FIRST MYSTERY—THE MASK OF SET
THE exact manner in which mental stress will affect a man's physical health is often difficult to predict. Robert Cairn was in the pink of condition when he left Oxford to take up his London journalistic appointment; but the tremendous nervous strain wrought upon him by a series of events wholly outside the radius of normal things had broken him physically, where it might have left unscathed a more highly strung, though less bodily vigorous man.
Those who have passed through such a nerve storm as had laid Cairn low will know that convalescence seems like a welcome awakening from a dreadful dream. It was indeed in a state between awaking and dreaming that the young man took counsel with his father—the latter more pale than was his wont, and somewhat anxious-eyed—and determined upon a rest cure in Egypt.
“I have made it all right at the office, Rob,” said Dr. Cairn. “In three weeks or so, at Cairo, you will receive instructions to write up a series of local articles. Until then, my boy, take a complete rest and don't worry—above all, don't worry. You and I have passed through a saturnalia of horror, and you, less inured to horrors than I, have gone down. I don't wonder.”
“Where is Antony Ferrara?” Robert asked his father.
Dr. Cairn shook his head, and his eyes gleamed with a sudden anger.
“For God's sake, my son, don't mention his name!” he said. “That topic is taboo, Rob. I may tell you, however, that he has left England.”
In this unreal frame of mind, then, and as one but partly belonging to the world of things actual, Cairn found himself an invalid, who but yesterday had been a hale man; found himself shipped for Port Said; found himself entrained for Cairo; and, with an awakening to the realities of life, an emerging from an evil dream to lively interest in the novelties of Egypt, found himself following the red-jerseyed Shepheard's porter along the corridor of the train and out upon the platform.
A short drive through those singular streets where East meets West, in the sudden, violet dusk of Lower Egypt, and he was amid the bustle of the popular hotel.
Sime was there, whom he had last seen at Oxford—Sime the phlegmatic. He apologized for not meeting the train, but explained that his duties had rendered it impossible. Sime was attached temporarily to an archeological expedition as medical man, and his athletic and somewhat bovine appearance contrasted oddly with Cairn's unhealthy gauntness.
“I only got in from Wasta ten minutes ago, Cairn. You must come out to the camp when I go back there. The desert air will put you on your feet again in no time.”
Cairn shook his head. His expression was enigmatical.
“Sime,” he said, glancing nervously around him, “I owe my present condition to Antony Ferrara.”
“Eh?” grunted Sime, staring curiously. “He was a bugbear of yours at Oxford. What with his incense burning, his weakness for mummies, and the scandal about women, it was rather a wonder he wasn't sent down. But what's he been up to?”
“Listen!” Cairn bent forward urgently. “You may remember that I once met a girl at the foot of his stairs—a pretty girl, obviously in deep trouble.”
Sime nodded.
“I know,” he said. “She afterward died at Bart's, while I was there. Apparently strangulation, although the nurse was within call.”
He paused, staring in his dull fashion at Cairn.
“Sir Michael Ferrara died like that,” said the latter slowly.
“Ferrara's adoptive father?”
“Yes. Myra—Myra Duquesne, Sir Michael's niece—has a strange tale to tell about the evening before his death. But, good God, why do I talk about it? I cannot hope to make you understand.”
Sime was unemotional, but there was concern in his voice and in his glance, for the change in Cairn was startling. Although he knew something, if but little, of certain happenings in London—gruesome happenings centering around the man called Antony Ferrara—he decided to avoid any further reference to them at the moment.
II
Seated upon the terrace, Robert Cairn studied the busy life in the street below with all the interest of a new arrival in the chief city of Africa. More than ever, now, his illness and the things which had led up to it seemed to belong to a remote dream existence.
Through the railings at his feet a hawker was thrusting fly whisks, and imploring him in complicated English to purchase one. Venders of beads, of fictitious antiques, of sweetmeats, of what not; fortune tellers, and all that chattering horde which some obscure process of gravitation seems to hurl against the terrace of Shepheard's, buzzed about him.
Carriages and motor cars, camels and donkeys, mingled in the Sharia Kamel Pasha. Voices American, voices Anglo-Saxon, guttural German tones, and softly murmured Arabic merged into one indescribable chord of sound; but to Robert Cairn it was all unspeakably restful. He was quite contented to sit there sipping his whisky and soda and smoking his pipe. Sheer idleness was good for him and exactly what he wanted, and idling amid that unique throng is idleness de luxe.
