The Paternoster Ruby Part 27

But this objection was in turn offset by the possibility that Page, although he had purchased the ruby openly, _had actually acquired no just t.i.tle to it_. I admit, considering that Felix Page was never the sort of man to buy a pig in a poke, that the possibility was rather far-fetched; still, it was a possibility, and a very pregnant one, too.

For if such were the case, Burke might have obtained, in some underhand manner, authority to dispose of it.

And this brought me to the, as yet, unaccounted-for j.a.panese--I call them such for lack of a more definite characterization. How otherwise was their obscure connection with the case to be explained? Why, the very word "ruby" instantly calls up a picture of the East. How often have priceless gems been filched from Oriental potentates! How often have mysterious murders been committed to recover some jewel stolen from an Eastern temple, the murderer driven forth by religious zeal--or fanaticism, call it what you will--to a relentless search for the fetich, and to wreak a dire vengeance on the plunderer! Admitting that the present intricate problem involved a similar instance, I could not see how the fact might tend to aid me any.

After supper, which was brought in to us, Stodger and I divided the night into two watches--I taking the first until two o'clock in the morning, and he a.s.suming responsibility from that time on until he chose to awaken me.

I arranged the two watches thus because I imagined that if an attempt should be made to enter the house during the night, it would occur at some time near the hour mentioned when both of us would more than likely be awake. My guess, you will see, was a poor one.

I also wanted to devote the fore part of the night, when my brain is always clearest, to an exhaustive study of the cipher found by Genevieve in the jewel-box. Until Stodger was ready to retire I could concentrate my whole mind upon it, I told myself, without fear of being disturbed. After my companion turned in I would have to remain alert, keeping pretty constantly on the move so that no marauder might steal in upon us unawares, or from an unexpected quarter.

If the place was bleak and dreary in the daytime, what words will describe its dispiriting influence at night? There is a silence that is soothing and restful, which imbues one with a sense of comfort and a pleasant desire for sleep. Then there is another sort of silence; one that magnifies every trifling sound, sounds that could not even be detected during the day; the sort of silence that hints at uneasy stirrings and movements all about one. The distant c.o.c.kcrow rings clear and high, floors creak, the very timbers of the house complain, and mice scurry in the walls.

It was such a stillness that enveloped us. Even Stodger's irrepressible good-humor failed to cheer. The old mansion was possessed of a thousand voices, strange, indefinable noises that kept our attention constantly divided; yet the night was so still that I could hear our watches ticking in our pockets.

The result was that the cipher received only scant attention from me.

I would get only fairly absorbed in my task when Stodger would startle me with a sudden "Ssh!" or a no less startling command to "Listen!"

Whereupon we would both sit straining our ears to hear--nothing.

Every few minutes one or the other of us, or both together, would go over the entire house, examining doors and windows and making sure that no one had entered since the last tour of inspection.

This was repeated so many times that Stodger himself grew glum, and at last signified a determination to turn in. He made himself comfortable on the big library divan,--the same divan which had held Belle Fluette's motionless form only a few hours previous,--wrapped himself in a heavy blanket from Felix Page's bed, and was soon fast asleep; or, at least, he offered audible evidence that he was.

Again I tried to fasten my attention upon the cryptic parchment; but it was of no use. In spite of myself, my head would jerk up to a listening att.i.tude every time a board creaked or I fancied I heard a door somewhere in the house being cautiously opened. Time after time I would be sent stealthily to some remote corridor or chamber, only to return again to the library no wiser than before.

I finally thrust the cipher back into my pocketbook and resigned myself to a lonely vigil. The great library was a place of shadows and dark recesses, as well as of silence; and had it not been for the regular, stertorous breathing of the sleeper, I might have wished myself well out of it.

The hours dragged along--midnight, one o'clock, two, half-past, and still I did not rouse Stodger; I never had less desire to sleep.

