The dream detective
refastened the door, we laid him on a sofa in the morning room. His
face was deathly and blood flowed from a terrible wound on his skull.
Strangest of all, though, he had a gaping hole just above the right
wrist. The skin about it was discoloured as if with burning. Neither
of us could detect any sign of life, and we stood, two frankly
frightened men, looking at each other over the body.
“It’s got to be done!” said Haufmann, slowly. “One of us has to stay
here and do what he can for him, and one has to go for a doctor!
There’s no telephone!”
“Where’s the nearest doctor?” I asked.
“There’s one at the corner of the first road on the right.”
“I’ll go!” I said.
Without shame I confess that from the moment the door closed behind
me, I ran my hardest down the poplar avenue until I had passed the
gate! And it was not anxiety that spurred me, for I did not doubt that
Ottley was dead, but stark fear!
III
Moris Klaw deposited a large grip and a travelling rug upon the
veranda.
“Good day, Mr. Haufmann! Good day, Mr. Searles!” At an open window the
white-aproned figure of a nurse appeared. “Good day, Nurse! I am
direct from Paris. This is a case which cannot be dealt with under the
head of the Cycle of Crime, and I do not think it has any relation
with the history of The Park. But thoughts are things, Mr. Haufmann.
How helpful that is!”
Forty-eight hours had elapsed since Haufmann and I had picked up
Ottley for dead in the poplar avenue. Now he lay in a bed made up in
the billiard room hovering between this world and another. I had a
shrewd suspicion that the doctor who attended him was mystified by
some of the patient’s symptoms.
Haufmann stared oddly at Moris Klaw, not altogether comprehending the
drift of his words.
“If only Ottley could tell us!” he muttered.
“He will tell us nothing for many a day,” I said; “if, indeed, he ever
speaks again.”
“Ah,” interrupted Moris Klaw, “to _me_ he will speak! How? With the
mind! Something--we have yet to learn what--struck him down that
night. The blow, if it was a blow, made so acute an impression upon
his brain that no other has secured admittance yet! Good! That blow,
it still resides within his mind. To-night I shall sleep beside his
bed. I shall be unable odically to sterilize myself, but we must hope.
From amid the phantasms which that sick brain will throw out upon the
astral film--upon the surrounding ether--I must trust that I find the
thought, the last thought before delirium came!”
Haufmann looked amazed. I had prepared him, to some extent, for Klaw’s
theories, but, nevertheless, he was tremendously surprised. Klaw,
however, paid no attention to this. He looked around at the trees.
“I am glad,” he rumbled, impressively, “that you managed to hush up.
Distinctly, we have now a chance.”
“A chance of what?” I cried. “The thing seems susceptible of no
ordinary explanation! How can you account for what happened to Ottley
and for his condition? What incredible thing came out from the
poplars?”
“No thing!” answered Moris Klaw. “No thing, my good friend!”
“Then what did he fire at?”
“At the coach house!”
I met the gaze of his peculiar eyes, fixed upon me through the
pince-nez.
“If you will look at the coach-house chimney,” he continued, “you will
see it--the hole made by his bullet!”
I turned quickly, and even from that considerable distance the hole
was visible; a triangular break on the red-tiled rim.
“What on earth does it mean?” I asked, more hopelessly mystified than
ever.
“It means that Ottley is a clever man who knows his business; and it
means, Mr. Searles, that we must take up this so extraordinary affair
where the poor Ottley dropped it!”
“What do you propose?”
“I propose that you invite yourself to a few days’ holiday, as I have
done. You stay here. Do not allow even the doctor to know that you are
in the house. The nurse you will have to confide in, I suppose. Mr.
Haufmann”--he turned to the latter--“you will occupy your old room. Do
not, I beg of you, go outside after dusk upon any consideration. If
either of you shall hear it again--the evil whispering--come out by
the front door, and keep in the shadow. Carry no light. Above all, do
not come out upon the balcony!”
“Then you,” I said, “will be unable to stay?”
“I shall be so unable,” was the reply; “for I go to Brighton to secure
the interview with Miss Greta which the poor Ottley so much required!”
“You don’t suggest that she knows----”
“She knows no more than we do, Mr. Searles! But I think she holds a
clue and does not know that she holds a clue! For an hour I shall
slumber--I who, like the tortoise, know that to sleep is to live--I
shall slumber beside the sick man’s bed. Then, we shall see!”
IV
It was a quarter to seven when Moris Klaw entered the sick room.
Ottley lay in a trance-like condition, and the eccentric investigator,
of whose proceedings the nurse strongly disapproved, settled himself
in a split-cane armchair by the bedside, and waving his hand in
dismissal to Haufmann and myself, placed a large silk handkerchief
over his sparsely covered skull and composed himself for slumber.
We left him and tiptoed from the room.
“If you hadn’t told me what he’s done in the past,” whispered
Haufmann, “I should say our old friend was mad a lot!”
The great empty house was eerily silent, and during the time that we
sat smoking and awaiting the end of Moris Klaw’s singular telepathic
experiment, neither of us talked very much. At eight o’clock the man
whose proceedings savoured so much of charlatanism, but whom I knew
for one of the foremost criminologists of the world, emerged, spraying
his face with verbena.
“Ah, gentlemen,” he said, coming in to us, “I have recovered some
slight impression”--he tapped his moist forehead--“of that agonizing
thought which preceded the unconsciousness of Ottley. I depart.
