The Cardinal's Stair

by Sax Rohmer

The Cardinal’s Stair

THE STRANGE STORY OF MARGARET
ORME AND THE BLIND GREEK BOY
AND THE TWO EVIL MEN WHO CAME
TO HER HOUSE ONE NIGHT IN JUNE

By Sax Rohmer

 

A FRAGRANT breath of May, tinged with the night-born sweetness of magnolia, whispered through the garden and made play in the cloudy hair of the girl who from an open French window looked out upon that paradise of flowers. Through the banks of bloom the sun shed a crimson farewell, yielding place to the pale sovereignty of an early moon.

Unannounced, in upon that scene came a man—tall, darkly handsome and having large, watchful eyes. Silently he stood at the door, looking across a dimly seen dinner-table to where, at the open window, the graceful figure showed.

The room seemed to be filled with unseen roses, and mingling with their sensuous perfume was the insistent sweetness of May blossoms. He paused a moment. Margaret Orme did not move.

“Miss Orme?”

She turned at that, and the slight action of surprise was full of grace. She faced him in the dusk.

“Margaret Orme—yes!” she replied.

The voice surprised the visitor. It was deeper than he had expected, more masterful.

“I could find no one—”

“So you found the way?” she laughed gayly. “That is how I like people to come.”

A bell sounded, and a homely-looking woman appeared and lighted the shaded candles.

The visitor felt vaguely ill at ease. With the eye of a connoisseur he appraised the antique oak looming about, the old silver upon the table and the sparkling Venetian glassware. With the eye of an esthete he appraised the beauty of Margaret Orme—the more striking since it was unexpected. Women who write can but rarely pass the simplest beauty-test, even by candlelight. That is an accepted dogma of journalism.

He now saw that a great bowl of roses was upon the table, that vases and pots of roses stood all about the room. Margaret Orme talked gayly, and she talked well. She smiled, and her smile was dazzling. She was happy—and natural.

He had anticipated something quite different. Of all the newspaper men who had sought it, Grainger Barton alone had won the consent of the authoress to an interview. Bursting cometlike upon the literary world, “The Flamen,” following upon a series of unusual articles in the leading magazines, had established in less than a year a reputation for Margaret Orme unique among modern writers who matter.

Possibly as a result of its mysticism, its strange, exotic beauty, wild rumors circulated regarding the new authoress. She inhabited a tiny but wonderful house in the midst of a garden, formerly that of a monastery; and being possessed of fabulous wealth, she had surrounded herself with objects of art and antique treasures said to represent a huge fortune. She was deeply versed in the occult sciences. She was the chosen priestess of a new religion of wisdom.

So spake Rumor’s busy tongue. Now, amid a very wilderness of flowers, this man of the luminous, watchful eyes found himself partaking of a dainty dinner with the much-discussed Margaret Orme—alone. She was young and beautiful and gay. He could not understand; he looked across at her, where the shaded lights picked out points of purest gold from her cloudy brown hair and gleamed entrancingly upon her soft shoulders.

HE felt that he stood on the threshold. Beyond the open French windows, where all the flowers were, stretched a world of unseen things. A sense of mystery hung over him like a cloud. Anticipating the literary woman of Fleet Street, who is so different from her writings, Margaret Orme disconcerted him. Her beauty, and the very womanliness of her surroundings, with flowers, flowers everywhere, increased rather than diminished that portentous something—that pending revelation. She was what “The Flamen” would lead one to expect her to be—and this it was that startled him.

For the first time his glance caught the dull gleam of the odd ring she wore. .... The scent of magnolia predominated now.

Yet her conversation was not of unusual things. She spoke of plays and of books and of other matters of the everyday world, and spoke simply and charmingly. She could be no more than twenty-three years of age, he told himself; yet he contributed little else save monosyllables to the conversation. Yet he felt as a child to this beautiful girl who had written “The Flamen”—whose gray eyes promised vague things, whose smile was that of Calypso but whose personality awed him—in whom, with the seductiveness of a dryad was allied the aloofness of a vestal.

How silent the place was—how peaceful!

The silence, particularly, oppressed him. He was unused to silence.

In the intervals of their conversation, while the homely-looking woman removed the courses, this silence became to the visitor something tangible—something that hushed and listened.