During one of my excursions through the empty, echoing rooms I set down my lantern--we had provided ourselves with this convenience--and looked out into the night. The pleasant weather of the past few days had ended; it was dark--very dark--and an occasional flake of snow, materializing ghostlike within the square of light from the lantern, sc.r.a.ped along the small diamond panes with a feathery touch.

Presently I entered Felix Page's bedroom. And here, for the first time that night, I was sensible of an absolute stillness. Not even a board creaked. Not a breath stirred the leafless boughs outside, nor rattled the withered vines on the walls. Then of a sudden I grew rigid, tensely alert, and watchful. From somewhere a breath of icy outdoor air struck upon my face and hands.

Now whatever else might be said of this old house, it was not a place of drafts. Its walls were thick and solid, its doors ma.s.sive, and the doors and windows were snug-fitting; therefore, the fact that I now felt a perceptible rush of air could signify but one thing--that an outside door or window had been opened.

During a brief pause I hesitated over whether I should rouse Stodger; but so slight a warrant decided me not to. A shout from any part of the house, should he be needed, would accomplish the purpose quite as well.

So I merely stood motionless and listened. The circ.u.mstance that my straining ears could now hear nothing whatever was in itself ominous.

The hush which had fallen upon the place was the sort that heralds an advance through a forest of the most cautious of hunters. Danger might be creeping upon me from every side and in any imaginable guise; if so, here was my warning.

Then it was that I smiled and reached a decision. With infinite caution I sank to the floor, removed my shoes, and draped a rug over the lantern. Only the dimmest points of light showed through the weave of the fabric; merely enough to serve as a guiding beacon in case I wanted to find it in a hurry. Next, with my revolver in hand, I stole to the hall door, which had been left ajar purposely, and peered out.

The darkness was fathomless, the silence complete. The s.p.a.cious lower hall was the Dionysius' ear of the house; if there was any movement about the place, here if anywhere it would be detected and its source determined.

The floor was of hardwood, and my feet were soon numb with cold. Then, too, bravery is a relative term when all is said and done. A coward may be always a coward, but it is not an inevitable corollary that a brave man is always brave. To know a possible antagonist, to walk boldly up to him in the broad light of day, is one thing; to stand in a hyperborean hall in the dead of the night, surrounded by the darkness of the pit, ignorant alike of the nature of your peril and the point from which an attack may come--that is quite another.

So I freely own that my jaws ached with the effort of keeping my teeth from clicking together like castanets.

In the course of a long and not uneventful career, I have been in a good many tight places and under all sorts of conditions where I had to hold myself to the matter in hand with every grain of will power that I could muster; but never since that night in the old Page hall have I experienced precisely the same unnerving feeling that possessed me then. I came perilously close to an ignominious retreat--and before ever I had an idea of what I was running from!

Fortunately for whatever status I may hold in this chronicle, the movement was checked at its inception. In a flash my momentary panic was forgotten. I caught a sound that I recognized and, moreover, located on the instant. It was the long, unmistakable creak of a loose stair plank such as follows the gradual shifting of a person's weight from one foot to another. Somebody was slowly and cautiously ascending the rear stairs.

I could smile once more and breathe normally. Instead of retreating, I was in the next few seconds stealing up the front stairs. Nor did I move very slowly, either. I knew by experiment that its steps were all solid, and that I need not fear the betrayal of any complaining board.

At the stair head I became cautious again; I did n't want to risk a collision with the _etagere_. What must I do, however, but stumble against the topmost step and plunge head foremost right into the thing.

The ensuing crash that filled the house was like an explosion. It also drowned my comments. To make matters worse, in my efforts to keep from falling, my revolver shot from my hand and through the bal.u.s.ters, and went clattering down to the landing with the noise of a falling brick.

I recovered myself on the instant, however, and with a final malediction, darted toward the bath room. There was a sound of scurrying behind its door; but I paused not for doors. Fortunately it was a trifle ajar, and it went open before me with a thud. Also from behind it a most unmistakable human grunt emanated, the sort of involuntary notice a person gives when he has the wind suddenly knocked out of him. Then right in my ears there sounded the most weird, unearthly cry that I ever heard; it was positively uncanny. A cold chill went through me from head to foot.

