The Professor's Mystery Part 16

CHAPTER XIII

THE PRESENCE IN THE ROOM

"I wonder how we shall come out of it all," said Lady.

She was sitting at the big dining-table before a treasury of bowls and vases, with a many-colored heap of cut flowers reflected from the polished wood and the drops and splashes of spilled water. In the open window, Sheila's canary was whistling merrily down a deep shaft of sunlight; and from the garden outside came the purr of a lawn-mower and the cool freshness of new-cut gra.s.s. Across the still dimness of the house behind us, the further windows gave upon squares of blinding green. Mr. Tabor and the doctor had gone to the city upon some business of our common defense. The house hung sleepily at the heart of the hot forenoon, very quiet and open; overhead, Sheila was shuffling about, with a crooning of soft Irish minors.

"It seems to be just a case of waiting," said I, "but the newspaper excitement is blowing over already, and we can trust Maclean to keep us clear. As for the detectives, if they arrest Carucci again so much the better, provided we don't appear in it. He'd be no more likely to talk then, than before."

"I wonder if we can trust Mr. Maclean."

"I'm rather sure of Mac," I said.

"It isn't that exactly; I'm not doubting your friend; but even so, he knows--knows absolutely that we were involved in that New York disturbance the other night. Think of all we did to keep you from even suspecting something far less exciting. And he's a reporter after all, and in no way one of us. Of course he's honorable, but--he's working up the Carucci side of it. I'm afraid of what he may bring out, perfectly removed from us in itself, but that might suggest-- Oh, you see what I mean."

"I wish I could hear from him," I said. "I want to know what's happening. But honestly, I think I took the safe way with him, whatever happens. It's much better to have him know what he mustn't say than to have him guessing all sorts of things with no reason for not airing them."

"Yes; but I wish n.o.body knew anything. We took a terrible risk."

"I did, you mean. If I spoke beyond my authority, the fault is certainly mine. Still, I'm not sure that I'm sorry, and I won't plead that I meant well."

She searched carefully through the heap of flowers. "No, you're one of us now--in a way. What you did was ours, not your own-- Oh, I'm sure it's all right anyway, and you acted wisely. Only I'm nervous about it, I suppose." She leaned back wearily. "I do get so tired of all this unnaturalness. Why can't G.o.d let us live like other people?"

It was the first time I had ever heard her complain; the first open confession of the weary weight that had lain so long upon her eyes; and it shook me so that for a little I did not trust myself to speak, for fear I should not speak quietly enough. She sat silent, the light gone out of her as I had seen it go on that first day, her hand twisting listlessly at her chain.

"I only wish I could be more use," I said at last.

She turned half toward me: "Sometimes I wish you could know," she said and her eyes of a sudden glimmered and grew wet.

That was more than I could bear. "Lady," I cried, "why can't I know?

What difference does it make? Oh, I'm not questioning you; I don't want to satisfy my mere mind with your mystery. I don't care what the explanation is; I'm not after answers to questions. But it can't matter to us, whatever it is. Nothing can. When I thought you were married, that didn't change anything really. It meant that I must go away, that I must never come back to you perhaps--but even that was a little thing.

And nothing else in the world could be as bad as that even."

"Don't. Please don't make it any worse--oh, stop telling me--_listen_!"

She caught herself suddenly, holding up her hand. The canary poured out a long trill that sounded like tiny laughter.

"Sheila," I said. "She's been walking about up there all the morning.

You've got so that this nightmare doesn't give you an hour's peace. I don't care what it is. You know that. You know that I couldn't be troubled by anything behind you or about you. I never shall want to know. But I want the whole right to stand in front of you and fight it, to take you away from this place and make you forget and be alive. And you know that no reason--"

I do not know what stopped me. The canary was silent, and the clock ticked twice across the hush. Then from the floor above a horrible scream cut through me like a frozen knife; then another, mixed with a heavy clatter of feet.

We both sprang for the stairs, Lady a little before me. As I tried to pa.s.s her at the foot, she caught me by the arm and clung desperately to me, her breath coming hard and fast.

"No, you mustn't. Don't come, do you hear? Wait until I call you." The dry tension in her voice was not a thing to disregard blindly. I waited with my foot on the lowest step, my heart staggering in my ears, while she sped above out of sight. The screams had broken into a choking wail of utter terror. A door slammed. Sheila's strong voice rang out angrily, then sank under a broken clamor of stumbling steps. A man leaped roughly down the first few stairs, stopped and turned as I bent forward just enough to get a half glimpse of coa.r.s.e clothes and clumsy feet, and sprang back again, trampling across the upper hall. I hesitated an instant, then followed him three steps at a stride. Whatever happened, I would not leave the three women alone with him.

In the hall I paused, for it was empty. From the front room which I took to be Mrs. Tabor's came voices, Lady's full and sweet, her mother's frightened and childish, and the resonant whisper of Mrs. Carucci.