A breeze from the garden reburdened the air of the room with heavy scent.

“What flower is that, Miss Orme, which has so peculiar a perfume?”

“Magnolia. Shall I close the windows?”

“By no means—the fragrance of the garden is delicious.”

But he would have liked the windows to be closed. It was from out there, from the dim garden, that the silence came. It was from the garden that the mystery entered into the room—and into his soul.

THE way was dark, and Margaret Orme went before him carrying a double candelabrum. She set it down upon the stone floor, immediately under the magnificent stained-glass window.

“And this,” she said, “is the Cardinal’s Stair.”

“The Cardinal’s Stair?”

“We are at the entrance to the chapel—which, as I showed you, dates back to very early times. This little house, you know, stands upon the site of a once extensive monastery; and in the reign of Henry VIII it was to this monastery that the great Cardinal Wolsey retreated when desiring to seclude himself from the world. The apartments reserved for his use adjoined the chapel and must therefore have been situated where we now stand; hence ‘the Cardinal’s Stair.’”

“Your home is very charming, Miss Orme, but more than a little—ghostly.”

“You are right, Mr. Barton. A Greek boy, whom I adopted in Crete, and who possesses extraordinary mediumistic gifts, is on quite intimate terms with some of the shadowy guests who visit us here.”

The man stared at the girl with those luminous, watchful eyes, which lent so much character to his face.

“Shadowy guests? Has he seen them?”

Margaret Orme shook her pretty head sadly.

“He cannot see; he is blind.”

“Blind! Then how—”

“His gifts are a divine compensation for the absence of sight, Mr. Barton. He has inner vision.”

The visitor looked about him with vague uneasiness, but there was something speculative in his glance as well.

“And with this inner vision what has he seen?”

Margaret Orme laughed gayly.

“Many things! He is not alone in his belief that the shade of the great Cardinal visits this chapel on occasion.”

“Surely you do not share that belief?”

She became grave again.

“I do not believe, of course, that that troubled spirit itself visits the chapel,” she said in her sweet, deep voice; “but the ancient Egyptian ‘Book of the Dead’ tells us that a kind of astral double may remain on earth long after death. Do you know that wonderful ritual, Mr. Barton?”

“I fear I am wholly ignorant of it.”

“It is a key unlocking much hidden wisdom. Let us now descend the Cardinal’s Stair, as you wish to see my work-room.”

Taking up the candelabrum, she led the way again.

IN the little court with its miniature fountain, a sweet, rose-tinted light prevailed. The fancy that he stood in a tiny villa of old Rome came to the watchful visitor. Openings right and left gave access to the garden. Suddenly:

“Do you not fear burglars?” he asked. “Living, as you do, in a veritable treasure-house, and wholly unprotected, your doors stand wide open.”

“Therefore what manner of man would molest me?”

He laughed harshly.

“Your faith in humanity is greater than mine!” he said.

In the writing-room a quaint, Eastern lamp burned. It swung on silver chains before a recess in which hung a cardinal’s robe and hat.

“I see you are curious respecting the red robe,” said Margaret. “It was that worn by Cardinal Orme, my kinsman, and I prize it very highly.”

The walls were lined with books—old, faded volumes, for the most part. The floor was of highly polished wood, with a few skins strewn here and there. Odd-looking idols and fragments of mural ornaments stood about, on the shelves, in corners, in cabinets. Margaret Orme rested the candelabrum upon a carved oak chest and sank into a low-seated high-backed chair. Upon its stamped leather a cardinal’s hat was dimly perceptible.

Roses, in vases and pots, stood everywhere. Flowers were the keynote of this strange house. The heavy scent of magnolia was wafted through the open window.

The guest stared heavily about him, and his seeking eyes came presently to the woman who worked amid these surroundings. Margaret Orme seemed like a beautiful ingénue fresh from a convent. Only in her calm gray eyes, seen in that dim religious light, dwelt something inscrutable. Her fresh face, her hair, her milky teeth, her soft, girlish form—these were those of a maid new come upon the wider world. But her eyes were the eyes of the woman, the woman who had written “The Flamen.”

“I usually work in the early morning,” came the sweet voice.

Then, at the start he gave, she laughed merrily. Her heart, it seemed, was the heart of a child, too.