Sometime to-night will come Sir Bartram Vane from Half-Moon Street,
the specialist, to confer with the physician who is attending here.
Mr. Searles, remain concealed. Not even he must know of your being
here; no one outside the house must know. Remember my warnings. I
depart.”
Behind the thick pebbles his eyes gleamed with some excitement
repressed. By singular means, he would seem to have come upon a clue.
“Good-night, Mr. Haufmann,” he said. “Good-night, Mr. Searles. To the
nurse I have said good-night and she only glared. She thinks I am the
mad old fool!”
He departed, curtly declining company, and carrying his huge plaid rug
and heavy grip. As his slouching footsteps died away along the avenue,
Haufmann and I looked grimly at each other.
“Seems we’re left!” said my friend. “You won’t desert me, Searles?”
“Most certainly I shall not! You are tied here by the presence of poor
Ottley, in any event, and you can rely upon me to keep you company.”
At about ten o’clock Sir Bartram Vane drove up, bringing with him the
local physician who was attending upon Ottley. I kept well out of
sight, but learnt, when the medical men had left, that the course of
treatment had been entirely changed.
Thus commenced our strange ordeal; how it terminated you presently
shall learn.
Moris Klaw, in pursuit of whatever plan he had formed, never appeared
on the scene, but evidence of his active interest reached us in the
form of telegraphic instructions. Once it was a wire telling Haufmann
to detain the American servants in London should they arrive and to go
on living as we were. Again it was a warning not to go out on the
balcony after dusk; and, again, that we should not desert our posts
for one single evening. On the fourth day the doctor pronounced a
slight improvement in Ottley’s condition, and Haufmann determined to
run down to Brighton on the following morning, returning in the
afternoon.
That night we again heard the voice.
The house was very still, and Haufmann and I had retired to our rooms,
when I discerned, above the subdued rustling whisper of the leaves,
that other sound that no leaf ever made. In an instant I was crouching
by the open window. A lull followed. Then, again, I heard the soft
voice calling. I could not detect the words, but in obedience to the
instructions of Klaw, I picked up the pistol which I had brought for
the purpose, and ran to the door. The idea that the whispering menace
was something that could be successfully shot at robbed it of much of
its eerie horror, and I relished the prospect of action after the
dreary secret sojourn in the upper rooms of the house.
I groped my way down to the hall. As we had carefully oiled the bolts,
I experienced no difficulty in silently opening the door. Inch by inch
I opened it, listening intently.
Again I heard the queer call.
Now, by craning my neck, I could see the moon-bright front of the
house; and looking upward, I was horrified to see Shan Haufmann, a
conspicuous figure in his light pajama suit, crouching on the balcony!
The moonlight played vividly on the nickelled barrel of the pistol he
carried as he rose slowly to his feet.
Though I did not know what danger threatened, nor from whence it would
proceed, I knew well that Klaw’s was no idle warning. I could not
imagine what madness had prompted Haufmann to neglect it, and was
about to throw wide the door and call to him, when a series of strange
things happened in bewildering succession.
An odd _strumming_ sound came from somewhere in the outer darkness.
Haufmann dropped to his knees (I learnt, afterward, that the loose
slippers he wore had tripped him). The glass of the window behind him
was shattered with a great deal of noise.
A shot!… a spurt of flame in the black darkness of the poplar avenue!…
a shriek from somewhere on the west front… and I ran out on to the
drive.
With a tremendous crash a bulky form rolled down the sloping roof of
the coach house, to fall with a sickening thud to the ground!
Then, out into the moonlight, Moris Klaw came running, his yet smoking
pistol in his hand!
“Haufmann!” he cried, and again, “Haufmann!”
The big American peered down from the balcony, hauling in something
which seemed to be a line, but which I was unable to distinguish in
the darkness.
“Good boy!” he panted. “I was a fool to do it! But I saw him lying
behind the chimney and thought I could drop him!”
Moris Klaw ran, ungainly, across to the coach house and I followed
him. The figure of a tall, lithe man, wearing a blue serge suit, lay
face downward on the gravel. As we turned him over, Haufmann,
breathing heavily, joined us. The moonlight fell on a dark saturnine
face.
“Gee!” came the cry. “It’s _Corpus Chris!_”
V
“Where did I get hold upon the clue?” asked Moris Klaw, when he,
Haufmann, and I sat, in the gray dawn, waiting for the police to come
and take away the body of Costa. “It was from the brain of Ottley! His
poor mind”--he waved long hands circularly in the air--“goes round and
round about the thing that happened to him on the balcony.”
“And what was that?” demanded Haufmann, eagerly. “Same as happened to
me?”
“It was something--something that his knowledge of strange things
tells him is venomous--which struck his wrist as he raised his
revolver! What did he do? I can tell you; because he is doing it over
and over again in his poor feverish mind. He clapped to the injured
wrist the barrel of his revolver and fired! Then, swooning, he toppled
over and fell among the bushes. The wound that so had puzzled all
becomes explained. It was self-inflicted--a precaution--a cauterizing;
and it saved his life. For I saw Sir Bartram Vane to-day and he had
spoken with the other doctor on the telephone. The new treatment
succeeds.”
“I am still in the dark!” confessed Haufmann.
“Yes?” rumbled Moris Klaw. “So? Why do I go to Brighton? I go to ask