The Hand of Fu Manchu (23 page)

"Good old Petrie!" said Smith hoarsely. "Wake up, man; we have to get
her to a hotel before they all close, remember.
I
understand, old
man. That day came in my life long years ago!"

"This is a singular situation in which we find ourselves," I said,
"and one that I'm bound to admit I don't appreciate."

Nayland Smith stretched his long legs, and lay back in his chair.

"The sudden illness of Sir Lionel is certainly very disturbing," he
replied, "and had there been any possibility of returning to London
to-night, I should certainly have availed myself of it, Petrie. I
share your misgivings. We are intruders at a time like this."

He stared at me keenly, blowing a wreath of smoke from his lips, and
then directing his attention to the cone of ash which crowned his
cigar. I glanced, and not for the first time, toward the quaint old
doorway which gave access to a certain corridor. Then—

"Apart from the feeling that we intrude," I continued slowly, "there
is a certain sense of unrest."

"Yes," snapped Smith, sitting suddenly upright—"yes! You experience
this? Good! You are happily sensitive to this type of impression,
Petrie, and therefore quite as useful to me as a cat is useful to a
physical investigator."

He laughed in his quick, breezy fashion.

"You will appreciate my meaning," he added; "therefore I offer no
excuse for the analogy. Of course, the circumstances, as we know them,
may be responsible for this consciousness of unrest. We are neither of
us likely to forget the attempt upon the life of Sir Lionel Barton two
years ago or more. Our attitude toward sudden illness is scarcely that
of impartial observers."

"I suppose not," I admitted, glancing yet again at the still vacant
doorway by the foot of the stairs, which now the twilight was draping
in mysterious shadows.

Indeed, our position was a curious one. A welcome invitation from our
old friend, Sir Lionel Barton, the world-famous explorer, had come at
a time when a spell of repose, a glimpse of sea and awakening
countryside, and a breath of fair, untainted air were very desirable.
The position of Kâramaneh, who accompanied us, was sufficiently
unconventional already, but the presence of Mrs. Oram, the dignified
housekeeper, had rendered possible her visit to this bachelor
establishment. In fact it was largely in the interests of the girl's
health that we had accepted.

On our arrival at Graywater Park we had learnt that our host had been
stricken down an hour earlier by sudden illness. The exact nature of
his seizure I had thus far been unable to learn; but a local doctor,
who had left the Park barely ten minutes before our advent, had
strictly forbidden visitors to the sick-room. Sir Lionel's man,
Kennedy, who had served him in many strange spots in the world, was
in attendance.

So much we had gathered from Homopoulo, the Greek butler (Sir Lionel's
household had ever been eccentric). Furthermore, we learned that there
was no London train that night and no accommodation in the neighboring
village.

"Sir Lionel urgently requests you to remain," the butler had assured
us, in his flawless, monotonous English. "He trusts that you will not
be dull, and hopes to be able to see you to-morrow and to make plans
for your entertainment."

A ghostly, gray shape glided across the darkened hall—and was gone. I
started involuntarily. Then remote, fearsome, came muted howling to
echo through the ancient apartments of Graywater Park. Nayland Smith
laughed.

"That was the civet cat, Petrie!" he said. "I was startled, for a
moment, until the lamentations of the leopard family reminded me of
the fact that Sir Lionel had transferred his menagerie to Graywater!"

Truly, this was a singular household. In turn, Graywater Park had been
a fortress, a monastery, and a manor-house. Now, in the extensive
crypt below the former chapel, in an atmosphere artificially raised
to a suitably stuffy temperature, were housed the strange pets brought
by our eccentric host from distant lands. In one cage was an African
lioness, a beautiful and powerful beast, docile as a cat. Housed
under other arches were two surly hyenas, goats from the White Nile,
and an antelope of Kordofan. In a stable opening upon the garden were
a pair of beautiful desert gazelles, and near to them, two cranes and
a marabout. The leopards, whose howling now disturbed the night, were
in a large, cell-like cage immediately below the spot where of old the
chapel alter had stood.