Events thereafter moved with such electric swiftness that the details are all blurred.

I remember that I heard Stodger shouting encouragement, and his stockinged feet patting the bare floors as he ran. As the bath room door shot open and the strange cry shrilled forth, some object fell to the floor near me. There was also a sound of running feet up the rear stairs; which would indicate that my enemy was a host, and that the main body was returning to accomplish a rescue.

In a flash I had reached forth my arms and grappled with the unknown behind the door. That struggle would have been short, for he was like a child in my grasp. But instantly I was seized from all sides at once, it seemed. It was as if a dozen hands were feeling over me, to distinguish friend from foe.

Into what had I rushed so blindly? Who was opposing me? How many were there?

At least twice I was borne to one knee by sheer weight and the number of my a.s.sailants. Both times I succeeded in shaking myself free and rising again to my feet. I was warm enough now, heaven knows, and I had the satisfaction of knowing that I was inflicting far more damage than I was receiving.

I knew when Stodger unhesitatingly threw himself into the thick of the fray. Good old Stodger! And there we fought, silently, furiously, in the restricted s.p.a.ce of the bath room, enveloped in a darkness that one could almost feel. Again and again I collided with the porcelain tub.

More than once when I secured a firm grasp upon one of my unseen adversaries, I picked him up bodily and hurled him with all the force of which I was capable toward where I fancied the tub to be. But in the riot and frenzied confusion of being jerked first this way and then that, how could mortal distinguish the location of anything!

The struggle ended abruptly. Stodger and I were at a disadvantage, for he dared not shoot on my account, and I had no weapon but my two bare hands.

Not so our antagonist, however. Of a sudden one side of my face felt as if some one had quickly drawn the tip of a red-hot poker from the corner of my eye to my chin. At the same instant a crushing blow caught me above one ear.

The blow did not render me unconscious, but it more than staggered me.

For an instant such strength as was left me was needed to keep from tumbling headlong. I was on my knees and one hand, while the other arm was hooked over the rim of the tub.

The fight had ended. I could hear a patter of feet on the rear stairs; I could hear some one near me on the floor, breathing heavily; then fell silence. I tried to yell to Stodger to be up and after them, but the result was only a painful wheezing in my throat. Then the gasping form on the floor groaned, and I managed to get dizzily to my feet.

We received the worst of that fight in more ways than one. When I managed to find a candle and light it, I discovered that Stodger was the one who had groaned. He was sitting up, not badly hurt, and staring dazedly at the candle. His mouth hung ludicrously open. But in a moment he struggled upright.

"Good G.o.d, Swift!" he gasped. "You 've been butchered!"

Then I recalled the red-hot poker. I put a hand to my cheek; it came away covered with blood. From the shoulder down, my clothes were saturated with it, and I had left a crimson trail to mark each of my movements since the keen-edged blade had laid my face open.

But enough of the wound. The white pucker of scar which to-day disfigures my face will be a life-long memento of that spirited combat in the dark.

After we were in condition to do so, Stodger and I set about an inspection of the scene.

First of all, we did n't find a trace of our adversaries, or how many of them there might have been, until we came to the snow outside. An open dining-room window indicated their method of ingress, the trampled snow beneath their number. There had been five.

"Why the bath room?" Stodger demanded, in deep perplexity. "Why should everything that happens in this house be pulled off there?"

Why indeed?

"Let's go back there and try to find out," I returned, stiffly, for my cheek was paining under the ma.s.s of plaster that Stodger had piled upon it.

Carefully and systematically, we went over every inch of s.p.a.ce--I don't know how many times I had done so since the murder--but found absolutely nothing that was not already familiar to me. It was miserably aggravating that every search I undertook in this house of mystery should prove fruitless. Yet, we could find nothing whatever to serve as a reply to Stodger's pertinent question.