The dream detective
The mysterious foreign gentleman looked about him with a sort of
challenge in his glance; then he quietly resumed his story.
“At the change of the moon in the sacred month, Methori, a maiden
selected from a noble house for her beauty and purity, and for a whole
year dedicated to the service of the gods, held in her hands the
sacred thing--held it aloft that the initiated might worship, until
the first white beam lit up the receptacle, when all bowed down their
heads and chanted the ‘Hymn of the Souls Who Are Passing.’ Then was it
locked again within the three-and-thirty doors, there to remain for
another year. None saw the symbol itself but the high priest, who
looked upon it when he was so ordained--for any other that gazed upon
it died! It was contained in a holy vase!”
He paused impressively. We had all fallen under the peculiar
fascination of the speaker’s personality; we felt as though he spoke
of matters wherein he had had personal concern. I could almost believe
him to have witnessed the strange rites that he told of with such
conviction.
“In a year so long ago,” he softly resumed, his voice now a kind of
jagged whisper, “that to speak of its date were to convey nothing to
you, the high-born virgin on whom the exalted office was conferred
closed upon her unhappy soul the gates of paradise for ages
unnumbered; called down upon her head the curse of the high priest and
the anger of the most high gods; was rejected of Set himself!
“She let fall from her hands the sacred vase, and the holy symbol was
lost to the children of earth for evermore! Lost was the key to the
book of wisdom; closed was that book to man for all time!”
“Go on!” said Halesowen, harshly, for Zeda had paused again.
“You do not grasp?” asked the doctor. “Well, then, know that the
sentence was ‘Until the parts of this vase be made whole again.’ Five
fragments there were: a large one, which is your potsherd, and four
smaller. The four smaller, after twenty years of untiring search, I
have recovered and joined together. What if we now make whole that
which was broken? May I not, by the exercise of such poor shreds of
the lost wisdom as I have gathered up, summon before me that wandering
spirit ere it return again to plead for rest at the judgment seat of
Amenti?”
When I say that the man’s words proved electrical, I do not exaggerate
the effect which this astounding proposition had upon us. Halesowen
was fairly startled out of his chair, and stood with his eyes fixed on
the other in a fascinated gaze.
Zeda, entirely returning to his customary urbanity, shrugged and
smiled. “You believe my story?”
Lesty was the first to recover himself, and his reply was
characteristic. “Can’t say I do,” he drawled, frankly. “I don’t say
that _you_ may not, though,” he added.
“Then do you not owe it to assist in proving my words? A little
séance? You are sceptical, quite? Very well; I try to show you. If I
fail, then it is unfortunate, but--I bow to an inevitable!”
We looked at each other, interrogatively, and then Halesowen answered,
“All right. It’s a queer yarn, but we leave the matter entirely in
your hands.”
The doctor bowed. “Shall we say to-night to begin?” he said,
tentatively.
“By all means.”
The doctor expressed himself delighted, and, carefully relocking the
fragment of the vase in its double case, he was about to depart, when
a point occurred to me.
“Might I ask whom you suspect of the attempted burglary?” I said.
He turned, in the door, and fixed a strange glance upon me. “There are
others,” he replied, “who seek as I seek, and who do not scruple to
gain their ends how they may. Of them we shall beware, my friends, for
we know they design upon us!”
With that and a low bow he retired.
Little of interest occurred during the day, until about four in the
afternoon, when Halesowen aroused us out of a lazy doze to show a
letter just received from the British Museum.
It was in reply to one asking why he had received no acknowledgment of
the photographs and drawings submitted; and it informed him that no
such photographs and drawings had come to hand!
We usually took tea in the afternoon, and Halesowen joined us on this
occasion, whilst, at about five o’clock, Doctor Zeda also looked in.
He remained until it began to grow dusk, when we all went over to
Halesowen’s to arrange the first “sitting”--for so the doctor referred
to the projected séance. Retiring, for a few minutes, to his own
establishment, Zeda returned with the iron box and explained what he
proposed to do.
“Around this small table we sit, as at séance,” he said; “but no
medium--only the potsherd. With these flexible bands I will attach,
temporarily, the parts, and stand the vase in Mr. Halesowen’s frame,
here by the window--so. Beside it we will place the lamp, shaded
thus--so that a dim light is upon it. We can just see from where we
sit in the dark. We will now wait until it is more dusk.”
Accordingly, we went out on to the balcony and smoked for an hour,
Zeda polluting the clean air with the fumes of the long, black cigars
he affected. They had an appearance as of dried twigs and an odour so
wholly original as to defy simile. Between eight and nine o’clock he
expressed himself satisfied with the light--or, rather, lack of
it--and we all gathered around the table in the gloom, spreading our
hands as he directed. For close upon an hour we sat in tense silence,
the room seeming to be very hot. A slight breeze off the Common had
wafted the fumes of Zeda’s cigar in through the open windows, which he
had afterward closed, and the reek filled the air as with something
palpable--and nauseous. I was growing very weary of the business, and
Lesty, despite the doctor’s warning against disturbing the silence,
had begun to cough and fidget irritably, when the rumbling foreign
voice came, so unexpectedly as to startle us all: “It is useless
to-night; something is not propitious. Turn up the lights.”