"He was here, I tell you, Lady." Mrs. Tabor's treble rose above the murmur, and as suddenly ceased. I looked about me, uncertain. I had only been above stairs once before, and then at night. My room then had been at the rear of the house, with the whole length of hall between it and Mrs. Tabor's; and the stair-head where I now stood was an even midway between the two. I felt vaguely ill at ease. I knew that I should look for the intruder, and look for him upon the instant; but something held me back--perhaps a feeling that I had little right to blunder about upon this floor, to stumble perhaps into Lady's own room, an intruder upon her intimate privacy. This, however, was no time for doubtful sentiment.

Minutes were pa.s.sing, and the man must be found. I was sure that he was still in the house. Very carefully I tiptoed down the hall toward the room that I had occupied. Fate might grant that he was hidden there, and so I should have to search only where I had already seen. But before I reached my door, I paused before another. It was slightly ajar; and half instinctively I pushed it open.

In the doorway I stood looking about me. This was Lady's room, after all. A deep bed stood in the corner against the outer wall to my left; and close by, a little table with a book face-down upon it. A dress of some filmy blue stuff lay across the foot of the bed, and from beneath peeped a pair of little slippers. My face burned at my intrusion, but I held my ground. The sunlight fell heavily through the two closed windows, across the wide rug, and almost to my feet. In the outer right-hand corner was a small desk. A low table, piled with dainty feminine miscellany, stood in the center of the room. A riding-crop lay carelessly across it; and I remembered absently that the Tabors had no horses. I stepped within, and cautiously closed the door behind me. Then I knew. There was some one in the room. It was unmistakable, this feeling of a presence. I listened closely, but there was not a sound.

The skin crawled at my temples, and I could feel the stir of hair upon my scalp, the strange primal bristling that has stirred man conscious of the unseen, since the beginning of time. For a heartbeat, I stood there with much of the clutching terror of a child, a child willing enough to face a fight, but hesitating before the sudden mystery of a place that he must pa.s.s. Then I got hold of myself, and crossed over to the bed. I knew that he was not under it; but I looked to see. Behind me something tinkled sweetly, and I sprang to my feet with every muscle tense. Across the room and above the little desk, hung a circle of bronze with tiny bronze pendants shaped like birds and fish and leaves swinging from it on silken threads--such a thing as the j.a.panese hang above the bed of a child to ward off evil and to chime with every breath of air. I glanced uneasily at closed door and windows as I started across the room. Upon the big central table before me lay a thin film of dust, invisible save for the contrast of a streak across its edge where something had brushed along. Tiptoeing around it, I glanced down at the little desk and the half-written sheet upon it. "Lady, dearest," it began; and I gripped my hands at my sides. This was not Lady's room, but-- One of the long outer curtains of the window shivered--shivered humanly with a trembling behind it; and I reached out my hand to grip through the fold the solid shoulder of a man.

In a sudden warm rush of relief, I struck at him savagely through the curtain, shouting as I struck. Then I gripped the curtain about, throwing all my weight against him and crushing him back against the side of the embrasure. He grunted, and an arm tore itself free from the folds above my bent head. Then there was a splash of light and a curious sharp smell that seemed to come from inside my own brain. And then nothing.

I knew that I had not lain there long, when I opened my eyes. Lady was kneeling on the floor beside me, very white and piteously lovely. As my mind grew clearer, the color seemed to come back into her face.

"Mr. Crosby," she said, "I asked you not to come up-stairs at all. I want to be able to trust you. What has happened?"

"Happened?" I repeated dizzily. "Why, I had to come up. I chased the man up here, and then I saw this door open and came in, and felt as if there was some one in here--and there was some one, there behind that curtain.

I tackled him, and he hit me." I raised my head sharply: "Listen--the fellow is here yet."

Lady pointed to the window behind me. "I think not," she said.

"But I tell you he's still in the room."

She smiled a little. "You are dizzy yet. Come here and look, and you will see what I mean." The window was flung wide, and beneath at the foot of the wall a syringa bush lay broken.

"It looks as if you were right," I said, as she carefully closed the window. "I think I'll scout around a little outside; he may not have gone clear away." I noticed that she locked the door behind us.

My ideas were rather indefinite as I examined the syringa bush after the most approved fashion, and discovered no more than that somebody had broken it by dropping from above, and had gone away. So I started vaguely across the lawn toward the road. At the gate, I ran into the men who followed us on our man-hunt.

"He did not come this way," said the fat one, catching me by the arm.

"How do you know?" I asked.

The thin Italian smiled. "Then you are after Antonio Carucci?"

I had been almost trapped. "Carucci?" said I. "No, I was looking for Doctor Reid. Some one wants him on the 'phone."

"Why did you search the side of the house, then?"

"Look here," said I, "I haven't the slightest idea what you people are getting at, and I doubt if you have, either. But if you've seen Doctor Reid--a stocky man with a jerky walk--I wish you'd say so. They won't hold that line for ever."

"We might take a look about the place for him," the fat one smiled, "while you go back to the telephone."

"I won't trouble you," I retorted. "If you have any errand inside, go straight to the door. Mr. Tabor doesn't like his lawns trampled. Good morning."

I stood at the gate while they moved unwillingly away, and then went back to the house.

CHAPTER XIV

A DISAPPEARANCE AND AN ENCOUNTER