And here were we an odd party in odd environment. I sought to make out
the time by my watch, but the growing dusk rendered it impossible.
Then, unheralded by any sound, Kâramaneh entered by the door which
during the past twenty minutes had been the focus of my gaze. The
gathering darkness precluded the possibility of my observing with
certainty, but I think a soft blush stole to her cheeks as those
glorious dark eyes rested upon me.

The beauty of Kâramaneh was not of the typed which is enhanced by
artificial lighting; it was the beauty of the palm and the pomegranate
blossom, the beauty which flowers beneath merciless suns, which expands,
like the lotus, under the skies of the East. But there, in the dusk,
as she came towards me, she looked exquisitely lovely, and graceful
with the grace of the desert gazelles which I had seen earlier in the
evening. I cannot describe her dress; I only know that she seemed very
wonderful—so wonderful that a pang; almost of terror, smote my heart,
because such sweetness should belong to
me
.

And then, from the shadows masking the other side of the old hall,
emerged the black figure of Homopoulo, and our odd trio obediently
paced into the somber dining-room.

A large lamp burned in the center of the table; a shaded candle was
placed before each diner; and the subdued light made play upon the
snowy napery and fine old silver without dispersing the gloom about
us. Indeed, if anything, it seemed to render it more remarkable, and
the table became a lighted oasis in the desert of the huge apartment.
One could barely discern the suits of armor and trophies which
ornamented the paneled walls; and I never failed to start nervously
when the butler appeared, somber and silent, at my elbow.

Sir Lionel Barton's
penchant
for strange visitors, of which we had
had experience in the past, was exemplified in the person of Homopoulo.
I gathered that the butler (who, I must admit, seemed thoroughly to
comprehend his duties) had entered the service of Sir Lionel during
the time that the latter was pursuing his celebrated excavations upon
the traditional site of the Daedalian Labyrinth in Crete. It was
during this expedition that the death of a distant relative had made
him master of Graywater Park; and the event seemingly had inspired the
eccentric baronet to engage a suitable factotum.

His usual retinue of Malay footmen, Hindu grooms and Chinese cooks,
was missing apparently, and the rest of the household, including the
charming old housekeeper, had been at the Park for periods varying
from five to five-and-twenty years. I must admit that I welcomed the
fact; my tastes are essentially insular.

But the untimely illness of our host had cast a shadow upon the party.
I found myself speaking in a church-whisper, whilst Kâramaneh was
quite silent. That curious dinner party in the shadow desert of the
huge apartment frequently recurs in my memories of those days because
of the uncanny happening which terminated it.

Nayland Smith, who palpably had been as ill at ease as myself, and who
had not escaped the contagious habit of speaking in a hushed whisper,
suddenly began, in a loud and cheery manner, to tell us something of
the history of Graywater Park, which in his methodical way he had
looked up. It was a desperate revolt, on the part of his strenuous
spirit, against the phantom of gloom which threatened to obsess us all.

Parts of the house, it appeared, were of very great age, although
successive owners had added portions. There were fascinating
traditions connected with the place; secret rooms walled up since the
Middle Ages, a private stair whose entrance, though undiscoverable,
was said to be somewhere in the orchard to the west of the ancient
chapel. It had been built by an ancestor of Sir Lionel who had
flourished in the reign of the eighth Henry. At this point in his
reminiscences (Smith had an astonishing memory where recondite facts
were concerned) there came an interruption.

The smooth voice of the butler almost made me leap from my chair, as
he spoke out of the shadows immediately behind me.

"The '45 port, sir," he said—and proceeded to place a crusted bottle
upon the table. "Sir Lionel desires me to say that he is with you in
spirit and that he proposes the health of Dr. Petrie and his fiancée',
whom he hopes to have the pleasure of meeting in the morning."

Truly it was a singular situation, and I am unlikely ever to forget
the scene as the three of us solemnly rose to our feet and drank our
host's toast, thus proposed by proxy, under the eye of Homopoulo, who
stood a shadowy figure in the background.

The ceremony solemnly performed and the gloomy butler having departed
with a suitable message to Sir Lionel—

"I was about to tell you," resumed Nayland Smith, with a gaiety
palpably forced, "of the traditional ghost of Graywater Park. He is a
black clad priest, said to be the Spanish chaplain of the owner of the
Park in the early days of the Reformation. Owing to some little
misunderstanding with His Majesty's commissioners, this unfortunate
churchman met with an untimely death, and his shade is said to haunt
the secret room—the site of which is unknown—and to clamor upon the
door, and upon the walls of the private stair."

