Chapter XVI
THE TOWER
IN THE library of the Abbey, the gruesome police inquiry was being conducted. The body of Mohammed Khán lay upon a settee. The police surgeon, rising from his knees, his examination concluded, shook his head in puzzled fashion.
“There is this wound on the arm, Superintendent,” he said, “which seems to have been inflicted by the teeth of some animal. No other marks of violence whatever.”
“Then, what should you say was the cause of death, Doctor?”
“Well,” the surgeon replied slowly, “it sounds a queer thing to say, but he looks remarkably as if he'd been struck by lightning!”
“Struck by lightning?”
“To be sure, I have only seen one man in my life who had died in that way. Over at Moss's farm, two years ago, you remember?”
The superintendent nodded.
“Well, the body presented much the same appearance,” said the doctor.
“Of course, we can't do much,” complained the superintendent, “until the Scotland Yard man who has the case in hand appears on the scene. He should be here now.”
“What Scotland Yard man?” inquired Jim Westbury, who had remained in the library and undergone a lengthy interrogation.
“Inspector Wessex. Perhaps you didn't know he was here?”
“He's not here!” declared Jim. “He hasn't been here. There have been no Scotland Yard men in the house!”
The superintendent smiled.
“He may not have been in the house,” he replied, “but he has been on the case.”
“Then, where is he?”
The superintendent continued to smile.
“That's just what I want to know,” he said. “We haven't been dealt with quite fairly. We've been kept in the dark all along; and now, without knowing the facts which led up to this man's death, how can we be expected to do anything?”
He turned to his assistant, who was curiously examining the mechanism in the pedestal in the image of Káli, which had been moved into the center of the room. “Any ideas?” he asked him.
“Can't say I have, sir. Looks rather like a receiving set.”
“It's not a receiving set,” declared Jim Westbury. “It's the thing that caused this man's death!”
The superintendent shrugged his shoulders, looking helplessly at the doctor.
“Do you see any connection, Doctor?” he asked.
“Not the slightest,” was the reply. “Except” The medical man's expression suddenly changed. “Well, I don't know!” he added. “There might be, there might be”
A vivid flash of lightning illuminated the room and the building seemed to shake in sympathy with the reverberations of the thunder which followed.
“The storm seems to be centering right over us,” commented the superintendent; “that last flash was very near the house.”
“Very near!” mused the doctor, looking vaguely at the electrical mechanism in the pedestal and all about the room, as if he questioned something.
Finally, he stared again at the strangely drawn face of the dead man who lay stretched on the settee. A second blaze of lightning came and cries of alarm were heard in the drawing room.
“That,” said the superintendent, “was a still nearer one!”
Amid the deafening crash of thunder, the four men in the library looked at one another. And in all their eyes was a question.
As the last hollow echo died away, “The sound that you heard at the time of this man's death, Mr. Westbury,” said the doctor, “could you describe it?”
“I never heard anything like it before,” Westbury declared. “It left my scalp all tingling.”
“You mean that literally?”
“Quite literally,” was the reply. “As though—as though” He fumbled for words.
“Did you ever have an electric massage?” interjected the doctor abruptly.
“Never!” Jim Westbury replied blankly.
“Oh! So that isn't going to help us. But—” and a strange expression crossed his face—“do you mind, superintendent, if we all leave this room, now? At any rate—” he paused significantly—“until the storm has abated.”
“I don't mind,” replied the superintendent. “I can do nothing further until Inspector Wessex turns up.”
“Good!” said the doctor. “Then we will go, if you don't mind!”
Each man experienced an unaccountable sense of relief on passing from the library into the lobby. The last to leave was the superintendent, who closed the door behind him.
“My God!” cried Westbury. “That's got the house!”
A third fork of lightning had leaped down upon the Abbey. There was a strange, quivering sound. The atmosphere seemed to vibrate. Every light went out. A vivid, blue radiance prevailed in the lobby for several moments. There came a vicious sparking from the library which they had just left, then a dull explosion; then darkness fell. And with an ear-splitting roar the very heavens seemed to open above them!
“Just in time!” said the doctor grimly.
Out of the drawing room burst a panic stricken party. But the doctor had thrown open the library door.