“You are forgetting your duties, Mr. Interviewer!”

But he scarce heeded her raillery. The odor of magnolia, mingled with the heavy perfume of roses, grew suddenly oppressive. A sense of mystery crept over him. The spirit of silence claimed him again, coming through the open window from the garden.

And now, borne in with it, came a wondrous sound.

HE knew that he paled; but he hoped that the dim light might save his fear from being visible to this beautiful, incomprehensible woman.

For out of the scented night swelled strains of the grandest, wildest melody that had ever greeted his ears. He seemed in a moment to be carried to some mighty cathedral and to be listening to the celebration of a high mass by priests, acolytes and choir inspired from above. The soul of music and of adoration spoke! Incarnate melody dwelled in that enchanted garden!

The world faded away upon those tidal waves of sound: peal upon peal, harmony succeeding harmony—grandeur leaping hot upon grandeur—until his very soul trembled. The music seemed to this man with the watchful eyes to be the voice of God!

Then, as night falls in the tropics, as simoom comes upon the desert, came silence upon that celestial sound.

He saw, vaguely, as through a haze of visible, contending thought, the eyes of Margaret Orme fixed upon him. Her sweet voice spoke:

“Please do not think that this is any prearranged theatrical effect! Believe me, I had no idea he was in the chapel!”

“He? Who?”

“It is only Lycius, the Greek boy of whom I spoke. He is a wonderful musician—too wonderful. Under his touch the organ breathes with the voice of heaven.”

Her own voice was softer than he yet had heard it.

“The Cardinal is with him to-night,” she said strangely.

MR. JOSEPH CHEAME, professionally known as Lord Joe, entered the cozy bar-parlor of the Fox and Hounds, where there awaited him a companion—a sandy little man, beady-eyed and bearing a marked family resemblance to the singular quadruped intended to represent a fox by the painter of the inn sign.

“Well, Joe,” said this individual cheerily, “is the stuff up to specification?”

Cheame nodded absently, and having ordered a drink, took it across to a table in a corner remote from the bar and from the group of local gossips clustered about it. Then:

“It’s almost too good to be true,” he said, speaking in a low voice. “Of course, we knew from her reply to our letter that she had never seen Grainger Barton, and I had no difficulty in taking his place—”

“You're at home at that game, Joe!”

“It was the way I framed the Grainger Barton letter that did it. I’m the first interviewer she’s received. And it’s lucky there was nothing brighter than candles, or she’d have wondered why so distinguished a journalist wore such a shabby dress suit.

“I was wise to leave the car at Wiston,” he continued, “and to take the train from there onward. The oldest inhabitant—a sort of Hebrew prophet—met me with a country cart and drove me to the house.”

“Does he sleep in?”

“No men sleep in—only a woman who’s old and deaf—and a boy. The other servants have quarters right away from the house. I gathered this and one or two other points from the prophet who drove me to catch the London train. The place is packed with silver, and with stuff better worth handling than silver. There’s a genuine Correggio in the chapel.”

“What’s a Correggio, Joe?”

“A picture, my son.”

The little sandy man shook his head.

“I’m not stuck on pictures, Joe. They’re dangerous.”

“I tell you Lewis will give me two hundred and fifty for it on sight! It’s worth thousands!”

The other remained downcast.

“Isn’t there plenty of stuff in the house,” he inquired, “without touching the chapel?”

Joseph Cheame, alias Grainger Barton, turned his fine dark eyes upon the foxy little man.

“Did you ever win a prize at Sunday school?” he asked mockingly. “Don’t be a fool!”

Yet, strangely, his glance was not so confident as usual, and his enthusiasm did not ring true when without pause he plunged into a mass of purely professional details. In conclusion he said:

“It simply amounts to getting away with the stuff; and the car covers that difficulty. I shall make first for the study, you understand; after that I’m safe. You need not come in at all; I can pass the things out to you through the French windows of the dining-room.”

The Fox and Hounds was just closing its doors for the night as the motorists started up the engine of the two-seater and drove towards Wiston.

THE house was very quiet when Margaret Orme passed reflectively to her room and prepared to undress.

To-night a languor to which she unresistingly yielded detained her much longer than usual. She did not summon Felice, her maid, but sat looking from the window. The moon floated in a cloudless sky.