Sime watched his friend covertly, and saw that Cairn's face had acquired lines—lines which told of the fires through which he had passed. Something, it was evident—something horrible—had seared his mind. Considering his many indications of tremendous nervous disaster, Sime wondered how near Cairn had come to insanity. He concluded that his friend had stood upon the frontiers of that grim land of phantoms, and had only been plucked back in the eleventh hour.
Cairn glanced around, with a smile, from the group of hawkers who solicited his attention upon the pavement below.
“This is a delightful scene,” he said. “I could sit here for hours; but considering that it's some time after sunset, it remains unusually hot, doesn't it?”
“Rather!” replied Sime. “They are expecting khamsin—the hot wind from the desert, you know. I was up the river a week ago, and we struck it badly in Assuan. It grew as black as night, and one couldn't breathe for sand. It's probably working down to Cairo.”
“From your description I am not at all anxious to make the acquaintance of khamsin.”
Sime shook his head, knocking out his pipe into the ash tray.
“This is a funny country,” he said reflectively. “The most weird ideas prevail here to this day—ideas which properly belong to the Middle Ages. For instance”—he began to recharge the hot bowl—“khamsin does not usually come so early in the season, and the natives feel called upon to hunt up some explanation of its unexpected appearance. Their ideas on the subject are interesting, if idiotic. One of our Arabs—we are excavating in the Fayum, you know—solemnly assured me yesterday that the hot wind had been caused by an afreet, a sort of Arabian Nights demon, who has arrived in Egypt!”
He laughed gruffly, but Cairn was staring at him with a curious expression.
“When I got to Cairo this evening,” continued Sime, “I found that news of the afreet had preceded me. Honestly, Cairn, it is all over the town—the native town, I mean. All the shopkeepers in the Muski are talking about it. If a puff of khamsin should come, I believe they would permanently shut up shop and hide in their cellars—if they have any, for I am rather hazy on modern Egyptian architecture.”
Cairn nodded his head absently.
“You laugh,” he said, “but the active force of a superstition—what we call a superstition—is sometimes a terrible thing.”
Sime stared. The medical man had suddenly come uppermost, and he recollected that this sort of discussion was probably taboo.
“You may doubt the existence of afreets,” continued Cairn, “but neither you nor I can doubt the creative power of thought. If a trained hypnotist, by sheer concentration, can persuade his subject that the latter sits upon the brink of a river fishing when actually he sits upon a platform in a lecture room, what result would you expect from a concentration of thousands of native minds upon the idea that an afreet is abroad in Egypt?”
Sime still stared in a dull way peculiar to him.
“Rather a poser,” he said. “I have a glimmer of a notion what you mean.”
“Don't you think—”
“If you mean don't I think the result would be the creation of an afreet, no, I don't!”
“I hardly mean that, either,” replied Cairn; “but this wave of superstition cannot be entirely without result. All that thought energy directed to one point—”
Sime stood up.
“We shall get out of our depth,” he replied decisively.
He considered the ground of discussion an unhealthy one. This was the territory adjoining that of insanity.
A fortune teller from India proffered his services incessantly.
“Imshi! Imshi!” growled Sime.
“Hold on!” said Cairn, smiling. “This chap is not an Egyptian. Let us ask him if he has heard the rumor respecting the afreet.”
Sime reseated himself rather unwillingly. The fortune teller spread his little carpet, and knelt down, in order to read the palm of his expected client; but Cairn waved him aside.
“I don't want my fortune told,” he said; “but I will give you your fee”—with a smile at Sime—“for a few minutes' conversation.”
“Yes, sir! Yes, sir!” The Indian was all attention.
“Why”—Cairn pointed forensically at the fortune teller—“why is khamsin coming so early this year?”
The Indian spread out his hands, palms upward.
“How should I know?” he replied in his soft, melodious voice. “I am not of Egypt. I can only say what is told to me by the Egyptians.”
“And what is told to you?”
Sime rested his hands upon his knees, bending forward curiously. He was palpably anxious that Robert Cairn should have confirmation of the afreet story from the Indian.
“They tell me, sir”—the man's voice sank musically low—“that a thing very evil”—he tapped a long brown finger upon his breast—“not as I am”—he tapped Sime upon the knee—“not as he, your friend”—he thrust the long finger at Cairn—not as you, sir; not a man at all, though something like a man, not having any father and mother—”
“You mean,” suggested Sime, “a spirit?”
