The Top of the World Part 36

"Yes, he is alive. He has been speaking. I think he is asleep."

"Permit me!" the stranger said.

He knelt beside the still form while Burke held the lamp. He opened the shirt and exposed the blood-soaked bandage.

Then suddenly he looked at Sylvia with black eyes of a most amazing brightness. "Madam, you cannot help here. You had better go."

Somehow he made her think of a raven, unscrupulous, probably wholly without pity, possibly wicked, and overwhelmingly intelligent. She avoided his eyes instinctively. They seemed to know too much.

"Will he--do you think he win--live?" she whispered.

He made a gesture of the hands that seemed to indicate infinite possibilities. "I do not think at present. But I must be undisturbed. Go to your room, madam, and rest! Your husband will come to you later and tell you what I have done--or failed to do."

He spoke with absolute fluency but with a foreign accent. His hands were busy with the bandages, dexterous, clawlike hands that looked as if they were delving for treasure.

She watched him, speechless and fascinated, for a few seconds.

Then Burke set the lamp upon the chair against which she had leaned all the night, and bent down to her.

"Let me help you!" he said.

A shuddering horror of the sight before her came upon her. She yielded herself to him in silence. She was shivering violently from head to foot. Her limbs were so numb she could not stand. He raised her and drew her away.

The next thing she knew was that she was sitting on the bed in her own room, and he was making her drink brandy and water in so burning a mixture that it stung her throat.

She tried to protest, but he would take no refusal till she had swallowed what he had poured out. Then he put down the gla.s.s, tucked her feet up on the bed with an air of mastery, and spread a rug over her.

He would have left her then with a brief injunction to remain where she was, but she caught and held his arm so that he was obliged to pause.

"Burke, is that dreadful man a doctor?"

"The only one I could get hold of," said Burke. "Yes, he's a doctor all right. Saul Kieff his name is. I admit he's a scoundrel, but anyway he's keen on his job."

"You think he'll save Guy?" she said tremulously. "Oh, Burke, he must be saved! He must be saved!"

An odd look came into Burke's eyes. She remembered it later, though it was gone in an instant like the sudden flare of lightning across a dark sky.

"We shall do our best," he said. "You stay here till I come back!"

She let him go. Somehow that look had given her a curious shock though she did not understand it. She heard the door shut firmly behind him, and she huddled herself down upon the pillow and lay still.

She wished he had not made her drink that fiery draught. All her senses were in a tumult, and yet her body felt as if weighted with lead. She lay listening tensely for every sound, but the silence was like a blanket wrapped around her--a blanket which nothing seemed to penetrate.

It seemed to overwhelm her at last, that silence, to blot out the clamour of her straining nerves, to deprive her of the power to think. Though she did not know it, the stress of that night's horror and vigil had worn her out. She sank at length into a deep sleep from which it seemed that nought could wake her. And when more than an hour later, Burke came, treading softly, and looked upon her, he did not need to keep that burning hunger-light out of his eyes. For she was wholly unconscious of him as though her spirit were in another world.

He looked and looked with a gaze that seemed as if it would consume her. And at last he leaned over her, with arms outspread, and touched her sunny, disordered hair with his lips. It was the lightest touch, far too light to awaken her. But, as if some happy thought had filtered down through the deeps of her repose, she stirred in her sleep. She turned her face up to him with the faint smile of a slumbering child.

"Good night!" she murmured drowsily.

Her eyes half-opened upon him. She gave him her lips.

And as he stooped, with a great tremor, to kiss them, "Good night, dear--Guy!" Her voice was fainter, more indistinct. She sank back again into that deep slumber from which she had barely been roused.

And Burke went from her with the flower-like memory of her kiss upon his lips, and the dryness of ashes in his mouth.

It was several hours later that Sylvia awoke to full consciousness and a piercing realization of a strange presence that watched by her side.

She opened her eyes wide with a curious conviction that there was a cat in the room, and then all in a moment she met the cool, repellent stare of the black-browed doctor whom Burke had brought from Ritzen.

A little quiver of repugnance went through her at the sight, swiftly followed by a sharp thrill of indignation. What was he doing seated there by her side--this swarthy-faced stranger whom she had disliked instinctively at first sight?

And then--suddenly it rushed through her mind that he was the bearer of evil tidings, that he had come to tell her that Guy was dead. She raised herself sharply.

"Oh, what is it? What is it?" she gasped. "Tell me quickly! It's better for me to know. It's better for me to know."

He put out a narrow, claw-like hand and laid it upon her arm. His eyes were like onyxes, Oriental, quite emotionless.

"Do not agitate yourself, madam!" he said. "My patient is better.

I think, that with care--he may live. That is, if he finds it worth while."

"What do you mean?" she said in a whisper.

That there was a veiled meaning to his words she was a.s.sured at the outset. His whole bearing conveyed something mysterious, something sinister, to her startled imagination. She wanted to shake off the hand upon her arm, but she had to suffer it though the man's bare touch revolted her.

He was leaning slightly towards her, but yet his face was utterly inanimate. It was obvious that though he had imposed his personality upon her with a definite end in view, he was personally totally indifferent as to whether he achieved that end or not.

"I mean," he said, after a quiet pause, "that the desire to live is sometimes the only medicine that is of any avail. I know Guy Ranger. He is a fool in many ways, but not in all. He is not for instance fool enough to hang on to life if it holds nothing worth having. He was born with an immense love of life. He would not have done this thing if he had not somehow lost this gift--for it is a gift. If he does not get it back--somehow--then," the black, stony eyes looked into hers without emotion--"he will die."

She shrank at the cold deliberation of his words. "Oh no--no! Not like this! Not--by his own hand!"

"Ah!" He leaned towards her, bringing his sallow, impa.s.sive countenance close to hers, repulsively close, to her over-acute sensibilities. "And how is that to be prevented? Who is to give him that priceless remedy--the only medicine that can save him?

Can I?" He lifted his shoulders expressively, indicating his own helplessness. And then in a voice dropped to a whisper, "Can you?"

She did not answer him. There was something horrible to her in that low-spoken question, something that yet possessed for her a species of evil fascination that restrained her from open revolt.

He waited for a while, his eyes so immovably fixed upon hers that she had a mild wonder if they were lidless--as the eyes of a serpent.

Then at last, through grim pale lips that did not seem to move, he spoke again. "Madam, it lies with you whether Guy Ranger lives or dies. You can open to him the earthly paradise or you can hurl him back to h.e.l.l. I have only Drought him a little way. I cannot keep him. Even now, he is slipping--he is slipping from my hold. It is you, and you alone, who can save him. How do I know this thing?

How do I know that the sun rises in the east? I--have--seen. It is you who have taken from him the desire to live--perhaps unintentionally; that I do not know. It is you--and you alone--who can restore it. Need I say more than this to open your eyes?

Perhaps they are already open. Perhaps already your heart has been in communion with his. If so, then you know that I have told you the truth. If you really desire to save him--and I think you do--then everything else in life must go to that end. Women were made for sacrifice, they say." A sardonic flicker that was scarcely a smile touched his face. "Well, that is the only way of saving him. If you fail him, he will go under."

He got up with the words. He had evidently said his say. As his hand left hers, Sylvia drew a deep hard breath, as of one emerging from a suffocating atmosphere. She had never felt so oppressed, so fettered, with evil in the whole of her life. And yet he had not urged her to any line of action. He had merely somewhat baldly, wholly dispa.s.sionately, told her the truth, and the very absence of emotion with which he had spoken had driven conviction to her soul.

She saw him go with relief, but his words remained like a stone at the bottom of her heart.

CHAPTER XI