Hovering over the rhododendron bushes a faint mist appeared. Odd shadows glided from clump to clump. Margaret watched them idly—then more intently. Her glance passed to the neat row of red pots topped by the pale green summer-cypress leaves. First one and then another faded, vanished and appeared again. What were these moving shadows? Perhaps imaginary.

She speculated vaguely for a time, only to dismiss the subject.

Thoughts are shadows. And her thoughts had hovered awhile about the rhododendrons. During the time that she dreamed in this fashion she had been mechanically brushing her hair. She had not yet lighted the candles. She seated herself at her toilet-table and slowly opened the little silver matchbox.

Grainger Barton would be back in London now, she reflected. Despite his good looks and polished manners, she had not liked him.

Holding the box in her hand, she allowed her thoughts to bear her away again. Finally, realizing that abandonment to this mood was making her drowsy, she struck a match, bending forward slightly—and paused, light in hand, staring into the mirror.

A vague shadow seemed to glide past the doorway.

Margaret watched a moment longer, but the shadow was gone. She moved the burning match in an effort to reproduce the apparition. Quietly she lighted the candles.

In a few minutes she was undressed.

Then she remembered that she had left Lycius asleep in her writing-room. She determined to go and awaken him. Throwing a kimono over her nightrobe, she was already upon the stairs, where complete darkness reigned, when a high-pitched scream pierced the silence.

Footsteps sounded—coming towards her. And the boy, fair as a young Antinoüs, rushed into her arms, sobbing and trembling and raising his beautiful sightless eyes to hers.

“Lycius dear! What is it? You are not afraid to waken in the dark?”

“Madonna, Madonna!” He always called her so. “You know I care nothing for darkness—how can I?”

“Then Lycius, what is it?”

“It was some one—in the room, Madonna!”

“Surely Felice?”

“No, no! It was not Felice. It was some one else!”

“No one else would go to my writing-room, dear,” said Margaret, tenderly drawing the frightened child to her. “You have been thinking too much about all sorts of gloomy things, Lycius.”

“Madonna,” he whispered as she led him through the darkened court and out into the freshness of the garden, “there was some one; truly, Madonna, there was some one—some one who stood beside me!”

“What makes you think so, Lycius?” asked Margaret. “Did this person speak to you or touch you?”

“No. I only felt that some one was there, and I was afraid!”

“Did you hear any movement, dear? Was it some one who came to steal?”

“I heard nothing, Madonna!”

“Sit here, Lycius, and think no more about it. I expect you were only dreaming. We often wake suddenly and mistake the end of an unpleasant dream for a reality. I shall not be a moment.”

LEAVING Lycius seated in the porch, Margaret returned. From the tiny, compact servants’ quarters—detached from the house—no sound reached her.

She walked quietly through the court where the fountain plashed, along the tiled passage and up the little oaken stairs. Without tremor or hesitation she passed into her writing-room. The moon silvered the ivy leaves about the open windows and spilled a pool of brightness upon a tiny patch of the polished floor.

A glance showed her that the place was apparently undisturbed and that no one lurked there.

It was as she had expected. The night was filled with shadows—vaguely disturbing shadows. Such a shadow had chilled Lycius’ delicate sensibilities.

Margaret walked slowly back to the garden, where Lycius, now quite recovered from his strange fears, awaited her.

“It was a dream, of course, dear,” she assured him, running her slender fingers through his curls. “Can you remember if you had been dreaming?”

Lycius shook his head.

“When I played the organ to-night, Madonna, he came and stood by me.”

“Who, Lycius?”

The boy raised his wonderful, unseeing eyes to her.

“The priest in the long robe, who is glad that we live here,” was his quaint reply. “I think he must once have been very happy in this house, and he is glad that he can still come and find happiness here.”

Margaret watched him in sad wonderment; the boy’s beautiful face as the moon shone upon it was touched with that elfin light which tells of another world already opening up to the eye of the spirit—of the spirit bound to earth by threads of gossamer.

“I am never afraid of him,” he continued wistfully. “I am sorry for him, because he seems so weary.”

Used as she was to the boy’s strange fancies, to-night they chilled her, almost with the touch of fear.