I thought the subject rather ill chosen, but recognized that my friend
was talking more or less at random and in desperation; indeed, failing
his reminiscences of Graywater Park, I think the demon of silence must
have conquered us completely.

"Presumably," I said, unconsciously speaking as though I feared the
sound of my own voice, "this Spanish priest was confined at some time
in the famous hidden chamber?"

"He was supposed to know the secret of a hoard of church property, and
tradition has it, that he was put to the question in some gloomy
dungeon ..."

He ceased abruptly; in fact the effect was that which must have
resulted had the speaker been suddenly stricken down. But the deadly
silence which ensued was instantly interrupted. My heart seemed to
be clutched as though by fingers of ice; a stark and supernatural
horror held me riveted in my chair.

For as though Nayland Smith's words had been heard by the ghostly
inhabitant of Graywater Park, as though the tortured priest sought
once more release from his age-long sufferings—there came echoing,
hollowly and remotely, as if from a subterranean cavern, the sound
of
knocking
.

From whence it actually proceeded I was wholly unable to determine.
At one time it seemed to surround us, as though not one but a hundred
prisoners were beating upon the paneled walls of the huge, ancient
apartment.

Faintly, so faintly, that I could not be sure if I heard aright,
there came, too, a stifled cry. Louder grew the the frantic beating
and louder ... then it ceased abruptly.

"Merciful God!" I whispered—"what was it? What was it?"

With a cigarette between my lips I sat at the open window, looking
out upon the skeleton trees of the orchard; for the buds of early
spring were only just beginning to proclaim themselves.

The idea of sleep was far from my mind. The attractive modern
furniture of the room could not deprive the paneled walls of the musty
antiquity which was their birthright. This solitary window deeply set
and overlooking the orchard upon which the secret stair was said to
open, struck a note of more remote antiquity, casting back beyond the
carousing days of the Stuart monarchs to the troublous time of the
Middle Ages.

An air of ghostly evil had seemed to arise like a miasma within the
house from the moment that we had been disturbed by the unaccountable
rapping. It was at a late hour that we had separated, and none of us,
I think, welcomed the breaking up of our little party. Mrs. Oram, the
housekeeper, had been closely questioned by Smith—for Homopoulo, as a
new-comer, could not be expected to know anything of the history of
Graywater Park. The old lady admitted the existence of the tradition
which Nayland Smith had in some way unearthed, but assured us that
never, in her time, had the uneasy spirit declared himself. She was
ignorant (or, like the excellent retainer that she was, professed to
be ignorant) of the location of the historic chamber and staircase.

As for Homopoulo, hitherto so irreproachably imperturbable, I had
rarely seen a man in such a state of passive panic. His dark face was
blanched to the hue of dirty parchment and his forehead dewed with
cold perspiration. I mentally predicted an early resignation in the
household of Sir Lionel Barton. Homopoulo might be an excellent butler,
but his superstitious Greek nature was clearly incapable of sustaining
existence beneath the same roof with a family ghost, hoary though the
specter's antiquity might be.

Where the skeleton shadows of the fruit trees lay beneath me on the
fresh green turf my fancy persistently fashioned a black-clad figure
flitting from tree to tree. Sleep indeed was impossible. Once I
thought I detected the howling of the distant leopards.

Somewhere on the floor above me, Nayland Smith, I knew, at that moment
would be restlessly pacing his room, the exact situation of which I
could not identify, because of the quaint, rambling passages whereby
one approached it. It was in regard to Kâramaneh, however, that my
misgivings were the keenest. Already her position had been strange
enough, in those unfamiliar surroundings, but what tremors must have
been hers now in the still watches of the night, following the ghostly
manifestations which had so dramatically interrupted Nayland Smith's
story, I dared not imagine. She had been allotted an apartment
somewhere upon the ground floor, and Mrs. Oram, whose motherly
interest in the girl had touched me deeply, had gone with her to her
room, where no doubt her presence had done much to restore the girl's
courage.