The fortune teller shook his head.
“They tell me, sir, not a spirit—a man, but not as other men; a very, very bad man; one that the great king, long, long ago, the king you call wise—”
“Solomon?” suggested Cairn.
“Yes, yes, Suleyman—one that he, when he banish all the tribe of the demons from earth—one that he not found.”
“One he overlooked?” jerked Sime.
“Yes, yes, overlook! A very evil man, my gentlemen. They tell me he has come to Egypt. He come not from the sea, but across the great desert—”
“The Libyan Desert?” suggested Sime.
The man shook his head, seeking for words.
“The Arabian Desert?”
“No, no! Away beyond, far up in Africa””—he waved his long arms dramatically—“far, far to the west, beyond the Sudan.”
“The Sahara Desert?” proposed Sime.
“Yes, yes! He is from the Sahara Desert. He journeys across the Sahara Desert, and is come to Khartum.”
“How did he get there?” asked Cairn.
The Indian shrugged his shoulders.
“I cannot say, but next he come to Wady Halfa, then he is in Assuan, and from Assuan he come down to Luxor. Yesterday an Egyptian friend told me khamsin is in the Fayum. Therefore he is there—the man of evil—for he bring the hot wind with him.”
The Indian was growing impressive, and two American tourists stopped to listen to his words.
“To-night—to-morrow”—he spoke almost in a whisper, glancing about him as if apprehensive of being overheard—“he may be here, in Cairo, bringing with him the scorching breath of the desert—the scorpion wind!”
He stood up, casting off the mystery with which he had invested his story, and smiling insinuatingly. His work was done; his fee was due. Sime rewarded him with five piasters, and he departed, bowing.
Cairn began to speak, staring absently the while after the fortune feller, as the Indian descended the carpeted steps and rejoined the heterogeneous throng on the sidewalk below.
“You know, Sime, if a man could take advantage of such a wave of thought as this which is now sweeping through Egypt—if he could cause it to concentrate upon him, as it were—don't you think that it would enable him to transcend the normal, to do phenomenal things?”
“By what process would you propose to make yourself such a focus?”
“I was speaking impersonally, Sime. It might be possible—”
“It might be possible to dress for dinner,” snapped Sime, “if we shut up talking nonsense! There's a carnival masquerade here to-night—great fun. Suppose we concentrate our brain waves on another Scotch and soda?”
III
Above the palm trees swept the jeweled vault of Egypt's sky, and set amid the clustering leaves gleamed little red electric lamps. Fairy lanterns outlined the winding paths, and paper Japanese lamps hung dancing in long rows, while in the center of the enchanted garden a fountain threw its diamond spray high in the air, to fall back coolly plashing into the marble home of the golden carp. The rustling of innumerable feet upon the sandy pathway, and the ceaseless murmur of voices, with pealing laughter rising above all, could be heard amid the strains of the military band ensconced in a flower-covered arbor.
Into the brightly lighted places and back into the luminous shadows came and went fantastic forms. Sheiks there were with flowing robes, dragomans who spoke no Arabic, sultans and priests of ancient Egypt, going arm in arm. Dancing girls of old Thebes, harem ladies in silken trousers and red shoes, queens of Babylon and Palmyra, geishas from far-away Japan, and desert gypsies mingled like specks revolving in a giant kaleidoscope.
The thick carpet of confetti rustled to the tread. Girls ran screaming before those who pursued them armed with handfuls of the tiny paper disks. Pipers of a Highland regiment marched through the throng, their Scottish kilts seeming wildly incongruous amid such a scene. Within the hotel, where the mosque lanterns glowed, one might catch a glimpse of the heads of dancers gliding shadowlike.
“A tremendous crowd,” said Sime, “considering that it is nearly the end of the season.”
Three silken ladies wearing gauzy white yashmaks confronted Cairn and the speaker. Suddenly there was a gleaming of jeweled fingers, and Cairn found himself half choked with confetti, which filled his eyes, his nose, and his ears, and some of which found access to his mouth. The three ladies of the yashmak ran screaming from their vengeance-seeking victims, Sime pursuing two, and Cairn hard upon the heels of the third.