“Perhaps, dear, it was because of these queer ideas of yours,” she said, “that you dreamed of some one’s disturbing you.”

Lycius stroked her hand gently.

“No, it was not, Madonna. I never dream evil dreams, as you know. But I am not afraid now, and I shall sleep quite soundly.”

HOW long Margaret had slept she had no means of knowing; but the moon sailed serenely high in the vault of heaven when that choking cry awakened her. She sat up with a start, listening intently.

“Madonna! .... Madonna!”

Dimly, in a weird, muffled fashion, the boy’s voice reached her again. He must be ill!

In an instant she leaped to the floor, pulled on her soft heelless slippers, and not pausing to take a kimono or dressing-gown, she hurried down the stairs into the court, below.

Plash-plash-plash! played the water in the miniature fountain. Nothing else disturbed the night’s silence.

Then again the boy’s voice sounded, calling her name affrightedly.

She realized, now, that he was in his room—perhaps was too terrified to leave it. What could have occasioned his fear it was beyond her power to conjecture; for living as he did in a pathetic shadow-world peopled by phantoms which perhaps had existence only in his own imagination, ghostly menaces held no meaning for him.

Margaret hurried across the court toward the doorway communicating with Lycius’ room—and with the chapel. When she had conducted Grainger Barton to the chapel, it had been necessary to employ candles; but now the moon poured its radiance fully through the stained-glass window at the head of the Cardinal’s Stair, lighting the way.

Pulling the portière aside, she was about to run up the steps when, unheralded by any warning sound, a red-robed figure glided from behind the curtain draping the chapel door!

Transfixed, scarce trusting her senses, and conscious that the place seemed to be swimming about her, she stood looking up to the majestic figure in the red robe. Realizing that she was about to swoon, she staggered back, and uttering no word, no cry, sank down unconscious on the threshold of the door.

WHERE the cold light of the moon had flooded the stone steps lay golden sunshine, tinged with blue and red from the window, when Margaret returned to a knowledge of her surroundings. From the garden came joyous songs of birds.

She staggered to her feet, looking wildly about her. What had happened?

Then, from some place close at hand, came a sound of muffled sobbing.

“Lycius!” she cried. “Lycius!”

“Madonna!” came wildly but gladly, joyously. “Oh! you are not dead, you are not dead!”

Margaret ran to the boy’s room. door was locked from the outside! She turned the key, and Lycius, pale and tearful, sprang out and threw himself into her arms.

“Oh, what has happened?” he said. “Something dreadful happened last night, I know! Some one came and locked my door, and although I called to you until I could call no more, you did not come—no one came! Of course, if you did not come, no one else could possibly hear me, I know.”

She stroked the boy’s head lovingly, her heart overflowing with gladness because he was safe.

“Nothing dreadful has happened, dear,” she said reassuringly. “You can go back to bed again; it is much too early to get up; and later on I will explain things to you.”

“But who was it laughed in that horrible way, Madonna?”

“Laughed, dear?”

“But of course. if you did not hear me calling you, neither did you hear the laughing. But, oh! it was horrible! It was not like the laugh of anyone who was glad; it was not like any laugh I had ever heard.”

Margaret watched the boy in perplexity.

“I am not sure that you did not dream that, dear,” she said quietly. “But we will talk about it when you have had a good sleep.”

The alarms of the night had worn the boy out; and happy again now that Margaret was with him, he readily consented to do as she wished. She saw him safely into bed and quietly returned to the stairs, which had been the scene of the apparition.

Something red was protruding slightly from below the chapel curtain.

A moment she hesitated, a moment she feared; then, advancing, she stooped and pulled out the red robe of Cardinal Orme, tied up roughly to form a bag! With trembling fingers she unfastened it.

It contained the altar candlesticks, the Correggio—and other costly pieces from the chapel!

Dazed, she stood looking down at them; then a vague suspicion of the whole truth came to her. Running to her room, she snatched up a dressing-gown and went back to the court again and across into the dining-room.

The room had been rifled!

Aghast, Margaret sank into a chair, and her wildly roving glance caught the gleam of silver just beyond the open window. Two large sacks lay there. As one moving in a dream, she crossed the room and began to empty the sacks.

Her house had been pillaged of its treasures, but not a solitary item of the plunder had been carried away!