“Who has a torch?” he cried sharply. “The lights have failed!”
“Here you are!” said Jim Westbury. “My God, what's happened!”
Vaguely, the light of the torch illuminated the big room they had so recently quitted. Pungent fumes filled it.
The image of Káli lay upon the floor amid the smoking ashes of its pedestal!
{di|T}HREE minutes prior to this, Harley and Latham had groped their way in through the ruined doorway of the ruined tower two miles away from the Abbey. A desperate fight was raging there, somewhere above them.
“Is there a stairway?” cried Harley.
The light of his electric lamp suddenly illuminated the ruinous place in which they stood.
“Yes! right ahead of you!”
There, sure enough, were the remains of a spiral stair leading to a fragmentary floor above them. Harley went stumbling up, Latham close behind him. Lightning was splitting the blackness on the further slope and thunder was booming wildly away over the Abbey.
Onto a partially ruined landing they made their way.
“Hands up!” said a loud voice.
Two lanterns moved in the darkness. And stretched on the floor, still struggling and uttering threats, was a man who wore handcuffs! Immediately in front of Harley, revolver in hand, stood Inspector Gorleston!
“Mr. Harley!” cried the prisoner, from the floor, “he's escaped! Explain to this imbecile who I am!”
“Lower your revolver, Inspector Gorleston,” said Harley sternly. “You may not know me, but my name is Paul Harley, and this is Captain Latham. We are both guests at the Abbey. Your prisoner is Detective Inspector Wessex of Scotland Yard!”
“I don't believe it!” cried Gorleston.
“Will you look at my notebook!” cried Wessex. “That will tell you everything. By God, you'll pay for this!”
The inspector was shaken.
“But this man is Parker, who has been posing as a gardener at the Abbey!” he protested. “He's been dashing around the countryside on a motor bicycle at night. And”
“Release him!” snapped Harley. “At once! You should not have interfered. You had definite orders to stand aside.” He stamped his foot angrily upon the ground. “Too late, Latham!” he said bitterly. “We are too late!” He turned to the inspector, as Wessex, released, got up. “Clear this building!” he ordered. “I want everybody out of it.”
“But,” objected Gorleston
“Listen!” Inspector Wessex crossed and confronted him. “Mr. Paul Harley's in charge of this case. He's acting for the Government. You have done enough mischief for one night. Just obey orders!”
Accordingly, a strange party, they stumbled down the ruined stairs and out of the tower and stepped out on the slope.
“Was anyone here when you arrived, Wessex?” asked Harley.
“I am almost certain there was, Mr. Harley,” was the reply. “I watched for a long time; and then I crept into the place and up the stair to the point where you found me. There is some way to a higher platform and I was trying to find it, when those” He shrugged his shoulders angrily.
“Gorleston followed you?”
“Evidently,” returned Wessex.
“It may not be too late,” began Harley. And then there came a dreadful interruption.
A vivid flash of lightning gleamed on the distant Abbey slope. Everyone was conscious of an uncomfortable, tingling sensation. There came a deafening crash from somewhere high in the ruined tower. A great spurt of blue flame leaped up, far over their heads. There was a rending, tremulous roar. The very ground heaved beneath their feet.
“Run! Run for your lives!” cried Harley.
He turned, and to the accompaniment of booming thunder they raced headlong down the slope, stumbling sometimes, but always recovering and running away—away from the tower, which, having survived many centuries, now was tottering!
As they all threw themselves exhaustedly down, at the base of the little hill, the old tower fell with a shuddering crash, in smoking ruins.
“Good God!” gasped Latham. “But the lightning was two miles away—it could not have struck”
“It struck the Abbey!” replied Harley, horror in his tone. “It struck the copper wire in the library chimney! And by some reflex action, some law we don't understand, all that electrical force passed from the receiver in the pedestal of Káli to the Ernst transmitter at the top of this tower!”
“Merciful heaven!” moaned Latham, “I pray there was no one in the library!”
“To which,” said Paul Harley grimly, “I add a prayer that the fiend who planned this thing was still in the tower when it fell!”
“We may never know, for sure, Mr. Harley,” came the awe-stricken tones of Wessex.
“I shall know!” was the answer. “He has failed. But if he has escaped, my task is all before me!”