Amid this scene of riotous carnival all else was forgotten, and only the infectious madness of the night claimed his mind. In and out of the strangely attired groups darted his agile quarry, all but captured a score of times, but always eluding him. He had hopelessly lost Sime, as he leaped around fountain and flower bed, arbor and palm trunk, in hot pursuit of the elusive yashmak.
Then, in a shadowed corner of the garden, he trapped her. Plunging his hand into his own bag of confetti, he was about to take his revenge, when a sudden gust of wind passed sibilantly through the palm tops, and, glancing upward, Cairn saw that the blue sky was overcast and the stars were gleaming dimly, as through a veil. That moment of hesitancy proved fatal, for with a little excited scream the girl dived under his outstretched arm and fled back toward the fountain.
He turned to pursue again, when a second puff of wind, stronger than the first, set the palm fronds waving and showered dry leaves upon the confetti carpet of the garden. The band played loudly, the murmur of conversation rose to something like a roar, but above it whistled the increasing breeze, and there was a sort of grittiness in the air.
Then, proclaimed by a furious lashing of the fronds above, the wind burst in all its fury. It seemed to beat down into the garden in waves of heat. Huge leaves began to fall from the tree tops, and the mast-like trunks bent before the fury from the desert. The atmosphere grew hazy with impalpable dust, and the stars were wholly obscured.
Commenced a stampede from the garden. A woman's scream, shrill with fear, rose from the heart of the throng:
“A scorpion! A scorpion!”
Panic threatened, but fortunately the doors were wide, so that the whole fantastic company passed into the hotel without disaster; and even the military band retired. Cairn perceived that he alone remained in the garden. Glancing along the path in the direction of the fountain, he saw a blotchy drab creature, about four inches in length, running zigzag toward him. It was a poisonous scorpion; but, even as he leaped forward to crush it, it turned and crept in amid the tangle of flowers beside the path, where it was lost from view.
The scorching wind grew momentarily more fierce. Cairn, entering behind a few straggling revelers, found something ominous and dreadful in its sudden fury. At the threshold he turned and looked back upon the gayly lighted garden.
The paper lamps were thrashing in the wind. Many of them were extinguished; others were in flames. A number of electric globes fell from their fastenings amid the palm tops, and burst like bombs upon the ground. The pleasure garden was a battlefield, beset with dangers, and he fully appreciated the anxiety of the company to get within doors. Where chrysanthemum and yashmak, turban and tarboosh, Egyptian crest and Indian plume, had mingled so gayly, no soul remained; but yet—he was in error—some one did remain!
As if embodying the fear that in a few short minutes had emptied the garden, out beneath the waving lanterns, the flying débris, the whirling dust, pacing somberly from shadow to light, and from light to shadow again, advancing toward the hotel steps, came the figure of one sandaled and wearing the short white tunic of ancient Egypt. His arms were bare, and he carried a long staff; but rising hideously upon his shoulders was a crocodile mask, which seemed to grin—the mask of Set, Set the Destroyer, god of the underworld.
Cairn, alone of all the crowd, saw the strange figure, for the reason that Cairn alone faced toward the garden. The gruesome mask seemed to fascinate him. He could not take his gaze from it. He felt hypnotically impelled to stare at the gleaming eyes set in the saurian head.
The mask was at the foot of the steps, and still Cairn stood rigid. As the sandaled foot was set upon the first step, a breeze, dust-laden, and hot as from a furnace door, blew into the hotel, blinding him. A chorus arose from the crowd at his back, and many voices cried out for doors to be shut. Some one tapped him on the shoulder, and spun him about.
“By God!” It was Sime who had him by the arm. “Khamsin has come with a vengeance! They tell me that they have never had anything like it!”
The native servants were closing and fastening the doors. The night was now as black as Erebus, and the wind was howling about the building with the voices of a million lost souls. Cairn glanced back across his shoulder. Men were hastily drawing heavy curtains across the doors and windows.
“They have shut him out, Sime!” he said.
Sime stared in his dull fashion.
“You surely saw him?” persisted Cairn irritably. “You must have seen the man in the mask of Set. He was coming in just behind me.”
Sime strode forward, pulled the curtains aside, and peered out into the deserted garden.
“Not a soul, old man!” he declared. “You must have seen the afreet!”
IV
The sudden and appalling change of weather had sadly affected the mood of the gathering. The part of the carnival that was to have taken place in the garden was perforce abandoned, together with the fireworks display. A half-hearted attempt was made at dancing, but the howling of the wind, and the omnipresent dust, perpetually reminded the pleasure seekers that khamsin raged without—raged with a violence unparalleled in the experience of the oldest residents. This was a full-fledged sand storm—a terror of the Sahara descended upon Cairo.