From the celerity with which Halesowen complied, I divined that he,
too, had been growing impatient.
“There is some not suitable condition,” said Zeda, relocking his
portion of the vase in its case. “To-morrow we shall make some changes
in the order.”
He seemed not at all disappointed, being apparently as confident as
ever in the ultimate success of the séances. One of the windows, he
suggested, should be left open on the following evening during our
sitting; and this we were only too glad to agree upon, since it would
possibly serve to clear the atmosphere, somewhat, of the odour
emanating from the doctor’s cigars. Several other points he also
mentioned as being conceivably responsible for our initial
failure--such as our positions around the table, and the relative
distance of the potsherd. “We shall see to-morrow,” were his last
words as he left us.
“A perfect monument of mendacity!” muttered Lesty, as we heard the
retiring footsteps of our foreign friend on the gravel below; “and I
think his accent is assumed. I don’t know why we even seem to credit
such an incredible fable.”
“I don’t know, either,” said Halesowen, reflectively. “But he
certainly possesses the missing part of the vase, and if he does not
believe the story himself, what earthly object can he hope to serve by
these séances?”
“Give it up!” replied Lesty, promptly; and that, I think, rather aptly
expressed the mental attitude of all three.
We saw nothing of Zeda throughout the following day, but he duly put
in an appearance in the evening, and placed us around the table again,
but in different order. One of the French windows was left open, and
the potsherd, with the lamp beside it, placed somewhat to the left.
After persevering for about forty minutes, we were rewarded by a
rather conventional phenomenon. The table rocked and gave forth
cracking sounds. There was no other manifestation, and, at about
half-past ten, the doctor again terminated the séance.
“Excellent!” said Zeda, enthusiastically, “excellent! We were _en
rapport_, and within the circle there was power. To-morrow we shall
triumph, my friends, but there is again an alteration that occurs to
me. You, Mr. Clifford, shall sit next to Mr. Lesty on the left, Mr.
Halesowen shall be upon his right, and I, facing Mr. Lesty between.
Also, there is too much light from the lamps in the road. It is good,
I think, to have open the windows, but this Japanese screen will keep
out that too much light and shelter the vase. To-morrow we will
observe these things.”
This, then, concluded our second sitting, and brings me to the final
episode of that affair which, strange enough in its several
developments, was stranger still in its dénouement.
IV
Zeda, on the following day, entertained us to luncheon in town,
followed by an afternoon concert, for which he had procured seats,
being interested, or professing to be, in a certain fiddler who
figured largely in the programme. We had arranged that Halesowen and
the doctor should dine with us in the evening, before we went to the
former’s flat for the séance, and we accordingly returned direct to
our rooms and chatted over the doings of the day until dinner was
served. Zeda surpassed himself in brilliant conversation. He must, I
remember thinking, have led a strange and eventful life.
At about nine o’clock, we walked over, in the dark, to our friend’s
flat, where we had to grope for and light an oil lamp which he had,
Zeda declaring that something in the atmosphere was propitious and
that the electric light would tend to disturb these favourable
conditions. He seemed to be strung to high tension, perhaps with
expectancy, but was not so preoccupied as to forget his black cigars,
one of which he lighted as he was about to go out for the iron box. He
borrowed my matches for the purpose and forgot to return them.
It was, perhaps, a quarter to ten before Zeda had matters arranged to
his satisfaction, and so dark, by reason of the tall Japanese screen
which stood before the open windows, that I could see neither Zeda, on
my left, nor Lesty, who sat on my right. Halesowen was a dim
silhouette against the patch of light cast by the oil reading lamp
beside the vase, which stood the whole length of the room away. I was
conscious of a suppressed excitement, which I am sure was shared by my
companions.
I heard a distant clock striking the half hour, and then the three
quarters; but still nothing had occurred. A motor car drove around
from the road and stopped somewhere at the outer end of the drive. I
wondered, idly, if it were that of the surgeon who lived at Number 10.
After that, everything was very quiet, and I was expecting to hear the
hour strike, and straining my ears to catch the sound of the first
chime, when the rocking and cracking of the table began. This was much
more violent than hitherto, and Zeda’s gruff tones came softly:
“Whatever shall happen, do not remove your hands from the table!”
He ceased speaking, and the rocking motions, together with the rapping
and cracking that had sounded from all about us, also ceased, with
disconcerting suddenness. A silence fell, so short in duration as to
be scarcely appreciable; for it was almost instantly broken by an
unexpected sound.
It was a woman’s voice, very low and clear, and it seemed to mutter
something in a weird, rising cadence, with a high note at the end of
every third bar or so, and this over and over again--an eerie thing,
vaguely like a Gregorian chant.
“Triumph!” whispered Zeda. “The ‘Hymn of the Souls Who Are Passing.’”
His speech seemed to disturb the singer, but only for a moment. The
Hymn was continued.
This singular performance was proving too much for my nerves; at each
recurrence of the quiet, clear note on the fourth beat of the third