Chapter XII
THE SOUND
UP ON the first landing, Latham waited in a state of indescribable suspense. Seated on the top stair, he watched for he knew not what, listening intently, yet not knowing for what he listened. Somewhere, a chord of memory awakened, and he endeavored to identify it. Presently, he was rewarded.
In spirit he was carried back to a muddy trench, not many miles from Ypres. Fantastic figures, hideously masked, surrounded him. He seemed to see again a little weather vane quivering in the breeze and to be waiting, waiting, waiting for a gas attack from the German lines. This suspense, this waiting for an intangible danger, was similar, he thought. He wondered how Westbury fared in the dining room; and the nature of Harley's dispositions puzzled him more and more.
He could see no point whatever in posting a man in the dining room, although the tactical importance of his own position was evident enough. Then, quite inevitably, his thoughts flew to Phil Westbury. He walked quietly along the corridor to the door of Mrs. Moody's private sitting room.
As he had anticipated, the women were wakeful. Mrs. Moody's soothing voice he detected, and the incisive tones of Joyce. Then, just for a moment, he heard the voice he had come to hear. Words he could not distinguish, nor did he wish to; but he was satisfied and he returned again to the stairhead, thinking that of all the odd positions into which fate had ever thrust him, this one was the strangest of all.
Then came the rain, so suddenly as to startle him. He heard it beating on the roof above and rattling on the windows around. Vaguely it irritated him, since such noise would prevent him hearing—what? He smiled at his own mental bewilderment. What did he expect to hear? The Voice of Káli? Yes, he, a cultivated Englishman, who took pride in his common sense, found himself under the influence of a wave of Eastern superstition. For his reason rebelled against this thing which Harley seemed to believe, but which surely belonged to the mysterious darkness of the Orient, out of which it had come.
“What is it?” he had asked. “Magic? Hypnotism?” And Harley had answered, “Scientific murder!”
Stairs and corridor were wildly illuminated by a vivid flash of lightning. Followed a booming as of big guns over the house, and the rattle and echo of thunder rolling about and about the building. He knew that the women would be alarmed and he longed to go to Mrs. Moody's room to reassure then, but he conquered the impulse and remained where he was.
The final reverberation died away. And then, in upon the new silence, intruded a sound. At the moment that he first detected it, for it began very soflty, Latham found himself thinking of Mrs. Mocdy's evidence in regard to the night of Denby's death. It was “unlike any sound she had ever heard in her life.”
Now he understood her inability to describe it, for this sound, if sound it could be called, which assailed him out of the silence, was undoubtedly the same that she had heard on that occasion. It was the Voice of Káli!
Latham knew from the very first instant of its arising that he had never experienced an identical sensation in his life. This vibration which increased and increased with every passing moment seemed to numb his brain; so that, whilst it was more like a sound than anything else, it produced so singular an effect that, during its continuance, his senses seemed to become merged or confused. He could not say if the thing which held him rooted to the spot where he stood reached him through his sense of touch, taste, sight, smell or hearing. At its height, it was dreadful, almost insupportable.
Then, to awaken him from the stupor which this thing induced, came a dreadful, frenzied shriek—a choking deathly cry, which rose in a wild crescendo and died away in a series of guttural moans.
The other horror—the Voice—the thing—he knew not how to define it—ceased at the same moment,
“Harley!” he whispered hoarsely, then cried the name aloud. “Harley!”
His scalp was tingling electrically. He was not master of himself and knew it. But, forcing his muscles to action, he staggered down the darkened stair and reached the lobby.
At the same moment, the dining room door burst open. There came the click of an electric switch. And there was Jim Westbury; revolver in hand, wild-eyed, running toward the library door. Westbury looked at Latham.
“Latham!” he cried. “You heard it?”
“My God! Of course I heard it!”
They reached the door almost together, threw it open and leaped into the room.
“The switch!” gasped Westbury. “It's on your side.” Then, “Harley! Harley!” he cried.