But there were few departures, although many of the visitors who had long distances to go discussed the advisability of leaving before the storm should have grown even worse. The general tendency, though, was markedly gregarious. Safety seemed to be with the crowd, amid the gayety, where music and laughter were, rather than in the sand-swept streets.
“Guess we've outstayed our welcome,” confided an American lady to Sime. “Egypt wants to drive us all home now.”
“Possibly,” he replied, with a smile. “The season has run very late this year, and so this sort of thing is more or less to be expected.”
The orchestra struck up a lively one-step, and a few of the more enthusiastic dancers accepted the invitation, but most of the company thronged around the edge of the floor, acting as spectators.
Cairn and Sime wedged a way through the heterogeneous crowd to the American bar.
“I prescribe a tango,” said Sime.
“A tango is—”
“A tango,” explained Sime, “is a new kind of cocktail sacred to this buffet. Try it. It will either kill you or cure you.”
Cairn smiled rather wanly.
“I must confess that I need bucking up a bit,” he said. “That confounded sand seems to have got me by the throat.”
Sime briskly gave his orders to the bar attendant.
“You know,” pursued Cairn, “I cannot get out of my head the idea that there was some one wearing a crocodile mask in the garden a while ago.”
“Look here!” growled Sime, studying the operations of the cocktail manufacturer. “Suppose there were—what about it?”
“Well, it's odd that nobody else saw him.”
“I suppose it hasn't occurred to you that the fellow might possibly have removed his mask?”
Cairn shook his head slowly.
“I don't think so,” he declared. “I haven't seen him anywhere in the hotel.”
“Seen him?” Sime turned his dull gaze upon the speaker. “How should you know him?”
Cairn raised his hand to his forehead in an oddly helpless way.
“No, of course not—but the whole thing is very extraordinary!”
They took their seats at a small table, and in mutual silence loaded and lighted their pipes.
Sime, in common with many young and enthusiastic medical men, had theories—theories of that revolutionary sort which only harsh experience can shatter. Secretly he was disposed to ascribe all the ills to which flesh is heir primarily to a disordered nervous system. It was evident that Cairn's mind persistently ran along a particular groove. Something lay behind all this erratic talk; he had clearly invested the crocodile mask of Set with a curious individuality.
“I gather that you had a stiff bout of it in London?” Sime said suddenly.
Cairn nodded.
“Beastly stiff! There's a lot of sound reason in your nervous theory, Sime. It was touch and go with me for days, I am told; yet, pathologically, I was a hale man. That would seem to show how nerves can kill. Just a series of shocks and horrors, one piled upon another, did as much for me as influenza, pneumonia, and two or three other ailments together could have done.”
Sime shook his head wisely. This was quite in accordance with his own ideas.
“You know Antony Ferrara?” continued Cairn. “Well, he has done this for me. His damnable practices are worse than any disease. Sime, the man is a pestilence! Although the law cannot touch him, although no jury can convict him, he is a murderer. He controls forces—”
Sime was watching his friend intently.
“It will give you some idea, Sime, of the pitch to which things had come, when I tell you that my father drove to Ferrara's rooms, one night, with a loaded revolver in his pocket.”
“For”—Sime hesitated—“for his own protection?”
“No!” Cairn leaned forward across the table. “To shoot the fellow, Sime—to shoot him on sight, as one shoots a mad dog!”
“Are you serious?”
“As God is my witness, if Antony Ferrara had been in his rooms that night, my father would have killed him!”
“It would have been a most shocking scandal!”
“It would have been an act of self-devotion. The man who removes Antony Ferrara from the earth will be doing mankind a service worthy of the highest reward. He is unfit to live. Sometimes I cannot believe that he does live; I expect to wake up and find that he was a figure of a particularly evil dream.”
“This incident—the call at his rooms—occurred just before your illness?”
“The thing which he had attempted that night was the last straw, Sime. It broke me down. From the time that he left Oxford, Antony Ferrara has pursued a deliberate course of crime—of crime so cunning, so unusual, and based upon such amazing and unholy knowledge, that no breath of suspicion has touched him. Sime, you remember a girl I told you about at Oxford one evening—a girl who came to visit him?”
