a.s.sociation with this woman of a hundred different names," I urged. "I have a reason for my curiosity."

"I know but little. Once, when I was about fifteen, Dad and I travelled with Mr Arnold from Vienna to Territet, and met her at the Hotel des Alpes there. She was very affable and nice to me, and she told me what an excellent friend Mr Arnold had been to her. I recollect the incident quite well, for on that day she bought me a little chain bracelet as a present. I have it now."

"Your father quarrelled with Arnold, I believe?"

"Yes," she said. "They had some difference. I never, however, ascertained the real facts. He evidently wished to see me, for he wrote to me making an appointment; and when I went to the hotel for that purpose, I learnt, alas! that he was dead."

"Had he lived, his intention was to meet your father in secret at Totnes in Devonshire. Why in secret, I wonder?"

"That same question has been puzzling me for a long time, Mr Kemball,"

she said quickly. "I have arrived at the conclusion that he feared lest Mrs Olliffe might know of his arrival in England and set some one to watch his movements. He feared her."

"Then there may have been some reason why the woman desired that they should not meet, eh?"

"Apparently so."

I reflected. Mrs Olliffe now knew that I had borne a message to Shaw from the dead man who had destroyed a fortune. Did she fear its results, and was she, for that reason, holding out to Shaw the olive branch of peace?

I suggested that to Asta, and she was inclined to agree with me.

"We must do what we can to break off your father's friendship with this woman," I declared. "It is distinctly dangerous for him."

"Yes, Mr Kemball," she cried. "I only wish we could! I only wish--"

Her sentence was interrupted by a sound which startled both of us. We listened, looking into each other's serious face without uttering a word. The sound emanated from the next room--Shaw's bedroom--the door of which was closed.

It was that low, peculiar whistle which I had first heard on the morning I had visited t.i.tmarsh after poor Guy's mysterious death, and had heard on a second occasion when visiting at Lydford.

"There's Dad again?" she cried, in a strained voice. "He evidently doesn't know we are still up." The whistle was again repeated--a low, long-drawn, peculiar sound, in a high shrill note.

It was not the unconscious whistle of a man thinking, but a sound full of meaning--a distinct call, which even as we listened in silence was repeated a third time.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

THE MAN WITH THE CRIMSON b.u.t.tON.

Pale and startled, she raised her finger in a gesture of silence, and we both stole noiselessly from the room, closing the door behind us.

Upon the thick carpet of the corridor we crept past Shaw's door, and Asta disappeared into her own chamber, which adjoined, while I went on to mine.

I could not get that peculiar whistle out of my ears. It seemed as though it were a signal to somebody; yet though I went back to Shaw's door and listened there for a full hour, I heard no sound of any movement. The room was in darkness, and he was, no doubt, already asleep.

When I turned in, I lay a long time thinking over the reason of Shaw's friendship with the woman Olliffe. What Asta had told me only seemed to increase the mystery, rather than diminish it.

I must have dropped off to sleep about two o'clock, puzzled and f.a.gged out by the long hours on the road, when I was suddenly awakened by hearing a loud, shrill scream.

I started up and listened. It was Asta's voice shrieking in terror.

I sprang out into the corridor without a second's hesitation and rapped upon the door, crying--

"What's the matter. Let me in."

In a few seconds she unbolted the door, and opening it I encountered her in a pale pink _robe-de-chambre_, her luxuriant chestnut hair falling about her shoulders, her large dark brown eyes haggard and startled, her hands clenched, her countenance white to the lips.

"What has happened, Miss Seymour?" I asked, glancing quickly around the room.

"I--I hardly know," she gasped in breathless alarm. "Only--only," she whispered, in a low voice, "I--I've seen the hand--the Hand of Death-- again!"

"Seen it again!" I echoed; but she raised her finger and pointed to her father's door.

"Tell me the circ.u.mstances," I whispered. "There is something very uncanny and unnatural about this which must be investigated. Last night it appeared to me a hundred and twenty miles away, and now you see it to-night. Are you quite sure you saw it."

I asked the latter question because it was still dark, and she had switched on the electric light.

"I felt a cold rough contact with my cheek, and waking saw the hand again! I burn a night-light--as you see," and she pointed across to a child's night-light in a saucer upon the washstand.

"And it vanished as before?"

"Instantly. I thought I heard a slight sound afterwards, but I must have been mistaken."

"Yes," I said, making a quick examination of the room, and looking beneath the bed. "There is certainly nothing here."

I noted that the communicating door between her room and her father's was still secured by the small bra.s.s bolt.

"Well," I declared, "it is utterly inexplicable." My voice evidently awakened Shaw, for we heard him tap at the door and ask in a deep, drowsy voice--

"What's the matter in there, Asta?"

"Oh, nothing at all, Dad," was the girl's reply. "Only I fancy there must be a rat in my room--and Mr Kemball is looking for it."

"Didn't you scream?" he asked wearily.

"Yes," I said, as she unbolted the door, and her father entered. "Miss Seymour's scream woke me up."

"Did you see the rat?" Shaw asked me.

"No," I laughed, in an endeavour to conceal our fear. "I expect if there is one it has got away down its hole. I've searched, but can find nothing."

"Ah!" growled the man awakened from his sleep. "That's the worst of these confounded Continental hotels. Most of them are overrun with vermin. I've often had rats in my room. Well, dear," he added, turning to Asta, "go to bed again, and leave your electric light on. They won't come out then."

The girl and I exchanged glances, and after a hearty laugh at the frightened spectacle we all three presented, we again parted, and I returned to my room.

What was the meaning of that inexplicable apparition of the hand? Why had the dying man warned me of it?

I could quite see Asta's reluctance to tell her father what she had seen, knowing well how he--plain, matter-of-fact man--would laugh at her and declare that she had been dreaming.

But it was no dream. I myself had seen the Thing with my own eyes, while my own cheek only a few hours before had borne witness to its actual existence.