There were sounds of opening doors and hurrying footsteps. A blinding flash of lightning illuminated the room just as Latham found the switch and turned up the library lamps. Deafening thunder burst over the house; but Latham and Westbury, standing close together within the open doorway, looked wildly about the library.
The room was empty!
“The chair!” gasped Latham. “He's in the chair!”
In a frenzy of apprehension he ran across the room, reached the deep rest chair and peered over the back of it.
It was empty!
“My God!” cried Westbury.
Latham turned in a flash. Westbury was staring at one of the wall cases, the glass door of which was swinging slowly open in response to the movement of a gilded Egyptian sarcophagus lid—one of the curiosities which Van Dean had imported.
Silently, the two men watched; and then, just before the ancient painted thing, the gilded effigy of the woman whose mummy had lain beneath it, fell out into the room, it was seized from behind and replaced in position. Paul Harley stepped out and closed the door of the wall case.
“Forgive me.” he said. “I did not mean to alarm you.”
“Harley!” cried Westbury and Latham together. “Thank God you're safe!” added the latter.
They all three turned as Burton van Dean, wrapped in a dressing gown, staggered into the library.
“Tell me! Tell me” he began, then saw Harley and pulled up short.
“All right, Van Dean!” said Harley. “I'm safe.”
Excited voices sounded from the lobby. The women were down.
“Stop them, somebody!” Harley snapped.
“Jim! Jim! What has happened?” came Joyce's voice.
“Please go back,” said Latham, stepping to the door; “everyone is safe.”
“Ladies,” cried Harley, “I shall be glad if you will all return to Mrs. Moody's apartments and lock yourselves in!”
Behind the group huddled at the doorway other voices could be heard.
“Order all the servants to their rooms,” commanded Harley. “Latham! Lock the door.”
Latham obeyed, leaving all that frightened party out in the lobby. The thunder sounded again; but this time-more distantly.
“What in heaven's name does this mean?” implored Van Dean. “What has happened, Harley? I expected to find you—” and his voice shook—“dead!”
“So did someone else,” said Harley shortly. “But brace yourself, Van Dean. There is more to come. If you don't feel capable of facing it, tell me frankly. I shall quite understand.”
“I want to know the truth,” whispered the American.
“So do I,” said Latham. “That noise, that vibrating thing that seemed to pierce my brain! And then the shriek!”
Paul Harley looked sternly from face to face.
“Van Dean,” he said, “what do you keep in this cabinet?”
He pointed to the tall lacquered cabinet which stood at the foot of the study stairs.
“Nothing,” was the reply. “It is empty.”
“Then, why is it kept locked?” demanded Harley.
“Because the door has been damaged sometime,” replied Van Dean, “and the only way to keep it shut is to lock it. But for heaven's sake, why do you ask, Harley?”
“I have a very good reason. Who has got the key of this cabinet?”
“I have.”
“Where is it?”
“It's on the bunch with the others.”
“Have you your keys with you?”
“No, they are in the table drawer in the study. You know where I keep them.”
Harley nodded shortly and, turning away, walked up the study stair and into the study. A few moments later he returned, carrying a bunch of keys. No one had spoken during his absence, but all three men had stood staring, as if petrified, at the lacquer cabinet at the stair-foot.
Excited voices could plainly be heard in the lobby, outside the room, and recognizing what their state of mind must be, Latham would have given much to have been enabled to speak words of comfort to soothe the mind of one at least among them. But such was the tense expectancy which held him that even that other claim faded beside it. He watched Harley descend the stairs and it seemed to him that he was unduly deliberate. But finally, keys in hand, he reached the cabinet and faced the three men who were watching him.
“Much remains to be explained,” he said. He held out the keys. “Which is the one, Van Dean?”
Van Dean, his fingers tremulous, selected a long, slender key from the bunch and returned them to Harley.
“Prepare yourselves,” said the latter. “When I have unlocked this door, one of the minor mysteries will be solved.”
He inserted the key in the lock. It operated and he turned it without difficulty. Then, his attitude tense, he slowly opened the door.