Sime nodded slowly.
“Well, he killed her. Oh, there is no doubt about it! I saw her body in the hospital.”
“How had he killed her, then?”
“How? Only he and the God who permits him to exist can answer that, Sime. He killed her without coming anywhere near her. He killed his adoptive father, Sir Michael Ferrara, by the same unholy means.”
Sime watched his companion, but offered no comment.
“It was hushed up, of course. There is no existing law which could be used against him.”
“Existing law?”
“They are ruled out, Sime, the laws that could have reached him; but in the Middle Ages he would have been burned at the stake.”
“I see!” Sime drummed his fingers upon the table. “You had those ideas about him at Oxford. Does Dr. Cairn seriously believe the same thing?”
“He does. So would you—you could not doubt it, Sime, not for a moment, if you had seen what we have seen!” Cairn's eyes blazed into a sudden fury, suggestive of his old robust self. “He tried night after night, by means of the same accursed sorcery, which every one thought buried in the ruins of Thebes, to kill me. He projected—things—”
“Suggested these—things, to your mind?”
“Something like that. I saw, or thought I saw, and smelled—pah, I seem to smell them now—beetles, mummy beetles, you know, from the skull of a mummy! My rooms were thick with them. It brought me very near to Bedlam, Sime. Oh, it was not merely imaginary! My father and I caught him red-handed.” He glanced across at the other. “You read of the death of Lord Lashmore? It was just after you came out.”
“Yes—heart.”
“It was his heart—yes, but Ferrara was responsible. That was the business which led my father to drive to Ferrara's rooms with a loaded revolver in his pocket.”
The wind was shaking the windows and whistling about the building with demoniacal fury, as if seeking admission. The band played a popular waltz; and in and out of the open doors came and went groups of men and women costumed to represent many ages of history and many nationalities.
“Ferrara,” began Sime slowly, “was always a detestable man, with his sleek black hair and ivory face. Those long eyes of his had an expression which always tempted me to hit him. Sir Michael, if what you say is true—and after all, Cairn, it only goes to show how little we know of the nervous system—literally took a viper to his bosom.”
“He did. Antony Ferrara was his adopted son, of course; God knows to what evil brood he really belongs.”
Both were silent for a while.
“Gracious Heavens!” cried Cairn suddenly, starting to his feet so wildly as almost to upset the table. “Look, Sime! Look!”
V
Sime was not the only man in the bar to hear and to heed Cairn's words. Looking in the direction indicated by his friend's extended finger, Sime received a vague impression that a grotesque, long-headed figure had appeared momentarily in the doorway opening into the room where the dancers were. Then it was gone again, if it had ever been there, and he was supporting Cairn, who swayed dizzily and had become ghastly pale.
Sime imagined that the heated air had grown even more heated. Curious eyes were turned upon his companion, who now sank back into his chair, muttering:
“The mask! The mask!”
“I think I saw the chap who seems to worry you so much,” said Sime soothingly. “Wait here. I will tell the waiter to bring you a dose of brandy. Whatever you do, don't get excited.”
He made for the door, pausing and giving an order to a waiter on his way, and pushed into the crowd outside. It was long past midnight, and the gayety, which had been resumed, seemed of a forced and feverish sort. Some of the masqueraders were leaving, and a breath of hot wind swept in from the open doors.
A pretty girl wearing a yashmak, who, with two similarly attired companions, was making her way to the entrance, attracted Sime's attention, for she seemed to be on the point of swooning. He recognized the trio as the three girls who had pelted Cairn and himself with confetti earlier in the evening.
“The sudden heat has affected your friend,” he said, stepping up to them. “My name is Dr. Sime; may I offer you my assistance?”
The offer was accepted, and with the three he passed out upon the terrace, where the dust grated beneath the tread, and helped the fainting girl into an arabiyeh. The night was thunderously black, the heat was almost insufferable, and the tall palms in front of the hotel swayed as if in torture before the might of the scorching wind.
As the vehicle drove off, Sime stood for a moment looking after it. His face was very grave, for there was a look in the bright eyes of the girl in the yashmak which, professionally, he did not like. Turning up the steps, he learned from the manager of the hotel that several visitors had succumbed to the heat. There was something furtive in the manner of his informant's glance, and Sime looked at him significantly.
“Khamsin brings clouds of septic dust with it,” he said. “Let us hope that these attacks are due to nothing more than the unexpected rise in the temperature.”
