CHAPTER XLII
THE EMPTY MANSION
DIMITRI has bolted," said Teak. "All the other servants are at Southampton. They went yesterday, to join the yacht. We were to have sailed to-morrow."
Sir Provost Hope stared about him in undisguised amazement. These wonderful apartments, of which he had heard so much, were empty! Nothing but bare boards and stripped walls met the eye in any of the spacious rooms through which they passed. Of those priceless and bizarre appointments which fashionable London had competed for the privilege to view, not a trace remained. The great house of Trepniak was a memory.
He exchanged a significant glance with Torrington, as the two followed Teak up uncarpeted stairs; and:
"What has become of all the furniture?" Torrington asked; "is that at Southampton also?"
"No," Teak answered, glancing back; "it was taken away on Tuesday and Wednesday, twenty-three lorry loads, and burned in the furnaces of a firm at Shadwell. It was a contract. The heavy stuff was put aboard a lighter, and towed out and dropped in the sea. I was in charge of the job, myself. It was the same when we left Paris," he added.
Again the two men who followed him exchanged glances; but now they became silent.
The light of early morning was streaming through uncurtained windows into the bleak room which had been the library; and the masked door communicating with Trepniak's study was open. Pausing before it, Teak turned, his grim, weather-beaten face lined and haggard.
"Here, I finish," he said. "I won't go in—I can't go in. I've done my last job for him and I'm through. He told me to bring you two gentlemen along, and I have brought you. There's a door behind the table, and a stair. You'll find him in the room above."
He nodded shortly to each in turn, and recrossed the library, going out through the doorway by which they had entered, his heavy footsteps echoing hollowly.
Sir Provost and Torrington watched him, but he did not look back. Yet, in silence they stood staring at the doorway, long after he had gone, and listening to the dying sound of his footsteps as he tramped down the staircase of the empty house. Not until the distant bang of a door told of his final departure did their glances meet.
The face of Sir Provost Hope was pale and very stern. Torrington, gaunt, eagerly vital, regarded him with questioning eyes; and:
"I know the way," he said.
They entered the study. It was stripped, in common with the other rooms, and the strong door in the recess behind where the table had stood was ajar. At the foot of the steps beyond they paused. This room possessed no windows, but light shone in through the library door and, more dimly, down the staircase from above. No sound was audible. Sir Provost took a step forward.
"Let us go up," he said.
A few moments later the two entered that little isolated room in the tower. From here, also, the greater number of those strange and horrifying curiosities which once had occupied the shelves and cases had been removed. Since neither of these two hitherto had entered the room, they were unaware of this. They had no eyes for the laboratory, but only for its occupants.
Upon the tiled floor, in a dreadful, tortured attitude, lay a long-armed man, his hairy hands clenched convulsively, his head and features undistinguishable, indescribable, for the reason that a huge crystal which seemed to have dropped from the roof, and which lay shattered, had clearly fallen upon him, crushing his skull like an eggshell.
There was a gash in the metal ceiling where some fitting had been torn away, and part of a broken pedestal lay among the crystal fragments. Sunken in a revolving chair, staring down at the bloody horror of the floor, was one who at first glance appeared to be a stranger. Clutching the arms of the chair with slender, venous, white hands, he slowly raised his head and stared at the intruders.
As the glance of the cavernous eyes met his own, Torrington grasped Sir Provost's arm in a fierce grip, and:
"My God!" he said hoarsely; "can it be?"
"It is," Sir Provost replied, his voice no more than a whisper.
So they stood in that room of phantoms, contemplating the figure in the chair. It was that of a man whose shirt front was stained with blood, of a man whose clothes seemed too big for him—of one having a deathly grey face and clammy neutral-coloured hair which hung down lankly upon his forehead. He achieved speech, even sought to smile; and the expression, when his grey lips were drawn back from his teeth, was so like that of a death-mask that Torrington, hardened though he was, shuddered.
"I thank you for coming." He spoke in a rattling, feeble voice. "But I knew I could count upon you."
Faintly, the guttural accents, the Teutonic inflections, might be discerned in this phanton voice.
"I have," he continued, "a bullet in my right lung. There is internal hemorrhage. You wonder no doubt that I am conscious, that I can speak."
The dreadful voice sank lower and lower.
"It is the last scientific miracle I shall ever perform."
He moved his glassy eyes from right to left.
"Indeed, I am already dead. You do not understand-but at this moment I am among the dead. Yet, now, I no longer fear them. I welcome them. He"—his wavering glance sought the figure on the floor—"my poor companion, returned to me to-night, wounded and mad. He wished our companionship to continue. His first wild shot"—the sunken eyes turned upward to the rent in the metal ceiling and then downward to the crystal fragments on the floor—"I diverted. You see the consequences. In the very moment of his own end he fired again—successfully."
The speaker became silent, and seemed to sink lower in his chair.
"Sir Provost!" Torrington whispered, "it isn't possible!"
"It is possible."
As the echo of a breeze, Trepniak's voice answered him.
"Look at Krauss: decomposition is present—in both of us. … I beg you not to remain after … cease speaking. …."
"His cheeks are falling in!" Torrington whispered.
It was so; yet by an effort of his great will Trepniak spoke again.
"The diamond … it is-untainted … my wedding gift—to Jasmine. Never tell her … of-the end. …"
A loud disturbance arose from below. Inspector Whiteleaf and a party of police had arrived from Limehouse.
A very faint rattling sound issued from Trepniak's jaws. The venous white hand had turned grey, and now the flesh of his face collapsed, revealing the outlines of his skull. He began to settle in the chair like something which dissolved.
Sir Provost Hope turned suddenly and pushed Torrington down the stairs.
"Merciful God!" he said, "I can't face it."
***
And in the library in Half-Moon Street Carey sat with his arm around Jasmine, afraid to stir lest he should awaken her. Her weary little head pillowed on his shoulder, she had fallen asleep; and upon the dying embers of the fire a dense mass of grey ashes settled lower and lower—ashes of the Forbidden Wisdom.
THE END