THIS is the story of the burglary at the home of Margaret Orme, and of what occurred that night on the Cardinal’s Stair, as told by the only living man who knows—and can speak.

Having stationed their car in the narrow lane behind the orchard, Joseph Cheame and his companion crept up to the house in order to learn if the inmates had retired. Familiar with the eccentric ways of that singular house, Cheame was prepared to find all doors widely opened; and he proceeded to Margaret Orme’s writing-room without encountering anyone on the way.

As a measure of precaution in the event of discovery, he had planned to wear the robe of Cardinal Orme, believing that the credulity of the women would lead them to suppose him a phantom if, in the course of his brazen pillaging, he should arouse them.

He had actually secured the robe from the recess in which it hung when he became aware of the presence of the sleeping Lycius curled up in the high-backed chair. At the same moment the boy awoke, and seeming to divine the man’s presence, ran screaming from the room.

Cheame hurriedly retreated to the lane where his accomplice waited. Not until perfect quiet was restored did he commence his burglarious operations. Then, unopposed, unmolested, he rifled room after room of its treasures, loading up the big sacks until they were full.

Now the foxy little man became anxious to depart, but Cheame scornfully declared that the contents of the chapel more than equaled in value all the rest of the booty.

So Cheame set out for the chapel, and mindful of the acute susceptibilities of the blind Greek boy whose room was so perilously near, he crept to the open door, closed and locked it. But slight as was the sound occasioned, it proved sufficient to awake Lycius.

The boy’s outcry alarmed the pair. The little man retreated, and Cheame concealed himself behind the heavy chapel curtain—just as Margaret Orme appeared at the foot of the stair. The position was desperate, but Cheame was a man of infinite daring and resource; this was such an occasion as he had foreseen. Stately, he stepped from his place of concealment—and had the satisfaction of seeing Margaret swoon on the threshold.

All for instant flight was the little man; but Joseph Cheame would have none of it.

“There is no time to empty either of the sacks into the car,” he said; “so I will use this red robe, which has served its purpose.”

But the other stoutly refused to enter the chapel.

For some moments Cheame, a big, powerful man, glared down upon his accomplice with murder beaconing from his eyes; then:

“Very well! Wait on the stair,” he snapped. “I'll pass the stuff to you.”

And with no further word he turned and entered the chapel.

WHAT followed is better told in his companion’s own words:

“I waited just by the chapel door, trembling and shaking all over. Partly it was that I’d been brought up to respect things holy, and partly it was something else. Down at the foot of the stair, lying so white and still and beautiful, with the moonlight on her shining hair, was one of the loveliest ladies I’d ever seen in my life, and somewhere close by a boy was crying as if his heart would break and sometimes saying very weak and husky: ‘Madonna!’”

“‘Madonna!’ That scared me somehow; and I couldn’t stand it any longer. I was just going to call out, softly, to Joe Cheame, when from inside the chapel came the sound of some one laughing!

“It was Cheame. Mind, I’d never heard him laugh like that before; I’ve never heard any man laugh like it, and I never want to hear one laugh like it again. I was frozen, absolutely frozen, to the floor; and as I stood there I saw the curtain move, and I saw the red robe. I was on the point of gasping out something, when the curtain fell back, and the man in the red robe began very slowly to come down the stairs toward me.

“Before Heaven, and as God is my judge, I’ve lived on the straight from that very moment to this, and shall to the end of my days. For the man coming down the stairs was not Cheame! He was a real cardinal, and his eyes looked right through me and seemed to burn my brain. I knew he was not flesh and blood.

“How I lived to get away I shall never remember; I knew nothing else until I found myself alone in the car, flying like a madman along the London road.”

HERE is a singular figure sometimes to be met with in out-of-the-way spots of England. He goes barefoot, dressed in sackcloth, and carries a pilgrim’s staff and a bowl such as mendicants use in the East. How and where he lives no man knows; for whatever money he receives from the charitable he places in the church poor-box at the next town or village on the road. He never speaks, but acknowledges gifts by making the sign of the cross. Those who have missed Joseph Cheame from the rogues’ circles which he once ornamented might be interested, and startled, if they could look into the vacant yet watchful and luminous eyes of the silent pilgrim.