An air of uneasiness prevailed throughout the hotel. The wind had considerably abated, and crowds were leaving, pouring from the steps into the deserted street, a dreamlike company.
Colonel Royland took Sime aside, as the latter was making his way back to the buffet. The colonel, whose regiment was stationed at the Citadel, had known Sime almost from childhood.
“You know, my boy,” he said, “I should never have allowed Eileen”—his daughter—“to remain in Cairo, if I had foreseen this change in the weather. This infernal wind, coming right through the native town, is loaded with infection.”
“Has it affected her, then?” asked Sime anxiously.
“She nearly fainted in the ballroom,” replied the colonel. “Her mother took her home half an hour ago. I looked for you everywhere, but couldn't find you.”
“Quite a number have succumbed, I hear,” said Sime.
“Eileen seemed to be slightly hysterical,” continued the colonel. “She persisted that some one wearing a crocodile mask had been standing beside her at the moment when she was taken ill.”
Sime started. Perhaps Cairn's story of the hideous mask was not a matter of mere imagination, after all.
“There is some one here dressed like that, I believe,” he replied, with affected carelessness. “He seems to have frightened several people. Any idea who he might be?”
“My dear chap,” cried the colonel, “I have been searching the place for him, but I have never once set eyes upon him. I was about to ask if you knew anything about him.”
Sime returned to the table where Cairn was sitting. The latter seemed to have recovered somewhat, but he looked far from well. Sime stared at him critically.
“I should turn in,” he said, “if I were you. Khamsin is playing the deuce with people. I only hope it does not justify its name, and blow for fifty days!”
“Have you seen the man in the mask?” asked Cairn.
“No,” replied Sime; “but he's here, all right, for others have seen him.”
Cairn stood up rather unsteadily, and, with Sime, made his way through the moving crowd to the stairs. The band was still playing, but the cloud of gloom and fear which had settled upon the place refused to be dissipated.
“Good night, Cairn,” said Sime. “See you in the morning.”
Robert Cairn, with an aching head and a growing sensation of nausea, paused on the landing, looking down into the court below. He could not disguise from himself that he felt ill—not nervously ill, as in London, but physically sick. This superheated air, which seemed to rise in waves from below, was difficult to breathe.
Then, from a weary glancing at the figures beneath him, his attitude changed to one of tense watching. A man, wearing the crocodile mask of Set, stood by a huge urn containing a palm, looking up to the landing!
Cairn's weakness left him, and in its place came an indescribable anger, a longing to drive his fist into that grinning mask. He turned and ran lightly down the stairs, conscious of a sudden glow of energy.
Reaching the floor, he saw the mask making across the hall, in the direction of the outer door. As rapidly as possible, for he could not run without attracting undesirable attention, Cairn followed. The figure of Set passed out upon the terrace; but when Cairn in turn swung open the door, his quarry had vanished.
Then, in an arabiyeh just driving off, he detected the hideous mask. Hatless as he was, he hurried down the steps to the street and threw himself into another vehicle. The carriage controller was in attendance, and Cairn rapidly told him to instruct the driver to follow the arabiyeh which had just left.
The man lashed up his horses, turned his carriage, and went galloping on after the retreating figure. Past the Esbekiya Gardens they went, through several narrow streets, and on to the quarter of the Muski. Time after time Cairn thought he had lost the carriage ahead, but his driver's knowledge of the tortuous streets always enabled him to overtake it again.
They went rocking past empty shops and unlighted houses, along lanes so narrow that with outstretched arms one could almost have touched the walls on either side. Cairn had not the remotest idea of his whereabouts, save that he was evidently in the district of the bazaars. A right-angled corner was abruptly negotiated—and there, ahead of him, stood the pursued vehicle. The driver was turning his horses around, to return. His fare was disappearing from sight into the black shadows of a narrow alley on the left.
Cairn leaped from his arabiyeh, shouting to the man to wait, and went dashing down the sloping lane after the retreating figure. A sort of blind fury possessed him, but he never paused to analyze it, never asked himself by what right he pursued the wearer of the mask, and what wrong the man had done him. His action was wholly unreasoning. He only knew that he wished to overtake this masquerader and to tear his disguise from him.
He discovered that, despite the tropical heat of the night, he was shuddering with cold; but he disregarded this circumstance and ran on.
The pursued stopped before an iron-studded door, which was opened instantly. As he entered, the runner came up with him, and, before the door could be reclosed, Cairn thrust his way in.
Blackness, utter blackness, was before him. The figure which he had pursued seemed to have been swallowed up. He stumbled on, gropingly, hands outstretched, then fell—fell, as he realized in the moment of falling, down a short flight of stone steps.
Still amid utter blackness, he got upon his feet, shaken but otherwise unhurt by his fall. He turned about, expecting to see some glimmer of light from the stairway, but the blackness was unbroken. Silence and gloom hemmed him in. He stood for a moment, listening intently.
A shaft of light pierced the darkness, as a shutter was thrown open. Through an iron-barred window the light shone; and with the light came a breath of a peculiar and. stifling perfume. That perfume carried his imagination back instantly to a room at Oxford.
He advanced and looked through into the place beyond. He drew a swift breath, clutched the bars, and was silent—stricken speechless.
He looked into a large and lofty room, lighted by several hanging lamps. It had a carpeted divan at one end, but was otherwise scantily furnished, in the Eastern manner. A silver incense burner smoked upon a large prayer carpet, and by it stood the man in the crocodile mask.
An Arab girl, fantastically attired, who had evidently just opened the shutters, was now helping the man to remove the hideous headdress. She presently untied the last of the fastenings and lifted the thing from his shoulders, moving away with the gliding step of the Oriental, and leaving him standing there in his short white tunic, bare-legged and sandaled.
The smoke of the incense curled upward and played around the straight, slender figure, drew vaporous lines about the still, ivory face—a handsome, sinister face—sometimes partly veiling the long black eyes, and sometimes showing them in all their unnatural brightness. So the man stood, looking toward the barred window.
It was Antony Ferrara.
“Ah, dear Cairn!” The husky but musical voice smote upon Cairn's ears as the most hated sound in nature. “So you have followed me to Egypt. Not content with driving me from London, you would also render Cairo—my dear Cairo—untenable for me.”
Cairn clutched the bars, but was silent.
“How wrong of you, Cairn!” the soft voice mocked. “This attention is so harmful—to you. Do you know, Cairn, that the Sudanese formed the extraordinary idea that I was an afreet, and that this strange reputation has followed me right down the Nile? Your father, my dear friend, has studied these odd matters, and he would tell you that there is no power in nature higher than the human will. Actually, Cairn, they have ascribed to me the control of khamsin; and so many worthy Egyptians have made up their minds that I travel with the storm, or that the storm follows me, that something of the kind has really come to pass! Or is it merely coincidence, Cairn? Who can say?”
Motionless, immobile, save for a slow smile, Antony Ferrara stood, while Cairn kept his eyes upon the evil face, and with trembling hands clutched the bars.
“It is certainly odd, is it not,” resumed the taunting voice, “that khamsin—so violent, too—should thus descend upon the Cairene season? I arrived from the Fayum only this evening, Cairn, and, do you know, they have the pestilence there! I trust the hot wind does not carry it to Cairo! There are so many distinguished European and American visitors here that it would be a thousand pities!”
Cairn released his grip of the bars, raised his clenched fists above his head, and in a voice and with a maniacal fury that were not his own, cursed the man who stood there mocking him. Then he reeled, fell, and remembered no more.
VI
“All right, old man! You'll do quite nicely now.”
It was Sime speaking. Cairn struggled upright, and found himself in bed, with his friend seated beside him.
“Don't talk,” said Sime. “You're in the hospital. I'll do the talking; you listen. I saw you bolt out of Shepheard's last night. Shut up! I followed, but lost you. We got up a search party, and, with the aid of the man who had driven you, we ran you to earth in a dirty alley behind the mosque of El Azhar. Four kindly mendicants, who reside upon the steps of the establishment, had been awakened by your blundering in among them. They were holding you—yes, you were raving pretty badly. You are a lucky man, Cairn. You were inoculated before you left home?”
Cairn nodded weakly.
“Saved you! Be all right in a couple of days. That damned khamsin has brought a whiff of the plague from somewhere. Curiously enough, more than half of the cases reported so far are people who were at the carnival. Some of them, Cairn—but we won't discuss that now. I was afraid of it last night; that's why I kept my eye on you. My boy, you were delirious when you bolted out of the hotel.”
“Was I?” said Cairn wearily, and lay back on the pillow. “Perhaps I was!”